It began innocently enough. The trip was unusual but not my first of the kind: an expedition with several archaeologists to explore and document a recently-unearthed site. In this case, the site had been known for many years, but the locals had violently refused any attempts to explore within – until one week earlier when a representative from the locals had contacted the university at which I work and invited our team to come to explore the ruins.

The team was kept small – a concession to avoid potential tensions with the locals. It was, therefore, a four-person team: Myself, my immediate superior, Doctor Muller, a doctoral student by the name of Adam Lochner, and the representative of the local villagers, a woman named Yui, who greeted us as our plane deposited us at the makeshift landing strip that had been created near the ruins.

“I’m glad you were able to come, especially after how many times my people have rejected you in the past,” she said. She was younger than I’d expected, probably no older than Adam. She wore the traditional purple robes of the village leader, which stood starkly against her extremely pale skin. Her eyes were large and dark, which, when compared with her skin, gave an uncomfortable feeling that she was looking at us not through her eyes but through a pair of deep holes that had been carved through a mask. “Please understand, the ruins of the ancient temple are core to our people’s beliefs. Letting outsiders in is inviting disaster in the minds of many of our older villagers.”

The village had been built around the ruins. The ancient temple had long ago collapsed into a massive sinkhole, and the village encircled the hole’s rim. Around the village were miles upon miles of forest, allowing the villagers to remain almost isolated from society even in the modern day – though, I noted, not as isolated or primitive as most would expect, considering the number of villagers I saw playing games on their smartphones.

“Just so we’re on the same page, would you mind recapping those beliefs?” Muller asked, glancing at Adam. I suspected he was worried the student hadn’t paid attention.

Yui nodded. “Thousands of years ago, we were ruled over by a tyrannical sorceress known as the Drowned Woman. She took great pleasure in cruelty, demanding frequent sacrifices and killing our people for her amusement. She waged war against all other peoples, slaughtering them down to the last child, drinking the blood of their most innocent. The legends say the soil of our land was stained red for generations, and we could do nothing to resist. The Drowned Woman ruled for centuries, extending her life with dark magic until a single hero managed to infiltrate her chambers and strike her down. But the legends-”

“Why do they call her that?” Adam interrupted, drawing a glare from the rest of us.

Yui’s mouth twitched in annoyance, but she quickly concealed it. “Water connects us to the land of the dead. Souls are taken by the water and carried to the next life. The name ‘The Drowned Woman’ is because she was a necromancer – someone who does not respect the water’s flow. And as I was saying,” she continued loudly before Adam could interrupt again, “our legends also warn that she can never truly die. They say that when the time is ripe, she will return and begin a reign of blood and terror far greater than any the world has ever seen. Our village was built here by our ancestors to guard her temple and ensure that she could not return.”

“So the reason you keep outsiders away….” I ventured.

She nodded. “Is so that nobody could attempt to resurrect her.”

“So what changed?” Muller asked.

Yui smiled wryly. “We decided to enter the 21st century. You might not have noticed, but our village isn’t exactly modern. As our new leader, I’m determined to bring us in step with the rest of the world, and getting this old temple properly studied is the first step.”

“How did you become leader?” Adam asked.

“The spirits of my ancestors proclaimed it into everyone’s dreams,” Yui said testily. I got the impression she didn’t like Adam or his questions. “My mom was the prior chief. She died. I inherited it. It’s not complicated.”

Yui led us to her home, a one-room stone structure. “Pardon the primitiveness," she said. “I’d like to one day have a hotel here for guests. And a house with central heating for me. But this is what we have for now.” She gestured for us to sit around a small stone table and poured us each a mug of black liquid.

“What is this?” Adam asked.

“Water,” Yui answered. “All our water is that color. It’s safe, though. Just minerals.”

I examined my drink. The water wasn’t merely dark – it was solid black, not reflecting a single speck of light. I shook my glass, and it seemed like the water didn’t even move, though I knew that was an illusion caused by the darkness.

“You can boil it or run it through a filter if you like,” Yui said, sipping hers. “But I promise it’s pure. We’ve got our own underground aquifer we draw it from.”

Telling myself that I’d had stranger drinks on other expeditions, I took a sip. The water was shockingly cold, almost enough to give me brain freeze from a single drink, but it tasted pure and clean, and yet something about it, more than the color, still made me uncomfortable. I felt a strange nervousness as I swallowed and decided not to finish my cup.

“Thank you,” Muller said, draining his cup. “But I’m quite eager to see the ruins. If it’s not too much of an imposition?”

“Not at all,” Yui said. “Follow me.”

