The ghosts left behind

There was a stillness to the air, to an almost impossible degree, as if the air itself had begun to forget how to stir and dance until the stone that had denied it the one privilege air was afforded was hauled away and left the air with nothing but the ghost of memory to dance to. The thick scent of long-rotted wood carried upwards on a whoosh as it went to greet a world that had not waited for it.

Yes, the world had moved on, but it could not take its ghosts with it.

This, naturally, had been anticipated and so the team that stared down into the deep, empty void they had exposed to the harshness of the afternoon sun as the light reached out to probe at the unfamiliar landscape beneath the earth with a greediness that could never be satiated. With thick masks to protect their noses and mouths against pathogens that had not seen the light of day since the buried land’s time in the sun, they shone their flashlight beams to run their own investigations in parallel with the scorned daylight. The day had been unseasonably warm, but that darkness seemed to drain that with a swiftness that could put even the heartiest of nerves to the test.

“It almost looks manmade, doesn’t it?” the youngest of the excavation team, Daniel Johnson questioned, “What is it?”

“That’s what we’re here to find out,” came the reply of his supervisor, Amanda Perkins, “By all accounts there should not have been any surviving ruins this close to the mountains, but there has been reports of anomalous geographical features observed by the scouting party, hence our assignment here.”

“Because the scouting teams have proven to be oh so reliable when it comes to identifying anything more difficult than their left and right shoes,” the third and final member of the group, Adam Mason, grumbled in a comedic stage whisper to Daniel (who, on his part, did a remarkable job of keeping his snort of laughter to himself), “Just because they might have gotten lucky this time, just how much of our lives are we expected to waste chasing rocks because someone decided they were sitting wrong?”

“However long it does takes,” Amanda snapped, “It is better to confirm the occasional red herring to be just that rather than let a find of very real archeological significance go unreported for so long that it falls to such a state of ruin we can’t tell what it was supposed to be.”

Adam had gone to roll his eyes Daniel, expecting to find him as a unified front, only to not find him at all. The man had, instead, decided to take it upon himself to scoot his way over to the very edge of the hole that they had uncovered (too neat to be naturally occurring, he was sure), flat on his stomach as he peered down into the darkness. With his flashlight’s strap securely fastened around his wrist (it would be just their luck to finally find somewhere of archeological significance, as their supervisor had taken it upon herself to repeat often enough to wonder if she was trying to give herself a catchphrase, only to go and damage it by going and dropping things down there), he strained his eyes as much as he possibly could to, well, try and actually work out what he was seeing. That lack of clarification brought with it an odd sense of wrongness. Like his inability to discern anything was by design, a design he barged in with his 21st century audacity to try and challenge.

He wasn’t sure why, but the thought of this, alone, was enough to leave his mouth a little drier than it was.

For all that, however, the actual decent down into the darkness was almost disappointingly anti-climactic.

For all the strange energies the discovery had brought, when they set themselves to work the simple familiarity of the routine shook things back in order. Daniel had yet to quite pick up the industrial efficiency of his older colleagues, having only very recently graduated from over-eager intern to co-worker, but to see the others acting as though there was nothing too strange about the whole scenario was a relief in its own. It left him with the distinct impression that he was looking to much deep into shallow things.

Not that the actual hole was shallow by any description. There had been a very real moment on their descent downwards that they just would never stop. That the rope they’d secured aboveground would run out and he would be left hanging there in a darkness that the sun could never reach for all eternity.

But, of course, they did reach the bottom. In doing so, they brought a light to dance about the strange nooks and crannies beneath the dirt and tree roots, the hungry light taking in more than its fair share.

The extent of the information they had been given was an unhelpfully vague description of an anomalous cavern-like structure picked up by recent readings that was distinct and separate from any cave systems in the area. At the time, there had been much grumblings (almost entirely on Adam’s end) about how vague this was, but now that they were in there… maybe it did make sense. Even if the reading had been able to glean anything more, it still would have failed to encapsulate anything before them now.

It was certainly manmade, that was without a doubt. Whether it had started out life like that, or if some ancient peoples had taken claim of the space and made it their own, well, it did not matter in the end. Not that Daniel would dare to say that to Amanda, who was already busy jotting down precursory observations down.

