The Bound Eye- Part 4

Click here for Part 3
               The initial survey of the site was very slow-moving. It took nearly forty-five minutes for the sub to observe the first ten-meter grid column, which contained the wall along the south-west side of the structure. The wall stood roughly 10 meters tall, so that the base was virtually invisible to the camera as the vessel passed over it. It was made from large, irregularly cut stones stacked on a two-meter high base, which was carved directly from the seabed stone beneath it. The whole thing was well worn and pitted from the epochs of weathering and oceanic activity. Loose stones lay near the base where the hammer of time had left them, giving the sense that this wall once towered even higher above the ground. There appeared to be some kind of regular striations and cuts within the stone, but if they had been some form of writing or hieroglyphics then the erosion had long since made them indecipherable.

               Aboard the Bess, the research team worked diligently to catalog the locations within the grid of the most noteworthy features. It was difficult work, not for physical rigor, but for there being a great many features to note. Each potential hieroglyph, rocks that may be small enough for the sub to lift on other passes, groupings of smoother looking rocks that may have been more precisely cut, these things and many more existed in abundance along the wall. To aid in this effort, Alex studiously monitored the video feed’s timestamp versus the subs position on the grid so that the recordings could later be reviewed for anything they missed.

               With each new mark on the map, Miguel felt more at ease. After months of planning, preparation, and pain he was finally involved in the field work he had fallen in love with years before. The archeological importance of this expedition could not be over-stated, and it finally seemed to him that there was evidence to support the seemingly crazy hypotheses he and his wife had first proposed in that dark university office nearly five months prior. The memory of Alyssa’s elation that day and the thought of how much these finding would have excited her gave Miguel the strength he had been so long without. As the work went on, he felt his heart grow heavy again, but for the first time in a month it was with pride rather than despair.

               As the sub continued its slow, snaking path over the structure, the small mounds that made up the oval came into view of the camera. The topographical map showed seventeen of these in the oval, and the survey gradually observed each one. These mounds ranged from ten to twenty meters tall and all had the same general shape: a conical appearance that tapered towards the top before the upper-most stones had fallen away. On some of the taller mounds the stones towards the top were very flat with a smooth edge, showing that they had been intentionally hewn into a flat roof. There were divots in the center of some of these roofs, but the team could not yet tell whether they were intentional or had been collapsed by the centuries. Once again, the bases of these mounds were cut directly from the rock around them.

               While each feature of the structure excited the team in its own way, the large mound in the center of the site was by far the most anticipated and most interesting part. This great feature was forty meters tall and twenty meters in diameter, dwarfing everything around it. It had the same overall conical shape as the other mounds, but the top of this one was still intact. Instead of being cut flat like the others, the roof here was domed and, aside from the general wear of weathering, was completely undamaged. There was a great volume of the hieroglyphs along the outside walls of the mound which grew even more frequent approaching the most spectacular feature found: a massive opening into the mound that was flanked by the remnants of great stone pillars. The doorway stood on the north-west side of the great mound, in line with the two parallel walls. When Corwin asked if they wanted the sub to head in, Miguel shook his head, despite the sub pilot not being able to see the gesture. “We’ll search the inside on another pass,” he answered into the com. “For today, let’s focusing on finishing the exterior survey.”

               Scanning the second half of the structure revealed much of the same things as the first. The symmetry of the whole site allowed these observations to be done a little more quickly, although note-taking on the map was still done meticulously. Different stones, both rough and smooth, were marked, the slight variations with some of the mounds noted, and a few new squiggly striations that may have been writing recorded. As the sub reached the end of the second wall some eight hours later Dr. McMullin suggested they retrieve one of the loose stones to start dating and analysis. The others all agreed, and so a small fragment of rock from the wall base layer was collected by the arm. The sub then moved back toward the ridge it had come from. The camera now showed small particles on the water, lit up by the camera’s light, falling downward as the craft began its slow ascent.

               Alex leaned back in his chair at the console and let out a loud sigh, stretching his arms above his head. The research center started to come alive, with each member of the team getting up and stretching. For the first time since the vessel had gone down, Miguel became suddenly aware of how hungry he felt. They had all been so encapsulated by the voyage that they had skipped lunch. As if releasing their own long-held breaths, everyone’s stomach started to groan audibly. Steven, who had come into the room 3 hours ago, said he ate while they were monitoring the progress, so he volunteered to watch the ascent while they went to eat. With smiles and a great bit of thanks, the team headed to the galley for a well-deserved meal.

