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Nov. 18th, 1964

I stand corrected in my last statement. Grievously so. Madness, after what's happened, would've been a welcome boon.

It started when I was awakened once again, having apparently fallen asleep once again or at least somehow lost consciousness of myself, to find a searing pain shooting through my arm. My eyes snapped open to find Ambrose gnawing viscously on my right arm. I could hear him growling, the way a dog would when gorging itself. When I tried to throw him away from me, he sent a clawed swipe across my left eye, drawing blood across the brow.

I tried calling out to him, to bring him back to his senses, but it was no use. Whatever spell he was under, it was no mere madness or psychosis. Somehow, I knew this wasn't just a desperate attempt at quelling his hunger after being trapped in this room for so long.

His eyes were black, soulless and oozing black ichor and I could see areas of his skin that he'd evidently picked from his own body. Staring back at me, I heard him utter that haunting growl, "Adrayok aduae Jubbilex, zanctis melioss!" It almost seemed to force itself out of his throat, as though he were being forced to say it!

Paralyzed with shock, I was caught off guard yet again when Ambrose seized me tightly around my throat and, with strength that shouldn't have been possible for someone as small as him, hurled me like a baseball straight into the obelisk. Before I could do so much as catch my breath, Ambrose lunged for me, pinning me against the obelisk before attempting to gnash at my face. The black ooze was gushing more and more from his eyes, seeming, I noticed, to cause him pain.

It was everything I could do to keep his ravenous jaws from tearing away my face like paper. He was relentless, managing to still tear a sizeable chunk from my left cheek. I managed to hurl him away, sure enough, but that ended up costing me the last of my strength, being too weary from pain and sheer exhaustion from inability to sleep. I stood, cradling my wounds against the obelisk as Ambrose rose up and prepared to pounce again when suddenly, something stopped him.

He stood paused mid-lunge, his face frozen in what appeared to be utter shock, despite his oozing eyes. I stared at him for a moment. confused as to why he wouldn't attack, when I noticed that he wasn't looking at me anymore, but instead behind me toward the obelisk itself. His face was reflecting something, a bright light that made his already pale skin appear even lighter in color. When I turned then to look, I was immediately blinded by a light that seemed to burn even through my eyelids. It was as though the sun itself had exploded and that I'd just attempted to look upon the supernova with the naked eye. It was a far more advanced feeling of the effect a total eclipse would have after attempting to look at it with the naked eye.

This was more than just a light, though. This was something sentient. Something celestial, something alive! Even Ambrose, in spite of his possession, could see this too, and was terrified of it. My eyes were searing inside my skull, slowly melting to slag. At any moment, I was afraid the rest of me would soon follow. Then, from the direction of the light, I heard the baritone voice I knew all too well. The inhuman boom of that tyrannical pharaoh!

"Away from him!" the voice bellowed. Its tones echoed all throughout the space of the domed room. Slowly, I began to open my eyes once more. Once more, my eyes were strained in doing this, though I eventually succeeded in opening them all the way. My vision was blurred heavily, everything appearing to me as only a white, cloudy void with the vague outline of a person clad in a snow white robe standing directly ahead of me in place of the obelisk.

Distorted though my vision was, I noticed faintly that the being's limbs appeared to sway like branches in a strong wind back and forth. I opened my mouth, but found myself unable to speak. I felt as though my throat had been muted, or that my voice had somehow been ripped from it. My mind was a firestorm of awe, fright, wonder, confusion, and more. So many thoughts, so many questions, so many feelings, all at once invaded my mind, not allowing me a second to so much as breathe.

Who or what was this thing? Where had it come from? The room? But then why had neither myself nor Ambrose seen it before? What was its purpose for being here now, saving my life like it had?

"Flesh must not continue! The end approaches, and there will be no hiding from it, as you have deceived yourself in doing for so long now, Flesh child!"

I noticed when he, it, spoke, that it was a sort of combination of the skinless humanoid's beastial growling and the hissing tone I heard before. I looked behind me toward Ambrose. Either because of the force controlling him or because of something else entirely, he seemed unaffected by the heavenly light around the three of us. He stared forward in both terror and a sense of revulsion past me toward the figure.

"You didn't believe you would prosper for the rest of time, did you? You weren't foolish to think that resetting this world would hide it from the Gluttonous Star, from Khaeos, did you?"

