The Demon Pit PH2018 [WRITER]

Emily's breath caught in her throat as she carefully tugged the battered, little book out from under the rusted jumble of tubular chair frames in the corner of the dark, musty room. Her head torch picking out dust motes dancing lazily through the air that was still overbearingly hot down here. Bosnia was never somewhere she had thought of as hot, but it was, almost unrelenting and she wiped the sweat from her face, leaving dust streaks on her pale skin. Her hair tied back into a short, blonde pony, the tail pushed through the back of the off white baseball cap she wore. “God I am going to need two bloody showers after this” she mumbled to herself, her skin itching from the dust and dirt that adhered to it.
She was dressed in a pair of khaki cargo pants, brown magnum boots and just a sand coloured vest, having discarded her M65 style jacket when the going became too torturous and it kept getting snagged on annoying spikes of rebar as she crawled through the mostly destroyed corridors.

She pushed the peak of her Mets cap back up higher on her forehead and blew at the cover of the book. Smiling as she thought of her boyfriend's last remarks before she left for the airport. Lara Croft, he'd said she looked like..Without the guns, obviously. She had decided to take her gap year and try and get some closure on a family mystery. Her uncle, Alex Curzon had gone missing back in 2007 when she was just a little girl. Family legend said that he was investigating a war criminal in Bosnia and was probably killed by some of the people that stood to go to jail if he was successful.
She remembered how fun he was, how he used to tell her stories whenever he came by the house and she remembered her mother telling her not to pay too much attention to “uncle” Alex as he was always looking for the craziest explanation for anything.

The old memories faded now as she opened the book and gave a little squeak at the neat script inside the cover.
“Alex Curzon Bosnia Journal”

“Yes!” she exclaimed and scuttled back across the dusty, crumbling concrete floor to sit somewhere with fewer lumps and sharp edges. She flicked through, reading her uncle's words taking them straight off the page and into her mind's eye as if he was telling her one of his stories.


3rd April 2007
I arrived in Brod after a hellish drive..Really, what is wrong with these people? They drive like they can't wait to bloody die, seriously...and the roads.. Anyway, as suspected, Jane's information about this place, Bosanski Brod looks legit. The old school house was indeed used as a prison for the enemies of the HVO back in the day. The story about Adrijana's brothers being taken away and tortured by the HVO commander here might be spot on. I am going to get a little bit drunk, find something edible and sleep for 8 solid hours then go and have a look, see what I can find.

Her eyes crinkled in amusement as she read, there were disparaging remarks about his hotel, some of the people he had met and all the usual “Alex things”...Then the tone changed.


4th April 2007
Well, that was bloody strange. This old guy, obviously someone who had been here for ever, approached me today and, between his broken English and my sparse Serbo Croat, I was able to get him to understand why I was here, though when he cottoned onto the fact that I was specifically investigating the old school and what happened there, he got rather upset and was quite animated in telling me it was a place of evil and that I should just leave it be and that nothing was important enough to mess with the bad things there. “Demoni” he said and it's quite fitting, the people there doing the torturing, raping and killing were demonic by most measures. Anyway, I left him to his rambling and went off for lunch, at which I managed to find out from a charming little waitress type that the old school was derelict, the government had no plans to do anything with it and as there were far more fashionable places in the country, it wasn't very likely that some developer would step in to build something on the site any time soon.

5th April 2007
Today I plan on hopping the fence and seeing the inside of the place for myself. A torch and a pry bar are all I will need...
OK so I am back, and the place has been pretty much gutted. There are massive craters in the plaster of the gym wall, right where Adrijana said the executions were carried out. No obvious graves, though that's hardly a surprise, she told me the bodies of her brothers had been dumped in the street outside the family home, so I suppose there was no need to dig graves. I found a blocked off doorway that I think leads down to the basement level, but it's going to need a hammer, a big one to get through the brickwork. My little pry bar barely scratched it.

Emily nodded to herself as she thought about the rough hole upstairs that she had had to crawl through to get down here and she flipped rapidly through the journal, scanning the pages for anything that caught her eye until she reached an entry that almost stopped her heart.

6th April 2007
I was on my way back to the school with the SDS drill and two fully charged batteries. God last night took forever, but if I am going to get through the wall, I reckon it will take both batteries... The hammer would have taken me until doomsday I think...Anyway, this old Muslim fellow stopped me outside the coffee shop and asked me if it was true I was the Englishman investigating the school. I suppose my old friend had been talking. When I confirmed I was the very same Englishman, he became quite agitated and gripped my arm at the elbow, telling me I must not do it, that no good would come of digging up the past this way. Quite funny since I was indeed going to be sort of digging away with the hefty drill and chisel bits. Not that he was having any of it of course. I promised to be careful and told him that the monsters behind what went on there had to pay, that I couldn't rest until I had shone the bright light of justice over their crimes. He muttered a string of unintelligible stuff, looking by turns, angry and afraid, then stormed off shaking his head and throwing his arms in the air. I got out of there pronto, what with all the funny looks the locals were giving me...

