by Jodi Taylor
And then every instinct I had said, ‘Keep quiet. You don’t know what it is yet.’
The smell hit me next. A musty, animal smell. Like the lion house at the zoo, but weaker. And stone. I could smell damp stone. And mould. And stale meat. Like an old butcher’s shop. This was not a good smell. Not in any way. And whatever it was that was making that smell was in here with me. In the dark.
I froze, standing rigid, trying to breathe very, very quietly.
That dragging noise came again, followed by another gust of mouldy stone smell.
I turned my head slowly, trying to identify the source of the sound so I could run in the opposite direction. Run as fast as I could. Run away from this place and never come back. Never mind the river – possibly falling into the Rush and letting it carry me away might be the best thing that could happen. At least I’d be out of this place.
From out of the darkness came a long, low grinding sound, like two giant rocks rubbing together. I felt all the short hairs on the back of my neck stand on end and my skin tightening as my body, entirely independently of me, moved into fight or flight mode. Flight would be my preference.
I stood as silently as I could, unmoving, hoping against hope that whatever it was would miss me in this impenetrable blackness and just … go away.
And so, for a moment, it seemed that it would. That long, dragging sound came again, but further off this time. Over to my left and heading away from me. Was it moving away? The temptation to turn and run in the opposite direction was overwhelming, but I swallowed it down and stayed put.
Time passed. Nothing happened. I made up my mind that if the next sound was even further off then I would wheel about and run. Blindly, yes, but arms outstretched and willing to take my chances.
I waited, heart pounding, in the dark. I couldn’t believe this was happening. One moment I was out in the sunshine and birdsong and the next moment I was in the dark, lost and terrified. This was another world. Two short steps had taken me from my world to this. And something was in it with me. And even if I managed to evade it – whatever it was – how would I ever get back? Was I trapped in here forever?
I didn’t know what to do. Was it safer to move or to stay put?
My mind flew back to my childhood and I remembered being with my dad in his shed at the bottom of our garden. That had been a magical place, full of golden light, where he worked with the wood he loved so much, and I loved to help him. I would hold his pencils and screwdrivers, triumphantly producing each as required, and we would chat – not about anything in particular, but just chat. I heard him now, clear as day. ‘If in doubt, lass, do nowt.’
Good advice. I was in trouble. Let’s not do anything to make it worse. So I stood in the dark and waited.
For a very long time, nothing happened at all. No sound of movement. Even the smell faded. Or, more likely, my nose was getting used to it. Had whatever it was gone away? I waited, straining my ears for even the slightest sound to indicate that whatever was here with me was still here. I could hear nothing. I could see nothing. Had my immobility worked? Had whatever it was gone away? I had no idea where it could possibly have gone to, nor did I care. Just as long as it had gone. Or was it, like me, just standing in the dark … and waiting …?
If that was indeed the case then I was in trouble because I couldn’t stand here forever. I would become hungry, thirsty, tired. I might even just sneeze and then whatever it was would be upon me. I felt the panic welling up inside me. I couldn’t breathe properly. The urge to run was becoming unbearable. To run and run. I struggled to remember my dad and his shed. To hear his voice and watch his hands as he measured off a piece of the wood, but like everything else, that golden vision had faded into the dark.
I made up my mind. I would move. I wouldn’t run. That would be foolish. I would pick up each foot and place it as carefully and silently as I could and I would keep doing that until … until I found my way to safety.
I lifted my left foot and placed it, flat-footed, about six inches in front of me. Nothing happened, so I transferred my weight and did it again. With my right foot, this time. Again, nothing happened. The silence around me was complete. Whatever it was had gone. It must have. Surely nothing could stand that silently for that long.
I lifted my left foot again and took another step forward and this time my foot encountered an obstacle. Something rolled away with a hollow clatter that sounded horribly loud in this dark space.
I froze again, heart hammering in my chest. If there was something here it couldn’t fail to have heard that.
And then …then … I felt a hot breath on my cheek. The smell enveloped me.
