The thing was just about thirty meters away when she finally heard, faintly, Marcel’s voice call up.
“It’s okay, there’s a passage down here. Come down!”
He tugged on the rope a little to signal to her, and in her paralysis she nearly let it slip from her hands. She wanted to call down to him but didn’t want to draw the attention of the wormlike creature slithering towards her. She held her breath, willed herself not to make any noise, and hoped it couldn’t smell her.
Although it featured nothing that resembled eyes, its mottled black skin slithered and oscillated as if its surface was some kind of receiver.
And it shook suddenly, a wave running down its thick body before rearing up and swaying its pointed tip in the air.
Shit, shit, shit, it’s gonna find me, Carise thought.
The ceiling splintered further and a heavy, sharp-edged boulder crashed beside her, making her yelp out loud. The worm-thing reacted instantly and slithered its great bulk on those thousands of hooks until it was no more than a couple of meters from her.
She scooted her butt forward and let her back slide down the side of the chasm, and just as the thing lurched towards her, she ducked and allowed her feet to drop below the lip so that she, like Marcel before her, wedged herself in the gap.
She let herself slide down the hole as the tentacle lashed out, barely missing her.
She fell the hundred meters in a matter of a seconds, her stomach lurching and her throat choked with barely held screams. A light glimmered from beneath, and she recognized it as the cold, sterile white light of Marcel’s helmet-mounted flashlight.
“Marcel!” she screamed as her skin burned and grazed during her frantic descent, and then she was free from the gap and falling freely towards the rocky floor.
* * *
Marcel sprinted to the exit of the chasm and got there just in time to help break Carise’s fall. She tumbled into him butt-first and they both hit the deck in a crumpled heap. Her backpack came down after, falling on top of them. His arms were around her waist, and for a few seconds they stayed that way, as if waiting would mean fewer wounds and less pain.
She swiveled round in his arms to face him.
“You’re always there to catch me, aren’t you?” A pained smile stretched across her dusty face.
“I try,” he said. “Are you hurt?”
“My back feels like it’s on fire. Would you take a look?”
They stood up and she turned, exposing the red and gashed flesh of her back. It looked like she’d been flogged by a slave master. He winced and said, “It’s not too bad,” to reassure her, and himself. He took the first-aid kit from his pack and gently removed the largest chips of rock and dust from the cuts. She shuddered each time.
“I’m going to spray some disinfectant on it, like I did with your ankle. It might feel a bit cold,” he said, knowing it’d hurt like hell for a few seconds. He popped the cap on the can and sprayed the open wounds.
“Motherfucker!” she hissed and arched her back.
“Just breathe,” he advised as he took a packet of adhesive gauze bandages and applied them over the wounds. He pulled her jacket carefully over her back.
“Okay?” he asked.
She wiped tears from her eyes onto her sleeve. “Yeah, just about. It’s going numb, thankfully. Thanks. I thought I lost you… What happened?”
He smiled then. “I know where that chanting is coming from. We should get moving; I found something interesting.”
Marcel had found and replaced his Tovex bandolier and took Carise’s backpack so that nothing would interfere with her wounds. He led her down yet another tunnel. This one was just above head height but much wider as if it had been squashed from all the weight above. A yellow light came from farther down and round the corner. He followed it earlier, tracking the hideous chants, and now he led Carise in the same direction. It was quiet now apart from that continuous rumble that felt like a controlled earthquake.
Turning the corner, he said with a whisper, “Down there about ten meters and to the left is a room…with an altar and…other stuff.”
“Other stuff?” Carise asked, raising her eyebrows.
“You have to see it, it explains a lot. But we’ll have to be quick just in case.”
“In case what?”
“In case they come back and catch us.”
“They?”
16
Carise inhaled and whistled when Marcel led her into an antechamber cut into the rock off the tunnel.
“Looks like someone sleeps here,” she said, noticing four narrow cots covered in austere brown cloth. They were inset into nooks within the walls, two either side—one above the other—of the twenty-foot room. Robes made from the same rough fabric hung on stone protrusions next to the cots.
“They do more than just sleep here,” Marcel said, pointing to an ornate stone-carved lectern in the middle of the room. “Looks like some kind of worship,” he added.
“Or study,” Carise said. The lectern came up to her chest and featured carved faces resembling gargoyles upon its sides. She recognized the forms: they looked like those bat creatures, but not as evolved. These faces were brutal, antediluvian, primal. Their eyes were great featureless orbs and she couldn’t shake the feeling that they were looking at her, assessing her.
On the left-hand side of the room, and above the cots, was a leathery material upon which was drawn a set of glyphs, much like those she saw on the ceiling of the lake chamber. Beneath each symbol—which were arranged in a grid—was some kind of translation. Some of the shapes resembled roman alphabetic letters, but not close enough that she could make them out, and yet despite that, she felt her throat and mouth form unusual and inexplicable new forms.
She blinked and looked away, scared what might come out of her mouth next.
Marcel was rifling through the cots and robes, inspecting various artifacts held within niches and nooks.
