I was snapped out of the vision by the most wonderful sound I had ever heard. Voices shouted. I could hear Darla barking and yipping. I tried to shout, to be heard. Nothing escaped me but a pained wheeze. I stuffed half a handful of snow in my mouth to wet it. I licked my numb lips and tried again. My voice cracked with effort, but it was enough.
A light began to shine on the edge of the hole I had tumbled through. It was at that point I realized the sun had already set. The light crept forward, then suddenly it was blinding me. I held a hand up to block the light. I feebly cried for help.
The light switched off, and I saw the face of my neighbor. He saw my leg, and immediately used his cell phone to call for help. Then he swept a bit of snow from the ledge. Some fell down onto me. I felt warmth spreading in my body.
He talked to me for the hours that we waited. He refused to let me sleep. I grew to hate him as he shouted at me. He wouldn’t come down to help me. I only wanted sleep, to let my body fall into the warmth. Eventually, he turned away. I heard some monstrous noise muffled by the snow.
He left, then returned some minutes later. Two EMTs shined their lights on me, then disappeared. They returned a few minutes later with a large plastic orange stretcher. They told me to roll onto it, and buckle myself on. It took an eternity with my frozen hands.
They carried me back up the slope. Once I crested the edge of the hole, they crouched and lifted in unison. Then they quickly carried me off. I learned what the monstrous noise was a moment later. Helicopter blades whirred overhead, deafening me.
The helicopter lifted off, and they put a headset on me. I could hear them talking. They said I owed my neighbor my life. They said I was lucky. The flight took hours. When we landed, I was quickly transferred to a hospital cot, and whisked down below. Basic measures were taken to bring my body back to temperature.
I could see my hands and feet were blackened. I had frostbite from my extended stay below ground. I was dosed with something, and fell once more into blackness. This time, I welcomed it.
When next I woke, I was in a bed. My entire body hurt. My leg was in a cast. I raised a hand toward my face. I had all of my fingers. They were black, but they moved.
I checked my other hand, finding it also whole. I checked my toes, and they were all intact. A nurse entered the room a moment later.
She welcomed me back to the land of the living. She also spoke about how lucky I was. How wonderful my dog was, and my neighbor. I mutely nodded. I was lucky to live. I was not lucky to find that hole the way I had. She dosed me as well, saying I needed rest.
I stayed for three days in the hospital, while they treated me for hypothermia, frostbite, and extreme dehydration. When I was released, they promised to sort everything out with my insurance. I had to call my neighbor to pick me up from the big city.
He showed up hours later, and quietly drove me back. We barely spoke, though I did thank him. He talked about how amazing Darla was. I could only agree.
A bill showed up in my mail. It listed a huge number. I fought it, and my insurance company. Eventually it was taken care of.
The cast came off six weeks after my fall. My leg had shrunk from disuse. I started physical therapy to help regain strength. By the time spring rolled around, I was able to jog with Darla again. Every day I pushed a little harder. Every week I improved the speed and distance I could run.
The darkness at the back of the hole I fell into was never far from my mind. I made plans. On my next trip into town I stopped by the library. A geological survey had been done more than twenty years before by the county. My property was included in the survey.
The results were a little puzzling. The foothills were riddled with caves. The survey listed no caves within dozens of miles of my property. Seismic imaging had turned up nothing, save the underground river far below that my well drew from.
I opened my disused email and sent a letter to several friends in the survivalist community. I asked them what they thought about this hole on my property. I knew answers would take weeks, so I logged out and left the library.
That same trip, I made a stop at the hardware store. I bought new tools, including glow sticks, a shovel, marking posts, and rope. The next day I ventured out onto the property, hunting down the hole. Without the snow, it was easier to see the hole when I eventually found it.
The hunt itself took six hours, because everything looked different without the blanket of white obscuring everything. Landmarks were not the same. When I found the hole, I placed several marking poles around the perimeter of the hole. They stood tall and bright for easy sighting.
By that point, I was tired from the hunt. I called it a day, and went home for dinner and sleep. That night I had strange dreams, filled with dancing colors and strange shapes behind a curtain of shadow.
I woke in the morning, quickly forgetting all but the vaguest of details from my dreams. I prepared for a long trip in the warming day. When I arrived, I was perplexed. I could have sworn the poles were placed around the hole when I left the day before. Instead, they led to it, like a cone placed on one side.
I placed the further poles around the hole again, noting the solid ground I walked over. The exhaustion of the day before must have caused me to misplace the poles.
I cracked and shook the first light stick, tossing it into the hole. It rattled and fell down the steep slope. It stopped six feet down, on the flat surface I had lain on the winter before. I knelt and cracked a second stick, tossing it farther into the hole.
The second stick skittered across the flat area I had lain on. About four feet from the wall, it dropped into darkness. In the brief moment of light, I saw the far wall was approximately four feet from the cliff. I had come very close to falling into the cave at the back.
With new food for thought, I walked back to my house. Nights were still chilly in spring, though not like they had been even a decade before.
Still, a fire sounded comforting. I built the fire and relaxed in one of the recliners that had been left behind. It had one side to the fire, to benefit from the light. Nearby sat bookshelves. The shelves were lined with books, both new and old.
