The Devil's Breath

by David Gilman

  He waited in silence, trying to focus his mind into a place that lay as still and as remote as a pool of water. His head nodded forward, tiredness enfolding him, a sleeplike surrender easing him away.

  A shuddering wrench made him gasp. Jolted, he felt as if he’d been snatched and thrown by a mighty hand. An ice-hot force seared up his spine. It was worse than he had feared. A huge rush of energy powered him through the sky, and then he hovered silently in the air. He was higher than a skyscraper, and part of him felt quivering terror, as if he hung over the edge of such a high building. His whole body shook. His cry of alarm shrieked across the sky; shadows moved on the ground and his eyes zoomed in to where a low circular mist hugged the ground. He looked over his shoulder, which was covered in overlapping layers of dense brown and gray feathers. A long way away—beyond the horizon, scrubland and low trees nestled alongside the scar that was the elephant track—was the tiny figure of his friend.

  “!KOGA!” he yelled, but the cry that came from the back of his throat was not a sound he recognized. He gasped; he was unable to hover. He was a bird all right, but this time he was no hawk or eagle or whichever raptor form he had taken before; now he was a dove, swooping through the air and beginning to panic; a roller-coaster ride without anything to hang on to. But he saw the direction he had to take on the ground. Beyond the elephant grass, through the small forest and across the broken plain, small plateaus rose and dipped and animal paths gave a sense of direction for a few kilometers. Beyond the ravines and increasing tangles of scrubland lay a ragged-edged black hole, punched into the earth’s surface. The shape of its snarling face would not be visible from the ground; only a pilot or a bird would see how the land had been scrunched and twisted from a meteor’s impact, millions of years ago. The shattered remnants of rock formed eyebrow scars, and the slab of stone below, a broken nose. The gaping, broken-toothed chasm exhaled a sour mist that fed the vegetation. It was the entrance to hell and the place most feared by the Bushmen.

  The place held his attention, but when he looked beyond the smashed earth he saw the distant glint of water. A river, like a fat Gaboon viper, settled lazily; reeds and sandbanks where creatures lay, unmoving. Crocodiles. Big ones. He was learning to see things now, his head twisting, giving himself different viewpoints, and the most obvious formation of rocks now made itself clear. Square blocks formed a structure, figures moved, dust rose from a moving vehicle. It was a fort. Skeleton Rock.

  Max tried to turn; somehow he had to get back to !Koga, but flying was not easily mastered. He fluttered helplessly, as if caught in a storm, and his panic sent shock waves through the air. Another cry filled the desert sky; cruel and piercing, it instinctively terrified him. A dark shape circled high above him, the ragged edges of its wings dipping and controlling its flight. A memory flashed into his mind—baboons shrieking with fear at the shadow of a martial eagle. Now one had sighted him as its prey. Wings folded, it plummeted through the sky in perfect attack mode. Moments later, ripping talons would make short, vicious work of him. Max tried to escape; he could see the tiny figure of !Koga squatting in a tree’s shade, hundreds of meters below him. !KOGA! But of course the boy heard nothing. Ripping talons slashed, a feather’s breadth from Max’s face, but no sooner had the eagle missed its attack than it pulled off an incredible midair maneuver and struck again. Its heel talon stabbed backwards, cutting into feather and down.

  Max was falling. The stomach-churning ride was now an out-of-control tumble. But how many times had he been told he was a natural sportsman? What Max could see, Max could do. Show him the position to take on a white-water kayak, demonstrate the body angle for a downhill off-piste ski run, and Max could hold that picture in his head, and his muscle memory repeated it. Eagles went bullet-shaped in their attack dive; so too could Max. Concentration forced his panic further back into his consciousness. He felt everything change. A subtle shift of control, a tightening of his arms—or were they wings?—against his sides; the velocity buffeting his face, the ground swooping upwards and then, like air brakes, the arm-tearing tension to slow the descent and glide into the trees. Not enough control! Branches and twigs like long-thorned fingers snatched at him.

