Nightmares Rise

by Mirren Hogan

  “Oh?” he asked. “What kind?”

  The flash lit up the tunnel again, making her blink. “We’ve got spiders and centipedes, and what looks like a scorpion. And these lobster-looking things. Those are pretty strange. And carp.” She moved along the ledge, and pointed her lamp to the end of manmade parts of the tunnel.

  Something moved up ahead, rippling the water as it hurried to get out of their light. Makani only glanced at it, her attention focused on the trash that littered the way.

  “What are those?” he asked, his voice echoing.

  She glanced to the side to see what he was referring to. “Just the pillars from house foundations.” They rested side by side with stalactites coming down and dripping water. “The rock formations have grown since I was here last.”

  “You’ve been here before,” Flynn stated.

  “Yeah, with my brothers. We didn’t stay long, though. Sam swore he heard the Night Marchers. At two in the afternoon.” She shook her head.

  “Night Marchers?” Flynn asked. “What’s a Night Marcher and am I going to regret asking?”

  “They’re supposed to be the spirits of the dead chiefs and warriors. They hold processions on certain nights of the year. If you hear the drums, you lay flat on your belly and don’t move until they leave. Or else they take your spirit and add you to the line.” Makani stepped into the knee-deep water. “I’ve heard the drums before. There’s a reason I don’t go hiking at night. But I’ve never seen floating torches. We’re more likely to run into Mo’o, or a Kappa down here. Or Aswang.”

  He snorted softly.

  Tourists, they never did seem to believe this stuff.

  Up ahead, something disturbed the water. “Watch where you walk,” Makani said. “Don’t step on the carp.”

  “I’ll try not to. What is a Mo’o and a Kappa? I’m assuming nothing to do with a fraternity?” Flynn chuckled, the sound echoing eerily, coming back to them like a maniacal clown. He immediately stopped laughing and glanced around, clearly unnerved. Echoes were probably the safest thing down here.

  “Nah . . . Mo’o is a demigod shaped like a giant lizard. They’re usually bad news. But Kappa comes from Japan. They’re smaller but meaner. They eat your liver. But they have these dents at the top of their heads filled with water from wherever they’re from. If they spill all the water, they die. Grandma and Grandpa used to tell us the plantation chicken skin stories, like, they give you bumps on your skin. Good fun. Oh, look, a centipede.”

  Flynn turned his lamp in the direction she pointed.

  The creature was hairy and strangely colorless, but harmless.

  “Good, something normal,” Flynn said. “I was starting to worry that we were going to see Godzilla down here.” He grinned at her, then raised his camera, adjusted something around the protruding lens and snapped the centipede a few times. “It seems too normal to be down here. Like, maybe it should have two heads or breathe fire, or something.” He snorted softly.

  “They might. Wait until I . . . ah-ha!” Makani’s arm dipped under the water and came back up with an ugly, fuzzy-looking prawn in her hand. “How’s that for weird?”

  “What’s weird?” he asked. “It, or the fact that you managed to catch it?” He grinned again. “Smile.” He aimed the camera, the flash bright as he snapped her with the strange creature dangling from her fingers, its tail snapping back and forth as it wriggled, trying to get free.

  “What is it, anyway?” Flynn lowered the camera for a better look.

  “Crawfish. Kind of . . . if you look down, there’s a blind catfish at your feet. Don’t move.”

  He looked down and the camera flashed again. “Not the best angle, but . . . ” A shuffling sound deep in the darkness made him turn and look, his light moving with him as he moved his head. “This is bloody brilliant. At least if I get deported, I got to see this.” Everywhere in the cave, creepy and crawly life was to be found. Millipedes and snails, goby and small black newts. There was an entire ecosystem in this relatively small place.

  Makani let the crawfish go and watched as it swam under a rock submerged beneath the water. “The tunnel system goes further. Wanna go a little more in?” The way ahead was murky, as if someone, or something, had kicked up the silt.

  Flynn shivered.

  “Maybe we’ll find some more tourists up ahead?” Makani suggested. Surely that’s all that was causing the disturbance in the water. It wasn’t unheard of, now that more people knew about this place. But in all the years she’d had known about it, she’d never run into another human being while trudging through the karst.

