The Cavern

by Alister Hodge

  Talons pierced the skin of her ankle as the beast grabbed hold. She looked backwards, screaming and kicking out desperately with her remaining leg. The heel of her boot skidded across the monster’s face, momentarily rocking it backward. It shot out another hand, bony fingers locking an unforgiving brace about the other ankle to restrain her.

  She was trapped. Frida trembled, nose running with snot, breath coming in short sobs as the creature ripped a coverall leg up to knee height, exposing the swell of calf muscle. It opened its jaw, a seemingly impossible number of razor teeth on display before it savaged her leg. With a savage jerk, it tore a chunk of muscle away, spattering blood on the rocks surrounding.

  Frida gasped in horror as the agony hit. She convulsively sucked in a breath and screamed. The beast ignored her, gulping down the tissue without chewing before tearing out another mouthful. It crawled backward, then wrenched on her ankle. She clung to the rock floor in desperation, fingernails splintering as it dragged her back out of the squeeze and into the wider tunnel near the cavern.

  Now that it had more room, the beast began to feed in earnest.

  Chapter Nineteen

  Aaron opened one eye, the other glued shut with clotted blood. A spike of white-hot agony burned behind his forehead, making nausea rise in a hot wave. He went to sit up, but found he couldn’t use his hands. Pain throbbed in time with his heart, each beat a knife point behind his fractured skull. Glancing down in confusion, Aaron saw his shirt soaked in crimson, wrists zip-tied together and ankles bound with duct tape. He was on his side in the dirt, within arm’s reach of the sink hole, trussed like a beast for slaughter.

  Fear clawed at his gut, panic a hair’s breadth away. Aaron turned his head, madly trying to work out where his attacker had gone. He heard a car door slam, then a pair of old Blundstone boots came into view, scuffing a puff of red dust into his face.

  “Better if you’d slept through the next part.”

  Aaron glanced up, squinting into the bright light that backlit her skull. An open duffle bag stuffed with something hung off one shoulder, while in her opposite hand, she held a pocket knife in a relaxed grip, blade open. Her jaw was clenched, eyes hard.

  Aaron instinctively shuffled back from the knife, but could only go so far as he sensed the drop behind his back. His mouth was gummed up and dry, breath coming in fast short gasps. “What the hell’s going on? Why are you doing this?”

  Kaz’s face contorted, like she had a foul taste in her mouth. “You think I want to do this? I don’t have a fucking choice! The Mother has to be fed, and you’re it.”

  Aaron’s mind reeled, trying to get a grip on any sort of logic to her words. “You’re not making any sense. What mother?”

  Kaz ignored the question this time. “Get on your stomach.”

  “Why…”

  Her boot stabbed out in a vicious kick, crunched into the side of his mouth. “Stop asking questions.”

  Aaron spat blood and fragments of teeth onto the ground. He explored the mess with his tongue, finding half his molars snapped at the gum line. His jaw wouldn’t move properly, broken to match his teeth. Pain from his ruined mouth challenged an ugly contest with the agony of his skull.

  He glared at his tormentor as she lowered the duffle back to the ground. Kaz shoved him over to lie belly down, then knelt onto the back of his thighs to keep him still. Leaving the duct tape around his feet and ankle in place, she ripped his pant legs up, exposing the back of his lower legs. She raised the knife, then stabbed down into his left calf burying the short blade completely. Aaron’s eyes bulged as she ripped it through the belly of the muscle. Blood poured from the wound, pulsing from severed vessels. His scream emerged as a mangled groan through his broken teeth.

  “I need more blood to attract her in quickly.”

  From the corner of his eye, Aaron saw her raise the knife again over his other leg. Before she could bring it down, he bucked hard, throwing Kaz off. Something was stuck on one foot, he glanced down and saw a handle of Kaz’s duffle bag caught about his ankle. Aaron kicked out, sending the bag over the lip of the shaft before lurching up to his knees. The council woman’s mouth dropped open in horror at seeing her bag disappear into the cave, then she launched at him, blade aimed in a downward strike at the angle of his neck and shoulder. Aaron caught her wrist between his hands, stopping the point of the knife within millimetres of his carotid artery.

