The last conscious thought he had was staring down the cliff over the side of the damp stump that had saved his life. He felt as if the stump had sunk away from before him throwing him off the side of the mountain. He realized that it was very dark as he rubbed dirt from his face and eyes. He wondered how long he had been knocked out but couldn’t catch a full breath.
His mind raced as he wondered if it was night time or was he dead already. It struck him that if he was in fact dead he must be in hell. Catching a slight breath of dusty cool air spurned him on as he scrambled his thoughts trying to force that image out of his mind. He felt his chest and it stung against his hands. He had bruised his ribs when he struck the stump. He tried to focus his eyes and take in the surroundings but couldn’t get his eyes to clear. They were heavy, hazy, and blurry.
The air had a musty taste and smelled stuffy. There was only a glimmer of light coming through what seemed to be a hole high above him. He realized now that the stump hadn’t fallen but rather, he had sunken into the ground and fallen through it into a cave or hole of some kind. His mind raced and prevented him from clearing away piles of dust around his feet or the roots that lay across his waist.
He tried to get to his feet but felt his stomach growl and felt sick once more. He couldn’t manage and fell back again. After nearly an hour of staring into the dark void around him he mustered some strength, took a deep breath, held it in, and pulled himself to his hands and knees. It was a small victory but he had nothing left. He couldn’t manage anything more than to try to focus on a truly dark area in front of him.
“Not yet” he repeated to himself like a calming mantra while trying to pace himself. He wanted to clear his mind and prevent fear from overwhelming him. He had nothing left in him to gather a clear thought from. No inner strength was there to supply him with what he really needed, certainty. So he thought the best thing for him was to lean against something if he could find something to prop up against.
His energy was gone but he felt lucky that he was now able to reason against the challenges he now faced. “Another small victory” he told himself. “Better than nothing at all I guess”. He coughed. His ribs felt much more painful than he felt they would if they had only been bruised.
“Must be broken” he admitted. He twisted around a little to see if he could tell what was around him but the pain rose around his heart and nearly forced him back into the dust face first. He closed his eyes tight and tried to focus on breathing. He lifted his hand and arm slowly one at a time to see if any more limbs were injured. His arms felt fine but each time he moved them his ribs stung.
He rubbed his face with his left hand. It felt wet. “Why” he thought. So he put his hand to his nose and smelled blood. He must have hit his head or cut his hand. Which it was he couldn’t tell but what he did know was that he was in quite a state of trouble. He reached for his cell phone and felt the pieces of its crushed mass in his back pocket. What was he going to do now? He thought about how he had no idea where he was and that the only information he did have was that he must have fallen into a cave within the side of the cliff.
He pressed the battery against the back of the phone making the light of the cracked screen light up. “Now that is a victory worth celebrating” he thought aloud. He could make out a large shadow in front of him. Maybe a large boulder or rock pile, he wondered? He crawled over to it hoping to use it to help himself to his feet.
At the very least he thought he may be able to prop himself up against it long enough to get his bearings. He climbed up against it but felt a large wooden board slide and crash to the ground as he pressed against the top of the stone and slammed hard down onto whatever it was. He held the phone up above his head revealing the most horrific shock he had ever had. His left hand was pressed down on a mangled skeleton. None of the bones seemed to be where they should be. The arms and legs formed a cross and the head was propped up in the center like a kind of icon.
Once again the noises and lurches returned to his stomach and his intestines twitched as he jerked back his hand like he had been burned by an intense flame. What had he done, he ran over and over in his head. He had climbed up against and was propping himself up on a very old dead body. He scrambled back away from it and tripped over several large roots. His balance was off. It was too late to recover. He was “finished now”, his mind told him.
He landed hard on his back knocking the wind out of his chest. It was more than anyone should have to endure, he thought as his mind raced. After catching his breath again, he wondered if he stumbled sickeningly into a very old burial ground or some kind of remote gravesite. He felt very sick and began vomiting once more all over himself. He couldn’t move. The thought of being stuck in the cave with the dead, frightened him so much he could barely remain conscious let alone think straight.
What he hadn’t noticed was that in his state of shock he had brought into motion a terrible thing. The bones no longer lay lifeless or motionless. They in fact grew, shook, trembled, and assembled. A stench overcame Alexander as fast and as nastily as he had fallen into this chamber of death. He had renewed what was never to have been allowed to do so. He had breathed life into the dead by allowing his freshly spilled blood to touch the decomposed corpse. A great evil had been wrenched back from hell. A minister of the darkness had been awakened.
All the while Alexander struggled to catch his breath the beast grew stronger and became once more a complete and total nightmare. Blood flowed from the stone below the bones and the flesh of long removed limbs returned. A black beard thickened and granted a sinister smile, deceptive character. Alexander could smell rotted and burned flesh, hair, and leather.
He choked. He gasped. He collapsed over and over in fits trying to regain his senses. He felt mad. He had lost all control. Once more he had no more power over his consciousness and drifted into an abyss that he would never return from again. He was to be the food of vengeance and the powerful antidote for entombed death. He would be the one catalyst to grant the demon his lifeblood and his chance to undo his imprisonment. His enemies long dead of natural causes. This creature was free to wreak his revenge on whomever he saw fit to let it loose.