  “I hope we don’t, but yeah, I’d like to see how far it goes. I suppose if anyone else was here, we’d hear them. unless they’re . . . ” he paused, “dead.”

  “Possibly,” she said lightly.

  He turned his head back, his headlamp’s glare rising up the wall. The deeper shadows, bathed in darkness, were barely touched by the light. “What?”

  She grinned. “People don’t usually go this far. It’s pretty gross, with all the bugs. I’ve never gone this deep on my own, just with my brothers.” She moved slowly, watching her feet just as much as the way ahead. The water grew deeper as the roof came lower. “There’s a swim up ahead, but it opens back up into another chamber. Wanna chance ‘um?”

  “I like going deep,” he replied, his tone cheeky. “And I don’t mind getting a bit wet to do it. And yeah, I’d like to see more of this cave of yours.”

  “Wow, you’re real forward, aren’t you?” She laughed low and shook her head. Not that Makani minded. At least she knew he was catching the same vibes.

  “You’re the one who wanted to be alone with me in the dark,” he said.

  “Sure. That was my plan the whole time.” She moved back to Flynn and suddenly wrapped a hand around his waist. “I’m just dragging you further in so I can sacrifice you to the Kappa. But shhh, that’s a secret.” Her smile was wicked as she pushed off from him and started swimming ahead in easy, long strokes. He wanted to see the cave, that’s what they would do.

  Afterwards . . . they’d both find out what those vibes meant, maybe?

  She glanced back quickly and saw him hold his camera above his head with one hand. The other hand, she watched him use to move forward in the water. It was awkward and slow, but she knew he was never too far behind her.

  She shivered in the cool water. It was relatively silent down here, while above their heads, a restaurant was probably serving lunch to an elderly clientele. People walked their dogs and drove cars, oblivious to the world beneath their feet. Makani thought, with a little derision for her own species, that mankind was far too confident in its taming of nature. Under the noses of these people, an entire world flourished without sunlight or intervention from humanity. How many thousands of years had the majority of these things been here before people swarmed into this waterway to stare into the darkness?

  Her musings were cut short when she felt something brush her leg. Abruptly, she stopped treading water and her toes brushed the bottom. Whatever had moved past her didn’t feel like a fish, which would have made a little sense. She turned around to see Flynn behind her, but he was just a little too far away to have touched her. A shiver ran down her spine, and not because the water was cold.

  Clamping down on her ridiculous paranoia, she took the last few strokes that would take them into the final chamber. “Here we go. Look at the stalactites coming down here.” She pointed up, her headlamp illuminating the ceiling.

  “Wow,” He said quietly. “This place is incredible. It’s like—the cave version of the Sistine Chapel. Without the paintings. It’s huge.” The karst was that kind of place, awe inspiring and weird.

  The sound of their slogging through the water filled the cavern. It echoed back at them until they stopped. Then quiet fell as they looked around.

  It was profound. Only broken by the soft sound of water sloshing across the cavern. Back and forth, back and forth, rhythmically, like a slo
w, wet heartbeat.

  All of Makani’s senses tuned in. ‘Chicken skin’, her grandmother had called it. The moment when all the hairs at the back of your neck stood up. Her heart started racing. Goosebumps rose on her arms under the wetsuit. She looked around. The headlamp barely cutting through the dark.

  Flynn gestured downward. “The water isn’t moving,” he whispered. “What is that sound?”

  Finally, with some trepidation, she looked down. “No fish. Mongoose can’t get this far in . . . maybe rats?” She hoped it was just a rat. A really, really big rat . . .

  “Rats?” He sounded doubtful.

  “Maybe it’s a pipe or something above us? It might feed into the water? Maybe someone just flushed a toilet. Or is taking a shower.” Makani was, if nothing else, a real optimist. Although the idea of trudging through human waste was only slightly more attractive than an unsolved mystery in the water.

  Flynn took off the lamp and raised it toward the ceiling.

  “What the crap?” He dropped the lamp.

  It hit the water and went out.

