Suddenly, it sharply lifted its head up and glared at me. It began to cough violently, but its chilling gaze was still upon me. It did not blink, it just stared, as if analysing me; my face, my body, everything there is to know about me, its black eyes only two slits carved in its face. Just staring.
I gulped back some phlegm and bit my lip in nervous anticipation. I didn’t know what it could do to me. I was stood here faced with a monstrosity, and was completely vulnerable, but instead of running, I stupidly decided to stay where I was.
Suddenly all three of its mouths began to rapidly talk in unison, in some kind of unknown language, although strangely, it sounded like I had heard it before. A screen appeared above the creatures head, and a series of symbols and what seemed like foreign letters quickly scrolled across. I grabbed my notebook and pulled the pencil from my hair and began to scribble down the writings. After a couple of lines, I noticed that the creature began to talk less quickly, and now drew deep breaths after every other word. I knew there was something wrong, but I couldn’t do anything to help it. It carried on talking slowly, and with each line its eyelids sank a little lower. I almost forced myself to touch it, but instead my hand dropped to my side. Soon afterwards, the talking stopped. I bit my lip and looked up from my notebook. Its eyes were closed, and black liquid oozed from its mouth. The creature slowly began to fade, until there was not even a suggestion that it had been there. Just the globe stood on my desk.
I felt a twinge of guilt, but decided to block it out. I mean, what could I have done? Glancing over the jumbled shapes and symbols I felt ready to give up. I found simple maths difficult, so figuring out codes wouldn’t be my forte. I’d forgotten all about who could figure it out though! I ran towards the window with fists clenched and banged repeatedly. Daniel slowly rose from his work and looked surprised as I fanatically gestured for him to come over.
Daniel always knew what to do with things like this. The story seemed a bit far-fetched, but I’m sure that he could work out what this all meant, he always seemed to find a way – usually while I sat back.
“Wait, start again. I don’t understand. So this “alien” was just hovering over the little globe thing. It started saying all this stuff, and you wrote down the subtitles, but it’s in some kind of coded language. Come on; is this some kind of joke? ”, he remarked, with eyebrows raised.
“Look, it doesn’t matter, I knew you’d be like this, I’ll figure it out,” I scoffed, although I had to struggle to hide my smile. We’d been like this since we were kids, subtly trying to challenge each other. It was like some kind of unwritten rule that you had to step up to the challenge, despite the consequences. I knew that he wouldn’t just give up now that I’d said that. He always had to prove that he was smarter than me.
“Hey, I never said I couldn’t help you, it just sounds a bit...OK forget it. Let’s try and solve it, but we have to hurry, I have to go soon”
I took another look at my notebook, and reality started to flash back. It looked like all a bunch of mumbo jumbo. Daniel looked over the symbols his eyes darting back and forth like a , and mouth open, his tongue pushing forward his bottom lip. Once or twice he pushed his hands through his hair agitated, and I looked on in anticipation.
“I don’t understand it!” he exclaimed frustrated.
“Why’d you think I called you? I sure as hell can’t figure it out. You’ve always been the smart one!”
He took no heed of my comment and carried on brooding over my notebook. He muttered endlessly to himself, sounding out different parts. I watched him for the most part, but got bored and sat on my bed listening to music.
About twenty minutes later, he threw his arms open into the air as he got one of those “eureka” moments. I wrestled with headphones for a bit as the wire entwined me in its choking grasp, but soon was the victor and ran over to him.
“What is it? Did you find something? What is it?”
“It’s English, but like kind of backwards. If you take away all the little accents and things”, he smirked and sat back on his chair quite satisfied.
“You’re right!”
“Of course!” he scoffed, mimicking me smugly.
As we decoded the message, it seemed to make even less sense. It read:
You are the only human that can help us. We are from a place right here on Earth, but no human knows about us except you. It is a place near the North Pole called Xerbindinia, and all of us are dying. I am the fittest one of all our people, so I was sent to ask you to rescue us. We are all dying, and we don’t know why, only you can find out. If you help us, we will forever be indebted to you, and will be your servants and you will never have to worry about anything ever again. By saving us you would be saving yourself.
