Night Chill

by Jeff Gunhus

  A sharp cry of pain right next to him shifted Jack’s focus away from Janney. Even in the faint light, he saw Lonetree slumped against the side of a stone cage. Jack saw the problem. Lonetree held Janney’s knife by the handle, but with the blade pointed the wrong direction. It was buried six inches into Lonetree’s side.

  With a weak smile at Jack, Lonetree drew a deep breath, closed his eyes, and yanked the knife out. In the same motion, just before a scream of pain exploded from his mouth, Lonetree threw the knife toward Jack. It landed at his feet with a clang against the rock floor.

  Jack grabbed the knife. But as he turned, Janney was on him, snarling, spittle foaming around his mouth. He grabbed Jack by the throat, his thick thumbs digging into his windpipe. Jack plunged the knife into Janney’s chest. The man’s eyes bulged out from surprise and pain. Jack withdrew the knife and stabbed again. This time sinking it up to the hilt into Janney’s abdomen. He forced the blade upward, twisting it back and forth to destroy as many organs as he could, hoping the blade tip could reach at far as the man’s heart.

  Janney released his grip around Jack’s throat. A wet gurgle came up with a torrent of frothy blood that spilled out of his mouth and down his chin. He collapsed to his knees, grasping at the knife wounds. He raised his blood soaked hands to his face and clenched them into fists. He looked to Jack, his face contorted with pain. He tried to say something, but it came out as a torrent of blood. Janney’s eyes rolled and he fell to the ground.

  Jack ran to Lonetree.

  “How bad are you hurt?”

  Lonetree tried to stand. He cried out and grabbed at his side. His breath came in short, ragged bursts. He stood, but remained bent over with one arm grabbing the stone cage next to him.

  “How much time?” Lonetree wheezed.

  Jack glance at his watch. “Under six minutes.”

  Lonetree reached out and took hold of Jack’s wrist. Jack thought he was going to recheck his watch, but instead the injured man drew him in close and whispered, “Take your girl. Follow this path. Elevator can’t be far away.” He pushed Jack’s arm away. “Now. You have to go now.”

  Jack ran over to Sarah and put a hand on either shoulder. “Sarah, we’re going to go home, all right sweetie?”

  Sarah nodded. She was scared, but she was staying in control. Jack could feel her whole body shaking but she was focused on what he was saying. Jack had no idea what had happened back at the Source, or what part Sarah had played, all he knew was that she was his little girl. She was scared but doing her best to listen to her dad. God he was proud of her.

  “I need your help.” He handed her the glo-stick. “Hold this light and walk right beside me, O.K.” He held her at arm’s length to get a good look at her. “I love you, honey.”

  Despite the cold darkness around them. The blood and death. The silent skeletons that stared out at them from their stone cages. Despite it all, Sarah smiled. “I love you too, Daddy.”

  Jack hugged her then turned and ran over to Lonetree.

  “What are you doing?” Lonetree said.

  “Come on. We’re all getting out of here.” He slid his shoulder under Lonetree’s arm and shifted the big man’s weight onto himself. Lonetree pushed off from the stone cage and hobbled forward, grunting with every step. Jack struggled under the man’s weight, repeatedly losing his footing on the slick rocks beneath him. Sarah walked next to them, holding the glo-stick out in front of her as if it were a talisman against whatever lurked ahead of them.

  “Faster. Faster,” Jack urged Lonetree as they stumbled down the path.

  “Leave me, damn it.”

  “No, you just move your ass. I thought you were a Marine or something.”

  Lonetree cocked his head to the side. With a gasp he straightened himself a little and took more of his weight on his own legs. With this better distribution, they surged forward together. Navy SEAL,” Lonetree hissed between gasps for air. “Marines are pussies.”

  The trail turned and entered a tunnel carved into the cave wall. They noticed a glow of light ahead of them. “That has to be the elevator,” Jack said.

  They pushed as fast as they could down the trail, around a bend, and finally into a brightly lit room. Halogen lamps glared like artificial suns. The mechanical hum of a generator filled the air. Against the far wall was a square metal platform with guardrails around the perimeter. The elevator. The way out.

