by Nick Marsh
Through all of this, the colonel became increasingly agitated. He kept shaking his head, and rubbing his ears. At first I wondered if the cold, thin air had affected him, but after more observation I came to the conclusion that he was listening to something – or rather, trying to stop listening to something, although I could hear nothing but our guide’s patter, and the echoes of dripping water from all around.
After some time, Tom led us into a large chamber he called ‘la bocca del diavolo’ – the mouth of the Devil (because the entrance was lined with stalagmites and stalactites that looked, from some angles, like teeth). By this point I was watching the colonel more closely, and saw that he was now patting his jacket, and glancing down a darkened side passage. I was about to ask him what the matter was when suddenly the electric lights went out and we were left in total darkness.
At first I thought this was another of Tom’s scare tactics, designed to show us just how dark true darkness really was, but I heard him saying ‘Just a moment, ladies and gentlemen, probably a temporary setback. In the meantime I have--’
Then he stopped. There were voices behind us; men shouting to each other, their words echoing through the caverns, their words indistinguishable. There could be no mistaking their hostility, however.
Suddenly, Tom appeared in front of us. He had switched on his electric torch. His face was pale, and any faint hopes I had that this was still part of the tour vanished with one glance at his expression.
‘Wait here,’ Tom said. ‘I shall see what... what that noise is.’
‘You can’t leave us here in the dark!’ Violet cried.
‘Of course not,’ Tom said, taking another electric torch from his belt. ‘Take this. But do not move. I shall not be long.’
I would have offered to go with the young man, but my place was with the rest of the party – it was likely that we were in much more danger than Tom himself.
We watched the light from Tom’s torch until it disappeared into the blackness. The voices had stopped, but we could hear footsteps and occasional clattering noises. It was impossible to tell just how close they were.
‘What do we do now?’ Grace said in a frightened whisper.
‘What can we do?’ Violet replied, her torch beam still shining down the corridor which Tom had left down. ‘We wait! How will he find us, otherwise?’
‘But what if those men are looking for--’ Grace said, but then the shouting started again, much louder this time. Tom’s voice shouted something in response, and he sounded upset. The retort to his question echoed through the caverns and filled our hearts with dread.
A gunshot.
‘Oh my God!’ Violet cried. I drew my own pistol, thankful that I had brought it, though I knew it was unlikely to be much use in this echoing darkness.
‘We can’t stay here,’ I whispered. ‘Come on, we’ve got to move!’
The colonel came to life at this point. ‘This way,’ he said, grimly determined. He was pointing to the side passage that he had been distracted by earlier, but there was no time for argument. Our pursuers would certainly be able to hear our whispers, and the longer we stayed on the tourist trail, the simpler it would be for them to find us.
‘He’s right,’ Mrs Sunderland said. The colonel had already started toward the passage. Swiftly we followed him, with myself at the back of our group, constantly checking behind us for any signs of torchlight that might give our pursuers away.
Diary of Mrs Betty Sunderland, Thursday, 12th November, 1925 (Ctd.)
Neville ran up the passageway like a man possessed (the pertinent question, of course, being – possessed by what?) and it was all Violet could do to keep the beam of light ahead of him to prevent him from stumbling. I’m sure she would have handed it to him had he asked.
‘This way!’ he muttered, more to himself than to any of us. Within minutes the rest of us were hopelessly disorientated. As we stumbled, I noticed that Milos had pulled a pistol out from somewhere. He shows great initiative and, not for the first time, I was grateful to have him with us. I cannot say how long we hurried along in the near darkness, squeezing through narrow tunnels then splashing in pools through larger caverns, but presently it seemed to me that we could no longer hear the voices of our enemies.
‘Neville,’ I suggested (somewhat out of breath), ‘I think we may be able to slow down, dear.’
Neville merely shook his head and blundered on. The man can be frightfully stubborn at times. It’s a wonder it hasn’t got him into trouble before now.
