“Mr Kincaid,” Winston calls to the man, approaching slowly whilst his comrades approached from other sides.

“Yes,” the man answers, his tone flat, his expression blank.

“We’re from the company,” Winston explains. “Sent in on a clean up.” As Winston speaks to him, there appears to be no reaction from Kincaid, who just stares back.

“We here to check the site and… your team.” Winston looks around in a gesture.

“Where’s the rest of the team?”

“No team,” Kincaid replies, his words lifeless.

“Standard operating procedure, a team of 3 at a minimum. Yours had 4.” Winston looked at his tablet, tapped a button that brought up the previous worksheet with all the details. “Sinclair, Matthews, Rajah and… Kincaid. Yourself.” Winston made eye contact with the lost man. “They were all down here with you.”

The man simply shook his head.

He was in shock, Winston realised.

“Okay,” he nodded. “My colleague is just going to give you the once over. Dash?” Winston stepped back as Dash approached from the side. Kincaid had not acknowledged the presence of the other men, but he wasn’t fazed either when one stepped from out of his peripheral vision.

Winston turned to face the open room. It was clear as anything now that the mist had lifted. Although he still hadn’t figured out where the mist had disappeared to.

The room seemed smaller than he’d expected. The fog had made it feel like the site was vast, especially since the progress they’d made was slow. But now as he beheld the structure, it seemed a similar size to the company offices. The pillars etched into the walls stretched above them about 20ft before reaching a vaulted ceiling which seemed perfectly sculpted. This was no natural formation. Surrounding the outskirts of the room were a series of small man-made lights, likely installed by the fixers, that now illuminated the area without the fog muting their light. “Where is your mask?” he heard Dash ask the fixer.

“No mask.” Came the reply

“You were equipped with a…” Dash started to say but Kincaid simply repeated his answer.

“Okay,” Dash said, retrieving a small torch from his pocket. “Look into the light.”

As Dash inspected the man’s vitals, Lambard stepped forward and watched. Meanwhile, Winston continued to examine the surroundings.

“What are you thinking boss,” Carter said, approaching.

“Something ain’t right,” he said, in thought.

“About this place? Ain’t anything right with it.”

“No, not just that,” Winston said. “You feel it right?”

Carter hesitated to answer, afraid of seeming paranoid.

Winston had no such fears. “You know that feeling you can’t quite place? Like when someone tells you they’re fine but you know there’s something under the surface they ain’t saying.”

“Like intuition?” Carter replied.

“I guess, but… more than that.” Winston said, looking around. “I ain’t superstitious, but this place…”

“It gives a vibe,” Carter said. Winston nodding. “Like we ain’t wanted here.”

“Exactly,” Winston said, turning back to face his colleague. “Like this is… holy ground.”

“Blessed,” Carter said, searching for the thought that was etched on the face of his boss.

“Or cursed,” Winston thought but didn’t say. He simply nodded as he looked towards the vacant-eyed fixer.

Lambard and Dash had been continuing to ask Kincaid questions which he had answered as briefly as possible.

“What’s the word,” Winston asked, approaching the group again.

“He’s in good condition physically. No apparent injuries, suit is in working order. Would be even more efficient with the mask, but I can’t seem to get any answer as to where that is, or the rest of his team.”

“Kincaid…” Walter said. “Francis. You think you’re able to walk out of here?”

He shook his head.

“We should find out what happened,” Lambard interrupted. “Where the others…”

“He can be interviewed back up top,” Dash said. “Ain’t no reason to keep him down here. He needs a proper exam.”

Winston ignored the conversation of the other two as he focused his attention on the man and his response. “You can’t walk?”

He shook his head again and opened his mouth to answer but words didn’t follow.

“Francis,” Winston pushed. “We can guide you to…”

“Took my leg,” Kincaid said absently. “And…” he looked away for the first time, toward his shoulder. He blinked twice as if he was struggling to remember, or maybe even recognise his surroundings. “My arm.”

“They hurting you?” Winston asked, looking over his shoulder to Dash as if to ask “you checked him over, right?”