It – whatever it was – had moved soundlessly in the dark and was standing right beside me.
I gathered myself to run. Where to was no longer important – I just had to get out of this place before I started to scream and scream – and then something took hold my arm in a grip of stone. I felt claws.
I had a sudden picture of a cold and desolate world. A barren and empty land, lying silently under dark skies and dead stars. A place where long ages of nothing had passed very slowly. A cold and lonely world that yearned for warmth and light and yet, at the same time, harboured a deep and abiding hatred for that same warmth and light. Despair and longing battled for supremacy. A longing for the world of people. And a deep and terrible hunger.
Something snuffled in my hair. It was horrible. I could feel something warm running down my face. But it broke the spell. I could move. I screamed and struggled, hurting my arm quite badly and not noticing at the time, but most importantly, I remembered to shout for help.
‘Help. Help. Anyone. Help.’
My voice reverberated, bouncing off distant walls and I could tell from the echoes I was in a huge space.
The thing beside me growled, a low, liquid, bubbling sound and a deep, deep voice, very close to my ear, slowly rumbled, ‘Silence.’
Not a chance. I struggled even harder, twisting myself in its grip, shouting, ‘Help. Help. For God’s sake, someone help me. I’m under the bridge.’
‘No. You are in my realm now. You belong to me.’
Something warm, wet and rough, like a giant cat’s tongue, licked my face. From my chin, up past my nose, up my forehead and into my hair.
‘Taste good …’
I screamed and struggled some more, battering at something with my fists, kicking out as hard as I could. I had nothing left to lose. The grip on my arm never slackened and I could feel warm wetness running down my arm. I was bleeding which wasn’t such a good move as it turned out. There was a massive snuffling noise in the dark and the voice took on a new and frightening note.
‘Blood …’
I kicked out wildly and all that happened was that I hurt my foot, screaming all the time. ‘Help. Help me. Someone help me. Please,’ and knowing all the time that no one would come. That something had hold of me in the dark and, I was certain, was going to eat me.
I was flailing helplessly with my other arm, hitting out at something that felt like a long-haired, bristly doormat. And smelled like one, too. It held me close, crushing my body against its own, snuffling around my face and neck. It was looking for my throat. I felt teeth. The smell was overwhelming and made my head spin. I kept trying to turn my face away. All the time hitting and kicking and struggling to be free.
‘Hunger …’
I was panting with effort and terror. ‘No. Stop it. Let me go.’
It said one last time, ‘Hunger …’ and I knew it was about to bite me. To sink its teeth into my throat and drink my blood.
I gathered myself for one last shriek. ‘Help me. Someone. Please help me.’
The echoes were still bouncing off the walls when the air changed. Stinging dust blew into my eyes and the whole area erupted in a vast sheet of bright, silver light that blinded me.
I screamed again, convinced that this was the end and squeezed my eyes tight shut. Painful tears ran down my cheeks. The thing t
hat was holding me bellowed and not only released me, but actually pushed me away. I staggered backwards, caught my heel on a rock, felt the ground disappear beneath my feet and lost my footing. For a moment, I floundered on the edge of nothing, disoriented, blind, and terrified, and then a hand caught mine. A warm, human hand. A voice said, ‘Whoops-a-daisy, I’ve got you,’ and suddenly I was standing on firm ground.
A hand clapped my shoulder, not ungently, and a man’s voice said, ‘I’d just hang on a moment, if I were you. There’s a troll to deal with here. Keep your eyes closed if it helps.’
So, of course, I opened them immediately.
Chapter Eleven
I don’t know why, but I was clinging onto my backpack for dear life. As if a pile of sandwiches and a couple of bottles of water were my dearest possessions, although at that moment I think they might have been. They represented the safe and the familiar. And believe me, at that moment, I really needed safe and familiar.
I was standing in a vast cavern. Huge stalactites hung from the ceiling and even mightier stalagmites thrust themselves up from the floor. Bright silver light winked off jagged crystals and veins of what looked like gold ran through the rock like shimmering ferns. It was all quite beautiful. Until I looked down.
