CreepsMcPasta Creepypasta Radio - "I inherited an old creationist museum. To my horror, some of the displays were genuine." Creepypasta

Episode Date: April 14, 2025

When I found what was left of my grandfather, he didn't look like he was any closer to God. His flesh creaking like the bows of a tree. I might not have recognized what I was looking at if he hadn't whimpered at my light. I'd only met him once before that. I was about ten or so. I had no idea about this strange man who turned up, claiming he was my grandfather. For someone who believed cavemen rode dinosaurs, Elijah wasn't as weird as you might think. He tracked us down when I was 13 and came over to Britain to visit us.

Dad had never mentioned his biological father, and while the old man seemed regretful about the lost time, he didn't sit around crying about it either. He was courteous but distant throughout, and he and dad parted ways after the those two days and never spoke again, at least not in person. He did invite us to see him some day in Texas as he left, but it never happened. Other than that, I remember that he sat me down one night to talk me through my math textbook, told me about imaginary numbers and string theory. Heavy stuff, but he made it accessible through his simple,

yet earnest passion. It was only after he'd gone that Dad told me the old man was a young earth creationist. Believe the earth was around 6,000 years old, and that every last solemn word in the Bible was meant to be taken literally. Twenty-eight years later, and I was standing in the lobby of Elijah's privately owned museum that had passed to me after my father's death. Dad had never told me about either the museum or Elijah's own passing, but going through his estate turned it up, and I was as surprised as anyone to find out I was now the owner of 60 acres on the other side of the world. The whole place was dedicated to teaching biblical science of the world's creation. I saw stone slabs with human footprints displayed like great treasures, some of the world's. them 16 inches heel to toe and with little placards explaining that the rocks were proof of humans

coexisting with dinosaurs. There was a whole jungle room with plastic cavemen versions of Adam and Eve crouched over paper cut out fire, while on the opposite side of the room, a badly made Stegosaurus watched Kane push Abel to the ground. Although the most ludicrous was the one where two generic looking cavemen used raptor claws to harvest wheat. It was imaginative, I'll give him that, but it wasn't especially convincing. How or why Elijah was so obsessed with creationism was something of a puzzle to me. He'd begun his career with a PhD in mathematics and a short stint teaching at a local college, and part of the reason I spent so much time in that museum packing up his things was to try and figure him out.

During that time, I learned three key things. First, Elijah argued furiously with every other creationist he could find and burned every bridge there was. Without their support, he had almost no visitors during the 30 years the museum was open. The second was a cutout of a newspaper I found on Elijah's desk showing him grinning next to a dinosaur footprint. The article talked about how he'd gotten lost in the wilderness and taken refuge in a cave full of old fossils.

I recognised the land in that photo as the place he'd later built his museum on, so it must have been important to him. I hadn't seen any cave in my wanderings though, but I figured if I kept looking, I'd come across it sooner or later. The final piece of the puzzle was Elijah's letter to my grandmother. I never knew he'd reached out to her. All we knew was she slept with some American GI and never wanted to see or speak to him again.

The letter was a proposal, and I was initially surprised she'd shown no interest. Elijah was wealthy, intelligent, hardworking, and, based on his photos, a good-looking and good-looking and athletic man. But then I got to the last page or so. Ethel, I can offer you more than just a good life. I can offer you an eternal one. I'm sure I told you about the time I hurt my leg hiking in the wilderness and was forced to take shelter in a cave until the storm passed. There I found many strange and curious fossils and I took the first steps on this strange hobby of mine. But what I haven't told the others, is that I saw more than just a few old rocks.

I found a way down, down, down, down. Ethel, I went deep in the earth, and there I found a paradise, a peace of the world that had been preserved as it was before the great flood. And I saw early man still living as he did in the days of Eden, 10 feet tall and a thousand years old and speaking the tongue of God handed down before the fall of Babel. One of these great men sat me down and told me the secret histories of the world. I have kept this knowledge to myself for so long, but I know I can change the world, and it begins with this new book I'm writing.

