Chapter 1
I had just bought a cabin right off the shoreline of Crystal Lake… Well, what used to be Crystal Lake. Now it was just a river and the muddy remains of what used to be a lake. The dam that kept the reservoir filled was decommissioned about six months ago. Now that the lake was gone, the cabin I bought hit rock bottom prices and it would have been idiotic for me not to buy it. All I wanted was a nice hunting cabin, somewhere to stay for a month or two each year. I didn’t care about the lake being drained and the river was still flowing so there’s plenty of fish to be caught.
After signing, I drove up to the cabin to start the renovations. It hadn’t been used for decades and it needed some repairs. Luckily, the foundation was sturdy and the damage was only cosmetic.
I arrived early in the Spring and my to-do list was endless. The roof had small leaks, the window shutters needed to be replaced, the doors needed new hinges, there was dirt, plants, and debris everywhere, and that was just scratching the surface. It was a mess… but it was my mess now.
A few weeks passed before I noticed the boarded up door on the far end of the house. Between the repairs and fishing trips to the river for food, there wasn’t much time to make new discoveries. It wasn’t easy to open either. Whoever nailed the boards to the wall really didn’t want this door to be opened easily.
I got to work and an hour later the boards were removed. The room was blanketed in a thick layer of dust. There were no windows but there was another door on the outer wall. I didn’t notice a door from the outside and after examining it, I found that the door was completely covered by bushes on the other side. I wish I could say there was some kind of treasure but there were only gardening tools, shovels, and some old books. One book in particular caught my eye.
It was an old journal written by a woman who lived here in 1922. I wasn’t much into snooping but it’s hard to resist reading someone’s one-hundred year-old journal. She was a thirty year-old woman who had moved to the cabin with her husband. Her name was Isla. Her husband was a dam operator and was sent out here to replace the previous operator after they went missing.
July 17th, 1922
I am not too enthusiastic about moving out here but Edgar went on and on about how great it would be to get away from the city and do something meaningful. The dam is only a few years old and the reservoir is filling up faster than expected. The reservoir is going to supply water to the nearby farms during the dry season so it is important that this dam is maintained well. It is an important job for an important man, my husband. Even as reluctant as I was to move, there was no way I could say no to him as excited as he was and I could finally start the garden I have always wanted.
July 22nd, 1922
It’s been a few days now and we’re settling in. Edgar has been working hard at the dam the last few days so I’ve been tending to our cabin. Whenever I have time, I work in the garden. The weather is great and with any luck, we will have plenty of vegetables to eat in a few weeks. Edgar went into town yesterday and bought me new tools with the stipend his company gave him. He even brought back a necklace made by a local jewelsmith in a nearby town. It has the most beautiful amethyst surrounded by small obsidian shards and swirling silver rings.
August 1st, 1922
Oh, I have really messed up. I lost it in the garden. I have been digging holes everywhere to try and find it but I just can not find it. Edgar is going to be disappointed with me when he finds out it is lost.
It was getting late so I decided to wrap up for the day and it wasn’t much fun to read a journal in a room filled with one-hundred year-old dust. At least the dozens of shovels stockpiled in the room made sense now.
The sun was setting, dark clouds were rolling in, and I still needed to get the generator running before it would be too dark to see. I couldn’t help but wonder what she lost. A ring? Some money? Maybe some kind of family heirloom? I wondered if it was still in the garden, buried for over a hundred years. I decided I’d take a look soon. I have to dig up the old garden to install a new septic system anyway, I might as well dig around a bit while I’m at it.
The weather worsened as I finished starting the generator and by the time I was in my new bedroom it was already pouring. I sat down and started to read Isla’s journal again. I was hoping I could figure out what she lost but the next seven days of entries just repeated how “she lost it” and how “it must be buried here somewhere.” I realized I wasn’t getting anywhere with this and decided to sleep. There was plenty of unfinished work to be done and I needed to conserve my energy.
That night was the worst I’ve slept in years.
I’ve had the same recurring dream the last few nights. The dream starts with me waking up on the couch downstairs. I look out the window and the sky is washed with smoke and the deep burgundy glow of fire. I try to rush out of the house but when I open the door the cabin is on an island of dirt surrounded by a pit so deep the bottom is shielded by a thick, black fog. I always wake up before I can do anything else.
Tonight, the dream was different. When I open the door, the smoke filled sky turns into a wall of dirt, as if the cabin was swallowed by the earth. I remember the shovels in the gardening room and begin digging my way out. No matter how much dirt I moved, all I accomplished was filling the house. There was no end. My only choice was to fill the hole behind me as I continued to dig. My shovel breaks and I wake up drenched in sweat.
The night had just broken and the sun was barely higher than the mountains in the distance. There were still light orange and red hues refracting through the clouds. I sat up, rubbed my eyes, and made breakfast. It was a smoked fish I caught at the river a few days prior.