  Sarah screamed. Jack grabbed her and pushed her behind him.

  In the middle of the room, shotgun hanging at his side, stood Nate Huckley. Beside him was Dr. Mansfield, his hair now wildly out of place but otherwise looking calm and in control. The elevator was twenty feet behind them.

  Dr. Mansfield called out to them. “I was starting to get worried. I thought maybe that idiot Janney had done something drastic. He’s always over-reacts in a crisis.”

  Huckley pointed the shotgun at Sarah. “We don’t want anything happening to you. Especially you, little girl. You’re much too important to waste”

  Jack and Lonetree exchanged glances. Neither of them had an idea how to get around this latest obstacle. Jack still had the knife he’d used on Janney, but it was no match for a shotgun.

  Lonetree was gasping for air and clutching his side. And they had less than five minutes before the entire place came down around them in a massive explosion.

  Jack’s shoulder’s sagged as he faced reality. Despite everything they had done, they were all going to die.

  EIGHTY-THREE

  Lonetree collapsed to the floor, his body wracked by a coughing fit that produced a new flow of blood from his mouth. He rolled to his side, panting from the bolts of electric pain that tore through his body. Jack stayed with Sarah as Huckley walked closer to them.

  “Looks like you’re in a little pain there, Mr. Lonetree.” He raised a gun. “Perhaps you’d like me to put you out of your misery?”

  Lonetree managed to look up from the floor. He tried to say something, but the words came out in an unintelligible mumble.

  “Don’t be stupid, Huckley. We still need to know who he’s told about us. And where his brother’s notes are hidden,” Dr. Mansfield said. “What the hell happened back there? What was that explosion?”

  “I don’t know. If you didn’t notice, I was the one on the ground in pain.”

  “You’re not in pain now.”

  Huckley cocked his head to the side. “Not only that, but I can’t sense the Source anymore.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Usually the Source is so loud that I’m totally overwhelmed. It’s like white noise, a constant throbbing that fills my head. But now, nothing. I don’t sense anything.” Huckley stared at Dr. Mansfield. “You don’t think…”

  Dr. Mansfield turned pale. He looked at Jack. “What did you see? What was that explosion?”

  Jack shrugged. “Nothing. I didn’t see anything. There was an explosion then the lights went out.”

  “He’s lying,” Huckley said. “Without the background noise from the Source I can sense what he’s thinking.” He closed his eyes. “He saw movement inside the Source. He thinks the Source escaped from the cage.”

  Jack stared at the wall behind the two men. He studied the smooth surfaces, the way the shadows filled the cracks of the rock. The tried to catalog the types of rock he knew. After Huckley had read his mind about what he saw back at the Source, he knew he had to keep his mind occupied. Anything to keep his brain active. Anything to keep from thinking about…

  Huckley arched his back as if a current had passed through his body. His faced contorted savagely. He looked quickly at Lonetree. Then at Jack. “Explosives? How much? Where?”

  “What are you talking about?” Dr. Mansfield demanded.

  Huckley waved him away and concentrated. Jack tried to think of anything else, but it was impossible. He fought the urge to look down at his watch. The explosion had to still be at least four minutes away. Somehow he had to stall Huckley to keep him from escaping be
fore the detonation.

  Jack looked away. Still, no matter how hard he tried, the pure satisfaction of seeing Huckley caught in the trap seeped through the mental barricades. The look on his face betrayed his emotions.

  “Where are the explosives?” Huckley screamed. “WHERE ARE THEY?”

  Jack allowed himself to smile. He allowed the conversation with Lonetree about the fail proof feature of the charges replay in his mind. He watched Huckley’s face change expressions as the memory played in his inner eye, the last bit of color draining from Huckley’s already pale complexion.

  “This…this …can’t be.” He looked back up the passageway toward the cave. “The Source will be destroyed.”

  “Tell me what is going on!” Dr. Mansfield shouted.

  “The cave is rigged to blow. There are only a few minutes to go,” Huckley said.

  “Tell them to turn it off!” Dr. Mansfield screamed.

