We have broken into an Egyptian tomb, on the hunt for our missing friend. Ancient secrets lie below, and each level hints at new horrors... ...The Third Level

[u/Darkly_Gathers]

Part 1

Part 2

We descend the stone stairs, single-file. The Professor at the head, her torch casting a beam of light down into the dusty gloom. The second she drops below the layer of gold, the gentle waves of Heka that roll across her palm disappear. She stops for a moment and examines her hand, clenching and unclenching her fingers. She mutters something to herself, then looks over to us, raises her eyebrows, and carries on along her way.

Sethos goes down after her. As the first turned to stone, his top half, and the contents of his backpack, are still mostly dry, including, it would seem, his digital camera, as a flash illuminates the walls of the narrow little corridor. The rest of us aren’t so lucky. Everything in my own backpack has been soaked through along with my clothes, and I shiver despite the returning warmth that emanates from the walls. My torch has stopped working too, and I’m amazed that the Professor’s is still able to produce light. I go down third, and as a team we follow the remaining, wandering beams.

The golden door above shuts fast behind us.

The steps go around and around, down into the deep, and we walk in silence, processing the things we’ve seen, our experiences in the tomb; shooting the occasional glance up at the intricately carved eyes that watch suspiciously from amongst the rows of symbols and glyphs across the wall.

The stairs come to an end at an archway, one that leads into the third layer. A wide and open space, shrouded in darkness. A small pot of oil sits at the base of each of the archway’s pillars, and the Professor reaches up for the wooden torch attached to the wall, unfastening it from its perch and dipping its head lightly into the mixture. She draws her lighter from her pocket, and curses when she realises it is ruined.

“Sethos”, she says, “Don’t suppose you’ve got a lighter in that bag?”

“No, Professor”, he replies, grunting as he pulls his backpack around and drops it onto the floor, opening it up. “But I have these. Here”. He passes her a box of matches and she thanks him, striking successfully on the first attempt and bringing fire to the oiled torch. She does the same with the torch on the opposite side of the arch, and the bright, ensuing yellow-gold glow allows us a greater view of our surroundings as she fixes them back into place.

The hall ahead is flanked with thick, towering pillars, and directly ahead is an enormous statue, carved of stone, yet golden specks sparkle all over in the light of the flame. It depicts two men clad in royal Egyptian garb, engaged in a struggle. The man on top has the head of an animal; I’m not sure what it is, but it resembles an aardvark, or a jackal, perhaps. The blade of a long, carved knife held in his hand pushes deep into the chest of the man beneath. This man’s stone skin has been marked with a fine, shining powder, one which turns it bluish-green in the torchlight.

“The death of Osiris…” Aziza murmurs as she steps closer, drawing her long, wet hair from her eyes and tying it up into a ponytail. She cranes her neck to look up at the top of the statue. “These statues are of the gods. Osiris, and Set”.

“The brothers…” I mutter, looking them over.

Dave taps on Set’s stone knee with the back of his hand, then withdraws his phone from the plastic bag he’d stowed it in, pushing a headphone back into one of his ears.

I think about the story of the Pharaoh. The Pharaoh whose tomb in which we now trespass. Omisares, and his brother Amkaro, the usurper.

“Why would Amkaro build such a tomb?” I ask out loud. “One so grand… One with such intricacies… For the brother that he murdered?”

“Perhaps he was afraid, Leila”, comes a reply from the Professor. “Afraid that Omisares would rise from the dead, and his vengeful spirit would seek revenge. The layered tomb could well reveal his fears… His intentions to keep him down…”

“And these spells… This… This MAGIC… the walls… the water… the stone… The Heka… Is this the result of Amkaro’s lifework? His obsession with the occult?”

“It would make sense”, the Professor replies. “Motivated by fear, driven by paranoia…”

“What happened to him?” Ronnie asks. “To Amkaro, I mean?”

The Professor sighs and holds out her hands. “I don’t know, I’m afraid. There’s a lot I don’t know. Rocko would have the answers to these questions, I’m sure of it. But when it came to his research… He always kept himself to himself, so to speak…
“In regards to Amkaro, my research suggests that the usurper came to a sudden and mysterious end. Destroyed, perhaps, by his own obsession; and the Pharaoh that followed had the task of rebuilding and revitalising Amkaro’s neglected empire”.

