Forcing down my fear somewhat, I turned off the water, dried my face and hands and then steeling myself, took a cautious step into the corridor. Beyond where the light fell from the just quitted room, there seemed only blackness. I attempted to call out once again, but my voice unexpectedly cracked, the resulting sound much like the cry of some small, stricken animal. That squeaking echo, as it reverberated off the marble walls, quelled me to silence.

Knowing that the only way I would be able to find an exit was to begin looking for one, I willed myself to take a few tentative steps into the darkness. My most immediate problem in attempting to locate a way out was the fact that I was completely lost in that labyrinth of the dead. I knew for certain only that I was somewhere on the third floor of the mausoleum, but any sense of direction I might have processed was totally obliterated due to the pervading blackness.

Moving reluctantly away from the light given forth from the flower room, I proceeded slowly, one hand trailing lightly along the marble wall. My fingers began to occasionally slide over incised lettering--the sealed doorway of some soul's final bed. I was already trembling badly and began to snatch my hand quickly away from the wall whenever I encountered those etchings in the stone. I seemed to have the rather hysterical feeling that if I touched those names craved into the marble, the cadaver within would somehow know I was out here and would thus take offense at my presence. In my mind's eye, I could see the moldering corpses sitting up within their rotting caskets (much as I had dreamed I saw my own father's corpse do), pounding and clawing at the hard marble that imprisoned them; trying to get out, trying to reach me.

Fighting down a growing sense of panic, I began to shuffle forward more rapidly and when my foot encountered an unseen obstacle on the floor, I stumbled and lost my balance. Try as I might, my frantic hands could find no purchase on the slick stone wall and crying out in terror filled fright, I fell to the floor with a seemingly deafening crash. Fumbling desperately to regain my feet, my hands came upon a mass of soft and yielding material, from which cold, slimy liquid oozed as I pressed down on it. My fear was now such that I was sure I had stumbled over a recently loosed, decaying corpse and I quickly jerked my hand away from the object I had touched.