There are things in this world that are both older and stronger than mankind, and if you are unfortunate enough to cross their path your life will change forever. This story began by considering what might have happened if HP Lovecraft wrote TG fiction.

I don my armor and prepare for the night.

I have a duty to perform and it is mine alone. No one knows what I do for them. The night that I end my vigil, on that night begins the end of mankind. I do not know how much longer I can bear this horrible burden. Three times already I have tried to escape beyond the veil, but three times Charon has refused me and I remain stranded on this side of the River Styx.

I must not try to escape again.

I prepare to face the night.

My armor is not complete without my war paint. The paint I wear will determine the path I must walk tonight. Should I fail, I will not suffer alone. My failure would doom every person I have ever met alongside those I have not. Though they do not realize it, every race in the world depends on my choice, on my vigil.

And they must never know, let alone give me thanks.

My duty and my nightmare started on the same day, a time that is never far from my thoughts.

---

Cold winds blew fallen leaves across the trail. A few stray wisps of brown and red still clung to the trees like the torn remnants of a mourner’s dress. I walked the wooded trails with my coat pulled tightly around me. The dark clouds swirling above me matched my mood.

Although I can barely recall her face, I will never forget Lilith’s eyes. Crystal blue, like ice that had just started to melt. Those eyes were cold when she announced that we were through. She had entered my life like a storm, upending old certainties and birthing new dreams. Like a storm she left me and those dreams died. And her clear blue eyes never wavered.

I found some small consolation that dismal gray sky had the courtesy to not match those eyes. I was seeking solace in isolation by roaming the autumn hills across sparsely traveled and oft forgotten trails. The last thing I desired was a reminder of the fresh wound torn in my heart.

It was in this spirit of self-abnegation that I turned away from the trail to march up a steep hill against the brambles that stood silent sentinel. The brittle thorns tore at my hands and face, providing me a temporary solace from the pain in my heart. As the way got harder I pushed harder, glad for the distraction. I imagined myself an explorer, a pioneer from the earliest days of the New England settlements.

I was so different then.

Night was not yet a time of dread. I saw no need to hurry when the Sun passed its zenith. A night in the woods was little more than an adventure.

I tackled the hill like it would fight back.

And found a clearing that I wish with all my soul had remained hidden until time came to an end.

I did not know what awaited me then and was filled with misplaced elation. My first thought was to share the sight with my beloved Lilith. I reached for my phone to take a picture before stopping in disgust. My self loathing quickly gave way to renewed delight with my discovery. Pride, perhaps, that goeth before the fall.

An ancient church watched over the grove, its faded white paint still visible through the weeds and vines that wrapped it in a green choke hold. The tall steeple that might have alerted the outside world of its existence lay rotting in the ground to the side of the chapel. A hole in the roof extended along the side of the building, providing mute testimony to the violence of its fall. The cross lay stuck in the ground waiting for a penitent to drag it to Calvary.

It may seem inappropriate to take joy at so morose a sight, but I ask you to consider the position I was in at the time. I’d taken a reasonable skill in math and parlayed that into an accountant’s position at a small firm, and that looked the sum total of my future. It had proved insufficient to keep the girl of my dreams. With this unexpected discovery I saw a potential previously undreamed. Momentary fame, for certain, but perhaps also a chance to use my meager savings to purchase this land and make of it an attraction.

These may seem small dreams, but they are far more than I now possess. Looking back on them now is near enough to crush me.

No. The weight of memory can not break me. I must continue my vigil. My penance for the sins of mankind.

Filled with unjustified resolve I marched through the overgrown dried grass to the entrance of the fallen chapel. The door hung futilely to its frame by a single hinge, swaying open as though to welcome a destitute stranger. The vestibule inside was stained by a thousand rainfalls, mold growing rampant over walls that may once have been sacred.

Further inside, mottled light dappled the pews from the few pieces of stained glass that still clung to their nearly empty frames. Blood red and corpse blue flickers mixed with the fading autumn sun. Yet that light shone on an interior that had suffered far less damage than its years of neglect would justify. The dirty wood floors were not warped and the walls were sturdy. The stage where a minister once performed for his flock patiently awaited a new troupe of actors. A bright spot on the wall, an inverse shadow, testified to where the cross once hung.

