The Cavern

by Alister Hodge

  THE CAVERN

  Alister Hodge

  www.severedpress.com

  Copyright 2019 by Alister Hodge

  For Lee

  Chapter One

  Rope zipped through Jim’s carabiner with a high-pitched whine as he abseiled down the rock wall, bouncing out one last time before hitting the ground with a thud to join his wife. Ancient limestone walls surrounded him, smooth and dry to the touch. He glanced up at the shaft’s opening, thirty metres above. Discovered in the Australian Outback by a farmer barely three weeks ago, the near perfect circle of blue sky marked the only known access to the cave system. A twenty-metre wide sink-hole had broken through into the ceiling of a limestone cavern, granting access to a previously hidden world, unseen by any human eye.

  Jim unclipped his harness and peered into the gloom for his wife. He spotted Beth on the far side of the main shaft, shining her torch down a tunnel branching off to the south. He zipped up the front of his coveralls against the cool subterranean air, and began to pick his way across the rubble strewn ground.

  Beth’s eyes were bright as she turned to meet him. “I can’t believe we’re the cave’s first explorers!”

  “A bloody expensive privilege,” muttered Jim under his breath, still smarting at the two thousand dollars he’d paid Mr. Anastas for access to his land.

  “Let it go, babe. I would have been happy to pay three times that.”

  Jim clenched his jaw for a moment, then forced himself to exhale and relax. There was no going back now. He’d seen the state of Anastas’ sheep and knew his cash was probably already gone, spent on feed for the farmer’s drought stricken livestock.

  “All right, no more talk of money.” He shrugged off his backpack and dumped it at his feet, raising a small cloud of fine dust. “But before we go any further, let’s do one last safety check. Can’t afford any accidents while it’s just the two of us.”

  Beth huffed at the delay, but waited as he systematically reviewed their gear. Both wore a set of old State Emergency Service coveralls. Jim’s pack carried most of their stuff, including rope and a spare light source amongst other safety equipment.

  He pulled a waterproof sheet of grid paper from his sleeve and made a mark for their beginning position along with a bearing off his compass. Jim fastened the strap on his helmet, before taking time to memorise the rock features around him. “Which way do you want to go?”

  His wife shone her torch down each of two branching tunnels before settling on the option to the right. “This one, I reckon.”

  Beth took point, weaving between larger slabs of rock that had dropped from the ceiling. The passage sloped steadily down, the uneven roof skimming scant inches above their heads before dropping down to waist height, then a length of tight squeezes.

  At forks in the tunnel, Jim created a simple cairn, no more than three rocks balanced atop each other to mark the way back. He stopped for a moment to take a drink of water while Beth took a seat on a boulder to the side. Without the sound of footfalls bouncing back off the walls, their breathing seemed unnaturally loud, silence weighing like an almost palpable force. For the first time on a caving expedition, Jim felt a niggle of claustrophobia. If he stuffed up and got them lost, the cave would become their tomb.

  As he put the water bottle back in his pack, a new sound caught his attention. He touched Beth’s arm. “Do you hear that?”

  A faint tapping came from somewhere up ahead, rhythmic in nature.

  Beth paused to listen, her expression unconcerned. “Dripping water maybe?”

  “Nah, I don’t think so.” He cocked his head to the side, trying to hear the sound more clearly. “More like footsteps. Weird.”

  Beth’s eyes opened wide in mock astonishment. “Maybe it’s one of the creatures that barman was talking about. What was it called again?”

  Jim smirked as he cast his mind back to the previous night. “I think he called it a ‘Miner’s Mother’?” The old guy had been up to his gills in whisky when he’d pointed out creepy pictures of the town’s mythical beast behind the bar and warned them off exploring the cave. The monster’s features had been indistinct in the paintings. With its body shrouded in shadow, it had been the creature’s malevolent green eyes that made his skin crawl.

  “Didn’t it help miners find opal or something?”

  “Nah, he said it was more likely to slit your throat than do anything friendly.”

