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he first feeling I experienced was a throbbing pain in my temples. After a moment I opened my eyes, blinking against the bright light reflecting off the cold steel walls. As my vision returned my other senses dimmed, my pain falling behind the worry that sprung up upon seeing my surroundings. I was bound in a sealed metal chamber littered with gold bricks. Beside me lay the unconscious forms of three officers from the Bureau of Investigation, stripped of their weapons and bound as I was. We had entered the gold refinery in a raid but upon reaching the administration office we had been ambushed by the strange men who ran the place.
The room we were now in was large and plain with a strange metal door on the other side of a cage wall, both at the other end of the room. The walls were lined with disordered stacks of a whitish-gold material stamped with the Innsmouth seal. The cage door was padlocked from the other side. On the other side of the cage wall was a ladder which led to a platform on the second floor of the chamber.
The ropes binding me were wrapped around my chest and arms three times, tied securely. Another set of ropes bound my ankles and I lay on my back. The ropes around my chest kept my arms securely at my side, but I could wriggle around and I still had finger movement. For a short while I struggled against my bonds and attempted to figure out how I could escape. I had no idea what I could do to escape for a while, but as I wriggled there, slowly moving towards my unconscious comrades, an idea struck me.
I wriggled over to the nearest BOI operative and, with much difficulty, slipped my bonds over his hand. Now, with his hand and the ropes binding him tightly holding my rope secure, I began to wriggle backwards. It was a slow and arduous process, but as I struggled I could feel and see the bonds slowly edging up along my body. The great relief came when the bonds slid past my elbows and I regained elbow movement. Suddenly, with my job significantly easier, I slipped the bindings off more quickly and untied my legs. I had no idea what the status of my fellow comrades was, but they appeared unconscious. As I figured they would likely be out of commission for the moment, I untied them and began to wonder how I would be able to escape the cage that seemed to hold us in.
As one may expect, my interest quickly fell to the gold blocks that littered the room, and I picked one up to more closely examine it. It was, in fact, gold, but it looked stranger than any gold I had ever seen before. It was of a particular whitish hue, as if it had been mixed with a slight amount of platinum or other such metal. It was certainly heavy enough to be gold.
As I felt the object in my hand, I had a fleeting wish that perhaps the padlock had been on our side of the door, so that I could use a brick and smash it in. But as I stood before the mesh door, a block of gold in my hand, I realized that maybe, since the gaps were so wide, I could widen them even more and get my arm through. It would be a hard and laborious process, true, but it was better than being stuck inside this hellish prison beneath a cursed and half-deserted fishing town.
I have no inkling of how long it took me to hammer open a window large enough to extend my arm through, only that after a long time I was able to reach through and begin hammering on the padlock with my golden brick. I hammered for a while, only interrupted as a man moaned behind me and I heard one of the other men stand up, surprised. He saw me hammering on the weakening lock and stepped over to me.
“Hearst, what are you doing?”
“Getting us out of here. Officer Banner already helped me escape my bonds and untie you all, but now I have to break the padlock and let us out. I’m almost done . . .”
“Aren’t you afraid they’ll hear you and come down here?”
“Does it matter? If we don’t try to escape we’ll rot in this prison until they come and pick up our dead bones and toss them to the fishes.” I had no idea how accurate my elaboration may have been.
“I suppose. Finish breaking out. I’ll go wake the others.”
While Officer Fehr awoke the other BOI agents, I hammered four more times on the damaged padlock, finally breaking through. I withdrew my hand and tossed aside the brick, kicking the door and sending it flying open. The three awake officers followed me through the open gate as I approached the door. I tried the handle and was rewarded with a firm lock. I turned back to the officers and shook my head.
“It’s locked?”
“Yes.” I looked around, my eyes going back to the gold blocks in the main chamber. “Do you think we could—”
“Mr. Hearst, what’s up here?” Officer Banner, the youngest of the men here, tenderly placed his weight on the ladder to the side of the room and upon deciding it was safe he began to climb.