Kincaid shook his head again.

Winston looked him up and down and then remembered the blood they’d seen.

“We found some blood over there,” he pointed behind him. “Did you hurt yourself?”

“Wall fell,” Kincaid nodded repeatedly in a slow manner. Winston wasn’t sure if it was a nod in agreement or a sign of the shock he was enduring.

Winston glanced over at the site. The wall near the bloodied floor was still up and as structurally sound as the rest of the place. “Pinned.”

“He’s in shock,” Lambard said, finally catching up with everybody else’s diagnosis.

“Okay,” Winston reassured. “But you look like you’re good at the minute, perhaps my colleague can help guide you out.”

“Fixed us” Kincaid said.

“Sorry?” Winston asked.

“Came down to fix, it fixed us.” Kincaid’s gaze drifted from Winston to his own body standing there.

Winston heard the words but then looked back at Carter. “Can you take him?” Then to Lambard, “help him.”

They both nodded in response as they stood on each side of the stunned survivor and placed one of their hands under each of his elbows. “C’mon,” Carter said as he started to lead him away.

“Michael said you’d come,” Kincaid said as he started to walk.

“Michael?” Lambard asked whilst Winston quickly looked back at the tablet and the work sheet. Not one of the men working the site was called Michael. “Was he down here with you?”

“Yes” Kincaid answered coldly.

“Wait,” Winston said, interrupting.

The two men stood with Kincaid halfway between Winston and the tunnel exit.

“Michael was a fixer, like you?” Winston asked, trying to get to the bottom of it.

Kincaid shook his head and his gloomy face changed to a soft smile.

“Michael was down here?”

Kincaid’s face was no longer the blank expression it once was, but his eyes now glistened in the light.

“I think this is home now.” He answered matter-of-factly.

Winston turned to search the room once more. Were there people buried in here? Was this room actually as bare as it looked? Had the dust in the air actually been made of the missing men?

“Did he die here?” Winston asked, his back to the rest of his team. It was like he could barely have them look at him whilst he asked a seemingly preposterous question.

“No,” Kincaid answered, almost with a laugh

Okay, Winston thought, relieved. Maybe this place was just getting to him. All he wanted to do was get this man out of there and then send the science team down here to do a sweep. Maybe they could work out what had happened. But then, Kincaid elaborated.

“Michael died years ago.”

Winston nodded in easy acceptance. The man had lost it. Whether he’d snapped down there or before, he didn’t know, that was up to the doctors to work out. But he also couldn’t shake the image of that first sight of him. Of the mist seemingly dissipating around him, maybe becoming absorbed in his suit, or even in his exposed skin. Surely there was no way he could have breathed all of those particles in. But then again, he wasn’t the scientist.

“On second thoughts,” Winston said. “Best to take precautions and wait here for a few more minutes.” Winston put some more space between himself and the other men as he placed a request with those up top. “Possible contagion, might need proper measures in place up top. Quarantine zone.”

“Uploaded Diagnosis revealed no contaminants,” the voice on the other end reported.

“I know,” Winston answered. “But machines and… well, everything has been pretty screwy down here. Not sure we can trust the readings. We’ve got one man down here that might have been exposed to… something. Signs of psychosis.”

“Acknowledged. Are you and your team safe?”

Winston thought the answer over. If he said “no”, they would likely send in an extra team, armed and capable and likely unnecessary. Never mind the extra paperwork he’d have to fill in. He didn’t believe Kincaid was of any real danger to them but he couldn’t quite tell them they felt safe there either. But he couldn’t explain why.

“I believe so,” he answered simply.

He’d made his way to the spot where the blood had dried on the floor.

“Might want to prep a science team too,” he said, staring at the substance. Crouching down he sought to examine whether it was completely dry, something he wouldn’t have expected if it had come from one of the fixers.

“Acknowledged. The air is safe?”

Winston looked up and around him. “Seems so.”

