My name is Raymond Horace. I’m an archaeologist and my career in the field has spanned over 30 years. This field has been the great passion of my life. I’ve been to just about every secluded corner of the world from the peaks of the Himalayas to the dense Amazon Jungle studying the remains of ancient civilizations. I’ve seen more of the world than most ever will, and I’ve learned more about the history of humanity than I believe I should have. I’ve had the monumental privilege of taking part in over a hundred excavations, each of them being unique and memorable in their own regard. However, it was my last experience, that spurred a prompt retirement and left me wishing I had chosen a different path in life entirely.

  I became an archaeologist because ever since I was a boy, I’ve wanted to unravel the mysteries of us, of people. Where did we come from? Why are we the way that we are? Why do we partake in our various traditions and customs? Where did everything our societies revolve around originate, our art, music, religions, laws, and so on and so forth. I’ve always felt an innate desire to travel the world, searching every corner for the answers, leaving no stone unturned. Throughout my career I’ve attained many of these answers, but the most important thing I’ve learned, what made me retire, is that sometimes the answers to some of the most profound questions we seek do not provide comfort, but rather quite the opposite. Some things might be best left unknown, some stones should remain unturned. My last dig was what led me to this viewpoint, and this is the story of that experience.

  It was a crisp autumn morning when I received a letter from an old colleague I knew from my time with the British Museum. The foliage of new England graced the view from my office window, painting a scenery that had always calmed me. The vivid sea of auburns and ambers were like balm for my soul after the long spell of summer heat. However, that letter was like a stone tossed into a calm pond. Small of a thing as it might have seemed from appearance, the disturbance it made had such strong resonance that it seemed to throw everything else out of balance. The sender was someone I had long since believed would never speak to me again. I had scarcely spoken with any of my former colleagues from my time with the British Historical society, but if I were to create a list of all of them ranked from most to least likely to contact me, the sender of that letter would be at the dead end of the least likely. I had long since removed myself from that circle, accepting a position with a new facility across the pond, but I had remained reachable by some individuals therein. I did a quick double take and looked in disbelief as I read the words, “From the Office of Gerald Foster”. He and I had never seen eye to eye on many matters and had frequently butted heads when working together but as per his letter, it seems he was willing to put that aside because he needed something from me. It seemed he had caught news a new find in the wilderness of Iraq, far from any cities, likely Mesopotamian. As I continued to read, it became clearer as to why I was the one he reached out to. While the new site may have been privileged information, known of only by a select few in the archaeological community, Gerald had never been particularly knowledgeable about Mesopotamia, while it was the core focus of my studies back in graduate school. My thesis was on the evolution of pottery craft development in Mesopotamian art. It was likely that anything he found at the site, he would struggle to interpret or even properly classify, so while he likely dreaded the idea of sharing credit with me, he would settle for a collaboration.

  There I sat sitting at my desk, my head hung back, eyes tracing the ceiling in contemplation. Almost as though part of me thought the answer to how I should respond was hidden somewhere among the grooves of the plaster above head. The details of the project sounded promising; the pictures he sent depicted a site that seemed remarkably well preserved, since most of it was in a newly discovered cave system underneath the desert. The ancient Mesopotamians weren’t a cave dwelling civilization as far as we knew, they famously built sophisticated urban centers. These structures could pose some very interesting new questions for the larger archaeological community, mainly the question of why they were there, and what they were for. Ultimately, I concluded that the offer was too good to pass, and I accepted, albeit with some reservations. I felt my heart rate climb with a sense of excitement as I wrote my response, doing my utmost to keep my hands from shaking with anticipation as I penned the letter. Thoughts of how I would soon be flying into Baghdad to embark upon an excursion that could be the piece de resistance of my career, revived a sense of passion for my field of study that had gone into something of a hibernation during my time of dull office work and writing articles for various Archeological magazines. The more I thought about it, the more impassioned I grew at the prospect of another dig, at getting back into the sort of work that drew me to my field in the first place.

  Roughly a month after I received that fateful and unexpected letter, after flights had been booked, bags had been packed, after all the preparations had been made, the moment finally came. As I found myself stepping out of the airport into the bustling streets of Baghdad to meet with my contact to take me to the dig site, my heart continuously fluttered with excitement as though it would burst through my chest. I could hardly contain myself. It must have been a spectacle, a grown man with the general excited disposition of a schoolboy, but I couldn’t help it. Finally setting foot on a dig site was like returning to my beloved home after a hiatus that I believed weighed on me much more than I had realized. On the bumping and rattling car ride to the site I could scarcely tell if I was shaking from the motions of the vehicle over the rough terrain or if it was purely from my own anticipation of what was to come.

