by Mark Mulle
the side to check Austin. He wasn't laughing.
"Oh, come on, it’s just a bit of fun!" I called, hauling another arm's length of rope up, but he shook his head and pointed laterally to him toward a ledge in the face of the great cliff.
"I see something," he said, almost in a whisper, and he motioned us to stop pulling him up. Slowly, he grabbed onto the rough rock wall and began to move toward the ledge. As he approached, he moved slower, almost at a crawl, as though he was trying not to be seen. He grabbed the edge of the projection and pulled himself onto it, out of the range of our light sources.
We waited for a few seconds in silence and saw the rope moving as Austin moved deeper into the dark. Then, suddenly, the rope gave slack, and Austin shot out of the darkness, jumping off the edge of the little outcropping and scrambling to get away from it.
"Pull me up pull me up PULL ME UP!" he shouted, just as a low static sound, like a growl from a creature who didn't know how to make a sound we would understand, echoed through the cave complex, seeming to come from all directions at once. It was like I could feel it in my head, not just hear it. In the dark, I caught a glimpse of burning violet.
"Get him up!" We hauled with all our might, bringing Austin up, bustling him over onto the edge, and as he unhooked himself from the rope, there was a sound like quickly dragging a stick over a rough patch of gravel. Something appeared behind him.
The creature was enormously tall—at least three meters in height—and had long, spindly limbs that bent too many times in too many directions all at once. Its entire body was a sheer, dull black, with what looked like tiny sparks of the same deep violet I could see emanating from it. Its torso was long and skinny, almost emaciated, and it had no neck. Its head was attached directly to the body, a huge, bulbous skull that unhinged itself and seemed to grotesquely bare a mouth with no teeth or tongue but only jagged shards of its skull where it separated. The worst of it was its eyes, blazing in a fiery deep purple that seemed to simultaneously burn like fire and seep out like blood from erratic holes in its skull that seemed to be constantly changing shape. Its limbs terminated abruptly with no hands or feet to speak of, and from its open skull issued that same horrid dragging sound we heard before.
Austin spun, his axe snatched from its harness at his hip, and he struck at the creature, putting his strength behind the blow. It bit into the thing's brittle flesh, and Austin prepared to pull the axe back, when—
Suddenly the thing wasn't there, instead standing several meters behind James. Austin's blow continued on, and when he recovered, the thing closed in on James. Not one to be slow on the reaction, James rolled to one side, sword already in-hand, and swung the blade at where the thing was only a fraction of a second ago, but it was already somewhere else, in the darkness where we could not see.
We fled. Whatever this thing was, it was not something we wanted to fight, with its disappearing and reappearing where and whenever it wanted, so we retreated backward, into the mine rail tunnel that had brought us to the cliff. The tunnel was well-lit, and as we fell back, we thought the creature would not follow us into the light. We were wrong.
That sort of drag-scratch-zip sound echoed again, and I found myself face-to-face with the thing, crouched low and looking not unlike a mutated spider. One of its limbs struck out, seized the front of my bag harness, and hefted me off the ground, hurling me to one side. I felt my body smash into the wooden support, heard the wet thud of my head connecting with it, and felt a warm trickle run down the back of my neck. I blinked hard, fighting back the dizziness, and forced myself back to my feet. As my eyes came back into focus, I saw Katy drawing a bead on the thing with a bow.
One arrow fired and buried itself in the thing's torso. This time, it didn't disappear and let the blow come harmlessly through; this time, a neon-looking purple liquid sprayed from the wound, and the thing screeched like the sound of a knife being dragged across a chalkboard.
It stumbled and then disappeared, leaving a puddle of the acrid liquid where it was. "Arrows!" Katy cried, and everyone who had brought a bow drew them out. I slumped back against the wall, blotted the back of my head momentarily with a scrap of wool, and quickly drew out my bow.