  “Well I prefer my version of the story better,” said Beth. She took a step further down the tunnel before looking back over her shoulder. “Why don’t we work out where the noise is coming from? If it is dripping water, it might lead us to a diveable watercourse.”

  Jim shrugged. “Good idea as any, I guess.”

  He glanced back over his shoulder, searching the tunnel with his light. For some irrational reason, he couldn’t shake the sensation they were being watched. Seeing nothing unusual, Jim clamped down on his growing unease and walked onward, the beam of his helmet torch a harsh white against the walls. Shadows cast by the rocks on the floor danced ahead, as the angle of their torches shifted.

  After a short distance, the tunnel branched. The couple paused to listen for the sound, before hearing it clearly from one side. Beth moved forward eagerly, and the tapping noise escalated for a moment, as if applauding their decision to follow. The couple continued onwards as the maze deepened in complexity, turn after turn.

  Beth stopped and touched a finger to one side of the tunnel. “It’s damp. We must be getting close to water.”

  A clatter of small rocks echoed from behind. Intrigued, Jim left Beth for a moment and retraced his steps to find what had made the noise. At the last fork in the tunnel, he pulled up short. The small cairn of stones he’d built to mark the route home was now missing. He shone his torch down each option, searching for footprints or any other evidence of their passage, but both were swept clean, the dust smooth and undisturbed. Shit. Both options now looked the same to him, and unless his wife could remember which tunnel they’d come from, it would be a roll of the dice on their return.

  Jim quickly walked back to his wife. “Babe, we have a problem,” he said, voice holding an edge of anxiety despite his best efforts to sound unconcerned. The last thing they needed was to panic and become further disorientated.

  “That last cairn of rocks I placed is missing, the tunnel’s wiped clean.”

  Beth raised an eyebrow at him, confused. “That’s not possible. We’re the only ones down here, how could they have moved?”

  “I’ve got no idea, but doesn’t change the fact that they’re bloody gone.”

  “Well, you’ve been keeping track of our turns and co-ordinates on paper like usual, haven’t you? We just go off them to find our way back. It’ll be fine.”

  “Umm… yeah, should be okay,” said Jim, not having the guts to admit that he’d grown lax in his recording as they hurried after the sound, letting his usual procedures lapse.

  They heard water movement close ahead, and Beth turned toward the noise. “That sounds like a proper body of water. It might be the lake we were hoping to find. Let’s do one more corner to check, and if there’s nothing there, we go back the way we came. What do you say?”

  Jim felt powerless to disagree, and followed after his wife. She was being reasonable, not losing her shit at him, and one more turn in the labyrinth was hardly going to make the difference between life and death.

  His jaw dropped as he rounded the corner and bumped into the back of his wife, heart leaping with excitement. Above them, the roof vaulted high, granting a cathedral dome to the underground room. Great stalactites reached down from the ceiling in clusters, white crystalline deposits shimmering like chandeliers in the torch light. In some areas, the stalagmites rising from t
he ground had met with descending stalactites to form great columns. They’d found something truly magnificent.

  Twenty metres into the room, dry ground gave way to water. Jim paced forward, all thoughts of their predicament banished at the wonders ahead. He dipped a finger into the water then put it into his mouth – fresh. The lake was clear and still as glass, allowing him to view the bottom as it gently sloped away.

  Beth looked about the massive space, lips parted in silent awe. “We did it, babe. We’ve found something beautiful.”

  “And as its discoverers, we’ve got naming rights. What do you want to call it?”

  Beth shined her beam slowly across the expanse of the cavern, her gaze lingering where huge stalactites hung, in some places kissing the surface of the water.

  “It’s almost like a church, the way the ceiling peaks in the middle – and those columns at the side, it’s like they’re guarding the entrance to smaller, private chapels or alcoves,” she said. “Let’s call it ‘The Temple’.” She turned to him expectantly for his reaction. “What do you think?”

  Jim rolled the name about his mouth and found that it suited the cavern. He agreed, there was a feeling of power oozing from the area. “I like it. Just as long as we don’t have to leave a sacrifice to the temple’s deity,” he said with a short bark of laughter.

