Stone and Fire

PROMPT: Everyone has a talent. What is rare is the courage to follow the talent to the dark place where it leads.
- Erica Jong (Writer)

Stone and Fire.

I couldn’t help a certain swelling of pride as the heads of my team leaned closer to the computer screen to study the image it showed.

“Oh my God!” Jeff whispered in awe.

“It's sure an ugly brute,” Michael contributed with a shudder.

I was surprised that Michael had been dead against us taking that last step. You wouldn’t expect an extreme sports enthusiast, Kung Fu champion and jungle trekker to be afraid of a challenge.

“How big do you think?” he asked, his eyes narrowing.

“Our opening was 1.4 metres wide,” Jeff replied before anyone else could. As the mathematician of our four-man team, he always answered the hard questions. “If their opening formed at the same height,” he continued, tapping numbers into the flexible calculator he wore at his wrist, “the creature should be 2.6 metres tall.”

“Eight and a half feet to four rows of teeth,” Michael added, his lip curling in disgust as he stared at the screen. “One bite from that would drop an elephant.”

After measuring the mouth with a ruler and tapping a few more buttons, Jeff announced, “A mouth eighteen inches wide could certainly take a large bite out of a leg.”

“Hell, why go for a leg when you could take the whole head off,” Michael spat.


Angrily pushing himself up from his chair, Michael left the room. Worried that my second-in-command might had seen something that I hadn’t, I followed and found him pacing the gloomy, dank corridor outside, nervously fidgeting with his car keys.

“Matthew, what are you doing?” he demanded angrily. “You're meddling with things you don't understand."

For the sake of our long friendship, I let the insult pass.

“I know what started out as an investigation into an unexplained magnetic anomaly,” I explained, “has led us down a strange path, but we’ve been down these sort of paths before. What’s the problem?”

It was true. We had worked together on various projects for Cambridge University's Physics Department for the last 15 years. In all that time I had never seen him so agitated.

“God knows what induced them fifty years ago to built a centre of government

Called Burlington. Built in secret during the cold war and exposed in 2002 when it was put up for sale. See http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/uk/article584503.ece

in this old stone mine, even if the threat of a nuclear holocaust was very real then," he answered, glancing at the massive stone blocks in the ceiling. "But why after all this time sell a 250 acre city, 120 feet underground, filled with obsolete technology, to a firm that wants to put in wall to wall data storage? If you ask me this whole place is a death trap. And that was before we dragged ourselves down here and ripped a hole in the universe."

“They couldn’t use it for data storage because of the magnetic anomaly,” I quickly reminded him, “We were asked to find out where it was coming from, and if possible remove it. All we've done is measure its strength and frequency and use an induction annulus to create a similar field with the opposite polarity, to see if we could cancel it out."

“And how did that go exactly?” he sneered, shaking his head.

“You know some sort of opening was created inside the annulus, one we immediately shut down.”

“But then, against my strongest advice, you re-opened it,” Michael insisted.

"Just for half a second so the high-speed camera could record exactly what was happening. It was only when we analysed the video that we noticed that creature. I don’t know why you're so upset because I’m excited. This is cutting edge stuff!” I was getting annoyed with him now.

"This isn't cutting edge," he insisted, breathing hard and jabbing an accusing finger at the room we’d just come from. "This is…tampering with the bloody unknown! We could have opened up a doorway to Hell for all we know. You can’t tear a hole in reality and not expect consequences. This isn't one of your online fantasy game we're playing here."

“But it's closed.”

“And it should bloody stay closed!” he insisted with such vehemence that he almost staggered.

“We’re scientists Michael. Pushing back the boundaries is what we do.”

“This is different,” he insisted breathing hard, his face red and the veins on his forehead bulging. “When I complained about working in this God-forsaken hole, what do you think the Bursar said?’Everyone has a talent. What is rare is the courage to follow that talent to the dark place where it leads.’ He’s a moron but in this case he might be right. He meant being here with a hundred feet of fractured stone hanging directly above our heads, but the dark place we’ve found, is on the other side of that opening of yours.”

“Michael…” I tried

“It's…alien,” he hissed. “You mess with that stuff at your peril. What if half a second is enough time for a single mutant bacteria, or a small insect to cross over? That half a second could be enough to damn the whole human race!"


Suddenly I realised he was right. We hadn’t taken enough precautions, not against the things he was talking about. We’d opened a hole and peeked through. What if something had crossed over from the other side?

“You’re right,” I told him, battling down an icy certainly that I had just made a terrible mistake.

“We’ve got to shut everything down,” he repeated. I just nodded.

“We might already be infected,” I whispered, staring at my hands as if they could show the contagion running through my veins.

“Or we might not,” Michael snapped, opening the door with a bang and startling the others.


“Dismantle the annulus,” he told them, pointing to the huge split ring covered in windings, surrounded by massive cables, sitting on a metal frame in the centre of the room.

They looked at me for confirmation. After all I was their boss, the Professor of Advanced Physics, not Michael. Numbly, I nodded. Without a word they began breaking the equipment down into its component parts. Michael helped with an urgency that was contagious.