               Despite the engine idling to maintain the boat’s position, the noise in the galley was still inordinately loud. Everyone was almost shouting as they discussed the findings over their late lunch. “What kind of creatures do you think built this thing?” Alex asked enthusiastically.

               “Something big and strong,” replied Gene. “Some of those stones must weigh at least six tons! Not to mention the lack of evidence of any tools or simple machines to help them.”

               “Well a lack of evidence doesn’t mean they didn’t have them,” Anita chimed in. “This race may have used wooden or other organic materials for tools.”

               “But what about fossilized tool remnants? Or species remnants for that matter?” Some oil dribbled from Gene’s mouth as he spoke, his words muffled and mixed with his chewing. “Where were all of the remains of whoever built this place?”
               Miguel swallowed his bite of salad quickly before answering, “It’s possible the site was abandoned by its creators.”

               “Or perhaps the anatomy of these creatures was so delicate that the fossil record didn’t preserve them,” Anita posited.

               “Yeah, or maybe it was,” Alex took a short pause to ruffle his hair and throw his hands forwards demonstratively, “aliens.” Anita and Miguel laughed heartily, while Gene seemed to miss the reference. As their chuckles died down, Alex spoke again, “Well I don’t know about you all, but I’m certainly most interested to see what the hell is inside of that centerpiece.”

               At the mention of the hole in the center mound, the smile faded away from Miguel’s face. He felt his heart began to sink again and his palms seemed to grow sweaty and uncomfortable. He couldn’t say why, but the thought of that doorway and what lay beyond gave him a deep sense of dread. Like the maw of some ancient giant, this opening stood agape, and Miguel could feel that there was only darkness behind it. The words of Father Kingsley and his own nightmarish vision resurfaced in his head. He had always been a scholar and a man of science, but for the first time ever his heart beat more quickly with the notion that whatever awaited within that mound was something man was never meant to discover.

               “Miguel, what do you think?” Anita’s words snapped Miguel out of his own thoughts and back to reality. He looked up from the table to see everyone else staring at him. The weight of their eyes and the dull roar of the engines created a great feeling of pressure in his gut.

               “I’m sorry,” he said sheepishly, “I was lost in thought for a second. What did you say?”
               Anita repeated herself, her expression showing some definite concern. “We said, do you think we should have the submersible team take a look inside the center mound tomorrow.”
               Miguel sat silent for a short moment, trying to wrangle his emotions and not blatantly reveal his reservations. “I don’t think so,” he said thoughtfully. “There’s still a lot of observations and samples to collect about the outside of the structure first. I want to make sure we really don’t miss anything there before we move to the interior. The more thorough and systematic our approach, the more we’ll be able to uncover.”

               Gene and Alex both nodded their heads in agreement, taking their eyes of him and turning to one another to discuss some further details. Anita, however, seemed to notice the worry Miguel had. She continued to look at him with concern on her face, her eyes feeling as if they pierced directly into his heart. Miguel did his best to maintain a neutral face and block her from seeing any more than he suspected she already had. After what felt like hours, she gave her own consent to his plan and got up, saying that she was heading back to the research center to help Steven bring the sub up safely. As she left, Miguel let out the breath he had been holding in, his legs feeling weak and his anxiety bearing down strongly. He also excused himself from the galley and headed aft to have a smoke.

               The next three days were a whirlwind of work aboard The Barrier Bess. Each morning began in the same manner: either Steven or Captain Barton would help prepare and launch the sub team first thing after breakfast, while the other one sat at the helm. The research team would begin their work monitoring the sub’s descent and planning what parts of the site would be observed in-depth for the day. Alex had been relieved of console duty in favor of analyzing the samples that the vessel brought up, starting with the rock from the first dive. Each day, the sub would bring back new specimens for him to see; the first day it was one of the smoother stones that had to be cut from the sea floor, the second was a wall fragment with the potential hieroglyphs, and the third was one of the flat cut rocks from a smaller mound. The other members of the research team rotated their daily jobs, one overseeing Alex, one monitoring the console, and one analyzing previous camera records to make sure nothing was missed (often assisted by whomever had launched the sub that day). By the time the sun cast its deep orange light over the waves, the sub was back on board the rear deck and all the expedition members would be sitting down to dinner.

