by Scott Reeves
They left the room and followed Nigel deeper into the tunnel. Just as he’d said, twenty feet further on, on the tunnel wall opposite the room they’d just left, another large doorway loomed.
Paula shined her flashlight inside. Beyond was an immense cavern, so large that her light couldn’t reach any of the walls save the one immediately surrounding the door. Row upon neatly arranged row of wooden bed frames filled the cavern to the limits of her light, interrupted only by the odd stalagmite jutting up from the floor.
“And if you’ll follow me, please,” Nigel said, as if he had appointed himself some sort of tour guide.
He led them a few more dozens of feet down the tunnel.
The tunnel dead-ended. They stood on the lip of a huge square shaft that plunged straight down into the earth, a gaping black maw from which a slight but very hot breeze rushed upward. Screams, so faint they might almost have been imagined, echoed up to them.
SIRI WAS CURLED IN on herself in the darkness, sleeping. After crawling for a long time through that narrow crevice, a light had beckoned up ahead. The narrow tunnel had opened up into a cavernous room. Light emanated from a mossy yellow fungus growing on the ceiling, providing a dim illumination. She’d seen the fungus before. It had grown on the ceilings of the tunnels and rooms in which she’d spent her youth, providing light as she had been educated in the ways of God and Satan and had received weekly punishment for the crime of her existence.
As she’d entered the cavern, she’d looked up at it, welcoming the light and the memories it brought forth, memories of the time before she’d been thrown into the lake of fire. She’d searched the cavern to make sure she was safe. None of the Lord’s minions were here. Apparently she’d stumbled upon a forgotten corner of the world, or perhaps a corner that had never been discovered. Whichever the case, this appeared to be a safe place. After making this determination, she had collapsed to the ground, exhausted.
Curled in on herself, the last flames of torment that had been ignited in her mind by the lake of fire died. And she slept.
CHAPTER FOUR – The Shaft
AN INTRICATE PULLEY system was bolted into the roof of the shaft. A rusted iron chain rose from the black depths, snaked through the pulleys, and attached to a manual crank on the wall of the tunnel.
“What do you suppose the chain is attached to?” Jason asked.
“Only one way to find out,” Mike said. He grabbed the lever of the crank and yanked backward on it. The pulley system creaked in protest, but it moved. Mike hauled on the lever, spinning it round and round. The chain segments rose from the shaft and slowly wrapped around the hub of the crank, rattling noisily in the process. It required tremendous strength; his biceps bulged and his face contorted with strain.
Paula stroked his arms. “Way to go, baby. You can do it.”
Something creaked upward. They could hear it scraping the sides of the shaft as it rose.
Stacy looked hungrily at Mike’s bulging muscles. “You’ve got some muscles, Mikey-poo. There’s no doubt about that.”
Jason pounded his fist against his side in agitation and bit back a jibe at her.
It seemed foolish, hoping that the pulley would offer them a way to go lower, toward those distant screams. But at that moment, forward seemed to be the only way out. Or at least, the only way that gave them any hope of a way out.
After about two minutes of spinning the crank, a rusted iron cage, attached to the end of the chain, crested the lip of the shaft and Mike threw a bolt, locking the crank in place and trapping the platform.
The cage was deep red with the rust of immense age. The rickety thing looked like it might fall apart if they stepped so much as a foot into it.
“Right,” Jason said. “Let’s ride the thousand-year-old cage down the pitch-black shaft toward the screams.” He motioned gallantly toward the opening that provided access to the cage’s interior. “After you, ladies.”
Paula shook her head. “Thanks, but I think I’ll hang around up here for a bit longer.”
“I second that,” Stacy said, looking warily at the decrepit cage. “There’s got to be a better way.”
“Perhaps Nigel will be a good chap and pop down to have a look around for us,” Jason quipped in a poor British accent. “What ho, Nigel old boy?”
“Come now,” Nigel said in reproach at the obvious taunt.
