Greig Beck
Primordia 2: Return to the Lost World
“One must wait till it comes.”
From the Research Notes of Emmaline Jane Wilson
It’s only a tiny comet.
It’s called P/2018-YG874, designate name: Primordia, and probably came out of the Oort cloud a hundred million years ago, give or take a few million.
Since then, this astral speck of mostly iron had been traveling in an elliptical orbit around our solar system. It would approach our Earth, pass by it, and then head back to the inner star where it was grabbed again and then flung outward for yet another cycle around us. It was a decade-long yo-yo game that has been going on for millions of years and would go on for millions more.
The Primordia apparition, meaning when it was visible to the naked eye, was unremarkable, except for one thing — scientists say the comet’s nuclei has a significant concentration of iron and other rare minerals. But what they don’t know is that this composition creates a unique magnetic distortion on the surrounding solar geography.
In its slow pass by Earth, the comet came closest to South America, directly over a vast tabletop mountain in Venezuela. It was only observable for a few days, but in that time, strange distortions occurred on the mountaintop — things became rearranged, reordered; pathways were created and doorways opened.
It also caused localized monsoonal weather patterns that had been known by the indigenous tribes for millennia as the wettest season. It was also known that for this brief period, the area became home to gods and monsters, and should be avoided. Those who ventured there never came back.
I know this to be true. Except for one thing: sometimes people can come back.
PROLOGUE
He froze, listening to the stealthy sounds outside the cave. He sat for many minutes in the near darkness with just the dying embers of his fire giving the walls a hellish red glow.
After five more minutes of silence, he exhaled long and slow and went back to sharpening a stick by slowly grinding it against a rough stone. His knife, now rusty, was lashed to the end of a long, straight branch, making a spear — his only weapon, and his only protection.
He paused to look again at the cave entrance. Was that the soft sound of claws raking against the rock — seeking, testing, investigating? The entrance had been sealed over, as it was every night. But the creatures that hunted in the dark were more than powerful enough to force their way in.
Hiding, becoming invisible, and avoiding some parts of the jungle was the only way to survive. Nearly every night, the sounds of death and killing went on out there — but he knew, as long as they stayed out there, he was safe in here.
He looked through long strands of greasy hair up at the walls. He had spent days, weeks, covering the inside with mud, sealing over every crack, fissure, and pockmark, to make sure there were no ways into his refuge, no matter how small. He knew things came creeping at night, not just big things, but tiny, hungry things, and sleep was when he was the most vulnerable.
He shifted a little, feeling the mud flake on his body. He had also coated himself in the silky clay to create a barrier against biting insects and also to mask his scent from the beasts that had senses of smell hundreds of times more sensitive than his own.
His eyes ran along the walls. On one were hundreds upon hundreds of marks — four strokes, crossed diagonally by a single stroke, over and over, as he counted down the days. So far, they totaled to 2,920—nearly 3,000 long, lonely, and terrifying days he had been here. But there were still many more to go until his chance of escape would arrive.
His eyes shifted to the other wall — there, he had drawn an image of a memory now eight years gone by — it was his motivation and his waking dream; Ricky’s, a rib joint, complete with sign overhead, large windows, and people inside sitting at a horseshoe booth. One of the people he had carefully drawn in detail, a girl, looking out at him.
Benjamin Cartwright’s eyes began to water as he remembered. His dry lips moved. “Don’t forget me, Emma,” he whispered. “Don’t forg—”
His words caught in his throat as the sniffing came from right outside. Then the cave entrance exploded inward and the monstrous thing reached in for him.
PART 1 — FOOTSTEPS FROM THE PAST
“Life is infinitely stranger than anything the mind could invent”
CHAPTER 01
Emma crouched and picked up a handful of scree. She looked at the weather-blasted fragments, rolling them in her palm for a few seconds before letting them drop.
She rested her forearms on her haunches and slowly turned her head, blowing air through her pressed lips. This place, this tabletop mountain, or tepui, in the middle of nowhere, wasn’t on any map and wasn’t explored.
And why would it be? she thought. It was like the surface of another planet — riven with crevices, a few small pools of water, stunted trees, and some hardy grasses.
She continued to scan it, looking for something, anything, some sign that indicated there was something here now, or there had been something here in the past. As she watched, a small striped skink clambered out from under a flat stone in pursuit of some sort of gnat. She watched it dart forward, ruby-red gimlet eyes and jerking movements as the tiny reptile hunted down its prey with ruthless efficiency.
After another moment, she turned away. There was nothing here now, no secrets revealed. When the wettest season came, and it would as it had been doing perhaps for thousands or millions of years, then anything that was here was buried, hidden, or maybe even destroyed. And what existed 100 million years in the past became reality, just in this one place in the world.
What was lost would be found again. She placed a hand against the sun-warmed stone. “Are you there, Ben?”
She waited, letting her fingers trail over the ancient rock’s surface. But she knew there would be no answer, and maybe not for another two years until the time was right.
There was just an eerie silence on the plateau. Perhaps there were ghosts here, but they wouldn’t speak to her. Not yet.
Behind her, a huge helicopter waited. The pilot watched on, but was paid handsomely for stripping down his long-distance helicopter, loading in spare fuel tanks, and also for his discretion.
She bet she knew what he was thinking. Probably the same as everyone else that had heard her tale—jungle fever, hallucinations, post-traumatic stress disorder, fakery—and dozens of other accusations that had been thrown at her.
But she knew different, and she looked up into the azure sky. One day soon, the eyebrow-like streak would appear, heralding the return of Comet P/2018-YG874, designate name, Primordia. It would first bring an aurora borealis effect in the upper atmosphere, and then its powerful magnetic field would distort time and space on the planet’s surface. A doorway would be opened, right here, and she’d be waiting for it.
Emma Wilson stood and turned, circling her finger in the air. The pilot immediately started engines and the huge rotor blades began to turn.
She was finished here, for now. But before going home, she had one more thing to do.
CHAPTER 02