by Paul Zindel
“Hold still now,” the radiologist instructed, as he withdrew to stand behind an immense shield at the far end of the lab. He pressed a button and Dr. Cawley’s body began to inch forward. She noticed slits on the metal arch above her face: DO NOT LOOK DIRECTLY INTO LASER APERTURES.
In the next few moments she believed she could feel the radioactive cocktail moving through her. She felt a tingling sensation creeping from the bite on her neck toward the center of her brain.
BUZZZZZ
The machine made a vibrating, low noise as her body was drawn slowly inside. She forced herself to keep thinking. She would call upon calm logic to keep her fears in check. There must be undiscovered dark caves. There will be Ramid and….
Her mind stumbled again as though a dark veil were dropped over it. She didn’t know how long it was before her next thought arrived. She wanted to scream it before it disappeared. There would be others of its kind. She struggled, trying to make her lips form the words. She wanted to shout out a warning from inside the machine, but some power was taking control of her brain—a bridle cutting into her mind.
7
THE DESCENT
Alma sat behind Jackson on the dune buggy, her hands clasped tightly around his waist.
“What kind of songs did you sing in your school’s chorus?”
Alma laughed. “A lot of Irish ones. Most of the music department was Irish, so it’d be a lot of ‘When Irish Eyes Are Smiling,’ and that sort of thing.”
She helped Jackson with the route, keeping them clear of the Ministry of Defense lands and tank crossings. Coffin kept pace off to one side as they raced toward the stones.
“Why do you think Skull Face dragged the body of the young guy all the way from Stonehenge to the old mill?” Jackson asked.
Alma pointed to a series of mounds in the middle of a farmer’s wheat field. “I think it’s got something to do with those,” she shouted as the wind snapped her hair behind her.
“The burrows?”
“They’re mainly piles of buried bones and cremated bodies. Lots of stones, too. Five thousand years ago that’s what everyone wanted—to be roasted and stuck in a mound with everyone else.”
“You think the beast is attracted to cremations?”
“Yes—something besides snacking.”
Jackson said, “Unless it’s like the cremations in India my aunt told me about. Everything doesn’t end up as ashes there. Sometimes there are bits and pieces left over to float down the Ganges River.”
“I think this has something to do with life and death, all right,” Alma agreed. “That creature looks like it’s been around a long time, like it’s the local Minotaur—something prehistoric. Cremation’s one of the things they did around Stonehenge. I think this monster thinks the crematorium is part of some old ritual—something for some reason it keeps an eye on.”
The buggy climbed fast up the small ridge of a dirt road edging private land. At the top Jackson and Alma saw Stonehenge rising from the line of the horizon. Jackson’s eye was drawn to the tallest stones standing in the middle and capped by horizontal stones.
“We’d better not go any closer or the guards will come after us for trespassing,” Alma warned. “Everybody’s supposed to enter across the roadway—buy tickets and walk through the tunnel. They don’t know my shortcuts.”
Jackson shut off the engine and set the emergency brake. In the distance the crowd of regular tourists looked like ants milling about on the path circling the stones.
Jackson helped Alma down from the buggy. They walked through tall grass, keeping far from the crowd and the stones.
Jackson threw a stick and Coffin took off after it.
“There are flint mines around here, and more cremation holes,” Alma said. “They’ve plugged most of them up with cement, but I wouldn’t put it past Skull Face to pop up out of one.”
“What do they say about Stonehenge on the tour?”
“How the stones got here. The smaller, blue stones were brought down from the Preseli Mountains in southwest Wales. The giant sarsen stones were dragged over forty kilometers from Marlborough Downs to the north. Most of the weird things I know I’ve gotten from the cathedral library. They’ve got the really old books with the freakiest theories about Stonehenge.”
Jackson sat down cross-legged and looked toward the stones. “All I ever learned in school about Stonehenge was that it had something to do with knowing when the longest day of the year was.”
