The Cavern

by Alister Hodge

  He lifted his goggles, spat out his regulator and took a breath. Stale air, overladen with a thick stench of fishy decay made him gag. Although the shape of the floor provided some concealment of their bodies, their torch lights would have announced their arrival. There was no way he’d be able to fight while treading water against a creature holding the advantage of high ground. They needed to be out of the water before they were attacked.

  Needing both hands, Sam placed his spear gun on the edge, then hauled himself out, his feet scrabbling at the rock underwater to find purchase. Adrenaline leant him strength, and he was out of the water in seconds. He leant down, giving Ellie his forearm to grasp onto, then dragged her out roughly.

  A reptilian scream ripped through the air from behind, followed by a wet slap of something hitting the ground. There was a scrabbling of nails on rock, then silence. Sam snatched up his spear gun and spun about, his heart thumping like a war hammer against his ribs. Now with the advantage of height, he could finally see the rest of the cavern. Rectangular shaped, it was about twenty metres deep and half that in width. Along the back wall and right side were misshapen stalactites and stalagmites sprouting from the roof and floor. In the distal third there was a raised bed of rock shaped like an altar, and on it, Ellie’s brother. From his position, he could only see the man’s legs, the rest of him blocked from view by a large sac covered in a network of veins. As Sam’s torch swept over the structure, something large twisted inside, making the surface undulate and twist. His gorge rose afresh as he realised it was some type of egg sac.

  “Max!” screamed Ellie.

  Sam kicked off his fins so that he could walk and paced forward, spear gun clasped in both hands, a finger curled about the trigger as he searched the shadows for the source of the earlier scream. As he got to the edge of the rock bed, he was able to see past the egg sac between Max’s legs and his breath caught in his throat. His body was a wet mass of gore at both shoulders and abdomen. Loops of intestine hung off the table like wet cords of rope, and his face was a bloody mess, blood stained jelly oozing from empty sockets.

  Two empty sacs flopped against his chest from under each arm, and it took little imagination for Sam to realise he’d disturbed whatever had hatched during their birthday feast. He caught a flicker of movement in his peripheral vision as something darted for cover amongst the stalagmites to the right. He spun to track the creature with gun up, but lost it in the shadows.

  Sam closed the distance to Max, feeling for a pulse beneath the angle of his jaw and was rewarded by a thready pulse. Ellie was at his side now, tears streaming down her face as she saw the bloody ruin her brother had become.

  “Max, look what they’ve done to you,” she said, voice catching. At the sound of her voice, Max’s lips moved like he was trying to form words. She leaned closer.

  “You shouldn’t have come,” he whispered, face grimacing at the effort. “Run. While you still have a chance.”

  Ellie grabbed the limp fingers of his left hand, squeezing them hard. “No, I’m not leaving you again, not while…”

  Max’s body convulsed, a wet burp spattering flecks of blood from his lips, his teeth wet with scarlet. The remains of his eviscerated abdomen contracted again, and this time a gout of blood poured from his mouth and into his lungs. He coughed once, trying to clear his airway, then nothing but a wet gurgle as he exhaled one last time. Max’s features softened as Sam felt for a pulse at his neck. Nothing. He was dead.

  “No!” Ellie slumped forward, clasping his limp body as she sobbed.

  A faint popping sound came from the end of the table, and Sam flicked his gaze to the egg sac between Max’s legs in time to see the point of a talon emerge at the base. In horror, he watched the talon sweep upwards, slicing it open. Fluid gushed from the rent over Max’s groin and abdomen, thickening the air with a stench of rotten meat.

  “Ellie!”

  Sam grabbed her by the shoulder and yanked her off Max’s corpse, his eyes fixed on the sac. Thin black fingers emerged from the slit, two hands that grasped either side and tore the opening wider. A head shoved through the hole, black skin glistening with amniotic fluid. Bony arms reached out, talons sinking into the bloody entrails of Max’s abdomen to drag itself from the egg sac in entirety.

