I was soon disgusted to note that in many places where the floor met the walls, rather large, long-legged, pale spiders had spun asymmetrical webs, the silken strands sometimes reaching many inches up the wall. Here and there too, the wretched creatures themselves would occasionally scuttle jerkily across the floor in front of me as I continued down the passage. I wondered vaguely what might have sustained those vile life forms in this sunless, airless tomb, but whatever it may have been, I certainly did not want to run across any of them. I also noticed in several places long lines of thick, gray dust had piled up against the base of the walls, the entire effect seemingly one of if not total disuse, then at the very least, a long neglect of my surroundings. This visual information did nothing to ease my mind concerning a readily located egress from this place.

As I moved cautiously forward, my eyes were inevitably drawn to the chiseled features on the walls around me. When I saw some of the dates on the vaults near me, I slowed my progress and eventually stopped completely, fascination overcoming my fear. The dates of death that I read on those tombs all appeared surprisingly old: 1864, 1857,1842, 1838. Apparently, all of the deceased which were entombed in this area had died well over one hundred years ago.

I was somewhat amazed by this discovery, as I knew that the mausoleum itself was only some sixty or seventy years old. I therefore theorized that the hundreds, perhaps thousands of bodies entombed in this underground vault must have been transported from their original resting places and re entombed here, presumably sometime after the structure was first erected. Either that, or the present structure had been built over the top of the older crypt, one that had been on this location for over a hundred years. I could not know the answer to this question, but I could guess that there were surely no longer any relatives of these long dead souls to still mourn their passing or to bring flowers to their crypts. The obvious neglect of this place seemed to reinforce the idea that these dead were indeed long forgotten and perhaps totally ignored. This train of thought only tended to agitate my already fearful mind and I hurried on, trying not to look at any more of the dates carved into the walls.

As I quickly continued down the passage, I was startled to come upon a branching corridor and momentarily hope swelled within me. It was just as quickly dashed, however, as this new passageway appeared identical to the one I now traversed. It too seemed to stretch away endlessly, until the light appeared too dim to distinguish any further details. The total number of bodies actually entombed within this necropolis began to stagger my mind and I realized this damnable maze must honeycomb the entire undersurface of the mausoleum grounds.