Rene was ok with that. He wasn’t a big winter person, unlike most of his mid-20’s friends. He really wasn’t into snowmobiling and ice fishing. Of course, he wasn’t really a summer person either, while he enjoyed camping and the occasional hike, he didn’t own an ATV or a boat of any kind, and you would rarely see him doing anything that could be considered a sport, unless writing had become a sport.
Creative writing was a passion for him, but technical writing was how he put food on the table for himself and his wife, and, God willing, the baby that might someday come. He had tried to have some of his creative work published, but so far he’d only had one piece accepted anywhere; afterward he’d discovered they were a purveyor of ‘Science Fiction Erotica’. The story was accepted, but he’d never been paid since it had never seen print, which he guessed was due to the fact that it contained no ‘erotica’ what-so-ever.
So technical writing paid the bills, even if he didn’t have the same love for doing it. He worked for a small firm that did contract work for other businesses who didn’t staff their own writers. For the most part, he enjoyed the work. He go to check out plenty of new products and services. He also knew that there might actually be thousands of people reading something he wrote, even if it was simply the user manual for a high end drill bit for specialized application in a particular machine shop drill.
This cold February morning he stood in his living room with a steaming cup of coffee in his hand, staring out of his living room picture window at the snow as it piled up. It was already inches deep having snowed all night, and it wasn’t supposed to let up for another couple hours. He owned the second to the last house, of only two houses, on a small dead end road in an outer most suburb of the cities, meaning that he was as far from his downtown offices as is possible before being considered rural. He was having a hard time convince himself to undertake the grueling morning commute. He’d been in the professionally world for only 6 years since graduation from college, and in that time he’d only missed two days of work. In the end, his good sense won out, and he walked down the hall to his modest home office, opened the door, sat down at the desk, and lifted the panel to his laptop computer.
He hoped that he could get some work done before Richard, his neighbor, started in with his snow thrower, snow mobile, and whatever other loud snow contraptions he had hiding in that monolithic shed of his. The sound drove Rene crazy and made it absolutely impossible for him to concentrate. It was one of the many things he absolutely hated about the man, that he always had some new machine to rev and roar. He sighed, and opened folder on the desktop, took a sip of coffee, and tried to dive into his work.
“You’re like a big kid, Rich!” chided Mary, his wife, setting a plate of bacon and scrambled eggs down in front of him.
“I know. I know! But this winter’s been so bleak, and you know how bad I’ve wanted to get out on the Z1!” as he said it, he knew how immature he sounded.
“I know Richard, I know.” Mary sat down on the opposite side of the table. He noticed how gracefully she was aging. Even though she was only a few years younger than he was, she looked like 40-something to his late 50’s.
He’d retired a few years back, after dedicating the majority of his life to selling insurance. He had planned, saved, and when he turned 50 he happily walked away from the working world to settle into his family’s land, north of the cities. When it had been his Grandfather’s land, it was one of his fondest memories, riding in the family sedan to visit him. They were so far from everything when they were out there; it was a completely different world.
Of course, times had changed. Now there were housing developments inching closer and closer toward him, more shopping centers popping up along the county road that lead past, which had grown to two lanes. When the village became a city, they began parceling out more land and paved his road that now ended in a cul-de-sac. When his neighbor bought his tract, Richard had gone to the city to protest the sale, saying that he was infringing on his land. When that didn’t work, he demanded a survey, and then he began bringing various law suits and things, trying desperately to keep his property clear. He just wanted to be able to look out of any window and see only nature.
He couldn’t understand why anyone would buy a parcel so close. He couldn’t understand why it was the man didn’t want more privacy.
“You going to take it all the way back, dear?”
“Maybe, depending on snow cover, why?” He knew the answer before she gave it, but was really hoping that she wouldn’t.
“He’s asked you very nicely, Richard.”
“I can’t believe you’re still taking his side in this!”
“I’m not taking his side,” her tone was always calm, even when they argued, and it drove him crazy, “but he does work out of the home, and he’s asked you very nicely not to drive around here during the day while he’s working.”
“He wouldn’t have that problem if he hadn’t moved onto my land!”
“It’s not your land, and you knew that it was only a matter of time before people started moving out here.”
He hated it when she was right, so rather than acknowledge it, she just snorted and took a sip of his coffee. Still, she had a point, and he knew it. He would take it back onto the property, just past the pond and up the stream a little bit.
