The incessant hum and buzz of young faces, each exuding emotions of joy, upon hearing a bit of good news from a friend, curiosity from conversations which delved into theoretical psychology, distant gazes from those who relaxed with earphones and their favorite music playing out of their Walkmans, flirtatious glances between couples and the general, deafening chatter of meaningless and superficial small talk, it all began to slowly die down and then totally stopped, plunging the vast lecture room into a dead silence.
A man walked up in front, standing beside the lectern. His gray, receding hair had cleared away on his forehead, like a big fire line in a forest, revealing wrinkly skin which was marked like a topographical map by numerous brow marks, evidence of frustrations long past. Somehow his face evaded the degradation of old age, his african features on full display to the world, his eyes and brows just as expressive as they had been ten, twenty years ago, even if they had seen many things since then. Although now, he often sat them behind a pair of bakelite rimmed reading glasses. He certainly wasn’t tall at around 5’6 but well dressed, with a dress shirt beneath a beige vest complemented by a pair of neatly ironed white pants and shiny leather shoes.
In his calm and usual, measured voice, he spoke into a small microphone which was mounted to the lectern, occasionally glancing at the papers, filled with minute and detailed, albeit disorganized scribbles which he used to structure his lectures.
“Well, the last time we saw each other, we had just wrapped up World War Two with the Soviet invasion of Manchuria, and the detonations of the Fat Man and Little Boy, as well as the beginning of the trials at Nuremberg.” the professor glanced up at the students, his gaze like a laser, shooting out from under his brows and over his glasses. He continued…
“It appears that we have to start on what is essentially the world war which continues on even today, the beginning of the Cold War. As you may have known already if you had done the assignments asked of you…” he said looking up again, this time at a specific young man sitting in the semi dark corner of the lecture hall, who nervously swallowed. “You would have known that although the Cold War didn’t truly begin in earnest until the blockade of occupied Berlin by Soviet forces and the standoff between East and West which followed, the fierce rivalry between them had existed ever since the Bolsheviks took power and the United States had sent troops and weapons to support the White Russians during the Russian Civil War.”
“This rivalry, flared up, in hidden aspects during wartime as the ideological enemies were forced to become allies, however beginning in 1944, following D-Day, and through the end of the war in Europe, the Allied high command became very interested in capturing as many German wunderwaffe or wonder weapons as possible in order to gain an upper hand over the USSR after the war. At all costs…”
An hour passed and the lecture was over. As the students formed a human example of an artery blockage while trying to leave the musty confinement of the lecture hall, the professor prepared to leave as well, collecting his notes but stopped as he saw one student break from the stampede, and hurry over to him.
It was a 20 year old young man of a strange unidentified mix of southern European features and a nordic accent. His name was also quiet strangely all-american considering his appearance, Justin.
“Professor Hastings, I’d like to ask you a question.” he exclaimed, trying to get the professor’s attention.
“Go ahead Justin, I’m listening.” Professor Hastings said with a slight smile, Justin was one of his best students, despite having a reputation as a little “out there” on campus and in general.
“From where do you think U Boat 977 came from, because I’m pretty sure it couldn’t have made its way all the way from Germany.” The words came out of Justin’s mouth. Any ordinary history professor would have waived such a question, or really anything about U-977, a German U Boat which appeared off the shore of Argentina under strange circumstances in August of 1945, off as weightless nonsense. But not Hastings, he was no ordinary professor, in fact he was originally teaching classes on ancient languages, before he was qualified to teach history.
“Well we may never know where 977 sailed from,” Hastings lied “But I think it’s certain enough they were running, running from something.”
“On the run from whom, the Allies or the Soviets? Why didn’t they just surrender to the Allies like so many other Germans had done?” Justin inquired further. Hastings knew the answer, the correct one that is, but he couldn’t say it, and even if he could, he wouldn’t know how to phrase it.
—————————————————————————————–
“Oh God, I think I’m going to be sick!” Hastings exclaimed, leaning out, pressing his hand against the thick metal walls, painted in bland battleship grey in thick coats. Beads of sweat were rolling down his face, forcing him to wipe his forehead with his sleeve every few minutes.