I was done repairing the roof, walls, windows, and anything else that would let the outside in and it was time to start the septic system. It was only a hunting cabin but I planned on staying a few months at a time. An outhouse wouldn’t cut it.
Digging the trenches for the sewage piping was taking much longer than I expected. The issue wasn’t how hard it was to dig, it was how much of a bore it was to dig for hours. As soon as I remembered Isla losing whatever “it” was in the garden, I was already digging. Before I realized how long I was at it, the sun was already setting. I could feel the pit in my stomach tighten as I became conscious of my hunger.
As I sat down for dinner, I picked up Isla’s journal and began to read.
August 23th, 1922
Edgar has been worried about me lately. I stopped swimming in the lake recently and he won’t listen to me when I say I’m fine. I just don’t have the time to swim anymore. There’s so much to do around here. I have to tend to the garden. It’s not easy to grow your own food. I wish Edgar could understand.
September 2nd, 1922
Edgar has been insistent on trying to stop my gardening. He says I spend too much time on it, that we don’t need the extra food. He says that the holes are too deep, that it’s not even a proper garden. He just doesn’t understand. He still doesn’t know about it. It’s still buried somewhere. I need to find it.
September 13th, 1922
Edgar had a doctor check me. He says that there is something wrong with me because I spend too much time doing what I love. I have expanded the garden now. It extends to the treeline. I am thinking about expanding it even more. I have always heard that the forest is a natural garden. It only makes sense. I could use the extra space too. There is not much room by the cabin now.
September 30th, 1922
Edgar is mad. He fell and hurt his leg. It is not my fault he was not paying attention. He knows I like to garden, he should be more careful. I told him I started a new garden there.
I had the dream again. I was digging for hours… Though, it’s not easy to tell time in a dream. It could have been days. Shovelful after shovelful of dirt I moved ever closer to the surface. My clothes were drenched in sweat and I peeled off each layer, burying the clothes behind me as I dug further and further, never coming close to reaching the end of wherever it was I was going. With each pile of dirt I threw behind me, my breath became more labored. My muscles ached and screamed out to me in pain, telling me to stop… to control myself.
The tunnel narrowed and I slowly became encased in the dirt around me. I was barely able to move my arms and legs enough to maneuver the increasingly damp dirt until the soil condensed and hardened around my body. I tried to scream as dirt and rock filled my lungs.
I laid there, imprisoned in an ever hardening coffin of dirt, until a crack formed above me. Was I free? Did I reach the surface? I watched as a soft purple glow filtered through the dirt and the soil around me melted away as if the light shining through was cleansing me. I was free.
Suddenly, the world turned upside down and I was falling through the crack that was once above me. I crashed into the rock below me, expelling the dirt from my lungs. I was laying in a vast cavern lined in purple gems. I reached out to grab one.
I awoke.
I wanted to find out what she lost.
October 5th, 1922
Edgar is becoming angrier every day. He has not tried to understand. He told me he would sell my tools and destroy my garden if I did not stop. He just does not understand what was lost! I thought maybe he would understand if I told him about it but he only became angrier. This is why I had to hide it. No one will understand.
October 6th, 1922
Poor Edgar. I told him that I would not stop gardening. I have to find it. He does not understand. I have to find it. I can not stop until I find it. Why will he not listen? Why will he not understand?
He came home from the dam tonight. He was angrier than I have ever seen him. He tried to stop me. He took my shovel. My dear shovel! He tried to take me away from here but this is where I belong. I belong with my garden. It needs me.
If only he did not try to stop me. We were so happy and now he is gone. He would not stop and so I had to stop him. I did not have any other choice… I have to find it. I have to find it. I have to find it. I have to find it.
October 6th, 1922. This was the last entry in the journal and it’s likely gone unread for one hundred years. I finished dinner, well.. breakfast, and went outside to decompress.
All I could do was stare at the long abandoned garden and think about the history here that no one knows but me. As I stared at the ground, I could feel it calling me. It wanted me to dig. My head began to ache and my hands began to numb. All I could do was dig. I had no desire for anything else at that moment. I just needed to dig, to find what it was. What was Isla so obsessed with that she would murder her own husband to continue her search.
My mind jumped to the purple gems in my dream. I wondered if my dream was some sort of premonition on what lay below the garden. Maybe she knew about the gems. Maybe she had dug some up when she first started gardening. Maybe they were still there, somewhere hidden below me.
I went to the gardening room, grabbed her shovel, and started digging.
I dug hole after hole for days. First, I started near the cabin. It made sense, this is where Isla started her first garden. In each hole there was nothing and yet I continued digging. I remembered her journal. She started gardening further from the cabin. It was possible it was further out.
