What lives beneath

Fred had not been sleeping well of late, and it was playing with his mind now. And there was a lot of quiet time alone for it to play. His whole world was now just him and his 2 wheeled companion Wylma, and the open road.

It had been just under a week since Fred had crossed by ferry from Helsinki to Tallinn. A week dogged by a medley of misfortunes which were getting the best of his mood, not to mention the constant drizzly rains intent on giving Fred the worst possible impression of the Baltic.

It was 6pm, and Fred had just left Valmiermuiža about an hour prior. The roads he was traversing went through flat farmlands interspersed with patches of woods. Overhead, the clouds were gathering again, shortly threatening something more than a mere drizzle.

“It's time to find a campsite Wylma”. Fred said to his trusty bike, but in the dying light, there was nothing but fields. Perhaps there was some knob or hill coming up, but it was hard to see in the darkening gunmetal sky. Those last few kilometres were the hardest. A stiff wind began to sweep head on as he ploughed on into the persistent rain. The road now passed a forested area, and an inviting trail venturing deeper into the woods offered itself to him.

Fred hated setting up camp so late. Under the trees it was close enough to the dark of night to not make a difference, but luck was with him in that moment. A suitably level clearing appeared a few metres off the trail, fringed with high grass, it felt very hospitable indeed. Fred decided to forgo dinner to catch up on some sleep, so with honed efficiency, he was set up for bed in under fifteen minutes. There was just one thing, he had no drinking water. A silly oversight. Fred’s decision to forgo a search for water came back to bite him just 3 hours later when he woke with a parched throat and saliva like glue. After some procrastination, he got dressed and headed out into the night to sate his thirst.

***

The rain had stopped and a sliver of moon now bathed the land in a weak cold light. With his head lamp and water bag now in hand, Fred paused for a moment to admire the beautifully clear night sky, then set off deeper down the forest trail. Soon the trail began to wind upwards onto a shallow escapement. 

The night was still and quiet which fortunately allowed Fred to hear the babble of running water and hone in on it. His trail led to a large gash some metres deep into the living rock on which he now stood. Below a spring water source gurgled gently. Exactly what Fred sought. He scrambled down one side of the rock ledge and now stood ankle deep in clear running water. He squatted down, scooping up water in both hands, throwing it down his throat with relish. The gush of cold sweet water bathed him in euphoric relief. Anyone who has experienced real thirst, well understands this sensation.

He looked around to see the source of the water. It came from a cave which forbiddingly vanished into inky darkness. He went down again on his haunches to fill his sack. That is when he noticed it. The ground seemed to gently sway under his feet. The same feeling you get when you finally stand on solid ground after a long time at sea. A stiff breeze began to stir and the night animals who had resumed their normal sounds, fell silent. The wind carried a strange low humming sound which would come and go with each gust. Fred turned this way and that trying to orient the source, but in the sharp ravine, this proved impossible. There was something more to this wind, it carried a strange scent. Subtle but definite. It reminded Fred so very strongly of the smell of a young girl’s sweat. Not pungent nervous sweat, rather the sweat from healthy physical exertion. Vaguely arousing.

The humming sounds began to modulate into some kind of chant or throat singing. Together with the smell in the air, Fred felt himself succumb to a trance. His eyes became heavy and he let himself sway in the wind with the music. The sounds grew in intensity, slowly building up, promising some climax to come.

Fred, standing in the shallow running water, stumbled to one side and managed to catch his fall with an outstretched arm. He turned his back to the rock wall and heavily leaned against it letting the trance deepen. A swirling energy emanated from the ground, the water, the rocks. All around. It was going through him. The rock on which he lent pulsated. He imagined himself as a tiny insect resting on someone’s chest. Up and down, the rock gently oscillated in a slow rhythm, somehow synchronised with the ebb and flow of the wind, the singing, and the water.

***

Fred had no idea how much time had passed or when he had fallen over into the water. He lay there face up, the water lapping right up to the corners of his mouth. The weightlessness of his body was soothing, but cold. Deathly cold. Something shocked him fully awake. He almost gagged on the water that rushed in as he gasped for air.

