Ayagom, the Resolute

The afternoon was fresh and dry. A new smell of vitality and growth seeped from the forest around him. It was a very welcome change from the week of rain that Fred and Wylma had endured. A week of persistent drizzle that soaked to the bone and gave no chances to dry anything out. Everything he owned was in various states of saturation. Bitter experience had taught Fred to protect at all cost his sleeping bag, but it had also succumbed to the persistent rain and now felt clammy to the touch. Of course Wylma, his 2 wheeled companion, his accomplice on this around the world epic, did not care a wit.

The leaden sky continued to threaten rain, but optimistically Fred laid out a pair of socks and two pairs of underwear on top of his panniers in the hopes of drying them in the last kilometres before finally making camp. It was the first chance to do so in what felt like an eternity. The cool wind cooperated, but made Fred shiver with each gust, eventually compelling him to fish out his windbreaker. Summer in Scandinavia was not for the warm blooded.

The trail Fred was following was not often used. The grass in the wheel ruts, and lack of any fresh tire tracks made that obvious. He guessed he could camp anywhere here without being discovered. Just as he began to scope out potential camping spots, a single trail split off from this path. He spontaneously took it.

The trail wound invitingly amongst the trees deeper into the forest. Suddenly it ended at a small clearing at the foot of a low cliff. The cliff faced east and was blanketed in shadowy secrecy. The forest obscured most of it’s face, but Fred could vaguely make out a darker patch on the rock wall.

Now off the bike, he scoped out the site more carefully. The clearing was muddy and wet making Fred ruefully expect yet another night on sloppy ground. As if clairvoyant, the clouds began to release their first tiny drops of rain again. We're going to have a wet night again, he thought. Fred turned his attention to the cliff. Perhaps an overhang may offer some respite. This is when Fred discovered the cave mouth in the cliff wall.

Hardly much higher than Fred was tall, but wide enough to drive a car through, the cave promised a night of respite from the rain. For all his bushcraft skills, he didn't know much about caves. This gave him pause. As if embittered by his discovery, the clouds redoubled their efforts and the rain became more substantial. Fred pulled Wylma, and his now wet laundry into the darkness of the cave.

The darkness was oppressive till Fred donned his head lamp. The vestibule of the cave offered an ideal space to camp with level ground and space enough for a small fire. But the rear of the cave vanished into murky darkness that the torch could not penetrate. Fred let out a yelp as a casual call to any other occupants. The sound slowly echoed back to him from the bowels of the earth, hinting at the cave’s unseen depths. A tingle of trepidation ran down Fred’s spine. He put the darker thoughts from his mind as he set up for the night.

Fred was proud of his own self reliance and fortitude. That pack of hungry Hyenas in Senegal, nor the visit from a curious lion in Tanzania were sufficient to perturb him, so he was adamant a mysterious cave in Finland was not going to get under his skin. He set up a clothes drying line between his tent and Wylma near the warmth of the fire. Soaking socks, wet underwear and a saturated fleece got prime sites near the heat. Once Fred was satisfied with the setup, he ventured out to collect more dead wood for the fire. Now back and settled in, he admired the camp which was ideal despite the slight smokiness. He sat back to begin dinner.

As he peeled an onion, Fred noticed the dancing flames were being played by a faint breeze. Air was being sucked into the cave ever so gently. The smokiness somewhat dissipated, but it stirred his dark imagination again. He pushed the congealing dread out of his mind. He came up with a dozen logical explanations to mollify his imagination. The breeze intensified culminating in a short gust, accompanied by a deep rumble emanating from somewhere deep underground - then stillness. Again Fred paused and struggled for calm. After a few silent minutes he resumed his meal preparations.

Fred had become quite the camp gourmet. Tonight his favourite tuna mornay was on the menu, with the obligatory surprise ingredient, usually whatever came to hand on the road, this time it was some delicious mushrooms he found in the forest that morning. Now sated, he sat back and lit a cigarette. This was the only vice he carried with him from his previous life. A solitary cigarette, as a desert of sorts, he told himself.

Sitting in the stillness, Fred noticed the floating smoke emanating from his lit cigarette was heading for the cave opening. It was too faint to detect otherwise but just as his thought concluded, he could then feel the breeze, ever so gentle. It carried a strange odour. Both earthy and rancid. Not enough to be intolerable, but unpleasant nonetheless.

The dying flames of the campfire were now being whipped up by the rapidly strengthening draft. Fred’s tent and laundry now whipped about in it. He began to collect the washing up from his dinner as the wind became a gale whistling toward the cave mouth. Fred’s clothes were now off the line and the tent pitched upward catching the draft. He tried to hold it all together till he lost his footing leaning into the powerful tempest.

