Board Thread:Writer's Workshop/@comment-28060931-20170615234214

Wilbert H. Marlowe, without knowing it, uncovered one of the most dreaded and forbidden secrets of mankind, and cost two men their life. I was an archaeologist, and he was a millionaire investor; I hypothesized a location in Egypt where I believed arhaic loot was concealed, and he financed the expedition -- that’s how far our relationship stretched, and yet, this disconnected cooperation between two, dimly-related parties almost cost humanity its sanity. I will not go into detail for obvious reasons so don’t even ask, but I will say that the excavation took two years. The first year was a fruitless search, with only a few pieces of worthless platter and clothing being found; these were carbon dated and traced back to only fifty years ago. On the second year, however, a pickaxe struck a limestone structure. This might have been an already raided cache, natural formations, or pretty much anything else, but we were desperate. All men were ordered to abandon post and dig in this one area. As we worked at the limestone, another, stranger rock blocked our progress: it was much harder and utterly foreign to whole continent of Egypt; and, indeed, foreign to us. It vaguely resembled granite but was certainly an igneous rock, as evidenced by the large crystals embedded in the volcanic rock. We shovelled and picked the stone for hours, and dug fifty-three feet down until a pickaxe broke through into an opening. We widened the aperture and shone our flashlights into it. A large, dark room spread out beneath us, and, in the middle of it, an iron rectangular box. It was rusty and mossy. I ordered rope and electric torches immediately. Me, Henry and Ammon grappled in and explored the room with our flashlights. The walls were made out of the queer rock, damp, and collapsed in places where moss sprouted from the ruins. But it isn’t exactly fair to call that thing moss since it resembled some type of fungus, clearly not of this earth, it was colored in a sickly-green hue, and seemed to move faintly despite the utter lack of wind; this exhibition of perpetual motion unnerved us, to say the least. Ammon and Henry set down their torches at angles which lit up the whole box. It squatted in the middle of the room, and something about that silent metal rectangle, crouching in the middle of an ancient, dark room fathoms beneath civilized soil, was horrifying. I swallowed and nodded to the others. Crowbars were unstrapped as more of the ceiling was steadily chipped away with chisels and picks -- careful not to bring the bricks crashing on our heads. We carefully lifted the lid off the box. As we steadily lifted the plank of iron from the box, there was a swishing noise and a horrible miasma escaped into the air; we choked and dropped the lid. I covered my mouth but vomit was already rushing up my throat, and out onto the ground. The above workers, seeing our dismay and smelling a subdued semblance of the smell, hurried and dropped more rope inside and helped us out of there. The miasma was so horrible that if I a monster, threatening to devour the whole world, was contained within that box, I could not bring myself to seal it back up. The sunlight stung my eyes and the dry heat was a relieving change of atmosphere, and I was glad to be rid of any traces of that god awful place; the smell of rot and flesh and feces and everything foul mixed with an other-worldly foulness that far outranks the worst odour found on our planet. I vomited again. So did the others. Henry threw up thrice more. I was sick and weak and felt the smell coming on me stronger again, I heard the grunts of the workers who retreated from the gaping hole. The smell was escaping. I could just hope it would not hold sway over the world, I just hoped there was a limit to the miasma, that the box wasn't just some portal to a realm dominated only by that smell, an infinite universe trapping only that vile smell. We all escaped far away but kept watch on the place where we dug from the campsite. The shadows stretched out, and then they swallowed the whole world. The moon hung low in the sky and clouds rolled over it, plunging us into darkness. The smell lingered, but it was bearable.I dozed off when a golden line peaked out of the horizon and was woken six hours later by Ammon. The sun was blazing and the smell a memory. I set out towards the hole were a group was already gathered. The torchs’ batteries expired and there was only a black hole in the ground, a terrified, anxious whisper surged through the crowd. I -- the leader of the excavation -- felt ashamed at my fear and my head was clouded by the after-sleep haziness, so I did not skip a breath in flipping on my flashlight and directing the beam squarely where I remembered the box to be; we saw the box’s rectangular iron shape, but we could not see further down. The