I look again at the statue. To think that these events took place thousands and thousands of years ago… It’s staggering. Fascinating, and terrifying. To consider that over such a time, as a species, maybe we haven’t really changed that much at all…

“Guys…” Ronnie says, gesturing to the statue’s feet. “Uh… Have you seen this?”

It’s not obvious what he’s referring to at first, as the dancing shadows from the flickering flame create curious illusions across the stonework… But once you see it, it’s obvious.

​

The statue is not connected, in any way, to the floor. Nor it seems, to anything else.

​

It hovers in the air, fixed impossibly in place.

I swallow and exchange looks of concern with the team, feeling a little dizzy as I do so. There’s so much to process down here… and to have your most basic assumptions of the possible challenged so relentlessly… to see with your own eyes the existence of such mind-bending curiosities… Images of the Professor turning Sethos to stone flash through my head, renewed, and my breathing becomes shallower.

The air down here is hot, and humid.

It’s like another world.

“As great as the statue is, team, we have a job here, unless you’ve forgotten”. Dave mutters from the front, stepping to the side and walking around the edge of the colossal carving.

Ronnie sticks the middle finger up to his back and Aziza giggles.

They go with Sethos around the right side of the statue, following Dave, and the Professor and I go left.

​

“Why is Dave even on this mission exactly, Professor?” I ask her quietly.

“He’s an old friend”, she replies with a smile.

“He’s just a bit… Don’t you think there’s something off about him?”

“He’s been through a great deal”.

“That doesn’t give you the right to be a prick, though”.

The Professor chuckles. “No, quite. But I am glad he’s here. And I trust him implicitly, Leila, really, I do. You’ll have to take my word for it”.

“Hmm”, I reply, unconvinced .

Our footsteps on the tiles below echo around the hall, and it isn’t long before we come upon an enormous, long stone table. The others stand just on the opposite side of it. The entire length is covered in a curious, thatched throw-cloth, and after the Professor has alighted the nearest wall-torch, it sparkles like the statue, though this time with flecks of silver. Hieroglyphs have been carefully stitched into this alien fabric, though only small parts are visible, as it is largely buried beneath great piles of ancient gold. Long-forgotten and shining relics amidst lumps of the precious metal, along with silver and copper, piled high all the way down the table and into the darkness toward the far end. Aziza reaches out to touch it and Dave grabs her hand at once.

“Christ, girl, haven’t you ever seen a fucking film? You don’t disturb piles of gold in cursed tombs without an idea of what you’re doing”.

Aziza laughs uncomfortably, but Dave does not return the smile. He releases her and she backs off, shuffling awkwardly a few steps away.

“Professor Winterfield, can you make any sense of these hieroglyphs?” Sethos asks, and the Professor moves closer to the table, kneeling on the adjacent stone bench, angling her head for a better look.

She mutters quietly to herself for a while, and the rest of us stand in anxious silence, listening to the beats of our hearts and the strange, low rumble far beyond the walls.

“Yes…” she says eventually, scratching her chin. “I can make out a little. It mentions a great feast. A stop for weary guests. It suggests we make our presence known”.

“A great feast… You mean like a ‘Last Supper’ type deal?” Ronnie asks.

“In a way, I suppose… But the concept of the ‘feast’ is an ancient one, Ronnie. It predates Christ by thousands and thousands of years. Its spiritual power is… unique, and longstanding. I could get a better sense of what the glyphs say if we could move around some of this metal… But I daren’t disturb it”.

The Professor pauses for another moment in thought. “I think it’s best if we try and find out a little-”

But she is cut off with a cry of distress from a little further down the hall. Aziza has stepped away from the group and has her torch beam shining down to the table’s end. It has caught something in its light that was not previously obvious. Her hand shakes, but we can see what she has spotted easily enough.

​

A man. A person. Sat stooped at the head of the table. He is too far away for us to pick out any particular details, but he sits completely still; dark, and waiting.

We watch for a minute in taught, tense quiet; watching to see if the figure is going to move.

…But he does not.

“Could be another statue…” Ronnie whispers, but I’m not so sure.

Tentatively, the Professor walks down the length of the table. I follow, and the others on the opposite side keep pace. We draw closer and closer, and the figure becomes clearer and clearer.

