Older and Fouler Things (Jed Horn Supernatural Thrillers Book 4)

by Peter Nealen

  The chute wasn’t the mine entrance; that was a few yards beyond, a stark, black rectangle, framed with heavy timbers, leading back into the mountain. It looked like it had been boarded up, but the blocking boards hadn’t lasted long; they were scattered on the flat ground in front of the entrance, smashed and splintered as if something had set a charge and blown them apart. I knew that there had been no explosion; we would have heard that.

  The vampire had torn the obstacle apart with its bare hands.

  Magnus and his knights stopped as we moved toward the entrance. When I looked back at them, all of them were staring at the darkened portal with luminous, golden eyes. I would have almost said that there was fear there.

  “We dare go no farther,” Magnus said quietly.

  “What?” Frank demanded. “But we need your help down there!”

  Magnus only shook his head. “The risk is too great, for us and for you. We will stay here and stand guard. Nothing will follow you down.”

  Ray didn’t say anything, but stopped just outside the entrance and turned to the rest of us. A faint wind was coming out of that hole in the ground, cold and bearing a harsh, vaguely metallic smell. It was a scent that reminded me of dust and ash, old bones and death. Not the visceral, bloody and rotting smell of dead flesh, but the smell of the very avatar of Death itself—stark and lifeless. It was no more encouraging than anything else we’d faced up on that mountain.

  “Prepare yourselves now,” Ray said grimly. “Don’t worry about Magnus and his knights. Once we go down there, there’s no coming back until either that vamp is dead and the Thing is buried, or we all go down and leave our bones under the ground.”

  As pep talks go, I’ve heard better. But there was nothing he’d just said that I disagreed with. Almost all together, except for Miller and Trudeau, we crossed ourselves. Charlie’s hand, I noticed, was shaking violently as he made the Sign.

  Then Ray turned, lifted his lantern high, and plunged into the darkness under the mountain.

  Chapter 14

  The entryway was surprisingly large. The ceiling was a good three feet overhead, and the passage was at least twelve feet wide. The square-cut timbers didn’t show the kind of weathering that we’d seen on the chute outside, and still looked quite sound. There were a few random rocks on the floor, but after shining my light very carefully around the walls and ceiling, I thought we could be fairly confident that the mine wasn’t about to collapse and bury us all.

  At least, not by itself. The vampire and its Renfields could have had all sorts of nasty surprises waiting for us, down there in the black.

  The mine cart rails were still in place; after the mine had been abandoned, no one had wanted to risk going back inside to remove the rails or the ties. They would have made for somewhat difficult footing, except for the fact that, at least at the entrance, the passage was wide enough that we could walk on either side of the tracks.

  The tunnel went straight back into mountainside, and Ray led the way, still holding that Gibbs-Summit at waist level. That wasn’t a terribly light rifle, short as it was, but Ray wasn’t a weak man by any means. The muzzle didn’t waver a millimeter.

  He paused after about fifty yards. When I looked over at him from the other side of the tracks, he angled his rifle to point with it. I shouldered my Winchester, my light held tight to the wooden forearm, and pointed it in the same direction.

  There was a dark hole in the wall, about ten paces ahead of Ray. It looked like a drift passage, blasted back into the rock. A faint glitter on the wall suggested that part of the vein of silver or lead that it had been cut to mine was still there.

  “Hold up a minute,” Frank suddenly whispered from behind me. He was rummaging in his pockets, and after a moment came out with a handful of earplugs.

  “Here,” he said, starting to hand them out, “I didn’t get a chance to say this before we came down here, but if we cork off one of these cannons down here, it’s going to hurt. We should probably put some ear protection in.”

  “I’d be worried about hearing something coming,” Ray muttered, “but the man’s got a point.”

  Ray and I switched off covering the entrance to the drift passage, while first one, then the other of us stuffed the foam earplugs in our ears. I immediately didn’t like having them in; everything was deadened, and, like Ray, I worried that I wasn’t going to be able to hear a skinny or a Renfield creeping through the dark.

  Even worse, they didn’t do a thing to mute the whispering voices that had followed us down into the tunnels.

