The Lost Level (13 page)

“What is this Flight 19?” Kasheena asked. “Were they vehicles?”

“Yes,” I said, thinking back to my years of research into the
paranormal. “Very famous vehicles. These are called airplanes, like we talked
about before. They’re machines that flew through the air, just like the one you
saw when you were little. These numbers painted on the side correspond to
Flight 19, which was a group of airplanes that disappeared on December 5, 1945
during a training flight off the coast of Florida—that’s a state in America,
the place where I’m from. Each plane had a three–man crew—a pilot, a gunner,
and a radioman. The pilot flew the plane, the radioman was in charge of
communicating with people on the ground, and the gunner was the fighter. He
would shoot at enemy planes.”

“So, where are the men who flew in these airplanes?”

“I wish I knew. So do many people back where I come from. See,
Flight 19 was a famous disappearance, connected to something we called the
Bermuda Triangle—an area of the ocean where many people have vanished over the
years. I must have read a dozen books about this when I was younger. I was nuts
about the whole thing.”

“Maybe those people who vanished in this Triangle came here,”
Kasheena said.

I nodded. “The crew of Flight 19 did, at least. The flight leader
was….” I searched my memory, trying to recall the name. “Lieutenant Charles
Tyler? Or Taylor, maybe? Yeah, I think Taylor was his name. Some people
believed it was his fault the planes disappeared. He showed up late the morning
of the training mission, and he made some confusing and strange decisions while
they were in the air. There was a theory that he might have become disoriented,
and then he ordered his men to ditch the planes into the ocean after they ran
out of fuel, and everyone bailed out. Obviously, that didn’t happen.”

“Could these airplanes still work?” Kasheena asked. “Our journey
would be much easier and safer, I think, to travel in one. How amazing that
would be, to travel across the sky!”

I shook my head. “No, these are long past working. And even if
they were still functioning, I don’t know how to fly one. You need special
training for that.”

“But you have proven capable many times, Aaron. Surely, you could
do this, as well.”

I chuckled softly. “I wish. But sadly, no.”

We searched each of the aircrafts, but exposure to the elements
had left nothing salvageable amongst the wreckage. Some kind of animal had
nested in one of the cockpits. It was filled with sticks and matted leaves. The
nest had been abandoned, but it had a musky scent that I found unsettling. In
all of the planes, the seats were torn and covered with mold and grime, and
most of the metal had rusted. There were no skeletons or other signs of human
remains, nor were there any scraps of uniforms or survival packs. That meant
one of two things. Either Lieutenant Taylor and his men had abandoned the
planes and ventured out into the forest, or they had died here and the site had
been looted and time had erased all existence of their remains. Judging by the
position of the planes, they hadn’t crashed, but I couldn’t imagine how they’d
managed to land them in the ravine without incident. Maybe whatever event it
was that had transported them here deposited them in the ravine upon arrival.
But if they had survived, where were they now? Were they even alive? Judging by
their condition, the Avengers had been here for a very long time. So had the
pilots, if they were still alive. How old would Taylor and his men be now? I
didn’t know how to tell time in the Lost Level, but I knew how to mark its
passage—the stubble on my face or the length of my fingernails indicated that
time still passed normally here, just like it did back home. If Flight 19 had
indeed landed here in 1945, then they would be old men by now.

I weighed the possibility that they had landed here more
recently. Perhaps it had still been 1945 in their world when they vanished, but
their arrival here in the Lost Level had been merely a few years or months
before my own. Given the nature of time travel, this was plausible, but when I
considered the condition of the airplanes themselves, I found it the most
unlikely scenario. Which brought me back to speculating on the whereabouts of
the crew. Had they made a life for themselves here, perhaps building a
permanent shelter? If so, could any of them still be alive?

Or maybe it was possible that they’d found a way back to our
world. Or their world. There was no guarantee that this particular Flight 19
was even from my reality. It could just as easily originated from an alternate
universe—an alternate Earth. Maybe they’d found a way to return there, albeit
without their planes. If so, then—despite legend saying it was impossible—that
meant that I could do the same. I could find a way to return to my own level
and escape this place once and for all. The possibility didn’t excite me as
much as it should have, and I paused to wonder why.

I turned to Kasheena. “I’m assuming that no one from your tribe
has ever mentioned this place? Or the planes?”