  Kaz drove down upon the knife with all her body weight, teeth grinding together as she growled with effort. Aaron could feel her winning. Knuckles showed white as he held on to her wrist. His right shoulder hung out over the void, and he felt the dirt at the edge crumbling. He wouldn’t last much longer. His strength pulsed out of his torn calf with every heartbeat, leaving him weak and light headed.

  One more effort.

  Aaron shoved up with all his strength, a war-cry of anger and confusion blasting from his lips as he forced the knife away from his neck. To dislodge her position, he kicked clumsily with his bound ankles, connecting with one of her boots. The knife stabbed into air above Aaron’s shoulder and she lost balance, screaming as she began to fall into the shaft. She dropped the knife and grabbed on to Aaron in a last attempt to save herself.

  Aaron felt himself begin to slide, half his back now over the edge. He desperately tried to dislodge her, but Kaz had one arm linked behind the ties at his wrist. The heel of his boots dug deep furrows in the earth in a last ditch effort to halt the slide. Suddenly both of them were falling.

  Aaron screamed as the rocks below sped up to meet them.

  ***

  Kaz stretched out her hand for the bag’s handle, fingers trembling as they just fell short. She bit her lip hard enough to pierce the surface, blood trickling down her chin like crimson drool. The sharp pain focused her mind. Just one more effort, one more push.

  She looked down at her useless legs, the left thigh bent unnaturally where a bloody shard of femur poked through her jeans. The right leg was little better, the bones of her ankle smashed so badly that the joint might as well have been made out of jelly. Kaz had landed feet first, the impact destroying her legs, but sparing her brain and neck. She had already dragged her mangled body three metres across the rubble strewn base, dirt clogging her wounds and mixing with her blood to form a gritty red paste.

  Lying on her back, she shoved the heels of her hands into the ground and levered herself back yet again. Her head swam at the agony from her legs, her vision greying at the edges, nausea climbing up the back of her throat. She breathed hard, waiting for the wave of pain to lessen, then threw out her hand once again. This time she felt the woven cotton of the bag handle in her palm. Kaz closed fingers about it, and dragged the bag near, taking satisfaction that at least part of her plan was about to go right.

  She glanced over at the unconscious caver. He lay sprawled, back arched over a boulder with his spine as smashed as her legs, blood steadily dripping from his calf into the dirt. Kaz never thought a city boy like him would have fought back, and now wished that she’d simply shot him instead.

  Her head jerked at a sound. A series of clicks sounded faintly from the tunnel entrance to her right. She was still at a distance, but it wouldn’t be long before the Miner’s Mother arrived to collect her offering. Kaz had wanted to give the creature a chance to take Aaron’s body before blowing up the shaft and sealing the access point for good. She’d sliced open his calf to ensure a blood stench would permeate the tunnel air and draw her in quickly. Kaz just hadn’t planned on being part of the main course.

  There wasn’t much time. She unzipped the duffle bag and extracted the explosive and detonator, her hands trembling, breath coming fast. The ten sticks of gelignite were wrapped with electrical tape into one big bundle. She fit the fuse into the end of the detonator, then gently poked it into the soft explosive. It was now ready to explode.

  Kaz picked up a rock and threw it at the caver. Her aim was true, the chip of limestone opening a fresh gash on Aaron’s cheek
. If she was going to die, she wanted the bastard who’d tipped her into the shaft to experience the end as well. His eyelids flickered open, consciousness returning.

  “I’m over here, you bastard.” Her voice sounded odd, tongue dry and tacky within her mouth.

  Aaron’s gaze flicked across to her, eyes suddenly wide and panicked. “I can’t move anything, can’t feel my arms or legs!”

  Kaz snorted a humourless laugh. “Welcome to quadriplegia. Think of it as payment for these,” she said with a gesture to her mangled legs.

  Clicks sounded again from the tunnel. They’d been louder that time. Time to finish it. Part of her felt a certain calm satisfaction, knowing that her accident would ensure the beast would be properly sealed in. Where she would have allowed a mine entrance to stay open so that she could occasionally visit the image of little Archie, Kaz knew that Trevor would ensure the remaining mine entrances were properly capped. With her death would come an end to the monstrosity that had fed on her town for decades.

