Esoteric Exotica
It all started with that god awful scream of terror. We all heard it echo out from deep in the mines. The Pelican Co. goldmine…
Author: Sean C.
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It all started with that god awful scream of terror. We all heard it echo out from deep in the mines. The Pelican Co. goldmine…
It all started with that god awful scream of terror. We all heard it echo out from deep in the mines. The Pelican Co. goldmine had been worked to an absurd degree. For over three centuries, countless men from dozens of generations chipped away at the barren stone looking for any shred of gold that might be hiding in the Earth. A mining operation this long and exhaustive resulted in tunnels that extended miles beneath the surface.
We had no idea where the scream was coming from; sound carries far in an enclosed tunnel such as this. It could be someone just out of view, or someone in the deepest and most dangerous parts of the mine. The way his voice echoed and was barely discernible made me think it was the latter. We only heard the screams for a second before the mine started to collapse. I heard the rumbling and the tell tale creaking of the support beams, so, without a second thought, I ran for the surface.
Support beams started to bend and snap as the rumbling and screams of dying men grew louder. The hundreds of workers within all started to rush out in any way they could. The shuttle to the surface was the only hope that any of us would make it out alive. When I got to the shuttle I saw a dozen men attempting to bust down the door that was strangely locked shut. In my years working for the mine I never once saw the door refuse to open. The shuttle started to tip off of its railing as the panicking masses desperately tried to pry open a way inside.
Thinking fast, I took my pickaxe and swung hard at one of the windows. By the third swing a hairline crack started to work its way up the window. With each swing the crashing of crumbling rock grew louder, the Earth shook with an aura of vengeance, and the support beams snapped like dominos falling into place. I had never been so happy to hear the shatter of glass. I climbed quickly through the window, making it inside. Hordes of desperate miners tried to follow me in all at once. They crammed their shoulders and necks in while others tried to break other windows. The amount of people crowded around the shuttle was far too much weight for the shuttle to bear. I scrambled for the acceleration lever, closed my eyes, and cranked it up to the maximum setting. Steam hissed from its engine as it rattled to life.
The sound of hopeless men condemned to their deaths was the last thing I heard before the shuttle hurried me to safety. At a max speed of 30 miles per hour, I escaped mere minutes before the whole thing came crumbling down. As soon as I got to the surface, I sent the shuttle back down in hopes of saving others. Soon after I did, the entrance itself crumbled to pieces, and the void where the mine once stood had now been filled. The Pelican Co. goldmine had finally closed. With deep heaving breaths I fell back onto the ground to process what had just happened. All of those miners had just died. I was seemingly the only one to make it out alive.
When I gathered my bearings, I stood up in blind rage ready to hold the safety manager responsible for the hundreds of deaths on his hands. Where was our warning? Where was the monitoring of seismic activity? Why was the shuttle, of all things, locked? The safety manager’s office was located in a lodge, just to the south of the mine’s entrance, but when I went to go find it, the whole thing was gone.
Not just that either, as I looked around I realized the entire mining outpost had just up and vanished. I thought I must have been mistaken. I must have been disoriented, but no, there wasn’t anything in sight. No crew, no remnant of the outpost that I had just seen that morning when I boarded the shuttle. The only thing that remained was the dirt road that led to the outpost. I shouted for anyone that could hear me. I climbed on top of the entrance to the mine, which was a small hill, and I shouted that there had been a collapse.
There was nothing. I was utterly stunned, how had a decades old mining outpost abandoned us? As I examined the area further I realized full grown trees had grown in place of the buildings that were once there. It didn’t make sense. Defeated, I sat on the dirt road, took my helmet off, and just thought about what to do next. I was now at least 30 miles into the forested wilderness, with no food, no water, no shelter, and no one to help me. I finally resolved to follow the dirt road that would eventually lead me back to civilization. I did so, but after about 15 minutes of walking, the road just ended. Undisturbed forest was in front of me as the dirt road just abruptly cut off. It was as if there were no discernable path at all. That was the first thing that really made me start to panic. I was alone, in the middle of a forest, everyone I could rely on had died or vanished, and I had no way to signal anyone for help. There was hardly any evidence at all that anything I once knew still existed.
By then, noon had passed, and it dawned on me that it would soon be nighttime. I was never much of a survivalist, but if I were to have any hope of finding out what exactly happened here I would have to learn to live in the wilderness, at least for tonight. Shelter was my first priority. I took inventory: I had a pickaxe, my mining helmet, my miner’s jumpsuit, work boots, and socks. What could I do with these?
