I read through her diary again and again, now taking my wife's words about the monsters she spoke of as a more deliberate and real concept. She'd detailed them living in the closet and I finally knew what she really meant. Alice mentioned in her diary that it was hell, but this conclusion did not seem to satisfy her. It was another world, but not so far removed from our own. It was somewhere in between. It sounds insane, but she said that our world was like a scab over a wound and if someone were brave enough to pick at that scab, they'd find what was underneath. I still don't know what that means.

What I did know is that she was down there somewhere, and I was going back. Just thinking of that man's face and his wagon of gore made me queasy; I kept the overwhelming makeup of the world down there far from my mind to not be enveloped in its grotesque imagery.

I gathered up an old backpack that I once used for hiking. From back when I used to do stuff like that. I packed four bottles of water, two flashlights with backup batteries, jerky and chips, matches, a pocketknife, and an aluminum baseball bat. I wished I owned a gun, but I didn't. Besides, my love was down there, within the mechanisms of a nefarious creation.

Unlocking the closet door in her office, I sat in the floor and stared at the spot where the hole would appear if I looked at it exactly right. I must have looked funny, staring into the solid boards of the floor of the closet for what felt like an hour, shifting in my sitting position every so often and waiting for it to show. I heard the echo of a massive chamber before I saw the hole appear. I heard a wet dripping sound and then I saw the hole. It didn't open like a mouth. One moment it wasn't there and then it just was. I shimmied up to the edge of the hole as though I was trying to peer off the edge of a tall building. I wanted to get a good look at the entrance. I wanted to make sure there wasn't any creature lurking for me.

There wasn't. I clicked on my flashlight and shone it into the opening. The blackness swallowed it, but it still felt better than using the light on my phone. After taking a few heaving breaths and steeling my nerves, I hunkered down and began moving down the ladder.

As I moved, I had to focus my attention on the ladder rungs in front of me. I'll admit, I was afraid to look at the walls of the hole. I was afraid that if I saw it out of my peripheral, there would be an eye staring back at me or some unknown person's limb reaching out to flop against me, but I did look at the walls and they were all gray concrete. Nothing to worry about.

After reaching the bottom, I pivoted quickly, shining my light in all directions, waiting for something to jump out of the dark. Nothing came. I stayed like that longer than I'd like to admit. I was frozen in terror for the things I’d yet to see on this venture.

The subterranean tunnel was colder than I remembered, and I pulled my pack closer around my shoulders. It made my teeth click and I had to consciously keep my mouth closed. I pointed the light down the direction I'd gone last time, waiting to see that lantern bobbing in the distance. God, I didn't want to keep going. I wanted to climb back up that ladder, sell the house, and move to somewhere sunny and warm. I couldn’t. I kept Alice in the forefront of my mind and began walking in the direction opposite I'd gone the last time I was there.

I followed my translucent breath in the darkness, taking small steps to make as little noise as possible. I didn't want to be found out. Found out by what? I didn’t know. There was a low growl from somewhere in the direction I was moving towards and I stopped dead in my tracks, looking back from where I came to see if my light reached the ladder. It was out of sight and so I turned my attention back to the blackness in front of me, the place where that growl had come from. It was so low that at first, I thought that maybe I'd imagined it and I took another step forward. Then came another growl. That's when I heard something moving towards me, sluggishly at first but picking up speed as it slid across the ground.

I pressed myself against the wall and covered my flashlight with my free hand and waited and waited. Then I felt something slipping over my right shoe. I bit my tongue and felt blood in my mouth. I didn't- I couldn't scream. The thing was touching me in the darkness, but I was still sure that the creature had not seen me. It didn't know how close I was. It felt like a serpent of some kind, sliding slowly over my foot and further in the direction from where I'd come. With every edge forward, the slimy thing made that same low growl, as though moving was difficult for it.

"Eh', how'd you get here?" someone whispered in my ear. I could feel hot breath down my neck from the lips that spoke the words and my spine was replaced with a steel rod. A whimper escaped me. My back was against the wall; there was no way someone was behind me. It was just my imagination. Or it was just this place playing tricks on me? I waited for the thing moving over my foot to slither further down the massive tunnel. "Mmm, you smell good." came the voice again. The serpent didn't seem to hear this interloper’s voice.

When I was sure that the slithering creature was gone, I stepped away from the wall and shone my light against it, scanning the flat surface, half expecting there to be a pair of devilish lips protruding from it. I sighed, relieved that nothing was there. After studying the wall long enough to put my mind at ease, sure, that nothing was going to come out of the wall of the tunnel and grab me, I squinted in the direction where the serpent thing had gone, towards the ladder. I still heard those low growls. I started away from it at a light jog, still trying to make as little noise as possible. The ground beneath me started subtly declining and I was reminded of the first time I'd gone down there. I kept waiting to see that light in the distance, but that hooded figure pushing the cart never appeared and I continued. My eyes glanced beneath my pattering feet every few yards to be sure the floor was still made of floor.

