Mechanic Gopher
rating: 0+x

A Guide To The Sahara Jungle Volume 4 (Foreword, Chapter 27, Epilogue)


Foreword

My name is Sean Sabin. The year is 1847, or at least I think it still is. I am an explorer and biologist from Adare, Ireland. I was researching lifeforms in the Sahara Desert. If you find my journal but do not find me, assume I am dead, take and publish my journal, and DO NOT come looking for me.

To quickly explain my circumstance will not be easy. You may not even believe what I am writing but I assure you this is real and true, and very dangerous.

This is my fourth journal of documentation but I want all the integral information to be gathered if only one book is found.

As I traversed through the harsh winds and walked against the course sand I could feel myself beginning to tire. My traveling partners, Richards, Donovan, and O'Malley, seemed to agree, so we set up camp.

I had started writing in my desert documentation journal when the sand beneath began sinking and pulled me in with it. My shouts for saving were most likely received too late as I have not seen any of my companions since, nor have I seen any other human at all.

As I sank I found myself in a dark cavern surrounded by the thin layer of sand that fell with me. The walls seemed to be made of stone, pieces put together, and were covered in moss. It smelled, and everything else still smells, like wet vegetation, which makes sense now, but was strange as I was used to the feel of the dry, hot, desert, but was then sitting in a cold, wet, jungle. I found my footing, and my journal and pen, and searched around my environment.

It was a building, built from stone, but so incredibly old that it seemed to once again become part of nature. The exit once had a wooden door, but it was now mostly pulled into the ground, flat on its face, covered in moss and vines.

Outside the building was much the same as inside. It was a wet stone cavern that sank infinitely down into darkness, filled with vegetation, very old buildings, and strange creatures, unlike anything I had ever seen.

An example of one of these creatures is what I am calling a Rhinotia sabinae, or Spit Beetle for short. This creature (first described in Journal 2, Chapter 18) is a black beetle with luminescent blue highlights on its wings and legs and is about the size of my palm. It has a long tube on its head, I originally assumed mouth, but it spat something sticky and thick onto my eyes which caused them to burn until the substance was removed. By the time I recovered the creature was gone. I then documented it.

That is one of the tamer creatures in comparison to the Mentality Blooms, yes they have a scientific name, no I'm not going to go look through Journal 1 to try and find what I decided on. These flowers grow out of the cracks in stone walls with abnormally thick appendages, petals I couldn't even bend, and a hole in the center. They often grow in very large patches. The center hole sprayed blue powder in my face that made me delirious, delusional, and dangerous to myself. The only reason I survived was thanks to the help of Yetin, whom I refuse to discuss here unless absolutely necessary.

To sum up my current position, I have realized that I have no escape from this wet hell, and so I decided to delve deep into the depths of this vertical tunnel and to document everything I find in the hopes, while extremely unlikely, that my discoveries will be made public and this cave won't remain hidden.


Chapter 27: The Indescribable Temple

I seem to have stumbled across a temple, or church, or something of that kind. By design it is very church-like, reinforcing my theory that humans at one point lived down here, but no humans, nor their remains, can be found. Paintings painted directly on the walls of the inside, fill this building. Painting of humans, of some of the locations I have visited, including but not limited to: The Fire Graveyard, The Red Cliffs, and The Reverse City. Many of these paintings also include a figure that I can't seem to describe. The figure always looms over the area, and the people in it, and they all seem to worship it. It appears large and is always painted using a different color, with a different amount of limbs. It looks alive but impossible, but even though I can clearly see it I can't comprehend describing it any more than that, not even to write in my journal. If I were asked to draw a picture of it now, as I stare at it, I couldn't. I wouldn't know where to begin, or where to end, and what to do.

It watches me. It feels me, and I feel it. It will protect me. It has protected me. It is protecting me. It controls me. I am but it's puppet, moved by strings over the endless void of everything. It is protection. It is all. It is everything. You are everything. You are here. You are power. You are love. You are hate. You are life. You are death. You are me. I am You. I am me. You are you.

I seem to have fainted. When I awoke I found a bunch of writing in my journal I do not remember creating. I have circled this phenomenon. I know I would not write such a thing, so some other creature or being must have knocked me on the head and written in my journal. That is my current theory, as I don't see what else it could be. I don't believe I would have written that.
After awakening from my temporary slumber, I found my way to the center of the temple, which had a book on a totem. The book is completely written in a language, or I assume a language as it is full of symbols, that I have never seen, though somehow I can understand what it reads. I read the first couple of pages to myself before going back to my journal. Though I can understand the sound, and the pronunciation, and the emotion, I don't understand the true meaning. I don't know how I can both understand yet not understand something at once but this is what I am experiencing.


Epilogue: I feel like I am going mad

I awoke, in my bed in Adare, next to my wife Maria. I remember being in the Sahara Desert with others, but it feels like a dream. When I awoke I was also holding this journal, full of strange ramblings about creatures and places. So much information, so much detailed information. I couldn't have written this! But it says my name at the beginning and mentions traveling the desert with others. Was I writing a piece of fiction before I had fallen asleep, and that's why it feels so real, but like a dream, because I had dreamed about my exploration? I don't remember any of the strange things that happened after the desert though, so I must not
have dreamed of them, I had thought.

I woke up my wife to ask her about the fiction I had apparently written, but she was very frightened, claiming I was out exploring the Sahara, and she didn't expect me back so soon. Had I really gone to the Sahara? If so, then how did I get back?

Every night I wake from horrible nightmares, visions of a thing made of color and limbs, a thing that I can't describe further than that no matter how hard I try. This same description is in the fiction, at the end. Everybody I tell about my experience assumes me crazy, and now I'm starting to assume the same.

Unless otherwise stated, the content of this page is licensed under Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 License