For locations, consult the map of the Ebonwood Region on homepage.
After making it in a way, Prof. Abrams could see that the walls of the cave were stratified; dark in some places and lighter in others. “Have there been many cave-ins?”
“A few here and there. Dr. Bianchi here says this one is pretty sturdy,” Nichols remarked. “Isn’t that right, doc?”
Prof. Abrams imagined that Dr. Bianchi and Nichols were pretty comfortable and probably on a first name basis when outsiders weren’t around.
“Relatively speaking,” Dr. Bianchi replied.
After walking further, Prof. Abrams looked back to see the late morning sunlight peeking through the cave entrance, become eclipsed by one of the walls. She felt a twinge of excitement.
“I really appreciate you having me along for this expedition. Even though I live in the Sierras, I hadn’t been to this area yet.”
Dr. Bianchi turned and smiled. “You’re good company, so we’re glad to have you. Algen may have hired you because of your scientific background and occult expertise, but it’s good to see that you have more going on as well.”
Did he just flirt with me?—she thought to herself. “Well, it’s a treat to consult on this expedition. I know that Algen wants to recover any of the archaeological finds that we make, to shed some light on what happened to the Whilowhen tribe; how and why they suddenly disappeared back in the nineteen-fifties. It’s just a shame that we can’t use better light sources.”
“The SEDIs are extremely powerful here, close to the center of Ebonwood,” he said. “It would be an added bonus if we could discover the source of them. That’s probably why you never see any wildlife in the entire region, it must scare off animals.”
Prof. Abrams knew the SEDIs, or Spherical Electromagnetic Disruptions, blanketed the entire Ebonwood region. They effectively nullified all electrical devices and even disabled batteries, which not even EMP (electromagnetic pulse) devices could do. Even though she lived right on the outskirts of Ebonwood, most of her electronics only worked half of the time.
A little further on, their torches began to fall upon openings to the sides of their high-ceilinged tunnel.
“Doorways?” she asked.
“Precisely,” Dr. Bianchi replied.
As she passed a doorway, her torch illuminated a small room with some type of small objects on its floor.
“Here, I’ll show you one,” Dr. Bianchi said as he led the party into one of the larger chambers, which like the others, appeared to be carved out by some sort of tools. He pointed to some of the small objects on the floor that she’d seen before.
Her eyes squinted in the muted light of their torches. She thought it odd that even with the light of four torches, the light they cast off seemed unnaturally dim as if it was being swallowed by the oppressive darkness around them. She made out some sort of fragments on the ground.
“What are they?”
“Some sort of fossilized material. We took some samples back to Algen last week because we’ve never seen anything like them.”
“Really?” Prof. Abrams kneeled and ran a finger along one of the longer fragments. “Curious.”
Dr. Bianchi nodded his head. “Yes—we should have some results from the lab, soon.”
“Hey guys, check this out,” Brannon said from outside the room. He was pointing down the tunnel at something.
They exited the room and were about to continue down the tunnel when Prof. Abrams suddenly saw a small figure flickering in their torchlight.
“What’s that?” she queried.
As they came closer, Prof. Abrams could see that the figure was a small doll that stood facing them. She guessed it was probably no more than six inches in height. It had on a simple cloth dress with frills and long black hair that ended in ribboned ponytails. It was made of wood and bleached in some sort of white pigment. It had dark eye sockets, a tiny nose, and an oddly-smirking mouth shape.
Nichols scratched his scruffy chin. “We didn’t see this one before. It’s more detailed than the others we seen.”
“Must have missed it in our initial surveys,” Brannon added.
“What do you think these represent? We’ve seen a couple of other ones too.” Dr. Bianchi asked, looking at Prof. Abrams.
Prof. Abrams brought a hand up to rest on her dainty chin. “I’m not sure, although…”
The three men looked pointedly at her.
She continued. “People…there have been people whom we’ve interviewed that said that they’ve seen similar dolls in Ebonwood, or on the outskirts of it.”
“Were they near any sort of landmarks or anything?” Dr. Bianchi asked.
“They only saw the dolls at night so…they were hard to see…a couple of them said that the dolls they saw were of different sizes. When they approached them from a distance they would lose sight of them and…”
Nichols snorted. “I wonder what they were on,” he and Brannon chuckled. “We get a lot of drifters and runaways that come through here.”
“They were terrified,” Prof. Abrams said.