His tent and clothes were all now gone. Whisked away in a whirl of wind. Wylma was being sucked out as well while Fred hung on to the rock wall leaning against the tempest. The wind palpitated in strength a few times then vanished. He stood there panting from his excursions and beginning to take stock when the reversal began.

The wind began to howl in through the cave opening and down into the dark unknown depths. Fred reversed his grip on his rock and held on for dear life. The gale kept intensifying. He could feel his grip starting to give and the power of the rushing air was magnifying. Fred’s hold finally gave way and he was sucked into the inky depths.

***

Fred was sucked into the very earth. There was no chance to catch a handhold to arrest his progress. There was no fighting the sheer power and violence of the moving air as it dragged him deeper.

The whirlwind began to lose its potency as Fred managed to grab onto a protuberance. His hand had found a hold but it was not solid rock, it was more like hard rubber coated with slime. He didn't have a great purchase on it, but soon the wind completely vanished. Fred was bracing for another reversal but it did not come.

The odour was stronger here and the air was warmer and more humid. Fred stood up and thanked his luck when he found the headlamp hanging around his neck. Now he could see, but what he saw shocked him. The cave was close to round in shape. The walls were covered in lumps and pustules all covered with wet slime of various colours. Some were oozing yet more ugly goo. Fred knew from whence he had come but after some steps, the tunnel had split off in wildly different directions. There was no way to be sure of the path out.

This is when he noticed the first oddity. The ground was not solid. It felt underfoot like the canvas of a boxing ring. Fred checked his pockets. Half a packet of cigarettes, a lighter, and his spoon is all he had. There was nothing he could use to mark his path. A curiosity took him and before he thought it through, he scraped the wall with his spoon. The surface gave way like the skin of an overripe peach exposing a gelatinous body laced with white stringy chords and muddy red tissue. The momentary calm was broken when the entire tunnel shuddered, then the air began moving rapidly inward again.

Fred threw himself to the ground, searching for purchase in preparation for the next tempest. It did not come though. It was at this point that he noticed the pain. The palms of his hands began to tingle uncomfortably. He wiped them on his pants but the irritation intensified. A similar hot stinging sensation was beginning to spread on one side of his neck. Fred felt the skin and noticed it was covered with the mucus. He began rubbing it off with a mild panic as the pain gradually grew.

He began to walk. He took the left tunnel, then the right, then left again, then he stopped. It all looked the same. Fred admitted to himself that he was thoroughly lost down here. After a few minutes of wandering the familiar breeze reappeared. He braced himself again but it was not as turbulent as before. He kept moving. Moving felt like progress, no matter the direction.

An ominous theory began to germinate in his mind about the nature of this cave. All his logic told him that he had somehow found himself inside something that,... is alive.

With each passing step, he saw things that corroborated his theory till he could no longer think of any other plausible explanation. The paths he took all seemed to go downwards. Even when he backtracked, that sensation of descending remained. It all added to his disquiet. The slime had worked its way onto his flip flops caking his soles and making each step treacherous.

He took a tunnel which suddenly dropped precipitously. Fred slipped and slid a long way down the bumpy slick tunnel till it levelled out again. It proved impossible to climb back up that tunnel. His panic was bubbling, but still contained. On he went, deeper and deeper.

The tunnel opened into a chamber not much larger than a garage. It was shaped like a bubble with a puddle of gunk collected in the bottom. The surface pulsated in slow motion. It was at this point Fred became certain about his theory, He was inside some terrestrial leviathan.

A dark despondence descended upon him. A sense that he may not live to tell this tale. The air was hard to breathe here. Heavy, and wet. Fred suddenly felt very tired and slumped down against the sticky wall and concentrated on taking some deep inhalations, but no matter how he tried, he could not catch a satisfying breath. A funk descended upon him fogging his mind, thickening, until he was no longer sure of where he was.

***

Huge powerful limbs, too many to count, grasped, tugged and pushed at the earth, the rock, and the roots all around him. He slid his body through the sticky wet ground. It offered a strange resistance. He was not tunnelling in the earth, but rather moving through it, or it moved through him. A very strange sensation. He stopped. Quiet.

A dim low rumbled modulated from somewhere far away. An earthquake, or a movement of a large mass. Grinding over rock and rubble. But there was meaning in the sound. “Ayagom, I feel you”. Fred knew what the sound meant but he did not know how he knew. He drew into himself and shuddered. A strange pattern of rumbling sounds emanate from him.  “Ugora, my friend, I hear you” Fred answered, but without intention. Did I say that? he thought to himself

As happens in those rare moments when you become aware you are dreaming, Fred knew he had somehow become psychically absorbed by some other entity. An immensely old being. He could sense a memory spanning back millennia and more. Spans too fantastic to comprehend. Back to the age of the scaled monsters, and warm oceans. Ugora was close by, by Ayagoms reckoning anyway, but this was still hundreds of kilometres away.