  And then blackness.

  He awoke in the back of the cockpit.

  Max hauled his aching body out of the plane and stood for a moment in the warm shade. He scooped a handful of earth and put it to his nose; the earthy smell of Africa gave him a reassuring sense of being grounded.

  !Koga waited nervously at the edge of the track, a look of relief on his face when Max pushed through the trees. !Koga touched the slash across Max’s shoulders, as long as a hand’s length. It was superficial but it stung. “I think I fell backwards in the cockpit,” Max answered the questioning look. The truth frightened him as much as the experience; if he was mentally able to take on the form of an animal, then it was fairly certain that he could be attacked and injured or killed.

  Maybe it was all in his imagination. Maybe that cut did come from falling inside the plane. At least that was one way of fooling himself.

  They jogged steadily for a couple of hours, the layout of the ground imprinting itself like a three-dimensional image in Max’s mind. As the sun rose higher and the heat became intolerable, they rested in the lee of a rock overhang. Max spread the maps out. The crease marks on his own map were frayed; his father’s Ordnance Survey map was more serviceable. The hydrology chart was what interested him now. By comparing his father’s two maps and his own aerial memory view of the Devil’s Breath, he realized that one of the blue veins formed an underground circuit from the gaping hole and traveled directly under Skeleton Rock. He wasn’t sure about the hair-thin line that looped off, but it seemed the river system could also be a feed from, or was a result of, this underground water system. Max mentally chastised himself. What an idiot. He had literally had a bird’s-eye view of the fort. He could have seen everything he needed to know. The river and those crocodiles acted as a natural defense, but he could have flown into the fort itself. He could have observed everything. They had to be bringing in supplies. Were they using the river for drinking water? If they were, was there a filtration plant? If so, where did they generate electricity to run it? Answers to these questions might have given him a way into Skeleton Rock.

  Everything had brought him to this place, there was no doubt in Max’s mind that this was where he would find more evidence of his father’s whereabouts. But the memory of that last flight gave him the jitters. His hands trembled at the memory: the eagle’s penetrating eyes, the talons that clawed at his face and neck. He could almost feel them closing on his chest, piercing heart and lungs, and then in those last agonizing moments of life the beak would rip him apart. It was a horror scenario. Truth was, the reason he hadn’t looked more closely at the fort was because he had been so scared.

  There was a part of him, the adventurous bit, that thrilled at the idea of being able to take on another animal’s form, but the reality of plunging into that half-world was another matter. For a start, it wasn’t something he could just do whenever he wanted—it wasn’t like taking a coat on or off, it appeared to depend on circumstances and necessity. His emotions seemed to be part of the trigger that allowed him to do it. It was something that he just couldn’t analyze.

  !Koga watched him, reached out and touched his trembling hands.

  “Sorry, mate, must have had too much sun,” Max said in response.

  “What is it we must do?” asked !Koga.

  “Well, getting the SAS would be a good idea, failing that the cavalry, but if they’ve got another gig planned it’s down to you and me, and the me part of the equation might be going a bit loopy. And going off your head out here isn’t going to help anyone, is it?”

  !Koga waited until something Max said made sense. Max traced their journey on his dad’s map. “We’ve come from here, I think, and we’re going there, I hope. Thing is, !Koga, I’ve got to get into the fort. Do you know about the fort?”


  !Koga shook his head.

  “What about Shaka Chang? Ever heard of him?”

  “No. I do not know this name. But here”—he touched the back of his hand on the map where Max had indicated—“is this the place where the monster lives? Below the ground? The bad place?”

  Max had tried to hide his own fear, but he could see that !Koga was getting frightened now as well. He summoned a smile for his friend.

  “One good thing about being frightened is it makes you careful.”

  “I would rather not be frightened,” !Koga said.

