Into the Valley

You wake up, belly down, in warm, pale yellow sand. With a cough, you raise your head, wiping grains from the sides of your lips like froth from some drink you wish you had. 

The sound of rumbling waves fades in along with visual clarity as you blink your eyes to let them adjust to the blast of sunlight you forgot to prepare for. 

As you sit up to get your bearings, you see endless beach to your left and right, the wide ocean behind you, and dense forest ahead.

You weigh your options: beach, water, forest.

Each possibility is plucked from your mind the instant it forms.

The sand seems to push you.

The ocean recoils.

The forest parts, something deep within its shadows summoning you, demanding you step forward.

You are uncertain how long you’ve been here, only that it’s been long enough for thirst to set in, but not long enough for the sun to have noticeably affected your exposed skin. 

So into the forest you go, passing dates, coconuts, bananas, and fruits you cannot name, all just out of reach. 

A fleeting thought of grabbing one flirts with your consciousness, but a deeper compulsion drives you onward. 

A distinct lack of sound, beyond the rustling of leaves in the wind, strikes you. 

None of the expected calling of birds, chittering of insects, mocking shouts of simians, or threatening snorts of boar. 

Just you, the aforementioned breeze, the growing heaviness of your breathing, and that infernal hum.

Has it been there the whole time?

Uncertain.

But what is certain is that it buzzes in your ears and vibrates your bones with its constant, quickly oscillating rhythm. 

The sensation, while not louder or faster, continually grows more intense the deeper you delve into the forest. 

The growing fear and nausea would, under normal circumstances, compel you to turn back. But, much like picking at a scab, or the self-molestation of a sore spot, the sickness feels disturbingly intriguing, and so you press on.

The deeper you press into the forest, the more it seems to thicken with the need to hold you back, furthering your desire to hack away at its limbs with a machete you do not have.

Finally, you press through the final wall of hindering forest and find yourself in a wide open valley, the far side walled off by steep hills.

The skyline above those hills is marred by several bunkers of gray concrete and Brutalist design.

But your attention is drawn to the source of the hum.

An eight-foot-wide icosahedron hovers six feet off the ground at the center of the valley. Thin, pulsing, radial tubes extend from each vertex, as thin, hair-like waving strands surround the base of each tube.

Within the twenty-sided figure, another polyhedron rotates in no discernible pattern, while the number of its sides fluctuates, and the eye within gazes upon you.

In your periphery, you see dark silhouettes lining the hills, observing you. Their arms are suddenly raised toward the sky in perfect unison, though you never saw them move, and you feel a hand with too many fingers grip your shoulder.

You find yourself where you are now, and where you are now is not what it appears to be.

And somewhere, something in the valley shifts as the hum grows stronger, fed by the simple fact that you’ve noticed it.