Days passed. I think it may have been six days of digging before I found it. Well, not it but him. I found Edgar or rather what used to be Edgar. He was wearing denim overalls and a shirt that all but withered away under the soil. He was nothing more than a skeleton now.
Reality set in for a fleeting moment. I was filled with contrition. Until now, I had only assumed Isla had murdered him but there was no way to actually know for sure. She stopped writing in her journal after that night. I knew this was him and now I knew that he was murdered. The right side of his skull was caved in as if an axe had cleaved its way into his brain.
“Why was I digging again?”
That was the question I kept asking myself over and over as I sat above Edgar’s grave.
“What am I looking for?”
My head was foggy and it was hard to concentrate. I stared at Edgar’s lifeless bones and remembered what Isla wrote the night she killed him. He had just come from the dam when he tried to force her to leave the cabin. There was something he learned that day that he didn’t know before that night.
My answer was at the decommissioned dam.
Chapter 2
I was told a bit about the dam when I passed through a nearby town on my way to the cabin. It was officially decommissioned six months ago but it stopped being maintained decades before then. Even though the dam was decommissioned, neither the dam nor the operator’s hut were demolished. The company didn’t want to pay for the demolition and opted for bankruptcy instead. Now it was the Bureau of Land Management’s job but progress was slow.
After hiking a few hours I reached the operator’s hut. It definitely lived up to its name, hut. I’d barely call it that. The window was shattered, the door was long gone, and it looked as if the roof was replaced multiple times but only a small section at a time. The place was dilapidated.
I stepped into the hut and with each step, the floorboards squealed in misery. There wasn’t much dust… likely because the wind is free to blow through. I searched the cabinets for anything that could help me. There were piles of logbooks, most of which were weathered and unreadable. The few that were in reasonable condition were useless, full of maintenance notes and random doodles of… the human anatomy. It was obvious a dam operator wasn’t the most exciting job.
After twenty minutes of brushing aside cobwebs and wiping dust encrusted logbooks I found files from Edgar L. Armstrong. The writing was faded but still mostly legible.
October 7th, 1922
Isla and I moved to the cabin nearly four months ago. I thought it would do us good, get out of the city and away from her family. After her stillbirth, she holed herself up in the bedroom for days at a time. She would not eat. She would not sleep. No doctor could cure her ailment.
Before we married, she often spoke of her love for the wilderness. She longed to live among the fauna and flora of this world, tending to her home far out in the woods; though, her interest had waned since the stillbirth. She had a dream of owning her own award winning garden, one as beautiful as the Japanese gardens she would see in the paper.
I thought taking a job as a dam operator and moving out here would help her, clear her mind, help her move on. I see now that was a mistake but I need to be clear. My mistake was not bringing her to her dream, my mistake was thinking her dream was here, at Crystal Lake.
She was ecstatic when we first arrived and it was the first time I saw her smile in months. After I bought her a shovel and a few gardening tools from the nearby town, she immediately started in her garden. Things were back to normal… for a while. I don’t know when she began to change. I don’t think there was any single defining moment. She began to wake at night, drenched in sweat, screaming about her buried daughter.
In her dream, we had just buried Isabella in the garden behind the cabin. I would go inside to prepare dinner so Isla could rest. After I left, she would hear faint cries coming from beneath the ground.
“It’s Isabella,” she would cry, “she’s calling for me, I have to save her.”
She would dig and dig and dig but no matter how deep she went, how desperate she became, she could never reach her. I couldn’t console her and she became more and more obsessed with her gardening. She always called it gardening but the holes she was digging were far from any definition of gardening. She was manic.
No doctor could help her and my words were met only with hostility. Her mental state changed a few days ago after another dream about Isabella. In this dream she finally reached her after digging for weeks straight. When I came home the next night I fell in a hole she dug in her gardening room and sprained my ankle.
I wish I had known what I know now before we moved here, before I accepted this job.
I was looking through my predecessor’s logbook for notes on a recurring issue with the dam’s floodgates when I came across something strange. His notes devolved into madness the longer he was here. I would simply excuse it as a symptom of loneliness but it was the similarities between what he said and Isla’s manic episodes.
He kept writing about it. How he had to find it. How it was buried somewhere nearby and how he would be freed once he freed it. I looked at his predecessor’s logbook and the operator before even him. They were all the same. Normal notes devolved into drivel about digging and finding it.
Finally, I found the original operator’s logbook. He was the one who built the cabin I now live in. He didn’t come here as an operator though. He built the cabin because he needed shelter to keep digging. He became the first dam operator because he needed money for supplies. His notes never turned into nonsense. In fact, he was quite coherent but there was something off about the way he wrote. It was as if he feared what he was after. As if he was forced to dig.
Whatever he was digging for, it was beneath the cabin.
I am not sure what he was afraid of and I am certainly not sure what it is these people were digging for. I do know that I am not going to stay here and find out. Tonight I am going to leave here and take Isla back to the city where we belong.
