holy place? She shook her head. “We can’t just go around disfiguring ancient ruins,” she said, her mind still in some sort of haze.
“This doesn’t look like a ruin,” said Rick, marveling at the beauty of it all. The corridor walls were smooth obsidian with gold trim that seemed to be dancing in all sorts of fantastic shapes. The floor they were walking upon was made of individually cut tiles of marble, and the ceiling, where the vines with the glowing grapes hung, was made out of red stone. “It looks so new and beautiful.”
Francine saw, in the lower corner of the left wall as it reached the floor, a few drawings that were both glorious and disturbing. She saw a man sitting on a rock, feeding a giant bird his hand, with a smile on his face. The detail was breathtaking, and the colors were so well combined only an artist of supreme mastery could have created it. There was another drawing, also beautiful and disturbing, of people of all ages hurling themselves down into the open maw of a revolting form that seemed to be a giant toad with rows upon rows of teeth. The people looked horrified, yet the drawing gave the impression that they were willingly throwing themselves into the monster’s mouth.
Something snapped back in place in Francine’s brain. Immediately, she became aware of how wrong everything felt and appeared. “Those drawings weren’t there just a few minutes ago,” she said.
“Huh?” Cynthia said, turning to face Francine.
“Weren’t those walls just black with some gold patterns?”
“Where’s the door?” asked Shane as the mist began to clear from his mind.
Everyone turned immediately, looking for the door. It was about forty yards away.
“I don’t remember walking,” said a perplexed Rick.
“Me neither,” said Cori. “I thought we were standing still, talking.”
Shane Pillman thought of himself as a tough, clearheaded, rational and adventurous man, but at this moment none of that mattered. He was as confused as everybody else. He wasn’t exactly scared—or could not bring himself to acknowledge his own fear—but was feeling the greatest sense of unease that he had ever experienced. He knew now that the only smart thing to do would be to exit the mountain, to get out. He was about to suggest this when Cynthia spoke.
“Guys, quick, come over here!” she shouted.
Cynthia led the group into a large octagonal room filled with the most exquisite stone statues that anyone had ever seen. The statues were all in different postures of fear and despair. Some of them were not of humans but of fantastic creatures of mythology: satyrs, a griffin, and an enormous Minotaur that seemed life-size—standing eight feet tall and as broad as a real bull. Some of the statues were clearly of ancient soldiers. What was real odd, thought Cynthia as she examined each and every statue, was the uncanny detail. Cynthia stood in front of the statue of an old soldier who was in a posture of extreme fright—back bent and slightly twisted, hands raised as if warding off an attack, mouth opened in an unfinished scream. She was astounded with the minute detail the sculptor had achieved—she could make out the wrinkles on the face, the dried cracked lips, a tear emerging out of the left eye, and even the cavities on some of the teeth.
“This is the work of a genius,” she said, her voice hushed in awe.
“A genius who didn’t know how to sculpt weapons,” said Rick, picking up a spear off the floor.
“Oh, yeah, that’s weird,” said Shane. “All the weapons on the soldier statues are real. I wonder why?”
“Well,” said Cynthia, “I think that most geniuses are great in just one thing and not in everything.”
“Whoever made these was a macabre genius,” said Francine with a shiver.
“Ah, I think the walls are moving,” said Rick.
The entire room started shifting and rising. Had the group not been stupefied and sluggish, they may have been able to make a dash out of the room and escape; instead, they stood there watching, letting it happen. And the room kept rising.
When the room finished its ascent, the group found itself in a forest unlike any they had ever known. An army of birch trees with leaves as white as snow, spaced about ten feet apart, greeted them. The trees formed a pattern that appeared a maze. About fifteen feet in front of them, in a small clearing, stood a woman with her back towards them.
The woman was unusually tall and wore a long white dress. Her hair was a strange shiny green, and even though there was no wind it moved in soft waves.
Shane walked towards the woman. His mind was filled both with wonder and apprehension. Above him was a completely yellow sky, and before him a tall woman whose face he had a strong impulse to see, almost a need.