The pickaxe, while not an ideal tool for the job, could be used to collect lumber with enough time and effort. It could also be used to dig a burrow of some kind. I first weighed which option would take less time. Chopping wood with a pickaxe would take significantly longer than if I had a hatchet or a saw, while digging a burrow in such a heavily wooded area would be a similarly laborious and time consuming task. Ultimately, I decided on a hybrid between the two. If I were able to dig a large hole with logs and brush laid atop of it I might be able to have the best of both worlds.
I swung my pickaxe at the soft ground where the dirt road ended. If anyone were to come check on the state of the mine, they’d be likely to find me there. The soil was cluttered with small plants and tangled roots of trees, making the task somewhat difficult, but the flat side of the pickaxe proved efficient in cutting the roots away. I settled into a groove of breaking up the soil and then scraping it outward, sometimes using my hands if the pickaxe was ineffective. The hole I was making ended up being ovular with the long side measuring about seven feet across and the short side closer to four feet, just enough to sleep and take shelter comfortably.
When the burrow got to be about ten inches deep, the soil became rocky and filled with clay. I actually felt blessed to be working with a tool for mining. Where I might run into difficulties with a shovel, a pickaxe proved useful in breaking up large chunks of rock and clay. This enabled me to simply pull chunks of rock out that otherwise would have been too heavy to remove. The vacancies these rocks left behind actually made my job easier. The larger rocks went as deep as ten inches to an entire foot. I made quick work of this layer, getting the burrow to about two feet deep in only an hour and a half. Wiping the sweat from my forehead, I started to question whether it was deep enough. It would be enough to lay down, but with logs laid across it I might start to feel claustrophobic with so little space. I decided to go for three feet in depth.
Digging into the third foot of depth, the mineral deposits were more scarce, with only a few small rocks showing up. There were also much fewer roots to break up, as most roots reside in the topsoil. The soil in this layer was thicker and mostly made of clay, which my pickaxe was less effective at breaking up. I used the sharp side to break deep holes into the thick clay, and then used the flat side to scrape it out as I did before. I also did my best to save as much clay as I could in a large mound in case I might be able to use it for some constructive purpose.
As the sun fell dangerously close to the horizon, I had finished the burrow portion of my shelter. It wasn’t much—a three foot deep hole with a sloped side for entry—but it was a good start. Next was the task of gathering lumber and brush for a suitable roof, which I imagined would be the hardest task. I started by trying to chop down trees with the sharp side of my pickaxe, which proved too difficult. After some time I was able to wear away at a tree for long enough that I could split it in half. I tried again, this time using the flat side, but that also proved ineffective. I sat to think about the best solution for this when I noticed the exposed roots of a smaller tree and I got an idea.
I wedged the sharp end of the pickaxe under the roots and kicked it down into the dirt beneath the tree. Then I used the leverage of the pickaxe to simply uproot the entire tree. This only worked for smaller bushes and trees, but it was all I needed. I took the sturdier and straight dead pine trees I had collected and dragged them over the top of my burrow. This created a foundation that I laid pine branches and bushes over to create a relative barrier toward potential rain and the cold of night. It was then that it occurred to me that a rainstorm might flood my burrow while I slept which would obviously be hazardous. As a precaution, I dug a small trench, about six inches deep, around the entrance of my burrow to hopefully direct water away from my domicile. For good measure, I also extended this trench completely around my burrow with several pathways for water to flow outward but not inward. I had done well for myself. It wasn’t ideal, but I felt much more comfortable sleeping in this than on the bare ground.
The sky had turned orange as the sun drifted below the trees. My last task was to build a fire. Several possible solutions had crossed my mind. My mining helmet contains an acetylene gas lamp. I wanted to be careful about wasting the lamp’s fuel, because it could prove invaluable on cold or dark nights. However, I saw no harm in using it as a fire starter. Acetylene gas lamps work by mixing water with calcium carbide which causes a reaction that creates flammable acetylene gas. Therefore, rather than igniting the flame on my lamp and using it in an attempt to light kindling, I had the idea to unscrew the lamp and place just a few chunks of carbide underneath my firewood, dripping water on it to start the reaction, and then using my lamp to ignite the gas.
I took the extra time to dig a fire pit, only about an inch deep, and surrounded it with rocks for safety. I gathered branches and dry brush from the surrounding area, making sure to pile on dry leaves and pine needles. Then I threw on some of the larger and thicker branches I was able to find until I had a respectable pile of timber. I unfastened my miner’s helmet and carefully unhooked the lamp. Unscrewing the bottom, I saw the carbide chamber was nearly completely full. This was good; I recalled that I hadn’t used the headlamp much, because there were established standing lamps in the shallower regions of the mine. The headlamps were mostly reserved for emergencies, such as getting lost, or by miners tasked with digging deeper in less developed portions of the mine.
