The Glaciermen #4: The Cave

Early access prepublication manuscripts of "The Glaciermen"

The story continues as questions are raised. You can use these links to find #1, #2, and #3.

Apologies for the day-late publication—my wife and I were hit with an untimely stomach bug. I’ll spare you the details, but needless to say, I was not in a position to do much more than lay in bed in mixed states of consciousness.

Enough about me, let’s get to it…

(Link to previous segment if you missed it, and a link to the beginning, if you’re new).

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The Cave

Outside, under the billowing canvas walls of the tent, Amanda stood on a grated metal platform next to the lift. Erika stood beside her and Rolf was working levers on the machine’s controls. Soon a winch whirred to life, drawing in a steel cable that looped up into a suspended pulley mechanism then down into a five foot wide hole in the ice. A counterweight on a second cable began to descend.

 Amanda leaned over the frosted aluminum safety railing around the hole and looked down the forty foot shaft. In the dimness below, past power lines and the cables of the lift, she could see a circular metal-grated basket rise up toward her. Below it she could make out the beam of a flashlight occasionally passing across the small circle of the cavern visible at the bottom of the shaft.

Within a minute the basket had completed its ascent and locked into place above the hole in the ice. The rim of the basket came up to Amanda’s waist, and the whole thing looked barely big enough for a single person. Rolf lifted a crossbar in the railing on the platform, then opened a gate built into the basket.

“I know, it’s pretty small,” Erika said, seeing the nervous look on Amanda’s face, “Makes it a real pain to get anything down there. Anyway, you ready?” she asked, handing Amanda a flashlight.

Amanda took the flashlight, then looked to Erika and back at the basket. “I guess so. Like you said, it’s this or sit around in that cramped station all day.”

She stepped from the platform into the basket, which swung gently as Rolf closed the gate with a clang.

“Here I go!” she said, forcing a smile and taking a firm hold on the handrail of the basket.

“I’ll be right behind you.” Erika said with a warm, genuine smile in return.

Rolf pulled a lever and the basket jerked down half an inch, making Amanda gasp and drop the flashlight onto the grating at her feet. Rolf spoke incoherently as she sheepishly bent to pick it up.

“Just the locking mechanism letting go,” Erika translated, “Gets me every time too. Once you get down, just step off and clank the basket a couple times. Rolf will bring it back up and then I’ll follow you down.” She turned to Rolf and said a few words in Danish.

“What’d you tell him?” Amanda asked.

“Just to send down a couple of these crates after me,” Erika answered, pointing to some crates sitting in the corner of the tent. “I’ll be right behind you.”

Rolf cranked something else and the winch whirred again. The basket began to move downward, and Erika gave Amanda a cheery wave with a bright smile. Amanda made a weak smile back at her as she descended. The icy tube soon swallowed her view of the tent. The walls of the shaft changed from crusty white to a dark blue as she went lower. She focused on the passing patterns in the ice left behind from the excavation process—actively trying to ignore the creeping fingers of claustrophobia growing inside her. Erika said it was spacious down there, she thought, consoling herself, spacious and beautiful.

She breathed deeply as the basket continued its descent, turning on the flashlight. Her breath came out in white clouds in front of her face. After a few more moments she passed the lip of the shaft into a vast, gloomy open space. Dang it—she said the lights would be on by now!

She pointed the flashlight below the basket, its circle of light illuminating crates of equipment scattered around the frozen floor of the ice cave a few yards below. Shortly, the basket came down onto the floor with a thud. She opened the gate, stepped off, and banged the side of the basket with her flashlight two times, just as Erika had said. She watched as it ascended back up into the light of the shaft.

Amanda played the flashlight around her, its light shining on the near wall of the cavern. The surface was a broken plane of bizarre overlapping curves of blue, as if a pond had frozen solid during a windstorm, ripples stuck in place. Her flashlight scattered and reflected on the ice, sending crossing patterns of light onto the cavern floor. The cave was around fifteen feet tall near the shaft opening. The rest of it was shrouded in gloom, as Amanda’s flashlight dissipated in the darkness before hinting weakly at the far walls fifty yards or so away. Another light was bobbing near the other end of the cavern. Runa.

Amanda made her way around the crates of equipment, her boots scraping with each step on the ice floor. A power cable snaked into the darkness toward Runa’s flashlight, so Amanda followed it. She passed a few lanterns, set up on tripods about the height of a person, connected to the cable and still unlit. In the gloom ahead, the light was moving back and forth. Amanda wondered what Runa could be doing to make it move like that—then she noticed that the light was more than a few feet off the ground. She must be standing on a crate to set up one of those lamps.

