by Scott Reeves
They shouted themselves hoarse. They pounded on the door. They listened for signs of activity on the other side. Maybe they’d been reported missing by someone. Perhaps David had returned and would open the door if he heard them.
All their attempts failed.
They trudged back down to the kitchen and collapsed against the walls.
“Well, that was a waste of an hour,” Jason said.
“It’s got to be at least midnight by now,” Mike said.
“Twenty-one hours without any sleep, then,” Paula said.
“How about that other room across the way?” Stacy said. “The big one. It’s full of beds. Maybe there’s another tunnel in there. Shouldn’t we check it out?”
They all looked at her. Then they rose and crossed over to the cavernous room with the ancient bed frames.
“I christen you the bedroom,” Mike said, tapping on the stone of the doorway as if he were breaking a bottle of wine on it. He took the flashlight from Paula. “I’ll go first, since I’m the one with the muscles.”
“And how,” Paula said with forced cheerfulness. By now they were all about ready to drop. But sleep would be impossible, knowing what might be lurking in the darkness, waiting for the right moment to strike.
There were one hundred wooden bed frames in the room, arranged in rows of ten. None of them had any mattresses. Piles of decayed organic matter beneath the beds might once have been cushions stuffed with straw or feathers. As they counted the beds and explored the room, Paula gave them a running history of the tenth century A.D. But none of the others really listened, and eventually Mike asked her, none too politely, to shut up. Yes, they were all tired and irritable, and the beds only served to remind them of sleep.
Just as Stacy had suggested, there was another tunnel mouth on the wall opposite the door through which they’d entered. They ventured into it.
A short distance through the tunnel was another cavernous room filled with piles of jumbled rock and dirt. Perhaps a dumping ground for debris from the mining.
“If what Nigel said was true,” Paula speculated, “and that bronze door was shut and sealed in the tenth century, there were obviously people trapped down here. They must have lived here as they continued mining.”
“But why?” Mike asked. “Nigel said ‘What’s inside must not get out.’ Does that mean the people who lived here?”
“It’s the thing that stung me and dragged Nigel away,” Jason said. “It’s got to be. Whatever is trapped in here drove these people away and they shut the door. This was just the quarters for the miners, before they were scared away.”
“Not so skeptical anymore, eh, sweetie?” Stacy asked snidely. He’d always loved it when she called him sweetie. Now, however, she made it sound like an insult.
“Who knows the truth of what went on here?” Paula said. “Let’s keep looking.”
Besides the piles of rock and dirt, there were a few vile devices inside this cavern: half a dozen rusted, rectangular metal frames with rollers at both ends and a system of levers and pulleys.
“Racks,” Paula said. “They used these to torture people.”
Stacy gasped.
“Nice,” Jason said. “This place just gets better and better.”
“Why resort to something like this?” Mike asked, running his hand along the metal edge of one frame. “Why not just threaten to marry them off or saddle them with a girlfriend?”
Paula slapped at him.
Near the racks, just lying on the ground, they found several swords, a wicked metal spike and several sets of pincers.
Paula picked up one of the pincers and waved it near Mike’s crotch. “This is what wives used to use on misbehaving husbands.” She smiled, then tossed them aside.
Another tunnel led from the cavern. This next tunnel sloped sharply downward. After about forty feet, it leveled out and opened into another cavern, the largest cavern they’d yet seen, larger than the bedroom.
The cavern stank. It smelled of sewage and organic decay. Far above the, the entire ceiling was covered with some sort of yellow moss or fungus that glowed, casting a wan light down upon them.
“Bioluminescence,” Jason gasped. “Incredible.”
Mike flicked off the flashlight. “Might as well conserve power,” he said. “At least we won’t have to be in darkness if the flashlight goes dead and we’re still down here.”
There was a lake at the far end of the cavern. Its surface was placid. The depths were murky; all they could see was the reflection of the bioluminescent moss on the ceiling.
