The heat seemed to seep from the sky as though it slipped down through between the clouds.
Even with the occasional breeze, I could find relief only in the sparse shade offered by those few trees still standing straight. Looking at the jungle from afar, I had made the earlier mistake of assuming that sea of green stood as a single unbroken canopy, like an umbrella sheltering those that called the forest floor home. Yet a day’s march into the heart of it had seen to my unfortunate enlightenment. Trees that at first appeared straight in stature were anything but, instead twisted and warped as though victim to frequent storm. Having done my research before embarking on this exhibition, I knew better, and was thus forced to wonder why it was the woods appeared so falsely. The university’s reports had made no mention of it. Few of these ill-standing trunks and branches offered protection from the sun, while in fact most seemed to almost irk away from it, as though they preferred the darkness the braver of their kind offered. Were it not for the conviction with which the locals told their stories, and just how long it had taken me to get here, I might have turned back for search of cooler places.
Slicing through a nearby low-lying vine, I listened carefully to the sounds of those living things around me. Though I was now alone in the sense I’d left behind any of those willing to follow me, I was far from companionless. To my left I could sense as much as I could see the willowy movement of creatures not so unlike me. Monkeys, as I well knew them from the university’s texts, suspended high in the air, and shifting slowly where vine allowed so as to gaze down at me in shameless curiosity. These were not to be feared, or so I was told by both the faculty and locals alike. They are inquisitive and rarely anything more, Dr. Rumfort had said. Still, I could not help but stare back in what I hoped reflected more of my amazement than it did my worry. In some ways, I felt I was seeing a version of mankind that might have been. Like I’d discovered cousins unknown, not related to me in any individual sense, but by something greater. It was strange to think that soon anyone in London would be able to see one. With the Zoo soon going public, the world would broaden for those otherwise stuck under the capital’s smokey skies. A good thing I thought, staring into the wide eyes of a nearby cousin.
Though it seemed that even I was not enchanting enough to hold their attention for long, for after another moment of quiet study, they retreated deeper into the green, moving with ease in those areas hidden from the sun. Perhaps I should follow them, I thought amused, watching until I could no more.
Turning back to the path-to-be, I cut through the last of what separated me from that which I had sought for so long. All at once, unexpectedly, the oversized knife gave way to open air and no resistance as the vines parted into a clearing. Struck into a state of awe and disbelief, I pushed forward until the realm of twisted trees lay behind me, and in front of me, stood a story made real.
I could remember the first time I had stumbled across mention of the ancient city. In a text dated from 410, written collectively by the higher clergy of the Amadaks. The traveling priests had spoken of ruins ancient even to them. Laden with theistic fervor, they had praised the city the first of God’s creations, yet spoke also in aversion to things they had not seen but rather felt, though many of those later pages had been long lost. The next prominent discovery was that of a tome from 671, in which Limitanei soldiers spoke of entering an abandoned city unlike any they had ever before. They described structures of peculiar construction, and a seemingly senseless layout. A city too large to exist, as though scaled up from any human model by a factor of 10. They too referenced a disquiet, their scribe writing that the men could not even sleep within the city’s border. And finally, almost 500 years later, the diary of one Captain Sebastián García, recovered with what remained of his ship at the bottom of the Indian Ocean. He and his men had ventured further into the city, or least made record of it, than either the priests or soldiers had in their times past. His account introduced painted images that could not be explained nor accurately described, saying only that they elicited strange emotions from those of his crew that viewed them. He’d written that they had spent a total of 3 days and nights within the city’s confines, but that time had almost moved sluggishly, and no one could quite recall just how many times the sun had risen and set again. It was clear that at first they had hoped it was the lost city of El Rey Dorado, and though a lack of gold and treasure soon dissuaded them of this notion, it did not take long for the crew to tender ideas of their own. It was written that some claimed the city was from times when mankind was too different to recognize, while others said that it was a city of spirits, and not intended for those still living. Regardless of what they had thought though, the sketchings of Captain García had matched with the earlier description provided by the Limitanei soldiers. The overlap was simply too much to ignore. Buildings exceptionally large and advanced for construction technology of even the 13th century, let alone when it really came to be. The proportions, if accurate, seemed a better fit for giants than humans. Spirals peaked each building to a height even I had not believed, for such free standing structures would not last long, even today. He had spoken of roads wide enough for ships to sail through. Doorways round in appearance yet measuring twenty men laid sideways across. The fantastical nature of these descriptions had ensured the disbelief of many of my colleagues, but something even I could not fully articulate had held my attention all these years. Something of what it might be that whispered to me from the most inventive parts of my mind. Enough so that it was not long after reading the diary when I began my search for the funding that led to where I stood now.