  Finally arriving at the site, I made my way to the central tent, upon entering I saw the same tall lanky man with shaggy unkempt hair and a greyer beard standing over the table, examining a handful of artifacts taken from the site. It was remarkable how little Gerald’s appearance had changed since I last saw him, albeit perhaps he did look a bit more weathered. Due to the nature of our relationship, our conversations that first night revolved primarily around the professional reason for the reunion. We discussed the site, how the excavation would proceed, and of course, continued our running conversation on how credit would be assigned, despite having already come to a supposed agreement over our correspondences in the weeks since my receipt of that initial letter. Such was dealing with the likes of Gerald foster. He was a curt man, very focused on the task at hand, and very stubborn when it came to certain things that he wanted. It was because of this trait that I knew there were certain aspects of the project that wouldn’t be negotiable, but in the end, the terms were laid out, and the project was set to move forward. After a long night of exhausting discussions, the whole crew settled in and preparations were made for the next day, when we would finally be examining the site.

  I awoke bright and early that morning. Thankfully the desert had cooled down significantly over the course of the night, and despite the especially firm texture of my cot, I felt at least rested enough to embark on the day’s journey. When I was a younger man, I would have likely been too excited to properly sleep but at my comparatively advanced age, I knew that having ample reserves of energy would be critical, so forcing myself to sleep had been an invaluable skill that I employed. Exiting my tent, I began to explore the rest of the camp, hoping to establish a rapport with various members of the team. As I met some members of the crew, it became apparent that, while difficult to discern exactly what it was, something was amiss. Everyone I spoke with seemed nervous, on edge, as though they were participating in something that they shouldn’t be, as though some rule was being broken by our presence there. There was a thickness in the air of the camp, as though everyone but myself was aware of some elephant in the room, some great controversy, but were loathe to speak of it. After mustering up the courage, I inquired with Gerald about the strange disposition being displayed, particularly by local people helping with the project. “Oh, it’s just some local superstition, nothing to be worried about” came Gerald’s characteristically curt and dismissive response. “Supposedly this area is of some spiritual significance. However, all the members of the team are not of the most devout disposition, seems the folk tales have still gotten to them a bit. Still Raymond, surely, you’ve experienced all sorts of myths and local legends, and so of course you know it’s nothing to fret over. What we’re here for is much more important than adhering to superstitious clamor. Pay it no mind.” His attitude was as off putting as ever but his point still stood. I had indeed experienced all manor of superstition throughout my travels, and while typically it was nothing that would completely derail an expedition, Gerald and I did differ considerably in our approach to handling the cultural sensibilities of the locals. While I found it helpful to maintain a good working relationship with any local hired workers and felt taking steps to ensure that they would not feel their culture, beliefs, or customs were being dismissed to be conducive to a smooth working relationship, Gerald had a less tasteful approach. Perhaps it was a facet of his more upper crust origins in the posh south of England, but Gerald could take on a troublingly condescending tone when dealing with such sensitive cultural matters. He had a reputation for utilizing his resources to simply circumvent the desires of local populations in terms of how the local areas were handled, as opposed to working with them, and it led to controversy on more than one occasion. In all the years that Gerald and I had been away from each other, I think how much I came to detest that tendency of his escaped my memory. The creeping tendrils of regret began to crawl into my mind regarding the whole endeavor, but I simply had to do my best to push them back. After all, the whole project was well underway. I would just have to do my best to curb Gerald’s worst impulses and push on for the sake of the dig.

