extending to the single-mindedness of purpose he could see plainly expressed in their narrowed eyes whose depths reflected the profound blackness of an abyss.
They possessed a slightly stooped appearance as of some rounding of the spine between their shoulders, this perhaps exacerbated by their extremely tall, lean frames upon which gravity must surely wreak havoc for their musculature was lean, their limbs longish – too long. It was their faces, however, which mesmerized him. For these were downright frightening - one might even say ghoulish. Their skulls were as elongated as were their bodies, their eyes set too closely together while the back of their hairless heads ascended to a puckered seam in the form of a ridge running to their napes.
Before he could bring his rifle to bear it was snatched from his hands by a skulking, gray-back that approached him at a sharp angle from his blind side. He knew he had no time to wrestle open the holster containing his pistol and so, going completely on the instincts of years of training, he immediately clutched at and grasped the sling of his rifle upon which he gave a tremendous wrench as he sought to pull the carbine free.
The thing howled in agony when the man’s desperate tug dislocated the arm holding the rifle from its socket. Not stopping there Erik drew the creature in and delivered a staggering punch that sent the hideous beast sprawling backwards, the unearthly thing unconscious before its skull rebounded from the stone flags of the courtyard. From every side now they surrounded him, barking at him with strange words in a tongue in which he recognized not a single syllable.
“Verdammt, help me!” he cried out to the onlookers.
But as well cry out to the stone for support. The people in the bazaar stood mutely by, apparently unable to come to the aid of one of their own – or too fearful to do so.
He knew that in his current state of weakness and privation he would be unable for long to carry out his one-man stand against the strange beings attacking him. His fists flew in rapid succession, connecting with the throats, chins and proboscises of a many of them, but his actions causing him to succumb all the more quickly to his current state of flagging strength. He blinked his eyes hard to clear them when his vision went momentarily blurry.
Closer and closer circled the crouching, lean gray beasts with Erik staggering now as his flying fists only served to unbalance him as he consistently missed his targets. A hard object suddenly struck him from behind upon the side of the head. All went black before his eyes and he knew no more.
04: Peenemünde
To those who have neither experienced nor imagined what it is like to awaken on the floor of a dungeon Erik would advise them to count themselves blessed among men.
His entire body cried out in pain from lying in the same position for some indeterminate amount of time upon the stone flags of what he immediately surmised to be a prison. Along his arms were the painful wounds of having been fed upon by whatever kinds of small creatures find their way to these dark places far below ground. His nose, throat and eyes suffered painfully from dehydration although runnels of water were to be found upon the walls and floor of the dank and chilly place.
The grating sounds of the groans of someone in pain and suffering were what at last awakened him – sounds he realized after a few moments issued from his own throat. The man rolled over and attempted, through eyes made blind by darkness, to survey his environs, but of them he could see nothing.
Every so often (but not frequently enough) someone, or something, would bring him a small vessel of food and another of the water of which he could not seem to get enough, although he found its odor questionable. Whatever the person or thing was it spoke not nor carried with it any light, seeming to know these underground passages by rhyme and rote and needing nothing to guide its feet.
Often Erik would awaken to the scraping sound made by the vessels of revolting mush serving for food being scooted along the stone flooring beneath whatever opening his prison’s walls afforded the one responsible for supplying his sustenance - the sound ripping the man from delusional dreams of the cafés of Paris, Antwerp, Berlin and other gay capitals of the world in which he’d been no stranger.
In those bright and colorful places he had entertained beautiful and fashionable members of the opposite sex in happier days on festive evenings where they ate and made merry, drinking wine and sampling the many local breweries that abounded. The scents and smells of bratwurst, schnitzel and fresh baked bread mixing with the strong aroma of dunkel Bieren filled his nostrils – but only until he fully awoke.
For when he awakened it was to the real-world smell of mold and the clammy aromas that seems to cling to darkness; the odors of earth and raw stone and root – the scent of the grave; these it were filled his senses.