Eventually we arrived at a disturbing-looking formation of stalagmites and stalactites, grouped together with a narrow gap between them. In the light of the electric torch, they looked far more like a grinning, fanged mouth than anything poor Tom had attempted to unnerve us with.
‘Through here,’ Neville gasped. He sounded exhausted. Without waiting for comment, he began to clamber through the gap. On the way through he slipped, his old leg unable to support him properly, and gashed his arm and leg open on the sharp rocks. He grimaced, but it did not slow him.
‘Neville!’ I called, but he had already disappeared into the darkness. We hurried to follow him, first myself, then Grace and Violet. We were somewhat slower than Neville, taking our time to prevent similar lacerations. Milos began to climb through, but I stopped him.
‘You should stay here,’ I suggested. ‘In case they come this way.’
He nodded. I don’t know why, but we both had the feeling we had reached the end of the journey in the underworld, and we would either return this way again, or we wouldn’t leave at all.
Violet shone the torch around, revealing a huge grotto. The rocky floor, covered with glistening cones of rock, led down onto the shores of a wide, black lake. Huge creamy-orange stalactites dripped from the ceiling, their splashes echoing eerily in the otherwise still water.
Neville stood on the shore, gazing into the darkness. We hurried to meet him.
‘Look!’ Violet whispered as we half-walked, half-slid down the slick floor to our friend. Scattered amongst the rocks in the grotto were dozens of objects – small grotesque idols, candelabras, even scrolls and books. Objets-d’art of all kinds, some of which were covered with thin sheets of milky-white limestone. As we looked, we realised that even some of the stalactites themselves were, in fact, ancient artefacts, now unrecognisable and encased in millennia-worth of stone.
‘Colonel Goodenough--?’ Grace asked as we reached Neville. His face was as pale as the limestone around us.
‘Can you feel them?’ he said, as he gazed into the inky-black depths of the lake. ‘They’re here.’
His whisper echoed around the grotto, and a nasty tingle travelled the length of my spine.
‘There’s nothing in here,’ I said, briskly, ‘but old ghosts. And old fools.’ As the words left my mouth, however, I felt a strange tension in my head, like one sometimes feels before an electrical storm. I saw Grace rubbing her eyes and wondered if she was feeling the same thing.
‘Come on,’ Violet said. ‘The statue pieces might be in here. Let’s find them and--’
She stopped, and looked at me. I knew why. The pressure in my head was building. My eyes began to ache, and as I watched Violet I saw a trickle of blood running from her nose onto her lip. She wiped it, then jumped as she saw the blood on her hand.
‘They want it,’ Neville was saying. ‘They want the amulet. But... now that I am here, I don’t think that I will give it to them.’
He looked at me, his eyes pleading despite the thin streaks of blood that were beginning to well up in them.
‘I can’t.’ He said, simply. ‘Lilly.’
The pressure increased. Grace fell to her knees with a sob, and Neville reached a hand to his waistcoat pocket to check his precious amulet once more. His eyes suddenly widened with horror.
‘It’s gone!’ he said.
‘What’s gone?’ I asked, struggling to stay standing. ‘This?’ I produced Winckelmann’s amulet from my own pocket.
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Neville’s eyes fixed on it. ‘You’ve been behaving very, very strangely since you picked this wretched thing up,’ I said, ‘I decided it was time I relieved you of it.’
‘But... when?’ Neville growled.
‘Back in the passage.’ It was becoming difficult to talk. My ears popped as I opened my mouth. ‘When the lights were out, and we were all doing our best to keep up with you.’
A lady does not like to give away her secrets, but I have always found the art of sleight of hand comes in handy in the most unexpected situations, and I like to feel that my few years in Cairo, despite the relative failure of my dig, were not entirely wasted. Such charming street children.
‘Give it back!’ he snarled. ‘Give it back!’ He suddenly jumped towards me with a speed that belied his age.
‘Oh for heaven’s sake,’ I said, and tossed the amulet into the water.