  Yes, we were there for a reason, and I wasn’t prepared to turn back after coming so far. So, we set out from camp to make our way to the site. After about a one-hour camel ride through the desert that felt like it took ages, I soon saw what looked like a little black hole in the side of a distant hill. At first, I wasn’t sure if my eyes were seeing it correctly, or if it was a trick of the shimmering desert air. However, as we approached it, the cavern became unmistakably clear. Not only that, but the difference in perspective soon became apparent as well, as it was much larger than I initially thought. The mouth of the cave stood somewhat short, but quite wide underneath a large stone cliffside jutting out from a massive dune. Perhaps it had been revealed by the wind sweeping the dunes across the desert in an ever-shifting manner. No matter the story of its discovery, there it stood, a vision of promise and intrigue. After a few hours of the crew setting up a series of flood lights throughout the initial portion of the cavern complex, the time to enter had finally come. We set off to explore the mysteries that awaited us within the depths of that mystifying portal to the ancient wonders that lie below. Upon entering, the temperature dropped quickly, giving great relief from the sweltering desert heat, however the cold quickly lost its sense of comfort as chills began to assault my body. Something about the atmosphere of that cavern gave me a strange mixture of feelings. A unique cocktail of emotions formed within my mind as I took a few moments to truly take it all in. The excitement was certainly still a large component of it, but the more I breathed in that slightly stagnant air and gazed upon the exponentially deepening darkness of the cavern, a more ominous feeling entered the mixture. I felt strange, unlike I had at any other dig site. Perhaps it had just been the superstitious murmurs around our camp from the morning, at least that was the comforting mantra I embraced to ward off the subtly increasing sense of dread that hung in the air.

  With that comforting mantra repeating in my mind, we pressed onward, cautiously traversing the caverns, diligently scanning our surroundings for any signs of more artifacts to be found. After some time had passed, we came across the first find of the day. No matter how many times I made that first discovery, I don’t think my heart had ever failed to leap with excitement. It was nothing huge at first, just a small figurine depicting a human like figure, most likely an idol of one of the various Mesopotamian gods. However, I couldn’t immediately discern which of the pantheon it might be. Regardless, I carefully excavated the piece, taking all precautionary measures to extract it without any sort of damage or contamination. The thing was so small I had just about missed it, having nearly mistaken it for just another one of the numerous stones scattered about the cavern floor.

  I looked back at Gerald with an expression of elation, hoping perhaps in vain to see the same expression on his face, but was of course disappointed. “Surely, we didn’t come all this way to be satisfied with a singular figurine Raymond, we need to push further. The initial scout spoke of whole rooms full of strange writing on the walls.” Filled with a sense of invigoration I nodded, and we continued our descent into the stagnant air and cold chambers. After two more hours of exploration, the moment finally came. An urgent burst of Arabic shouting from around the corner of one of the many corridors caused my ears to perk up. Wasting no time, I made my way to its source and after turning a corner, I struggled to maintain my composure at the sight before my eyes.

  Illuminated by the dim glow of distant floodlights, was what appeared to be the entrance to a temple of some sort, carved out of the very walls of the cavern. The sight of it shook my whole world. I had learned long ago not to get my hopes up at every dig, so I had done the typical mental work to maintain my composure and temper my expectations, but the sight of such a grand fixture stripped away all those layers of professionality in one fell swoop leaving me awestruck like a child seeing an elephant at the circus for the very first time. Gerald followed shortly after, displaying the same sense of excitement I had at the initial artifact we had stumbled upon, that was what we had come for, that was why we were there. After erecting a series of secondary lights, illuminating the true extent of the temple entrance, we ventured yet further beyond the ornate pillars that marked the entrance. A series of stone rooms with various vases and artifacts awaited us within the immediate entrance of that temple, but beyond the first few rooms came what I believed was the discovery of a lifetime. The main room had walls decorated with countless glyphs and depictions of strange humanoid figures. After examining the glyphs further, my heart sank as they were indistinguishable, even to myself, someone who had extensively studied the Mesopotamian language and culture. I was baffled, and that left me in a state of discouragement. After all, if I didn’t have a frame of reference for what we were witnessing, who on earth did? After a series of discussions, we came to the suspicion that the site may not be Mesopotamian at all, but rather, could be from a civilization even older, one wholly undiscovered. The possibility was mind boggling. Mesopotamia was thought to be one of the oldest civilizations known to man, yet here we stood, possibly on the precipice of something even older. As we explored more of the rooms, we found more and more of the strange glyphs, leading us to the even more exciting possibility that this was a library of some sort, a trove of knowledge that could lead to untold discoveries of the origins of human civilizations. This was truly monumental, I thought, we may have been standing upon the precipice of a library of prehistory.