To find all of it was true.
First to steal my attention were the spirals that surely should have been visible from the mountain-side village I had stayed at the weeks before, but were somehow not. They were completely unweathered in appearance. They not only touched the sky, but pressed deep into it. It was an architecture without an Earthly influence I could place. Nothing resembling Baroque, no hints of anything Islamic, nor Greek or Egyptian of any time period. Something for a lack of a better word, unworldly. Though it stood in stark contrast to the blue sky it invaded by more than just its aberrant proportions and style. It also felt somehow threatening. Like a totem erected in warning, or perhaps in some dark practice. I had once briefly studied the old Norse ways of totemism and remembered now how some Viking warriors used to sow fear in the peoples they pillaged by placing ungodly statues throughout Cumberland and the greater north. It was almost like that, but not nearly so barefaced. Like the unease it caused was not intentional, but simply derivative. Like me and people like me were not worthy of being a part of its purpose, even one so menial. It was now that I began to wonder if the unease my ancient guides had spoken of was something more then medieval superstition. Unable to look much longer I readjusted my gaze to see the whole of the city instead.
To call it a city was a failure of description. Yet try as I might there was no more apt a way to define it. Perhaps it is easiest to say that in the same way an ant hill is both a city, and not a city, so too was that which laid before me. Those spirals which had so totally held my attention until now receded into colossal buildings of varying and nearly perverted shapes. I had not so long ago stood in the halls of Westminster and marvelled at the sheer size of my nation’s government, but what I saw now dwarfed that by some good measure. My first thought, dully, was that it was simply impossible I was the first to re-find what I now stared at. Something of this magnitude just could not remain hidden, no matter where on Earth it may be. It seemed there were enough raw materials, albeit unidentifiable at the moment, to rebuild any English city twice over.
And that wasn’t even to speak of the roads. They were precisely as Captain García had described them. Vast far reaching arteries of a dark material that looked near enough to asphalt in appearance, or at least from the distance I currently stood at. Another thing that just simply could not be. Even with Rome’s greatest years in mind, I was certain there was no larger divide than between this city’s buildings and anywhere else known to mankind. The entirety of the Royal Navy could likely hide among its towers.
Shivering despite the heat, I returned my blade to its carrying case and edged slowly forward, falling soon into the shadow of the first of the great constructions. As I neared the base of it, I could more clearly see the material it was made from. From a distance it had appeared softly beige, but it was in fact darker than it led on. Closer, it looked like a sand rock of sorts, but was nevertheless distinct from anything Arabian, or Middle Eastern, I had ever seen. It was smoother, too smooth, without the lines or signs of age that was otherwise to be expected. The building closest to me jutted straight up for maybe one hundred meters before immediately angling itself perpendicular again with the ground. This overhang lasted perhaps ten meters before another sharp change saw it turn once again upwards, but this time at a strangely diagonal angle. What it did then I could not see from where I stood, but this general process repeated itself at least a dozen times, making for an overall shape that seemed to defy what was structurally legitimate. Not even in my wildest imaginings could I have guessed what this might have sought to achieve.
When my feet left behind the forest floor and entered what might once have constituted city grounds, I sensed my anxiety worsen. The ground below me was indeed a kind of asphalt, rather than stone. In it I could even see the tiny pebbles one would anticipate finding, yet when I bent down to touch them, I found there was no texture to it whatsoever. Like it had all been sanded away. I walked slowly at first for it was peculiar to walk on, like it were polished wood rather than hardened concrete. This too was free of wear.
In another long moment I was within touching distance of the first building, standing still right where the impossibly large door ended and the smooth sandlike rock began. The door itself was wood, which once more seemed to mock my understanding of basic construction. Wide enough to house a grounded blimp, I could find not a single break nor grain anywhere. It was as if it had been crafted out of a single monstrous plank. To the touch, it was cool. The kind of cool that a limestone in winter might hold, not wood. I pulled my hand away quickly, despite the fact it was the first cool thing I had touched in days. I supposed it made as much sense as the rest of the city did, but there was something in that damp cold that pushed my nervousness too close to the unmanageable. I cleared my throat once and looked the great door over a final time before turning back to the road, and deeper into the city.
