"The Star Seal"
Full First Draft

This is the full draft of my short story "The Star Seal", which I wrote for Scareuary 2024. Enjoy!

The statue was an oddity, as far as statues from the region went. Perhaps of Akkadian origins, it depicted what seemed to be an anthropomorphic creature, with the head of a woman, and the clawed legs of some kind of raptor - perhaps a vulture. The figure wore a robe, but there was something about it that seemed stiff, thick, not quite... fabric-like. There was what seemed to be a headdress, though the sculptor hadn't been particularly detailed, and it might have also been a pair of wings. While the position of the wings was strange, it was not unknown for the Akkadians to present Ishtar as a winged creature. For that reason alone, and the fact that the figure seemed evidently female, and that it had been dated to the Akkadian period, many scholars believed this to be a statue of Ishtar.

He wasn't so certain. Something about this statue was... off. He ran his fingers over its stone surface, taking note of every single ridge, bump, indent, and abnormality. In fact, the whole thing was rather a strange abnormality, when taking into consideration contemporary pieces of art which held a realism to them that this could not begin to replicate.

Certainly, it was an unsettling piece, with its sunken eyes, staring darkly out at him, and its life-sized proportions, but so were many depictions of Ishtar. It was entirely possible that this was a nuanced and unique representation, but he simply couldn't shake the feeling that there was something else to it.

The carriers had helped him move the statue, such that it lay upon a table, tilted slightly onto one side, so that he could investigate and study it more thoroughly. Were it not for them, the small, peculiar, circular figure at the bottom of the pedestal upon which the statue's clawed feet were clenched might have gone completely unnoticed.  

It was perhaps five inches in diameter, and seemed to jut out ever so slightly from the rest of the statue's base. The circular piece depicted a nine-pointed star with a circle around it. At first glance, he almost conceded. Clearly, if the very symbol of Ishtar was engraved in the bottom of the statue, his previous suppositions of false identity were wrong. But Ishtar's symbol was an eight-pointed star, not a nine-pointed star, and he generally speaking, people didn't make such mistakes when it came to these things.

What did a nine-pointed star symbolize? He wracked his mind, but found nothing. Deep in thought, he reached out and traced the edges of the stone seal with his fingers. As he did, he felt it give slightly. To his astonishment, the seal turned in its place. Fascinated, he turned it little by little until he felt a significant cluck, and out the seal came, a cylindrical thing of perhaps seven inches in height.

For a moment, it was all he could do to stare blankly at the stone cylinder in his hand, and stare again at the gaping hole where it had been hidden. A chill rushed up and down his spine, and he shook himself slightly, trying to regain his composure. This was new. This was a new discovery - nobody else knew of this, or it would have been in the notes!

He glanced around, half-expecting his supervisor to step into the room and take the star seal from him, but of course that was nonsense. He was working late - that was the deal. If he wanted to do any research of his own, he'd have to stay after hours and do it. But, during work hours, all he worked on was his supervisor's research, his papers, even his darned blog posts. Any discoveries made during that time were his supervisor's discoveries, and any mention of his hard work or contributions almost never happened.  

He was thankful, of course, to have even that opportunity. It was like the old man to deny him all chances completely, but he'd been in a rather good mood of late, due to a terrible book of his getting a feature in some magazine or other, and of course he'd taken advantage of the situation immediately.

So, this was his time. And this was his discovery - he was going to make sure of it. Nobody was going to take this away from him.

He was only a few minutes into his examination of the seal in an archival room when the shelves around him began to wobble, the precious items in boxes juddering loudly. Underneath him, the ground swayed back and forth violently, and loud creaking and groaning and rumbling was heard everywhere.

An earthquake!

He scrambled underneath the table, taking the star seal with him. Holding the cylindrical item in his hands, he watched as items fell to the ground around him, some priceless pieces undoubtedly damaged beyond repair, and heard the sounds of more of them landing on the metallic surface of the table. He paid little attention, then, to the heat emanating from the star seal.

The noise, the shaking - all of it was overwhelming. His heart, beating with a strength he did not know it had, was going off like a warning drum, and his breaths came in sharp, deep gasps and inhalations. Dust came down in rivers as the ceiling cracked and split, and for a terrifying moment he imagined himself buried under the rubble of a three-story building, crushed or suffocated to death.

He did not know how long the quake continued, but it had been long enough that his legs were numb when the shaking finally weakened, and then eventually stopped. He crept out from under the table carefully. Would there be an aftershock? Was it safe to come out? What if the whole structure fell down around him, right now?

