The Chamber, revised.
Oct. 6th, 2009 09:27 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
realsorienAnd here it is again, with a fair bit of editing. :)
Ahead, the narrow passage abruptly widened into a much larger chamber, the hideous, sticky reek a suffocating blanket about them. A dim light was somewhere ahead and above. Now moving almost without choice, the five boys passed into the chamber.
The first thing that registered to Bill’s overwhelmed mind was Ernie’s lifeless face, staring at him in a silent, eyes-wide-open gape. Everyone stopped, and the image before him widened out to include the true insanity of what they’d found. Ernie wasn’t alone. He lay atop a vast reeking pile of the dead, all with similar hideous grimaces on their faces. Ernie’s arms and legs had been broken, not once but many times- he hadn’t been dead for long. Worse, all over the exposed parts of his skin there were little paired sets of punctures...
There was no blood at all on him.
The smell seemed to pulse within the room almost as if alive- the chamber, a vast rough sphere with a walkway around it, was obviously artificial. The upper portion arched above them, with a single dangling light powered by god-knows what. The lower part of the sphere... Was filled. Piled in a grotesque hump were the rotting, oozing remains of hundreds upon hundreds of the bloodless dead. Wet gurgling and bubbling sounds came from deep within, as with time the horrid mass liquified and settled under its own weight. Of the corpses, most were clothed; stained with the fluids of decay the styles ranged from the current to those of decades long past.
The air, damp and thick, clung to their skin like oil. As the tunnel had been, the chamber was far warmer than natural, decay providing a fetid source for the heat. Nobody moved... In truth, none of them could; frozen in their tracks by the nightmare they’d walked into.
And still Ernie stared into Bill’s eyes.
Ahead, the narrow passage abruptly widened into a much larger chamber, the hideous, sticky reek a suffocating blanket about them. A dim light was somewhere ahead and above. Now moving almost without choice, the five boys passed into the chamber.
The first thing that registered to Bill’s overwhelmed mind was Ernie’s lifeless face, staring at him in a silent, eyes-wide-open gape. Everyone stopped, and the image before him widened out to include the true insanity of what they’d found. Ernie wasn’t alone. He lay atop a vast reeking pile of the dead, all with similar hideous grimaces on their faces. Ernie’s arms and legs had been broken, not once but many times- he hadn’t been dead for long. Worse, all over the exposed parts of his skin there were little paired sets of punctures...
There was no blood at all on him.
The smell seemed to pulse within the room almost as if alive- the chamber, a vast rough sphere with a walkway around it, was obviously artificial. The upper portion arched above them, with a single dangling light powered by god-knows what. The lower part of the sphere... Was filled. Piled in a grotesque hump were the rotting, oozing remains of hundreds upon hundreds of the bloodless dead. Wet gurgling and bubbling sounds came from deep within, as with time the horrid mass liquified and settled under its own weight. Of the corpses, most were clothed; stained with the fluids of decay the styles ranged from the current to those of decades long past.
The air, damp and thick, clung to their skin like oil. As the tunnel had been, the chamber was far warmer than natural, decay providing a fetid source for the heat. Nobody moved... In truth, none of them could; frozen in their tracks by the nightmare they’d walked into.
And still Ernie stared into Bill’s eyes.