If you are reading this, please take this as a warning and leave. You may not believe me, and I am not sure I believe it myself, but something is happening.
I stood there for a while. My mind was turbulent. I wasn’t sure what to believe. None of the other logbooks were readable and there was no way for me to confirm what Edgar had written.
It was already getting dark and the wind was picking up. It looked like a storm was coming. I closed the logbook and tucked it away in my jacket. I was far from the cabin and wouldn’t be able to make it back without getting caught in the storm. Unfortunately, it would be worse to stay in the hut. I set out towards the cabin.
Only an hour passed before the storm was on top of me. The dark clouds blotted out what was left of the sun’s light and the wind screamed through the trees towering over me. Thunder boomed in the distance. Each flash of lighting sparked a flame of pain that raced across my temples. The roar of thunder reverberated through my body. An avalanche of water and hail began to fall from the sky.
It was becoming too dark to see yet my body was being guided by unseen hands. I reached the cabin about thirty minutes after the last bit of light had fled from the sky. Exhausted and sodden from the journey, I stumbled through the back door, into the gardening room.
I stood just beyond the doorway as I watched the water pooling between the floorboards. The water flowed along each crack and disappeared underneath some crates. I didn’t notice it before but one of the floorboards was split into the shape of a rectangle with a hole carved along the seam. I reached for the hole, just barely large enough for me to fit my hand into, and pulled. There was movement.
I knocked aside the crates on top of the door, scattering pots, tools, and other debris around the room. I pulled open the door beneath me. It creaked open and snapped at its apogee. Damp, moldy air wafted into my nostrils. A wave of fire washed over my body and my head began to throb.
I lowered myself into the tunnel below and began down the path ahead. The light from the cabin quickly faded but there was only one way to go. I kept moving. Hours had passed and the tunnel began to narrow. I continued on, my body guiding itself through the tunnels.
I continued to crawl as the dirt around me encased my body, wriggling through an ever narrowing coffin of dirt. Eventually it came to a dead end and I couldn’t move back. My hands reached out before me and began to dig, filling up the tunnel behind me as advanced. I could barely move. Thousands of tons of soil above me pressed down around my body. I could only move my fingers and scratch at dirt I couldn’t see.
A purple light began to fill the voids between each grain of dirt. I found it. Finally, I had found it. I punched through the dirt into open air and was ejected from the earth along with the soil behind me.
Unlike my dream, I wasn’t in a cavern filled with purple gems. The cavern was filled with moss and small plants. The purple glow reflected off the wet surface of the rock around me. I could hear flowing water in the distance. However, it wasn’t the fact that there were plants far below the surface that concerned me. It was the heat. The heat, not from the ambient temperature of the air, but clearly from the light itself.
I could feel my head start to throb again. It was a slow, methodical pulse. My vision began to blur and my body began to heat up. It had only been seconds since I breached the wall of the cavern and I barely had time to breathe clean air before my body began to move once again.
I could feel my arms start to numb. Then my feet. Then my legs. As I rounded a corner, I saw it and I understood. I was being called here. It needed me.
Before me stood a purple crystal at least five feet across and twelve feet high. There were cracks throughout the crystal and it was at the center. Each one of its tendrils projected away from its body as if it was trying to force its way through the cracks surrounding it. Its face could only be described as a cross between a squid and a human.
Its eyes bulged from its face. Tentacles snaked down from its mouth and around its neck. Its body was humanoid, fat, and round, covered in scaly skin that refracted the light around it like a diamond — only it was tinted purple by the crystal it was encased in.
I looked around the cavern and there were dozens of skeletons lying around the crystal. The one closest to me held a pickaxe. I walked towards the long deceased body and when I bent down I noticed its necklace. A silver necklace with a large amethyst gem at the center surrounded by obsidian.
My head began to throb once again. I grabbed the pickaxe and turned towards the crystal. I could see it pulsing. It pulsed and my head throbbed once again. Another pulse and my body moved towards the crystal. Once more and I swung the pickaxe.
Every strike I could feel my body becoming increasingly numb. Every strike I could feel my mind losing consciousness. I stood, helpless in my body, watching myself try to free whatever it was, wondering if I was going to meet the same fate as the people around me.
Another pulse.
The crystal began to crack.
Another pulse.
I strike the crystal harder.
Another pulse.
The crack grew larger.
Another pulse.
And the pickaxe snapped, the head flying somewhere into the abyss behind me.
The creature’s eyes opened and locked onto me. I could feel the pure fiery rage flowing out with each pulse. A wave of unfettered terror washed over my body as its eyes pierced my soul. I felt as though my head was being cracked open with a hammer, each pulse another blow to my head. The operator’s hut flashed into my mind. Inside was another pickaxe.