“Why not?” Mike asked. “You’re the one who discovered these rooms and this elevator before we did. You’ve shown yourself to be an intrepid explorer, blazing ahead of us. Why stop now?”
Stacy took Nigel’s arm and tugged at him, trying to pull him away from the cage. “Come away, Nigel. Don’t listen to them.”
He resisted her. “No. They’re right. I got you into this mess. I might as well make myself useful.”
He stepped forward and gingerly placed a foot into the cage. He put his weight down, testing. The floor of the cage held. He stepped all the way inside. The cage swayed a bit under his sudden weight, but not too much, constrained as it was by the sides of the shaft. He stayed at the center of the cage, moving around slightly until he found the position that imparted the most stability to the cage. Grabbing a firm hold on the thin iron lattice that comprised the walls of the cage, he nodded at Mike. “You may lower away at your convenience.”
Paula stepped forward and held her flashlight out to Nigel. The others looked at her, and Mike opened his mouth to protest. But she cut him off. “What? He can’t very well look around down there without light, can he?”
“He found those rooms and this shaft just fine without a light, didn’t he?” Jason pointed out.
“Take the flashlight, Nigel,” Mike said. He held up a hand to cut off more protests. “I can operate this crank in the dark. And if we all stay perfectly still until he gets back with the light, we’ll be fine.” He failed to mention the beast that might be lurking in the darkness, but he didn’t have to; it was on all their minds, including his.
Nigel took the light from Paula. “Don’t worry. I’ll be right back.”
Jason shrugged. “Just as long as the light comes back. That’s all we care about.”
Stacy glared at him, and he ducked his head sheepishly.
“It might be a rough descent,” Mike told Nigel. “It was tough enough pulling that thing up without any weight in it.”
Nigel nodded. He put the flashlight into his mouth, gripping it between his teeth, and braced himself in the cage. “At your convenience,” he said around the flashlight.
Mike grabbed hold of the crank lever and told Paula to remove the locking bolt. She did. The crank lever yanked Mike forward, catching him off guard and nearly ripping free of his grip. The cage lurched and then dropped into the shaft, disappearing from sight almost instantaneously and taking all their light with it. The four friends were once again plunged into pitch-blackness.
Mike fought the whirling crank, slowing the cage’s descent as best he could. Which wasn’t much. After only thirty seconds, only about a quarter of the time it had taken him to raise the cage, it hit bottom with a jolt and the crank stopped spinning. The impact sent a muffled metallic crash echoing up to them.
“I’m okay, I’m okay!” Nigel shouted up at them. “Bit of a rough landing, but I’m fine.”
The slightest hint of a glow emanated from the black maw of the vertical shaft, dispelling the darkness, but not enough to see much of anything at all. The four of them carefully inched forward to the lip of the shaft and peered downward, hoping to catch a glimpse of Nigel. But they couldn’t see him; just a faint pinprick of light far, far below.
“I’m going to spit,” Mike called down to him. “Let me know when you feel it or see it hit.”
“Right,” Nigel called up.
“Oh, let me spit, let me spit,” Jason insisted.
Mike sighed, but didn’t protest as Jason hacked up a generous mouthful of saliva and held it at the ready.
“Now,” Mike said.
Jason spit down into the shaft.
“Okay,” Nigel’s faint voice echoed up to them. “It hit.”
“Did I get you?” Jason called down hopefully.
“Right square in my upturned face, if it makes you feel better,” Nigel called up cheerfully.
“Thank you, it does,” Jason said.
“Twelve seconds,” Paula reported.
“About twenty-seven hundred feet down,” Jason said immediately, calculating at his typical lightning speed. He waited expectantly for praise from Stacy. She always praised him whenever his mental prowess revealed itself.
But not this time. She was silent in the darkness.
“About half a mile,” he said, disheartened. “That’s how far down Nigel is.”
“Why isn’t the sound deadened, like it is up here?” Paula asked. “I can hear him pretty good. And those screams...”
Jason shrugged. “Beats me.”
“What do you see down there?” Mike called down.
