At the entrance to the tunnel I stopped. I turned around. Kafka and Stonehenge were whispering to each other.
“Come on then,” I said. They stopped conferring and followed me over. They didn’t look too happy. I wasn’t grinning myself.
“Ready?” They looked at each other, then at me. Kafka made a grunting affirmative sound. Stonehenge nodded slightly. “Okay. Let’s go,” I said, with an authority I didn’t feel. I snapped off the flash. We walked forward, into the darkness.
One thing hadn’t changed since last night. Walking into the tunnel was like walking into fog. Thick, dense fog. I held my gun in one hand, and with the other trailed my fingers along the wet, slimy wall. I could hear Stonehenge and Kafka’s footsteps behind me, but they were a little muffled. I couldn’t hear anything else, apart from an intermittent dripping. There was nothing else. Yet.
The smell of sulphur was stronger than in the chamber, but I was expecting that. Stonehenge gagged a few times. But he’d be okay. He’d better be. I tried closing my eyes. No difference. Opened them. No difference. I wasn’t about to try that too often, or else I wouldn’t know whether they were open or shut. Even if I couldn’t see anything, I wanted the option to be there. What was I looking for? Oh yeah. Vats of dry-cleaning fluid. Naturally. And pigs. Whatever. We had stuff to do. What was the order of importance? Destroy the vats. Get Barry out. Rescue the sacrificial victim. Right. A breeze. Piece of cake.
Then I heard something. Or I thought I heard something. Maybe it was Kafka. I stopped dead. I said, “Sshh.” Kafka and Stonehenge stopped, too.
“What did you say?” I whispered back to Kafka.
“Nothing. What did you say?” he whispered back.
“I didn’t say anything either.”
We stood in silence for a long time. Or a short time. I couldn’t tell. But I hadn’t been wrong. There was a sound, and it wasn’t our footsteps, and it wasn’t dripping water. As far as I could tell it was a sort of thrumming, throbbing sound. Like something with a very deep voice muttering something unimaginably obscene, very slowly. Not quite regularly. Very, very distant. As if it was very loud, though. As if it was coming through layers of rock and clay, faintly echoing along the maze of tunnels. Through the catacombs. It wasn’t a reassuring sound. I might have said something to that effect. I don’t know.
I remember Kafka swearing softly, and a faint worried noise coming from Stonehenge. I took my hand from the wall and grabbed for one of my whiskey bottles. Then I put my gun in my pocket and unscrewed the bottle cap. I took a big swallow. I passed it back, and I heard Kafka, then Stonehenge taking similarly large gulps. The bottle came back. I had another swig, put the cap back on, and slid it back in my pocket. I took my gun out again. We walked on.
It wasn’t much further on when the wall wasn’t there under my fingertips. I halted. Kafka stumbled into my back, then I felt a lurch as Stonehenge bumped into him. We steadied ourselves.
“Okay,” I whispered, “I’m going to turn my flashlight on. Just me. The wall isn’t there any more. I think it’s where me and Colin found the first crossroads last night. But I’m going to check.” I flicked the switch. The light was gloomy and yellowish, not bright at all. But it was enough. We were in a cavern. It was enormous. Horribly enormous. Slowly I moved the beam of the flash around. The ground was level, paved with flagstones, but there was enough of it to—to, I don’t know—have a football match? A military parade? For all the damned in hell to park their fucking cars? It was huge. Immense. My flashlight barely found the edges of it.
“This wasn’t here last night, Stonehenge,” I whispered. “If we’re in the same tunnel as last night. Big if. But we definitely went south last night. Because of where we got out. And we’re pretty clear that we’re going south now. Fact is, I’ve never seen this before. But then the chamber at the bottom of the hole wasn’t there last night either, not like it is tonight. So, that leads me to a conclusion. I don’t like it, but I don’t like anything that’s happened in the last couple of days. These tunnels change. They change shape.”
“We’ve got to be in another tunnel,” said Kafka. “They can’t change shape. They just . . . they just can’t!”
“They just can. They just do. And as long as we stay alive, we’re going to have to deal with it. Okay. We’re going to keep straight ahead. I’ll keep the flashlight on.”
“Just a moment,” said Stonehenge insistently. “If you’re right—and I’m assuming that you are—how do we know if we can get back? How do we know if we can get out?”
“Good question. I was wondering that myself. I didn’t get as far as finding an answer. Sorry. But I don’t think there is one. Any other questions? Not that I’ll have any answers to them, either, but you might like to ask them anyway.”
