by Perrin Briar
Everyone in town knew someone who had gone wandering in the caves, never to emerge again. They believed they became spirits that haunted this place. Some said you could hear their cries if you listened closely enough. Montgomery had no such intention of listening, and blocked his ears of any sound.
He came to a clearing within a large cavern, a few boulders acting as decoration. Montgomery lay the bodies down in the center. The hairs stood up on the back of his neck. He did not make the mistake of attempting to identify his audience in the darkness. If something was there he wouldn’t have been able to stop it in any case. He was better off not knowing. If it did attack, hopefully it would finish him off quickly.
Still, he was scared. He wouldn’t breathe a sigh of relief until he was back in the pub and staring at the stain of the wall that morphed into nothing but friendly shapes.
Montgomery wound through the tunnels back to the lake, and the bodies he still had to transport. When he came within sight of the unscorched bodies, he got quite a shock.
One of the bodies—the elder female—lay on its side, a few feet from where he had positioned it. Had something come and pulled at the body? Possibly. But if it had, there were no longer any tracks in the soft wet sand.
Montgomery’s throat felt dry. He steeled his nerve and did what any sane man would do in such a situation. He ignored it. He had a job to do. Scratching his head about a moved body wasn’t going to get the job done. But he wouldn’t touch the female body, not until he had no choice.
He took the elder unscorched man by the wrists and dragged him backward, his boots making lines in the dirt. Montgomery kept his eyes firmly ahead, in the direction he was going. His peripheries, focused in the direction of the mysterious moving female body, were on high alert.
Montgomery ordinarily believed the dead should be respected, no matter whether they rose from hell or descended from heaven. But he couldn’t prevent himself from carelessly dropping the man’s arms, letting them strike the ground, when he deposited the body.
There was no way he was going to hang around any longer than he needed to. He stood up from his crouched position and hustled back to the water’s edge, almost taking a wrong turn on the way.
“Calm down, Monty,” he said to himself. “This ain’t no time to panic.”
He was relieved to find the three remaining bodies were right where they should be. He took hold of the young unscorched boy and girl by an arm each and pulled them along the wet sand.
He would normally have taken just one at a time, but this wasn’t any normal time. He deposited them beside the larger man, who he was also relieved to find hadn’t moved a muscle.
“Just so,” Montgomery said, a smile tinging his lips.
He turned and headed back into the tunnels and felt the familiar sense of relief and joy at having almost finished the job. He hustled back, a near skip in his step. He returned to the waterfront and found…
Nothing.
The elder female body was gone. The sand was where it should have been. The water gently lapped against the sand. Everything was in place. Save the dead body.
Dead body.
Montgomery spun around, flinching back in anticipation of someone striking him. But there was no one there.
A dead body had come back to life. Something new. Something dangerous.
“To hell with this,” Montgomery said.
He climbed into the boat, rowed back out into the lake, left his boat at the jetty without tying it up, and ran into town. He entered the nearest pub and ordered his favorite glass of brown.
The stain on the wall that had always brought him solace with its various morphing shapes, no longer did. Each time he glanced at it, it was fixed in the same unflinching outline.
A dead body, lying in a position he had not set. And her eyes were open. She was looking directly at him.
Montgomery’s jittering mouth, missing so many teeth, opened. He laughed to himself, beginning as a titter, before working up into a maniacal roar. It sounded odd even to him, even stranger to the bar flies who had never heard Montgomery so much as chuckle all his years.
“Montgomery,” the barman said with genuine concern. “Are you all right?”
“Yes,” Montgomery said, stifling his laughter by biting on a knuckle. “‘To hell with this,’ I said. ‘To hell with this’!”
The barman smiled, before turning to look at the other drinkers. The joke was lost on him.
In the caves Montgomery had said, “To hell with this.” But now he realized the dead hadn’t gone to hell. Instead, hell had come to them. Isn’t that the funniest thing?
3.
BRYAN’S EYES fluttered open. He’d had the most vivid dream.
He’d imagined himself in a giant cave, the sounds bouncing off the hard stone walls, echoing endlessly and without end in the corners of his mind. He remembered the press of sand against his face, leaving an imprint.
He’d been aware of a man, his features unclear and indistinct, blurry and out of focus like an early model camera. He thought the man to be old. It was in the way he moved, the way he comported himself. But it could have just as easily have been a boy.
Bryan was shocked to find himself lying on the ground, peering up at a jagged ceiling of natural rock knives. The ground at his back was hard. And there was less grit here. Had the place he recalled been real? He would swear he’d been moved.
The last thing he remembered was being in a quicksand whirlpool that dragged him under the earth, a whirlpool he had willingly thrown himself in. It had taken him lower and lower, into the clutches of the abyss below…
It had gone dark. He’d been worried, concerned for Zoe, Cassie and Aaron. He lost his grip on their hands. He didn’t know where he was going, but he had some faith that the sinkhole would take them to a better place—and not the shining white one in the sky with harp-playing winged creatures. He wanted to go somewhere better than the last world, that had been eviscerated by its own occupants.
