Chapter 18

  What is this, Spelunky?

  Within the fear-fuelled hallucination of the past, a cavern opened before Elijah and his two childhood friends. It was shaped like a natural port. When the tide was all the way in, a rowboat could follow the shallow channel they walked along.

  Stone rose to either side of the group, creating a wall at shoulder height. Judging by the seaweed, water didn’t make it as high as the walkway, leaving most of the cavern dry.

  Noah had already taken off and clambered up towards something that reflected in the light of the phone’s torch.

  “Wait up,” Elijah called, but it was no use; there was no stopping that little hellion. The two other boys were slower in coming. Boaz gave Elijah a boost up, then the slightly older boy helped his friend in kind.

  The whole while, Elijah’s phone’s light was pointed towards the ceiling of the underground space, ensuring there was enough light to see the entire chamber.

  Once the preteen was atop the naturally formed promenade, he was able to see the extent of the area.

  It looked like the perfect place for smugglers to dock their boats. Lichen grew on the walls, there was plenty of room, and it smelled like stale wood, though nothing but the rotten remains of crude racks and shelves remained.

  Elijah finally caught up to Noah. The flash of red, which had caught the youngen’s eye, were the reflective ruby eyes of what looked like a face carved into the rock.

  Elijah had heard about this place when he visited the sailor’s museum. That’s what inspired this adventure. They had several historical displays, and the history of illicit trade had been the kid’s favourite part, of course. It had described this place as simply a hideout used by nerdowells a few hundred years ago, but this carving, at least to Elijah’s untrained eye, looked older… far older… too old!

  There was an aura of mystique about the thing. The face was angular. It looked like there were blood-red rubies that had been embedded into the stone in place of eyes. The teeth that peeked through the androgynous smile appeared sharp, adding to its predatory expression.

  Elijah was drawn to it somehow. It called to him in a way he didn’t understand. As soon as he locked eyes with the depiction, he couldn’t walk away. Before he knew it, he had walked past the downcast Noah, plodding slowly forward, as if in a trance.

  “What’s up?” Boaz asked Noah, noticing that the boy seemed upset.

  “When I saw the red, I thought it was a can of Coke.” Noah explained.

  “What?” Boaz asked, incredulous.

  “What?” Noah retorted, “I’m thirsty.”

  “If it were, it would probably be empty, or worse, filled with piss. Who would leave a perfectly good fizzy drink in a cave?”

  “You don’t know; it could have been left in case someone got stuck here,” Noah tried to argue.

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  Elijah heard the bickering that ensued, but it went in one ear and out the other. This face, it was just too… alluring? That wasn’t the right word, but he couldn’t describe quite how he felt when looking at it.

  It was impossible to tell whether it was supposed to represent a man or a woman; all he knew for sure was that it resonated with him. The cheeks were sunken and hollow. The eyes were deeply bagged, and yet there was an air of life that seemed to hum in the air about it.

  Elijah was mesmerised. This carving simultaneously scared and excited the young man. His breath caught in his throat as, unconsciously, he raised a hand to touch the face.

  “Are you alright?” Boaz asked, disengaging from his debate about the number of piss bottles there were in the world. He had noticed something was wrong with Elijah, though it was already too late.

  Noah, actually picking up on social cues for once, stopped calculating whether there would be more yellow-filled drinking vessels or brown-filled bags, and turned his attention to his spellbound friend.

  “Don’t touch it, it’s creepy,” he called tactfully.

  His words fell on deaf ears. Elijah touched the stone mask.

  The world shifted.

  All he later remembered was waking up more than an hour later in the darkness. The whole experience had been repressed, that part especially so, but now that he was reliving the experience, the exact details came back to him.

  The eyes came to life the second he touched the stone face, and they stared directly into his soul. Elijah’s consciousness was reduced to a series of images flashing past at an impossible speed.

  A thousand thousand lifetimes flew by before him. The lives of kings and peasants, of rich and poor, strong and weak, were all contained within the impossibly long life of one man.

  The people in these images didn’t look right. Some were too tall with pointed ears, others were short and stocky, and the strangest were what looked like cat people, with whiskers, fur, and tails. There was magic and wonder, death and betrayal. It was all too much for the young man, for anyone to bear.

  Through the tide of consciousness, there was one theme. This man, whose eyes Elijah now realised he must have been seeing through, always got what he wanted in the end. Time was on his side. He was an immortal!

  This carved face had been left here as an echo of an echo of a message, luring in people who may possibly be of use.

  The river of consciousness narrowed, and a more real and vivid scene appeared before Elijah. He was restrained to some kind of altar; no, the person whose face was carved in rock was tied down here. As he realised there was a distinction between himself and this other person, the perspective shifted.

  His vision floated out of the other man and into the underground chamber where this altar was located. Bloodstained jars lined the walls; implements of torture were scattered about. All of it was covered in an impossibly thick layer of dust. There was a skeleton in one corner, half crushed by fallen rock, fallen rock that blocked the only entrance or exit to this long-abandoned chamber.

  Elijah turned his disembodied focus towards the person, who he now knew was a man. His race looked exactly the same as the depiction on the cave wall… exactly the same, except the eyes were shut. It was as if he had been turned to stone.

  He had been turned to stone. He couldn’t die. Without blood, he would stay here, trapped for all eternity.

  Elijah knew this in his very bones. The knowledge of this man’s life had been imparted to him all at once, but even thinking about a single second of it caused his soul to cry out in pain.

  He screamed in intangible rememberings.

  An eye, made of pure, crystallised blood, opened and stared into him with a wicked smile.

  A voice ripped through Elijah’s consciousness. It said two words, “Free me!”

  That single muttering held within it the heartfelt plea of a million desperate souls and the threat of a million more. If he could but help this creature, anything, everything could be his.

  The dream shattered, and with its destruction, the thoughts and ideas that had been shared with him, the experience of thousands of years of life, were wiped from his mind. All that remained was a seed, implanted in the back of Elijah’s mind, one of thousands.

  Elijah’s eyes snapped open. He was back in the cave. He saw the pointed drips of cave roof illuminated by a light that seemed dimmer than before. The sound of waves swelling soothed his fractured mind.

  The momentary peace was broken by Noah’s cry.

  “He’s awake!”