An Extract from This Month's Release: Forbidden
Forbidden
Written on June 27, 2016, for the March 28 entry of 366 Days of Flash Fiction, this piece is an attempt at blending mild elements of horror, with science fiction in a tale of colonial loss and discovery.
Opened the cave, today, the journal read. Nothing inside—just as I predicted. Looked, then locked it up and left it.
“Locked it up?” Jorge wondered. “How do you lock up a cave?”
“Maybe it has a door,” Tiana replied.
“But caves don’t have doors,” Jorge argued. “Caves can’t have doors.”
“We could always go and check it out. The book has directions.”
“Why don’t we finish reading it first?” They two of them had found the journal in the colony archives, in a box of personal belongings donated by parents whose child had gone missing. “Better to go in forewarned.”
“Yeah, but let’s not wait too long.”
Jorge laid the book open on the table, and they both squinted at the small cramped scrawl.
“We could split it,” Jorge told her. “I’ll scan the next ten pages, and you can work on them, while I start just after.”
“Fine.” Tian would rather have been the one to go through the book, but Jorge had found it, and he’d grown evermore reluctant to let it out of his sight, the more they read.
My name is Jorgia Stemmafiend, the book had begun, and Jorge had been hooked.
Tiana had searched the colony database for the Stemmafiends, and discovered the family had sold its stake and left the planet within twelve months of their daughter going missing. She’d looked up the register of births and deaths, but had not found Jorgia, until she’d searched the columns of the missing—and then she’d found the coordinates of the cave.
Unfortunately, the cave was in Seamma’s Valley, a region that had been cordoned off by the authorities as soon as the Stemmafiends had deeded it back.
Unsafe, the colony database read. Danger unspecified. Lives lost.
And it was true. Jorgia had disappeared into the cave, and the search party that went after her had vanished, too. There had been a single survivor from the second team, but his report had been too incoherent to be believed. The loss of a third team had seen the caves closed, and the valley put under a twenty-four-hour watch.
The reports after that, had been classified—as had all the reports from the search teams. No one had thought to see if Jorgia had kept a diary, and her parents hadn’t drawn any attention to it, but Jorgia, herself, had explained why.
I keep these books hidden under my bed. My parents don’t approve of horror stories. They’d take them away, if they knew—and they won’t go searching through them, either. My diary is safe in the box. If you find it, give it back. If you find it, come and find me.
And that had been when she’d been talking about exploring the valley. He and Tiana had skipped most of the plant and animal descriptions, pausing only to study Jorgia’s detailed drawings. Whoever she’d been, she’d been good at drawing.
When he came back from the scanner, he handed Tiana the sheets, and sat down beside her, turning to a fresh page of the notepad.
They sat, side by side, working through the pages until their communicators vibrated, their parents telling them they were late.
“Sorry, mum,” Jorge said. “I was working in the library.”
“You’re awfully keen,” his mum said. “What are you working on?”
“Something,” he said, and she frowned.
“I want to finish it, before I show you,” he said.
“Fine. Now, get ready for dinner.”
And Jorge had hurried off to his room. By ‘dinner’ his mum meant ‘dinner and bed’, and he’d better have done his homework, which he hadn’t, but he could get it done before class started, and no one would know.
The weight of the diary dragged at his shoulder, and memory surfaced—Jorgia had written much the same thing.
The xenobiologists say there’s something wrong with the valley, she’d written, and they’re too busy mapping the grasslands for the agronomers to be bothered. I can do it, they said, but only if it doesn’t interfere with my schoolwork. Well, it does, but I’ll be finished before anyone notices.
And then she’d found the cave, and it had been locked tight, but she hadn’t said how, which was strange, given just how much detail she gave of everything else. Jorge hurried through dinner, and then pretended tiredness. That night, he joined Jorgia in the caves.
It’s dry down here, she’d written, and smells musty. I passed through another set of doors. Ones you can see, the usual sort. They’re easy to unlock; I used a pass-card from the library. Something made these caves. They’re old, but not as old as the world. I’ll draw a map as I go, and stick it in, when I get back. Tomorrow, I’ll copy it at school, and take the copy with me, and add anything new.
Only the diary stopped, right there. Jorgia hadn’t come back, and she’d only left a partial map behind her. Jorge met Tiana before school, the next day.
“We’ve got to go, now,” he’d said. “Mum caught me reading the journal, and she’s gonna tell the library.”
And Tiana had followed him, right up to the door—and there she’d stopped.
“No, Jorge,” she said. “I can’t. Can’t you feel it?”
Jorge shook his head.
“Not a thing, Ti, but it’s okay. I’ll let you know what I find, okay?”
She stared at him, as he felt around the edges of the cave, and then ran his library card through an invisible slot. She stared at him, as he stepped through, and disappeared.
“I begged him,” she said, later. “I begged him not to go, but I was so scared all I could do was whisper, and he didn’t hear. He just smiled and waved and went inside.”
And he hadn’t come out, not then, and not when the colony security had come looking for them. He hadn’t come out, and they hadn’t gone in.
“It’s forbidden for a reason,” they’d said, and nothing Tiana, or Jorge’s distraught parents said, could sway them.
Cover art is by Jake at JCaleb Design, and links to 366 Days of Flash Fiction can be found on Books2 Read at: https://books2read.com/u/b6MrN0
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