The Cave

I am aware that the events I am about to recount will be doubted by any sane person. Not only because of the horrors of which I am about to speak but also because of the fact that I am locked up in an asylum for the rest of my life. The doctors say that I am insane and that the story I am about to tell is merely the product of a deranged imagination. I wish for my life that I could believe what they say and sometimes I even for a moment begin to think that I may actually have been dreaming, but I always return to the same fact that convinces me that my account is not just the ravings of an insane man, but something that has actually taken place.

The disastrous day of which I am speaking took place about a month ago. I had been attending a lecture at the university and was relaxing in the park adjoining the university grounds as I usually did if no pressing matters forbade it. I was seated just beside the small stream that flows through the entire park. Just opposite was a small dark opening in the rock face that looked like the entrance to a small cave. I was a little puzzled that I had not seen it before, on any of my previous visits to the same place, but I did not think anymore of it at the time.

I was just about to leave and return home, when I heard a faint sound from the small mountain that was the natural north limit of the park. After a little while I was able to discern that the sound came from the cave entrance I had just noticed and also that an eerie, blue-green glow had started to emanate from it. The slowly increasing sound from the cave sounded like an army clad in slippers, shuffling its feet as it advanced slowly. Suddenly something came into view in the cave entrance. What I now beheld caused my eyes to widen and my jaw to drop in disbelief and horror. I was frozen to the spot by the mere sight of what emerged from the cave. What was approaching was indeed an army, consisting of zombie-like creatures that appeared to be human at first glance, but when they came closer a second wave of terror swept over me as I noticed that, in one way or the other, all of them were partly reptilian. All of the loathsome apparitions that slowly closed in on me had at least some scaly reptile part merged with their decaying, otherwise human, anathomies. Some of them had a scaly tentacle instead of an arm, some had reptile heads on human bodies. Some of them were almost entirely non-human with only a pair of legs that seemed human. About a hundred of these abominable creatures had marched out of the cave when the first ones came up to the place where I was seated. I wanted to scream and try to escape them, but no sound would come out of my dry throat and my body did not obey me. When the creatures reached the place where I was seated, they lifted me above their emptily staring heads with chilly hands without a sound being made apart from the slow shuffling of their feet. I almost choked from the intense stench of decay that emanated from their rotting bodies. Slowly, the horrible procession turned around, carrying me high above their heads and started to walk slowly back into the cave again. The creatures carried me through seemingly endless winding corridors, leading steadily deeper into the heart of the mountain. Finally the walls of the corridor parted, and the procession emerged into a huge cavern. The cavern was dimly illuminated by a glow that seemed to come from nowhere. I was carried up to an altar-like block on an elevation in the floor in the centre of the cavern. They put me down onto the cold surface of the stone altar and then slowly walked down the slope and lined up in a double circle around me. Slowly, the creatures started to walk around the altar where I was lying, and for the first time they started to make sounds apart from the slow shuffling of their feet against the stone floor. They joined up in a croaking, terrible song which rose steadily in intensity.

When the creatures had completed their first turn around me I felt as if my conscience was leaving my body and rising to a non-corporeal state above what was happening in the cavern. I found that I could float around my inert body on the altar without any effort, watching what was happening in the cave. Suddenly, a shapeless black mass emerged out of the darkness that hid the ceiling of the cavern from my view and started to move slowly downward to the altar where my body was suspended. In the same moment the black thing appeared, the song of the zombies rose to a high-pitched, triumphant wail that echoed in my brain.

The black thing floated down to my body and settled itself upon it, obscuring it from my view. I now noticed that my conscience was actually divided into two., On the same time that I floated above the scene, watching, I could still feel the cold embrace of the black shapeless mass. The wail of the zombies now changed into a mocking laughter and I suddenly felt an immense pain as the thing started to slowly devour my body. With the part of my conscience that was outside my body I could only watch as the black thing settled itself slowly upon my body, and then started to undulate slowly like some kind of huge amoeba devouring its prey. Between the waves of pain that floated through my brain, I suddenly noticed that a dim outline of my body had become visible at the entrance to the cavern. For every new wave of pain the outline grew a little sharper and finally it was entirely clear. The waves of pain finally ceased and I could feel my conscience return to my body at its new location by the entrance of the cavern. With the mad laughter of the zombies ringing in my ears I scrambled to my feet and ran madly through the endless corridors that the procession had carried me down. Numerous times I stumbled on irregularities in the floor of the corridor and bruised myself against the rough walls. Finally, after what seemed like an eternity, I arrived at the entrance to the cave. I didnÕt manage more than a few steps outside the cave before I lapsed into unconsciousness.

When I was found I was babbling madly about the dark that was engulfing me and I was bruised and bloody all over. I was taken to a hospital where I was washed and bandaged, but the doctors there thought that my continual ravings of dark things devouring me, feeding on my illness, were too strange to come from a sane man, so as soon as my wounds were administered to I was taken to the asylum where I currently reside. My life will probably not last very long, as I almost never sleep. Every time that the darkness of the night engulfs me, or I even close my eyes for more than an instant, I feel the terror of the black shapeless thing flowing up inside me again. I think that I would be able to believe the doctors, that my account is merely a dream, if it was not for the fact that up to that disastrous day a month ago I had been a cripple, bound forever to my wheelchair and had never before taken a single step of my own.

Some day, I will manage to get out of here and go back into the cave again and let the shapeless black entity devour the new illness that has lodged itself in my brain.

Written by Hans Persson, August 1986. A Swedish translation of this story has been published in the book Svenska monster och annat otyg (Bokförlaget Paradishuset, 1999).

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