Dark Tales Of Lost Civilizations (13 page)

The next chamber proved identical to all the rest—limitless, composed of green soapy rock and filled with naught but darkness and wreckage—save one aspect: In its center were four stone trapdoors, sealed with bands and locks of singular, dark metal and nearly identical to the mighty door they’d pried open on the surface.

It was from one of these doors that the terrible pounding issued. The stone slab shook as though subjected to hammer blows imparted by some unseen agency beneath the door. But the most terrifying, soul-shirking characteristic of that dismal room was realized only when Dr. von Eichmann allowed his gaze to drift from the shaking door to a door farther back.

Here, Dr. von Eichmann required several more draughts of water, guzzling them down as though they were nepenthe. Finally, with a strained voice and wild eyes, he continued. It had taken him some time to finally regain control of himself since what he revealed next—although it lacked any visceral horror—it carried implications of a most unspeakable magnitude. In the back beyond the shaking, rattling door, beyond the other two doors which lay still there was the fourth and final door yawning wide and completely thrown open!

This proved too much for the party and they fled in abject terror. Von Eichmann was nearly abandoned when he tarried alongside the oblong artifact to scribble its location, but he came to and tore recklessly for the surface with the others. The pounding began anew to beat out an abhorrent, mocking tattoo that chased their every footstep but—when they finally, gratefully, blessedly regained the snow-dusted surface—it ceased.

Grey clouds gathered overhead and soon a wet snow began to fall, which did little to lighten their already damp spirits. Another party, led by Major Holtz, yet remained underground. Reluctantly, they decided to wait to see if their companions would emerge.

After an hour, with undeniable clarity, the terrible pounding echoed up once more from the depths. It started and stopped at random intervals, but one fact was undeniable—it grew stronger with each passing minute. The men began to talk of working the pulleys and levers attached to the trapdoor in order to close it. Dr. von Eichmann argued against them—he could not even imagine even an ounce of the despair he would visit upon the men remaining in the catacombs should they rush to the exit and find it horribly sealed and find themselves entombed for all time. But just as Dr. von Eichmann began to lose the argument, the pounding abruptly stopped.

In tense silence, the men waited. Quite suddenly, they beheld the drunken swaying of two points of light at the bottom of the utterly black staircase. From the way the two electric torches swung around, Dr. von Eichmann could tell that their bearers were in distress. He called down to them repeatedly and received terrified screams in reply.

Immediately, the men heaved on the cables that held the trapdoor open in an attempt to slam it shut. The two specks of light grew nigh and Dr. von Eichmann knew that they were running at full tilt for the surface. He shouted down encouragement, begging, pleading, praying that they would reach the surface before the stone barrier entombed them forever. As the straining pulleys and winches hauled the trapdoor closer to vertical, Dr. von Eichmann made out a third, more distant, point of light whipping to and fro further down the stairs. The faint crack of far-off gunshots echoed up the staircase with the emergence of this third point.

By then, the first two points drew so close that they had expanded into blazing halos of light. Von Eichmann could make out quite clearly the forms of Major Holtz and another man scrambling desperately up the ominously large stairs. Dr. von Eichmann shouted at them to hurry. He tried to get the men to pause in their attempt to close the door, but to no avail. By now the door was vertical so that it teetered precariously close to tipping over and slamming shut.

More gunshots rang out from the shadowed passage. Major Holtz had drawn close enough that flashes of his blonde hair were occasionally visible in the crazed pitching of his electric torch light. A terrible smell that von Eichmann described to me as a combination of spoiled milk and the stench of low tide issued forth. It was clear that, as he ran, Major Holtz was firing backwards into the shadows at something unseen. A moment later Dr. von Eichmann could make out Major Holtz’s screams; he was screaming with all his might for the door to be slammed shut.

The men heaved against the cables holding the door up. The door pitched and wobbled. No matter how they strained, its weight denied them utterly so that it remained stubbornly vertical. Less than an inch of lateral movement would incline it sufficiently as to cause it to topple shut, but try as they might their strength proved wholly insufficient. Just as Dr. von Eichmann felt his hammering heart must explode from fear and exertion, Major Holtz leapt from the opening to tumble out into the snow. He wasted not a moment for words, but instead heaved with all his considerable power against the opposite side of the trapdoor. This final shove proved just barely enough and the door swung down to close with an almighty bang. Although it obviously pained him to do so, here, Dr. von Eichmann paused in the telling of his tale to whisper quietly that—amidst the crash of the door slamming blessedly shut—he heard faint cries for help echoing up from those he’d just entombed.

But tragedy of the man’s premature burial went unrecognized, for more pressing matters were yet to be attended to. Major Holtz had already heaved one of the heavy green blocks that lay scattered near the door back atop it. The men aided him as swiftly as they were able and, working in teams of two, they had soon dragged four blocks atop the door. Just as the fifth block was dragged into place, the door shook with that all-too-familiar pounding. The blocks atop it rattled and danced, but after two horrific minutes, the barrier had moved not at all. Then, as sudden as its onset, the pounding ceased.

That horrible, fishy, rotten stench lingered around the door for nearly an hour longer then it too disappeared. Most of the men were too stunned to react to what they had felt and heard and simply sat shivering in silence with their stuttering breaths misting in the air. Hidden behind a white shroud of clouds, the sun now sank slowly below the horizon to cast the sky in haunting blacks and deep blues.

I asked him then what happened to Major Holtz and the others. He paused for a long time before trying frantically to convince me that they were dragged, screaming, back into the abyss. He claims that several days after they departed that hellish place, the pounding came anew—and in the darkest hour of night, each of his companions vanished one by one beneath the cold light of Saturn’s gaze. He claims they left naught behind but their agonized cries. He claimed that he would be next. He claimed that we would all be next.

