Beneath The Desert
1373 Words
"I am one hundred and sixty-eight years old."
The words echoed through the underground chamber.
Jade stared at Elias.
Waiting for him to laugh.
Waiting for him to admit it was a joke.
Waiting for reality to return.
It never did.
The silence stretched between them.
"You expect me to believe that?" she finally asked.
"No."
"Good."
"But it's true."
Jade shook her head.
"This is insane."
Elias knelt and picked up the fallen journal.
"It sounds insane."
"It sounds impossible."
"Those aren't always the same thing."
She hated how calm he was.
Anyone else claiming to be nearly two centuries old would sound ridiculous.
Elias sounded tired.
Like someone carrying a burden for far too long.
He opened the journal to one of the photographs.
The picture showed him standing beside Nathaniel Blackwood in 1887.
Then he pulled something from his pocket.
A second photograph.
The same face.
Different decade.
Different clothes.
The date on the back read 1924.
He produced another.
Another.
Another.
The same face.
The same amber eyes.
No signs of aging.
Jade's stomach twisted.
"How?"
Elias stared at the old photographs.
"That is a very long story."
"Try me."
He sighed.
"I wasn't born in Red Mesa."
"No kidding."
A faint smile crossed his face.
"I was born in 1858."
Jade nearly laughed.
Except she couldn't.
Not anymore.
"Back then this place wasn't called Red Mesa. It was little more than scattered settlements and old legends."
"Legends?"
"The desert was sacred to many tribes long before towns existed here."
Elias looked toward the stone walls.
"They believed something slept beneath the earth."
Jade folded her arms.
"And?"
"And they were right."
A chill crawled up her spine.
The underground room suddenly felt much colder.
"You're serious."
"Completely."
Elias walked toward one of the maps hanging nearby.
The paper was yellowed with age.
Ancient symbols covered the desert landscape.
"There are tunnels beneath Red Mesa."
Jade remembered the journal entries.
The hidden ruins.
The underground passages.
"You found them?"
"No."
His expression darkened.
"They found me."
Jade spent the next hour listening.
And the more Elias spoke, the stranger everything became.
When he was seventeen, he had discovered a cavern hidden deep within the desert cliffs.
Inside he found ruins older than recorded history.
At the center of those ruins stood a black stone unlike anything on Earth.
The moment he touched it, something happened.
Something impossible.
Something that changed him forever.
He stopped aging.
Stopped getting sick.
Stopped dying.
At first he thought it was a blessing.
Over time he learned otherwise.
Everyone he loved grew old.
Everyone he cared about died.
Generation after generation.
While he remained exactly the same.
"I've buried more friends than I can remember," he said quietly.
Jade looked down.
For the first time she understood the sadness behind his eyes.
The loneliness.
The exhaustion.
"What was the stone?" she asked.
Elias shook his head.
"We still don't know."
"We?"
"My family spent decades studying it."
His gaze drifted toward another section of the room.
Rows of journals stretched across stone shelves.
Hundreds of them.
Records spanning generations.
"My father searched for answers."
His voice softened.
"So did my grandfather."
Jade walked toward the shelves.
Some journals looked ancient.
Others were recent.
The sheer amount of research was overwhelming.
One question continued nagging at her.
"If you've known my parents for years..."
Elias looked away.
Immediately suspicious.
Jade narrowed her eyes.
"What aren't you telling me?"
His silence answered everything.
Her heart sank.
"Elias."
"You won't like the answer."
"Tell me."
Another pause.
Then—
"I knew your grandmother."
Jade blinked.
"What?"
"I knew her very well."
Her grandmother had died before Jade was born.
The only memories she had were old photographs and family stories.
"How?"
Elias hesitated.
Then opened a nearby drawer.
Inside rested a faded photograph.
Jade's breath caught.
The picture showed her grandmother at sixteen.
Standing beside Elias.
Smiling.
Her hands trembled.
"That's impossible."
"It isn't."
Jade stared at the image.
Something about it felt wrong.
Not because of Elias.
Because of her grandmother.
She looked exactly like Jade.
Not similar.
Identical.
The same eyes.
The same smile.
The same face.
Jade slowly looked up.
