Chapter 6: Hell is Empty and all the devils are here (part 2)
"If I am mad, it is mercy! May the gods pity the man who in his callousness can remain sane to the hideous end!"
-H.P. Lovecraft
. . .
For some absurd reason, even though I was still aware that the sun was still shining brightly behind my back, I couldn't feel its warmth anymore; I can only feel the air growing cold around me the longer I find myself staring at the being. I can feel goosebumps already forming on my arms and legs.
W-What... what is this thing? Is this... is this supposed to be some sort of monster squid? A human-octopus drawing that went wrong? It didn't even look like something that belongs to this world.
So what in God's name am I even looking at?
With trembling fingers, I managed to flip through the next pages, albeit a bit clumsily–anything to keep myself from staring at it far longer than I should–because I can faintly feel the peanut butter sandwich was planning to worm its way out of my throat any moment now.
I think I'm going to be sick.
The papers were just as worn as the cover, old and yellowed, frayed at the edge but... but the d-drawings... they... t-they... the longer I went further, the more they looked like they were moving.
...Like the images were coming alive.
Oh... oh, God...
OH, GOD–!
I dared to blink.
One second, I was sitting by my aunt's porch but the next thing I know, when I made the mistake of opening my eyes again...
I found myself gawking over the ruins of what probably once was a great city lost to the course of history with strange high, towers made out of weird geometry that looked and felt like they were swallowing me all up with the sheer size alone.
I can already feel a headache the longer I looked.
I'm not... I'm not so sure but I seemed to be floating somewhere far beneath the bottom of the sea and even though there was a part of my brain that still stubbornly clings to the remnants of common sense during this sudden course of madness.
A part of me suddenly feels like thrashing and shrieking because this shouldn't be even possible, even my mind naturally tried to reason out, sounding just as desperate as I feel in this one awful moment, that I shouldn't be even seeing a thing in here because this is a place where light shouldn't even reach. I can't be seeing this. I can't be here. OH GOD, I AM NOT SUPPOSED TO BE HERE–!
But I swear to God, the freezing feeling and the suffocating pressure of the unforgiving ocean is very much real.
It was real.
Everything was and felt so much real and it was all over me, gripping and crushing my lungs as though I am actually drowning, the pressure was far too intense, but I still won't die.
Why wasn't I dying?!
And like a puppet being moved by invisible strings, I can feel my very being sucked right into what seemed to be a chasm, somewhere deeper than what was supposedly possible.
I can feel my eyes being forced to look down upon hundreds and hundreds of what seemed to be people whose lives I don't know how but somehow, in some way, a primitive part of my brain instinctively knows that these very lives have all been taken by the sea, lives stolen from different eras hailing from various races, black and white, old and young, men, women and... and oh god, there were little children...!
They weep unseen tears (because even that, the sea takes from them) as they were forced to grovel on their bruised and bleeding knees, chanting hymns of a language I couldn't even hope to understand.
They all had terrible wounds inflicted all over their body and some even cradled their broken limbs, their gaping wounds still fresh and far too painful to even look at.
How can they still breathe down here?
How are they still alive?
Without thinking or maybe it was because I was already panicking way out of my mind, I frantically tried to look around me and saw strange things that vaguely reminded me of centipedes but... but not quite.
Because these creatures...
These things are far too large with far too many eyes and a misplaced, grotesque maw within somewhere in the middle their abnormally long bodies that seemed to stretch all over across the darkness that looked too out of this world; they scrabble and feast upon any human that so much as tried to raise their head, screaming and crying to the heavens for mercy, for salvation.
Out of nowhere, something glimmered right beneath me. And I instantly know there and then that no matter what happens here, I must not look.
But one of the monstrous centipedes suddenly turned to look straight to my direction with their bulging, too-many eyes–as if sensing my presence, someone that has no business being there–just as a tremendous, shapeless mass of shadows passed below us for far too long.
One second, two second, three, four, five, six, seven–
I can feel another presence now.
Cold and suffocating on its own right, the surroundings around me seemed to shudder. The whole world felt like it was shaking upon the waking of something so powerful; something that was not human or mere monster. For it was something that was far older than the sea, far older than the world itself regarding me, as if considering...
It has no voice but somehow, in some awful way, I can feel that it was trying to... to communicate to me with its long-gone language.
Because far beneath the depths of the sea, somewhere far deeper than the heart of the ocean itself, where no light could ever hope to reach... something was moving, stirring as if shifting in slumber, sending current after current of waves as it tried to blink away the tattered gauzy, paper-like wrappings covering one of its eye, a monstrous eyelid was soon fluttering as if it was trying to open, casting both humans and monsters alike further into to the abyss.
My mouth drops open.
I will not look, I swear I won't, I won't–!
And instead of screams, I can only hear my own voice singing along the dead, hymns of the lost and the damned spilling forth easily and endlessly.
My own voice was ripped right from my lips even as I can feel my head pounding at such an awful sound as though it was going to split my own mind apart, my jaw was aching as I found myself automatically swallowing in mouthfuls of water after water, filling my throat, my lungs, until my chest, my stomach were filled to the point of bursting and it hurts, it hurts so much and I couldn't even close my mouth, oh God, I couldn't breathe, I COULDN'T BREATHE!
It feels like my ears are ready to rupture themselves from within when black spots began to creep from the corner of my vision just as what seemed to be a tentacle shot forward.
...Aiming towards me.
No, no, no, no, NO–!
...
...something wet dripped on my neck.
With a choked gasp, I instantly dropped the book on the wooden floor with a sound that I didn't quite heard right.
My hands are cold... and they were shaking.
And as I sit there, heaving breath after breath, swallowing back down sobs and bile, it took me several more minutes to realize that I wasn't drowning. Instead, I was still seated in my aunt's porch, safe, alive... I was drenched in cold sweat, my eyes stinging so bad it hurts to keep them open for a moment and... and my ears are bleeding.
For a moment, I stared in muted horror at the book while the sound of the perpetually crashing waves behind me did nothing to soothe me this time around.
The sound of the sea frightened me more than anything else in this world because the sound of the roaring waves, it... it reminded me of their chant, of their unholy hymn, a song that knows no end... and just as the thought of what my aunt will do (has been doing) once she found out what I've seen through this book, that... that thing...
My knees knocked against each other, my legs trembling as I clumsily picked the book off of the floor, I couldn't even bear to look at it as I frantically tried to put it back where I've found it.
And then, I wonder...
Had I really been down there, in the bottom of the ocean, watching dead people whose lives were stolen by the sea, now forced to worship monsters that dwelled down there long before I was even born? Or am I just seeing things?
Am I growing crazy?
Do I even want to know?