It was only then that he realized the stone cylinder in his hands was hot. Uncomfortably hot. He passed it from one hand to the other like a hot potato, confused. It was unnaturally hot - abnormally hot - and something about it gave his a queasy sort of feeling in the pit of his stomach, as though he was forgetting something - as though the answer was right there.

He rushed out of the room, back to the place where the statue had been laid to rest for him to examine.

✯

He reeled back almost as soon as he reached the threshhold. The room was as he had left it, though the statue that had once been lying on the table was now shattered - giant shards of stone scattered on the table and floor as though the thing had been hollow, and not carved out of heavy, dense rock.

Worst, yet, was what had hatched from the statue - the monstrous thing that stood there now, atop the table. Frozen at the entrance to the room, he could only watch as this beast - some kind of winged, reptilian thing with talons, but which had a head vaguely resembling that of a human woman - turned to face him. Its eyes honed in on the cylindrical seal still gripped tightly in his hands.

If his heart had been pounding before, surely by now it had stopped, frozen in silence just as the rest of his body was. The grotesque creature leaned toward him, almost looming over him, and let out a terrible screech. It was only this noise that broke him out of his fearful daze, and, clutching the sides of his head in agony, he rushed back out of the room and into the hall, stumbling somewhat in his haste to get away.

Behind him, the ear-splitting screeching grew distant, and a terrible crashing sound accompanied it. The thing did not follow him.  He ran and ran, tripping not once but twice in his hurry to escape, but when he finally reached the front doors of the museum and banged on them, the security guard who answered his call was the picture of ignorance.

"Monster?" he asked, glancing around. "Screech? I didn't hear or see anything like that."

"You must have - you must have heard something!" the young man exclaimed frantically. He couldn't keep himself from whipping his head around, his shaky legs at the ready if he needed to break out into another sprint. "It was just moments after the earthquake - just seconds after - "

"Oh, is that what you're calling it, then?" the security guard interjected, the irritation clear in his voice. "You think I'm dumb enough to believe that an earthquake caused that gaping hole in our wall?"

"Hole? What hole?"

Everything made sense when they rounded the corner of the building and walked down its length to see the broken rubble left by what had obviously been something breaking out from within. The sigh froze the blood in him. The damned beast had broken down the wall and escaped.

That meant... that meant that it was out here, with them. He turned around nervously, small sounds of protest and terror leaving his throat. "No." He stepped this way, then that, but where could one go when a creature like that - a monster with wings - could be anywhere? "No. No!"

"Hey - hey - calm down," the security guard ordered, his voice firm. He lifted his hand in a stopping gesture, though the archaeologist noticed his other hand resting on his baton. "You need to take a few breaths, sir. You need to take a moment to calm down, and tell me how this happened."

Calm down? Calm down? He was practically hyperventilating. Legs giving out beneath him, the archaeologist found himself on his hands and knees, panting, gasping for air. That thing was real. That thing was real. How could he calm down knowing - knowing that it was in there - in that statue?

"Breathe," the security guard commanded. "Take deep, slow breaths. Listen, if this was all some sort of accident, it'll be OK. Talk to me. Tell me what happened."

What else could he do? He told him everything - about the statue, about finding the seal, about leaving the room, about the earthquake, about the monster he found when he returned, and the broken shards of the rock statue, a shell discarded by the creature it had borne.

And, of course, the more he spoke, the less the guard seemed to believe him. "Are you currently on any drugs, sir?" he asked, shining his flashlight in his eyes briefly.

"What? No!" he protested, raising his arm to hide from the bright light. "I'm telling you what happened! I swear to you - that's exactly how this wall was broken. It wasn't me!"

He couldn't get the blasted man to understand him - to listen to him, let alone believe him. Everything he had experienced so far that night, he had written off completely. No earthquake, no ear-splitting screech - nothing. All he saw was the wreckage left behind by the monster. That's all he had heard. 

How was that possible?

 ✯

Almost an hour later, he found himself seated in the staff break room, the guard stationed at the door, waiting for someone in management to arrive. The shrill screech of the monster still echoed in his mind, and the more he thought about it, the less he remembered it - the finer details. An irrational fear slipped into his mind: that he might forget what it looked like completely. What would that mean? That it had never existed? That he had made it up? That he had gone insane?

When the curator finally arrived, he was struck by how put-together she seemed. Her suit was immaculate. Her hair had been pulled back into that same severe bun she always wore it in, stripes of grey alternating with a rich brown. Her lips were the same striking shade of red, set, as always, in that disdainful frown which made her so unapproachable. This time, of course, the frown was slightly deeper.

