Dreadmyre

by J A Raikes

  Taking a page from my dad’s book, I tried to recall the general contours of the cave itself in my mind’s eye. I slowly inched my way forward on the sand, arms outstretched so as to not ram my face into anything and feeling the ground beneath my feet with every step I took. I continued until my foot struck something hard and solid.

  Perfect. The cave floor.

  Aside from clearly having been cut into the mountain, the ground itself felt no different than the rest of the rock in the State Park. It seemed as though someone just found this little ravine, climbed into the same hole I did with a few mining tools and dug out this nice big cavern. I couldn’t begin to understand why someone would do that, but relevance changes little - the reality was that there was a humongous cave carved into the mountain and that person, or persons, decided to construct a huge metal ring in the middle of this place.

  Clearly, I’m not the most savvy person, considering the mess I was in, but I do fancy myself a logical person. Logic tells me that this place was strangely secluded and hidden for one of two reasons: it’s dangerous or it is valuable. Either way, I’m not sure I should have been there. Evidently, someone wanted to hide this place from... well, everybody. Being there was not likely in my best interest. Although, the large and very hungry cat still scraping at the rocks outside was definitely not in my best interest, so I figured I’d stick this one out. It’s likely that whoever built this is banking on the seclusion to help hide it, so they’re probably not going to be back any time soon anyway. I’d be up and out before they ever knew someone found it.

  I stepped onto the cave floor and started shuffling my way toward the center of the room. After a few steps, I heard a sound like the whir of an engine starting up from the middle of the cavern. A moment later, clanking sounds and the slow chugging and screeching of gears, rumbled through the cave like a factory powering up for the first time in a while. Metal scraped across metal. I squinted in the darkness to see better but came up with nothing. I could barely see my hands in front of me, let alone several yards ahead.

  The sounds grew progressively louder yet more sure and soon the grinding, clicking and chugging filling the chamber stopped and was replaced with a surprisingly steady humming symphony of machinery.

  Gingerly, I took another step forward and was instantly met with blinding light from the ground beneath me. I winced, covering my eyes from the sudden light, though what had seemed intense and bright a moment earlier had quickly faded to a soft glow. I looked down and saw the ground lit with strange symbols emanating a soft blue glow. I took another step and again, was met with the same blue glow beneath my feet. Every step I took on my way toward the machine lit up a path beneath me, basking the entire room in that soft blue glow.

  Being able to see helped me feel a bit more at ease about my situation, but it didn’t change reality. I was still out of water, there was still a predator trying to claw its way in and I was out of food and options. Added to the mix, I was completely at a loss for understanding what I was looking at.

  With the light from the ground, I could see the contraption that was taking up a sizable portion of the room. The giant metal ring was covered with designs similar to the shapes glowing on the ground all around me, except in various colors and sizes. It looked like writing. It looked Asian, but not Japanese or Chinese. When I had seen the ring with my flashlight earlier it had been resting vertically in a base. However, now that there was power, it was no longer simply resting. Instead, it was suspended in mid-air about 4 inches from the base, like one of those contraptions where a magnet rests an inch above its base using the magnetic field as a sort of invisible force. The ring was slowly rotating but gaining speed.

  Above the whirring of the machine, I could hear the lion scratching at the rock guarding the entrance to the cave and giving a half-meow half-hiss. I looked back, relieved to see the cat hadn’t yet gotten through my haphazard barrier and turned again to face the ring in front of me. All at once, the events of my day caught up with me and a wave of exhaustion hit me.

  I plopped down next to the enormous contraption and sat facing the rock protecting me from “Mr. Cuddles” and tried to figure out a solution to my predicament. I had no water, barely any food, I was trapped in a cave by a mountain lion, and had somehow managed to stumble into some sort of weird space-age alien chamber thingy with a floating metal hula hoop spinning aimlessly. It wasn’t the most relaxing vacation.

  Get a plan together, Finn. You’re not getting out of here by having a meltdown.

