by Brian Lumley
Liz had followed the old man (Bruce? Hell of a lot of Australians called Bruce, she thought. There have to be at least as many as there are Johns in London) along the foot of the knoll to the lesser shack that leaned into an almost sheer cliff face.
It was quite dark now, and the torch he’d given her wasn’t nearly working on full charge. The batteries must be just about dead. Of course, knowing the place as he did, that wouldn’t much concern the old boy, but it concerned Liz. And despite following slowly and carefully in old Bruce’s footsteps—mainly to give Jake the time he needed to look the place over—still she stumbled once or twice over large rocks or into this, that, or the other pothole. But in truth much of her stumbling was a ploy, too, so that it was perhaps a good thing after all that the torch was almost spent. She thought so at the outset, anyway.
Until eventually: “He we are,” the old man said, turning a key in a squealing lock and opening an exterior screen door. Beyond that a second door stood ajar; and as old Bruce, if that really was his name, reached out an incredibly long arm to one side of Liz to push it fully open—at the same time managing to bundle her inside—so she recognized the smell of a lair.
It was a primal thing, something that lies deep in the ancestral memories of every human being: to be able to recognize the habitat of a dangerous animal or animals. The musty, feral smell of a cavern where something dwells—or perhaps an attic where bats have hibernated for untold years—or maybe the reptile house in a zoo.
But there are smells and smells, and this wasn’t like anything Liz had ever come across before; or perhaps it was simply the tainted, composite smell of all of them. Until suddenly she realized that it wasn’t just a smell—wasn’t simply a smell—but her talent coming into play, and that the stench wasn’t in her nostrils alone but also in her mind!
And then she had to wonder about its origin, the focus or point of emanation of this alien taint. Was it the shack—or the steel-barred, wall-to-wall cell it contained—or perhaps the night-black tunnel beyond the bars, with its as yet unseen, unknown “creechur” … or could it possibly be old “Bruce” himself?
There came a sound from the darker depths of the horizontal mine shaft. And just as there are smells and smells, so are there sounds and sounds. Liz gasped, aimed her torch-beam into the darkness back there, and saw movement. A flowing, gathering, approaching darkness in the lesser dark around; an inkblot of a figure, taking on shape as it came, bobbing, wafting on a draft of poisonous air from wherever and whatever lay beyond. And it had luminous yellow eyes—slanted as a beast’s, and yet intelligent, not-quite-feral—that held her fixed like a rabbit in a headlight’s beam!
But only for a moment. Then—
“You!” Liz transferred the torch to her left hand, dipped her right hand into a pocket and came out with a modified Baby Browning, used her thumb to release the safety and aimed it at the old man … or at the empty space where he had been. While from outside in the night, she heard the grating of his booted feet, his now obscene chuckle, and the squeal of a key turning in the exterior screen-door’s lock as he shut her in.
Hell! But this could quite literally be hell! Along with her talent—held back far too long by her desire not to alert any-one or-thing to her real purpose here—Liz’s worst fears were now fully mobilized, realized. She knew what the creature in the mineshaft was, knew what it could do. But even now she wasn’t entirely helpless.
Tucking the torch under her arm, she found her beeper and pressed its alarm button … at the precise moment that it commenced transmitting Jake’s own cry for help.
The shock of hearing that rapid beep beep beeping from her pocket almost made Liz drop the torch; she somehow managed to hold on to it, held her hands together, pointed the gun and the torch both through the inch-thick bars of the cage. But as the weak beam swept the bars, it picked out something that she hadn’t previously noticed; there had been little enough time to notice anything. The cage had a door fastened with a chain and stout padlock—but the padlock hung on the inside, the other side, where it dangled from the hoop of its loose shackle!
She knew what she must do: reach through the bars, drive home the shackle to close the padlock. A two-handed job. Again she put the torch under her arm, fumbled the gun back into her pocket. Then, in the crawling, tingling, living semi-darkness, Liz thrust her trembling hands between the bars … and all of the time she was aware of the thing advancing towards her, its slanted, sulphurous eyes alive on her … and the beeper issuing its urgent, staccato Mayday like a small, terrified animal … and on top of all this the sudden, nightmarish notion: But what if this thing has the key to the padlock!?