As she moved away from the light coming down through the shaft into the darker reaches of the cavern, Amanda’s heart began to beat faster, and her hands began to sweat inside her gloves. There was a loud clunking sound back near the shaft. She jerked around toward it, but then relaxed as she realized it was just the counterweight of lift knocking against the cave floor. The basket would be at the top of the lift now, and Erika would soon descend. The thought was comforting to Amanda. She turned back toward Runa’s light and continued, soon passing a few long-frozen suitcases.

As she walked, she aimed the beam of her flashlight to the side, illuminating another wall of the cavern. Here and there in the ice were openings like dark gaping mouths. Some were no larger than a dinner plate, but others were big enough to crawl or even walk through hunched over. They left Amanda with a sense of growing unease. The passengers must have gone down one of those, she thought to herself. Why wouldn’t they just stay in here?

As she neared the light of Runa’s flashlight, something was wrong. A tripod lamp lay on the ice at the end of the cable, but there was no crate in sight. The beam of Runa’s flashlight swept back and forth across the ice floor in a slow arc. Amanda trembled as she raised her own flashlight up toward the other, not knowing what to expect. Clouds of white filled the air in front of her face as she exhaled rapid breaths.

Runa came into view under the shaking beam of the flashlight. Amanda took a step back in horror, the light now exposing the full scene. Runa was hanging upside down from the roof of the ice cave. Her arms hung limp below her head, the flashlight dangling from her wrist by a loop. Her legs were wrapped within a dark, sinewy rope which extended up toward a spike jammed into the roof of the cave. Her unconscious form was swinging gently back and forth.

Amanda caught a scream in her throat. Something was very wrong.  She turned to run back toward the shaft. The counterweight was already rising, meaning Erika was on her way down. In her panic, her foot caught on the cable on the floor, sending her sprawling. The flashlight flew from her grip and flickered off as it skittered across the ice.

As she moved to get up she heard a faint shuffling sound. She froze in place. The sound was coming from the wall where the openings in the ice had been. After a few seconds staring into the darkness, Amanda saw a dim blue glow begin to illuminate one of the larger openings. As quietly as she could, she scuttled in the opposite direction until bumping into the ice on the far side of the cavern. She crouched there in darkness, trying to silence her breathing.

The blue light grew brighter, and the light shuffling noise soon separated into discernable footfalls. Amanda hugged her knees against her chest, heart pounding, still trying to keep her breathing quiet. Then, out of the opening came two figures. They were hunched low, wearing only animal skin loincloths and moccasins. Most alarming, however, was their skin. It glowed iridescent blue, and wrapped around lean, rippling muscles. Their arms looked too long, and their heads were either bald or shaven, but she was too far away to make out their faces in any detail.

Both were carrying bundles in their arms, and they were walking directly toward Runa’s unconscious form hanging at the far end of the cavern. Amanda stayed completely still. The blue figures had reached Runa and set their bundles down on the ice. One pulled something from the bundle, then leapt up with inhuman agility toward Runa. He grabbed ahold of her, both swinging together for a moment, then clambered up her body before scaling the ropes to the ceiling. He took whatever he had grabbed from the bundle and jammed it into the spike in the ice ceiling.

After a few seconds of commotion with his arm, the spike came loose from the ceiling. The man, the spike, and Runa all dropped toward the floor. Amanda wanted to look away from seeing Runa’s head crash against the ice, but she could not bring herself to avert her gaze. Tensing for the impact, Amanda was relieved when she saw the second figure catch the falling woman’s unconscious body. The other figure fell silently, landing deftly on the ice, legs spread wide and a hand going down to help break the fall. They bent over Runa and began to further entangle her in the rope.

As they were working, both stopped suddenly and looked toward Amanda. No, they could not have seen her in the darkness. They were looking toward the light coming down from the shaft at the end of the cavern. The lift! Amanda thought. Erika!

The bottom of the basket came into view at the opening of the shaft in the roof of the cavern. I have to warn her! Or they’ll take her too. 

She opened her mouth to scream.

Before the sound could escape her lips, a hand slid across her mouth, stifling the scream. An arm snaked under her armpit and across her chest, and legs wrapped around her torso, squeezing firmly. She struggled against the iron grasp, but was completely unable to escape. Just as she was about to bite the hand across her mouth, a whisper came from directly next to her head. The breath was hot against her ear, and the voice was raspy and deep—a man’s voice.

“Don’t move. Don’t make a sound—else we’re both dead.”

Amanda’s eyes were wide, and she was breathing harshly through her nostrils. 