“No. If so, then it was before my time, and our elders have never
spoken of it to us. I have only been this way a few times, and there was never
time for exploration on those trips. The landscape will become more familiar to
me after our next sleep.”

I nodded, turning my head to scan the forest.

“Are you okay, Aaron? You seem troubled.”

“I’m still wondering what happened to the men who flew these
craft,” I said. “Wondering if they are alive or…dead. Wondering if they made it
back home. Do you know of any other settlements or villages nearby?”

“No. In this area, it is just ours.”

I nodded again, still staring at the trees.

“We should move on,” Kasheena suggested. “There is nothing here
for us, and I do not like this place. It feels sad.”

Nodding in agreement, I climbed down from the plane, and we
continued on our way. I glanced back only once, and when I did, Flight 19 had
already vanished again, swallowed once more by the undergrowth.

And by time.

OUR JOURNEY
PASSED UNEVENTFULLY FOR
a while after that. At times, it felt to me as
if we were wandering in circles. The terrain didn’t change much, although
Kasheena seemed to recognize various distinct features and landmarks. She
seemed positive that we were still on track for her village, and getting
closer. I had no choice but to trust her instincts. Bloop seemed okay with this
arrangement, as well. Most of the time he stayed with us. Occasionally, he
would bound off into the underbrush in pursuit of wild game. Then he’d return,
happy and gloating, and usually with something for us to eat. In some ways, he
reminded me of a big dog. He was certainly as committed and faithful a
companion as a dog, but obviously far more intelligent. I wondered what his
story was and wished he could tell us. Were there more of his people here in
the Lost Level, or, like me, was he a dimensional castaway? Did he have a mate?
Children? Parents, perhaps? Was there someone back home missing him?

That thought made me consider my own family. Only once since my
arrival in the Lost Level had I considered how my disappearance might be
impacting them. I hadn’t exactly been close with them over the last few years,
devoting my time to my occult studies and other pursuits, as I had. But I’d
stayed in touch with my siblings online and called my parents every Sunday
afternoon, and we all got together during the big holidays. The last time I’d
seen them in person had been the week between Christmas and New Year’s, when we’d
all stayed at my parents’ home. Most of our discussions then had been polite
but guarded, the conversation of people who didn’t have much in common anymore
but still shared a history. But despite that distance, I loved them, and I
think they loved me. Would they notice I was gone by now? Indeed, I wondered
how much time had passed back on my Earth. Was time there the same as here in
the Lost Level, or was it different? It would have been presumptuous of me to
assume that time passed the same in both dimensions. While I had only been here
a few days (or whatever passed for days in a place where the sun never set),
entire decades or even centuries might have passed back home. Or perhaps only a
few minutes or seconds. If I was ever successful in making it back to my Earth,
it was possible I might find that I’d long been given up for dead by those who
had known me. It was equally possible that I’d discover I had barely been gone
in the time it takes to blink. Thinking about all of the different
possibilities made my head hurt.

As we hiked, Kasheena and I continued our discussions about the
Lost Level. I learned more about its ocean and desert regions and was very
surprised to discover that it even had frozen areas with regular arctic–like
conditions, despite the presence of an eternal sun hanging overhead. Other than
the snowfall on some of the mountaintops, I had assumed the entire dimension
was as temperate as the forests and jungles I’d experienced so far, but that
wasn’t so. I was especially curious to know more about the Creator and anything
more concerning the Lost Level’s subterranean features, but unfortunately,
Kasheena didn’t know much. She insisted several times that she had told me
everything she knew about what lay beneath our feet. As for the Creator, her
people believed that the Creator was just that—an entity who had created the
Lost Level. It had no sex or gender, at least not that she knew of, nor were
there any fables or legends surrounding it. There was no dogma and no set of
rules or commandments dedicated to or derived from its worship. She knew of no
identifiable characteristics. According to her, the mysterious figure didn’t
even have a name, other than the Creator, which she admitted was a name her
people had given it. Other inhabitants of the Lost Level had different names
and theories for the unknown entity.

