I remember it as if it were yesterday. In fact, it was yesterday. Or so they tell me. At precisely ten-fifteen in the morning, my Alaskan sled dogs had barely stopped running when one of my assistants flagged me down. Every morning prior, he had greeted me on top of this saucer of ice with my third cup of coffee for the day. But this day was different.
“I left as soon as you radioed,” I said, stepping off my sledge. Arctic snow crunched beneath my thick, suffocating boots. My breath materialized into an icy fog, like the hand of a ghost that clawed at my assistant’s face as I spoke. “Has no one gone in?”
He shook his head, breathless. “No, Professor. We’ve been waiting for you—I’ll take you there!”
I nodded and brushed a dusting of snow off my shoulder as I followed. The base of operations was vibrant with scientists and their hypotheses of what lurked beneath them—ranging from the origins of earthly life to the remnants of the gods who had come from other worlds.
At the time, I only chuckled at their childish fascinations.
My assistant stepped aside, and before me stood the wide mouth to a blue cave. It was a wound the diggers had gouged in the foot of a mountain whiter than death. The chattering went out like a match behind me, and I veered a glance over my shoulder to see the entire camp waiting for my command. They were just as eager as I was to step foot beneath the Arctic floor. Whether they were the rationalists who expected preserved tunnels of evolutionary history or whether they were the abominable-snowman-chasers who dreamed of a forbidden cellar of extraterrestrial secrets, the team stood shoulder to shoulder, ready to dive headfirst into the earth’s coldest of mysteries.
An eldritch moan emitted from the gaping hole. Even under the protection of a subzero suit, my skin crawled as the unwelcoming wind lashed out like a cornered serpent. Somewhere behind us, the sled dogs whined. An uneasiness rustled through the crowd.
I squinted at the mountain. Then straightened my posture and took the first step into the unknown. Indeed, there were fossils inside though few and recognizable. Trilobites were nothing to announce to the world. But as the air grew colder, new and unfamiliar shapes traced themselves upon the cavern walls.
The cave winded in zigzag formation, and some of the bulkier equipment had to be left behind as we descended. Near what we perceived to be the end of the cave was a narrow slit. As the rest of the scientists busied themselves with the previous fossilized findings, my assistant and I slipped through and found ourselves in an unnervingly spherical chamber.
“Look there! Look!” My assistant pointed with a wavering finger. “They’re too smooth to be wrought by the hands of nature. But we’re leagues beneath the time of humanity. Are they . . . do you think . . . can it be . . . ?”
I wasn’t one to finish the thoughts of others. Not when they were the uncensored ramblings of an emotional youth from the university. But . . . “Boxes,” I said, my voice as cold and dead as the cave around us. Indeed, there were four rectangular cubes hewed from a stone that appeared to be more of a metallic nature the closer we crept up for examination. “Caskets,” I added with a shiver. The face of each box bore an image that appeared as fresh as the year I could only guess it had been carved.
It hurt my head to even contemplate, for I feel to do so requires a certain level of madness. It took machines with laser-drilling technology to bore this deep into the ice. Yet against all the evidence, in defiance to every dogma of reason, a form of intelligent life had once stepped foot within this cave that preceded the dawn of man by over two million years.
“A burial chamber,” I said, pausing to check my sanity. My gloved fingers ran over the images. The specimens they depicted were shorter than man, bulbous, and three out of four wore a waterfall of either braided hair or (and I shudder to think) tentacles on their faces, which were stern and as irritable as the ancient—
“God!” my assistant cried. “The legends are true! Everything he said—the Psycho Prophet—every drop of ink spilled in the Vikingicon! Oh, God! The Elder Ones—they’re real! If we awaken them, we’re—they’ll—there’s no escape!”
I stilled my trembling eyes and stood tall, facing my assistant. He quivered before me, weaving a string of unintelligible things. “Leave. This is no place for superstition and blatant irrationalism. Don’t come back down until you’ve cleared your head of this fabled nonsense.”
My assistant’s knees buckled, and beads of fear froze on his face. At last, he turned and crawled through the slit in the wall, releasing a soft whimper. “Oh, God! What have we done? Oh, God!”
Alone in the chamber, I fixed my attention on the first of the four caskets. The face of this buried creature appeared the most dominant. The god of gods. The blackest of nightmares. The more I stared, the more he seemed to stare back. He wasn’t, of course. It was just a trick of the light. The two red lights that somehow reflected perfectly off his two glaring eyes.
Knock!
I gasped.
Knock! Knock!
The lid began to shake and rattle.
Knock! Knock! Knock!
Horror filled my mouth when I realized all four lids were coming off.