He’d been stripped of everything, even to the clothes that hid his nakedness. Weapons, haversack, canteen, all had been taken away, the man tossed, nude and unconscious, to shiver in this dark and stony cell with none willing to vouchsafe him an explanation as to what would be his ultimate fate.
But as often happens in these situations where the waiting seems interminable a different sound eventually impinged on his hearing. Opening his eyes he saw light for the first time in weeks in the form of ruddy torchlight approaching along what he only now saw was a narrow passage just outside the door of his prison. The torchlight he found blinding, it stinging his eyes to the point he could barely open them because he’d by now become accustomed to the impenetrable darkness and obscurity of the underground. Blurry figures dragged him forth.
Stumbling weakly up several flights of stone steps he arrived at a small chamber where someone handed rough made clothes to him. Before his captors allowed him to don them, however, they had his body scrubbed in the absolute coldest water he ever felt upon his body but for one time when, on a dare, he’d taken a dip in the sea during a brief stint above the Arctic Circle.
His skin ruddy from the experience but cleaner than it had been in days, his jailers roughly dressed him and then hauled him into an adjacent chamber he found to be filled to repletion with beings both human and not.
Here he saw again the gray-backed creatures he had encountered prior to being stricken unconscious. These had haunted his nightmares in the dungeon where he’d hoped they were merely the conjurings of hardship and nightmare, that they weren’t real.
He saw now they were all too real. He saw, too, his fuzzy recollections of them were accurate, they being tall beasts with bodies roughly cast in human conformation but that beyond having legs, arms and a torso any resemblance they had to humanity ceased. There was not a one of them that wasn’t at least a head taller or more so than was he, and Erik was slightly above average in height.
His mind was yet cloudy from his sufferings as they dragged him before a dais upon which sat another of the inconceivable creatures. It crouched upon a prominent, throne-like furnishing from which point of vantage it might survey the entire chamber that lay below its gray feet with its encompassing gaze.
The gray creature addressed his guards who replied to it in like fashion. At last the creature of obvious status addressed him to which query he replied in his native German. Failing to get a reply the pilot addressed the thing in the other languages at his command, attempting French, English, and Spanish – even Latin. Lastly he tried his smattering of Swahili – all to no affect.
At one point the monstrosity addressed a human at its side, this person disappearing briefly only to return with the most captivating creature Erik von Mendelsöhn had ever beheld. How might one describe a level of beauty where mere words are foredoomed to be found inadequate to amply convey the image that burned in the pilot’s brain? He knew the thought was ridiculous but he suddenly found himself grateful of the forced bath he’d endured earlier, it having cleaned him of much accumulated filth.
The girl’s lush, blonde locks fell in curvy cascades to chalky shoulders below which a low cut blouse, in a style current nearly two centuries before, revealed the bosoms of womanhood.
Her features, far beyond classic in beauty, were dominated by a pair of the most riveting and vibrant blue eyes he’d ever seen, perched as they were in perfect proportion over a pair of lips the color of St. Valentine’s blood and shaped like a cupid’s bow. It is no wonder von Mendelsöhn’s eyes widened, and the heart hammered in the chest of the pilot as he took in this unexpected but welcome vision.
He soon discovered, though, that she hadn’t been summoned here to wile him with her wiles or entice him with her undeniable gifts of pulchritude. Rather, she had been called because she spoke at least one of the languages in which he had addressed the obvious leader of the frightening gray men. When she spoke, her rendering of the tongue rang with a flare that sounded far from modern.
“Garmakalok wishes to know how you arrived here as none have been summoned for some time.” Her English was heavily accented, reminding Erik immediately of the coastal lands of Germany.
“Oh, thank God, someone who understands me!”
“Of course I can understand you. Why shouldn’t I? It’s why I was summoned.”
“Your accent - it reminds me of the coastal folk near Bremerhaven, or Wilhelmshaven, perhaps,” he replied.
