Pan's Grotto

And I say to thee: That thou art Peter; and upon this rock I will build my church, and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it.

Matthew 16:18 (King James Version)

Audio Journal Entry, Day 45

June 06, 2026

9 AM

Deir ez-Zor Governorate

Syria-Iraq Border

The Gate Opens

I was an atheist. I used to be. How could I not be? I found the concept of God, angels, demons, and the Devil to be totally ludicrous. They were the ravings of madmen. I equated Jesus with the likes of the Tooth Fairy, Mr. Sandman, or Bigfoot. To me, they were figments of people’s imagination. Heaven and Hell were alien concepts to me—until I came face to face with the latter and it terrified me. I was an oiler in Syria, drilling for black gold. We were on a deadline to find the precious liquid and our bosses were breathing down our necks. We hadn’t hit a payload yet and we were running out of time. They were pressuring us to drill deeper—and drill deeper we did. That’s when the Gates of Hell opened up before us and I could no longer deny its existence, try hard as I might to grapple with the concept of it. As the hole kept getting deeper and deeper, it got hotter and hotter. It was so unbearable that we started sweating through our clothes. We often sought relief in the cold desert night air or in the cold showers of our living quarters after a very long day.

And then we hit 40,000 feet. The ground shook and the temperatures flared, melting our equipment. And then we heard the voices—no, not voices—screams and moans of agony as though billions of people were being tortured and screaming in pain and terror. We had to cover our ears. I myself couldn’t bear to hear those awful screams.

And then we started smelling sulfur. We had to cover our noses and it got so bad to the point where some of my colleagues were passing out from the intense smell. It was ten thousand times worse than rotten eggs. Our eyes watered and we could hardly breathe.

But that was not all.

We saw horrors beyond our own imaginations.

Demons began clawing their way up and out of the hole. Their skins were as black as the oil we were so desperately and so greedily seeking—as black as sin. Their eyes danced red, yellow, and orange—the colors of their fiery domain down below. Some of them had twisted forms, ugly and grotesque—something like a combination of Gollum from Lord of the Rings, Quasimodo, and King Richard III. They spoke in a deep and guttural voice in a language that none of us understood—it wasn’t English, Latin, Hebrew, or Arabic. It was completely alien. These creatures haunted me at night and turned my dreams into nightmares. We tried to seal up the hole and temporarily put a stop to the project but more and more of them kept coming out of the woodwork, breaking through the barrier that we had put over it.

And then they broke into our living quarters, attacking our team. It was a complete nightmare. But despite the evidence, the reality of it all, I sometimes still grapple with it. I sometimes question if this is all a horrible fever dream or a really, really bad LSD trip. But I know it’s not. I know this is real. We have sealed our fate. We have dug our own graves. We have opened up the Gates of Hell. Our greed and our hubris have doomed us all.

Audio Journal Entry, Day 46

June 07, 2026

4:30 AM

Deir ez-Zor Governorate

Syria-Iraq Border

The Fight For Our Lives & Our Souls

My comrades and I—the ones that are left, anyway—have talked about it. We will fight for our survival to the death. I feared that was the case so I made my peace with God. I called on God for the first time this morning—the God that I fought tooth and nail to deny. The God that I’d been denying my whole life. It’s sad that it took a catastrophe like this to bring me face-to-face with Him. This is my Damascus Road and I was just as blind as Saul of Tarsus. I hope it’s not too late at all. I hope He hears my pitiful cries for help. But why would He? I know I don’t have that right, but I am desperate—we are desperate. 

Our numbers are dwindling. More and more of my comrades are being dragged down into the dark depths of Hell to be tormented for all eternity. I can still hear their screams mixing with those of the damned souls in Hell, whose screams rise to the surface from the bottom of that accursed borehole. I saw one unfortunate soul being overpowered by seven of these Satanic spawns. His screams will haunt me till the day I die—fortunately, or unfortunately, it may be today. It may be tomorrow. It may be the day after. I know it will be soon.

Besides making peace with God, I have also made peace with those who have wronged me and with those that I’ve wronged. I wrote a letter to Jodie, the girl whose heart I broke in college. I asked for her forgiveness and said that I would understand if she couldn’t forgive me now, but I hope someday she will. I wrote a letter to Ryan, the man who destroyed my friendship with Katherine thanks to his burning jealousy. I told him I had already forgiven him for ruining a beautiful friendship and that I had also already forgiven him for thinking the worst of me.

This may be my very last journal entry. If anyone finds these recordings, know that I am dead and I died fighting. I will not allow my comrades and I to be dragged down into Hell—a Hell we helped create. A Hell we helped to open. Tell my family I love them.

AUTHOR’S NOTES: This story was inspired by the urban legend of the Russian borehole that led to Hell and where it is said that the agonized screams of the damned could be heard.