https://i.imgur.com/iutC1X6.jpg
<sup>[source](https://artohuttu.files.wordpress.com/2016/06/hole-deep.jpg)</sup>
*<sup>[Part 1](https://steemit.com/writing/@alexbeyman/original-novel-the-black-pool-part-1)</sup>*
*<sup>[Part 2](https://steemit.com/writing/@alexbeyman/original-novel-the-black-pool-part-2)</sup>*
*<sup>[Part 3](https://steemit.com/writing/@alexbeyman/original-novel-the-black-pool-part-3)</sup>*
*<sup>[Part 4](https://steemit.com/writing/@alexbeyman/original-novel-the-black-pool-part-4)</sup>*
*<sup>[Part 5](https://steemit.com/writing/@alexbeyman/original-novel-the-black-pool-part-5)</sup>*
*<sup>[Part 6](https://steemit.com/writing/@alexbeyman/original-novel-the-black-pool-part-6)</sup>*
*<sup>[Part 7](https://steemit.com/writing/@alexbeyman/original-novel-the-black-pool-part-7)</sup>*
*<sup>[Part 8](https://steemit.com/writing/@alexbeyman/original-novel-the-black-pool-part-8)</sup>*
Most of them ignored me after that. The few who didn’t were nevertheless intractable. However fervently I assured them I’d come from a larger world beyond the black fog, one which they had not yet seen, all I received in return was mockery.
“Eat us already, demon. That’s what you’ve come for” one of them growled. Frustration mounted, twisting my guts into a knot...until I gave up. Just like that, the tension vanished. I don’t actually need to help these people, do I?
They don’t want my help anyway, and you can’t force help on somebody who doesn’t want it. I could spare them weeks, months or years of suffering if they would listen, but they won’t. Some people have to learn things on their own.
I searched for some way in which it was the wrong decision. Wasn’t I absolving myself of an important responsibility? But regardless of which angle I examined it from, I’d already done everything that could be asked of me.
Up the shaft, then. Now that I knew there weren’t more uniformed ghouls or something worse waiting for me around the black pool, I returned to the rim for my mount. It took another two days to reach it, but once I did, the journey back to the center took little more than an hour.
It raised a few eyebrows when I arrived at the black pool riding atop my winged steed. I wondered if I should repeat my offer to lead them past the black fog. But what for? They had their chance. They’d have another when I return from the surface.
If they decide they want my help after all, they’ll ask for it. With that, I determined that I would not allow the matter to trouble me any further. Instead I clung tightly to the winged beast’s carapace and rode it up into the shaft.
The ascent was as tiring as ever, but also unusual. This time rather than grey stone all the way through, or a slow transition to strange flesh, the tunnel instead went from stone to wood. When I emerged from the other end, it answered one question but raised countless more.
I crawled out through a hole gnawed in what looked to be a finely papered wall within an astonishingly luxurious, well furnished home. Not remarkable in itself except that it was about a dozen times too large.
A finely carved, polished oak table towered over me like a highway overpass. The rug lining the hallway was so large that I sunk into it up to my knees. More long, narrow tables lined either side of the handsomely decorated corridor...both above and below.
For where a ceiling should be, there was instead another floor, but upside down. With the very same rug lining it and the very same tables to either side. I mistook it for a mirrored ceiling until I noticed the tables were in slightly different positions.
This is Earth, surely? Those were humans at the bottom of the shaft, like any others I’ve seen. Yet once again I found myself someplace I felt certain could never exist on the Earth I knew. Even the window at the end of the hall yielded no clues, as from this angle I could see only a black expanse on the other side.
I took flight, weaving around the leg of the table and gaining some altitude for a better vantage point. The tables lining either wall turned out to have dollhouses atop them. Though because of my small size relative to this environment, they were in fact full sized houses to me.
Only when I landed to explore one of the dollhouses up close did I discover that it was a replica of the larger house around it. Same wallpaper, same vertically doubled hallways, same polished wooden tables...with smaller dollhouses on them.