It is eerie when one is alone on an otherwise commonly crowded street, but to be truly isolated in such a foreign space was something else entirely. My footsteps rang out around me hollowly, and yet I doubted the sound reached the closest buildings for they were so far. Whether or not the road I was on was typical or atypical of the city I could not say at that point, but it stretched so far in the distance that the strange steeples looked like nothing more than toothpicks against the slowly darkening sky.
I walked cautiously for perhaps a half hour before turning around to see how much progress I’d made. To my surprise, the forest I had struggled so to cut through seemed far. Much farther than my slow pace should have allowed for. Confused, I struggled to pull my timepiece from my waistcoat and nearly gasped aloud when I saw that it read a quarter past ten. By my best recollection I had arrived sometime shortly before eight. Feeling my heart redouble its efforts, I decided to camp for the night and explore further when the sun could aid me better. It had also fallen further than reason told me it should have, illuminating only a sliver of the faraway horizon. A sudden coolness in the air I had certainly not felt in the mountains seemed to sweep through the abandoned city too. I found myself reaching for my jacket for the first time in weeks, afraid to really question why.
Moving quickly to the shelter of one of the towers, I built a small fire and pitched my tent as fast as I could. It felt strange, like making camp on Oxford Street following some sort of apocalypse. I did not feel as though I were being watched, but wanted greatly to be out of sight, with the canvas of my tent between me and the strangeness all around. Thin though that barrier may be. Following a tasteless meal consisting mostly of cured meat and stale biscuits, and the rest of my second to last canteen, I scuttled the remaining flames and buttoned myself in for the night.
Sleep, if it could be called that, overtook me quicker than anticipated. I hesitate however in calling it sleep for never before in my whole life had I dreamt anything so lifelike. Something so real, part of me wonders if through some impossible medium I did not just live it. And though I could swear to its vividness, to the point where I almost trust it more than my own memories, the specific nature of what I dreamt was foggy. Perhaps just too real to be remembered in any great detail. Ludicrously, I recalled seeing a strange and ancient people, without being able to say how or why I knew that. I recalled a practice or ritual of sorts, and a chanting almost too malformed in nature to be heard by human ears. In what dark language they hummed their hymns I could also not say, though the feeling of unbridled fear it caused I remembered well enough. But perhaps worst of all, and what against all reason I remembered best, was that which they prayed to. It was the image of a beast that which thankfully cannot be described in words. A great work of art, if it could be called that, spanning perhaps half as high as the distance between me and the first level of the towers. The monster it pictured was captured in dark colours, and a giant by its own right. Humanoid in only the vaguest of terms, it towered over those that prayed around it so barbarically. Where this took place I could not say. I had no energy for remembering my periphery as every ounce of me was busy fighting the fear climbing up from out my throat. But I do recall feeling as though it were inside. Somewhere in some black and grand chamber perhaps, with a roof or walls too distant or unimportant to remember. What I did in this dream, beyond witnessing the horror of my darkest imaginings, I do not remember. Nor could I say how long I felt it lasted. Only one other thing was clear to me, and it may have very well been what startled me awake. In the waning moments of the nightmare I turned to the painting of the beast one last time, inexplicably drawn to its single eye. Lidless, and cold beyond the darkest interpretations of the word, it seemed almost to look right through me. I do not ever remember feeling as inconsequential and infinitesimal as I did then. I think I held ants in a higher regard than this painted devil held me. However, I think it was what happened next that worried my heart enough to wake.
The eye blinked.
I awoke more tired than I’d been heading to sleep the night before, but unreasonably relieved to find the sun up and trying to worm its way into my tent. Some of the front buttons had come loose during the night, and through this gap of canvas I could feel the heat I had come to expect from this part of the world. That morning however I welcomed it. I packed up my camp with a dry throat, using more water than I should have to try and wet the sandpaper feel of it. When I realized it was futile, I gave up, and made peace with the fact I was to be uncomfortable for some time to come.
My march further into the city yielded nothing more unique than what I had already found. Each tower was identical to the last, right up to the strange materials they were built from. All smooth and seamless, the level of uniformity yet another reason for wonder.