“Besides, how would you have felt if someone went snowmobiling outside of your office everyday while you were trying to work?”
“Yes, Mary, you’ve made your point.”
She hummed satisfactorily, kissed him on the forehead and walked laboriously into the next room. He was left to brood alone, sipping his coffee. He poked at a strip of bacon with his fork and put it in his mouth.
The snow lay on the ground in a thick blanket; the trees that had yesterday been barren and brown were now caked in white. Eight inches had fallen and left the world a completely different landscape. “Walking in a Winter Wonderland” played over and over in a loop through Rene’s mind as he sat in his sunroom drinking a fresh cup of coffee, taking an afternoon break, and enjoying the blissful scene that spread out before him.
The quiet was why he’d moved out here. He’d been with his company for 4 years before they would finally let him work from home. He still had to go in every couple of weeks, but for the most part, he had escaped the office jungle.
He’d gotten a lot done today. To his relief, the roar of his neighbor’s snowmobile lasted only a few minutes before it trailed off into the woods. He watched out of his office window as Rich raced off through the trees, a spray of snow following in his wake. The rest of the day had been quiet, and he was thankful for it.
Rene stood up and started to walk back to his office, but a gentle knock at the back door diverted him. The inevitable question was who it could be. By the time he reached the door though, he’d figured that it had to be one of his neighbors, and since he hadn’t heard the roar of the snow machine’s return, he assumed that it could only be, “Mary! Nice to see you, how are you?”
“I’m good, Rene, how are you today?”
“Good, just been working. To what to I owe the pleasure?” She looked worried and he opened the door to let her into the kitchen, “Come in, please.”
She made her way inside, the soft black rubber tip on her cane made a soft thudding sound with every other step. Rene knew that she’d been in a car accident years ago and that walking was very difficult for her. She thanked him and sat down at the table, hooking her cane on the edge of the table. He offered a drink but she politely declined.
“I’m worried about Richard.” She said it like someone who didn’t want to say something, like she’d been trying to find the courage for a while. He said nothing, but waited for her to continue, and after a minute she did, “He didn’t come back at lunch he’s not answering his phone, and it’s really not like him.”
Rene started to see where she was going with this, and he started trying desperately to figure out how to get out of it. “Have you thought about calling the police?”
“I did call them; they said that they couldn’t go looking for him because I’m worried and that they couldn’t do anything until he’d been missing for at least 24-48 hours.”
Rene had to admit that he wasn’t really surprised by this, and was wondering why she was so worried. “Oh.” He realized how stupid he sounded, but he really didn’t know what to say. It wasn’t that he really wished his neighbor harm, but he couldn’t say that he’d be too upset if the man just never came home, given the amount of grief that he’d cause him even before they were actually neighbors.
“Listen, I know it sounds crazy, but he and I have been married for 24 years, I know my husband very well. He didn’t come home for lunch, and I know that means there’s something wrong. I really need your help Rene.” Something in her voice told him that she was very serious, and very concerned, “Please, take Richard’s other snow mobile and follow his track. Find out where he is and get help to him.”
Rene sighed and ran his fingers through his short brown mop of hair, “Ok, but I’m under a deadline right now, and I probably only have another 20 minutes of solid work to do for today. That way he’ll have a little more time to make it home.” He glanced at the clock on the wall, 3:32, he said, “If he’s not home by 4 o’clock, I’ll go look for him, okay?”
“Thank you very much,” she said, sounding very relieved. He liked Mary, she seemed a pleasant woman, and he had a feeling that she played a big role in the quiet he was getting to work. He really did want to help her, but he always really hoped that her husband would come roaring back sometime in the next 28 minutes.
Rene sat on the snowmobile, which idled under him. She pointed out the controls and told him to be very careful on the throttle, since this machine would do over 90 miles, which was “way too fast through the woods,” then she added as an aside, “way too fast in general if you ask me.”
He had dug the cold weather gear out of the closet and put it on a little after 4 pm and trudged his way across his lot to theirs. She was waiting on the back porch, the worry lines on her face had deepened, and she flashed a weak smile at him. She led him over to the open shed and gave him the key to the Polaris, telling him it was Richard’s old one, which he found funny since it looked like it was brand new.
She made sure he had their phone number on his cell phone, and he took off.