  Of course, photographs were taken of everything, we had to document as much as we possibly could. Every pillar, every hieroglyph, every inch of anything that looked to be fashioned by human hands was meticulously documented. Further exploration revealed more statues, more ornately decorated rooms, and eventually, the discovery of something that changed the nature of our expedition entirely. As I stood hunched over in a crouched position, inspecting a shard of pottery decorated with a unique pattern of interlocking blue and black vines, I overheard a shout from a few rooms down the main corridor of the temple. Though I knew precious little Arabic, the tone of the voice could be understood by anyone who had ever experienced the emotion of overwhelming shock and awe. That individual had stumbled upon something that demanded the immediate attention of every member of our party, myself and Gerald especially. The excitement in that exclamation communicated immediately that I should drop everything I was doing and investigate. Anticipation built as I exited the antechamber I had been investigating and pursued the source of the shout. As I walked down the corridor, flanked on each side by more of our hired hands that also wished to see what all the hullabaloo was all about, I couldn’t help but feel a new kind of intensity flood the air. The floodlights set up within the temple slowly illuminated what appeared to be a grand set of doors, which appeared to be sealed tightly by means of a sort of intricate stone lock, the mechanics of which none of us could begin to imagine. The doors were ornately carved and painted in a similar style to the shard of pottery I had been inspecting earlier. There was an ominous air about those doors. Clearly, I thought, they were meant to indicate that something of immense profundity and importance laid behind their towering figures.

  Intense debate broke out surrounding the question of whether we should breach the tightly sealed stone doors, but ultimately, we decided to leave them closed and fully intact for the time being. With reservations of some members of the administrative party, namely Gerald, it was agreed that more careful consideration should be given to whether we would intrude upon whatever the society that crafted such imposing doors clearly intended to remain behind them. Having come to that conclusion, we brought our findings back to the surface to regroup and discuss the next phase of the excavation. Back at camp, the glyphs were the first mystery to examine. Gerald and I reached out to a variety of linguistic experts that we knew we could confide in, in hopes that one of them might be able to at least decipher a portion of the unique symbols we found on the walls. We did eventually find someone who was able to make partial sense of the language, but interestingly, the expert did not come from either of our circles of linguistic experts, but from one of the locals in our excavation team who had a family elder claiming to be familiar with the strange runes. Both Gerald and I were highly skeptical of the notion but having nowhere else to turn, we relented and asked the man to contact his relative, to invite him to the site to attempt to make sense of our find.

  Throughout all my years of travels, I don’t think I had ever met an older looking man in my life. He wore an expression of disapproval as he approached the table in the main tent at camp, as though he were preparing to scold us for our investigation in the caverns, however he sat down and looked at our photographs intently. Waiting with intense anticipation, we remained fixated on the man as his eyes traced each curve and corner of the symbols we laid out before him. Finally, with a look of deep concern, like that of a father witnessing his children playing along the edge of a cliff, he stated that the place was indeed an ancient historical library, but it also that it was so much more. The information contained within the confines of that temple was vast and covered a wide variety of subjects. History, language, medicine, art, philosophy, architecture, engineering, all the knowledge of prerecorded history, or at least the greatest extent yet discovered was contained in those chambers. That is, if the elder and his roughly translated testimony were to be believed.

  As he spoke, Gerald had a look in his eyes like a ravenous animal, a resolve to learn more, an appetite for knowledge, all consuming, like a raging fire. “He has to come with us into the complex, we’ve only shown him a portion of what we found, he could tell us more, he has to.” He spoke quite bluntly. The relative of the elder seemed to attempt to translate Gerald’s insistence in the most diplomatic manner he could, it seemed to do little good. At this the man seemed to recoil, as though offended by the notion, but Gerald’s stubborn nature won out, after some heated back and forth, the man was coerced to join us in our subsequent excursion into the vast caverns, all the way to those looming, sealed doors. As we walked through the caverns, the man wore a grim expression on his face as he looked over the statues and depictions of the archaic people. I asked his relative to tell me what he thought they were supposed to be depicting, who he thought those people were. After some tense conversation between the old man and his relative, he looked to me and said, “he says they aren’t people”. The response made me pause. Not people? Then what were they? My initial thought was that these were supposed to depict deities, but I had to bookmark the thought as we were quickly approaching the sealed doors.

  This text was taken from Royal Road. Help the author by reading the original version there.

