"The Tale of the
What-Is-It"
By RD Rivero
"Tell
me again why we're doing this?" I asked Tygra. He was down in the level beneath me. I could see him -- or parts of him anyway --
from where I stood at the head of the metal staircase. Down below there was surprisingly more light
than I had expected but the room was cluttered with instruments and with
scientific miscellania that I could hardly make out the form of the most
important detail as far as I was concerned.
"It's imperative,
Cheetara."
"You've said that
for weeks."
I heard no
response. Perhaps he had not heard me,
perhaps he had planed to avoid me. Never
the less I was intent to get answers that time.
I walked down the metal
staircase -- my footsteps echoed in sharp timbers. I found Tygra working at the end of a long,
hollow cylindrical tube from which bright sunlight poured in from above. A black table, topped with a thick sheet of
parchment, was placed directly at the end of the tube's opening. An image was clearly focused and distinctly
visible on the paper: he was drawing on it when he looked up and saw me.
He spoke: "Do you see that red knob by the side of
your head?"
I scrambled in sheer
panic to find it, I was never very good at even those slight technical
things. "This one?" I asked, I
kept my forefinger on it.
"Turn it ever so
slightly to your right. I'll tell you
when to stop."
The knob was very hard
to turn, I needed both hands for the job but even then I was barely able to
turn it at all. Its movement, what ever
movement it underwent, was imperceptible.
"That's all
right. That's enough."
"Are you
sure?"
"It's a very
precise machine."
Carefully I made my way
closer to him and to the table over which he labored. I could then and only then see the image with
exactitude. It was the sun and Tygra was
drawing its outline and its particular features on the parchment.
"Can't you just
take a photograph?"
"It's not the
same."
"So why is this
‘imperative’?" I may have playfully
mocked his tone or I may have not, I cannot remember.
He looked up at me with
the most pathetic face I had ever seen him give me. He returned to the object of his foremost
attention. "The sun's been active
lately. Two months ago there was a very
violent solar flare."
"Oh."
"The ions that it
has released has tampered with our equipment."
"I wouldn't have
noticed."
"Even the Sword of
Omens has been affected.” He
stopped. “There. There.
This is the last one."
He stood up with the
sheet of paper in one hand and the pencil in the other and walked briskly to
the back of the room. I followed right
behind. Hung along the walls in the
recesses of the subterranean chamber were about fifty of those drawings posted
in an ordered series. Each drawing was
dated in red ink.
Very proudly he began
to show me his picture show. "Look
at what's happened since I began."
He pointed along the equator of the sun and I had to admit that even I
noticed. There were black spots, some in
groups, some all alone and then there was a huge one that appeared about once
every two days. "That large sunspot
is what's responsible for all the ill effects we've been suffering but I need
more information. This lab isn't good
enough. The others are busy surveying
the land for the site of the new observatory."
I stood outside in that
late afternoon hour. Overhead, the sky
everywhere was clouded in a thin and in a chaotic cover of mist. The land was flat and dead, it was a desert
after all, but every now and then there were tall trees and dense bushes that
dotted the oppressively level scenery. A
strong but a noiseless gust of wind blew in the distance and swayed the tall,
entangled trees of one of those patches of oasis.
Behind me the rest of
that long cylinder stuck out of the earth at an acute angle to level of the
ground. Tygra had all but finished his
day's work and was in the process of shutting down the solar observatory. He scrolled down the lens cap to protect that
upper and exposed opening. He climbed
down a small set of steps that protruded out of the side of the top half of
that concrete bunker.
"Well, Cheetara,
that's it for today."
We began to walk across
the loose orange sand west toward the edge of the land, toward the rim of a
tall cliff. Exposed below was the vast
expanse of ocean. We were a thousand feet
high on the plateau, so far removed that the sounds of the waves that crashed
and that broke on the shore were inaudible.
Aside from the snippets and the distorted fragments of the crabmen that
roamed and that moved out and round the caverns of their homes, there was very
little else down there of interest outside of the nice and the tranquil-looking
vegetation.
The plants were all
green, all leafy green and overflowing, bending and beating in the
ocean-sprayed breeze and the sandy air that circulated down there. The flat line of the horizon at the end of
infinity, past even the ocean itself, a large, an obscenely large and red sun,
streaked across by elongated, finger-like clouds, far and distant parallel to
the horizon, grossly distorted by what Tygra called the ‘action of the
atmosphere,’ slowly began to sink, to sink below into the waters.
The air, that had been
warm up to that point, became cool and the currents, that had been calm all
day, turned more than depressingly violent.