The snow had stopped falling hours ago, and the wind had been pretty calm. The woods on their property were pretty thin for a good four acres back, past the big bond that spanned their line. Richards’s tracks were still very clear in the snow, and Rene followed along them at a reasonable pace, trying to get used to riding the machine, which handled like nothing he’d ever driven before.
He wore a pair of ski goggles that Mary had pulled out for him, telling him that he’d be glad of them. He realized that she was right as he picked up speed, passing the little pond and moving into the thicker cover. The snow was still pretty thick, but branches and brush broke up more frequently, and the trees were heavier, and while he found he was starting to enjoy the ride, he was having to speed up and slow down to follow Rich’s slalom.
He was getting better at it though, he thought. And he was starting to see the appeal.
His eyes fluttered a few times, the pupils rolling around in their sockets. It was dark, and he was in pain. He had been knocked out. Something had happened while he was riding his sled. It was dark, but his eyes were adjusting to the light, which seemed to be coming from somewhere high above him. On his back, he surveyed the cavern that held him.
He tried to sit up, but there was a sharp pain somewhere in his back, his legs were pinned, and he dropped back down hitting his head again. His eyes rolled back again, and he lost consciousness again.
Rene had broken into a wide clearing, beginning to wonder how far back Richard had gone, he wondered if the man owned this entire tract, because it seemed to be going on forever. He was still following the fresh tracks, which seemed to be heading into the trees up ahead.
Richard woke up again, his head throbbed, a pulsating rhythm at the back of his skull. He tried to wiggle his various extremities, starting with his arms, which both seemed to work as he wiggled his fingers in front of his face. His legs, however, didn’t seem to be responding, and he could feel a great deal of pressure on his lower back.
He tried to roll one way, then he tried the other, but he was completely held in place. Instead of sitting up again, he just lifted his head and realized that his Z1 way lying completely across his body. He could tell though that there was something taking some of the pressure because he could tell he hadn’t been completely crushed. He contorted himself one way and then the other and saw that he was wedged underneath but the machine was being held up by some rocks on one side and a small ledge on another.
He was trapped.
Sighing heavily, he slowly laid his had back down on his rocky pillow.
With sudden inspiration, he patted his jacket pockets, looking for his cell phone, but realized with chagrin that he’d put in his jeans pocket. His jean pocket was under his bibs, and his cell phone is sitting under several hundreds of pounds of snowmobile.
“Shit.” His voice echoed around the small cavern with a sharp staccato on the high pitch of his whisper. He closed his eyes tight, and then opened them again, trying to examine his surroundings, hoping to figure out where he was exactly, and how long he’d been out.
On his right was a fairly smooth wall that seemed to be carved out of the rock, it seemed to go fairly high up to the ground above, and it disappeared at an slight angle out of sight. He wondered if this was some sort of old mining operation, perhaps someone had tried to find something and just covered over their hole when they decided they were bust.
Above him he saw the hole in the ceiling that he’d come in through, probably no more than 10 feet up in the air, but he saw no way to get up to it easily. There were 4 walls that sloped down from it, the first, with the slight angle, was the one he’d just been looking at. The other 3 walls seemed to make much steeper grades off into the inky blackness beyond the light from the hole. He guessed that it must have been late afternoon or early evening based on the light and the fact that his stomach was screaming for food.
Mary would have called for help by now, and it didn’t seem to be snowing anymore, so his tracks should be fairly easy to follow. He figured the sound of engines would be approaching very soon and they’d get him out of there within a few hours. He decided that it would be best to continue looking around, though, because he really didn’t want to think about his condition, or the rescue effort.
He looked back at the hole above him and followed the wall on his left down, expecting it to move out of his vision, disappearing into the darkness, but at about forty-five degrees it cut more or less straight down, and he followed the smooth rock face down to a spot about 10 feet away from him, and he gasped, loud. Then he held his breath and tried not to scream.
It had been almost an hour and a half straight back following the tracks before they started making a wide arc in a started to circle back the other way, carving out another path a few yards parallel to the first.
He’d broken into the last clearing and sped up through the wide expanse, pushing the throttle open all the way and soaring along the snow. He’d decided that he really did enjoy this, and that he couldn’t really blame Richard for his enthusiasm. It was actually quite exhilarating, being out in the snow, in the middle of nothing, riding fast over and sliding along the ground.