Francine had tried to stop Shane. She had grabbed his arm, but he shrugged her off, roughly. She was about to tackle him low around the knees when she noticed all the others were following him. Not really knowing why, Francine stayed behind. Something was bothering her, something about the macabre nature of this place. She decided to hide. She hid behind the huge statue of the Minotaur.
“Lady, are you all right?” asked Shane, approaching the woman. By now he was frightened, but his conscious mind would not allow him to accept it, so he did not listen to that little voice in the back of his mind that screamed at him to get away. He reached out and was about to touch the woman’s shoulder when she spoke. What she said he could not understand—it was an ancient dialect that had long ago descended into the house of oblivion.
Though he could not understand a single word she said, the profound sadness with which she said it was evident. He touched her shoulder and turned her around.
What he saw turned him to stone. The first thing he noticed was her hair, which was moving and squirming. Snakes, he thought—her hair is made of snakes. The snakes were of many different species and of varying lengths—some so thin as to almost be worms. Then he noticed her skin. It was a faded and ghoulish green, except for two nasty red marks, like tiny cuts, on her cheeks. Her forehead was wrinkled, yet those wrinkles did not seem to belong to age but to an abundance of skin that had folded upon itself. Finally, he saw her eyes. These were eternal pits of despair and emptiness that dragged the very essence out of him. They were the last things he ever saw.
Shane was still alive when his eyes turned to stone, and his face began to freeze in an expression of dawning horror.
Cynthia reached Shane as he was turning to stone. She tried to turn him around, grabbing his shoulder and pulling, but by now he was far too heavy to move. Startled and in a state of shock and disbelief, she looked at the woman as if expecting some sort of explanation. Cynthia turned to stone with one word echoing in her mind: Medusa.
Rick knew that something was wrong, but he was not near enough to understand what was happening. He could tell that the woman was staring at Shane and Cynthia; he could also see that both of them were frozen in weird postures, completely unmoving. Rick was trembling.
“Oh, God, she’s coming our way!” Cori blurted out as the Medusa turned towards them.
“How come they’re not moving?” Rick asked, almost to himself.
“Run,” hissed Cori as urgently as she could without raising her voice.
They both ran in opposite directions.
Francine saw her friends running. Cynthia and Shane didn’t move. She wanted to call them over, but the strange woman moved too fast, going after Rick. Francine waited for a count of twenty and then crawled out of her hiding spot behind the Minotaur. She was as scared as she had ever been in her life, as scared as when she was ten and the neighbor’s Rottweiler had broken free from its yard and chased her up a tree. She could still see the dog’s long sharp teeth snapping, saliva spilling all over the place.
Francine carefully made her way to where Cynthia and Shane were, frantically whipping her head from side to side, scanning for any sign of the strange woman. When she got a good look at them, she let out an involuntary yelp. They were completely turned to stone. Several things began to click in her mind—the uncanny detail of the statues, the statue of the Minotau
r, the woman whose gaze could turn people to stone. “Oh, God,” she whispered, “the myths are real.”
Though she was immensely frightened, she forced herself to think clearly. If the platform of statues had risen, then there had to be a way to lower it. She probably had enough time to search the platform before that Medusa creature caught up with Rick and returned looking for more victims. She probably had enough time, but it was beyond her to just abandon her friends.
Francine heard a loud, desperate scream. Rick. It was too late for him. She dashed in the direction Cori had taken, hoping to find her before the Medusa found them both.
She ran, dashing through strange foliage that had she been in a different frame of mind would have surely called beautiful. She ran until she cleared the forest, arriving at a place of brown and purple camel hump like hills. Someone called her name. She turned and there was Cori, her head and shoulders protruding out of a giant and slimy mushroom. Cori waved Francine over. “Quick, get in,” she said.
Francine ran towards her, and Cori helped her climb into the mushroom. The mushroom sagged with the weight of both women, but not by much. Inside the mushroom felt like being in a tub full of tofu. They had to keep their faces out so as to breathe. They stuck their faces out of the underbelly of the mushroom umbrella so as not to be seen by the Medusa.
“Where’s