Epilogue

“Andrew!”

Her screams reverberated throughout the hall, seemingly coming from all directions. A heavy fog blanketed the floor of… what was this place? Some cathedral, or underground stronghold somewhere? He wasn’t entirely sure. The only thing he knew was real, the only thing that had to be real, was the sound of her echoing voice.

Andrew had lost track of how long he had been running, time was an irrelevance. His only reference to the outside world was the moon that shone brightly through the tall windows that lined the halls he traversed. At one moment he would see the last remnants of a waning crescent before it turned black as the surrounding skies, but in another he would see it’s thick gibbous frame growing larger once again. Perhaps he truly had been thrown through some kind of celestial door to another plane, for this moon could surely not be the one that revolved around the Earth; that would mean he had been running for days on end, weeks even. When, though, had he last truly experienced a day? Time was meaningless in this space that was held in perpetual night with its still shifting moon. The concept of a day, let alone daylight, was foreign to Andrew and held no rightful place in his mind. All he could perceive now was her voice.

“Andrew!”

He remembered walking down the watery staircase and holding his sister’s hand as she guided him into its inky depths, and how confident she had seemed in her stride. They had descended the shimmering steps until no light could be seen through the water above, and then her hand let go. The sudden feelings of loneliness and panic sent Andrew into a terrifying fit of confusion. The officer called out his sister’s name and dropped his foot onto the next step, not expecting to feel open air beneath his sole and be sent falling into the abyss. The sensation he felt was akin to what one feels when they have forgotten a step on a ladder; fear, dread, exhilaration, and the constant bracing for an impact that is going to come much sooner rather than later. As the sharp wind cut across his face, Andrew closed his eyes and prepared to meet his end.

“Andrew!”

When his eyes finally opened, Andrew was surprised to find solid ground beneath his feet. Never once did he feel his descent slowing or the touch of the ground beneath him, he simply came to be here, in this endless passageway. The floor and walls around him were covered in large mossy-green tiles with archaic symbols and scenes etched into their surfaces. Many were decorated with tracings of the moon and its phases, with each phase having its own symbols and creatures associated with it. Behind him was a wall lined with similar tiles, though it appeared as if someone had taken a chisel and created a curved door frame in its center. In the middle of the frame was a pitch black hole that Andrew could not see the other end of. An intrusive thought told him to stick his hand in the hole, but after a moment of consideration he thought better of it.

He shifted his attention to the tiles that lined the walls, which he studied deeply. One featured the full moon surrounded by glyphs and symbols which made no sense to him. Another, displaying the waxing crescent, held the moon high in the sky over a field of reverent monstrosities that danced and writhed in some type of hellish gathering. Andrew noticed that there were five equally spaced runes held on the curvature of the moon, which put off a faint yellow glow in the darkened corridor. He traced his fingers over the etching and felt a cold wave begin to pass over him. In the back of his mind, he could hear the unidentifiable sounds of the creatures as they performed their black mass.

“Andrew!”

His attention was ripped away from the captivating images by Bernice’s voice ringing down the hall. She sounded relatively close, but no matter how far or fast he ran, he couldn’t seem to catch up. After running for what he thought must have been half an hour at least, Andrew heard her voice come from far behind him. He immediately stopped and pivoted around, but all he saw behind him was the etching of the doorway and the menacing, tenebrous black hole within it.

The passageway he was in snaked left and right, sometimes seeming to turn enough times to circle back on itself again, yet he never found another path. Never did he see a door, an alcove, an empty sconce, or any semblance of any other branching hallway. He could only keep going forward and he dared not look back, afraid of what he might see behind him, and what the hole in the wall might contain. After running for another hour, Andrew spotted a faint light in the distant darkness.

The shadowy hallway ended at a giant set of wooden double doors that were easily forty feet tall. One of the doors was slightly ajar, letting a ray of pale light escape from the room beyond. Andrew stepped through the small opening and marveled at the enormous circular room he was now in. The space was completely empty, save for twelve enormous statues that lined the circumference of the room. The statues were spread evenly around the circumference of the room, with six to Andrew’s left and six to his right. Directly on the other side of the large room was another set of giant wooden double doors that were also ajar. Andrew found a slight humor in the fact that two sets of doors made to fit giant colossi were the least strange things in this place.

