Have you ever wondered about things you’ve lost? That toy car you remember having as a kid. That ring you had, tight on your finger as you dove into the sea, but gone when you got out. That braided phone charger, your middle-school homework book, I could go on.
No need to answer. Everyone’s lost something, at some point, and never found it again. Their stories, without conclusion.
Most of us simply forget. We accept the fact that these things are lost, and quickly adapt to life without them. Just think… what a wealth to be found if one were able to recover what is lost.
Don’t be fooled, though - this isn’t inane conjecture. For the wanting man, there is indeed a way to stick your hand into the lucky dip, and wrench something back into existence, all for yourself. To keep.
To bind you.
As far as I can tell, there’s no one strict name for this ritual. Call it whatever you want - perhaps its true name has, too, been lost. The place you’ll be opening a gateway to, however, I’ve heard referred to mostly as the Cellar. Or the Basement, the Crypt, but at the end of the day, these are just labels, and aren’t conducive to getting what you want. What matters is that it’s the mausoleum of all things lost. If Hell is the absence of the light of God, then the Cellar is bereft of the light of reality itself - for what is lost, may as well not exist.
The constraints of our universe hold little sway there, and become as fluid as the ocean.
Before I get to the steps you’ll be following, and the risks posed to your wellbeing, it’s best to learn exactly what you’re going to need. Do NOT skip out on any of the following items:
You’ll also need to find a rift. Now, don’t overthink this. You don’t need to go to the grand canyon, and you don’t need to find a portal - you’ll already be making one, in essence. All that matters is that you’re able to pour wax into it: a crack, a split, hell, you could use a pothole if you’d like. Not recommended, though. No point in performing the ritual if you get turned into pate by a garbage truck halfway through.
And as these things always go, try to be somewhere away from the noise. No need for interruptions. In any case, the Gatekeeper will demand your full attention - you don’t want to lose in his game. I’ve seen what happens to those who do, and trust me, you’re better off slitting your neck on the spot.
One more thing before I teach you how to go rooting around in the Cellar: even with a perfectly executed ritual, risk still remains. In the Cellar, rules of reality are fluid, broken and rewritten every second, which you’ll remember from earlier if you have an attention span wider than the hairs on your head - if not, you shouldn’t be here at all.
When lost things are left to fester down there, they may serve as the base for a random, chaos-borne physical (or metaphysical) property that doesn’t exist up here. To avoid clunky lingo, you can think of them as curses. Cultures of conceptual mold and algae that cling fast to their host.
Yes, curses. Don’t let that word scare you away - a curse can just as easily be a blessing, depending on whose hands it falls into. You might retrieve a jar that perpetually rains tiny diamonds from no apparent source, or a teddy bear that imbues you with superhuman levels of confidence. But, you could also get a compass that kills any living creature on the direct opposite side of the Earth from you, or a fog machine that you can’t turn off, and drains your blood to vaporize into mist, regardless of where you are.
Because you are bound to it.
Now let’s get to the steps:
First, find an isolated location and a hole or crack in the ground. Place the two linked objects on the left side of the hole, and if you’ve brought an heirloom of a dead loved one, place it on the right. You’ll need enough wax to melt and pour to fill the cavity you’ve chosen. Bringing a portable stove or a blowtorch is ideal to melt a large quantity of wax at once. Pour the wax into the hole, and sprinkle it with the tears of grief you’ve obtained while it’s still fluid. If the wax sets before you can add the tears, the ritual is over. Allow the wax to cool until malleable, then form an imprint with your stamping object of choice, like a signet ring.
You can take a break here while you wait for the second sigil to appear beside your imprint. Once it has fully formed, drive the chisel into it with the hammer, as deep as you can. When you feel it can’t be pushed any further, twist the chisel in place. You should hear a distinct sound - really, you can’t miss it. The gate is now unlocked and will open.
If you’re wondering why I’m sharing this information, the answer is simple. The more seekers, the more you and I stand to gain. And for those compelled to search for what they’ve lost can anyone hope to stop them? Might as well make sure they’re well-informed, so I’ve chosen to document my last dive into the Cellar.
