by Chad Oliver
Together, with only Tlaxcan’s fitfully burning torch to guide them, they entered the cave. Fang sniffed at the cave mouth and drew back, whining. The half-men screamed behind him, and Fang, growling deep in his throat, trotted hesitantly through the entrance and followed the flickering torch into the uneasy darkness below.
Chapter 17 Dweller Under the Earth
The cave sloped downward, and Mark could feel his steps quickening on the slanting floor of rocks. He could hear the Neanderthals growling in the darkness, and judged that they were grouped around the cave mouth, trying to decide whether or not to go in. The hollow, tubular caverns did strange things with voices however, taking them and twisting them grotesquely out of all recognition. It was almost impossible to tell whether a sound came from just over your shoulder or hundreds of yards away. The growls and mutterings chased each other down the black echoes and lost themselves among the uncaring rocks.
Fang stayed so close to him that he constantly entangled himself in Mark’s legs; he had to push him away forcibly in order to keep on going. The dog was obviously afraid of something, and Mark had a grim suspicion that what he feared waited ahead of them in the depths of the cave, rather than behind them where the half-men whispered their fury.
Mark had a continual feeling that he was about to step off into a bottomless pit; there was not enough light to see by, and he simply had to follow, as best he could, the light from Tlaxcan’s torch, as it wound on down into the cave. He knew, of course, that where Tlaxcan had gone he could also go, but it was weirdly uncomfortable to have to put his feet down on rocks that he could not see, feeling all the while that he might just go on forever, down, down, down . . .
The dank, unpleasant smell increased as they pushed on through the caverns. Mark could not quite decide what it was about the smell that was so oppressive; it was a nameless thing, all the more chilling because he could not positively identify it. It was not merely a dead smell, although the cave had the stench of death about it somehow. Nor was it only the dampness, or the stifling closeness that one often knows deep in the earth, with the untold tons of rock pushing down on you from the clean world above.
It reminded Mark of a sewer pipe he had once crawled into as a child. The pipe had stopped abruptly and turned into a stone tunnel, where the sewer line ran under a railroad track. He had groped forward in the darkness, the batteries in his small flashlight beginning to give out. He splashed excitedly through the murky ooze, still on his hands and knees, putting one hand ahead of the other to feel his way along. First his right hand, then his left hand, then his right hand, then his left hand touched something. It was cold, cold and slippery. Horrified, he could not take his hand away. The thing was round and soft and flexible. Mark ran his hand along it, shocked almost out of his senses. It was long. His other hand shaking so that he could hardly hold the flashlight, he turned the fading beam downward. There on the rocks, dead glazed eyes staring at him, was a six-foot rattlesnake that had been dead too long . ..
That was the way this cave felt.
Down and down Tlaxcan went, not even bothering to look behind him. Mark could not hear the half-men now. Had they given up? Were they squatting around the cave mouth, waiting? Or were they stalking them in silence through the Stygian blackness, their red eyes fixed on Tlaxcan’s dwindling torch even as Mark’s were?
Fang whined loudly and then subsided into silence as Mark patted him with a reassurance he did not feel. Mark tried to tell himself that he just had the willies, that the worst was over, that Tlaxcan clearly knew what he was doing and where he was going. That helped some, but the eerie feeling persisted. Mark kept seeing that dead snake, soft and horrible under his hand.
Tlaxcan fired up another torch from the dying flames of the first one and hurled the first one away. It sizzled and hissed as it fell into a shallow basin of oily water, and then winked out. The new torch chased the shadows back momentarily, and Mark caught a sudden glimpse of fantastic rock formations all around him in a somber and brooding series of archways and branching tunnels, rearing stalagmites and hanging stalactites. It was weirdly beautiful, and yet infinitely dead. It looked like the cold surface of the moon.
On and on they went, with Tlaxcan as sure-footed as though he were trotting through an open field for exercise. He twisted and turned, following a trail that Mark could not see. The damp heaviness in the air increased, almost as if all the weight above them were pushing down on it with physical force. Far in the distance,
Mark could hear what sounded like the gurgle of running water. That was all. There was no sound to alarm him, and he noticed nothing that was the least suspicious. And yet the feeling of dread stayed with him, seeming to seep through the very air itself.