  Sam felt like he had a cold fist about his heart, terror squeezing it tight, disbelief at what he watched freezing his limbs from action. The creature that emerged onto Max’s body was the size of a dog, a serpent’s tail uncoiling behind. Its eyes were still squeezed shut as it sniffed the air. Suddenly it went stiff, tail that had been languidly moving held taught as a line. It angled its head and neck slowly in Sam and Ellie’s direction and sniffed again. Eyes flicked open, pupils contracting to slits in the torch glare. Lips peeled back from needle teeth as a high pitch growl vibrated its throat.

  The sound tore Sam from inertia, he whipped the spear gun up just as the beast screamed, jaws wide as it launched at his face. Sam reflexively jerked backward, squeezing the trigger at the same time. A thin steel spear whipped forward, straight through the open maw of the creature, barbed point bursting out the back of its skull. The force of the spear stopped it mid-flight, cartwheeling it backward to fall off the far side of the rock altar. Green blood sprayed, emitting a faint luminescence where it spattered into the shadows. It thrashed on the floor, hands clasping the spear, trying in vain to rip it back out as needle teeth crunched and fractured on the steel shaft.

  “Sam!” yelled Ellie. “To your right!”

  Sam turned to meet the next threat. Now that the one shaft of the spear gun was spent, he held it like a club. From behind a stalagmite, a second juvenile appeared. At first it was like night had taken form, shades of black moving on black within the shadows. From behind Sam’s shoulder, Ellie shot her one spear, the metal shaft whispering forward with promise of death. Sparks glinted off a rock as the steel tip missed the beast and ricocheted harmlessly away. It shied for a moment, then came forward again. Each step stiff and measured.

  As it emerged into the full beam of Sam’s torch, his gut clenched, hair rising on the nape of his neck. As a juvenile, it had yet to perfect the ability to camouflage. Instead of a full body transformation, it managed only its head, mimicking Ellie’s brother from the neck up. A hellish version of Max’s ravaged face stared back at him, elliptical pupils malevolently glared from under lacerated eyelids, needle-teeth poking from behind torn lips. At the neck, the illusion failed utterly, blending into jet-black skin. Walking on all fours it crept forward like a young lion on its first hunt, one foot at a time, gaze locked with Sam. When it was no more than five paces distant, it paused, eyes flicking between its dead sibling and Sam.

  “That’s right you little shit. You take me on, you’ll end up like your fucking brother.”

  At his voice, the creature turned its attention to Sam again, lips withdrawing in a snarl. One step, then another with increasing speed, and suddenly it was at full sprint. Time seemed to slow, the room getting brighter as adrenaline surged, dilated pupils soaking up all available light. Blood and oxygen flooded his muscles. Behind him, as if at the end of a tunnel, he vaguely noted Ellie scream, and then it was on him.

  Chapter Thirty

  Blood trickled from Jack’s mouth where he’d bitten his lip, and he tasted copper as he ran the tip of his tongue over his teeth. The beast wrenched on his wrist again, forcing it up behind his back, turning him to face the rockfall. His fractured wrist bones grated against each other, a sensation that turned his stomach.

  A familiar dull ache of angina spread through the left side of his chest, the demands he’d placed on his body finally too much for his aging heart. Not now, damn it! The chest pain sapped strength from his limbs and he found himself gasping for breath, vision greying at the edges.

  At the hole above the rock fall, the head of the Miner’s Mother emerged from the shadows. It had discarded Frida’s visage, skin returned to jet black, nostril slits flaring as she sniffed. The beast rega
rded the scene below as if revelling in the chaos created, eyes travelling over Mia’s unconscious form and up to the old barman. Jack stared back defiantly and as the monster met his eyes, he fancied it flinched slightly.

  “You remember me, don’t you?” he rasped, sagging back in the grip of the beast behind. “Was it your children Dean and I killed all those years ago?”

  The Miner’s Mother lunged a few steps forward and shrieked, saliva spattering the rocks below, rage gleaming in her eyes.

  “I’ll take that as a yes.” Jack uttered a short laugh, rough as sandpaper. “Good. The bastard things had it coming.”

  The beast behind him snarled, rancid breath gusting hot down the side of his neck. He could tell its patience was nearing an end. Either the matriarch would descend and finish him, or he was about to lose a chunk from his neck.

  “Finish this shit,” he grated. “I ain’t got all day.”