Sometimes, we encountered signs of other intelligent life. Once,
we found what appeared to be Native American petroglyphs carved into the
exposed face of a large boulder. The crude diagrams depicted everything from
beavers, deer, and snakes to dinosaurs, flying saucers, and what was almost
certainly an Anunnaki. Kasheena had no knowledge of them and no idea who might
have made them or how long they’d been there. Another time, we found Chinese
letters scratched into a tree trunk. These she had known about and said that
while she had never seen them for herself, a hunter from her tribe had spoken
of them. Apparently, they’d been there for a long time.

Occasionally, we also came across random dimensional relics that
reminded me of home. There was nothing as impressively awe–inspiring as the
wreckage of Flight 19, or as bizarre as a Jeep fused with a mountainside or a
partially–digested wheelchair buried in dinosaur shit. Some of the things I
found weren’t even from Earth, mine or any other, but the ones I recognized
were comfortable in their familiarity, all the same—a pair of scissors half–buried
in the dirt, a broken television, a frayed dog collar, an empty disposable
cigarette lighter, a pair of hospital crutches, a cracked child’s wading pool
with faded animal characters painted on the sides of it, a cell phone charger,
a doll with a missing arm and eye, a rubber gasket, plastic bottles and dented
aluminum cans (because apparently even parallel dimensions had pollution), an
automobile license plate from the United Kingdom, a dirty and weathered Chinese
takeout menu whose lettering was so faded that I couldn’t make out where it was
from, a department store mannequin, a red yo–yo with Japanese writing on it, an
empty canister of bug–spray, a glass Mason jar with a chip on the rim, a jumble
of parts that I thought might have come from a propane grill, a Civil War–era
powder can with a bullet hole in it, and a steel–belted radial complete with a
chrome rim that had become the nesting place for a family of small lizards. All
of these items appeared to have been here for a long time, and none of them
were really salvageable.

I thought Bloop might enjoy the yo–yo, so I cleaned the dirt off
of it and tested it out. I was surprised to find that the string was still
strong and resilient, and not nearly as frayed or weatherworn as I’d assumed it
would be. I then ran through my rather meager repertoire of tricks with it.
Bloop seemed interested enough and laughed as I did Walk the Dog, Sleeper, and
Around the World. Kasheena smiled dubiously, watching us both. I did a few more
tricks, and Bloop clapped, so I handed the yo–yo to him. He tried to repeat the
tricks, but the string became tangled almost instantly. Growling with
frustration, he brought the yo–yo to his nose and sniffed it. Then he tried to
untangle the string but only succeeded in making it worse. Next, he put the toy
in his mouth and tried to bite it. His teeth clacked against the hard plastic.
With a grunt, he hurled the toy into the forest.

I grinned. “Maybe we can find you a Playstation or an Xbox,
instead.”

Bloop snorted at me, and then scratched his groin. We continued
on our way. The police riot armor grew heavy, chafing my shoulders. The
backpack didn’t help. I considered jettisoning some of my gear—things like the
compact discs and other assorted items from John LeMay’s Jeep, but after
thinking about it, I decided to hold on to them a while longer. They might
still prove useful, I reasoned. But I also wondered if it was their
practicality that made me keep them, or the fact that they reminded me of home.
And, in truth, they weren’t that much of a burden. Dropping them wouldn’t have
noticeably decreased the weight I was carrying. I glanced at Bloop, clutching
one sword in his left paw and wielding the other with his tail, and wished I
had an extra prehensile appendage to help lessen my load.

When we got tired, we stopped and made camp again. After building
a fire and eating a meal together, I volunteered to take the first watch. After
Bloop was asleep, Kasheena and I made love twice. Then she went to sleep, as
well. I stroked her hair for a while, then got up and sat cross–legged near the
fire. Falling asleep on watch wasn’t a concern—not the way my mind was
spinning. I thought back over the events of the past few days, which led me to
return to the train of thought I’d had earlier and ponder the idea of days
themselves. At that point, I was really struggling with how to mark the passage
of time. It had never occurred to me just how reliant we were—as a species—on
calendars and schedules. When I attempted to calculate just how long I’d been
trapped in the Lost Level, my only frame of reference was how many times I’d
slept. It seemed so strange, but as I pondered it more, I wondered if this
style of living might not be better. There was a certain freedom in not being
beholden to the cycles of the sun, or a time clock, or a busy social
calendar—to sleep only when tired and awake only after the body was
sufficiently rested, rather than the obtrusive blaring of an alarm clock.