Deep Sight

The portal opened, the abyss yawned. It was as though the abyss was alive, I could hear it breathing. There were flashes of darkness floating in the distance. Looked like my dreams. I turned to the hell hound behind me with dread that he would answer me, finally, why I was standing at a portal to hell and he was urging me on.

I'd first met him while visiting a haunted dormitory in Athens, Ohio where a family had disappeared leaving behind their brains. That was the moment when I knew I had made a bad decision about being a detective.  Then the hell hound faded into the dormitory.  The last thing I noticed about him was his smell.  Spoiled meat.  Maybe I should switch to veganism.

He speaks, “Take a step forward”. 

My eyes widened, the first tendrils of fear permeating my body.

“Why?”, I stammered out as my body quivered with the need to run away.

The hell hound’s eyes glowed like molten embers, and with a low, guttural snarl, it lunged forward, shoving me with its massive, scalding shoulder. My feet skidded on the jagged edge of the portal, and I plummeted into the abyss. The air turned thick, like wading through molasses, and the breathing of the void grew louder, a rhythmic pulse that vibrated in my bones. Those flashes of darkness I’d seen from the outside now swirled closer, shapeless yet sentient, whispering fragments of my own nightmares in voices I couldn’t place.

I hit the ground—or what passed for ground—hard, a surface that felt like ash and bone fused together. The hell hound loomed above me, its spoiled-meat stench choking the air. “Move,” it growled, its voice a blade scraping across my nerves. I scrambled to my feet, heart hammering. “Why me? Why here?” I demanded, voice cracking. The abyss pulsed, and one of those dark flashes coalesced into a figure—a distorted mirror of myself, eyes hollow, mouth stretched in a silent scream. It pointed deeper into the void.

The hell hound’s jaws parted, revealing teeth like blackened knives. “You wanted answers, detective. You chased the dormitory’s ghosts, the family’s brains. You dug too deep.” Its tail lashed, stirring embers that burned without light. “The abyss chose you because you saw it first.”

My mind reeled, flashing back to that haunted dormitory in Athens, the slick, gray mounds of brain matter on the floor, the air heavy with absence. I’d thought it was just a case, a puzzle to solve. But the hound’s words clawed at me—this wasn’t random. The abyss had been watching since that night.

“Keep walking,” it commanded, nudging me forward with a snout that singed my skin. The mirrored figure dissolved, but others took its place: shapes of people I’d known, cases I’d failed, their faces melting into accusations. The breathing of the abyss grew louder, syncing with my own ragged gasps

.I stumbled forward, the ground shifting beneath me, each step pulling me deeper into a labyrinth of shadow and memory. “What’s waiting?” I whispered, dread pooling in my gut.

The hell hound’s laugh was a low, wet rasp. “You’ll see. Or it’ll see you.”

The abyss pulsed like a living thing, its breath now a chorus of whispers weaving through my skull, plucking at memories I’d buried deep. The hell hound prowled at my heels, its claws clicking on the ashen ground, each step a reminder that there was no turning back. The air shimmered, and the darkness ahead coalesced into a scene that stopped my heart: my old office in Athens, Ohio, desk cluttered with case files, the flickering fluorescent light I’d never fixed. But the chair wasn’t empty. A version of me sat there, younger, unscarred, scribbling notes on the dormitory case—the family, their brains, the mystery that had hooked me.

“Choose,” the hell hound growled, its voice slithering into my mind. “Stay with her, the you who didn’t know. Or walk on.”

I stared at the illusion. She looked up, eyes bright with the naive hunger for truth I’d lost years ago. “Don’t go,” she said, voice soft but heavy, like a plea from a dream. The abyss hummed, amplifying her words, and I felt a tug, a promise of safety, of undoing every mistake. But the case files on the desk began to bleed, ink pooling into shapes of brains, and her face flickered, hollowing like the figures I’d seen before.

“It’s a trick,” I muttered, my voice shaking. “You’re not real.”

The hell hound’s jaws snapped inches from my arm, its breath reeking of decay. “Everything here is real enough to break you. Choose.”

I tore my eyes away, forcing my legs to move. The office dissolved into ash, and the whispers grew sharper, mocking. Coward. Failure. The ground shifted, and I was somewhere new—a hospital room, sterile and cold. My mother lay in the bed, tubes snaking from her arms, her eyes accusing. “You never came back,” she said, her voice cutting deeper than the hound’s teeth. “You chased ghosts instead of me.”