After that, a museum to display all the proof I've gathered. It isn't just about history. Ethel, it's the future that's at stake. Down there, I learned how to put a stop to it all, the wars and the fighting, hunger and deprivation. It can all be a thing of the past, and I believe it's God's will I do this. I can change the world, Ethel. I want you by my side when I do it. There it is, I muttered quietly to myself as I read the letter by the Tim Light, of Elijah's old desk lamp. That was why my grandmother had not responded to his letters,

and why my father did not meet his father until Elijah tracked him down decades later. Six weeks in the dusty ruins of Elijah's seldom visited museum, and I finally felt like I understood my grandfather. Intelligent, stubborn, possibly mentally ill. Over the next few days I continued to pack up his things and found myself often

feeling sorry for him it was lonely out there and it made me uncomfortable to think of how an old man painstakingly painted little plaques no one wanted to read or planning the best place to build public toilets for field trips that never came

and he just kept at it right until the end It was like I was walking around the physical manifestation of someone's delusions, but then I found the door behind the bookcase, and I discovered that Elijah had built two museums. Whole time I'd been in that place, I felt a kind of quiet unease, but I'd put it down to the circumstances, packing up a dead man's things, or so I thought. But as soon as I pulled on that little locking mechanism and the shelf popped free with a puff of stale air, I understood I'd been sensing something else entirely. It was the darkness that stood out to me, or maybe the smell. Hard to say, since I'd never breathed air like it before or since.

And looking back, I think I might be overstating just how black the darkness. at the bottom of those stairs really was, but just the sight of it made something inside me want to turn and run, not just out of the building, but out of the damn country, back to the airport and home again. I had no idea what was going to be down there, but for some reason,

I was scared witless, just the dark, I told myself, before forcing one foot, in front of the other and making my way down. Wasn't far before the plaster chipped away, and there was nothing but bare rock for walls. Turns out, I hadn't been able to find the cave on Elijah's land because he'd built the museum on top of it.

And down there, in a large chamber, bigger than most school gyms, was a whole other set of displays. Eight large glass tanks. each one bigger than a car. I quickly realized what I'd been smelling the whole time was from aldehyde, and it had turned those glass tanks into green and murky pits where my light revealed only the occasional glimpse of what lay within. Whatever Elijah was planning on showing off down here,

it wasn't fossilized rocks. There was flesh and bone in there, exposed muscle all white and wriggly. I moved quickly at first, shining my light into each one and squinting. I was skittish and in a hurry, not sure what I was going to find, but then I looked into one and saw a fist-sized eyeball staring back at me, and I cried out in terror. It was the suddenness of it that got me. That, and it was housed in a soul.

socket of rotting flesh, unfamiliar in color and shape. Couldn't have told you if it belonged to something that slithered, swam, or flew. But as I walked around the case, I did find a hand curled up in one corner with fingers all different lengths and shapes. What was Elijah planning to do down there in that hidden room? There were no plaques, no explanations, only those eight tanks that took up most of the enormous space. Each one raised so the bottom was about chest height, ready for someone to wander around and marvel at God knows what. The floor had been covered in marble, so he clearly had grand ambitions. Now there was only dust and sandy pebbles littering the floor. But everything upstairs had been hokey and cheap. The kind of evidence that was going to

convinced the already convinced, but down there in the dark, where I could just make out the great shapes floating in the murky dark, there was the sense of something electric in the air, a feeling of revelation that warmed its way up through the ground, through my feet and into my chest where it settled like a kind of slow panic. I couldn't stop myself wondering about Elijah's belief and how it factored. into that strange place. What had he preserved for decades in that chemical filth? I left after only ten minutes and returned to the normal world above, where I spent a good

hour sitting in the sun, hoping the Texan warmth would purge the dirty feeling that dark room had left me with. I briefly made arrangements to return home, but quickly cancelled. Elijah was insane, so I told myself. But there was something down there, and it was a damn sight more compelling than a bunch of cheap forgeries. That night, I stayed in the same room I always had, and lay tossing and turning beneath the moonlight, unable and unwilling to simply let the thoughts of that room fade away. I was wide awake when I heard the sound of something moving around the rooms below.

