Parallel

A short dimensional rift originally published in the anthology GEEKS RULE, 2012

There were eight of them.

Eight friends who loved adventure, excitement, even danger.

Skiing, bungee jumping, sky diving, surfing, rock climbing; there wasn’t much they weren’t willing to try. Friends since high school and all through college, John, Mitch, Kevin, Bryan, Steve, George, Jin, and Marcus were irrepressible in their search for that next adrenaline rush, which is how they ended up at the cave.

The twenty four hour summer sun beat down on them relentlessly, showing no mercy since the early morning when they drove two four wheel drive SUV’s up the long dirt road through the thick spruce forest to the clearing at the base of the mountain. At eight that morning they got out and made their way along the narrow foot trail as the sun rose higher raising the mercury levels as each moment ticked by.Contrary to many people’s perceptions, Alaskan summers can get down right hot, well into the 90’s and beyond. This had been just such a day.

When they reached the 4000 foot level the direct sun seemed to cook their faces. They found the cave opening and entered the protective shade, the coolness of the interior instantly refreshing. The group of friends sat just inside the entrance munching handfuls of jerky and granola which they washed down with Gatorade. The cave was about 20 feet wide at the entrance and seemed fairly straight as it tunneled into the mountain.

“I wonder how deep this cave is,” asked John, flashing his torch towards the rear of the cave. The beam of light vanished in the darkness.

“Whoa, dude,” said Jin, “did you see that?”

“See what?”

“Flash your light back there again.”

John flashed his torch toward the back of the cave, but saw nothing.

“What are you talking about, man? I don’t see anything,” he replied.

“That’s what I mean,” Jin said. “There was no reflection...of anything.”

Jin took his own torch and pointed it towards the wall of the cave near where they sat. He ran the beam of light along the side of the cave toward the darkness at the rear. The others watched the circle of light enlarge as it shone farther down the length of the cave. Thirty feet back from the entrance the bright white beam stopped reflecting off the rocks. It vanished into blackness.

Bryan looked up from the tough piece of jerky he'd been gnawing on. “Dude, don’t try to get all freaky on us. That’s just the extent of the beam, it diffuses after that.“

“It better not be diffusing that close, this is a freakin’ expensive torch that’s supposed to cast a beam at least 200 feet,”came Jin’s response.

“Yeah well, it’s obviously not working right,” quipped Steven.

“Guys, I think Jin has something,” said Mitch. “Check out this laser pointer.”

Mitch ran his laser pointer across the wall opposite from that on which Jin had run his beam. At the same distance back, the laser dot vanished. It should have carried on for several hundred feet before they lost sight of it, but it was clearly gone.

“Ok,” said John, “so what exactly is this supposed to mean anyway?”

“Um, it would seem that there is nothing back there,” answered Marcus.

“Yeah, my point from the beginning, so what’s the big deal,” said Bryan, sounding irritated.

Mitch moved his laser pointer around in a circle bringing it back to a place they could see the dot, then moving it forward again trying to shine on all the possible surfaces that should have been there.

“Nothing…as in no walls, no floor, no ceiling. Nothing.”

“It’s a cavern, you morons,” said Steve. “It’s probably just a steep drop into a cavern.”

“I don’t think so,” said Kevin.

“Oh, why is that professor?” asked Bryan.

Kevin had long ago earned the nickname “professor” due to his knack for knowing something about almost everything. As far as his friends were concerned, if Kevin hadn’t read it, heard it, seen it, or imagined it, it probably didn’t exist.

“Well,” Kevin started, “if that were a cavern, then we would hear an echo of some sort coming back from it. Even just our normal volume of conversation would have reverberated to some degree. But the sound of our voices is suppressed like we are in a small room, not more than a few meters long.”

The professor was right. They had explored a lot of caves together. They knew that the room would have felt larger if it were in fact larger. The echo of their voices or the sound of distant water would have given it away. If not those signs, there would at least have been a draft through the cave as the cold, dense air inside escaped to the lower pressure outside.

They looked at each other, then as a group turned their eyes to the end of the cave.

George stood to his feet and said, “Ok, let’s just figure this out logically. Jin, let me see that flashlight.” He took the torch and said with a melodramatic flourish, “Follow me gents, and we will see what is at the end.”

He shone the flashlight on the floor a few feet in front of himself and started walking toward the back of the cave. The others hesitantly rose to follow him. George slowed his pace as he approached the place at which the light beams stopped reflecting. At the point where the light vanished he stopped and dropped to one knee.

The others came up behind him slowly, cautiously, expecting to find themselves at the edge of a dangerously steep precipice. The group stopped a few feet back and watched for George’s response.

“Uh…this is kind of weird guys,” he said.

“What is?” Jin asked

“My light…it just…uh….stops,” George replied.

