The Cursed Excavation Site. (Or CES for short)
That’s what most of us call it. By “us”, I mean the soldiers and workers that are stationed there. The higher-ups call it something different. Some innocuous, bureaucratic title that they’ve designated for it. I guess it doesn’t really matter what anybody calls it. It sure is one hell of a bizarre place.
As you might have guessed, it’s a dig site located smack in the middle of a desert. I won’t disclose which one, even though I doubt that anybody would find it regardless. It’s quite the ways away from any kind of civilization. Like I mentioned before, there’s essentially two groups of people stationed there. The workers – archeologists, medics, guys who do grunt work, etc. And the soldiers. I’m part of the latter group.
Now, you might be wondering why an excavation site in the middle of nowhere would require the presence of armed soldiers. I was pretty confused about it myself at first. However, it’ll make more sense after I explain what kind of stuff goes on here.
Let me tell you more about how this place is set up. If you go and search up “excavation site” on google images, I can tell you that it won’t quite be an accurate representation of the CES. In fact, the difference is monumental. The title we gave it is a bit of a misnomer. It isn’t just one site. There’s actually nine of them, all spread out a few kilometers apart each.
We refer to each site by their number. (So, CES 1, CES 2, CES 3, ETC.) This isn’t an arbitrary system. It’s actually quite important. Maybe I’ll go into that later.
Each site is divided into three areas. One – the barracks or living quarters. They’re surprisingly nice and well air-conditioned, and we can usually get a few minutes of internet access a day. You can probably guess what most of the guys spend those minutes on. The food’s alright as well, although most of its either powdered or out of a can.
The second is the main digging area.
The third and final area is somewhat of an enigma. It has a simple, but apt name – “The Tent.” That’s literally what it is. Just a massive, white tent that’s located way off to the side, well past everything else. It kind of looks like one of those FEMA disaster relief tents, only way larger.
None of us have any idea what it’s for. And the ones that ever have the opportunity to find out don’t end up coming back. The thing is, it’s not a medical area, as you might assume it would be. We already have one of those, located in the barracks.
The people that end up going to the tent are usually suffering from stranger afflictions. I’ll give you an example, something that happened during my first week here. There used to be a guy named Amir, one of the lead archeologists. One day, he gets a call from the higher ups, instructing him to tell his team to start digging a tunnel down at a specific set of coordinates at CES 2, where I was stationed at the time
Amir sends them down and decides to check in with them after about two hours of digging, only to realize that he’s lost all contact. Radio silence. Thinking the worst, he decides to venture down into the tunnel himself in an attempt to figure out what’s going on.
Here’s where things get messy. Only about five minutes after he goes down, his team comes back up. However, he’s not with them, and his team doesn’t report ever seeing him down there. That obviously doesn’t make any sense. They hadn’t dug any branching pathways, just a linear tunnel. They also hadn’t reported seeing anything strange at all. The only reason they came back up was because it was getting close to lunch. And also… because Amir had apparently told them that they could.
They all looked understandably confused when we told them that Amir had failed to make contact with them at all, and that was why he’d gone down.
“That’s impossible,” one of the diggers said. “We were talking to him the entire time.”
We had a procedure for things like this. I thought it was pretty vague when I’d first read it, but this was a situation that it undoubtedly applied to.
In the case of any event(s) that isn’t explainable by the context of the events that have transpired earlier in the day, immediately contact the main office and await further instructions.
The “main office” basically meant the higher-ups. We followed the procedure and called it in, explaining what had happened to them. They simply told us to stay put and “wait for him to come back up.”
“Well, what if he doesn’t come back up?” I asked them, unsure of why they seemed so confident about that happening.
“He will,” they responded. “When he does, send him to the tent.”
I’m not kidding when I tell you that they hung up immediately afterwards. No instructions beyond that.
“Strange shit, right?”
I turned around, seeing Anze hovering over me. He was another soldier that was stationed there with me at the time. “You’ve never handed anybody off to the tent, have you?” he asked me.
I hadn’t, so I shook my head.
“Alright then,” he said. “I’ll show you the ropes. It’s a… delicate process.”
I gave him a look of confusion and he responded with a slight grin.
“Save the questions for after, alright?”
