Creeping Horror – Chapter Two

Emergence

Having finished my chores for the day, I settled down to looking after my garden, the jewel in the crown that was my outdoor space. I had my back to the hill, the house towering over me as I tended to the inflorescence of my roses. It was a blisteringly sunny day, the heat beating down harshly upon the land and my brow. The animals were snoozing in the heat and I wiped the sweat off my brow as  I continued to prune and trim my roses.  It was warm, but not unpleasantly so. I sat enjoying the heat for another hour or so.

Then it happened.

I was clipping the leaves of a foetida – one which had worryingly become infested with blackspot – when the most terrible noise flanked me from behind. My ears pricked up as the most detestable sound of scraping rock exploded from behind me. It was akin to having dynamite set off behind my back with no prior warning.

That was not the worst part, however: this diabolical vociferation was accompanied by something much more sinister.

Following the deafening explosion, I felt a fast-moving chill wind grate my skin as it rushed past me.  This wasn’t an average breeze of wind common to a summer’s day: this was akin to the wind of Cocytus itself, passing over my soul and chilling my bones to their very core. The effect stayed with me even after it had blown past and I shivered as I watched it move over my livestock, agitating them into a state of alertness.

It was only until after this feeling of dread forced upon me dissipated that I could bring myself to turn around. I stood up and swivelled to find something totally incomprehensible: in the former solid rock of the hill upon which I had built my house now stood a hole that yawned into perpetual darkness.

I stumbled over to the opening, perplexed as to how it came to be: I had been living by myself for weeks now and had seen nobody in that time. It would also be impossible for someone to collapse the wall only to then disappear without a trace. How would someone be able to place so much TNT there without alerting me to their presence?

But it couldn’t have been done with explosives: there was no trace of any blast  having ever occurred. There were no boulders strewn about, no rocks, no stones, not even any dust. It was as if the outer layer had been nothing but a façade disguising the true nature of the hole. Whatever happened here had not occurred naturally.

I laid my hand on the smooth rock wall at the entrance of the cave and peered in. It was pitch black and I could not see far ahead of me, but what I could perplexed me: a perfectly straight corridor ran into the darkness, as far as the eye could see. The Cimmerian shade permeated the entire cave: even the bright sunlight from outside could not diffuse the crepuscule barrier surrounding the opening.

Staring into the atramentous void, I noticed that it was accompanied by the same benumbing wind that had overcome me before. There was no sound whatsoever, no clue as to its source emanating from the darkness, but nevertheless that foul chill was ever present in that vile cave.

I shouted into the yawning void, where my voice was cut off almost immediately. There was no reverberation, no echo: my call simply died, as if it had been suffocated by the cloying darkness.

I spent no more than a few minutes standing at the entrance of the cave: my heart was filled with fear and I desired nothing more than to escape that place. I ran back to the rosebed, praising the warm sun as it danced upon my skin, gathered my tools and sprinted up the path towards my house. I bolted the door as soon as I had entered and collapsed into my recliner, relieved that I was back in comfortable surroundings, but terrified that this… this monstrosity resided a mere dozen or so feet below me in the foundations of my abode.