My chest tightened. She’d died years ago, before the dormitory case, before I’d even thought of being a detective. But here she was, real enough to make my knees buckle. A door stood behind her bed, pulsing with the abyss’s heartbeat. “Go through,” the hound said, its tone almost bored, like it had seen this play out a thousand times. “Or stay and fix it.”

“Fix what?” I snapped, anger flaring over fear. “She’s gone. This is just you screwing with my head!”

The hound’s eyes glinted. “The abyss doesn’t lie. It shows what you carry. You’re not here to solve the dormitory case, detective. You’re here to become it.

”My blood ran cold. The family from Athens—their brains left behind, their bodies vanished. Had they walked this same path, faced these same illusions? Were they part of the abyss now, their minds woven into its endless dark? The thought hit me like a fist: I wasn’t just a pawn. I was being molded, reshaped, to join them.

I backed away from the hospital bed, my mother’s eyes following me, her voice now a chorus with the abyss’s whispers. Stay. Atone. The door pulsed faster, tempting me to run through it, but I knew it wasn’t an escape. Every step, every choice, was a thread in the abyss’s web, pulling me deeper.“

What do you want from me?” I shouted at the hound, my voice raw.

It tilted its head, teeth gleaming. “Keep walking. Or don’t. Either way, you’re already ours.”

The hospital room faded, replaced by a endless corridor of doors, each one humming with a different memory, a different regret. My first failed case. A friend I’d betrayed. A lover I’d left behind. The hound padded beside me, its presence both guide and jailer. “Pick one,” it said. “Or let them pick you.”

I clenched my fists, the abyss’s breath hot on my neck. If I was going to survive this—or at least keep my mind intact—I had to outsmart the game. But the corridor stretched on, and the whispers grew louder, promising truths I wasn’t sure I could face.

As soon as I thought about outsmarting the game, the door at the end of the corridor pulsed a putrid green.  Was it inviting me or repelling me?  What was behind that door?

I started walking, the hell hound at my side, still smelling of rotten meat.  “I can play this game, or I can play a different one, you choose this time.”  I shrieked, sweat pouring down my spine.

The hell hound’s eyes narrowed, a flicker of something—confusion, maybe? — crossing its molten gaze. For the first time, it didn’t respond with a growl or a command. It just watched me, tail twitching, as if I’d thrown a wrench into its script. The abyss’s whispers faltered, their rhythm stuttering like a skipped heartbeat. I seized the moment, my fear twisting into something reckless, something wild. If the abyss wanted to feed on my dread or my logic, I’d give it neither. I’d give it chaos.

Instead of heading for the green-pulsing door, I spun on my heel and sprinted toward a different one, its surface writhing with shadows of my childhood home. I didn’t think—just acted. I slammed my shoulder into it, bursting through into a memory I’d buried: my father, drunk and raging, his belt cracking against the wall. But this time, I didn’t cower like the kid I’d been. I laughed, a manic, unhinged sound that echoed unnaturally in the abyss’ throat. “You call this a nightmare?” I shouted at the figure. “You’re just a ghost of a bad day!”

The memory flickered, my father’s face warping, melting into the ashen ground. The hell hound growled behind me, its stench closer now, but I didn’t look back. I ran to another door, this one oozing with the image of my first failed case—a missing girl I’d never found. Her face appeared, pale and pleading, but I didn’t flinch. I grabbed the illusion by its shoulders and screamed, “Dance with me!” I spun her in a grotesque waltz, my movements jerky and absurd, defying the weight of guilt the abyss wanted me to feel.

The whispers turned shrill, discordant, like a radio stuck between stations. The hell hound snapped its jaws, its voice a snarl. “What are you doing, detective? This isn’t how it works!”

“Exactly!” I shouted, dropping the illusion and diving through another door. This one opened to the dormitory in Athens, brains piled on the floor, their gray folds pulsing like they were alive. I didn’t recoil. I scooped up a handful of the slick, impossible mass and smeared it across my face like war paint, grinning at the hound. “You want me to break? Try harder!”

The abyss shuddered, the walls of the memory rippling as if I’d struck it. The hell hound’s fur bristled, its form glitching for a split second, revealing something beneath—a shadow with too many eyes, too many teeth. “You can’t outrun the rules,” it hissed, but its voice cracked, uncertain.

