Bottom Feeder

by Matt Cole

  * * * *

  Frantic, his heart pounding, Gary Chapel left Mike Leopold and the rest of the team and ran back into the nearest sinkhole opened tunnel, after arming himself, of course. They had decided that he would serve as a decoy to lure the creature out into the open where Leopold and the rest of the team would ambush it with the hopes of killing it. It wasn’t the best plan, they had also agreed, but things were becoming desperate with the town slowly being swallowed by sinkholes.

  Just before running back into the tunnel Chapel had made a plea to his boss—the sheriff—in hopes of getting her on board with what was really happening. He punched out the numbers of Sheriff Lindsey Hill’s cell phone. He was anxious to get back down underground to find Deena Hopping and to confront the monster again.

  “Come on, come on,” he muttered.

  His call was sent straight to voicemail.

  “Fuck!” He left a panicked and quick message: “This is Detective Gary Chapel. Call me! I know this is going to sound absolutely insane but hear me out. I have found the true kidnapper and killer of all of these people. It is a monster—an honest to God monster straight from the depths of hell. Believe it or not—it no longer matters. I’m going down underground to lure it out and hopefully put an end to this once and for all. I don’t want to die but if I do know that the beast killed me. Sheriff—um—Lindsey please heed my warning and believe in me. There truly is a monster under Strafford and it is killing our citizens and destroying the town. If I should fail, you must stop it.”

  Mike Leopold, that old nutcase, watched as Chapel spilled the beans. But he wasn’t the culprit; he wasn’t the one who had to fear the damned monster’s wrath. It was Chapel who was going back down to face it.

  Hard to believe. Things had changed so suddenly and radically.

  Frank Marsden was a human monster—a depraved soul who preyed upon women and did horrible crimes against them. He was also a killer. This was all true; however, he wasn’t responsible for the majority of the killings or disappearances in the town.

  “Right under our goddamned nose,” he said, cutting a glance at his reflection in the rearview mirror of his car. His jaw set, his eyes dark as obsidian, the corners of his mouth pinched in disgust and anguish. He knew what he needed to do.

  It was now time to end this. He was going to face the monster and kill it or be killed.

  Chapter 40

  Deena was lost. The various passages were by no means alike or even similar; some having been opened by the action of water assisted only by acid carried in solution; while others are the unmistakable crevices of earthquake origin, afterwards enlarged, or perhaps only remodeled, as we might say, by the water’s untiring energy in changing the position of rock masses without obliterating evidences of original design.

  There opens out a kind of alcove, an extension, and spreading out from this is the corridor, a room about one hundred and twenty-five feet long and seventy-five feet in width, with a low, narrow passage, or crawl, leading from the northeast into a dome-shaped room.

  On one side of this room there was a narrow “squeeze” opening into a passage several feet lower than the other levels and leading to another room, which when discovered bore indications of having been occupied by human beings who had tried to escape by tunneling, or by reaching a hole in the roof. As no bones were to be found we may hope the assistance arrived in time. When Deena made the discovery of the room, a quantity of loose rock was piled before the entrance, so if she ever escaped it was not by that way.

  After crawling back to the corridor, through the same small, but dry passage of seventy feet length, she saw a narrow ledge of fine crystals, a deposit of Epsom salts, and a few bats that in the dim light looked white but were a light tan color with brown wings. A particularly large one hanging on a projecting ledge of the wall remained undisturbed by us and our lights, giving an opportunity for careful inspection so that she presently discovered it to be a mummy; which naturally suggested that this portion of the cave, being dry and opening out of the great temple-like auditorium was an alcove, could be converted into an imposing crypt. Her crypt. The thought made Deena’s skin crawl.

  You’re not giving up.

  Deena ignored the monster’s voice in her head.

  I will come after you—there is no escape.