The tension in my head vanished suddenly, leaving me feeling so light that I thought I might float up to the ceiling. Neville cried out and spun in mid-jump as the amulet flew past him. It splashed into the water and vanished beneath the dark surface.
Neville stopped, and rubbed his head. He wiped his eyes, and looked at me, ruefully. ‘Well done,’ he said with a smile, and I knew that we had our old Neville back again.
‘Can we delay the congratulations until we are safely out in the sunshine again, please?’ Violet said, helping Grace to her feet.
‘What... what happened?’ Grace was asking. ‘Was there something here? Is it gone now?’
‘Best not to think about it for the moment, dear,’ I said. ‘Violet’s right. Let’s see if we can find what we came for.’
The artefacts were close together, near the entrance of the grotto, an arm and a leg. They were covered in a brittle layer of limestone but were still recognisable, although some chemical seemed to have mixed with the stone towards the end of each, staining it browny-red and giving them the disturbing appearance of bloody stumps. A few swift kicks from Neville’s good leg soon liberated them from their petrified prison.
Neville was exhausted, and needed both hands to steady himself, so Violet took the right leg whilst Grace carried the right arm, and we hurried back to the entrance where Milos waited for us.
Milos Valinchek’s Personal Journal (translated from Czech) Thursday, 12th November (Ctd.)
The darkness swallowed me completely as I waited for Mrs Sunderland and the others to return. My gun felt heavy, cold and reassuringly solid in my hand. There was nothing to do but to stand, and listen.
The mind is not used to such paucity of sensation. It grows impatient, and I have heard that it will begin to invent sights and sounds of its own if denied them for too long. That may have explained the noise I heard, though subsequent events suggest otherwise.
After a time, I grew aware of a strange sound, as of metal scraping against rock. It was quiet at first, but gradually becoming louder. My first thought was that perhaps it was one of the mine carts, but they had been louder, and heavier. This was something else. I cannot explain why, but the noise filled me with fear. It seemed to creep malignantly towards me, and I felt a sudden premonition that I would die there, alone in the dark. I held my breath as the noise became closer. I resisted the urge to call out a challenge, for it would have given away my position. I no longer felt hidden, but exposed, as if the maker of that noise was a thing of the night itself, and the darkness its ally.
The scraping stopped abruptly, and I gripped my gun, holding it before me, sweating despite the chill cavern air.
And then I heard voices behind me, and suddenly I could see again. The rest of the party had returned.
‘Everything all right, Milos?’ the colonel asked, noting my posture.
‘It is fine,’ I said. ‘I have heard no other voices.’
Colonel Goodenough nodded. He looked tired, but more normal than he had in days.
‘Were you successful?’ I asked. Violet and Grace appeared, each holding a piece of the cursed statue.
‘All done!’ Mrs Sunderland called cheerfully from the back of the group. I winced as her voice boomed around the cavern.
‘Please, Mrs Sunderland,’ I said, ‘We must try to remain quiet.’
‘Oh yes,’ she said. ‘Of course.’
The task ahead of us was still daunting – millions of tonnes of rock and earth above us, and miles of tunnels to get lost in. The most sensible plan was to attempt to locate the railroad, before the batteries in the electric torch ran out, and follow it in one direction or the other. It would get us out eventually. Until then, we decided to take whichever route was the easiest, and therefore the most likely for tourists to be allowed to walk.
Time stretched out before us, and it was difficult to know how long we searched, but I heard neither the shouts or footsteps of our pursuers, or the mysterious baleful scraping that I had heard on my own. After a number of false turns we entered into a large chamber. Violet’s rapidly dimming torch illuminated, to our great relief, a pair of metal rails running along the floor.
‘There!’ she said, as her torch finally died. She gasped in dismay.
‘It doesn’t matter now,’ the colonel said. ‘We can go by feel from here. It may be more sensible anyway.’
‘Nobody stray from the track!’ Mrs Sunderland said, as we walked on to it. I felt a small, cold hand press into mine.
‘So we don’t get lost,’ Grace whispered in my ear.
