AUGUST 14, 2003, TIME UNKNOWN
The group descends deeper into the bunker. The stairs creak and groan beneath them, and Novak has a particularly hard time navigating them. When Carreau offers the girls his hands to help them down, they shy away from him, sticking to Novak’s side. Hardcastle hangs behind briefly to wrangle the camera settings, and then edges past the rest of the queue to take the lead. The stairs lead down and down and farther still.
KAPOOR: I think I can almost make out the words. We must be getting closer.
NOVAK: It’s not really that I can make them out, it’s more like I’m starting to understand them.
Hardcastle reaches the bottom of the stairs. He looks in on the round room. It is similar to the chamber in which Sophia will find Liam, over a decade from now, but its walls are not adorned in paint.
They cross the room cautiously, and the tunnel leading out comes into sight. In this video it is wider, and arched smoothly, crafted with intention and skill. The tunnel beyond seems manmade, wide enough for two people to walk side by side, if a bit uncomfortably.
HARDCASTLE: Only one way forward.
They proceed into the tunnel. No one speaks. No one questions the decision to press onward—and downward, as the tunnel slopes, curves, spirals slowly in on itself. As it has before, the camera cuts out now and again. It is especially difficult to guess how long these intervals might be as there is no difference between one section of video and the next. A slightly different wrinkle in the rock around them, a crack in the floor, a discolored bit of stone—nothing substantial. The video comprises at least fifteen minutes, but they may have been walking for many more by the time they come to the door.
It is identical to the door into the bunker: metal, rectangular, windowless. Hardcastle looks back at the others, turning the camera. They watch him expectantly. There is no question that he will open the door, and he does, grunting with the effort.
The door opens onto the island. Onto the same patch of ground they came into the bunker from. Here, there is no mist. No grass either; only bare rock. Hardcastle points the camera up toward the sky—but there is no sky. Only a reflection of the island and the ocean, hanging above them.
KAPOOR: I should be terrified, but I’m just . . . empty.
She looks up. Her expression is slack, but tears track down her cheeks.
KAPOOR: We aren’t getting out of here.
CARREAU: Stranger things have happened, Vanya dearest. Stranger things.
NOVAK: Down there.
She points. Just offshore, a large wooden vessel is mired against the rocks. Even translated into the medium of film, it is a mind-bending sight—it seems, impossibly, to be eternally breaking apart. An optical illusion, perhaps, for there is no beginning nor end to the way the wooden beams crack against the rocks, splitting open. Black liquid gushes from the crack like a wound—a wound that is forever in the process of being rent open.
HARDCASTLE: Is that where we need to go?
KAPOOR: No. I think that is.
She points along the side of the slope and downward—toward the town. Hardcastle steps to where he can angle the camera to follow her pointing hand.
Where the town should be there is only an empty field. Except for the church. It has doubled in size, gained spires that twist in nauseating geometry. Terns swarm around its roof in eerie silence, and where its door should be, the camera captures only random visual glitches and flashes of light.
CARREAU: No sense in wasting time.
In wordless agreement, the group starts off down the hill. Carreau takes the lead, his gait buoyant, head high, and hands in his pockets.
The glitching of the camera becomes more frequent as they draw closer. As they step over the threshold, the video remains rolling but turns to jagged, discordant shapes and colors.* The image resolves thirteen seconds later.
The interior of the church is not a church at all, but a cavern. The walls are gray stone. Columns of rock and stalagmites rise from the floor, preventing a complete view of the space. The vaulted ceiling is covered in a mural not unlike that of the previous echo, though on a larger scale, and wrapped around the outcroppings of rock. A path leads toward the dark interior of the space, and the group follows it.
KAPOOR: Did you see that?
NOVAK: What?
KAPOOR: I thought I saw something moving.
CARREAU: Come on. It’s just through here.
KAPOOR: What is?
They step through a gateway of two craggy columns, and Joy gasps. In the center of the room, suspended in the air, is a massive shard of glass, the size of a human torso. Its edges are jagged, and light refracts brokenly through its clouded surface. It shifts and changes in midair, and sometimes it seems less like a piece of glass, and more like the world itself is the glass and the object in the center of the room is a crack through it.
From its jagged lower tip weeps black liquid, dripping into a circular pool. Channels flow from the pool outward, threading among the congregation gathered around the shard. For there are people—many people, dozens—arranged in concentric circles. They kneel, heads bowed and backs bent, their hands resting on their laps, holding shallow bowls.
Hardcastle draws close to the nearest man. He wears the uniform of a US Airman circa the second world war. One of his boots is unlaced, his shirt unbuttoned. Black tears run down his cheeks. Every few seconds, one drops into the shallow bowl. It is already half-full.
Most of those nearby are dressed similarly. Some seem to have had more time to dress than others; a few wear only their underclothes. One young man, no more than nineteen or twenty, has only one sock on.
NOVAK: Will, look out!
Hardcastle jerks back from the man he is examining, yelling as a burst of movement comes toward him—but it’s only a young boy, and he runs past Hardcastle, ignoring him entirely. The boy, who has a dusty blond mop of hair and a gaunt frame, carries an empty bowl clasped to his side. He stops in front of one of the airmen and exchanges the man’s filled bowl for the empty one. He pauses, the bowl balanced carefully on both of his palms, and looks at Hardcastle.
HARDCASTLE: We’re not going to hurt you, kid.
The boy approaches with hesitant steps. He holds the bowl up toward Hardcastle. In his eyes is an invitation. An offer.
HARDCASTLE: Uh—no thanks?
The boy nods—and then he sets the bowl to his lips, and drinks. He drinks thirstily, greedily, gulping down the tarry black liquid. It spills out of the sides of his mouth, down his chin, splashes on his chest and the ground at his feet. Hardcastle makes a guttural sound of revulsion and steps back.
The boy takes the last swallow and lowers the bowl. His skin is red and blistering where the liquid touched it, but he smiles, a contortion of his lips that is almost parody. And then he sprints back toward the rocky outcroppings at the edge of the room, his movements too limber and too controlled to belong to such a young child.
KAPOOR: There’s more of them.
Eyes reflect the team’s lights. Dozens of eyes, belonging to rail-thin children who cling to the rocks or crouch against the ground. The oldest is perhaps twelve, though it’s difficult to tell, given their emaciated state and ragged clothing. The youngest might be four or five.
NOVAK: I know that girl.
She’s whispering. She holds the Sophias close against her as she stares at one of the children, a girl with long black hair and light brown skin that had begun to turn a sickly sort of gray.
NOVAK: Mikhail has a painting of her. He showed me once. That’s his daughter.
KAPOOR: We have bigger problems.
Her voice is shaking. She points with her flashlight. Around the circle, toward the outer edge, kneels a group of four people, two men and two women, as insensible as all the rest.
They are Joy Novak, William Hardcastle, Vanya Kapoor, and Martin Carreau.