Thud, Thud Thud, the hull of SS-408, also known as the USS Sennet crashed repeatedly against the floating ice sheets, breaking them up. With each floating chunk of ice weighing somewhere around a ton, meeting 4,000 kilowatts of power head on. Everytime a sheet of ice would crack, Hastings felt a little ball of anxiety form up in his throat, as his fears, not totally unjustified, swelled like the frigid, unforgiving arctic waters outside the submarine’s hull.
He gripped a metal pipe which was the vessel for some thing or another, the chilly cold metal and sharp flecks of uneven paint biting into his hand, contrasted by warmth. He looked over, a hand, elegant, soft and decorated with manicure wrapped around his.
“Don’t worry, we’ll be there soon,” reassured his wife, Shelly from the bunk below, gripping his hand even tighter. “Are you sure you have everything ready?”
“Seems ready to me.” Hastings confirmed looking at the several heavy bags which they had spent the entirety of the morning preparing and making several final additions. “Besides, even if the bags are ready, I’m ready to get off this damned sub and that’s all that matters.”
They lay like this for several more minutes, in silence, simply appreciating each other’s presence, it wasn’t often that they would get to spend much time together, as she was an archeologist, always forced off into foriegn countries for excavations and exhibitions. He was a grounded dead languages expert. Ironically it had been their similarity in professions which had initiated their first meeting and conversation at the 1939 World’s Fair in New York, just before the war.
This was however, an exception to this lonely reality, they were contacted by a shady individual in early 1946 who claimed to represent the US Department of Defense and had a job opportunity for both of them. After a long period of uncertainty, they agreed to take the risk of meeting this person in Washington D.C. The person proposed that they partake as civilian scientist personnel in a certain “military funded research expedition” which was referred to as Operation Highjump. They weren’t given any specific details but only to be ready to leave when given word. The promised pay was extremely high and with the promise of finally spending more than a month together with his wife sealed the deal, at least for Hastings.
In early August they received a knock on the door, being met with three stone-faced men in matching black suits, unceremoniously seated in a nondescript mini-bus, with windows mirrored from the inside they were deposited in some port, directly in front of SS-408 which was journeying with a fleet of other ships commanded by Rear Admiral Byrd as operation Highjump, and had been fated to be their home up until today, September 20th, 1946.
As the submarine crashed into another floating hunk of ice and violently shook, they heard a knock on the heavy, weight supporting door to their cabin. The door opened, and a man in a heavy coat, hat under a helmet and a M1 carbine slung over his shoulder, an onboard security officer, entered.
“Are you ready?” the officer asked gruffly, exhaling clouds of steam with each breath.
“Suppose so.” Shelly simply said.
“Well then haul up on deck.” the officer said rudely and unceremoniously. He stepped aside as Hastings and Shelly made their way through the cramped corridors lugging their packed bags. Meanwhile the submarine had slowed and stopped completely. They ascended up a ladder, through the conning tower, with crew members helping them with the bags.
As they cleared the rim of the hatch, George Hastings took a deep breath, filling his lungs with the cold air, as freezing as it was, to him it was much more preferable to the musty cramped atmosphere of the sub.
“Hey!” he heard a sharp bark from the exposed bow. It was the captain, accompanied by the first mate, bundled up in a similar fashion to the security officer, with the carbine being replaced with a large pair of binoculars. A dinghy was tied next to the side of the submarine, evidently collapsible as there was no way it had been mounted on the deck before. It was already filled with food and basic survival supplies. The security officer climbed out behind them, with another scientist, Jared Kollinger, a geologist.
“Deception Island. You will have to investigate that right there, search every inch of it for anything valuable or interesting and report every little bit of it, do I make myself clear?” the captain spouted off in the usual commanding tone that he used for his subordinates, while extending his right hand across the waves to the misty, jagged snowy peaks of an island not too far away.
“Ye-” Jared began but the first mate cut him off.
“You are also supplied with basic radio communication which you will both make your reports and request for additional supplies which will arrive a week after such a request is made, I hope that is understood.”
After the minor details were ironed out, Hastings, Shelly, Jared and the security officer were seated in the dinghy and they began to row away towards those hateful peaks crowned in mist, as they watched the captain and mate climb below decks and SS-408 slipped beneath the waves, leaving no trace that it ever was there.