               Alex and whomever worked with him that day also often had astonishing and shocking results come up from their analyses. Regarding the rock from the first dive, he and Anita started with archaeomagnetic dating techniques. By analyzing how the magnetic alignment of the rock had shifted with known shifts in the Earth’s magnetic field, they found the stone to be much older than the three million years when the shelf it was on sank. To validate this, they also performed potassium-argon dating, looking at the amount of a certain potassium isotope left after it decayed into argon. The results of this test came back similar to the first ones, and at dinner that night the two excitedly announced that the base of the wall was carved from stone that was close to 20 million years old. While this didn’t prove when the stone was actually cut, it gave credence to the theory that the structure was far older than originally anticipated.

               On the fourth day of diving Miguel was assisting Alex in analyzing the smoother stone brought up two days prior. This stone, and the many others like it that still sat at the bottom of the sea, were much different than those used to construct the structure. They were long and thin, and seemed ill-suited for any type of building or construction. Initial observations onboard the Bess showed that the smoothness was not from purposeful cutting, as originally thought, but was either natural or the result of erosion by the sea. The composition was also strange, clearly not the volcanic-based sediment of the sea floor. While Alex did the potassium-argon dating, Miguel cut a small cross-section to determine its make-up. Under the microscope, the slice clearly appeared to be made of compressed layers of sediment, and chemical testing revealed them to mostly be made of calcium compounds known to make up the sea floor in nearby areas. Alex stated that the dating put the sediment at around 3 million years old, while the stone it was within was slightly younger than the base of the wall, somewhere between 15 and 18 million years.

               The dizzying realization about this smoother stone washed over Miguel like tidal wave. This smooth piece was not a rock at all, but instead a fossil of whatever creature had built the site. The base rock had contained molds of the dead animals when it sank, and the local sediment had filled to molds to form the cast that lay on the table. That meant that the creature had died, decayed, and imprinted as the rock it was encased in was being formed 15 million years ago. In his head, this information proved that the structure was built before that time, and that everything previously known about prehistoric life was wrong. The groupings of these smooth fossils on the sea bed were likely partial skeletons of the creatures that had been lying in wait for someone to find them and their handiwork for countless millennia.

               Instead of the scholarly excitement he expected, this understanding filled Miguel with dread once again. He instructed Alex to inform the others of their findings and to write it down in the logs. He sat down slowly and tried to grasp the full meaning of his feelings. The idea of a creature intelligent and large enough to create the structure they were observing was nauseating. How had this race died? Why had no other evidence of their existence been found? Was this lack evidence related to his fears and the visions? Everything swam in his head, a torrent questions whose answers, he feared, would just bring more terror. He had to brace himself against his knees to steady his stomach even a little, and when Alex returned he gave the excuse of sea sickness and retired to their quarters for the rest of the day.

               By the fifth day of dives both the crew and research team agreed that they had surveyed and cataloged everything of importance on the exterior of the site. Before any hard-cutting excavation would begin, there was only one location left to investigate: inside the central mound. The prospect of such a dive chilled Miguel more than he could say, but he knew he could not convince the others to avoid that place any longer. With reluctance in his heart, but forcing it out of his voice, he gave his blessing for that dark cavern to be the object of the day’s dive.

               While the sub descended, Miguel stepped out of the research center and stood on the front deck. He pulled the cigarette from his lips, his second to last one, and blew out a cloud of smoke. The breeze carried the puff across the deck, scattering it about until next to nothing reached the other railing. The quite splash of the water was calming, and Miguel felt a little better standing alone in the salty air. He made the moment last as long as he could, smoking down the cigarette until it nearly burned his fingers. Tossing out the butt, he made his way towards the wheelhouse, doing as much as he could to avoid watching the dive feed.

               Inside, Captain Barton sat at the helm, drinking strong smelling coffee out of a large, black mug. She was reading a book, looking up every so often to check this or that instrument on the ship’s panel. When Miguel shuffled in, she dog-eared her page and set down the book. “What can I do for you, mate?”

               “I’d welcome any conversation not about rocks and walls at this point,” Miguel said, forcing a slight grin across his face.

               Shelly returned the grin and gave a small, sharp exhale. “Well, I’ve got something else to talk about, but I doubt it will cheer you up any. I got off the phone with Dr. Kepper earlier this morning, and he says that storm has grown stronger and started moving east, towards us. The weather service thinks there’s a fifty percent chance it cuts between us and the mainland and we get some rain from its outskirts, forty percent it bears down right on top of us and we get out own private monsoon, and ten percent it does anything else. Bottom line is we’re more than likely gonna lose a day or two of diving.”

               “That’s alright,” Miguel replied with a mix of exhaustion and relief. “I’m a little sick of diving at this point. Maybe a couple days of rest will be good for everyone. Did they say how fast its moving?”