With this in mind, I liberally sprinkled carbide on the kindling to ensure a successful fire. Water started to drip from the lamp as I turned the lever. The chunks of carbide fizzed, and I knew the reaction was going off as intended. I quickly reassembled the lamp and started striking the flint and steel to ignite it. There were a few tense moments where the acetylene gas failed to ignite, but with a little persistence, an uproarious cloud of fire engulfed my fire pit. I turned the lamp off and felt the warmth of the flames. I relaxed. My hard work ensured that I could live with relative comfort for at least a few days.
And without any time to waste. Just as the fuel on my fire fully started to burn, the stars began to shine brightly around the clouds. Plumes of smoke and glowing embers ascended into the treetops. I looked up into the sky and my eyes lingered on the moon. The moon was an eerie deep blood red. The forest was strangely silent. Nothing but the sounds of wind blowing through trees. No crickets, no frogs, no cicadas, just a foreboding silence. Perhaps most disturbing of all, I was hardly hungry or thirsty. I had spent the day in hours of manual labor and somehow my appetite was missing. It had been proven to me then that something strange and unexplainable had happened. The entire world seemed to have shifted around me when the mine collapsed. And I was the only one to bear witness to it.
As the fire dwindled to smouldering ashes, I decided it was time to sleep in my makeshift shelter. I clipped my carbide lamp back in place on my helmet and lit it to see clearly, keeping it on a low setting to prevent any accidental fires. I was able to crawl in fairly easily and the logs provided a reasonable ceiling. I had made the burrow just roomy enough to lay with relative comfort, and the cool deep soil provided a decent bed. To say I drifted to sleep peacefully and easily would be a lie, but I did so easier than if I had no shelter at all.
I awoke to a voice. It was still night time. I laid still, somewhat in fear. I couldn’t hear what they were saying at first.
“Get up.”
It was a female voice.
“Get up and come out with your hands up,” she said.
I hesitated. She was speaking in a threatening tone. Part of me was relieved to know there was someone else here, but I was clearly not being met with friendly intentions.
I heard her kick at the roof of my burrow. “Come on! You think a bunch of wood is going to stop a bullet?”
“Ok, ok,” I responded. “I’m coming out; don’t hurt me.”
I crawled out. She was pointing a bright light at me. I reflexively shielded my eyes because this light blinded me temporarily. As my eyes adjusted, I could see the light was in fact a part of her rifle. The light made it hard for me to see her, but I could make out a vague feminine figure.
“Hands up,” she said in a stern tone.
“Right, ok,” I said. I put my hands into the air.
“Hand over everything you have,” she said.
I sighed. “I don’t really have much of anything. Just what I’m wearing.”
Her rifle lowered slightly, before being firmly trained on me again. She spoke with more of a skeptical inquisitive tone this time. “How did you get here?”
My arms relaxed a bit as I got tired of holding them in the air “I-”
“Hands up high,” she interrupted me.
I extended my arms as high as they would go and continued. “I’m a miner for the Pelican Goldmine. There was a massive collapse, and I’m the only one left alive as far as I can tell.”
“Goldmine?” she said.
I stammered a little. “Yes, it’s a goldmine, but don’t get your hopes up, we’ve hardly found any gold for-”
She interrupted again. “No, I’m not after gold, it’s just that I’ve never seen a mine around here. And there were others?”
I was surprised by this. The Pelican Goldmine was the most famous mining operation on the continent. Practically everyone knew about it, but I answered anyway. “Yes… The Pelican Goldmine. There were hundreds of miners employed. Many of them are dead now.”
She said nothing, and though I couldn’t see her face, I could sense some hesitation. Her rifle progressively aimed lower and her shoulders started to relax. But she still wasn’t backing down. She just stood there, thinking, maybe trying to decide what to do next.
I decided to fill the silence. “Look, I really have no idea what’s happening. Everyone I could possibly ask for help has disappeared. I have nothing on me aside from my work equipment. I’ll give you anything you want, but I’m not here to hurt you or anyone else, I just want to go home and tell the world what’s happened.”
She was still silent, possibly ignoring everything I was saying. “How long have you been out here?” she asked.
“I’ve been working in the mine for about six years,” I said.
“No,” she said. “I mean how long have you been out here, in this forest.”
“Just tonight,” I said.
“Ugh, seriously?” she said, lowering her rifle a little more. “This is seriously your first night here?”