  The man looked over the entrance carefully and after seeming to finish his examination of the remaining glyphs he immediately jumped back from the doors, recoiling as though he had just realized he was in the presence of a fearsome predator, his chest heaving and his hands quivering. He began whispering in a frantic manner, his relative attempting to talk with him, trying to calm him down, but to no avail. They had a heated discussion in hushed tones, as though they believed if they were to speak too loudly, they would catch the attention of some malicious presence in our midst. I hadn’t the foggiest idea what they were discussing, but I would soon learn. “He said we must leave this place. He says we’re not meant to be here”. The man spoke as though he had grown to fear for his very life, a quiver in his voice, unmistakable. Gerald, appearing increasingly frustrated, spoke out. “Enough of this superstitious prattle! This could be the discovery of my career and I won’t have jumpy locals rob me of that.” At this the man spoke even more urgently to his relative and he translated as best as he could. “He says that the glyphs across the door tell of invaders, people, or rather, things spoken of simply as “imposters”, evil things that humans went to war with, in an attempt to subdue. He says that they couldn’t kill all of them, so they had to imprison them and that this isn’t just a library, it’s their prison. We’re at the gates right now. All the glyphs on the walls tell the story of many things, but those before our very eyes, are a grave warning, what is beyond these doors, is something not meant to see the light of day.”

  My head was spinning at the revelation. Skeptical as I was, it all needed to be processed and considered if we were to continue exploration. The stories of the places that we visited were perhaps even more important than the sites themselves and I told Gerald as much. After even more intense debate, he relented, and we returned to camp to discuss this new information regarding our find.

  The term “imposters” really stuck with me. As I lay in my cot pondering its mysterious nature, initially I thought of prehistory and how for thousands of years we shared this planet with a variety of other human species. Neanderthals for example, and how it’s debated as to whether the reason for homo sapiens becoming the only human species was due to either interbreeding with the other human species, war, genocide, or out competing them for resources. I had often pondered the nature of the relationship early homo sapiens had with their hominid cousins, and as I drifted off to sleep these thoughts permeated my dreams. I awoke the next morning to shouting outside my tent, two of the crew members were arguing in Arabic ultimately resulting in one of them packing up his things and quitting the project in protest. This was somewhat astonishing since part of their contract was that payment was distributed once the operation was complete. That man had just forfeited his entire commission, and I couldn’t help but wonder if it was due to the words of the elder, we had brought with us the prior day. Once the argument was translated to me, that suspicion was confirmed. The man wanted no further part in what we were doing and as it happened, word of what we discovered had spread through the ranks of our team, leading a few more to opt out of the project as well. Gerald didn’t seem particularly bothered by that, “fortune favors the bold, the way I see it this is just trimming the fat.” Were the only callous words he had on the matter.

  Gerald’s attitude had become more concerning the longer we stayed in that place. He had always been somewhat cold, dismissive even, but never so plainly cruel. That had changed over the following days as it seemed his obsession with the sealed doors and what they might contain seemed to consume him. A heated exchange between him and the elder resulted in his subsequent departure as well. “Crazy old man” Gerald huffed “Who needs him, we’re on the verge of defining our careers. Raymond, this is the day. We’re entering that final chamber and claiming our destiny”. The man seemed unhinged at that point, and I was presented with a serious dilemma. It was clear to me that Gerald was dead set on finishing that dig, and that there was no man or force of nature that could stop him. It was upon that realization, I began to think that perhaps we should slow down, I was even inclined to drop off as well. But if I did that, in no way would Gerald be dissuaded, and that might even embolden him to act carelessly, I thought. My sense of professionality won out over my nerves, and I decided to stay on the project, hoping to be able to play the role of the simmering pan to cool Gerald’s overzealous drive.

  That day would be our final descent into the caverns. We followed the same familiar path to the sealed door deep within the complex and Gerald, having made clear that he cared not for the superstitious concerns of some within our ranks, ordered some of the men to force them open. With an excruciating amount of effort, requiring specialized tools, the doors were eventually pried open. My excitement had long been replaced by a combination of dread and solemn responsibility to keep Gerald in order throughout the conclusion of the dig. I swallowed dryly as the doors slowly creaked open, and our floodlights pierced what must have been several thousand years of darkness. On shaking feet, I entered the room after Gerald and several of the remaining crew members. The air was stale and dry, causing me to cough with all the dust particles that were swept up by our disturbance of the inner chamber. The area contained more and more runes, but what was most striking about it was the gigantic statues, depicting what one might assume to be more detailed versions of the human-like figures we had seen throughout the rest of the complex. But what the details revealed made my stomach churn with deep and resounding regret. Upon first examination, these statues looked like people, yet something was wrong with them. The expressions on the faces were almost impossible to describe, it’s like they were evoking emotions that humans weren’t meant to express. There was something dark and foreboding about them. The eyes were hollow and expressionless, or rather, perhaps they evoked an emotion that I couldn’t even fathom. The closest thing I could compare it to might be a sort of cold indifference, perhaps even malice, that made me shutter. Furthermore, the fact that I couldn’t quite explain what it was about these statues that indicated the lack of humanity in them, perhaps was what disturbed me the most. They were like an imitation of people, yet effective in their impression. My unease at this ultimate display of the uncanny valley grew the longer I looked at them. As I looked around at the crew, I could tell these figures elicited the same feeling in all the members of our crew, with one exception of course. Gerald’s resolve had not been shaken, and he commanded us to venture yet further into the chamber, taking photographs of everything as we continued to intrude upon that disconcerting inner sanctum.