I was alone out there, far from civilization. The sheriff had spoken to me a fair bit about trying to get a hotel, and for the first time I wished I'd taken his advice. He was mainly concerned about squatters, and that's what I told myself must be out there. Despite the danger, I got up to check on it anyway. The thought of a whole night spent hold up in that room. room, waiting for some crack addict to come stumbling in, didn't seem much better than going out there

and confronting them. But of course, there was more to it than that. I had strange ideas floating in my head, left over from the short time I'd spent wondering those great glass displays. Every time I closed my eyes, I saw images of strange shadowed things floating within. I wanted to bury those thoughts as quickly as possible and put an end to fancy notions of monsters lurking in the dark. At first, the museum looked much like it always had. There were boxes of artifacts and books I'd spent the last few weeks putting away, and quite a few displays still left standing from where I'd yet to get to them. In the jungle room, I walked past those funny-looking cavemen and plastic dinosaurs,

hiding behind fake ferns and stopped briefly to examine the serpent that tempted passers-by with an apple in its child-sized fist. It was a cheap-looking creation with a strange childlike face rendered in fiberglass scales and beady yellow eyes. I disliked it from day one, and catching it in the dark that night made me hate it even more. But this time I stopped. and re-read the plaque beneath. I remembered the words Elijah had written for it, and at the time I dismissed them. But some strange feeling made me revisit them in that moment. Creatures alive

today, such as snakes and lizards, looked very different under conditions of the pre-flood world, where the air was alive with powerful static, and water did not fall from the sky, but seeped upwards from the ground as a kind of condensation. The serpent was probably not like any snake we'd see today, but perhaps an altogether different creature whose bones continued to confound the non-believer scientists who studied them. Only through the Bible can we realize what such fossils truly represent. This is only one interpretation of what the serpent that tempted Eve may have looked like When I looked up, another pair of eyes were gazing at me from over the mannequin's shoulder.

I could not see the face that hid behind the fake plant, but there was no denying the two yellow reflective points that fixed me momentarily before blinking, one at a time. I froze, terrified by such primal sight as a pair of predatory eyes gazing at me from the dark watched in terror as they slinked away and disappeared entirely. There followed the sounds of a few rapid and wet footfalls across the tile floor as something in that room crawled quietly into the shadows. That night I barricaded my bedroom door and come morning when I felt a little braver in the daylight, I checked the jungle room and found wet.

and slimy tracks leading to Elijah's office where they disappeared behind the bookcase and into the cave below. It was crazy, I told myself, all of it was madness, but I couldn't shake my curiosity. And if you were me, you wouldn't have been able to either. This was like seeing the ice wall in the Arctic, proof of some mad conspirator gibberish that was, we've all been peddled for years through rapid fire YouTubers who talk about flat earths and giants under the pyramids. It was as if I'd felt what Elijah had spoken of. The air really was electric down there. The ground was different. But as much as I hated to even give his beliefs the tiniest iota of credit, I could think of no other way to describe it than I had,

briefly stood in the conditions of another, older world. I had to make sense of it. I'd spent weeks putting away badly made fakes and forgeries, footprints with visible toolmarks, badly arranged dinosaur bones, and diaramis of raptors in Noah's Ark. Elijah had found something alright, but I was certain it wasn't proof of his worldview. I just had to understand it on my own terms.

Despite every bit of apprehension, I went back down the staircase. This time I took a crowbar and slipped a claw hammer in one belt loop just in case. I also brought a few wired floodlights and set about lighting that main room up so I could get a proper look. It didn't help me see what was in those cases any. better. If anything, the bright light scattered even harder in the filth, and it all looked like a kind of pale green jelly. But I did find two doors I hadn't noticed the last time. One was a simple wooden one that led into a small closet full of old journals and cassette. The other was like a metal bulkhead, the kind that would be used on a ship to seal a flooding hallway.

I know at some point I was going behind that door, but for the time being, I settled for reading some of Elijah's old journals. It seemed like the easier of the two options. Specimen 1. Rat. Failure died after only a few hours, preserved and put aside for further investigation. Specimen 2 Sheep

Partial failure The wool continued to grow at unusual pace Small buds Flowers We'll see Preserved and put aside for further investigation Specimen 3 Cow

Failure If size is anything to go by The Ark must have been colossal Perhaps these creatures are the origins of the fossils so many scientists attribute to woolly mammoths. Attempted dissection but proved too difficult. Specimen has been preserved and put aside for further investigation. Specimen 4.