In an instant the pain subsided and my body turned towards where I came. I was being forced to retrieve the other pickaxe only to be forced to come back here and break the creature free.
It was hours before I reached the surface again. It was already morning and the air was still damp from the storm the night before. As I stumbled out of the cabin, the pressure on my body was released and I fainted.
I don’t know how long I was unconscious for but I could tell it wasn’t the same day. The air was dry now and there was no moisture in the ground anymore. I could still feel its presence in my mind, telling me to go to the hut but I had control for now. It wouldn’t be long before I was under its influence once again.
I knew what I had to do.
Chapter 3
I stood up, bloody and bruised. My hands were raw from clawing my way through the dirt and I was caked in mud. I grabbed the shovel nearby and began to dig but this time it was of my own will. After a few hours I had filled the tunnel leading to the creature in the depths below. I brought in the fuel canister for the generator and doused the floor in gasoline.
Now that I was aware of it, I was able to stay in control as long as I kept my distance. I could still feel it crawling through my mind. It was pure luck that I was sent back to the surface to retrieve a pickaxe. I was only moments away from freeing it from its crystalline prison.
Before long there was a puddle of gasoline in the gardening room and a trail leading out the front door. I spent nearly two months in the cabin, slowly losing my mind, searching for it as it gradually worked itself into my subconscious. I don’t know what It is and I don’t know if I’ll ever find out, but I do know that I never want to be face-to-face with it again.
I opened my matchbook, struck a single match aflame, and tossed it just beyond the threshold of the door. The room burst into flames and a trail of fire blazed its way to the gardening room. I may not have been able to stop it but at least no one else would be able to live here and risk freeing the creature. I hobbled to my truck and drove away, my journey here was done.
The world behind me was set ablaze and the once peaceful blue sky now glowed a deep burgundy. Smoke filled the air and as the sun set, only the radiance of the fire illuminated the night sky.
I pulled onto the highway when blue and red lights began to flash behind me. It was the sheriff. I pulled over.
“This is [redacted] county sheriff. Put yer hands up and slowly exit the vehicle,” the man said with a thick southern drawl.
I opened my door, reached out far above my head and stood there. A pit in my stomach grew tighter and the world moved in slow motion as his next words left his mouth.
“Yer under arrest for arson, son. You have the right to remain silent. Anything ya say can and will be used against ya in a court of law…”
He paused for a moment before continuing.
“I’ve been watching ya. Ya’ll city folk don’t belong out here, interrupting our ways of livin’. I don’t think I need to tell ya but you’ve already dug yer own grave out here. The law don’t work like it does where yer from.”
I was struck in the head and the world faded to black.
I woke up cuffed to a bed in some kind of medical room. There were two men just outside the door in white lab coats arguing. The younger one smashed his clipboard against the window and caught me watching. He said a final word before storming off. The older man let out a long sigh and rubbed his temple. He opened the door and greeted me.
“Good morning, Mr. Bergmann,” he paused for a moment while rubbing his beard, “I hope you’re feeling better.”
He must have seen the wariness in my face. He let out a short sigh, breaking the short silence, and sat in the chair next to my bed.
“I know you may be a bit confused but I can assure you that you’re safe now. To tell you the truth, you’re lucky we reached you in time. The sheriff here is a bit of a vigilante. More importantly, you’re lucky you survived an encounter with an Amarantus. In fact, you’re the first person who has broken free from its grasp. There are no longer any signs of its influence in your psyche but we’re keeping you restrained as a precaution.”
The emotions came flooding back to me. The monster in the cavern, the fire, the sheriff, and now this… place.
“Where am I? What’s going to happen to me next?” I asked, solemnly.
“To be honest, it’s not up to me. According to our tests, your psyche has recovered; however, my colleague isn’t so convinced. I’m not sure how long we can keep the sheriff at bay. As it stands now, you’ll be executed tomorrow.”
My stomach tightened into a knot and I heaved over in nausea. The man handed me a bucket and began to vomit.
“Of course, I’m sure I could convince him to let you live… if you helped us. You see, you know where the Amarantus is and we need to find it before it’s too late. Guide us to it.”
I looked up, my face pale and drained of hope. One last dry heave and I wiped my mouth with a cloth the man handed me.
“Why would you possibly want to find it?” I screamed out in consternation. Those raw, repulsive emotions I felt as I crawled my way through that oppressively small tunnel. I began to dry heave once again, the contents of my stomach already expelled.
“I understand your fear, Mr. Bergmann, but I can assure you that you won’t be alone this time. We have a team dedicated to these kinds of missions. You will be safe.”
He paused for a moment, waiting for a response, but I gave none. I was too distraught to think. My mind was clouded and this still felt like some incredibly lucid nightmare.
“Mr. Bergmann, you aren’t the only victim. There have been many before you and there will be many after you if you don’t help us find it.”
