"What the hell?" Jones cries, furiously trying to force the lighthouse door open. Someone has locked him inside! There are words hastily written on the door in red crayon: 'You're not ready yet,'
He scans the small circular floor area. Something catches his eye, so he shines his pocket torch light upon it. A segment of the wall is coloured differently from the rest. Prodding it with his finger, it feels soft, like recently laid cement. No wait, it almost feels…. fleshy.
He kicks it with force and it indeed, tears like organic matter, plunging his foot into a viscous, tar like substance. The smell makes him gag.
Knowing there is no other way out of this tower, he gingerly tears the unknown matter away until there is a hole big enough to fit through. Covering his mouth with one hand, he uses the other to flash the beam into the uncharted tunnel. It proves fruitless, the black gunk blocking all chance of seeing anything.
"Hello?" he calls.
He knew that one wouldn't bring results. Only one thing for it, it seems.
"Look for another way," he mutters, losing his nerve.
He places one foot on the spiral staircase before the whispering stops him in his tracks. A voice emanates from the hole, offering no concrete words but instead, some form of chanting. It's calling out to him.
He shakes his head and ignores it, going up one more step. No good! His curiosity begins to peak. What's down there? Certain death, maybe? The tunnel is tiny; no large man would fit down it. Would he become trapped and swallowed alive by the glutinous substance caked all over the walls?
Enough thinking, time for action. He dashes, all thoughts dispelled, towards the hole, diving into the rough, fleshy passageway like an Olympic swimmer into water.
His sight is useless in this darkness, but he feels movement, and speedy movement at that. His body is sliding, nearly plummeting at this gradient, into the unknown. The voice soothes his passage. It reminds him of his sister.
Momentary sight is again engulfed by deep blur. He has fallen into water, and he thrashes about as it tickles his skin. It smells awful, like toxic waste, like death.
Pushing himself up to the surface, his eyes finally have use. He appears to be in a swimming bath. Corpses float on the surface, ten of them at least.
Jones cringes at the morbid sight.
Using the rusted metal ladder, he pulls himself onto his feet and allows the torrents of sewage-laden liquid drain out of his clothes. He rubs his eyes clean and words scribed on the wall in fluorescent colouring jump out at him.
'You have been purged,'
A flick of the eye below this odd statement, there is another word, this one written with the odd black tar like substance. It says: 'physically'
"You have been purged… physically?" Jones muses.
The room around him could be identified as a normal swimming bath, had it been cleaned once or twice over the last fifty years and not riddled with corpses. The sight, though terrible to the extreme, was becoming commonplace in this wretched town. He was more concerned that one of the dead would soon shoot into life in an attempt to murder him. He fingers the gun seated in its holster. It was dripping wet, just like the rest of him. For the time being, the firearm would be out of service.
Tiles on the floor, once chequered black and white, were now festering with mould, as was the inside of the pool itself. The whole room, presumably a gleaming bright white in its day, had long ago succumbed to a gloomy shade of brown. Whatever this place was, it was decommissioned some time ago.
His thankfully waterproof torchlight flickers back on. The CB radio hanging from his belt crackles slightly.
The polluted water reeks, so he makes towards a clearly marked exit. Trying to escape the smell would prove pointless, knowing full well he's drenched in this poison. He has to fight the urge to throw up.
Outside of the room is hardly any different, the first thing that greets him a slimy corpse hanging upside down in a metal cage. It appears to have been wrapped in bandages, stained strips in puss coloured yellow. Shining his light down the corridor, he notices that these unfortunate souls decorate the whole entire stretch of the wall, twenty of them at least. His spit thickens as his spirit wavers. This place has something terrible in store, he can feel it in his bones.
From down below, a loud metallic clank on ceramic stone sounds out, followed by a deep, protracted moan. To Jones, the expression sounds almost sexual. The CB radio sputters out a frequency, which dies down within seconds.
He passes by the ornamental dead until he finds himself staring at rusty door with an alphabetic combination lock binding it shut.
"The key to your mind," Jones muses, as he picks the words from below the doorknob.
What does that mean? There are no further clues in the immediate area.