Alma sat on the grass next to him. “If you stand at the center of the circle, you can tell it’s the summer solstice if the sun rises over a stone called the Hell Stone.”
“The Hell Stone?”
Alma broke off a daisy stalk and chewed on the end of it. “Other people call it the Friar’s Heel Stone. You can understand both of its names if you believe the legend that says it was the Devil who put the stones here. The Devil boasted that no human would ever be able to figure out how all these stones got there. But a friar saw what happened and threatened to tell the secret, so the Devil threw the Hell Stone on him and crushed him to death.”
“Where did you hear Skull Face?” Jackson asked.
“Around here,” Alma said, breaking off the stalk of another daisy.
“Right where we’re sitting?”
“Close.”
Jackson got up and brushed himself off. He put out his hand. Alma took it, and he pulled her to her feet. They headed back to the buggy with Coffin racing ahead of them.
“Where are we going?” Alma asked.
“Show me exactly where you heard Skull Face.”
Jackson climbed back up onto the driver’s seat. He gave a single slam downward on the kick-start pedal, and the motor roared. He swung Alma back up onto the seat behind him and shifted into first.
Alma pointed with her right hand in front of him. “This way.”
Jackson kept the buggy far from the tourists and stones. Ditches and slabs of ground overlapped each other. His foot hit the accelerator too hard and the buggy took off at a sharp angle, then landed front wheels first. The back tires sank into a deep hollow of overgrown thistle and ragweed.
“What’s that?” Alma asked, pointing to a fissure in the side of the hollow.
Jackson shut off the engine and got down from the buggy for a closer inspection of the hole. He lay on his stomach to look inside. “Hey, it’s a cave.”
“Probably one of the old flint mines,” Alma said. “We should get out of here.”
Coffin shoved his head in front of Jackson to sniff around the outside of the hole.
“No, Coffin,” Alma scolded, getting off the buggy and putting the leash on him. She held him back while Jackson wiggled his upper torso into the hole. A distance in front of him, he could see a rusted steel door, open. He felt a rush of wind, which made a sound like the whistle of a copper teapot starting to boil.
“Check the buggy,” Jackson said. “Maybe there’s a flashlight.”
Alma looped the end of Coffin’s leash over the tip of the front bumper and walked around the buggy. She spotted a hinge behind the rear seat. “I found something,” she called to Jackson. She tugged until the top of the seat lifted up. “It’s a storage compartment with junk,” she said, looking inside.
“What kind of junk?”
“A few spanners and something that looks like a stick of dynamite.”
“A road flare!” Jackson said. “Let’s see it.”
“Hey, suppose we just get out of here, okay?”
“Bring it over!”
Alma hesitated, then took the flare out of the compartment. She started toward Jackson. But before she could hand it to him, she realized her feet were moving out from under her.
“Help—I’m sinking,” she cried out.
“What?”
Jackson felt the earth beneath his body begin to shift. He lifted his head out of the fissure, turned to see Alma, and realized the earth was opening up. They tried to throw themselves backward, but the gr
ound fell away too fast. Alma screamed as she fell. They lost sight of each other tumbling as though in a long, curving drain—and then dropped down into blackness.
It seemed forever to Jackson before he landed on what felt like a steep slope of gravel. He slid farther, a rush of stones and ore washing downward with him. He choked from the dust and finally reached bottom—afraid to move.
Alma’s screams had stopped.
Jackson called into the inky blackness. “Can you hear me?”
Alma’s trembling voice came back at him. “Jeez.”
“You okay?”
“I think so,” she sputtered, unable to see him. “How about you?”
Jackson tested his arms and legs, stretching them. “I think I’m okay. No broken bones.”
They lay silent, struggling to catch their breath. “Oh, God, I bet that thing is down here,” Alma said.
Jackson decided not to think about that possibility. “No—it’s an empty mine shaft.” His hand felt a piece of stone the size of an arrowhead. He decided to put it in his pocket—to check it later if he ever got out alive.