“Small cavern,” Nigel’s distant voice reported. “Two tunnel openings. Those screams are a bit louder down here, but still far away.”
“Stacy, sweetie...” Jason said. He reached out in the darkness and tried to touch her arm, but she wasn’t where she’d been a moment ago.
Nigel screamed. A blood-curdling screech of agony, made even more terrible with the added backdrop of the other, more distant screams. Skittering, slithering sounds and a noise like the flapping of wings accompanied his screams.
“Nigel!” Stacy shouted down at him. “Nigel!”
Thus cued to her location, Jason reached out in the dark and grabbed hold of her, to prevent her from making a misstep in her agitation and plunging to her death. This time, she didn’t shrug him off.
For several seconds, Nigel’s screams rose and fell, until he gave one last agonized scream that gradually faded into the distance, as if he were being dragged away. Finally his scream was no louder than the background screams, merging with them and becoming indistinguishable.
Stacy crumpled against Jason, sobbing, and he hugged her tightly.
“His light’s still down there,” Mike’s voice said in the darkness. “I think he dropped the flashlight.”
Mike was right. The faint glow still emanated from the shaft.
There was a long, rhythmic creaking noise as he operated the crank. The feeble glow became stronger as the rusted iron cage rose from the depths. Finally it drew level with the lip of the shaft. The flashlight lay at the center of the cage, casting its sorely missed bubble of light onto the four friends.
Stacy squirmed free of Jason’s arms and shoved him away from her. “Well, you got what you wanted, didn’t you, bastard? Nigel’s gone, but at least the light came back, right?”
SIRI WAS AWAKENED BY distant voices. In the crevice through which she’d entered this cavern, she heard the skittering of limbs on stone; she heard several of the Lord’s minions chittering to each other in the Devil’s tongue.
She leapt to her feet and faced the narrow black crack in the base of one wall of the cavern. The hissing voices were getting closer. She hid behind a nearby outcropping of rock and peered cautiously around, hoping she wouldn’t be spotted.
Two of the Lord’s minions crawled from the crevice. They were dragging an unconscious man between them, a tall, skinny man, naked and entirely hairless. There was something strange about him, an otherworldly air. She didn’t quite know how she knew it, but he didn’t belong in this place. He was from...elsewhere.
The two minions dragged the man to the center of the cavern and dropped him on a large rectangular outcropping, like a table. They looked at him and licked their lips, bared their serrated teeth. Their leathery, membranous wings fluttered in what she recognized as a sign of anticipation. And she knew.
They were going to eat him.
“We shouldn’t eat him,” the minion on the right said, confirming her thoughts.
The Devil’s tongue was an ugly and harsh language, difficult to understand. But Siri remembered it from the time before she’d been thrown into the lake. Two of her teachers had been minions, and they had taught her in their own language. She hadn’t heard it since the time before the lake and she’d grown her breasts, but if she concentrated, she could understand.
“This isn’t the one the Lord seeks,” the minion on the left replied. “We can eat him.”
“You tempt me. His flesh tempts me. But no, he is the one,” the minion on the right insisted. Siri noticed that it had a large red birthmark on the back of its bald pate. “You can smell his blood as well as I. If we eat him, the Lord will have our hides. Why did I ever let you talk me into bringing him here?”
Siri picked up a large rock on the ground beside her. She hefted it in her hand, readying herself.
“I’m hungry,” the minion on the left said. “And you love me, that’s why.”
The one with the red birthmark hissed. “Love? You dare accuse me of love?” It reared up, spreading its wings and whipping its stinger, angered. The other minion backed away, straight toward the outcropping of rock that hid Siri.
She leapt from her hiding place and dashed the rock against the bald head of the minion closest to her. She put all her might behind the blow, and the minion crumpled to the ground, its skull caved in.
The other minion, the one with the red birthmark, lashed out with its stinger. Siri dodged to the side, narrowly avoiding the dripping, venomous tip. She kept her eyes fastened on the minion.
Its back was to the man lying on the table-like rock. He stirred.