Spider. Successful. A truly prehistoric creature. It returned to its aquatic roots and lived for many days in its tank before dying during escape attempt. To think these creatures once swam in the oceans, I have preserved the specimen for further investigation. Specimen 5. Lizard. Success. The primitive attempts at speech were a promising sign. Euthanizing it proved difficult, but ultimately necessary. The things it said could not have been permitted in a god-fearing society, preserved for further

investigation. Specimen 6. Cactus houseplant. Success question marks. Relatively unchanged in outward appearance, but dissection revealed the insights are developed a meat-like appearance, continues to grow despite best efforts, preserved in the hopes that formaldehyde will kill it, but must keep a close eye on its display. Specimen 7. Blue Catfish Success. The origins of the Great Leviathan perhaps lie within creatures such as this. Its growth was extraordinary and it will be a struggle to fit the beast inside one of the displays. I do not envy the ancient sailors who encountered one of these in open waters. Specimen 8. Sparrow. Failure. Dreadful mistake. Euthanized itself while screaming obscenities. The things is said were extremely blasphemous, preserved and put aside for further investigation. Specimen 9.

Despite my best efforts, exposure to pre-flood conditions has begun to affect me. I'll have to join the great men below, if they will have me. I will not be able to continue my great work, and that saddens me deeply. Not a success, but not a failure either. At least I can take solace in knowing this will bring me closer to God. I looked at the tanks and suppressed the shudder. Were these Elijah's failed experiments? And if so, what an earth had he been doing to them?

There was no scientific equipment down there, no mad scientist's laboratory with bubbling vials and buzzing Tesla coils, that I had been the size of a cantaloupe and could not have belonged to anything on that list, at least not in its natural state. But Elijah's notes hinted strongly at him, having changed them somehow. A kind of mutation, I wondered, perhaps even a form of radiation. For a moment, I considered going through the rest of the notes, but that was just delaying the inevitable.

I was impatient, curious and desperate to make sense of these things. So I approached the great metal door and reached for the lock, but hesitated when I heard a sound on the other side, a gentle susseration. I leaned forward and listened intently as I could. Jacob, open the door. It was not a sound. It wasn't. I could not tell you the timbre of the voice, the volume or language.

It had none of those things. It was inside me, and it hurt like hell. A hammer swing to my cortex that left my mind ringing. My sight turned into a slight show, blood sprayed from my nose and mouth. The floor was suddenly inches from my face, and then my hands were reaching for the locking wheel. I dragged myself to my feet and gripped it steadily. I was going to open it, even as my mind finally caught up, and I was flooded with a

terrible panic, a desperate feral need to get out of there. But I couldn't stop myself. became a kind of physical impossibility, as out of bounds as flying or walking on the ceiling. The loss of control was haunting, and I would have opened that door, were it not for the sound of splashing water behind me. Something about it scared me enough that the spell was broken, and I regained some of my senses. I managed the glance behind me, and my light caught a glimmer of something black and oily slithering in one of the tanks. That site alone turned my blood to ice, but it still paled in comparison to the force radiating from beyond that door.

I could feel it still there on the other side. A white-hot aura of domination that threatened to unravel me like a piece of thread. I'd never experienced anything like it before, the kind of terror that nearly had me mewing like a beaten child. Before that thing could speak again, I ran screaming from that room and out into the open air, where the shock finally hit my nervous system like a freight train. And I passed out. When I woke up, my mouth was gummy with dried blood and the sun had burned me badly on one side. A black boot was nudging me gently in the side.

You okay down there? I looked up and a policeman I'd once spoken to not long after arriving in Texas was squinting down at me. I just about managed to remember that Wheeler was his name. You need help, pal, he repeated, and I tried to answer but got a mouthful of dust. It wasn't until I sat upright and coughed most of the dust back up that I'm going to managed some kind of response. No, I'm not okay.

No sign of a breaking. I looked over to see another officer step out of the museum. Someone attack, Wheeler asked. Who was it? Crackhead. Sheriff told you was a bad idea to stay out here all alone. We got to get out of here.

The deputy put a hand on his holster and unclipped it. Don't you worry. You're safe now, he said. Rifled through your things, the second officer added as he arrived beside Wheeler. We'll need you to come look and see if anything's missing. No, no, no, I said, stumbling to my feet. No, we got to go, we got to leave, take me to the airport.