Even though his stomach hurt as if from overeating, the thirst had returned with vengeance. He rolled his head and let a small mouthful of water in, but the overstretched stomach complained immediately. A cramp gripped his abdomen and he threw up a huge stream of watery vomit and bile. The terrible thirst returned immediately. He let water stream into his mouth and gulped it in again with greed. He had to consciously stop drinking to stop the bloat returning.

Fred managed to get to his feet but they were slow to respond, crashing him back to his hands and knees. He was now face to face with some kind of weeds or growths from the sandy bottom. Strange, I did not notice these before, Fred’s muddle mind thought. They seemed to be straining to reach him, pulsing with the rhythm.

A mild panic rose in him. There is something wrong. With this place, with the water, with the night, something! It was his sixth sense screaming at him. He grabbed his filled sack, switched on his torch and began to climb out of the ravine. This was easier said than done. The path down was deceptively easy, but getting out was another matter.

The wind whipped up again and this time into a personal attack on his efforts. Sheets of rain began slicking the rock and thwarting his grip. The assault was furious. Fred’s determination won out and he managed, after a supreme effort to climb out, slumping with exhaustion on the top edge. The wind and rain abated, but this was a ruse, as he got to his feet, a savage blast of wind almost threw him backwards back into the ravine. Angry rain pelted him. Down on hands and knees he crawled away from the edge before trusting himself to stand again. The tempest vanished as quickly as it appeared leaving a mild drizzle of rain and gentle breeze. The humming sound was gone and the ground felt solid again.

Exhausted, Fred stumbled about in the forest for a while before he found the trail which led back to his camp. He slumped into his sleeping bag and fell immediately into a deep sleep.

***

The sun welcomed him the next morning with optimism. The entire episode of last night could have been a bad dream, but for two things: his soaking wet clothes, and the rapidly rising thirst. He took a long draw from his sack and set about breaking camp.

All through that next day Fred would battle this thirst. After taking a drink, no matter how much, he would feel sated to the point of that uncomfortable bloated feeling. Either he was bloated with water or he was burning with thirst, with little in between. By midday he had stopped at least 5 times to relieve his bladder. By mid afternoon, Fred was close to finishing the 8 litres of spring water he had collected in his sack, and he felt drained and diluted, as if his vital life force had been thinned out too much. Each stroke of Wylma’s pedals felt like a huge effort.

Determined not to make the same mistake yet again, he stopped at a supermarket to buy 2 large bottles of water, and some food for the evening meal. The water he harvested at the caves was virtually finished so he broke open the fresh bottles of water and filled his drink  bottles and emptied the rest into the water sack. Before setting off again, he took a long draft of the new water and almost collapsed with a cramp that gripped his stomach from nowhere. The water tasted positively putrid. That long draft was now regurgitated all over the pavement. The scene attracted curious glances from the shoppers passing him by, but they all politely minded their own business.

Fred broke the seal on the second bottle and gingerly smelt it. The odour was pungently rotten with a strong overtone of faeces. He could no longer even bring the bottle close to his mouth, but his thirst had been aroused now and desperately demanded quenching.

Fred took the rotten bottle of water back into the supermarket to complain, but once he had attracted the attention of the attendant, they found nothing wrong with it and dismissed his complaint with mild annoyance. Thinking fast, Fred asked if he could use the store facilities. The attendant reluctantly pointed to the back of the store.

In the bathroom now, Fred locked himself in and went straight for the handbasin. As soon as the water began to run, the same obnoxious stench struck him with almost physical force. He struggled to hold back a dry retch. He slammed the tap shut but the stench remained. All he could do now was flee.

Fred’s thirst was intensifying and he had no idea what he could do about it until an ingenious idea struck. Let’s try some softdrinks. Now back in the carpark with a bag filled with assorted cans, he carefully tested one. The cola drink did not taste like cola at all. It was not even sweet. But thankfully nowhere near the heinous taste of water, he even convinced himself it could be palatable, almost. He opened an orange Fanta, his favourite. It was terrible. A taste of rotten potato. He spat it out.

He tried the others and found the least repulsive flavour was a strange local concoction. The label said nothing about the origins of its flavour, but it tasted a bit like salty lettuce or cucumber. Far from enjoyable, but it blunted the evil thirst that was beginning to concern him. Fred reentered the supermarket, now attracting a scornful stare from the shop attendant, and bought a dozen cans of this drink, packed them on Wylma and left.