  Once we were all set, I stepped across the tracks to come closer to Ray. “I’m with you,” I told him. He started to step into the drift passage. We couldn’t afford to leave openings behind us that we hadn’t cleared.

  Granted, Otherworlders have ways of slipping through even when you’re being careful. But that’s no excuse to get sloppy.

  The darkness of the drift tunnel seemed to swallow our light as we started down it. My flashlight only lit up the walls nearest to us, fading away into the black farther down the tunnel. I could have sworn that there was something actively draining the light, until the tunnel curved ahead, and my light shone off the rocks, a lot farther away than I’d thought. Distances were deceptive down there.

  As we neared the curve, I started to tense up, my finger only a fraction of an inch from slipping inside the trigger guard, my muzzle trained on that corner where the passage disappeared around the curve. I just knew that a skinny or something worse was about to pop out at us, just as soon as we went around that bend.

  But as we carefully eased around the curve in the passage, we found ourselves facing a solid wall of rock. No Renfields, no skinnies, no monsters. Just the end of the tunnel where the work had stopped. With as deep a breath as I dared down there, redolent of dust and that same nagging scent of lifelessness that put a sting in the back of the throat, we turned around and headed back to the main passage.

  “Nothing back there,” Ray whispered as we came back out. Frank was covering the dark tunnel ahead, while Kolya took up the rear. Eryn, Father Ignacio, Charlie, Miller, and Trudea were in the middle, with Eryn devoting as much attention to watching the other three as she was to watching the tunnel ahead of us for monsters.

  There really was no point in whispering. The Otherworld has senses we can’t comprehend, and there was no doubt in my mind that the vampire already knew that we were in the mine with it. But there was something about that place that discouraged speaking at full volume, earplugs or no.

  I spared Charlie and the two FBI agents a glance. Charlie had his head up, but his eyes were wider than normal, and he was sweating, even in the chill of the tunnel. I thought I could see a tremor in his limbs.

  Trudeau was as subdued as ever. No, not subdued, that’s the wrong word. She was just quiet. Very quiet. That was worrisome, in contrast to how sharp-tongued she had been. Miller was having to guide her, as if she wasn’t even entirely aware of her surroundings. Given everything else that had happened, that made me wonder just what was keeping her attention.

  Miller himself was struggling to put a brave face on things, but his eyes kept darting around, and the hand holding his pistol shook a little, though it was only apparent when he took his support hand off to guide Trudeau.

  Charlie met my glance as I looked at him. He shuddered suddenly, and I frowned, stepping closer to him.

  “What is it, Charlie?” I asked.

  He hesitated, staring down the tunnel. “I didn’t want to say anything,” he said. “I thought I could keep it under control. But Jed…I can feel that thing that Ray says is under this mine.”

  I frowned. Ray looked back suddenly, his attention entirely on Charlie. “What do you mean, you can feel it?” I asked him.

  “I just can,” he said, gulping. “It’s like it’s scratching at my brain. It might not be awake, but it’s not exactly unconscious, either.” He winced suddenly. “If you think of whatever the Walker did to me as a wound, it’s l
ike that thing’s picking at the scab.” He shuddered again. “It’s been going on since I got to Ray’s place.”

  “Why didn’t you say something?” Father Ignacio hissed.

  Charlie bowed his head. He didn’t answer for a long moment. “Because I was scared,” he admitted. “Scared that if I was that vulnerable, then I couldn’t be a Hunter anymore. And I’m downright terrified of facing life without other Hunters nearby. I…I just know, after Storr’s Hole, that I’d be dead meat. I just know it.”

  A deep frown was creasing Father Ignacio’s leathery face. “Those are the kind of fears the Enemy likes to use, Charlie,” he said. “You should have said something.”

  Charlie shuddered again, and put a hand to his head, as if he had a sudden headache. “It’s getting worse,” he said, through clenched teeth. “It’s like it’s got its claws against my head, and it’s trying to get one in.” He suddenly grabbed my arm. “I don’t want it to take me,” he said. “I don’t want to go out like that. Please, Jed, if I start to flip out, you’ve got to finish me. Shoot me in the head. Don’t let that thing turn me into a puppet.”

