The Uncanny Adventures of Adam Honey

Chapter 1: Kaazim Digs a HoleChange rarely takes us by surprise. It creeps up on us with small, subtle steps until it is impossible to tell how it began. Or how to stop it. In this case it began on a Wednesday, the most neglected of weekdays, in the small village of Buzaymah. Buzaymah lay in a particularly low valley in the Sahara Desert, at the foot of a mountain range. The whole area officially belonged to the Combined Conquered Empire of Qin now, and had done so for a healthy four decades after the Empress had bought the land off Pharaoh Sarah IV. The village was so cut off from any traveling and trading routes that it was highly doubtful the Empress of Qin even knew about its existence. If she did, she probably didn’t care much, and that was just as well for the inhabitants of Buzaymah, who, above all things, wished to be left in peace and quiet. They herded their goats, they harvested their crops, they ate, slept, and prayed, and for all they knew, the world wasn’t much bigger than the mountains that surrounded them. It began with a hole, or to be even more accurate, it began with the town elders’ decision to dig a hole. The villagers’ only fresh water supply after the close-by oasis had dried up was a mountain spring. For many decades, the people had ventured up the mountain every morning, collected their water, then ventured down again. It was cumbersome, but the people of Buzaymah were in no rush and didn’t mind the two-hour journey. The spring, however, was carrying less and less water, something the good villagers noticed with growing unrest. If it were to dry up entirely like the lake had done, they would be left without any water. So they decided to dig a well. If the water didn’t want to come out for them anymore, then they would have to dig it out. Kaazim, the shepherd, was tasked with this job. He expressed his thanks for the elders’ trust in his abilities, picked up a shovel, and began to dig a hole in the middle of what the villagers called Middle of Village, but what was in fact a circular, eerily dry patch of land, a stone’s throw away from the last hut. The dry patch was something that unsettled the good people of Buzaymah to the extent that nobody spoke about it. Everybody had their own superstitious belief of what it may mean, ranging from a cursed spot to an ancient burial site; all those beliefs held a grain of truth. Kaazim had been chosen to dig the hole because he was of a simpler nature; it wasn’t that he didn’t believe in superstition, it was just that he didn’t bother about it much. Therefore, he was the only one willing to do the job. If nothing else, the town elders agreed amongst themselves, even if the well were to remain dry, at least they would get rid of the dry patch. That was what they thought, anyway. Kaazim dug for seven days. Relentlessly his shovel delved into the earth, loosened, then scooped up the crumbly dirt and shoveled it out of the hole. On day two, his wife helped him fix a thick rope to a peg, so he could get down and out of the hole easily. There was still no water, and the earth was as dry as desert sand. It kept crumbling back down, making it hard for Kaazim to go down deeper as the dirt around him shifted and settled; it was like standing in an hourglass, and, unbeknownst to Kaazim and the good villagers of Buzaymah, this was exactly what he stood in. Kaazim dug, and that was probably why he was spared the nightmares. They started on the third night. Again, the change crept up on people, and it was subtle at first, so subtle that the villagers didn’t speak about it. Although no less than seven people had the worst nightmares imaginable that night, none of them even mentioned it to their friends and family. The terrible images faded into oblivion as the morning progressed. By lunchtime, all that was left was a queasy feeling in their stomachs, for which they blamed indigestion. The same on the next day. Two days later, on day six of the dig, Kaazim’s wife mentioned at breakfast that her sister had had a disturbing nightmare the night before. Kaazim wasn’t sure why she told him that. “I tell you, Kaazim, my dear beloved husband, because I found it strange: yesterday she told me about her nightmare, and last night I saw similar pictures in my head.” Kaazim shrugged and gulped down another piece of papaya. “She told you about her dream, and it became your dream. That’s all. I must continue my work now. See to the goats today. Make sure the monkeys don’t tease them again.” “When will you be done with this well?” she asked, a trace of plea in her voice. “The spring carries less and less water. And the goats are accustomed to you shepherding them, not me.” “Don’t worry, Jabeena. It will not take much longer.” But even as he promised this, he was dimly aware that he was telling a lie. The earth was as dry as it had been on the first day. If there was any water in reach, the dirt should be damp and cool. Part of him knew this, was certain of it because logic commanded it, but Kaazim wasn’t used to communicating with that part of himself. So he shrugged it off. He put the leaves they used for plates on a stone to dry. The rest of the day he spent digging without making any true progress. At this point the hole was about two meters in diameter and ten meters deep. Kaazim had to tie a second rope around