Chambers, continued
Week 2, Winner
12…11…10…
The number of steps didn’t mean as much as the progression forward yet she counted them anyway. Slowly, step by step, past randomly-spaced recesses in the walls where shadows devoured any light that tumbled across their threshold. Intellectually she knew these to be empty yet she watched them like a hawk regardless, cautiously stealing herself for any sign of specter or skeleton. She’d seen enough movies; jump scares weren’t really her thing. No thanks.
Of the three challenges, this was the most documented though and likely the easiest: get to the end of the hall, find the doors, solve the puzzle.
From a textbook standpoint it was simple. There were no hidden pits full of spikes or venomous snakes. No house-sized boulder descending from above like a pinball of death. No slowly closing walls grinding against the stone floor as they sought to crush you flat. None of that. Just an empty hall lined with a dozen or so small vents near the ceiling, each featuring an opening roughly the size of a hand where light from above found its way in from the surface. The subtle luminescence settled around the room like dust on a mantle, softly illuminating the space enough to make out the set of heavy mahogany doors which stood large and imposing at the far end of the hall, each adorned with intricately carved vines, flowers, and various other flora.
Walk down the hall. Stand in front of the carvings. Fibonacci your way through each vine, touching the leaves in sequence. Done. Easy.
Most book jockeys wondered what the point was, but she had a theory. In her classroom she often sought to teach students the fundamentals of a topic first, reinforcing the significance of those basic tenets over time through the use of harder and harder techniques and challenges. Because of the simplicity of it, she’d concluded that the Fibonacci doors must be similar in nature. A fundamental rule. A definition of standards upon which the rest of the challenges would likely be built. “Likely” because nobody had actually made it to the third challenge and the only accounts of the second were half guesswork and half the split-second flashlight-trembling visions from the few survivors who’d made it back alive. Through fits of hysteria, they all told of a room glimpsed through rapidly slamming doors with a floor of complicated tilework littered with skeletons. They all spoke of the absolute quiet that befell the first chamber once those doors closed, their compatriots lost inside forever.
A talk show host famously made the trek ten or so years ago, bringing a camera crew and one of those long snake-like cameras SWAT teams use during hostage negotiations. Made it out to be a big reveal on primetime TV and everything. They’d made it to the doors. They’d opened it. They’d walked in…and the special ended. Only the B-roll videographer from that attempt had returned, immediately checking himself into a mental ward upon arrival and disappearing from the world entirely. Eventually the network released what footage they could recover: a fraction of footage from the attempt showing a precious 12 frames of grainy footage upon which one could clearly see a number of feet into the second chamber. These images were logged in the history books almost immediately, launching decades of new theories in their wake.
Even the number of challenges wasn’t actually known. Seismograph readings from the late 80s mapped the likelihood of a three-chamber system, each room bigger than the prior. The obvious hypothesis naturally led to the same number of trials as chambers, but a return for more data had stalled as years of civil unrest between the local militia and guerrilla groups in the region had made the trek impossible for anyone carrying more gear than a backpack. Hell, just getting to the entrance was now a feat only taken by those with funds to pay for the one smuggler still known to make the attempt. A couple grand and he got you close enough for the long hike in. Beyond that you were on your own.
Which is where she found herself, now. Somewhat less rich, tired, and covered in the mud from a steeper descent than she’d planned for. Scared. Excited.
3…2…1…
And then they were right in front of her: the ubiquitous doors of her childhood. They were no longer the hand drawn illustrations her mother scrawled on the tops of notepads. No longer the black and white images she used within her lecture slides as she taught “The Mythos of the Chambers”. Here they were, large and tactile and real. She could see attention to detail impossible to capture on camera, losing herself in the effortless flow of the carving.
After a few minutes she glanced back toward the entrance, wondering at the time. The sun should be high in the sky if she’d planned correctly, allowing luminous columns of light to extend past the mouth of each vent. Long ignored particles stirred within their depths, drifting down upon her and causing her to wrinkle her nose. She sneezed, watching the air from her expulsion ripple out through the lit columns of dust like a pebble tossed into the middle of a lake. Movement filled the room for a long second, the sound bouncing off the walls and echoing out the entrance. She could hear it recede down the long winding cave system beyond, fleeing to safety.
Wiping her nose with her handkerchief, she turned her attention back to the doors.
Pulling out her notebook to check her data on the first challenge she was hit with a sudden flash of doubt. Was it right to be here, she wondered? To open these doors? She’d been asked this question more than once during lectures. The inevitable morality debate on the tip of every freshman’s tongue. She’d always said “it’s our duty to honor the past through detailed study. How else do we learn?”. But that had been all academic.
It felt different, standing here. She stepped back, taking in the solemnity of the wood and stone. The reverence of the space itself. Someone built this, but why and for what?
She eventually shelved her concerns, deciding it best to continue that debate back home and not here. Not now. Not when she was so close. Besides, decades of attempts and all those subsequent deaths? They couldn’t have been for nothing, right?
Convinced by her own volition, she stepped closer to the door, locating and pressing the first leaf before allowing herself to doubt further. It sank almost immediately, stopping a fingertip deep into the stone, accompanied by a scraping sound beneath its surface. Then silence. She waited til she was sure nothing more would happen before locating and pressing the next leaf. It too sank into the door, accompanied by the scraping sound. Maybe a latch or a gear?
The first two down and not wanting to screw up the sequence, she reached into a small pocket on her vest and drew out a collection of small colored adhesives. Reviewing Fibonacci’s fabled figures, she counted out the sequence on the door, placing a sticker to the side of each leaf to trigger. It didn’t take long before she’d created her roadmap. Always the historian, she took out a small camera from another pocket and captured the moment.
Then she returned to the task, slowly pushing each leaf. Slowly waiting. When she got to the last one, she held her breath, unsure of what would come next. Scared yet remaining determined to see this through, she pushed and listened as the mechanism behind the leaves ground through its final movement. A moment of silence followed, and then from somewhere deeper within the door a second set of grinding and clicking followed by yet another set, this one from deep behind the walls themselves.
And then the massive doors swung away, gliding on invisible hinges. The smell of death and dirt hit her full in the face. Stale air pushing out, causing her to stagger back choking. Retrieving her handkerchief, she covered her nose and mouth, coughing against the black depths that spanned out before her.
It had been a few years since the last reported death. She’d read about it in the archeological society’s monthly newsletter, a relic in and of itself which was still sent through the mail, black and white printed words on recycled paper. Kern and Olsom. She’d never really liked either of them, having had run-ins with them online. Their fan base was happy to “well, actually” anything and everything and neither of them made attempts to course correct it.
She’d actually met Stephen Olsom once. A conference in Dubai. Like the vast majority of shitheads with opinions, he’d been a study in practiced professionalism with a generous dash of misogyny. She recognized his decaying head and torso now splayed out across the floor several feet into the second room, hips and legs torn away and missing. She gasped.
***
This is a second-stage story-start — if you’d like to see where the story goes, “clap” for it. My “winning” second-stage story-start (based on number of readers who clap for it) will be developed further and will become a full short story!