The man got up for a moment and walked to a table at the other end of the room. There was a pile of papers he picked up. He flipped through them, selecting a few before walking back to me.
“I could tell you but it would be better for you to read these for yourself.”
He handed me the papers. They were reports on previous occurrences near Crystal Lake.
April 25th 2021 Missing Dam Workers Dr. Olsen
The construction of Crystal Lake Dam, formerly known as the Red Devil Dam, was completed after two years of work. It was named that because of the red silt that the river carried along itself. The locals called it that because of the mass suicides of dam workers shortly after its construction.
Thirteen of the dam workers were found in a cove nearby with deep gashes along their abdomens. They were found after the blood tinted water flowed downstream. Another five dam workers were found floating against the dam wall five days later. Each one had drowned. One dam worker was found by a local farmer, lying in the woods naked and covered in mud.
George Caraway was his name. He was treated by local doctors but the issue wasn’t his physical wounds. He only had minor cuts and bruises. The issue was he had gone insane. Any attempt at talking to him deteriorated into his babbling about finding “it.” He escaped the medical facility multiple times and each time he was found nearby, digging a hole with his bare hands. Eventually, he murdered his caregiver and has been missing since.
Given the context of other reports of similar behavior throughout the area from the start of the Crystal Lake Dam’s construction to now, we can conclude that this is the work of an Amarantus and it lies buried somewhere nearby.
January 14th, 2022 Missing Persons & Violent Crimes Stats Dr. Olsen
Mr. Beauregard,
To try and pinpoint the location of Amarantus 017 we have begun to analyze missing persons and violent crime statistics in the area, comparing those statistics to other known Amarantus locations and control groups, as well as examining the discrepancies between the reported statistics and those found in local hospitals, sheriff stations, and government buildings.
The final report on this subject has not yet been completed but preliminary results show that Amarantus 017 is likely somewhere below what was once Crystal Lake. We will be following up with you shortly on our findings.
October 15th 1922 The Crystal Lake Post Missing Wife Murders Husband
The new Red Devil Dam operator’s body has been found after a missing persons report was made by a local store owner. Mr. Thatcher, concerned about a recent friend who often spoke about his wife’s deteriorating health, made a report to the local sheriff’s office on October 11th. A search for Edgar Walker began shortly after.
Unfortunately, Mr. Walker’s body was found inside his cabin with his head crushed by a shovel. The primary suspect is his wife, Isla Walker, who has gone missing this week. It is believed she has fled the area.
A funeral will be held for Mr. Walker on October 17th. He has already been buried outside of the cabin that he prized so dearly. He will be missed by the residents of [Redacted].
There were accounts of residents in all nearby towns becoming “sick” and murdering their family, running away, or becoming insane. I looked up at the man after finishing the last report he handed me.
“There isn’t just one, Mr. Bergmann, they’re all over the world. They bore into the minds of their victims like parasites infesting their hosts. The victim loses their ability to reason and they become consumed by whatever goal they are given by their new master. We need your help, before more people die.
“Mr. Bergmann, will you help us?”
I leaned back against the wall. I thought about Isla and Edgar. It may seem bizarre but I felt close to them. After reading months of someone’s life, you would feel close to anyone and Isla had gone through the same terrifying experience as me. To think that there have been hundreds… No, thousands… Of people who have become victims of Amarantuss was unbearable.
I took a deep breath, “I don’t want anyone else to go through what I’ve gone through. I’ll help you.”
“Fantastic news, Mr. Bergmann, I look forward to your cooperation,” the man said with a bow as he stood, “you can call me, Dr. Olsen.”
Chapter 4
“We’ve arrived,” An unfamiliar voice said.
I was led out of the vehicle and my blindfold was removed. It was already dark and the last bit of light from the sun shone against the deep black backdrop of the mountains in the distance. The ashen remains of the cabin lie before me. I could feel my gut tighten at the sight. The grass nearby was cleared by the fire.
“We’re here Mr. Bergmann, the start of your journey but hopefully not the end of it.”
Dr. Olsen had walked up behind me. He wasn’t dressed in a lab coat this time, instead opting for fatigues. I looked around, there were about thirteen humvees and dozens of men. All of them wore black fatigues, body armor, and carried an assault rifle and sidearm. They worked quickly to start clearing what was left of the burnt cabin.
“I never thought I’d come back here when I left. I hope that me being here today will save many others,” I stated coolly.
I was calm now. It wasn’t that the fear was gone. I was still terrified. The thought of going back into that cavern and facing that monstrosity shook me to my very core but I made peace with the fact that I may not make it out alive. Besides, I would be dead anyway if I didn’t help.
Dr. Olsen nodded his head in approval and continued to the cabin.
