The Crawling Temple

It was a late day in August when my partner, Professor Bradford sent me a message. We hadn’t been in contact for over a year now, but I had no reason to be upset.

Bradford was a busy man, and I was a shell of what I used to be.

Bradford had never updated himself with the times. I remember when the first handheld phone was released, and he scoffed at it. He had said something about interfering with signals, but then again, I always knew when to block out his ramblings. Once he had gotten started on something pointless, there was no stopping him.

I would get Bradford’s messages through a fax machine. That was the only reason I kept the damn thing in my office. Most had moved past it, but Bradford clung to the past like crocodile clings to its prey. Once it has got you, it will never let go.

As usual, the message needed more than five pieces of paper. While I preferred a quick and straight to the point kind of writing, Bradford wanted to drag his stories on. Sometimes, I worried he did it to annoy me. Other times, I wondered if it was because I was the only person to listen.

Removing the sheets from the machine, I sat on my chair and began to read. Bradford had found an island. Well, “found,” was a generous word. His men most likely wandered upon it. According to the note, there were remains of human civilization on the island. Hell, there were even human remains. Bradford simply gushed about it in his writing.

However, he had mentioned that there was a problem. They needed someone who had gone through ruins before and Bradford himself was getting quite old. Last time I had seen him in person he had mentioned how much his knees and back had begun to ache. I made fun of him of course and called him an “old-timer.” He had laughed a good deal from that, but when the laughter died down, I noticed a strange look of longing in his eyes. Like he hadn’t yet accepted this fact.

He was asking me to travel over to the island and assist him in exploring the island. At first, I was going to say no. My days of ruining what little knowledge civilizations had left of their past was over for me. After exploring a Mayan temple and looking at the faces of the people who had just witnessed me and my team disregard their culture shook me to my core. I am not God, nor will I ever be.

There is one thing that Bradford is good at though, and it involves getting people to do what he wants. I had foolishly read on despite already knowing my answer. The only reason I went was because Bradford had promised me one thing. The thing I dreamed of the most. I had wanted my left arm back.

It had been entirely my fault. There was no one I could blame. That same Mayan temple had collapsed under my foolish leadership and that same rubble took my arm. I knew on that day that that was a warning. I should have been wise and heeded it.

I wasn’t sure at the time how he had planned on getting me a properly functioning arm, but I oddly felt the sense to trust him. Bradford had been alive much longer than I had. He had even lived through World War 2, though he was just a bit too young to fight in it. He had been through much more than I had, so I had put this false sense of hope in the idea that Bradford could actually help me.

The plane ride left me feeling nauseous. I had never felt more phantom pain in the place my left arm once was than I did on that plane. Upon landing on the island, I had stumbled my way over to a bush and released what little breakfast I had managed to keep down that morning. Bradford simply laughed at me.

“Still superstitious now, are you?” His hand landed forcefully on my back causing me to retch once more. He continued to laugh at my despair, though he did help haul me up onto my feet.

“We can’t have you this sick for our exploration tomorrow now, can we?”

“Tomorrow?” Despite his love of words, it appeared Bradford had conveniently left out the schedule of the expedition.

“Why, of course! Sure, Rome wasn’t built overnight, but that was just because they didn’t have the equipment we have now.”

Bradford guided me over to a bulldozer and I had wanted to pass out at that moment. He was getting great pleasure in my sickness, and it was beginning to wear on my nerves.

“You never mentioned anything to do with destruction, Bradford.”

The older man simply shrugged. “There was a lot I didn’t mention to you, my friend.”

I was quickly led to a tent which housed an abundance of tools and items I had vaguely been familiar with. Bradford had sat down by this point and gestured that I should do the same. After getting myself comfortable to my best ability, Bradford finally explained what he and his team were doing.

