Far Horizons: Tales of Sci-Fi, Fantasy and Horror. Issue #16 July 2015 | Page 6

stretching, mesmerising, beckoning. One of them
elongates and creeps towards me. I can’t close my
eyes and watch it wrap around my body. It seems to
dissolve in me. I don’t feel anything. I don’t hear anything. I don’t see anything. It doesn’t hurt.

The passage goes slightly up and turns into a
comparatively bigger chamber. Despite my expectations I don’t recognise it as a burial chamber because I
don’t see any caskets or urns in it. It looks more like a
cavern because the walls appear to have crumbled.

***

My torch flickers so fast it starts to become
annoying. I pull the crystal out and resocket it but it
doesn’t help matters as the flickering starts again. And
it’s not a problem with the crystal either because that
thing seems to have a full charge.

I remember looking at the mansion from
somewhere high above and I feel no emotions towards
the place. My memories are gibberish and I know no
purpose. There is a benevolent force that drives me so
I continue staring down but why I know not. I don’t
feel anything. I don’t hear anything. I close my eyes
and don’t see anything. It doesn’t hurt.

I turn it off again experimentally and notice
a faint glimmer coming from the other end of the
cavern. It’s not enough to see my way around but I
can distinguish the outlines of the things directly in
front of me. I take a few paces forward and step onto
something that makes an awful crunchy sound.
I switch the torch back on in a blink. My heart
races in fright until I see what I’ve stepped onto. What
I see makes me freeze completely. Bones. Animal
bones. Human bones - if size is anything to judge by.
As I stare in silence at the sight on the floor,
next to which a wild animal’s lair is a child’s box of
building blocks, something swooshes behind my back.
It’s a very quiet swoosh, I would have taken it for a
draft except that I don’t feel any on my skin. My torch
goes mad with flickering, sending shadows dancing
all over the walls. They look like tongues of fire now,
oblong and shaped like vertical waves. It’s not even
my imagination talking now because they really look
like tails.
There is so much motion around me right now
I start feeling dizzy. I try to take a step forward but my
foot drags on the floor and I trip on the bones. I don’t
even register falling down but the crunch of bones is
deafening.
My head is turned to the side and I can’t seem
to move anymore. The shadows on the wall are dancing rapidly and my brain realises fuzzily my torch is
out. The shadows seem to be glowing on their own
now. There are seven of them and they are performing
a complicated dance, a ritual, intertwining, coiling,

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