Archangel Morpheus by Aguirre Forrest

Author:Aguirre, Forrest [Aguirre, Forrest]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2012-03-07T20:00:00+00:00

Chapter 8

The walls in this place are rough-hewn grey marble, grainy and sparkling in the feeble light cast by phosphorescent mushrooms. Geometry is indistinct, the wall's shadows all akimbo. I might be surrounded by piles of rubble, a dead valley of destroyed palaces or museums, an alien geology, I cannot tell. There is no sky.

There is a subtle stink, the barely-perceptible scent of sulfur mixed with mildew. The air is damp and cold and my kidneys ache with the dull pain of an oncoming illness.

I would expect an echo here, but there is none. Sound seems to be absorbed by the miasma that fills the air. I strain my ears to hear something, anything, but they are filled with the awful void of silence. A sudden fear grips me, not a fear of my surroundings, but of boredom, the realization that ennui will drive me mad in this place. At first, I try to think of some kind of mental game to keep my reason stimulated, but I cannot settle on a coherent set of rules before my mind wanders off in another direction, seeking a source of outside sensory input.

At least it is cold, and I can feel the cold.

I will be swallowed up in dolor if I don't find something quickly, so I begin tracing the outlines of the wall nearest me. The flat gives way to a vertex and I turn the corner. The ground under my feet slopes up and down at unpredictable times and grades. The walls veer off at obtuse angles, as if the blueprints given to the architect were drawn by a toddler or a senile elder.

I try to picture such a child, drawing stick in hand, scribbling a picture of a house whose proportions are so out of symmetry with each other as to render the drawing inane, even dangerous if a builder were so foolhardy as to actually use them to construct a house. For some reason, I picture the child singing.

I soon realize that the sound of the singing is not imagined. It is real, and it is here, a child's voice in the darkness. The words, unintelligible to me, careen off the walls, whispering to me from all directions, as if a chorus were being sung from among the cyclopean ruins. I soon recognize that there are, indeed, many voices singing from different locations, and that the choir is converging on my position. I cannot run, lest I injure myself in the darkness, so I back up against the nearest wall, ready to spring and fight my way out . . . to where? My body tingles with anticipation and my stomach begins to ache. The sweetness of the children's voices growing closer emphasizes, rather than assuages, my discomfort. Their innocence is the foil to my fear.

I think I see shapes in the darkness nearby.

The singing stops all at once. It is, again, silent.

"You need not fear," a child's voice startles me into a gasp. It comes from above me, not far over my right shoulder.

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