...

"Shadam ala taw urat" said the chittering-breeze of the desert. At the dark hour of night the moon gave light, but it was pale. It was there, distinct but in the background, repeating itself over and over. Something saying something quietly.

The whisper on the wind was a thousand sounds that formed into words. Having tasted the vile red stuff that the madman had fed his friends, Claire could hear these words, but she could not understand their meaning.

Blood dripping from her knuckles and glistening in the moonlight as she stepped forward across the desert sands. She sighed in terror and glanced back. Pain from her abdomen and fear kept her moving. Death was following her with a bloodied weapon that left its own trail of dripping blood.

Claire was staggering, holding her stomach inside with bloodied hands. She wasn't sure where she was going, or how far she could get. She had to get away from the expedition camp. Everyone there was dead.

"Where are you going Claire?" was the calling of Doctor Sheriah. So not everyone was dead, not exactly, but that wasn't her friend Lance anymore. It was something that looked like him and sounded like him. Something that had taken a machete and slaughtered everyone where they lay while they were drugged and helpless.

Whatever had happened to Doctor Lance Sheriah had changed him and made him something else. Perhaps it was reading something down in the darkness of the buried ruins or maybe it was tasting the stuff oozing from the walls. He had done both, and maybe it was the two acts together that had transformed him on the inside.

Claire kept walking across the moonlit sand.

Ahead was the oasis of Shedim Al Taw'ret. A place that had started as the discovery of one of the most ancient temple structures on earth. In fact it was so old that again, history would be rewritten. What had they worshiped there?

It was no god and no worship. It was where something was kept asleep and appeased with human blood. As long as it was fed it slept. Then, long ago, humans found gods and used holy words to lock it away forever. In its madness it had vomited out the red liquid of its mortal thoughts. A song of madness greeted Claire and she suddenly knew all of this.

"Just keep walking then. You won't get very far. The place you will find, it is still death." the voice of Lance was behind her; somehow she had gained ground in escaping him.

Then she fell down. It was very hard to get to her feet and as she did her guts fell out. She sobbed as she saw her insides dangling there from her open wound and with effort she pushed them back in. Shock might do any number of things. Somehow it was keeping her going, through the pain and bloodloss and forward, step by step.

Stolen novel; please report.

"Just a little bit further." he was saying from far behind her. But her body finally gave out and she collapsed on the first stones uncovered many months ago. The site stretched out before her, surrounded by the rare desert blooms that grew here. Her dying eyes reflected the pools of black starlit waters and her breath was carried by the wind out across the distance of cooling desert sands. A wasteland in every direction where her ghost would remain with countless others.

Doctor Sheriah stood over his victim with the machete and looked down at her back. There was silence as he looked up and around. The oasis was not speaking to him at that moment. It was laughing instead.

Crickets chirped suddenly and a desert bird cried out. The rustle of the little furry things that lived in the remote place was punctuated by their squeaking. All together it formed a whisper, a melodious sound like a windy humming. He had listened to it for very long already and he could hear the words it was saying.

It was speaking through the living things, the angle of sound forming distinct words. A whispered voice. He listened to it now. The language was very old, older than any other. It was a tongue spoken by old things long before man. Not even the gods knew such words, nothing did, or could. It was just a sound and he knew what it meant. It had made him able to know it, when he had tasted its ichor. The crimson ichor that seeped from cracks in the walls of the buried temple not far from where he stood.

The words on the walls were written by humans, long ago. Those he had translated. The words said not to touch anything red and not to take the words of the one deeper down, or know their meaning. He had to know the meaning. And so he had.

Now he stood over Claire's dead body, eviscerated at his feet. Why had she come here? Was it just a random direction of escape? He wondered this, wondering if he even understood his own thoughts anymore.

The oasis was trying to tell him something but it was becoming more and more difficult to understand. Here was the song of life itself, singing always where sterile death made no noise at all. The oasis was life and the desert was death. This he had come to understand.

And here, in this very sacred place, the value of life and death was reversed. It was the older way than those ways offered by even the oldest of gods. He knew all of this now, but could not hear it anymore. It was becoming unclear, just the sounds of the night in the oasis.

Lance shook his head in bewilderment. Was he losing the ability to understand the oasis? Could he no longer understand its voice? He realized that he would have to go down into the temple and receive more of the covenant of: 'mortal and of what was down there'. Something that needed to sleep again, jailed and insane for so long.

He took with him some of the blood. He had to go back and collect it as a heap of bloodied rags that he tore from the bodies of all he had killed. The entire archaeological team that was now prostrate corpses back at camp. Then he tossed them down ahead of himself. Somehow the blood was slippery as he went down the ladder, but his hands were sticky and helped him to climb down.

Then at the bottom he collected the heap of bloody rags and took them deep to the place where he could squeeze them. He did that and put as much human blood back into the thirsty holes as he could. Some of the ichor was still a red dew on the walls there. Something beneath shifted and rolled over, satisfied at last and ready to sleep.

He tasted the 'red droplets on the walls' again before he ascended. Dawn was a sunrise in the oasis. The waters shimmered brightly. He listened to the meaning of the voice of the oasis. It was saying:

"Thank you."