I gave her a confused look. “I don’t understand.”
“You really don’t realize how screwed you are, do you?” she said.
I said nothing, my arms starting to relax again.
“Ok,” she sighed “Gather some firewood. I have a lot to tell you.”
I protested: “I really need to slee-”
She pointed the rifle at me again. “You’re not in a position to negotiate.”
Needless to say, I did as she said. Once the fire was roaring again, we both had mutual ambient light. I could see her face in the dim orange of burning flame. She had slightly tanned skin with flecks of mud and dirt scattered over her and her clothes. She was wearing a plain white tank top with blue cargo pants. She had black boots on; she looked like an experienced survivalist, except that her clothes were baggy and hung loosely off of her. Her long black hair was tied in a ponytail that kept it out of her face. She had dark lines under her eyes; she looked like she didn’t sleep much.
She sat opposite of me in front of the fire with her right knee up, cradling her rifle in her left arm with it pointing upward. Her right arm rested on her knee and she looked at me with squinted eyes. I also noticed she was wearing a backpack, and tied next to it, tied to her back, was a strange glowing blue tube unlike anything I’d ever seen. Her posture told me she intended to speak with me frankly, as if she was about to break some terrible news. And I was more or less right.
“The world you knew is as good as gone.” Those were the first words out of her mouth.
I leaned in, opting to let her speak rather than pry for answers. She seemed perfectly willing to tell me everything she knew.
“For me, it started after a car accident. I was only 14. My parents died, and I was the only survivor. I tried waiting for help, I tried reviving my parents, I tried getting my phone to work. None of it worked. Then I started surviving. That was eight years ago.”
I took my helmet off and ran my fingers through my hair in astonishment. Eight years? She’s spent eight years living in the wilderness?
“I’m sure you’ve already noticed. This place isn’t like the world you left. It’s a connection, some kind of intersection of reality. Things don’t make sense, things you thought were there just disappear. Sometimes someone else wanders in. I steal from them to survive, if I have to.”
I looked at her with wrapped attention. When she saw my intent gaze she looked away, seemingly discouraged. “If you’re looking to me for answers then, I’m sorry, I don’t have many. All I know is that this place is a mess. There are things you have to look out for. Like, have you seen the giant yet?”
“A giant?” I said with hushed shock. “No, a giant?”
She leaned in, setting her rifle down and wrapping her arms around her legs. “That’s what I call it. It’s this thing, it’s huge. It only comes out at night and it towers over the trees. You can feel the ground tremble before you see it. It’s hard to get a good look, but I’ve seen shadows of it in the moonlight. It has horns on its head like an elk, horns that must be as big as trees. It stomps around aimlessly, and every now and then I’ll hear the screams of some poor soul he’s picked up and… done something with.”
She started to close herself, pulling her legs in and clutching them harder. “Every so often it will let out this deep, loud moan. It almost sounds like it’s in pain. Then, before the sun rises, it just walks away, and I never see it again until some other night.”
Now her voice started to tremble and she was practically in a fetal position. “The moon is always red like that. There are dangerous creatures out in the woods that eat corpses of dead animals. These things look sick, with long bony limbs, and if they see you, they look at you like they’re angry or something. A couple of times they chased me.”
She was holding back tears. She had endured eight long years of trauma and it was clear she resolved to continue enduring it for the remainder of her life. I took a deep breath. Her genuine fear and despair left an impression on me, and I had to hold back tears myself. Not just in empathy, but in fear for my fate as well. She sniffled, seemingly running out of things to say and understandably tired of talking about the subject.
“Can I ask your name?” I said.
She sniffled, wiping away tears. “Cindy,” she said. “Or Cynthia, whichever.”
“Cindy… I’m Bob, or Robert if you prefer.” I said before pausing to reflect on how I would respond to her story. “What you’ve told me is… terrifying. I might not believe you if it weren’t for all the strange things I’ve already encountered.” I picked up a stick and poked at the fire, sending glowing ash into the air.
“This place, it seems unforgiving and hellish,” I said, “but I think we’d have a better chance if we worked together. You don’t have to face this alone.”
She looked away and made some quiet stammers as she reflected the proposal. “You don’t understand,” she said. “How can I trust you’re even real? I’ve been tricked by this place so many times, you could just be another thing out to torture me.”
That was a reasonable dilemma. In truth she might not have been a real person either, but I felt confident in taking that risk. “What if I gave you my lamp?” I said holding up my helmet.
“What?” she said, evidently confused.