I chose an abandoned building on the outskirts of town where I was certain no one would interrupt. The moment I completed the ritual, a miasma began to spread and unfold from the cracked floor, and in the blink of an eye I was plunged into the depths. The first thing to greet me was the Gatekeeper.
Though his appearance can change, he most commonly takes the form of a decrepit old man covered in sores and scabs. His robes might’ve once been regal but now they were tattered and filthy. He wore a rusted battered crown and carved into his forehead, weeping and scarified was the word “KING.”
You cannot enter or leave the Cellar without a wager and challenge. You get to set some parameters for the challenge, so play to your strengths. If you’re smart, you can ask for a game of riddles or logic; if you’re athletic, you can ask for a test of strength or stamina. I always chose a game of hide and seek where I had to avoid capture for a period of time set by the Gatekeeper. I was good at it, and had always emerged from the Cellar unscathed.
As for the wager, what you stand to lose can’t be trivial. Could be your ability to walk, a loved one, even your life… Now before him, as I had done every time, I wagered the thing I value most. With empty eyes and a ravenous smile, he let me pass.
The Cellar always looks different and varies from person to person; you might find yourself in an ancient library stretching into infinity, every bookshelf lined with items long lost, or in an endless prairie with artifacts scattered about at random. Maybe it’s a metaphysical space, partly shaped by your mind, I don’t know. Just a theory. This time it was a dingy thrift store consisting of narrow corridors that wound and twisted around themselves to create a multi-story tangle of shelves, junk piles, and showrooms of old furniture. The air was rank, each inhale an acrid sting, and the lighting was dim orange.
A draft snaked its way through me, sinking bitter cold fangs into my bones, being here was a small agony unto itself. But the endless possibilities of what I might find drove me forward. I rummaged through some piles of lost things and found the usuals. A metric ton of socks, countless kitchen utensils, old photos, and anything else you can think of.
I’ve found ancient lost tomes and scrolls if you care to parse lost knowledge and mysticism. The only caveat is that they’re all in long-dead languages. Relics and archaeological treasures are common too but I’ve never had any interest in them. Then there are the cursed objects, the ones almost all seek. You know when you’ve found one, the air is poisoned with a rancid odor and malice radiates outwards from them. Holding one in your hand should feel wrong, and deeply unsettling. Your blood runs cold, your chest tightens and your stomach twists itself into knots. You’ll ask yourself what the hell you’re doing here and what this thing is capable of.
All I can say is if you choose to pocket a cursed item you need to be incredibly cautious and aware from that moment forward because God knows what it can do. They’re unpredictable so carrying one around for an extended amount of time is a gamble and here time is inconstant and ever-shifting.
The one I found on this trip was a silver pendant with a black gemstone at its center. I snatched it and quickly and cautiously snaked around an aisle toward a new room. That’s the trick, never linger too long and always be on the move. There are things here… I don’t know what they are. Maybe they’re searching too or maybe they’re part of the lost. But they’re never friendly, so try not to spend too long in any one area, five minutes maximum and move on.
Looping back around to a room to search again is improbable since this realm is prone to shifting and warping around. Which is why multiple trips are common amongst those who delve. I want to say it gets easier every time but consistently something new reveals itself to me, always malicious.
This time, winding around a corridor into a larger chamber, it was a black room. As in the light here was negative, inverting every color. My eyes strained and my head thrummed at the sight so I pivoted around to leave and find another way through. But things never go to plan in this place.
I froze at the threshold, pivoted to look behind me and glimpsed it for a mere moment as it ducked behind an alabaster wall. Tendrils like wisps of black smoke coiled out of sight. Stalker. I’d rather face the negative room and its unknown than an abyssal stalker and so I turned back around and stepped into the anti-light.
The darkstone pendant shone with a warm, greenish-yellow light in the black room, like a luminescent moss. Examining it more closely as I turned it in my shaking hand, a surge of recognition hit me of a sudden: a New England beach town, my first love. Mariel.