  It was nightfall before they reached some high ground, a raised plateau of a hundred square meters or so. As the earth’s rim turned from crimson to gold and finally to a deep blue, darkness followed quickly, eager to exert its dominance and beauty over the harshness of day. Max lay on his back, the Milky Way so close it was almost touching his face. Of all those stars and planets, universes and worlds, he was lying here, caught up in something he could barely understand. But when the lights of the fort flickered into life a kilometer or so away, one question had been answered. They had power. So there was a generator somewhere. And there was no sign of solar panels, so there had to be a source. The river was too placid. What else could create that energy? Diesel generators might do it, but that was a huge place to illuminate and there was no familiar hum of engines.

  When he awoke, the moon had shifted high into the sky and first light was already warming the air. !Koga was already awake, squatting, elbows on knees, as he gazed out towards the black pit in the distance. Max did a face wash with his hands, rubbing vigorously, forcing himself into a more alert state. “You should have woken me,” he said.

  !Koga smiled and said, “The day will always be here.

  There is no need to run all the time. The day will wait. Where do we go? To the fort?”

  “Not yet,” Max told him, and turned away, fearful that if he told !Koga what he had figured out, the boy would refuse to accompany him. And right now Max felt that he needed a friend close to him.

  An hour later the smell of fetid vegetation around the rim of the Devil’s Breath confirmed they were within a hundred meters of the gigantic sinkhole. Even though they could not yet see its depths, it appeared ready to swallow anything foolish enough to venture too close. Max felt the soggy seaweedlike goo. This place had to be a geyser of some kind, and they usually erupted on a regular basis. The question was: when? It had not happened during the previous hours when they had slept, but that damp grass and moss had not dried the previous day, so it had to blow at least twice during daylight hours.

  He wished he had paid more attention to his maths and science classes at school. The subjects seemed so unengaging as he sat gazing across the Devon moorland, dreaming of other things than dry mathematical formulae. His dad often despaired at Max’s poor grades and Max always promised to try harder. Maths helped one to understand natural patterns and structures, his dad had explained to him. Understand maths and science, and you can figure out most things, such as language, music and culture. And erupting geysers, Max thought. Well, he’d rather be shown something than have it explained. That was why he liked going on field trips with his dad; he showed him how things worked. Besides, at school he had Sayid to help him out of tight spots when it came to cramming for exams. He had a half-decent brain, but he was lazy. There were far too many other things to do; school lessons simply got in the way. Well, now he could do with a bit of maths and geology to help figure out how often this monstrous hole was going to erupt, because his life might depend on it. And maybe this time the practical experience was not going to be much fun.

  “Wait here,” he said to !Koga. “I’m going closer.”

  “That is a foolish thing to do.” !Koga muttered something under his breath which Max did not understand, and the boy gripped his arm tightly, stopping him from going further.

  “I have to see as much as I can before it gets any lighter. There’s not a lot of cover here—and look at those rock pools, animals will come and drink. Let’s take a look and find somewhere to hide,” Max assured him.

  “We should not be here,” !Koga insisted. “I have a bad feeling, Max. This is not something you understand.”

  “I don’t understand a ton of stuff, but I’ve got to have a look. Stay here,” he repeated.

  He pulled free from !Koga’s grip and threaded his way through the low boulders. His feet squelched in the moist earth, and the closer he got, the more he realized that the hole was bigger than he had imagined. Ragged projections stuck out from the sheer rock face, giving the impression of rows of long teeth lining the throat of the crater. It was still too dim to see the depth of the hole, but shadows dropped into total blackness. He heard a movement behind him. His heart walloped against his ribs, then calmed a little when he saw it was !Koga. “Do me a favor, !Koga, when you sneak up on me, give me some warning, will you? I nearly jumped out of my skin!”

  “You will need more than skin when the monster sucks you into its belly.”

  “If you’re that scared, why didn’t you stay back there?”

  “Because I am supposed to protect you.”