Sure enough, Amir came staggering out of the tunnel around ten minutes later. Although he seemed dazed and completely out of it, he didn’t appear to have any visible injuries.
“Watch closely,” Anze said as he got up and began walking towards him. As he got closer to Amir, he slowed down and drew his pistol. I looked around, seeing all of the other soldiers watching intently as he did so. Some had expressions of concern on their face. Others were grinning.
As Anze got within a few feet of him, he pointed the gun at Amir’s head, while reaching out for his hand at the same time. He grabbed it, before flipping it over to reveal his palm. And then he let out a big sigh of relief.
He looked back at us and held out a thumbs up. The other soldiers either groaned or let out sighs of relief as well before they all scurried back to their posts. Anze then looked at me, gesturing for me to come over.
“The most important thing you need to know in these situations,” he said. “Black is good. Red is bad.”
He showed me Amir’s palm, which was now marked with some strange black symbol. It looked similar to the squared circle (representing the philosopher’s stone), although more distorted. The edges of the triangle poked through the circle, and the lines all looked messy, as if they were drawn by a less-than-steady hand.
“So what now?” I asked him.
“We take him over to the tent. And then he stops being our problem.”
I looked up at Amir. He was staring off into space, his expression blank and pupils dilated to their absolute max. I waved my hand in front of his face, but he didn’t react at all.
I’m not gonna say something cliché like I started “regretting” my decisions at that moment. I knew that something wasn’t quite right with this place well before I took a position here. I “accepted” the risks, so to speak.
Still, I’d be lying if I said that the whole situation didn’t unnerve me at least a little bit. I followed Anze as he began leading Amir over to the tent.
“This part’s pretty simple,” he said, stopping a few feet away from the entrance. He let go of Amir’s arm and pushed him forward. He then grabbed my shoulder and turned me around.
“Once you deliver the guy, let the tent do the rest,” he said. “But they won’t take him unless you’re looking away.”
A few moments later, I could hear zippers being undone and the slight shuffling of feet. I nearly looked back instinctively, but Anze grabbed me by the head before I could see anything.
“Never do that,” he said. “Just keep looking forward.”
We heard some more shuffling, and then a second zip.
“Now it’s safe,” he said. We turned back and sure enough, Amir was gone.
“What?” I said, beginning to shake my head. “What the hell was-“
Anze began snickering, interrupting me. “If you want those kinds of answers, you’re talking to the wrong guy. The only people that have any clue what the goddamn hell’s going on here are millions of miles away. But I doubt that even they know everything.”
I suppose that was the response that I had to accept.
“Look, we’ll be fine,” he continued. “If we don’t dick around and play our cards right. I’ve been here for over seven months, and nothing’s happened to me yet. So if you want, you can follow my lead and maybe nothing’ll happen to you either.”
He grinned again, before slapping me on the back and walking us both forward.
“Another word of advice, don’t stick around the tent entrance for too long. I’m pretty sure that they can tell who has and hasn’t been marked, but I’d rather not take my chances.”
“Right,” I said, still trying to process the implications of what had just happened. “Can I ask you something that you might be able to answer?”
He nodded. “Go ‘fer it.”
“What if his mark was red? What would we have to do then?”
“Well,” he began to respond. “We have guns for a reason, don’t we?”
That was the first “peculiar” incident that I experienced here at the CES. A few more months have passed since then, and a lot more has happened. I’ve also heard some stuff from my fellow soldiers and workers. Stories about the giant black cube in CES 6, the strange village located in a cave hundreds of feet below, and the ‘desert stalkers’ that apparently show up after midnight, to name a few.
If I’m being honest, I’m not quite sure why I’m deciding to write this stuff down all of a sudden, or even who I plan on showing it to. I don’t think I’d get in trouble with the higher-ups for doing so, as long as I don’t divulge anything too specific.
I suppose that keeping a log of the things I see and hear here might keep me sane. Hell, maybe this is just fun for me. In any case, I should probably log off. The guy in line to use the computer after me looks like he’s starting to get antsy.
I’ll probably report back with some more stories soon. Maybe I’ll talk a bit about myself as well! (But don’t expect too much of that).
Stay safe, everybody. And don’t go venturing out too far into the desert. You might just come across something that’ll change your life, usually not for the better.
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Credits
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