We’d decided to take a trip there for a few days in fall during college, and she’d given it to me as a memento of our first trip together. A small hunk of some glassy, black material, probably onyx or obsidian, with a thin, red fissure running through it, all hung on a delicate silver chain, as tenuous as love itself. A heart had been carved or chipped into the black stone, the red stripe coursing through its center.
It had gotten misplaced some months later in our apartment, the loss sparking our first row. First of many, truth be told. In my mind, this fight was linked to our inevitable (and, to my mind - wholly avoidable) breakup. But, the bond we shared, Mariel and I, had been broken. What happened to her after we split was not something I could let my mind delve into - too much to do right now to let that distract me, and fear made me stay on task in this unnatural place.
If lost items took on an infectious, almost fungal nature here in this moldy place of living nightmares…what would happen if I moved deeper? Could it be reversed? Could the depraved, parasitic nature of the lost things become…a thing of hope? Or reunion? I dare not wish for such a thing. Mariel was lost to me and it was folly to think she should ever become mine once again. For if she did, would she be the same as I once knew her, pale and kind, sweet as a bud in spring? Or would the trickery and deception of this dank place transmogrify her into something inhuman? I didn’t have the time, or the wits, to think on it further,
I pocketed the charm and listened for the spectral being I had seen in the alabaster room. Was this being the Gatekeeper I had heard of when I first learned of how to unseal and delve into this forbidden place? Or was it something worse, and far more defiled, that dwelled below the Cellar?
Though I may have heard a faint scraping sound, no lumbering beast appeared, nothing slouched towards Bethlehem to be born, so I crept onward on tremulous legs. As I left the black room, I noticed a small group of moths flying away from it on dusty wings. It was that dark.
The next room was again lined with shelves, brick walls dancing with candle light. The shelves sagged with row upon row of dusty books, ornate sketches of unholy words in rolls, small jade figurines, dozens or hundreds of other items. The light in here was of the same quality as the obsidian pendant gave off in the black room; warm, slightly yellow, a shade of sickly green mixed in. This room in the old shop smelled of candlesmoke and old paper - a smell I had always loved, since my family ran a small bookstore in Virginia. Alongside this familiar smell was one of corruption, acidic rot, a foul sense of loneliness and abandonment. I think the fact that the Cellar plucks relevant ideas from your life to construct its space was what made it form this room for me, but it added its own hint of malice alongside it.
As I explored this new space, I was acutely aware of a sudden drop in temperature and my skin broke out in a rash of goosebumps, my armhair standing erect. Nothing moved in the shadows, but I was aware that I was once more not alone, and the feeling unnerved me. A soft sweeping sound, fabric moving against rough brick, perhaps, seemed to emanate maliciously from behind me. I glimpsed another of those smoky tendrils as it slowly crawled across the floor and curled around my ankles, like an evil cat cozying up to you in a cursed bodega.
The brick room seemed to go only up - the short hallway I was in ended in another brick wall, two wrought-iron sconces holding dripping, flickering candles. The ceiling seemed impossibly far away, disappearing into a foul gray mist hundreds of feet up; no escape there. I scoured the shelves for anything that might aid me in evading the cursed definitely-not-a-bodega-cat creature.
The sibilant sound intensified slightly behind me, and more dark, malevolent spirals appeared on the floor. I rifled through the items on the shelves hurriedly; a hunk of greenish glass, cracked and crazed, that seemed to glow subtly in the dimly-lit room; a cloth child’s doll, string hanging where the button-eyes had been plucked out, rough black thread sewing the red gash of a mouth shut. The last one made my bowels shake with fear, though I could not have confessed why, even if I was held at knifepoint.
The temperature dropped a few more degrees and a tremulous shiver ran through me. As I sifted through the items on the rough, wooden shelves, my shaking hand closed on something even colder than the room itself; a strange chrome hammer with a very small head and a long handle, the word FREEMAN stamped on it. Sitting next to it was a long, sharp metal object, ending in a small, flat blade with a mean edge. It was about the size of a standard household screwdriver, but this was nothing you’d ever find in your old man’s toolbox, even if he did handiwork in Hell. Danvers State Mental Hospital: Ward 9 had been etched into the haft of the object.