She watched as the basket cleared the shaft with Erika inside. She moved to bite the hand again, but the legs around her torso squeezed hard and she crunched in silent pain.

“Don’t do that,” he whispered, then after a pause, “I’m not gonna hurt you. But they will.”
She somehow felt a gesture through the limbs around her toward the two blue men, now moving toward the lowering basket.

“I’m gonna take my hand off your mouth, okay? Trust me. I’m not gonna hurt you.” The whisper continued: “Don’t. Make. A. Peep.”

The fingers across Amanda’s lips slowly relaxed and moved away. She desperately wanted to scream, but held it in. Some internal instinct told her to listen to this mysterious voice. The hand had not been glowing blue, so she figured it did not belong to another one of the figures. That was enough for now. She watched as the basket reached the floor.

Erika called out: “Amanda! Runa! Where the hell are—” her voice cut off as she saw the two glowing, half-naked figures creeping toward her from the far side of the cavern. They were only a third of the way across the space, still about thirty yards from the lift. Erika screamed. 

“Rolf!” Erika shouted up the shaft, “Rolf get me up! Get me up now!”

The basket jerked and began to ascend. The figures let out guttural snarls and yells, one of them breaking into a sprint. He covered the thirty yards in just a few short seconds and leapt the last five yards, seeming to fly through air with muscled arms and hands outstretched like claws before colliding against the basket. The contraption swung violently as Erikia began to shriek desperately. The figure’s arms lashed out, scraping across Erika’s face and torso before taking hold of her and violently yanking her from the basket and throwing her. She crumpled against the frozen floor with a grisly crunch.

Amanda gagged at the sight, but stayed as motionless as she could, still trapped in the unyielding embrace. She watched helplessly as the blue figure dragged Erika like a sack of meat across the ice back toward Runa. There was no way to tell if she was still alive. The empty basket continued to ascend out of the cavern.

In short order the two hunched creatures bound her as well, and were soon dragging both bodies toward the opening from which they came. They disappeared inside, the blue glow fading in the tunnel behind them. The man holding Amanda spoke again.

“Does that go out—out to the surface? That thing over there?” he whispered, gesturing toward the shaft. The counterweighted cable was now descending from the opening. Amanda was silent, still in shock at what she had just witnessed. He gave her a shake.

“Wha… yeah. Yeah it goes out,” she stammered.

“Good. Now we move, and we gotta be quick. They could come back at any time. When I let go, you run as fast as you can toward that rope. When we reach it, you get onto my back and I’ll climb us up.” He paused, then barked “Now!” 

The iron grip around Amanda was suddenly gone, and so she stood and ran hard through the dark cavern toward light coming down through the shaft. Her legs collided with something hard, causing her to stumble, but she somehow kept her footing and continued toward the cable hanging down. She could hear another set of footsteps, much quieter than hers, and soon her mysterious savior came into view as he outpaced her. He was shirtless, in just a loincloth and moccasins like the blue men, but his skin was a normal pale tone. His back was a mass of overlapping lean muscle, rippling as he ran. The skin was striped with ugly scars.

He reached the cable first, grabbing it with one hand and turning toward her. She saw him clearly for the first time, surprised at his normalcy for just a moment, though with no context for comparison. He was a young man, a tall young man. His head was shaven, and blue eyes looked urgently at her underneath strong dark eyebrows. A knobby nose curved down over his lips, and his jaw angled strongly toward a dimpled chin. Amanda reached him, out of breath from the sprint.

“Up you go, quick as you can,” he rasped, extending his free hand for her to step onto.

She clambered up onto his back, looping her arms around his neck and across his chest. He guided her legs around his waist, giving a firm pat to indicate she should keep them clamped there. He grasped the cable with his free hand and began pulling them upward. Amanda could feel the muscles of his back harden and move beneath her coat, and was amazed at his strength. The veins of his neck were bulging from the effort, and he breathed hard as he put one hand over the other, legs swinging under them in a pendulum motion. When they reached the opening of the shaft, he placed his moccasined feet against the ice sidewall, walking up it to aid his climb.

As they climbed higher, Amanda could see two silhouettes looking down from the opening above. Her eyes adjusted to the light and the silhouettes transformed into Rolf and her father. She let out an involuntary sigh, and felt herself crying as they reached down to pull them both from the shaft. She collapsed against the metal grating of the platform, surrendering to sobs as the shock of the last few minutes washed over her. Her father was gaping at the young man in baffled confusion, but Rolf was staring hard, eyes locked down into the hole in the ice, darkness growing under his brows, a violent scowl clamped in his jowls.

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And that’s it for now folks

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