She led us out of her home and through the village to the lip of the sinkhole. A makeshift wooden stairway led down the sides to a large opening at the top of the ruins. Here, as we began our descent, I had my first proper view of the ancient structure: a massive palace of purple stone, similar in shape and size to a Mayan pyramid, but with numerous windows and arched doorways throughout the exterior. Crumbled archways of that same purple stone surrounded the exterior of the ruin, slowly being reclaimed by the swamp below. Oddly for such an ancient structure, the ruins were devoid of plant life – not so much as a blade of grass stirred in the sinkhole. The depths of the pit were filled with the same black water as had been served to us in Yui’s home.

“Careful,” Yui said. “If you fall and are lucky enough not to hit one of the stones on the way down, you’ll get sucked into the Blackmire.”

“What’s that?” Adam asked.

“The swamp at the bottom of the pit,” Yui answered. “It’s a lot deeper than it looks, and it sucks you right down if you land in it.”

"Why do you call it that?" Adam asked.

Yui sighed. "Because it's a mire, and it's black."

As we neared the temple, I noticed that the surface was not simply rough from millennia of exposure – nearly every flat surface was carved with intricate designs – letters, in an unfamiliar language. Those slabs not covered in ancient writing displayed the visage of a faceless woman in flowing robes gazing down from a massive throne.

“The Drowned Woman.” Yui nodded at the images. “There’s a ton of sculptures of her inside, too, but all the faces have been smashed. I guess the people who did it were determined to erase every trace of the Drowned Woman. They must have been terrified she’d come back.”

“So you believe this lady really existed?” Adam asked.

I saw Yui’s eye twitch and shot a glance at Muller, who looked like he shared my exasperation. Adam had been selected for his academic performance, and we hadn’t expected him to be quite so bad at dealing with the locals.

“Yes, I do,” Yui answered, her eye continuing to twitch. “I am the religious leader of my people, and our entire faith for the last three millennia has revolved around her. Don’t you Americans believe your Jesus existed, even if you don’t necessarily believe all the stories?”

Adam mumbled something about evidence, and for a moment, I was worried Yui was about to push him off the stairway.

“Yui,” Muller interrupted, clearly hoping to change the subject, “can you tell us about the sorts of rituals you perform concerning this temple?”

Yui’s face seemed to brighten at that. “Of course.”

The path was beginning to level out, the stairway turning into more of a bridge.

“Our faith isn’t really prayer-oriented. The idea of it is ‘prevent the evil witch-queen from reviving,’ not ‘ask the evil witch-queen for a favor,’ after all. So our rituals are more…how do I put it? It’s a…well, it’s sort of a ritualized patrol route. We circle the outside of the sinkhole eight times a day. On the sixth day of each month, we put up some warding totems and take down the old totems. Each household makes its own totem in its own style. The old totems are then thrown into the Blackmire so that any evil influence they absorbed can be returned to the Drowned Woman rather than kept in our village. We also perform astronomy, keeping an eye on the stars for the ‘Day of Return,’ when the Drowned Woman will reincarnate and resume her reign of darkness.”

“What does your faith say to do if the stars are right for that day, then?” I asked.

Yui shrugged. “Nothing. I think the idea at that point is we’re all already doomed.”

Adam snorted. All three of us glared at him, but he didn’t seem to notice.

“Well, here we are,” Yui said. I had been so preoccupied looking at the carvings on the temple's exterior that I hadn’t realized we’d arrived at the entrance. “Watch your step. We only come here to clear out rubble twice a year, so it’s not exactly OSHA compliant.”

“Few archaeology sites are,” Muller chuckled.

Following Yui, we stepped inside into a massive hallway. The hall was lined with grand sculptures of the Drowned Woman, though, as Yui had said, all the faces were smashed. Behind each statue was an arched doorway leading into blackness. I estimated there must be nearly fifty such doorways within the hallway.

“Where do those doors lead?” Muller asked.

Yui shrugged. “We aren’t exactly keen on exploring. Though…” She paused. “Well, there’s one doorway that I have explored through. It’s on the way to the grand ritual chamber; let’s have a quick detour.”

So saying, Yui guided us to the door behind a statue on the left-hand side, almost exactly halfway down the hall. “Here. This leads to a special chamber we use for the New Year’s ritual.”

Muller went in first, followed by Adam. Yui nodded for me to go in next, then followed behind me.

The door led to a dark hallway with an odd smell of iron. “What do you do during your New Year’s ritual?” I asked. Or rather, tried to ask, only to discover that some strange property of the hallway’s design muffled sounds almost completely.

That was my last thought before the stone struck my skull, and the world vanished in a flash of pain.

---

I awoke to the sound of voices and the smell of salt and iron. My eyes fluttered open slowly, hazy images slowly coalescing into a nightmare.

