Journal of Anselm Palabras

October 11

They’ve assigned me to Site B-12. Disused military research complex buried beneath the ridge. Not on any standard grid, and no one will say who greenlit the excavation. I was told to survey for structural instability. Cracks, shifts, potential flooding or caving. Standard fare.

The facility’s real name is the “Seabright Research Annex”, but the workers called it “the Scar.” I think it’s apt. A gash in the earth, bleeding metal and history. Built before the war, shut down long before the bombs fell. Now it’s mine to explore.

Harker's here too. Geophysics, top of his class. He whistles when he works. Said silence is worse than the dark. Said he likes these assignments.

“No people. Just rocks. And rocks don't lie.”

October 12

Initial readings show oddities.

Mapping drones fail to maintain their position. Compass drift. Our tracking pings stutter and overlap, sometimes they separate completely, even though we’re stood right next to each other. Strange. Like the space is folding beneath our feet.

Schematics show five sublevels, yet we’ve found seven so far. And one corridor that we followed for 20 minutes before noticing the same debris patterns reappearing underfoot. Time of day seems… unmoving.

We chalked up arrows to test our orientation. In one instance, Harker swears that we went up three flights and ended up two levels down. I didn’t notice.

Later, I caught him staring at his own reflection in a darkened console screen. Said it blinked, when he didn’t.

October 13

Discovered a passage hidden behind rusted equipment. Not a door, exactly. More like a gap in the wall, from certain angles. It looks wrong? From every direction.

It led to a hidden spiral stairwell. Poured concrete gave way to stone, carved into basalt and something else I don’t recognize. Not rock. Not metal. Carved by hands-- or something older than hands. Just a hunch. Harker took some samples.

The smell hit first. Like damp stone and burnt ozone. I climbed down with Harker, as he whistled a familiar tune. Less upbeat than usual, but still eager to go deeper. The air changes the deeper we go. Less stale, more absent. Like something inhaled but never exhaled. Like standing inside a church without a God.

Further down: smooth black walls, seamless. Not like anything I’ve seen before. It looks like obsidian, but no volcanic traces in the region. When you walk it, your footsteps come back at you a beat too soon.

The halls are curved, like they were grown, not built. Cold, but not in a natural way. More like standing too close to a thought you shouldn’t be having. If that makes sense?

October 14

Dreamt of the hallway. Not as it was, but alive? Moving. Breathing. Pulsing like veins. Something shuffled just ahead of me, out of sight, or, out of time. Hard to explain. Just a feeling. Or a memory. Of a feeling.

Harker tried to photograph the walls this time. Nothing took. Not blackness. Just nothing. He ran spectral scans, but it wouldn’t register. It’s like they’re refusing to be measured. I even tried to sketch them, but my hand cramped uncontrollably when I tried to draw the curve of the hall.

I counted 451 steps before the passage opened into a chamber. Circular, quiet. Smooth black stone. No seams, no joints. I thought I saw myself entering the chamber, from the centre. Memory is somewhat hazy. All I can remember is Harker’s horrible whistling.

Harker said the EM readings are “sick.” He said that they pulse in irregular waves, like a heartbeat. He wants to seal the chamber. Told me this place isn’t just abandoned. It’s “unwanted.”

I tried to argue. I don’t even remember what I said. Only that my words weren’t mine. They came too easily. Like someone else had practiced them inside me first. Like a memory being recalled, without knowing why, or what for.

October 15

Harker asked me if I’ve started dreaming. I haven’t. Not that I remember. He said, “They’re not dreams. They’re architecture.” Said he dreamed of voices chanting underwater. That they weren’t speaking to him, they were remembering him before he existed.

We returned to the black chamber. There are markings on the floor now. Circular patterns worn into the stone. Not etched. More like erosion with intent. No moisture or airflow down here. They shouldn’t erode. Looks like a lung turned to stone.

There’s a wall at the far end. It wasn’t a wall before. Or it was, but we couldn’t see it. It shimmers faintly. Light bends near it, like heat off of asphalt. I see it spreading across my vision like a fungus blooming in reverse.

Harker said he hadn’t prayed since the war. Said maybe this place doesn’t need faith - just attention.

He hasn’t whistled since yesterday.

October 14

We moved our tents inside down. Closer to the black chamber.