  She pulled the bundle of gelignite onto her lap along with an electrical box that would set off the detonator, finger poised over the ignition button.

  “Any last words?”

  No reply.

  A glance over at the caver found that he’d lapsed unconscious again.

  “Looks like I’m doing it on my own again,” she muttered. Kaz took a shuddering breath, and pressed the ignition button.

  Chapter Twenty

  Sam glided forward, using only the smallest of flipper kicks and finger holds on the rock wall to his side. The silt bottom of the initial cavern had changed, replaced with smooth limestone the further they went. The water was perfectly clear, enabling him to see as far as his torch could penetrate. Sam glanced over his shoulder, back at Ellie who gave him an okay sign that he returned.

  As he made the hand sign, he realised he wasn’t lying. The anxiety he’d felt about the dive was absent. Now that he was submerged deep underground, he felt that he’d stepped over a threshold. There no longer seemed a point to worrying. If something was to go wrong, it was out of his hands. At the thought, he suddenly felt lighter, and with his mind unencumbered by anxiety, he was free to admire the stark beauty of the underwater cave.

  The group swam along a horizontal passage. If Sam had been standing, it would have been twice his height and the same in width. Grey stone undulated to each side, slick to the touch. Sam proceeded along the tunnel, his breathing slow, finding the steady repetition of movement strangely calming. Suddenly he bumped into Max’s tank, the thin wetsuit material of his hood providing scant cushioning for his skull. He pulled up in time to catch Max’s irritated glance at the contact.

  The floor of the tunnel abruptly dropped away, disappearing to inky depths that consumed the light of their torches. Max and Sam swam forward a few metres so that Ellie could emerge. Sam glanced at his depth gauge, seeing that they had only descended fifteen metres since beginning the dive. That meant the surface couldn’t be far above if this chamber held an air pocket. The three friends hung in space, their torches cutting through the water which in the larger chamber had a slight blueish tinge.

  Something thin and sinuous caught Sam’s peripheral vision, making his heart stutter in surprise. He flicked his head to the side and dragged his torch around, trying to track the movement. All he caught was the suggestion of a tail, like that of a large eel disappearing into the darkness. A shiver of revulsion ran up his spine. He’d caught plenty of eels when he was a kid. Great fun while they fought on the line, but getting them off the hook was a whole other matter. Their bodies were coated in a thick layer of mucous that made them difficult to hold, and then there was the teeth. Sharp spikes that threatened to take your finger tip if you got too close. Small eels he could handle, but the size of the tail he’d just seen looked like it belonged to a monster. He had no desire for it to mistake his fingers for something edible.

  Max swam onwards maintaining neutral buoyancy. Sam glanced down one last time into the depths, searching for another glimpse of the eel before following. Ellie brought up the rear, her reel of string unspooling behind. Within a few minutes, they reached the other side of the chamber. Max scanned the rockface, his torch tracking back and forth over it in imagined gridlines until he spotted an opening a further ten metres down.

  Ellie and Sam maintained their position while Max swam down to check it out, the front half of his body sticking into a mouth-like hole before returning. He touched his sister on the shoulder to get her attention, then using dive sign language, gave a thumbs up signal before touching one finger to the side of his forehead. Sam recognised the signals to ascend to the surface and think. Max must want to have a discussion before continuing into the passage he’d found.

  The trio swam upwards, heads breaching the surface moments later. Sam spat out his regulator and inhaled a lungful, the air musty on the back of his tongue. At the water’s edge there was a shelf of rock, just wide enough for one person to stand. From this, the rock soared vertically for another forty or so metres. Sam spotted a few other small passages leading off from it, but too high for access from their location. He’d have to climb like a spider to reach them up the sheer limestone walls, especially with wet hands after leaving the water.

  “What did you see?” asked Ellie. “Was that tunnel wide enough, or will we have to turn around?”