  CHAPTER 4

  Flynn cursed.

  Gingerly, he felt around in the water for his lamp. Something slippery brushed past his fingers. He was about to pull his hand out when he touched hard, molded plastic. The headstrap floated in the water above it, a buoyant plastic fastener shining in the light of Makani’s lamp. Maybe that was what had touched him a moment ago. He pulled the lamp out of the water and flicked the switch.

  Dead.

  “Crap,” he muttered. “Did you see that?” He turned to find Makani but couldn’t see her face past the glare of her lamp.

  “See what?” A sharp beam of light caught Flynn square in the eyes. “Oh, sorry.” She took her lamp off and held it facing up at the ceiling.

  Makani’s voice was barely above a whisper, her hands shaking. Whether from cold or fear, was anybody’s guess. The light shivered on the stalactites above their heads, and she worried her bottom lip between her teeth. “All I know is this place isn’t right.”

  “Yeah,” he agreed. “But I thought I saw . . . ” Flynn shook his head. He must have imagined it. The shadows, the cool water, the confined space, the folk tales, they were all creating silly ideas in his head.

  “Can you shine the light up there, above us?” He held his breath. He really didn’t want to see, just in case he hadn’t imagined it.

  “Okay, yeah.” Makani trod closer to Flynn and angled the lamp up again. She kept her eyes down at the water and whispered, “There’s no fish here. Not even goby. No bugs, either.”

  While she was looking down, Flynn looked up, squinting into the darkness. The light outlined something hanging from the ceiling. He exhaled, his furrowed brow relaxing. It was just a dark, wet stalactite.

  Until it moved.

  “Holy crap,” Flynn whispered. “You never said anything about bats in here. Big ones.” Really, really big ones. Bats would explain the lack of insect life but not the lack of fish.

  “I never said, because there aren’t any. If there were bats, there would be guano . . . ” Slowly, Makani looked up to where Flynn had his eyes trained.

  Whatever it was, it was big. And breathing.

  “We gotta get out. Now!” Makani sounded so terrified, the hairs on the back of Flynn’s neck rose.

  She put a hand against Flynn’s chest and pushed him toward the exit.

  Her shove sent him staggering back several paces in the water. He managed to stay on his feet in spite of the slippery ground. Trying to move as quickly as the pressure of the water would allow, Flynn started walking back the way they came. He made it a few steps, but stopped, curiosity warring with irrational fear.

  Slowing his steps toward the exit, he turned around and started taking photos of the thing while Makani’s light was still on it.

  “What the hell is it?” he asked from behind the bulky Nikon.

  “Just get outta here. Don’t disturb the . . . thing. We’ll talk after. Just move. Now!” Makani tugged on his wetsuit as she moved to swim ahead, lighting the way out of the chamber.

  Her anxiety was infectious. Taking a few final photographs, Flynn turned and hurried toward the entrance. Maybe the something was an endangered species and their presence might endanger it further. That made sense. A giant bat or some kind of strange cave dwelling animal was a bit disturbing, but nothing to worry about. Given the strange prawn and the weird insect life thriving in the isolated ecosystem of the karst, it had to be something logical like that. Still, Flynn would be happy to see daylight erupt at the end of the tunnel.

  The only sound he could hear was Makani splashing as she moved through the water, her feet scrabbling along the silty bottom and kicking up mud. She got to the first ledge and hauled herself up, the lamp’s beam and her wet hands disturbing the insect life.

  Stopping suddenly, Flynn nearly ran into Makani’s back, and they both flailed for balance. Flynn grabbed her arm to keep them both from falling. For a long moment, he didn’t want to let go. He could feel her warmth through the wetsuit, or maybe he imagined that just wanting a little comfort after their strange encounter.

  Eventually, he forced himself to uncurl his fingers and step back.

  “Sorry,” he muttered.

  “No, i-it’s fine. Let’s get back to the jeep.” She blushed slightly. Makani’s feet moved quickly as she led the way out, leaving a muddy trail in their wake. The moment they reached the drain’s mouth, she cried out gratefully, “Oh, thank Jebus! Real sunlight.” She slapped a hand against the dry soil around the entrance. In another instant, Makani was marching towards her jeep, not bothering to look back into the darkness.