“What does it mean “the North Pole” loads of people have been to the North Pole, why haven’t they seen these little things eh? Creatures will work for me for the rest of my life – not bad!?” I said, contemplating the thought of practically being a king.
“Maybe it’s just a bluff. Well I don’t know, I’ve never heard of Xerban...Xerbin... never mind! Where’s your little globe, maybe that’s something to do with it?”
“It’s by your bag, I’m not touching that thing, you can get it” I replied sharply, shuddering at the thought of the deceased creature.
The globe was just there tormenting me. Daniel peered at it. He poked his finger through the globe where the missing piece was, suddenly we were both hurtling through time, heads spinning, not knowing where we were going, screaming, praying for it to stop, all around us just a blur and the only things we were sure about were each other. We were crashing down into a dark abyss that wanted to swallow us whole, but we could do nothing about it, the only reassurance we had was ourselves and so we clutched at each other with all our might, as we sank further down into the darkness. My throat was ablaze from all the screaming, but Daniel was quiet now, even peaceful, as if he knew what fate awaited him. Then almost as sudden as it started, the falling stopped.
In a second, we were outside and surrounded by what seemed like millions of the small creatures! All eyes were upon us, and the silence was suffocating. Black eyes could be seen from every corner. They all lay on the floor, barely moving, contrasting alarmingly with the snow. They were all so small! Taking one step from where I stood could prove fatal for about three of them. I looked around and saw pools of black ooze, but the area surrounding it would be empty. These millions looked upon us with searching desperate eyes.
“What should we do?” I hissed out of the side of my mouth
“We should try and make contact,” he whispered back, glancing around uneasily.
“Yeah, because I speak backwards English like it’s my mother tongue!”
His mouth turned down at the corners and he allowed a quick smear across his front teeth. Then he crouched down and used his index finger to scratch out writings in the snow. He poised his mouth as if he wanted to say something but no sound came out. He tried again with the same result.
“Move over!” I said frustrated, and nudged him to one side. I wrote out what I planned to say, then stood up and shouted:
“I evah detpecca ruoy ksat dna dluow ekil ot ksa tahw I evah ot od!”
All of the creatures slowly turned away from me, and now looked up towards the mountains. I shot a glance at Daniel, but he was staring up at the mountains along with the creatures. I shielded my eyes with my hands and tilted my head to one side, as I looked up.
Just then a thunderous voice boomed the words “Y-y-ouu mu-st clim-bah thees mo-un-tayne and re-ach th-th- the fi-rst cave op-en-ing” The echo shook the ground, and the creatures bounced up and down. They turned back round to us, staring once again.
“So are we going to climb that thing? Look at it! We could DIE from just the cold,” I said looking down at my tingling fingers.
“But look how many of these things there are! We have a chance to save them. It’s not that high anyway, but I knew you’d be like this...”
I glared at him through narrowed eyes and hissed “Are you trying to insinuate something?”
“Look, I’m going. If you aren’t scared you’ll come too,” he said as he turned on his heel and began walking through the parting that the creatures had made for us. I hesitated for a few moments and then sheepishly trailed behind him cursing myself as I did.
For the beginning part of the journey we made awkward small talk, which fizzled out from time to time. I pushed to the very back of my mind the question I most wanted to ask him. It began to gnaw at me, more and more until I just burst out, “You’re a really cool person you know. So why do you have something against looking good, and being around popular people? Why do you have to be so...” and my voice trailed off. He kept quiet for a while.
After a couple of minutes, Daniel looked over at me with cold eyes.
“I once read this book on psychology and it said you try hard to avoid the things that have hurt you in the past. I completely blocked it out and went the opposite way. My mum was the coolest person in the world...” he stopped abruptly when I raised my eyebrows. “Forget it”, he mumbled and began walking at double the speed.