A deep, dark shadow stretched across the floor where his torch was pointed. The darkness completely absorbed the light, allowing no illumination. He backed his light beam up to where it reflected off the floor’s surface again. Directing the light to the shadow he was able to find the exact spot where the light vanished.

There was a sharp edge to the darkness, a non-reflective wall of nothingness. George laid on his belly and slowly walked his fingertips to the spot where his light beam disappeared. He kept his fingers moving into the shadow until he was in it up to his forearm. From just before his elbow to the tips of his fingers, George’s arm was invisible, as if he had stuck it into a pot of opaque oil.

“Well,” one of the others whispered, “what is it?”

George looked back at them while keeping his hand in the shadow. “Um, it feels like the rest of the cave, except that I can’t see anything, like the end of my arm for instance. This is really weird.”

“Can you move your arm around in there?” asked Kevin

“You’d better make sure you can pull your arm back, dude,” said Jin. “What if there is like some poison gas or something that’s killing your nerves and you just can’t feel your arm being chewed off my some alien monster or something?”

“Shut up, man!” snapped Bryan, nervous sweat breaking out on his forehead. “Don’t be saying crap like that!”

George pulled his hands out, and checked them. All the skin was still there, no sign of damage, sensitivity seemed normal. He shrugged then put his hands back in and moved them around in the darkness of the shadow. Then he stuck his other hand in as well. He felt no pain. No temperature change. The ground stayed level, no edge to a drop off he could reach from there. As far as he could tell there was nothing unusual other than the obvious lack of light. George rose to his knees and slid his hands along the floor inside the shadow, shuffling sideways until he reached the wall. Then he ran his hands up the wall as far as he could reach.

“It all seems fine to me, except that light just doesn’t reflect out of it.”

“This is too weird,” said Mitch, his voice trembled on the words.

Kevin moved toward the center of the shadow where George had first put his hands in. He slowly scooted his right foot into the shadow, staring at it as the line of shadow seemed to swallow his shoe. He continued until his leg was in the shadow up to the middle of his thigh. He looked back at the others as he put his arm and the right half of his body into it as well. Standing there for a moment, Kevin turned toward his friends, the went further into the shadow, until his face was obscured by the darkness.

Pulling back out again he said, “This is really interesting. There seems to be total shadow on the other side. I can see you guys but it's like I am looking through a silk screen or something.”

At that he stepped fully into shadow.

They stood staring for a moment. There were no sounds. Kevin didn’t step back out to tell them it was OK. He didn’t come back.

George went to the spot Kevin had entered from and called his name. No response. He reached his hand into the shadow. There was nothing there. He got closer to the shadow, and put his head into the murky darkness. He jumped back out.

“Whoa! … Wow!…. I uh…huh.”

George stepped in to the shadow.

“What the hell,” shouted Bryan. “Where did they go?”

“George! Kevin!” John called out, “That’s enough…get back here. We don’t need to be fooling around in a dark cave!”

“What is going on here. Are you guys a bunch of wusses? Let’s go in there and drag their sorry butts back.” proclaimed Bryan as he strode boisterously towards the shadow.

Mitch, who was right behind him, said in a loud, overly forceful tone, “This is so stupid. They’re too old to be pranking us like that. What do they think we are a bunch of high school kids again.”

They stepped into the shadow, and vanished.

The other four men stood still in dumbfounded silence, mouths open, staring at the dark shadow.

Jin looked at the other three and said, “Uh, half of our group just disappeared.”

“If this is a joke, come back guys!” shouted John. “You know better than goofing around in a cave. Someone’s gonna get hurt in there!”

Silence.

Marcus spoke for the first time since they started checking out this shadow, “I have a feeling they are not joking. I don’t what is going on, but we need to get on the other side of that shadow and figure out what it is.”

Steve looked at Marcus. Fear quaked in this eyes. His hands shook as he raised a finger and pointed at the darkness, “I really don’t like this, man. I really don’t like this at all. There could be some huge hole that they fell into over there, could be methane or some other gas coming up that knocked them out.”

Marcus stepped toward the shadow. Jin followed. Both stepped into the shadow leaving John and Steve standing alone in the cave.

John swallowed hard and said, “We’d probably better go catch up with them.”

“Have you all lost your minds?” snapped Steve, “We can’t all go, what if something really happened to them. Someone’s got to stay with the stuff, and if everybody got hurt in there, whose going to help. Man! I can’t believe you guys.”

John’s face calmed as if a sudden revelation had overcome him. He looked Steve in the eyes and said, “How many adventures have we been on before?”

“Huh?”

“How many times have we explored caves, jumped out of planes or off bridges, or climbed 2000 foot high rock walls?”

“This is not the same!” replied Steve.

“Why not?”

“It isn’t, we could see where we were going in those other places!”

“Well, I think there is something really curious going on here. If you want to stay on this side by yourself, go for it. I’m going in.”

