Zachary places the lamp on the disk and it lowers with the weight. A clanking sound follows.
Around the room lamps hanging from the columns spark to life. A few remain unlit, their lanterns missing or perhaps just out of oil.
Beyond the columns the room is lined with long horizontal alcoves. Zachary wonders why the space seems familiar, and then he sees a single skeletal hand at the edge of one of the shadowed spaces.
It is a crypt.
For a moment Zachary wants to flee, to follow the cat up the stairs.
But he doesn’t.
Someone wanted him to see this.
Someone—or something—thinks he should be here.
Zachary closes his eyes and collects himself and then he investigates the room.
He starts with its occupants.
At first he thinks they might be mummified but as he moves closer he can see that the strips of cloth wrapped loosely around the bodies are covered in text. Most have dried and decayed along with their wearers but some of them are legible.
sings to herself when she thinks no one is listening
reads the same books over and over again until each page is intimately familiar
walks barefoot through the halls, quiet as a cat
laughs so easy and so often as though the whole universe delights him
They’re wrapped in memories. Memories of who they were when they were alive.
Zachary reads what he can without disturbing them. The unraveling sentences and the sentiments that catch the light.
he did not wish to be here any longer
one strip of text reads, wrapped around a wrist that is now no more than bone, and Zachary wonders if it means what he thinks it likely means.
In one alcove there is an urn. It has no memories with it.
The others are empty.
Zachary turns his attention to the rest of the room. Some of the columns have carved indentations, sloped surfaces like podiums beneath their lamps.
One podium holds a book. It looks extremely old. It has no cover, only loosely bound pages.
Zachary picks up the book as carefully as he can.
The parchment breaks to pieces in his hands, crumbling into fragments over the podium.
Zachary sighs and the sigh carries more of the fragments from the podium to the stone at his feet.
He tries not to feel too badly about it. Maybe the book, like the people around it, was already gone.
He looks down at the former book fallen around his feet and attempts to read but there are only bits and pieces.
He makes out a single word.
Hello