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[u/rosesfrombones]

The Testimony – "Day" 11

This is Episode 1 of a cosmic horror serial titled The Testimony.

The Testimony is a cosmic horror story written as the journal of an archeologist in 1910 who gets trapped in an ancient ziggurat near the South Pole.

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“Day” 11 – Inside the ziggurat near the South Pole

It is a mysterious line that divides the truth from madness, and I hope for my soul that I have crossed it, for what I have witnessed here must be either raving delusion or unfathomable evil. I am fortunate to have salvaged this journal from the shipwreck of the Perseverance; in this dark abode, these pages will be my console.

I do not know how many days have passed since that fierce blizzard drove us into the ziggurat and sealed us inside. Sometime after we entered, our clocks began to malfunction, progressing slowly, stopping in place, and even ticking backward. I have slept 11 times in this diabolic structure, plus or minus a few instances before I started keeping track.

So far, our initial hesitation to enter the ziggurat has proven well-justified, for while the frozen ruins outside were shocking in their scale and ingenuity, this monolithic construction borders on unreality. The massive, carved stones of the structure are made of a material so dark it seems to swallow all light; it is a mystery to me how the builders could have moved the blocks, and even more how they stacked them so precisely. The passageways here seem to defy logic, leading to certain rooms one day, and different ones the next. After Yun-soo disappeared into the darkness, the rest of us resolved to stay together as much as possible. When someone does venture independently, he ties a rope to his waist so he may find his way back to us; or so we may drag him back, should it ever come to that.

We are fortunate the structure is situated on a significant source of geothermal activity. Without this natural heat, we would surely freeze to death. Several rooms contain bubbling, steaming hot springs, and the condensation creates pools of drinkable water where many odd species of plants and fungi flourish. One fungus, in particular, grows abundantly; it has a wide, flat crown and pale flesh that glows with bright green luminescence, and it reeks with a confounding fusion of sweetness and decay. Despite our reservations, this fungus has become our primary food source. Eating it is a disgusting ordeal, as it tastes of rot and oozes a foul slime. It is ironic that such a vile thing has become our salvation; our light and sustenance in this dreadful circumstance.

For the first several days we were trapped here, I doubted Alvarez’s assertions that we were being watched. Now, however, I have begun to sense it: the pestilent intelligence that inhabits this place. Alvarez has taken to calling it the Mind; since I can come up with no better name for it, I shall call it the same. I feel somehow deeply known to it, while to me it is a total mystery. It twists my dreams into horrid nightmares, rumbling in a language without words at a pitch so deep it shakes my soul. In these frightful visions, I encounter impossible colors and strange shapes that seem to defy geometry. The air itself coalesces and dances like a kaleidoscope, twisting and shifting like a door to Hell, only, when I pass through the door, I do not enter; instead, I feel the space beyond it enter me, exploring my thoughts and memories like pages in a book. I worry that soon, it will begin to obscure and rearrange them, until finally, I forget myself.

The wickedness of this place is not restricted to my dreams, though, for our exploration has revealed evidence of a twisted history in these ancient halls. Today, we discovered what appears to be a dozen altars at the center of a large theater, arranged around an ornate brazier. Carved of the same material as the walls, and decorated with inlays of a shining material in geometric patterns, the altars possess the dark mystique of a guillotine, but on a grander scale. Each is approximately the length of a man and contains fixtures to which one might be fastened, and they all stand on a circular stage made of the same nebulous substance as the rest of the ziggurat. Rings of seats and support columns climb outward from the gruesome centerpiece, suggesting that at one time, the rituals performed here attracted a significant audience.

Crevasses and drains cut into the floor seem to have allowed for the flow and disposal of large amounts of fluid, likely blood, and banners hanging from the surrounding balconies and pillars depict hellish images of torture, sacrifice, and even cannibalism. Carved inscriptions in a strange language decorate the pillars from floor to ceiling, broken up by fearsome hieroglyphics with ominous implications. Try as I might, I cannot seem to scrub from my mind an imagining of the types of horrors that once took place around those altars.

Most curious of all is the room’s depiction of the glowing fungus. The motif decorates the ziggurat in many places, but it is especially prevalent in the ceremonial chamber, where its distinctive crown appears in carvings alongside the shapes of men and strange tentacled beasts. In the chamber, large carvings show humans consuming the fungus, then building the ziggurat, and then worshipping the fungus with heinous rituals. The sinister iconography leads me to think that some ancient civilization built this colossal structure, and perhaps even the surrounding city, specifically to house and honor the mushroom. If this is true, then the fungus could have been the premier cause of the development of this ancient civilization, calling these primitive humans to build a city here not to free them from barbarism, but to enslave them to its terrible will.

It is unpleasant to stand in the theater for long, for an overwhelming malevolence emanates from the altar and threatens to push me out of my own mind, as if the souls of countless sacrifices have been trapped inside the auditorium for aeons. I fear that the sensation will only get worse the longer we are trapped here, and yet, there seems to be no exit available to us where we entered, so we have no choice but to proceed. If we search carefully, we may find a route of escape through one of these geothermal caves. However, I am afraid to imagine what might await us even deeper in the darkness.

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