“Well, if I were some being out to torture you, I don’t think I would make your survival easier right?” I stood up and sat next to her, handing her my helmet. She took it and examined it.
“You already have your own lamp, but you could use this one to start fires and the other one to see. You could conserve fuel that way.” I said.
After examining the mechanisms on top of the lamp for a moment she seemed confused. “How does this thing work?”
“It’s a carbide lamp.” I reached over to show her how to use it. “You turn this lever here to control the amount of water that mixes with the carbide in the bottom. Then you light the acetylene with this flint and steel.” I sparked the lamp on and the small bright flame ignited.
“Wow, it’s so bright,” she remarked. “Brighter than my flashlight.”
Now I was confused. “Your what?”
“My light,” she replied. She pulled out a long black cylinder from her backpack and with the click of a button it lit up.
“Wow!” I exclaimed “And I thought I was showing you something impressive; how does that work?”
She laughed a bit. “It just runs on batteries.”
I looked at her with squinted eyes as I tried to understand. “B-batteries?”
She turned the light off and unscrewed a cap on top of the cylinder, revealing tiny metal capsules contained within. “Yeah, like these.”
I held it in the palm of my hand. It was unlike anything I had ever seen. It was wrapped in a label covered in writing. I failed to see how this would produce light; I assumed it must have produced some kind of fuel similar to my carbide lamp. I tried to unscrew it to examine its contents but it seemed to be a solid capsule. There was no method by which it could be opened.“This is capable of making light?” I asked “How? How does it work?”
“Um,” she paused. “I don’t really know how batteries work man, they have acid in them or something? And it makes electricity.”
“That’s remarkable,” I responded. “I’ve never heard of an acid fueled lamp.” I handed the battery back to her. “This truly is a strange place,” I remarked.
She laughed again. “Yeah, no kidding.” Then she handed my helmet back to me. “Look Bob, I appreciate the offer, but I already have a lighter I’ve been using to make sparks.” She took a deep breath. “I think I trust you, is it ok if I sleep here tonight?”
“Yes, of course,” I said. “Space might be limited, but I think my burrow is big enough.”
“No, that’s alright, I’ll just sleep by the fire,” she responded.
“Are you sure?” I asked.
“Yeah, that’s normally what I do anyway.”
“Alright then. If anything happens, just scream, I wake like a cat. I’ll come rushing to help you.” I said
“I definitely won’t be quiet if anything happens to me, Bob, you can be sure about that.” she replied.
Feeling resolute and with some hope at finding an unlikely ally, I went back to sleep more peacefully than before. While our circumstances seemed bleak, I felt confident we could claw our way back home somehow. Even if it did take years.
I awoke to spots of sunlight shining through my imperfect ceiling. The forest, even during the day, was absent of most sound. I heard a crackling fire that Cindy had started and the rustling of trees instead of the singing birds one would typically associate with a morning in the wilderness. I then recognized the smell of cooking meat. I crawled out of my burrow to see that Cindy was cooking two dead crows over the open fire. I was hungry, but considering I hadn’t eaten since the previous day, I felt I was less hungry than I should have been.
“Where did you find those?” I asked
“I trapped them yesterday.” she had impaled them in a sharpened stick and was rotating their plucked and gutted bodies over the fire. “It turns out there are birds here, they’re just very quiet.” She removed them from the fire, turning them to see if they were thoroughly cooked, and then held them over the flames again. “Does it also take a long time for you to get hungry out here or is it just me?”
“I am hungry,” I said, “but yes, I did notice. I built this entire camp without a single meal and slept comfortably.”
“Yeah,” she said, pulling the crows off of the fire. “I think we require less energy out here.” She grabbed a second stick and impaled one of the crows on it. “Care for some roasted crow?” she asked.
I took my serving reluctantly. I didn’t expect fine dining, but there were many other creatures I would have preferred to sustain myself on. I let it cool as I worked up the courage to take a bite.
“That’s an interesting thought,” I said. “If so, it would work to our advantage. We can do a lot with only a little food.”
She took a large bite from the crow, pulling meat off of its skeleton and picking ribs out of her mouth. She talked with her mouth full. “Yeah, from what I gather that’s how it works. I hardly eat that much and it’s not really a problem.” She seemed unphased by her less than palatable meal. She truly had been here for a long time.
I finally pushed myself to take my first bite. I took a small nibble. The meat was thin and tough and the bird’s bones broke off easily, even with the most gentle bite. But, all that aside, it tasted like chicken.
“I have more I should tell you,” Cindy said, about halfway finished with her bird. She reached into her backpack and pulled out a spiral notebook. “I found this on a human skeleton. I don’t know how long he’d been dead, but from what I gather he was a scientist. He was studying this place.”