There was silence.
“Okay. Straight on, I think.”
We trudged across the cavern floor. Flagstones stretched out in all directions. I couldn’t tell how high the ceiling was, because the beam didn’t reach that far. The space didn’t feel huge. The cloying atmosphere saw to that. It looked immense, but it felt claustrophobic. After a long time we reached the wall at the opposite side.
As usual, it was clay, with rocks poking out all over the place, and wetness glistening everywhere. I couldn’t figure out how it had been made. There was no sign of what had been used to hollow it out. Just little, soft-looking ridges. It was like the inside of a mouth. There was an opening in the wall, which went pretty much in the direction we’d been heading. It looked a little small. A little low. We’d have to stoop. Which meant that it would be hard to see straight ahead. It would be hard to see what was in front of us, especially if I turned my flashlight off. I briefly thought about the pigs. We’d have to kneel to get a clear shot. There was barely enough room for two of us to fire. If Stonehenge panicked and let fly, then me or Kafka would get a bullet in the back of the head. It looked too cosy. Too intimate. Too intimate for three frightened men with loaded guns.
“Looks like we got a problem,” I said. “That’s a very little tunnel. Not much room for anything but scurrying along with our heads bent, watching the flagstones. Any ideas? Anyone?”
“Can you hear something?” said Kafka, quickly. Urgently.
“What?” asked Stonehenge.
“Sshh!”
Kafka was right. It was hard to hear because it sounded so far away. But I’d heard it before. Those blind, hairless, hungry children. The pigs. We could hear the pigs. I couldn’t tell how far off they were. But however far that was, it wasn’t as far away as when we couldn’t hear them at all. Which could only mean one thing. They were getting nearer.
“What is that?” murmured Stonehenge.
“It’s the pigs, Stonehenge. The Fleet Pigs. The flesh-eating Fleet Pigs. Bladud’s best friends. Sound like sweet little things, don’t they? Yeah. For sure. Whatever. It occurs to me that we’re maybe too visible here in this fucking cavern. Let’s go!”
We threw ourselves into the tunnel. It was cramped, but not too bad. We pelted along, the beam from my flashlight weaving and jittering about in front. The flagstones were wetter down here, slick with algae or mould or something. I couldn’t tell colours. Everything was yellow or black. The colours of plague and death. And the smell was disgusting. It wasn’t just sulphur any more. It was beyond foul, the smell of rain-rotted rats and wet, tacky dead skin, of putrefying corpses and fetid ooze seeping from countless crushed bodies, the smell of the hum of thousands upon thousands of flies feeding and egg-laying in the mounds of decaying flesh, the stench of an overfull oubliette, of cramped prisoners forgotten for months in some hellish dungeon . . . .
The next thing I knew, I was being pulled up by my arm. Kafka was saying something to me, but I couldn’t hear it. There was a light in my eyes. I couldn’t see. I tried to brush it away. I was in some sort of thick silence. Hands grabbed at me, pulled me upright, slammed me against the cold wall.
“Valpolicella! Valpolicella!”
&nb
sp; I murmured something. I don’t remember what it was. Shapes started to get more distinctive. Kafka and Stonehenge. They were staring at me with some kind of urgency. They were talking. Asking me stuff.
“Get that light out of my face,” I think I said. I probably said that, because it went away. I was very wet. But I was standing. Or at least, I was being held up in a standing position. The tunnel was much wider and higher here; there was room to stand up. I looked around. You could get a truck through here.
But something else was going on. After the scuffle of getting me upright, shouting at me or whatever, Kafka and Stonehenge had gone motionless. The three of us were frozen like dead men. I flicked my eyes right, left, up, down. Nothing.
“What is it?” I said, very quietly. There was no answer, but Kafka’s gaze met mine. With a couple of tiny movements, he jerked his head in the direction we were heading and pointed to his ear. I got the message. I listened, carefully. There was a voice. Distorted and broken, as if it was coming through something much denser and more evil than fog. I couldn’t tell what it was saying for a little while. And then it started to form itself into thickly spoken, drooling words. It was some foreign-sounding stuff. I couldn’t figure out what it might be. But it was like what Kafka had said that morning, in the café, a million years ago. ‘Memvola sintrompo. Kontentiga morto.’ Over and over. But there were two words that I recognised, sandwiched in between the gibberish. ‘Martin’ and ‘Valpolicella.’ In between all of it was some terrible screaming—but still, it was distant. It was from very far away. Not round the next corner. To be honest, it didn’t sound exactly as if it was in any normal sort of frequency. From any normal kind of world. And I couldn’t hear the pigs.
