It then seemed ridiculously obvious--in my initial excitement, I had been wasting my energy trying to pull at the door, while it was meant to open the other way. Cursing myself for ten different kinds of a fool, I heaved myself to my feet and peered through the doorway. Even the dim light that now greeted my eyes appeared blindingly strong since I had been so long in the darkness and it was several moments before I could readily focus on what was before me. Whatever I had been expecting to encounter, it was surely not the sight that now greeted me.

The wall across from the doorway appeared to be white marble and I noted that the ceiling seemed oppressively low. My eyes now growing accustomed to the light, I stepped into what turned out to be a long, seemingly empty corridor. Looking first to my right and then to my left, my breath seemed to catch in my throat and I staggered backwards to clutch at the door frame for support.

Fresh sweat broke out on my forehead, for all that the air around me held an uncomfortable chill. I realized with growing fright that I must now be even below the level of the outside street--I was now actually beneath the ground. Stretching away from me on either side, the passage appeared endless and there were words chiselled into the marble wall across from me and down both sides of the passageway. Names and dates were visible in the cold stone--dates of birth, as well as dates of death.

Now I hoped that I was truly dreaming, for I realized that by trying to escape that labyrinth of the dead from which I had awakened, I had unwittingly descended much too far and I was now in a gigantic underground crypt. My breath was coming in ragged gasps and the oppression I had felt earlier at being surrounded by the dead was now multiplied tenfold. Not only was I still surrounded by an untold number of rotting corpses, but now, above me were fully threes stories of the dead seemingly pressing me down into the ground. My entire body began to shake at the thought that I was trapped with thousands upon thousands of moldering bodies as my only companions in this nightmarish place.