She threw the notebook at me across the fire; I caught it. It read “Journal of Dr. Godwin Wright” on the front cover.
“Go ahead, see for yourself,” she said.
The notebook was filled with beautifully perfect handwriting and diagrams. I flipped through random pages, and it seemed nearly every square inch was filled with this man’s experiences, understanding of this mysterious place, and his discoveries, Until about the last 20 pages when the notes abruptly ended. I can only assume this is when the man met his demise. Flipping back to page one, I started reading to learn this man’s story.
***
I think it’s safe to say that I have discovered the anomaly we detected several years ago. After some examination, I have concluded that I am in a space that does not follow any of the laws of nature as we understand them. First and foremost among them is the way in which space behaves. I have not been able to observe this directly as of yet, but my hypothesis is that space is nonlinear in this anomalous zone. To explain what I mean, if one were to travel in a straight line under normal circumstances they would travel forward between two individual points; from point A to point B.
However, in this zone I hypothesize that traveling in a straight line results in a disconnected path of travel. Meaning that the person traveling instantly blinks out of existence and appears in a different location. To the traveler, this would appear as inconsistent and ever changing scenery, but in reality it is the traveler’s position that is changing, not the scenery itself. I have come to this hypothesis as an explanation for the strange inconsistent landscape before me. To me, the observer, the disparate parts of scenery I’m appearing in would appear stitched together. Meaning that when I look in any given direction, I am actually seeing a place that is in a completely different location; the world around me is essentially accordioned together from several different places at once. When I look straight ahead and observe what appears to be a normal world, in reality there are vast spaces between where I’m standing and what I’m seeing.
Or at least, that is my hypothesis. How and why this happens is a completely different question to answer. In the meantime, I must devise an experiment to lend evidence to my hypothesis.
***
The notebook was filled with other similar writings, all of which I could barely comprehend. But I did get the sense that Godwin knew what he was writing and was not a madman or something similar. All I could really conclude from it is that Cindy and I may never fully understand this place. Godwin, claiming himself as the first to discover it, dubbed it the “esoteric zone” which seemed fitting considering how difficult it was for me to comprehend. I also noticed that Godwin took note of the same giant that Cindy had described, even drawing speculative sketches of the beast, and noting that his art was subpar because he was not a biologist, though I found his sketches impressive. Finally, I closed the notebook temporarily satisfied with its contents.
“I also got this backpack from him, and found this.” Cindy unstrapped the blue glowing cylinder on her backpack that I had noticed earlier.
It was a strange looking thing. Getting a better look at it, I could see that it had a handle and a trigger, similar to a gun, but unlike any weapon I had ever seen. The top of it was covered in a tree-shaped arrangement of black squares. And at the end of the cylinder was a nozzle.
“I’ve only used this thing once,” Cindy said. “I’ve read that whole notebook by now, and I still don’t really understand most of the stuff he was talking about.” Cindy held the strange device in both arms; it appeared to be somewhat heavy. “But what I do know,” she continued, “is that this is a really powerful weapon.”
She laid the weapon across her lap. “It doesn’t use bullets, it uses the sun. These things on the top are solar panels, they charge the thing with sunlight. Kind of like the batteries I showed you.”
She stood up, walked a few feet away to a nearby sunny area, and placed the weapon down in the sunlight. “I’ve only fired it one time, just to see what it did. It created a light so bright I couldn’t see anything and it kicked so hard I was knocked onto my back. The whole thing vibrated like crazy when it did. Eventually it shook right out of my hands and that’s when it stopped. When I finally gained my senses, I looked up to see that the trees had been blasted in half for miles and they were all on fire. I caused a huge forest fire.”
She reached over and plucked the journal from my hands. “Then I decided to look through this for answers,” she said. “Turns out, this is something of Godwin’s design. He called it a ‘makeshift plasma pulse cannon’ or something like that. His pack was filled with all kinds of parts that I didn’t know how to use. I just dumped it all on the ground because a backpack was more valuable to me than any of that stuff. But he used some of that to make this gun somehow. And he also said each shot takes a month of direct sunlight to fully charge.”
I spoke in a wavering tone “A weapon that powerful would wreak havoc on our world. How did Godwin create something like that out in the wilderness?”
“Well that’s just it,” she responded. “Godwin himself wrote about how people probably come to the esoteric zone from ‘other realities’. I think you and I might come from two very different worlds. And I think Godwin came from a third that’s different from both of ours.”