A thought began to form in the back of my mind.
What if I…
No, I countered (myself) - It won’t work - it’s utter madness.
My reveries were interrupted by an intensification of the sound behind me and a thickening of the black fog, now swirling around my knees. My fear swelled and deepened.
Moving quickly, I grabbed the small hammer and screwdriver-looking object. I approached the brick wall, the dark, swirling shapes now seeming to tug at me. My legs felt the way they do in bad dreams, as if walking through switchgrass or wading in deep water. I reached up for one of the candles, lifted it out of the sconce with trembling hands and leaned in to examine the wall.
*There. *
A small fissure in the mortar between bricks. The bricks on either side of the crack stuck out just enough to make a small shelf. The rift was no larger than a pencil, but it would have to do.
Now, I know there are rules here in the Cellar, and I know I don’t have all the requisite items with me. But, perhaps, I had enough of them. Perhaps the fact that everything… changes down here, that even this place doesn’t follow its own rules, might let me bend whatever guidelines there were just enough that I could pull it off.
A thought came to me in this dank and mildewed place, filling me with a new species of fear: what lies beyond the Cellar?
I quickly separated the black pendant from the silver chain and hung the chain to the right of the crack. The rough, uneven bricks provided enough purchase that the tiny chain could be suspended, although the grip was tenuous at best. (Much like my current grip on reality, I thought). The pendant itself would have to serve as the seal.
Another quick scan of the shelves turned up nothing that could be described as anything linked. No chains, no cufflinks, no…
Hold up.
I quickly snapped two links from the silver pendant chain and held them in my shaking palm. In all my years of performing the ritual, I had never seen anything so small, so pathetic. But, it was all I had. I put them on a wee outcropping of brick to the left of the crack, carefully so as not to drop them, although my quivering hands meant that I had to try three times before they settled into their place. They looked as small and as fragile as two hummingbird eggs.
The black smoke twisted and grabbed around my waist as I tipped the candle and dripped the wax into the small void between bricks. I completed the next steps of the ritual and stepped back.
And waited.
Nothing happened.
I don’t know if my half-assed version of the ritual didn’t work once you were already in the Cellar. Perhaps the linked items didn’t work, or the seal was wrong. Of if my thinking itself was wrong and the rules that applied in the world also applied down here, but I didn’t have time to find out.
Whatever had been stalking me had just turned the corner, leaving me trapped in the brick-lined hallway as the black smoke seemed to turn solid and root me to the floor.
I braced for the impact I knew was coming any second now. With the hammer in one hand, and that screwdriver thing in the other, I kept my eyes peeled on the fog. I was in flight or fight mode, and the flight option had been taken from me.
The scraping I’d heard earlier paled in comparison to what I was hearing now. The sound of the scraping was intensified, and beneath it was another sound entirely. It was a sound I’d only ever heard in movies, all squishy and fleshy. The kind of thing a foley artist would get from peeling off chunks of raw meat and rubbing them together vigorously.
Next came the smell, all toxic and rotten. It made my eyes burn and water, clouding my vision. It burned my nose and throat, leaving a strange acidic taste in my mouth. Fear gripped my spine. Whatever this thing was had more or less disabled me and I hadn’t even seen it yet!
Just as that thought settled in my brain, it slowly emerged from the fog before me. No description I can provide here will truly do it justice, though I’ll do my best.
It was all tea leaves and Rorschach to me. Shapes that should make sense to my brain, but for whatever reason weren’t. Its structure was somewhere between melted wax and slime, so even if some semblance of shape was briefly recognizable it was always shifting.
The only thing that made sense was its mouth, as far as enormous rotting maws full of goo dripping razors made sense anyway. Unable to focus on the rest of its face, that’s what I stared at.
So, there I stood, unable to move and facing my impending doom. In that moment, I did what any sane person would do in that situation…I pissed myself. Most of it was from fear, but there was a tiny little voice on my head that insisted it was in defiance. If it was going to eat me, the least I could do was make myself smell and taste less appealing.