***

Fred turned onto an overgrown trail that wound away from the main road into a forest. He followed it until a suitable clearing for camp appeared, but first he had to relieve the burning thirst roaring in his chest. He downed a whole can of drink, and gagged on the unpleasant flavour. Fred was at his wits end. A frustrated panic was rising in him as he fought with the impossibility of his situation.

He took out his phone and decided to make a video log at try to make sense out of what was going on. A habit he started for himself a while back. It was more a personal log of events, rather than any latent reach for social media stardom. He rested the phone in a convenient fork in a tree branch and began recording.

While he was setting up camp, and narrating his conundrum as he worked, a dizziness began to compounded his odd fatigue. Suddenly he was overcome and slowly crumpled to the ground with a mix of weakness and dejection. He sat there, rump on the damp ground, slumped, head hung low between elbows resting on knees. The solid fortitude with which Fred had tackled every adversity the road had thrown up at him over the last year was crumbling. A tear of desperation rolled down his cheek.

The world around him stopped as he succumbed to this weakness and surrendered to his self-pity, but it did not last long. His dark reverie was sharply interrupted by something. Something subtle, something eerily familiar. It took a few seconds to snap out of his funk and realise it. The ground was moving. Gently heaving up and down. A huge lump encompassing him, Wylma, and his clearing was in subtle motion against the forest beyond. The trees on the perimeter swayed gently in and out. And now the subtle sweat smell on the stiffening soft breeze. Fred felt light headed again. An indistinct serenity descended on him rubbing off the sharp edges of this distress.

The low humming music began, dragging him back to a sweet sopor. Tiny rootlets began to sprout from the ground all around him, as if from some inverted tree, burrowing its roots from below into the air. They grew into short stubby fingers, stiff and white, caked with dirt. Fred could see them hooking around Wylma’s wheels, and around his feet. A few of them were already winding their way back into the ground ensnaring his left foot. Fred watched this with detached curiosity until those cords suddenly yanked with enormous force. His foot cracked with the force and vanished up to his shin underground. The white roots now reached for his knee, readying for the next assault. The pain he should have flet was slow to register as he fought the sedation.

A thickening tendril had wrapped itself around his hips like an old style car safety belt and was tightening uncomfortably. Just as Fred was finally shaking off his stupor, an excruciating wrench pulled his buttocks underground. He exploded in a harrowing scream of pain as his hips and legs snapped under the fantastic pressure. Now one hand was seized underground as he turned to Wylma. Her front wheel was folded in on itself and half consumed by the earth while many of the white roots had tangled themselves through the frame, thickening, strengthening.

The bones in his lost arm were being slowly crushed. Exquisite pain flashed, overwhelmed him as he franticly fought off attempts from the multiplying weeds trying to seize his free arm. He tried to inhale again only to find the weight of earth crushing his lungs. His legs were almost gone, but they burned with searing agony.

There was no escape from this fate, Fred was finally rendered helpless with all his limbs now vanishing into the very earth itself. Screaming was no longer possible as he struggled for breath. Panicked eyes bulging, Fred saw the earth directly in front of him slowly rupture. A large shiny bolder forced its way out of the ground. Something under its surface  slithered, then a gash opened revealing an alien eye staring without emotion at him. 

The last thought to go through Fred’s mind: At least my thirst is gone.

***

A pair of hikers set up camp in a small idyllic clearing in the ancient patch of forest. Next to a nearby tree, tangled in weeds, they find a long lost mobile phone. It no longer worked, but they found the SD card which contained the video logs of Fred and Wylma. The last video file shocked the hikers profoundly. In the dim and grainy video, Fred’s shocking final minutes are clearly preserved. At the end the earth returns to its original state. They looked at each other with rising foreboding as they notice the exact same trees as in the video surrounding them. They abandon their camp and flee for their lives.

Some moths later, an obscure post is published on a Wiki site called SCP Foundation. The post contains the video along with a vague technical description followed by a large bold warning: THIS EUCLID CLASS ANOMALY IS CURRENTLY UNCONTAINED.