  That's true. Sometimes, you have to give yourself a motivational pep talk. But people look at you funny when you talk to yourself. Thankfully, I was the only one here.

  In an effort to do something, I scoured the room, cobbling together a few more stones in front of the entrance to reinforce my makeshift door and hopefully deter the creature outside. A short while later, the sounds from the other side of the entrance stopped altogether.

  Good, maybe the lion has decided on a new creature to hunt tonight.

  With nothing left to do but wait, I tried to get some rest. My pack was torn in several places, but it would make an alright pillow. I opened it up and pulled out the box of breakfast bars, dug one out of the box and settled into a delicious mouthful of oats and honey.

  Hunger momentarily sated, I decided my best bet was to stay as far from the opening as I could in case the lion would broke through my fortifications, so I walked to the opposite side of the cavern. The ring floating in the middle of the room continued to rotate. I had no idea what it was supposed to do, but for the last hour or so it had only floated there, spinning quietly in circles, gaining speed until it was now moving so quickly, the colorful symbols on the edges were blending together in an array of lights. It looked a bit like those photos you can take where you leave the shutter open for a while and mess around with a flashlight or glow stick and when you finally take the picture, it looks like you’ve been drawing in the air with magic. Except it wasn’t a picture and there was no flashlight.

  I headed to the opposite end of the cave and was passing the machine to try and rest when I noticed a small bronze coin with a diamond shaped hole on the ground next to the ring. Intrigued, I stooped down to pick it up. Instantly, a piercingly loud noise kind of like an ambulance siren rang through the cave and the metal ring flashed a bright blue for just a moment.

  Instinctively, I lurched backward. The ring was now blinking off and on again and the siren was blaring loudly. My mom always said my curiosity was a good thing, but it was probably going to get me in a lot of trouble. I’m thinking she was right.

  Well, what have I done this time?

  CHAPTER FOUR

  You know that feeling you get when your stomach drops out from the bottom of your torso? Like when you’re riding a roller coaster and you hit a sudden dip and you get the sense that all of your insides are about to be outsides? Well, amplify that a hundredfold and you might be in the ballpark for what was happening to me.

  I slung the backpack over my shoulder and decided to get a better look at the bronze coin. The moment I moved near the metal ring, the world around me plunged to complete black and then erupted into a thousand neon colors- along the floors, the ring, the cavern walls and ceiling. At the same time, something unnatural ripped a vertical line through the air directly in front of me. The smell of burnt atmosphere blew past me and was swiftly replaced with the sterile aroma of electricity. All at once, the vertical line parted in the middle and revealed a swirling mass of blues and greens and whites twisting together while some unseen force yanked me toward this neon nightmare. White-blue streaks of electricity crackled across the surface as I came in contact with it. It felt semi-solid, like a wall of jelly, and within a moment I was forced through the barrier.

  To say that I remained calm and kept my composure as all of this was occurring would be ...well, a flat out lie. As a matter of fact, after a few choice words left my mouth, I clambered and clawed to get away from this thing. I must�
�ve looked like a house cat being thrown into a bathtub. For all the flailing, I was wildly unsuccessful. As I passed through the jelly stuff, my body began to tremble and I felt as though I was being blasted with several hundred volts of electricity. It wasn’t exactly painful, though I wouldn’t want to experience it twice.

  After passing the electrified ooze, I tumbled head over heels through some kind of a wormhole. I completely lost my sense of direction as there was nothing to hold onto. Worse yet, the horrible mass of colors continued to swirl around and past me. It was at this point that I cried out in a voice which wasn’t exactly “manly.” Give me some credit - there was a terrifying number of strange things happening completely out of my control and I was caught up in the moment. So sue me.

  Still tumbling at an alarming rate, my mind reeled with confusion. One moment I’m deep in the Catalina mountain range, and the next I’m hurtling toward my doom through an electrified nightmare born of a Jimi Hendrix album cover art. I couldn’t even begin to tell you how long I was in there. It was long enough, though, that the sensation of tumbling became somewhat commonplace and I didn’t think my ears would ever regain their equilibrium. That is if I ever got out.