The dim light that filled the room came from a glass dome overhead, through which Andrew could see a large crescent moon. When he had stood on the edge of the dock, which now seemed like an eternity ago, he had thought the moon had a strange beauty and radiance to it. Now its influence over him was gone, replacing those feelings with disgust and dread.

The light of the moon illuminating the grotesque statues did not make him feel any more at ease; they were abhorrent creatures of all shapes and forms. One was a mass of tentacles with eyes unevenly dotted over its grotesque body, another was humanoid in figure with the head of a massive eel or worm revealing its jagged toothy maw. And yet another, perhaps the most ominous and terrifying, was simply a man in heavy robes with his hood was down, revealing a perfectly smooth head and piercing black eyes that stood out even in the dimness of the cavern. In his hands he held a book which constantly secreted a dark crimson substance that Andrew could only imagine was blood.

The likeness that held his eyes the longest was that of the being he now believed was Qu’an’taar. It looked vaguely humanoid, but with a gangly, rail-thin figure. Its elongated and many-jointed fingers curled around a black ball that it held closely to its chest. The head of the creature was the shape of a crescent moon, dotted with five yellow orbs along its curvature.

This is what had traveled through the cosmos to meet with him, commune with him even, this abhorrent being. A sickening warmth began to swell and pulse in Andrew’s chest. As it did, the eyes on Qu’an’taar’s statue shifted upwards. He followed it’s gaze to the glass dome overhead, and as he stared at the demonic moon that hung in the sky, he could feel it glaring back at him.

A creaking noise from behind him ripped Andrew’s attention away from the statue. For a frightful moment, he thought some grotesque creature was going to step into the room and confront him, but none appeared. In fact the door was not opening, but closing, trying to seal the detective in the room full of stone horrors for all eternity. He sprinted to the door on the other end of the room and barely squeezed between the two immense doors before they closed firmly behind him. Somewhere within the door, he could hear a bolt sliding itself into place. When it did, it let out a deep thunk that echoed down the stone hallway ahead of him.

After he caught his breath, Andrew examined the passage he was in and found that it was not like the one he had first passed through. It was much lighter, and for that he was grateful, but the source of the light made him wish for the darkness. It was the moon, with its full, incandescent splendor cascading through mile high stained glass windows that further depicted the scenes he had witnessed in the tiled halls behind him: worms with mantis-like bladed fore-arms taking flight with opaque and veiny wings, hunched bi-pedal monstrosities with many arms and countless hollow eyes dancing around a glowing pit, men, women, and children laughing and screaming in an orgy of death and pleasure. There was no moon stained onto any of the windows, for no matter where Andrew looked, the moon that hung outside shone brightly through them.

“Andrew!”

That sweet familiar voice rang out from down the windowed chamber, and Andrew followed. He was frightened, lost, and alone; he had nothing now. All he could do was hope and pray for the eventual comforting embrace of his sister’s arms.

He was incredibly tired and his body threatened to give out under him at any moment. Each time she shouted out to him, however, his hope would resurface and a little more energy would seep into his tired bones, pushing him onwards; Bernice was all he had left to cling to.

The images on the windows began moving as he ran, chanting for him, mocking him. The winged creatures crawled and hammered on the other side of the glass, attempting to break into the hall. The many armed abominations stared intently and danced as he passed, while the people, in an act of reverence, displayed and massacred themselves in gruesome and vulgar fashions. He continued endlessly, fueled by fear, loneliness, scraps of hope and despair. He hoped that if he were never able to reach Beatrice, he would soon die of exhaustion.

The muscles in his legs ached in protest and felt as if they were being branded with white-hot irons. He felt those same irons pierce his lungs as he struggled to take in gasps of the dense and musty air that filled the cavern. He could no longer feel his feet as they slapped and cracked against the stone floor; only the motion of his legs moving and balancing on dead weight kept propelling him forward. The squelching sound emanating from his senseless feet led Andrew to believe that the soles of his shoes were filling with blood.

