Ashes - The Special Edition: The Tales of Tartarus

by A. L. Mengel

  “You up there?” he called ahead. “You still there man?”

  No answer. Only silence, save the crinkle-crinkle of the plastic wrapped around the roses. It would scrape up along the wall next to him with each step he took, and the sounds pierced the silence quite easily.

  Roberto stopped and tried to look ahead. He flicked his lighter again, and it sparked, but no flame. He shook it and smacked it a few times. After a second attempt, the flame ignited. “Man...you there?” Roberto stopped. If he truly was all alone, he did not want to go on any further into the black abyss.

  Nothing.

  Roberto heard a faint click far ahead – a shrill snap against the silence, like someone turning on a lamp in another room. A faint light emitted from a great distance down a dark, black passageway, but it was not enough light to lead his way, and it was quite far ahead. Still, the light was enough to allow Roberto to put his lighter away and look around. He saw something around him that seemed like wooden slats, pressed up against an earthen wall. He looked down, and caught a shiny, square object inserted in the wood, recessed into the slat. But then he craned his neck and saw the wood follow a path across the ceiling, and around and down the other wall.

  A door.

  And then it slammed behind him.

  How long was this hallway? he thought. He tried the door. It was heavy, a strong and impenetrable dark wood. The handle would not budge.

  He was forced to move further inside.

  He decided to make his way up towards the faint, yellowish light and he got towards the wall to his right and used his hands to help him along the wall. The light was very dim, but it was a welcome respite to the blackness that he felt when the door slammed and his eyes were adjusting.

  Had he been trapped? And who trapped him?

  Several feet down, he came across another door. It was not unlike any household door, however, right in front of the door the floor was much darker than the rest. It stood out like a giant square panel. On the door, there was no doorknob. That he could tell, but it was harder to tell exactly what type of flooring was in front of the door, and he was unsure if that section of the floor was some sort of panel or button. It was too oddly square…and stood out much. And it extended across to the other wall. The darkened section of floor, the panel, definitely seemed too large to jump across.

  He stopped.

  Bending down closer to the floor, he saw clean lines against the earthen floor, like giant black tiles. Like a gigantic button.

  Roberto paced back and forth for a minute, his eyes shifting from the door, to the panel on the floor, and back. There was no way around this, if Roberto wanted to continue, he would have to step on this section of the floor. And he didn’t know what would happen once he stepped on the panel.

  His eyes were much better adjusted to the light now.

  Looking up, he saw a small ledge about six inches from the ceiling. He figured that he could always grab onto the ledge and carry himself over this large panel in the floor.

  “What the hell,” he said, and jumped up and grabbed the ledge with one hand on the first try, hanging in the air and swinging slightly. He had caught the ledge with his left hand, and held the roses with his right hand. He took the roses and shoved them down his pants to where just the flowered tips were peeking out about his waistline. He swung his right arm up to the panel and steadied his grip. He found it to be cool, but dusty.

  No problem. It was only about 10 feet for so.

  Before he would know it, he would be on the other side and continuing towards the dim, dusty light at the end of the hallway. Or at least what he assumed was the end of the hallway. Either way, it was still the unknown.

  He slid his hands to his right, unsettling what seemed like years of dust. His eyes started to water, clouding his vision. And then….achoo!!

  Achoo!

  The sneeze echoed down the hallway. He snuffled, balancing himself on the ledge, hanging in the mysterious hall made of dirt.

  The sneeze almost caused him to lose his grip on the ledge. He was still about a foot or so from the beginning of the panel. Directly above the panel he had to be more careful.

  He kept his head turned down to avoid the billowing dust disturbed by his gripping hands, and he began sliding down the ledge again. His legs swung back and forth as he slid, and before long his legs were swinging over into the airspace above the panel. And then he noticed something that he did not notice before: the wall next to the panel in the floor was the same material (or at least appeared to be the same material) as the panel.

  He stopped. What now?

  He didn’t remember the wall looking like black tile before. He distinctly remembered the panel being only on the floor.

  But now it had built its way up the wall, getting closer and closer to his swinging legs.

  Roberto decided that he was going to try to swing his legs and try to swing his way over the panel to the other side. Hopefully the years of sports will have paid off.

  He gained momentum, holding his legs outward to avoid the wall panel, and used his arm muscles to steady himself on the ledge and leaped. He was flying through the air for what seemed like an eternity, and then, hit bottom.

  He hit the floor hard, causing the wind to get knocked out of him for a moment. He lay on the dirt floor waiting to breathe. Luckily, he did not hit his head. The floor appeared so hard as if it were marble, yet made of earth. Definitely it was of the hardest earth that he had ever felt in his life.

  He could not place what type of material or stone the floor was. He looked down, and saw he was lying on his back on the floor, and he had made it! His head was past the panel, and he was lying on what appeared to be a stone floor, on the other side of the panel. Had he truly made it?