It had appeared further down the tunnel, its eyes blazing, and it began to charge toward us, as though it would bowl through us. Five arrows (mine missed, went wide, as I was not yet focused) slammed into its body, and it let out another cry. This time it appeared just in front of Mary, who, realizing her chance, dropped the bow, seized a sword, and grabbed the thing's skull with one hand, plunging the point of the blade into its open mouth with her other hand. A sort of gurgling sound issued from its mouth, and it spasmed, thrashed, and then collapsed, its body rapidly decaying and melting into a puddle of the same violet slime. In the center of the puddle, the only thing that did not dissolve was what appeared to be a glass sphere, roughly fist-sized, green on the outside but a dark color toward the center. It rolled in the slime toward Mary's feet.
Everyone waited for a moment, not yet certain what else would happen, but when the tunnel was silent for that moment, a simultaneous sigh of relief leaked from everyone's lips. Mary and Austin rushed to my side, seeing the blood still running down my back over the top of my bag.
We set up a rest camp temporarily in that tunnel, blocking off either end of it with wood and stone. Inside, we rested for a while, heating up and eating soup or meat on a makeshift furnace and lounging about on our packs. I washed my head wound in a bucket of water. Mary had picked up the glass ball and was intently studying it, holding it up to the light, then weighing it in each hand, then tapping on it with her knuckles.
"I've got nothing," she said and tossed it to James. He reached out to catch it, but it slipped from his fingers, and pinged against the ground. Suddenly Mary, who was nearly eight meters away from James, slammed into his body at a high speed. The two of them tumbled on the dusty ground, coming to rest tangled up in a coil of rope.
Mary swore. James swore more.
"What was that about?" said James, brushing himself off as the two of them stood up. Mary was just as confused.
"That's what I want to know! Suddenly I was just flying at you, when you dropped . . . the . . ." The realization hit them both at the same time, and they both scrambled to look for the ball. It was there, just where James had let it drop, in thousands of tiny pieces.
Mary swore again. James swore more again.
And there, suddenly, was that awful low, scratching, static sound from all directions.
“Again?” cried Mary. "Seriously?" She grabbed up a weapon, knocking over the slightly red bucket of water I had been using. It flowed over the floor, making a puddle, just as that sort of warp-sound could be heard, and another of those terrible gangly black things appeared in our sanctuary.
Its leg stepped into the puddle, however, and it recoiled back, the appendage smoking and dripping green, as though it had begun to decay like the other had when it had been killed. Anne took the hint, grabbed another bucket, and flung its contents at the black thing. The water splashed over its frame, and the thing's body deteriorated before our eyes. James and Austin struck while it was busy lamenting, and it sank again to the ground, decaying like the other one, leaving a glass ball just like before.
We decided to get back out of there. This place was not the safest of places, and with me injured and the possibility at any moment of another one of those appearing paired with the fact that we no longer had any more water, it was the wisest decision we could make to go back up to the Green.
Following the marks we had left on the stone walls, we headed back until we got to a fork in the path, where a very certain piece of stone seemed to be conspicuously missing. On the ground by the hole in the stone wall, a crumbled chunk of stone—one with the marking we had left still partially visible in the pieces—lay strewn about. There was a hint of violet film on the stone, both in the wall and on the floor.
"Those things messing up our markings . . ." Anne mumble
d. "Does anyone remember which way it was?"
We did not. The consensus was to make a new mark and travel in one direction for a while. If we did not find any of our marks, we'd turn around and go back the other way. Down the left passage we went, more and more paranoid about those terrible creatures. The further we went, though, the less it looked like we were going the right direction, until a sudden slope going upward spit us out on the beach, a kilometer or so south of the housing complex.
This time, Austin swore, and everyone echoed it.
At the very least, we were out of the Underground. As far as I knew, those things would not follow us up into the light, so we were at least marginally safe. The sun was on its way down, but we would have plenty of time to get back to the house if we kept up a good pace. My head wound was already getting better and had mostly closed up after we rested and ate, so I felt alright enough to push for home.
This far south of the complex, the jungle began to thin out and transition into a sort of fertile plain, covered in grass and flowers. It was huge and open, and the plan was one day to build a bigger, more inclusive, better complex there so that we'd have everything we needed in one building. For now, though, all we used it for was scouting livestock that