               “About 20 knots, so we should expect to start seeing rain tomorrow night.” A silence fell over the wheelhouse after this answer. Miguel looked out over the sea ahead, watching the vast expanse of blue rise and fall like a breathing organism. The sky shone a bright blue as well, with only a rare white cloud dotting the view. It was hard to believe that a powerful storm lay somewhere beyond the horizon, speeding towards them to break up this beautiful serenity.

               With the calm tranquility of the sea before him Miguel felt more relaxed than he had for several days. He looked over to Shelly, who was also staring out the ocean beyond while the morning light danced off her hair. He felt a sudden closeness that he had not experienced since Alyssa had passed, and for a moment no longer felt the need to hide his vulnerability. He cleared his throat to break the silence and said, “Captain Barton, may I ask you something?”
               “Shoot.”

               “Does anything about this expedition feel wrong to you? Do you get the sense that we’re doing something that wasn’t intended for us to do?”

               While she was physically looing at the water, Miguel could tell that Shelly stared without seeing the world in front of her. She sat in deep thought for a minute, as if carefully selecting the words she would say next. She fidgeted with her ring for a brief moment, then answered, “I’ve been on a lot of expeditions with the Institute, but never quite anything like this. That site you lot are looking at down there seems a mite unnatural to me. It’s not that I feel what we’re doing is wrong, but I’m not so sure I want to know everything there is about this place. Maybe it is one of those places God meant to keep a mystery. I’m guessing you’ve got some feelings on the matter too then?”
               Miguel opened his mouth to answer, but at that very moment the radio from the research center crackled on. “Captain Barton, this is Dr. McMullin in the research room. Do you know where Mr. Romero is?”

               Shelly motioned for Miguel to use the radio. He picked up the transmitter and spoke with his more matter-of-fact, less open tone. “I’m here with the captain. What’s up?”

               “The sub’s just reached the sea floor and will be at the site in a couple of minutes to head into that opening. We thought you’d want to be here for when they go in.”

               “Yeah, I’ll be down in a minute.” He hung up the transmitter and took a deep breath. “Duty calls,” he joked to Shelly.

               She gave him a little nod and, with a determined tone, said, “Whatever you and I feel about this, we’re in it now, and I for one intend to see it through the end. Only smart way to go is forward.” With that, she picked her book back up and gave the instruments one last look. Miguel walked out the rear door and down into the research room.

               The tension inside the room was palpable as Miguel came in. Everyone had stopped what they were doing and were gathered around the console. Anita looked up with the sound of the closing door, but everyone else kept their eyes fixed on the video feed. Miguel came up behind them and saw that the sub sat at the threshold of the great opening, waiting like a poised race horse at the starting line. He knew it was him that they were waiting for. He leaned over Gene, siting in the monitor’s chair, and pressed the button to talk into the com transmitter. “This is Miguel; go ahead and begin the interior exploration. Over.”

               Millie’s reply came back with so much anticipation that it sounded like she had sucked in helium. “Yes sir! Entering the central mound now. Over and out.” The video from the camera crept forward and the bright exterior lights lit up the cavern within.

               The space inside the mound was massive. Even if the floor had been level, the far side of the cavern would still have been obscured in darkness. However, the floor was not level, and instead the light fell upon a raised platform in the center of the room. It was too dark to see what is was initially, but as the craft moved further in a rectangular slab of stone, three meters long and two meters wide, was found on top of this platform. Around the edges of the room were meter-and-a-half tall pedestals which each held a small statuette. The statuettes depicted the eye motif again, carved of flat rocks or shale. There were seventeen pedestals in all, some of which had fallen, their charges smashed on the chamber floor, and they were evenly spaced along the walls. On the other side of the central platform, directly across from the entrance, stood another rectangular block, but atop this one stood a gigantic version of the eye statuettes, nearly as big as the sub itself. It stared piercingly as the camera panned across it, its gaze fixed upon the central altar.

               The interior walls were covered in the hieroglyphs, but this time there was no doubt about their intentional creation. Protected by the walls of the mound, these pictures and symbols were far better preserved than those outside. Long, flowing cuts seemed to be some system of writing, while crude images sat beneath them. The pictures were of large, inhuman figures with elongated faces, three sets of spider-like appendages, and three protrusions on their backs that ended in bulbous dots. These horrifying creatures were depicted doing a myriad of things upon the walls, most of which could not be interpreted, but all of which seemed to move and dance as the light refracted through the water. However, on the rectangular stone beneath the large eye statue was a picture whose meaning was unmistakable. It depicted two of the creatures; one lying on its back on the stone platform while the other loomed over it, driving one of its limbs into the other one. Above both was carved the ever-open eye with the two lines on either side. With this glyph the purpose of the chamber became clear: this was a ritual sacrifice temple.

