by Mark Frost
Will saw Brooke fold her arms around herself and draw inward.
“Are you all right?” Will whispered.
“So empty and cold. Like a graveyard, on another planet. Doesn’t feel like there could ever have been life here.”
“Hold on a second,” said Elise as she stopped and waited for the others to do the same. “Talk about exactly how we plan to find this key. For instance, what does it look like?”
Will wondered if her irritation stemmed from seeing him whispering with Brooke.
“We don’t know anything else about it,” said Will, “except that it’s some kind of aphotic device and that Nepsted said we’d find it in the cavern at the bottom of the stairs.”
“Cavern, stairs, check,” said Nick.
“And that it was inside the hospital,” said Ajay. “Which you could only get to through the ‘old cathedral.’ ”
“I don’t suppose you asked him if he had a tourist book,” said Elise.
“Look, landmarks like that shouldn’t be difficult to find,” said Ajay. He gestured in front of the GPS screen in his hand; the device projected a 3-D map into the air in front of them, and each stroke Ajay made with his fingers added more detail to it.
“Primitive cities evolved along logical lines, with a practical place and purpose. There would have been a marketplace, for example, near a major entrance, with residential areas on either side, and a neighborhood for the various crafting professions would’ve grouped together to practice.”
“Practice what? We don’t even know what kind of people lived here,” said Elise.
“If they were people,” said Brooke.
“The scale of what remains of these buildings appears somewhat oversized for people,” said Ajay, walking ahead with his GPS map, forcing the others to follow him. “Based on what we’ve seen, I’d estimate this was a community with a population of over fifteen thousand … whatever they were.”
“You are aware that you always reel off a bunch of facts when you’re scared, right?” asked Elise.
“And what do you do, criticize others?” he sniffed.
“No, she does that all the time,” said Nick.
“Manage your anxiety your way, I’ll manage mine,” said Ajay, then, without missing a beat: “And since Nepsted mentioned a cathedral, it suggests that the inhabitants observed some communal form of worship. Given the importance of spiritual matters to advanced social organisms, it follows that the seat of such observances would have been accorded a prominent and visible location … for instance, the tallest point in the city …”
“Like over there,” said Will, pointing to a shadow in the distance.
Nick fired another flare in that direction. About two hundred yards ahead, the broad avenue they were on opened into a commons area or square. As they reached the square, the avenue diverged into three separate pathways. One branched left into a tangled warren of small, twisted streets; another turned right and led to a symmetrical pattern of spacious avenues—a residential area, possibly.
The third path continued straight ahead, and fifty yards past the square culminated in a broad flight of stairs that climbed twenty feet to a plaza that wrapped around the most impressive structure they’d seen inside the walls. It had suffered extensive damage. Will thought it looked like one of those hollowed out husks from the urban bombings of World War Two.
“Cathedral, anyone?” asked Elise.
As they approached, four peculiar objects came into view at the base of the stairs leading to the cathedral. Tall, thin, winding shapes that rose out of the ground for about ten feet and then branched up into large irregular spheres.
“Those look like … trees,” said Ajay.
“How is that possible this far underground?” asked Brooke. “Without light or water?”
“I have no idea,” said Will.
But Ajay was right. The objects did look like trees, with something like a trunk growing out of the ground, and a complex bower of bare, fingery branches above. As they shined their flashlights on them, the branches sparkled, refracting the beams into colorful shards like abstract chandeliers. Moving closer, they saw that all the limbs were riddled with elongated holes and looked more like glass than wood, as if they’d survived but been encased by the passing of a ferocious ice storm.
“They look more like jewels than trees,” said Brooke.
“If these are trees, they’re as old as a geologic age,” said Ajay. “Like fossils in the Petrified Forest.”
“Maybe they did have light and water here,” said Elise. “Once upon a time.”
“I’m just asking: did we find Hell?” asked Nick, moving around restlessly. “’Cause whoever came up with that whole ‘Hell is a fiery pit with a bunch of devils jumping around’ totally missed the boat.”
“Let’s check out the church,” said Will.
“Yeah, suddenly I got the urge to light a candle,” said Nick.
Nick started up the stairs. The stone steps felt soft, almost crumbling underfoot. Will brought up the rear. At one point he thought he heard something soft and rustling behind him. He turned to look and held up his flare.
Nothing moved in the relentless gray, but he felt a vague disquiet, his nervous system registering something he couldn’t see. Will called up his Grid to scan the landscape around them. No signs of heat—or life—registered, but he picked up a slight movement.
The trees at the bottom of the stairs. Their branches were swaying, as if stirred by a gentle breeze.
Will hadn’t felt any air moving since they entered the gates. He figured the walls were acting as a windbreak, since they’d felt a steady breeze in the tunnel earlier. And the tree’s branches were twenty feet aboveground, where they wouldn’t feel the wind.
He caught up with the others as they reached a broad colonnade at the stop of the stairs, punctuated with the ruins of a row of thick pillars that might have once held up a portico. Only two were still partially standing. Beyond the columns, an ugly jagged gap led to the building’s shadowed interior.
