there sound at present is still distant, but I know deep down it will become a lot louder and clearer as time goes by. I still can't be sure exactly as to what there telling me.
At least I'm not cold down here like I was in the cave. It seems warm here. Warm and dry in the dark black muck that clings to my flesh, covering me in a coat of its filth. It makes me warm and cozy, the same feeling I used to get once in my previous home when tucked up in bed on a cold winter’s night.
My torch is beginning to fail now, and as the blackness will be the last thing I will ever see in this old body. I will not be scarred. I still have my dead friends for company and the voices to keep me sane.
The voices are calling me now. Calling me M ... Mer ... Merv ... Mervin.
..................................................................
Greg looked down in amazement at the text he had just read. Adam had always seemed a level headed guy and never prone to going off the rails when times looked grim. Even then this was still no explanation for the madman`s writing in the diary, unless poor old Adam's mind had somehow snapped. Stranger things had happened, not least what once happened to him last year. Still he had nothing else to go on and seeing how the diary was half buried in mud he decided to dig down, just in case further belongings from the three lost men had become submerged in the wet mud.
He took from out of his pack a small hand axe that he kept in case he came across any dry wood that would be useful for building a fire with while out on a camping expeditions such as this. Using the sharp blade he began to scrape down into the mud. He started his dig at the place where he had discovered the diary, it proved hard work with the mud’s solidity more than he had first imagined. After ten minutes of digging in this manner, sweat and grime covered his face and hands as he made a hole three feet wide and nearly two feet deep.
It looked as though that he was not going to find anything else and he decided to give it another couple of minutes before giving up and climbing out of the pit to continue his search of the cave.
Then the blade of the axe struck something hard. Reaching down his fingers grasped what felt to be a hard smooth stick. He pulled hard, yanking out a long, thin object from out of the mud. Wiping off the mud that stuck to it he looked down in some horror as it suddenly hit him as to what he held. A large brown leg-bone, obviously human, sat neatly in the palm of his hand. He threw the bone to one side in disgust; this was the last thing he'd expected to find.
Then giving more thought to his find and recovering from the initial shock, he examined the bone more closely. From the bones state of appearance it was obvious to him that it had been in the ground for quite some time, dismissing his first thought that the bone might have belonged to one of his friends and that there was some truth in Adam's writing. These thoughts where cast once more to the back of his mind as he continued the dig. With the bone being so old and from a human, he surmised that he had possibly stumbled across a burial mound from the men who had first lived within this cave. This could mean that beneath the soil and mud, treasure from a lost tribe could be hidden and if he persisted a little longer, he'd end up being the fortunate one who due to the odd circumstances he now found himself in had by bizarre luck stumbled across great wealth. He decided that this was too good an opportunity to miss and spending one more hour would not jeopardize his chances of finding his friends. Not too much anyway!
After twenty minutes of scraping away in the dirt he did not find any treasure, though he did find signs of old half rotted away clothing, a digital watch that had practically rusted away and two plastic pink bracelets with small red flowers painted upon them that looked like they belonged on some teenage girls arm.
Also he found more bones. Lots and lots of them. Some of these bones did not look as old as the first he had found. Some still even possessing a sheen of whiteness.
A mixed group of browned dirty bones now lay, piled to one side of him and comprising of every type that the human body held within its meat encrusted sack. They included various leg, arm and rib bones and four grinning sculls of various age and size.
Certain things now troubled him. It was clear that the bodies within the pit where not all from an age old tribe, centuries old as he had first assumed. Also some of the bones he had noticed had what looked to be teeth marks upon them, as though they'd been chewed. If this was indeed the case though, it would take a skilled eye from a paleontologist to distinguish whether or not the teeth marks where from an animal other than human.
Thoughts of murderers and psychopaths sprang into his head and he became a little freaked out as he now began to worry not only for his friend’s safety, but for his own as well. And what he uncovered next nearly made him pass out as the blade of the axe scraped away a large section of mud revealing a cold dead foot.
Greg staggered back in horror, old bones where one thing but a freshly dead foot showing no sign of decay was another. It poked out of the mud like some hideous plant grown in hells horrid gardens. Forcing himself to look, Greg noticed that the leg vanished into the mud suggesting that there may well be a body connected to it. Closer inspection caused his bowls to groan in disbelief as the small part of the leg that also peeped out of the mud bore trouser legging around the ankle. The material was made out of a red and black chequered pattern, the same type that Phil had been wearing.
Without even thinking what he was doing, Greg reached down with both hands and seized the cold dead ankle. Then, with a mighty pull he tried to rip the corpse of his friend from its grave.
He struggled hopelessly as the mud refused to give up its grip and only managed to extract three quarters of the leg. As he pulled at the leg and without any warning he suddenly felt the hold that the mud had on the body break completely and slowly he pulled the corpse from out of the ground. He remembered thinking that there should have been no way possible that he could have achieved this feat. It was as if someone below the mud had given him a hand and while he pulled it felt as though a pair of invisible hands had pushed up from beneath.
