On Monday mornings, I send out a story via email: ultra-brief tales of 1,000 words or more, usually in genres including horror, science fiction, and the supernatural. Those stories collectively are called Once Upon A Time. I’d love to have you as a subscriber to the weekly free story. You can subscribe via email here. Unsubscribe any time, from the link in every issue.

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Here's story 275, of 288 so far.

Please note: permission is expressly denied to input any part of the story below into a machine learning (ML) or artificial intelligence (AI) or Large Language Model (LLM) system in any form.

Heavier

Toby Collins bought the house against his wife’s advice, but then he’d done a lot of things against his wife’s advice already. That was why Anne would very soon be his ex-wife, and had gone to live with her sister after sixteen years of marriage.

Collins still wore his wedding ring, and made a point of calling Anne once a week with the intent of begging her to take him back, but she never answered the phone. He couldn’t blame her.

He’d been a distant and disappointing husband, by his own admission. It was amazing that she’d stayed with him as long as she had, and in truth he held out very little hope that there could ever be a reconciliation. In the small hours of the night, when he lay awake in the darkness and was able to be most honest with himself, he thought that he might even lose some respect for her if she did agree to give it another try.

Collins was an adjunct professor of microbiology at the university, a permanent position with a heavy teaching load and numerous other commitments. The house was originally meant as a way to have a more relaxed and age-appropriate manner of living than the somewhat dilapidated flat three streets from the biology department had offered, and it was even slightly closer to Anne’s work. Collins didn’t at all mind the prospect of a twenty-minute bicycle commute each day instead of a ten-minute walk either, but of course the matter of Anne’s travelling convenience was now moot.

There was the question of renovations, of course; the previous owner, an elderly lady, had passed away and her only surviving family lived abroad, with no desire to modernise a building that had probably last been extensively redecorated when household television was not yet in colour. There was also the question of the area being a bit down on its luck, with a number of vacant homes in the same street. There was the question of the age of the property — more than 140 years old. There was the question of energy efficiency, and electrical rewiring, and lead pipes, and asbestos, and double glazing, and roofing, and so on and so forth. The remarkably low price was little wonder, and nor was its continued availability, months after going on the market.

He could work on it little by little, he told himself — in that way that men do, knowing full well that they’ll do no such thing — and he’d mostly be at the university anyway. As usual. As always. The house had become, if not quite entirely emblematic of his rapidly unravelling marriage, at least the straw that broke the camel’s back. Now Anne had moved twenty miles away and probably changed her mobile phone number, but all of her valid and reasonable concerns about the property remained.

Collins bought the house anyway. His best friend, a physicist at the university called Sahil, sagely said that the decision was typical of him.

Four bedrooms, an antiquated kitchen, a front sitting room, a family room, a dining room with a spectacularly neglected upright piano in it, a single bathroom in testament to the age of the place and how much cultural norms had changed since then, a wood-panelled downstairs study that was really what Collins was buying, a storage loft insufficiently tall to stand up in, and indeed a basement. The less said about the gardens, both front and rear, the better.

He’d been living there for a week when he first went down to the basement. It was unremarkable, slightly damp, though free of any of the expected cobwebs. There was exposed pipework, the ageing gas-fired boiler, and a solid-backed bookcase that might have been mahogany, and might once have been beautiful, pushed up against a wall. It held nothing but an old plastic ice cream tub full of nails in various sizes, and a can of WD-40 that was visibly rusty. Collins looked around and then went back upstairs.

The second time he went down to the basement was four days later, to get the exact model of the boiler so he could register for his new gas provider’s annual maintenance service. When he’d taken a photo of the name plate on the front of the appliance, he shivered at a sudden draught from somewhere behind him, and a faint, unusual though not unpleasant scent. Both seemed to come from the bookcase, coming around the edge from the rear. He resolved to look into it, but a further week passed before he had the chance. It was a Saturday morning just before 11 AM when, with some difficulty, Collins pulled one side of the bookcase away from the wall.

There was a hole there, about half his height, leading off into darkness.

His first thought was that the bookcase had been placed to block out a possible entry-point for vermin, but his phone’s LED flashlight showed no evidence of droppings, nesting materials, or other tell-tale signs. He crouched down, pointing the light directly into the opening, and saw only a rough-hewn passage that trended generally downwards on a gentle incline. The ground was solid, and at the limit of the insufficient illumination, he thought that the height of the passageway perhaps increased.

That night, with the bookcase back in place, he locked the basement door after coming back upstairs.