  I pulled away, horrified. “It can’t come to that, Charlie,” I told him. “It won’t come to that. You’re a Witch Hunter. You know how to fight this. You can fight this. Don’t let that thing, or the vampire, or voices in your head, or anything try to convince you otherwise. Pray. Hard. The Captain’s close. He’ll help.”

  Charlie ran a shaking hand over his face. He was pale and wan in the reflected light of our flashlights. He almost looked like a corpse already. I tried to put that thought out of my mind.

  Finally, he nodded, though he still seemed uncertain, and crossed himself. That simple action seemed to help him, and he straightened a little, the shaking in his hands subsiding ever so slightly.

  Before we continued into the mine, I glanced back at Miller and Trudeau. And then I stopped, and studied Trudeau a little more closely.

  She didn’t have her head bowed anymore. She was looking down the tunnel, the way we were going, but there was a vague look on her face and in her eyes that I didn’t like. It was as if she wasn’t entirely all there. And under the circumstances, that was more worrisome than usual.

  “Trudeau?” I asked. She turned slowly to look at me. Miller apparently hadn’t realized that anything had changed; he suddenly started and stared at her. “Are you all right?” I asked.

  For a moment, she just stared at me blankly, as if she hadn’t understood. But then she nodded slowly, and whispered. “Yes. I’m fine.”

  If anything, that was creepier than her earlier outbursts. Something was very, very wrong with that woman, and whatever it was had happened in the last six hours or so.

  “She’s going to be a problem,” the voice in the dark said matter-of-factly in my ear. I ignored it, as badly as I wanted to spot where it was coming from and blast it. Unfortunately, except in the case of certain types of manifestations, you can’t shoot what doesn’t have a body.

  But as hard as I tried not to think about it, I knew what the voice would suggest. I suddenly thought I knew where Charlie’s plea to be shot if he started to turn had come from. So, that was the thing’s angle.

  “You’re very distrustful,” it said again. “I’m only trying to help.”

  I only crossed myself and clapped my hand back on the forearm of my rifle as I joined Frank and got ready to continue into the mine. I whispered the Pater Noster again under my breath. …deliver us from evil.

  As soon as I came abreast of him, Frank started forward again. As dire as our troubles were, catching up with the vampire and stopping it was far more pressing.

  The tunnel started to slowly slope downward, the deeper we pushed into the mine, though it was only a slight slope at first. We found two more drift passages, that either Frank and I or Ray and I cleared carefully. One had caved in not twenty paces from the main passage. The next one went back farther than the first, but ultimately dead-ended just the same, and was just as empty.

  The whispering never stopped.

  Finally, after probably close to a quarter mile of careful advance, we came to a drop off. Frank and I shone our lights down, searching the shaft.

  It didn’t go straight down; without an elevator mechanism, we’d have been out of luck if it had. Instead, the shaft angled downward at about forty-five degrees, with an intact wooden ladder along one wall, and the mine cart track disappearing down into the darkness. The winch apparatus that had hauled the cars up had been affixed to the overhead timbers, but had fallen most of the way off, dangling by a single bolt. The cable was still on the reel, and followed the rails down into the black.

  As we stood there, looking down, I noticed that the darkness down there seemed thicker, somehow, almost tangible. Our flashlights were dimming, the previously brilliant white circles casting yellow glows on the floor and walls of the shaft.

  We stood there, no one saying a word, staring down into that inky, sepulchral darkness for longer than we should have. No one really wanted to go down into that. We didn’t know how far ahead of us the vampire was, nor what traps it might have laid for anyone who dared to follow it.

  But there was nothing for it. Our only way out meant going down. So I slung my rifle, drew my pistol so that I’d have something to fight with, and, angling my light downward with my off hand, I turned and got on the ladder, descending into the shaft.

  The darkness seemed to get thicker as I went down, Frank only a few rungs above me. I could almost feel it pressing in on me, as it seemed to suck the life out of my light, until the thousands-of-candlepower flashlight seemed to only dimly illuminate the few feet around me. The climb wasn’t difficult, but I soon found that I was struggling to breathe.

  I stopped, after what was probably only a hundred feet down, but felt like ten times that. I looked up at Frank, flicking my flashlight up to signal him that I’d stopped.