  Making her way across the room to its southwest extremity over a varied assortment of boulders and down a drop of eight or ten feet, she crawled into another tight-fitting dry passage lined with beautiful glittering onyx like clear ice banded with narrow lines of red, of which broken fragments covered the narrow floor and made a dazzling, but distressingly painful rug to crawl over Deena struggled in her escape attempt.

  Deena sat down on the edge of the large slippery boulder on which she stood, and reaching out caught a projection of the wall on one side and a boulder crag on the other, swung off and dropped into the soft mud below. This chamber proved to be a little gem; small but high, and beautifully adorned with calcite crystal. Down a wall of red onyx on one side clear water flows into a basin in the irregular, rocky floor, just behind the boulder we had used for a hand-rest at the entrance; the perfectly transparent water in the basin appears to be only a few inches deep, but measures three feet, and is several degrees colder than the air, which in this portion of the cave is warm. The other wall of this room is an almost perpendicular bank of the soft dark red clay, in which small crystals were sprouting like plants in a garden.

  Suddenly she heard a heavy, rolling noise like distant thunder, and asking if it were possible to hear a thunder storm so far below the surface, were told it was the protest of angry bats against a further advance on the quarters.

  She stumbled, and then falls down an embankment. She falls faster and faster down a ravine as the monster moved around the lip of the ridge, keeping her in its line of vision, staying on the ridge above her.

  Deena cried out and something flew from her hand. A stick…no, she had a knife in her hand! Now it’s gone—lost in the tunnels.

  Deena thought to herself, this is getting worse and worse—more and more out of control.

  Rage thundered through her. She knows she can’t last forever.

  She starts to falter. Desperate. Disheartened. Furious.

  Chapter 41

  It did not take Gary long to find the creature once back underground. He was struck in the stomach by a tentacle that seemed to be searching for something or someone. On the end of the tentacle was some sort of deadly, bony tip.

  He remembered reading in his grandfather’s notes that it was believed that the creature was reported to be able to spray an acid like substance that causes death instantly. It is also claimed that this beast had the ability to kill from a distance with some sort of super charged electrical charge on top of its super strength and tentacle appendages.

  Chapel recalled one passage that his grandfather had noted his belief that touching any part of the worm will bring instant death, and its venom supposedly corroded metal.

  His stomach hurt. He was in pain—incredible agony.

  There was a fire in his stomach. The pain stabbed him in the belly and he doubled over, stumbling into the wall. Using his hands to steady himself, he got back onto his feet and continued his dash for freedom.

  He was sure of that already, but if he could make it down the long stone-flagged corridors to the lower tunnels and Deena and make a leap for it, he might have a chance of survival. Two figures, eyeless and looking like walking fish, appeared in front of him but he immediately barged them out of the way, sending them skidding along the smooth floor. Just in front of him were the heavy rocks that stood between him and the outside world. His escape was blocked.

  He paid no mind to the possibility that this may be the end. Without a pause to think about his actions, he felt all the power in his body flow through his arm and up his side and shoulder-charged the barricade, knocking it on its side. The cool fresh air washed over his face as the cold rain poured in torrents from
the darkness.

  His foot slipped in something slimy. It was a trail of ooze and something else, a stain of blackish-red. The viscous stain on the floor had the rich smell of organic compounds with a tangy hint of iron. It was human blood.

  It was his blood.

  The wound in his stomach was bleeding heavily. He felt he may pass out.

  Gary Chapel willed himself on.

  For Deena Hopping. For Strafford. For himself.

  * * * *

  Sheriff Lindsey Hill listened to her voicemail. She could not believe what she was hearing.

  “Gather the troops,” she immediately ordered the nearest officer. “We’re moving to the other side of town. Tell everyone to arm themselves to the teeth. Shotguns, backup pistols, and alert the SWAT teams from the surrounding counties. And see if we can call in the National Guard.”

  The officer stopped and stared blankly at her.

  “Move it! I’m serious,” Sheriff Hill responded.