“I don’t know.” I didn’t actually know, for quite frankly I had forgotten that there was a balcony to this chamber. I followed him up while Officers Fehr and Orne ascended behind me. We spread out on the balcony and eyed the door that stood before us. Beside it was a window that looked into some kind of antechamber, furnished with only a wooden desk and a few minor office supplies. I could see a key lying, partially obscured, beneath some papers on the desk. Banner tried the door and was met with another lock.
“It’s locked,” he proclaimed to deaf ears. No one needed to hear the obvious. Having just broken out of the cage, with my mind still on that strange gold, I quickly turned to Officer Fehr.
“Head down and grab a gold brick and bring it up here. If we smash in the window we’ll be through.”
“Hardly subtle,” Officer Fehr admitted, but descended to get a brick anyway. We waited a moment for Fehr to pass the brick up, but once I got it I unceremoniously smashed the glass with it and dropped it on the desk on the other side. Orne shook his head and followed me through, the other two staying close behind. I shuffled the papers on the desk and grabbed the key ring, which unfortunately had only two keys on it. I approached the door leading away from the storage room we had left as Orne tried the various drawers. They were locked.
“Hey Hearst!” Steve Orne called from behind me, “You’ve got the keys, right?”
“Yeah.” I turned around and strode over. We tried one key and found it didn’t fit with the first drawer, but the other key did. After a moment we had used that one key on all the drawers and they were open.
I waited for the officers to finish scrounging around inside of them, searching for weapons, incriminating evidence, keys, or anything else we could use. When they pushed in the last drawer and showed me their findings, I smiled alongside them. They had found a pistol with three extra clips of ammo and several papers that proved that the Marsh family was engaged in criminal activity.
The second key turned out to unlock the two doors in the room, and in the back of my mind I hoped that the key would work on other doors in the Refinery as well. I opened the door that led out of the storage chamber and was instantly assaulted by a blast of sulfurous fumes. As I led the way out onto the catwalk we found ourselves inside a furnace room, where the molten gold shone brightly at us from the machines in the center of the room. A catwalk ran all the way around and another one crossed the center of the room, probably six feet above us. To our left was a pair of doors, one opening onto our catwalk, the other to the catwalk above. Just as we noticed this we saw one of those ugly men that had captured us patrolling the catwalk above. He was clad in a police uniform but was armed with a tommy gun, his weapon belying his actual purpose. Luckily, he didn’t see us at first, and the noise of the machines gave plenty of reason why he wouldn’t have heard our noisy escape.
Unfortunately, the room echoed and I had barely taken four steps before he turned to see us emerging from the office. He cried out and raised his gun, opening fire on us as we dashed around the room. He was saying something, likely calling for backup, and as he focused his attention on me and Banner, Michael Fehr opened fire with his pistol. A round hit the squat bald man in the shoulder and he spun around, spraying bullets at Michael. The officer tried to back into the room but was hit by a hail of bullets, all in his legs, and he fell to the ground. Barely able to hold himself up, he fired off the rest of the clip while the guard reloaded, and within seconds the guard was dead and Fehr was close behind.
We rushed to his side, but he reloaded the pistol and thrust it into my hand. “Quickly, run. I can’t follow in this condition and you can’t afford to carry me. I will try to keep myself alive as long as possible should you find a safe exit, but I don’t expect there will be one—”
Michael’s final words were cut short by the bang of a hunting rifle from the level above. We dove to the side and spotted two more guards above us, one with a long-range rifle and the other with an automatic pistol much like the one I held. I fired off several rounds at the one with the pistol, who was firing back, as I led the sprint for the door, praying that it was unlocked. Much to our luck, it was.
We slammed the door shut and I could hear cursing from the other side. Their voice was strangely slurred and their accent was similarly strange, as if their mouths weren’t entirely human. But I didn’t worry about that so much, as my entire focus was on getting out alive. Luckily none of us had been hit, but the first shot had finished off Michael Fehr. Banner, breathing heavy and scattered by the nervous dash, muttered something about me getting a hit on one of those men, but I couldn’t be sure, having not aimed at all.