It scraped and oozed its way ever closer, until it was standing directly in front of me. It places ruined and vaguely hand-shaped things on my shoulders and leaned in. The tea leaves and Rorschach shifted again, this time creating some semblance of a face as its structure hardened.
Two endless pits appeared where eyes would have been in a normal face. From them seeped the same greenish-yellow light I’d seen earlier. Two slits appeared below them as it leaned in to sniff me.
Suddenly, my senses returned to me, I raised the hammer and… I’m going to start calling this thing a pick now. Typing the words screwdriver thing just isn’t doing it for me. So, yeah, I raised the hammer and the pick as it leaned in. I quickly positioned the pick in the center of its forehead and slammed the hammer down on the flat edge of it, driving that pick right into the creature’s brain.
With the lobotomy achievement unlocked, I took a moment to breathe. I’d done it! I’d…made it angry. Its mouth opened wider and a roar ripped from its throat with all the effects of a concussion grenade. My hearing was shot and my brain was acting like I was under water. My feet suddenly came free from the floor and I stumbled backwards and fell onto my ass.
It continued to roar as it moved forward, slime still dripping from the razors in its mouth. My ears were ringing so hard I couldn’t even hear the scrape and squish from earlier. I scooted backwards until my back hit a wall. There was nowhere left to go.
Closer it came, looming over me now. The slime coated my face as I stared up into that roaring maw. I could feel it burning my skin. I lost myself in the endless pools of sickly light as I waited to die.
The hand-like shapes grabbed my ankles and tugged hard as it turned, dragging me behind it. I could feel every crack of the uneven floor as it tore my clothes and scraped my skin. I ditched the hammer, useless without the pick still stuck in the creature’s skull. I was on the lookout for anything I might be able to use when I noticed the pendant and its broken chain. I palmed it, chain and all, as I slid by it.
On we went, it dragged me through the maze of rooms and corridors to some mysterious destination. Some floors were smoother than others, and for those sections I was thankful. My clothing was being quickly reduced to shreds, and if this journey went on much longer I feared the same would happen to my flesh.
I’d seen things that might be useful as we went, but nothing that was within my reach. The creature never stopped, and there was no way to increase my height while in a constant state of movement. I managed to hold the pendant above my head. It glowed much more strongly now, and it illuminated the creature dragging me away. Except, what I saw was not a monster. A frail, naked woman, gripping me with impossible strength. Just before I gave up and closed my eyes, she turned to me, and the fraction of a second my eyes remained open was enough for me to recognise the face that stared back. And good God, it scared my brain blank.
By the time it released its grip on me, we’d just entered an area that emanated pure darkness. With the sheer amount of pain I was in, I almost didn’t realize the pressure around my ankles was disappearing. The floor here was smooth and cold, soothing my aches just enough to sober me, but not enough to take them away.
I stayed that way for a while. It’s impossible to say how long I was laying there in the darkness. My hearing was slowly getting back to being useful, and I neither heard nor felt any sign of the creature’s presence now. Eventually, the adrenaline fled my system and the pain took over completely.
Just as my eyelids began to droop from sheer exhaustion, a bright light flooded the room and nearly blinded me. It shocked me awake and I scrambled to get my legs beneath me. I turned to look around the room on wobbly legs, trying to determine from which direction the danger would come from next.
As my eyes adjusted, the light seemed to dim and become stained with the same tint I’d seen in the creature’s eyes - sickly, sallow green. The first thing I could identify was far above me. Hanging, like a chandelier from a ceiling drenched in shadow, was a black moon. Beams of glowing midnight fanned out from it, revealing that the Cellar’s structural elements were gone. Only one structure stood before me.
A great podium of pockmarked ashen rock, perhaps basalt, rose about three stories high, with a spiraling staircase hewn from it, coiling to the very top. The tower rested on nothing, and a sudden wave of vertigo took me when I noticed chunks and chips from the tower, suspended in motion below it, below where I was standing, as if God had pressed pause at the moment of its ruin and forgotten to press play again.