the first one so it reached down all the way. There were two buckets next to his feet; as soon as he had shoveled one of them full of earth, he sloped the end of the rope around the handle, then tugged at it to sound a bell above. This was the signal for Jabeena, who herded the goats not far from the excavation site, to pull it up. She carried the load a short way away from the hole, dumped the dirt on what was steadily becoming a mountain of dust, then lowered the bucket back into the hole again. It was a slow process, just as everything was a slow process in Buzaymah. * * * * The next day, the last day of the dig, Kaazim encountered something strange and puzzling. He stood in the hole, which was now well over fifteen meters deep. The earth was still not showing any signs of water nearby. He had just sent one full bucket up to his wife. Now he brought down the shovel into the next bit of earth, expecting it to be just as crumbly as it had been every time before. Except this time he encountered something solid. He hadn’t realized with how much force he had been digging until his bones resonated with the impact as the wood of his shovel struck the hard surface underneath. Kaazim stopped. Any other person in his shoes, faced with what appeared to be solid rock after seven days of digging for water, might have been angry, and reasonably so. But Kaazim was made of different material. He wasn’t angry. He didn’t think about the hours he had wasted digging a hole only to find a dead end. Kaazim’s inability to be angry, to curse out loud, or stomp his feet in frustration was, in this case, not a good thing. Disheartened and upset he might have just climbed out of the hole and left it at that. It might have saved his life. But Kaazim stopped and was quiet. He stared at the jagged rocks beneath the dust. In the silence that now filled up the air around him, he heard something. A strange noise he didn’t quite know how to categorize resonated from the rocks underneath his feet. It sounded like a muffled screech, the sound nails make on rock when the body is slipping and fingers grope for a safe hold. There was also an unmistakable gurgling beneath. And because he didn’t know what it was, and because it sounded so strange, Kaazim thought that it might be the noise of water trapped below. As it happened, his assumption wasn’t that far off, but this knowledge couldn’t save his life, either. Kaazim had promised the village elders he’d find water. He knew that his friends and family depended on this well. If there was water underneath the rocks, then he would get to it, if it was the last thing he did. Kaazim raised the shovel above his head and brought it down with such force that his bones resonated painfully. It was a simple, wooden shovel. It wasn’t made to dig up anything more solid than wet earth. Again and again Kaazim beat the tool against the rock, each blow brought down with a little more force than the one before. Soon, sweat was running down the shepherd’s neck and back. Salty beads appeared on his forehead and trickled down into his eyes, stinging and blurring his view. Kaazim did not stop. The water was there, he knew it, for some odd reason he knew it was down there. Splinters of stone came off, but also splinters of wood. Eventually, Kaazim did not have a dry patch of clothing left on his body. He administered a last powerful blow and the tool splintered into two pieces. The tip of the shovel crumbled against the stone like a leaf. A crack appeared in the ground. A low rumble swelled up from below. The stones were, and Kaazim would not know that until two seconds later, but a shallow, thin crust on which he was standing. The blow of the last impact had fractured it. The crack widened. The ground crumbled. A chasm opened up. Rock debris, dirt, and the two pieces of the now useless shovel fell through the ground into the Earth. So did Kaazim. He fell for a very long time. Around him, for the hole through which he fell was about two meters in diameter. He saw the most beautiful crag formations he had ever laid eyes on. Shiny veins glittered in the dark stones. Water trickling downward seemed to sweat out of the rocks like pearls. Eventually, the walls around him receded. The passage grew wider until it became a gigantic cave. Kaazim felt that rather than saw it. At this point it was pitch dark. Not even a memory of light lived at this depth. Finally he screamed, and his voice was carried back to him a thousandfold. His last thought before the growing air pressure rendered him unconscious was So there really is an Underworld. * * * * The Empress of Qin, who probably had no knowledge of the village of Buzaymah to begin with, never learned about the incident. The neighboring villages—the closest of those a two-day long foot march away—simply stayed away from the valley, as soon as news made the round that all of the villagers of Buzaymah had become insane. Some said it was terrible dreams, others swore they had heard it was a curse, and some—very few, actually—said nothing. They thought that maybe, just maybe, a whole village going crazy was but one facet of something infinitely large and incomprehensible. The start of something terrible. But, as usual, those few wise ones kept silent; and after a couple of years, the incident turned into a legend. The village of Buzaymah became a myth.