Once we calmed our nerves a little, after a brief moment of silence, I turned around and opened the door to the next chamber. It was a loading room, complete with a conveyor belt that I assumed led to some kind of crusher or led directly to the furnaces in the next room. The floor was steel, with a small fence around the conveyor belt to keep people from falling on it and being sucked into oblivion. I led us around the conveyor belt to the stairs on the other side of the room, quietly climbing them, my pistol held nervously before my chest.
The door at the top of the stairs was shut, and my hands were shaking as I took a hold of the knob and slowly turned it, smashing open the door and snapping my pistol up. Four shots rang out in quick succession and the man with the rifle fell to the ground, his head a mess of blood. The other guard was already bleeding and wounded, and by the time he had raised his pistol I fired off the other four rounds into his head. The three of us approached slowly and quietly. I stepped over the dead bodies carefully, keeping sure to avert my eyes from the men I had killed. As we passed them, Officer Orne searched the dead men and took their weapons and ammunition, handing the pistol to Banner. We continued on this catwalk until we came to another door. I slowly pushed it open and my gun snapped up to bear. Nothing.
We slid along the catwalks, careful to make as little noise as possible to evade detection by the men we could hear muttering in their unnatural voices on the floor below us. As we got to the next door I quietly opened it and we slipped through. This room was split in two by a great conveyor belt that we could only assume ended near the room we had been in previously. We didn’t know exactly what it was for, but we could see that across the room was another set of stairs that led up to the next floor. We could easily walk on the conveyor belt here, but the stairs interested us more. The three of us climbed over the belt and ascended the stairs to the level above.
Here was another conveyor belt, this one more easily navigable. We could travel up to the head of both, but this one was lower, giving us more space in the narrow hall. For a moment we weren’t sure which way would lead us out, but Officer Orne made a rather good suggestion: “I know, we need to get out of here as fast as possible, because the longer we’re in here the better chance we’ll be spotted. I’ll go up this conveyor, you two go up the other. If you find the way out, tap on the ceiling and I’ll come down to join you. I’ll try to do the same.”
“Sounds like a plan,” I agreed. I descended the stairs with Banner and we began traveling down the conveyor belt to whatever awaited us at the other end. We had not gone long when it reached its end, a dropoff into a tunnel that likely led to some vault or deeper level below. Luckily, we found a door to our right that we passed through, our weapons ready. But we found nothing save a set of descending stairs. With one last look up we began descending the stairs into the lower levels.
We hadn’t gone far before we heard the sound of activated machinery and Banner spun around nervously. Instantly I recognized it as well—the unmistakable sound of a conveyor belt moving. We dashed back up the stairs and found that our lower belt wasn’t moving at all. About that time we heard the frantic flailing from above us, and we dashed down towards the other end, where we might find a way up to see what was happening above us. As we passed the stairs we had formerly ascended I silently motioned for Banner to hasten up them, and he complied. I had little time to speak, and it is best that I didn’t for I could never have spoken fast enough. I reached the other end and saw that there was a great chute for catching things from the crusher above, to direct them onto the conveyor belt for transport to the levels below. But then it struck me—the spiked crushers were just where Orne was headed.
Fear gripped me and I stumbled back, suddenly fighting a very strong sense of nausea. I heard Banner scream in horror and heard the crunch as something entered the crusher. Orne screamed in pain and I stumbled back, averting my eyes and falling to the ground as the crusher crumbled and crackled through skin, bone, and metal. The horrifying sounds of squirting blood, crunching bone, twisting metal, and broken organs overwhelmed me and I upheaved my stomach on the belt beside me. In that moment I did catch a glimpse of the river of blood and waterfall of bits that fell from the turning crushers above, and I very quickly scrambled back, getting to my feet and running as fast as I could in the other direction.
I very quickly reached the stairs, where Banner, white-faced and cold, had just descended as if in a dream. His eyes barely reading my presence, he nonetheless reached out an arm to grab me. The horror he must have seen was so great that I faintly registered the signs of shock in the youth as he stammered to me, “Officer Orne . . . he . . . he . . . he was . . .”