I was standing on people. Or rather, I was standing on their bones. The rock I thought I had dislodged was someone’s skull. I’d kicked someone’s skull. Scattered all around were long bones, rib cages, pelvises, and draped across a rock like an ornament, a spinal cord. Most of the floor was covered in dead people’s bones – to a depth of several feet in places. It looked as if vague attempts had been made to stack the skulls together or to lay out the long bones in a crude pattern, but not everywhere. As if whoever had started this gruesome work had lost interest and wandered off to do something else instead.
All of the bones had long scoremarks. Or, as something inside me said, teeth marks. I stared, too uncomprehending to take it all in. These people had been eaten. All of the people I was standing on had been eaten. I could feel my mind spiralling down towards hysteria.
A pain-filled bellow filled the cave, hurting my ears. The … creature … I still couldn’t see it clearly, cowered in a dark corner, enormously long arms wrapped around its head.
‘A troll,’ he’d said. I’d seen pictures of trolls. Great lumpy misshapen beasts, ugly and stone-like. This one was ginger and hairy with long arms, short legs and what might once have been a great, bulbous belly but now hung shrivelled and empty. It sagged and swung with every movement. I couldn’t see its face – it was cowering in the corner, hiding its eyes from the bright, unaccustomed light.
‘No light.’
‘Yes light,’ said a figure I could only see in silhouette, so brilliant was the light emanating from him. I’d thought Jones’s colour was bright but this was incandescent. A brilliant, pure silver that penetrated every corner of this cave and cast long indigo-blue shadows across the floor.
He was waving his arms around. ‘What are you doing, Þhurs? This was not the agreement. You should die for this.’
The thing moaned. ‘Hunger …’
‘Tough. You don’t carry people off and eat them. That was the agreement.’
‘Did not.’
‘Don’t lie to me, Þhurs, you snot-laden doormat. I keep telling you – you have to stop carrying off young women. They don’t like it. You agreed. You signed the treaty in your own snot.’
‘She came to me.’
There was a pause. ‘Did she now? Stay there, Þhurs. Don’t even think about moving or I’ll shove lightsticks up your nose until your brain fries.’
The creature groaned again and turned its face to the wall.
The figure stepped out of its own light, turned to me and stared for a very long time.
I stared back, relatively brave as long as he was between me and what was looking increasingly like a giant orangutan with any number of personal hygiene issues.
His colour was so thick it was almost solid. I could barely see through it and he wore it like banner. It streamed behind him, a metallic silver, bright and clear. Unbelievably, like a medieval knight, he carried a sword, although this knight was dressed in army surplus combat trousers, a khaki T-shirt, and a very good pair of boots. I’d never seen a colour like his before. To be honest, I’d never seen a man carrying a sword before, either. Only on a TV or cinema screen, anyway.
‘Well?’ he said, looking me up and down, ‘and what are you calling yourself these days?’
I was suddenly angry. Still grateful, obviously, but angry as well. ‘I don’t call myself anything. I have a name.’
‘Which is?’
I clutched my backpack. If the worst came to the worst, I would throw it at him and run.
‘Elizabeth Cage.’
He narrowed his eyes. ‘And is that your real name?’
‘Of course.’
‘Are you sure?’
‘Yes. Why?’
He sighed. Suddenly, I don’t know why, he reminded me very much of Michael Jones. Perhaps all men have that sigh.
‘Has no one ever told you never to tell anyone your real name?’
I blinked. ‘Why ever not?’
‘It’s too dangerous. When you tell someone your real name you give them power over you.’
I considered this. The government, the council, authority in general, Dr Sorensen in particular, yes, they all knew my real name and they all had power over me. He wasn’t wrong. ‘What’s your name then?’
‘You can call me Iblis.’
‘That’s not your real name, is it?’
‘Of course not.’
I looked around for the way out. ‘I’d like to leave.’