  Sheriff Hill moved towards the door. As she went she slipped, or seemed to, all but stumbling on to her knees. Through the floor a tentacle broke through and grabbed her around the ankle.

  Then it was gone just as fast again.

  “Something tripped me up—what’s this?” She was stamping on the floor with her foot. “There’s something down there. Come and lend me a hand, one of you fellows, to get it up. Who knows what mystery’s beneath?”

  Detective Sergeant Robert Townsend, who had just entered, went to her aid. As she said, there was something in the basement. Her stepping on it unawares had caused her stumble. Together they were standing by and watching the door as it was opened by two uniformed officers. Having removed it, they peered into the basement it disclosed.

  There was something there.

  “What do you see?” cried the Sheriff.

  “It’s a woman!” shouted one of the officers.

  “You mean what’s left of one,” added the other officer who then promptly vomited.

  “And she’s covered in slime!” exclaimed Detective Sergeant Townsend.

  Sheriff Hill gasped. “Oh, my God! He wasn’t kidding.”

  The radios and phones began to ring off the hook.

  One officer yelled, “Reports are coming in from all over the town of similar discoveries.”

  Chapter 42

  Chapel managed to escape the monster once again. He crawled away and rushed down another tunnel. There were no immediate signs of the monster in that tunnel. He paused to catch his breath and tend to his wound. He applied pressure before ripping off his shirt to tie around himself and to keep the pressure on the wound to his stomach.

  It wouldn’t stop the bleeding completely but it should allow him a chance to complete his mission.

  He felt as if he’d failed. He was to draw the beast out into the open so the team led by Mike Leopold could ambush and kill it.

  Yet it had struck it first and his plans changed in that instant.

  Then from another tunnel he heard water and her. Deena Hopping.

  “Deena?” he screamed.

  “I’m here!” Deena Hopping called back.

  He reached into the other tunnel and pulled her up. She immediately hugged him. Chapel was embarrassed and turned on simultaneously even though he knew it was an inappropriate time for such feelings.

  There was no time to think about much else—the monster was coming!

  “Let’s see if we can make it to the water,” Chapel said.

  Deena and Gary entered another tunnel from under a beautiful natural arch, about thirty feet across at the bottom, and six feet above the water at the center. The bed of the river’s stream was eroded from strata of sandstone that is extremely hard, containing corundum, and so perfect is its continuity that it conveys sounds distinctly for a distance far beyond the reach of the human voice, when tapped upon with a hammer. The top of the arch was studded with lovely stalactites, clear as glass, that extends to the outer edge of the arch and form massive and beautiful groups there. Above the arch was a large opening. In truth the side of the room was out, and a great dark space appeared like a curtain of black. A natural path leads up over one side of the arch, and following the lead of the guide they went up above and learned that a room on the higher level extended off in that direction and it got larger and higher. The walls were columns in cream color and decked in places with blood-red spots or blotches of monstrous size. The ceiling they could not see. It was too high for the lights they had to reach. On the left they were suddenly confronted by large formation stalagmites so large and so grand that all others are dwarfed into insignificance.

  On the opposite side of the room from which they entered there was a hole or opening in the wall. It was large enough to go through but it went into the great dark room. An abyss confronted them, a sheer precipice which descends for many feet, perhaps hundreds. No man knew.

  Their eyes having grown accustomed to the dim light of candles in passages where absolute darkness, unrelieved by the stars of midnight, always reigns, the great opened room appeared before them softly flooded with daylight diffused from a broad white beam slanting down in long straight lines from the entrance as from a rift in heavy clouds; only this rift displayed around its edges a brilliant border of vegetation that the rough rocks cherish with tender care.

  As Deena and Gary stood lost in almost speechless admiration, and without the slightest warning of what was in store for them, the white beam was stabbed by a narrow, gleaming shaft of yellow moonlight. The glorious, radiant beauty of the picture presented was utterly indescribable, but it was of short duration, and in a few seconds the golden blade was withdrawn as suddenly as it had appeared.