A deep moan came from within the first casket. An animalistic snort from the third or fourth.
God . . . whatever is in there—they’re still alive!
The wall pressed against my back as the first of the devils sat up in its grave, a tangled beard unraveling down its face. It opened its mouth, crooked yellow teeth expanding as a gush of rancid air escaped between its lips.
I felt faint as its waking eyes fluttered around the room, not yet aware of my presence.
“Oi, time ter get up, is it?” the thing said with a yawn. “Gods preserve meh!”
Just then, the second beast sat up—a woman. “Ugh, stiff ter me bones, I be . . .”
Then the third. “Aye, could use a pick-me-up, tha’s fer sure!” He raised a bottle of some red hellish fluid and gulped it down by the mouthful.
Then finally, the fourth with a stretch. “Nothin’ like a stitch in time ter recharge the batteries, I say! Did we make it?”
The first took notice of the ceiling and walls that encapsulated the room. “Aye! See? Told yeh we could trust ol’ Borolax. T’was summer when we sa’ down in these time machines, an’ now it’s winter, it be. We’ll have yer little snowball fight yeh wanted, Andreía. Then we’ll git back in time ter Goldleaf fer tha’ elven barbeque . . . d’yeh get the joke, lads? Back in time? Laugh! Haha!”
His joke passed without notice. A silence fell like a spiderweb across the chamber. He followed the gaze of the others until all four sets of eyes landed on me.
“Oi,” the first exclaimed. “Must be one o’ our subjects. Hullo, human!”
I opened my mouth but couldn’t feel my tongue. “S-s-subjects?”
“Aye!” said the third. “We bought this here planet at a pawnshop. From a dragon!”
“I bought it,” said the fourth.
Dragon . . . ?
The second turned her head in disgust. “Aye, ’cept there were little ter do with the planet, an’ Andreía here wanted ter play in the snow, but there weren’t ’ne at the time.”
“So, we bought time machines!” chimed the third.
What the . . . God! This is madness. Madness!
“Human!” said the fourth. “Is it December or January? I hear the snow’s better fer packin’ after the new year, it be!”
My chin bounced beneath my face. It took all my nerve not to run away, screaming. “July,” I said as calmly as hyperventilation permits.
The creature’s bearded face responded with a rather quizzical expression. “July? Nay, can’t be right. Yeh silly humans, yeh. They warned us about yeh, they did. This place was a burnt-crisp jungle when we jumped ferward in time. It’d take prolly millions and millions of years fer summat like that ter turn into a cold, frozen, des’late . . .” The creature trailed off and sent a sudden worried glance at its accomplices. “Er, Cap’n? Still got tha’ goblin watch the colonel bought yeh fer yer birthday?”
The second creature sighed as she looked down at her wrist. Her eyes widened in horror. “Ten forty-five in the morn’,” she responded with little enthusiasm.
“Aye. And?”
“July 12.”
“That all?”
She gulped. “Exac’ly 2.6 million years since we entered the time machines.”
“Blimey!”
At that moment, each of the four creatures—which I can say, now that I’ve observed them for some time, are best described as dwarves—shared a haunted look of solidarity. Then they all turned to the third, who had just finished a second bottle of that red liquid. He leaned forward and reached into his boot, which was made of a shiny silver metal, and retrieved a slip of paper.
“I’ve got the receipt right here, yeh see? It says four o’ ’em Rad-2 time capsules.”
The fourth’s face bunched up like red-hot lava rocks. “Gods dem yeh, Sōphrosýnē! Yeh were supposed ter git time machines—not capsules, yeh potion-guzzlin’ oaf! We can’t go back now. We’re stuck here—forever. We’ll miss the barbeque because of yeh!”
“Now, now! Don’ get yer whiskers in a knot! How was I to know there were a difference? The capsules were on clearance alon’ with this here planet, an’ the dragon gave us ninety days ter return ’em both, so there!”
More was said among the creatures. But I could take no more.
Fossils whizzed by as I fled into the cave on legs of rubber, fighting for breath. The other scientists turned and watched as I barreled through the corridor—right into my assistant.
“Professor? I want to apologize about earlier . . . you were right, it’s all nonsense. The Psycho Prophet . . . the Vikingicon. I should have known better. I’m ready to go back in now. Professor? Are you all right? Professor, what is it?”
I pointed back at the chamber, madness taking me, finger wavering like a leaf in the wind. Between my peals of uncontrollable laughter, I could repeat only one word: “DWARVES!!!”
This story was a writing exercise based on the following prompt: You’re a scientist in the arctic and discover ancient ruins buried in the snow.