I watched Ambrose's mouth open and from him, the humanoid entity's own baritone voice bellowed, "Flesh can live on! It WILL live on! YOU are our damnation! Just as you were then, so you are here and now!"

Looking back to the figure in white, I saw its arms raise, flailing jointless. "I am not damnation, Fleshling. I am truth. I am inevitability. Unlike my brethren, those you so cruelly slew, I am not here as an oracle. No, I am here as your harbinger of the end!"

I exchanged glances back and forth between Ambrose and the figure. Ambrose, I saw, began to clutch his temples and crumple to his knees, suffering some sort of migraine or pressure. "NO!" I heard Ambrose shout, "No, I won't allow this! Flesh will continue! The Flesh will live on, through rebirth, as it always has!"

Ambrose was in a fetal position on the ground now, clutching his temples now in nothing short of pure agony. What was going on with him, I could scarcely even guess. The figure replied "And when Khaeos finds you again, as I know he will, what will you do then? Rebirth will not conceal you but for only so long. You destroy and rebuild this pathetic, meaningless empire, this world, and you believe it will save you? You name me as damnation, yet I am only doing what was already predestined, do you see?"

The figure began gliding forward, floating just above the ground as he did so. Out of reflex, I began moving backward. Among all the spastic thoughts racing through my mind, the question then of what the figure might do to me once it reached me had my focus. In only thirty seconds, at least ten or more possibilities inferring what godlike power this being had at its command flashed across my mind at once. I kept backpedaling until I inevitably came upon and tripped over Ambrose's writhing body. When I looked again, the figure had reached me, looming over the bodies of me and Ambrose on the ground.

I tried to move away again, only to find myself against a wall. There was nowhere to run. I was done for!

I closed my eyes then and began sputtering my last prayer hysterically. I stopped and opened my eyes, however, when I heard screaming of sheer agony coming from in front of me. Opening my eyes again, I saw that the figure was leaning over the body of Ambrose, him having been its apparent target instead of me. The figure, I saw, had one tendril -- yes, tendril, not a hand -- around Ambrose's throat and was glowing brighter and brighter.

I could see the tendril searing the skin of Ambrose's throat, causing him to cry out that much louder. His screams weren't a man's screams, though. Leastways not of any one single man. Rather, they were the screams of every living being on Earth, all at once from the throat of Lionel Ambrose. Still holding him down, the figure proclaimed, "Yes, you see it now, Flesh Child? You see the folly in what you do? That is why I'm here, to put an end to all misery once and for all, exterminating flesh and spirit." In another instant, the figure burst into a ball of white light and following another wail of pain from Ambrose, I heard it declare, "Urall Khaa! Eelik Adrayok Khaa! Kaos rallik Ga'an!"

Then the light dissipated and the figure was gone. It was instantaneous and at first, I had no idea where I was or if I'd not perished in that burst of light. In another five seconds, however, I found that the room had returned to the way it'd been before. Ambrose laid motionless on the floor in front of me.

I turned his body over to find his eyes rolled back and glazed over. Pressing against his throat with my fingers, I found he had no pulse. Whatever had happened, whatever the figure, the white, faceless pharaoh had done to him, Lionel Ambrose was dead now.

My attention was jerked away, however, when I heard the sound of stones shifting again. When I turned, I saw that the obelisk was sinking, the ceiling following close behind it. Immediately, I was throwing my head around in a panic to find an exit of some sort. Everywhere I looked though, I saw only the inscribed walls around me. I rushed to the nearest wall and began frantically prying at every divide in between the stones, praying one of them could be pried apart and that I'd find it in time. It only took me another fifteen seconds of this to realize I wasn't gonna make it out doing that.

There was no escape. I'd avoided the death Ambrose received at the white pharaoh's hand, only to meet it at the hands of the obelisk itself. This was the price I would pay for the pursuit of knowledge, to witness a horrifying portent and then to be buried with it forever, never to tell any others of it. I'd failed, not only as a journalist, not only to the world as the chronicler of the events that transpired in this godforsaken tomb, but to my purpose at coming in the first place, to tell the greatest story I'd ever know -- to honor my fallen friend, Pvt. Elroy.