“These aren’t right,” he said. “Could they be fake?” He held up a skull no larger than his fist. Its jaw distended and over-bit the face. The brain cavity was large and bulbous and like the carvings, its eye sockets were wide and tall.
Carise shuddered and wondered whether it was just some undiscovered species of monkey, but from everything she’d experienced, she thought it more likely some bizarre creature that dwelled in the darkness. Who knew what else was down here in the depths?
As if on cue, Marcel pulled a black jar from a nook and peered inside. He tipped the jar onto one of the cots and the skeleton that fell out made Carise’s skin crawl.
With its legs unfolded, it was bigger than a dinner plate. There were ten legs, long and thin, and on the end were obsidian-colored hooks. The creature didn’t have much of a body though. The legs attached to a central semi-sphere of bone like a tennis ball cut in half, and on that flat top rose a short spine that connected the body to a round skull with those familiarly large eye sockets—except this thing had four eyes, one on each side of its head, giving it a 360-degree field of vision. Its face extended out into a beaklike shape, and thin, sharp fangs lined the edges. Some were stunted and broken but they seemed no less sharp.
Marcel shook his head, screwed up his face in revulsion and placed the desiccated corpse back in the jar. “I’m taking it with us,” he said. “The bio guys at the university will have a field day with it.”
“Bad idea,” Carise said.
Next to a book on the lectern was a rather mundane pen. It had ALBERTA ANTIQUARIAN SOCIETY etched on its side. Carise soon found herself running her rope-burned hands across the pages of the book, which sat open, just inviting her to read it. The cover was surprisingly warm to the touch, and although the membranous pages were thin, they felt firm and leathery like dry…skin? Could it really be skin?
Carise held back her revulsion and inspected the strange marks and illustrations within the book. Like the markings from the leather piece on the wall, that weird language scrawled across the page.
She found her lips moving again as she “read” them.
Although she didn’t understand the material directly, when she scanned the content, images bubbled up in her mind and she felt the world melt away and a new one appear.
Like stepping through a gate into a hidden garden, an entire world of unusual and peculiar structures, plants, and animals opened up to her. Towering tubed carnivorous plants writhed on their stalks, full of prey. Neon lights flickered and danced along their thick veins.
She walked past them, as if in a dream—but yet she could hear, smell and feel as lucid as at anytime in her life. It was almost too real.
Beyond the fields of those tubular plants stood a great pyramid. A deep red light pulsed inside its semitranslucent surface. It pulled on her like she was the opposite pole of a pair of magnets. Multilegged creatures scampered about her, and large winged beasts followed her trajectory from the air. But she couldn’t make out the details, all she knew was the pyramid, and the thing that lurked within.
It waited. So patient, so ancient. It had always been, and now it was calling her, bringing her…home. As alien and unfamiliar as it all seemed, she seemed content, relaxed.
Something on the periphery of this world shuddered, disturbed the tranquility. It itched in the back of her mind that she was supposed to be somewhere else…but the attraction of the pyramid was everything.
When she got closer, she reached out and touched the translucent surface. It was freezing cold and she pulled away instantly. Her hands were burned by it. Carise stared inside, mesmerized by the pulsing red glow, and as it dissipated a darker shape took its place and moved nearer to her from within. A depthless eye, huge and black, expanded to fill her entire field of view. And then she knew she was lost. This wasn’t home, and she could never seek to understand.
In the distance, back in her other life, she heard a scuffle and a scream.
The world desaturated until it was completely monochrome. The sounds of struggle from beyond the world increased, and the dimension, or dream, or whatever it was, started to lose its solidity as it wavered and lost focus. Through the vision she saw shadows struggling.
With a deep inhale, and a flash of dizziness, Carise broke from the dream.
She spun round, realized she was now alone.
Marcel was gone…
Faint echoes of mumbling and shuffling came from outside in the tunnel. Like a bloodhound chasing down a scent, she followed, but not before taking the book and stuffing it into her backpack.
“Marcel!” she called and then listened. A muffled response came seconds later. Her body trembled with adrenaline as she sprinted down the tunnel towards those sounds, grimly aware that if she hadn’t been so enraptured by that infernal book, she would have been able to do something.
A chanting broke out, rose and fell in time to a dread piping bass note.
Inside her mind, a great black, endless eye dominated her thoughts.
* * *
Carise ran after Marcel. Her lungs felt like dried twigs as she sucked in ragged breaths. Her ankle wound throbbed, crawled up her leg, devouring her flesh.
The backpack—riding up and down with each pace—burned a sore into her lower back.
She wanted to stop and cry away the pain, but each muffle, each distressing sound urged her farther into the tunnels. She remembered to drop a few glow sticks as she went but she worried still that she was being led into a labyrinthine nightmare of which she would never find her way out.
Sweat dripped into her eyes, the humidity becoming ever thicker.
Up ahead, light spilled from around a wide, sweeping bend in the tunnel. Pieces of Marcel’s equipment left a trail in the disturbed dust.
She rounded the bend, pulled herself up to a creeping trot, and halted at the scene before her.