  Beyond the statues the room extended into an even larger chamber, almost unfathomably vast and so dark that our floodlights couldn’t penetrate even a fraction of it. The immense blackness we found ourselves submerged in brought about a sheer primal fear within me, the same fear of the intense dark that our early ancestors felt during the days when we were prey to the predators that stalked the night. Every instinct I possessed, every shred of me was screaming to leave that place, to desert it like it had been deserted by whoever built it ages ago. Something deep within me told me that there was an important reason that place had been sealed so tightly, those who built the chamber intended for that door to stay shut. But that was the problem with Gerald, that look on his visage never faltered, leaving me to believe he thought himself not to be a man, but to be a legend in the making, a figure of mythology like Achilles or Peleus. His ego left him ignorant of his own mortality, thinking he was on the verge of the moment that would be written about for posterity.

  However, filled with gusto as he was, even Gerald was ripped from his fantasies by the sound of an abrupt shriek of agony that echoed through the chamber. Every member of our crew began whipping their heads around, desperately looking for the source of the cries. Somewhere within the inky darkness it sounded like a man was experiencing the worst combination of fear and pain a human being could endure. Within moments I trained my flashlight on what seemed to be the source. One of the local hires was staggering back to the group, blood flowing from his shoulder and side, a look of terror and hopelessness plastered across his face, like a frightened animal mortally wounded by a fearsome predator. Then came another scream from the opposite end of the chamber, this time I showed my light on it to find another worker locked in a horrific embrace with a truly abominable being. At first my mind couldn’t quite register what I was seeing. The creature that held the man in its grasp appeared to be a person at first glance, but upon closer inspection it appeared to be more like some outlandish being attempting to look like a human. It’s features like a crude interpretation, even its face was completely expressionless, almost as though painted on, with its eyes, mouth, and nose all somewhat jumbled on to its face at crude angles. Its torso separated diagonally into a vacuous jagged toothed maw that crushed and sawed at the pitiful man trapped within its grasp. The thing made these disgusting chittering sounds that combined with what almost sounded like words, but there is no human language to which I could attribute them. My panic increased exponentially as the chamber began to fill with a chorus of these mock language sounds, and staggering footsteps of at least a hundred of these inhuman predators began shambling towards our forsaken party.

  “Back to the entrance!” I screamed at the top of my lungs. None of our staff needed to be told twice. Even before I gave the order a handful had begun to rush back to the mouth of the chamber in a frenzied panic. I could feel the devastating mortality of the situation rain down on me like a grand tempest, the fear boiled over within me at the idea that the accursed chamber truly could be our tomb. As I dashed like a madman back towards the entrance more abhorrent sounds joined the macabre symphony of chittering, the sounds of more men screaming and the sound of flesh being torn from bone culminated in an orchestra of agony that made adrenaline shoot through my veins like lightning. The first few of our troop that had gone in ahead to explore the chamber were undoubtedly doomed, consumed by those cruel monstrosities but I held out hope for those of us that were closer to the entrance. The visceral image of that abomination tearing that poor man apart shocked my mind into pure fight or flight, and my body moved accordingly. The screams increased in number as I made the mistake of glancing back, if anything just to make sure that none of the fiends were upon me. None had come close to me but that was because a majority of the hoard that had descended upon us were concentrated on the pitiful few men that had already fallen to them. The sound of gnashing teeth and flesh being unceremoniously carved caused me to shiver with disgust but the sight of it, oh the horrible vision before me made me briefly wretch. The mock humans had consumed at least three unfortunate men who were not able to join the rest of us past the entryway, their unholy forms drenched in every shade of red and every texture the human body could produce. Organs, limbs, fragments of bones, they ate all of it. Traces of horrendous gore could be seen dripping from the sickening maws that I now noticed were not universally placed among the creatures. Some of them had not one, but several mouths, laced with jagged teeth all over their bodies. Some had mouths in their hands, some had them in their sides, others had them in any location you could imagine on their faces. As they consumed, they emitted more of that odd human imitation, but these sounded…satisfied. As though a desire they had not been able to fulfill in ages was finally satiated. I was transfixed with horror at the grotesque scene, unable to tear my eyes from it. However, I was shaken from my stupor by none other than Gerald grabbing me and pushing me through the gateway.