smell was present but faint. I order for rope to be hammered in and called for my old team to join me. Only Ammon and Henry were brave enough and so we gently rappled down, lights focused on the box. When our feet hit the ground we stalked towards the box and shone our torches into it; the blackness swallowed our light. I picked up a stone and dropped it, counting seconds. ''one... two... three... four...'' Nothing. Five, six, sploosh. I ordered more rope to be hauled down and more electric torches to be passed, along with scented cloths, picks, helmets, and lightsticks. We descended further into this mysterious discovery, lightsticks affixed to belts, our light beams dancing on the unknown-stone walls. As we further submerged ourselves into the darkness the air got thicker and the smell worse, some considered turning back in fear that the intensity of the stench may reach unsurpassable levels. About ten minutes down, the smell made us gag and we forced the cloths against our faces, the darkness thickened and we could barely make out the shape of our flashlights, let alone the beams of light. I agreed to turn back but scaling up the rope would require us to use two hands -- thus removing the cloth from our mouths, thus forcing us to vomit and gag until we choked or threw every single nutrient in our bodies up into the abyss below: the smell was so bad we smelled it through two inch, lilac soaked cloth. Dangling from the ropes, we were like puppets on lonely strings. After that horrible, ungodly descent our boots hit ground, but not before splashing in about two inches of a thick liquid; our flashlights barely reflecting in the black, oily thing. Someone was bold enough to remove the cloth from his mouth and shout up into the blackness. His echo bounced off the walls and was suddenly cut off. We had no choice but to trudge un through the unknown. We had use our picks like a blind man might use a cane, holding onto each other in a three hundred degree circle, swinging our picks frantically, listening for a ‘’thuck’’ and feeling some resistance. We ascertained we were in a room with a high ceiling and compact walls. After we progressed north along the walls, we assumed we had entered a tunnel based on the ‘’thucking’’ of our picks. And we were right, for on the other end the tunnel a light glimmered vaguely, and we relaxed our grip on the scented cloths. We came to a T intersection, we could go either left or right; we voted and continued down the right tunnel. As we continued on down the tunnel, it became evident that we were heading towards the source of the foul vapour. Ammon was at the back, Henry in the middle and I lead the group. So it was me who plummeted down the hole in the ground first, Henry tripped but managed to hold onto some loose brick, and Ammon became stranded in the impenetrable darkness. Wind swished past my head and that smell burned my nostrils, assaulted my lungs, and followed my blood into my brain, thus bringing in an onslaught of pulsating headaches. Water -- or some other, fouler fluid -- cushioned my fall. I flailed like a fish on land in that little pond until I gained my bearings. I saw a faint glimmering of orange light in the distance, and rejoiced. Hope spread over me like a blanket, warming me like a hot cup of tea. I rushed towards it, tripping over algae, seaweed or other invisible, unspeakable things. I felt solid ground five inches above me and climbed onto it, to find I was directly facing the light. I touched the wall next to me and used to it navigate my way towards the light. Now I was sure that the source of the smell lay directly ahead of me, and I shuddered. When I reached the end, I saw -- before me -- a horrible expanse of terrifying, alien terrain which was not -- in any realm of imagination -- of this world. It’s no use describing how it looked, it’s too terrible for that; all I can give are vague outlines of what I saw, and tell you the geometry of the place was contorted beyond belief. A path made out of that queer stone ran along a pond of black, slimy water until it reached a huge aquatic monolit: the human-spider-fish caricature standing upon that pedestal traumatized my brain past recovery. A grotesque fishy face with horns and bulging eyes was surmounted upon an arachnoidal body with six tentacles in place of spider legs; and the two mockingly human things the monster stood on aren’t fit to be called “legs”, they were more like shredded masses of muscles masquerading as human legs. The place was completely alien and ghastly in it’s weird contours, and unheard-of angles, twisting and sloping landscapes totally unaffected by gravity. And that ghastly stench was at it’s zenith here; it was like a sepulchral breath, like a mass of ghouls breathing out into the air the odour of the grave. Muffled, and subdued a splash sounded behind me: apparently Henry fell. I looked