Board Thread:Writer's Workshop/@comment-28060931-20160918203623


 * This Journal has been found at the bottom of a ravine in the Ural Mountains. Bodies of two mountaineers, Bill Horten and Henry Conaway, have been found scorched and irradiated next to the bedraggled journal. An autopsy revealed substances of unknown origin within the mens systems. The ravine in question was nothing as described in Henry C.'s journal. Upon further inquiry at the university where these men studied and upon interviewing their close relations, we found out these men were both celebrating their newly acquired M.A.'s, from the aforementioned university, by going on this week long expedition through the Ural Mountains.*


 * Journal Entry #1; Ural Mountains, 1987, November 15th**

"How much bullets do you have in the Remington?" I said.

"Three. How 'bout your Colt?" Bill asked.

"Full cylinder. But no spare ammunition."

The expedition began six days ago. Three days passed without excitement, but on the third night, we saw an army of red eyes staring at us from the darkness. Wolfs. Starving ones. Their numbers proved too big: they forced us back to the edge of a forest.

"We have to do something," Bill said, " The wolfs are getting hungrier. We don't have any more logs for the fire, and I'm not risking my life by going out there."

"Let's set fire to the tent. Then we can run out back and kill the wolfs that get too close." I offered.

"Fuck no; I am not going to set the tent ablaze and shoot wolfs. There has to be better way! I'm not gonna kill anything if I don't have to."

I opened the tent and stepped out into the blizzard. You could barley see them in the darkness, few even risked approaching the fire so they could get warm, but I sent a hail of flaming coals at them.

Bill stepped out with our backpacks and said, "Okay. We'll scare 'em off and run into the forest. No killing though."

I agreed. I took a twig from the fire and threw it at the tent; bill kicked the fire, and a hailstorm of flaming coals, twigs and leaves assaulted the wolfs. Bill send a bullet into the air, and the rest retreated further. We turned around and ran into the forest. The army of savages behind us were halted by the flaming tent.

We heard vicious snarling coming from the darkness all around us as we maneuvered our way through the forest. The blizzard extinguished the blazing tent and the wolfs were upon our trail. When they came too close to us, I shot the closest ones, but their hunger exceeded their fear, and they charged at us like a stampede. I emptied my chambers into them. Bill was using the butt of his gun as a club(he did not care anymore).

Fear diverted all our energy into our legs: we ran so fast that all we could see was kaleidoscope of colors, it was a miracle we did not trip and fall onto the ground. But nothing can outrun a starving wolf for ever. We could hear their jaws snapping savagely, soon their breath warmed our thighs. By some lucky miracle, when I brought my foot down It did not meet the ground. My momentum sent me flying forth into a hole in the ground.

I slid on the ice that covered the walls of the hole. Suddenly, I felt myself leave solid ground and fly down into a cave; snow softened the impact, leaving me with only a few bruises. Bill hit the ground face down.

"Shit," he said, "where are we?"

"A cave, perhaps, but whatever this is, it's better than having those savage beasts tear you to shreds." I said.

"Spare me the imagery."

He took out a flashlight and illuminated the cave. It was vast. The stone walls had fissures in them, and there was a tunnel leading further into the cave. We were cold so we preceded deeper into the cave. We reached an opening after about sixty minute, the first thing we noted was the miasma. It smelled like rotting corpses, mixed with ozone. I just figured some animals found their way in and died.

The tunnel continued through an aperture in the opposite wall, but we were too tired to go any deeper, and the aperture was a steep fall, with stalagmites and stalactites protruding everywhere.

We had some spare firewood and twigs in the packs in case of an emergency. We lit a small fire and set up sleeping bags on two flat stones in the corner. The ground was like a stony beach. One thing we noted when we settled down to sleep was a mist filled the room.

It's not opaque, so we are fine. I think I will sign off here for the night.


 * Journal Entry #2; Ural Mountains, 1987, November 16th**

I woke up at midnight. The room was dark and misty, but I fancied a faint toxic-green light coming from the aperture in the wall. I stretched down and fumbled around for my shoes; my hand searching blindly in the dark, then I felt something solid. The thing suddenly twisted and seized my hand; I felt slimy fingers tighten around my wrist with crippling strenght. My lungs stopped functioning, sweat squeezed through my pores, and when my eyes adjusted to darkness, I saw a poison-green hand holding my own and I unleashed a strangled scream.