The minion lashed out with its stinger again. She dodged, but not quickly enough. The stinger scored a glancing blow, slicing open her right forearm. The minion leapt into the air, taking flight. Siri jumped back behind her outcropping of rock, keeping it between her and the minion, like a shield. The minion hovered in the air, flapping its great leathery wings. It dove at her several times, but couldn’t get at her because of the outcropping.
“For killing my mate, you’re going to die in this lost cavern,” the minion hissed at her in the Devil’s tongue. “And no one will ever know.”
“If death is the only escape from this place, then so be it,” Siri said. “I’ve made my penance. God will take me in.”
Abruptly, in one swift movement, the man leapt up from where he lay on the rocky table and launched himself at the minion, who was hovering about five feet above ground. He caught it around its wasp-like waist, and momentum carried both man and minion crashing to the ground. The minion landed on a wing. The bony struts crumpled beneath the minion’s weight and it screamed in agony.
The man wrestled the minion, trying to keep away from the dripping stinger, which dodged and weaved, looking for an opening. While the minion was distracted with the man, Siri crept up behind it and smashed a rock into its skull, the same rock she’d used to kill its mate. She continued bashing in its head until it ceased twitching and died.
The man thrust the creature’s carcass off of himself and got to his feet. He looked at her. “I’m Nigel,” he said.
They were the most beautiful words she had ever heard. She hadn’t heard a human voice in so long, at least that she could remember. She was sure her neighbors must have spoken to her in the lake of fire. But they had been words of gibberish, born from agony and reaching her mind through a filter of agony that stripped any meaning from them. Nigel’s were the first words she had heard and been able to comprehend.
“I am Siri,” she told him. He clearly didn’t belong in this place. That strange air about him, the way he held himself—he was an outsider who had never known pain. “Did God send you to bring me home?” she asked him, her voice trembling with hope.
CHAPTER FIVE – Things That Fly and Breathe Fire
THEY WERE SITTING IN the room they had come to think of as the kitchen. The name was born both from their belief of what the room had probably once been as well as from the hunger that was gnawing insistently at each of their g
uts.
They needed to eat.
Paula, Stacy and Jason were each sitting on the floor with their backs propped against the wall. Mike, however, rocked on his haunches at the ancient and massive wooden table, as if he were expecting a meal to be delivered to him at any moment.
“So trying to rescue him is out?” Stacy asked.
“You think there’s anything left of him to rescue?” Jason asked. “You heard those screams. There’s something down there. Something mean. And I sure don’t want to find out what it would take to make me scream like that. So yes, I think trying to rescue him is out. That guy had it coming, after what he’s done to us. I’m not losing any sleep over him.”
Paula said, “I agree. I don’t want to bring anyone down. But we’re in real trouble here.”
“You think?” Stacy jeered.
“Yes,” Paula spat back. “I do think. And I also think that we’re in this mess because of you and the way you led poor Nigel on.”
Jason nodded.
“Ladies. We’re tired,” Mike said, stating the obvious. He stood. “We need to eat. And we need to get out of here. I think we ought to go back up and try the door again.”
“I’m too tired to walk back that far,” Stacy whined. “You guys go. Send someone back down for us if you make it out.”
“Sure,” Jason sneered. “Let’s split up. That’s what they always do in the horror movies, isn’t it? Things start to go bad and so they decide to split up. It does wonders in the movies. Yes, let’s split up.” He rubbed at the red welt on his back. It had begun to throb, and pain radiated out from it.
Stacy grumbled, but she got to her feet. “Let’s go, then.”
They went all the way back up to the bronze door, giving a wide berth to the small opening where they’d heard the skittering earlier.
Mike and Jason both separately tried to open the door, scrabbling at the point where it met the tunnel walls. Neither succeeded. They tried together, prying at it from wherever they could get even the slightest handhold on it. Those attempts were unsuccessful. Each of them in turn tried scuffing the so-called seal that Nigel had created with his blood. The seal wouldn’t scuff. Jason even stood back and peered intently at the door, trying to open it “with his Jedi mind powers.”