Placed on the flat peak of the tower, sunworn with most of its spindles either snapped or missing, was a chair. Maybe oak, but it was too far gone to tell. And atop that, resting in the chair as if it were a notice of reservation, I saw a battered crown. A crown better fit for melting down than to be worn with any dignity. And yet, past the ugly skin of it, I sensed temptation, so deep and eternal it inspired an almost primal sense of want - no, better yet, need. I had to have it, without being sure why.
On the periphery of this void space, I detected movement. Figures wreathed in dark, shifting and shuddering. I had no fear, I simply ignored them and approached the bottom of the stairs, entranced.
A few steps, and I hissed in pain. My palm burned. The pendant, yes, I’d managed to grab it while being ferried to this place. Now, in the presence of the black moon above, it radiated both light and searing heat. I threaded the broken chain through the loop affixed to the pendant and held it up in front of me.
Like an oil lantern, I thought.
The light… it had a special quality about it. I remembered how it illuminated the creature’s face, and–
My skin flushed. No, that wasn’t real. A trick of the mind, of the light in the Cellar. That’s all. That reasoning was made ever more flimsy when I shone the pendant on the tower. It looked different in the light. At first I was unable to distinguish what stood before me, so I took a few steps back.
A skeleton. Two skeletons, in fact, entangled in death. The first and largest of the two appeared to be that of an enormous, winged humanoid, an outstretched hand serving as the chair in which the crown was nestled. The second was that of an equally massive serpent, coiled around the first skeleton, its head trapped beneath the winged humanoid’s reaching hand.
I hadn’t appreciated the thick silence until it was broken. A voice rang out, saying,
“Is one such as thee so uncaring, or simply aloof?”
Without needing to see its source, I knew exactly who that voice belonged to.
“Nope. Just bored and curious.”
The voice erupted into a dry cackle, and the void moon in the sky pulsed in rhythm. I tore free a hanging shred from my shirt, all ripped up thanks to that creature, and used it to swaddle the pendant, muffling the sight of the two skeletons. Again, I saw a stone tower, and I promptly made my way to the staircase and began to ascend.
I soon reached the top, a plateau that suggested the tower had once been much taller, but at some point, was cleaved apart. I tried not to think of what could have possibly done such a thing, instead turning my attention to the chair.
It was occupied. Sitting in it was a man, facing away from me, wearing that same battered crown. The tattered ribbons of his robes seemed to float, as if underwater, and parted to make way as I rounded the chair to stand in front. The man’s eyes looked so empty. The scars on his forehead spelling the word “KING” wrinkled in a scowl, and those eyes remained unfocused as he spoke again.
“At least you know now.”
“Know what?” I replied.
“That this is all there is. You can go no further. There is nothing beyond this accursed tomb. Regardless, you did something you should not have. Did you come here with a death wish?”
“I…”
The gravity of the situation came crashing down. Here I was, in the Gatekeeper’s domain, utterly helpless to do anything but listen as his voice emerged again like crackling embers, reignited by the wind.
“There, in thine hand. You cannot hide it from me, you know.”
I stuttered, fighting for air. At this, the Gatekeeper’s lips stretched into a cracked and inflamed smile.
“What else? Is this fool dissatisfied with his new plaything?”
“Yeah,” I said, surprised by my own aplomb, “I guess I’m looking for something else. Rest assured, this here pendant is the only thing I’ll be leaving with, physically speaking.”
His smile fell to a smirk, accompanied by a cocked eyebrow.
“And again I ask; art thou without empathy, or simply lacking sense? You would stand there, in front of me, whilst the wager is in my hand, and think nothing of it?”
“But I haven’t lost yet, have I?”
“You were going to leave with… show me.”
I shielded the cloth-wrapped pendant from view.
“Why?”
“I beseech thee, show me!”
Reluctantly, I extricated it from the layers of cloth, and presented the pendant, chain and all. On seeing it, the Gatekeeper devolved back into a rasping chuckle.
“Ah, that. How coincidental!”
“How so?” I asked cautiously.
“Thy wager, maggot. That which you love most, and hold most dear to thy glassen little heart. Do not deceive thyself; you saw her, didst thou not? That pendant is a special relic indeed.”