  “Neither do I.”

  Jack’s eyes widened in surprise at the voice, and he looked down to see Mia with her Glock in her hand, staring groggily at the beast holding him. Her aim wavered for a moment, then she pulled the trigger. Shooting from less than a metre’s distance, her round tore through the beast’s ankle in a welter of green blood. It shrieked with agony. The destroyed joint gave way and the beast collapsed to the ground, dragging Jack with it.

  With his injured wrist behind his back, there was little he could do to control the fall, and Jack nearly impaled himself on his own knife. After hitting the ground, he twisted and ripped his injured wrist out of its grasp, the broken bones tearing a bellow of pain from his lips as he levered himself around so he could fight back against his attacker. He was on top of the beast now, thighs straddling its waist.

  Mia fired again. This time she almost hit Jack, the bullet’s passage like an angry wasp past his left ear.

  “Jesus, Mia! Go for the other fucking one!” he grunted, and stabbed down with his left hand. The blade thumped into the creature’s chest to the hilt as it writhed beneath him. Jack stabbed again, then once more. Each time, twisting the blade as he withdrew, spattering luminescent green blood down his front and over his face, turning the rocks around into an abattoir.

  Gradually the beast fell still under him and the old barman collapsed to the ground beside it, breathing hard. The ache in his chest had increased, and now felt like he had an anvil crushing the life out of him.

  Vaguely he could hear Mia call his name. Jack tried to answer, but found his lips wouldn’t form the words. He was tired, just so tired from a lifetime of fighting. And so, for the first time in his life, he decided to surrender.

  Chapter Thirty-One

  The beast smashed into Sam’s chest, knocking him to the ground. He landed awkwardly with the tank still mounted behind his back. Sam gaped like a fish, winded badly as the creature snapped at him from above. He’d managed to get the body of the spear gun in front of its neck, providing enough leverage to keep the beast’s teeth a hand’s breadth above his nose. It screamed, a high-pitched screech that pierced his brain like a migraine, and lunged again. This time he only just managed to keep it off, its fangs scoring a burning line across his cheek and snipping a chunk out of his nose. It kicked with its hind legs, claws at the tip of each toe tearing deep holes in the lower half of his wet suit.

  Sam drove a knee up into its hips, but the tissue deformed like rubber where bones should have been. It lunged again, and Sam knew he wouldn’t be able to hold it off much longer. Something hot and salty sprayed into his open mouth and the creature jerked in his grip. A tip of a dive knife appeared like magic, poking through the beast’s neck just above him. The blade twisted in the wound causing more blood to pour, then Ellie withdrew it before stabbing it in again and again, screaming a wordless battle cry. Sam felt the beast finally weaken in his grip and he managed to kick it off, the body flopping to the ground beside him.

  With Ellie’s help, he got back to his knees, breathing hard as he searched the shadows on the back wall for the other juvenile beast.

  “Do you see any more of them?” His nose stung fiercely, and as he touched a finger to it, realised that the entire left nostril was missing.

  “There’s three empty sacs. Shit, there must be another one.” Her voice tight, on the verge of panic.

  Sam swore as Ellie started to frantically draw back in the cord attaching the spear to her gun. What he needed was one of the Glock pistols, not an ungainly spear gun that took forever to reload. Sam had reached across the stone slab to try and remove the barb from the first creature’s head when he saw it. What had initially passed as shadow cast by the stone slab, came to life. A handful of talons swiped up at him from next to his first kill. Sam jerked back just in time, the claws missing his eyes by an inch. But instead of pressing home its advantage in surprise, the beast ran to the end of the chamber and dived into the water.

  Sam swore in frustration, dreading the thought of diving into the same passage that the beast had just taken. He quickly searched the rest of the room, shining his torch behind each stalagmite to ensure there were no more surprises.

  “That’s it, we’re on our own.”

  Ellie didn’t appear to hear him. Now that the beasts were gone, she had returned to her brother’s side, one hand stroking a cheek of his ravaged face.

  “We shouldn’t have gone back to town, Sam. Maybe if we’d returned as soon as we had the Nitrox, I could have reached him in time.” She looked up at him, grief carving her face in stark lines of sorrow. “They fucking ate him alive.”