She didn't come alone. The security manager joined her. Usually, the security manager was a jovial, ruddy-faced fellow with a wide smile and smiling eyes. Tonight, however, he seemed tired, with bags under his eyes, and his face was pale. Between his brows, there were a set of ridges and folds which grew from tonight's troublesome episode.

They asked him what happened. He explained. They didn't believe him. Of course.

He tried explaining it again. Again, they didn't believe him. He was becoming more frustrated and agitated by the minute.

"I am telling you the truth!" he yelled at last. "I am telling you the truth. There is something out there, and it's a monster!"

"If what you say is true, then the cameras will corroborate it," the curator stated; it was the first time she had spoken all evening. The security manager took her words as an order. The four of them made their way down to the museum's state-of-the-art surveillance room.

More and more, it became harder to capture the image of the beast in his mind. What if he had gone mad? What if it had never existed? The cameras would show them. The cameras would show.

And if they don't?

He didn't want to consider it.

✯

His lungs struggled to fill with air - air which had been sucked out of the room as soon as they had rewound the security camera footage and watched what he almost believed had been nothing more than his imagination. Almost. And then, there it was, on the screen - undeniable evidence of the monstrosity which had faced him in the archives of the museum.

He shuddered, head in his hands, and tried to focus on his breathing. It had broken through the walls - it had turned them to rubble, as though it took little to no effort on its part at all. Its tall, angular frame loped out of the building and onto the carefully manicured lawns which surrounded the sides of the museum. Even from the grainy footage he could make out its talon-like claws where its feet should have been, attached to long, hardened stalks for legs - like a vulture, or a raptor, but the comparison ended there.

The wings, seen from the vantage point of the camera, were large, almost dragging against the ground as the beast stalked by. At the edge of the camera's view, it unfolded these and began to flap them, raising itself from the ground, and lifting off - the wings like bat's wings, skin taut and stretched from bone to bone. And its head - its grotesque, humanoid head, with its strange, beast-like features. There was something human in that face - something familiar - and this revolted him all the more.

Seeing it on the screen had a double effect. On the one hand, it confirmed his story; so, he wasn't mad, and he hadn't imagined anything. On the other hand, it brought back, in fine detail, the encounter he had had with the monster which could have evidently destroyed him with a mere flick of its scaly arms.

He was gasping for air, but if the others noticed, they didn't take time to comfort him. Instead, a flurry of activity followed the tense silence which had stifled the room while they'd watched the video. Now, calls were being made. Screenshots were being taken and sent. Authorities of all kinds were on Lines 1, 2, 3, and so on. All the while, he sat there, eyes closed, and tried to shut it all out.

There was a terrible, dreadful understanding that grew within him, from deep within the marrow of his bones and out to the hairs standing on his goosebump-ridden skin.

The certainty that he had done this.

He was responsible.

It had been the statue - and he had released the beast encased within.  

Ten minutes are up! Okay, I'm happy with how things are progressing. I want to keep going, so I'll take a couple minutes' break and then continue to what will hopefully be the last part of this short story.

He had nothing else he could do; after regaining control of himself, he lumbered our of the security office and found his way through the familiar halls of the museum he had worked in for almost two years now, until at last his steps became heavy, and it became difficult to push himself forward, towards that scene--that room, right there, right in that open doorway on the left--

But of course the monster wasn't there anymore.

Instead, a gaping hole led in the chilly winter air and caused his body to shudder violently. He stepped forward, the star-seal in his hand, and bent over to lightly trace the edges of a shard of what had once been the odd statue. It was a thick shell, almost two inches in depth. The inside of the stone statue, which on the outside had been quite rough - polished just enough to pass general inspection, he supposed - was smooth as glass.

Upon touching it he was overcome with a terrible image - a vision of himself, encased in this hard rock shell, alive, struggling against the confines of it for millennia while the world around him carried on, unaware that within this rock was a living being. He retracted his hand with a gasp. That was what had resulted in the polish - the smoothness of the inner part of the shell.

Over the next hour, he worked to decipher the words on the cylindrical seal. Written in Akkadian, they were challenging to decode and translate, but ultimately he was able to make out what seemed to be a relatively accurate translation. To his disheartened disappointment and horror, it said nothing about how the beast had been imprisoned.

Instead, it had only the following ominous words:

Woe to ye who have awoken the beast

Woe to ye who have forgotten

Take shelter, take heed

For the ravenous shall feed.