Calm down now, Wheeler said, as the two men exchanged a funny look, you ain't even got your passport. Why don't we go in and take a moment? Maybe let us get a statement. Besides, Taylor and Keene here have done a thorough sweep of the place, right? Yep, the other man smiled. I think he was trying to reassure me. Taylor's just finishing up in that basement.

Elijah sure was a funny fella, hiding all that down there. No, no, no, I stammered, all moving towards the parking lot. We got to leave. We got to leave now. Now, there's something. You plan on walking out of here? Wheeler's hand was on my arm, looking concerned more than angry, which gave me pause. Whoever left you in the dirt smashed the hell out of your car, he added,

That thing ain't going nowhere. Look, we'll give you a ride, but first things first, let's go inside and get a couple of your things. Dejected, I let them lead me back inside before I made it. a beeline to my room. I didn't do much packing, a single suitcase with everything I needed to get out of that damn place and back home. I also took a minute to call my wife and let her know I was fine. My failure to call her at the regular time had led her to phoning the police. Without that, I don't know how things would have panned out. At the time, I was deeply thankful just to have a looking out for me, and all I wanted in the world was to get back to her and put an end to the

whole weird episode. As soon as I was packed, I ran back downstairs where I found Wheeler, who was ready to enter Elijah's office. Keene went to get Taylor a short while ago, he said, getting tired of waiting, so you just stay here while I go round him up. Before I could beg him to stop, he stepped inside and I raced after him, but I was too late. By the time I reached the stairs, the only sign of him was the light of his torch already fading. With him went the keys to the only working car in that place. I had no choice but to follow. As soon as I took the first step down, I felt,

that strange but familiar energy. Only this time it seemed a thousand times more powerful. It rumbed through the air like a kind of vibration. Sound seemed both muted and amplified. My footsteps were silent, but my breath was like thunder. The effect was claustrophobic, like the world was closing in on me. By the time I arrived at the bottom, I'd already felt like it was too late to turn back. I nearly cried out when I saw that the great metal door was already open. No sign of the men. Femaldahide lay pooling on the floor where it mixed slowly with a puddle of fresh blood, although I had no idea who it belonged to. The tanks remained intact, which I was thankful for, but it troubled me to think of how that fluid got splashed around

so violently, and the lights I set up had been knocked over in what must have been some kind of struggle, and now they cast long and frightening shadows. Wheeler had never been more than a couple seconds ahead of me, and yet he was nowhere to be seen in that room, but I already knew that every question racing through my mind could be traced to a single place where had the men gone. what had caused such violence and mayhem? Why are my ears ringing? Why are my feet moving of their own accord? What had Elijah found in the wilderness?

What had changed those animals? What had spoken to me from the other side of a foot-thick steel doorway? What had compelled me to be drawn helplessly towards the strange and corpulent mist that rolled out of the black abyss and beckoned me deeper into the depths of the earth? the answer to every one of those questions was the same and it was all due to the force that lived on the other side of that door it must have surely affected the policeman in the same way it affected me i was no more than halfway across the room when it felt like i was actually falling towards an open vault after i crossed the threshold i seemed to lose all sense of time and self. God knows what it must have been like for Elijah all those years ago, lost in the

wilderness. I don't know what it was he found, but I still think he was mad and naive to genuinely think it was anything to do with God. Even now, glimpses of the journey down echo in my mind like snapshots in the dark. I remember heat and light. I remember pale miss. I remember pale miss. I remember that curled around my feet, lit within by some impossible light. I remember wandering vast caves larger than any stadium. But most of all, I remember the air and the way it crackled with skittish electricity. I could feel it across my skin like a gentle sunburn. There were buildings down there, and as I went deeper over what my mind.

have been hours or maybe even days. I saw the air filled with glowing mist so bright it was more like day than night. And it was in one of those buildings. I found my long-lost grandfather. Or what was left of him, I guess. Of course I say that. But he was alive. He made noises, so he must have been alive. The building was enormous, larger than even the cave above, but poor Elijah had still grown to take up nearly a third of it. He'd grown taller like he believed would happen, and I bet he was longer lived too. But I don't think the conditions of that cave had made him into something divine.