  He turned his head to the right and let out a breath. The door was open. His right hand was on the floor, and he hadn’t realized it had touched the panel.

  And that was all it took. The door was open, against the wall, letting very faint light in, not much, but just enough to see a pedestal table with a vase of roses lying dead on the floor in a mountain of broken glass and watery mess.

  *~*~*

  Roberto let his head fall back to the floor, sighed and closed his eyes. Exasperated, he did not know what to do. Every horror movie he had ever seen told him not to go through that door. All that was there was blackness. This building was a strange place, through that door was the unknown, and his instincts told him to just turn around. Turn around and leave, leave and wait for Antoine to come to him that night like he originally said that he was going to do.

  But on the other hand, Roberto was curious to see what was beyond the door.

  While the building was strange, and given the fact that the hallway he was in seemed incredibly long – apparently far longer than the one block on Washington Avenue that the structure encompassed outside. Roberto still felt oddly drawn to its darkness, just as he was drawn to Antoine the first time they saw each other.

  All in all, he decided at the very least he should get up. Rising to his feet, he brushed himself off, took the roses out of his pants, which were only slightly crushed, and turned around to face another wall.

  Roberto stopped and stared at the wall.

  What the fuck? Where did that wall come from?

  The floor was no longer a panel, now the area in front of the door blended in with the rest of the floor. Given that the door was open, Roberto now got a better feel of what the hallway looked like. The building had a whole medieval feel about it, almost like a castle, and the walls and floor were a uniform dark stone masonry.

  The door, with squared off corners and heavy wood, stood open against the wall beckoning Roberto to enter.

  He now only had two choices.

  He didn’t know if he was getting delusional, but now all he could do was go into this strange structure further or go through the door. But the darkness did not continue to hold his attention.

  His head looked forward down the hallw
ay, where the light had come from earlier; now only a few feet beyond the faint light that he stood in the darkness took back over and swallowed up the hallway; but what caught Roberto’s attention was not the overpowering blackness.

  The light at the end of the hallway – very faint and far, far down and further away now it seemed than before, was now accompanied by a slight methodic rap, like a metronome, like something hitting the wall, over and over again…rap…rap…rap…

  The noise was light but methodical and determined, and coming from the direction of the light.

  And that is when Roberto realized he was no longer alone. He heard a voice.

  “Hello young man.”

  Roberto stopped in his tracks. He saw no one. Who was that? Roberto did not know what to make of the noise or the light, so he decided to enter the door that beckoned.

  It became pitch black as he crossed through the door; the roses and table were indiscernible through the darkness that spread as he walked over the threshold. Even the dim light that was now in the hallway did not penetrate. Roberto stopped for a moment before he entered, pausing for one final minute. He squinted and peered inside, in a desperate attempt to see something, but all he saw was blackness.

  Was this the right decision? He was soon to find out.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

  Darkness.

  Into the black abyss.

  Roberto immediately regretted his decision to continue into the room, as the door slammed behind him, enveloping him in total blackness. He turned around to try and see if he could push the door open, but all he could feel was the stone masonry of the wall.

  The door was gone.

  Where was he? He checked his pockets for the lighter, brought it out, and started clicking it. It was low on butane. Not great, but at least he will be able to find out where he is and maybe if there is a way out.

  Click! went the lighter and the small, dim glow of the light revealed a silver coffin resting on a stone slab. It was too dark to see beyond the coffin; it was unknown if there were any additional doors in the room, or even where the room ended and the walls began. Or if there were even any walls to begin with.

  Or if there was anyone else in the room with him.

  The mysterious man that Roberto had encountered on the steps had disappeared shortly after ushering him inside this strange and macabre building; now he couldn’t determine if he was alone in the room or who might be in the casket.

  Or what might be in the casket.

  Roberto moved forward slowly and stopped above the elegant looking silver coffin. He looked down and revisited his mother’s funeral. He remembered watching the morticians lower her tiny body deeper into the white satin interior, and then shut the lid, closing her into darkness for all of eternity. The casket looked very familiar. It was the same silver color. It was very shiny in the dim flicker of the lighter’s flame, and he could see on the closed lid the flickering firefly reflection.

  And then the lighter ran out of butane and went out.

  Total blackness once again.

  Roberto stood still, and did not move his feet for he did not know what would come next. The room was so utterly silent it was eating him alive. He now regretted his decision of even coming to this building, he didn’t understand why he felt he needed to see Antoine today.

  But it was too late. Now he was trapped.

  He didn’t even dare move, for he knew just a few feet in front of him was the casket. And he dared not attempt to feel his way through a pitch black room for fear of toppling the coffin off of its slab – and maybe – just maybe, waking up what might be inside.

  That was when the bottom of the wall, where the wall met the stone floor, began to take on a glow of an orange essence. The glow was as if there was a recessed floor around the perimeter of the room and it filled the dim light. It was as if there were a bright fire or furnace underneath, and it lit the room in a dark orange eerie glow that once again reflected on the silver casket.