“That’s inconceivable,” I said. I suddenly felt so small, so inconsequential to this world we knew so little about. Not only was there so much I did not know, there were totally different worlds or realms with wonders beyond anything I could imagine. Cindy’s ‘batteries’ were proof of that.
“I’ve been letting it charge in the sun every day,” Cindy said suddenly.
“You’re going to use it again? Even after learning how dangerous it is?” I interjected.
“When that giant comes for me, I’m not letting him off easy.” She had a devious smile on her face. It was admittedly a good plan. Perhaps something so powerful could fell such an abominable giant. “That’s the whole reason he made it in the first place. It’s been about three months since I found it and used it, but I still put it in the sun every day to be safe. I’ll be ready.”
I began to admire Cindy’s perseverance. She was willing to fight for her life at every corner, a quality necessary for a true survivalist like her.
Considering we now had a camp for two, she and I spent the day making her a burrow of her own in the same style as mine. Cindy had a habit of losing interest in manual labor quickly and would sometimes get distracted. She would instead opt to hunt or look for food. Though somewhat annoying, I did not complain, considering it was another necessary task. I heard three successive rifle shots and thought that she had bagged an animal more fit to be eaten than a crow, but she returned empty handed, claiming that one of the strange creatures she described immediately pounced and stole her kill. She ran, not wanting to risk an encounter with the creature.
We had finished her shelter by that night. Our camp was beginning to shape into a reliable base. That night we chatted about each other’s respective worlds. It seemed Cindy’s world had wondrous technology beyond what I could conceive. She told me about oil powered automobiles that could reach speeds higher than the fastest steam train in the world. In fact, from what I can gather, nearly everything from her world ran on oil. Massive flying machines that average people used for travel, ‘electrical grids’ that lit people’s homes, huge boats that could cross oceans in as little as a week, it was all powered by oil they dredged up out of the ground. She even showed me her ‘phone’ which had a little of everything. Photographs, including ones that could move and play sound, music, games, and you could even talk to people remotely. Though she said contacting others required some sort of ‘signal.’ As she described it, waves in the air that were invisible. Waves that somehow allowed your voice to transmit across long distances. We were apparently lacking in ‘signal’ so could not contact anyone. She also explained that the fact it held onto its ‘charge’ for 8 years was a remarkable feat that would never happen under normal circumstances. It apparently was still at 20% energy, which she said was evident of the reduced energy requirements for this ‘esoteric zone.’
By contrast, I told her how my world still relied on wood and charcoal as fuel for steam engines. We had automobiles, but not nearly as fast nor as reliable as the ones from her world. We have large steam powered busses that can travel up to about 20 miles per hour, as well as trucks that operated similarly in our mining operation. They were only ever used for utility. Long distances would only ever be traversed via train, or sometimes horse if it were a less developed area. We had nothing capable of flight, aside from hot air balloons. There had been some applications of steam-generated electricity in my world, but nowhere near the extent it was in hers. In general, our worlds were different in every regard. Day to day life, global culture, our understanding of machinery and technology, even the continents’ names and shapes were significantly different. We both had countries that did not exist in the other’s world. My greatest desire in all of this was to make it back home safely, but I also felt there was some profound value in being able to converse with this other worldly person. Truly, no one else from my world would ever have a privilege such as this. If given the opportunity, I may even choose to go to her world and see all its wonders with my own eyes.
The quiet night carried on for hours, and we decided it was time to sleep. Her companionship was something I was truly grateful for. I couldn’t imagine how my night would have been if she hadn’t shown up or if I had given her my camp without question. Even though I was sleeping in the dirt like an animal, I drifted to sleep peacefully, excited for the next morning.
My eyes snapped open some hours later. I had felt a small, subtle rumble and fear struck me to my core. Could it be the fabled giant? I rolled over and put my ear to the ground, stilled my breath, and listened. Silence, and then a deep tremble of the earth, followed by silence, and then another tremble. It was him, there was no doubt in my mind it was this giant.
And on cue I heard the hissing whisper of Cindy. “Bob! Wake up!”
“I’m already awake,” I replied. “I hear it too.”
“I think he’s coming this way,” she said.
A deep hollow moan shook the air and echoed as far as I could hear. By now the footsteps were clearly audible. He was coming this way, and he was approaching quickly.
“The cannon!” I said. “Ready the cannon; this might be the time to use it.” I heard her scrambling across the dirt and unstrapping it from her backpack as I crawled out from my shelter. “Your rifle, I’ll use your rifle. Where is it?”
“I- uh, it’s in my room.” she held the cannon in her arms, trying to maintain a steady grip as her arms shook.