‘I don’t blame you but why did you come here in the first place?’
‘I didn’t,’ I said indignantly. Was he another of these ‘blame the victim’ people? ‘I was on the towpath. I walked under the bridge. Everything went dark and here I was, with that …’
‘Troll,’ he said helpfully. ‘One of the Jötnar. His name is Þhurs. You pronounce it Thurs. As in Thursday.’ He raised his voice. ‘And he’s broken the treaty.’
There was a muffled moan from the back of the cave. It sounded very much like ‘lonely’ to me and I suddenly wanted to be out of here and back in the warm sunshine. Or preferably at home, which I was almost certain I would never leave again.
‘Give it a rest, Þhurs, you broke the treaty. I’ll get back to you in a moment.’
He turned back to me. ‘Would you like me to show you the way out?’
‘Thank you. I really want to be out of here.’
‘Yes, most of Þhurs’s dates feel that way. May I take your arm?’
‘Um … yes. Thank you.’
He shouted over his shoulder, ‘I’m coming back, snot-snorter. You’d better make sure you’re here when I do. This way, Elizabeth Cage.’
He took my arm. The creature lowed again but we were moving away. The light from his colour showed the way. We crunched over more people.
‘Sorry about this,’ he said. ‘Unavoidable, I’m afraid. He does have a go at clearing up every now and then, but he has the attention span of a flea. In fact, we reckon it’s his fleas that do his thinking for him.’
‘We?’
He ignored the question. ‘Just watch your feet here.’
I watched my feet there, slipping and sliding over bones, shredded clothing, helmets, shields, the occasional weapon. Jewels and golden ornaments winked in his light and I had absolutely no desire to investigate.
‘Ready?’ he said. ‘Close your eyes.’
‘Why,’ I said suspiciously.
‘To protect your eyes because the sunlight will be very bright.’
It was. I put my hand up to shade my eyes and he manoeuvred me against the wall. ‘Keep them closed for a moment. Stay here. I’ll be right back.’
His footsteps faded away.
I stood as instructed, more grateful for the warm sunshine than I ha
d ever been in my life. The river gurgled past. Birds sang. Occasionally I heard a car in the distance.
I breathed deeply and tried not to think too hard about what had just happened. A troll? He’d said ‘troll’. Had he been joking? But I’d seen that giant gingery figure, felt his animal breath, smelled his smell, been enveloped in his mucus. All I knew about trolls was that they lived under bridges. I couldn’t help feeling it would have been useful to have remembered that before walking under this one, but I’d walked under bridges before and nothing had happened. And I knew they weren’t very bright as a species, habitually being outwitted by small billy goats and hobbits, as well as turning into stone at daybreak.
‘All right?’ Iblis said suddenly at my elbow and frightening me to death. ‘Sorry. Didn’t mean to scare you.’
‘Where did you go?’
‘I just wanted to have a quick word with Mr Congeniality back there and to make sure the doorway was well and truly shut.’
I don’t know what made me say it. ‘You didn’t hurt him, did you?’
‘Why would you care?’
‘Because, ‘I said, ‘I don’t know if you heard, but the last word he said, as we left the cave, was “lonely”.’
Now he really looked at me, up and down, examining my appearance. Since he was doing it to me, I felt it wouldn’t be impolite to do the same to him.
He was very tall. As tall as Michael Jones but very much slimmer. In fact, he was built like a whippet. In contrast to his military get up, his long white-blond hair fell to his shoulders. But it was his eyes. You could lose yourself in those deep, grey eyes, and I was willing to bet any number of young women had already done so.
He stood grinning at me, eyebrows raised, waiting for me to lose myself in his eyes.
I grinned back. I’d had an unpleasant experience, but now that I was back in the light – back in the real world – memories of the fear were fading fast. I wondered how much of that was to do with this young man standing before me. If, indeed, he was a man …
‘Are you human?’
He stopped dead and stared, but his eyes were laughing at me. ‘Wow. That’s rude. What sort of question is that to ask on a first date?’