  Sam didn’t know what to say, could see that she was on the verge of breaking down. And who could blame her after what had just happened? “He got to hear your voice, babe. He knew we didn’t give up on him.”

  Ellie turned to Sam and buried her head into his chest, an awkward hug with both still wearing their dive harnesses. “Thank you for coming. For trying.”

  Sam felt his chest swell at her words and he leant down and kissed her.

  “I need to do as your brother asked, and get you out of here while we have the chance.”

  Ellie stared at her brother, tears coming afresh. “I wish I could at least bring his body home. But that tunnel, there was barely room for one person, let alone three people to swim side by side.”

  Sam looked back over at the circle of water, wondering if the juvenile was waiting for them within the tunnel, or if it had truly fled and given up the hunt. Unfortunately, there was only one way to find out. A sharp pain from his thigh drew his attention. He fingered a hole in his wet suit caused by the beast’s talon, which extended through the material, down to a shallow wound. Without the suit, it would have been deeper, and he was thankful he hadn’t sustained a femoral artery laceration.

  Ellie gave her brother one last kiss, then joined him in a systematic review of their equipment, checking for damage to hoses and anything that might possibly be repaired before entering the water.

  Finally, there was nothing to do, but dive. Sam sat at the edge of the water, spear gun in hand. It was reloaded, the barb smeared with a mix of green blood and brain matter. He swung his flippered feet over the lip and shoved off, dropping into oily depths. Sam shivered as he tread water, waiting for Ellie to join him. He gave a last look about the chamber, then lowered his mask, bit down on the regulator and dived.

  On the swim back, Sam took the lead. Quickly, the tunnel narrowed once again until he could touch either side with outstretched hands. Straight down, smooth grey limestone all around. A glance behind showed Ellie close on his heels. He winced as his eardrums popped, and then he reached the deepest point and started to swim upwards again.

  The tunnel was starting to widen again as it approached the fork when a streak of black shot past him, crocodilian tail powering the juvenile beast at enormous speed. The tail flicked against Sam’s head, cracking his skull against the tunnel wall. Stars burst behind his eyes, the blow leaving him partially stunned, limbs weakened as he tried to turn and follow its movement. I
t smashed into Ellie, her head torch silhouetting the creature as it hit. Her spear gun cartwheeled out of her hands, disappearing into the depths below. Sam could see her eyes wide behind her mask, screaming terror through the regulator in a torrent of bubbles. The beast had her by a shoulder, tail wrapped around her thighs. It worried at the material of her suit, trying to reach the flesh beneath. With her legs immobilised, Ellie was unable to swim, and with the added weight of the juvenile Miner’s Mother, she began to sink.

  After the blow to his head, Sam was struggling to see straight and coordinate his limbs, and with the narrow confines of the tunnel, he was unable to turn and chase. His only chance was to shoot and hopefully skewer the creature before it passed out of range. He aimed his spear gun, having to shoot straight down past his flippers. The sinking image blurred in and out of focus as he strained his eyes, knowing that he risked killing his girlfriend if he missed. He squeezed the trigger and sent the shaft streaking below. The spear stabbed into the beast’s leg and it spasmed away from Ellie, releasing her momentarily. The Miner’s Mother gripped the shaft and wrenched on it, tearing the barb back out. Luminescent green blood sprayed into the water lighting the tunnel in a sickly glow. Free of the spear, it climbed behind Ellie, onto her back and behind the tank so that her body shielded it from Sam. It reached a taloned finger around her throat and dug the razor tip into the skin, just below her ear.

  ‘No!’ He’d had one shot, and blown it.

  Her regulator dropped from her mouth as she screamed, a torrent of bubbles emerging. The beast dug the talon deeper, then ripped it across her neck, slicing through great vessels and trachea, opening a gory smile that spurted Ellie’s life into the icy water.

  Sam stared in horror, watching as consciousness slipped from her eyes. The creature ripped the torch off her head and crushed the bulb against the tunnel’s wall, extinguishing the light, then gripped her carcass by the heel and dived deeper. Within moments, she was taken further than his torch beam could penetrate.