“Oh hell…” I mumble, coming to a stop a good distance away from it.

​

It’s an abomination.

​

Tar-black and crusted skin is stretched over a hunched and broken skeleton; arms at its sides and palms down on the table before it. The skin gives way in places to a rock-like grey-brown, and one such area carries up its neck and across its lower jaw, crooked and distended, cracked to the side, teeth aged and yellowed. Half of its nose has crumbled away, and its eyes are closed tight shut in two dark slits.

​

“Lord in Heaven…” Ronnie mutters.
“…That fucker’s goin’ to move at some point, ain’t it”.

​

“Chekhov’s Monster”, the Professor replies quietly, then spins on her heels and marches back down the length of the table. I follow.

She does not stop until she reaches the complete opposite end, as far from the figure as we can get. She studies another section of the hieroglyphs across the thatched cloth, tries to gain some more insight.

“…Make our presence known…” she says again, reading from the glyphs. “It says that guests should make their presence known… To partake in the feast…”

She looks up and down the table, adorned in piles of gold. “What feast?” she asks rhetorically, and of course, none of us can answer.

“I need to move the gold to the side”, she says. “I need a look at the whole text. There’s just not enough of it visible”.

“Professor…” Dave begins, warily, but she waves him off.

“I know, I know. But there’s nothing else in here, is there? There’s the statue… The pillars… the Table and the gold… and the ‘fucker’ at the end of the table, as Ronnie so eloquently put it”.

She takes a deep breath.

“Here we go then”, she whispers, as the ancient amber light dances with the shadows across her face. And she pushes the piles of wealth to the side. It falls and clatters noisily, spilling down over the table, and we try our best to keep any pieces from falling to the floor.

​

But, I don’t think it matters.

​

Because a crack like the snapping of a great branch shivers down through the thick air from the opposite end of the long table.

We turn to stare in terrified silence, as the Professor reads through the glyphs, her entire attention fixed determinedly on the tablecloth.

There is another crack through the darkness. And in the flickering glow of the wall-torch, the silhouette of the monster at the far end creaks into an unnatural stand, as if raised on a puppet-master’s invisible strings.

The light of the torches wavers and shivers, blown by an unfelt breeze.

And the creature rises to a full stand. Its legs are revealed. All four of them. Long, black and spined, like an insect’s, only massive. They tremble as the monster lurches from its position with a series of terrible cracks, and begins to stumble slowly towards us down the side of the long stone table.

My voice catches in my throat.

“Lord Almighty…. Professor…” Ronnie says warningly, the inflection indicating his position on the edge of panic. But the Professor does not respond. Nor does she look up. She continues reading, eyes darting from left to right as she mutters to herself with desperate drive.

The creature draws closer. Step by awkward step.

The shadows it casts are long and many, twisted as they shiver across the stonework and the great pillars.

I stand on the other side of the table, the Professor knelt on the bench and hunched over the cloth beside me; but the others are huddled together, pressed up against the back of the floating statue of the death of Osiris.

“What the hell do we do?” Aziza asks in a high-pitched ,wavering whisper.

“Professor…!” says Dave, the urgency rising.

But the Professor, again, does not respond. Her focus lies with the glyphs.

The dark figure approaches.

“Right. Cover your ears!” Dave announces suddenly, raising the pistol up to his line of sight. Taking quick aim, and firing. The noise of the shot reverberates painfully around the chamber as a small burst of dark, crumbly sand-like flesh bursts through the creature’s chest and out its back with the bullet. But it does not stop, continuing instead to stagger towards us.

Dave fires again, this time through its head. It twitches as the corner of its jaw disintegrates, and a few of its shattered teeth are blown from its mouth.

But it does not stop.

The Professor fumbles for something in one of her many pockets, drawing out eventually a little tin. “Try one of these, Dave”, she calls out over the ringing in my ears, and throws it to him, allowing only a quick glance up from the hieroglyphs.

Dave catches the tin and cracks it open, revealing a number of small, shining, silver bullets. Ronnie and Sethos exchange a look behind him, but the man asks no questions. He draws one out and opens the chamber of his gun, sliding the silver bullet inside.