Rowing for half an hour, avoiding collisions with the ice, the rough scraping sounds on the bottom of the boat alerted them that they had reached shore.
The island was completely barren, one giant stony crag holding its mountainous head high amid the vast white ice of the indomitable arctic. A half ring of mountains surrounded a sunken caldera which formed a protected bay which housed the bleached bones of huge sea creatures, whales, half buried beneath the ash colored gravel of the wind and wave swept beaches. In the 1820s this was a prime hub of the arctic whaling industry, but aside from that Hastings could not fathom why they were dropped off here, or at least why he, his wife and Jared were even required to be on this god forsaken rock.
“Follow me.” the security officer coldly stated. Having no other choice the scientists did as they were told. Trekking through the rock and snowy slag they crested a hill and on the view which opened to them revealed a brilliant white canvas studded with the little black and white silhouettes of penguins who gathered and frolicked freely.
Something else caught Hastings’s eye, a large mound of snow had almost completely covered something red, like a wall, next to which stood large drums, apparently for storage of some sorts, most were rusted beyond repair. It appears that there were signs of human habitation. Since there was nowhere else to really go, they set off to investigate, hauling their heavy loaded supplies behind them on makeshift sleds.
It was indeed a wall, the snow was brushed aside to reveal what was left of a whaling station, one building out of several, red wooden walls and simple roof, the windows were frosted over and small, casting no light on the mystery of what was contained inside. They searched and dug out a passage to the door. It was either locked or frozen shut, maybe both. The doorknob just wouldn’t turn, no matter how much one would jangle it. One direct stroke from the stock of the officer’s M1 carbine broke the lock however and at the behest of a powerful gust of wind, the door creaked open, swinging inward.
The first thing that Hastings felt, not noticed, for it was impossible not to notice it, was the smell. They didn’t see it at first but as they stood there blinking in the dusty cold interior of the room, adjusting to the semi darkness the officer removed a standard L shaped flashlight from his pack and shone it around.
They were in a standard wood room, with a blue carpet on the floor, signs of the fact that this was a lived-in space were the bookshelves with some unknown, faded books on them. A generic painting of an unspecific landscape of a village, forest and mountains hung on the wall. But that’s not what Shelly gasp in shock, and for Jared to step back in horror, leaving the officer and Hastings to just stand there in disbelief.
There were bodies on the floor, human skeletons with just a bit of mummified flesh stretched thinly over the yawning bone, partially concealed by the tattered remains of a uniform. And bullet holes, bullet holes in the walls in shaky lines, automatic fire. One of the bodies leaned up against the wall, the shull was drooping to one side, dark red stains of long dried blood formed waterfalls, cascading from a little hole in the chest all the way to the floor. In its skeletonized hand still firmly grasped was the handle of a submachine gun with a short skinny barrel and a tall magazine.
“What the hell happened here?” the officer murmured to himself, slowly, with measured steps, he crossed the room to the corpse holding the submachine gun and pried it away from it’s dead hands, he spun it around looking for identification markings, and settled on the left side of the receiver, where he spied a little engraved eagle with the letters “bnz”.
The officer grabbed the skeleton next to him by the sleeve of the uniform and held it up close. The arm of the skeleton seemed to snap and detach but they could all plainly see in the light cast by the flashlight, a swastika with its outer arms bent in a circular fashion, itself in a circle, under which was written Thule-Gesellschaft.
“Germans…” growled the officer.
“What the hell, what do you know,? Did they tell you about this? What on God’s Earth are we doing here amidst corpses?” Hastings exclaimed in a stressed and bewildered tone.
“Classified, all I know is that there is a high value item that the government wants, that’s the objective, I wasn’t told we’d have company.” He turned and spat at the dead german. “At least they’re dead, that’s one good thing.” Shelly turned away, almost puking but regained composure.
“Spread out, look for anything of use or any hint why Uncle Sam decided to send you squints here instead of boots. I’ll clean out the bodies and set up the radio to communicate with command, let’s go.” the officer ordered. Disregarding the thinly veiled insult, they did.
A doorway lay to the right and another to the leftmost wall of the room. Hastings and Shelly took to the right, and Jared went to the left. Hastings and Shelly found themselves in another room, approximately ten by ten feet. A large bookcase was to the right side of the room, a window, just opposite the door and a desk with a chair on the left. Another corpse slumped over the desk, the dead man had a thick winter coat draped over the bony shoulders which still wore the pristine black uniform which Hastings recognized as a sign of an SS officer. Shelly turned away in disgust, busying herself with the books.
