A special Halloween post. This catches me up to where I’m currently writing but am still struggling with a few ideas. I always liked Halloween as a kid; the costumes more than the candy (which I suppose is why I still cosplay into my dotage) and the unofficial transition to winter. I prefer things cooler to warmer. That will undoubtedly be one of the flash points when my wife (who likes things warmer) and I move for the last time.

I have a suspicion that the next few scenes are going to be a bit odd as I work my way through this predicament Allie is in. It is thus very likely that the final form of what will be this “chapter” shall be quite different once I get this finished and edited. But, that’s why I do this: play with ideas, elicit input, and force myself on.

Yes, another reference to LotR; I cannot help myself.

Enjoy my content? Buy me a beer!

She stood and affixed her belt around her, securing the Makarov, as well.

“And, if we can’t do good, then we’ll do bad well!”

The young woman stepped out of the hut and turned north, into the darkness.

As before, the path separated from the lake by an average of five meters, but it was still there.  Now, back into maris incognita, she kept her mouth shut.  If there is a path, it must lead to something.  But how far?  Crabbies are much smaller than us, so I’d not think too far…  Or, what if all this had some religious significance to them?  Then a pilgrimage could go on and on.  What a bother!

Walking, walking, and more walking.  Only thirty minutes out, she paused to turn left and bow to Zhukov’s cairn.  The light of the water having leveled off to a faint ambience, she used her flashlight for a quick flare every thirty minutes.  Nothing.  But the path was still there, so she kept on.

At just over ten hours, thinking about a rest, Alicia came to a wall.

“These call-backs to the book are getting ridiculous,” she said aloud.

Aware that the cavern’s wall on the left was slowly closing in over the last hour of her walk, she hoped to be coming toward something, if not important, then at least different.

“A blank rock wall is different, I guess,” she said, flashlight on at its lowest setting, looking in all directions.  “The path obviously keeps going, but the seam on the ground is like that of the Crabbies’ building:  nearly invisible.  But there is nothing here.”

Thinking she was being toyed with, Alicia took a step back and intoned “Mellon!”  Nothing happened.

“Worth a shot, what with everything else I do not understand,” she muttered, feeling for seams or cracks.  Nothing.  “I suppose I’ll move the distance to the lake to the east and see if I get killed there.”

She paused and looked over her left shoulder.

“This is a door.  It’s closed.  Something is past it.  You only build a door to protect something.” Feeling angry, she put her noseline in.  “Dammit, Crabbies!  What is going on down here!  Do I have to come back with C4?”

Nothing answered her.  Noseline out, she walked on, back toward the lake, at this point fifty meters away.  Even with the very faint light of the lake, halfway there she paused at a patch of blackness before her feet.  She flicked the flashlight on then off.

“A meter wide and maybe three from left to right.  The same deep,” she muttered at her good fortune.  “Had I walked into that, I’d be dead; impossible to climb out.  Was things like this why Uncle Allen stayed put for so long?”

Skirting it to the north, Alicia made her way to just shy of the lake.  The white plants growing there looked the same as what she’d been eating, so, tearing a few leaves off, she chewed on them while looking about.

“If I knew there weren’t more Squiddies in the water, I’d swim around to see if there’s a way past the door back there,” she said, swallowing.  “Too dangerous, especially now that I know help is on the way.  Urk!”

She grabbed at the sharp pain from her stomach.

“Oh, no.  Are these not the same plants…”

There was bile in the back of her mouth and her breathing was getting ragged.  In reaching to reseat her noseline, Alicia fell over.

I am so stupid.