“Crushed,” I finished for him. “Come Banner, we have to get out of here.”
“Yeah . . . yeah.” The youth was slowly regaining his composure, but slowly was the best description. He let go of me and I grabbed his arm, leading the two of us, both pale and terrified, down the unmoving conveyor belt. I barely registered that the belt above us had stopped.
As we hurried down to the other end, I would swear that I saw things I had not noticed before. Bloodstains riddled the conveyor belt from past victims, and when I looked up ahead I could have sworn that the walls were seeping with blood and the floor slick with it. Had I not already relieved my stomach of my most recent meal I would have done so again. I could tell that Banner was faring little better, so when we reached the other end I swiftly pulled him into the stairwell and we descended together.
The spiral staircase was a relief for us, for as we descended the first vestiges of shock were wearing away. The visions of pouring blood ceased as I made my way to the bottom, and when we reached the door at the base of the stairwell I could see that at least some color had returned to Banner’s face. I drew my pistol and he remembered his, drawing it out and unlatching the safety. I placed a hand on his shoulder and we both silently sighed in a vain attempt to regain our composure. I waited another beat until Banner nodded, then I pulled open the door and thrust my pistol through the gap.
The passage was empty, but a sickly green light seeped from some power source running underneath a section of grating on the floor. There were two doors down this hall, one in either direction, and once I had decided it was indeed completely safe I led Banner towards them. One read CHEMICAL STORAGE and the other WORKSTATION. Assuming that the workstation would have another exit, I pulled open that door first.
As I expected, there were several more inhuman guards on the other side, but it wasn’t difficult for me and the still-shaken Banner to take them out, since we had the element of surprise. We left them be, since I was not as comfortable with death as a cop like Banner would be, while Banner was still sorely shaken by the fate of Officer Orne. We reloaded and examined the workstation. It was initially a mere hallway with a couple doors, a ladder going up off to the left, and what appeared to be an elevator to the right. I first approached the elevator, surprised that they would have a cargo lift down here, but it seemed to have little or no power. Just as I was turning to try the doors, Banner declared that they were both locked. I checked out the ladder, but discovered that it merely led to a small catwalk one might use to access the ventilation shafts. Annoyed, I motioned for Banner to follow me and I led him across the first hall to the door marked CHEMICAL STORAGE.
This door too was unlocked, but it was unguarded. There was what looked like several vats of some kind of chemical substance, all very large, that filled the immense room, and off to the right I saw a control panel of some kind and a few stacked boxes on top of which sat a clipboard of notes. I also spotted the glint of keys attached by a string to the clipboard and I eagerly rushed over. Banner followed warily.
I cut off the keys and pocketed them, lifting up the clipboard to examine the contents. It was a report of some kind, but I could not tell who it was from. It seemed to be from some science department that was related to the Marsh Refinery, but I couldn’t imagine what use a science department could possibly to a company that created gold bricks. Nevertheless, I read the report in its fullest.
Report X041
SUBJECT: Sebastian’s Pet
Lord Marsh, I must ask you to take up with your grandson the issue of the creature he keeps down here. It is living in the Chemical Storage facilities and while it seems to be hindering us little it is certainly not helping. It doesn’t seem to want to obey anyone besides Sebastian, even though it has no qualms speaking either English or the language of Y'ha-nthlei. It can be controlled by force, through the use of powerful electrodes, although this seems to anger it and as such this tactic is rarely used. The creature is known to eat people occasionally and its amorphous shape bothers several of the younger workers. Perhaps we can move it to Y'ha-nthlei where it can be of less danger? Sebastian ought to remove it from the Refinery anyway, it has lately been acting up.
G. Waite
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I wasn’t quite sure what to make of this short report, but clearly there was some creature down here that the inhuman workers hated. I already knew that the Marsh family ran the place, but I was surprised to learn that Lord Marsh—who could only be the old Robert Marsh—was still alive, for his grandson Sebastian was now in charge. Just as I was putting the clipboard down, I heard a loud clang and spun around to see a shovel hit me flat across the forehead.