The new path was taking him right through the middle of the field, which was enormous, and absolutely barren. He was about to open up the throttle again when he saw something unusual just ahead of him. He almost didn’t catch it, but cut quick to his left and squeezed hard on the break, and the sled stopped so abruptly that he thought he be thrown or it would roll. He took a second to catch his breath and then heard Richard’s voice calling up from somewhere just a short distance away.
Rene trudged through the snow and found himself at the edge of a hole in the ground, out of which he could hear, faintly, the sound of Richard calling for help.
He looked down and saw the man lying at the bottom of some kind of cavern. He was pinned under his snow mobile, and Rene wondered how the thing had even fit down there since the hole in the ground seemed only big enough to fit a person, but he didn’t wonder long.
“Help me out of here!”
“Richard, how badly are you hurt?”
“Rene?!? Dear God, Mary got you to come out?!” He coughed a couple times and then chuckled, more to himself than Rene, “I guess it makes sense.” He looked up at him and shouted, “I’m can’t tell, I’m pinned.”
Rene stood up, about to pull out his cell phone to call for help.
“Wait!” Richard’s voice drifted out of the hole, “What are you doing?”
Rene leaned over the hole again, “I was going to call for help.”
“No!”
“What? Why not?” Rene had called this man crazy before, but he’d never thought he was actually insane.
“Just, wait, ok! Mary send you on my old sled?”
“Yes, but-“
“Bring the sled over and drop the cable for the power winch down, we’ll see if I can get out from underneath this thing.”
Rene looked saw the hook. He walked over to the sled drove the machine around a short distance from the hole. He unlatched the winch so that the cable pulled free and he pulled the length out and dropped the hook down the hole. He watched, wearily, as Richard wrapped the cabling around the steering column and secured it against itself.
“Alright, secure the winch, get on the sled and press the toggle switch down. Gently, it’s pressure sensitive! Go real slow, I’ll shout when I’m free!”
Rene walked the few paces back to the idling snowmobile, reached out and locked the gear on the winch back in place and then sat down on the machine. He pressed the switch gently until he heard the little motor whir as it took up the slack, and then it changed pitch and groaned in protest, but still, it wound slowly around the spindle, the little arm guiding in back and forth in tight spirals.
“I’m out, I’m alright!” The voice seemed so distant. Rene let go of the switch, about to lower the sled back down, but there was a sudden crack, and then a rumble and the world began to move and change. He jumped up off the sled as the ground gave way below it so that he was left, hovering just above the falling machine and rock for a moment before following it down into the hole.
He hit the ground and rolled over on the dusty floor and ended up in a mostly sitting position. He was surprised at his nimbleness. Richard was standing over him a moment later, lifting his legs up and down over and over, first left, and then right. He didn’t look at Rene but asked, “Are you alright.”
Rene stood up, brushing the dust off his snow pants and jacket, and said, “Yeah, I think I’m alright.”
“Where are we-?” He started asking the question and then saw Richard was staring over his shoulder, he turned and looked and gasped.
He had been certain his was laying on in enormous space ship, but didn’t really believe it until Rene made the hole so much bigger that light cast its way further into the cavern.
“Holy shit! Is this a-," Rene’s eyes were wide and his jaw was agape. Richard chuckled.
“I bet that’s how I must have looked just before you showed up.”
Rene shook his head and looked back at him, then looked back at the cavern wall which ended at the outer most wall of the hull of some kind of huge space craft. There wasn’t much exposed, but judging by the curve and the shape and the distance into the cavern, it seemed that it must have been at least as big as a sports stadium.
“Is that what I think it is?”
“I think so, yes,” Richard took a few steps toward it, slowly, tenuously.
Directly in front of them was what appeared to be a door, or hatch, of some kind, which was hanging completely open into the craft. In the doorway was a figure, like a small person, but mummified, its long fingers clinging to the edge of the frame. You just see the top of its oversized head, and the outline of its small body. The way that the ship was laying now, it was at maybe a forty-five or sixty degree angle, but the creature that they could see seemed to have been frozen in time quite literally hanging from the frame of the door, as though it had crawled all the way to the edge before it died. It looked as though it had been frozen there for a very long time. If you’d asked Richard, he would have guessed thousands of years.
The two men looked at each other, and Richard smiled and said, “I’ve got some flashlights in both sleds, care to take a look?”
Rene smiled as Richard threw him a flashlight and he said, “You think I could just walk from this?”
The two men walked to the edge of the ship and Richard took a long step into the door frame, his heart pounding with excitement. Somewhere, far away, there was a humming of some kind.
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