The rest of the cavern floor was covered with a thick layer of some sort of natural composting matter. And growing atop this pungent layer of organic detritus was a miniature forest of mushrooms.
Stacy knelt down and gingerly pulled one up, examining it. It had a short, purplish stem and a huge purplish cap. “Clitocybe nuda,” she said authoritatively. “Commonly known as ‘wood blewit.’ It’s edible. But we should cook it first. Food problem solved, for now.”
Paula was astonished. “I’m impressed,” she said. “How exactly do you know this?”
Jason guffawed. “Clitocybe. It’s the clit part.” He knew her so well.
“It’s one of my favorite words,” she confessed. She leered up at Jason. “It’s my favorite body part. Right, sweetie?”
“She collects clit-related trivia the way other girls collect dolls,” Jason said.
Paula rolled her eyes, and then Stacy remembered she was supposed to be angry with Jason. So she dropped her leer and put on a stony face.
“Food problem not solved,” Mike said. “We don’t have a fire to cook the mushrooms, remember?”
“Wood burns,” Jason said. “There’s plenty of wood back in the kitchen and the bedroom. All we have to do is break up a few of those beds.”
Paula went apoplectic. “Are you insane? If we ever get out of here, those are historical artifacts that belong in a museum. They’re priceless!”
“If we ever get out of here,” Stacy said. “You want to starve? I’m already starving.”
Paula sighed. “The wood might not even burn. If it’s lasted this long, it’s probably been chemically treated somehow.”
“All we can do is try,” Mike said. He pointed to the mouth of another tunnel across the way near the lake. “Let’s go look around a bit more, then we’ll come back and eat. Rest for a while.” He flicked on the flashlight and started out.
They entered the next tunnel and darkness swallowed them, barely pushed back by Mike’s flashlight. “We’ll call the room we just left ‘the pantry.’ Sound good?”
“Why do we have to name everything?” Jason asked. “You planning on settling in here or something?”
Mike didn’t bother to reply.
A short distance ahead, they saw a light. They rushed toward it.
The tunnel dead-ended in an immense chasm. The rocky walls were sheer, plunging straight downward into darkness. The light came from molten rock that was raining down from high above. Mike flicked off the flashlight, once again conscious of the need to conserve the battery.
They stood on the lip of the tunnel and peered upward. High above, winged things were flitting around, too distant to make out much detail. But they were vaguely humanoid; the four friends could see that much. And they were spitting fire at the ceiling. There were perhaps a hundred of them, swarming around. The combined intensity of their flames had turned the ceiling red hot. Great gobs of the molten ceiling dripped down, tumbling past the friends like fiery raindrops and down into the depths of the chasm, where darkness soon swallowed them up.
“Things that fly and breathe fire,” Jason said in disbelief. His preconceived notions of the world were being blown further and further to bits with each new situation they encountered.
“What are those things? Why are they melting the ceiling?” Stacy asked. “It’s like they’re trying to melt a path to the surface.”
Mike shook his head. “I don’t know.
But we’d better go back into the tunnel before one of those things sees us.”
Paula had gotten onto her hands and knees so as not to tumble over the edge as she peered over the lip, down into the depths of the chasm. “It’s not totally dark down there,” she said.
They all looked down. Far, far below, a faint ribbon of light marked the bottom of the canyon, almost as if a river of flame flowed in the distant depths.
“Look out!” Mike suddenly shouted. He’d glanced upward just in time to see a huge gob of the molten rock falling straight toward where they perched on the lip of the tunnel.
He, Stacy and Paula reacted quickly, scrambling backward into the tunnel. But Jason wasn’t so quick. The molten drop, as big as a Hummer, splashed into the side of the chasm right at the tunnel mouth, inundating Jason.
The impact slammed him to his knees. Hissing, steaming drops of molten rock splattered into the tunnel, narrowly missing the other three. Jason screamed in agony, covered with white-hot liquid rock and floundering in a pool of it.