When I came to, there were a few people standing over me. I could hear their inhuman voices muttering amongst each other, and was surprised to see that I wasn’t bound. I opened my eyes and tried to remain as still as possible so they wouldn’t notice me, but one of them must have noticed for he proclaimed,
“Mr. Hearst. You finally woke up. I didn’t think we hit you that hard.”
The voice was contained and gravelly, and it sent chills down my spine. I rolled my head up and saw two of the workers staring down at me, their wide unblinking eyes causing mine to water and their stretched and pallid skin causing a cold tingle to descend down my spine. One stepped away and turned to face the control panel I had seen, his back to me. I noticed that his hands were slightly webbed and his fingers more pointy than they should have been.
“Where’s Banner?” I asked groggily.
“Your BOI friend?” the man above me asked in the same unnatural voice. He laughed. “He’s over there. I think he’ll really enjoy the surprise we have in store for him.”
I turned my head and saw him tied to a rope that spanned between the two catwalks that led over the vats of chemicals not far below. I let my hand fall to my hip but my pistol was gone.
“You won’t be needing that, Mr. Hearst,” the man above me laughed again. “Guns won’t save you.”
The man at the controls began to do something, and I saw a fuse box beside it begin sputtering and I realized that two large electrodes were beginning to power up above one of the vats. Suddenly fear gripped me and I rolled onto my back, grabbing the man standing above me by surprise and hauling myself up. He kept his balance perfectly but I punched him in the face, grabbing my pistol from his waist and backpedaling, leveling it at the two inhuman workers.
“Stop!” I cried. The one at the controls only laughed.
“Goodbye, Mr. Hearst.”
I fired off the entire clip into the two of them, but the one at the controls had already activated the electrodes. They spat electricity and to my horror I saw a torrent of slime explode upward from the vats, its surface primarily green with a hint of horrible plasticity. It rushed to the ceiling and grabbed on, forming a new pillar beside the still-unconscious body of Banner hanging between the bridges.
Then, when I realized the slime was the creature from the report, was when the horror began. It spread out into an hourglass shape and from its body, at random points, small tentacles burst out. They had smaller tentacles on the ends, almost like hands, and at the center of each tentacle was a ring of teeth. The creature’s surface began to bubble and suddenly it was adorned with randomly-distributed packets of eyeballs. The eyeballs rotated and oriented on me and Banner, and then three adjacent organs popped like bubbles and fell back into the writhing mass of ectoplasmic cells. From another part of the creature suddenly two more eyes emerged, both looking straight at me. The effect sent chills down my spine and I almost shot at it, before remembering the strange man’s warning that weapons could do nothing against it. I hurried towards the catwalk, where I could get Banner down with a well-placed shot to sever the ropes that he was hanging on. His eyes fluttered but he did not awake.
I had stepped onto the catwalk when the amorphous creature sent a tentacle screaming towards me. I dove to the ground, feeling the catwalk beneath me shudder. Fear leapt into my heart but the catwalk remained strong. The tentacle, with its unnatural mouth on the end, missed me and pulled back enough to allow me to climb up onto my hands and knees, scuttling forward recklessly. It struck again, but I leapt to my feet and outran it, hearing the wooden planks that made up the metal-banded catwalk shatter violently. Suddenly I heard Banner scream and I dove off the catwalk at the other side, turning to see the Officer. He hung there, finally awake, and I could hear his utter terror at seeing the thing, and before I could fumble out my pistol, the creature, whose sheer plasticity was so unbearable, lashed out with three tentacles that burst from its bulk with a wet slap and wrapped around Banner. I could hear the hissing of the corrosive matter the creature was composed of reacting with Banner’s tender human flesh.
