Beckon (4 page)

Chapter 07

They stood in the tunnel listening to the tapping noise getting louder. Jack felt himself holding his breath.

At length Ben said, “I don't mean to be a killjoy or anything, but maybe that millipede knows something we don't.”

“I agree,” Jack said, gesturing to the passage ahead. “Let's keep going.”

They made their way up the passage in the direction the millipede had departed. Soon the tunnel began to narrow sharply and eventually came to a dead end. Jack could tell that the bizarre sound was coming from behind them, which gave little comfort since they now appeared to be trapped.

“Okay,” Rudy said, “anybody have any other ideas?”

Ben was busy inspecting the walls of the passage. “Just keep your shirt on. Let's see if there's another way out of here.”

“It's still getting closer,” Jack said. He could hear the
click-clack
sounds more distinctly now, but they weren't just getting louder; they had multiplied, like several people were off in the dark tapping rocks together.

Ben had apparently realized the same thing. “I think there's more than one thing making that noise.” He pointed his light up at the ceiling of the tunnel. “Here! I think I found an opening.”

With that, he climbed up the wall and disappeared into a small hole above them.

Meanwhile the tapping grew more intense.

Rudy aimed his camera back down the passage. “I gotta tell you, I'm starting to get a little creeped out here.”

After several seconds Ben's voice came from above them. “I found another tunnel.”

Jack peered up into the shaft. It was a nearly vertical passage with jagged walls, not even three feet at its widest point, but he could see Ben's flashlight shining down over a ledge about fifteen feet up.

“It's a bit of a climb.” Ben's voice echoed down the shaft.

“No kidding.” Jack shouldered his pack. He wondered how Rudy would manage if his claustrophobia began to kick in again. “It looks a little tight.”

Rudy spun suddenly and pushed Jack up into the passage. “We don't have time to think about it.”

“What's wrong? Did you see something?”

“Just get moving.” Rudy's voice was tense.

Jack groped around the passage for a handhold. Sharp outcroppings on the rough surface gouged his hands, but at last he was able to pull himself higher into the tunnel. He could feel Rudy beneath him, pushing hard against his feet.

“Hurry up!”

Jack pulled himself higher up the shaft, ignoring the pain of rocks scraping his hands and arms.

Beneath him, Rudy's voice grew more urgent. “C'mon, keep going!” He gave another thrust against Jack's feet.

Jack groped around blindly, pulling himself up foot by foot. His heart pounded as he wrestled his fear both of getting stuck and of whatever was in the tunnel beneath them.

Then his hand reached up but felt only a smooth section of cold rock with no ledge or outcropping. Nothing with which to pull himself up. And Rudy was still pushing against his feet, shoving him higher into the tunnel, pinning his other arm against his side.

“Hold on,” Jack said. “I'm stuck.”

“Keep moving!”

Jack struggled to twist his body free, but it was no use—he couldn't pull or push himself any higher. His heart thrashed inside his rib cage like a wild beast ready to burst out. “I'm
stuck
!”

Then he felt warm flesh clamp down around his uplifted hand, and he was yanked up through the passage until at last the rock seemed to open around him, freeing his other arm.

Ben pulled Jack into the tunnel, where he rolled onto his back, gasping for breath. A moment later Ben helped Rudy scramble up out of the hole as well.

The sounds drew closer, echoing up the shaft.
Click-clack-click-click-click-clack.
Ben switched off his light, and the three of them lay in complete darkness. The noise grew louder until it sounded like the source was right at the bottom of the shaft. Jack held his breath and waited, measuring the time by counting his pulse as it throbbed in his ears. Then the sounds began to grow fainter again, and within minutes they disappeared altogether.

Jack fought to calm himself and slow his heart rate. “What was it? What did you see?”

Rudy sat up, shaking his head. “I'm not sure. I saw something moving . . . back up the tunnel. I don't know what it was. But there was definitely more than one.”

“What did they look like? Did you get anything on video?”

When there was no response, Jack flipped on his flashlight. Rudy's face was white in the glare, and his eyes seemed distant and unblinking, staring into the darkness.

“Rudy.”