               The abundance of watchful eyes and depictions of gruesome sacrifice were unnerving in their own right, but it was something else that made Miguel’s heart beat in his throat and his gut turn over. Littered all across the floor of the chamber were hundreds of the smooth, slender protrusions of fossils. Large, clear bone outlines covered every inch, and some even seemed to be nearly full skeletons. The carnage was everywhere, and worse, was inconsistent with the room’s function. In all known cultures that practiced ritual sacrifice, bodies were neatly disposed of, or at the very least not thrown about so as to cause an obstruction within the temples. These remains were scattered haphazardly over every square meter, with no order or respect. Miguel knew of only one reason for the fossils to be arranged like this, and it sent a sharp chill down his spine. This chamber had been built for ritual sacrifice, but it ended up as a mass execution site.

               The tension in the research room turned into palpable unease as the sub moved through the room. While they should have been drawing or making a map of the site, everyone was too fixated on the camera feed to move. Corwin and Millie stated what maneuvers they were making and some dimensions over the com, but no one aboard the ship acknowledged or even wrote down what they said. It was as if everyone was hypnotized by the aura of death which the room emitted. Miguel felt as though all his fears about this chamber had been correct, and it made him nauseous. The nausea grew even worse when he realized that some of the other team members may have been struck to silence in awe of the room, rather than terror.

               Swallowing down his fear, Miguel leaned over once again and pressed the button to talk to the sub pilots. “Alright, I think we’ve gotten a good idea of the mound’s interior. You all can head back out now and begin another scan of…”

               “Wait a minute,” Alex piped. “Don’t you think we should have them bring some kind of sample from inside?”

               Miguel wanted nothing less than to bring anything from that room of death up to the surface. “What would they take? All of the stones in there are far to large for the sub to carry.”

               “What about one of those smaller statues? The ones on the pedestals? I’d like to do some tests on one to see its age, what stone it was queried from, maybe determine what carving tools were used.”
               Dr. McMullin voiced his agreement. “The kid’s right. Those little idols could tell us a whole bunch about these things, whatever they were.”

               Trying desperately to devise some other excuse, Miguel found himself at a loss. Anita and Steven were already beginning to nod and mumble their approval of this plan, and Miguel knew he could never convince everyone. With a huge knot in his stomach, he said slowly into the transmitter, “Actually, Millie, before you all head out can you grab one of those eye-shaped statuettes? We’ve got some tests up here we’d like to run. Over.”

               “Can do Mr. Romero. Over.” On the screen, they watched as the sub drifted towards one of the walls. The arm extended out in front of the camera and gingerly grasped the statuette, lifting it gently from the pillar. The arm the retracted out of sight and the sub moved out through the great opening it had entered from. “Anything else in particular you want us to see? Over.”

               “No,” Miguel said, exasperated. “May as well bring that idol up now. We’ll call it a short dive for today. Over and out.” He stood back up straight and clenched his fists by his side, trying to steady his heart. The room began to grow loud as the team excitedly discussed what they had seen. The sense of unease lifted away, except for the dense cloud which surrounded Miguel. He said a small prayer to himself that he would never have to see the inside of that damnable chamber again. Steven turned to him and asked what their next move would be, and Miguel put on a brave façade to join in the conversation.

               Two-and-a-half hours later, the sub crew was back aboard the ship and the remaining daylight hours were being dedicated to investigating the statue they had brought back. Compared to everything else from the site, this idol was very small, measuring only ten centimeters at the widest part of the eye. It was a single piece carved from shale which the team believed came from some non-local source. Alex was looking closely at the carvings to see if he could determine the tool type, but several hours of this were of little avail. Finally, after dinner had been served and the sun had gone down, the team called it a day and went to get some rest for the following one.

               Miguel sat bolt upright in his bed, his body quivering and cold sweat pouring down his shoulders. He didn’t cry out, but was breathing heavy from the horrific images he had just dreamt. The overall dream began to fade quickly from his conscience mind, but the image of the eye burning out from Alyssa’s chest, then from his own was something he thought he would never forget. He grabbed his shoulders and tried to stop shaking. A deep fear crept its way into his heart. It was not like the fear he had felt over any nightmare before. In fact, it was not fear for the nightmare at all, but instead an ominous feeling of terror that something was coming. And it was coming soon.

Click here for Part 5