The Darkness Below

The 700 miles of mining tunnels beneath Virginia City had a pulse, a heartbeat as ancient as the earth. Above, the frantic rush of tourists snapped selfies and shuffled between saloons.

Below, the tunnels lived and breathed with their rhythm. Rats skittered, water dripped, and the faint groan of distant pipes whispered through the damp air. But tonight, there was something more—ancient and foul, moving like smoke through the shadows.

Jim Delaney wasn’t supposed to be down here. Not really. The city had contractors for this kind of thing. But when his kid sister called, in hysterics, he didn’t ask questions.

“Jim, they took Kenny!” she’d screamed. “They dragged him into the tunnels!”

Kenny was nine. Sweet kid. The kind who still collected baseball cards and thought chocolate milk was a food group. Whatever they were, Kenny didn’t deserve it.

Jim’s flashlight flickered as he picked his way through the damp corridor. He cursed under his breath. The beam barely cut through the murky dark, the shadows too thick and alive to be pushed back.

In one hand, he clutched an old baseball bat—a relic from his Little League days. Now, he wished he’d grabbed a shotgun instead.

The air smelled thick, cloying mix of sulfur, wet stone, and something metallic—like old pennies. Ahead, the tunnel opened into a cavernous junction.

The walls glistened with algae, and strange symbols scrawled in red lined the stone. They weren’t graffiti. Jim knew that much. The symbols seemed to shift when he wasn’t looking, the lines too deliberate, too alive.

“Kenny!” he called, his voice ricocheting off the curved walls.

Only silence answered. No. Not silence. The faint skitter of footsteps.

Miles deep into the labyrinth, twenty figures knelt in a circle, faces hidden behind grotesque masks made of rat skulls and stitched leather. Robes clung to their bodies, soaked to the knee in sewage.

At the center of the circle, Kenny writhed against the ropes, binding his wrists and ankles, his cries drowned by the low, guttural chant of the robed figures. The leader stepped forward, raising a jagged blade glinting in the faint light. His voice rumbled like ground stone.

“Aleroth, hear us! We call you forth from the abyss. Take this offering and grant us your power!”

The symbols on the walls pulsed, oozing a sickly crimson glow. The air turned frigid, and shadows stretched unnaturally, crawling up the walls like living things.

Something began to emerge from the darkness. First, claws—long, black, and sharp as obsidian. Then, curling horns, jagged and cruel.

Its eyes burned like molten gold, twin orbs that seemed to see everything. The cultists gasped, some weeping with joy, others trembling in terror.

The demon spoke, voice a rumble that made the ground tremble. “Who dares summon me?”

Jim heard it before he saw it, a low, bone-deep growl followed by a flash of crimson light painting the tunnel in nightmarish hues. He stumbled, nearly dropping the flashlight. The symbols on the walls pulsed in time with his racing heart.

“Kenny!” he shouted, his voice cracking with fear.

Wet footsteps echoed ahead—many footsteps. Shapes emerged from the dark.

They moved like marionettes on tangled strings, their heads tilting unnaturally. The masks—they all wore those grotesque masks.

“Stay back!” Jim shouted, swinging the bat in a wide arc.

The nearest figure lunged. The bat connected with a sickening crack, and the figure crumpled.

But the others didn’t even flinch. They kept coming, their movements jerky and wrong.

Jim turned and ran.

Behind him, the demon roared, its voice shaking the tunnel. It was awake now.

Fully here. And it was hungry.

The chamber Jim stumbled into was massive, its ceiling arching like the nave of a cathedral. At its center yawned a pit lined with glowing symbols that pulsed like a beating heart. The air shimmered, heavy with sulfur and decay.

Kenny lay near the pit’s edge, his chest rising and falling in shallow breaths. Jim dropped to his knees, fumbling with the ropes.

“It’s too late,” a voice rasped.

Jim looked up to see the cult leader standing across the pit. His mask was gone, revealing a gaunt face twisted with fanaticism.

“You can’t stop it. Aleroth has risen. He will cleanse this world of its filth.”

“Cleanse this, asshole,” Jim growled, tightening his grip on the bat.

The demon laughed, a sound that rattled Jim’s teeth.

“You think your world can contain me?” it bellowed.

Its form was visible now—a grotesque blend of muscle and shadow, its wings stretching impossibly wide.

Jim didn’t think. He scooped Kenny into his arms and ran. Behind him, the cult leader screamed as the demon stepped forward, its claws raking the stone.

They emerged into the night, gasping for air as the ground began to tremble and the tunnel’s entrance caved. Above, the sky turned an unnatural shade of red, and sirens wailed in the distance.