He remembered very little after that, other than snatches of images and sounds. What had made him pass unconscious, he didn’t know. Perhaps it had something to do with the sand’s pressure. It might have been too much for him. Maybe too much for the others too.
The others.
Where were they?
Bryan moved to lift his arms to push himself up, but found they would not obey him. Was he injured? He concentrated on his limbs and then the rest of his body. He felt a little numb, his body exhausted, but no pain. He applied pressure to his arms. Something was wrapped around his wrists and ankles. He’d been restrained.
He moved his eyes left to right, checking the peripheries as best he could. He commanded himself to lift his head, but it wouldn’t budge. He could hardly move. He froze when he saw something out the corner of his eye.
Clothes. On bodies. He couldn’t tell their shape and size, but they must have been the others. They were beside him, and he felt himself relax with relief. If they were together, things couldn’t be that bad.
Bryan needed to rest. He didn’t like the idea of letting himself go, to fade into that nothingness that was unconsciousness. But there was nothing he could do in his current state anyway. His eyes rolled back, despite his best efforts to keep them open, and he fell unconscious again.
4.
HIS EYES opened. Faster, and with more energy this time. He had no idea how much time had passed, but he could already feel the difference in his body. He turned his head to one side. The world swam in his vision. His head hurt like someone had been swinging hammers at it. He preferred the numbness.
His head felt heavy on his flimsy neck and didn’t react well to his commands. But it did react, and that was an important improvement over the first time he’d woken up. He was in a cavern, large, with craggy walls. He remembered the two bodies he’d seen earlier out the corner of his eyes and turned to them. His breath caught in his throat.
There was blood. A lot of it. Dried and burnt, the bodies unreco
gnizable.
Bryan recalled the swirling miasma of the red hot magma and boulders the size of cars being tossed around like leaves in a strong wind. That could have done this. It had done this.
Then Bryan shook his head. No. This couldn’t be Cassie and Aaron. He rejected the idea. These mashed up bodies couldn’t possibly belong to anyone he knew or loved.
Tears stung his eyes and quivered, threatening to spill down his face, but never quite carrying through. His face scrunched up and he heard a low whine escape his throat, the cry of desperation.
These lifeless forms were the kids. They hadn’t escaped. They hadn’t gotten out. He had escaped with his life, largely untouched, while the kids had been fried to a crisp, beyond recognition. He couldn’t live without Cassie. Not like this. He couldn’t live with himself.
A rage overtook him. He forced himself up, difficult with his arms and legs tied, first into a crouched position, and then up onto his knees. He edged toward the bodies, the stench of their charred flesh stinging his nose. He fell upon them, pulling them close with his chin. He cried into them.
They never got a chance to be a family. They never got a chance to love each other the way they deserved. They had so much left to experience and give to one another. All these feelings of pain and regret poured out of Bryan and into the two bodies he clutched tightly to himself.
“I’m sorry,” Bryan said. “I’m so, so sorry.”
There wasn’t anything else he could think to say. What else could he say?
And then he noticed their hands.
They were thick and powerful, strong, like they were used to physical labor. Aaron and Cassie hadn’t had a hard day’s work in their lives. They were students, used to studying at school with pen and paper. They would not have hands like this. Then how did they come to have them?
The obvious answer struck him like a thunder bolt, and hope swelled in his chest at the ramifications.
Because they weren’t Aaron and Cassie. They were someone else.
But who?
Bryan thought back to the bodies of the miners who had died in the previous world, and their funeral ceremony. They’d been lowered into a pit of magma, what was believed to be a passage to another world. How right the miners had been, though they could not have expected it to be this world.
And suddenly it all made sense. The old man he’d thought he’d dreamed, the water, the sand, this cavern. It was all the same thing. The process of laying the dead bodies to rest. Despite not having the same scorch marks, Bryan had been mistaken for dead, as a cousin to these unfortunate deformed bodies beside him.
Then if these bodies were not Cassie and Aaron, where were they?
Bryan sat back on his heels and looked around. His heart leapt.
Aaron and Cassie lay to one side, right beside where he’d lain. Why couldn’t he have looked in this direction first? Then he wouldn’t have had such a scare!
“Cassie!” Bryan said. “Aaron!”
He fell to his knees and edged closer. He checked them over, but found nothing wrong with them save a few grazes to their bare skin. They were in one piece, their hair wind blown from their faces. They appeared perfectly healthy.
Except they were unconscious.
Bryan put his face to Cassie’s cheek and nudged her.
“Cassie?” he said. “Cassie? Can you hear me? It’s Dad. Are you awake?”
She obviously wasn’t awake. Bryan lowered the delicate skin of his neck to her nose. He could feel her breath. He checked Aaron. He was breathing too.
Finally, Bryan could breathe too, letting out a lungful of relieved air. He smiled, unable to hide his happiness. He hugged them close and gently nudged them with his shoulder.
“You need to wake up,” Bryan said. “Come on. Get up.”
Aaron and Cassie muffled, grumbling under their breath.
Bryan paused. He thought he’d heard something from one of the tunnels that branched off the cavern they were lying in. It began as a low rumble, vibrating the air and making it quiver. It emanated from the darkness of one of the tunnels. Bryan eyed one tunnel after another, but couldn’t identify which one the sound was originating from.
