The Pyramid

Follow the REM signal to a place where Leviathan eyelids hang heavy. So many eyes, scabbed with coral sores. May they never open. The annihilation signal is trapped, bouncing off the triangular corners. But if the angles should ever bend or break…

Follow the signal to the land of dried Pharaoh meat. Deep crevices and steep mountainsides fold like hands in prayer, like a magician’s secret palming, hiding the City of the Sun God from the world. An ancient pyramid rises from the depths.

Your vocal organs have no designation for the peculiar, foreign material of the pyramid. It reflects a ruddy hue. The cyclopean structure rises from a shining pool. Some long dead wretch named it the Divine Lake, and the name remains. The greasy film of the surface shows like a smoking mirror.

Oblivion contaminants detected. The Filth. The Filth!

Worship was done here, worship and bad things. This tri-sided tomb was the holiest of holy dwellings for the Aten religion. What is time to us? We stand outside. We hear the cult chanting from tongues that were ash three thousand years ago. They call to the terrible sun god.

Inside, this pyramid does not behave as pyramids should. The huge chamber in the centre houses a downward chasm into the fathomless nothing. The apex lacks a capstone, allowing moonlight to penetrate into the eldritch dim. Moonlight and stars. Yes. Seeing the stars must taunt it so. The gnawing hunger. An event horizon licking its lips with a tongue of concentrated gravity.

Deeper now, into tomb-heavy air. A tangible, ear-popping pressure – liquid flows strangely – objects too heavy or too light. A dull ringing. Reverberations from the chasm, mechanical sounds, metal straining like a submarine’s hull. Not darkness, no, but an unlikely twilight. Your jelly eyes would adjust by now and see the impossible shapes below.

Only the most devoted are permitted here. They meditate and fast. Some starve themselves to death. Some throw themselves into the pit, following the mad whispers down and down and down.

Deeper still. Just a peek…

Signal disruption! Something rips our data-weave flesh. Away.

There are places even we fear to tread.

Whosoever entered that chasm never returned, save one. Akhenaten bathed in the blackness of eons, and climbed back out. When he expired, the sarcophagus of the Black Pharaoh was placed within the pyramid. The City of the Sun God was sealed. Egypt returned to the worship of their old gods. There Akhenaten abides, waiting for the return of the whispers.

Can you hear, sweetling? The behemoth eyelids tremble. May they never open. May the eye movements always be rapid. Let us pretend the whispering is only the desert wind.