It didn’t take long before I was able to fully understand the city’s true indistinguishability. Having gawked long enough at tower after tower, and no closer to understanding any of it than I was at my arrival, I chose one at random to approach again.
Standing in the shade before another great circular door, I braved a second touch of the false wood. It was still cool, but I managed to hold my palm against it longer this time. What, if anything, was inside, I could only speculate. I realized then my mistake in also presuming that great circular thing before me was in fact a door. In a place of such peculiarity, I wondered if dismissing all assumptions was the wisest approach. Perhaps this thing had some other significance, and was simply a differently coloured wall. I pondered this over for some time, running my hand across the surface of it, pushing randomly to see if at anywhere it felt different or had any give. I was about to abandon my study of it when suddenly I felt something. I was nearing the opposite side of where I had started when I noticed just the slightest bump on the material’s surface. Immediately frightened, I pulled my hand away and stepped back, searching for what I had felt. Try as I might though, my eyes could not decipher any visible difference in the material. I tentatively stepped closer again and retraced the general area. Sure enough, I found it again. A slightly raised line, yet invisible to the eye, that I could trace from the ground to about two meters up. From there it turned immediately left for about another meter before once again joining with the ground.
It felt like a door.
My heart beat hard anew, but this time for a different reason. It my excitement I dropped the heavy pack digging little trenches into my shoulders and traced the entirety of the invisible frame a second time. Then a third time. Finally, hoping to all things good I was not about to make a mistake, I placed both my hands flat on the surface of the strange matter and pushed as hard as I could. With one fluid and time-defying motion, the small panel swung inward.
Holding my breath, I dared not move. Through the door it was dark. Some part of me responsible for warning urged I flee that new obscurity with all my might. But the emotions of mine that did not yield to such fear were overcome with a curiosity no book or lecture had ever offered me. I had with me a simple lighter, with fuel enough for some careless burning. Thinking more with my heart than my head, I reached for it in my pocket, igniting the flint and coil with two short snaps. The flame itself was not strong enough to reveal much of what the strange building had opened to show, but it was enough to push away the heaviest of the nearby shadows. What I saw forced my breath to catch.
Both the floor and wall of the tower’s interior were nothing like that which lay outside. Both were a material closer in appearance to glass than stone, and made of a black so dark it seemed almost to suck the light from my lighter. It shone like obsidian might when so tested, and reflected back to me a great sensation of desolation. I could almost feel as much as see the vacuum of the room. The absence of anything at all.
Careful not to make much sound, I stepped forward slowly, so that I was no longer just in the city, but now in one of its absurd buildings. The nothingness immediately engulfed me. As if I’d gone from one foot on Earth, to the next in outer space. Careful not to step out from the sun’s light that pushed in, I turned to view the inner side of the door. It too was this ebony glass, just as seamless as its counter part outside. With no small amount of irresolution, I shuffled inwards yet another step. The light I had was certainly not enough to illuminate the chamber through to its other side, but the echo of even my softest footstep was enough to inform me of its enormity. Braving only one more moment of staring into the nothingness, I walked backwards until I was in the safety of the day’s full embrace again. I took a moment to calm the remainder of my loose nerves before searching my pack for the materials I had packed for situations just like this. I retrieved my retractable metal bar, two strips of oil soaked linens, and a pair of pins. Careful not to squeeze the fuel from the wraps, I tied both in opposite directions around the bar, pinning them together when they could wrap no further. Using the lighter still clutched tightly between my fingers, I set flame to the makeshift torch, attached my canteen to my hip, double checked my pen and notebook, and let the darkness swallow me once again.
Using what momentum I had, I strode forward in an ebbing confidence until the sun’s light was little more than a glow some ways away. Even in my fresh courage, I neither saw nor sensed any object in the foreign room besides my own body. Each footstep reverberating around me like sonar, reminding me of how alone I was.
But then that changed.
Slowly at first, but then with increasing certainty, I began to realize I was nearing something. Far from being able to tell what, I knew only that I was still some ways from the building’s other side, perhaps closer to the room’s middle. What eventually rose from out of the shadows forced an icy hand around my heart. Not because of any outwardly malicious appearance, but rather its connection to memory. A fresh memory.