I was tied to a stone table. A pair of faceless statues loomed over me. I could vaguely make out two arched doorways, one in front of me, one behind. Another table lay to my left, and atop it was a pile of flesh and meat that had once been Adam.

“He’s awake.”

It was Mueller’s voice. My senior stood beside my table. Next to him, dressed in elaborate purple robes and wearing a faceless purple mask, was Yui. In her hand was a bloody knife. I tried to speak, but terror had closed my throat. My heart pounded in my ears, and my stomach seemed to drop.

“Please, do understand,” Muller said, as though discussing the weather. “Learning about the ancient past is lovely, but that’s not what we’re here for.”

He grinned. “I’ve studied many ancient religions, but I never thought I’d have a chance to visit the necromancer’s temple myself.” A mad light danced in his eyes. “Most scholars scoff at such things, but I happen to be quite knowledgeable about the supernatural, not simply the physical. And the Drowned Woman was – is – very real.”

“And the time of her resurrection is nigh,” Yui added. “I’m afraid I wasn’t being truthful either. Our faith is indeed about protecting the temple, but not to stop her from reviving. It’s to ensure no interlopers could prevent the return of our mistress.” She shrugged. “I never thought the stars would align in my lifetime, though. Imagine how excited I was to get that news a few months ago?”

She shook her head. “Of course, my mother was the chief at the time, so she would be the one to lead the ritual and receive the Drowned Woman’s blessing. I couldn’t have that, so….” She made a slashing gesture with the knife. “The Blackmire is very convenient. It disposes of anything.” “I knew of the Drowned Woman’s return as well, from my own studies,” Muller said. “I couldn’t pass up the opportunity to meet her – to gain her blessing. I contacted Yui here last month and offered to provide her with the necessary sacrifices for the ritual in return for being part of it.” That mad light flashed again in his eyes. “A few sacrifices are worth it for immortality, don’t you think? Don’t say you wouldn’t do the same. Anyone would.”

“It came as a relief, really,” Yui added. “The Drowned Woman needs a blood sacrifice, and I’d have hated to have to go out and kidnap someone myself.” She made a sound of disgust. “At first, I wasn’t sure which of you would be the first offering, but I made up my mind as soon as that brat started talking. Disrespectful fool.”

“A-are you going to kill me?” I managed to ask, my voice trembling as much as the rest of me.

“Not yet,” Yui answered. “The ritual only says we need one blood sacrifice for the revival, but I imagine the Drowned Woman will want another when she’s revived. I’ll save you until then.” She chuckled darkly. “You should be honored. You’ll be one of the first to see her face.”

The sound of a bell echoed loudly through the chamber.

“That’s the signal,” Yui said. “Come on, Doctor Muller. We wouldn’t want to miss the ceremony.” With that, she and Muller vanished into the doorway in front of me, leaving me alone with the pile of meat that only hours ago had been my student.

As the sound of their footsteps faded away, I began to struggle wildly against my bonds. I felt them begin to slip – like the rest of the ruins, these restraints were clearly ancient and unmaintained. After only a minute, I felt them release.

Panicked, my nostrils filled with the horrible smell of death, terrified that Yui or another cultist would soon return, I turned and fled through the other archway.

I stumbled blindly through the dark tunnel, running as fast as my trembling legs allowed. Many times I stumbled or dashed myself against an outcropping on a wall, but I didn’t dare stop. Whenever the tunnel branched, I simply ran through the closer opening. I didn’t slow until I began to hear voices.

Terrified, I crept forward and beheld an entirely different kind of nightmare.

I was on a small balcony concealed behind one of the many faceless statues that filled the ruin. The balcony overlooked a massive chamber filled with hundreds of people, all wearing the same purple robes. The entire village was here. I saw Muller there as well, near the front. Yui stepped onto a platform almost directly below my balcony and removed her mask.

“Kah’trackha!” She yelled. She began pacing back and forth, proclaiming loudly in a language I didn’t understand. But while I couldn’t decipher the words, the tone was obvious. This was a celebration. The sort of speech a general gives the troops on the eve of great conquest. It was a speech about the return of their queen, their evil goddess. The Drowned Woman.

As she spoke, two villages brought forth a giant basin filled with black water and placed it beside Yui.

A cheer went up from the crowd as Yui extended her arm over the basin, drew her blade, and slashed herself across the arm, splashing her blood into the basin.

The room seemed to darken, and the crowd went silent. Then, suddenly, a great bolt of lightning flashed inside the darkened room, filling it with orange and purple light.

As that strangely-colored light flickered throughout the room, the basin began to bubble.

A cold hand gripped my heart. Ice ran down my spine. I was breathing so fast that I was starting to see spots.

And then, slowly, almost leisurely, she rose from the basin.