“No don’t!”I said, as I practically ran to catch up to him. “I’m sorry”
He looked half surprised, and continued with his story. “I remember the day she left. She only had her backpack, and I thought she was going to the gym. I said bye to her, and she said I love you.” His voice began to crack a little. “It grew late, and mum wasn’t back. My dad told me to go to bed, and that’s when I saw a little piece of paper on top of my pillow. It said “I will always love you, but this life is suffocating me. I can’t stay here. I’m dying inside, and I wouldn’t want you to see me like that. When I’m ready I’ll come back, that is if you want me back”. Does she expect me just to wait for her? When I was younger I would get excited when any sort of celebration came around, and then be bitterly disappointed. I’ve given up on that now. She sends me letters all the time claiming that she will “always be near to me at heart”, but I tear them up. She was as cool as you could get, and she deeply hurt me. Why would I ever want to be like that?”
He stared me down, his eyes overpowering my own. I looked towards the ground as guilt clawed at my insides. We walked quietly for a while, until we reached the foot of the mountain. As we climbed, we made each other aware of loose rocks that we could fall on. Climbing was fairly easy, because there were large areas of flat rock, but it was still possible to lose your footing, so I didn’t get too comfortable. The higher we climbed, the more difficult it was. With sore feet, and slowly numbing fingers, my motivation for saving the creatures was dithering. The cave was directly above us, but who knew how long it would take to get there? We stopped from time to time to draw breath, but as we were getting higher these became more frequent. We scrambled upwards once again, as the sun began to dip in the purple sky.
“It’s getting dark. How long do you think we’ll be?”
“Another hour and a half or so maybe? I think we shouldn’t stop to rest anymore. Let’s just finish it in one big go. We’ll be okay for light”
He looked over at me and tried to read my face. I remained expressionless, even though worried thoughts were racing through my head.
As we climbed to dizzying heights, rocks began to give way beneath my feet and tumbled into the dark land below. It was becoming increasingly difficult to see where to place my hands as the sun said goodbye. We pressed on through raw and bleeding hands and starving bellies. After forever had come and gone I asked Daniel how long there was to go.
“You’ll never guess how close we are!” he grinned and did an excited double smear across his teeth. The look on my face explained to him that I was not in the mood. “Just over this ledge”
I clambered over the ledge as fast as lightening then collapsed on to my back in relief. Daniel followed soon after and remarked “Anybody would think you were tired Callum”. I scrambled up and dusted myself off. We walked inside the gloomy mouth of the cave. There was the sound of water dripping in the distance. Panic seemed to creep into my head, and I walked more slowly. We walked deeper and deeper into the black cave, until we came across something very strange. A gigantic elderly version of the Xerbindian creatures sat propped up against a wall in the cave, with its eyes downturned. Daniel was already making his way towards it. He stumbled over a loose rock, and the creature looked towards us and gave a tired half-smile. If a creature with three mouths can smile that is.
Maybe this was the creature that had instructed us to climb the mountain. Daniel bent down and picked up the small rock, and stood close to a cave wall and began scratching at it.
About two minutes later, he turned facing the creature and said,
“Woh od ew evas eht serutaerc?”
“S-speak to me een Eeeenglish if t-that ees eas-ayer” he replied. I noticed that he struggled with longer words, because had to turn them back to front in his head. It took him a long time to say anything, and Daniel soon became agitated.
In time we learned that there had been epidemic between all the Zurlik’s (the name for the creatures) about 200 years ago, which was exactly like this one. The old Zurlik and his wife had survived it, by evacuating into the cave and by eating the cure. Many years later the Zurlik’s wife (and all his children by then) had thought it safe to go back to Xerbindinia, but he forbade them to leave, believing that it was still unsafe. They ran away in the night. He believes that the “black ooze has taken them”, and he has seen the rest of his people dying out. None were fit enough to climb the mountain, especially as they are young (they grow bigger with age) and deliver the cure to the rest. At this point he turned to us and smiled again.
“What and where is the cure?” Daniel asked looking in all corners of the cave. The old Zurlik hesitated for a moment. He then told us that it was just one big jump away. We couldn’t climb down, as there were no footholds, and both of us needed to go in order to bring enough for all the creatures. Once we had jumped, we couldn’t go back for anymore as the Zurlik’s would soon die out. Once we had jumped down onto the ledge that was shaped like a crescent, we must look for a purple plant with a yellow stem. We learnt that we had to gather as much as we could carry, because we couldn’t come back.