“Fine! Go! If you don’t fall down some hole and kill yourself, make sure you come back to get your stuff cuz I'm not carrying it down. In the meantime, I’ll sit here with the gear and wait. If you guys aren’t back in an hour, I am leaving!”

“Whatever. I’ll go in and get them, then we’ll be back asap.”

John walked cautiously into the shadow.

Silence again.

Steve stood alone in the cool stony cave. The afternoon sunlight shone into the chamber. It illuminated everything except for the cursed shadow into which his seven companions had all vanished.

He fidgeted back and forth and tried not to scream at them to come back. Regardless of all the danger he had intentionally faced in the past, Steve was scared, more scared than he had ever been in his life. He walked back to the mouth of the cave and sat by the piles of gear his friends had left. Their half eaten lunches still lay next to their packs.

The late afternoon sun dropped far enough to peer directly into the cave. It’s brilliance reflected off the walls, floor and ceiling. In the bright light of the direct sun the shadow grew more ominous. It was now a clearly visible blackness that seemed to suck in all light, like a terrestrial-bound black hole.

He chewed nervously on a large piece of jerky, gnawing at it like an apprehensive defendant in a courtroom chewing his nails as he awaited the verdict. Steve looked at his watch and realized his friends weren’t coming back unless he went in. He certainly didn’t want to leave them if there was something wrong. He had already waited for nearly three hours. He had to make up his mind. If he didn’t leave the cave soon, it would be too dark to descend the mountain. On the other hand he didn’t want to step into a hole and get hurt or killed with the rest of them.

“Hey! Guys!” Steve shouted. “Come back.”

Silence.

“Come one guys…don’t do this.”

A slight breeze wafted by the mouth of the cave rustling through the leaves of a cluster of tangled alder just outside.

“Man…you guys suck!”

He sat the half chewed jerky down on his pack, slugged down all but an inch of his Gatorade, then jumped to his feet.

“Alright. I’m coming in there. If you guys have been messing me this whole time, I will seriously kill you all.”

Crossing to the back of the cave, Steve stood next to the shadow. His heart pounded so loud it seemed to echo off the stone walls.

He stretched his hand into the shadow. It disappeared into the blackness.

“Oh! Crap!” he exclaimed, “Man!”

Steve took a deep breath and slowly stepped forward until the shadow enveloped him. He looked back as he went into the shadow. The gear was still visible at the end of the cave but the view of the brightly lit entrance was dim, like looking through a veil, just as Kevin had described it.

Turning back to the shadow, he stepped slowly into utter darkness. The ground stayed solid beneath his feet. A cool mist brushed against the exposed flesh of his face and hands and the parts of his legs below his khaki shorts. The darkness seemed to thicken before him as he scooted his feet forward.

A couple yards in he turned back to the entrance, but could no longer see behind him. He stood for a moment, frozen in fear, staring at the nothingness all around him. Gathering his energy he foced his feet to scoot forward one at at time, cautiously feeling his way along the invisible floor.

The darkness gradually began to dissolve, vague gray shapes materializing in the distance. Muffled voices muttered unintelligibly somewhere ahead as he slowly made his way through the shadowy darkness, shuffling his feet against the surface of the cave floor. They became clearer, Steve recognized the voices of Marcus and John. He slid another step forward and the shadow unexpectedly disappeared. Steve was shocked to find himself back in the cave. All of their stuff was right where he had left it, but now, his friends were all sitting there with it.

“Man, you certainly took a long time to make up your mind,” declared George.

Steve stood there with his mouth open. He spun around to face the shadow only to see the stony back wall of the cave. No shadow. No darkness. He reached out his hand and touched the solid stone wall. It was damp and cold.

“Yeah, “ said John, “It’s real. There is no way back.”

“Best we can figure,” stated Kevin, “is that we are in a parallel universe or something like that, kinda cool, eh? Since our stuff is all here, exactly as we left it, I assume the rest of this world is also the same as the other side of the shadow. At least I hope so.”

“Anyhow, it’s getting late, we’d better be getting off this mountain,” said Jin.

“Uh….yeah,” said Steve, as he shakily picked up the half chewed piece of jerky and a nearly empty bottle of Gatorade from beside his gear.

The group rose, put on their packs and stepped outside the cave. A tangle of alder branches jutted from the rocky earth just outside the mouth of the cave, it’s leaves fluttering in the slight breeze that blew across the face of the mountain. They descended in silence, making their way carefully down the trail they had come up and reached the bottom before the red sun descended beyond the horizon. The two large red vehicles were waiting right where they left them. Once the gear was stowed, the friends climbed into the seats and started the engines.

The SUV’s rose quietly from the surface of the ground until they levitated above the tree tops. The drivers accelerated forward and drove home, skimming quickly across roadless wilderness that led them back to the city’s edge.