  “They can’t. It’s on a failsafe.” He turned and kicked Lonetree in the side where he was bleeding. “Goddamn Indians. I hate them. Always have.”

  “If the Source escaped in that explosion, maybe we can lure it out of the cave. Bring it up with us.”

  Huckley looked horrified. “Are you insane? How would we control it? There’s no way. Here it was our slave, but up there?” He shook his head. “You don’t get it, do you?”

  “Get what?”

  “Without limits. It was talking about itself the whole time. Somehow the girl gave it enough power to break free. It will want revenge against us. Both of us.”

  “We can’t just leave it here,” Dr. Mansfield shouted. “We can’t let it be destroyed.”

  Both of the men turned as a low, coarse sound rose from Sarah’s throat.

  She reached for her neck as a violent cough convulsed her body. Her face turned red as if she were choking.

  Jack kneeled beside her and rubbed her back, searching her face to understand what was wrong, but she pushed him away with surprising force. The sound coming from her changed pitch and tone as if she were an instrument being tuned.

  Then her lips contorted and strange and guttural round tones came from her, interspersed with clicks and grunts. They came fast, roiling and pulsating, uttered in a breathless rush, no more than a stage whisper.

  Huckley and Mansfield stared at her, craning forward to hear the exotic, mesmerizing language pouring from her. She stood perfectly erect, her eyes fixed on Huckley.

  Jack felt helpless. He thought he should shake her awake, hold her, do something. But he couldn’t move. He kneeled on the ground. He recognized the language coming from his daughter’s mouth. He had heard it earlier that night for the first time. It was barely distinguishable then too, coming in the same whispering intonation, coming from inside the stone structure in the cave. Whatever evil creature was locked in that stone structure, it was somehow speaking through his daughter.

  Jack jerked his head toward a sound to his right. It was Huckley. Dr. Mansfield stood next to him, confused, but Huckley was in a panic. Turning in a circle, his hands clutched to his ears to block out the sound. He gasped for air as if an invisible hand were crushing his throat. “Shut up! SHUT UP!”

  But the language continued to pour out of Sarah. The color drained from her face. She swayed in place as she spoke ancient words. Her forehead and cheeks shone with sweat.

  Huckley raised the shotgun at Sarah and marched toward her. He pressed the barrel against her forehead.

  “No!” Jack screamed.

  Sarah’s mouth shut and the voice stopped. She looked up at Huckley. Her eyes were glazed and red as though she’d been crying. Her hands trembled, but her lips parted into a simple smile. “Someone wants to meet you,” she said, jutting out her chin toward the passageway.

  Both Huckley and Dr. Mansfield turned toward the mouth of the passage. A large shadow stood at the edge of the light, indistinguishable in the dark. Rasping, snorting sounds filled the air, as if the figure had held its breath until its introduction.

  “Janney?” Dr. Mansfield called out, his voice cracking. “Is that you?”

  The shadow shifted its weight from side to side as if the light on the passageway floor was a barrier it was reluctant to cross. Then with a lurching movement, it jumped forward into the lit cave, arching its back to reach his full height.

  The Source. Jack saw the creature’s arm, the same grotesque appendage that attacked Lonetree. A twisted mass of bone and sinew, skinless, draining pus and dark blood. The other arm hung at an impossible angle, as though the bones had been shattered and allowed to grow back in a different form, not an arm at all, but a crooked, useless appendage that terminated in a curved black claw. A grey fungus covered most of the torso and the skin that remained hung in ragged flaps over exposed bone. Ulcerous organs bulged through holes in the ribs and abdomen. Lesions oozed black pus. A jagged hole marked where the creature’s genitals should have been, as if the area had been hacked out. The legs were exposed muscle punctuated by bone growths, improbable mutations that stabbed up through the muscle like pointed armor. The feet, like the hands, were gnarled claws, hideously thick with calcified joints.

  The creature’s face was human, but so ravaged that the similarity only made the likeness more grotesque. The head was more exposed skull than skin. Dark patches of broken and rotting bone appeared among strands of long wiry hair that hung down the creatures back. Teeth somehow remained attached to the jaw, but were bent out at bizarre angles from crushed jaw bones. The nose was gone. Instead a festering sore filled the nasal cavity, eating through the face and consuming the right eye socket. The creature had only one eye that functioned, the blood red, cancerous mass that had stared down Jack earlier.