towards the ancient idol looming over the sacrificial table, clutching a trident. I felt myself walk down the stairs and tread down the path. If there was a ceiling somewhere in this place, then it was too high to be visible. And just then I noticed the orange light had no apparent source, like it was magical. I walked up the golden, limestone steps towards the statue. Suddenly, a surge of paranoia set in: I jerked my head to the left, the right, behind me, above me, and back to the statue again; I felt shadows darting around the room, I felt eyes peering at me from my blind side. I closed my eyes and recited some prayers; my mouth warped into a whirlwind, whispering frantically. I was so focused on the prayer that I was shocked by a heavy grip on my shoulder. I whirled around, fist raised, and saw Henry gasping, frightened, behind me. "Howard," he said; "where are we?" I said I didn't know and he insisted we must get out. A gurgling, bubbling noise sounded and a mechanical finger shot out of the black water and struck the limestone pathway. Then another one. Two seconds later I realised those were not fingers, but legs. The two legs pulled out a writhing, horrible fusion of mechanical and biological of parts: a huge, pulsating, poison-green tumor -- more like a heart -- with ugly veins pulsing along it's misshapen structure, connected to mechanical spider legs, jagged and and impossibly contorted. The thing had other features which were removed by brain so that it would remain sane. The creature sprang at Henry, piercing his skin with a syringe affixed to its spidery limbs and injected him with something unimaginable. Adrenaline rushed through my veins, and I raised my pickaxe and swung at the monster, striking it's core. A splash of yellow juice squirted from the the sides of the pick. Henry shrieked and writhed under the creature's weight; I pulled the pick out -- releasing a further splash of yellow bile -- and swung harder this time. A swishing, liquid sound rang out as my pick struck the other side of the monster's body. Its legs falter and yet it persisted in attacking Henry, and I persisted in attacking ‘’it’’. Jets and streams of the yellow bile were exploding from the thing’s wound and showering us. Finally, with a finishing blow, the thing wavered, faltered and fell sideways. I never truly believed what I saw; yet, despite the sheer horror of ‘’that’’ monster, I could swear I saw the form of a far bigger and far more ghoulish thing below the surface of that black water until it disappeared into unknown fathoms below. I stooped down to check on Henry. I saw the veins in his body push out against his skin, and his flesh lost it’s peachy color and turned into a skeletal, pale tint, it looked like the blood from his body was being diverted from the arteries and capillaries into his veins; and then, in a cataclysmic explosion, his veins burst in an eruption of blood and gore. I can’t even start to fathom what that fiend must was injected into poor Henry. I was too shocked and weakened to remember what happened next. All I have are photo-snaps of my escape: pictures of rusty ladder, a pipe I pried open, a confined space we crawled through, an upward curve in the claustrophobic darkness and then I remember breaking through something and a flood of light as sand spilled down. And so I was out, ten miles away from our excavation site. I saw the headframes and wooden scaffoldings and pillars of smoke from campfires far off in the distance. I managed to crawl until I saw the tents; and then, in a moment of joy and hope, I passed out. I awoke in a hospital, and was questioned by authorities; after answering question accordingly, I was assured a search would be conducted. They found that the tunnels I was talking about were flooded. Apparently the pipe I had disturbed experienced a sudden eruption of water from, and to, some unknown source, and flooded the underground facility. They found nothing strange there, or to even anything hint at the fact that I was telling the truth. But, then again, nearly all of the place was flooded. After I recovered I returned to my room for a final night. I was weary after hours of questioning by my employer and by the authorities, and I wished nothing but to take a hot shower. When I turned on the shower, it shuddered for a moment, belched and a black thick liquid spurted out of it. As the black slime came out of the shower-head, a foul but familiar stench assaulted my nostrils. I turned the tap off so hard I dislodged the handle. Then I stormed out of the hotel, forgetting to even turn my key in. I headed for the airport and that was the last time anyone saw me. I retreated to New York, to my home, and haven't turned a taken a shower or washed my hands in three months; all my food and water is ordered online and I daren’t venture out into the world again, not even outside this house. 