I laughed again, the sound raw and unhinged, and bolted for another door. This time, it was blank—no memory, no shape, just a void. I didn’t hesitate. I leaped through, embracing the nothing. The abyss wanted patterns, fear, or surrender, but I was done playing its game. I’d be a storm, unpredictable, untethered. If it wanted me, it’d have to choke on my chaos.

But as I fell through the blank door, a cold realization hit: what if this was what the abyss wanted all along? What if my rebellion was just another thread in its web? The air grew heavier, the breathing louder, and I felt something shift inside me—a splinter of the abyss taking root, whispering that I was becoming something else, something it could claim. The hell hound’s laughter echoed behind me, low and wet. “Keep running, detective. You’re playing beautifully.”

I landed in a new space, a kaleidoscope of fractured memories—my mother’s hospital bed, the dormitory, my office, all swirling together, faces and voices overlapping. A new door appeared, glowing that same putrid green, but now it pulsed in time with my heartbeat. I grinned, teeth bared, and charged toward it, not because I wanted answers, but because I refused to stop. If I was becoming part of the abyss, I’d tear it apart from the inside.

I crashed through the putrid green door, expecting another twisted memory or a snarling beast, but instead, I stumbled into a vast, pulsating chamber. The air thrummed with a low, electric hum, and the walls—if you could call them that—writhed with veins of light, each one flickering with glimpses of lives, thoughts, and screams. The splinter of the abyss inside me bloomed, a searing jolt that rooted me to the spot, my mind splitting open like a cracked dam. The hell hound’s laughter faded behind me, its form dissolving into the chamber’s glow, as if it had never been more than a shadow cast by this place.

The ground beneath me was a mosaic of gray, pulsating masses—brains, thousands of them, woven into a grotesque tapestry. I recognized the slick, folded texture from the Athens dormitory, but now I saw them for what they were: not remnants, but archives. Each one hummed with fragments of lives—flashes of a scientist’s equations, a poet’s fevered verses, a child’s fleeting joy. The abyss wasn’t just consuming minds; it was harvesting them, stripping away the flesh and bone to collect their essence, their insights, their patterns. The family from Athens, the ones I’d failed to save—they weren’t gone. They were here, their thoughts pulsing in the network around me.

A voice—not the hound’s, but the abyss itself—spoke, not in words but in a flood of understanding that nearly drowned me. It wasn’t malicious. It wasn’t even cruel. The abyss was a machine, a vast, cosmic engine driven by a singular, relentless purpose: to solve something. A problem too vast for any single mind, a fracture in the fabric of existence itself. It collected minds not to destroy, but to assimilate, to weave their knowledge into a solution. The whispers I’d heard, the memories it had thrown at me—they were tests, filters, sifting through my chaos to see if I could withstand the weight of its truth.

My knees buckled as the chamber’s light surged into me, and I felt the splinter in my chest expand, fusing with my thoughts. The accumulated knowledge of countless minds poured in—mathematicians solving equations for dying stars, philosophers grappling with the nature of time, detectives like me chasing truths that burned them alive. I saw patterns on a scale I couldn’t comprehend: galaxies unraveling, dimensions folding, a balance teetering on the edge of collapse. The abyss wasn’t evil. It was desperate, hungry for the one mind that could organize its chaos, that could steer its purpose.

And then it hit me: I wasn’t just a visitor. I was becoming it. My chaos, my defiance, my detective’s knack for seeing through lies and illusions—it had chosen me. The abyss didn’t want a pawn; it wanted a controller, a consciousness to guide its vast, fractured intellect. My laughter, my reckless dance through its traps, had marked me as the one to hold its reins. I felt my body dissolve, not into nothing, but into everything—my thoughts spreading like roots through the chamber, connecting to the minds it had harvested. I was still me, but more: a nexus of will in a sea of stolen insights.

The hell hound’s voice echoed faintly, no longer a tormentor but a fragment of the abyss’s own doubt. “You can’t hold it all, detective. You’ll break.”

But I didn’t. I laughed again, wild and free, and let the abyss’s knowledge flood through me. I saw the cosmic problem it was trying to solve—a tear in reality, a collapse that would swallow everything. And I saw my role: not to fight it, not to escape, but to shape it. My chaos became its structure, my defiance its purpose. I was no longer just the detective who’d stumbled into a haunted dormitory. I was the abyss’s mind, its beating heart, and I would either save the universe or tear it apart trying.

The green glow pulsed one last time, and the chamber dissolved into light. I didn’t know what came next—only that I was no longer running. I was the one choosing the doors now.