  After what seemed like an eternity of falling, a small, bright dot of light pushed through the maze of colors ahead of me. My heart lurched at the promise of an end to this whole encounter. Then I was struck with another, altogether more terrifying notion that the light I’m seeing could be emanating from a really hard surface and, given my velocity and general inability to control my fall, that could prove painful to my poor gangly body.

  As the light grew bigger and closer, I squeezed shut my eyes and braced for impact. “Please don't kill me, please don’t kill me, please don’t kill me” I chanted frantically to myself.

  The smell of electricity and atmosphere grew intense once again and behind my closed eyelids I could tell that I was passing into the light and …

  Nothing.

  I stopped moving, I stopped falling. The lights and the tunnel were gone. I didn’t even jerk to a stop or anything (who says Newton knows anything about physics?). I was just there, lying on the ground in the cave.

  I sat up to look around to get my bearings. Immediately, I got a head rush, my brain pounded and I was overcome with that creeping black sensation when you stand up too quickly and had to lay back down for a moment.

  “This is okay. Yeah. This is okay.” I said aloud.

  “That….that was perfectly normal.” Trying to reassure myself.

  Slowly this time, I sat up and looked around. Turns out, this was definitely not the cave. Instead, I was in some sort of large warehouse, several stories tall. There were high vaulted ceilings held in place with latticed metal support beams and crosshatches. Wooden crates filled the room and bits of machinery were thrown haphazardly into piles in no recognizable order. Gears and cogs littered the floor and as I lifted my hand, a small metal sprocket stuck to my sweaty palm. The only familiar thing in the room was the same contraption from the cave. It was dormant once again, the metal ring resting gently in the base and the symbols back to the original muted colors. As a matter of fact, the entire room was completely dark, save for a small Edison bulb dangling from a long cord directly overhead.

  “What the…” I managed to say before my confusion was cut short by a horrible metallic scraping sound. Instinct kicked in and I scrambled to my feet. Glancing to my left, I spotted the entrance to this room -- a large metal-plated door on an old rusted track, now slowly opening. I quickly dashed behind one of the larger crates in the corner of the room and hunkered down as best I could in such a tight spot.

  Thankfully, it was dark in the corner I chose. I poked my head out from my hiding spot to see about the commotion.

  “I’m telling you, the alarm was going off in the office. Someone was down here,” said a man with a high pitched, nasally voice.

  “No one has been in or out of this room in months, sir,” the other man said with a hint of exasperation creeping into his deep baritone voice.

  “Well, it is my prerogative to check. We have some very sensitive...eh, materials...stored here and we cannot have them compromised,” The first man replied as he brushed past his companion into the room.

  As they stepped into the light, something struck me as very odd about both men. The man with the nasally, irritating voice was clad in dark grey britches (yes, britches) and a high waisted pea coat with long tails. His steps were accented by large black boots - the kind with flaps on the top into which his britches were tucked cleanly. His slim face was lined with age and wrinkles creased his temples where he seemed to permanently squint above the half moon glasses resting precariously at the edge of his nose. His mouth came to a sharp pucker and there was a subtle cruelty about his features. Honestly, if I hadn’t been trying to hide from these guys before I saw them, his expression was enough to send me running.

  In contrast, the other man with him was shorter by a head and much sturdier. He seemed to be wearing some kind of uniform, but I couldn’t place it. It had an American civil-war look about it, dual-breasted with brass buttons down the front and a short, clipped collar. He was clad in all black, save for the buttons, and a sidearm was fastened to his waist. There was a small, bright red emblem on his left sleeve, but I was too far away to make it out. To me, both men seemed devastatingly out of place in terms of fashion. Then again, who am I to judge? I still cling to my over-sized tee-shirts and baggy jeans for my weekend attire.

