Mat Johnson - Pym

“There’s another set, look. There is one set walking off, and then there’s a set that comes back, and then walks off,” Jaynes told us. He pointed them out with his flashlight. Looking back toward the entrance, we saw that we weren’t more than twenty yards into the journey.

“These weren’t here before,” I said, but it seemed the others had already deduced as much from Jaynes’s tone. In response, Jeffree bent down on one knee, snapped a bit of the packed snow in the track with his fingers, and took it to his nose for a heavy snort before declaring, “It’s fresh.”

“What does stale ice smell like, Jeffree?” I asked, but if there was an answer I didn’t hear it as the marching continued.

Nathaniel had brought a still camera too this time. When the whiteness of its flash hit, the explosion of light revealed nothing. The dimmer, persistent blue sunshine that made its way through so much ice was far more revealing. The ceiling of the expanse, cathedral-like in its arch, reached a good twenty yards above us. The group walked to the side of the tracks, careful not to crush them. As they did on their regular fitness walks, Jeffree and Carlton Damon Carter wore aluminum teardrop snowshoes, which let them float above the snow’s crust nicely. Despite the heavy steps of the hiking boots that the rest of us wore, after a few minutes I noticed that my own steps did not go as deep as the footsteps we were tracking, my own feet packing the snow mere centimeters while the prints pushed down inches.

“What’s the rush, y’all? You know there ain’t nothing down there,” Garth yelled ahead to me when I stopped to let him catch up, while the others moved on. Garth could move fast, but he couldn’t move fast for long.

“Well, we’ll find whatever soon,” I assured him.

Garth paused when he reached me, leaning on my shoulder to do so. Pulling off his hood for a moment, he looked up, gazed around at the stillness.

“Nope. If there was something down here, this would be quick, because there would be something to find,” he declared. “But searching for nothing: that takes all damn day.”

Contrary to Garth Frierson’s pessimism, there was something ahead. The path did have a direction. Aside from its straightforward line, it was also clearly heading down, the angle becoming more steep as we moved. It took Garth and me only a few minutes to catch up with the others despite Garth’s slow pace, the road dipping at points significantly enough that until we were within thirty paces of the group we couldn’t see them. Couldn’t see them even when they were just black shadows within the snow, a clearly alien presence in this environment. Around us the walls were glistening and curved; I could even hear the echoes of water dripping in the distance.

“Which direction you think we should go?” Captain Jaynes asked me when I reached him. Our tunnel broke into three possible routes. Looking down at our two sets of tracks I saw it: a third set , and what could even be a fourth. There, beneath so many tons of ice and for the first time feeling its suffocating implications, I felt the vertigo hit me.

“That don’t mean there are more than one of … whoever this is … in here.” My cousin exuded his usual confidence, but it wasn’t working. The marks seemed all to be made by feet of roughly the same massive size. Regardless, retreat was never even discussed. When I look back now, I wonder about this. We were all down here for our own hustles, pursuing our own self-serving delusions, maybe, but now that we found ourselves on the trail of something genuinely new, something undiscovered, all that could wait. We had to see it through. It was decided then that we should break up into pairs and explore the three tunnels ahead, returning to this spot after five minutes.

Jeffree pushed off with Carlton Damon Carter before the rest of us had even adjusted our gear, so the captain moved to the left entrance with Garth in tow. I tried to follow them, but my cousin literally pushed me back to the last group. Nathaniel and Angela Latham. Nathaniel smiled. Angela wouldn’t even look at me, the way she hadn’t since we’d gotten here. Not like she was mad, or even uncomfortable. Just like her eyes naturally went three feet over and down in my presence.

“If we were to find something, Chris.” Nathaniel left her to run up beside me, the most energy I’d seen him exert since we got down here. He tapped on my hood to get me to reveal an ear to him. “Naming rights would be no small issue. Of course, it’s really intellectual property rights that are prominent here.” The ceilings continued to lower as we went. It was all downhill, taking Nathaniel, Angela, and I farther into the depths.

“Fortunes can be made in being an expert, I’m sure you know,” he damn near purred. “There’s documentaries, coffee table books, reality shows. But even if you get to play the expert role, you’d need management. Someone to deal with the finances, publicity.”

“Slow down, Chris. Listen to him. He’s the best.” Angela followed me on my other side, tugging on my arm in a way I decided to read as seductive. Nathaniel, watching, smiling, knew his wife hypnotized me, but he also knew she was so far out of my reach that my obsession posed no threat. “There’s not much left to be new in the world anymore, Chris,” he told me, grabbing her gloved hand right across me and squeezing it. I stopped, just to look at them. This sent Nathaniel into a riff on international property rights and the Internet. I turned to Angela. She was looking at me now, but just to impress upon me that I should be listening to him. Her face modeled the seriousness with which she thought I should be taking Nathaniel’s pitch. I mimicked her without meaning to, until I caught myself.

“That’s enough. For today. Let’s go back.” I turned to walk in the other direction. I tried to split through the two of them, but Angela held tight and they stepped out of my path before I could reach them.

“We’re lost, aren’t we?” Nathaniel asked when he caught up to me. It had been five minutes and we were heading back to the first cavern, and from the dread in his voice I knew that he too had noticed the mess of tracks that had formed behind us. Tunnel entrances I had ignored on the way down now seemed to tempt me as possible return routes. Had we really walked down in a straight line, or was that just an illusion? Was one of these side openings actually our way out?

“These are the freshest tracks right here.” Angela, bent down on her knees, took a picture of the evidence with her cell phone for posterity. “The others are shallower; the wind’s thinned them out. And they’re crusted over.” The two of us looked down at her, and when she got up, we followed behind. She walked faster leading, but it wasn’t more than a minute later when the little woman halted abruptly. Flung a flat palm up in the air to motion for us to cease as well.

I followed Angela Latham’s eyes, saw nothing.

“Listen,” Angela mouthed, and this I tried as well. There was nothing to warrant the wide-eyed expression that had seized her face.

“Breathing,” Angela mouthed, and I knew that I was breathing very hard, not quite used to the level of physical exertion currently being demanded. Then, logic clicking into my brain, I stopped my breathing, or at least paused it for a little while.

But the breathing kept going.

Harder than my own this time, although fainter from the distance. Just beyond the next corner, the next bend, something was alive. Something was alive and breathing like a thing wounded, its gasps heavy and deliberate, broken up by occasional forced sighs. It sounds almost like a horse , I thought. That is what it reminded me of.