Perhaps it should have been the shadow of the cross, but it was the building interior that gave me hope. The entrance was a loss, but the rest of the structure was intact and could be rebuilt.

Had I only stopped there, how different might my life have been?

Alas for us all that I did not. I resolved to explore the grounds while light remained, content to sleep in the fallen house of God should it take too long.

Headstones grew wild in the grass behind the church, several of them crushed beneath the fallen steeple. There was neither plan nor order to where they sprouted; they may have fallen haphazardly from the hands of a passing giant, left behind where they lay. The stones were scratched and stained. What names they may once have held were as forgotten as the glade and church had been.

A stone crypt stood silent watch near the woods at the outer limits of the graveyard. Its iron gate was securely shut to guard against any intrusion from the living, while the back corner had collapsed to put the lie to its promise. The fallen stone lay scattered outside the tomb, making it appear that it was those interred within who had made their exit.

My curiosity overcame me and I approached that ill omened tomb. The name that was once inscribed over the mantle was cut deep into the stone to endure long years. Yet no craftsman’s art could survive the crumbling of the facade; the center stone had fallen and no longer rested nearby. Save that the name began with a ‘W’ and ended in an ‘r’, I can tell you no more.

A strange symbol was inscribed atop the name, and like the name it was mostly missing. Only the top of the symbol remained, the apex of a triangle with an arc above it. Though I racked my brain I could not match it to anything I had seen before. It was no symbol of the Church I knew, and I wondered then as I wonder now if that is why the crypt was placed on the outside of the graveyard, so it would be furthest from the house of God.

---

I do not know what fey spirit overtook me, but I circled to the rear of the crypt to see what lay inside. Looking back I cannot recall what I expected to see or why I even thought to look. Movies had prepared me to see a sarcophagus standing in the middle of an otherwise bare room, or to see walls lined with individual tombs like a medieval morgue.

Nothing prepared me for what I saw.

The stone walls were lined with deep carvings that had stood the test of time. They reminded me of ancient mariners’ sea charts, covered with odd lines that had no apparent purpose, but of undeniable importance to the trained eye. I tried to discern their pattern, but I grew dizzy as I stared at the walls.

In truth, I spent but little time on the walls, for it was the floor that commanded my attention. It was missing.

Broken stone tiles descended into a sinkhole in the tomb’s center. A bare foot of floor remained around the perimeter, but it then fell away into darkness.

And stairs led down.

Were the stairs built with the crypt, or was the crypt built over them? Did the builders even know they were there?

That had to have crossed my mind. It must have, though I cannot recall thinking it at the time.

I was so eager. I was so wrong.

I knelt on the stone to peer down into the darkness. I felt the damp and cold stone steps. The harsh granite was solid beneath my fingers. It was crudely carved in contrast to the smooth marble of the crypt. I was sure the stairs had a different maker than the crypt.

A moment of sanity followed and I backed away from the vertiginous descent. Whatever lurked in the depths would wait until I was better prepared to face it.

Stone cold blue eyes swam in front of me. The echo of a biting voice issued forth from the stone, or perhaps from the tunnel itself. “All you want to be is a small town accountant. You’re just not man enough for me.” Those words compelled me then and have haunted me every night since.

Shaking my flashlight to be sure it worked I reversed my course and plunged into the dark gloom of the tunnel. The earth closed around me as I traded the shadows of the crypt for the midnight of the catacombs. The deep gloom was warmer than the chilly air above and it made my increased isolation feel welcoming. Cut off from the pain of the world above I squeezed into myself as I crouched low to avoid hitting my head on the dirt above me.

I pondered the men who carved these steps. They were smaller than me, as I needed to duck while descending to keep my head safe. Yet their legs must have been curiously long, as I found the steps uncomfortably steep.

I stumbled more than once and caught myself only by bracing my hands on the solid earth in front of me. That smooth tunnel had never known the passage of root or worm.

I have cursed myself endlessly for not seeing the signs that were so plain in front of me.

I have more important tasks before me. Tonight I only have time for memory, not for the indulgence of self-loathing.

I’d voyaged a few hundred feet below the crypt when the steep tunnel opened into a wide passage. I scanned my flashlight across a chamber with a rough stone floor. The stone was the same roughly carved granite that made the stairs. The ceiling overhead was still uncomfortably low but I could move about with little more than a stoop to my shoulders.