The following Sunday found him standing in his basement once more, with a bag of newly-purchased items from the local hardware store: a lengthy coil of climbing rope — he’d never climbed anything in his life, but it was brightly-coloured, and both narrower and lighter than conventional rope — and a headlamp on a velcro-fastened band. Collins already felt profoundly foolish, because the passage would undoubtedly end just a metre or two beyond what he’d already seen, but he was compelled to investigate further.

He wore jeans and old boots, a zip-up fleece (with several chocolate bars and a small bottle of mineral water in the pockets), and a pair of gardening gloves that had been Anne’s. They were powder blue, with a delicate pattern of pink roses printed on them, and they had never seen serious garden work. He tied one end of the rope around the railing of the staircase that went back up to the ground level, and the other end around his waist. With the bookcase once again pulled away from the wall, he got onto his hands and knees, headlamp illuminated, and crawled into the darkness.

The passageway did indeed become taller after ten metres or so, but only because the ceiling remained the same height while the floor angled downwards. Collins was uneasy at first about a descent, but the rope around his waist reassured him, as did the silence, and the absence of any insects or other wildlife. The passageway curved gently and crudely to the left as it went downwards, and a few minutes of careful walking brought him to the end of the makeshift ramp. He stood what must have been two storeys below his starting point, looking into a chamber of solid rock that was perhaps ten square feet in floor area, and about seven feet high. A passageway continued ahead, curving out of sight to the right, but two things stopped him from going any further.

First, the breeze and the unusual scent were much more pronounced here. Second, there was an archway bisecting the chamber in front of him. It was carved from the rock, and he could readily walk straight through it; his view of the area beyond was unimpeded, and as devoid of any signs of life as his journey so far. There was a single marking on the archway, where its keystone would have been if it had been constructed free-standing. Collins didn’t recognise it, but it had a generally runic quality. It was carved deeply — and something about it felt wrong.

Some obscure instinct, unfelt for the entire forty-four years of his life so far, had woken up and was saying something wordless and urgent. Collins frowned in confusion. There was absolutely nothing threatening here. It was damned unusual, but there was no indication of danger that didn’t originate in either superstition or horror movies. He was many things, but Collins was also a scientist and a rationalist. He pushed the feeling down, took a step towards the arch—

—and a wave of anxiety rose up in his chest, bringing him to an immediate halt.

He grimaced in irritation at himself, but there was something wrong. His mind and body were both telling him so, unambiguously, but he didn’t understand the message. It was

!!

and it was

???

and neither of those things were decipherable.

“Get a hold of yourself,” he muttered, taking a quick and shallow breath, fists clenched at his side. “There’s nothing there.”

As if to prove it to himself, he bent over to pick up a small stone that lay at one side of the chamber, made of exactly the same rock as everything else. He tossed it underhand towards the arch that lined the chamber halfway along from where he’d entered, and watched with no real surprise as it sailed through the air, passed through the arch, and—

?

He frowned. The stone completed its arc and fell to the floor, bouncing across the hard surface a couple of times before coming to a stop. Just as expected. But… hadn’t it fallen just a little strangely?

He shook his head, angry with himself now. He puffed out a breath, marched straight up to the arch, and stuck his left arm straight through it.

He felt nothing unusual. But his arm dropped by just an inch or so. And then suddenly his mind made its wordless warning again, and

!!

despite his best effort of self-control, Collins turned and ran all the way back to the crawlspace at the top of the winding ramped passageway, and returned to his basement, pulling the bookcase back into place hard enough to jar his shoulder.

It was a month before he decided, after wrestling with the issue, to tell Sahil. His friend listened patiently, and was fascinated at the idea of a passage down into the bedrock and a strange arch, but he was predictably skeptical about the strange trepidation Collins had felt. He expressed interest in seeing it all for himself, and Collins readily agreed, having planned to go back down there again soon no matter what his friend had said. As for the odd feeling when he’d reached through the arch, Sahil said he had a possible explanation in mind, and could set his mind at rest.

Two days later, they set off together from the basement, with Sahil bringing a powerful flashlight and a latched equipment case from his own laboratory. He wouldn’t be drawn on the contents of the case, but when they reached the archway chamber, Collins watched as Sahil himself hesitated.

“I see what you mean,” Sahil said. “I feel… I’m not sure. Like an animal when there’s thunder. An instinct to get away.”

Collins nodded, and smiled. His friend had a way of pinpointing things. “So what’s in the case?” he asked.

Sahil set it down, opened the latches, and lifted out a silver cuboid device about twenty centimetres on each of the shorter sides and around sixty centimetres tall. It had four metal legs, and the top surface bore an LCD display and several flat buttons. It bore the model number CG-6, and a logotype that said Autograv.