“Jason!” Stacy screamed. She scrambled toward him, but Paula held her back. Neither of them could do anything for him. If they tried, they’d just be burned themselves.
But Mike couldn’t let his friend die. Without hesitation, he leapt forward and grabbed Jason’s feet, which were about the only part of him not covered with molten rock. He hauled Jason backward as fast as he could, dragging his screaming, writhing friend back to the cavern they’d just left—the pantry. At the tunnel mouth, he yanked Jason’s legs upward and flung him bodily across the cavern toward the lake.
Jason, still shrieking, cartwheeled through the air, bits of molten rock flying off him. He hit the water with a huge splash and a hiss of flash-cooling liquid rock, and sank into the murky depths.
Paula and Stacy emerged from the tunnel seconds later and looked at the steaming surface of the lake.
“Oh my God,” Paula said. Stacy fell against her, sobbing.
“I was quick enough,” Mike said. “The molten rock didn’t have time to cool and harden. He may be all right in there.”
Paula gaped at him. “Are you serious? No one could possible survive that! I’m surprised there was anything left of him for you to drag in here.”
He looked at her, whimpering, on the verge of breaking down, and she realized he needed to believe what he’d said. For the first time, she noticed that his forearms were puffy and red, blisters swelling even as she watched. Molten rock had splashed on him as he’d dragged his friend through the tunnel.
“Someone go in there and get him before he drowns!” Stacy wailed.
Mike raced toward the lake and was about to dive in when Jason bobbed to the surface near the shore, naked and gasping for breath. Mike splashed in, grabbed his friend and pulled him to the shore. Stacy and Paula rushed up and together they laid Jason out on the shore.
He lay there taking deep, gasping breaths and spitting up water. He shivered and looked around at them, his eyes wild. Stacy brushed off pieces of formerly molten rock that had solidified and clung to his skin like stone leeches.
Paula rocked back on her heels, running her incredulous eyes over the length of his body, examining his skin in particular. His clothes had burned away by the molten rock, but his skin showed absolutely no sign of having been burned. It was a bit reddened, but nothing more. “It’s not possible,” she said. “He should have been burned to ashes.”
Stacy ran her hands over his body, relishing the feel of his skin as never before. “Oh my baby, my baby,” she repeated over and over.
Mike slapped gently at Jason’s face, trying to get some sense back into his friend’s pain-addled eyes. “You okay, buddy? Can you talk?”
Jason coughed loudly, dribbling a stream of water over his chin and down his naked chest. His eyes slowly refocused on them. He coughed again. Then he said, “That water is fucking cold!”
Stacy sat back on her heels. “The water?” she said. “You were just doused with boiling lava, sweetie, and all you can talk about is the cold water?”
“Well, the lava hurt too, yeah,” he said, gasping weakly.
“How are you still alive?” Mike asked.
Jason shrugged. “How should I know? It hurt, holy crap did it hurt! But now the pain is gone, and that’s all I care about.”
Stacy pouted.
Jason rubbed her arm. “That and the fact that I’ve been given more time with my baby.”
Stacy smiled. “Good boy.”
There was a hissing sound from the tunnel mouth that led to the chasm. They all looked over just in time to see two monstrosities skitter out from the darkness.
NIGEL AND SIRI FOUND a patch of mushrooms at the far end of their secret cavern, directly across from the crevice that let into the cavern. Near the mushrooms was a bubbling pool of lava, about twelve feet in diameter.
Siri picked a handful of mushrooms. “We used to eat these when I was a little girl,” she said. “They must be cooked first.” That said, she thrust the hand containing the mushrooms deep into the pool of lava. She winced and whimpered, but held her arm firmly immersed.
Nigel, aghast, cried out, “What are you doing?” He scrabbled at her arm and yanked it from the lava. He instinctively brushed some of the lava away before he remembered it was molten rock rather than water. He screamed, but was amazed to see that his skin had suffered no damage.