“The ground’s still moving,” Alma said.
“Where’s the flare?”
“I dropped it.”
“You still have your camera?”
Alma felt down to the bulge in the side of her jeans. “Yes,” she said, wiggling the camera out of her pocket.
Jackson said, “It’s got a strobe flash, right?”
“If it’s working.”
“Try it.”
Alma clutched the camera tightly, moving her fingers over it like reading Braille. She found the shutter button. “Here goes,” she said.
The strobe flashed. Alma glimpsed what was causing the motion at her feet. A moving carpet of wedge-shaped heads with yellow eyes stared up at her from a churning mass of black, scaly coils.
“Snakes!” she screamed as the darkness crashed back in. She hit the button again and again, but it took a moment for the flash to recharge. When it finally fired, the blazing light startled the snakes further as they scrambled to escape.
“EEEEE!” Alma screamed again. She sucked in the dusty air. Her throat tightened as the head of one of the snakes snapped up at her face. She dropped the camera.
Jackson had watched for the flash. He saw Alma and the snakes several feet from him. The emergency flare was midway between them.
“They’re probably harmless,” Jackson shouted.
“PROBABLY?” Alma screamed back at him.
“Press the flash again.”
He crawled along the floor of the cave, feeling in front of him for the flare.
“I dropped the camera.”
“Get it.”
“I can’t.”
“GET IT!”
Alma reached down into the darkness. Her hand touched a squirming, skinny body and fear grabbed her throat. At last she felt the small plastic rectangle. She lifted the camera, searching for the shutter button again. The flash fired. The last of the snakes were fleeing, but now there were several glistening, amorphous globs crawling up her arms. The darkness swallowed her and she dropped the camera again.
“They’re slugs,” Jackson shouted to her.
She flailed to rip them off her skin. She was sure she felt large unseen insects climbing up her neck and moving in her hair.
Jackson grasped the flare. “I’m coming.” He scratched at its surface, but it wouldn’t spark.
Alma’s cries stopped.
“Are you all right?” he asked.
“Jackson…” Her voice came from the dark.
“What?”
“What are you chewing?”
“I’m not chewing. I’m trying to light the flare.”
Alma was confused. His voice sounded a distance from her, but his breathing seemed to be right next to her. It came closer, and a pair of clammy lips touched the right side of her face.
She reached her hand up to his head. In the dark his hair felt coarser, longer than she had thought it would be. She felt a hand on her legs. “Are you touching me?”
“No,” Jackson said.
The cap sparked and the tip of the flare burst into a white magnesium light. Jackson’s pupils narrowed to shut out the small sun; then he looked beyond it.
Alma was frozen, staring at him from across the floor of the cave.
“Jackson…” Alma said.
“Don’t move,” he told her.
Small, pale faces and a collection of tiny limbs surrounded Alma in the pulsing light of the flare. The distended brow and albino face of a creature the size of a chimpanzee was smiling at her. Alma stared down. Other small, pale creatures with heads resembling those of bizarre human babies were stroking her legs and arms, picking slugs and insects from her body and eating them.
“Don’t make a sound,” Jackson said, crawling toward her with the flare.
ROAR
The horrifying sound reverberated from deep in the labyrinth of the cave. The sparkle faded quickly from the faces of the creatures surrounding Alma. They shrieked like terrified monkeys. Jackson got quickly to his feet and pulled Alma up. “We’re out of here.”
One of the smaller creatures with a fat, pink face grasped Alma’s left leg.
ANOTHER ROAR. Closer now.
The creatures around them modulated their shrieks higher and higher into the shrill screams of a madhouse.
Alma saw her camera on the floor of the cave. She grabbed it, shoved it into her pocket. “I’ve heard of a dysfunctional family before,” Alma wailed, “but this is ridiculous.”
Jackson set the burning flare into the ground and pulled Alma away from the roaring.
“You’re leaving the flare?”
“It’d make us look like spinner baits in a pike pond!”