Then his focus became fixed on the walls. He’d imagined they were fairly bare, but he noticed there were minute patterns. Like those picture games, it only became clear once you unfocused your eyes. He shifted in and out of focus and then unclipped his tablet and pointed the camera at the walls. The screen seemed to show the same bare walls until he tapped the Detail feature and it brought up the same wall, only this time it was one filled with defined shapes. As he zoomed in on it, it revealed the shapes looked to be words, minutely written in countless languages. Some looked to be pictographs. He tapped the Share button as he asked “Are you seeing this?”

The other men looked down at their screens whilst the company up top would similarly receive such images.

“Record everything,” the instruction came from his superiors.

“This is…” Winston couldn’t find the words.

“There’s arabic here,” Dash said.

“I think this is old russian,” Lambard similarly answered.

“What’s it say?” Winston asked as he stepped towards the wall and ran his hand against it, as if it would reveal the secrets it held.

“Origin? I think” Dash guessed. “There’s a lot here. I’m a little rusty”.

“Alpha and Omega” Carter volunteered. “Greek. Beginning and the end.”

“Fallen place,” Lambard suggested. “Like, uh…”

“Tomb?”

“Genius,” Dash interrupted “Is that English? Genius… Loki?”

A laugh echoed. It came from Kincaid. “The trickster God.” He nodded, smiling to himself. “That would make sense.” The man seemed more lucid now, like he’d finally woken up from a long sleep.

Nobody seemed to be paying him much attention now, so focused they were on their new discovery.

“Loci,” Carter corrected. “Genius loci. Like a…” He thought about the meanings of the phrase. The spirit of the place, only in some versions the spirit wasn’t just an idea, but something literal. A chill ran up his back.

Winston examined the wall closely, he could make out words on the wall without even needing to zoom in with his tablet.

“Impossible,” he said under his breath as he spotted a phrase that seemed to disappear within a crack in the wall.

“What is it?” Carter said, looking up. Winston was practically pressing his masked face to the wall as he sought to read the phrase.

“I can’t quite…” Winston said, frustrated as he tried to focus on the words in the wall. “It looks like…”

Finish a sentence, Carter thought but he wouldn’t dream of saying it out loud.

Before he could say anything in reply, Winston was unclipping the clasps of his mask and freeing himself of it. The words were whispering to him now. Bidding him to come closer.

“Sir,” Carter called out, running towards him, just as Winston pressed his bare face against the wall.

The words he’d believed he’d seen written on an ancient wall now beckoned him. The truth that lies in Krause Gorge... Words that meant little to anyone else, except him. Words that pointed to a past once hidden and, he’d hoped, long forgotten.

“Is he out of his mind?” Lambard asked Dash.

“Doesn’t make any difference,” Kincaid volunteered, sounding almost intoxicated.

Lambard snapped back to look at him.

Kincaid looked as clear-minded as he ever had. Only now his temperament seemed more disturbing than ever. “Ain’t no mask can keep him out. This is his place.”

An inhuman scream pierced the air as the stone walls bit into Winston’s face, pulling him into their grasp. His face dripped with blood as it squelched against the hard unforgiving surface. His screams became muffled as his hands scrambled to push himself away from the wall.

As Carter reached him he grabbed a hold of his superior’s body and tried to pull it free, all to no avail.

Winston’s face was fully pressed into the wall now and his scream which had become garbles now became silenced by the wet crunch of bone. His standing body now slumped forward, his hands still engulfed in the wall. They too, bloody stumps that they were got yanked further into the wall, first the wrist then the forearms, pulling the carcass closer to the predator.

Carter staggered back, stunned and shook, unable to formulate a thought.

He didn’t even hear the other men running to aid him. Lambard was pulling him away as he had once guided the former survivor Kincaid. His words called out to Carter as if from a distance, pleading with him to move.

Dash was living up to his name, tugging at Carter’s arm one minute and on the move the next. He rushed back to where he’d left Kincaid only to find the man standing in the centre of the opening to the tunnel, staring blankly as he watched the events unfold.

“Gorram run!” Dash screamed as he passed him, hurtling up the passageway.

“There’s nowhere to run,” Kincaid muttered as the man ran off.

