Spawn of Hell (21 page)

Using every ounce of stamina he possessed, he went in further until the yellow glare of his flashlight caught the outline of one of the entrances to the caves. “Sam!” he shouted out again, knowing there’d be no answer. The men must have dawdled along the way, taking their own sweet time, meandering on the trail that led around the base of the mountain back to the open picnic area. He wondered if he should set out on
that
path and try to catch up with them, but realized that if they were too far ahead of him, he might be stranded there at the camp grounds without a car. No, better to go back to the auto now, then have to walk all the way back to it from the picnic area.

Those noises again!
Pop Pop Pop Pop.
They were so weird, so intense, growing louder all the time. He was almost tempted to draw his gun. But what was there to shoot at, to defend himself against? He saw nothing in the beam of the flashlight. Nothing at all.

Until now.

What was that?
He’d seen it out of the corner of his eye, darting out of the path of his light into the underbrush. Something big. A bear? No, a bear wouldn’t move like that. It
must
have been an animal, though he had no idea what kind it was. There had been something almost reptilian about it. Yet, it hadn’t been a reptile. Nothing like that. A snake? Too large. And not tall enough for a deer.

He thought of the way they’d found Jeffrey Braddon’s body and his blood ran cold.

There was something unnatural going on, something he had no care to be part of. But he was a patrolman, an officer of the law, and he had no choice in the matter. He walked over to the spot where he’d seen the critter darting back into the covering brush. His light picked up the tops of the tall grass, the bushy overgrowth, the patchy bark of tree trunks, but nothing moved, nothing stirred. There was not a sound.

Then he heard something in back of him, scraping across the ground, slowly dogging his footsteps as it had been doing all along.

He turned, looked down and screamed. He had only a moment to shine the light on it, to see what it was, before it was upon him. His mind reeled and he refused to believe, not wanting to be part of a world that could spawn something as hideous as this. He became aware in his death throes that he was surrounded, that the whole woods was full of them, waiting, watching, starting at last to come closer. He let out a horrible shriek, blood running down his limbs, his body writhing in agony, and finally struggled no more.

They were approaching Jeffrey’s house as it started to get really dark, as a cool breeze started whipping up the leaves in the trees and the night birds and crickets began to call. Harry said good night to David, accepting David’s thanks for the lift. David stood in the road for a moment watching the car drive away, disappearing around a bend in the distance. He walked over to the front door and knocked. After a few seconds he heard footsteps in the hallway, the door opened, and Anna stood before him, smiling.

It was obvious that she had been crying. Her eyes were puffy, her nose red. She’d needed to be alone to let it all out, to get it out of her system. David hoped that she felt better—or had her tears only deepened her despair? He knew there was nothing that could erase the pain, the sense of loss, but he wanted to help her any way he could, wanted her to need him in some small way.

She needed him more than that, it seemed. Perhaps she’d felt the emptiness of the house the moment he’d stepped outside earlier in the day, and now she rushed to him and pulled him inside, and nestled in his arms and smothered him with kisses. David knew not from where this show of affection came, but it didn’t really matter. He clung to her, grateful that she cared enough to show that she
did
care.

They said nothing for a while, until Anna led him over to the couch and they sat down beside each other. She broke the silence by asking him what he’d done all day. He surprised her when he told her what he’d been up to: bumping into Harry, running around, trying to solve the mystery of her brother’s death. He could tell that Anna was touched, but she said: “I didn’t mean for you to get involved with all of this. I appreciate what you and Mr. London are doing, but it isn’t necessary.”

“We think it is. Remember, I may not have known your brother, but he was one of Harry’s closest friends. He’s not just doing it for you.”

She sighed and rubbed her eyes. “I guess not. I suppose I should be glad that somebody cares—cares enough . . .” She leaned her head against David’s chest and continued. “It’s just that I didn’t plan for you to get personally involved with my brother’s death. It’s not your concern, that’s all. I have no right to intrude in your life this way, to make my problems your problems. You probably have enough worries without bothering with this, too. I can’t thank you enough for coming up here with me. I don’t know what I would have done. I’m sorry you had to stay out all afternoon. It’s just that . . .”