Hastings approached the corpse, a matching black officer’s cap lay on the table opposite the corpse, which had fallen over onto what looked to be a book. A Luger pistol lay in the lifeless hand of the officer, and a small but dark bullet hole in the skull evidenced that the cause of death was most likely suicide. Hastings took the pistol and quickly stuffed it inside his own winter coat, afterall, he wasn’t about to completely trust his life to some irreverent security officer. He fished around and found some extra bullets lying loosely in the pocket of the dead SS officer and concealed them next to the pistol.
Carefully, he pulled the book on which the corpse was laying on out from under him and blew off the layer of dust which had settled on it. It was bound by a nondescript cover of simple black leather. The blood from the officer’s head had evidently poured down and pooled on the table as many of the book’s pages were caked in blood.
“Found anything interesting?” he inquired his wife who had flipped through several yellow-paged tomes by now.
“Surprisingly yes.” She replied in a tone indicating both intense concentration and confusion. “These Nazis were surprisingly invested into archeology from what I can tell, I don’t know much German but these seem to talk about architectural similarities between ancient civilizations.”
“So right up your alley?” he asked
“I suppose so.”she mumbled back
He turned back to the book that he had found, his knowledge of German was far from fluent, he specialized in dead languages after all, but he could read and understand a good amount. He opened the book, it’s pages, where it could be read in between blotches of dark red, were filled with copious lines of neat penmanship, probably the officer’s personal journal. Roughly translated it read something like this:
3rd of February, 1944
The British have landed, forcing us back into the mountains. We will stay hidden in our second camp and stand guard. Thankfully they have not found (blood spatter). I, as SS-Unterführer, commander of this Ahnenerbe unit will (unintelligible) must be done.
6th of July, 1944
Supplies are running low, we have been resupplied by submarine- the rest Hastings couldn’t read. He flipped forward a few pages.
(unintelligible) 1945
The British are leaving, they have not found us or it, we held our ground. We are leaving the second camp on Mount Pond. (blood spatter) some left to guard it. We are retaking residency in the first camp.
(large blood streak)
It won’t let us leave, none us can leave. U-977 has evacuated the injured, can’t let that happen again. The war is almost over. Nobody leaves the island, (blood) dangerous. By my orders I anybody caught attempting to leave will be shot. I can’t carry on much longer, giving command to (unintelligible). It’s in our minds, it’s in my mind! This is the end for me…
Shaken, he closed the book. So this was the “high value item” something in the mountains. He looked outside the musty window, the winds howled and swept up the snow in miniature tornadoes, all under the watchful, looming shadow of the mountains. Something was out there, silent, waiting, brooding.
His thoughts were broken only by the heavy breathing of the security officer. As he sauntered in through the door.
“Another corpse, I’ll have to drag it outside with the others.” he sighed
“You might want to see this.” Hastings said, handing the officer the journal. The officer flipped absentmindedly through the bloody pages before finally proclaiming:
“I don’t know any German.” he said bluntly “What does it say?”
“It states that they were here to protect something, something in the mountains.” Hastings explained
“Well, well, that sounds like something Uncle Sam would like, what mountain? Does it say specifically?” pushed the officer
“Mount Pond, I think.” Hastings squinted recalling. The security officer shuffled off into the other room in his winter gear and came back with a map, unrolling it, he searched with his gloved finger, scanning the map.
“Here.” he pointed at the highest peak on the island. “Damn figured it’d be so. We set off there tomorrow.”
“Tomorrow?” Shelly murmured unsure
“I want to get the job done as quickly as possible, and then get the hell out of here, as fast as possible, no more, no less. Do you understand? I don’t want to deal with your kind.” the security officer angrily exclaimed. “Do you think I get paid to be an undertaker for Nazis?”He prodded the dead SS officer with the muzzle of his looted submachine gun, pretending to shoot. Grabbing the mummified corpse by the collar of it’s uniform he heaved and unceremoniously dragged it away.
