The Angels Crypt (a short story)
"Come on guys, don't leave me here!" I screeched like a banshee.
But I did not prevail over my so-called 'friends', who where now clattering noisily up the muddy steps back to civilisation and fresh air, and leaving the cold iron gate to the underground crypt locked, with me inside. After I heard the last drunken footstep, there was silence.
Minutes passed, but it felt like hours, and I still couldn't bear to look at my surroundings. I just let my pupils stare into the darkness. If I turned on my torch, which felt slippery in my sweaty palms, I might see rotting corpses, or skeletons, or worse. I wish I had never agreed to come out to the Swiss Kleintal Mennonite graveyard with my traitor friends, but I rhetorically asked myself "I don't want to look like a sissy, do I?" and I ended up slouching around the graveyard whilst my friends got drunk on a stolen bottle of vodka. At midnight- which was hours past my curfew - Greg suggested that we all take a stroll down to the crypt under the church, which was supposed to be haunted by the soldiers who died during World War 1. Stupidly, I agreed because I didn't want to be left alone in the creepy graveyard. And now I am here because my friends betrayed me. I have never felt so ill-tempered, tears where now trickling slowly down my left cheek. I mean, I know they weren't the nicest of people, but I thought that I could trust them.
Without warning, I was abruptly brought out of my reverie when a gust of cold wind blew fiercely through the crypt, nearly sweeping me off my feet with a loud whooshing sound that tangled my already messy hair around my face. Terror swept through my whole body, but I stood my ground. If I was going to find a way out of here, I would need to stay as calm as possible, and having my eyesight would be useful. Holding a shaking hand out in front of me, I switched on the torch and let the light flood through the crypt.
It was like being in one of those scary sceneries in a horror movie. I was wobbling on shaky legs in a circular dingy room that had a low ceiling, which was dripping some dark brown substance in a steady rhythm. Each drop brought another shot of adrenalin into my bloodstream. The walls had some reddish-brown filth on it that looked very similar to blood, and this comparison made my whole body tremble. There were seven narrow tunnels that led off in different directions from the room, and each tunnel cast suspicious looking shadows in different directions. On the bright side, there wasn't any vulgar, rotting corpse to disgust me. In fact, there wasn't any yellowing skeleton bone either, which surprised me thoroughly. The panic subsided ever so slightly, but I still feared that a zombie or ghost would come sweeping into the room at any moment. The ground underneath me felt damp and squishy and had the texture of quick sand. My feet where already sinking a few millimetres into the ground. Ice cold air was smothering me like the freezing snow that we get here every winter in Switzerland. But why was it so cold? It is the middle of summer and we are currently having the hottest heat wave that we've had in thirteen years. Logical reasons where popping in and out of my head to explain the unfathomable coldness, but each reason grew more unlikely as I went down the list.
Cautiously, I crept to the tunnel that was nearest to me. I don't know why I crept, I guess I was worried that someone might hear me, but I have no idea who else would want to be down in this filthy place. Maybe a zombie ... or a ghost ... I shone my torch down the tunnel, but saw nothing except a long, twisty path with sharp rocks casually strewn around. I shone my torch through the six other tunnels but they all looked the same. But then I came back to the tunnel I had started at, and something was different about it. There was a faint, hazy golden glow at the end of the tunnel. My body was torn between relief that it may show a way out of this dismal place, and terror that the light might not be as safe as it appears to be. Why hadn't I noticed the light before? I had been staring down that tunnel only seconds before. Surely I would have noticed the golden light, which seemed to pulse lighter and lighter like a steady heart beat. Somehow, I felt attracted to the light. I wanted to see what was down the tunnel. No, I had to see what was down there. But what if something wicked awaited me at the end?