These ones were actually an appropriate size for dollhouses, relative to me. I inspected the intricate little details, including a set of even smaller dollhouses, until a commotion from the next room over drew my attention.
When I went to investigate, I found a pair of weary looking men dressed up to the nines, seated at either end of a dinner table. I introduced myself. Neither responded, or even so much as rose from their chairs at the sight of an intruder.
They were alive alright. I could see them breathing and, when I approached, their eyes were following me as I moved about. But their mouths were stitched shut. I circled around them slowly, looking for some explanation for their behavior but finding nothing.
Exasperated, I withdrew a knife fashioned from a bone shard and cut through the stitches so the poor man could speak. The first thing out of his mouth was incoherent blubbering. Sounded like a combination of relief and fear.
“Y-you shouldn't be here!” he whimpered. I told him that I came up the shaft, and could bring him down it with me. “You don’t understand!” he seized me by the shoulder. “I can’t go anywhere! I can’t move! Dolls can’t move! They can’t speak either, I shouldn’t even be talking to you!”
I began to entertain the possibility that I was speaking with yet another madman. “Dolls? What dolls? Listen, the fog around the black pool you came from isn’t real, it’s-” he broke in, now so anxious that he was visibly shaking.
“He’s coming. He’s coming!! Don’t you know how furious he’ll be? You didn’t move anything did you? If things aren’t exactly where he left them, he’ll...he’ll…” I heard distant footsteps. “That’s him!!” the man tearfully wailed, snapping back into the same rigid pose as when I found him.
I tried to rouse the other fellow opposite him, but without avail. Neither would even acknowledge my presence now. The footsteps grew louder. I explored the lower floor and found both men and women carefully holding various poses, dressed up in clothing which, despite fitting them decently, was clearly made for dolls.
None would react, except to fight me off and resume posing any time I tried to physically budge them from their positions. The footsteps grew louder. I flew from house to house and found the same thing in them all. Men, women, and a few children. Their mouths stitched shut, their bodies frozen in poses evocative of domestic life.
The footsteps grew louder, now nearly upon me. None of it made any sense. I didn’t want to leave before I understood it, but the more I explored, the stranger it all became. My confusion peaked when the source of the footsteps rounded the corner.
Oh. Of course. Of course the hallways would be as they are. I was rendered so speechless I couldn’t even scream when it came into view. The lower half was that of a man, wearing a fine pair of suit pants and polished black dress shoes. But so was the upper half, inverted.
Four legs in total, both sets unnaturally elongated. The lower set walked along one floor while the upper set walked along the other. Every footstep sent out minor quakes, the resounding thud of each shoe coming down all but deafening me as it drew near.
I looked back at the two men, both staring at me wide eyed and sweating bullets. Why? What happens if that thing finds me? What’s the big deal if I tamper with these dollhouses? Where the fuck am I even? What the fuck is that stomping, suited creature? How, even among infinite possible worlds, could a place like this exist?
Not for me to know. Like the stubborn captives at the bottom of the shaft, I couldn’t help these people. They weren’t having it. So I climbed back onto my mount, took flight and headed back for the shaft entrance.
...Except it wasn’t there. I did a second pass, then a third to be sure. Where the hole in the wall was on my way in, there was now smooth, unbroken wallpaper instead. The bizarre behemoth came to a stop before the table I now clung to the underside of.
Could it have noticed me? Was it looking through the rooms of the dollhouse for me, even now? I didn’t see any eyes on it. I held my breath. Not sure why, I didn’t see any ears on it either. It lingered for a time, then moved on, stomping along until it rounded the corner at the far end of the hall.
I gasped for air, then struggled to regulate my breathing until my heart settled down. It can’t just be gone, I thought. The hole can’t be gone! I can’t be stranded here...not here. Not after I’ve come so far and survived so much, it can’t all come to an end in a place like this!
I buzzed about, warily straining my ears for footsteps as I explored the vast manor. Was it the footsteps? Did the creature I came here from within sever its connection to this world out of fear? How long must I wait until it reattaches itself?