By now I had withdrawn my pistol, and I raised it to my eye and, with shaking hands, attempted to fire at the ropes holding Banner up. Better to die from a fall, I presumed, than to be burned by corrosion and torn apart slowly inside the monster’s innards, whatever they were. I fired off the entire clip but it wasn’t until the final bullet that the rope suddenly snapped, and as the creature fumbled with surprise Banner slipped from its grasp and fell, hanging on the second of two ropes, in an arc that took him under the catwalk I had crossed. As he fell I could see his burns, and it pained me just to look at them. I attempted to load the next clip but my hands were shaking too badly. Suddenly I saw from the corner of my eye as one of the creature’s hellish tentacles fly towards me, and I dropped my clip in surprise and ran in the other direction, barely evading the tentacle as I dropped harshly down a ladder to a lower level. I grabbed my final clip and after spending a moment to focus myself on loading the gun I managed to set the next clip into place. Fear flooded me as I ran along the catwalk I found myself on, Banner’s screams as he swung back into the monster’s bulk haunting me. A hissing emanated from above me and I attempted to ignore it as I climbed the next ladder. I didn’t succeed.
Upon reaching the top of the ladder, I clutched my ears and cried out in desperation, pain, and terror. The scream did little to stop the horrors around me but it made me feel a little better, enough so that I was able to glance around the small storeroom I was in now. It had supplies of varying kinds, and to my right I could see a small low window that looked into the chemical storage. I looked long enough to see movement involving the huge hourglass-shaped creature, and quickly looked away. Suddenly something caught my eye and I saw an unopened box containing a fuse box and an idea came to mind. I stepped over, reached out, and grabbed the box—before the glass window exploded. I barely had a chance to move before a tentacle came screaming through, barely missing me, but still close enough that its ‘fingers’ brushed my shirt. The thin fabric was eaten away instantly and my skin stung wildly, but I stumbled back and leveled my pistol. I wasn’t thinking as I fired three bullets into the ectoplasmic tentacle, and the bullets seemed to pass right through them, the wounds healing up almost as fast as they were made.
As I had done before, I turned and ran for my life, sliding down a ladder and barreling along the lower catwalk, praying that I would live long enough to escape. A tentacle dropped down and I screamed, slipping and falling backwards as it lashed out above me. I pushed myself up enough to slide under it before I got back up and sprinted the rest of the way to the ladder, climbing as fast as I could. I pulled myself up and spun around, nearly retching again as I beheld Banner’s remains. They were charred and half-eaten, dangling like a forgotten fruit from the one remaining strand. He barely looked human.
I dashed for the catwalk but just before I stepped onto it one of the monster’s tentacles swooped down to block my access. I stumbled back and ran for the other catwalk. Once again, just before I stepped onto it, another tentacle dropped to block my path. I stepped back and noticed that the first catwalk was no longer impeded, but I had decided that the creature must have reacted to my fast movements. As I edged across, walking slowly and keeping wary for springing tentacles, I was surprised that nothing struck at me. I was about halfway across when I looked over at the monster beside me and a chill ran down my spine. The creature’s eyes were looking right at me in an unreal way, as if they were human eyes, or as if the creature staring at me was a thinking, feeling person staring into my soul. And then the monster’s eyes popped as if they were merely bubbles on a pond, and the ever-moving mass of corrosive ectoplasmic cells spawned another set of eyes elsewhere on the creature, and a third set turned to focus on me. The effect the monster’s gaze had on me, as our eyes lay trapped in each other’s gaze, was unsettling.
I stepped off the catwalk and with feigned control—for in my heart I was really mortally terrified—I stepped over to the control panel. As I had seen in a passing glance, the fuse box had been fried when the workers had activated it, and just as a test I clicked a few buttons—to no avail. I popped out the old fuse box, and keeping an eye on the monster in the vats before me, I slid the new fuse box in. The device sputtered and hummed with power. I edged the electrodes over with a joystick, awakening interest in the monster. All of its scores of eyes snapped over to watch the electrodes, creeping me out. I tapped a button and the electrodes powered up, suddenly sending hundreds of volts into the creature before me. It screamed in an indescribable voice that caused me to clutch my ears and scream in terror. Electrical bolts ran through the creature and it collapsed into the piping below the chamber, leaving the vats on the lower level empty. The electrodes sputtered and died as the second fuse box failed.
A moment of silence rang out through the huge chamber, and it hurt me more than anything that I had yet experienced.