As the pain began to finally overtake his mind and blot out everything else in existence, a figure appeared on the edge of his vision. He had stopped hearing the voice of his sister long ago and thought himself lost and alone in this never-ending catacomb, but the presence of the distant figure gave him some semblance of hope. He tried to shout out to the figure ahead of him but found that he was too weak to utter more than a small moan. He put his last ounce of energy into this final push, almost tripping and collapsing from exhaustion in the process, and lumbered down the hall. Fear momentarily grasped Andrew’s fragile mind as a simple thought appeared in his mind: What if it’s not her? This fear was soon abated as he got closer to the figure and was able to discern the back of its petite frame and its long auburn hair.

He was only a few feet away from her now; joy and relief surged in his heart as he outstretched his arm to grab her. As he did, he groaned, “Bernice…” and slowly took hold of her left shoulder. With her back still turned, she took her right hand, reached up, and placed her warm fingers around Andrew’s sweaty and shivering ones, holding them tightly. He let out a small shaky sigh as a small smile began to emerge on his face. Her grip around his fingers tightened, and she slowly took his hand off her shoulder and turned around. The smile that had threatened to bloom on Andrew’s face withered and his joy turned to terror when he saw what stood before him.

The figure finished its turn and caressed Andrew’s cheek with its now free hand, coming close to his face and peering into it. What he peered back into weren’t Bernice’s deep green eyes, but a deep black hole cut into a slab of mossy-green tile, replacing the spot where her face would have been. He stared at the abyss wide eyed and open mouthed, too weak to let anything more than his harsh and ragged breathing escape his destroyed lungs. He could feel the irregular and frantic beating of his heart begin to slow as his vision became enveloped by the pit that stared back at him.

The sound of a screeching maelstrom filled Andrew’s ears and he felt his body being ripped and torn apart, only to painstakingly come back together seconds afterwards as he was propelled through a cold, darkened space. As his body regained its natural form, he noticed his arms were brushing against the sides of the small tunnel he was passing through. With each passing second the space grew smaller, constricting his body and soon his breath. The air passing into his lungs came in long sharp gasps as his bones creaked under the pressure of his own form. The hole became too small for his clenched body, but the force pushing him persisted. Pain exploded in Andrew’s right shoulder as an audible *crack* emanated from it. His left arm soon broke in the same manner as the first, filling Andrew with agony as he was shoved through the savern.

Suddenly he was thrust back into the world and landed on his face, having no time to cushion himself from the short fall. As he lay on the musky floor, Andrew could feel nothing but the dull throbbing that now resided in his nose and forehead; no trace of his fatigue or other injuries remained. He cautiously pushed himself off of the floor and stood. He swung his arms to his sides and stretched his legs expecting to feel some sort of lingering ache or pain, but he felt lithe and unhindered. It was as if his body had simply forgotten the pain, and slowly his mind did as well.

His attention shifted from his body to his surroundings, taking in whatever he could with what little light there was. He appeared to be in a large corridor lined with large intricately carved green tiles. Etched onto their surfaces were mysterious runes and imagery he could not bring his eyes to focus on.

He spun around to see the spot he had entered from and was surprised to find a solid wall covered in the same green tiles. A curved door frame was etched into the wall but featured no cracks, hinges, or knobs. In its center was a menacing black hole that Andrew could not see the end of. He looked inside the hole and found nothing, but felt a gnawing curiosity that tempted him to stick his hand in to see if he could feel anything. The more he pondered the mysterious hole and its implications, however, the more he came to reject the idea.

He turned and made to examine one of the etchings set into the numerous tiles along the walls, but was interrupted by a shout ringing out from further down the hall.

“Andrew!”

Complete shock held him in place for a moment as he thought then softly said out loud, “Bernice?” After a few moments of silence the voice came echoing down the halls once again, sounding more fearful this time. Tearing himself away from the chiseled tiles, Andrew sprinted down the hallway, filled with determination and a longing to find his sister once again. Finally, they would be together again, and he would be able to protect her from the world. A smile began to slowly spread across his face as he ran, thinking about the comfort and safety of their embrace. When I catch up to her, he thought, I’m sure she’ll be just as glad to see me.