Then, amid the pandemonium, I faintly heard stones shifting again coming from the walls. Looking to my right, I found that a section of the wall was rising, revealing an exit to the room. Summoning every reserve of strength, I gunned it through the new doorway and into another dark corridor. There, I found that it, too, was shaking, with the ceiling lowering there and throughout as well. The tomb was collapsing, and I knew that it wouldn't be long before it would serve as the eternal resting place for any who were still inside when it did.

Through the long, dark corridor I ran. I had no idea where I was going and there was no way to know. A few times, I'd slammed into a wall that I couldn't see. All around me, with each passing second, the walls and ceiling shook. The closer to the ground the ceiling came, the harder it soon became to even breathe. Still, I kept running. I wouldn't stop -- I couldn't -- until either I made it out, or death took me!

About three quarters through the latest corridor I'd found myself running through, I began to hear voices at my right, likewise clamoring in a panic like mice for the exit. For just the briefest of moments, I swore I could hear one of the distant voices cry out that they'd found the entrance of the tunnel. Realizing there was still a chance to make it out alive, to tell this story and fulfill my promise, I turned and broke for the direction of the voices. Despite how much closer and closer they appeared the further I went along, that last corridor stretched seemingly for an eternity.

I was quickly running out of breath, out of strength, but I didn't stop. Finally, like I was looking through the abysmal tunnel of death itself and peering toward heaven, I saw the light at the far end. I could make it. And eventually, I did.

In my hysteria, when I found myself out of the tunnel, I was set to continue running -- probably even to the ends of the Earth -- but was stopped by one of the men waiting on the outside in the campsite. It took another ten seconds before they were able to get me to calm down and regain my composure. When I finally did, seeing that I was safe, that I had made it and would live to tell the story after all, the only reaction I knew to have at that instant was to devolve into a sobbing, inconsolable mess.

It was over. All over. I was alive, and I now had a story.

When I could finally come back to myself fully, I took one last look toward the pyramid. It was gone, swallowed into the earth forever, or perhaps until the day comes that that nameless and horrifying White Pharaoh chooses to re-emerge to preach once again of the end of days as he had so long ago. To this day, at least seven or more following, I still wonder of what he meant.

I wonder of other things, too, such as whatever happened to poor Travis Bruckner or even to that rat bastard, Benson. As for the ones that did make it out, of which only two of them were the Tri-Nexus advisors, we were all exhausted and quite speechless from fright. Some from the handful of expedition crew survivors were even gibbering deliriously, some even devolving into howls of mad, hysterical laughter.

I couldn't blame them. I can't blame them, either, for their fate afterwards being confined to a mental institution. As I said, especially in writing this now, even long after, I wish now in a way that I could have been institutionalized with them. I wish that I could simply doubt my sanity during any of this and say that it never happened. Such is the paradox, then.

Before departing from the site, I requested that there be one last photo taken of those that survived that fateful and harrowing experience. As damning as the memory is, the thought that I lived, miraculously for over two weeks without food or water and through an unexplainable phenomena as what I had, without fulfilling my promise to tell this story weighed far heavier on my soul. As I've found out, too, I would make the right call in doing this.

When I returned to the base in Saigon a few days ago, I planned to record this final part of this journey and send it for publication. Just yesterday morning, however, I recieved a brief letter from the Tri-Nexus, forbidding me from publishing or publicly speaking of any of the details I was aware of from the past month, and that disobedience would result in criminal prosecution. I couldn't believe it, after everything I was forced to endure on their behalf and after everyone else that lost their lives, they were now enforcing my silence!

As much as I want to forget about this, I know I owe it to them and to Pvt. Elroy to keep this chronicle, perhaps the only surviving record of their lives and of the haunting truth with the act of discovery. They will not be forgotten, even if only memorialized by these pages, never to see the public eye.

To the men and women in the photo that day, November 11th, 1964, the day we narrowly escaped the hands of fate at the hands of that terrible White Pharaoh's tomb, and to those that tragically never made it out, I say that, even if your country and the world has forgotten you, I haven't. I may not be able to tell your stories in my lifetime, but I know, as certain as I am that what happened in that tomb was real, that one day, someone will find these pages and will speak its story to the world.

That is my cross to bear, to preserve the memory, both the honorable and the horrifying. Because of this, despite the still persistent -- though only occasional -- night terrors I face, I can still find semblances of comfort. Because of this, I will still smile.

The day of truth will come, I promise...

