Dark Temple
A story by F.E. Hubert
Copyright 2016 by F.E. Hubert
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or other characters is purely coincidental.
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods, without the prior written permission of the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical reviews and certain other non-commercial uses permitted by copyright law.
Content
Title and copyright
Content
Chapter one: The Aldritch expedition
Chapter two: Dark tunnels
Chapter three: Lost
Chapter four: The camp
Chapter five: Missing
Chapter six: Into the Temple
Other titles by F.E. Hubert
The Aldritch expedition
For some reason the Aldritch-expedition never makes it onto the unexplained mystery hit lists that get aired during the paranormal hour. That’s a mystery in itself, because that crumbling stone tomb hidden deep in the Amazonian jungle is shrouded in nothing but mysteries and strange disappearances.
For example, every single person that went on the expedition led by professor Aldritch vanished without a trace. Some say the guides killed them, took their equipment and disappeared into some backwater with their ill-found wealth. It’s possible.
But whatever happened, we can all guess it wasn’t something good.
Dark tunnels
Something in the dark watched them as they worked. Kim felt it every day they were inside the tunnels. First, she thought it was just her imagination running wild, but no matter how stern she talked to her inner voices, the constant feeling of being watched stayed. Tingling its alarm at the back of her neck. And there was the smell that sometimes replaced the flat mineral scent of moist stone. Dry, like old leaves, but without the pleasant connotations of autumn.
Hadwick felt it too. He kept staring off into the tunnel while he was working, into the shadows that seemed too dark to be simple shadows. She wondered if he knew how often he did that.
“This one’s new, make sure you get the edges sharp.”
Two gas lamps hanging on the wall above Hadwick were the only illumination in the part of the tunnel where the two of them worked. Down the passage to her right, Kim could see the glow of two similar lamps, hanging over a different section of the murals where Williams and Peterson worked.
She sat crouched on her heels, giving the archaeologist as much personal space as the narrow tunnel allowed without having her back touch the cold, damp stones behind her. The lamps gave everything they lit a warm, orange glow, but her gaze kept drawing back to the dense black that waited outside the circle of light. Its proximity made her want to breathe fast. Breathe fast, and run even faster. Run through the narrow tunnels as fast as she could, before whatever hid in the shadows could put its claws in her back and draw her into the hidden tunnels.
She drew a deep breath. She didn’t want Hadwick to know how scared she was. Didn’t want him to know that the slightest crunch or sigh would send her bolting for the door. The darkness seemed to have a weight here. She could feel it all around her, like a thick film that covered the orbs of light in which they worked, isolating them from the world outside. Everybody felt it. You could see it in the way they looked at the temple when they thought they were alone, frightened, worried. Not for the first time, she wondered why they didn’t just pack up and leave.
“Kim?” Hadwick held his finger down next to the figure he wanted her to copy. He cocked his eyebrow at the chipped symbol on the wall.
“Sorry,” She moved over and waited for him to give her the location to fill in at the top of the sheet. The professor and his other two university aides didn’t even trust her to do that. They filled it out for her, then watched to make sure she made a rubbing of the correct symbol.
“Why we don’t just copy all of them?” Not that she’d want to be in here a second longer than strictly necessary, but she couldn’t help wonder. It seemed strange to come all the way out here and then just bring maybe a hundredth of the writing back for analysis. What if you missed something? It wasn’t like you could run back for it like a carton of milk you forgot at the grocery store.
Hadwick crooked one side of his mouth at her and shook his head.
“Any idea how long that would take?”
She looked at the tunnel they were in, just two bends down from the entrance. The rows of minute carvings covered both walls top to bottom; the ceiling and the floor were covered in larger symbols.
“Too long?” She ventured.
Hadwick laughed. A cultured, polite sound. He had regular features with straw-coloured hair and an easy smile, but it was his attitude of casual certainty that made him handsome more than anything else. The fact that he knew it, took some of the charm out of it, but Kim still found herself blushing when he looked at her too long.
“Exactly.” When he stood up, his hat almost scraped the ceiling.
“There’s more than twenty of us, we could copy the entire temple in six weeks.” She heard her voice edge toward the stubborn tone her dad teased her with, calling her stubborn Annie. But she knew she was right: they could copy all of it, if they tried. They had boxes and crates full of the thin sheets they used for the rubs.
Hadwick laughed again, not so polite this time.
“You may have noticed that our local help doesn’t come into the temple,” She had noticed, but assumed the professor wouldn’t let them near his precious mural reliefs. “Well, they won’t. As always, there’s supposed to be some sort of curse on the place, so we’ll be lucky if they don’t all up and leave before the end of our expedition.”
“A curse?”
She tried to sound neutral, but she felt her voice shake a little. Nobody’d told her anything about a curse.
“Yes, the usual bullocks. Old wrathful god will kill us all because we disturbed his beauty sleep, big Oeh-hoe.”
He stood behind her, but she could just hear him roll his eyes as he said it. The thought that she might find a curse disturbing didn’t seem to occur to him. And she couldn’t help but wonder if the blatant unbeliever pose was part of the story he told himself, to keep from being consciously afraid in here.
As if he heard her thoughts and wanted to prove he wasn’t frightened, Hadwick took the lamp on the side of the tunnel leading deeper into the temple and took a few steps toward it. The darkness retreated backwards, showing only more walls covered in the dense lines of ancient script.
“You go ahead, I’ll catch up in a moment.” He said, moving deeper into the tunnel. She hesitated for a short moment. It wasn’t a good idea to go down into the tunnel by himself. She looked over her shoulder, toward the tunnel that led to the exit. She could see the light from Peterson and Williams’ lamps fade as they headed out. She hurried to catch up.
Lost
Frowning, she held the lamp up above her head to enlarge the circle of light. One lamp didn’t do much against the complete dark inside the ruins. The tunnel in front of her continued straight on as far as she could see. She looked again, but she already knew that what she saw was wrong, very wrong. She should have reached the short corridor that faced the entrance by now. She turned around and took a step to look if she recognized anything in the direction she came from. Also a straight tunnel.
Panic squeezed her stomach into a cold ball. She must have taken a wrong turn getting to the exit somehow. Maybe sh
e walked past the stone entryway, lost in thought. A small voice in the back of her mind asked how that could be, if she wanted to get out so badly, but she ignored it.
Turning back around, she took a few steps with the lamp held out in front of her. Nothing in the circle of light looked familiar. The dark, carved stones all looked the same to her.
No. No, no, no. She tried to slow her breathing. She took a few deep breaths, but her vision kept pulsing with the thudding of her heart. Looking around, the panic in her stomach deepened its grip.
Did she come that way? Or that way? How often had she turned? She couldn’t remember. At least twice. Maybe three times, or four? The clammy chill of the temple seemed colder here, more intense. Goose bumps sprouted on the skin of her arms and legs.
Breathing too fast, she pushed the tips of her fingers against her temples. She needed to think. The anonymous tunnel told her nothing about her location, but she knew she couldn’t be far from the entrance. Could she? How long had she been walking?
With a trembling hand, she reached to the side until she touched the rough surface of the stone wall. Something, anything tangible to steady her. She turned so her hand was behind her and stepped back, leaning her back to the wall. It wouldn’t make her any safer, but having her back against something solid lessened the naked feeling that something could get to her unseen.
The dark beyond the small circle of light was close enough to touch. She tried not to think about everything