  “Do you want to join them!? Move, man!” He roared. Running alongside my brash colleague I realized he was right. It was possibly the first sensible thing he had said throughout this entire exhibition, but I didn’t allow that to let me forget that he was the one who rushed us to open that accursed portal to hell. But at that point still within the ruins, it was not the time to argue. I knew that if we wished to live, we needed to get out of that miserable ruin, that the light of day at the mouth of the cave would be the beacon of salvation if we were to have it. Those that were able to escape the sealed chamber wasted no time in dashing as quickly as they could back through the rest of the subterranean ruins. I had never been the most athletic man, but the threat of my own gruesome demise was motivation enough to assist me in overcoming my average physical makeup. I struck the best balance I could between moving as fast as I possibly could and minding the various grooves and snags of the cavern, knowing fully well that should I stumble, that could very well be the death of me. The closer I got to the surface the more it became apparent that not everyone in our troop had displayed the same prudence in pacing. I could clearly hear some stumbling and falling due to a frantic pace and that sound was often followed by that bone chilling chittering and a quick sharp shriek of agony.

  Those moments between making that cursed discovery and making my way to the surface were the purest agony I had ever experienced. The combination of sheer horror and adrenaline was the emotional cocktail I partook of as I made that desperate scramble for the surface. There was not one moment in that interval when I had anything resembling a shred of faith that I would live. I think I even felt tears streaming down my cheeks when I saw the light of the caverns opening. As I ran further from the symphony of wailing carnage and further towards the light my steps grew less cautious and more frenzied. I could feel the horrified despair that had consumed me gradually give way to a cautious optimism that I might indeed survive, I think Gerald had already made it out, along with the first few workers who had managed to get ahead of the pack. The horrific chittering and mumbling, while no longer audible, remained imprinted in my memory and served as continued fuel for my desire to escape. As the mouth of the cave came into full view, I could feel my chest burning, the strain of running for such a prolonged period and under such stress was beginning to be noticeable through the fog of adrenaline, threatening to snuff out my chances of escape with a depletion of energy.

  However, seeing how close I was seemed to give me the strength to push through the fatigue and after a few more desperate paces I found myself breathing the glorious air of the surface. I took in the fresh outdoor air greedily, having a renewed sense of appreciation for each breath, despite the fact that I nearly doubled over from exertion and could scarcely manage but to suck in quick shaking gulps of that wonderful surface air. My head was still spinning with the absurdity of it all, and my body still reeled from the immense effort it took to escape the ruins so quickly but after a few moments of collecting myself, it dawned on me that I was not yet safe. Obviously, the cave entrance was nothing that could be easily blocked off, it was a wide opening, and there was nothing of sufficient size to keep those unholy imitations of human beings confined.

  I began to panic even more at the thought of the predatory abominations being released into the world, as I looked around our camp outside to try and find anything that could be used to avert the horrific event of those beasts escaping to the world of the surface. My sense of fear was then combined with a sense of outrage with what I found. Most of the vehicles were gone. It appeared to be the case that those who were able to get out first allowed their fear to overpower any sense of responsibility for the fates of their fellow workers, and took the cars, regardless of whether they were abandoning others to die. There was one car left but who I saw inside it, attempting to get the stalled vehicle to start, was none other than Gerald. Even though I had not entirely recovered from my exhaustion, my anger with his cowardice and short-sighted thinking propelled me to rush the vehicle. Between haggard breathes I coughed out “What the hell do you think you’re doing?” It seemed that he couldn’t bring himself to look me in the eyes as he attempted to start the car once more, it almost turned over but stopped just shy of starting. “Surviving Raymond, I’m surviving. And if you’ve got any wits about you, you’ll get in the car too.” “You’re…” I wheezed “You’re just going to let those things out?” “And what do you propose we use to keep them in there? Raymond, we need to leave. There are miles of desert between this place and the nearest town. It’ll do no good for us to die here, now get in.” I looked back at the cave entrance and felt my fear flare back up as I could have sworn, I started to hear that mimic speech that those things emitted. With a guilty dry swallow, I got in the car as he attempted to start it again, that time finally achieving success. We peeled out of the circle in front of the cave and got on the road. Part of me wanted to avoid looking back but I couldn’t help myself and glanced out the rear window only to gasp as I saw several of the imposter humans emerging from the mouth of the cave, appearing to be stained with the blood of the men who weren’t fast enough. “Gerald they’re out, they’re out! Drive, Drive!” I couldn’t help but reveal the utter dread in my tone and Gerald responded with a similarly shaken tone. “What do you think I’m doing? Any faster and I risk the truck slipping off the road. If we get stuck in a ditch, we’re as good as dead.” My instincts told me to protest but my more logical mind knew that he was correct. Still, driving only around 20 Miles an hour while those monstrosities were likely shambling in pursuit provided little comfort. None the less, as we kept driving, the silhouettes of those things gradually faded into the distance. Like nightmares giving way to the waking light of morning, the horrible scene evaporated over the horizon. Once they were entirely out of view, I felt like I could finally breathe just a little bit easier.

