This is an automated archive made by the Lemmit Bot.
The original was posted on /r/nosleep by /u/unimagine97 on 2024-10-11 22:13:28+00:00.
I was helping my mom move house the other day and I found a small leather journal in the attic. I asked her about it and she said it belonged to her grandfather who was an archaeologist. Apparently he had a few of these from different digs he’d been on though she had never read that one in particular. She said I could take it home and read it but warned me that they could be pretty dry. Seems like my great grandfather wasn’t known for his creativity.
I took it home that afternoon and forgot about it for a while. I was reminded of it by, strangely enough, a dream. I was sitting in a field on a rock outcropping reading the journal. I remember, in the dream, being overwhelmed by a sense of serenity, like I was floating, like the grass, swaying gently in the breeze wasn’t grass at all but a vast ocean.
Anyway, the next day I made sure to set some time aside for reading.
It started out normal and was mostly just logistical things, supplies and such. But then about half way through the entries took a turn. The only way I can describe them is unsettling. I’ve been trying to convince myself that he just randomly decided to take up creative writing. Gunna write up some of the weirder entries here, hoping that by sharing them it’ll take the edge off a bit. Hopefully we can all laugh at how dumb I’m being.
August 24th 1932
The dig has been nothing short of a disaster. We’ve found nothing and the money is running out. I knew it was a gamble and it took more than enough convincing from the committee to secure the grant. The books that led me to this location were entirely suspect, a queer leather bound tome barely held together by ancient bindings. Strange glyphs covered the front and back in its entirety, scrawled things that had been scarred into the leather itself. The text, if it could be called such, inside was entirely incomprehensible, much of it similar to the scrawl on the cover. Luckily, or perhaps unluckily, there was a map on one of the pages. It took months to decipher possible locations. It was a risk, a massive one. I just had a feeling. An inexplicable feeling. It wasn’t a particularly good feeling mind you, but it demanded an answer. It was my decades of work at the college that enabled this trip and it will be my head if it fails.
It pains me to think that if this dig turns out a failure, my so far immaculate career will be tarnished, an ugly, writhing blemish on an otherwise perfect legacy. Is it conceited of me to think about such things? Perhaps but when one’s field is history you can’t help but think about how you will be remembered, what you’ll leave behind. Will anyone know my name in 80 years? I like to hope so.
We have two weeks of dig time left and I’ve little hope.
August 27th 1932
A fight broke out between Moore and Thompson today. The strangest thing. Moore is one of the most sensible men I know. Likes to keep to himself, never causes trouble. But at tonight’s meal he just lunged at Thompson. Thankfully they were broken apart before anything could happen. Thompson says he did nothing that knowingly could’ve drawn the man’s ire, didn’t even know he had ire he said. I spoke with Moore a bit later, after giving him a moment to himself. He didn’t say much. Just kept saying that he didn’t know what came over him and that he was sorry. It must be the stress of the dig weighing on him. He has another one on the way. I tried to reassure him but he seemed despondent so I left him alone.
I just hope there will be no further incidents. This dig is teetering on the edge of a cliff as it is.
August 29th 1932
Things have just gone from bad to worse. There has been a plague- that is the only way to describe it- going through the camp. People have been vomiting all through the night. We’ve considered perhaps that the rations had gone bad but only a few men have come down with this mysterious illness. It is terrible to witness. Violent and disturbing. The substance they expel from their stomachs is- there is no word for it. I have never seen anything like it in my fifty seven years. Like tar, thick and black and shone an odd mixture of green and purple. It seemed to move on its own accord but thats-. Maybe it was a trick of the light. It must’ve been that, a simple trick of the light. Or I’ve been out here too long.
September 4th 1932
It’s hopeless.
September 9th 1932
We found something. It’s just a glimpse of something. We uncovered an opening and after lowering a lantern down we saw some odd stone. Definitely not natural. From the look of it it was impossibly smooth and the light bounced off it like nothing I’ve ever seen. The news has reinvigorated the men and I couldn’t be more relieved of it. I could see they were starting to slip and the failure of the dig was starting to get to them. We’ve been out here for three months after all with no sight of anything remotely interesting and after… the sickness the men needed this morale boost. I’ve got a good feeling. This will be the find of the century, I know it.
September 22nd
We’ve continued excavation of ‘the structure’, as it has become known.
September 24th
I have been examining the book that led us to this location, desperate for any sort of clues as to the nature of this ungodly structure and it remains as endlessly vexing as it was before. I have studied the book, cover to cover, hoping to gain some insight, and each time proves fruitless, the odd runes seeming more and more a jumbled mess each time. I have found something that I seemingly have overlooked in my previous study of the book. A sketch, of what I can now discern is our current location with a strange monolith-like structure reaching impossibly into the sky. Obviously there is nothing of the sort here. There are some phrases in the book, long rambling paragraphs that have the cadence of a sermon. A rambling preaching by a man so lost in his faith it has consumed him, unfortunately they make little to no sense at the best of times. The passage “and we shall indulge in one another and become the ouroboros of eternity given flesh” seems to be repeated many times throughout.
My current theory is that this structure is a place of worship, though to what deity I haven’t the foggiest, a cathedral to the forgotten. I don’t want to imagine the sort of twisted divinity that would demand such a place.
September 34th
The dreams, they haunt my sleep and i can’t escape no matter how much I run
Disregard this entry. Lack of sleep.
October 4th
It’s colossal. Two weeks of straight digging and we haven’t fully uncovered the structure. The walls reveal nothing. They are blank. Working near the stone is odd. You can see your reflection perfectly. But only that. Not the lanterns, not other people, it is truly odd. It has my stomach in knots. Looking into that mirror, you stand truly alone.
October 9th
More and more questions and no answers.
October 15th
I received a letter from my wife today and the pain of my family’s absence has hit me in a way that I didn’t expect. The letter details my daughter’s eighth birthday which I have unfortunately missed due to this dig. Just as I regretfully missed her first, fourth and fifth birthdays. The letter details her delight over my present, a small archaeology set that I put together, complete with brush and her own hat similar to the one I sport when I go on digs. My wife noted that she has refused to take off the hat for five days now. It pains me dearly that I can’t spend these days with my family but my career is something I hold very dear as well.
November 6th
The excavation is almost complete. It has been an enormous undertaking, much more than any of us had anticipated. The area we are uncovering seems to be the “front” of the structure, having seemingly more “decoration” though perhaps that isn’t the best word for the odd patterns and curious carvings that line the wall. Queer swirling patterns that wind in on themselves and get lost and tangled. There seems to be no rhyme or reason to them and my best men cannot make heads or tails of it. No idea of any possible time period or known civilization they could have come from. I can get lost in them for hours, the intricate detail, every inch I follow reveals new details and patterns only for it to abruptly end and for me to realize it had seemingly led me nowhere. While the patterns inspire a sense of wonder and vastness that simply cannot be put into words, the carvings inspire something much darker. Faceless heads have been carved into the rock, again, seemingly at random. Due to the previously stated reflective nature of the rock, looking into this blank visages you would find yourself staring out from the infinite void within, as if you yourself had been carved into the rock. It inspired an odd feeling of fate, or destiny, a silly notion that somehow I had been selected by something higher than my understanding to find this structure. A feeling slithered inside me, while staring into my own, seemingly black, eyes, that everything in my life, every choice and look and breath had been guided by an invisible hand.
I am rambling. We estimate the size of the structure to be around one hundred and twenty meters by one hundred and ninety five meters.
November 17th.
People are starting to talk about going home for the winter and while it is disappointing it is also understandable, the pain of missing my own family is starting to weigh heavy on me. The only two who seem to share my vision…
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