Kai led the way, speaking loudly to bolster his courage. “It’s probably just the geese making trouble. When I get hold of them, I’ll teach them a lesson.”
Our hearts in our throats, we surrounded the coffin, only to find nothing behind it. The sound abruptly stopped.
Kai slapped the coffin lid. “It couldn’t be coming from inside, could it? Maybe the ghost grave came with a ghost dumpling.”
“Don’t say that,” said Gold Tooth. “You’re scaring me. May the Goddess of Mercy protect us.” He held up a charm, only to realize he’d picked up the wrong one and was invoking the wrong deity—this was Buddha, not the Goddess of Mercy. He hastily repeated his prayer with the right name.
“The sound wasn’t coming from inside the coffin,” I said to Kai. “It was definitely coming from behind.”
Before I could go on, there was a burst of white in front of me, and something landed on the sarcophagus. I jumped back in fright, then looked closely. It was one of the missing geese, looking fine and uninjured, spreading its large wings and waddling contentedly from one end of the stone coffin to the other. How had it suddenly dropped down from the roof? How had it gotten up there in the first place?”
We must have had the same thought at once, and now each of us shined our flashlights at the ceiling.
The round dome of a Tang dynasty tomb represents the heavens, and it is usually decorated with an array of auspicious constellations. That was more or less what we saw, although one side of the dome was also sprouting a stone wall—that Western Zhou tomb asserting itself again. We were probably the only three people living who’d seen this bizarre sight, two tombs fighting to occupy the same space.
Seeing nothing too alarming up there, we turned our attention back to the goose. Still no sign of the other one, so we continued our search, but it was no use. This tomb was so enormous—the burial chamber alone was more than a hundred square meters, though it wasn’t actually finished. This was just the outer chamber, where the grave goods would have been stored. There would also have been an inner chamber, which would normally have held the coffin itself—this coffin was probably out here because the half-finished tomb didn’t have a proper space for it. The side and rear chambers hadn’t been built either, and the front one, which was also large, had a sunken room with a lake, and it would probably have been landscaped into some sort of garden.
How were the three of us going to find the missing goose in all this?
“At least we’ve got one of them. Be sure not to let it get away,” I warned the other two.
I directed my flashlight down the hole, and sure enough, the tiled passageway was gone. In its place was a dirt floor—the tunnel we’d first come here by.
Somehow or other, despite all our blundering, we’d gotten our escape route back. No time to celebrate, though. Our flashlights were all flickering, and the replacement batteries we put in now were the last ones we had.
We jumped into the hole. I led the way, yelling to the other two. “Let’s keep going no matter what. Gold Tooth, follow me, and Kai, bring up the rear. If you see that Gold Tooth slows down, push him along.”
“What’s the rush?” grumbled Kai. “The tunnel is back, after all.”
“If the other goose wanders back, the Western Zhou tomb might materialize around us again. We have to get out while we can.”
With that, I dove into the tunnel, the other two behind me, keeping a safe distance of two meters between us. After a short while, I turned to see how Gold Tooth was doing. He was panting heavily, but he soldiered on, as eager to get out as I was.
The tunnel looked exactly as it did when we’d first come through it. That struck me as odd—the ghost grave had appeared bit by bit, and I’d expected it to disappear the same way. After another twenty or so meters, I started hearing dripping water. I figured we must be halfway there, and yes, a little farther along was the cave. I started to crawl over and jumped into it, and when Gold Tooth appeared at the entrance, I lifted him down.
Sweat was pouring off the poor guy like rain, and he was breathing in quick gulps. “I…can’t…I…really…can’t…I’m…so weak….”
Seeing that he really was exhausted, I told him to sit and rest. “Take deep breaths,” I said. “When Kai shows up, we’ll have to carry on. When we’re outside, you can rest as long as you like, but this isn’t the time. In a minute, you’ll have to start moving again.”
Gold Tooth could no longer speak. His mouth hung wide open, and he barely managed to nod. I looked back into the tunnel to see how Kai was doing, but he was still a fair distance away. His bulk made climbing through this confined space particularly difficult.
Seeing that he’d be a while, I went over to the opposite side and shined my flashlight into the tunnel. The limestone caves here were joined, all the way down to the very depths of the mountain. If the stone wall was still blocking our path up ahead, we’d have to find our way out here.
As I stared into the depths, I heard Kai’s voice. “What are you looking at, Tianyi? Has Gold Tooth gone on ahead? Let’s go after him, quick.”
I turned around to see Kai standing alone. “Where’s Gold Tooth? You didn’t see him?”
“You were the only one here when I arrived.”
There was a peculiar sound from elsewhere in the cave. I quickly shined my flashlight in that direction, and froze. Looming out of a dark corner was a face similar to the ones on the sarcophagus. It looked completely inhuman, about the size of a sink. Its body was invisible.
The only difference was, this was no stone carving, nor was it a wall painting. Kai and I were both pointing our beams at the face when it started to move, its lips curling upward, its eyes shutting into half-moon slits. I’d never in my life seen a more terrifying smile.
Kai and I involuntarily took a couple of steps back, but then we stopped. Where was Gold Tooth? We had to help him instead of running off. His disappearance surely had something to do with the strange apparition.