The Neanderthals were gone as though they had never existed, and Mark did not believe that they could have followed them all this way without once betraying themselves. Either they had gone back to the dead mammoths, or else they were waiting for them at the mouth of the cave. Neither Mark nor Tlaxcan was in any hurry to go back and find out for sure, so they kept on going down into the depths of the cave. Undoubtedly, Mark figured, Tlaxcan knew of another exit to these caverns than the one by which they had entered. Otherwise, they were trapped more certainly than they had ever been outside, and Tlaxcan was not dull-witted in any respect. If the Neanderthals knew of that other exit, too, however . . .
Fang kept drawing back, afraid to go on, and then hurrying madly to catch up, afraid to be left behind. What was the matter with him? Mark knew that the wolf-dog was used to caves, and he had proved his courage many times over on the mammoth hunt. He didn’t scare easily, and if he was scared at all, there was a reason for it. Such thoughts did little good, however. They could not possibly go back now, even if they knew for sure that danger lurked in the black depths of the cave. They could only go forward, down into the earth.
“Not much farther down now,” Tlaxcan said suddenly, the unexpected sound of his voice startling in the hush of the cave.
“Let’s hope not,” Mark answered, keeping his voice cheerful. “It should start getting hot any minute now.”
Tlaxcan, of course, did not catch Mark’s reference, but he did not question him. “We have lost the Mroxor,” he said instead.
“Are you sure?” Mark asked.
“The Mroxor will not follow us here,” Tlaxcan assured him.
“Why not, Tlaxcan?”
“This cave is not a good cave,” Tlaxcan said quietly, summing up all Mark’s vague thoughts in a single sentence. “We are very far from the sun.”
The second torch burned down to a mere twig with a vanishing flame, and Tlaxcan hurriedly lit his last dead branch. Mark was grateful for the light, as was Fang, who wagged his tail in relief. Light very decidedly made a difference, and Mark did not even like to think about being lost in this underground maze in total darkness. He still had three branches of his own, but he realized that that was none too many. The dead wood burned fast, and not even Tlaxcan could find his way to the surface again without a torch. There must be fresh air moving through the cave, Mark thought, since the torch seemed to be blowing very slightly. It could not be much, since he could not feel it at all, but its presence was encouraging.
Abruptly, the cave floor leveled out underfoot. The steady downward grade vanished, and Mark had been walking so long on a slanting surface that for a moment it was difficult to adjust his stride to more normal conditions. He had a distinct impression of open spaces all around, as opposed to the pressing sensations that sensitive individuals always felt in narrow caves. In the uncertain light of Tlaxcan’s torch, he could not even see the walls of the cave, and the roof was lost in the shadows above his head. The gurgle of water was quite close now, and it echoed with surprising loudness against the distant rocks. They were evidently in a huge underground room of some sort, far beneath the surface of the earth.
Tlaxcan did not break his stride, and Mark had to hurry to keep up with him. But the strange, oppressive smell
was even stronger in the vast chamber, and Mark found that it took quite an effort of will to keep from looking back over his shoulder. The smell, he was now able to determine, was not one smell but several, all mixed up together. One of the smells, unless he was very much mistaken, was that of dead fish. At first thought, this seemed strange, but then he remembered the fish caught in Mammoth Cave in his own day and age. There was a stream here, and therefore there could be fish. The other smells he could not yet identify, but there was one question that needed answering in a hurry.
Who, or what, caught the fish down here?
No one answered his unspoken question, but obviously Tlaxcan had also been doing some figuring with regard to those dead fish. He quickened his pace, torch held high aloft, and swung his bow around in his free hand so that it was ready for action. Fang caught the heightened odor too, and whined and growled by turns.