I reached down into her burrow and felt around until I found it. The stomping was now accompanied by the sound of trees bending and moaning before snapping in half under the weight of the impending monster.
She flipped a switch on the side of the cannon and the whole thing came alive. It let out a strange, high-pitched whine and hummed with power. Its usual blue glow turned twice as bright, illuminating our camp better than any fire. Even when not being used, the sheer power it possessed made the whole thing vibrate in her arms.
Cindy breathed heavily in big gasps. “I don’t- this thing is really strong, I’m not sure if I should be the one to fire it.”
Now we could see the feet of the thing in the distance, felling trees with each step, dragging its feet across the ground pitifully and leaving a path of wreckage.
I stammered, “But Cindy, between the two of us, you know how it works best.” The legs of this giant were so massive that with each step it took it must have gotten 100 yards closer to us. And it cried out again, this time with deafening volume that made us both drop our weapons and cover our ears in pain. Even with both of my hands clasped firmly over my ears, it still rattled my skull with ferocity.
I continued, “I’ve used a rifle before, Cindy, I’ve never used one of those.”
She continued gasping for air, running her fingers through her hair. “But what if- So much could go wrong, I could miss, I could hurt you, we could die.”
I grabbed her hands and looked her in the eyes with the pale blue glow of the cannon as our main source of light. “Cindy,” I said calmly. “I trust you can do this. Pick up the cannon, aim it at this beast, and obliterate it.”
A massive hoof slammed into the ground, crushing my beautiful burrow into a crater. The creature bent over, and, through the canopy, a bony hand the size of a train car was reaching for me. I pivoted for the rifle, but it was too late. I felt giant fingers clutch around me like a child clutching a toy.
The sound of Cindy shrieking my name was the last thing I heard before being whisked through the treetops and up to the face of true horror. It looked at me, its eyes glowing white with the blood red moon behind it. It was indeed reminiscent of an elk’s head. It stared at me huffing plumes of hot air through its snout as it did. It was a face of rage, the face of the pure hatred this strange place bestowed on its visitors. It looked at me as if it hated everything that allowed for my existence. And it howled at me as it did, now so loud that my ears rang, and I nearly drifted out of consciousness.
Then, blinding white light and searing heat burst right next to me. The sound of a crack of thunder echoed from the ground. I could feel tremendous heat radiating from a wondrous beam of pure power. It struck the creature through its leg and out of its left shoulder. Immediately the air was filled with the stench of burning fur and flesh. I felt its grip tighten around me, and I worried it might crush me. Slowly, this incredible beam of light began to move as Cindy directed it through its body. Blood sprayed from the creature’s splitting viscera and it immediately was engulfed in flames.
The creature cried out in rage, futility, and pure blind hate that it had been defeated. In an instant, the immense power of the cannon dissipated and, still in the dead beast’s clutches, its entire flaming body began to fall. It’s large sturdy bones creaked as it collapsed. A boom echoed throughout the forest as its knee collided with the ground. As its torso hit the ground, so did the hand that was still holding onto me tightly. I landed hard, hard enough to stun me and cause me great pain, but not enough to kill me. I lost consciousness momentarily.
I awoke to Cindy slapping my face and calling my name. I gasped and tried to squirm from the giant’s grasp.
“I’m alright,” I finally said. “I think I’m alright”
Cindy pulled on my arm to help free me. With some effort I was able to get out of the creature’s horrid claws. Cindy hugged me warmly while saying “Oh my god, holy shit, I can’t believe that worked, oh my god.”
And against all odds I started laughing. The laughter of a man who had just seen the face of death and lived to tell the tale. “You did it!” I said, “I told you Cindy, I told you, and you did it!” We were crying tears of joy, tears of victory in the face of such doom.
We returned to camp, used her flashlight as a temporary light, and regained our wits as Cindy told me about her side of the experience. How she saw me get pulled up into the darkness of certain death. And how she mustered the resolve to wield such a power.
I reciprocated with my side, what I saw of the beast, what I felt as I looked into its eyes, and the amazement of seeing the cannon obliterate such a mighty foe. As we relaxed, she eventually drifted to sleep, clearly exhausted.
I looked up into the stars and at the foreboding red moon. I reached over and clicked her flashlight off. I now felt safe sleeping under the open sky. I took a deep breath and reflected silently. We had won a battle, but not the war. Cindy has been here for eight years, and we might be stuck here for even longer than that. Eight years. Could I live eight years in a place like this? I was skeptical. But what happened on this night is something I never would have even imagined. Somehow, some way, we can get home. I know that to be true.
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