It could have come from any direction.
What made it worse was the sound reverberated off the walls in Bryan’s cavern. It sounded like it came from the left, but when he turned his head, it sounded like it was coming from the right.
How was he meant to avoid something when he didn’t even know where it was coming from? He might escape, but end up running directly at the creature. It sounded big, whatever it was.
“Get up,” Bryan said to the kids, his voice low. “We have to go.”
The growl from the mystery tunnel grew louder. It was coming closer. Bryan couldn’t pick the kids up with his hands and feet tied.
“Damn it!” Bryan said.
He turned and shuffled toward a large rock on his knees. He was moving too slowly, so he got to his feet and hopped. He dived behind the rock and waited, hoping the creature hadn’t seen him. He wouldn’t wait to find out.
A small rock protruded from the dirt, half buried. It had a sharp edge on the top. Bryan turned his back and lowered himself onto it. He rubbed his restraints against it, sawing through it. He felt the strands snapping, coming loose, the heat rising against the skin of his wrists.
Where had Zoe gotten to? He hadn’t seen her since they had entered the Passage in the magma world, what felt like another lifetime. Could she have been taken to another world? Could she have ended up somewhere else? Somewhere far away? He didn’t know. He couldn’t worry about that, not now. He needed to focus on saving the kids.
Bryan felt the rope give way. He massaged his wrists with his hands. It felt good to be free of the restraints. He leaned forward and began to do the same with his ankles.
If he could get loose he might still have time to get the kids free before the creature found them. There hadn’t been a sound from the tunnels for the past few minutes and-
Bryan froze. No growl. No grumble. Nothing. In his recent experience, that was never a good thing.
A puff of dust rose from a sharp, strong exhalation from a large nostril. Bryan caught the stench of reeking meat. The creature’s diet. It didn’t bode well.
Bryan daren’t turn to look over the boulder. He didn’t want to be there. He didn’t want to see or hear what the creature was going to do. Not if Bryan didn’t stand a chance of stopping it. He found himself doing what many prey in the wild did.
He froze.
5.
IT TURNED out freezing was the best thing Bryan could have done.
The creature stared directly at him, its large eyes piercing him to his soul, pinning him in place. Bryan had never been so terrified. Even his breaths came short and shallow. Luckily his bladder was already empty. The monster turned, the ground shaking with every step.
It wasn’t the first time Bryan had seen such a monster. How could it be here now? Had they gone backward? Back to an earlier world? Was that even possible? He supposed anything was possible when you didn’t completely understand the rules of the place you found yourself.
What was Bryan going to do? Wrestle the kids from the mouth of this huge beast? No. That wasn’t going to happen. He would end up getting himself as well as the kids killed. He needed to watch what the monster did. And if it bent down to eat the kids? Then he would distract the monster to give the kids a little more time to come round.
He’d race through the tunnels, getting the monster to chase him. He’d almost certainly end up lost, and in all likelihood, eaten, but at least the kids might get away.
The monster bent down, its huge head sniffing the unconscious children. Its great dripping tongue protruded from its mouth and ran over its sharp teeth and thick lips, and then over the scorched bodies on the floor, covering them in a thick film of sticky saliva. It could taste their blood, no doubt, and would be the first on the menu.
For the first time since finding th
e kids, he prayed they wouldn’t wake up. Not right then. It was the worst possible time to regain consciousness.
The great reptile lowered its head further, and for a moment Bryan thought it was going to consume the scorched bodies, but it didn’t. It took another step forward, fully extended its tail, and bent down to scoop up one scorched body in each of its short, powerful claws. It wasn’t careful with them, and let their heads drag along the ground.
The creature carried the bodies, with them swinging in its arms, down the same tunnel it must have entered through, its footsteps heavy and foreboding. Soon, it was gone.
Bryan emerged from his hiding place and ran toward the kids’ prostrate forms. How could they still be unconscious after what had just happened to them? Had they been poisoned? Or struck with something? Why was it he was awake and walking around while they were still like this? Perhaps size had something to do with it.
He shook them, more violently this time. The kids’ bodies flopped all over the place, but did not wake. He would have to carry them somewhere safe. Soon the monster would be back to take them away too. He couldn’t let that happen.
Bryan bent down and scooped his arms under Cassie’s knees and neck. He ran as fast as his legs could carry him toward a random tunnel. He stopped and put Cassie down. He wanted to take her farther away, but first he needed to get Aaron to safety too.
He turned to run back and get Aaron, and froze once he laid eyes on what was present inside the cavern. He crept back into the tunnel, and pressed his back to the wall, and let out a mouthful of air, silently.
The creature was there. How it had managed to creep into the main chamber so stealthily, Bryan didn’t know. But there it was, crouched over Aaron’s body.
The great beast peered down at the single body on the ground and looked around. It looked confused. It seemed to think there should have been another body there. It sniffed the ground, but couldn’t see any sign of it. It contented itself with just the one it had now. It bent down and performed the same careful procedure of picking Aaron up using in its front claws.