Jackson ran with her to the far side of the cavern, where clusters of red stalactites framed the mine corridors. Suddenly, they were aware of the distant sound of a barking dog.
“Coffin!”Alma said.
“This way.”
They began scrambling up a steep terraced wall of the main chamber. Soon they stumbled onto an incline of rotting railway ties and rusted mine track.
“Hurry,” Jackson shouted.
Alma climbed fast in front of him. The slope of the tracks leveled off at a point several stories above the cavern floor. As Jackson and Alma crossed to the next incline, the roar of Skull Face exploded from below. Jackson grabbed Alma and made her stop. Breathing hard, she looked at him as if he were out of his mind.
SHHHHHHHH
They froze. Beyond the brink of the ledge, the roars of the beast rose toward them with the shrill cries of the smaller hominids. Carefully, Jackson and Alma peered over the edge. The beast was below, its great glistening skull head radiant, saliva dripping from its open, fanged jaws. It roared again, swiping at the smaller hominids, which scampered away from him shrieking in pain and protest. The full impact of the beast’s rage was directed against the burning flare. It screamed at it as though it were a foreign god that had violated the lair.
Suddenly the roaring stopped. The smaller hominids quieted and crawled into the crannies along the edge of the cave floor. Alma turned away, fought to stop her knees from shaking. Jackson’s gaze stayed riveted below. He saw the beast shifting gears, sniffing at the air in the way he had seen it do when its sickening face had been inches from the other side of the Plexiglas of the chopper window. The view from above made the creature’s shoulders appear broader, more gnarled and deformed with muscle. It appeared to go into a trance, as though it were summoning up an instinct beyond smell or hearing.
TICK TICK
Jackson heard the ticking sounds. They seemed to come from a type of snapping back of the monster’s tongue against the roof of its mouth. The creature scanned the cave with its mechanical sound. Slowly it lifted its head and stared up at Jackson. Its eyes locked onto his like lasers, and Jackson realized the ticking sounds of the monster were a homing device.
“Let
’s go,” Alma cried. She scrambled up toward the sound of Coffin barking. Jackson started after her along the ledge, keeping his eyes fixed on the beast. The creature mimicked Jackson’s speed and motion. It moved along the floor of the cave, circling toward the incline of the tracks and terracing.
“I see light,” Alma called back to Jackson. She started to run up the steeply graded tracks.
Jackson saw the light, too, and the frame of the steel door at the end of the tunnel. He looked behind him, saw the creature had started up after them. Jackson resisted running, sensed it would trigger the creature’s stalking pace into a full-speed attack. He wanted Alma to get as far ahead as possible—but terror made him pick up his pace. The beast accelerated with him.
Suddenly, Jackson lost control. He started to run. He glanced over his shoulder. The beast was bounding after them now. It was knuckle-running, loping like a gorilla in an all-out charge.
“Hurry,” Alma screamed as she neared the top. At her shriek a great flapping of black, shiny wings exploded into life. She tripped on a piece of rotting track and reached out to the side of the shaft to break her fall. Her hand sank deep into a living fabric of bats.
“EEEEE!”
Jackson heard the thundering, cracking sounds of the beast fast behind him. He saw Alma make it out beyond the steel door, and glimpsed the red of the dune buggy and Coffin straining against his leash.
“It’s going to get you!” Alma screamed. She skirted the hole through which they’d fallen and leaped up out of the hollow.
Jackson reached the door. He swung it behind him with all his might.
CLANG
“It won’t close!” he cried out.
Alma saw him struggling. “There’s a stone blocking it.”
The monster planted its fists and arms like crutches, lurching forward with ferocious swings. Jackson kicked at the stone.
It wouldn’t budge.
In a second Alma was back at his side. Together they pushed until the stone rolled clear.
They slammed the door shut as the beast crashed into it. Alma threw a locking bolt into place, as the beast pounded savagely, a series of booming, deafening blows that caused the entire door frame to shudder.
