“Between you, me, and the wall,” Jim shrugged towards the stony surface and the ornate depiction of a grand hall painted upon it, “I don’t know what to do! Every time I’ve found something that could be a major discovery, it just ends up being a dead end or unimportant.”
“Uh huh,” Andy muttered, hardly paying attention. Her focus held to the surprisingly vibrant colors and intricate technique lathered across limestone bricks.
“It’s been years since the remnants of the settlement at this site were discovered, and yet we’re only digging up sticks that may have been tools!”
“Ancient tool usage is important,” she retorted, then returned to jotting down notes about the depiction. Upon the left of the mural, a small crack was faintly reaching around the fourth pillar supporting the chamber. Yet as she looked more intently, she noted it had not been from the decay of the piece, yet deliberately added in shockingly realistic detail.
“It would be, if we could confirm anything!” Jim paced back and forth in the tight stone chamber, barely able to make four half-steps before turning the other way. “At this rate, we might as well be chasing ghosts.”
“We literally proved the latest batch from your digsite were ancient spears last night. Also, you’re the one ignoring the very notable wall we just uncovered.” At the side of the chamber where stone should have met brick, there seemed to be a millimeter wide gap between the natural and artificial stretching on past Andy’s view. Trying to discern the distance the two ends remained this way could bring information of note, yet she dared not risk getting too close, and ruining the current discovery.
“Psh, yeah right,” he brushed off, “there’s no way I wouldn’t have heard about that.”
“You did,” she stopped for a moment to reflect on why she had been sent with him, “At the board meeting three hours ago. That we both attended.” Back to the mural. A vibrant red carpet, which severed the bottom third of the portrait in twain, seemed to unravel at the feet of an ornate throne. The sight of the twisting metal and glistening gemstones bound together in some discomforting form. If there had been a ruler upon a seat such as this, their very presence would command all to bow before them.
“Well, they should have made a bigger deal about it,” Jim refused to back down from his false victimhood, “You’d think they’d tell their most valuable researcher first.”
“Mhm, sure buddy,” Andy subtly yet snarkily remarked, “and tell me, what is your job exactly?” Don’t get distracted. Note the ceiling, luminescent candlelight beamed into and bounced through reflective spirals of glass and metal. Chandeliers clung tight to chains shackling them from gravity. The roof’s pattern was hexagonal, each tile a mural. Even paintings within a painting seemed clear, as if observing it in reality.
“Obviously I’m the…” for once, finally, hesitancy from Jim, “I’ve been working here for years, how dare you suggest I don’t have a job.”
“I didn’t say that,” Andy smirked just out of his view, yet her voice gave her expression away, “I’m just asking your title, that’s all.” How could something so real be thinly plastered upon rough stones? Every reflection, every crack, every thread, every particle of dust gently floating in the air; the closer she looked, the more precision was revealed.
How could this even exist?
“If you must know, I’m sorta an everyman,” Jim proclaimed with too much confidence, “I do a little digging, do a little analyzing, do a little overseeing, stuff like that. Comes naturally with being the one who discovered the site.”
“If that’s the case Mr. Everyman,” she gently pressed herself from the chilled floor and shut her notebook, “then surely you have something to say about this wall that you’ve been ignoring this whole time.”
“I mean, what do you want me to say?” He seemed puzzled at the simple question, “It’s a yellowish white stone brick wall, not much else about it.” Jim scratched his short beard, that never seemed to grow quite right. “I guess it’s kinda weird that it doesn’t touch the cave?”
“Ok, haha, very funny,” Andy’s eyes rolled as she turned and gestured to the portrait, “What about the very obvious mural plastered across it?”
“What mural?” Obviously a joking remark, right? Yet, Jim’s question held far too much sincerity to be playing a simple prank.
“Do you,” Andy looked back and forth from the vibrant colors, the precise lighting, the dusted cracks in a facade of marble on stone, to the ragged man wearing a small light on the side of his hat, contrasting and blacking out the slick rock walls behind him, “Are you messing with me right now?”
“Are you doing ok?” He quarter-stepped forward, trying to discern any hint of delirium in Andy’s visage, or any note of her claims, yet found nothing in both. Both seemed completely bewildered at the other’s claims, yet neither doubted their own.
“You mean to tell me you can’t see,” she opened her notebook to her notes and rough redrawing of the mural, “This right here?” He shook his head, looking back and forth to see if it was just a small blemish on the surface, or the alignment of points connected via the mind’s pattern seeking nature. No matter how deep the other looked, neither found a crack in the other’s claims.
“This is freaking me out,” Jim sheepishly whispered, stepping back and hitting cooled rock, “let’s just get out of here.”
“Yep, agreed,” Andy wasted no time pushing past Jim to exit the chamber, preparing to fit through the tight squeeze. Except, apparently she misremembered the exit. Behind where Jim once stood was undisrupted dark-bluish rock.
“You gonna leave or…” His words trailed off as his light illuminated the freshly not-an-exit before the two, “Crud.” He scanned the tight chamber, yet even with its claustrophobic scope, the narrow passage couldn’t be seen.
Both traced the walls, attempting to discern some trick of the light, some poorly perceived depth, any indication of escape. But nothing could be found. Nothing but the portrait. Back to back, shallow breaths quickened.
“Hey, is it,” Andy hurriedly spoke between sharp inhales, “just me, or–”
“The room is shrinking.” There was no need to avoid the truth, both remained pinned to the other’s back, Andy facing the grandiose hall as its outer edges subsumed to stone.
Whether from desperation or delusion, Andy reached out her arm to the twisted throne, begging in her mind that she would reach through, and be free from this nightmare. A single finger reached through squeezing stone, colliding in a chilled touch. It felt as if metal.
Jim collapsed backwards, landing dazed and staring up at the ceiling. There had barely been enough room for the two of them standing up, let alone laying on the ground. How did..?
“Jeez Andy, you could’ve given some warning,” he grunted, pushing himself from the strangely dry floor. In fact, the room seemed off. His flashlight illuminated the yellowed pale of the bricks, now the earth containing the strangely spacious chamber. Before him, the less-narrow-than-he-remembered exit stood as if a saint reaching out its arm.
“Holy crap, Andy!” Jim raced up and felt the passage, assuring its existence to his touch. “Andy, we’re not dying!!” Not dying, not dying, not dying. The words echoed back, then fell quiet once more. Perplexed by the silence, Jim turned slowly to check on his companion.
“Andy?”
He could see it now, exactly as she described it. The sanguine carpet, the bone-white marble walls and pillars, the dizzying lights dangling beneath horrific depictions of victorless wars. And at the end of the hall, the great throne; its framing jagged and pierced with mismatched gemstones, rising to a gilded faux-crown of spikes at its peak. And sat at in the heart of this iron maiden of a crown, pierced and bound to their eternal prison–
Jim twisted away and fled, barely snatching Andy’s dirtied notebook before bolting through the passage, off into the dark.
She emptily smiled back.