“I understand.”

“I was afraid you’d just be bored and depressed by my mood. I’m not much fun to be with now.”

“You don’t have to be ‘fun’ all the time. You’re a normal person with normal feelings, and I’ve very fond of you. Whether you’re ‘fun’ or not.”

She smiled and looked up into his eyes as his head leaned down over hers. She looked down again, studying her hands. “There’s nothing here to tell me much about my brother. I was hoping to get to know him a little by going through his things. Didn’t find out much. He read
People
and
Popular Mechanics.
Watched TV a lot. Had this
TV Guide
with all the programs circled. Kept all the newspapers in a pile down in the cellar. You should see the cellar. A lot of junk that was probably here when he moved in. Don’t know what I’ll do with it. There’s nothing I especially want to keep. Nothing to help me remember him. Nothing . . .”

She began to cry again, weeping unabashedly into David’s shirt, grabbing his collar with one of her hands. She kept apologizing, although it was unnecessary. Finally she forced herself up, and said: “Let’s get out of here, David. I made reservations at a motel about three miles away. I don’t want to stay here any longer.”

They locked the place up and went over to the car. David offered to drive, but she said no. He was glad. They drove to the motel in silence.

While Anna and David checked into the Milbourne Motel as Mr. and Mrs. Braddon, Police Chief Walters was finally accepting the fact that he was hopelessly and incontrovertibly lost. He had gone down into the great hole in the floor of the Forester Building hours ago, climbing down the collapsible ladder, touching down on the soft earth under the cellar. He told himself over and over again that he was a fool, that he should never have gone alone, that his strange compulsion to test his manhood had driven him into an act which made him seem more child than man. But he had been so sure that he’d be able to find his way back, so determined to get to the end of the tunnel branching out to the far right at the end of the cavern where they’d found Jeffrey’s body, that he’d failed to take precautions any nitwit would have. He’d stupidly left the rope on the floor of the Forester Building, but had blundered on compulsively anyway, positive that he’d not lose track of where he had come from. At one point he tripped and broke the lantern, leaving just the flashlight to light up the way. And the backpack, hot and heavy on his shoulders, was more irritant than blessing.

What was he doing down here, while his men were out searching for four of the town’s missing citizens? He should have been up there with them, running the show, giving the orders, charging ahead. Sure, he was being too hard on himself; after all, the kids hadn’t even been missing twenty-four hours yet. But he still couldn’t shake the feeling that he was shirking his duty, ignoring his responsibility in the face of the town’s only “crisis” in years.

But he had to see this through. Had to find out, once and for all, what was down here. Had to discover for himself the uncanny instrument of Jeff Braddon’s horrible demise.

What had been
at
the man?

Walters had gone straight to the spot where they’d found the corpse, then quickly chosen the tunnel nearest the right wall of the cavern. There was no doubt that this was a natural underground chamber, and that the tunnels, too, had existed for possible eons. The funny thing was, something had destroyed whatever wall or barrier might have existed between the Forester Building’s sub-cellar and the cave without. There was even something funny about the condition of the dirt, so crumbly and squishy in his fingers, as though it had been loosened and moistened by a thousand tiny earthworms, He had noticed an outcropping from either side of the cavern that neither he nor Harry had noticed before.

The edges of the outcropping were torn and jagged as if they were simply the ends of a wall that had somehow been breached by whatever had crawled out from under the Forester Building. He surmised that the break had occurred fairly recently.

He also believed that Harry and he had been wrong in their initial estimate as to the location of the cavern, as well as its depth. He couldn’t be sure without instruments, of course, but it seemed as if it sloped down and curved towards the left, taking it deeper beneath the foundations of the buildings above than he’d first imagined it to be. The leftward swing also indicated that he was no longer beneath Main Street, explaining why this section, at least, had never been discovered when the buildings had been erected so many years ago. It was not really located underneath the town.

