Home
I continued walking, limping slightly on my bruised toe. The corridor just kept going on and on. I brushed my hair out of my face. I was beginning to notice that there seemed to be wind filling the corridor. But that makes no sense, I thought vaguely, there are no openings or anything�
Then, all of a sudden, there was a scream echoing around the corridor- a horrible, shrill scream. My heart jumped into my throat. I�m not alone, I thought nervously. And that scream�it was an awful sound, like the scream of bloody murder. Just as I thought the words �bloody murder�, the shriek repeated. It was accompanied by a horrible slashing sound. Blood splashed all over the walls in terrible, dripping streaks. I took a step back, shaking slightly. It was like someone had just been murdered in front of me- but there was nothing there. I was afraid to keep walking. Cautiously, I stepped forward, and kept stepping forward. There was nothing there except for the blood on the walls. I walked a little faster, desperate to get away from the odd, sanguinary scene. At that moment, I wanted even more desperately to get out of there, but I had no choice but to simply continue on.
I was starting to grow aware of how tired I was. My eyes were beginning to close and my leg muscles wanted to stop working. I�ll just sit down for a second, I thought, but I couldn�t bring myself to do it. The floor was gritty and I kept thinking about blood-spattered walls. I trudged along with my eyes half shut and my head hanging down. My head was beginning to hurt. I had forgotten about being unconscious. I could have a concussion, I thought. Or a blood clot in my brain, and I�m gonna die in here, all alone and no one will care. Knock it off; don�t think like that, I told myself, lifting up my head. It was a good thing I did, too, or else I would have walked straight into a wall. Unbeknownst to my averted eyes, the stone wall to my right had been curving slowly until the wall to my right became the wall right in front of me, jamming a blazing torch in my face. The wall to my left ended abruptly there, leaving an opening, almost like a doorway. Peering inside, all I could see was a dark abyss. I didn�t dare step into the darkness. Instead, I pulled the torch in front of me out of its bracket. I held it in front of me at arm�s length as I walked through the doorway.
I immediately realized that I was traveling down a tightly spiraling stone staircase. The stairs were very small and the walls were so close together that my elbows inevitably scraped against them. As I walked down the stairs, I rolled the stone key over and over in my left hand. I had almost forgotten I was carrying it. I listened to my breathing to try to calm myself down. Wow, my breathing sounds raspy, I thought lamely- and then I realized it wasn�t me that I was hearing. It was another sound, almost like hissing. It seemed to be coming from the very walls that surrounded me. As I listened, the hissing gradually became some sort of demonic language. I could hear clear words, but I couldn�t understand. I just listened as I walked, the torch flaring up in front of me. The awful voice made my skin crawl. It chanted on and on until it stopped abruptly. It let out a cackling laugh that made me shudder.
�Welcome home, my dear,� it said clearly. I felt a burning sensation in the pit of my stomach as it cackled again. The voice faded into nothing as the stairs ended and became another sand-covered corridor. The light returned to a flickering glow- this corridor was also full of fiery torches. There was an empty bracket on the wall to my left. I placed the torch I had been carrying in it, but I still held the key. Funny, it seemed as though everything had been laid out for me; my arrival was expected. The way is clear� the time has come. I started down the corridor, faster this time. Somehow, I felt like I knew where I was going.
As I walked, images flashed before me. Blood was splattered on the walls, sometimes creating rune-like symbols. Eyeless corpses stared at from empty sockets, grabbing at my arms as I passed them. I felt a clammy hand on my wrist and heard a pained moan in my ear. I turned to the sightless face and hissed at it as I passed. As I did so, the very air in the tunnel seemed to move aside. I was practically running through the corridor now. It began to twist and turn in every direction. I picked up speed. I could hear the cackling laugh filling the air again. The faster I moved, the louder it became. �Don�t try to go back. You can never go back! The only way is forward!� As the voice stopped, I stopped. I had reached a dead end.
In front of me stood a wall made of large, gray stone blocks. It was bare except for a carving in the center stone. It was composed of swirling, glowing lines, burning orange against the dull gray rock. In the center was a small diamond shape, glowing brightest of all. I felt a strange warmth in my left hand- the key, I realized. I examined the key. It, too, was glowing. I lined up the diamond shape of the column with the diamond on the wall. They were identical in shape and size. The key seemed to slide through the solid stone, like a knife through butter. There was a soft click, accompanied by a rumbling, like thunder. The wall before me crumbled to the floor. The newly formed opening in the wall was dark and foreboding. And yet, at the same time, it seemed to call to me, pull me in from the depths of my soul, as though hooks had been strategically placed within me.