In what I supposed was indeed the room’s centre were two large columns of stone, each divided down the middle until perhaps just a meter from the ground. Were it not for the nightmare I had escaped only hours ago, I might have wondered at their purpose, but I knew. I feared and despised knowing more than I had ever loathed anything before, but I knew. In my dream, the painting those archaic peoples had prayed to stood upright by way of two stone supports, identical to the pillars I now stood before. I struggled for a way science might explain how I’d come to see something like that in advance, but arrived only at the concept of déjà vu. And that sounded weak to even my own mind. To think on it for long was to invite a panic I was not sure I could recover from.
Unable to ignore the trembling of my light source, I gripped the torch firmly with both hands and stepped closer, seeing something in the stone I had not in my dream.
There were carvings. Images of men, and of the city. I recognized the chamber I now stood in. I recognized the beast’s stone silhouette. It was easier to look at this way, though admittedly not by much.
There were other things in the stone I did not recognize, and perhaps for that I should be thankful. Images of open water, the night sky, outlandish birds surely carved out of proportion and of fire. It appeared almost chronological, each carving having just enough of the last in it to blend them all together. If it told a story of sorts, it was one I had little interest in reading. Nevertheless, the scholar in me pressed for my own copy. I set my torch down against the stone so the flame licked upwards toward the carvings, and began sketching some of what I saw.
I managed to depict three of the first scenes when I noticed that the flame of my torch still wavered. Free of my hands, I stared down at it blankly, wondering what inside a vacuum could cause it to move. When it didn’t stop, I set down my notebook and pen, crouching to see it closer. It was then I felt the slight breeze.
It wasn’t a strong enough current for me to think it came from the outside, but I couldn’t deny there was a movement of air towards the base of the stone. I reached out to touch where it met with the glass-like floor and found a small gap between it and the ground. The space was small, not even large enough for me to press my fingers through, but the discovery was astonishing nonetheless. It meant that there was something below.
Thinking back to how I’d opened the building itself, I threw my weight against the pillar, but to no avail. Knowing it was unlikely, I tried pressing some of the images to see if perhaps they hid a mechanism of sorts, but none did. After a moment of that I reached for my torch again, and began circling the stone. I think some small part of me hoped I’d find nothing. That way I’d be able to leave under the impression I’d done all I could. But what I found almost halfway around nearly had me laughing aloud, despite my persisting angst. Buried into the opposite face of the stone at about the height one would expect, was a lever. An ordinary lever, made of simple wood rough to the touch. It seemed strange, but it was nearly a kind of relief in itself to suddenly find an object so normal. Something so obvious and humanistic.
I set the light down again to check for protrusions in the stone, but save the carvings, there was nothing. The small space that hinted at something greater was the same on this side too. Feeling as though I were finally getting closer to the purpose of this place, I gripped the lever and pulled it downward.
Without so much as a squeak, the first of the stone pillars rotated outwards, away from me. I had to quickly grab my torch to stop it from falling. As though it floated above the glass, the massive stone moved with an effortlessness I doubted even the best of modern architects could match. I stepped back to watch it slide into its final position, revealing a set of stairs that descended into darkness. What of these I could see were also of a shape and size relatable to me, something that further calmed my most tenacious nerves. Not wanting to waste a moment, I held the light out before me and started the stairs one at a time.
While the proportions might have been encouraging, their depth certainly was not. When after the first hundred steps I had not yet reached the bottom I assumed my counting had somehow gone awry. After the second hundred my breathing came raggedly, and a damp cold had settled in the air around me. There was no mistaking just how deep I was. When finally I counted three hundred I stopped to consider what I was experiencing. At perhaps half a meter per step I was more or less one hundred and fifty meters below ground without an end in sight. I felt as though I should have been surprised, but I sensed only a growing unease in me again. No ancient people had the tools for such excavation, and yet this discovery was likely among the lesser of all mine in the past day and a half. When at last enough of my breath and stamina returned, I continued my plunge into the Earth at a slower pace. There was, precisely, five hundred steps to the underground hall. And hall seemed indeed the best description for what I found.
When I could go down no more it came almost as a surprise. Not unlike regaining my land legs after a journey at sea, it took me a few moments to find my balance. What stretched out before me was a corridor of stone, doorless as far as my window into the darkness allowed me to see. It was precisely my height, not an inch taller, and perhaps just wide enough for two of me to stand shoulder to shoulder. I advanced warily, wondering at what ancient Pharaoh or King might be buried so deep below the surface. Not ten steps in, carvings appeared once again, lining both walls to my side with their fantastical stories. I avoided focusing on any one of them, first hoping to see what I was being lead to.