“This is a gravimeter,” he said. “Earth’s gravitational field varies depending on a variety of factors, including altitude, the positions of the sun and moon, relative masses nearby, and so on.”

“Surely not by an amount that a human being could detect?” Collins asked, and Sahil shrugged.

“Up to half a percent, but you’re right. Nevertheless, we’re in an area of concentrated mass, below ground level, and you were spooked. You never know. You’re always telling me about the amazing capabilities of organisms, Toby.”

“Set it up, then,” Collins said, and Sahil got to work. He placed the device below the arch, a frown flickering across his face as he did so.

“I think I can feel it too,” he said. “Very strange.” Then he pressed several of the pillow-switch buttons on the top of the gravimeter, it beeped crisply, and Collins heard the sound of an electric motor. He watched with interest as the machine adjusted its own legs to stabilise itself, and then there were several seconds of silence before it once again gave a short beep.

Sahil peered down at it, and Collins saw his face pale. “That’s… there has to be some sort of…”

“What does it say, damn it?” Collins asked, fighting the urge to grasp his friend’s shoulder and pull him back. The breeze was stronger again, and so was the scent.

Sahil shook his head, then he pressed a control on the machine. There was another brief silence, and then a beep. Sahil looked up at Collins.

“Gravity doesn’t vary this much, anywhere at this altitude. You’d have to be much closer to the core. It just… this isn’t how it works. The variations are minute. This isn’t possible.”

“What does it say?” Collins asked, but his voice was reedy now, and the feeling of dread was back.

“There’s a fourteen percent increase on expected gravitational acceleration for this location,” the other man replied. “That’s unbelievable. You can feel it yourself. I felt it when I put the meter down. It’s—”

“Heavier,” Collins replied. Sahil glanced at him distractedly, still focused on the machine.

“Well, of course; that’s what I said. You’ll perceive the acceleration as a greater weight for the same mass of object. This is unprecedented. What could be causing it? Toby, we have get some more equipment and some of my graduate students and come back here as soon as possible. This is…”

The scent rose up, along with the breeze from around the curve of the passageway ahead. It was floral, Collins realised. That was why it seemed unusual, so far underground. But he couldn’t quite place it. He was standing at Sahil’s shoulder, his friend crouched on this side of the arch and looking down at the gravimeter. Without really knowing he was going to move at all, Collins took a large step forward.

Immediately, he felt his feet pressing into the floor. Breathing took marginally more effort. He felt like a backpack had been transported onto his shoulders. His belt felt slightly tighter. There were a lot of sensations… but it was manageable.

“I’m going to see what’s up ahead,” he said. The quality of his voice had subtly altered too, though it was difficult to say whether it was from anxiety or not.

“For god’s sakes,” Sahil said, but after a moment he gritted his teeth and stepped through the archway to stand by Collins’s side. He made a small sound and moved his jaw, as if adjusting to the new environment. The scent was stronger now, too. Collins looked up at the arch and saw that there was a different glyph carved into the other side.

They walked side by side, slowly, into the passageway ahead, following the curve. There was light coming from somewhere beyond, but only dimly. They paused and exchanged a look, and then resumed walking. After a few moments, they rounded a final corner, and stopped.

It was night.

The cave mouth opened onto a hillside, sloping downwards towards a valley. A vast inland lake glittered under the stars. Insects flitted between a thousand flowers, low to the ground and with narrow, elongated petals, somehow open even after dark. The breeze blew, rustling the things that might have been trees, midnight blue and flat on top.

In the distance, there were the lights of a settlement, perhaps two miles distant. There was a haze of smoke hanging over the huddled shapes of low buildings.

Collins looked around at Sahil, and knew that his own eyes had the same wide, dark pupils and bright whites visible around them.

A creature that might have been a bird called from somewhere close by.

In the sky above, the moon shone balefully in the red reflected light of an unknown star, and another moon had just began to rise above the horizon.

In slow motion, Sahil grasped Collins’s forearm, pulling him back in the direction they’d come, but neither man had even turned around when there was the rustle and crack of movement over turf and fallen twigs. Too close. Impossibly close.

Sahil cried out. Collins tripped or was pushed. He briefly saw the vast vault of stars above, twinkling in strange and alien constellations.

A blur of movement. A dark shape.

And then nothing.

JINX

KESTREL face a new and terrifying enemy: an all-seeing mastermind who already knows exactly who they are, and many of their deepest secrets. Nothing stays hidden forever, and the line between privacy and liberty is razor-thin…

Book 3 in the KESTREL action-thriller series.

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