Rudy started as if snapping out of a trance. “I . . . I don't know what they looked like. I just . . . I didn't get a good look at them, and I didn't exactly want to stick around for one.”

Rudy played back the video recording. With the night-vision setting, the amplified glow of the slime showed up as bright patches of pale-green veins running over the floor and up the sides of the passage. They were lit so brightly that the rest of the detail was fuzzy and out of focus. It looked like some kind of crazy, neon house of horrors. Suddenly a dark shape flashed into the frame. A blurred black silhouette skittered across the passage, but then the picture jerked hard as Rudy turned away and stopped filming.

“Rewind it,” Jack said.

They rewound and paused the footage, advancing it frame by frame as the shape moved into view. But it was too hazy to discern any details.

Rudy was still breathing heavily. “I think they were some sort of arthropods, but I couldn't tell how big they were.”

“Look.” Ben rubbed his eyes. “I hate to remind you guys that we still need to find a way out of this cave. Let's take a few minutes to eat something; then we should get moving.”

It was shortly before noon when they broke out packages of beef jerky and protein bars. Jack hadn't thought about food until now and was surprised at how hungry he was. And thirsty.

“Careful with your water,” Ben warned as Jack chugged his bottle. “We need to ration it until we get out of here.”

They had each brought along a pair of one-liter bottles, which would last them the rest of the day, but if it took any longer to find another exit, they'd be in trouble.

There were still patches of the glowing slime nestled in various nooks and crannies of the passage, though considerably less dense than it had been in the tunnel below. They had to proceed on hands and knees through the mud and puddles. The passage wound and zigzagged through the darkness for several dozen yards until Ben stopped them again.

“You guys might want to have a look at this.”

Jack inched forward and saw something that looked like a crescent-shaped melon rind wedged between some rocks. And as he looked closer, he spotted several more scattered along the passageway as though someone had just enjoyed a picnic of melons and left the garbage strewn about the tunnel.

Jack picked up one of the pieces and turned it over in the light. He held it up for Rudy to film. Its curved outer surface was smooth and black; the interior dripped with gelatinous yellow goop.

“What do you think it is?” Jack asked.

Rudy wrinkled his nose. “It smells terrible, but I'd say by the size and shape . . . it looks like it belonged to one of our millipede friends.”

“Uck,” Jack grunted. “What happened to it?”

“I'm not sure, but I think this guy met with a pretty unpleasant end.” Rudy pointed out the other pieces. “There are segments of its body all over the tunnel. I'd say this one was, um . . . torn to pieces.”

Jack just stared at him. Rudy's face was pale. Ben didn't look well either. Jack sifted through more of the pieces and found fragments of the dark-red leg segments and a bit of an antenna.

“Okay, so—” Ben rubbed his eyes—“these millipedes feed on the slime. And now there's something else down here that's feeding on the millipedes.”

“Yeah,” Rudy grunted. “It's called a food chain. We just haven't come across the predator yet.”

“You think it was those things that were making the clicking sounds?” Jack said.

Rudy shrugged. “I'm as much in the dark as you guys.”

Ben's lips tightened. “Well, whatever it was, it managed to tear this giant millipede apart.”

“That's one possibility.” Jack tried to offer another, less-alarming hypothesis. “Of course, we don't know if this millipede was even alive when it got eaten. It could be that whatever did this is just a scavenger. You know, feeding off carrion.”

“C'mon, Jack,” Rudy said. “Scavengers don't tear a carcass apart like this. I mean, it looks like this guy put up a bit of a fight.”

Jack surveyed the tunnel. Rudy was right; the segments and legs were cracked and separated, strewn about the passage.

Rudy went on. “This looks more like a predatory kill. Maybe multiple predators, operating with a pack mentality. Or like a feeding frenzy.”

“A feeding frenzy,” Ben repeated and shook his head. “That's great.” He shifted the leather sheath around his waist and started crawling forward again. “Let's just find a way out before we run into one of them.”

They crawled through the tight, damp passage, sometimes having to squeeze through sections barely eighteen inches wide. Jack was covered in mud and started feeling a chill in his arms and feet. But mostly he struggled to keep his mind off the thought of an unknown predator lurking somewhere in the tunnels.