The makeshift cabin
seemed awfully lonely amidst the surrealness, the etherealness of those
twilight hours. The observatory, by
then, was no longer visible to us but we could see the camp that the rest of
the Thundercats had made for themselves a good half mile away.
Inside I sat at the
edge of the bed and began to read a little something. Ever since we had stumbled upon that old
library in the forbidden zone, Bengali and Pumyra had been busy translating the
ancient, first-earth materials. While I
was enthralled in the book -- titled ‘The Mad Tryst’ -- Tygra was busy on the radio talking to Liono
and to Panthro about his latest discovery.
I paid little notice.
When the sun completely
set and the whole of the world was basked in darkness, Tygra and I ate dinner
huddled closely on a small, round table, a plastic table over which a green
lamp hung from the exposed beams of the roof of the wooden ceiling.
"Tomorrow we're
going back to the others at camp."
"You found all the
information you needed?"
"I got all the
data I could get." He looked up at
me. "I hope I haven't bored
you."
I put my hand on his
arm and rubbed his fur gently, then I gave him a little pat under the
chin. "How could I be bored with
you?”
He took my hand in his
own and smiled.
Sometime in the middle
of the night he nudged me awake.
"I have to go
out," he spoke to me with those words exactly, "I'll be back."
"Don't take too
long, Tygie" I said.
He got up from the bed,
unwrapped the blankets around him.
Almost instantly I was colder than before, my body shivered
uncontrollably. In the darkness he
stumbled to try to find the door without hitting or tripping. The door of the cabin swung open and shut
without a noise. I went back to sleep, I
do not remember how long I was out.
If I could only
remember.
I was alarmed by the
strangest sound of tapping. I sat up in
bed. Next to me on the mattress, the
blankets were rolled up in a long, flat mass.
Had Tygra come back and I not notice?
Had he covered himself up completely though he was a mummy, a
corpse? I was about to reach out and --
Tapping.
Tapping came from a
window.
No, of course. The entangled mass of sheets on my side
neither reacted to the sudden noise nor did it move at all the way it should
have moved, up and down, rise and fall, if there was indeed someone breathing
under the dense folds. I was alone in
the cabin, I could not see Tygra anywhere.
Tapping.
There were two windows
in the cabin. The one right in front of
me glowed in the light hue of the early morning. I arose and walked to it, I could see the
clear blue sky over the rippled and violent gray of the reflective ocean. The sun was behind me and I turned around.
Tapping.
Yes, it came from that
window, from that window right above the bed.
I could see the figure but in shadows.
It was Tygra, no doubt, perhaps he had locked himself out of the cabin,
perhaps -- I approached the window.
It was Tygra but there
was something wrong. His eyes were
closed shut -- though the light had hurt him -- his nose was off to the side --
though it had been broken -- and his lips.
I could tell no more. When I came
right up upon the window, Tygra shot back and darted to the side out of the way
of my view. I was confused, but --
I opened the cabin door
and stepped out into the coldness of that dusk.
No sun was out at all, at the least not yet. The sky was aglow in that pre-dawn
light. Only the faintest spray or mist
of white clouded the sky.
I walked around the
cabin to where I had last seen Tygra.
He was not there,
instead I found him walking away south.
His footsteps in the sand were deep and well preserved, though a dense
wind did much to erode their trace.
Since he was still in
my sight I trailed him. I shouted his
name, of course, but he did not respond.
Only every now and then did he stop to look around to see if I was still
there, to see if I was still following him.
It began to rain a
slight mist, my breath was visible in the ambient coolness of the
environment. I shivered, too and that
was when I noticed how poorly I was dressed.
I wondered if I should not have gone back to the cabin to change into
something more appropriate but by then was too late, far too late. I would have lost him completely had I done
that.
Without fail Tygra kept
himself a good fifty feet from sight.
Never at all could I see him clearly, even in the emerging light of
morning he remained in the grasp of a somber shadows. His clothes were abnormally loose, though for
some reason they no longer fit him well -- the flaps wavered noisily in the
strong wind. For the fist time I noticed
the spray of the ocean in the air and in the depression of the scene I thought
I could almost cry.
Where was he leading
me? What had he found? What had happened to him? I kept remembering that face that I saw on
the other side of the window. How
contorted, how disfigured and then the strangest idea crept up into my
head. Was it not a face at all but the
mask of a face? I shrugged it off, I
could not believe it, I would not believe it.
Something had happened to Tygra in those brief moments when he was
outside -- or had it been so brief?
I kicked my self for
having fallen asleep and having lost track of time.