It took a few moments to form a picture of the space around me. I could only shine my light on it one spot at a time. The chamber was a poor mimic of the church so far over my head. The stone floor was rectangular and seemed suitable for pews, though there were none. A raised area forward from me would serve as a stage, and a large boulder could be a debased pulpit.

With fear roiling my heart I raised the beam of light to the far wall. Where the church still featured the shadow of a missing cross, here there was a symbol such as no man had ever seen. A triangle was surrounded by four large arcs, like a Japanese chrysanthemum. There was once a figure inside the triangle, but the deep gouge of a determined chisel eliminated it. I could not tear my eyes from that symbol as my mind filled in ever more hideous candidates for what had once been carved in its center.

In that silence I heard a dreadful pounding. It took a moment to realize I was its source. The blood coursing through my veins was the only sound in the oppressive darkness. I was powerless to move away, held in agonizing contemplation.

To flee or press on.

I wanted both, each with the whole of my being. I did not know where I was but I knew I was not welcome. The bowels of the earth are not home for men.

At the same time I felt the siren call of fame. Should I find evidence of some lost tribe of primitive men beneath our soil, what future might I build for myself? I dreamed of seeing Lilith bitter that she left me, and it was that vision that made me force my feet onward.

To my everlasting doom.

An opening beckoned beneath that scarred symbol. Too small for me to pass through even crouched, I approached the front of the profane church on my knees as a penitent. Crawling on my belly towards an ancient sacristy I nudged the light in front of me, its beam circumscribing my vision.

Only when I was fully engaged did the danger become apparent. If the passage narrowed even slightly I would be lost. For that matter I was completely dependent on the batteries in my flashlight. I rested briefly to catch my unsettled breath.

I heard a sound ahead of me and pressed towards it. Water. Blessed flowing water such as I have heard and dismissed every day of my life. But in the abyss any sound is welcome and water was the very breath of life.

Death and life are inextricably linked. What was for me the breath of life carried with it the death of all.

I soon wet my hands in a trickle of a stream as the passage widened and allowed me to crawl. The water tasted of clay and sewage, and I spit it out as soon as it touched my lips. I heard a splash downstream and turned my light in that direction, thinking to see an albino fish or some stranger sight.

What I saw was stranger than I’d ever imagined.

It froze me to my bones.

---

It moved through the dark tunnel with an ease I could never match. It was the size of a small child, but with a bulbous head and scales growing along its arms. Then it looked at me.

That face is eternally seared in my mind. It creeps into my daydreams and I wake screaming when it invades my nightmares. The elongated jaw and sloped forehead put me in mind of nothing so much as a crocodile. The eyes held the same mercy that predatory reptile shows a fish, but with a much greater intelligence.

It padded slowly towards me, its gait inhumanly smooth in the dark and narrow stream.

“Stay back,” I called out in a quavering tone, my voice falling flat into the dark void.

Whether it understood me or not it gave no sign, but continued its methodical advance. I backed up, knowing I had no chance to escape through the narrow tunnel I’d used to get there. My heart pounded in my chest until I feared it would burst.

And then I learned we were not alone.

Another of the creatures was there.

It grabbed my leg, its cold clammy touch wrapped about my ankle and held as tight as any manacle.

I yelled.

The darkness swallowed my screams without so much as an echo.

Never before or since have I suffered such panic. To truly know fear you must also know hope, and I no longer have any. My hopes were consumed in the deep dark along with my screams.

I tried to flee, but the creature’s grip was not easily broken and I tumbled into the stream. My light flew from my grasp and rolled away. The beam illuminated nothing but dirt as the water trickled past me.

In retrospect I see losing my flashlight as a rare stroke of luck. No matter how terrible the attack is in my imagination, I am certain the reality was far worse.

---

I must have lost consciousness at some point, for the next thing I remember is a dry room away from the stream where I fell. To this day I cannot tell you what that room looked like as I never once saw it.

Not only was there no light, there was an oppressive darkness that was a force in itself. This was not the mere absence of light, but its actual opposite pressing on my straining eyelids.

A slow hideous scratching sound roused me but I could not discern its source.