At that moment it was Liz Merrick who felt like some small, terrified, trapped animal—but a human animal. While the thing striding silently, ever closer to her along the shaft was anything but human, though it might have been not so long ago.
It was almost upon her; she smelled the hot stench of its breath! Liz had squeezed her eyes shut in a desperate effort to locate the padlock. Now she opened them …
… And it was there, it was there! Its face, caught in the upward-slanting beam of yellow light from the torch in her armpit, looked down on her. And:
“Ahhh!” It—or he, the “creechur”—sighed. “A girl. No, a woooman. And a fresh one. How very good to meet you here! How very … provident. Ahhh!” And as simply as that his cold, cold hands took the padlock from hers, freed it from the chains, and let it fall with a clank to the dirt floor … .
2
DARK DENIZENS
Meanwhile, Jake Cutter had proceeded maybe a hundred yards down the gradually sloping shaft, deep into the earth. The shaft was quite obviously the entrance to an old mine; the walls and roof were timbered, and there were sleepers and rusty, narrow-gauge rails in the fairly uneven floor. In places there was some evidence of past cave-ins, where holes in the ceiling and boulders on the floor told their own story. Since the surviving supports seemed stout enough, Jake wasn’t worried for his safety in that respect.
But in one other respect, he was. And he kept finding himself wishing that right now he wasn’t somewhere but rather someone else—despite that he would usually prefer not to be. All very confusing and paradoxical, but it was something which had only ever happened twice, and then in the most extreme of circumstances. And for the time being Jake was only Jake Cutter.
Such were his thoughts when the narrow but adequate beam of his pencil-slim pocket torch picked out the first of several side tunnels, shafts that radiated off from the main, the original mineshaft.
Until now the floor had borne a thick coating of dust and sand, much of which had settled against the walls. Towards the centre, however, and between the rails, most of this had been scuffed away, presumably by the recent passage of several or many persons. But persons going where? Of course the old proprietor might be using this place as a warehouse or stock room; indeed, back where the shaft opened into the shack that fronted the mine, Jake had passed a jumble of old crates and cardboard boxes, and labels on the latter had declared their contents as wiper blades, fuses, various grades of motor oil, spark plugs, and spare parts and vehicle accessories in general. Of course, he would have expected as much that close to the entrance.
But all these signs of recent disturbance—or of occupation?—all this way back here? Why would anyone want to come back here, except perhaps on exploratory forays; maybe someone who was curious about old mine shafts? But recently? And how many someones? It was beginning to look like this might be the place. In which case he and Liz should never have split up and gone their own ways. Oh, he knew why she’d done it, all right, but now …
… Now what was that? Jake froze.
The side shafts weren’t recent diggings; they were probably old exploratory digs from the days when prospectors sought an ultimately elusive “mother lode.” Certainly quartz was present in the walls where the subsidiary tunnels had been hewn or blasted from the rock. It was here, too, that the scuff marks
on the floor—in places actual footprints—were most in evidence, and it was from the first of these lesser branching diggings that the sound had issued. A sound like a sigh or a yawn, like someone waking up.
Jake knew that by now it would be night in the valley in the Gibson Desert, dark in the outside world. But not nearly as dark as it was in here. And Liz was back there somewhere, alone with the old man. Or maybe not alone. And hadn’t his “Orstrylian” accent been a little too thick, and hadn’t there been something—maybe just a trace—of the Gypsy about him?
Jesus! Jake was now aware of fumbling movements from the side tunnels—from more than one of them—and was immediately galvanized to action. But at a time and in a place such as this there was only one action he could take: flight.