Moving at the same time, Kai and I got out our weapons and slowly advanced on the ghostly face. Then, abruptly, a strange sound rose from the ground.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
The dark cave was shaped like a bottle. We had come in through the neck, and the noise was deep in the body, as was that eerie face. I pointed my flashlight at the sounds, which turned out to be coming from Gold Tooth, who was slumped on the floor, lengths of white silk binding his hands, feet, and mouth, which prevented him from speaking. He still seemed able to breathe, though. And he looked absolutely petrified.
Seeing us rush over, he struggled to cry for help, but all he managed was a muffled scream.
I didn’t have time to think how he’d gotten into this state, just dashed over to cut him free. Before we reached him, there was a sudden creaking overhead, and he was abruptly hoisted into the air.
I pointed my flashlight up, and once again it caught the strange face, which was now hovering overhead, smiling coldly down at us.
Gold Tooth was jerked a little higher off the ground.
What on earth could be happening? The cavern roof rose high enough into the air that I couldn’t make it out clearly. I signaled to Kai, and without hesitating, he dropped his shovel and got out his knife, reaching up to slice Gold Tooth’s bonds. Luckily, the old man was still within reach, and he fell to the ground. I quickly helped him up.
“Are you all right? Can you walk?” I asked.
He’d been so badly throttled that he could barely shake his head. His limbs were like jelly.
Kai glared at the strange creature above us. “What is that face?” he shouted. “And why is this silk so sticky?” At the same time, he’d picked up his shovel and was pulling his arm back, and now he took careful aim and let it rip.
The pointy head of the shovel jabbed right into the ghostly face, at which point two rows of red lights lit up underneat
h it, four big ones and four little ones, like eight blood-red eyes.
A giant black creature dropped down from the roof. Quickly, I dragged Gold Tooth to one side, just before the thing landed where we’d been standing a second ago. I was close enough to see it clearly now.
It was a giant spider with a human face. Its body was soot-black, with white markings that had formed themselves into a humanlike face on its back, all the features exactly where they should be. Eight huge, hairy legs hung from its body.
I’d heard stories about these giant spiders from my dad, who’d encountered his share of them in the Kunlun hills. When he was in the army, his platoon had been searching for a missing comrade when they encountered a nest of such spiders. Thanks to their training, they managed not to panic and killed the three huge spiders in the nest with their rifles and bayonets. At the back of the nest, they found the man they were looking for. He’d been wrapped in silk, tight as a mummy, and all the fluids had been drained from his body.
From what I’d read, these creatures injected their victims with a paralyzing poison that left them fully conscious. The spiders then gorged on the live victim as they pleased. It was a slow, awful death. I shuddered to think of it.
All this flashed into my head in an instant, with the monster just half a meter from me, every one of its black hairs standing out in my flashlight beam. Before it could make a move, I stuck my pocketknife into its side. The blade was too short to do it any real harm, but it startled the spider. When it was close enough, I quickly sliced across one of its front legs.
Immediately, the creature scuttled a few paces back.
The shovel Kai had lodged in its back now worked free and clattered to the ground. Kai ran over to grab it. “Tianyi!” he yelled. “We must be in the spider’s lair.” He started hacking at the monster’s body, driving the spider into the far corner of the cave.
Kai was about to go after it, when I shouted, “Leave it! Pick up Gold Tooth and let’s get out of here.”
Kai rushed back and scooped up Gold Tooth, who was still on the floor. He took a step and stopped suddenly—there was something soft underfoot. He looked down. “Hey, it’s our missing goose!” he yelled. “It looks like the spider sucked it dry.”
I hurried over to help with Gold Tooth. “Forget the goose. Quick, get him on your back. I thought there were more caves beyond this one, but it looks like they’re all part of the spider’s nest. Let’s just get out through the tunnel. If we go into the caves, we’ll never—”
Before I could finish, something tightened around my legs. I could no longer stand. The same thing happened to Kai and Gold Tooth. Just like that, the three of us were pulled downward, a force dragging us deeper into the cave. I struggled but couldn’t get to my feet. A skein of silk the thickness of my forearm had wrapped itself around my calves. The spider Kai had scared off definitely couldn’t produce anything that thick. Could there be an even larger specimen in the cave?
I struggled harder. I grabbed my pocketknife, planning to cut myself free, but when I looked up again, the roof of the cavern was rushing toward me, and I smashed face-first into it, almost breaking my nose—the creature must have swung me upward with a twitch of the silk. Blood streamed from my nostrils, and I could only whimper, feeling increasingly helpless.
We were rattled along for quite some distance, which ripped the backs of our shirts to ribbons, and soon our skin was left covered in long cuts. Were we heading back to the nest, where we’d be paralyzed and slowly eaten at the monster’s leisure? I felt a chill all the way up my spine.
Kai had been stunned, but he managed to gather his wits. I hadn’t found anything to cling to that might halt our movement, but he reached out and grabbed a stalagmite as we passed it, and this allowed him to hold himself stationary long enough to slice through the silk ropes around his leg. Ignoring the agony he must have been in, he sprinted over and caught up with me, cutting me free too. I cursed as I sat up, wiping the blood off my nose with my sleeve, then cutting the rest of my bonds off myself. Meanwhile, Kai turned to rescue Gold Tooth, only to find him farther ahead, shouting and waving his arms.