Likewise, he noted that her arm showed no sign of having been scalded.
“By the grace of God!” Nigel said. “How is this possible?”
Siri pointed to the bodies of the two creatures they had slain. “Their venom,” she said. “It allows one to suffer no ill effect from intense heat. Thus are we stung to prepare us for the lake of fire.”
He remembered being stung before the creatures had brought him here. The welt on his leg still ached. But her words were nonsense, and Nigel looked at her blankly. He found her quite attractive, despite her lack of hair. “The lake of fire?”
She smiled at him and immersed her handful of mushrooms back into the bubbling pool of lava. “We have much to discuss over dinner.” The pain was intense, but was nothing compared to the lake of fire.
When she had cooked enough mushrooms to provide a halfway decent meal, she and Nigel returned to the center of the cavern and knelt at the flat, raised rock on which he had lain earlier. It provided a remarkably convenient makeshift table.
As they ate, they talked. She told him of the lake of fire, of all the people suffering so that their souls might be kept clean until the day Jesus Christ returned. She told him a great many things, and he listened with growing resolve. When she was through, he told her, “What you describe is an abomination. You were right, and I was wrong. God did send me to bring you home. In succumbing to temptation, I have unwittingly done His will and found the path to my redemption. What’s inside must now get out.” He paused, chewing over that last for a moment. It was difficult to say, after a lifetime of saying the opposite. But he had never uttered truer words. “You and your friends are inside, and you must get out. And I have been sent to lead you out.”
CHAPTER SIX – Lend Me Your Jockstrap
JASON AND THE OTHERS stared at the two creatures that had skittered from the tunnel mouth.
The creatures were humanoid, but they were a bastardized version of man, like some unholy evolutionary offshoot. They were so thin they seemed like little more than walking skeletons, with leathery gray skin, almost like an insectile chitin, stretched taut over their bones. They were naked and lacked any visible signs of sex. Thin, bat-like wings sprouted from between their shoulder blades. They had four elongated arms and legs on which they crawled along the ground like dogs, with their wings spread wide, as if to aid their balance. Scorpion-like stingers grew from the small of their backs, right where the human tailbone would be, and lashed around restlessly. The tips of the wickedly sharp stingers dripped with venom.
The creatures must have been drawn by Jason’s screams when the molte
n rock fell on him. These two were obviously part of the swarm that was blasting up toward the surface.
The creatures focused predatory eyes on the four friends and skittered slowly toward them, low to the ground, stingers lashing. The things hissed at each other in some sort of rasping but unintelligible language.
“You know,” Jason remarked, “I’m beginning to think maybe Nigel was right: what’s inside should definitely not get out.”
One of the pair paused and spat a burst of fire from its mouth. The burst fell short of the friends, but they felt a blast of heat wash over them.
None of them needed any urging. Mike flicked on the flashlight, and almost as one, they turned and ran, racing back into the tunnel that led to the bedroom. Seconds later they emerged into the neighboring cavern, the one with the piles of rock and dirt. They didn’t stop, just raced on through. Mike could have beaten them all, but he was forced to pace himself in order to keep them all within the bubble of light from his flashlight. They wove among the piles of rock, which appeared out of the darkness ahead and receded into the darkness behind as they hurried past.
As they passed the torture racks, Jason bent down and picked up one of the swords and the metal spike.
Constantly, they heard their two pursuers in the darkness behind them. One of them continued skittering along the ground, but the other took to the air, flapping its great wings, disappearing into the darkness as it rose up toward the ceiling, obviously intending to dive bomb the friends.
The one on the ground gained swiftly, the skittering sounds growing louder the closer it got, but they reached the bedroom tunnel mouth first. Jason was the last to enter. He stopped running just inside the tunnel and turned to face the creatures. He leaned the metal spike against the tunnel wall and held the sword in front of him.