I could not be sure of
anything anymore except that I had to go to where ever my Tygie led me. I could not resist the patheticness of that
look he had given me that haunted me -- the lips. And then there was something about the chin,
too, that was not right.
Eventually the flat
land sloped gently. The ripples in the
sand grew sparse until the very earth itself was replaced by barren rocks. The stones were not gray but a light yellow
and rough and serrated by long cracks. I
had an awful hard time climbing down into the wide and open pit the monoliths
formed.
Tygra stood before an
enshadowed entrance. I called to him and
the shrillness of my voice must have startled him for he took notice. He looked up at me while I spoke: "Tygra!
What happened? What's wrong? Tygra?"
No answer, no answer
was given.
For a moment, for a
brief moment I turned around to face the side of the rock wall that I was
steadily descending. When I came to look
back, when I was safely on the ground of the pit, he was gone. Once more I called but even then I knew that
would be in vain.
I crawled to the
darkened spot I had seen him last. The
skies then cleared though at the distance there was a loud clasp of thunder and
there was the faintest trace of a lightning bolt that struck from one cloud to
another. The mist no longer fell and for
the first time that morning the air was warm.
I entered the shadows
and before me the wall that I had expected to meet me was replaced instead by
an unusual opening. Mouth in shape,
complete with ‘teeth’ that were of course not teeth at all but stalagmites and
thin pillars of brown rock. The faintest
red light glowed from within.
The floor that had been
covered with that orange sand and small pebbles had very quickly transformed
under my feet. Shiny red tiles grew out
of the naturalness and at the same time that the cramped passage exploded into
a vast cavern of inconceivable proportions.
Only the immediacy was visible of the rest, to the farthest recesses, I
could see the embryonic beginnings of yet more passages, yet more tunnels, yet
more caverns but darkened in the shades of shadowy gray.
The cavern I was in was
supported at odd places by what I supposed could pass for columns. Every so often the ceiling rocks or the floor
-- that was dotted with intermittent, uncovered patches of that red tile --
would sink or rise, one to the other, one to meet the other and in that chaotic
method I would suppose that the large cavern could be conceivably separated
into various smaller chambers. Each
little chamber had a fire pit, orange and blue flames shot up to lick the air
and to cast moving, dancing shadows on the walls.
The walls.
The walls were red, red
like the tiles were red but it was not the same. I approached one that was the nearest to
me. A dense liquid oozed from the
surface of the rocks though the walls had pores -- and could bleed. It was blood and it dripped down onto the
ground slowly like honey, like stringy honey.
"Tygra!" I screamed and I ran aback. That was when I noticed something else about
that cavern. Around the fires the ground
was littered with bones. Bones! Of every shape and variety. Hacked free from the flesh. Some were chalky white, some were brown, some
were burnt crisp to a brittle black that the wind alone could have erased from
existence.
In that frenzied
stupor, in that utter confusion, I bumped into Tygra.
He had his back to
me. I was hysterical, I screamed and
yelled his name. When I received no
response yet again I grabbed his shoulder and I turned him around.
I saw that face again,
exactly the same face again. The eyes
were closed and there I noticed slight traces of blood, crusty blood under the
lids. His nose was loose and
crocked. His lips were simply too far
removed from the contours of where his mouth should have been to have been
real, to have been actual. Then the
chin, then the chin drooped down and as I watched and as I looked on in horror
the chin kept moving down. Slowly at
first -- was his mouth opening? No, his
lips as well as the rest of his features remained unchanged. Yet the chin continued to fall and there,
very quickly at the end, it fell.
His whole face fell to
the ground where it flopped around until it came to rest folded in on itself.
I screamed and darted
back. I tripped over a pile of
bones. I was stabbed or cut by the sharp
tips of broken rib cages.
I looked at the figure
for I knew then that it was not Tygra.
There was a face under there, yellow green eyes deep and embedded into
the skull. The nose was missing or else
it was flat against the face, reduced to nothing more than the openings of the
nostrils. But the mouth! Wide open, the jaw moved up and down though
it was chewing on the air, up and down though it was mechanical, though it was
not alive at all. The flesh was dried,
painfully dried and wrinkled to the extreme, so wrinkled it seemed that the skin
would come apart like an erase being used up, coming apart into tiny shreds.
Then at last it took
notice of me and in a swift moment turned my way. I got up as quickly as I could and ran to the
opening out of the cavern. I knew I had
to be swift, I knew my life depended on it and I was not intent to suffer the
fate, the grizzly fate that no doubt had befallen Tygra.
Tygra.