Better it comes from her, he supposed, than someone like him. With her background and reputation, they might believe what she wrote.

In its day, the cavern would have surely been an impressive sight to behold. Roughly the size of a standard ballroom (Daniel assumed, having no actual experience with ballrooms, standard or otherwise), every square inch of the walls were covered by ornate carvings. The meaning of these carvings, as well as some of the decorative qualities had been lost to time as paint faded and sharp lines eroded, but there were more than enough repeated motifs that he felt it was important to photograph them. There might have been somebody with a better understanding of ancient language and semiotics who could shed more light on it all than he ever could.

Out of the corner of his eye, he was sure that the engravings seemed to… move. Or at least flicker, if not outright move. He wanted to think that it was just some strange trick of a light that had not been fathomed at the time they were carved. The light of his flashlight’s bulb was definitely different from that of a flickering candle flame, even on just a functional level alone, not to mention the way time had worn strangely against the marks creating odd grooves to catch the light with.

The others seemed to not notice, so he assumed that meant it was fine. Sure, Amanda was busy with her notes and Adam was assessing the overall structural security of the place to ensure it doesn’t go and collapse on them, so they did not have the chance to notice peculiar little details like that.

But no matter how strange the markings were, they were nothing compared to what awaited the team on the furthermost wall from their entrance.

Only here wore the more severe ravages of time. The ceiling had collapsed inwards, the roots of a great old tree having reached down to entangle themselves with what was below. There were so many roots, in fact, that it took Daniel a moment longer than he’d like to realise what it was that the roots were surrounding.

It was a slab. A great big stone slab, carved neatly from a cool grey stone. Even under the force of the roots of the trees above, probing and poking for nutrients, it remained sturdy enough.

Sturdy enough to remain the grave site that it was.

Lying there on the slab for a time that made his head ache a little if he were to try and fathom it was a skeleton. The roots formed a coffin of sorts to surround it, curled away from the bones rather than taking the easy route through the corpse, leaving it untouched by anything but the inevitable decay. Well, maybe it was untrue to claim it was completely untouched, but Daniel couldn’t really say with any certainty whether the ornate, long handled dagger that jutted neatly from the ribcage had been there before or after the person had let out its final breath.

Person? Was that quite right? He’d certainly thought it was when he first looked at the thing, because why would he not have? It felt like the most natural conclusion to make. Yet the longer he looked at it, the more he wondered if this really was true. There were just little things that did not quite seem right.

There were too many teeth in the thing’s jaws. Not in the sense that there were some that just had not grown through to adult teeth, but rather that there were just too many lined up in an imperfect, crooked line. As though more had jotted out uninvited to crowd the jaw. In fact, the more he looked, the more wrong it seemed. The limbs seemed a little too long to be proportional. He surely couldn’t have miscounted how many ribs the thing had, yet even as he tried again to convince himself that he was wrong, he was left with the certainty that there was one set of ribs too many.

The absolute wrongness of it all hit him like a shock of lightning and, while he really wished it didn’t, it did validate the sense of wrongness that had been bothering him the whole time they were out there.

A wave of dizziness crashed over him, his ears ringing uncomfortably and, despite his best efforts, he staggered forward. One flailing hand caught the handle of the dagger in the corpse and, well, he was left feeling no better certainly. A strange tingling feeling raced his hand with an alarming swiftness, as though he had stuck his hand into an ant nest, but this was far from the worst part. His vision had begun to swim a little, but it cleared with a jarring swiftness the very second his eyes locked onto the thing on the other side of the roots.

It blended in so well with the gloom-heavy shadows that he could have easily missed it before, and yet he was sure that was not the case. It simply had not been there until that very moment. Even as he froze, the horrid thing ensured that he knew that it saw him too. Its pale, empty gaze meeting his with an almost penetrative intensity that left his skin feeling uncomfortably twitchy.

With a nauseating slowness, the thing tilted its head as it observed him, titled just a little too far to the side as it did. Whatever its intention was with him, any of them really, was lost to him but he knew it was not a good thing. It was not something he should see, this was a certainty that seemed to seep out from the very marrow of his bones itself.

He was afraid, certainly, but he found he was oddly calm about it all. In fact, the fear swallowed his panic so efficiently that he was almost passive. One just had to hope that was not something that the creature might have wanted from him.