Well, I am back at the hotel, 2 hours with that damn drill and I think my fillings are loose. I do have a hole I can get through now though and will be going back after breakfast to see what is through there. I am charging the batteries again, just in case it's all walled off further down.

tbc

7th April 2007
Well, the stairs were damned near impenetrable, it looked like every chair and lump of furniture in the building had been hurled down them making for a barrier that took me until after lunch to get through. I was able to kick away the last of the tangle and gain access to the main room though. Something about it gives me the chills. There is nothing obvious in here, the floor is just rubble, cracked concrete and general detritus...perhaps its the gloom and the knowledge of what may have happened here? I don't know. Rather disappointingly, it looks like nothing more than a grubby, square basement about the size of a basketball court. No left over fingernail pliers or medieval racks or anything. There are a couple of filing cabinets lying around but they have long ago been cleared out.
The torchlight did reveal what looks to be some sort of repair in the far corner and I chiselled away for a bit and was rewarded with the most godawful stink from the opening. Sadly, I am back at the hotel now waiting for these batteries to charge again. Soon as they are full, I am going back to open up the new bit of wall further..I may need a mask though as the stink is beyond anything I can think of, worse even than Charles' rugger socks. Strange note waiting for me at the desk also, from a Father Nikola. What is it with priests and imams and me lately? Anyway, he wants to meet. So I will call him and see what he has to say for himself before I turn in for the night.

Emily flicked the page over as she looked around, the beam from her head-torch tracing along the wall until it vanished into a craggy opening on the far side, behind some filing cabinets. She started to shuffle towards it, keeping her place in the journal with her thumb until she felt her throat tighten at the sulphurous, carrion like stink that seemed to hang like a haze before the opening. She backed up, coughing and cursing and dropped her gaze to the page again.

8th April 2007
Seems like Fr. Nikola is quite the friend of the old Muslim fella, who it turns out is an Imam. Well, people of the book I suppose, all I need is a Rabbi and I have the beginnings of a good joke... Anyway, he let me buy him a coffee in the hotel bar and we chatted about what I was doing, he became very serious though, when I mentioned the school, even crossing himself before leaning in to whisper conspiratorially to me about “Things beyond the mind of man” I had just about enough by now and told him so. He shook his head and said if I was dead set on this then There were things I must know. He proceeded to tell me a story so damn bizarre it made me think he must have taken in too much Lovecraft when younger, but, I did refrain from upsetting him by just leaving at least. In the end, he pressed a little leather bag in my palm and hissed “This, when the moment comes and Cernobog comes for you, press it into his chest and call on Volos.” Well, what could I do? I mumbled my thanks and watched him leave. Then I had a stiff whisky and headed up to my room armed with my little leather bag and the drill, I am going back in. I will take this Journal too, I might just spend the night there so I don't meet any more local crazies during the commute.

Emily took a breath, and her head turned to the opening, she pulled a handkerchief from her pocket and tied it around her mouth and nose, moving towards the forbidding looking darkness of the hole in the wall, she paused, right at the edge, then lifted her foot and stepped through.

The gloom seemed to swallow the torchlight beyond a couple of feet in front of her and she was continually stumbling as she descended the ramp like corridor. The brick and concrete giving way after a few yards to stone and finally just roughly hewn rock. She gave a little squeak as the corridor abruptly opened out into a circular room, looking like some sort of natural cave, complete with stalactites and stalagmites. Her lips curled as she remembered a day with uncle Alex and her parents at Cheddar gorge and how Alex had explained that stalactites have a c in them and descend from the ceiling, while stalagmites have a g in them and grow from the ground. That brief memory dissolved almost immediately as she felt the chill in this place seep into her bones. Looking around, as much as she could see, the place was empty and she started to walk around clockwise, left hand always touching the wall. Halfway round she paused and decided to see what the journal had to say.

8th April 2007
The cavern! Good god it's creepy in here and damn cold too. There are stalagmites and stalactites, some of which must be almost 3 metres tall. The whole space feels much larger than it can reasonably be, though that could just be the gloom and cold and pure creepiness of the place. In the centre is a sort of Stonehenge like arrangement of these stalactites and a flat, onyx coloured “Altar” I suppose. Clearing the dust from it, the whole thing is covered in a network of grooves, much like the fern on a New Zealand shirt. The stem of which ends at the edge of the altar at a little lip below which is a hole in the ground (Which I discovered by accidentally kicking loose a stone that was covering it and nearly tripping over).

She immediately left the wall and headed towards where the centre of the room would be, and yes, there it was, the flat black stone, just as described. She moved closer, finally reaching out and tracing the lines on it's surface with her fingertips and feeling a shiver run up her spine at the icy coldness there. Shaking her head, she edged around the “altar” until she could see the hole. Immediately a feeling of deep terror settled in her belly and she backed away. She looked down once more at the Journal.



11th April 2007
Oh god, they were right, it's not just the evils of man at work in this place, there is something else, more than one thing, I am sure. I felt it, that dread, I know it sounds bizarre, but ever since uncovering that hole in the cavern I have been plagued with dreams and visions or hallucinations, call them what you like. Dark things, like demons haunting my thoughts, whispering doom right into my mind. I saw the Priest again and told him, he said I have to go back and confront this thing. I don't mind admitting I am scared, unreasonably so. But his friend, the Imam agrees. Neither of them are willing to do it, supposedly it has to be me, since I opened up the gateway again. This is quite honestly, the maddest thing that ever happened to me. They said these are some sort of other dimensional entities, and that the cavern is some sort of dimensional rift and perhaps why people were able to do so much bad stuff on this site, somehow the evil leaked through and infected them. I am going back in, I will update this Journal after I have closed off the gateway.

That was it. The last entry and as Emily looked up, she noticed how some of the blackness surrounding her was slightly darker than the surrounding areas and, when she screamed, it lasted for aeons yet no one heard beyond the circle..

The end

Ooooh, this was great! I love a good edge of your seat horror story! Well done!

a reply to: Night Star

Thanks

Rushed it a bit though which is why I canned it, I needed to put a lot more in there, but then it wouldn't have been a short story