  In a flash of mental image, Jack understood who the creature was. He saw the scenes carved into the side of the stone structure, but as real life, not as static stone figures. He saw the shaman arrive to the village, a handsome man dressed in long robes and adorned with feathers. Jack saw the sacrifice of the first women, the carnage of the wars, the atrocities that came after. He saw the shaman attacked by the men of the village, saw how they hacked at his body with knives and cudgels. Saw that the shaman was not killed.

  Reduced to a twitching mass of pulp and gristle, the shaman’s energy mercilessly forced him to live. Caged in the dark confines of the stone structure to suffer for over a thousand years, unable to die because of the energy he’d taken from his thousands of victims, but able to feel every second of the pain as his body decayed, the shaman had become the visceral appearance of evil. He had become the devil.

  Jack reached out for Sarah, but she held up her hand. “Don’t worry Daddy.” Jack stared at his little girl. She looked not at him, but directly at the creature. “He’s here to hurt them.”

  Huckley screamed with rage and terror. He turned and pointed the shotgun at the little girl tormenting him. Fire leapt from the muzzle as the gun fired. The impact lifted Sarah’s small body off the floor and sent her flying through the air.

  EIGHTY-FOUR

  Jack screamed. He ran to Sarah. Blood already covered her white gown. He looked up and saw that Huckley and Dr. Mansfield were staring at the creature.

  Jack seized the moment.

  There was a piece of wood against the wall. He grabbed it and he lunged forward. Jack brought the wood down on the back of Huckley’s head as hard as he could. Huckley’s knees buckled and he collapsed to the ground. Jack reined in his urge to keep attacking.

  He turned toward Dr. Mansfield, and saw the doctor walking toward the creature, his arms raised to show he was not a threat. Jack wanted to watch what would happen, but he needed to get his daughter out of there.

  He threw the board down and ran back to Sarah, gathered her in his arms, and sprinted to the elevator.

  It was an old-fashioned mining elevator, no more than an open platform with a waist-level bar surrounding the perimeter. He climbed onto the metal platform and looked up. Without a roof, he could see the cables extendin
g up into the dark shaft above them. He saw a light at the end but couldn’t gauge how far they had to go.

  He looked back out across the floor of the tunnel. The creature hadn’t moved but Dr. Mansfield now stood directly in front of it. The creature’s head was cocked to the side as if listening to what the doctor said. Then the creature gave its answer.

  For such a large creature, the movement was surprisingly smooth. Its good arm was already stretched out as if it were necessary to balance its awkward stance. Without warning, the creature swept the arm down and across its chest. The black talons of its claws, perhaps chiseled to perfect sharpness over the centuries for this exact purpose, sliced cleanly through Dr. Mansfield’s neck muscles and vertebrae.

  The doctor froze in place like a man balancing a full glass of water on his head who feels it starting to slide to one side. A second later, his body slumped to the left and his head fell to the right. The creature crouched over the body, stabbing it with the talons of its foot to be sure it was dead.

  Jack pulled his attention away from the creature. He saw that Huckley was starting to move on the ground. Next to Huckley, Lonetree was conscious and looking his direction.

  The second they made eye contact, Lonetree mouthed the word, “Go.”

  “Like hell,” Jack said.

  Jack propped Sarah against the low guardrail that surrounded the elevator platform. He ran across the floor, sliding on the ground to Lonetree’s side. He shouted in his ear to get moving. Lonetree grunted as he churned his legs to propel himself forward. Jack pushed him along, glancing over his shoulder at the creature.

  Once they started to move to the elevator, the shaman-creature screamed. The decayed throat created a high-pitched shriek. A sound no living thing could ever produce. The creature lowered itself until its good hand hit the ground and then charged forward in a bizarre three-legged movement.

  “It’s coming!” Jack shouted. “GO! GO! GO!”

  Jack turned away from the fast approaching creature. He focused on the elevator. Only fifteen feet away. Now ten feet. Five.