I, for one, believe not a word of his tale. Our scouts have scoured the areas he described and detected nothing resembling even slightly the nameless city or the horrid trapdoor. It is possible that Major Holtz and his party have made their way back to safety, or that they were killed by the Red Army somewhere on the tundra—but I am convinced that, in his madness, Dr. von Eichmann’s murdered them whilst they slept.

After von Eichmann told me his tale, there came a low thudding or pounding. I knew it to likely be distant artillery fire, but von Eichmann would not be convinced and stood to his feet and let out a soul-shirking laugh. His white beard bristled and his eyes blazed with the light of madness. From his pockets, he dug out a collection of hand-written notes and cast them at me, cackling, wailing and shrieking.

“Don’t you understand, Herr Lieutenant? Don’t you understand?! After we shut the door, it rattled and shook. We thought that we’d trapped the thing—but it was not pounding on the door from beneath.
It had already escaped and was pounding on it from the outside in victory
! What fools we were to think we’d won—what fools we were to think that such an entity was necessarily visible to the human eye! We let it go free!

Burn the documents, Herr Lieutenant! I beg you! Burn them and disavow any knowledge of finding me or of the expedition. Please Herr Lieutenant, I implore you! Burn them. Burn them all! Burn yourself and burn me! The vaults are not for our eyes! Burn! Burn it all!
Uuah! Uuah!
The Kingdom of Sorrow spreads over the Earth! All bow before the unspeakable High Priest! Before His grace and His might! The worm rises to his invisible throne in the sky!
Uuah! Uuah-Xethogga!
”

Dr. von Eichmann broke into a series of wordless shrieks and then, casting his canteen to the floor, he rose with arms outstretched to throttle me. My guards tried to restrain him, but he broke free. He tore through our camp and eventually managed to lock himself in the cab of one of our trucks. There, whilst heroic attempts were made to force the door, Dr. von Eichmann retrieved a spare Luger from the driver’s compartment and shot himself in the head.

Very Respectfully,

Major Josef Müller

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C. Deskin Rink
is a human organism. His writings include
The High Priest
available at
CastMacabre.org
and
Ankor Sabat
available at
Pseudopod.org
. Visit his website at
ankorsabat.blogspot.com
.

Fadzlishah Johanabas

=[]=

Dr. Fadzlishah Johanabas is an interesting guy. He’s a young neurosurgeon in Malaysia and one may not immediately equate an individual who is anchored in the scientific world of medicine as someone who would be passionate about writing speculative fiction. However, after reading
Gestures of Faith
, you’ll quickly find that he has honed his craft of writing with as much precision as . . . well, a surgeon’s knife. This story follows Thoth, an idealistic youth who may not have the powers of his peers, but could be the final hope for the once-mighty people of a declining Island nation.

=[]=

The great Poseidon sat alone facing the rising sun. The rest of the temple, from the sea-blue marble floor and colonnades, to the double rows of pristine white columns supporting the elaborate triangular pediment and slanted roof, were well maintained. The gigantic orichalc statue within the naos, the heart of the temple, however, was fading. The gold leaf that layered his entire form had peeled off in places, and the trident he held upright was dull when the pointed tips should have captured the first rays of sunlight and lit the open-aired temple like a beacon, welcoming all to the island kingdom.

Pastel hues of blue, pink and orange filled the heavens as the sun blinked awake from beyond the eastern horizon of the ocean. In the soft light, the floor of the temple reflected Thoth’s solitary form. He alone knelt and kissed his forehead on the cold marble before the statue. He remembered a time when he was little and his mother still alive; there would be at least fifty worshippers to greet the rising of the sun.

“If only there were more like you, child.”

Thoth sat up and smiled at the Oracle as she walked into the temple from the side. The colorful beads at the tips of her fine braids tinkled with each movement. Her hair was white, her face etched deep with creases, but her slender body was still graceful, her steps sure and fluid. She smiled back at him before kneeling beside him to pray.

He waited for the Oracle to finish her ritual before speaking. “Has Poseidon spoken to you, Oracle? Everyone is worried about the war going on against the Greeks.”

Her half-smile was a sad one. “The Lord of the ocean deep has remained silent.”

“I pray that everything goes well. Master Leus says control over the elements is erratic at best.”

“The sages too? I thought only the magic of my order is failing.”

Thoth looked at the statue’s stern, bearded face and shuddered. “I should go back to the Hall of Ages. The test is today, and Master Leus will require my assistance.”

“Your lovely friend is taking the test too, isn’t she?”

“Yes, Oracle.”

She nodded, sending the beads in her hair jostling against one another. “I shall pray for her success. Give my regards to Leus as well.”

“I will. Thank you, Oracle.” Thoth bowed at her and padded out of the temple.

Beyond the temple grounds, the city was rousing. Boats and ships with masts slanted to either side had their white sails unfurled as they made their way in and out of the capital and its surrounding islands via canals that cut through the islands like spokes on a wheel. In the early sunlight, the metal-coated walls that circled the concentric ring islands gleamed like the haloes of a full moon; the yellow brass of the outermost island wall, the white tin of the middle island wall, and the red orichalc wall of the circular island that was the heart of the greatest civilization on Gaea. The buildings, great and small, were primarily white, and stripes of red and black decorated most of them. Tropical trees and ferns co-existed with buildings, roads and walls in glorious harmony. At the exact center of the inner island, the high emperor’s palace stood proud with its graceful spires and columns, gold and orichalc arches, and fountains sprouting from life-like statues, tumbling down in gentle cascades into pools of water-lilies. The palace proper was large enough to house all ten rulers of the island including their retainers, whenever they convened at the capital.