  Beth looked at him sternly for a moment, as if checking to see whether he was making fun of her suggestion.

  “No, babe, I like the name, I swear,” said Jim, holding up his hands in surrender. “But we should crack on and get a few photos of the place before we head back. The guys at the club will be sick with envy!”

  Beth’s face brightened at his words, and she helped him unpack a small tripod and SLR camera from the bottom of his pack. They set up three lights to illuminate the ceiling and main cavern before Jim started clicking off some shots.

  While Jim was occupied in the visual documentation of their find, Beth wandered closer to the water. The bottom looked to be less than thigh deep for about twenty metres prior to dropping away. The base consisted of fine silt interspersed with rock, much like the flooring in the dry sections of the cave. With any luck, The Temple would continue underwater, giving them a whole submarine system to explore.

  She sighed at the thought of bringing in others to assist. Just the job of carting down the dive gear would require significant leg work, not to mention coordination - and that meant a larger group. Cave diving was inherently dangerous. She knew she was somewhat cavalier in her attitude compared to others in the Australian Caving Association, but if you planned on coming up the other side of a dive breathing, you had to take underwater safety seriously.

  Movement in her peripheral vision caught her attention. Twenty metres off shore, slight ripples expanded in concentric circles. Something was in the water. Beth lifted her hand torch, pointing the beam for a clearer view into the shadows, just in time to see a child’s pink nose disappear under the surface. Her heart stuttered for a moment. Surely the sounds they’d been following hadn’t been actual footsteps?

  Not trusting her eyes, she waited for the ripples to clear. Adrenaline surged, causing her heart rate to gallop. There it was again! Close to the drop off into deeper water, she saw the child again, just a face, the rest of its body obscured by silt and rock on the lake floor. Fear constricted her chest, breathing now quick and shallow.

  Why the hell was a kid alone down here?

  She froze, battling indecision. Beth’s gut screamed to run, every instinct telling her to retreat. She dry swallowed, concentrating on the child’s face to ignore her own terror and act. It didn’t make any sense, but surely she had to do something?

  “Jim! There’s a kid in the water!” She started to strip off her heavy outer coveralls, ready to dive in.

  “There’s a fucking what?” Jim’s face was white as he put down the camera and ran over.

  “A kid – over there,” she said pointing off-shore. “He only just went under, we can still save him if we’re quick.”

  “But we haven’t got any diving gear. What if there’s a current? If it pulls you under, you’re dead. Don’t do it,” pleaded Jim.

  “Don’t be such a coward,” she answered scathingly. “Get one of the climbing ropes, I’ll tie it around my waist. If anything goes wrong, you just haul me out. Quick!”

  He jerked away as if physically slapped, and retrieved a coiled rope from his pack. Jim tied a length about her waist, and then she was off.

  Beth churned into the water, spreading silt in cloudy blooms from the bottom, turning crystal clarity to an impenetrable haze in her wake. At waist depth she began to swim, powerful kicks driving her forward. When she thought she was in the right spot, she took a deep breath and duck-dived.

  Two metres below she could see the boy. The child looked no older than six. Close cropped hair hugged his skull, the skin of his face white and hypoxic. She drove down with all her might, desperate to get the child to the surface before he suffered irreparable brain damage. She knew the stats; it only took five minutes without air before brain cells started to die, and Beth was determined to prevent that happening.

  As she drew within arm’s reach, its eyes opened. Something wasn’t right with the picture below her, and she paused mid-stroke. The child’s pupils flickered as its gaze locked onto her, before lengthening into the slits of a serpent. The iris and white of the eye became a halogen green. Lips drew back in an animalistic snarl, exposing a jaw full of needle-sharp teeth.

  Beth hung in the water, frozen in horror. The beast’s face deformed, mouth and jaw protruding as the skin darkened to black, shedding the chameleon-like colouration used to attract her into the water.