Behind him, the main tunnel curved however slightly back towards the entrance. Setting off at a loping run, Jake played his torch beam on the ceiling in order to avoid the jagged ends of dangling timbers in a number of places where pressured beams had popped. And as he went he felt for his pager, making ready to send out his distress call. Not that he felt panicked or in immediate danger himself, but Liz might well be. If she wasn’t already aware of the danger, the beeper would give her advance warning. He wouldn’t use it just yet, though, because to do so would be to alert whoever she was with that he was on his way, perhaps precipitating some undesired activity.
In a matter of twenty seconds or so, when he was in sight of the beadcurtained rear entrance to the shack, Jake skidded to a halt. A figure, momentarily silhouetted by the light from the shack, had appeared on the other side of the curtain; Jake recognized it as that of the old proprietor. Switching off his torch, he flattened himself to the wall behind a support beam, took out his 9-mm Browning and soundlessly armed it. And none too soon.
Grumbling to himself in his fashion, the old man came on through the curtains and made straight for Jake; there was no other way he could go. But as he blotted out some of the light from the shack, so Jake noticed that his movements weren’t any longer those of an old man. He came on at a sprightly, almost youthful lope, and his previously dim eyes were no longer hidden in wrinkled folds. Instead they were a glowing, feral yellow, and in their cores burned red as fire!
Jake needed no further warning or convincing. He now knew for a certainty what this place was if not exactly what he was up against. Going into a professional shooting stance, he took careful aim and squeezed the trigger.
But the other had seen or sensed Jake in the moment that he fired; seeming to flow to one side, he moved closer to the wall. Jake knew he’d missed and got off a second shot; the bullet whined where it ricochetted from the shaft’s wall, hurling sparks and splinters of rock at the “old” man’s face and neck.
He jerked at the impact of the stony fragments, then stood up straighter and stepped out into full view. And putting up a hand to his neck under the ear, he glanced at it almost curiously and said, “Blood?” That was all, blood. But his voice was no longer old, and his furnace eyes had turned uniformly crimson.
Knowing he couldn’t afford to miss a third time, Jake moved forward. Behind him there was real activity now: voices calling out wailing questions, and the sounds of stumbling feet. And:
“Lead, is it?” said that low, growling, dangerous voice as the distance narrowed between them. “Oh, ha! ha! ha! Then come on, son, fire away. For as you’ll discover, I’ve something of an appetite for lead.”
“How about silver?” Jake said, squeezing the trigger again. His words were pure bravado for he was by no means sure of himself, but it was a nice line.
And perhaps in that last second the vampire sensed that his opponent had the advantage. He once more caused himself to relocate, used that weird flowing motion to move to one side. But not quickly and not far enough. The silver bullet hit him in the right shoulder, spun him around, and slammed his back against the wall. With a gurgling cry of, “Ah! Ah!” he clawed at his shoulder and fell to his right knee, and Jake leaped around him to carry on headlong through the bead curtains, taking them with him in a jangling tangle.
Maybe he should have stayed to finish the job. Certainly he would have if he had been that someone else—or half of someone else—but despite the danger Jake was still only Jake Cutter; he hadn’t yet reached that point of uttermost desperation.
Free of the curtains he crashed through the makeshift bar and sent the plank flying from its barrel supports, and without pause he rushed out into the night, wheeling left to go sprinting towards the second shack. That was where the alleged “creechur” was, and Jake could scarcely doubt but that was where he would find Liz, too … where the lying, scheming, undead proprietor of this terrible place had left her. As he went, so he reached into his pocket to activate his pager … .
The thing’s cold hands on Liz’s hands … the beeper continuing to issue its endlessly repeating Mayday (or its cry of warning, she couldn’t say which, but in any case the latter was far too late now) … and this thing from her worst nightmares, smiling at her through the stout iron bars. But bars that might as well be of paper, because the door in the cage stood ajar.
The creature freed her right hand, pushed at the door. Liz stood frozen; she let him get that far—but in the next moment was shaken from her paralysis on hearing Jake’s shout of “Liz! Liz! Where in hell are you?” He was dead right: that was exactly where she was! But she guessed he already knew that.