If anything, he looked to me like he was breaking down, melting in slow motion. Made me think of the elephant's foot in Chernobyl. Someone or something had also staked bits of him into place and tied some of his limbs to the vast rocky beams that supported the building ceiling. There was a touch of cruelty about it that I couldn't quite place at the time

but would later attribute to the brands burned into his flesh at semi-regular intervals. If he had a mouth, I've no doubt he would have begged me to kill him. But my mind was not my own at that time, and I left that place and went back to wandering the mist in search of something I could not understand. I was merely compelled to go deeper towards some strange force that beckoned me onwards, working my feet and body like I was nothing more but a puppet. during my journey.

I heard a voice. He was wailing and sobbing, and he came screaming out of the mist and ran right into me. Something about the collision shocked both of us enough that it seemed to break the cave's effect on us. He looked as surprised to see me

as I was to see him, and for a brief moment we both lay in the floor and stammered desperately in an attempt to speak. Eventually, I managed to ask what the hell had happened, but he jumped on top of me and clamped a hand around my mouth. He held me there for a few seconds, his wide, terrified eyes imploring me to stay quiet.

And then I heard the footfalls of a giant, and I felt its mind looking for us. I caught glimpses of the world as remembered by that man-shaped creature, the content of its mind spilling outwards into me. I saw the great flood, the ark, a world with wondering seraphim and the great tannin, the behemoth and Leviathan. But more than that, I felt a kind of seething contempt in his feelings towards us, a burning disdained for the lesser race that had inherited the surface. I don't know how to fully describe it, but whatever that thing was, I don't know how Elijah could have possibly mistaken it for benevolent.

Perhaps he had seen only what he wanted to. Perhaps it had read within him a desperate need to believe and use that to manipulate him. God knows what would have happened if Elijah had actually managed to fill that hidden room with people and open the door. Whatever lived within that cave would have had ten times the number of victims it had claimed so far. Only Elijah's arrogance and obstinence had saved him from playing right into its hands. Eventually, the creature moved away from us. I'm not sure how or why it couldn't find us. The spell at cast seemed to come and go,

and in that moment the only thing I could be sure of was that once free I had every intention of getting the hell out of there. Wheeler and I seemed to share this understanding because as soon as it was saved to he let me go and the two of us wordlessly began to skulk back the way we came. It wasn't as long back as I feared it might be, although it's still hard to be sure of the time. What I can be sure of is that it was a special kind of nightmare to leave that place. The mist made it impossible to navigate, and if it wasn't for the tracks we'd left in the strange wet ground, we would have been lost forever down there.

Even then, we often got waylaid and had to take hours just to find our way back to the track. And more than once, we found ourselves forced to hide in crevices and caves, as terrible things drifted close in the fog, drawn perhaps by our scent or some other strange force. But eventually we found ourselves hiking upwards at a steep and familiar incline with a mist thinned out almost entirely. By the time we were finally stumbling back out into the hidden room with the class tanks, I had managed to grow a fair bit of stubble, and I noticed, that what was once fresh blood had now congealed into a dark, rust-colored brown. At a guess, we were down there for a good two or three days.

I'm only thankful our memories of it were so broken. Wheeler almost immediately made a beeline for the exit, but I grabbed him and pulled him back. The door, I gasped while grabbing the locking wheel and trying to push it shut. But I was weak, and it took both of us trying with all our might to finally swing it closed. Once the mechanism clicked into place, I tried to turn and run, but something in me gave out, and I collapsed to my knees, where I began to heave and cry. Wheeler placed one hand of my shoulder and slowly pulled me back to my feet.

What the hell was your grandfather up to out here? He moaned as we both limped towards the exit. God knows, I muttered. And as I placed my foot on the first step up, I felt the deepest relief I've ever known flood through my body. Wake up. The voice was as clear as day. But this time, there was no pain.

I looked to Wheeler to confirm that he'd heard it too, and sure enough he was staring at me with a horrified expression. But the command made no sense, and it seemed to be distant, almost thinned. Was it the distance, I wondered, or the door? Elijah must have put the barrier there for a reason, but I couldn't be sure that was the only reason that the voice felt different somehow. But then I heard the sound behind me, and I realized why those words had been so strange.

The command wasn't meant for us. The glass tankers broke one by one, and Wheeler and I both turned to see the room flood with formaldehyde and slick, oily flesh. The smell alone was enough to make me recoil and cry out. But then I saw them. The creatures within. God, most of them merely thrashed around. I don't know what that was.

