Tim Curran - The underdwelling

“Those are trees,” Jurgens said.

McNair nodded. “Yes…but immense. I’ve never heard of anything like this from the Permian.”

“Maybe they’re not from the Permian,” Breed said.

“They have to be,” McNair pointed out. “I mean, it would be a little coincidental to assume that these were far older, that they had been standing petrified in our theoretical valley when the flood claimed the rest of this forest. It would be stretching.”

He and Jurgens walked around with their lanterns and long-handled flashlights while the others just stood and stared. There were at least a dozen of the big trees, some up on mounds, and some down in little draws sitting in standing water. They led right up to the far wall of the cavern where at some time in the past there had been a cave-in, swallowing the rest of the petrified Permian world. Set amongst them, were dozens of the other trees.

Breed kept panning his light around, studying the boles of those big trees. “I don’t know, Doc,” he said when McNair returned. “These big ones just look…I don’t know…”

“Older,” Maki said.

And Boyd was with them on that. Like this was some sort of sacred grove that had been abandoned, all the little trees inserting themselves and growing wild when whoever or what ever cut those cells was long, long gone. Regardless, there was something eerie about them standing so big and stark like monoliths and monuments. The flashlight beams scanning them made the cell mouths seem to move as shadows spilled from them.

Jurgens and McNair went up to one and started peering inside it. Boyd and Breed followed suit. The openings were all about four-feet in diameter. Inside, were little cells maybe five-feet high by ten long. You could still see the chopping marks in the petrified wood. McNair climbed inside one and examined this.

“It looks like this was done when the tree was still alive,” he said.

“But by who?” Breed said. “I mean, who was around 250 million years ago to hollow out these little apartments?”

Jurgens shook his head. “It wasn’t a matter of who, Breed, but what. There were no people during the Permian. This is, was, the work of some arboreal creature. Some tree-living species that chewed these cavities open.”

“They remind me of those holes the prairie dogs dig in their sand piles at the zoo,” Maki said.

“What could have made these, Doc?” Boyd asked.

“I…I’m not sure,” McNair said. “But it’s apparent that there were very many of them and it must have taken time.”

Boyd looked into another. “Almost looks like toolwork, don’t it?” he said, putting his flashlight beam on the meticulously carved ceiling, the series of hack marks that looked like maybe they’d been done with an axe.

“It wasn’t done by tools,” McNair said, but he didn’t sound convinced of that himself.

“But what cut them off flat on top, Doc?” Breed wanted to know.

McNair said, “There’s no way of telling. Could have been that they grew that way or some natural force did it. The movement of the rock above may have sheared them off over a period of millions of years. Hard to say.”

“Almost looks like it was done on purpose,” Maki said.

Boyd stood before the nearest tree, sweeping his light up it, counting all the cells set into its face. They went right up to the very top. Dozens of them. Looking at them, he was reminded of a bee honeycomb. Whatever lived in them must have been a very good climber.

McNair was taking photograph after photograph.

“Well, gentlemen, I think we should call it a day,” Jurgens said. “No sense waiting around down here until our batteries go dead.”

Boyd was in perfect agreement with that. This was plenty for one day. Let the scientists figure this all out. He wanted to get topside again, get out of the cavern and the mines in general, suck in some air that wasn’t dank and stagnant smelling.

After this I’m gonna need a drink, he thought, maybe four or five of them. In fact, I just might Maki, who had been investigating trees ahead, came running back, shining his light around up in the air. “What the hell was that?”

They all looked at him.

In the glow of the lanterns, his face had taken on the color of yellow cheese. His eyes were wide and white, his lips pulled away from his teeth.

“I didn’t hear anything,” Jurgens said.

But nobody was saying it was his imagination. They were all looking around them now as if the unpleasant possibility that they might not be alone down there had just occurred to them, had just settled into them like venom. Flashlight beams scanned about, but no one heard anything but that continual, morose dripping of water. The air smelled like it had been blown from a crypt…yellow bones and flaking shrouds, dust and advanced age.

“I heard it,” Maki said. “Up there…up on one of those trees. A kinda scratching sound.”

All flashlights went up.

Beams arced through the darkness.

There were lots of the other trees around them, the gymnosperms and cycads standing about like posts. Some were fifty feet in height and the flashlights played about their tops.

“There’s nothing up there, Maki,” Jurgens said.

“Wait,” Breed said. “I heard something, too.”

Then they all did. A sort of knocking sound like a woodpecker working a dead tree. It had that same hollow, continual rapping. It went on for maybe five seconds, stopped, then started again. It was coming from high above, from the apex of one of the trees…but they could see nothing up there.

“Fuck is that?” Breed said.

McNair swallowed. “I assumed this cavern was sealed, but something could have gotten in through a crevice. Bats, maybe.”

“I never heard bats knock like that,” Maki pointed out.

Boyd stood there, his heart pounding and the cylinder of the flashlight in his hand feeling very greasy like it might slide out of his fist at any moment.

Jurgens cleared his throat. “Well, let’s get on our way-”

“Shut up,” Breed said.

They were hearing more noises now. Not just that knocking, but a scraping sound from high above them like tenpenny nails were being scratched over petrified wood. A flurry of noise that went on for maybe thirty seconds. Then nothing. Nothing at all.

“There’s something up there,” Breed whispered, like he was afraid that whatever it was might hear him.

All lights were up in the petrified treetops now. Most were just posts lacking branches. The lights swept over them and there was absolutely nothing up there. Nothing that the lights could find.

The sounds started again, knocking and scraping, not from one particular tree, but from many as if whatever was up there was leaping from trunk to trunk over their heads. It stopped again and they all stood there, silent and motionless, sensing something but not knowing what it was. Boyd’s flashlight was shaking in his hand, his beam jumping around. He wanted badly to run, to get the hell out of there, before whatever it was showed. Because he had a bad feeling that it was about to. That whatever was up there was about to drop down amongst them in a flurry of scratching limbs.

What they heard next was a clicking.

Click, click, click.

The sound of a deathwatch beetle in the wall of a deserted house or a cicada up in a gum tree. Just that repetitive, chitinous clicking like some insect rubbing its forelegs together or tapping them on its carapace. Whatever it was, it was not a good sound and nobody dared speak. Dared acknowledge what they were hearing.

It’s like Morse Code, Boyd thought. Like something up there is trying to communicate with us.

“I’m getting the fuck out of here,” Maki said.