When the Swallows come back to Capistrano
That’s the day you promised you’d come back to me...
As Jason walked into the old ranch house, the song seemed to echo through all the hallways, a fuzzy, scratchy quality to the sound. Each step he took through the building was done gingerly and deliberately, each time he stepped on the floorboards, they’d creak when he finally put pressure on his foot...
When you whispered “Farewell” in Capistrano
That’s the day the Swallows flew out to the sea...
Each creaking step brought him into a rather large chamber, a dusty, rotten set of furniture littering the room, coated in spider webs and cached in a layer of dust. After examining the room, he found a vague, emaciated figure sitting on the lounge chair next to the record player, the song continuing to play on it. It stared at the record player, the sleeve for the record “When the Swallows Come Back to Capistrano” lying by the chair before it acknowledged the presence of the flesh-and-blood human that seemed to be able to see him. The apparition stared at Jason and tilted his head, barely rasping something out in a thick, German accent.
“Who are you...?”
Jason adjusted his coat as he examined the ghost a bit further. “I’d ask the same thing... You’re not from around here, are you?” He walked back and forth... He knew something wasn’t right here. Ghosts stick to the places that hold significance to them, namely where they died... And this wasn’t a ghost he’d ever seen before.
Oh, the Mission Bells will ring
The Chapel Choir will sing
The emaciated German ghost just sat there, confused by the whole situation, its ephemeral head turning slowly toward a staircase that led down to a cellar... Jason’s brow furrowed deeply, feeling compelled to move toward the staircase and see what was down below...
The happiness you will bring
Will live in my memory
Jason gingerly walked down the stairs, pulling out a flashlight and turning it on, pointing down the stairwell. As the stairs went further down, there seemed to be no more wood planks covering each of the steps, eventually just turning into, for lack of a better term, natural rock formations. A cavernous hole that just went further down stood in lieu of a door, though pointing the flashlight into it revealed nothing else but the floor right beneath it... The creaking of wood turned into the crunching of gravel on solid rock, the air around Jason suddenly becoming heavier and thicker. He slipped after the last step, sliding into a steep tunnel that shot straight down, Jason barely sliding down into the pitch-black tubes. The record still echoed down the tunnels as Jason’s clothing was torn up by the rocks he slid across, though he could barely make it out in the midst of the noise...
He saw light approaching at the end of the tunnel, though it was very faint, simply a lighter shade of gray in the surrounding absolute blackness. Spat out by the tunnel into the new depths, Jason tumbled across the rocks, his clothing being ripped as the skin on his arms was scraped off. He groaned in pain as he picked himself up, dusting himself off... After he wobbled up to his feet, he blinked a few times to absorb his surroundings... The entire area was littered with ancient, crumbling residential buildings, most of them made of hewn, hand-crafted stone. The windows were simply holes cut into the rock, strange glyphs carved into the walls. Jason wandered around the streets of the strange subterranean city when he heard the ringing of chains, followed by the sound of bones being cracked and flesh being rent. As Jason heard this, he turned around, staring at the creature with wide-eyed terror, his jaw dropping at what he saw...
The creature that stood before him looked like three human bodies, the skin the a cold, violet pallor fading to black as it went down to the legs... The arms seemed to blend into each other, forming a triangle between the three bodies that seemed to face inward, except for the faces. They turned outward, massive rips in the flesh around their necks where their heads turned around to address Jason. A massive length of chains wrapped around each of the three bodies’ legs, reaching out and beginning to glow a bright orange as though they’ve been heated in a forge. It began to speak, each head contributing one word to the sentence, each utterance sounding like a metal hammer slamming against a lead vault door...
“ONLY. THREE. ARE. ALLOWED. HERE. AT. ONCE. YOU. ARE. THE. FOURTH.”
The chains reach up, blazing hot as they lashed out toward Jason. He tried to scramble away, but his combined injuries and the fact that he was paralyzed with fear by the creature that just addressed him wouldn’t allow his legs to move. The white-hot chains flew in closer, the whole world around him went silent, the last thing he heard being the final verse of the song on the old record...
When the Swallows come back to Capistrano,
That’s the day I pray that you’ll come back to me...
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