The man that had lived in my house previously had been Norwegian by birth. His family immigrated to America when he was young, but they brought their culture with them. I had learned all of that when checking out the house before buying it.
His collection had been included with the house, and I had merged it with my own. Three books in particular caught my eye that night. Two were in Norwegian, their titles indecipherable to me. The third was in English.
I pulled all three out, but set the two in Norwegian aside. The third I took with me back to the recliner. It was a book of Norwegian fairytales. I began reading, curious about the strangely mature material contained in what appeared to be a children’s book.
It spoke of trolls and gnomes, of adventures that went well and others that ended terribly. My eyes grew heavy as I read on. At some point, I fell asleep, the book still in my hands. I had strange and vibrant dreams that night.
When I woke in the morning, I was stiff from sitting in the recliner. I put the book aside and stretched out. After my morning run with Darla, I decided to return to the library. As I left the house, I grabbed the two Norwegian books.
My email was still empty when I checked it at the library. I searched the internet for the books in question, and found their English equivalents.
The first was a play called Peer Gynt. It had a story of a man who refused to take responsibility for his own actions, and fled to another country. The other book was focused on trolls, which had their own rich history and lore. I checked the two books out and returned home.
Once more, at the end of the day I lit a fire and relaxed in the recliner. The first book, Peer Gynt, grabbed me immediately.
Peer, the titular character, recklessly shirked responsibility. He always chose to pursue his wishes instead of taking responsibility. He lived an entire life centered around the e
thos best described as ‘not my problem, I’ll go around it.’
I continued to read the play until I fell asleep. In my dream, I stood at the foot of an impossibly massive mountain. The slopes curved up well into the sky and beyond sight. It looked like the stars themselves orbited the peak of the mountain. In front of me stood a pair of intricately carved stone doors.
The doors were imposing in their size, seemingly big enough to accept the largest of man’s vehicles with ample space to spare. The longer I looked at them, marveling in their majesty, the larger they seemed. Runes appeared to crawl along the surface, constantly shifting in the edges of my sight.
The strange light that seemed to permeate the world caused colors to reflect out of the carved runes. Flecks of grassy greens, sky blues, and bruise like violets seemed almost exposed by the runes as they writhed along the surface.
Beneath the stone, in the flecks of color, another language could be seen. The more I focused on the ancient letters, the more my head hurt. I began to piece a mental image together of the letters that shifted below the surface.
I fell to my knees, though I couldn’t tell you why. Perhaps I sought clarity, a closer look, or maybe even in supplication to an unknown source.
I snapped awake in my bed, tangled in sheets and soaked in sweat. I had no recollection of preparing for bed, let alone getting in it. A glance at the bedside clock showed it to be an hour before dawn. I rose anyway, unwilling to chance more sleep, fearing the dreams it might bring.
I cooked a hearty breakfast and prepared rations for the exploration I would be performing in the cave. The sun had long risen by the time I let Darla out to run. I packed my hiking backpack, attached rope, and set out. The walk took a solid twenty minutes.
It was like the darkened abyss called to me. I walked straight to it, not taking note of anything around me. When I arrived, I set two anchors deep into the ground. Once they were set, I attached the rope. I used a belay system to safely descend.
I kicked the rope into the hole, and lowered myself in. I attached my belay system to the rope, and tossed the rest of the rope into the cave. I could hear the rope unfurl for a long time. It was two hundred and fifty feet long.
I lowered myself over the lip of the cliff, and began to descend. I set a pace that by my figuring should have taken me the full two hundred and fifty feet in about fifteen minutes.
I could feel myself descending. The darkness was all round me. I had a head lamp, though it seemed to only go a handful of feet before being swallowed by darkness.
I dropped a glow stick, and it disappeared before hitting the bottom. I descended for over an hour. I should have been exhausted. Instead, I felt something akin to a runner’s high. Eventually the rope ended. My feet touched ground as I ran out.
My headlight showed walls on all sides, only a few feet away. Opposite the wall I had descended sat a small tunnel set near the floor. It was wide and low, maybe four feet across and two feet high. I knelt down, shining my headlamp into the tunnel.
I had to shrug my backpack off before I could crawl into the tunnel. The walls seemed to press in for a moment. Apprehension gripped me. I crawled forward, fighting the sudden urge to turn and run. The tunnel opened up, growing taller. I was soon able to stand, and walk normally.
Even as I continued forward, I questioned if I should. I reasoned it out, trusting that I had been led to this cave for a reason.
Something drew me ever onward. Something stirred in the back of my mind, perhaps the anxiety I was sure I should have felt. Instead, I felt as calm as the dead air around me. One foot in front of the other, I walked inexorably forward. Even when I tried to turn back, I found myself moving forward.
Suspicion bloomed in my mind. I began to grow concerned, perhaps whatever lay at the end of this endless tunnel had an influence over me. The thought floated around for a moment, before subtly disappearing.
A gust of wind billowed over me, causing me to blink. Condensation glittered on the walls, so close to me as I found myself crawling on my belly once more.
