His jaw dropped as he reached the bottom of the steps. The walls were covered with newspaper and magazine articles, every one a story about the mysterious Lake Kaarme monster. A set of shelves heaving under VHS tapes and DVDs stood in one corner. There was a desk and a computer, an armchair and big screen TV, more bookshelves with a wide variety of hardbacks and paperbacks. But what really caught the eye was the construction at the far end, against the wall.
It could only be described as a shrine. Carved from shining, polished wood, it was a dark arch with a deep concave hollow cut into it. Small candles stood on the base of it, either side of a large, leather bound book. The candles were out, but there was light enough to see the other items behind the book. Three teeth, of varying size, but all huge compared to anything Nikla had seen before, and bright white. A kind of bony spine, curved and as long as his arm, that ended in a wickedly sharp point. Next to them a collection of small figures, men made of twisted sticks and twine, each about a foot tall and somehow disturbing to behold. At the back of the altar was a stretched piece of leather… or skin. Darkened and hardened with age, it had strange, curving symbols branded into it, five of them, one below the next. Nikla’s eye tried to look away despite his desire to study the symbols more closely. They were crabbed and pointed, they seemed to shiver against the skin and cast slight shadows of themselves as though they somehow floated just above the surface.
Nikla began to feel sick trying to look at them and tore his gaze away.
The book was large and heavy, the leather covers thick and shiny smooth. The pages inside were rough and weighty, ragged along the edges. The thing reeked of age and seemed to exude a presence, and a desire to be read. It was hand-written in a dense, swirling cursive script. Nikla backed up to the armchair and sat, placed the book on his lap. It took a moment to get his eyes around the cramped lettering, but eventually he began to figure it out. Excitement thrilled through him as he started to read.
In the darkest passages underground, in the reaches of the north, where water flows icily by, a dread Leviathan guards the entrance to the Underworld. But its mind is malleable to he who has the knowledge and the words, and, in this book, those rituals and incantations are explained. Brace yourself, seeker, for knowledge is now yours that bears the weight of great responsibility. Power comes to you, but you must worship that which serves.
Had it been hours? It felt like days, dragging out to years, but Sam Aston refused to give up. Battered and bruised, his stomach a hollowed out pit of pain, he stumbled on through the darkness.
He had cast off his scuba gear the moment he miraculously found a dry passageway after the explosion that knocked him momentarily senseless. Among collapsing debris, rocks rolling through the aftershocks of the giant detonation, everything had gone black.
When he came to, hanging limp and broken in the water, in darkness, the tiny, weak light of his helmet flashlight showed the bubbles of his rapidly diminishing air tumbling upwards. Stunned to still be alive, he weakly kicked up and followed them.
The dark passageway opened out into a much larger space and he saw the strangely carved lintel of the door he and Slater had discovered before. The explosion had created a new access to that enormous cavern. Knowing every other way out was blocked, he decided he might as well learn more about it before he died.
Aston kicked hard for the door and went through into blackness. His torchlight flickered again, threatening to fail completely at any moment. Could this way possibly lead to the underworld? To undiscovered wonders? Would he never find out, blind in the darkness? Drowned? He pushed on, trying to at least discover something, some personal revelation before death.
Then his air ran out. His lungs began to burn, and he was certain he would drown. But silvery reflections shimmered far above. Thinking it was simply the last of his expelled air, caught in a small pocket under some rock, he sobbed as he kicked upwards, desperation to survive just a moment longer driving him on. He surfaced into it and gasped in amazement when it turned out to be a cave.
He crawled out of the water, cast off the empty tank, and desperately explored as his torch finally gave up. The last thing he saw was a tunnel leading away, and leading upwards. He followed it.
After hours, maybe a day, weak and stumbling, he stripped off his wetsuit and pushed on. Several times he reached dead ends, only to turn around and try again. He tried to keep a mental map in his head, terrified of starving like those Nazis. It would be so unjust to survive drowning only to die of hunger.
The pain of his wounds, of his starvation, threatened his consciousness, so he lay where he fell and slept. Twice more he pushed on, only to collapse and sleep. It must have been at least three days since the explosion, he could barely see for hunger, he ached with thirst, and he sat against the stone wall, despair clawing at him through the pitch dark.
But it wasn’t pitch dark.
For the first time since the cave, he perceived a vague outline of his hand in front of his face. On hands and knees he pushed ahead. A band of dim light far in front hooked into him like a fisherman’s line and drew him forward. The light became a rectangular outline, like it shone behind a closed door. Sure he was hallucinating he finally reached it, and pushed.
The door opened into a basement study, the walls covered with newspaper and magazine articles about the Lake Kaarme monster. Shelves bore VHS tapes and DVDs, there was a desk and a computer, an armchair and big screen TV. A shrine to the beast took up one end of the room, candles either side of a large, leather bound book. One photograph in particular stood out, an enlarged print showing a clearly very elderly Lars Pera, the Nazi scientist from Old Mo’s photos. Pera had his arms around a middle-aged man on one side and a young boy on the other. Even with all the years between, the young boy was clearly Alvar Laine, aged maybe eight or nine at most.
Sam Aston stood trembling and managed to laugh. This had to be Alvar Laine’s house! And Aston had to get away. He staggered up the stairs, hoping no one was home. He was rewarded, the house empty, bright afternoon light through the windows painful against his eyes.
He found the kitchen and stuffed himself with bread and fruit, guzzled water. He wore only filthy board shorts and t-shirt, but he didn’t care. As soon as his aching stomach could take no more, he hurried from the house and out into freedom.
He couldn’t believe he had managed to survive. Surely anyone who knew anything would assume he had died. There were clothes on the line in the back yard and he grabbed some, hurriedly dressed. Maybe he should let the world think Sam Aston had indeed died. Perhaps it was time to reconsider all his life choices and take the opportunity for a fresh start.
Shaking his head, rushing with the thrill of survival, he decided that first of all he simply had to get away from Kaarme and out of Finland. Anything else could wait.
Nikla Laine arrived home from school and went back down to study his father’s books. There was so much to learn. On entering the basement, something looked different. One of the bookcases had been shifted away from the wall slightly. On investigating, he discovered that it wasn’t only a bookcase, but a door. And someone had left it ajar. Wide-eyed, heart pounding, he grabbed a flashlight and stepped cautiously into the shadowed passage beyond.