Stumbling about I tried to find the limits of my cell. It was a rounded stone chamber a few arm lengths wide. Neither door nor bars revealed themselves to my probing fingers.

The endless scratching stopped as I moved about and resumed when I paused. I could not get rid of the suspicion that I was not alone.

“Who’s there? Who are you?”

There was no answer.

“Are you – one of them?” I asked hesitantly.

There was no answer.

I continued like that until I grew tired. In truth I had nothing else to do and talking to my silent and possibly imagined companion kept the creeping horror of my situation at bay.

I found I could not stay silent long before panic crowded around me. To avoid giving in I would concentrate on breathing slowly and resume conversing with my silent and yet surprisingly effective interrogator. I do not know how long I continued that pattern before it changed.

Stone scraping against stone deafened me. After untold time hearing nothing but my own voice and small scratches an actual noise was more than I could bear. Bile rose in my throat when a wet claw grasped my leg. I tried to lash out at my captor only to find my hand grabbed as well.

My struggles were pointless and I was pulled down and held in place. I thought there were at least 3 attackers but in the darkness and confusion I could not be sure. They pried open my mouth, their scaly hands reaching into my throat and leaving an acidic aftertaste. I tried to bite but their grip was inhumanly strong. They poured a thick liquid down my throat and I swallowed the milky fluid reflexively.

As soon as the foul tasting drink trickled down my throat my captors released me and I heard the scraping of stone again. I tried to pursue them but could find neither hide nor hair of the passage they’d used. I soon heard the gentle scrape of my companion keeping out of my way.

“You’re still here?” I questioned. “Are you the same one, or one of the others? What did you do to me?”

There was still no answer.

My growing hunger and thirst fled with whatever it was they forced into my stomach. In fact I was bloated and soon fatigue overcame me. I ran my hands along the rough walls containing me until I could do so no longer and collapsed onto the rough dirt floor and fell into slumber.

I dreamed of blue eyes and sunlight.

I awoke to neither.

The darkness that had so long been my companion was still there. My useless eyes saw the same things whether they were open or closed. But I had been moved. I rested on stone instead of dirt.

I discovered my mistake as soon as I moved. I was not on the floor, but a raised platform of stone. I fell hard to the dirt below.

The slow scratching noise I’d grown so accustomed to hearing was still present.

“Are you still here?” I yelled as I tried to lunge at the noise.

There was no answer.

Neither did I find my watcher.

“What did you do? My voice…” I blurted out.

My voice was strange to me, changed from the resonant tone I’d heard all my life. With the stone swallowing echoes I could not be sure exactly what was wrong, but it sounded higher, almost a tenor. I felt clumsy, my legs were weaker than they were, but I put that off to my confinement and lack of exercise.

I paced around my new cell and found it sealed as tightly as the last. The roof was taller, I could stand up straight for the first time in my confinement. The walls were more rounded but there was no exit. The pedestal on which I’d awakened was the only furniture in the room. It was worked stone some 2 or 3 feet high. It was intricately carved, and I tried to find the meaning with my fingers.

It took time, but I had nothing else.

It was a map, one I knew and yet did not. North and South America, familiar to my fingers from childhood jigsaw puzzles. The contours were close, but not quite right.

Were my captors poor mapmakers, or did they lack better knowledge? No, I realized, that wasn’t it. Continents shift. This map was old; they knew the world above before Clovis. They must have been driven below ground by the men who crossed the Bering Straight, or perhaps even earlier. So long below ground, so long hating mankind.

My companion stayed out of my way. I could hear it move every time I shifted my position. Disturbed by my new voice and my new thoughts I didn’t speak to it this time.

When the urge to pound on the walls overcame me I forced myself to imagine my escape instead. I could see my home and hear the plaudits of my peers as I presented evidence of this ancient burrow. I took joy in imagining Lilith lamenting that I was no longer hers. The tears in those deep blue eyes lifted my spirits.

Such simple pleasure I took in those dreams, pleasure now lost to me.

When I heard the stone scrape again I knew what was coming. I struggled, but it was as fruitless this time as last. My captors again forced some foul thick liquid down my throat and again I swallowed it.

I quickly fell into slumber and awoke on a stone platform. Was it the same one?

I stepped off it carefully and found a stone floor beneath it.