Fred did not like it. Not one bit at all. He was powerless, but conscious. Looking upward, but not with eyes, he saw a low canopy of tangled roots from countless trees spreading out in all directions. Pulsing and communicating. A hum of intelligent exchange, like a busy Chinese restaurant. Moods and emotions, both brilliant and bleak in constant flux. He was under this cobweb ceiling, in a serene cocoon of dirt.

This was not Fred’s world and he knew he had to fight to return to his own, but he lacked the vitality to act. I need to wake up from this, he said to his dreaming self. He tried to move, but he was just a silent passenger enveloped by this colossus.

He tried again and felt a tear in his mind. A rend that he now pushed against. He felt a slow disorienting topple ending with a suffocating sensation.

***

This brought Fred back. He was lying face down at the bottom of the chamber now, drowning in the slime. He jerked his head back and spat out the goo and gasped for air. He strained at the lack of oxygen, and fought back the drowsiness. He then reached into his pocket, drew out the spoon and with the sharp end, stabbed the floor, over and over again. The membrane gave way and the shank sunk deep into the flesh with satisfaction.

The tunnel shuddered, and a gust picked up threatening violence again. The air freshened and Fred finally got a gratifying breath into his lungs. Immediately energised he stumbled up toward the chamber entrance, Fred was out of the now strengthening wind and noticed the chamber expanding. The wind tapered off and the chamber could grow no larger. Fred chose his moment and stepped out of its entrance into the main tunnel and braced himself.

The reversal was shockingly powerful. It hit him like a solid thing. Fred became immediately airborne flying through the tubes, bumping and skidding off the sides. The speed was terrific. He slid past a section of the cave wall that was now harder and sharper. Then with a loud popping sound he exited the cave mouth and flew through cool night air, clipping a branch and finally landing heavily in a muddy puddle.

He was in the clearing outside the cave now. The sky was showing the first light of dawn but the rain still held sway. In the dying light of his headlamp, Fred spotted his tent tangled in some bushes and Wylma caught in a tree branch. Other debris from his campsite littered the immediate area.

On hands and knees, he turned and looked at the cliff face. In the steady rain, it was just a black band, and black backdrop behind the forest cover, preventing the first rays of dawn to penetrate. Fred’s disorientation was dissipating at the same time the burning sting on his face, neck, arms and feet reasserted itself. He wiped at the sticky gelatinous gunk with muddy waters but it resisted his efforts reminding him of slug slime.

He looked down at his hands that were covered in it and saw the skin had turned a very dark colour. He pushed an enquiring finger of one hand through the slime to the skin of the back of his other hand. It was rough, and hard. Like… rock! Something was growing on him. He studied his hands again and with concern and noticed his fingers lengthening, in fact his hands were growing. Still on all fours, He looked down and the ground was moving away from him. The trees and bushes were shrinking. Wylma, still stuck in the tree, was now at the scale of a toy.

The ground under his knees and hands felt soft and spongy. He picked up a clump and squeezed. The earth melded with him, some of it leaking out from between hard unyielding claws. His fingernails now looked like power shovel buckets. With childish curiosity, he scooped out a hole in the wet earth the size of a refrigerator, and held it aloft effortlessly. He dropped it and then with fingers extended like a spike, he drove his arm into the earth. His arm descended into the ground with a delightful satisfaction.

The dawn was brightening, Fred could seem more of the cliff face, and the cave entrance. But this was no cliff, this was Ayagom, the resolute. One of the great Mokit. Stewards of this planet. Slayers of the Gkruts, the destroyers of life. Fred was surprised by the overwhelming feeling he now felt - it was pride.

Fred then realised Ayagom was speaking to him:

“Ufrot, you are me. I am you, join us.”

At this, Fred looked at the earth under him in a new light. A light of comprehension. He then noticed a buzzing hum of background chatter. It was like hearing a poolside conversation while submerged underwater. Fred knew what he must do next. His arm was still buried. He balled his fist, taking a grip of the very earth itself and drove his head and other arm into the ground. His body slid fluently into the ground. He could now hear the conversations clearly and was gratified he was not alone. It was a gentle melodic ebb and flow of the Mokit hivemind. It was hypnotic.

The turmoil and tribulations of life were now profoundly changed. Fred glanced one last time upward to see Wylma, alone, caught in the tree branch. He wondered if he would ever see her again.

“I see you Ayagom!” Fred said, embracing his new reality.