Then, with a slowness that left its previous movements to come off as practically a race by comparison, it rolled its gaze to where the sunlight dared to creep through the hole in the ceiling.

The discomfort that was setting his ears to ring grew so loud that it drowned out the rest of the world. So much so that he did not realise Amanda had been talking to them until it eventually managed to creep into the back of his mind as the echo of an afterthought. At least, if nothing else, the woman did not seem too bothered by the blank look he returned her comment with.

“It seems to be a ritual site of sorts,” the woman began, repeating herself even if she was being decent enough to not draw attention to the repetition, “But I feel we may need more than a precursory examination to work out what it was actually-“

“It’s a burial site,” Daniel said with more certainty than perhaps either of them had expected.

“How on earth can you be so sure?” asked she. She didn’t seem mad, but it did seem to stir the flame of her curiosity which seemed worse in the circumstances.

It was not as if he was in any position to interfere with his supervisor when she was working, but as she made her way past him to investigate the root encrusted slab all the panic that he had previously been missing hit all at once. What if that wretched thing down there did something to her if it knew she could see it too? To all of them? What if they were seeing something that they weren’t supposed to see and it came back to bite them later?

Just as the woman reached out to the roots, setting out to peer through to see the horrible burden beneath, Daniel reached out and caught her arm. He wasn’t sure if he actually said “Wait!” when he did so, but he had to assume he did. He could feel both of their eyes on him, even with Adam on the other side of the room as he was. Under any other circumstances he would have found this to be a little embarrassing, but the risk outweighed the shame.

“I don’t… think its safe here,” he began, only to realise it would be wise to say he was seeing monsters, “It isn’t structurally sound down here. I don’t think we should be down here.”

“Oh?” asked she, her brows furrowed, “I’m sure if it was dangerous down here Adam would have warned us.”

As if to prove this, Adam, who at the time was busy sampling to try and reach a more definitive conclusion as to what had once been used to decorate the walls, paused his work to flash a thumbs up to his colleague. This was all very nice, but it did not do much to ease the younger man’s nerves.

“The roof already caved in once, what if it happens again while were in here?” Daniel protested, his mind snagged on the immediate need to be anywhere that wasn’t down there near the strange, silent shadowy creature that he could feel turn its gaze to him the more worked up he got.

Amanda did not assume the man had somehow managed to catch a glimpse of some sort of unknowable horror that resided in the darkness of its tomb for time unimaginable. What she did assume, however, was that the darkness was starting to get to him and was leaving him a little claustrophobic. It wasn’t true, but if it meant they were going to get out of there faster, he wasn’t going to complain.

With a hum, the woman nodded before turning to join Adam. They exchanged hushed words between the two of them for a moment, and Daniel was almost glad he was not in any way to take in whatever they were saying about him. The fellow rose from his work, made his way over to where the youngest of the group had diligently taken on the task of standing between the shadow and his team, before clapping him on the shoulder with a flash of a grin.

“He’s right, we should get it checked out proper before we go and get stuck down here, eh?” Adam remarked, “Now we know it’s here, we can come back with the right equipment. ‘sides, we’ve got enough to start a report at least.”

Daniel did not want to have them come back again, right equipment or otherwise, but he did worry that if he protested they might then end up staying down longer. He did not want to find out what might come of outstaying their welcome with a host like theirs, and so he agreed.

The few minutes of packing felt like they went on for a lifetime, but before too long, they were making the laborious journey of climbing back out into the afternoon waiting for them above it all.

Daniel had taken the tail, scrambling upward with the strange sense that he was climbing for longer upwards than he had going downwards. But he could see it. The safety of the daylight above him. Closer and closer it grew, and the nearer it became the more desperate and frantic he grew. He could feel the hints of a stirring breeze above and he dared to allow relief to flood his shocked nerves.

Relief that devolved to blind panic the second the rope he was climbing was tugged by something unseen down below him, threatening to drag him back into the eternal night of the tomb. A panic that did not release him even long after he flopped on his back amongst the grass and stones.

Did that thing down there in the tomb want him to join it now that it knew he saw it? Or did it want to escape, to join him in a world that did not belong to it? He hoped he would never have to find the answer to this horrible question.