  The drive back to the town was for the most part very quiet. Of course, both Gerald and I needed a bit of time to gather ourselves and we seemed to silently agree that we would spend at least a portion of the drive in silence. However, I felt that we both knew we needed to discuss what happened as well as what we would do, despite desperately wishing to do anything else. What would we tell everyone? What explanation would we give for the abrupt abandonment of our project, for the deaths of roughly half our workforce? After all, we had benefactors to answer to, would we simply tell them the truth? Such a thing would have them thinking us lunatics, but that begged the question of what we would say. After a bit of back and forth, we eventually agreed that we couldn’t tell the truth, but we had to tell them something that would prevent anyone else from going near that place. Even if the answers we gave ended my career, I was willing to say whatever seemed most plausible to achieve that end. We decided to blame the whole thing on a catastrophic cave in, we agreed to say that it was structural insecurity that led to the tragic demise of all those men and the reason we had to abandon the project. Once we had our stories straight, we solemnly agreed to stick to it and to never speak of what really happened in those caves again. The men’s families would be compensated for their horrendous fates, Gerald and my careers would likely end, although I was simply happy to still be breathing.

  So why am I revealing all of this now? Why am I going against my word that I gave to my old colleague? Because I received word not long ago of Gerald’s untimely demise. While I swore off any more archaeological digs, Gerald’s famous ego propelled him to continue in the field. Supposedly he was on a dig somewhere in north Africa and it was reported that he and his whole crew disappeared. I hadn’t initially thought that I knew what the exact reason for the disappearance was until I started to hear more reports about a great deal of disappearances throughout the middle east and north Africa. Then when rumors of strange humanoid beasts being sited throughout the region, I could no longer deny that my worst fears had come to pass. It seemed that they had not only gotten through the desert but had no trouble travelling any manner of terrain on this earth, we may very well had doomed all of man kind the moment we blew open that sealed chamber and we didn’t even know it. Those beasts, it seems, have no need of water, no need of rest, they can just keep going, undeterred by such bodily functions as the ghouls undertake their gruesome pilgrimage through our world.

  My days since learning of the horror we had unleashed upon the world have been spent in a drug and alcohol addled daze. I simply can’t live with the guilt of what we did, what we released, the monstrosities now walking the earth due to our foolishness, our vanity. So, this is the reason for divulging all that I know, for the most part it is a vain attempt to ease my own guilt. This is my confession to the role I played in the release of a predator the likes of which man kind could have never been prepared for, likely an ancient foe our forefathers did everything they could to protect us from. Thinking back on all the things we had seen in those ruins; it seems that primitive man had encountered those things before and had somehow managed to contain them. Clearly, they were the biggest threat to our dominance of the planet. The depictions within the depths of the ruins, they were trying to warn us. We didn’t listen, albeit mostly because we couldn’t decipher the messages, but in hindsight it’s all so painfully clear. We very well may have shaken up the whole food chain and made it so that we are no longer on top of it. Now I’m growing more and more nervous. I’m back in new England as reports of deadly encounters with those things are surfacing around Europe and East Asia, panic is quickly growing as news stories are consistently breaking. It seems that they appear to be on a path to reconquer the earth, or at least to threaten our position as its chief stewards. We are warned by public officials to stay away from anyone who is speaking an incomprehensible language or appears ‘wrong’. We are warned not to approach any strangers we see in the wilderness who appear to be beckoning to us. These things are quickly becoming a part of the new horrifying reality we live in, and it’s all our fault. God forgive me.