“Is anyone there?” I asked.

I stopped. It was not my voice. I felt my throat. It wasn’t mine.

My hands were wrong. I could feel a weight on my chest, and I grabbed it. Them.

Despite my best efforts to restrain myself I was overcome by panic. I grabbed at my crotch and found that missing too.

I yelled at the heavens, but they could not hear me through the weight of stone overhead.

I pounded the floor and the walls but they took no more notice of a girl’s fists than they did of a man’s. I lashed out hoping to hit my captor only to smash my arm against the pedestal and feel pain lance through me.

My self injury brought my tirade to a screeching halt. My screams turned to tears. I drew into myself on the stone floor, curled into a fetal crouch and wept bitterly. Crystal blue eyes and an echoed thought, “You’re just not man enough for me,” turned my tears to sarcastic laughter.

I don’t remember what I did or said next. I think my mind broke for a time. I do not even remember my captors returning, but in some disjointed fashion I awoke again.

And this time I saw light.

---

I clear my head and resume my preparation. The setting sun gives me a time limit as I ready myself for the evening’s dread task. My armor consists of a short skirt with a slit up the left leg and a scoop necked blouse. I turn to a vanity covered in make-up to prepare my paint.

Despite my urgency I cannot turn my memories away from that first day when I emerged into the dim and shadowy crypt and saw the church in a new light. The fallen steeple pointed right at me, as though it had leapt of its own accord from its housing to slay this awful tomb. Then as now I regret it failed in its task. It falls to me to bear the curse for all mankind, and I know sympathy with the cross.

The first buds of new leaves were on the trees, speaking to how much time I’d spent trapped below ground. My clothes were the same ones I’d arrived in, now stiff with sweat and dirt and fitting me poorly. The legs of my jeans dragged on the ground and my feet rattled in my boots. My shirt swamped my frame and did nothing to contain the shifting mounds of flesh on my chest.

Lacking any other options I sought the trail I’d followed back in the autumn of the year - and how I hoped it was only the last year - to return to the town I once left.

A puddle became a mirror and I saw myself for the first time. The face looking back at me was a stranger. There were the barest hints of who I was, if you knew what to look for, and I resolved to hang onto that. But the biggest surprise was the eyes. Ice blue eyes stared back at me.

If I thought my horror was complete I was in for a great disappointment. As I awkwardly walked down the hill in my ill fitting boots I realized I was not alone. I felt it shift. Inside me.

In my stomach.

In my womb.

Though not the slightest bulge showed, I knew with absolute certainty that those creatures sought a way to the surface. They wish to displace men and they may succeed should they be born into our world. I have become the vessel of mankind’s defeat.

I sought an escape. A final escape.

Whether it was bravery or cowardice I cannot decide. Steeling my will I found a steep hill and flung myself from it in anger.

It worked.

I know it worked. I heard my neck snap. The last sound I would ever hear.

Until I heard another.

I woke up with a bearded man hovering over me, his truck parked nearby.

“Love of God,” he exclaimed, “Stay still, darlin’. You’re lucky to be alive. Ambulance is on the way.”

Tears rolled quietly down my cheeks without my volition. Though I have tried suicide since, I knew then that the sweet relief of death would be ever denied me.

And God have mercy on my soul, I saw the only other way.

“No,” I whispered to him. “Please, no hospitals. No police. I’m fine. Please take me with you.”

I licked my lips while speaking and turned to let my shirt fall open slightly. I saw his eyes move away from my face, just as mine would have once.

Whatever those things in the ground were, they made a mistake. Their spawn grows within me but I am still human. They are patient, but we are greedy. A human child will take all that my body provides and leave the other to languish and wait. And so it was that night that I did things that killed my soul but saved mankind.

And so it is still. I left another child at the convent. I hope the babe has not been touched by the shadow inside me, but that is all the concern I can spare her. My mission allows me no time to be a parent to those I leave behind.

I put on eye shadow, mascara, and lip gloss. My war paint. It shall hide my pain as I stand vigil in the bars and pool halls of my latest haunt and seek a man to forestall our race’s doom for another nine months.

If I can find the right man, I will take his support. I want to have a place to live and money to live on, at least for a few months. Then I will depart and move on, leaving him with a memory of eyes that are icy blue.