I stepped back uncertainly, half-expecting the monster to come crashing up before me, but it never came. Hurrying out of habit rather than necessity, I spotted a door across the catwalks and hurried to open it. On the other side I found myself in another hallway, this one with various doors on either side but with stairs leading up at the other end. I knew somehow that I would need to go up to get out of this hellhole, and so I hurried past the doors and up the stairs. As I reached the other end of the hall, I heard something behind me and I spun around, leveling the pistol. Seeing nothing, I heard the creak of metal again and looked towards the ceiling. It was filled with pipes and I suddenly realized what was making the creaking that seemed to be growing steadily closer. The pipes were damaged and open just above me. I turned and dashed up the stairs.
Upon reaching the top I heard the explosion as the pipes broke from the force that was being pushed on them, and I grabbed the door and slammed it shut behind me, sliding the bolt into place. There was a loud rumbling as of a train barreling down towards me, and I fled down the hall, passing through a doorway and without knowing quite why it was there slamming it shut and bolting it. In the few moments I looked back I saw the door at the top of the stairs suddenly bend inward as if some immense object had slammed into it, and I dashed down the hall. I had barely gone two steps before I heard the first door explode open and the rumbling continued, louder and more omnipresent. I slammed the next door and in the moments I looked back I saw the door I had just closed collapse as the roiling green ectoplasmic mass rumbled down towards me. I slammed the door shut, thankful that the sight had not paralyzed me with fright, for even as I slid the bolt into place I felt the creature slam into it, hurling me back.
I leapt to my feet and hurled open the door at the end of the hall, not even seeing what room it led into, and I slid through a door that led off from the hallway to the side. It was another short hallway, but I didn’t bother looking for details as I ran to the door at the end, hearing the creature barrel past through the door I had flung haphazardly open. I dashed down the short hall and opened the door, finding that to my relief it led to a huge room filled with boxes and with an elevator to the right. I ran for the elevator even as I heard workers crying out, “Stop! Kill the outsider!”
As I ran for the elevator I faintly noticed that the creature behind me had stopped moving, but I didn’t care as I spun around inside the huge cargo elevator and slammed on the button that would take me to the ground floor. The door began to slide down and I heard gunshots ring out. I danced back and forth, hoping they wouldn’t strike me, until the door latched shut and the elevator began to ascend. I could see out the elevator’s windows for a moment as the door I had come through erupted with green, and I knew the creature had followed me. I didn’t see it obliterate the workers there, but I know beyond a shadow of a doubt that it did exactly that. I breathed a sigh of relief as the elevator ascended, for once I reached the ground level I knew with absolute certainty that I would make it out.
The elevator had almost reached the height of its ascent when I felt it shudder, as of something hitting it from below. Fear blossomed in me again, and I looked down. The elevator shuddered again and this time began to screech in protest as what I can only believe was the creature from the vats latched on with its immense bulk and began to pull on the elevator, attempting to drag me down to the bottom of the Refinery where it could feast on me. Why it wanted me so badly I don’t know, but I could see the door on the ground floor . . . before the elevator came to a complete shuddering stop. I could hear the mechanisms screaming as they attempted to ascend while the creature pulled down, and with no other option I slammed on the emergency release. The door that was half-visible began to open, and with the bottom free I leapt up and squirmed through the opening, escaping the elevator just in time to hear it explode with the stress and plummet. I pushed myself to my feet and stepped to the edge of the now-open door. I looked down as the nauseous air billowed up from below, and I heard the words that sent a chill down my spine at the time, and have since haunted my dreams and nightmares. The cry of the creature was terrifying in its inhumanness and its familiarity, as if it were an ancient evil that humanity had known at their very beginning. When I heard it I stumbled back for fear of falling in, before I collapsed to the ground in fear and weariness and shivered into a ball, lying there gibbering wildly until the police force that had broken in to find us found me mad on the ground. I could tell them nothing of what I had seen or heard; I could tell them nothing of the eldritch monster from below and I could not bring myself to repeat that terrible cry,
“Tekeli-li! Tekeli-li!” |
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