“We had stumbled upon the island and had assumed it was nothing more than a worthless piece of land. I was just about to fax Henry, you know the realtor guy, so I could sell it. Just as I was about to, however, one of my men came running up. ‘There’s a body,’ he shouted, ‘A body.’ Much to my delight, there was a body. It was a skeleton by now, of course, withered a bit from the elements but it was real. One thing of interest, however, was how it was positioned. Whoever this person was, as they were dying, they were crawling. Why, I had chills down my spine at that moment. Was he fleeing from a match? Maybe trying to escape from a death sentence? Well, none of that ended up being true.”

Bradford leaned back into his chair and turned from me. Looking out of the screened window, Bradford continued the story staring at the strange building sitting in the view.

“As we continued further into the island, we walked past the village and noticed more bodies. All of them, every single one of them was crawling.”

“Where to,” I asked quietly. The air in the room was beginning to feel suffocating.

“No. They weren’t trying to go somewhere.” His face slowly melted into a deranged look of excitement. “They were fleeing. They were fleeing from the temple.”

A sense of dread began to pool in my stomach. “Bradford, please tell me that this expedition isn’t for the temple.”

“What else could it be for, my old friend?”

In that moment, I failed to recognize my friend. He seemed obsessive and inescapable. His gaze had me locked into my seat. I feared that if I even breathed, he would have pounced on me at that moment and ripped me to shreds.

“There is a legend about that place. They say the people worshiped a being that resides in that temple. They say it will give you anything you want; you only have to pay his price.”

“Well clearly that worked out well for the people here before, didn’t it?” My voice didn’t have the ferocity I had wanted. In fact, I sounded more like a scared child.

“We are better,” Bradford began, “We are far better than these people. We can crack the code. We can have our wish come true.”

“Is that how you plan on getting me an arm back?”

“No. You’ll be able to get it back yourself. I have a different wish.”

Our conversation ended. I had felt no better than when I had arrived on the island, and I suspected that I was never going to feel better until I had left the dreadful island.

I had dug my heels into the dirt. The entrance to the temple seemed to be like that of a mouth. It beckoned you to move forward, but it would come at a price.

It was early in the morning. Bradford had aggressively shaken me awake and forced me to get ready. He said that he couldn’t wait anymore. I could tell by the way he bounced on his feet like a child getting ready to open presents for Christmas. It would have been funny if not for the overbearing temple that stared down at the silly scene.

It would take one of Bradford’s men to push me through the door. I believe his name was Phil, though it doesn’t really matter now. Phil had been assigned as the person to look after me. In all honesty, it was embarrassing. When Bradford told me that he was assigning me a person to look after me, I had begun to feel like a burden. If I had needed a person to look after me, it would have been better to have just left me behind. Nevertheless, I had someone to watch me the whole time, so I was going to have to work with what I was given.

I would quickly come to realize why someone had been assigned to me. After climbing down multiple staircases and passing one too many remains, we walked over to a hole. Bradford had explained that the temple had a bit of a collapse due to old age and the only way to get to the heart of the temple was to climb. Climbing with one arm was not a task I had ever partaken in.

The only way I was able to get down was by clinging onto the man as he climbed down the rock wall. I had started to apologize on the way down, but Phil only responded in uncaring grunts, so eventually I grew silent. In this silence, I realized how much noise I had made. Upon ending my apologies, I realized that there was no noise. No dripping of water onto rock, no sound of feet stepping on the rocks, there was simply nothing.

It took longer than I would have liked to get to the bottom. Once I had regained my footing, I noticed the carvings on the walls and how some even stretched over onto the ceiling. I had never seen these kinds of carvings before. They were nothing like the ones in the Mayan temples or even in the pyramids. They seemed more frantic and unplanned. The carvings were just barely scratched into the surface of the stones that at first, I thought I was hallucinating them. Bradford would later point them out, which calmed my worry, but only for a second. As I looked past the entryway of the area we landed in, I noticed the wide-open room.

The ceilings stretched up to an impossible height. There was no way, in my mind, that the people here managed to carve out this room on their own. They would have had to make scaffolding, no, not even scaffolding would have held up to the height of the room.

