The Strange Lava of Sodom and Gomorrah
Did you enjoy The Punishment of Sodom, that I wrote a few months ago? Do you think it was God's punishment, a natural disaster or something more sinister? Two archaeologists decided to find out if it was the same phenomenon that destroyed Pompeii many centuries ago. And things aren't going to end well for them. Keep reading and find out what happened in one of my recent stories from the Daily Prompt app.
The Strange Lava Of Sodom And Gomorrah
‘Do you think God did this, Professor Brown?’ James asked his mentor, holding a small rock of dried black and strangely cold lava in his hand. It didn’t quite feel like the same lava they had worked with in Pompeii. Pompeii had clearly been a natural catastrophe. But Sodom and Gomorrah... that rock was too smooth and too cold to be solidified lava. And yet, what else could it be?
Professor Brown’s scientific mind didn’t let him answer affirmatively. Their project was precisely to prove that what had destroyed the two biblical cities was exactly the same phenomenon that had destroyed Pompeii. Yet, ever since he and his best student had arrived, none of them could shake off the feeling that they were before something far more sinister. Something their five senses couldn’t explain.
He looked at the volcano just a few kilometres away. It was as small as the Vesuvius. It had been dormant for centuries even though the regular tremors reminded them that it was not extinct. But nobody knew nor could predict when it would erupt again. It didn’t look like it would happen now. The ground under their feet was still and no smokes came from the crater.
‘Maybe it was indeed something supernatural...’ James proceeded after his teacher’s long silence.
‘Well, the lava feels different but that proves nothing, James,’ he finally said. ‘Don’t forget science is always evolving as we discover new elements and creatures. We’ll know what it is when we examine it at the lab.”
Professor Brown’s projects had always been successful, he had always managed to prove his point. He wasn’t ready to admit he was wrong about Sodom and Gomorrah. Yet, just like James, he sensed that something was watching. That the volcano was watching.
He took his notebook out and wrote some random words on it to disguise his uneasiness. Then he noticed the silence. Was it him or the birds were no longer chirping? He couldn’t even hear the wind against the trees anymore.
‘Everything is so quiet. It’s like we are the only two beings on Earth,’ James said, guessing his mentor’s thoughts.
‘Let’s just get closer to the volcano and collect some more material,’ Brown said, putting his rucksack on his back.
That’s when it happened. A chill went down the geologist’s spine, as a soft, yet ominous voice whispered something in his ear. It wasn’t English, it wasn’t any language he had ever heard.
‘Did you say something, James?’ he asked, turning his head to his pupil who was busy packing his own rucksack with the recently found material.
James shook his head in surprise.
‘Ok, in that case, let’s go. We still have a lot to do.’
He walked fast, forcing James to rush his task to catch up.
‘You do sound nervous, Professor Brown.’ he said.
Again silence was the only answer James got. Both remained quiet, keeping to their own thoughts as they tried to step on the right rocks spread all over the more and more irregular ground. As they approached the volcano, the two men were enveloped by a slight and uncomfortable fog. It was icy cold now too. Something they would never have expected from those Middle Eastern lands. Wherever they looked, the landscape was now a blurred mix of black, white and grey rocks that somehow seemed to fuse with the colourless sky.
They finally reached the volcano. A chilly, unnatural wind swept through their bodies, making their hands frenetically rub their opposite biceps.
‘Now this is something, James. Would you ever have thought we’d be this cold?’
James was about to answer when the same voice Professor Brown had heard before spoke again. Dangerously calm and cavernous as if that wintry wind itself was talking to them, caressing their ears with a disturbing whisper.
‘Infidels you two are. Infidels aren’t welcome.’
This time they could understand. The two men halted and stared at each other, petrified. Cold sweats burst from each pore of their bodies. They tried to speak but only guttural sounds would come from their throats. They couldn’t move either, it was as if the cold had transformed them into ice.
Into ice... That was it. That was no lava, or at least not the volcano lava they had always known. That was ice... ice like they had never seen before. They tried to run away, but they were stuck. They looked at their feet and realised, to their sheer horror, that the ground had taken over them. It was spreading up to their shins, to their knees, to the middle of their thighs, slowly but surely transforming them indeed into black ice. Then, from the mist they saw dark grey shades. Human shades moaning in pain, in agonising screams...
‘They were infidels too. And we punished them,’ the malevolent voice said.
And this time, the ice didn’t go slowly up their bodies. It ran through them at the speed of light. Brown and James’ last movement was just staring at each other, their faces aching, as the supernatural substance took over them and transformed them into statues.
‘No more infidels.’
And as the two men’s statues broke into thousands of small pieces, the mist and the cold vanished and everything went back to as it had been for thousands of years.
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Enjoyed this story? Check out my other horror stories.
When You Wake Up in the Middle of the Night
Or my Werewolf Short Stories which I publish every Full Moon.
Don't go Into the Woods at Night
Midnight Shift at the Zoology Museum
Officer Brooks' Creepy Blue Eyes
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