Ben stopped and dimmed his light. Jack could see a dark shape moving between the rocks up ahead. His heart raced.

Ben whispered over his shoulder, “It's more millipedes. Two of them.”

Jack and Rudy crept closer. Two of the creatures milled lazily in the passage, munching on a small patch of the slime. One appeared to be an adult, roughly four feet long, with a juvenile maybe half its size.

The two animals scurried off in the glare of Ben's flashlight, disappearing into a small side tunnel. Ben led on, and soon they emerged into a larger open area. Jack sighed in relief. His back and legs ached from crawling through the narrow passage, and he was glad now to stand straight again.

They inspected their new surroundings and found themselves at the bottom of a deep shaft. A steady trickle of water cascaded down from somewhere above them.

Rudy was filming up the length of the shaft with the night-vision setting. “This place is huge. I can't even see the top.”

The other side of the shaft opened to a narrow passage that seemed to twist and turn on an angle downward like a very narrow canyon.

Ben shone his light into the mouth of the tunnel. “Looks like we go this way.”

They proceeded along the passage slowly. The water trickling from above snaked along the ground in tiny rivers as if leading them on, deeper into the mountain. They'd traveled for less than five minutes when Ben stopped again.

“I see light up ahead.”

“A way out?” Rudy said.

Ben looked closer and shook his head. “Don't think so. I don't feel any wind.”

They moved forward, and soon Jack could see the light as well. It grew brighter with each twist in the passage until finally the tunnel opened.

Ben stood still and Rudy drew up beside him. “Wow.”

Jack stood, openmouthed, staring at the sight in front of him.

“Whoa” was all he could think of to say.

Chapter 08

They stood at the mouth of an enormous cavern, easily the largest chamber they had encountered so far. Jack tried to estimate the dimensions and guessed it to be nearly three hundred feet across. Like a huge, domed amphitheater rising to a height of a hundred feet or more. Frothy springs peppered the floor and bizarre rock formations rose up across the chamber. Fat, gnarled stalagmites twisted upward from the ground; long, slender stalactites reached down from above. A few met in the middle to form statuesque pillars around the edges of the great hall.

And the glowing slime was everywhere. It grew in dense, foaming patches around the pools. Winding tendrils spread out through the cavern, creeping up the columns and walls toward the ceiling.

Jack could see several of the millipedes munching lazily on the slime like cattle out in a meadow. And there were other creatures as well. Fat, round beetles the size of overturned coffee cups marched across the cavern in a little tea-set caravan.

The light was mesmerizing. Almost dizzying.

Jack found his voice first. “It's like Las Vegas.”

Rudy switched on his camera and began filming. “This is incredible.”

Jack was grimy and sore, but he and Rudy spent the next several minutes traversing the chamber end to end, getting shots of rock formations, the pools, the slime, and the millipedes. And they found more of the big, plodding beetles they'd seen earlier. Rudy said he thought they looked like dung beetles. In fact, he discovered three different species and took copious shots of them all. It was odd that none of the creatures appeared to be disturbed by their presence but rather seemed content to simply graze on the slime.

They gathered around one of the larger hot springs, observing the foam being generated by the slime.

“So what's with all the foam?” Jack said.

“Well . . .” Rudy bent down to inspect the pool. “I think it's hydrogen peroxide.”

Jack frowned. “How do you know that?”

“I've been working on a theory,” Rudy said. “Chemiluminescent reactions require hydrogen peroxide in order to work, right?”

“Chemi-what?”

“Chemiluminescent.” Rudy stood and pointed to the slime. “A chemical reaction that generates light. Glowsticks, fireflies, or our slime here. They all need hydrogen peroxide in order to glow.”

“Okay . . .”

“And hydrogen peroxide is produced naturally in most organisms as a by-product of their metabolic activity.”

“Of course it is.”

“So this slime, whatever it is, must be generating copious amounts of hydrogen peroxide to cause it to glow like it does. It's called oxidative phosphorylation.”

“It's kind of funny.” Jack shook his head. “I know you're speaking English; I just have no idea what you're saying.”

