Gone Batty

This is a story I wrote about a year ago for a writing contest at my high school. I’ve since revised it drastically, and intend on submitting the updated version (as follows) to a writing contest here in Rolla. The original story (which can be found here – and honestly isn’t very good writing) won fourth place in the fiction competition, the biggest critical comment resembling, “I don’t get it.” It is my hope that with this revision, I can take this story even farther than fourth place.

UPDATE (May 7, 2008): “Gone Batty” received third place in the science fiction/fantasy category in the MS&T 7th Annual Writing Center Writing Contest (that’s a mouthful).

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Gone Batty – v.2

“Hey. Hey!” an eager voice whispers. “Come, listen. Please. I have much I wish to say.”

His voice grows sure, less excited, but maintaining all of its original rapture. In the dim light, a look of sincerity—care, or perhaps concern—crosses his face. The light flickers, and, for a second, his eyes glimmer softly with the unmistakable taint of fear.

“Are you ready? Good. Take a seat.

“Now, let me begin by saying I don’t expect you to believe everything I’m going to tell you. In fact, it may be better if you don’t. Still, I implore you hear me out.”

He does not speak for a moment—long enough to enunciate the slow, sharp crackling of the dying fire against otherwise stark, ubiquitous nothingness.

“People quite often experience phenomena which rational thought has yet to explain. Things science denies. Things, maybe, we’re just not ready for. Not ready to accept. Not ready to understand.

“And it may be just as well. If you’ve ever heard a first-hand account of any such phenomenon, one told in extensive detail, you know just how unbelievable they can be. But who can really say, fairly, if their stories are true?

“It is rumored there are three men from the time of Jesus Christ still here today, wandering the earth until He comes again. Saints. Apostles. Who really knows? Their presence here has been attributed to common bigfoot-sasquatch sightings. Some say these men live among us: participate in our day-to-day routines. Others say they’re just wanderers, travelers, or even guardians of the fountain of youth… the Tree of Life. These men have, so to speak, become a double-layered myth: an explanation—one that is more acceptable to some—for our culture’s own mythologies. Ironic, though, how these two unrelated tales are irrevocably bound together by this testament to our Christ.

“But such is the nature of the unknown. Simply by its observation, it is changed forever—the least of which is its change from unknown to known, unobserved to observed. Our observation brings about irreversible changes; our nature and desire to dig further sets in motion a chain of events the likes of which we may never fully understand. But once the door is open, the wall torn down, the line erased, it cannot be undone. In spite of that, we seek it out. We strive for more, thrive on it. Discoveries never cease; progress never stops; and thus, our own destruction lurks ever closer. The magnitude of mayhem wrought upon our fragile Earth by even one such ‘advancement’ is impossible to tell. Each one is a Pandora’s box: myriad madness disguised as a gift.

“‘Curiosity killed the cat,’ they say. And, ‘ignorance is bliss.’

“I can tell you of one incident, however. That is, if you still wish to listen to the ravings of a decrepit old man.”

● ● ●

In the early acceptance stages of the technological revolution, three men (with unknown ties to the United States government—that’s important) took an interest in the arid Nevadan desert. For some reason which has yet to be—and may never be—ascertained, the three went digging. Who knows? Perhaps they were looking for pirates’ treasure. But they did find something. Something absurdly extraordinary. One of Satan’s final touches after Lord Jesus and Michael finished creation, perhaps. It was undeniably hellish. And just as unbelievable.

They stumbled upon a cavern, as best they could tell. Several hundred feet below the surface—God only knows why they were that far down—the men met resistance, and it wasn’t rock. They hadn’t struck gold on the lid of a buccaneer’s chest, either; that was certain. Instead, what they found was soft, much softer than the sediment they had been plowing through. And it squeaked. Whatever it was, they tried to dig around it, but the wall of soft, sand-colored squeaking things extended far beyond their patience to just ‘go around it.’

Not about to be stopped by what seemed to be nothing more frightful than an enormous child’s-toy, the men abandoned their shovels and set to find what lay beyond this barrier. They worked one-by-one, taking shifts working, watching, and sleeping.

Each small, furry creature pried from the mass immediately spread its wings, let out a high-pitched screech, and then flew up and out of the pit. The digging took exceptionally long: repeated bat-wails in quick succession left all three with murderous headaches, and almost destroyed their will to continue. Only curiosity—and ultimately greed—kept the three men going. After several days, several thousand excavated sand bats each, and several extra feet in depth, a large, apparently empty cave revealed itself.

The men threw a rock down the hole to test its depth. They were met with a shrill echo of what was probably another bat-scream.

Perplexed, but mostly curious, one of the men tried to climb down through the hole. His first leg got about knee-deep in the chasm, and then it was gone. None of the three saw it happen, but the curious man felt it. The layer of soft, squeaky, sand bats was now nothing more than tannish-brown, rocky sand.

The first man was dead before the other two got him out of the hole. His leg was cleanly gone at about the knee, and a fatal portion of his blood spilled out on the rope-ride up.

Three days later, the wall of bats reappeared; however, no sign of the hole they had dug or the leg that had been lost to that hole ever appeared.