I broke its grip and scrambled back frantically. I did not dare move a muscle for two hours. When my fear was overpowered by curiosity, I reached into my backpack with a shaking hand and took out a flashlight. The second the beam lit up the room was the second I pulled my hand back and swung the heavy object at the foot of my makeshift bed; using all my momentum and strength I crashed the flashlight into the place where the hand was.

The flashlight broke the second it hit the stone... there was nothing there.

"Hey, what are doing!" Bill yelled.

"Where are you?" I asked.

"Where do you think? I didn't move from the bed. What is all the racket about, did you have an aneurysm?"

"Give us a light, will you." I said.

When Bill flipped on his flashlight, I told him the whole story. He look at me gravely and shook his head,

"It was in your sleep, Henry, look at the ground: there's no marks. Beside, who in the world would believe such a thing? Was it like the bogeyman under your bed? My mother used to tell me those stories, I believed them. But now no responsible adult would believe in that kind of bullshit."

"People believe in god, what's the difference. The bogeyman, cthulhu, god. All of them are things beyond the realm of understanding, each of them have a cult following, and each of them have a plethora of stories about them. So I ask you: what's the fucking difference?" I said. Bill shook his head and opened a can of beans.

"Breakfast." he said.

I have no idea what I am supposed to make of this. Was it really a dream, was it just an overactive imaginations, or an illusion? I wish I had an answer.


 * Journal Entry #3; Ural Mountains, 1987, November 18th**

With full stomachs, we headed back the way we came. There was no exit. The ice was too weak, the walls too smooth and the hole too deep. When we returned to the opening, we pondered on the issue and finally decided to take our chance with the aperture.

We hammered two nails into the stone beneath the aperture. We wrapped rope around the nails and placed our feet on one of the stalagmites, as we looked down the vertical drop.

We rappelled down, maneuvering between the sharp, jagged rocks protruding from the walls. When our boots touched the ground we sighed in relief. We were staring into a dark tunnel; the floor was littered with bones of small animals and the walls smeared with blood.

The air was thick. And there was this weird sensation, it was unexplainable: it was this feeling of impending danger, but it was vague and distorted. Bones of small animals crunched under our boots as we stalked down the dark tunnel. It was cold, very cold. Halfway down the tunnel I searched for Bill's hand and squeezed it. A few minutes later, I saw a flicker of green light further down the tunnel.

"Did you see that?" I asked Bill.

"What?"

"The green light. Look, there it is again."

It was more distinct this time: a venomous green light rising and waning from deep down the tunnel. Bill fumbled for his flashlight. It shattered on the ground when his grip failed. That was when a shrill scream rose from somewhere in front of us. Our hands squeezed so tightly that I felt my blood stop circulating.

"W- Wha... What was that?" Bill mumbled.

A shuffling started somewhere far away; it steadily grew louder and closer, it also grew faster: like something was charging at us. I was breathing frantically, my hands shook, and I tried to scream but my lungs failed.

When my self-defense mechanisms kicked in, my eyes darted to Bill. I saw a flare attached to his belt. The shuffling was getting louder. Since we had no flashlights, I quickly ripped the flare of Bill's belt and removed the cap, striking the end of the flare against rough end of the cap. A fireball of sparks erupted from the flare, and I threw it into the tunnel.

It landed about three feet away. When it settled on the ground, a shrill hissing echoed in the tunnel, and we saw a vague figure flee, in the dim red light. The panicked running turned into banging, which turned into shuffling. Then, silence.

Bill fumbled in his pocket for a cigar, and brought it to his mouth with trembling hands. He took out his matches but could not strike one alight with his shaking hands. I took the match, lit it, cupped my hands around his mouth, and burned the paper encasing the tobacco.

"You fine?" I asked.

Bill shook his head, "Wh- what was that... thing?"

"I don't know. A rat?"

"Six fucking feet tall, running 10 fucking miles per hour?"

"I don't know what I saw. Maybe it was... Bill? Hello? Are you okay? Bill! Shit, what happened to you?" I said.

Bill suddenly became pale, and his facial features seemed to contort into a grimace. Then he collapsed.

"Brandy. Please." Bill mumbled.

"I don't have any; water must suffice. What happened?"

"I'm not sure. I got a bad headache, it seemed like my brain expanded and was pushing against my skull. Then my vision became distorted, kinda like TV when the wind is messing with the lines. Then I heard a voice, it said something incomprehensible -- the verbs sounded different, but the consonants were the same: if it said 'cat' it would sound like 'K-hap-t.' "

When Bill felt better we continued down the tunnel, using flares to navigate ourselves. The tunnel expanded, both vertically and horizontally after a while. There was a hole in the side of the tunnel, like someone set off dynamite there. But instead of a small niche, there was an opening onto a large abyss. All we could see was blackness.