With one last huge heave the dead body of Phil shot from the hole like a bullet from a gun. Greg cried out in terror as his first thought said to him that the undead Phil had jumped out at him and was greatly pissed off at being dug from his grave in such a manner. But then Phil flopped face down into the mud, clearly dead.
The sight of his friend lying dead proved too much for Greg and instead of looking at the corpse he turned his head away in terror and looked into the hole where Phil had been exhumed from. Unfortunately for him what lay in the hole was just as bad as now he looked straight into the dead eyes of Ted, who's body must have lain beneath Phil’s.
Greg stood in shock, his eyes magnetized to the horror at his feet, flicking from one corpse to the other, while the bodies eyes just stared their deathly stares straight upwards into the thick cold blackness. Finally he forced himself to turn, tearing his eyes away from the grisly sight. He collapsed down onto a heap of piled up soil that he had made from all the digging he'd done.
For some time he just sat on that pile of mud, his head in his hands as hot tears streamed down his face. The thing that made it even worse was not only where Phil and Ted dead but whoever had murdered his two comrades had also taken large chunks out of them. Large chunks, that to Greg looked like bites.
"Bites", thought Greg as he remembered what he had read in Adam's diary. "The bastard", he said out loud as realization hit him like a sledge-hammer. He must, he...THE BASTARD", he screamed as he began to rise to his feet in anger, but as he did he was stopped half way as something beneath him grabbed the backside of his trousers and pulled him back down into his sitting position.
He tried again to rise to his feet but whatever was holding onto his pants had a very firm grip and he struggled in vain. Then pushing with all the strength left in his legs he began to rise up, as he did he looked behind him and saw a muck covered arm with an
equally muck covered hand on the end of it that held tightly onto the seat of his trousers. Greg heaved and pulled himself forward, letting out a cry from the exertion as his legs began to buckle beneath him.
Finally he felt the grip of the hand let go and he stumbled forwards, slamming into the stone wall of the pit. Luckily he only suffered two slight bumps to each of his elbows as his arms had come up to protect his head from being cracked against the hard stone.
He turned around quickly to face whatever might be behind him. Fortunately he had held onto his torch and he brought it up to the spot where he'd been.
The large pile of soil he had been sitting on still remained, though its top had burst open like a freshly cracked egg, whatever had been inside it had sprang out. Near the base of the large pile, another pile, though far smaller in size lay that previously had never been there. As he shone his torch directly onto the new pile he watched in amazement as the muck that formed it seemed to grow and change in shape. Within a matter of moments, a fat bellied man covered from head to foot in mud stood in front of him.
Greg pointed a shaky outstretched finger at the two dead bodies. "You, you did this", he said in a voice that shook even worse that his finger.
The mudman slowly nodded then gave a wide grin, exposing teeth that ran with thick red blood.
At this, the terror that Greg was feeling was replaced with the hot-headed anger that had but moments before filled him. With the killer mocking and enjoying the fact that he visibly shook with panic, Greg rolled to his right and came to his feet in the position where he had left his axe.
Seizing it in one hand he again faced the mudman. Shaking the axe angrily at it, he cried: "Come on. Come on then you...YOU SLAG".
At this the mudman's grin was replaced with a wide opened mouth as it began to howl and whoop with laughter. The laughter reverberated in the pit, sounding evil and insane but Greg remained unaffected and he charged forward, aiming a hefty blow at the creatures head.
The blow swept through thin air as the mud covered thing moved with unnatural speed that no human could attain, a strange movement, too fast for the human eye to follow jerked it out of the blades path. The speed made it a blur to Greg and as he raised his arm for another strike he felt teeth bite into his right forearm, making him drop the axe in pain.
A horrible tearing sound followed as the mudman ripped a large piece of flesh from his arm. Greg grimaced, then swung his left hand that still held the torch at the things head, in hope of catching it with the hard long handle.
Again his swipe met thin air as the mudman vanished behind him, it moved so fast that Greg actually heard a whoosh sound pass his ear. Then two hands where against his back and he felt his feet leave the ground as the strong hands pushed him forward.
His torch slipped from his grip and he fell forward into darkness, his head making a dull thud as it cracked onto something hard and cold (though fortunately not hard or cold enough to be the stone walls of the pit that encircled him) and although it hurt like hell, he remained conscious.
The torch had fallen near his right side, the head landing in the mud, illuminating a small patch of dirt around it. It was the only thing that remained visible as the blackness cloaked everything, including his attacker from sight. It would have been easy for him to simply reach out a hand and pick the torch back up. However the panic and terror he had felt before again re-entered into his system as the mad laughter rang around in the darkness, incapacitating
Mervin Badman Page 6