Catacombs of Terror! by Stanley Donwood

and that in itself worries the hell out of me. That one? Or that one? What
is
this place?”
    I couldn’t answer him. I didn’t know. It was that simple, and that complicated.
    â€œThat one,” I said decisively, and walked towards the gaping darkness. This time we weren’t turning back. This time we were going to find out what these tunnels were all about. This one was the same again—a ghastly, cloying, terrifying darkness of a sort I’d never known anywhere before. An intermittent dripping from the roof. I could feel the flagstones beneath my feet. My flashlight revealed nothing but the walls of the tunnel receding maybe ten feet or less before being devoured by the darkness. We walked slowly on. Nothing changed. Nothing at all. The silence got so fucking silent that it started to mess with my head. I stopped.
    â€œDid you hear anything?” I asked, with a very clear idea of the answer I’d like to have heard.
    â€œI don’t—think—so,” whispered back Kafka. Wrong answer. Not badly wrong, but wrong enough.
    â€œWhat d’you mean, you don’t
think
so?”
    â€œWell, did
you
hear anything?” hissed Kafka.
    â€œI don’t know,” I said. “Maybe. But I think it’s this place. The quiet. Playing tricks on me. And you, too, by the sound of it.” Yeah. Somewhere there was a rational, scientific explanation for this. But it wasn’t down here. It wasn’t where we needed it. We carried on, even more slowly. The smell came back again, nauseatingly strong. For a split second it reminded me of death, of putrefying corpses, animal and human, piled up and up and rotting, like some kind of infernal compost . . . .
    I tried to force the thought out of my head but it wouldn’t go. The fetid black liquid seeping from the crushed carcasses at the bottom of the pile, the writhing masses of larval flies, the sickening miasma emanating from it . . . . I stumbled against the wall and sank to the floor. I dropped the flashlight and clamped my wet hands to my face, I bowed my head and gritted my teeth, and I tried to force the horrendous vision from my mind. But it got worse. And I think I passed out, because the next thing that happened was Kafka slapping me in the face. I woke up and grabbed his hand before he hit me again.
    â€œWhat the
fuck
. . . ?”
    â€œShit, you just, you just collapsed. You dropped the torch and it went out and fucking hell it was so dark . . . . I found mine and turned it on and you were just, well, you were out. I mean I, I almost fucking lost it, I almost panicked and lost it, so I started slapping you . . . .”
    â€œWell, cheers for that. There was some stuff in my head that was far, far worse than being slapped. Thanks. Thanks a lot.”
    I was gasping. My gratitude was genuine.
    â€œNo problem. I don’t mind saying I almost shat myself when your torch went out. Do the same if it happens to me. Bring me out of it, whatever it is. What happened?”
    â€œYou do not,
do not
, want to know. Let’s just carry on. Where’s my flashlight?”
    â€œI dunno. I think it went over there somewhere.” Kafka gestured with his light. The beam raked the floor around us.
    â€œMaybe it rolled. There’s a sort of slope to this tunnel.”
    â€œYeah, maybe it rolled. So, let’s see where it rolled to.”
    I felt almost better. I was pissed off at having lost it badly enough to pass out. If Kafka hadn’t been there I could have lain there for hours. Being an independent operator was one thing. Lying out cold in a hellhole God knows how far beneath the earth is another. I shook myself. Maybe I said, “Let’s go,” or something. But we were walking on, further down, into the dark.
    After a time, Kafka whispered, “Where’s your fucking torch?”
    We hadn’t found it. We’d walked a few hundred yards I guess. But no flashlight. It couldn’t