  It felt like there was a fire in the room, lighting up as if there were a blazing fire in the fireplace, yet there was no fireplace in the room.

  It was an empty, stark stone room – with just a silver coffin on a stone slab, in the middle of a stone floor, with a warm, orange light that reached up the walls like fire along on the edges under the floor.

  There was an audible click that reverberated through the silent room which brought Roberto’s attention to the coffin.

  Roberto could tell one thing. The sound came from inside the casket.

  Was something was moving inside? Was something was trying to get out? The click let Roberto know if that whatever or whomever was inside wanted out, they knew the way out.

  Roberto dropped the roses, and his eyes darted around the room, scanning the walls.

  He wanted to run, but there was nowhere to run to. Behind him, there was now just a wall. There was no longer a door, or even the imprint of the door.

  Just a wall.

  How had the room changed around him again? The walls seemed to be closer to him now, as if they moved inwards, but in the blink of an eye. They trapped him in what felt like a small closet – he felt like he was almost on top of the casket, yet he was not, and as the walls kept closing in on him the flames began to take shape and finger out from the walls.

  There was nowhere to hide. Nowhere to go.

  The heat from the fire increased, and grew more intense as they shot out of the floor – and the flames now felt their way through cracks in the wall. The room was much brighter now, filling quickly with flames, and Roberto’s attention diverted back to the casket.

  There was a banging on the casket lid. Hard, and deep.

  The casket was moving – rocking back and forth on the slab, knocking and banging, coming close to falling.

  Where the fuck am I?

  Roberto ducked quickly on the ground as a thin arm of flames darted past his head – so close that he could feel the heat from the fire and it felt as if it singed his hair. The flames soared over his head and grew larger, reaching for the casket.

  The flames enveloped the casket and danced on the lid and Roberto now realized that the room had shrunk even more. He was struggling to stay away from the fire, and was so close to the coffin that it was almost touching him.

  There was a small, round light that appeared above the casket in front of him. When he looked closer, he thought he saw people on the other side of the round light. Like he was looking through a tiny window.

  And then he started putting the pieces together.

  His mother had been cremated. He knew where he was.

  “Roberto…..” It was a woman’s voice and was coming from his right. He closed his eyes.

  The coffin lid started to slowly open through the flames.

  “Roberto come this way and follow me…..” the voice continued

  He struggled in his mind, arguing with his sane and rational side, that these events could not be happening and were just in his mind. He did not know nor did he want to know what woman was calling him. But he chose to open his eyes.

  It was Eva.

  She stood in front of what appeared to be another hallway, long but leading quickly into blackness, reaching towards some other unknown destination. She had the same long brown hair she did in life, the same beauty and the same eyes. Like she was still alive, beautiful and healthy, before the cancer, before the beatings. She was wearing the same white, flowing nightgown she had during life. “Come follow me Roberto…”

  The apparition did not wait for an answer, but rather turned without further words and disappeared down the hallway, quickly being engulfed by the black abyss. “Come follow your mother, Roberto…” Her words trailed off as she got further away.

  He followed her. The oven had gotten so small that he only had room to crouch next to the casket, which was now engulfed in flames. He turned his head away from the hallway for a moment to find the casket lid still open.

  He could not see what or
who was inside, only darkness. But something looked like movement, like something was reaching towards him through bright, hot fire.

  That was when he ran. He sprinted into the hallway, away from the flames; away from the burning casket. Away from the intense heat of the oven.

  The mysterious figure was far ahead, and she was illuminated in bright white, but all he could see was her, and the light surrounding her. Had he died? Was he in heaven now? Or was this hell? But the question that posed Roberto’s mind was, where did this dark tunnel lead to? And where was his mother leading him?

  And, the question that replayed in his mind over and over: was that really his mother ahead?

  Roberto stood at the entrance of the passage. He turned behind him, and saw the casket. The lid was still open. And there was definitely someone inside the casket, he was certain now. Roberto attempted to look more closely at the coffin, but could not tell from the distance that he was at who or what was inside. There was a body lying inside as if dead and immobile, clad in black, appeared to be male, but from the rustling earlier, Roberto doubted that the body was dead. It certainly had to have been dead now in the flames of the oven.

  “Roberto….” Eva turned back to face him. “Come away from that room. Follow me this way…” The sound her words reverberated against the dark stone earthy walls of the passage, beckoning him to come.

  Roberto was in a quandary. If he followed his mother, or whatever that was that looked like his mother, he was venturing more beyond into the unknown, and further into this strange entity. But who was in the casket?

  Curiosity overtaking him, Roberto turned once again towards the casket. The body lay there, still, as if on display in a viewing room – the body was apparently untouched by the flames. The body looked dressed and ready for mourners to pass by, and kneel in front of the casket to say a final prayer and to pay respects.