All was total darkness now, all bar the glow of her monstrous adversary’s eyes. Off-balance as the door swung squealingly open on her, carrying her with it, still Liz managed to snatch the Baby Browning from her pocket. Ramming it between the bars, she gritted her teeth and fired.
“Gah!?” said that shuddersome voice, sounding mildly surprised. And as the thing released its hold on her, she slammed the door shut again on its rusty hinges, and on him, turned, and groped fumblingly towards the inner door to the shack. She came across it, found the doorknob, and yanked it open. But the creature was behind her; she could feel its hot, fetid breath on her neck, its oppressive strength gathering in the darkness. Then:
“Liz?” came Jake’s voice again. He’d heard her shot, had come to a halt beyond the locked screen door. She heard him cursing, rattling the lock, until: “Stand back!” he called out.
She should stand back? When right behind her something was rumbling, “Urgh—ah!—argh!” even now? And:
“Christ!” Liz said, quickly turning and firing again, and then a third time, until the grotesque black shadow of the creature was lifted from its feet and hurled bodily away, flailing its arms and spitting blood, back into the shack’s more natural shadows—where it collided with yet more shadows that Liz hadn’t been aware of until now.
Her shot had come simultaneously with Jake’s as he blew the lock off the outer door. And a moment later she was out of the place, stumbling into his arms.
He steadied her, breathlessly told her, “This place. This is it! It’s what we were looking for.”
“Do you think I don’t fucking know that?” she gasped.
And then they were running, both of them, heading for the Rover, for safety, and for sanity. But as yet safety, and especially sanity, seemed a long way off. Behind them, the smaller shack was spewing stumbling, dazedseeming, zombielike figures into the night. A handful of them, four or five at least. While ahead of them …
“God almighty!” Jake breathed with difficulty.
The moon was up, a waxing moon that gave good light. Likewise the stars, very bright in a sky that was now black as jet and banded with varying degrees of purple on the hills. And so by moon and starlight the pair saw what waited for them close to their vehicle.
“We’re in it up to here,” Liz panted, choked. And: “God, I can’t breathe!”
“Me neither,” Jake told her. “But don’t panic and keep the plugs in. This isn’t over yet. Our beepers will have been heard by the others. They’ll be on their way.”
“We … we can’t run forever,” she
answered, veering away with him towards the track back to the road. “How’ll we get to the Rover with those damned things waiting for us?”
“Split up,” Jake answered. “You head for the road … . Keep running like hell, north … . I’ll try to lead the bulk of these bloody monsters on a wild goose chase.”
Behind them the vampires were taking it easy. They weren’t running; they ambled, arms hanging loose, some with their hands in their pockets, eyes aglow, kicking pebbles aside as they followed their intended prey. There was no great hurry—nowhere out here to hide that couldn’t be sniffed out. The girl would be easier to handle when she was tired; they wouldn’t have to damage her in order to have her one by one—or maybe two or three at a time—before they had her blood.
As for the man: his blood would be good, strong. But he’d caused Bruce Trennier no small amount of pain, and Bruce would be wanting him first. Oh, this one would be missing an arm or leg or both before Bruce gave him up to the rest of them. And the would-be “Lord” Trennier would wax fat on meat and marrow, while the hole in his shoulder slowly but surely healed. But:
Silver! came Trennier’s voice in their minds, where they tracked the humans across the false plateau at the foot of the knoll. These people are more than they appear to be. Their bullets are silver, which could mean danger for some of us in the short term, and for all of us in the long. Which in turn means I have to talk to them, question them. So be sure to take them alive, and do it quickly! There was pain in his mental voice, quite a lot of it.
But … silver bullets? That took something of the arrogance out of the pursuit, while the rest of Trennier’s sending served to speed it up.
Liz had almost reached the top of the ramp. Cut from the side of the plateau, the ramp would take her down to the road. But one of her pursuers had somehow managed to flank her and was drawing ahead. He would get there first, and the way was simply too narrow to avoid him. She cut right, heading for where she’d last seen Jake.