Something about the hole reminded Will of a gaping mouth with broken teeth. He could feel his pulse rising, and as he glanced around, he realized they were all uneasy. Except, maybe, for Nick, who looked like a kid lining up for the teacups at Disneyland.
“You’re sure we have to go down through the cathedral to get to the hospital?” said Elise.
“Yes,” said Will. “I can’t picture what he meant by it, but it’s what Nepsted told us.”
“And this is no time to be deviating from his directions,” said Ajay.
“As the only Catholic in the group, I’ll go first,” said Nick. “In case there’s zombie priests inside, which I’m almost hoping for, since there’s some padres at St. Francis Elementary whose necks I’d like to snap and this might be the closest I get.”
He lifted up his flare, whistled “Onward Christian Soldiers,” and marched through the hole. They waited until Nick signaled all-clear and then followed him inside, Will bringing up the rear. He glanced back one last time and thought he saw a tall, shadowy shape slip behind a crumbling building in the distance. Will quickly stepped inside.
Seen by the light of their flares, the place fit Nepsted’s description as a “cathedral”; the room was immense and space soared above them just as a central hall of worship would. Most of the high ceiling had collapsed, but a few intact beams spanned the gap above like exposed ribs. Rows of thick stone benches, many broken or overturned, lined either side of a central aisle and faced a raised stone dais where the aisle ended.
As they passed down the aisle, Will realized the benches weren’t built to a human scale. They looked between four and five feet high, which suggested anyone sitting in them would have been at least seven feet tall.
Will glanced over at Ajay, who was looking at the seats on the other side. Will held his hand up, about
a foot over his head, and Ajay nodded.
“Welcome to the church of the NBA,” said Ajay quietly.
Four tall stone steps led to the dais. Nick climbed it first and called the others to come take a look. A square, empty stone platform the size of a boxing ring, about two feet higher than the dais, occupied the middle of the rise.
“This must be an altar,” said Elise. “Or something like it.”
Directly behind the altar stood a rectangular stone structure about twelve feet long and five high. A carved stone slab covered eighty percent of it; the rest had crumbled, leaving an opening on top. Nick hopped on top of it and made his way toward the opening.
“What is this?” asked Elise, shining her light around the sides.
“It looks like a crypt,” said Ajay.
“Yeah, baby.” Nick pointed his flashlight down inside. “Uh, Will?”
Nick held a hand down and pulled Will up to join him. Both directed their lights at the interior.
Amid crumbled debris and other unidentifiable decomposed materials, a massive skeleton rested inside. All they could see was its huge, misshapen head, a bulbous oblong spheroid the size of a beach ball with four empty eye sockets and a gnarled set of fangs that spanned the entire width of the skull.
“What is it?” asked Ajay, looking up at them.
“The tomb of Pope Putrid the First,” said Nick, grimacing. “Dude had to be eight feet tall.”
“That’s why he got the best tomb,” said Will.
“The Mac Daddy Monster. Take some snaps of this dude’s melon,” said Nick as he pulled Ajay and Elise up to take a look. “And I used to think you had big brains.”
“Oh my God,” said Elise. “They’re aliens.”
“They’re not aliens,” said Will.
“You’re not going to tell me that’s human,” said Elise.
“Extraordinary,” said Ajay, immediately snapping pictures. “You really ought to see this, Brooke.”
“No thanks,” said Brooke, keeping her head down.
“They’re not humans, but they’re not aliens,” said Will.
“How is that possible, Will?” asked Ajay, taking more pictures.
“They’re not from someplace else,” said Will. “They’re from here.”
“Here? Where here? Where how?” asked Nick.
“Earth. They were here before,” said Will. “These must be the ‘Old Ones’ in the Lakota legends. Or maybe, just maybe, part of that ancient race that’s trying to come back to earth, the Other Team. And it’s possible they’re both.”
Will saw Brooke wandering away, folding her arms around herself. He hopped down and hurried over to her.
“Are you going to be all right?” he asked.
Brooke refused to look at him. “I don’t think we should be here. At all. I think we should leave now.”
“They were here before what, Will?” asked Elise, a little more insistently.
“Before us. Before humans. A long time before. Thousands of years.”
“Considering all this,” said Ajay, looking around, “the timeline seems plausible.”
“How do you know all this, Will?” asked Elise, her gaze narrowing sharply.
“Good question,” said Nick. “Wassup with that?”
Will watched Brooke carefully—she still wouldn’t meet his eye—then turned back to the group. Change the subject. Not the right time to drop the whole “Dave and the Hierarchy” number on them.
“From what Jericho told me, connecting the dots. Does anybody see any other way in or out of here, besides the one we came through?”
Nick jumped down and scoured the perimeter of the cathedral. No other entrances or exits.
You need to stand on it.
