Chapter Sixteen

I’d like to say that things started out well, but in all honesty, ‘well’ was off the table as soon as we found the crypt, with a faint red trail leading up to it.
I was fixated on the trail by that point, scuttling along beside a crypt “like Frankenstein’s pet crab” as Jeff put it, so the first I knew of the problem was when there was a shout of “No!” and hands grabbed my collar and ankles, dragging me backwards.
“What the … !” I went silent when I saw the structure I’d been about to follow the trail into.
A white marble building, leaning to one side like a piece of badly constructed flat pack furniture, chunks of the roof were pushed up to the point that the rafters were exposed, a once-decorative glass window was in fragments across the neighbouring graves, and the giant bronze doors, still closed, bulged outwards.
“Is there any chance.” Jeff asked hopefully. “That it always looked like this?”
“Nope.” Archie prodded him with one leg, then pointed Jeff’s attention at a neatly-manicured floral border around the nearby graves. “Glass fragments in the flowers.”
At a confused look from Anj and I, he continued.
“Groundskeeper would have dealt with…”
Yorick spun on his heel and stalked over to the flowerbed.
“And there he goes; Maybe don’t disturb the … OK, nevermind, do your thing.” Archie trailed off as Yorick delicately picked out fragments of glass and sections of cut-off flower. “We’ve lost him for a bit.”
“I’m just seeing how much damage there is.” Yorick called back, over his shoulder, continuing to gather glass fragments. “And no, it wasn’t like this earlier. I passed through here last evening, and it was fine then.”
We stood and looked at the wrecked structure for a while, listening to the sounds of Yorick collecting glass fragments.
“I could try pulling out an eyeball and rolling it in?” I suggested. “That might work?”
“Ugh.”
“No.”
“Ewww!”
“Dude; Gross.”
“Under no circumstances.”
“Wasn’t overly keen on the plan myself.” I muttered. “But if someone is stuck in there?”

Peering through the gap in between the deformed doors, I called back to the group behind me.
“The inside is a mess; Chunks of marble everywhere. Looks like there was a box in the middle that exploded.”
“Sarcophagus.” Commented Headcrow from his perch on the least-damaged corner of the roof. “Arrivals sometimes come through into one of those.”
“Or in top of we get lucky.” Archie added. “Are you sure about this rope thing?”
I pulled at the silvery strand of web looped around my waist, and glanced sideways at Jeff, who was doing the same. I shrugged at him. He shrugged back.
“Not really?” He said. “But maybe it’ll let you pull us out if the thing comes apart? Or at least find us?”
We both looked back at Archie, Anj, and Yorick, who were hanging onto the other end of Archie’s hastily made rope like contestants in a costumed tug-of-war event. Up above us, Headcrow carefully positioned spindly arms and legs on whatever seemed sturdy enough, and peered through the holes in the roof.
“Nothing significant resting against the doors from the inside.” He reported. “Which is odd, because I’d expected there to be debris everywhere with the doors looking like that, and there’s not. It’s like they got hit with an explosion without any fragments.”
“Shouldn’t that have made an enormous noise?” Anj enquired. “Wouldn’t someone have heard it? Could it have happened before you got the arrival notice for us?”
“I would have heard it if it had.” Yorick replied. “This is part of my patch; Wouldn’t have missed a huge explosion.”
“It’s not really a notice.” Said Archie. “More like … A change in the air?”
“Yeah, you just get a feeling?” Headcrow agreed, hesitantly sticking his head through a hole in the roof. “Strongest if you’re directly involved, weak if it’s just happening near you.”
Jeff and I took hold of the edge of a door and gently pulled, slowly easing it open. As the gap widened, we could see the shattered remains of the sarcophagus, debris scattered across the floor and even embedded in some of the walls, and Headcrow’s worried face peering at us through the crumbling roof.
I nudged a chunk of stone with one foot, then twisted round to look at the inside of the door, contorting a bit to avoid a thin stream of dust coming down from somewhere above me that seemed determined to go down the neck of my shirt.
“I’d have thought that it’d leave a mark in the inside, or maybe just be embedded in the door?” I said. “But there’s nothing on the door, and the stone …?”