● ● ●

The diggers’ story piqued the interest of an official to the United States government. He was a senator (though it remains unknown which state he represented) with a powerful influence. The story of a colony of sand bats residing underneath the Nevadan desert was fantastic, literally. That a man had died trying to discover what was inside made it that much better.

The senator rashly determined he needed to know more. The best way to do so, in his opinion, was to use his influence to impose government possession of the land. He’d have full access to whatever was discovered there—it was his proposition after all—and curious civilians would not have the chance to interfere.

Obviously, though, the true story couldn’t even be hinted at while making the proposition for government funding. Who would believe it? Who would sacrifice any money for a blind archaeological dig with no immediately apparent benefits? So instead, the proposition was made to construct an underground research facility under the code name of Area 51.

The number 51 is of some importance to the United States. Simple majority—the backbone of democracy—is 51 percent. They meant to say, quite literally, that portion of the Nevadan desert belonged to the government.

The senator’s first Area 51 research project was going to be the rediscovery and exploration of the vanishing bat cave, reported as preliminary facility construction. That didn’t quite turn out, though. Two members of the initial dig team disappeared entirely while at least seven more lost limbs—all clean, precise cuts.

The senator found it progressively more difficult to replace the injured team members.

After considerable effort, an archaeologist—the first real one to join the dig—discovered the key to continuing the team’s research. While meticulously removing bats in the same ridiculously slow way archaeologists do everything—“Daniel,” we’ll call him; it’s as good a name as any—Daniel noticed even sunlight was unable to penetrate the mysterious bat cave’s threshold. He lowered a candlestick, lit and attached to bit of loose thread, into the hole, and it vanished before his eyes as though it were passing through some invisible barrier. Suddenly, the hole itself disappeared, severing the string and nearly taking Daniel’s fingers as well.

When the sand-colored bats appeared again, exactly three days later, the hole Daniel had dug was gone. With each laborious—but ultimately failed—experiment, Daniel grew less cautious, no longer sharing his archaeological dignity with the wall of bats, and eventually found himself throwing heaps of bats from the pit just to get through.

In what might have been a mistake, or maybe a fit of desperation, Daniel found the solution. Instead of holding the candlestick-string himself, Daniel tied the end to a sleeping sand bat’s foot and dropped it into the cave. The candle maintained corporeality, and its light shone brightly in the cave—which, he noticed, appeared to be extremely large—until the string’s half-hearted knot came loose and the candlestick fell from the sand bat’s foot. The cave vanished instantly, and this time didn’t appear again for seven days.

When it finally did reappear, Daniel wasted no time re-excavating a hole in the bat wall. This time, however, Daniel’s string was not attached to candlesticks, but himself. He tied several sand bats to each of his limbs, and tightly clasped one in his left hand. In his right, Daniel held a long, lit candle, and, with it, he descended into the cave. He attempted to slide into the hole slowly, but the bats on which he sat suddenly dropped out from beneath him, and, in his attempt to regain purchase, Daniel lost the sand bat in his left hand. No longer restrained from the effects of gravity, he fell quickly into the bat cave.

Before he could see anything but an enormous wall of sand bats, the candle in his hand whisked out. He was enveloped in an almost palpable darkness, broken only by a deep, hellish red on his peripheral. All at once, the bats he had attached to his limbs began flapping and squirming against their restraints, and, all at once, they broke free.

The sand-bat cave vanished, and Daniel vanished with it.

● ● ●

The cave didn’t reappear for six months, and, in that time, the remaining members of the expedition decided to go through with their cover plan: build an underground research facility. The cave reappeared—in much smaller form—early on in construction. The decision was made to remove the bats—now clearly spherical in form, and only about eight feet high—for curiosity’s sake, and then to lock it away forever, build an impenetrable wall around whatever it was and never speak of it again.

When the bats were removed, an obsidian statue revealed itself. The statue depicted a demon of some sort, hanging on an upside-down cross, with crimson gemstone eyes. It was mesmerizing, and one man even touched the statue; he disappeared in an instant and never came back.

Construction of a chamber in which to encase the statue commenced immediately.

● ● ●

The old man finishes his story with a sigh. He is shivering; his clothes are torn and raggedy, and the worn jacket he uses for a blanket is clearly not helping. The last ember of his evening fire, set atop an upside-down metal barrel, goes out with a faint crack. The silent emptiness of the abandoned city becomes more apparent in the pitch black.

“How do you know? How do you know what happened to Daniel? He was never found.”

“I didn’t say he was never found,” the man responds. “I only said he disappeared.”

“But how do you know?”

“I was there; it was me. I went into the cave, and I saw the demon statue. I even ran across the poor man who touched it. The meeting was brief, and he didn’t speak much of it, just what I told you. What came after that, I won’t tell. Nobody deserves to have to know… even what feeble explanation I could put into words is too horrific. Suffice it to say, what I went through incapacitated my spirit.

“Anyway, there’s no need for me to tell you now; you’ll experience it yourself one day.

“We’re all going to Hell, after all.”

THE END

Jeremy Davidson

First Revision: February 15-22, 2007

Updated: March 18, 2008