“Why don’t you come with us?”I asked, leaving Daniel amusedly surprised. It seemed mean just to leave him here. It let out a horrible gurgling noise, which I think was supposed to be laughter.
“I am too o-ld, eet ees m-ya time soon” he replied sadly. I felt a twinge of guilt, but I knew it would be best just to leave him. Me and Daniel looked at each other and nodded. We said our goodbyes and readied ourselves for leaving the cave. As we moved towards the mouth of the cave two words caught my ears, “thank you”.
The light punched me in the face, as I writhed trying to block it out with my hands. As I became accustomed to it, I noticed that Daniel was no longer by my side. He was leaning over sideways by the edge of the rock we were standing on gazing down. I cautiously leaned over with him, fearful of hurtling over the edge. What I saw hit me with so much force I almost did. The crescent-shaped ledge seemed a million miles away. Just looking down made me feel dizzy. It was too far off. I could kill myself jumping. As much as I wanted to save the Zurlik’s, this was just too much.
“Daniel, where’s the globe? I’m going home”
“We can’t just give up after all that, I know it’s a long drop, but we can make it! Come on! They’re all going to die if we don’t!”
“Don’t you think I know that? I’m sorry, but I can’t. You go. At least you can save some” I said. My eyes could have burnt through the rock I was standing on.
“You heard what it said; both of us need to go. What am I supposed to do? Go down and say; sorry, only some of you can survive?!”
“Listen. We CAN’T save them.” As soon as I said it I felt a change sweep across me. It hurt. My head started to rush and suddenly I felt like I was going to pass out. Walking dizzily sideways to Daniel, I touched his shoulder and he flinched away from me. He had just so blankly shunned me. I staggered backwards, just...weak. My vision blurred and my legs buckled under me. I felt an uncanny feeling, and I knew that something was wrong, something about me felt different and it hurt. Pain had paralysed my whole body and it felt as if something around me was changing, I had no idea what was going on. It was terrible I couldn’t smell, or touch, or see or even breathe! Panting heavily, I tried to reach Daniel again, if he saw how much pain I was in he couldn’t just leave me, but me it seemed as if I would never reach him, every step I took, took longer than the last. Boulders towered over me like a tall vertical cloud, every other step I took made me fall down and the giant rocks tore at my skin, so I just began to scream Daniel’s name like never before - but wait! The voice that I heard was not mine, it sounded like something I had once heard before, it didn’t make sense! A thunderous thudding came from behind me and I quickly turned around, and right before was the toe of a big shoe, I lifted my head to the heavens and made out the figures head – it was Daniel! He could help me now, he always found a way out, but now he just looked down on me shaking his head in pity. Not believing that he could have seen me I manically waved my hands in front of me, but these hands –oh no –these were not hands at all, but three-fingered claws! I screamed in horror, what was I turning into? I rubbed my hands against my body, and thick blue goo came off onto each of my claws and dripped slowly into the ground - I was one of them! I curled into a tight ball on the ground clutching my knees and squeezed my eyes tight to stop the tears from spilling over.
Over me I heard a sigh, and after came this “I knew this would happen! I worked it out along the way. I’m sorry I should have told you, but I was trying to stop myself from believing it. You didn’t save the Zurlik’s, you didn’t even try - they had nothing to do with you, so you didn’t care. You were so selfish that you couldn’t even see that all along, you were going to become one of them. Saving them was saving yourself!”
I felt life leaving me, all the breath was being squeezed out of my body. I think I vomited and put my claw to clean up but it was black ooze. Life was leaving my body, my eyes were closing...
I woke up to see Scherezade standing over me.
“You didn’t think I would have just given you a little globe did you?” she said cheekily. “Come on, was that not one of the best adventures ever?!” she said grinning, and showed her utter satisfaction by smearing her tongue across the top row of her teeth.
Rachel Cutenar 11HYB
