Breathing

Stooping and then kneeling, I set the lantern on the ground beside them and scanned.

I found my own terror mirrored on the face of Quentin, his angular features set in a horrified rigor. For all I could tell, he might have died of fright. Looking left, I could see Breaker Bill wore a similar expression, though his was mixed with outrage.

Professor Ludlow struggled to draw breath, his wide eyes fixed on the dead men. I am sure my eyes were wide as well, but doing my best to keep calm, I pried Quentin's pack from his grip, and locked his hands atop his chest. As I reached to close the man's eyes, Ludlow spoke.

"Where are all the others?" he demanded, his voice muffled by the cloth.

Wishing desperately to awaken from a dream that was too terrifying to be reality, I suddenly found a new reason to fear.

From behind me, came first the rising, and then the falling of a gasping and hideous breath. The skittering sound accompanied it, but it was nearly drown amid the torturous noise.

Ludlow and I turned toward the gaping maw that had hours before been a promise of answers to great secrets of the world, shock registered in my mind, as the professor let loose a cry of alarm. It was that cry that saved my life.

Pulling free of the blackness in the mysterious wall came gray tentacles like the tendrils of smoke rising from an extinguished fire. As if summoned and fed by my terror they grew and lengthened, and at Ludlow's howl, they shot like lightning toward the man, tearing his torso from his lower half. The scream died on his lips as he did.

In what can only be described as pure reflex, I moved and unaware of anything else, at first starting toward the stairway to salvation, but upon finding my way blocked by writhing tentacles now soaked in Professor Ludlow's blood, I turned and fled further into the gloom at the back of the basement. Once I had reached the back wall, I forced myself through a narrow space between a pillar and a wall into small nook out of view of the chaos of the horror that was unleashed.

Taking deep breaths to try and force calmness, I realized that I still held Quentin's bag in my hand. I set it softly on the ground and listened. The rustling slowly died away, and finally I felt content to breath regularly and set some order to the madness that the world had become.

Through the reflection, and coming to terms with what has happened to me, I have come to realize now that Norcutt did find his doorway to another world, the world beyond life. Perhaps that is what had been meant all along by the writings of the druids that had built this place.

With nothing left for me, and no way to escape without passing too closely to the mouth of death, I have set down this account in the ledger I found in the bag of Quentin Kellogg.

I would take the time now to wish all those I love goodbye, and by doing so remind myself of the beauty and happiness that life had dealt me up until this point, but the last lantern in my view is down to the last of its wick and soon I shall be plunged into a lasting darkness that will encompass eternity.

My only hope now is that this ledger will never be found, and that this room will remain undisturbed forever.

That whatever dark thing we awakened with our meddling is allowed to feast no more upon the living is all I can hope, for it is certain that I am lost to this world.