Rock pushes against my back as I continue. The tunnel is narrow, and I feel claustrophobic. I am struggling forward, pulled through this crevice. My knees and elbows are sore, scraped by the rock.
I am watching now, locked inside my mind. I do not know when it happened, but I am no longer in control of my body. All I can do is watch, wait. My body continues through the tunnel for an eternity. I am trapped, screaming silently in the dark confines of my own mind.
My body has become an instrument to another will.
I try to panic. I try to feel the terror that by all rights should be mine. Instead, I feel a detached calm. Once more, my eyes blink.
The rock is gone. My torch gutters in the wind. Dust is swirling in front of my eyes, kicked up by my breath. Something is wrong. My light is still mine, but it is wrong.
My body stands, still enslaved to another. It is stiff, creaking with disuse. I have only been standing in this void for seconds. I cannot see far, the shadows themselves seem to live. My torch is guttering, sputtering, dead. Darkness has settled around me.
The weight of untold volumes can be felt in the darkness. I am standing in a space that is immeasurable to my mind. It is open and vast. A gust of stagnant air is drawing me onward, telling tales of millennia past. Epochs echo in the distant reaches of this place, times so long gone that stars have been born and died of old age.
One foot in front of the other. I have been walking for decades. Centuries. I lost my mind to time and unchanging darkness long ago. I only have short windows of lucidity now. I have never been hungry. Never tired. I have not known sleep in so many ages I do not understand the concept anymore.
The endless cycle of stepping on stone, of listening to my feet shuffle forward has ended. I listen, I look about. For the first time in untold eons, something is different.
Stars. Stars are all around me, glittering in the darkness. My body reaches a hand out, and a wall is there. The stone looks cold, barren. The surface is rippling like water. I can see my hand even from the miles away that it is. My hand is sinking into the pliant, fleshy surface of the appendage before me.
The gray stone is mottled, is green, is healthy pink flesh, is ashen and dead. It is all of these and more. It is none of these. My hand is retracted, my eyes are closed. I cannot bear the majesty, the unending garishness.
My body is once more mine. I stumble, not knowing my own body after so long apart. So long held a hostage in my own mind. Sounds rush in, sounds that hadn’t existed a second ago.
I am looking around, and I am surrounded. Throngs of initiates kneel all around me. They kneel in supplication, the infinite hordes all kneeling toward the wall.
Some prayed to the sky. Some touched their heads to the ground. Some lacked a head at all. I look to the sky, to see what they pray to.
I can see, and cannot unsee. My eyes are seared open, my mind flayed by the sight.
The wind reverses direction. It no longer blows across my face. A long strong gust pulls my clothes, pushes my back. The wind has once more reversed. The hot moist air pushes against my chest with an insistence.
I am still looking up. Ever upward. I have realized what I see. This wall of stone, of flesh, is a toe. The nail is far beyond any range I can understand. Understanding is crashing through my brain.
I am looking upon a higher being. An Elder One. A creature of such immense power, enormous size, that my mind fails to grasp even the fullness of a single foot. Still, I am compelled. I look farther, seeking the answer I am terrified of.
Farther into the abyss do I gaze. I can see one of the supplicants turning toward me in the corner of one eye. I cannot tear myself away from what I look upon. I watch in my periphery as it sees the reflection of the glorious, radiant, maddening sight before me. It opens its mouth, perhaps to speak, perhaps to scream. It is immolated, the heat washing over me.
Ashes have fallen to the ground. The creature is no more. I am still me. I am
certain I am still me. I can feel the abyss gazing back. It is looking into my deepest depths, knowing me more fully than I can ever know myself. It has shifted its attention from the whole of the universes, to me. I have become a singularity of focus.
I stand, resolute, unwavering. The abyss gazes at me, through me. It has come to know me, down to the molecule, the atom, the very quarks of my being. I am granted sight.
The abyss is no abyss at all. The Elder One is seated upon a throne of mountains. The mountains that are so vast an entire universe is but a grain of sand at the foot of one. I can no longer function in any realm that imposes limits. Three dimensions fail to grasp the slightest hint of the being that observes me.
The Elder One is made of time, of chaos, luck and chance and creation and destruction. It is made of cosmic energy. Then it stepped forward. My head is no longer craned back. I stand face to face with its avatar. It is of infinite height, yet eye to eye with me.
The avatar that is presented only strains sanity to breaking, instead of total obliteration. Tentacles writhe about on its face. The face sits on a head, above a body that could be generously described as human. Every proportion was perfect in its wrongness. Every proportion failing to be understandable in any perceivable dimension.
The eyes gaze at me, swirling pools of stars, universes colliding, living, dying. It extends a hand to me, one I willingly take. It is drawing me in, across all the lightyears that separate us.
My skin sloughs, my hair and eyes, my muscles and organs destroyed in the radiance I behold. I am nothing but a ghost in a skeleton. A skeleton that itself crumbles to component atoms in the fires of creation and the death throes of infinite universes.
Still, I hold on to the hand, and looked into the eternity that stared at me. Then, it spoke. The sound destroyed reality. The stone beneath my feet ceased to exist. It asks one question, the most important it has ever asked.
Winds of Darkness Page 17