Gritting our teeth against the pain, we sprinted toward him. We only had a single flashlight between us, and its light wobbled as we ran, winking out just as we caught up with Gold Tooth. That was the last of our batteries, and now we were in borderless darkness. We had to move fast—if Gold Tooth got dragged away from us again, we wouldn’t be able to find him in the dark, and then he’d suffer a torture worse than hell. I reached out blindly but only managed to grab hold of his liquor flask as he was wrenched away again.
No time to think. My shirt was so badly ripped that I was able to pull it off my body with a few tugs. Tearing it into shreds, I emptied Gold Tooth’s flask over them and held a lighter to the makeshift torch, which flared up brightly. I flung it away from me, and as the fireball arced over the cave, we saw Gold Tooth about to disappear into a triangular opening in the wall. I made a note of the location before the fire could go out, and we ran toward it. Kai ripped off his shirt and tossed it onto the flames to keep them going. I caught hold of Gold Tooth’s arm while Kai sliced through the silk.
Gold Tooth’s face was bruised and battered, his body covered in wounds, but he was still conscious and alert. The spider’s nest was no doubt through that opening, and we had to get out of here as quickly as possible, before the next attack came. Who knew how far into the cave we’d been dragged? I was completely disoriented, but that didn’t matter; we just needed to get as far away as possible. By now we’d had to burn our trousers to keep the flames going, and we were standing in only our underpants, but we still needed to flee, even if it meant groping our way through pitch darkness.
Before we could get Gold Tooth to his feet, a few strands of spider silk came flying out of the triangular opening and looped into a lasso that wrapped around us before we had time to move. Kai tried to slice through the silk with his shovel this time, but it was pulled from his grasp. He tried to bend and pick it up, but he was stuck too firmly to do even that.
It wouldn’t have been so bad if we’d been fully dressed, but in our half-naked state, the webbing clung directly to our skin, and there was no way to break free. The ropes drew together, dragging the three of us into a clump and hauling us toward the opening.
The nest must be on the other side—how many spiders would we find there? How big would they be? Actually, the answers didn’t matter—as long as we wound up in the hole, this wouldn’t end well for us.
There must have been seven or eight thick, sticky strands woven together, and more were spewing from the hole. It looked like the spider was going to wrap us up like human dumplings right where we were.
My mind was fizzing with panic, but I remembered that I still had a lighter, and I hastily got it out. The silk caught fire easily, and I was able to burn my way through the two or three ropes leading me toward the hole. Though the sticky stuff was still wrapped around my body, I was no longer being pulled into the lair.
Gold Tooth and Kai were being rapidly dragged toward the hole. I’d only have time to save one of them with the lighter.
Frantically, I pulled off Gold Tooth’s trousers—his belt had been so badly frayed, they just slipped off—balled them up, and stuffed them into the hole. Then I held the lighter up to them, thinking I could burn off all the silk at once. As soon as the strands caught fire, a muffled explosion came from inside the nest, followed by giant tongues of fire shooting out.
In an instant, the cave was lit up bright as day by the inferno, and all the silk was going up in flames. I rushed to pull the other two aside, and we brushed the rest of the webbing off our bodies.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
It seemed as if half the mountain was now on fire. As the flames crackled, I was finally able to see that the triangular opening was in a man-made wooden structure that had probably been sealed wit
h some highly flammable substance like beef fat.
The wooden construction was about the size of seven or eight apartments. It wasn’t clear what it had originally been built for, though from each pillar and beam hung corpses sucked dry by the giant spiders, both humans and animals, all reduced to desiccated husks. Even through the webbing wrapped around them we could see how they’d died horrible deaths—tormented expressions were etched on their faces.
As the room started to collapse, we saw three enormous balls of fire writhing in the flames. Eventually they stopped moving, either burned to death or knocked out by the falling debris. Soon they’d be burned to mounds of charcoal.
The three of us stared, knowing we should get far away but unable to make our feet obey.
Kai suddenly pointed at the flames. “Tianyi, Gold Tooth, look—there’s someone in there.”
We looked where he was pointing, and sure enough, there was a human face—a giant one, several times bigger than the ones on the spiders’ backs. In the flickering firelight, its already-disturbing features grew spookier, suspended as they were in the middle of the room. Finally, we could see that the face was carved into the side of a huge bronze urn.
Kai groaned. “Not that ghost grave again?”
I shook my head. “Nope. Probably the ancients thought these spiders were the gods come to earth and worshiped them. So this must have been a shrine, right where they nested. They kept slaves back then—many of those poor devils probably ended up as human sacrifices to these things. We’ve done a good deed today by destroying this lair.”
The Western Zhou tomb must have had some connection to the spider altar. Maybe the latter survived when the former was destroyed, because it was hidden so deep in the caves. In any case, this was all the dust of the past, and no one would ever know what really happened—except perhaps a particularly determined historian.
The Dragon Ridge Tombs Page 10