I simply don't know. Something fish-like, I suppose. Screamed in an almost human voice and rolled around in the slick waters. Another thing was pulling apart its face with a starfish-shaped hand. One was just a pile of legs that wrapped around the central mass. But one of them was rising to its feet. Two yellow eyes glaring back at me from the dark, the iris is glowing with a sickly rage. It almost looked human.

Before I had time to react, the creature leapt at both of us and sent us both sprawling onto the steps where I hit my head. For a few terrifying moments, I felt myself being dragged slowly down into that disgusting liquid, with strange tentacles and insectile legs thrust violently for some kind of purchase. I remember something hairy and kiteness brushing against my cheek, and the disgusting sensation was enough to bring me back to my senses. When I looked over to where Wheeler was being pulled right beside me, it was semi-conscious and groaning, and I realized it was up to me to try and get us out of there.

I kicked violently at the strange thing pulling us. It was smaller than I thought, a bit bigger than most children, but it held onto my leg with an iron grip. But my movement woke Wheeler, who, finally coming around, began to fight back. Both of us kicked as violently as we could and seemed to enrage the monster that was fighting to pull us towards the door. With a strange hiss, it let go and turned towards Wheeler, lashing out with a single swipe of its hand.

Almost immediately, there was an arterial spray of blood and a death rattle from the officer's lips that made my blood run cold. For a few desperate seconds, the dying man seemed to fumble towards his belt and grabbed something in his fist. I hoped it was a gun, but instead his limp hand fell open and reversed. field a beaten old zippo lighter and his car keys. I don't know if he meant to, but in that moment, Wheeler saved my life. I grabbed both items and ran as quickly as I could, reaching the steps and refusing to look back for even a second.

I lit the zippo and tossed it behind me, praying to God that this final gambit would work. Something took a swipe at my back, a hot burning sensation followed by a warm trickle that ran down my legs. My final memory before I stumbled face first and hit my head again was one of light and heat. A blinding flash and a terrible wump that pushed the last glimpse of my consciousness aside and left me drifting in the dark. I never recovered from my time in Elijah's museum. and I never even made it to the car. Police found me having crawled just outside

or the entire place went up in flames. The plume of smoke was what caught their attention, and when they arrived, I was soon rushed off to hospital. The death of Wheeler was attributed to a violent attacker, mainly on account of the damage to his body and they pulled it out of the fire. Not just burns, of course, but the slashed throat and damaged vertebrae.

Taylor and Keane, while never recovered, were both considered victims of the same attacker. For my part, I never contradicted this theory, but I never could quite bring myself to outright say some crazy addict was the reason for the fire and the men's deaths. Besides, I had my own issues to deal with. Third degree burns over most of my back and damaged my spine that left me with severe nerve damage. It would be a lifetime of work just to get back in my feet, so the doctor said back then.

As for the museum, I'm glad it went up in smoke, and I'm glad the explosion caused the caving down there. My memories of the cave itself are still quite fuzzy, of course. I've relayed as much as I can. We went down, we saw things, then came back. The images the giants pushed into my mind. I'm still not sure how trustworthy they are. I still don't believe Elijah's interpretation of that cave was correct. I don't think the earth is only 6,000 years old or that the Bible is meant to be taken literally.

they say humans evolved over a million years ago. I guess there's a lot of history that got lost along the way. As for Elijah's theory, that the conditions of the cave would cause some divine change in humans. Well, I can remember him clearly enough to know there was nothing godly about what happened to him. And as for me, the doctors keep scanning me. It was once, every six months, then three, then one. Then I was being called into the hospital down near every other day, and now they won't even let me out of my room. They won't tell me what's wrong, or why I sometimes wake up to find my back itching like it's covered in a thousand ants, why the last nurse who gave me a sponge bath ran out sobbing halfway through. They took me in for surgery a few days ago.

And when I woke up, they'd amputated something from my leg, but they wouldn't tell me what. I'm lucky my wife managed to sneak this phone in. It's the only communication I have with the outside world. I'd like to see her again, but I'm not sure I will. I guess I was down in that cave for too long, but I know it's getting worse, and that I don't have much longer. The last doctor who came in wore a hazmat suit, and I'm pretty sure when he left, he was still coughing up blood.