They crossed an icy stream, and Mark felt as though he were stepping barefooted through piles of drifting jellyfish. He did not relish the thought of wading through water that he could not see, and he was tense and nervous, waiting for something to happen. Nothing did, however, and they went on through the great cavern without incident.
Tlaxcan led him into a small branching tunnel that shortly opened up again into another cave room, this time much smaller than the one they had just been through, but still a cavern of considerable size. It was pitch dark, and Tlaxcan’s torch was growing dim. Fang whined constantly, and almost crawled along, fiat on the floor. Mark felt the hair on the back of his neck stand up, and he began to shiver uncontrollably. Even Tlaxcan slowed his pace, his breathing harsh and shallow in the stillness.
Something was wrong with the room.
Mark could not for the life of him figure out what was the matter. The smell was stronger, but that was all. There was no sound, save for Fang’s whining and the chuckle of water from the cavern behind them. All was darkness, darkness and silence, and yet . . . Eyes.
There were two eyes looking at them from the blackness of the cavern. Two eyes where no eyes could be, glowing with yellow flames in the gloom under the earth. There was not a sound, only the two unblinking eyes like misplaced stars watching them. The eyes were bad enough, but their position was worse.
The eyes were a good fifteen feet off the ground.
“Tlaxcan,” Mark whispered. “Tlaxcan—”
With the awful suddenness of a thunderclap when there is not a cloud in the sky, an ear-splitting roar bellowed through the cave. The sound blasted against Mark’s ears, numbing his brain with fear. It was the most fearful sound he had ever heard in his life—and coming as it did from fifteen feet off the ground . . .
“Get back, Mark!” shouted Tlaxcan. “Back in that corner!”
Mark did not move. Frightened as he was, he had not the remotest intention of leaving Tlaxcan to fight a rear guard delaying action by himself. Instead, he moved up beside him. Forcing his nerves to steady down, he took one of his torches and lit it from the dying flame of Tlaxcan’s. The light flared out suddenly, and he caught a quick glimpse of something enormous and black under the eyes. The thing roared again.
It started forward.
Tlaxcan threw his feeble torch with all his strength at the padding figure of darkness, and the thing snarled hideously, its yellow eyes gleaming. It hesitated, brushing the flame aside.
“Now,” hissed Mark. “Back together.”
To have only one direction from which to defend themselves, they backed rapidly into a corner, with Mark holding the torch high in the gloomy air. Fang growled deep in his throat, no longer afraid now that the danger was real. He knew that he did not have a chance against the monster before him, but he was determined to die fighting.
The thing roared again, its voice wet and ugly.
“Whatever we’re going to do, we’ll have to do it quick,” Tlaxcan said evenly. “We need these torches to get out of here.”
They had their backs to the wall, with no room to maneuver. Their supply of light was going up in smoke. When the light gave out, and left them alone in the darkness with that monster—Mark tried not to think about it.
They would have to act, and act now. But that thing in the cave was not going to sit “back and smile indulgently while they figured out some way to dispose of it. They would have to kill it instantly or not at all. A mere wound would simply madden it into a headlong charge after its tormentor, and anything fifteen feet high was apt to take a lot of killing.
They had no choice. Tlaxcan had evidently figured things out the same way Mark had, and it was characteristic of the man that he did not even consult his friend to see who would risk his life first. With a faint smile on his proud face, Tlaxcan stepped forward to do battle against the towering monster with a bow and arrow.
Chapter 18 The Council of War
Tlaxcan!” Mark reached out and bodily pulled his, friend back into the relative safety of the corner., Tlaxcan tensed, and eyed Mark with the questioning look of one who thinks his companion insane. “You have no weapons,” Tlaxcan pointed out reasonably. “Your job must be to hold the light steady.” “You are mistaken,” Mark replied. “I have this.” Mark drew his .45 and showed it to Tlaxcan. Before them in the cave the monster-thing shuffled its huge invisible feet and snarled an angry warning. Fang growled back at him, making up in heart for what he lacked in size.