"Why do we look alike?"
Elias didn't answer.
Which terrified her.
That evening Jade found Rowan waiting near the cliffs outside town.
The sunset painted the desert in brilliant shades of gold and crimson.
Normally she would have admired it.
Tonight her thoughts were elsewhere.
Rowan immediately noticed.
"You look like you've seen a ghost."
"I might have."
He sat beside her.
"What happened?"
For several moments she considered telling him everything.
Then she remembered Elias's warning.
Not yet.
"Family stuff."
Rowan raised an eyebrow.
"That serious?"
"You have no idea."
They sat quietly.
The warm evening breeze carried the scent of desert sage.
Eventually Rowan spoke.
"My grandfather used to tell stories about this place."
Jade glanced toward him.
"What kind of stories?"
"The weird kind."
She laughed softly.
"Everyone keeps saying that."
"I'm serious."
His expression remained thoughtful.
"He believed there were entire cities buried under the desert."
Jade's pulse quickened.
Cities.
Plural.
The journal had mentioned ruins.
"What else?"
"He said strange lights appear sometimes."
Jade remembered Elias mentioning unexplained energy beneath the earth.
Rowan continued.
"People disappear occasionally."
Her stomach dropped.
"What?"
"Not often."
He looked toward the distant horizon.
"But enough that people notice."
The breeze suddenly felt colder.
Then Rowan smiled.
"The stories are probably nonsense."
"Probably."
Except Jade wasn't so sure anymore.
The conversation drifted elsewhere.
School.
Friends.
Music.
Life.
The easy comfort returned.
For a while she forgot about ancient ruins and impossible secrets.
Forgot about hidden tunnels.
Forgot about immortal family friends.
Until Rowan reached over and brushed a strand of hair from her face.
The gesture was small.
Simple.
Yet Jade's heart nearly exploded.
Their eyes met.
Neither spoke.
The desert seemed to disappear around them.
The moment stretched.
Closer.
Closer.
Then—
A distant rumble echoed through the valley.
The ground shook.
Both jumped to their feet.
"What was that?" Jade asked.
Rowan looked toward the mountains.
His face had gone pale.
The rumble came again.
Louder this time.
Somewhere beneath them.
Deep underground.
And then the earth cracked.
A line split across the desert floor nearly half a mile away.
Dust exploded upward.
Birds scattered into the sky.
Jade's blood ran cold.
Because something was climbing out.
The entire town gathered near the edge of the newly formed fissure.
Emergency vehicles lined the roads.
Police blocked access.
Everyone was talking at once.
Jade stood beside her parents.
The c***k stretched nearly three hundred feet across the desert.
Nobody understood how it had appeared.
Except Elias.
The moment he arrived, Jade saw fear in his eyes.
Real fear.
The kind she had never seen before.
"What is it?" she whispered.
His expression remained fixed on the fissure.
"It's happening sooner than I thought."
"What is?"
He looked at her.
"The awakening."
Jade wished he would stop speaking like a movie trailer.
Before she could ask more questions, a voice shouted from the crowd.
Someone had climbed partway into the fissure.
An explorer.
A local geology professor.
He emerged holding something.
The object glittered beneath the setting sun.
Black stone.
Perfectly smooth.
Ancient symbols covered its surface.
The exact same symbols Jade had seen in the underground room.
The same symbols described in the journals.
The same symbols connected to Elias.
A terrible silence spread through the crowd.
Then the professor looked up.
His face had gone completely white.
"There's an entire structure down there."
Everyone began talking at once.
The professor swallowed hard.
His voice trembled.
"It's not natural."
The crowd quieted.
"It's a city."
Jade's heart pounded.
A buried city.
Beneath Red Mesa.
Just like the legends.
Just like the journals.
Just like the stories.
And somehow she knew this discovery wasn't an accident.
Something had awakened beneath the desert.
Something ancient.
Something waiting.
Waiting for her.
Waiting for Elias.
Waiting for a secret hidden for centuries to finally be uncovered.
As the sun disappeared behind the cliffs, the shadows inside the fissure deepened.
Far below, where nobody else could see...
A pair of glowing eyes opened in the darkness.
And watched.
- Writer