Marcel was being dragged toward a wide exit by three robed men.
Beyond them she could make out the flicker of fire, its ember hue reflecting brightly against the polished stone walls.
She waited for them to breach the exit, then followed quietly behind like a specter.
Carise reached the exit, flattened her back against the tunnel to stay in shadow.
A crudely made wooden bridge stretched over a bottomless pit from a stone ledge in front of the exit. It ended at another bridge that jutted out at a ninety-degree angle from the polished walls. She watched them take Marcel across and when they had reached the ledge, she followed.
The bridge swayed with each step, and as she looked down between the wooden boards, the darkness stirred and moved as if the blackness itself was alive.
The path on the other ledge bent round back against itself to the left, and led into a domed chamber so large the lights on the walls opposite were like pinpricks. The entire place hummed with that same noise they heard before that split the other tunnel. And now she knew why.
Extending up from the darkness were hundreds of tentacles: the same ones from before with those terrible hooks. They slicked through holes in the walls like worms. Occasionally one would come back with various animals and meat attached to its hooks and bend itself back down into the murk.
The entire place rumbled as those terrible limbs infiltrated the rocks.
A flash of light caught her attention. A wedge of rock reached out over the center of the void like a ramp. At the end of this platform, a stone altar stood with a number of lighted torches surrounding it. A tall, stick-thin figure stood hunched over the dais, chanting those animalistic and other-dimensional syllables. His head was entirely too large for his body and when he turned to regard the robed figures dragging Marcel, she noticed how his eyes bulged, distended, and had that now-familiar pupil-less white-gray look to them, as if they were polished marble.
She raced down the ledge hewn from the rock and made her way onto the platform.
Not really knowing what she was doing, she took the ice axe from her belt and charged at the robed figures holding Marcel, whose head was wrapped in the same rough-cloth as their robes.
Two of the three—the ones holding his arms at each side—turned round and stared at her with pale expressions and black eyes.
Marcel slumped heavily to the floor as they let him go and shuffled towards her. They seemed untroubled by her presence, but as she sprinted towards them, eating up the distance, she raised the axe and brought it down hard onto the first one’s head. The thud and squelch was sickening, and the figure fell to his knees without a sound.
The one next to the fallen victim opened its mouth and let out a strained keening sound. Within seconds, the entire chamber was filled with an energy.
A black mass below rolled and writhed, and before she could act, hundreds of hooked limbs were crawling up the walls, making holes and dents, and then they became taut and stretched as if…as if whatever was attached to them was pulling itself up from the gloom below.
The cultist was on her now, its hands around her neck. She fell back, taking his weight with her. She hit the deck, rolled once to the side, brought her leg up between them and pushed off with all her strength. It broke his grip and the figure flew off the side and down into the void without a sound.
“Marcel!” she shouted as she scrambled to her feet. The third cultist had removed his hood and knelt at the tall figure, who held a piece of leather aloft, and read aloud from it.
His voice boomed with its weird bass tone. It was almost as if there were more voices speaking at once, covering a multitude of octaves.
As he continued to chant the incantation, the entire mountain began to shake even more violently. She sprinted again now, some twenty meters from the altar and Marcel. The cultist was waiting for her and received her charge; her momentum forced her enemy to the ground and onto its back where its hood fell away from its face. And “it” was an appropriate description. It was so far from human that for a second she was mesmerized.
It struck her across the temple and she fell to her side, banging her head against the stone surface. She was looking
over the edge now and she was right; the thing attached to those innumerable limbs was rising from the deep…
An impossibly wide maw covered with mottled black flesh emerged from the gloom. Thousands upon thousands of fangs formed a perfect circle. Within the maw, a bulbous tongue slathered slowly. And then the worst thing of all…the darkness blinked. It was like the entire void beneath them was one great all-seeing eye, and she saw recognition within its reflective surface.
It was like a fairground mirror, distorting everything that shined upon it. She saw the weirdly flickering lights, the walls and limbs and the stick figure, whose shape was now curved across the surface of that dark globe. And somewhere among all the detail, all that reflection, she saw her face reflecting back at her; it was pale, and her eyes were black.
A hooded figure stood behind her, a carved bone-colored dagger aimed for her back.
“No!” she screamed as she spun round and kicked out her legs. At the same time she reached up her hands, catching the robe. She yanked it down, sending the body over the edge and into the maw of that great and terrible beast. There was no noise as the figure fell, just the wet thud as it hit the thing’s tongue.
With one slow movement, it descended into the beast’s throat. The great eye blinked again and it was getting closer; its gigantic mouth now no more than ten meters from the end of the stone ramp and its altar.
“Carise,” Marcel said, his voice strained and the muscles on his neck bulging. “Help…me.”
His face was bright red, as if the blood in his veins was being pulled out via his skin.
Grabbing the bone dagger, she rushed the tall figure standing above Marcel and plunged it into the thing’s chest. It sliced right through, its bones made of old, dry paper. The figure stumbled back against the altar where the slit in its face that she presumed was a mouth opened and a voice that clearly hadn’t spoken a human language for so long laughed at her.
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