We picked the direction that felt right to us, and followed the tracks, not daring to speak. After a long, silent journey, Grace whispered to me ‘Is it getting lighter?’
I peered ahead; it did seem that I could make out some shapes, shadows of rock.
‘I think I can see daylight ahead!’ Mrs Sunderland called out from the front of the party. As her voice faded away I heard distant shouts behind us. The others had heard us.
‘Quickly,’ I said. ‘We must move. Now!’
Our pace increased from a crawl to a walk, and then a run as the tunnels grew lighter and the shouts behind us became louder. We began to see the beams of torches illuminating the caves around us, and hear thudding footsteps.
‘Run!’ the colonel called. ‘Run faster!’
The crack of a pistol echoed around the caves, and then another. Ahead of me, I heard Violet cry out in pain and saw her come to a stop. In the semi-darkness I could see blood staining her blouse around her shoulder.
‘You can’t stop,’ I said urgently. ‘Keep moving, or we’re dead!’
Violet nodded, her face pale, and continued to run, but I knew that we had too far to go, and there were too many of them.
I let go of Grace’s hand. ‘You go,’ I said to her. ‘I will delay them.’
I turned to face the torches. More gunshots were fired around us, more shouts. The words were Turkish, and they were not asking for our surrender. They had obviously decided it was easier to retrieve artefacts from corpses than from living people.
‘Colonel! Mrs Sunderland!’ Grace cried. ‘Milos has stopped!’
I looked round to see that they had stopped also. I caught the Colonel’s gaze, and he nodded silently to me. He could see what needed to be done.
‘No!’ Mrs Sunderland said. ‘We’re so close! All of us--’
‘Betty,’ I said, ‘There is no time. Goodbye.’
She blinked, and nodded. Further gunfire eliminated any more argument. I pointed my gun towards the beams of torches, and fired twice. I felt a sharp punch to my right leg at the same time I heard the gunshot, and felt blood begin to trickle down my leg. I knew that I could no longer run. It was over.
‘Goodbye, Milos,’ Mrs Sunderland said. ‘Come on, Grace.’
‘You can’t just--’ Grace protested.
And then, behind us, the shouts turned to screams in the darkness.
‘What... what was that?’ Grace said.
As we watched, one of the torch beams shut off. Then another. The crack of gunfire became a mad rattle, and screams of
fear and panic echoed around the caverns. I thought of the scraping noise.
‘It doesn’t matter,’ I said. ‘We’ve been given another chance. Let us take it!’
The wound to my leg was not severe, but it slowed me. Grace supported me as we moved as quickly as we could towards the light. Towards the sun. Within a few minutes we found ourselves in the entrance cavern, with the river running through it. The kiosk was empty. Swiftly as we could, we ran down the hill that led down from the cavern, and there I fell, panting, upon the grass. Violet was already there, pale and shocked, staring at the cavern mouth. We all turned to look. We all saw what came next.
A dark-haired man in a grey suit appeared. He was running in blind panic, and he was covered in blood. I do not think it was his own. He saw us, but he did not care. He was perhaps twenty feet from the mouth of the tunnels when something else emerged.
It was shaped like a man, but it moved like an animal, scurrying on all fours like some terrible spider. Its eyes were small and red, and its gnarled, twisted arms ended in long, vicious claws. The thing was coated from head to foot in gore which glistened horribly in the early evening light. Even with this loathsome attire, I recognised it immediately as the ‘man’ we had seen at the clock tower in Venice. It growled like a bear as it emerged into the sunlight.
The grey-suited man didn’t have time to turn. He didn’t even have time to scream. Within a moment it was upon him, ripping him open. We watched in horrified silence until I came to myself and had presence of mind enough to raise my gun.
I don’t know if my shot hit it or not, but it distracted the creature from its grisly work. It lifted its head, and gazed at the party. I fired again, but the thing did not flinch. It stared at us for a heart-stopping moment, and then in a flash it was gone, back into the darkness.