We were tired and frightened so we set up camp here. Bill immediately fell asleep. I sat up and ate some crackers with a bottle of water. I became drowsy soon, and when I began undressing I saw a flash of cyan light from the abyss below. I crept to the edge and crouched down. The light flashed again, this time more to the right. It happened again, and again -- in fact -- it appeared at regular intervals, each time changing position in one general direction. Something was moving down there. Our flare supplies were depleted. The only possible light source was a box of matches. I sat down. I was too scared to sleep.

Suddenly, my hand jerked upwards in an involuntary, spasm-like motion; then my leg twisted and kicked uncontrollably, my head writhed violently in every direction. I fell to the ground while my limbs went completely berserk. Foam spewed from my mouth, and a ringing started in my ear. Bill woke up and ran to me, dismayed. He tried to restrain me, but I was stronger.

Eventually, the manic flailing subsided, and I sighed in relief. Bill was exhausted from the exercise.

"What was that shit?" he asked.

"I dunno: I saw some bright blue light from down there and, in a moment's notice, I was flailing around like fish on land."

"Blue light from there? Shit. I had a dream where I was a sneaking around in a dark room, ice covered the colossal walls. There were some kinds of relics scattered around: old pots, tiaras, crowns, and bricks with some kind of... Hieroglyphics etched into them. I saw a light blue glimmer in the distance. I followed it. The light shone brightly then dimmed again. I was following along an array of pipes, all leading the same way. When I came to a hole in the ground, I saw the pipes drop down there. When the light rose I saw the shape of some kind of plane without wings. It was a cylinder, nineteen feet by twenty, add or take. It's side was broken off and lying on the ground, sparks flying from some blue-colored chips attached to some wiring.

"Then the blue shined again... It shined to my left, about six inches to my left. I heard a screeching which transformed into your scream, that is when I woke up."


 * Journal Entry #4; Ural Mountains, 1987, November 19th**

We decided to continue down the tunnel. The air in the tunnel was heavy. And there was something in it -- some eldritch horror hidden in the blackness; there was this feeling of... Radiation? Bill felt it too: he kept looking back as if to confirm that a monster was not stalking us.

After about an hour we reached a natural stairs. There were stone slabs leading down somewhere. Since we hit a dead-end, we went down. We ran out flares, so we made makeshift torches out of twigs and cloth. When we reached the end of the staircase we emerged into a colossal ravine.

"Shit," Bill shouted. "This is the place I saw in my dream!"

I looked around. The place was true to my friends description: collapsed buildings, broken pottery, and royal jewels, with strange symbols engraved on them, littered the place. The architecture of the buildings was mostly Mesoamerican with vague suggestions of Gothic or early Roman. The pottery was larger than normal pottery and was made out of some reflective marble I have never seen before. The jewels were made of solid gold with real diamonds (about 120 carats), these were authentic minerals, no doubt about it.

We heard a rustling nearby. We jumped up and became motionless as if rigor mortis had set in; we stood in the silence -- enshrouded by darkness -- listing to the stealthy shuffling. The miasma from earlier came back with the force of a snake launching itself at its victim. A glint of light flicked in the distance, it got closer, closer again, and it flickered even closer to us. I could make out a amphibian shape crouching in the distance. The shape became obstructed with a huge bulb of light, followed by a swishing sound. Then, we blacked out.

"Ah!" I yelled in agony when a haze of colors breached the darkness which swallowed me. I awoke in a room. A peculiar room. The walls were a rusty metal with wires and cables running along them. I heard Bill scream. I jumped to my feet, fully alert.

"Bill? I said. "Hello? Bill?" A scream answered me.

"Bill!" I shouted.

I saw a metal door. I regret ever approaching that accursed thing. I choked and lost my footing when I saw that fucking abomination. It had small, gleaming eyes. It's body was rough and contorted: each rib pointed a different direction, its body was red, and its legs resembled ones that a horse-frog hybrid might have.

It was covered in a blue armor which gleamed light blue at regular intervals. The miasma was coming from that thing, I was sure of it. Never has it molested my nostrils as bad as when I was near that hell-thing.

Bill stopped screaming now. I saw a kaleidoscope of colors flash somewhere behind the bars. The ugly fuck outside the cell door opened its hideous mouth and manged to say "You're next." 