The first thing Dahlia did was turn right. Before she looked, before she thought, she turned. Then she ran. It was very dark. She could sense the cold walls on either side of her. She reached out her left hand and let it glide along the wall. Stone. Soon she felt a door handle and grabbed it, jerking herself to a stop and jerking open the door, she went through and somehow didn't fall when it turned out to be a stairway down, just as dark.
She listened to the tiny echoes of her footsteps. The voice had said something more complex than "Get out." It was simultaneously saying, "Come here," and not only that but it had given her directions. All in the space of two syllables.
When the stairs ended she found herself in another hallway. She slowed her pace to a brisk walk and her eyes slowly adjusted to the dim light, which came from occassional low-wattage bulbs hanging from the ceiling. Sometimes the hallway would branch in several directions, but the pain in her hands would not let her stop and think about choices. Instead, she just kept going. On her right she saw a stone coffin and, carved above it, the statue of a supine businessman in an Italian suit. She saw another one, and another.
Eventually the hallway started to shrink, growing steadily smaller and darker until finally she was hunched over, her hands on a small metal door that flaked with rust. She found a big heavy handle and turned it until she heard something either click or break, but the door would not open. So she kicked it, a sideways kick that she learned from a self-defense infomercial. She didn't know that she had learned it, she thought that she had just watched it. In fact, she really hadn't learned it until just that moment, when she looked at her memory of the kick and figured out how it was done.
The door slammed open with its old hinges screaming. It opened on more darkness, which she entered. The floor was irregular and she could hear the chirping and splashing of rats. One step forward and she realized she was balancing on a slat of wood. Before she ventured another step, she felt a vibration which slowly expanded into a sound. it was like a moan, or a deep purr. She turned to the left, which was the direction she knew she had to go, but the sound had transfixed her. Then a wall up ahead was suddenly lit up, followed by the appearance of two lights. The sound was getting louder. The lights were getting bigger.
"It's coming right at me," she thought. "It's so big."
But she had to go in that direction. She was amazed at how loud it was getting, in defiance of the silence in the catacombs. How loud can something be? How big? How powerful?
"God," she thought.