A large staircase traveled down to the floor of the room and an oddly small throne sat against the back wall, facing the stairs. There was a pathway that led directly to the throne, but there was a grid-like pattern that went off from the path. In between each square was nothing. I was afraid that if someone fell in between, they would fall forever. Bradford and his men had this ecstatic look on their faces. My body began to feel quite heavy and tense. The feeling I had when I got off the plane returned but there was nothing in my stomach. I could only stand there and watch with an acute sense of horror.

Phil would once again push me towards the moving group and whistle a tune I hadn’t heard before. Each step down the stairs made my unease grow immensely. I had also, again, become incredibly aware of how quiet the place was. While Bradford and a few men were talking, nothing even hinted at drowning out their voices. Surely, there must have been an echo at least. Yet, as we descended down the stairs, we were greeted with a terrifyingly loud silence.

The throne wasn’t anything to gawk at. Nothing in the room was particularly awe-inspiring. From all of my years of research and exploration, I was feeling rather let down. Bradford had talked up this place as being mysterious and incredible and yet in front of me sat the dullest throne I had ever seen. The height of the room, the carvings, all of it didn’t frighten me anymore.

There was nothing here. There couldn’t be.

The men seemed fixated on the throne, each trying it out and acting like a king. Before I would have joined in on the fun but with my mood dampened, I simply wanted to go home.

That was when I became strangely aware of Bradford. He was away from the group. He was facing a wall just a few feet away from the throne. His face was so close to the wall, I thought maybe he had found some small text and was struggling to read it. Bradford was also uncomfortably close to the pits that had caused me to still earlier. I made my way over and gently placed my hand on his shoulder.

“Bradford?”

Whatever state he had been in, my voice had snapped him out of it. He looked back at me with wild eyes and a disheveled appearance. His appearance surprised me. It had been barely a few minutes and the poor man looked dreadful.

“I don’t want it anymore.” I had to strain my ears just to hear him.

“You don’t want what? The expedition? We could always leave.” At the time I thought that if I had comforted him, we could leave. The whole place was a letdown, and no one needed to spend any more time there.

“I’m sorry, old friend.” Bradford’s voice shook as he placed his hands on my shoulders. “I don’t know what came over me.”

“It’s alright. Come, you should sit. You look pale.”

Bradford looked worse than pale. He seemed to be one step away from death. Within minutes of being away from my view, he seemed to have aged rapidly.

I wonder what he saw. I can no longer ask him, but I am not sure he’d want to tell me anyway.

As I tried to drag Bradford toward the stairs, his grip on my shoulders tightened. He stayed firm with his feet planted solid on the stone. Soon, what started as an effort to move Bradford became a struggle for me to get away from him. He continued to look at me with this crazed look and I could feel all the dread that had greeted me at the door of the temple returning.

Before I could yell for help from the other men, Bradford pushed me away from him. Despite being quite old, he still had enough strength to push me over the ledge and down into one of the square pits.

Upon waking up, I wished I hadn’t. The endless throbbing sensation in my body was worse than when I had lost my arm. I blindly let out a groan of pain as I twisted and contorted my body. My head felt as though a massive amount of pressure was being applied upon it. The headache certainly made me want to pass out again.

I think I would have laid on the floor had it not been for a strange whistling sound. The place had been so absent of noise that a strong sense of happiness filled me despite my injuries. I’m still not sure how I managed it, but I had begun to crawl.

I felt like an infant, shakily stumbling my way on my only arm and two, somehow, unbroken legs. I just knew I had to make it to the sound. It didn’t matter what was making it I just needed something or someone there. So, I crawled.

To start my journey, the only daunting task had been my lack of a left arm, but soon I noticed a strange tingling feeling on my legs, belly, and arm. It was easy to ignore at first, but eventually the sweat that had begun to congregate on my skin became uncomfortable enough that I tried to push myself up. As I made my way onto my knees and hand, my back brushed against something solid and smooth. I tried to lift my head, but the same barrier prevented me from tilting my head upwards.

I felt sick again.