No sooner had the security officer pulled the dead German outside, did Jared emerge from the semi darkness of the leftmost room. He didn’t say a word but his face seemed to say everything for him before he even opened his mouth.
“This might be a problem.” he murmured. They crowded into the small space in which he was, nearly tripping over themselves as they did so.
“What now?” asked the security officer gruffly, sounding more like an angry babysitter than somebody with a real stake in the goings on.
“The crates.” Jared responded motioning over to a number of large wooden crates stacked up against the wall, prying over one of the lids revealing their contents, tidy, neat rows of dynamite stacked one on top of the other.
“Well damn.” the security officer murmured.
They stayed the night at the derelict base, sent a basic message to command that they were doing well, and the next morning, as the sun climbed its way up from the abyss of the night, its unfeeling rays of heat which were illusions this close to the arctic wastes, greeted four dots pulling a sled, traveling step by step, knee deep in snow but moving forward nonetheless. By late noon they had miraculously reached the foothills of Mount Pond.
“Any idea where this item might be?” grumbled the security officer whose name was discovered to be Frank.
“Up the mountain I suppose.” Hastings made a general statement
“Well, don’t you suppose that we should have a more precise point to navigate towards?” Frank replied with another question.
“We’ll have to summit it, at least two people and look for anything from the high ground.” Hastings proposed
“Well thanks Sherlock. The question is, who will do it.”
“I volunteer.” Jared breathed out.
“Good, let’s go, can’t be the only one doing all the work here.” Frank grumbled again and they began their ascent.
Half an hour passed when a heart wrenching scream came from above which seemed to tear through the air. Hastings and Shelly scrambled up the cliffside, several times Hastings’s foot had nearly slipped and flown off the snowy rock. As they climbed further up the screaming stopped, Hastings assumed the worst. His feet continuously plunged through the snow, sinking up to his knees. One more step, one more. He heard a yell, behind him. Shelly was hanging on by just one arm, trying to stop herself from helplessly sliding down the slope of jagged rocks, with gravity pulling her down, threatening to shred her body on the ice and shale.
“HOLD ON!” Hastings screamed slipping down himself, the wet formless mush of snow pouring down, making his boots slip and his hands lose grip. He grasped her other hand, held on tight and pulled. He pulled with all his might.
Once more Shelly scrambled up the soles of her boots seemed to slide like she was trying to walk on water. She hung, suspended from a small ledge, sixty meters above the ground, like a spider on a thin line, hanging off a thin tree branch billowing in the hateful wind.
“Grab on!” Hastings yelled, extending his arm out. Shelly swung and desperately reached out, breathing a sigh of relief as she felt the leather glove of her husband grasping her’s. Hastings heaved, his legs and feet trying to desperately find a catch on the rock, finally landing on an uneven indentation which gave him traction. He strained every muscle in his body, biceps, triceps, lower back, deltoids, with his arms threatening to pop out of their sockets but he pulled her up, inch by inch, up. They passionately embraced, two figures, all alone, two minute specks of warmth outlined against the cold unfeeling tempest of the elements.
They were still alive, yes, but where were Jared and Frank? What happened to them, the thing, the thing in the mountains, what was it, had they found it and were they alive? These thoughts whirled around in Hasting’s mind, mirrored by the whistling wind felt on his skin, which seemed to animate the mountain, which heartily cackled at them and their efforts, unwilling to give up neither it’s secrets nor it’s dead.
“We have to keep climbing, we have to find them!” Hastings urged on
“Are you crazy? We have to go back to the camp and contact one of the ships!” rejected Shelly
“They won’t…” Hastings panted “They won’t send our way anything until we’re out of supplies or we found something, we’ll end up just like the Germans before us. Besides Jared and Frank, they could be suffering, and dying or injured, we must help them!” Hastings tried to explain
“Help a man like Frank? You know what type of man he is!” Shelly interjected
“Indeed, he is a man, and he shall be tried before the Lord in time, it is not for me to determine should he live or should he die. Jared is with him, and he is innocent of the things Frank is guilty of, and I will not simply abandon them both to their fates, we have to find them, and whatever else is here.” Hastings said with finality. After a few more moments of uncertainty they began their climb forwards again.