  The quarter of a mile seemed to stretch out in some mysterious way as we worked on it, but the variety and abundance of attractions are more than ample compensation.

  The view was fine, including as it did the deep ravine and grassy, wooded slopes rising three hundred feet above, with here and there a handsome ledge of marble exposed like the nearly buried ruin of a forgotten temple of some past age. Scattered about in great profusion among the broken rock on the surface of these hill-sides were observed a water deposit of iron ore.

  The entrance was sufficiently broad to give a good first impression, and was under a heavy ledge of limestone which broke the slope of the hill and was artistically decorated with a choice collection of foliage, among which was a coral honeysuckle; the fragrant variety grows everywhere. Under the ledge was a narrow vestibule, out of the north end of which was a passage about twenty-four inches in width, between perpendicular walls, and as steeply inclined as the average dwelling-house stairway but without any assisting depressions to serve as steps.

  * * * *

  The first chamber entered was the principal portion of the cave, and by actual measurement is forty feet in length by forty in greatest width and the height estimated at fifty feet. On account of irregularities it appeared smaller but higher. On opposite sides of the chamber, at elevation about midway between the floor and ceiling were two open galleries.

  The floor was extremely irregular with its accumulation of fallen masses of rock, and the action of water has given to portions of the walls the appearance of pillars supporting the arches of the roof. The whole aspect is that of a small Gothic chapel. Off to the northwest was another room measuring thirty feet in each direction, and out of this were several openings, too small to squeeze through, which indicated the possible existence of other chambers beyond, along with untold horrors filling those chambers.

  The topography was nearly as broken, in its way, as the natural spread over it, and very beautiful with the dense forests lighted by the slanting yellow rays of the afternoon sun. The way lead up to the “ridge road” which was at length abandoned for no road at all, and descending through the forest, more than half the distance down to the Susquehanna River flowing at the base of the hill, Deena came suddenly in view of the cave’s entrance, which was probably one of the most magnificent
pieces of natural architecture she had ever seen.

  The entrance to the cave was through a hole about two feet high by three in width, into which she went feet first and wiggled slowly down an incline covered with broken rock, for a distance of fifteen feet, where a standing depth was reached. A flat, straight, level ceiling extends over the whole cave without any perceptible variation, and this is bordered around its entire length and breadth with a heavy cornice of dripstone, made very ornamental by the forms it assumes, and the multitude of depending stalactites that fall as a fringe around the walls. The line of contact between the cornice and ceiling is as clear and strong as if both had been finished separately before the cornice was put in place by skillful hands.

  Dripstone covers the walls, which varied in height from one foot to twenty feet, according to the irregularities of the floor, just as the width of this one-room cave varies with the curves of the walls, which are sweeping and graceful, the average being twenty-nine feet, but is much greater at the entrance where the entire slope extends out beyond the body of the cave. The length, from north to south, measured two hundred plus feet or more.

  The south end of the cave rose by a steep slope to within a foot of the ceiling with which it was connected by short but heavy columns of dripstone, and another line of pillars of graduated height met this at right angles near the middle and ends in an immense stalagmite that stood at the foot of the slope like a grand newel post.

  That’s when the two became separated.

  Chapter 43

  A short distance within, the cave widened and the floor of the extension being somewhat higher, was dry, but the roof dropped so low over it that the water-course is an easier route of travel; and this soon widened into a lake above which the ceiling rose into a broad dome less than twenty feet in height, and hung with heavy masses of dripstone draperies of varying length, from five to seven feet; and all the ceilings were fringed at various heights with stalactites of every size and age, some being a clear, colorless onyx, while others proclaim their great age in the fact that they have so deteriorated that the onyx texture is either partly or completely lost, and what was once a pure drip crystal has returned to a common, porous, dull-colored limestone so soft that portions can be rubbed to powder in the hand.