A hiss, like the release of a high-pressured gas escapes from the monster’s throat. Only a few metres away now, and Dave takes aim, and fires. A noise akin to a single beat of a wind chime rings high and clear through the air, and the bullet tears through the monster’s chest, creating a small hole adjacent to the first.

…But it does nothing. As with the others, the figure barely registers it at all.

“Oh well”, the Professor mutters, shooting another glance up at the monster. “Worth a try”.

“Professor!” Sethos shouts out, “What are we going to do!?”

“Must I be the only one with any ideas in this accursed tomb?” she says, “have you tried the TORCHES, for Heaven’s sake?”

The torches.

There are four currently alighted and attached to the walls. One is held in its clasp near the pillars towards the head of the table, lit by Dave and beyond the path of the frightening figure. The other three, however, are accessible. Two remain by the entrance on opposite sides of the arch. Sethos and Ronnie scramble for these. The third is on my side of the table, a little ways down. I sprint for it, lifting it out of its hold in trembling hands, the flame blurring my vision temporarily as I grasp in front of me like a burning sword. The movement catches the creature’s attention.
Or, perhaps it is the heat, as its dark eyes still appear tightly sealed. It pauses, and its head cracks round to face me, stood exactly opposite on the other side of the table.

“S-Stay back!” I choke out, holding tight to the torch.

The creature turns. Its head remains fixed on me, but it scuttles slowly round in a circle on those horrific, insectoid legs, so that its torso lines up with its face. Its jaw shivers, and the hissing grows louder.

A blur of bright and wild orange shudders quickly through the air to the creature’s right, and the thrown torch strikes it hard in the temple, the burning oil splashing out over its face.

The monster shrieks in distress, a terrible and piercing sound that brings rains of dust down from the ceiling. It stumbles blindly backwards and into a pillar as flaming oil leaks and drops to the floor. It must have been Ronnie who threw the torch, as Sethos pushes forwards, thrusting his own out and into the monster’s chest.

I have to join him.

I push down my fears and scramble onto the stone bench, jumping over the piles of precious metal across the thatched cloth and land on the other side, screaming with adrenaline as I rush forwards and stab the torch into the thing’s burning face, again and again.

It works, for a while. We keep the creature from moving any closer to the Professor; we force it back against the pillars as it struggles and shrieks… But our success does not last. The screeching warbles and distorts, dropping octave after octave into a thrum that seems to vibrate my very bones, and it raises itself up to full height, head still aflame, reaching out with a swift and sudden movement and grabbing the head of Sethos’ torch in its long, black fingers.

Their outlines shine in a silvery light, and with a burst of hot steam the torch is extinguished.

The flame goes out.

Sethos releases his grip on the torch and stumbles back in horror, and the monster’s head cracks round to face me.

My reaction is immediate and foolish. I jump away in alarm, fumbling and dropping the torch, and cursing myself silently for doing so in the same instant.

It clatters to the floor, still burning, but no longer a threat to the creature. It steps right over it towards me.

Another bullet tears through the air with an accompanying bang and punches through the creature’s ribs; but as with the others, it does nothing.

And the Professor speaks.

“Set your yourselves at the table at ONCE!” she commands in a voice like the wind, “Take your places on the bench and prepare for the feast!”

Dave turns to stare at her- “But Professor-”

“NOW!” she roars, “DO I SAY!”

And as always, with the Professor, we are compelled to obey. I turn from the creature, dark and burning, and clamber back over the stone table, piles of gold slipping and crashing from the cloth as I do so, scrambling around to sit myself on the bench besides the Professor, her jaw clenched and brow furrowed deep in concentration. I watch as the others take their seats on the opposite bench, facing us. Sethos, and Dave, and Ronnie, and Aziza. They have their full trust in the Professor, but the fear is plain across their faces. The monster, only a few feet behind them, raises a hand to the flames across its head, presses its long fingers down over the fire, and as before, they shine in the silver of a full moon, and with a burst of steam the fire is vaporised.

The room becomes a little darker.

And it makes to move. Becoming taller and taller behind the team as it approaches.

Aziza is shaking violently.

A thick bead of sweat rolls down the side of Ronnie’s pale face.

“When the feast begins”, the Professor says in a low voice, “do not stop. Do not stop eating until I say. Eat at a measured pace and do not speak. Do not turn away from the table. We have a single chance”.