“Does anyone feel…different?” I asked clumsily.

“Actually, I feel bloody marvellous,” Jeff, remarked. “It's not every day you get to see into another dimension. Wheel out the Nobel prize and carve our names on it!”

Michael groaned but Jeff, with his carrot-coloured hair and devil-may-care grin, just ignored him. He was the joker in the pack.

“I'm confused,” Adam confessed as he coiled a cable around his hand and elbow. "What's going on?"

Adam was our electrical technician, a man who made light, magnetism and electricity dance. He was also a hulking six foot rugby player. While in real life he was a gentle giant, in our World of Warcraft games he was the battle-hungry warrior known as,Sir Gilmore, the black knight.

“Considering what we’ve seen on the other side of the opening,” I forced myself to admit, “There’s a chance that alien bacteria may have crossed over.

Adam blinked, his brown eyes glazing as the implications of what I’d said sank in.

“Oh shit,” he whispered, winding the cable more quickly, as if that could somehow undo the damage.


“Jeff,“ I asked, my mind beginning to work once more. “Have you finished the download?”

“We’re piggy-backing 50 year-old telephone cables,” he reminded me. “It’ll take another 10 minutes.”

“Lock the file, I don’t want anyone else seeing it yet. Then contact the Health Protection Agency and tell them we've found something alien down here. Ask them to send someone over. I wouldn’t be surprised if they quarantine the whole place with us in it.”

They all groaned but said nothing more, probably hoping that confinement would be the worst of what they’d have to endure.


“Adam, how much diesel do we have left?”

“We’ve got about 100 gallons,” he answered. “Enough to keep the generator going for months."

“Take the bike," I said, referring to our only means of underground transport. If we left a screwdriver in the van, the half mile hike to the lift went a lot quicker with a bike. “Use the phone in the lift and tell the surface team we won’t be coming up tonight. Also let them know we’re expecting the Health Protection Agency. Ask them to send down some food.”

Adam nodded then headed for the steel door.

“And don’t forget to walk through the props.

Steel columns inserted to hold up the roof. See http://www.mining-technology.com/contractors/roofing/strata-support/

,” Michael growled. “We don’t want you hitting one and bringing the whole bloody roof down.”

Adam grunted good-naturedly as he shambled out. I smothered a smile. Everyone knew how much Michael hated the section of corridor where the sagging roof was held up by a forest of steel props. A moment later we heard the bike’s characteristic squeak as it was ridden away.

“Is the download finished?” I asked, looking over Jeff’s shoulder.


Before he could answer there was a deep, rumbling growl. Like everyone else, I froze. An instant later we heard the sound of metal hitting the ground. Michael was first out of the door. I followed hard on his heels. It was around the first bend that we found the discarded bicycle, the back wheel still spinning, and next to it, a single white sneaker.

“Where did he go?” Michael asked.

The corridor, with lights every 20 feet, stretched emptily into the distance. I walked up the corridor, testing the doors on either side, but they were all locked.

“What’s that?” Jeff asked, pointing upwards.

With the others I stared at a line of dark spots splattered across the stone ceiling.

“They weren’t there before.”

“It's just water,” Michael snorted. “This place is riddled with cracks.”

Jeff bent and rubbed a finger over a dark spot on the floor, then lifted it to the light and examined it closely.
“It's blood.”

Michael peered up at the marks. “How did blood get up there?”

“Not how--whose,” Jeff prompted.

There was an awkward pause, so I put into words what everyone was thinking. “This doesn’t make sense,” I told them. “If Adam had an accident, then where is he?”

“I think there’s something you should both see,” Jeff suggested softly.

We followed him back to the room, eager to put some distance between us and that accursed bike.



“It’s the recording,” he explained, standing at the computer.

The image on the screen was the same as before. A strange creature with four longs legs stood in a rock-littered glade, surrounded by spindly trees. The long legs supported a round, bloated torso, like that of a spider, with a huge, fang-lined mouth and segmented eyes that staring hungrily in our direction.

“As you move through the frames,” Jeff was saying as the image flickered, “you can see it spit.”

On the screen a pale blur could be seen forming in the monster’s mouth, before moving at incredible speeds towards the screen.

“Adjusting the resolution,” he said, fingers flickering over the keyboard. “we can see...”

“It’s a tongue,” Michael declared as the blur took shape, “like a lizard’s.”

“But the really interesting stuff,” Jeff added with a sigh, “is this.”

I stared at the screen as he described what we were seeing.

“Here the end of the tongue strikes the opening and disappears. In the next frame, the tongue looks like it is still moving but…?”

“Nothing is coming through the opening,” Michael added, scratching his head.


While they discussed theories, I agonised over what had happened to Adam. I was just about to join the invisible alien debate when the same deep growling occurred. Everyone stopped talking. Suddenly a massive weight crashed into the steel door, shaking it in its frame. Again and again the door was struck. It started buckling under the assault. Michael stood up. Jeff grabbed a cable wrench. Then as suddenly as it started, the attack stopped. I waited for a few seconds before cautiously opening the battered door. Pieces of plaster littered the floor, but the corridor was empty.