The words slipped into Will’s mind just as easily as before, but this time he recognized a familiar tone and rhythm. Did he suddenly know where these instructions were coming from, and whose voice this might be? When he took a moment to think about it, it actually made sense, or as much sense as anything did in his life these days.
Will stepped onto the altar and examined it. Its entire surface was lined with chiseled grooves, worn smooth with time, a patterned latticework of them all running slightly downhill toward a round hole, about three feet across, in its center, big enough to fall through.
“Everybody come up here,” said Will.
Everyone but Brooke joined him.
“Come on, Brooke.”
“I want to go officially on record and say this is a terrible idea,” she said.
“And then … ?” asked Elise patiently.
“We’ll take a vote,” said Will. “Either we keep looking for Nepsted’s key or head back. Who wants to keep going?”
Everyone but Brooke raised their hands. She sighed and stepped up onto the platform with them.
The platform jolted sharply and then, accompanied by a sound of heavy chains rattling, the whole altar began to slowly descend.
“You gotta be pooping me,” said Nick, laughing.
“Would anyone else like to change their vote?” asked Brooke, annoyed.
Ajay jumped off the moving platform, which had lowered until it was just level with the dais itself, and it came to a sudden stop.
“For goodness’ sake, people,” said Ajay. “May I ask, Will, what is the purpose of throwing ourselves into this hole?”
“Nepsted said we had to go down through the cathedral,” said Will.
“I’m perfectly aware of what Nepsted told us, Will,” said Ajay, folding his arms.
“We took a vote, Ajay,” said Elise.
“And, dude, we’re not throwing ourselves,” said Nick.
“I’m sorry but this constitutes changed circumstances,” said Ajay. “I did not have all the information required at the time to make a fully informed decision.”
“Don’t filibuster us now, buddy,” said Elise. “We obviously don’t have enough weight to activate this thing without you.”
“I feel the need to point out that our progress will not be adversely affected by pausing for a last moment of self-reflection,” said Ajay. “Before we recklessly ride a descending stone platform adorning the middle of some godforsaken ruin of demonic worship into the lower precincts of the underworld.”
“Hang on a second,” said Nick, fishing through his pack. “Sister Mary Margaret makes a fair point. Let me rig something.”
Nick took out a long coiled rope and secured one end to a short stone pillar on the corner of the dais, then held on to the other end and jumped back up on the platform.
“I got a hundred feet of rope here. Feel better now?” Nick asked Ajay.
“Brooke?” pleaded Ajay.
“In for a penny,” she sighed, resigned.
Will looked at his watch. “Take your time,” he said, without looking at Ajay.
Ajay held out for another few seconds before he said, “Oh fiddlesticks” and then stepped cautiously back onto the platform. Another jolt and it immediately began lowering again.
“Yee-haw,” said Elise quietly.
As they passed down through the floor of the altar, Nick knelt near the center of the platform, shining his light through the hole.
“This is so awesome,” said Nick.
“What is?” asked Ajay.
“I can totally see a huge pile of bones down there.”
“Dear God, if there actually is a God, please let me die quickly and painlessly,” whispered Ajay, while sinking down onto his hands and knees.
No need to get your knickers in a twist, said the voice in Will’s head. Those bones are as old as the Himalayas, mate.
No question about it now. The voice was Dave.
THE HOSPITAL
The altar descended at the same steady pace for what Will estimated to be somewhere between fifty
and sixty feet.
Dave, hey, Dave? You there?
Will repeatedly thought a response to Dave, but the voice didn’t respond.
The five of them huddled together toward the center, staying away from edges. Shining their lights around, they realized they were dropping down through a narrow chamber of rock that appeared to be man-made, or at least not a natural formation. It widened slightly as they neared the bottom, and the platform came to a sudden stop a yard from the floor.
The ground around their stopping point wasn’t just littered with bones; it appeared composed entirely of a vast pile of them. Pale, dusty, and compacted together. What appeared to be a path or clearing through them led away to their right.
“If we step off this thing, is it going back up without us?” asked Elise.
“Only one way to find out,” said Will.
“Let me make sure we’re ready for that,” said Nick.
He pulled a piece of climbing gear from his pack—a section of strong fabric straps that formed a seat—and threaded the end of his rope through it, then dropped it down the hole in the center of the platform.
“If it goes back up, I’ll climb the rope. You take turns in this seat and I’ll pull you up,” said Nick as he worked.
“Step off one at a time to test it but stay close,” said Will. “Nick, grab the rope and hang on in case it goes back up on some kind of delay. If it doesn’t move, we’ll continue on.”
“Sounds like a plan,” said Nick. “Actually, it sounds like my plan.”
They stepped off one at a time. Nick went first, reached under the platform, and grabbed the rope. Will went last, bones crunching underfoot as he landed. They waited a full minute, in tense silence, but the altar never budged. Keeping an eye on it, Will led the others away, turning their attention to their new surroundings.
Their lights picked up bones everywhere, piled high all around the moving platform in a chamber that appeared to be the size of a football field. The air around them felt dead and carried the slightest suggestion of decay.