  “Are you feeling short of breath at all?” I hissed, when he looked down at me. His dark eyes were barely visible glints in the blackness.

  He nodded. “Yeah, it’s getting stuffy down here.” He paused, though I couldn’t make out his expression. “Do you think the air’s going bad?”

  I waited for a moment, but I couldn’t smell anything, aside from that dry, dead smell. There was still a faint breeze coming up from below. That didn’t mean it wasn’t wafting poisonous gases up from some crack in the earth, but I didn’t think it was. I wasn’t feeling sick or lightheaded. Just stifled.

  “No, I think it’s just the dark,” I replied. “Along with whatever’s in it.” I shone my light at the far wall of the inclined shaft, and it seemed to barely illuminate the rock.

  “Do we keep going?” he asked.

  “Yeah,” I replied. “We keep going. No going back now.” The alternative was to let a thing of Chaos and Old Night out to walk the waking world. We couldn’t do that. Our duty as Witch Hunters alone precluded it. We had to stop this, or die trying. I kept climbing down.

  Something was catching at the back of my throat after another twenty rungs, and I stifled a cough. It could have been whatever malign influence was creating this tangible, clinging darkness, whether it was the vampire or the Thing Under the Mountain. Or it might have just been the dust that lined every surface of the mine shaft. Under the circumstances, there really was no way to tell.

  An opening suddenly gaped to my left. I paused, shining my light into it. Another drift passage, dark and silent, went back into the rock, the walls vanishing past the reach of my increasingly feeble light. When I swung the light to check the other side of the shaft, bare rock was all I saw. So, there was only one tunnel to worry about.

  But it was something to worry about. We could continue down as fast as we could, to try to catch the vampire, only to find ourselves cut off from the surface by its minions, if it had thought to leave some behind. We had to clear as we went. It would slow us down, and it meant the risk of losing the race, but I didn’t see much of any other
choice.

  “Drift tunnel, left,” I whispered up to Frank. “We need to check it out.”

  “I’m right behind you,” Frank replied, in the same hushed whisper. If anything, the oppressive weight of the millions of tons of rock overhead, along with the clinging, inky darkness, made even whispers sound too loud. As if the slightest noise was going to bring the mountain down to crush us all.

  I stepped off the ladder and into the tunnel mouth, keeping my pistol up as I scanned the entrance. It was a good-sized tunnel at the beginning, but looked like it narrowed significantly as it went deeper in. Going in there was not going to be fun. Was one of those shoring timbers sagging, just a little?

  The more I looked at that tunnel, as Frank got off the ladder behind me, the less I wanted to go in there. The narrow space began to look more and more like a throat, leading to the gullet of some massive, predatory beast.

  Frank’s hand descended heavily on my shoulder. He was ready. I holstered my .45 and swung my Winchester off my back. I swallowed hard and advanced into the tunnel.

  My boots crunched on the crumbled rock of the tunnel floor, and I started to hunch my shoulders. It felt like I was about to crack my head on the rocky ceiling. The walls closed in rapidly, and no matter how much I squinted moved the light around, it showed me nothing beyond that narrow spot. Only darkness.

  I began to get a bad feeling, like I simply knew there was something malevolent and nasty, just waiting in the dark on the other side of that slender crack. I couldn’t see it, I couldn’t hear it, but the heebie-jeebies just wouldn’t go away.

  “I wouldn’t go in there if I were you,” the voice in the dark whispered.

  “Go back to the pit you crawled out of,” I muttered. It was the first time I’d actually responded to it, and it was probably a mistake. I crossed myself hastily, slung my rifle and drew my pistol again, and plunged through the crack.

  Chapter 15

  It was even harder to get through than I’d expected. In the dim light cast by my flashlight, the size and angle of the opening had been deceptive, the blackness beyond it looming large and threatening. I had to turn sideways and sort of crouch to get through, and even then, I hit my head on the ceiling above and had to scrape my back along the rock to clear the crack. The entire time, I had a choice between keeping my gun front and center, or my flashlight. Be able to see, or be able to shoot? I kept the pistol to the front, holding the light back and up, barely managing to get enough light past the shadow of my own head to be able to see something ahead of me.