Breathing they came upon a level spot near the peak which had been completely snowed under by a snowdrift four feet tall. It was up to their chests but at least it was level ground. Shelly slipped on another patch of wet snow and sat down. She tried to get up, pushing her hand on the snow, not thinking and instinctively expecting it to be solid, her hand sank maybe one foot deep before hitting something solid, something hard, something frozen, another human hand.
They dug revealing this little patch of frozen ground to be full of more corpses, at least five, also Nazis, they were in various poses, sprawled on the floor. Two were clutching the same submachine guns as the ones at the base, MP 40s. But two corpses were kneeling, their hands outstretched, frozen in place, kneeling before a stone which seemed to be composed of a different material than the mountainside surrounding it, pitch black, dark as the night. In it were carved lines of strange symbols which Hastings recognized as resembling traditional Mediteraenean Greco-Roman characters. It’s shadow loomed, obscuring the perfectly preserved, frost covered, icicle rich faces of the dead, kneeling Nazis before it.
“What in the world?” Hastings murmured in amazement
“ I guess that this is what we were looking for.” Shelly simply hypothesized
As they prepared to camp for the night, they heard the brushing of the snow and clambering out of the drift cam Jared and Frank, Frank looking considerably worse for wear than before.
“What happened?’ Shelly asked concerned
“Big man here took a tumble down a small cave.” Jared explained gesturing at Frank, “Had to spend hours trying to get him out. More importantly, what is this?” He pointed at the scene which Hasting’s and Shelly’s hasty efforts had partially uncovered.
“We would like to know ourselves.” Shelly said, puzzled.
“Seems damn obvious to me, seems like this is what we came here for, and because the less time I spend with all you four eyed freaks the better, let’s set up and get this over with.” angrily seethed Frank who was trying to nurse his injured pride.
They pitched small yet thick walled tents in the snow, with plans to ferry the rest of the supplies from the sled one by one in the morning, in the morning when once again the light of the sun will shine light on the mystery of the black rock. And indeed, soon after the breaking of the dawn their work began. The snow was cleared away, and Frank heaved supplies up the mountainside while Jared poured over small samples of the rock, Shelly searched for anything else surrounding the monolith which might clue at its origin and Hastings faced the challenge of what was written on it.
This continued for days and days turned to weeks, progress was made. As the scientists made progress chipping away at the mystery and hidden message concealed by the characters, so did the wind swept island induced isolation chip away at their sanity. This was a place of death, nothing grew here, no plants, no mushrooms, only the resilient lichen, and surrounded by frozen corpses this heavy crushing feeling never seemed to stop, never ceasing, even in their dreams. Disturbingly Hastings awoke in the night with a shudder, not because of the cold but because in his dreams, no matter what he dreamed of, the most heavenly dream or the most horrifying nightmare, the black monolith was always there, waiting, never flinching, having no eyes but always watching.
“Can you tell me what the shit says?” Frank screamed at Hastings
“No, I still don’t know.” Hastings calmly stated, raising his eyes to meet Frank’s glare with his very own. “And get that damn barrel out of here, what do you think you’re gonna do, shoot me?” he continued now angrily placing his hand on the barrel of Frank’s M1 carbine and making a show of moving it aside. “What are you gonna do, commit treason?”
Angry, Frank was the first to pull away from the engagement and preferred to sulk off to gaze at the blue sea far below studded in the white poca dots of drifting ice sheets.
“That’s right you racist scum.” Hastings whispered to himself.
He returned and sat down next to the rock, trying to translate it desperately. The letters he seemed to understand, as if they were alive, they seemed to sing to him and he swayed in tandem with their rhythm and melody yet he remained untouched and unmoved by the lyrics which he did not understand.
He had managed to work out a framework, something in the deep, which- awakens in the flow, connect or destruction? It sounded like gibberish because that’s what it was, but that gibberish obviously meant something.
The composition of the rock was deemed by Jared to be most likely a shard of a meteorite which had crashed into the caldera, sending a shard of it flying and landing on the mountain. Shelly had uncovered not much else, except a slogan which had been crudely etched into the mountainside by the Nazis, Überreste von Thule which deepened the mystery surrounding this place, throwing their minds in a whirlpool of theories and thoughts. Yet the passage of time did little alleviate their desperate thirst for answers.
