The Lost Level Read Online Free PDF

looked normal. Others were strangely colored. A tiny brown lizard, the
size of my thumb, poked its head out at me from a crack in the rocks and then
vanished. A bird squawked overhead. It sounded like a crow, but was much
smaller.
    Occasionally, the slight breeze turned into a quick gust of wind
that whistled through the ravines and peaks. The sun remained where it was,
seemingly frozen at high noon. Sweat dripped from my hair, nose, and upper lip,
and ran down my back and shoulders.
    I glanced below again, but the smoke I’d spotted earlier was now
gone. Sighing with frustration, I decided to keep climbing anyway, in the hopes
of spying it again and ascertaining its source. Smoke most likely meant one of
two things—either a wildfire or a campfire. Judging by the shape of the column
I’d seen, I judged it had been the latter, and that was a good thing. A
campfire meant some other form of intelligent life. So, I continued my climb.
    I was about fifty feet from the peak, clinging to a jagged,
triangular outcropping of grey, lichen–covered stone which teetered above a
steep, almost vertical drop to more rocks far below, when I spotted the Jeep.
It was painted red, with big, fat tires, a roll cage, and a black canvas top
attached to the roll bars. The front half of the vehicle was sticking out of a
cliff face to my right. The rear of the Jeep wasn’t visible. Indeed, it was
fused with the rock, as if the vehicle had materialized on the hillside, half
in and half out of the cliff.
    Overcoming my initial surprise, I edged my way over to the
precariously suspended vehicle and managed to get the driver’s side door open.
The hinges squeaked and flakes of rust drifted down into the gorge below. I
clambered inside and sat down. Sure enough, the bucket seats gave way to sheer
cliff face. It felt like I was sitting inside some bizarre sculpture, as if
someone had carved an incredibly realistic vehicle out of granite. But when I
reached out and touched the Jeep, I felt steel and vinyl, rather than rock. I
was nervous at first, half–expecting the cab to snap off and plummet into the ravine,
but it didn’t. It didn’t even wobble as I moved around. It was truly fused with
the stone behind it, becoming just another outcropping in the cliff face.
    I sat there for a moment, wondering how this was possible and
what it meant. That was my first inkling that I was in the fabled Lost Level
that I’d read about—that dimension from which there is no exit, where cosmic
castaways wash up and are abandoned. Several occult tomes had suggested that
doorways to this dimension could sometimes open at random, without magical
means. It had been proposed that this was the secret behind everything from the
Bermuda Triangle to some of the thousands of missing persons cases each year.
Could that have been what happened here? Maybe a temporary doorway had opened up
back home (or in a reality similar to my home) and this Jeep had driven through
it, materializing here, high above the jungle. And then the doorway had closed
just as abruptly, leaving the vehicle half–embedded in solid rock. But if so,
where was the driver?
    My hands were scraped and chafed from crawling up the rocks, and
my jeans were torn and dirty. I’d lost my shirt somewhere along the way, too. I’d
had it tied around my waist when I started climbing, but now it was gone.
Despite the heat, I started shivering.
    “Shock,” I muttered. My voice sounded strange to my own ears. “You’re
going into shock. You need to focus, Aaron. You’ve had a very stressful day, so
focus on the tasks at hand.”
    I did just that, starting with a thorough search of the Jeep’s
interior. It had obviously been there a while. In addition to the rusty door
hinges, time and exposure to the elements had faded the seat covers and left
the vinyl dashboard cracked and dirty. The windshield was covered with a thick
coat of dirt and dead bugs. Most of the insects appeared normal, except for one
that was