Dash couldn’t think of the men behind him. Maybe this was what had happened to the others, but he was damned if he was going to stay there like Kincaid had.

It was no coincidence people called him Dash, he’d won medals as a teenager for his running. Not quite worlds best, but he’d placed 3rd one year. His gammy leg had put an end to those dreams but he could still move fast. Just not as fast as he would’ve liked in a containment suit.

His foot caught in the ground and he went flying to the floor, his face headbutting the mask and the two colliding into the floor, a crack forming in the centre of the glass.

“Ruttin’ hell,” he screamed into the void as he tried to get to his feet. Standing he tried to push off again but found himself stagger. His foot was stuck. He stepped back to try and free it when he realised the foot wasn’t caught on something, it was stuck in the earth. A pain shot through his foot, up his ankle and through the nerves up his leg. It didn’t felt like a stab or a bite, it felt like a chomp. He expected to see his leg disappear with a stump where his foot had been… but his foot was still in the earth, only now he found himself sinking further. He pressed his hands to the ground to try and push himself off and immediately realised his error. His left hand was stuck now too. His right felt stuck to the ground like glue but it wasn’t entrenched. He tugged it harshly, the skin tearing off of his palm like torn paper. He let out an almighty scream as he collapsed to the ground, face in the dirt. He knew what was to come now but there was no moving, his body was to the ground, sinking into its grasp, as it sank it’s teeth into his flesh and bone.

Carter and Lambard had made their way to the tunnel but now, faced with the cries ahead, stopped where they were.

They turned to Kincaid, still standing there, motionless. “What is this?”

“This is the end,” Kincaid uttered simply.

“Like hell,” Carter snapped.

“Exactly,” Kincaid muttered

Carter shook it off, grabbing his funnel gun like it could protect him. Maybe he couldn’t shoot whatever was coming but he could blast it.

Lambard was rattling off something to the superiors but Carter struggled to focus on the words. He knew they wouldn’t be able to help him. Instinct told him this would all be over in minutes, if not seconds. He should’ve trusted that instinct the minute they got down there.

Carter staggered into the centre of the room and looked around him hoping for a solution. An exit. Or even a god he could pray to. He didn’t believe in the latter and the former wasn’t looking likely either.

He spotted the clump in the corner that used to be Winston. The body had started to decompose already, heavy dust forming around it. Then a breeze gusted from the wall as if it had blew off an unwanted bug, “Winston” fluttering in the air like seed-heads of a daffodil.

“No,” Carter said, but he knew no words would stop what was to come. Still, he had to try. “Stop this!” He ordered Kincaid.

“I can’t.”

Lambard ignored the dialogue, he was too focused on listening for any instruction from above. The man couldn’t think for himself if he tried.

“How did you make it?” Carter demanded.

Kincaid didn’t answer but simply examined his surroundings.

He hadn’t made it, Carter realised. He was still down there with the rest of them. For what? Bait? Or something else more sinister?

In the tunnel behind Kincaid, a growing mist gathered and made it’s way into the temple.

Carter shook his head as he watched the mist overtake Kincaid until he was obscured from view.

Lambard was next. He fidgeted with his mask and struggled to reach his funnel gun, but not before the mist overtook him. His screams rang out in the speakers in Carter’s helmet, long after the mist had similarly overtaken him.

Carter wanted to shut off his comms, but there was no time for that. He aimed his funnel at the approaching mist and blasted it again. Directly in front of him, the mist from the tunnel dispersed but then continued on, eventually meeting the mist that had once been Winston and now made it’s way to Carter.

He blasted again and again, stepping back each time. With each pull of the trigger the mist shifted and redirected, but it persisted. Until Carter found himself backed against the wall.

He felt the claws at his back gouging through his suit and into his flesh. He felt the dust in his suit, scorching his skin, burrowing their way underneath and burning him up from the inside. And then he didn’t know where the pain was coming from, except that it was everywhere, it was all he was.

He could still hear the screams in his helmet, but he could no longer tell if they were Lambard’s or his own.