Another week passed, and they were resupplied by a pallet of bags dropped by a helicopter. Day and night, day and night Hastings fought to crack the code of the monolith and finally he felt it give way, in his mind or in real life, he couldn’t tell the difference and nor did he care anymore.
“A choice is before you, to lay down your defences or to resist. Those who choose to resist will face torture eternal.” Hastings chanted out, reading from his messy notes. “That’s what is written on the stone.”
“What kind of choice, who wrote this?” questioned Jared. Why would anybody write this in the first place, here of all places!”
“I don’t know, I don’t know!” Hastings exclaimed, visibly irritated.
“Oh, I don’t suppose you believe that this is some real threat. What are you going to do, wave around a white flag and surrender, to whom I might ask?” sneered Frank
“You be quiet, what do you know!” Hastings shouted, jumping up to face Frank, only to be met by the cold barrel of his M1 carbine.
“Sit back down, and get back to work, until you tell me everything that you are asked of.” Frank commanded. “Now.”
Another day passed, and as night fell Hastings lay bundled up in blankets. The cold, like invisible knives pierced all coats, blankets and tents and pierced deep into his flesh, right down to the bone. He, however, had come to expect that, what he didn’t expect was the sensation of a hand landing on his foot. He jerked upright, sitting up and seeing in the darkness only the black void of a silhouette which blocked out the faint moonlight. It raised a finger up to it’s lips and whispered; “Shhh.” It turned and vanished into the night.
Hastings, ever so carefully stood up and followed, silently he slipped on his coat and went outside, following the figure.
Jared stood, unmoving in the cold light of the moon, whose silver rays reflected off of the snow and ice illuminating the scene as if it were a movie. He turned and glanced at Hastings, motioning him to come closer.
At that moment, he heard a sharp bark behind him,
“Hastings!” yelled Frank, his hand yet again reaching for the carbine.
“Wait, it’s about to start, watch.” Jared pointed upward into the night sky.
“Wha-” Hastings was about to start but then cut himself off as the night sky seemed to open up in a rainbow of colors, aurora borealis. But something caught his eye, amid the typical waves of colors, a speck which he first thought to be a star began to grow larger, drawing nearer. It became a large disk of light, it had no identifiable features except a golden radiant glow as it simply hung in the sky directly over their heads.
Suddenly, Hastings felt a booming voice in his head, it kept repeating, repeating, impossible to ignore, “Tell the others about the stone, tell all, all must know. We have you surrounded, you cannot escape, tell all so all may surrender, surrender and you will be spared. We will come.”
He was awoken by Shelly as she shook him awake.
“Why were you in the snow, are you alright?” she asked
“I think so.” he said. Looking around, he was lying in front of the stone, right where he saw the thing last night.
Jared was just waking up as well, Frank was already up.
“Explain to me what that was!” Frank questioned Jared.
“The writers of the stone I presume?” Jared meekly replied
“And that’s it? Let’s hand it over to command then.” Frank said confidently. He turned and headed over to their makeshift radio station, and almost began to call command, almost.
“Stop!” yelled Hastings, “Stop!”
But Frank did not stop, and as he neared the radio, he felt a force collide with him and throw him aside, Hastings had tackled him.
“How dare you, you mutt, how dare you attack a superior officer!” Frank yelled
“We still don’t know what that rock is, or what it means!” Hastings tried to reason with Frank “We can’t let the world know about it, what about what you yourself saw!”
“Bullshit, we did the job, and I won’t let some dark skinned traitor stand in my way!” Frank yelled again, enraged.
“I won’t let the same thing that happened to the Nazis happen to us, they went mad and killed each other because of that thing!” yelled back Hastings pointing at the monolith, “That thing is dangerous!”
Ignoring Hastings’s words, Frank slowly got up, gripping his rifle, glaring at Hastings with intense hatred.
“Time’s up you dog.” he growled.
“NO!” screamed Shelly lunging forwards.
Frank raised the carbine, pointing the barrel at Hasting’s chest who stood paralyzed with fear. He pressed the trigger just as Shelly lunged in front of Hastings.
The snow turned crimson as blood from the gunshot wound in Shelly’s stomach bled severely. Hastings, on his knees, stared into his dying wife’s eyes. Frank, in shock from what he had done stumbled back.
“MONSTER!” screamed Jared at Frank
“No, No, No.” cried Hastings, cradling his wife.