She was tall and thin, with raven hair that extended below her feet. She wore a series of golden bands around her fingers and arms, and her legs were wrapped in cloth bandages. As she stepped from the basin, dripping black water from her chalk-white skin, to accept the robes Yui reverently held out for her, I beheld her face.

Her eyes were gone, but it was not empty sockets that I saw. Instead, from the holes where eyes should be, I saw nothing but endless darkness, a bottomless abyss. It was not that her eyes were black – the skin around her eyes had cracked and crumbled away like porcelain, and thin cracks continued from where her eyes had been down the rest of her face. On the other side of those holes, where flesh or muscle or bone should have been, was nothing but deep blackness, like the void of space.

As she dressed, I realized the water dripping from her was not leftover from the basin. From every pore in her body, pitch-black water dripped in an endless flow.

“Water connects us to the afterlife,” Yui had said. A horrible vision filled my mind of an endless, infinitely deep ocean of black water. The afterlife.

And it was from this Stygian sea that the woman below me had crawled. From the endless ocean of death, she had dredged herself back to the surface, back to our world. The room was completely silent as the Drowned Woman slowly surveyed her followers. And as she did, I saw my chance.

She was standing directly below my balcony, directly below her own statue.

I knew it was dangerous, but I also knew it was my only hope. It was only a matter of time before Yui’s cultists found me and dragged me before the Drowned Woman as a sacrifice. And beyond that…How can I describe the feeling? The sensation of pure, complete Evil?

It filled the air and seeped into my eyes, my ears, my mouth, my pores. It poured out from the Drowned Woman, an aura of such utter wrongness that I could barely comprehend. I couldn’t allow this monster to walk upon the earth once more.

With all my strength, I pushed at the statue, my pulse racing, fear filling me with adrenaline. If the statue moved too slowly – if the cultists saw me or heard it move…my mind raced with terrified visions of my horrible death, of my soul being dragged down into that black ocean. With a sudden crumbling noise, the statue came loose. The world seemed to be in slow motion. I was exposed, in full view of the crowd. Some cultists stared at me, others at the falling statue. I heard someone scream – or thought I did.

Then, with a terrific crash, the massive statue smashed down onto the ground below me. Shattering harmlessly several feet too far to the left.

My heart dropped into my stomach as the Drowned Woman looked up. A faint smile crossed her black lips.

She’d known I was there the entire time.

“Well, well.”

Her voice was deep and echoing, like the roar of a stormy ocean, yet her tone was calm and conversational. In the depths of my mind, drowned out by fear, I wondered how she knew English. “It seems your guards aren’t very good at their jobs,” the Drowned Woman said, a flicker of amusement in her voice.

Yui opened her mouth – to apologize, or maybe to order her guards to seize me. Which it was, I will never know, because the next moment, her eyes widened in horror, and she began to gag on the black water suddenly flowing forth from her mouth.

Horrible choking sounds echoed throughout the room as the same black water, appearing seemingly from nowhere, began to suffocate the entire cult. At the front of the room, Muller took a staggering step forward, his arm extended towards me, before collapsing, black water oozing from his nose. In moments, everyone in the room was dead, save for the Drowned Woman, standing calmly amid the slaughter.

I ran.

I knew it was futile. I knew it was hopeless.

But my fear was stronger than my mind. It drove me forward, back through the tunnels, down other side passages, through ancient paths nobody had trod in millennia. Black water dripped from the ceilings as the humidity of the ruins began increasing, water pooling in the corners of the rooms and sliding down the walls. Flashes of orange and purple light burst randomly through the air as I ran. In my ears, I heard the voice of the ocean, laughing.

Light suddenly shone before me. My heart leaped. It was the exit.

Hope gave my legs another burst. I ran as fast as possible for the opening, for the fresh air. And then the water wrapped itself around my legs, hurling me to the soaked floor.

Cold black water dripped down onto my back. The light outside dimmed. Orange and purple spots danced in my vision. I struggled to breathe.

Then she appeared, emerging from outside the temple, and stopping in front of me.

She gazed down at me through those black chasms, a cruel grin on her face. I heard her chuckle darkly at my terror.

And then…she left. She turned and exited the temple, vanishing into the sudden darkness as a storm began outside, black rain hiding her from my sight.

I stood slowly, panting, trembling. My body ached, but fear kept the pain at bay.

I took one stumbling step, then another, then another, until I was out of the temple, out of the sinkhole, out of the village.

The storm clouds seemed to part as my plane took off, just long enough to create an opening, then closed again. Below me, I saw the black clouds beginning to spread.

I will never be able to say with certainty why I was spared. Maybe she simply found it amusing, or maybe she found me so beneath her as to not be worth bothering with.

But I think I know.

She wanted someone alive, as a messenger. To tell the world that she has returned.
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