Stolen content warning: this tale belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences elsewhere.

It wasn't long before I came across a staircase off to the left. It led further down. Not for the first time, I wondered who would build something like this?

"It has always been here and always will be." I felt that whisper down my neck again and spun, almost falling over and down the stairs. No one and nothing were there. I shook the chill that was beginning to settle into my bones, and I grabbed the railing of the staircase and began moving further down. When I shone my light in front of myself, I could see no end to the stairs. I stopped holding onto the handrail when it took on the shape of intestines. I'm no doctor, but I am sure that's what it was. Slippery, rubbery, full of gas that released through pinpricks of its long wormy body when disturbed.

At some point the stairs beneath my feet took on another form as well. Each of my own footfalls stopped making those familiar thuds against solid ground and they sounded stickier. Every time I went to pull one of my feet up, it would make a shhhlp sound. I ignored the ground and dared not look there.

It began to rain. It was blood.

No one could ignore that thick iron smell. It ran down my body like a viscous chemical, not like water at all. This made the cold unbearable. I pulled the collar of my shirt up around my neck, but it was too late. The stuff was soaking right through me. I looked up to the ceiling and saw no end there, only the droplets of blood that fell from the darkness above. I shuddered.

I found the end of the staircase and happened a glance at the ground. It was that same unimaginable, indescribable red horror I'd seen last time. I walked some more in an open chamber that echoed with each of my wet footsteps. The cold was getting worse.

Some figure was up ahead. It was feminine and small in the darkness. Don't ask me why I ran then, splashing through puddles, because I can't tell you. "Alice!" I screamed as I went to the figure I could barely see in the darkness. I tripped over something that felt like a hand attempting to grab at my shoe and slammed into the figure. I fell over top of it. I heard a shattering sound like glass. I lost my light in the tumble and scrambled in the darkness to find it. I wrestled it from a set of disfigured fingers protruding from the ground. I searched the ground for the figure but saw only bits of guts and dark crimson limbs. I shone the light around some more and the light fell upon more figures. They were like statues. I approached one. It was normal- I mean to say it wasn't some monster. It was a frozen woman glowing in red. She was covered in the thick rain that came from above. I was baffled to realize that she was, at least at some point, a real and breathing person.

The chill in the chamber was cutting bitter. I could feel the blood rain slowing my motions. If I stayed in place too long, I could become like her. Captured in my struggle till the end of time. I studied the woman's face. It wasn't Alice. I approached the other dead statues to be sure they weren't her either. They weren't. I looked back to the place where I'd shattered that first unlucky soul. I hoped it wasn't Alice and continued through the massive chamber as the rain became deafening and I could barely see beyond it.

There was an incessant weeping coming from no direction. It seemed to echo inside of my own skull.

The rain began to form deeper places on the uneven ground.

I moved through innumerable faces frozen in blood red terror. They would have been beautiful if they weren't what they were. The further I marched into the cavern, the more there were. My movements were slowing as I was forced to high step through the muck and avoid falling over unseen debris in the liquid. My skin felt as though it was hardening and I my joints tightened with every desperate, flailing measure I took forward.

I tried to maneuver through the frozen bodies to little avail. Their fingers were outstretched, and their brittle appendages would snag at my wet clothes and I would have to meticulously shift. But one did and I didn't notice. The figure fell into the one next to it and I ran, knocking over the dead statues, no longer caring about the ones I was leaving behind. They fell and crumbled behind me. The weeping grew louder. I killed them. Had they still been alive? Impossible. I vaguely hoped not as I clamored around.

I ran through the crowd as a million souls called out to me in a cacophony of wails and splintering glass bodies.

There was a door! I could see a door through the red mist of blood rain washing down upon the pool under my feet. It was just ahead. There were still forms clinging to the edges of it. They had come so close. I reached the great big metal door and swung it inward, shattering the outreaching hands of those that had almost escaped. I swung the door closed behind me.

It was a small room. It wasn't raining there. It wasn't cold.

"You've murdered them." That whisper came again and trailed off.

The weeping followed me. It echoed from everywhere.

I wrung the blood out of my clothes, but that smell will stick with me forever. I huddled in a corner, attempting to get that chill out of my body, rubbing my arms with my bloodstained hands.

I studied my drenched body and my left pinky finger caught my attention. It was darker than the others. Like red wine. I tapped it and felt a hollowness in it; it reverberated through me, sending nervous shocks into my brain. Then it shattered into a billion pieces of dust and fell away from my other fingers. I swallowed hard and I wanted to wail out.

It was hard to eat and drink there. The water I’d brought was murky and the snacks I ate from my bag were stale like old moist crackers.

After examining the room, I saw there was another door on the opposite side of the one I’d come from. I rested there for some time and decided to take stock of my surroundings and inventory, as well as quell the mashing, pressing presence the place had.