Tlaxcan smiled patiently. “You are brave, my friend,” he said, “but bravery is sometimes ill-advised. You cannot possibly harm the Dweller with that tiny weapon; you could not even get close enough to use it.”
Mark wasted no time trying to explain to Tlaxcan the principle of firearms. “This weapon is magic,” he said instead. “With it I have killed the Mroxor, and it will not fail us. Let me try, at least. I will not have to move from this spot.” Tlaxcan hesitated. He knew that his friend had the reputation of having strong medicine, and he knew too that his chances against the thing in the cave with a bow and arrow were slim almost to the vanishing point.
“You hold the light,” Mark said, thrusting the torch into his hand. “I will try my magic.”
Tlaxcan held the torch aloft, and with his other hand he gripped his bow. Magic was all very well, he knew from experience, but it had a tendency to be undependable. Sometimes it worked, sometimes it did not. It never hurt to have something in reserve.
Mark himself was far from feeling as confident as he sounded. To be sure, his .45 with its three bullets was a more effective weapon than a bow and arrow could be, even when the more primitive weapon was handled by such an expert as Tlaxcan. But a pistol, for all his talk about magic, could not perform miracles. A .45 packed a formidable wallop, but it was not accurate even at close range. What he needed was a high-powered rifle with rapid-fire action, and even then he would not have felt completely secure. He was under no illusions that one shot from the .45 would knock the monster over like a rabbit. That thing had bulk, and he felt oddly like someone trying to stop a tank with an air rifle. The thing roared again, deafeningly. It started forward.
It was now or never. Mark’s nerves were steady, and he managed to think of the nightmare creature simply as a target. He ignored the roaring sound and aimed carefully at the thing’s yellow eye. He tried to breathe evenly, and he remembered to squeeze the trigger gently, so as not to throw the weapon off its aim. He could feel cold sweat dripping down his body.
Mark fired. The .45 went off with a slamming blast in the still air of the cave, and Mark had a wild fear that the vibrations from the shot might start a landslide, sealing them in forever or burying them under tons of rock. The gun kicked back against his hand, and one yellow eye winked out.
A terrible roar of pain filled the cave and Mark knew that his shot had struck home. But the thing was not dead; all Mark could see now was one yellow eye and the vast bulk of darkness beneath it. The monster screamed in agony, and launched itself at them like an avalanche.
Mark did not fire wildly. He aimed for the other eye and squeeze
d the trigger again. The shot boomed out when Mark could already feel the thing’s fetid breath upon him, smell the underground monster’s terrible nearness. Dimly, he was aware of Tlaxcan dropping the torch and loosing an arrow into the black bulk. Fang growled deep in his throat and charged to meet the attack.
But it was not enough. The warm and stinking mass of the monster kept coming, and before Mark had time to fire his last shot it was upon him. He thrust out his hands futilely and was thrown back against the cave wall, dropping his gun in spite of himself. He closed his eyes, waiting for the crush of unseen jaws, feeling the terrific weight of the thing against him.
Nothing happened.
Mark opened his eyes. Desperately, he crawled out from under the dark mass, feeling something wet and sticky on his hands. “Tlaxcan,” he gasped. “What—”
“It is dead,” Tlaxcan said quietly, a deep respect in his voice. “You have killed him with your magic.”
Reaction set in and Mark was suddenly and thoroughly sick. Then he felt better. He came back and looked down at the dead monster that had waited for them in the depths of the earth. Fang was wagging his busy tail furiously and rubbing against Mark with a grateful affection that knew no bounds.
“What was it?” Mark asked, picking up his fallen .45 and returning it to its holster.
Tlaxcan picked up his torch and held it so that Mark could see the dead body. Even in death, the thing was formidable. Its eyes were gone, vanished in bloody spots where the .45 slugs had done their work. An arrow was buried in its shoulder. It was over fifteen feet in length as it sprawled on the cave floor, lying in a growing pool of its own blood. It was covered with long, shaggy black hair, matted with filth. It had only a suggestion of a tail, and its long snout was open in a death-grin of defiance, its yellow fangs gleaming in the torchlight.