It wasn’t long before the debris was cleared and the tunnel entrance I filled was uncovered. A team of six ran over with equipment and began to dig.
“Please lead the way, Mr. Bergmann, we’re counting on you to bring us right to the Amarantus.” Dr. Olsen turned away and began barking orders to the men around him before turning back to me. “You said that the tunnels narrow the deeper we go, we have an excavation team to widen the tunnel as needed. Amarantus 017 may not be influencing you any longer but you’re still linked to it. You’ll be able to guide us.”
He turned to the men behind him, “follow Mr. Bergmann and clear the way for the rest of us.”
I shuddered at the thought, “linked” to it, as if I never even escaped its grasp. Yet I knew he was right, I could feel it still, that tingle deep inside of my mind. It didn’t control me but it was there deep, deep inside my subconscious.
Everyone was ready and we began our descent into the bowels of a hell I never wished to return to. It was different then I remembered. In my clouded state, I didn’t notice the extent of the branching tunnels. Those who were here before me must have spent a cumulative decades digging these tunnels in search of the Amarantus.
“Turn left here…”
“Down this center tunnel…”
“Turn right…”
No matter how many branching paths we came across I always knew which way to turn. I wondered if it could sense me too, if it knew that we were still linked to each other. I brushed aside the thought I continued on. The tunnels were beginning to narrow and the excavation team took the lead.
They removed the dirt and rock ahead of us and passed it back. The progress was slow since we had to clear the dirt from the tunnel before us. There was a certain feeling of comfort as they burrowed through the earth. I was relieved that I wouldn’t have to crawl through crevices tighter than any human should ever fit through.
Hours passed. Progress was slow but finally the lead member of the excavation team called out.
“We’ve broken through!”
I could hear the message being passed all the way to the back. Some voices filled with excitement, others with dread.
I stepped through the opening to the cavern. There was no purple glow this time. There was only darkness, a deep, black abyss that penetrated far into the cavern. The rest of the men filtered out behind me. Dr. Olsen stepped out from the hole in the cavern and a man dressed in all white followed.
We rounded the corner and lying before us were fragments of purple crystal, shattered and scattered across the cavern floor.
“Where is the Amarantus, Mr. Bergmann?” Dr. Olsen asked through gritted teeth, “you told me that it was still encased in a purple crystal. Why isn’t it here?”
Even in the darkness I could see that Dr. Olsen was red with fury. I wasn’t sure what happened. As far as I knew it was in the crystal. The man in white walked past us and knelt down near the crystals. He grabbed a fistful of the crystal and crushed them in his hand, slowly sprinkling them on the damp cavern floor.
“I see we’ve been misled into believin’ that Amarantus 017 was still contained within its crystal,” he said with a familiar southern drawl.
My body reacted with panic before my mind could even register what was happening. As the man in white turned to face Dr. Olsen and me, I realized who he was. I couldn’t see it earlier due to the darkness but now I could see his face clearly. He was the sheriff.
He turned sharply in his boots, roaring at me in anger with a tongue like a whip, “ya lied to me, Bergmann, and I’m gon’ make sure ya regret it. I shoulda killed ya the moment I saw ya.”
He turned to Dr. Olsen, “and you, you said the Amarantus’ influence had vanished. Because of yer incompetence, its free from its crystal and we’re without recourse.” The man in white turned to the mercenaries beside us and barked an order. “I want Bergmann restrained, now!”
“Mr. Beauregard, I can assure you that the tests we conducted show that he is no longer influenced by Amarantus 017. If the Amarantus is released from the crystal, it happened after Mr. Bergmann’s encounter with it.”
My mind was racing to find answers. Beauregard was the sheriff who had knocked me unconscious and threatened to have me executed for arson. Why was he here? Dr. Olsen said they had rescued me from the sheriff before vigilante justice could be enacted. And yet, here he was, giving orders. This was his operation, not Dr. Olsen’s.
Two of the mercenaries grabbed my arms, twisting them behind my back. Beauregard punched me in the stomach and if it weren’t for the two mercenaries restraining me, I would have keeled over in pain. Instead, I let out a shrill shriek as the air from my lungs exploded out of me.
“Because of you Bergmann, we won’t be able to capture Amarantus 017. Do ya understand the setback ya caused with yer lies? Do ya not understand what we coulda done with the power to influence an entire population’s minds? Where is it, Bergmann?”
Another punch, this time harder. The little breath I recovered was once again freed from my lungs. Then the world faded for a moment and stars flashed in front of me after a blow to my head. My temple throbbed.
“Where is it?”
Another blow to my stomach.
“I don’t know! Why would I know? I can’t sense it like that!” I could barely breathe let alone speak.
“Liar! Ya tricked us and you will tell me where it is. I’ll keep this up ‘til ya tell me.”
