Some Rooms Are Best Forgotten

In 1989 on the Kola Peninsula of Russia. at the Kola Superdeep Borehole a drill operated by human beings descended to a depth (40, 230 feet, approximately 7.6 miles) that had never been reached before and has not been returned to since. The humans operating the drill did not go to the bottom, the extreme heat 180°C (356°F) made that impossible. In fact, no human being has ever descended underground beyond approximately 2.5 miles. However, some equipment, including a heat hardened video camera containing a 90 minute VHS tape was lowered to the final depth. Reportedly it captured images of rock behaving something like plastic, oozing, twisting, convulsing and turning in and over on itself like the inside of a can of paint when mixed with a drill mixer. The VHS tape containing this purported footage mysteriously disappeared shortly after it was returned to the surface and only the verbal accounts of the two men who watched it survived. Those two men Sergi and Ivan Ivanov, Soviet engineers and brothers were found dead in 1992, apparently of suicide. A handwritten note was found with the bodies which contained a detailed description of the exact method that would be used. Sergi was to shoot Ivan in the head first. Then he was to gather up the various bits and pieces of his brother's skull and brain and bury them, but not his body, in an unmarked grave behind their home. Once that was complete he was to hang himself from the rafters. The police discovered them dead about a month later when their neighbors called authorities complaining of a terrible smell emanating from the Ivanov home.

The missing VHS tape resurfaced almost three decades later in 2019 and and was immediately sent to my lab for analysis. I watched it first, alone. I had no idea what it might or might not contain and I did not want any rumors or misinformation to spread about it contents. Of course I had hoped to find some clues to the location of the long rumored forgotten room described in the occult book the Necronomicon as the dwelling space of the thing that should not be. If the room did exist it must be found and that thing destroyed. If that thing, the thing that should not be but is, were ever to find its way out of its room and into our own world it would spell the end of all things. With it would come an age of endless night, a dead infinite expanse of ichorous blackness replacing what was once a light filled universe of life and color.

After watching the tape I immediately soaked it in gasoline and set it on fire. As soon as the flames died, I smashed the remains to powdery dust with a sledgehammer, wrapped those in holy vestment obtained directly from the Vatican and blessed by the Pope himself and buried it beneath a silver cross at the foot of a 400 year old elm tree. No one could ever know of the location, and no one could ever know of the contents of the tape. I did know and teetered on the edge of insanity for three days before managing to call Captain Tipperist and telling him to assemble the team, we had a mission and it would require all of his best men and at least three fully equipped battle tanks. He began to object but I interrupted him before he could get out more than a few words saying "Captain, I know the location of the forgotten room. We are going there tomorrow to destroy it. If you have any objections take them to your commanding officers. I already know what their answer will be. I will see you tomorrow with the full team and the tanks at 0800." I then gave him the coordinates, hung up the phone, pulled my rosary beads from the shelf in my bedroom, lay down on the bed staring at the ceiling and began to pray.

When we arrived at the door of the forgotten room I instructed Captain Tipperist to ready his team and position the three tanks in an arc about 100 meters distant from it. I sat in the center tank, finger on the trigger of a GAU-21 0.50 caliber mini-gun which was the secondary weapon of the armored battle tank. It was mounted coaxial with the tank's main gun and I could feel the heat from the cannon barrel as it began to warm up in preparation for firing. I flipped on the transmitter of the mounted headset I wore saying "Do not make a move until I have destroyed the door. Once the door is open, say a prayer to whatever God or Gods you believe in and attack the thing which will come with everything you have. Hold nothing back and do not stop until it is dead or we all are." I paused for just a moment there to calm my racing mind before continuing to speak. "It has been a pleasure knowing each and every one of you and no matter what happens next you can take some comfort in knowing you did what you could to save humanity from madness, death, and eternal night. Good luck and God bless." I flipped the transmitter off and exchanged the com headset for ear protection, took a deep breath and began to repeat the the Lord's prayer over and over in my mind. The words of that prayer echoed through my head, Our father who art in as I pulled back the slide of the mini gun then squeezed the trigger down hard. The gun could deliver 1,100 rounds per minute and it's barrel spun crazily making a sound like whirling helicopter blades as it expelled white hot death into the door, reducing it to sawdust and ash in seconds. I released the trigger and the barrel slowly came to a stop as smoke rose from it, and from the spot where the decimated door once stood. As the smoke cleared I could see the darkness beyond and a pit of fear rose in my stomach. I experienced a moment of vertigo and it felt as if the heavily armed tank would be sucked into the gaping maw of blackness that had opened before us. As the vertigo subsided a low humming sound could be heard coming from the darkness. Time itself seemed to slow as that humming rose in volume and pitch becoming a screech that was almost deafening. Luckily I still wore my ear protection as I'm not sure I could have kept my sanity if I had been exposed to the full noise of the thing. And it was a thing which raced straight towards us. A thing that should not be. I said a quick prayer, aimed the mini-gun straight into its monstrous, Chthonian face, pulled back the slide once again, closed my eyes, and squeezed the trigger. The bullets exploded into the ophidian creature and it roared and then all went black.