The Thing Within #ONC2023

Chapter 4

Northern Frigoria

Jenny

We descended into the aperture, single file. Others had excavated a lot more dirt around it. The first thing I noticed on landing was the three-foot crevice at the initial spot of discovery. With more sunlight filtering in, everything on the other side looked near. Perhaps the dome wasn't as extensive as I'd thought.

Peering in, I searched for the opening I'd seen before, on the other side, through which I swore the daylight burned brighter, but there was no such luck. I was sure I hadn't imagined it.

Standing upright, I spied the previous opening, about fifty feet to my left, which had been sealed off to prevent further leakage. They had cut the new opening a few feet to the right of the crevice. Looking in, I was awestruck. Were my eyes deceiving me? The cavity was immense. Second-guessing my eyesight, I peered through the glass once more, to see the difference. The entire cavity looked slightly smaller. "The glass makes everything look smaller than it actually is," I said.

Danny, who was already inside, covered his ears and shrieked. "DON'T SPEAK! STOP! STOP!"

His words echoed off the walls of the dome before somehow blasting my ears. I covered them, as I flashed him a confused stare.

He explained, pausing at every word. "The. Dome. Intensifies. Sounds."

I tried to put his distant and muffled words together. After a while, it all came together in my head. I remembered the creature had wailed right after I'd spoken to Sam that day. So it must have heard me through the thick glass, just like I'd heard it. I thought of telling the others and opened my mouth to shout up at them when Simon leaned over into the pit. "We know!" he whispered.

"Unbelievable," I whispered to myself, grabbing onto the thick rope leading down. I dropped myself into the cavity and held on for the life of me as I made my way down.

The descent took almost fifteen minutes of careful foot-stepping on the loops of a strong rope. Afterward, I stood with hands on my waist, looking up at the opening through which sunlight seeped in, the trickle too small to illuminate the entire dome. My headlight began flickering uncontrollably for a while, before suddenly appearing to grow brighter. The same happened with Danny's light. Weird, I thought.

Looking to my right, I noticed part of a metal cubicle with heavy dusty drapes pulled to the side at one end, while at the other end, the drapes lay in a crumpled pile on the floor. I stepped inside to see what used to be perhaps an office with shelves packed with huge binders with words written in a language I could not understand. Plastered on the wall, between two binders, was a photograph of a young man, with a signature written across it. Looking closer, I made out the name Kushin. Another shelf below the one with the binders contained smaller books. I reached for one and flipped through it, and was awestruck when most of the pages crumpled in my hands.

Danny appeared beside me suddenly. "They're dried-rot. This dome must be ancient," he commented, his voice low.

"What's dried rot?" Sam asked in a hushed tone. He'd just made the descent.

"Come see!" Danny replied.

I stepped outside the cubicle, remembering the crevice I'd seen the day of discovery, and followed the streak of sunlight which stretched to the other side and grew into an ascent the more I traversed. Reaching the end, I examined the walls there, as shock stole my voice. I could not believe my eyes. I looked along the length of the wall as far as the eye could see. It appeared to be made of a shining metal substance, like silver, with edges of gold in some areas. Looking higher along the dome, I noticed that almost twenty feet from the opening, going downward, the wall was composed of thick glass. Most of the dome was made of silvery and golden-looking metallic substances—perhaps silver and gold.