PART THREE: OUT OF NOTHING.
Terror has never before consumed me like it does now. Nothing can hide me from its grasp, nothing can hold back the billions of voices of tormented souls that now hammer against the closet door, blistering my brain and eroding my mind. I fear that I have been driven insane, but I cannot be sure. The paths that lead me here are now fogged over with the deepest of despairs.
I write against the soft-wood wall of this tiny janitor's closet which has become in such a quick amount of time my blessed refuge. I know now that death stalks me, and that R'leya was a warning – that fucking word! It will haunt me onwards into blackest oblivions.
Only three hours ago I was overjoyed, my perceived triumph at discovering the tablet hidden away in this accursed museum being all that mattered to me. I had met Charlie in the Museum car-park after hours, as per his over-the-phone instructions, to begin my studies on the ancient tablet. Charlie, a short, pot-bellied man with a small tuft of red hair protruding from his head had fumbled with the keys for several minutes before letting me in and locking the doors behind us so that no one could walk in while we were hard at work and raid the place for treasured antiquities.
I had launched straight into the translating of the tablet. Using R'leya as my source word I began to string together what appeared to be primitive sentences in the strange dialect.
"Pre'lu tfdu et R'leya. Cesi et o tfdu dt R'leya."
This sentence, being the first of my discovery I announced out loud, upon noticing its frequent repetition on the stone. When I began to look deeper into the scratchings I started to notice similarities between these words and known old world languages. The tablet slowly, but surely began to be transformed into an informative piece on some kind of summoning ritual.
"Open (pre'lu) and through (tfdu) the (et) R'leya. The Cesi and through dt R'leya."
I began to believe that R'leya held meaning as a gateway between worlds. Leaving this sentence behind for a time, I focused on further paragraphs (if one could call them such) and to my surprise found them mostly easy to translate.
"Open and through, the cosmics pass, great R'leya.
The bridge connected, and the cosmics come, great R'leya.
Open and through, great R'leya!
Tremble and fear, great R'leya!
We (the first men) locked the way through great R'leya!
May it never be opened.
Through ritual or spell, may it never be opened."
An implosion shook us suddenly! Like all noise and air was to be sucked inside a vortex most damnable. And as soon as this imagining happened upon us, we turned and behold! A colossal portal hovered between us in the air, its surface shimmered like translucent glue, and a great lurking fear twisted and curled out from the thing.
My companion and I, in shock stood lost in its gaze, until the unmentionable and unholy occurred. I can scarcely think of it for long, as it causes a nervous panic to override me and I must remain quiet in this closet. Materializing out of nothing like a demon-spawn birthed from the womb of hellish origin, came a hand all gnarled and clawed, as a creature unknown to mankind began to pass through into our dimension.
A great terror over took me, screaming I turned and ran from the hand that was pushing through great R'leya. As I ran, I heard the blood-curdling scream of my companion behind me and the sickening crunch of murder and death at the hands of the thing.
I had no other motive at that time other than to escape. Pursued through the darkness of the Museum, I ran, blubbering with the kind of child-like fear that causes one to slobber and snot all over their knuckles, jammed firmly in their mouths.
Reaching the front door, I grabbed at the handle only to remember in heart-sinking horror that the doors were locked, and the keys upon Charlie's person. Turning frantically, I decided to hide best I could from the being. And here I find myself.
I must recount my horrific tale, if only to warn those that find my corpse, that the gateway has been opened! Great R'leya stirs once again. And it was me who unlocked it. It was me who held the key. Me. Not them. Me. Oh God, that it could have been someone else's error. But I am the one. I hear the creature nearing me, it moves through the room with the sound of a sickly wet slap of flesh against stone. Its presence is palpable and I realize it has caused me to urinate in my pants.
The closet door creaks as something grips its handle, and a dim gloom drifts into my cubby hole, and the hand! Oh God! Its hand! Its hand!