Had I managed to crawl my way into a small tunnel? Or were the pits really this strange system of hallways that you had to crawl to get through.

The whistling was the only steady thing that occurred in those tunnels. I had no choice but to keep crawling my way forward. The sound was the only direction I felt I could go to.

Any fear surrounding what might be making the sound was quickly vanquished when I realized the floor that had been somewhat warm suddenly felt like it had been set on fire.

I could feel the sweat sticking to my skin. The heat only increased, and I had wanted to tear my skin off in that instant. I could feel my blood begin to boil, bubble, and pop. I began to scratch at my skin as the feeling of thousands of needles began stabbing themselves into me. My throat closed up and felt dry. Every time I tried to swallow; a distinct ripple of pain ran down my throat.

This was hell. It had to be.

Every time I tried to remove myself from the floor, I could feel my skin slowly peel itself away and a horrid ripping sound was the only thing that filled the daunting silence of the room. I could barely see, but with what little eyesight I had left, I noticed the small patches of the skin of my knees and hand being left behind.

I wanted to scream, but I knew that would have been hopeless. With my throat the way that it was, it would have only made my situation worse. In an awful moment of recollection, I was reminded of the brazen bull and the outcome of its victims.

Was this my fate? Was I to die at the hands of this cursed temple and the ignorance of a man I thought was my friend?

As I crawled on, the lack of skin became noticeable and soon I could only feel muscle sticking to the ground. My vision began to blur past the point of use and my eyes began to bulge and strain.

I had sworn at that moment that if I had made it out, I would call everyone I had ever wronged and asked for forgiveness. I would join a monastery and live my life in complete devotion to something other than myself.

My arm shook violently as it tried to keep up with the speed I was crawling at. I could feel my veins expanding and straining. The swelling that had once stayed in my arm and legs made its way to my throat and head. I had clenched my teeth to such a degree that they cracked and crumbled in my mouth.

I couldn’t stop. If I did, I feared I would become a part of the tunnels. How many people had given up and allowed their bodies to melt into the tunnels I now crawl in? Was this what the village was fleeing from? A fate almost worse than death?

Throughout my panic, I had failed to realize that the once sweltering stone floor had turned into cold, damp dirt. In fact, I didn’t realize I had made it out until I had crawled all the way to the beach and sand began to embed itself into my exposed muscle tissue.

I do not know what exactly fell upon the others after I had been pushed. I don’t think I want to know.

Bradford and his men were found, but not as the men they once were. Bradford himself looked aged and ragged. His eyes constantly bulged out of his skull as though he was searching for something. His hands shook so viciously that he could no longer feed himself. He would die a few weeks later.

Phil didn’t look any better. His hair had fallen out and whatever strands had remained clinging to his skull would be remorselessly ripped from his head. He had a strong physique before the journey, but now he appeared to be nothing but flesh and bone. Fresh scars decorated his body. They almost reminded me of the strange etchings found in the temple. When they had found Phil, he was making an odd whistling noise. Even after bringing him to the hospital, he continued to make the noise until his vocal cords gave way.

Personally, I like to think that it was Phil’s whistling that saved me from my fate that day.

From what the doctor told me, I fared better than the others. I use a wheelchair now. Apparently, the fall did break my legs, but the adrenaline was so great I didn’t even notice. I no longer participate in anything involving expeditions anymore. If my mistakes before the Mayan temple had taught me little, the latest horror I subjected myself to taught me greatly.

I still can’t bring myself to get rid of the fax machine. Perhaps Bradford pushed me because he knew what horrors awaited us all. Selfishly, I wish that were the case. Whatever it was that Bradford saw had changed him. In his last few days, the doctor said he was miserable. That was until I had worked up to the courage to see him. After that, it was said that Bradford became oddly peaceful, and he passed away in his sleep. I suppose I keep the machine as a way to remember him. I had forgiven him long ago. The selfish actions that pushed Bradford to go to the extremes he did died with him. I can only hope, wherever he is, that he is resting peacefully.