Rudy sighed. “If this slime is producing hydrogen peroxide and there are other microorganisms in the water that produce catalase, it would cause a chemical reaction.”

“Catalase?” Jack snorted. “Y'know, I slept through biology.”

“It's the enzyme used to break down hydrogen peroxide into oxygen and water. So basically this could all be part of a symbiotic ecosystem that acts like a natural oxygen generator.”

Jack was starting to understand. “Oxygen . . . So that's how the millipedes get so big?”

“It's just a theory,” Rudy said. “But we got in here through that underwater tunnel. So if these caverns are sealed off from the outside and this slime is somehow giving off oxygen, it could easily raise the levels in here considerably.”

“Makes sense, I guess.” Jack nodded. “But my question is, why haven't they found this slime in other caves before? Why only this one?”

Rudy shrugged at that. “Maybe it's all the hot springs and geologic activity or something indigenous to this region; I don't know. But this cave has an ecosystem that's developed totally isolated from the rest of the planet. We have no idea how many other caves like this there are throughout the world. We're just now discovering new species on the ocean floor and places we've never explored. Think about it—we know more about the surface of Mars than we do about some places on Earth.”

At that point Ben spoke up. “Hey, I think you guys might want to take a look at this.”

They made their way over to where Ben was shining his light on an object wedged in the rocks. Jack bent down for a closer look.

It looked like some type of segmented appendage—almost like a crab leg. But bigger than any crab Jack had ever seen.

Much bigger.

Rudy gently pried it loose and held it up in the light. The smooth, hard claw portion was about twelve inches long, black with a gray underside and curved down to a point like a sword from one of those old Sinbad movies Jack used to watch. The rest of the limb was segmented by two connecting joints and snapped off just past the second joint. Shreds of white tendons and pink muscle tissue dangled out of the jagged end.

Jack straightened up. “I don't even want to know what that came from.”

Ben grunted. “Looks more like something that belongs at the bottom of the ocean.”

“It's definitely some kind of arthropod.” Rudy turned the appendage over in his hands. “It's gotta be at least eighteen or twenty inches long. That'd give this thing—whatever it is—over a three-foot leg span.”

“Probably closer to four,” Ben said. He stood and looked around. Then he pointed his light toward the wall of the cavern. “I say we keep moving. Looks like there's another tunnel over there.”

“Fine, but I want to take this with me,” Rudy said. He got his wet shirt out of his pack, wrapped the appendage tightly, and stuffed it back inside. Then he produced a small plastic Ziploc bag of peanuts and dumped them into his pack. “I'm going to take a sample of this slime too. Just in case we actually make it out of here alive.”

They made their way through the passage Ben had indicated. The tunnel narrowed quickly and soon the slime had dissipated, leaving them relying again on their flashlights for navigation. The luminescent slime had given Jack a sense of space, but now the darkness seemed to huddle around them, making the tunnel feel even more cramped.

Finally the passage opened onto a wide, oval-shaped cavern. The walls swept upward, nearly vertical, giving the chamber a basin-like shape. This room, however, had no cheerful tendrils of glowing slime. It was completely dark, and the darkness felt even heavier than inside the passage.

Jack swept his light around. Ahead of them, twenty yards or so, the chamber curved slightly and extended out of their line of sight. Jack pointed the light back toward Ben and noticed that he was staring at the wall behind them.

“Jack, you might want to get a shot of this,” he said.

Jack turned to see markings scrawled on the surface of the rock with what looked like white chalk. They consisted of vertical lines with smaller lines protruding out at right angles in varying spots.

Rudy leaned in to view them. “Looks like the same kind of writing from your dad's drawing.”

“We're not the first ones here,” Jack said, digging out his camera to take some shots of the wall.

Ben stood with his hands on his hips. “Well, at least we know there's probably another way out of here. I'm guessing whoever drew these came in by some other entrance.”

Jack zoomed in on the writing. “I wonder if these are the markings that Running Bear's grandfather saw.”

They checked the wall for additional images but found none. So they spread out to inspect the rest of the chamber. Jack was searching along one wall where he'd discovered several side passages leading away from the main chamber. But they all looked too tight to crawl through. He was crouched down, shining his light into one of the tunnels, when he heard Rudy let out a sort of low groan.