To my disappointment, the answer came after only another moment of walking. The hallway ended abruptly, with nothing besides more wall. It too was littered with stories, though I also paid these no mind in the moment.
Frustrated, I dropped my torch once more so that I could ensure the wall ahead was not some hidden door. I felt for irregularities in the stone, strangely hoping for some sign that it did not all end here, but save the carvings, the wall appeared to be just that. I stepped back, almost in disbelief. I simply could not fathom why a people would go through the enormous effort of creating something so seemingly significant, only to have it hide nothing at all. I reached for my quickly waning canteen in preparation of the climb up, when I realized the same error in my way of thinking. I brought far too many of my own presumptions to a place too foreign for them to have any real value. It had been clear from the start the city did not operate like any other I knew. To try and understand it, I had to think as they might have. For if they indeed buried things of value, perhaps there was value in this hallway after all. And on some level, I think I did actually understand. Gold and trinkets might have an immediate worth, but if industrial society had proved anything, it was that information might be the most valued thing of all.
I approached the carvings on the last wall again, but this time to see what it was they depicted. I noticed with some curiosity there was only a single line of symbolization here. Whereas the long walls were covered from ground to roof with images, the corridor’s end was blank, save the one strand that also stretched from top to bottom. Beginning with that image closest to the ground, I started sketching what I saw.
The first picture contained a man surprisingly recognizable to me. He held a sword of sorts, and seemed to be cutting his way through something. He wore a hat and carried a pack more modern than anything else I’d seen in the carvings. The second image was of the same man, but with his back to me. Over his shoulders and head the city’s great spirals rose up, unmistakable in their looming presence, captured well even in stone. In the third the man entered the city, his movement caught from a profile view, not unlike some Egyptian hieroglyphs I had studied. At this point I felt the beginning of something I couldn’t quite recognize stir in the pits of my stomach. It was not until the forth image though that I recognized it for the feeling of horror it was.
The forth carving was of a tent nestled below the overhang of one of the monolithic towers. The man in it was building a fire.
I tried swallowing but found I could not, nearly choking on my own saliva instead. I went back to the first image and stared at the man’s hat and pack until I could no longer. I tried telling myself the similarities were simply too vague to have any meaning, but I could not sell myself the lie.
In the fifth picture, the man entered one of the great buildings, and in his hand he held a torch. Now my panic threatened to overwhelm me. Creeping in from my periphery I could see as much as sense a spotted darkness coming closer. Only because what remained of my composure screamed in warning did I not embrace that fainting sensation. It scared me just how much I wanted to.
In the sixth image the man descended the very steps I had only just reached the bottom of. He stood alone with his torch, facing the same barren corridor. From there, it took no small amount of effort to crane my neck up at the seventh carving. Though what it showed I couldn’t tell at first. It was the same man, seemingly where I was, but touching something on the wall before him. Turning away from the carvings for a moment, I restudied the wall in its entirety, seeing nothing more than I had the first time. Confused, I raised a hand to lightly trace the seventh carving I could not fully grasp. There was a sudden and sharp pain at the top of my middle finger and I immediately withdrew my hand, stepping back in shock. For a long moment I stared in dismay at a dark smudge on the stone portrayal of me. Then looking between the droplets of blood dripping from my finger, and the carving itself, I realized in growing terror I now knew what the stonework illustrated.
At the sight of the eighth picture I vomited violently into the corner. In it the appalling painting from my dream had returned to its place in the grand chamber above. And as I stood there, struck dumb with the impossibility of it all, somewhere, distantly, there rang out the muffled boom of something inordinate sliding into place.
I do not think I fully understood what the remaining carvings showed, but their general meaning was all too clear. The empty cavern of what I now saw as a voracious tomb was not to be empty for long. The demented beings from my dream could be once more seen surrounding their pictorial demon, as they had in my vision.
However the last of that wall’s dark prophecies was almost certainly the most dreadful. That magnificent lapse of God’s prudence, who’s very image had shaken me to my core, could be seen stepping out from its pictured home. The simple thought of it on Earth was enough to spoil what remained of my sanity.
In my haste to flee from what the wall promised, I tripped carelessly over the pack I had lain behind me. Sent sprawling out onto the cold stone of the occult corridor, I hesitated in getting to my feet, as my ears picked up on something that should not have been.
Above me, a great drumming filled the air.