This time it was his knee. He made direct contact with my sternum and I felt a pop echo through my chest. A sharp pain dulled my sense of everything around me. Then I felt it. It felt different that it did before. The connection was much stronger without the crystal to attenuate the signal and I didn’t feel the debilitating pain that came with each pulse.
I could hear a guttural wail bouncing off the walls of the cavern from deep within. My vision was still dim from the beating I took a moment ago but I could see Beauregard move away and give orders to the mercenaries throughout the cavern.
A hailstorm of bullets ricocheting off the cavern wall assaulted my eardrums. The cavern lit up like a fireworks show and I could hear the gargled screams of a few mercenaries near the entrance to the cavern. A stray bullet ricocheted off a wall and found its way embedded in Dr. Olsen’s leg. He howled with pain. The two mercenaries released me and I hit the floor with a thud. I started to crawl to a nearby wall when Dr. Olsen grabbed me.
“Mr. Bergmann, you must listen to me. I didn’t know this would happen. I thought we were saving people too. I can’t walk now; I need you to bring that box. The gray one, there.” He motioned his head to my right, his hands bound to the wound in his leg. “It’s a weapon. Once I set it off, it’ll emit a signal that will cripple the Amarantus and they will be able to kill it before it’s too late.”
It was a large metal box about the height of my chest that was brought down by the mercenaries. The box was fixed to two large wheels to make it easier to roll through the dirt tunnels. I crawled to it, bullets zipping through the air above my head and sparking off the walls of the cavern. It was only a few yards away but dragging it back felt like it was a mile. The gunfire and the threat of a monster more terrifying than any human could ever imagine turned the ordinarily easy task into a grueling fight for survival.
I pulled it up to Dr. Olsen as he sat up against one of the walls in the cavern. He opened a panel and pressed several buttons before shutting it once more.
“It’ll take a moment to start up. I hope you can forgive me for what’s about to happen. I’m sure you would do the same if you were me,” he said between heavy breaths.
Just as Dr. Olsen finished speaking, the world flashed white. A wave of pain crashed through my body. My head was crushed by an invisible force, compressing my skull and everything inside it. I could feel the pressure building up, never giving me a moment of mercy. As quickly as it started, I collapsed to the floor, writhing in pain.
Then a deafening howl from within my head pierced my eardrums, building up pressure against the force crushing me from outside. Each pulse that squeezed me like a vice was met with an equally powerful force that threatened to rip apart the atoms that made up my body.
My vision began to clear and I was lying beside the metal box. I could see each pulse it generated warping the air around it. At least, it seemed like the air was distorting; though, somehow I could tell that wasn’t it. It was my new sense that was being manipulated by the machine. The link between Amarantus 017 and I was being ripped apart and smashed back together over and over again.
I could feel it, Amarantus 017. It was pushing outwards from inside me, fighting to stay connected to me. I could feel its pain and it could feel mine. A surge of clarity flowed through me and I understood what I had to do.
I reached up to the same panel Dr. Olsen used and depressed it. It opened and I watched myself as I pressed several buttons before closing the panel.
As quickly as it came, it stopped.
I could hear again and my vision returned to normal. The gunfire had died down and it was silent for a moment. An explosion shook the cavern and rocks began to fall near the entrance we came from. They trapped the few of us still alive in here.
The lights had vanished and only darkness remained to fill the void it left behind. I could still hear the muffled screams of men being torn apart and… running water. Running water in a cavern that wasn’t flooded meant it was going somewhere. There had to be an opening. I began to crawl towards it.
I was exhausted. My body was beaten. My mind was shattered. The only thing that kept me moving across the jagged, rock filled floor of the cavern was a primal instinct to survive. The screams had stopped and I could hear it slithering in the distance behind me. I pushed myself to move faster but in my state, I could only slow down.
And then I felt it bearing down on me, focused solely on me. I rolled onto my back, finally accepting the death that awaited me. I was face to face with it. It was looking down at me, hunched over as if it were inspecting me, thinking, deciding what it would do with me.
It reached out with a tendril but my body didn’t flinch, perhaps I was too tired to move. It lifted me up and tossed me into the stream. It was much deeper than I thought and the current was strong enough to carry me away. All I could remember was the bone chilling cold, being bounced from rock to rock, and the icy water filling my lungs.
I awoke on the shoreline of a river. There was a waterfall jutting out about twenty feet up the side of a cliff. I was being lifted onto a stretcher by two men.
“Oh, you’re awake. Good. I thought we lost you.”
“Ya, you took quite a fall there, I’m surprised you’re still alive.”
“We did good this time. He was exactly where we were told he would be.”
I listened to them talking for a while, too tired to speak out. As my eyes adjusted to the moon light I could see that their mouths weren’t moving. I could hear them clearly. Then I felt it. It was the same feeling I got with the Amarantus… The link. I closed my eyes and slept. I felt safe.