  Max felt humbled. The boy had overcome his terror to honor his obligation; the least Max could do was put on a brave face and keep his own fear under control. He smiled. “It’s not a monster, I promise, !Koga. It’s just a geyser. Pressure builds up and blows water from an underground river, and my guess is, it’s the source of power for the fort. It’s called hydroelectric. Just like the huge dam they’ve built in the mountains.”

  !Koga had that blank look which Max recognized as his own when Mr. Lewis the maths teacher tried to explain something beyond his comprehension. But before he could explain his own limited understanding of hydroelectric power, the ground began to shudder. It happened so quickly, the boys could not move. They reached out to steady themselves because now the vibration took away the strength in their legs. And with the jarring shudder came a growl, churning deep within the bottomless pit. Max steadied !Koga as they pushed their backs against one of the boulders to stop themselves from falling. A sucking, gurgling hiss of vapor spewed from the hole, drenching everything within fifty meters, its plume at least twenty meters high. The gossamer mist settled like dew and then, with the retreating water pressure, the plume plunged back downwards, belching air and noise as it receded. The explosion had lasted less than thirty seconds, but the power that drove up from beneath the ground rattled nerves as well as bones.

  The suddenness of the eruption and the silence that quickly followed left them both mute. It took a moment for their ears to stop ringing. Max pulled a piece of something slimy off !Koga’s head, a ragged piece of weed, and presented it to him.

  “A present from the monster,” he said, but !Koga was not smiling. Instead he was retreating slowly backwards, never taking his eyes from the crater.

  “!Koga, it’s OK. I promise. It can’t harm us.”

  !Koga stopped and shook his head. “We must leave this place now. That was a warning. We are not welcome here. It is a bad sign, it is as my father told me. A bad place.”

  Max knew he could not argue with a belief so rooted in nature spirits. He would never deride such strong feelings. His experiences so far had taught him that the Bushmen’s secrets and their understanding of the natural world were far beyond anything he had ever come across. He deferred to his friend and nodded towards their resting place that overlooked the void.

  “Come on, let’s get back up there.” He turned away but felt the light touch of !Koga’s hand.

  “Wait. You are planning something.”

  Max nodded. There was never going to be a good time to tell !Koga his plan. It might as well be now. The same dread of frightening his friend away still lingered. “I think my father could be in that fort. If he isn’t, then the people in there may know what happened to him. I reckon at the very least there have to be some clues.”

  He gazed across the landscape. In an hour the sun
would scorch and they would be hard pressed to find shelter, not so much from the heat as from anyone seeing them move across the ground.

  “Max, if your father is in that place, how can we get inside? The men in there might be the same men who attacked us. They searched for us and we escaped, now you want to knock on their door. Are we giving up?”

  “No, we’re going inside. There’s a secret passage that should lead straight into the fort. At least, I think there is. Come on, I’ll show you.”

  He turned towards the hole, hoping !Koga would follow. When he reached the chasm’s edge he held back a couple of meters, nervous of the drop despite the firm footing the embedded rock provided. He turned. !Koga was walking forward nervously, as wary as an animal seeking to drink at a dangerous water hole. But he kept walking until he joined Max. They steadied each other and falteringly shuffled to the edge. It was a bottomless shaft, and saw-toothed sheets of rock clung to the sides.

  A fetid, quivering air breathed malevolence on them. The sibilant whisper of the unseen water beckoned them closer. Edge forward, see what lies below, see how far it is to fall. Max seemed mesmerized by its lure and stepped to the very edge, his gaze locked firmly on the black, unblinking eye far below, where the light ended and the totally unknown began. It had to be more than four hundred meters deep. That volume of water, under pressure, could blow a double-decker bus to the moon. So what was stopping all that power? How come the water never burst above the surface in any great quantity? The whole area should have been a wetland.

  So intense was Max’s concentration that !Koga thought he was about to step into the abyss. He whispered Max’s name. Max turned and faced him. “Follow me. I think I know what we have to do,” he said grimly.