As I weaved between the legs of the upside down tables on the ceiling, I contemplated living out the rest of my life here. In this obscured, tucked away little pocket dimension, this backwater of the multiverse. Could I subsist on scraps? Does that suited, stomping behemoth eat anything?
As if in answer, I came upon a darkened kitchen. Vertically doubled just like the hallway, though the fridge extended fully from floor to ceiling. Whatever’s happened to my eyes in the past few months rendered them perfectly able to see in the dark, aiding my reconnaissance.
There were bugs here. My heart, though I can no longer be sure there’s only one, leapt into my throat. In the middle of the floor, a scattered few bugs foraged for crumbs. How could that thing eat, anyway? I didn’t see a mouth on it.
But where there’s bugs, there’s a bug hole. Just then, the kitchen was bathed all at once in light. Blinding at first on account of my eyes having adapted to the darkness, I didn’t understand why I heard the bugs around me stampeding away.
I felt a gentle but increasing wind from above, and a shadow fell over me. My mount took flight on its own, and once my eyes finished adjusting, I understood why. The suited creature’s shoe came down just behind me with an ear splitting, earth shaking impact.
The shockwave jostled me about, but I held fast to the carapace and directed my mount towards the underside of the fridge. There would be nowhere else in the room that it couldn’t reach me, undoubtedly why the last of the bugs were seeking refuge there even as I watched.
I landed just short of the gap between the floor and the fridge, then skittered under it. Oh, what a relief it was to once again be engulfed in darkness! The thundering footsteps continued behind me as I followed the small herd of bugs...towards a hole at the base of the wall, behind the fridge!
I would’ve cried except for the urgency. All I could think of was to direct my mount towards the hole as fast as it could crawl. As if it weren’t real, but a cruel mirage. But it was real alright! I laughed aloud with relief as I barreled through it.
Now that I had some breathing room, I took the opportunity to reflect on what I saw. So many questions that would forever go unanswered! But when what sort of answers could I expect? There are none of those down here, only more questions.
I swore not to let my curiosity get the better of me next time. Even though I was warned that the holes could close at any moment, it didn’t become real for me until it happened. Why did I risk exploring the manor? Foolish in retrospect. But then, it was something new. Something I hadn’t seen yet.
I emerged from the other side of the tunnel to find the usual black pool below me. What an oddly welcome sight it was. Even knowing full well what it does, that it shouldn’t exist and that I still don’t really understand it...at least it’s familiar.
The rest of the bugs swarmed through the hole behind me as I dropped to ground level, then set out for the pillar’s rim. Exhaustion from the ordeal I’d just endured forced me to stop and make camp, though with my mount I might’ve easily reached the edge before the day was out.
When Horatio crawled out of my satchel as before, I noticed he was moving strangely. Slower, more stiffly than before. Had I fallen on the satchel at some point? Was he cramped from spending so much time in there?
“You look as tired as I am, little fellow.” He crept over to me, clung to my body and emitted a series of feeble trills. I fed him some dried meat on the off chance he was simply hungry, but he only threw it up a minute later. I wish I knew what these things normally eat.
To my own surprise, I started talking to him. I’m no stranger to loneliness. But for years now it’s had no power over me, so I don’t know why I felt the need to spill my guts all of a sudden. The close call back in that mansion maybe. The disappearance of that hole touched a nerve.
Ever since the village, hope grew within me that I might actually make it home. But that’s no more certain now than it ever was. It’s just a story I tell myself so I’ll keep moving. A plastic carrot dangled before a tired, broken down mule.
I believed it less and less with every repetition. But if I tell it to someone else, I can believe that he believes it. Or at least that the lie isn’t as transparent to him as it is to me, if only because he doesn’t understand a word of it.
It’s like when you’re little, and you tell your stuffed animal that everything’s going to work out in the end. You’re the one that’s scared. But maybe if you can keep your voice steady and say it in a grown up sounding voice, it will really happen.
Horatio rolled into a ball. I did my best to wrap myself up around him, pulled a blanket over us and went to sleep. A dreamless sleep, mercifully. The only remaining refuge from what my life has become.
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*<sup>Stay Tuned for Part 10!</sup>*