  Bubbles exploded out of her mouth as she screamed. Beth felt two hard tugs on the rope about her waist, pulling her up to the surface. Spell finally broken, she kicked hard to follow the rope, her chest burning with the need for air, desperate to escape the monster beneath.

  Jim let out lengths of rope as he watched his wife frantically swim offshore and then disappear beneath the surface. He forced slow breaths, trying to keep a lid on his own fear. It didn’t make sense. Surely if a child had gone missing, the town would have been up in arms trying to locate it before they’d entered the cave?

  Another thought entered his head – air. He mentally kicked himself at his own stupidity. This far below ground and with such poor ventilation, it wasn’t unheard of to lose oxygen content in the air, leading to mental deterioration. Hallucinations weren’t such a big leap for the oxygen-starved mind. If that was the case, he needed to get his wife out of the water and quick.

  Jim dug a foot into the dirt and started hauling back on the rope, pulling his wife back to shore with all of his strength.

  Beth powered up to the light, her right hand punching through the surface into the air. After one frantic look to identify the direction of the shore and Jim, she kicked into a rough freestyle, feet churning the water as adrenaline fuelled muscles leant every ounce of strength. Her knees bashed into rock as the depth lessened, and she stumbled to her feet.

  Beth went to take a step forward, then something grabbed hold of a leg and jerked her backward. She looked down in open-mouthed terror to see the creature had caught up. Black, bony fingers clamped about her ankle like a vice. Talons at the point of each digit punctured her skin, sinking deep as she screamed in agony.

  The rope tugged viciously from behind as Jim tried to pull her to shore, the single loop sliding up under her armpits as her husband fought the beast in a brutal tug of war, with her body the prize. She couldn’t breathe, the rope a ring of fire about her torso as it snapped ribs with each savage jerk. Beth stared helplessly as the top half of the creature emerged above the water line. It had a lamprey-like mouth, circular rows of needle sharp teeth protruding as a pointed tongue flicked out to taste the air. Above the vicious maw, four green eyes with elliptical pupils blinked independent of each other. It wrenched backwards against her husband as it stood,
cord like muscles standing proud on its arms and chest. A serpent tail swept the water behind, adding strength. The rope went slack, the creature must have ripped it from Jim’s hands.

  With irrepressible strength, it drew Beth into an embrace, two nose slits above the mouth flaring as it leant down to her neck and sniffed. A low wail of fear and revulsion escaped Beth’s mouth, her bladder releasing a warm flood down her leg. The head lifted, reptilian eyes locking onto her gaze. Suddenly two flaps of skin sprang out to either side of the beast’s head and neck like a cobra and it emitted a high-pitched scream, then dived forward to latch onto the side of her face.

  Beth wailed in terror as razor-sharp teeth tore into her cheek, ripping through the tissue in an instant. She fought against the beast but was helpless, her arms pinned to either side. Dimly, she registered her husband’s futile screams echoing her own. Claw tipped fingers forced her mouth wide, and its protruding jaws forced past her teeth to clamp about her tongue, ripping it out with one savage bite. Blood spurted in her mouth as the beast gagged down its prize, pouring down the back of her throat to fill her stomach and flood her lungs as she convulsively sucked in a breath. Her stomach rebelled and she vomited, crimson erupting in a gout from her mouth to coat her chest and the skin of her killer.

  Jim watched the unfolding scene in stunned horror. Blood seeped from his palms where the rope had torn a sheet of skin away as the creature wrenched it from his grasp. Beth’s eyes bulged in agony as the creature ripped into the flesh at the angle of her neck and shoulder. Jim brushed his hand against his belt, checking for the basic knife he always carried while caving.

  His wife shuddered within the beast’s grip, mouth pleading silently as her eyes stared into space. Jim charged into the water, blade in hand, any thoughts of his own safety erased by the need to help his wife. At the noise of his approach, the monster lifted its head, mouth disengaging from her neck with a wet sucking noise. A fresh glut of blood spurted from the unplugged wound and Beth’s features went slack. Releasing its hold on her, she slipped beneath the surface, dead.