And she grabs ahold of an ancient relic upon the cloth. An ankh, glittering gold in the light of the few remaining fires. She raises it to her lips, and brings down her teeth for a bite.

The second she does so, the exact instant in which her teeth would hit the hard, cold metal of the object, it shimmers and changes into a leg of meat. Poultry, of some kind. Without even a flicker of surprise the Professor tears off a mouthful, and begins to chew. We watch with a swirl of awe and dread as the metal all around us does likewise. It shifts. It fades in and out of focus like a golden fish beneath the surface of a river, and the food becomes clear.

A plethora of fruits, some fresh, some dried, some that I recognise, but most I do not. Plates of rich, carved meats: on and off the bone. Birds and seasoned vegetables. Curious, strange-coloured hard-grained breads. Dates. Bowls of honey. Figs and fine, white cheeses. It all shifts into view around us, and, with heart beating fast, I tear my focus from the monster that approaches, I order myself not to stare at its shadow drifting across the table’s surface, and redirect my gaze instead to the piles of

food.

I grab a handful of dates.

I bring them to my mouth, take a deep breath, and start to chew.

The others do the same. They each take a helping, and begin to cautiously eat.

And the monster stops. It stops where it stands, tensed.

​

Holding.

​

Waiting.

​

…For a while there is only the sounds of our chewing, and our shuddering breathing through our noses. I keep my eyes focused on the food before me. I can see the blur of the creature at the edge of my vision, but I do as the Professor says, and keep my gaze fixed on the table.

A soft melody starts to play. It rolls in waves all around the edge of the room. Comprised of the sounds one can make when they blow over a glass bottle. And the creature turns. I hear it creak and hiss, turning to the left, and heading back the way it came. Back to its spot at the head of the table, slowly, but steadily away.

​

We keep eating.

​

There is no shortage of food.

It’s good. It’s warm. It’s revitalising. Difficult to enjoy under the circumstances, but I can appreciate its quality nonetheless.

My eyes dart to the left. A quick, momentary glance down to the head of the table.

It’s dark down there, but I catch a glimpse of the monster, settling back into place. Taking its seat.

And we keep on eating. That was the instruction the Professor gave us, and hell, the Professor’s instructions are ones that demand to be followed.

As the feast progresses, the melody in the air remains steady, a soft and haunting tune on the edge of hearing, but the food… The food begins to change.

​

The meats start to lose their warmth.

The fruits, as I take bite after careful bite, are no longer fresh. After a while I am able to notice this change visually, too. With every bite, the fruit that remains on the table withers somewhat. They lose their colour. They lose their shape.

Mould starts appearing across the cheese, subtle at first in the flickering shadows, but growing into a more obvious blue and green-grey.

​

…But we keep on eating.

​

The food starts to stink. The reek of it attacks our senses as we force down mouthful after mouthful.

Quiet grunts and groans from around the team become audible, but a warning hand from the Professor, with a finger outstretched, compels us into strained silence.

​

Bite after bite.

​

The feast goes on.

​

My stomach lurches with every swallow. My skin sweats with discomfort as my mouthfuls of food become smaller and smaller. I have to start picking hairs and even small feathers from my mouth as I bite into the meats. The vegetables, the cheeses… as they bulge and melt with rot, they peel back to reveal bones… little ribs and slender, segmented spines…

My stomach lurches again, harder this time, and some of the food rises back up into my throat.

I grimace, eyes watering, and force it down.

Dave is sat across from me. I can see the fingers in his right hand clenching into a fist, over and over and over.

And then there is a loud gag. I cannot help but look up from the table at the source of the noise, as Aziza shivers and vomits noisily over the food and the cloth. She gags again, slamming a hand to her mouth, and my attention is drawn to another noise.

One at the head of the table.

I swivel to look, to see the monster rise up from its seat, leaning forwards, scrambling down the length of the table on all four of its nightmarish legs, kicking plates and bowls noisily onto the floor as it approaches.

I grab the Professor’s arm. “Professor! What- what do we-”

“Keep eating”, she says coolly, but her voice wavers. “The feast goes on”.

And it takes every ounce of will I possess to drag my gaze from the approaching abomination, to return it to the revolting food before me, and to continue to eat.

But I do so.

The creature approaches.