Harker didn’t come today. Said he heard something last night in his tent. Whispers. I believe him. I heard them too. Inside. Like my own voice, inverted.

October 17

Harker packed to leave this morning. Said we’re trespassers, that the walls know our names. Said he dreams now even while awake.

There are voices now. when I’m near the wall. Not words. Not language. Not sound. More like intent. Like a thought, but not mine. Just behind the membranes of my ears.

I tried recording audio. Playback is distorted. Like long stretches of silence interrupted by sharp clicks, like teeth tapping glass.

We returned to the chamber. The markings

The patterns, fractures carvings. Seem deeper. Or maybe I’m just noticing them more. Not words. Not language. But patterns. Truths. Spirals. Some carved deep, others faint like scars on skin.

Harker says the walls are watching us the way caves watch bats.

The chamber smells of sin and salt

October 18

No entries. Memory unclear.

October 20

The chamber was different today.

The wall has cracked. Or ripped. Like a canvas. Hairline, like a fracture in glass. Like a mouth trying to remember how to open. I put my ear to it. Heard nothing, but my thoughts stalled. I don’t know how long I have stood here.

I touched the mouth, and the pulse surged through me, memories flooding in.

A spiral pattern, carved into stone. It’s old, ancient, but perfect.

The longer I stare, the more I feel myself being drawn in, pulled deeper into the pattern, like a whirlpool in my mind.

Harker asked me, very softly, “Do you think I’m still me?”

October 18

No entry. Memory uncertain.

Woke up disoriented. Found soil beneath my nails. My boots were wet. Mouth tasted of iron.

Harker’s cot is undisturbed. He didn’t come back. I heard him whispering In his tent last night. Or yesterday. Or tomorrow. But it was not words. it wasn’t his voice

Found his field book wedged into a fissure near the wall. Most pages torn out. One remaining, covered in a single spiral etched over and over, pressing through to the wood below.

October 19

It opened.

We didn’t touch anything. No breach, no tools. The eye at the end of the spiral simply... split. Not like stone cracking, more like skin peeling back.

And beyond it: darkness like ink. Impenetrable. It was heavy. The Underchamber.

The word came to me unbidden. I always knew it. A hollow space, wider than any mapped segment, ceiling lost in shadow. Smooth black stone, pulsing with veins of dim red light – but not light – like blood filtered through centuries.

No source of heat, but I began sweating.

The chamber is

October 19

I don’t sleep.

i stand

When I close my eyes, I see the spirals growing beneath my skin.

folding inside the ridges of my brain

wrapped in veins where no

blood flows

twisting

in

places I don’t have names for

Harker came back.

He stood outside my tent for hours.

Held together by the idea of a man.

“…he blinked with my eyes…”

At dawn, he was gone again. No tracks. Just a spiral burned into the dirt where a thought had stood too long.

October 20

I tried to leave today.

Walked for six hours toward the ridgeline. The sun never moved. I passed the same dead tree three times. Once, it was missing its shadow.

Came back to camp. Only… it wasn’t the same camp. My tent was facing the wrong direction. The survey flags were arranged in a spiral I didn’t mark.

I am writing this down so I dont forg

October 20

I went down again. Alone.

Into the Underchamber.

Not sure how long inside. passage turns back on itself. physics don’t exist in here.

a shaft. no End. above, in the dark like a nerve,

looking through the hole in the world

here is no light

have no light

knows

it saw me

it

October 21

[This page is full of scribbles, ineligible, almost as if not written by the same hand.]

October 22

The wall is bleeding. or weeping. The fluid is clear but heavy. It clings to the surface and refuses to fall.

I tried drinking it. but now it’s empty again. it is sealed.

I looked inside. It showed me someone else’s face, aged and burned. It mouthed something. I think it was my name.

I turned to speak, but there was no one there.

I keep thinking there was someone here with me.

October 24

It accepted the shape of me.

There is no wall. No floor. No ceiling.

Only the curve.

Spiral.

Descent.

There is no “inside” or “outside.” The chamber was never a room. It was a pupil.

And we were the light it needed to remember

Now it is open

now it can see

Us.

October 25

I know what it wants

I know what it wants

I know what it wants

I know

October

[No writing. Just ink spirals: one on each page, tight, endless, collapsing in on themselves.]