“Oh, Bremerhaven!” the girl sighed.
From listless disinterest her sparkling eyes now appraised the man more frankly, eyeing his form from head to heel. The clothes weren’t flattering but she saw they disguised what would otherwise be a fine form.
“I haven’t heard that name spoken for longer than I know! As a little girl I spent much of my time in Bremerhaven. And my father named me after another coastal area, where I was raised.”
“And where was that?” encouraged the pilot.
“I was born in Peenemünde,” she replied.
“Peenemünde,” he repeated. “I’ve heard of it. I would have never thought to consider it for a girl’s name, but it’s beautiful! You speak German, then?” he asked in that language.
“Ja, natürlich,” she answered, responding in Deutsch. “Now, if you would, Herr…?”
“My name is Erik – Erik von Mendelsöhn,” he said. “Oh, you asked why I was here. You see, my aëroplane crashed in the jungle—“
“Your - aëroplane?” she asked, seeming confused.
“Yes,” the man continued, not noticing her confusion. “After I set it down in the tree tops I hiked nearly three days to this place. I was being hounded by beasts when I reached the foot of the cliffs surrounding this valley. I escaped them by ascending the cliffs only to be driven here by strange monsters I can’t begin to describe in the forest surrounding this city.”
“Ah – you must be referring to the purple loknovarloks of Deneb,” she nodded.
“The purple whats-of-what?” he stumbled.
After her last comment, however, Peenemünde turned to Erik’s inquisitor – the gray creature upon the throne who’d begun to grow restless during the discourse of the two natives of the Fatherland. She passed on Erik’s words about becoming lost in the jungle but left out any mention of the aeröplane with which she seemed unfamiliar.
The creature on the throne uttered a few sentences in his bizarre tongue which sounded unlike anything the man ever heard before. The girl spoke quickly in reply, answering in the same tongue and appearing much as an attorney coming to the defense of a client. The gray-back half rose out of his seat, shouting. The girl nodded, cringing, and turned to face the man.
“Peenemünde?” His eyes went from her ashen face to the enraged expression of the gray-back. “What is it? What did he say?”
“You are to labor in the mines, and I am to teach you their tongue when you are not,” she translated. “But first, they wish you fitted with a restraint.”
“A restraint?” he started. “What sort of restraint—“
He found himself seized suddenly from behind, and held in the inexorable grip of these gray creatures whose like he’d never before seen. He struggled, yet he was weak from privation and there were four of them holding him while a fifth fastened something about him. When they finished he wore a silver band of dense metal about his neck, a tight fitting piece, and wide and thick. These gray-men released him then and withdrew, while armed ones approached and took their place, apparently an escort of some sort.
“Peenemünde, what is this?” he asked angrily.
He glanced from the surrounding gray-backs to the girl, his fingers reflexively clutching the metallic band. Only then did he note the girl wore a similar piece of apparel about her own shapely neck. He glanced about the room, seeing for the first time that all the humans in the chamber were adorned thus. The girl’s tone, when she answered, was one of listless hopelessness.
“This is what they use to prevent us from leaving this place, Erik von Mendelsöhn. You can no longer cross beyond the boundary of the sphere of influence - of Deneb!” she revealed.
This collar, then, was the mark of a thrall – he had become a slave!
05: Gateway to Deneb
Erik felt a debt of gratitude to the nameless antecedent who bequeathed him a strong back once his captors introduced him to the mines in which he spent his days slaving for his new masters.
The implements they utilized for their work, although ancient and well-used in appearance, were roughly of the same design one might encounter in any modern excavation – pry bars, picks, spades and the like. The tunnelings were a vast network and unbelievably old if their complexity of layout in combination with their breadth and scope were any indication.
The area they currently excavated was at extreme depth, possibly a half a kilometer or more below the surface, and so Erik knew some system of air filtration or replacement was at work. This he discovered to be the simplistic manner of cross tunneling and drilling in combination with convection used to move warmer air out, allowing cooler, outside air to take its place.