“Invisible aliens,” Jeff insisted, ashen faced and visible shaken.

I shook my head. It just didn’t make sense.

“It could be out of phase with our reality,” Michael proposed.

“For much of the time,” I agreed. “then attacking when its resonance matches ours.”

Jeff shook his head. "Are you saying that...that thing killed Adam?”

I nodded. No one said anything but I knew they were thinking Adam died because of me, because of the risks we'd taken.

“How long…?”

“Between phase changes?” Michael guessed. “About ten seconds in-phase, fifteen minutes out.”

I thought about that. “Is it coming through a fluctuating temporal rift?”

“I don't think so. It appeared down the hallway, and then here, I’d say IT is fluctuating in and out of our reality, and when it's not here, it's walking around its home world wondering where dinner went.”

“So, it should reappear anywhere, in…about ten minutes.”

“We have to move, now!”


For the next hour we evaded the creature by moving from room to room, locking ourselves behind the strongest doors we could find. Hiding in the old laundry room, listening to the banging and growling going on outside, I came to a decision.

“It's been in-phase for almost a minute now. Soon we won’t be able to move without bumping into it. We need to destroy it before it finds a way out.”

Michael nodded, almost eager for the confrontation. Jeff looked nervous.

“The telephone exchange.

See photographs of this and other areas. http://www.bbc.co.uk/wiltshire/underground_city/gallery_1/

would make a good trap, the corridor narrows there.” Michael suggested.

I agreed. The noise outside stopped.

“Take the cables and see what you can do,” I told him. “I’ve got another idea. I’ll meet you there in ten minutes.”

Racing back to the diesel tank I gathered some of empty cans and began filling them with fuel.


The rest of the team were waiting for me at the dusty, old, telephone exchange.

“We’ve rigged high voltage wires either side of this corridor,” Michael said, pointing to the bare cables and an old switch in front of him. “Anything walking between them now will get a 300 volt whammy.”

A low rumbling growl warned us that we were running out of time.

“Where is it?” We all stared in different directions.

The creature came at us from our side of the trap. Michael instantly fled, leaving us to face the monster alone. Picking up a wooden box , I hurled it at its head.

“Hurry,” Michael shouted from the other side. Jeff hurried through, I followed as quickly as I could.

“Switches on both sides,” Michael said with a grin before throwing the lever.

We stood transfixed as the creature stalked towards us with its teeth bared, its long tongue swaying. As it reached the cables, lightning flashed across the gap, striking it in the chest. Shrieking and jerking uncontrollably, it toppled forward, away from the cables. It was hurt but it wasn’t dead. I stepped forward with a wrench to finish the job, but as I did, it shimmered and disappeared.


"Damn, but there's something else we can try. You two wait for me at the lift.”

“Go,” Michael told Jeff, “I’ll catch up with you in a moment.”

“Just remember," Michael warned me, sqeezing my shoulder, "this isn’t one of those fantasy games you're so good at. Be careful. Don't get hurt.”

“I brought it here,” I reminded him. “I need to fix this.”

I left him then and hurried to the weakened section of roof. I waited until I heard the now familiar growl. Grabbing one of the half-filled cans, I banged it hard against a metal stanchion. The noise was tremendous, echoing through miles of corridors. Banging the can again, I stepped back into the dark hallway and waited with my hand on the light switch. I didn’t have to wait long.


The huge head, with its double row of pointed teeth almosted touched the ceiling as the creature moved cautiously towards me.

“Come on,” I whispered, urging it forward.

Reaching the tangle of stanchions, it hunched down and spotted me. As soon as it stepped between the columns, I switched on the lights. Inside one of the half-empty tanks piled at my feet, my detonator was now active. Power surged through the coiled element of a broken light bulb, heating the fuel in the can, vaporising it. Then at the right moment, the glowing coil would ignite the diesel causing a massive explosion...bringing the roof down.

The creature, hesitated as I moved backwards. I smiled when I realised where my talent for computer games had brought me. This was like last night's game when I as the Arch Mage confronted the dragon with spells of Fire and Stone. I waited, luring the creature forward. Slowly it moved between the stanchions and then stood up. For a terrible moment, as it focussed its attention on me, I was afraid I’d failed, that the diesel wouldn’t go off, that I’d be torn apart like Adam. I couldn't run away, I was the bait. Either way, I was going to die there.

Suddenly the world exploded. Tongues of curling flame rushed outwards, hurling me against the corridor wall. In agony I fell, hearing stone and bone, creak and slip. Then…blackness.

In the dark centre of the earth the Arch Mage battled a ravaging
Daemon with spells of Fire and Stone, till both were destroyed.
His companions sealed the mountain out of respect for his sacrifice,
but also to ensure that Daemons would never again walk the world of men.


Words : 2937

© Copyright 2009 Alan Philps (UN: anglophile at Writing.Com). All rights reserved.
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