  As they walked into the light, I ducked down as far as possible while still peeking above the crate.

  The shorter uniformed man urged once again, “I can assure you, Mr. Klein, that there is simply no way that anyone could get into this facility. The only entrance to the entire chamber is the same way we just came in and the lock on the outside is outfitted with triple primed, state of the art MACS. There is simply no one who can bypass those security measures.”

  Mr. Klein dismissed the soldier’s statement outright with a wave of his hand.

  “Locks can be broken. MACS can be thwarted,” Klein said.

  The shorter man sighed heavily, “Very well, sir, I will have a security team sweep the warehouse and the entire plaza.”

  “I expect as much!”

  “If there was anyone who made their way back here, the culprit will be found and brought to you immediately,” the shorter man continued, placing a particularly pointed amount of emphasis on the “if.”

  Mr. Klein took one last glance around, peering above his half-moon glasses, nodded once to himself and turned curtly on one heel to march out of the room, summarily ignoring the shorter man.

  The shorter man glared at Mr. Klein as he left. I felt bad for the guy, but at the same time, it seemed that I was going to be in a heap of trouble if I didn’t figure out a way to get out of this room really soon, so my compassion was short lived.

  The soldier took a moment to glance around the room for himself, his eyes lingering an uncomfortably long time in my direction before he pulled a small contraption from his pocket and fidgeted with it briefly. I wasn’t entirely sure from my vantage point, but it looked a bit like a smartphone with the glass screen missing. Instead, gears and motors were all exposed, and yet, he seemed to be able to get it to function.

  A static sound broke the silence in the room and was replaced with a terse male voice.

  “Go for Kaplan.”

  “Kaplan, this is Reggie,” The soldier replied. Reggie?! Definitely not the name I’d have guessed. I’d have guessed maybe a Dirk. Or a Hank. Definitely not a Reggie...Reginald. Whatever.

  “Yeah Reg, what’s going on?” the voice on the phone thing chimed out.

  Reggie held the device in an open palm and depressed a button on the side.

  “Kap, there was some sort of issue with Warehouse 31. Klein was down here in a fuss about his sensitive material and demanding we do a sweep.”

  “Teams three and four are off on patrol already. Do you want them
to form up?”

  “Nah, there’s nothing here,” Reggie replied. “The locks were still active and the security system was still in place. If someone had gotten in here, they’d be completely ash by now. Since the teams are already out, can you make sure they pop by the director’s office and let them know we didn’t find anything?”

  “Sure thing, Reg,” the guy on the other end of the line relayed.

  As Reggie was speaking, I was looking around for a way out. It really did seem as though I was going to need to get through that door. But how was the better question...

  Looking around the room and attempting to avoid drawing any attention, I could only see the few crates and piles of scrap metal lying around.

  “I’ll lock up here, but I’m going to have to reset the codes, so give me two minutes to get those coded in before you re-engage the MACS,” soldier Reggie chimed back.

  “Affirmative. Do you want me to run the purge diagnostic?” Kaplan replied.

  “It wouldn’t hurt, I suppose. Give me those two minutes to head out so I don't get totally fried and then I’ll contact you again.”

  Purge? Fried? Well, crap.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  I waited for Reggie to leave and the big metal door shut behind him. As soon as it closed, I dashed out from my hiding spot and frantically tried to find a way out. I searched the small windows on the far side of the room, pressing and pulling against all of the panes, but banging on the windows would probably lead to somebody noticing me, so I couldn't be too forceful. If I learned anything from that exchange between Reggie and Mr. Klein, it was pretty clear I was not supposed to be here.

  None of the windows would budge. My heart raced and I could feel sweat beading on my forehead. I ran to the big door Reggie had exited and tried pulling, but he must have locked it because I wasn't able to open it. I ran around the room trying to find any floor vents or air ducts that I could climb into to get out, but everything was either too high up or blocked. A moment later an ear piercing siren began whirring away and a red light began flashing above the door.