Frank raised his carbine again, aiming it at Hastings’s head. Hastings ducked and the shot missed, his feet slipped, sending him sliding through the snow down the mountainside as several more shots rang out. Frank turned his attention to the frightened Jared.
“Work or I’ll kill you too, you filthy no good traitor. I’ll skewer you like an infidel dog that you are!” He pointed the carbine now at Jared. “Keep working, until you decipher the words of this warning from the gods.”
Frank went over to the radio and called in for a helicopter.
Hastings awoke and found that he couldn’t breathe, his whole world flooded with the dim dark white of ice and snow. He swam up and climbed up through the mound of snow he had ended up in. His arms were fine but the right side of his body was shredded and bleeding from the rock.
He tried to get up and fell down again, but stood up yet again. He had to go, forward, to the base, he knew what he had to do, he needed to…
Hours passed and day turned to night under the watchful, insane stare of Frank as at gunpoint he forced Jared to try and solve the riddle of the monolith.
“Are you for or against the great union of life?” rambled Frank, “Do you choose life eternal or death in the void?” Jared didn’t respond
“Answer me coward!” he screamed
“I just want to go home to my family.” Jared broke down into tears and sobbing.
“You fool, we are home.” Frank laughed, raised the carbine and pulled the trigger. Two shots rang out. Jared slumped over, dead. Frank collapsed, first onto one knee and then falling onto his back, a dark red stain spreading from his stomach. Hastings, shakily, trembling, on the verge of hypothermia and death holding the Luger in one hand and his backpack in the other, emerged from the shadows.
He tossed the backpack, which landed at the base of the black rock, the main flap of the backpack opened just enough to reveal sticks on sticks of dynamite.
“They’ll come for you, you know, they see all, they are the great watchers in the sky, and you must join them.” continued to ramble on Frank.
“Listen here you monster you killed my WIFE!” screamed Hastings allowing himself to burst into tears. He pressed the Luger to Frank’s chin and pulled the trigger.
Flipping open a trench lighter Hastings lit the fuse, and watched it grow short as he called in for rescue. He said that the assigned security officer to the expedition went insane killing everyone except him, destroying the objective, that he himself was injured and required rescue. It would be one day until rescue could arrive, but he didn’t care, not anymore.
He simply watched the fuse as it burned, and then, the ground shook violently and columns of the flame rose as the stone monolith became no more. He fell to the ground, looking up at the night sky, and he could’ve sworn that he saw a disk of blinding light descend, hover in place as the burnt charred shards of the stone rose into the air as if by themselves and were pulled upwards into the light, and vanish altogether.
He closed his eyes and rested his head.
He was recovered by a Navy helicopter one day later, comatose and on the verge of death. He quickly recovered however and returned to teaching in the following years. He was heavily questioned by military authorities on what exactly the expedition found on Deception Island, as no trace of any black rock had ever been found, yet he maintained his story. Due to this he was at first placed in a psychiatric ward but it was ruled that they were likely hypothermia induced hallucinations, and not extremely harmful.
However, Hastings’s account of the black rock coincided perfectly with similar stories from wartime France, the depths of Siberia, the mountains of China and Nepal as well as the forests of Canada. Neither did they contradict US military records which had been heavily guarded under lock and key in god forlorn bunkers, with words that reflected the intense fear of what lies in the arctic. —————————————————————————————–
“Admiral Richard E. Byrd warned today that the United States should adopt measures of protection against the possibility of an invasion of the country by hostile planes coming from the polar regions. The admiral explained that he was not trying to scare anyone, but the cruel reality is that in case of a new war, the United States could be attacked by planes flying over one or both poles. This statement was made as part of a recapitulation of his own polar experience, in an exclusive interview with International News Service. Talking about the recently completed expedition, Byrd said that the most important result of his observations and discoveries is the potential effect that they have in relation to the security of the United States. The fantastic speed with which the world is shrinking – recalled the admiral – is one of the most important lessons learned during his recent Antarctic exploration. I have to warn my compatriots that the time has ended when we were able to take refuge in our isolation and rely on the certainty that the distances, the oceans, and the poles were a guarantee of safety.”
El Mercucio, Chilean Newspaper, March 5th 1947
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