A Flight of Souls

I steeled myself against the failure. It became obvious to me now that the only exit was that swirling tunnel of water.

But… how do I reach it?

Glancing from the ghouls to the vortex, I guessed that I hardly had anything to lose… but everything to gain if I managed to lose myself in the rough waters before they could pull me back.

I closed in on the ceiling again, but this time, instead of attempting to pass through it, I flattened myself against it at a hundred-and-eighty-degree angle—my front facing the twinkling lake beneath.

Slowly but surely, I summoned the courage to glide closer and closer to the base of the whirlpool. As I arrived within several feet above them, they were still absorbed in their freakish conversation.

Fixing my focus on the surging waters, and shoving aside my fear of the ghouls beneath, I knew that I would only have one shot at this.

I can do this. I can do this.

But as it turned out, I couldn’t.

I didn’t even reach the entrance. Far from it. The moment I lunged to close the final short distance between myself and the vortex, the ghouls spotted me and whirled on me with such speed that I couldn’t help but wonder if they’d noticed me in the room all along. All ten of them barricaded me, blocking my way, and I knew then that the game was over. There was no point in continuing this attempt. I had to abandon the mission.

Now my only focus became escaping the ghouls’ grasp. As one of them launched at me, I whirled around and zoomed back to the passage of water. Entering the tunnel and speeding with all that I had along the canal, I heard a harrowing moan close behind me.

I cannot get caught. I cannot get caught.

Emerging in the second cavern that held the main door, I didn’t even dare look behind me as I whizzed across the last of the water and sank through the wood. Faster. Faster. I passed along the dark corridor and then through chamber after chamber of the luminescent ponds. The ghoul hadn’t caught up with me yet, although I was under no illusion that I’d lost him yet. Far from it. I still heard and sensed his presence. But it was at least some comfort to realize that my speed seemed to be a match for his. Even if I could not see ghouls, I could still flee from them. Though, as I sped further and further from the exit, “fleeing” hardly seemed like the appropriate term. Fleeing deeper into their clutches, maybe.

I was traveling so fast, my surroundings were a blur by now. I was vaguely aware that I was still trailing through chambers filled with pools—due to the dim pale light that whizzed by—but soon, even that familiar surrounding disappeared. All became darker, much darker. I must have traveled miles and miles by now. How big is their lair?

After what felt like ten more minutes had passed, the eerie noises the ghoul had been making disappeared. I dared slow down a little after I passed through what felt like the hundredth stone wall. And then I even dared to stop completely.

I found myself gazing around a large chamber, lit by torches. Its floors and walls were bare, with no signs even of the morbid decorations I had become accustomed to seeing in every room. There was, however, what appeared to be a towering cage at the opposite end of the room. I couldn’t immediately see what it contained, as it was cast in shadow, and I didn’t have time to stand and stare. I moved to a corner on my left, partly submerged in the wall in case the ghoul was still hot on my heels. As I waited in tense silence, still expecting the ghoul to burst through the wall at any moment, I tried to scrutinize the cage more closely. A hulking figure stirred. It extended… a tail? A long, thick, silver-scaled tail. As my eyes traced a large, oblong head, I realized that it was a dragon.

How on earth could these ghouls have caught a dragon? And where would they have found it?

As the dragon settled, lowering its head again and apparently drifting back into slumber, I turned my thoughts back to the ghoul. He could be invisible of course, but I couldn’t shake the hope that perhaps, as I’d sped through corridor after corridor, chamber after chamber, I’d managed to lose him after all. At least for now. Maybe he didn’t even care. I was away from the exit, back within the depths of The Underworld. He’d think I would get caught sooner or later anyway, and dumped back in my pond.

Staying close to the edges of the room, I left the chamber containing the dragon and passed through to the next. Here, I was surprised to find an entire room lined with cages, albeit much smaller ones than the dragons’. In the flickering light of the torches, I realized that they were filled with mostly earth animals—and domesticated ones at that. Dogs, cats, rabbits, horses, even a few donkeys. I wondered how many of these were stray, and how many they had kidnapped from homes. Then there were also some wilder creatures: foxes, squirrels and pigeons.

I wondered what fate lay in store for these poor animals. I recalled everything that my parents had experienced of ghouls. The way they killed and ate their victims’ guts. Perhaps all the living creatures here in these cells were being kept for food, unlike the ghosts who were simply for pleasure.

Thankfully, I saw no humans… yet. It was quite possible that they would be kept somewhere else, and that was a sight that I really did not want to see.

My suspicion was confirmed as the next chamber I passed into appeared to be some kind of gruesome butchery room. The tables were covered with knives and stained with blood. And in the far corner was the dissected carcass of a horse.

My stomach would have churned if I’d had one.

Fixing my eyes ahead on the wall opposite, I kept moving. I had almost reached it when I froze. I heard the sound of ghouls tittering, coming from the other side of the wall. Then the sound of a door creaking open. Ghouls were approaching. My first instinct was to sink into the floor, rather than head back from where I’d just come—where I might come across the wandering guard who’d been chasing me before.