No more stalling; he had finally decided to enter the forbidding tunnel and bravely stepped inside, having to stoop down so that his head would not scrape against the natural ceiling above. Odd—the very walls seemed to glisten in the glow from the flashlight he carried. He touched them and pulled back. His fingers were coated with a slimy gray substance that had been smeared, as it turned out, all around the entire circumference of the tunnel—walls, floor and ceiling. The sticky stuff felt oily and thick and disgusting. He wiped his fingers on his trousers.

He continued along his way, wondering if his were the first human eyes to set sight upon these walls, the first person to walk within this space. Things seemed to be closing in on him, but he shrugged it off, determined not to let his claustrophobia get the better of him. He had it under control, he told himself; he always had it under control.
Don’t let your mild neurosis inhibit you now. Get on with it.

He walked faster. Still the space seemed to get smaller, tighter, and he wondered if it
had
been in his mind. He reached out. No—the walls
were
closer, there was no doubt of it now. Again he rubbed his greasy fingers on his pants, wondering what kind of slimy creatures passed through here while the township slept. Had Jeffrey taken a peek in here? Had he seen too much and paid the ultimate price for his fatal curiosity? The Chief stopped, then closed his eyes tightly, and summoned up a reserve of strength. He would not think like that. Not here. Not now. He had a job to do. No one else could have been sent in his place, he knew that now. Let them brush through the overgrowth with sticks, searching for four wayward children; the real work, the
man’s
work was being done down here.

Then the Chief started seeing things.

Lights at first. Little dots in front of his eyes which he assumed were strictly imaginary, special effects playing off his retinas. Optical illusions. He started—he thought he’d seen a figure in the passage way before him. Then it was gone. No, it too had been an illusion. In a place like this even a sane man could start seeing things that weren’t there. He shivered; his mother had always told him he had too active an imagination. It would get him into trouble someday.

And here he was.

The first tunnel had branched out into other tunnels and he’d lost track of how many forks he’d chosen, and before long he’d had no idea where he was. There was nothing familiar, no wonderful landmarks, in any direction. He was lost, lost, lost.

Just as he was about to give up hope, the tunnel he was in broke through into a cavern even larger than the one he’d entered from originally. The odor, which he had gotten used to easily enough before, was stronger than ever. He shone the light up and down, trying to determine exactly how big the place was. A few bats scurried away from the light, flying into sinkholes overhead. Stalactites hung down from the ceiling, and their sisters, stalagmites, pierced upwards from the floor. He saw a lot of multi-colored speleotherms, rock formations frozen in strange and twisted shapes. Spiraling cylindrical helictites grew out of the walls, and murky brown fungi covered the stone drapery hanging from the ceiling. Insects, large spiders with pallid skin, and darting lizards hurried away from his feet into a multitude of holes, pockets and crevices in the walls.

The place had an eerie, ancient look to it, as if it had not been disturbed by a human presence for centuries, as if, in fact, it had not been disturbed by anything save the bats and lizards and bugs throughout history.

But there
was
something else in there with him besides the bats and lizards and bugs. Whatever they were, they had formed an uneasy alliance with the winged creatures nesting above and the insects and others below, as if the bats and spiders tolerated the presence of the enemy because they had no other home and were too weak to evict the invaders, and the invaders tolerated the presence of the spiders and lizards because they used them and the bats for their food supply.

Until now.

First they had eaten each other, feasting on siblings and spouses alike, working their way out from the enclosure, boring and squirming slowly through the many rocks and crevices They found the cavern at last, and squeezed through the different tunnels, and swarmed out into this, their final home. Then they’d found the bats and insects and consumed them. They lived on next to nothing. One bat was enough for many days. Then one day a few of them had come upon the man, the man who’d fallen down into the area where first they had been kept. (At one point they had crawled up into the building next door, through the floorboards, but the vibrations they had heard had frightened them, disturbed them, so they had gone no further. They had not found anything to eat there anyway.) The man, however, was food. Fine, delicious food. They had subdued him. and taken a quick taste, but that was all. They were too close to the vibrations, so had left some of the delicious food behind. Had they not been so wary and so disoriented, they might have taken the rest with them.