Beneath the Lakebed

The four of them go to the dry lake to play, the hideaway that feels to them their own. It’s the boys’ favorite spot to play, despite – or indeed, perhaps because of – their mothers’ warnings not to venture out there. It was the site of a great catastrophe generations ago, long lost to memory, and the boy’s attention is here, and now. They throw a ball as hard as they can, no rules to a game, just seeing who will dash out the quickest, who will lay out for a spectacular catch, dirtying their clothes.

On a landscape of cracked caliche they run, one catapulting the ball and two more tearing out in its trajectory; the fourth lags behind, his mother’s admonitions still in his ears – it’s his shoe, while he meanders to the others calling him to catch up, that strikes something firm, substantial buried in the sere earth.

“What is it?”

“He tripped over a rock.”

“It’s not a rock, it’s too pointy to be a rock.”

“Do you think it’s an animal skeleton that got buried?”

“Like a fossil?”

“That’s stupid.”

“It’s bigger, it’s like a corner. A big corner of something.”

The others are unconvinced but probe and trace the sandy clay with their sneakers. The coarser gravel of the lakebed is called grus, minute fragments of plutonic rocks crumbled over centuries. Their shoes find edges, firm lines artificial in straightness.

“It’s like the start of a building. My dad showed me something like it once. They built the base but never made the rest of the building.”

“That’s stupid, how could they build a building in the middle of a lake.” The leader stamps impatiently at the ground, and his foot breaks through the duricrust, half his calf below ground level.

They have no tools but cannot fetch them from home, as the dry lake is forbidden. As they claw at the glassy rock and gravel heaps, they begin to use their own weight, jumping in place where the surface feels light and like the dried exoskeleton of a crab it breaks apart. Eight hands scrabble at the earth, tossing away the great flakes that shatter on the lakebed.

When they stop to regard their progress, there’s a wall, partially uncovered, and set in the wall a door beneath where the surface broke; a level of a building submerged in the top stratum.

“It is a building.”

“How did they build it underwater?”

“Maybe it was a man-made lake, like when they dig a mine. I bet that’s what it is.”

“Do you think there’s underground mine tunnels still around?”

“But when did they demolish the building?”

Curiosity makes for boundless energy. The excavation centers on the door and when the crater they’ve hollowed out gets too narrow for all of them, pairs take turns scooping out the cavity, the remaining two sitting at the edge resting their red, chafing hands and daydreaming what relics might still be inside the foundation, sealed away for years unknown.

“How big do you think it was?”

“I dunno. You’d have to find all the edges, and the dirt’s harder at the top.”

Despite their persistence it takes many thousands of handfuls to uncover the doorway. Excavated sand and pebbles trickle back into the pit as it deepens – more of the gravel they unearth is craggy and porous, gray and off-green pieces the size of arrowheads. By the time all the boys feel internally they must soon return, the sun’s descent quickening, they’ve dug down to the door’s knob.

“It’ll take forever to open it. We’ll have to dig more so it can swing.”

“But it’s still locked. How can you open it? There’s no keyhole.”

“Look, scrape out more from under the knob. Just do it.”

When there’s a cranny dug beneath, one boy takes the biggest chunk of rock they’ve unburied above his head and standing astride the doorknob heaves it down, striking a harsh clang. He does it again and bits of rock shoot off, stinging his legs, but the knob breaks and hangs limp.

They kick at the door. It budges, but with the hinges still buried, holds fast. All their force cracks the door open just a few millimeters. To return home now is unthinkable, no matter the hour, their goal tantalizingly close. With so little leverage, kicking ankle-high, one of them lies back against the slope of the pit and stomps with both legs. Another takes a running start and slides into the door foot-first –– part of the fossilized door breaks away, the boy tumbling after into the darkness.

“What’s inside, what’s inside?”

“I can’t see!”

“Move away, let the light come through.”

The boy inside scrambles to his feet, nerves alive. “It’s pitch black, I can’t see anything.” The ground underfoot feels metallic, and some glassy rocks rattle as they seep in from the outside. Not volcanic glass, but minerals melted by human fire.

“What it’s like in there?”

“My eyes need to adjust, hold on.”

As the others chatter excitedly and begin to climb in, the boys’ pupils dilate and start to regain their acuity and they can see the extent of the inside. It’s a small vestibule, just an enclosure for a stairwell.

But the stairway does not lead up, it leads down. In the darkness and disorientation, they find themselves not in at the base of a stairwell, rather at the top landing, the entire thing tilted on its axis. The boys squint at the handrails and steps, where the rays of light do not reach.

Then it was not a foundation they came across at all, but the bulkhead on a rooftop. The true size of the edifice is impossible to judge.

“How did they… build down?”

“How deep is it?”

“What if the building was here before the dirt covered it?”

They look down the dark mouth of the stairwell, imagining the uncountable stories of the structure – and if an entire building was swallowed, could there be others sleeping underground, beneath layers of dust and earth and rock, those shards reminiscent of lightning-born fulgurite, sand melted by a tremendous heat. One boy picks up a stone of fossilized lightning and drops it down the slanted cavern of the stairwell, listening for the clatter. Then they all follow suit.

Long forgotten but for warnings diluted by time – there were not lakes, but craters; not beds but ceilings, vaults formed after bombs shook the earth and buildings sank into the fissures. The silicate minerals metamorphosed by the heat of detonations.

A boy picks up one of those pale green rocks and drops it down the skewed tunnel, and this finds the center of the stairwell, touching nothing as it falls. They wait and a sound never comes.

“How far does it go?”

“It’s dark. It looks like it could go forever.”

There’s no wind in the buried chambers, nothing breaking the eerie silence, though to the boys it feels as though something could be lurking, lingering to hiss out from the past. They dare not descend. Looking down the stairwell is akin to looking up into the night sky; it’s as if the distance could go on forever.