***

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That was the last entry of Pawpaw Dan's memoir. After that, up until the day he passed, he held onto this journal and its haunting tale. No matter how much it killed him to do so, he stuck to his word to commemorate the events in Egypt.

I've read this many, many times now since the day I found it in their old house. For the longest time, I had no Idea of what to even make of it. My grandfather, granted, was never once in his career as a journalist reputed to be a slanderer or liar when it came to writing any columns, for and outside of the army. Still, for so long, I wasn't sure I could accept this as true. That is, not without some sort of concrete proof.

I wanted, to a degree at least, to believe my grandfather. I wanted to believe that what he wrote in this memoir was real and that my grandfather really was a hero, being the sole keeper of the memories of so many others. So I began looking for the truth.

For at least the past 10 years since Pawpaw Dan passed away, I scoured across libraries, the internet, and even tried looking for old news articles to try and find something, anything, from mid Nov. 1964 relating either to him, the pyramid, or any of the other survivors. The only result from that, though, turned out to be a single article that more or less was summed up to say "Expedition crew mysteriously goes insane after stint in outskirts of Egypt." The article made neither mention of him or any of the others. The photo listed, however, surprisingly enough, was the same one Pawpaw Dan had taken the day they left Egypt.

Because of this, I knew something really had happened there in mid-November of 1964. It wasn't for another four years or so that I ended up finding out exactly what. Never giving up the pursuit to prove my grandfather's story to be true, I spent the next four years looking into and studying each middle eastern religious text I could find to see if there'd be anything relating to the White Pharaoh, the pyramid itself, or any of the other beings spoken of in the memoir while also saving money to book a flight to Egypt myself and see the site for myself.

For the longest time, until I finally managed to accrue the necessary funds, I was at a loss, being unable to find any sort of text relating to the aforementioned aspects in any known culture. It seemed then, that the only way to prove his story true was to ask the people of Egypt, judging from how afraid they were reported to be in Pawpaw Dan's accounts.

Finally, in the summer of 2018, I scrambled the money together and flew to Egypt to see the expedition site for myself. Like with my grandfather, I spent the first week in the small hotel that was both cheap and available while scouting the land. During this time, I tried asking a few of the locals what they knew of the White Pharaoh of the desert pyramid or of the obelisk itself. Most of them either looked at me confused or just kept walking, ignoring me. Some, though, older folks, gave me the same grim, horrified expression Pawpaw Dan described he'd gotten when he asked.

Just like with what he was told back then, I, too, was told that "Only infidels, fools, and traitors" dared seek what I was after. Finally, I set for the site itself where my grandfather had narrowly escaped death all those years ago. This took another week and when I did arrive, I was confused at first. There were no pyramids to speak of, at least not the one Pawpaw Dan wrote of. It was when I came right on the spot that those few that'd actually known of the pyramid had told me it'd be that I found it.

Despite being buried under 56 or more years of sand, I saw what appeared to be a large slab of stone. Further investigation revealed the stone to be not of the pyramid itself, but a fragmented piece of that room, with the slab of stone bearing the eight sided star hieroglyph Pawpaw Dan described seeing upon the obelisk. The colossal terror that, according to his memoir, was capable of both the creation and utter devastation of all existence. The very thing that, supposedly, had been answering the White Pharaoh's call. The most horrific aspect of all this, however, was that, cradling the slab there buried un the sand as well, was the skeleton of a man wearing the tattered remnants of the black polo "Tri-Nexus" uniform shirt. On the pocket, though faded and worn, I faintly read the name "R. Benson" across the tag.

It was true, all of it! The pyramid, the portents, the obelisk, all of it! It was real, and now, I'd found it, clutched by the bones of the very man that bestowed this journey, this curse, upon him in the first place! How he managed to make it out, I don't know, and neither did Pawpaw Dan or anyone else for that matter. But all the same, he did, commemorating his own memory of the expedition. Of the day in which he and so many others paid the ultimate price for pursuing long forgotten secrets. I suppose, though, I still have to commend him because without him, there would've been no proof to corroborate my grandfather's greatest story. His most fantastic, most horrifying, and all too real account, "The Obelisk".

I say this now, if you can hear me, Pawpaw Dan, wherever you are now, this is for you. This is your day, the day you toiled so hard to make happen and for so long, couldn't. This is the day of memory, for you and for all the others, both that survived and those that didn't.

For you, Pawpaw Dan.