Ben's voice echoed in the dark. “What's wrong?”

Rudy replied, “Just tell me this isn't what I think it is.”

Jack scrambled up the rocks to where Ben and Rudy stood with their lights aimed at the ground. “What is it? What happened?”

In the dim circle of light Jack could see what looked like several long sticks lying in the mud and gravel at Rudy's feet. They had a pale, ashen color that stood in stark contrast to the black rocks. So pale, in fact, that they seemed to glow in the light. Jack tried in vain to suppress a gasp.

“Bones?”

Rudy knelt down for a closer look. “Looks like a couple femurs and maybe some ribs.”

“They're human, all right.” Ben's voice sounded distant and detached.

“How do you know that?” Jack said.

“Because here's the rest of him.” Ben swept his light to the side, where it fell upon a skull perched amid a small pile of other bones. Wide, hollow eye sockets stared back at them, and an open jaw gaped as if frozen in the midst of a silent laugh.

Additional arm and leg bones lay strewn within a ten- or fifteen-foot radius. Jack struggled through his revulsion to maintain a level of professional detachment, but there was something sinister he noticed in the discovery. Something familiar and darkly unsettling that he wasn't sure he wanted to share with the others.

“He's, uh . . .” Jack didn't know quite how to put it. “He's sort of . . . all over the place.”

Ben flicked his light up into Jack's face, then back down at the skull. “Like the millipede in the tunnel. He's been torn limb from limb.”

Jack nodded slowly. “Kind of looks that way, doesn't it?”

Ben turned away as Jack knelt beside the skull and lifted it, inspecting it for gashes or other marks of violence. He saw none. The surface was smooth, free from any bit of flesh. Like it had been picked clean.

“Jack.” Rudy's voice was so soft that Jack at first didn't heed it.
“Jack.”

Jack looked up and saw Rudy standing on the edge of a rise, shining his flashlight down into the cavern on the other side.

“What?”

Rudy's voice sounded grim. “I think you should see this.”

Jack drew up beside him. “What is it?”

Rudy pointed down into the cavern. “It looks like there's more.”

Jack could see more white slivers glowing in the light near the bottom of the pit. He picked his way slowly down the rocky slope as his stomach tightened and his hands grew cold. He had never been this close to death before, and he fought his rising fears. Fear of never finding a way out of this cave and of whatever might be lurking in the stifling blackness. Fear that he would end up like these corpses, lost in the dark and the mud.

And a cold, paralyzing fear that one of them might be the remains of his father.

He reached the bottom and stopped in his tracks. The shapes of white bones littered the ground amid the rocks and mud. Maybe dozens of them. Parts of an arm and a leg, at least two skulls, and what looked like collarbones and more ribs. His jaw tightened as he swept the light across the rocks.

Rudy's voice came from the top of the rise. “What do you see?”

Jack willed himself to move farther down into the chamber and saw still more pale fragments. More skulls.

“Yeah, there's more down here,” he heard himself say, like he was having some kind of out-of-body experience. “I'm guessing . . . maybe a dozen or more.”

Jack's legs froze and he could go no farther. He moved the light ahead and upward and his eyes widened at what he saw. Then he turned away and retched the contents of his stomach into the mud.

Moments later he could hear Rudy and Ben shuffling down the incline.

“You okay?” Rudy said.

“Not really, no.” Jack wiped a muddied sleeve across his mouth and then pointed his light up again ahead of them. As he did, he could see Rudy take a step backward.

The light chased off distorted shadows, unveiling bit by bit a tangled mass of pale bones, stacked high against the far wall of the chamber. Gaping skulls and misshapen spines and legs and arms, all twisted and contorted and heaped into a brutal white edifice. As if someone had just bulldozed them into a pile.

Rudy's breath came in throaty gasps. “There's . . . got to be . . . hundreds . . .” His voice trailed off.

Jack stared at the grotesque mound. “What is this place?”

Ben squatted down and hung his head for a moment. Then he looked up again and wiped his hair out of his face. “It's a bone pit.”