A frequency from CB radio spikes again, this time violently, the pained electronic screech creeping through the narrow corridor.
"What the hell is wrong with this thing?"
He assumes water has damaged the device, so he removes the battery in an attempt to disable it entirely. The CB's speaker does not die down, even with its power source removed.
His attention is quickly stolen by a flash on the ceiling, a slight twinkle in the corner of his eye. Something is moving above him. He gingerly passes under, not for one moment removing his eyes from the darkness up top.
And then, it descends behind him, a revolting mess of flesh and metal.
It presents itself as an overgrown, organic potato sack, fat literally oozing out of various torn orifices about its form. From stumps were fleshy appendages should sprout, long metal blades extrude as an alternative. These sharpened limbs revolve in spiral movement, a metal roll-cage which threatens to slice Jones' skin to ribbons.
Where rusted iron fuses loosely with flesh, the skin simmers and bubbles, thousands of darkened veins working hard to keep blood flowing to overworked areas.
To accompany its heinous appearance, the ungodly sound of gnawing metal generates from an unknown location on its body. By all intents and purposes, this dreadful creature surely runs the risk of tearing itself apart but Jones can't stand here and wait for that to happen. It'll take him down before that happens. Sparks fly around the corridor as it pulls itself along the walls and floor, approaching him with haste. Jones throws himself back through the doorway and again finds himself in the swimming pool area.
Sliding on its side, the dreadful fiend squeezes awkwardly through the open door, before clambering onto two metal extremities. Like a tortured spider at the mercy of a sadistic child, it struggles to keep balance on what limbs it has. Jones notices a third limb, no… not an arm or leg but a razor-sharp shaft akin to the stinger of a bee. It thrashes about eagerly, gelatinous venom excreting from a small hole on the tip.
It begins to charge, so Jones throws himself back into the pool, hoping the creature will be scared of the liquid. As he looks upwards, his hope is expelled, the blades tearing through the surface, losing little speed against the resistance of the water.
Jones swims along the bottom, darting left at right to avoid the hellish knives that thrash past him. The corpses floating on the surface are torn to asunder by the unrelenting blades, leaving behind a rotten cloud of dark fluid before being discarded like rag dolls. Unfortunately for Jones, the creature recognises the difference between dead and living flesh.
He manages the reach the poolside ladder and quickly pulls himself out. Water whips across the room as the creature skims along the surface. It notices his evasion and adjusts its trajectory, climbing awkwardly out of the pool, taking up an attacking position in front of Jones.
Somewhat recklessly, the Detective darts towards the creature and launches himself into a streamlined manoeuvre, sliding under the creature's body. Bamboozled by the man's movements, the repulsive organism tries to spin around but only succeeds in losing its balance entirely, crashing down onto tiled ground. Jones capitalises on the opportunity, darting towards the exit.
Before long, the sickening sound of gnawing metal rises again and the creature is upon him once more. Almost in slow motion, he reaches the other side of the wooden door and slams it shut behind him. No, it won't shut, not with the monsters limb trapped between door and frame.
The ghastly leg begins to swell and pulsate, blood building up under the pressure. The creature buries its free leg into the wooden door, piercing right through, nearly taking Jones' eye out. He leans away, pulling harder and harder on the door-handle. The weak organic connections of the monster's joints threaten to split apart completely under the rising pressure. With one final effort, the door slams shut and the hazardous appendage tears from its owner, followed by a rupture of inky lifeblood.
Jones' back slams against metal cage hanging from the wall. He stands there frozen as he listens to the creature wail and moan, desperately seeking its severed limb. It tries to pull its remaining leg away from the door, but it's stuck firmly in the wood.
After thrashing about madly for a few moments, it eventually gives in, choosing instead to sit and whimper pathetically. From behind the door, Jones can feel its pain, like an injured child reaching out for its mother. He closes his eyes and breathes a deep sigh of relief.
"There is no time for rest!" a male voice calls out.
The CB radio crackles, his eyes flash open and he knows something is there. He studies the still twitching limb on the floor and wonders if the blade can be used as a weapon. There's no time. All he can do is flinch as a knife flashes across his neck and…
… Something feels wet.