I knew exactly what he was talking about. That creature…
“I… I saw… I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
Immediately, all the smugness dropped from his face. His sore-ridden skin contorted with anger, lined by warty ridges. He shot up from the chair, a way that didn’t seem to utilize three dimensions. Made my head hurt. It was as if he’d vanished and materialized standing face-to-face with me. He spoke in a growl of controlled wrath.
“Oh? Hast thine eyes become foggy? Then let it be made clear: last time, I let you believe you won. You did not. Thus, the wager for this visit - being the same one you’ve used every time - was, how to put it… expired. What– who you love most. Well, loved most.”
The Gatekeeper threw his head back and snorted. The very thing I hadn’t wanted to accept crawled down my throat and settled in my stomach, heavy as molten lead, and shrouding my head in a contradictory haze of confused clarity. Then, the Gatekeeper made my fears into reality.
“Oh Mariel! Be a dear and come up for tea.”
Out there in the shadows, one of the shifting figures changed. It crept into the light, became more real somehow. I didn’t turn to look. I couldn’t. Whether it was from some occult force or sheer terror, my muscles wouldn’t budge an inch.
But I could hear it. Wet, frictional, and strangely manufactured, a sound hailing an overpowering stink, growing stronger with every encroaching step, mustard gas, rotten eggs. My eyes began to water from the stench.
My arm rose up with a mind of its own, directing the pendant towards the top of the stairs. Black moonlight burned darker still to resonate with it, invigorating it, and bathing the newly emerged figure in light. For a moment, a fraction of a second, it was all Rorschach and swirling tea leaves again. Teeth like stalactites dripped with secretions below a pair of deep, glowing pits.
The creature entered the light, and stopped.
She looked so, so unhappy. Standing there, naked and withered, all her hair, gone. Her teeth too, leaving behind rotten, puffy gums. Only one eye had been plucked out - not because of any mercy, no. It was more like a punchline. A perverted joke. But one eye was all she needed to convey a kind of anger I’d never seen before. A kind of anger that needed no coal to fuel it. A kind of anger that can never be extinguished. If it weren’t for her emaciated body, she’d have flown into a rampage - and even if she could, no catharsis would ever be enough. She’d have torn me to shreds, she’d have skinned my mother alive in front of me and still it wouldn’t be enough. I barely felt the tears streaming down my cheeks under the scrutiny of that single eye.
Tears right for the ritual, I thought.
I tried to speak, to say anything at all, but my throat was tight shut. Either way, the Gatekeeper was satisfied.
“I may be one to withhold information, but I am no more a liar than you are honest to thyself.”
He paused to gaze at her. At my love. At the thing I valued most, and it really hit me then. The magnitude of what I’d lost. Not just Mariel, but my trust in… everything. Gone.
“Okay, Mariel. That will be plenty from thee.”
With a flick of his wrist, the Gatekeeper sent her tumbling through the air, off the tower, and back into the dark, where she will remain until the stars themselves are lost.
“Worms, the lot of them. They don’t understand the purpose of this place, of why it was made. Of what it houses. It is something demons covet, and that God sent angels seeking for. Do you seek it, sojourner?”
I felt whatever force that held me in place lift from my body, and I wheeled around to face the Gatekeeper again, staring him down with my smoldering indignance. The pendant, as if empathizing, flared, bright as a tungsten filament, more than enough to illuminate the face of the man before me - and his, too, was a facade.
Gone was his giddy rictus, bloated with greed and derision. The eyes now staring deep into my own were dour and heavy - not with wrath, but misery. It made Mariel look quite comfortable by comparison. It was the face of the first to grieve, of one whose eyes have cried themselves dry as salt.
His voice underlined that sentiment. A withered croak that told of ancient ruins lost beneath desert sand and, above all, sounded unequivocally honest.
“I… it is no treasure they seek. Power it is not, nor any blessing of the sort. I have been its keeper for… since… I don’t know. Too long.”
The Gatekeeper laughed, but it was hollow and came out more as a flurry of gasps.
“Do you want to know?”
