The Hold
As I lay here on my deathbed, I find desperation in sharing my dread. Not of my impending doom, but of a mountain. I was sworn to secrecy in this mountain and for the safety of the foolish who may read this, I will not be disclosing locations or any hints that would lead you to certain punishment. I was brought into contract as a maintainer and a cleaner. In my early days in this contract I used to think that the specific processing area I was in, led to a sort of doomsday bunker or small city underground for some end of the world backup facility. I thought this was really neat, which would have explained the amount of constant cattle and top secret clearance requirements to employ contractors like myself. I had been employed straight after my discharge from the military. It was good money and fairly straight forward duties. This facility was vast and we had specific teams for specific parts of the facility that no one team would ever visit another part nor engage with team members outside of your section. All communication inside was monitored heavily anyway. So I never knew what any other team did outside my zone. I worked in a place my team referred to as the Hold. Mainly during my shift we'd process cattle into the hold. At the top was a big metallic bunker. There were some 12 foot tall doors, room to process the cattle and a large crane and pulley system with a section dedicated to extra parts to replace or maintain the pulley or crane. In the center were even bigger doors that led downward. The doors met at the center and would open for the pulley to lower cattle in. I'd imagine there could be several zones for different resources as I only ever saw cattle. I helped up top with herding, repairs and organizing cattle transfer. Once we got up to about 20 cows into the hold we halted operations. And would take a 30 minute break. And after wards we'd have to don CBRN gear down into the main hold. There was only two set of doors that led there about the size of a naval ship bulk head hatch opposite of each other. There was a small window on the door where we could see the hold release decontaminates being sprayed into the room. The bottom doors I imagined were just as thick as the upper doors of near 10-12 feet thick steel. They were bigger and took up the size of the hold itself. The hold for reference could easily fit 100 heads of cow. There was a mechanical redundancy of the doors to prevent contamination. The bottom door could not open if the top was open and vice verse. However, the bottom hatch opened downwards rather than slide like the ones above where we hoist the cattle down. When we do open the bottom main hatch a shielding opens up in front of our doors that prevents us from seeing as gates open. None of my fellow contractors had ever seen what's below the main hatch of the hold. As the main hatch would open there would always be a rumbling which always made me hold my breath as the immediate vicinity shook slightly. With time each of us would get used to it. At first I thought nothing of it. Once the doors closed and the decontaminate was sprayed we'd go in and check for any maintenance or cleanup. There were cameras there which after years of maintaining I could tell were closed off from access to where my zone was as opposed to the upper cameras which we could see by the zone control outside the upper bunker. We were deep in this mountain and some small talk and whispering of rumors spread amongst us humble contractors. The rumor being that this was the pit to hell. A few of the cleanings of the main hold there'd be occasional webbing of some sort and some thick long hair, too long to belong to any cattle I saw processed. The hair was dark and at least 2 feet long, but they reminded me of spikes more than anything. There were marks on the inner upper hatch. You'd have to stack at least 5 cows to reach. What could have made those marks? We never knew. The marks were wide maybe the size of my leg at the smallest mark or imprint, with an indent relief of at least half a foot difference. We'd have to get a hose or ladder down there to clean and there was a small chute that was vacuum run which we'd put in any waste including the long hairs into. There was a cable that ran along the chute, which looked like it was to another camera outside of where we were. My guess was there was a camera that was lowered through the chute that could see below. After seeing the marks I had very little curiosity to see below the hold. I suppose we were contracted for our known reputation for secrecy, as I lay here dying, it means little to me now. I wish I could say that I'm glad no one would ever see down below the hold, but there was one incident documented before my shift started. Whether by accident or intentional a person had either fainted or hid among the cattle. We looked for hours around our zone to no avail, I can only assume that the main control room could retrace his steps. As we restarted our decontamination of the main hold we could see blood for the first time on the bottom hatch. When we saw the blood we looked at each other. I hadn't even taken notice that there was no rumblings at that moment until someone else had pointed it out. Regardless we never heard more about the one who went below, but we did get a safety brief about not going down with the cattle. For 27 years I've held on to this dread, what was down there? One contractor had mentioned he saw some notes on accident as some paper work was spilled by a rushing researcher. He said he saw much of the text on the pages were blotted out in black ink except for the operational name of Phalanx. Which meant nothing at the time, but now writing this I feel the dread in my bones with my tired and wrinkled hands. May whoever find this never go looking for this place. May whatever is below the hold never be known. I'm now free having said my last anxieties of the hold. I can still feel the rumblings.