  “Okay, so do you want to tell me what had you so freaked in there?” Flynn asked. The sunshine, although almost blinding after the darkness, felt warm on his face.

  “That thing wasn’t right, whatever it was.” She slumped against the gate and closed her eyes, wringing water out of her hair. “It looked like . . . I dunno! Like something from a plantation Obake story.”

  Flynn regarded her silently for a long moment. She certainly didn’t seem the type to become hysterical or melodramatic over nothing, but surely that was all this was.

  “There’s a logical explanation for everything,” he pointed out. He tried to keep his voice light and not sound derisive.”You don’t think maybe your imagination is getting the better of you?”

  He didn’t doubt that her anxiety was real. He could understand that. The cave was cool but creepy. If any place would make a person’s mind dream up monsters, it’d be a place like this.”Or you wanted to scare me so you could put your arms around me?” His heart had stopped pounding for long enough now that he could joke.

  “Hey—be serious for two seconds! That thing had wings like a bat! And it had hair. I think.” That made her cringe in disgust. “Ugh! Chicken skin!” She shuddered and scrunched up her nose. “C’mon, we’ve gotta get outta here.”

  Flynn knew what they’d seen, and that no matter how he might try to justify or explain it, there was something more to this. He flopped down onto the ground and started looking into the small view screen on his camera.

  “I took a few pictures of it. We’ll look, see it was just a bat and feel really silly. And then we’ll go for a drink and laugh about it.” He looked at the photo of the centipede, the strange prawn, the darkness, the darkness, the darkness again.

  “What the hell?” he muttered. “Nothing’s coming up?” He looked up at her, confused.

  “What?” Makani moved closer to him and peeked at the screen. “I know you caught some clear shots.” She slid the camera from his hands and started going through the pictures. And sure enough, the last few frames which should have contained proof of the creature were black. Makani looked up at Flynn, her own brows knitted together in the same confusion.

  “I must have had my hand over the lens, or the light wasn’t good enough?” But Flynn knew that neither was true. He was a good enough photographer no
t to screw up that badly. Nothing else made any sense, though.

  “Maybe we should go back?” He suggested half-heartedly.

  “No! Hell to the no!” She shook her head vigorously. “We need to talk to someone about this. I’m gonna call my Aunty Elsie. She would know what that thing was.” Makani got up and headed for the jeep, stripping off her wetsuit along the way.

  “Who? What? Wait!” He unzipped his wetsuit and pushed it down until it hung off his hips. Her anxiety was getting to him again, but all of this was making less and less sense.

  “Wait,” Flynn said again, more firmly this time. “What are you talking about?”

  “Aunty Elsie. She’s a kahuna nui. A priestess. Sort of.” Makani opened the door of her jeep and sat down to take off the rest of the wetsuit. “Sometimes, you have to believe there isn’t a logical explanation. Maybe what we saw back there was something she can explain better than our college science credits can.”

  “What is there that science can’t explain?” Flynn argued. “Ok, sometimes it takes a while, but sooner or later everything in question can be answered.” Her words sunk in a little deeper. “A priestess? Do you think this is something . . . ” What was the word? “Paranormal?”

  She looked at him, “Yeah. I think this is ‘paranormal’. But it wasn’t a ghost. It was too,” Makani searched for a word, “real, y’know? We didn’t just imagine it. Aunty would know. She knows way more about this stuff than I do. We might want to get blessed, or purified, or something.” She turned off the GPS tracker, and fished her phone out of the glove box. “Get in. I don’t wanna be anywhere near this cave, anymore.” She slammed the jeep’s door and started hot wiring the engine.

  Flynn pulled his shirt on, leaving the rest of the wetsuit hanging. If she was in such a hurry, he’d have to take the rest off later. He couldn’t help but notice how good she looked in just a bikini.

  Pushing the thought away for the moment, Flynn put his camera back in its bag and jumped in beside her. He barely had time to pull his seatbelt into place before the jeep started to move.