  Max glanced down in the direction of the passage, obviously still considering his recommendation. “There’s an issue with the entrance. It’s narrow, only enough room for a torso to pass. After that it appears to widen, but for how long is anyone’s guess. We’d be stuck taking off our tanks and passing them through separately.” He paused, running a hand over his face before flicking off the drops of water. “One slip and we’d lose a tank into the depths. It’d be risky.”

  “Yeah, too risky,” muttered Ellie. Obviously frustrated, she slapped the surface of the water with an open palm.

  “We could swim down further, scout for another exit point,” suggested Max.

  Ellie shook her head. “No, the passage you found was already at our depth limit. If we need to ascend quickly for any reason, I don’t want us getting the bends.”

  “So we turn back?”

  “I don’t think we have a choice. The police are probably topside now anyway,” she said.

  As he treaded water, Sam scanned the water below with his torch. “Hey, did you guys see that eel before? I only saw the back of it, but it looked like a monster.”

  Ellie pulled a face at him. “That’s impossible. We’re well over a hundred metres underground, there’s not going to be any eels in here.”

  “The water course might be connected to a river or lake?”

  “But there aren’t any nearby.”

  Sam could tell she still wasn’t taking him seriously.

  “Ah, guys, we have company.” Max pointed past her with his torch, his face a tone paler than it had been a moment before.

  Twenty odd metres away, a snake like head stuck above the water. Jet black, it regarded them with cold curiosity. It opened its mouth, exposing circular rings of rear-curving fangs inside, a forked green tongue flicking out to taste the air. Sam’s breath caught in the back of his throat, his mouth suddenly dry.

  “That’s not a fucking eel,” said Ellie, a slight shake to her voice.

  The water behind the creature swirled as it began to swim toward them.

  “Max, can you help Ellie onto that ledge?”

  Splashing water and slaps of plastic on rock told him that Ellie had climbed out of the water. Sam kept his eyes on the creature as he pulled his dive knife out of the sheath at his waist. The blade felt small, a child’s toy in the face of the serpent cutting through the water toward him. Adrenaline surged, causing his heart to race, smashing against his chest wall with every beat. Colours suddenly seemed more acute, the water brighter as his pupils dilated. Pressure at his left shoulder alerted him to Max joining his guard. A quick glance to the side showed
that he also had his own knife in hand.

  “Shit, it’s going under,” said Max.

  Ellie trained her torch on the serpent as it dove down ten metres. Under the glare of her light, Sam saw it was about six foot in length and as thick as a child’s thigh. A thin dorsal ridge of fin down the length of its body, while the end of the tail finished in a flat paddle like that of a sea snake.

  “Maybe it’s going away?”

  Sam groaned as he watched. Ellie had spoken too soon. The serpent whipped around in a tight curve, the muscular length turning on a dime, and suddenly it was charging up at them.

  There was no time to think. Forgetting about his regulator, Sam ducked under the water, knife held ahead, tip forward. The serpent had its mouth open, lips retracted to expose rings of fangs like a shark closing to bite. Sam slashed at its head, trying to score a gash, but it swerved aside at the last possible moment. Max stabbed outward, his blade punching a hole in the serpent’s side. Green liquid spurted into the water and the serpent spasmed, twisting itself in knots of agony just out of reach.

  “I got the bastard,” said Max panting. “Jesus, why the hell is its blood that colour?”

  Sam didn’t waste time answering. The creature had finished its contractions of agony and it was coming back for them again. It didn’t bother diving this time, surging straight across the surface, churning the water with muscular whips of its tail.

  Ellie shoved one of her fins into Sam’s free hand as something to fend it off with. He shoved the end of the fin deep into its jaws, and the rear curved fangs sank into the tough rubber. Sam hung onto the fin as it began to whip its head from side to side, trying to free its teeth.

  “Get it, Max! Quick, before it gets its teeth free!” shouted Sam.

  Max lunged forward and sawed at the soft skin below the serpent’s neck with his knife. Green blood flooded into the water, creating an inky cloud. Water boiled behind him, thrashed into white wash by the serpent’s tail. Ellie’s brother grunted as he continued to saw, green fluid splashed over his face, running through eyes wide with fear. The muscular contractions began to lessen as Max increased his efforts, the movement of his arm frenzied.