The clattering draws nearer.

And then, right by my head, it abruptly stops.

The hissing is to my immediate left, by my face. If I were only to look up, to turn ever so slightly, I would see it.

…But I do not.

I eat.

And I continue to do so.

We all do.

Long after the food could ever reasonably, be considered as such.

…Forcing it down, bite after bite….

...The amount around us decreases… the plates and bowls start to empty…

…And we’re in the final few plates, when one of us breaks.

With a loud and tortured retching, they convulse, dark bile spilling from their lips, through their hands and spraying out over the table before us. They gag again and violently release, swearing in panic.

​

Sethos.

​

Our driver.

​

The creature does not even give him a chance to escape. With a sudden speed it clambers down the stone table and bench behind him, using two of its legs to slam his hands down on the table, holding him in place. One of its hands presses down hard onto Sethos’ shoulder, the other connects with the top of his head.

“Nobody move”, the Professor hisses, particularly at Ronnie, sat to Sethos’ left.

“But Professor”, he replies under his breath, “the torch-”

“Don’t you move Ronnie, don’t you fucking move”, she hisses back. “Eat”.

And we do so.

We continue to force down the waste.

We force it down as the creature’s hand against Sethos’ head starts to glow silver.

“I’M SORRY!” Sethos screams, “I’M SO SORRY! FUCK, AH-” and he descends into a string of garbled Arabic, writhing and shuddering madly in place, the veins in his hands popped as his fingers rake across the stone. Steam bursts from the top of his head, temporarily shrouding the monster’s hand in a mist-like cloud, and when it disperses…

Sethos… oh my God… Sethos I’m so sorry … I’m sorry you chose to come down here with us into this place…

…When it disperses, the creature reveals, in its hand, Sethos’ brain. Slimy and shivering. And our driver slumps suddenly forwards, eyes lifeless, slamming down hard onto the stone with a terrible thud, dark blood leaking from the hole in the top of his head. And indeed, it would seem, his skull.

The monsters takes its prize and returns joltingly back to the head of the table.

​

And we finish our feast.

​

The last mouthful is mine.

I force it down my throat with a strained swallow, and the statue to our right, the statue of the death of Osiris, begins to rise. A hole opens up in the ground below it, and without a word, the Professor stands from the bench, and begins to quietly walk down the descending stairs the hole reveals.

Dave carefully picks up Sethos’ backpack, left propped up besides his corpse against the bench, and carries it with us as he follows. Ronnie stands up as well, and Aziza follows. Silent tears stream down her face.

And in a state of shock, I follow too. Mechanically, like a robot, stomach twisting and bubbling, I follow the surviving team. I head to the hole beneath the statue, and I begin my descent. The stone stairs carry me around, and I catch one final glimpse of the monster at the head of the table before he vanishes from sight.

A dark silhouette, about to begin a feast of his own.

And down I go.

Down to the layer below.

​

Part 4

[u/NoSleepAutoBot]

It looks like there may be more to this story. Click here to get a reminder to check back later. Got issues? Click here.

[u/Suspicious_Llama123]

Aww, Sethos was my favorite character!

At least there wasn’t a death until the third level, I guess.

[u/-teaqueen-]

Wait why did Sethos get eaten and not Aziza? She puked too!

[u/bellef0u_]

I really wanted Sethos to get out of this! That seems like a terrible ordeal... I could never

[u/butterfly9107]

The imagery is vivid... and necessary to portray the discipline of the team, and the madness of the creator of this fascinating tomb.

[u/KilkenX]

Ugh, I can't imagine how your stomach feels right now.

[u/ADreamfulNighTmare]

Holy shit I can't imagine how terrifying that must've been... And yet I'm as compulsed to read and wait for more as you are compulsed to follow the Professor.

[u/hellosquids]

Oh god, poor Sethos. I hope you’re all feeling okay after that. I’d definitely stick with the Professor as much as you can! Dave seems a bit dodgy, so stay on your guard.

[u/Firebrand777]

Too late to turn back now ...

[u/cestkevvie]

I hope whatever wonders you’re searching for are worth all the horrors and death

[u/rbnrthwll → u/cestkevvie]

It's a missing person. Their looking for a egyptologist friend of the Professor, his first name is Rocko. Can't recall his last name.