Jeff reached out and picked it up with one foot.
“It’s not crushed; Not even a bit.” He muttered, turning the chunk around. “And there’s bit of moss and dirt on all sides, which makes no kind of sense.”
“It’s not new?” Asked Archie and Anj simultaneously.
“I don’t think any of them are.” Headcrow called out. “Everything I can see is … Well, not old and dirty, but looks like it’s been there for a while?”
“See what you think?” Jeff suggested, and tossed the chunk in a slow arc towards Yorick.
“How are you that nimble with your feet?” Wondered Headcrow.
“Werewolf stuff.”
“That is not a valid explanation and you know it.”
We carefully stepped into the room.
After a long pause, Anj called out.
“You OK in there?”
“They’re both staring at the walls in … Probably surprise?” Reported Headcrow from above us. “Both doing that jaw-drop dead eyed stare thing, which is honestly pretty impressive given that one mouth is sewn shut.”
Headcrow cautiously repositioned himself and leaned even further through the hole in the roof, dislodging some wood fragments and a roofing tile in the process. His eyes went wide.
“Lads?” Came the call from Anj. “Start talking.”
Jeff shook his head.
“You know that scene in the horror thriller where they find the bad guy’s place, and there’s all this crazy shit written all over the walls?” He asked.
“That has to be the least reassuring opening to an explanation I’ve ever heard.” Said Archie, and I felt the ropes get tighter. “Just taking in a bit of slack here, nothing to worry about.”
“Well, it’s like that.” Continued Jeff. “But they carved it into the stone of the walls.”
We walked a bit closer to the front wall, the ropes now pulled tight as they dragged against the door, which creaked open a little more, knocking loose some more debris.
“It’s all overlapping itself.” I called out. “Some vertical, some horizontal, some in weird curves.”
“Nicely carved though.” Headcrow commented. “Lots of different styles, but all very neatly done.”
“Sooo, crazy but diligent?” Asked Jeff. “Is that a good thing?”
I tried tracing the different lines of text, got a sudden headache, and stopped.
“Probably not a good sign that it’s in a bunch of different languages.” I suggested. “And it maybe swaps between them mid-line? I can’t read any of it, but some is maybe in Latin?”
Jeff crept closer to the remains of the sarcophagus.
“Who the hell can read Latin?” He grumbled, peering into the wreckage but poised to run away.
“I can.” Came Yorick’s shout from outside. “And a few others; I was a secretary once.”
“Uhhhhh, do these things usually have a lining?” Jeff asked.
I headed over, reaching the side of the sarcophagus just as the doorway made a loud groan. We both jumped as one of the doors buckled outward a little more.
“Sooner rather than later, I think?” Said Headcrow softly from above, craning across to look into the hole. “I’m beginning to suspect that this structure may not be as well-built as we might have hoped.”
We all peered in. Clearly there had been a stone lining at some point, but most of it was gone, leaving a moss covered hole in the dirt, with the occasional chunk of rock sticking out.
“How’d it get that much moss?” I wondered. “This thing was sealed up, wasn’t it? How’d it get like this so quickly?”
Jeff nudged me and pointed to the back wall.
“At a guess.” He said in a tone of exaggerated calm. “The same way that the wall carvings are all covered with moss and lichen.”
“Is that something down the bottom?” Headcrow asked as the roof collapsed and he plummeted into the hole with a shout of alarm.
Jeff and I lunged forward to try to grab him, then spun as the stone above the doorway cracked, then shattered. The lintel collapsed, taking the front of the structure down with it. Behind us, more of the roof came down on top of the remains of the sarcophagus.
Sharp claws slashed through Archie’s ropes, Jeff grabbed the belt of my castaway trousers, and I was suddenly flying through in the least dignified escape ever, carried like an uncooperative toddler by a werewolf. We crashed onto the grass outside the crypt as the rest of the roof came down.
After a long silence, a little orange glow drifted up from the wreckage.
“I wish to register a formal complaint about the construction standards in this area of the boneyard.” Headcrow declared. “How is anyone to be expected to pose dramatically on rooftops, or indeed just rest comfortably in peace, if the damn things fall down?”