I cried out for help
hoping that someone, anyone could have heard me. Outside in the pit I tried to climb up the
steppe walls. The walls were so steep
and the rocks were so slippery from the rain that it was impossible to latch
onto a secure hold. I did manage enough
strength to make it up half way when my left foot stepped on an outcrop of rock
that was apparently more unstable than it looked. It gave way in a great crunch and I fell
backwards fifteen feet.
On the floor of the pit
I felt something on the back of my shoulders.
When I looked up I saw that the thing -- the what ever it was, the
What-Is-It -- was absolutely, completely behind me, next to me, over me.
I screamed. I got up and ran to the other side of the pit
in a mad dash. I do not know by whose
will or by what strength but that time I was able to reach the top edge, the
rim of the pit. My hands felt the orange
sand of the plateau, my lower legs felt the grip of that figure. I kicked back -- I do not know if I hit it
but I broke free none the less.
Safely above I ran to
the camp where the rest of the Thundercats were already up and doing their
morning exercises. I was out of breath
and hysterical.
“It’s Tygra,” I said,
“Something’s happened to Tygra.”
Liono looked at me
blankly.
Panthro stepped forward
from behind the central fire he had been tending. “What about the Eye of Thundera?” He asked.
Liono quickly unhilted
the blade. “Sword of Omens,” he began
and continued but the sword did not respond.
“No, no, Tygra said the
sword wouldn’t work.”
“That’s right, of
course,” Liono slapped himself, “the solar flares.” He looked at everyone -- Bengali had just
come into the group. “I can’t use the
Sword of Omens, I don’t --”
“Where did you last see
him?”
I was dumb, silent.
“Where did something
happen to him?”
I shook my head, I did
not know what else to tell them -- I could not believe it myself -- but I told
them everything that had happened as fast as I could while still retaining some
level of coherence.
The whole group of us,
Liono, Panthro, Bengali and me, we all walked to the pit. My footprints were still there, fresh in the
sand.
We climbed down and I
pointed to where the opening had been but the entrance was gone. Once again I was hysterical. Panthro tried to blast it open but all the
instruments we had told us that the pit walls were rocks several feet thick.
Bengali, who had
remained up above on the sands of the plateau, said he found an extra set of
foot prints that led northwest, to the cabin Tygra and I had been in since we
had arrived at the site.
The footprints we
followed lead to the door and backtracked to the edge of the cliff where the
trail ended and where no trace, no visible trace began.
“That What-Is-It must
have jumped,” someone said, I could not remember who it was exactly, I was too
busy thinking about something else.
The smell of death and
of decay was ripe and repugnantly fresh.
No one else would go
into the cabin, no one else would accompany me so I entered alone. The front door was wide open and I knew that
I had shut it before when I had left at the start of the whole ordeal. Inside the first thing that I did was grab
for that lamp that rested over the surface of the small, round table. I turned it on and the entire scene was lit,
aglow in green.
The bed was not empty.
There was a form, or at
the least there was the suggestion of a form on it. Somehow I remembered it that way from before,
from when I had awoken in the early dawn.
I had seen that very form on the bed next to me but I had dismissed it
because at the time it looked like nothing more than the masses of the blanket,
folded in on itself when Tygra had left in the middle of the night. But when I stood there just then all of a
sudden there had been a shattering of paradigm -- I saw it in a whole
completely new and different way.
I approached slowly and
cautiously. I grabbed the ends of the
blanket that draped on the floor lifeless and lifted it in the air. I began to draw back the sheets, slowly,
slowly then, half way done, I screamed.
The rest of the
Thundercats came running into the cabin to stand in a semicircle behind me.
Tygra was on the bed,
he had been there all along, all along, he had been there since I had
awoken. His body shook and quivered and
was perversely distorted -- the face was missing but all the other features
were identical to his. The body was
structureless and all the way down his sides, from the legs to the skull, there
was long, deep slit from which all the bones had been removed, a gash from
which spare organs were not only visible but seeped through.
“Stop, Cheetara, stop it,
don’t do it, don’t,” Bengali said. He stood before me and I thought he was
about to cry. He hand his hands around
my shoulders.
Liono stood behind
me: “Don’t look at any more this. Get out, let’s all just get out.”
“Give me that blanket,”
Panthro said. In fear and in terror he
pushed Bengali to the side. I looked
into his face, right into his eyes. Were
those tears? Panthro tried to pry the
blanket from my clenched fists.
I knew he meant well, I
knew none of them wanted me to see it -- what ever it was that was on the bed
-- and though while they spoke I could not make out the words, I could not hear
them at all.
In shock I fell to the
ground in a moment of lightheaded stupor and in so doing I pulled the blankets
back all the way, all the way, all the way -- Tygra's severed face fell to my
feet.
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