The cunningness of the support structure he saw in the tunnels Erik found intriguing for a people living in what had all the indications of a city dating to the Stone Age, if not earlier. Rather than wood taken from the nearby forests the roofs were supported utilizing the very stone in which they quarried as master stone workers carved buttresses directly into the walls and ceilings overhead at specified intervals, thus utilizing the native in-place stone for structural reinforcement. In addition, material taken from the ground was used directly at its point of removal to fabricate any additional columns of stone deemed necessary.
All in all, although a man of the skies and understandably nervous about working deep underground, Erik came to trust in these seeming infallible methods of mining, especially after being informed no one in living memory could recall a collapse of any sort.
Gradually he became inured to the idea of digging precious ores and stones from the hollowed earth beneath the ancient city, storerooms of which he passed through on his way to his work site each day. His eyes widened at the first sight of cavernous rooms of pure, raw diamond, emerald, platinum and gold sitting in open caskets and stacked up by the thousands.
No one knew the intended purpose of the precious caskets other that they were for the masters’ use and destined for the place they called Deneb. On occasion these storerooms would be found to be depleted, after which Erik and his band would begin the task of replenishing the hoard, for apparently the avarice and greed of these cruel gray-backed fiends was unrelenting and insatiable.
Eventually, however, the sight of piled up plunder no longer impressed him. Although he slaved amidst the greatest wealth of treasure he might have ever imagined he would trade it all for a pfennig if it could be used to purchase his freedom. He often pondered that he would gladly pull a lever and dump every single jewel and nugget into the deepest portion of the sea could he but leave this God-forsaken place, taking Argos and Peenemünde with him.
Since he did not yet speak the language they’d paired him with someone to simply point and indicate and illustrate what he should do. This happened to be a friendly ch
ap who called himself Argos, who happened to be a Greek – the only language in which Erik hadn’t tried to speak with his jailers. Erik was astounded to come across the bearded man and instantly gratified to have been partnered with one whom, out of the thousands housed in the city, spoke a form of Hellenic – one of Erik’s first languages.
Although the man’s enunciation sounded different from his own and some words Erik used the man was unfamiliar with, they got along famously. Before long Erik considered the man more than a fellow slave, thinking of him rather as a friend whose own abiding hatred for their masters gave Erik one in whom he might in safety confide, with Erik gladly standing in for confidant when Argos must vent.
With their backs weary from toil he and Argos sat at the foot of the hole in which they dug, breathing heavily as they took the brief respite they were allowed once each period.
“What of escape, Argos? Surely you must have hatched plans by now?” Erik asked, his voice low.
None among the gray-backs were aware Erik could speak the language of Argos – none but Argos, and Peenemünde. The bearded Greek took a deep swig of water and passed Erik the clay jug.
“I tried to sneak away, once.” His voice was low and Argos didn’t look directly at Erik when he spoke, so any gray-back who happened to glance their way would not realize they conversed. With a grimy finger nail he scratched his neck and then surreptitiously tapped on his metallic slave collar. “Neck band brought me back.”
Erik did not look at Argos as he raised the jug to his dust-caked lips. Two gray-backs strode through the ranks of miners, spears in hand and swords of odd make hanging on their sides, rousing the workers from their breaks.
“On your feet!”
“Back to work!”
The gray-backs strode on, remonstrating the humans to return to work. Argos smiled at his friend, his beard thick, bushy and black as pitch. Shining between his mustachios and the wild growth upon his chin were teeth whiter than summer clouds.
“Ready?” he asked.
His voice, had they been anywhere else on Earth, would have sounded gleeful. His eyes, though, were moist and told a different story.
“I’m ready, Argos. Here, I’ll give you a hand up.”
“Argos not that old yet.”
But he took the proffered hand. Stooping to pick up their implements where they leaned against the stone, they bent their backs to their toil.