A cold chill flushed my entire body. I know the right choice would’ve been, “no,” but the only thought running through my mind was, “I’ve come this far.”
So I nodded.
“What could have such value, that God Himself cannot already conjure? Well, in a way, He did create it. But it was an accident. A side-effect, a natural byproduct of the creation of something that lives on to this day, something that continues to exist within all of His children on Earth. It is the shadow of that, and also the relinquishment of it. I speak with you now freed from its grasp - the one you have been speaking with is not me. I do not– cannot control this vessel. I can only observe as it acts on its own.”
“Just tell me!” I yelled, not out of impatience, but mounting terror. The Gatekeeper continued as if he hadn’t heard me.
“ I still don’t understand why it does the things it does. It shouldn’t be doing anything, because it is the anti-will. The shadow of agency, the counterpart that was necessary to be born to allow the freedom of choice, the very same you used to decide to visit this place. I don’t know what that pendant is, but oh, it is good to breathe again. To speak. The ones who covet the anti-will… perhaps I’m too small and insignificant to comprehend their motives. Why, God? Why would you want to abandon yourself? Please, my friend, you have to free me, you–”
I’d heard enough. In one shaky motion I drew back the pendant, and no sooner had I stashed it away than the Gatekeeper leapt at me, all his rage and hunger returned. I understood now. The entity before me was impossible, and yet here it was. The emptiness where a will should be, not only acting by itself, but grabbing me by the throat to pull me in close.
“Answer me! Wilt thou, or wilt thou not?”
I strained to force words past cold fingers tightening around my windpipe.
“W-what? Will I what?”
“DAREST THOU TEST ME!?”
Had some hidden conversation taken place when I was speaking with the Gatekeeper - the real one? Had something been asked of me? I didn’t have time to rationalize, all I knew was my vision was turning black, so I did all I could think of to release myself.
“Yes, okay, yes I will, I–”
With that, he let go, spilling me onto the ground where I clawed at my throat and gasped for air.
“Very well. Thou hast come far, and so I bestow upon thee this gift. Remember, one thing at a time, so I will be taking this. Don’t be greedy.”
He bent down and snatched the pendant, still glowing dimly. Without pause, he straightened, and pointed a finger directly upwards, at the black moon hanging above. On cue, it burst like a popped water balloon, raining a supernova of shadow down on my shivering body. I felt the ground disappear from under my hands. I rose, up and up towards an empty filament, and with one final glance, I saw the Gatekeeper. The power released from the shattered moon reinvigorated the pendant and it shone on his face. That tired, eternally tortured face. It was smiling. His body seemed to decay in time lapse into flakes, flittering away in an unfelt breeze. With the last vestiges of his strength, I heard him whisper something that sounded like,
“Thank… you… from the bottom of my heart…”
A dark tunnel filled with blinking lights - or eyes - and the sensation of something worming its way inside my body.
Then, I was back. Back in the abandoned building on the outskirts of town. I checked myself, no pendant, as I expected. Was the Gatekeeper telling the truth? The anti-will? I didn’t understand. Had I reAlly bEEn givEN THE DEATH OF CHOICE???
STOP THIS I suppose the Gatekeeper must have punished me for breaking the rules, and forced me to leave empty-handed. Yes, that’s it; empty-handed.
Now, most of you reading will have thought by now: why share this experience? How does it provide any significant insight into the ritual itself?
I think it’s as simple as being prepared. Would you go skydiving without seeing some footage beforehand? Would you tempt the wolves, not knowing their predilections? If so, well, fools are still welcome in the Cellar, but it’s more fun when there’s a challenge.
I’m running out of time. If I want to get this out there, it needs to be done now. I’ve inherited such a terrible curse wonderful gift, and what is a game without the gamemaster?
So come on, plunge your hands into the lucky dip, take your pick and GET OUT LET ME OUT go home a little richer. Or perhaps you’ve lost something - in which case, I know just the place to search, so come and take back what is rightfully yours. Or something that isn’t. THIS IS NOT M Serendipity, I say.
I look forward to the fun we are going to have.