“That’s a pretty goddamn unpleasant kind of noise,” I said, my voice still low, “but I can’t hear the Fleet Pigs any more. We’ve got to carry on. What we’re hearing is probably, um, probably a tape recording.” Was I really saying this? A tape recording? “Yeah, that’s what it is. A tape recording from last night is what it is, right? Kafka, isn’t it just what you got on the tape last night? Am I right or am I right?”
Kafka slowly shook his head. “It’s not the same. Not the same at all,” he said. “It’s pretty much the same words, but it’s more—frenzied.”
“Which means that They’re down here already,” muttered Stonehenge. “They’re preparing, already. They will have Their victim by now. Who will be terrified out of his or her wits—held in an iron cage while the altar preparations are made. I had no idea that They would be here so early.”
I swung my arm up. It felt too heavy. I took in the time. 8 P.M. Already? Yeah, well. I couldn’t be sure, not after what had happened to Stonehenge’s compass. But I figured that my watch had to be at least mostly right. Not Greenwich Mean Time, perhaps. But Valpolicella Mean Time. And that had to be enough for now.
“It makes no difference. There’s nothing else we can do. We’ve got to keep going,” I said. In that dim, fogged yellow light it was hard to tell how Kafka and Stonehenge felt. They looked like weird shadow devils in the dim amber fog. I leant back against the wall and dragged out the whiskey bottle. I had a hard swallow. Then another. I passed the bottle. It came back empty.
I held the neck in my hand and smashed it against the wall. Now I had another weapon. Not as technologically advanced as a gun, but anyway. I tested one of the gleaming glass points on my finger. It was very, very sharp. It would be helpful. But even though I knew I was going to have to use it, I still hoped that I wouldn’t need to. Deceptive thinking. Dangerous thinking. I took a deep breath, and told myself to remember how to fight. Maximum violence, instantly. Don’t think. Just fight. Just . . . fight.
“Okay,” said Kafka. “Okay. Let’s move.”
We all had our flashlights on now. Not that they made much impression on the tangible darkness that surrounded us. The flagstones were slimy and slippery with mould, and the walls and ceiling looked yellowy-orange. Or red. Ahead and behind was a darkness that no light could illuminate. Wetness dripped down on us as constantly as rain. We trudged forward. And downward. There was a definite slope to the tunnel. I had some crazy stuff running around in my head. Bad crazy stuff. I tried not to give it too much room. I kept it shut tight behind my teeth.
Nobody said anything for a while. The distant howling continued. It kept mentioning me. Martin. Valpolicella. Martin. I focused on the beam of wan light ahead of me. Black-stained flagstones. Red walls. My footsteps. My heart, beating. My breathing, hoarse. My courage, faltering. I kept on wondering what I’d done to deserve this. Whether I could have avoided it. Why in hell Karen had done this to me. How could she have done this to me? We’d been, I don’t know, close or something. I wasn’t an expert, but I’d thought we’d got on okay. Better than okay. In my unguarded moments I’d even wondered if I’d fallen in love with her.
But now I was so far below the earth’s surface I didn’t want to think about it too hard. Chased by flesh-eating pigs down a foul tunnel towards some fiend chanting my name when it wasn’t screaming like an audio collage of every torture victim the world’s ever known. Was it just opportunism on Karen’s part? Okay, we need a culprit, say AFFA. Any ideas, anyone? Oh, I know, pipes up Karen.
It just didn’t gel. The Karen I knew wasn’t like that at all. She was—she was nice. She gave every appearance of liking me—a lot. Yeah, the sex had been great, but there was something else, too. She really seemed to care about me. But what the hell did I know?
“I’m not certain, but I think we must be approaching the area where the chloroethylene vats are housed. We’ve been walking for an hour at least. Keep an eye out for left-hand turnings,” said Stonehenge from behind me.
“We find these vats, we make holes in them with bullets, right?” I asked him, without turning round.
“From a safe distance,” he replied quietly, “chloroethylene is, erm, rather flammable. Very flammable, in fact. So I’m told.”
I stopped. Stonehenge and Kafka stumbled into me. I was standing firm. I let them untangle themselves before I spoke.
“Very flammable? Stonehenge. Have you ever thought about what ‘very flammable’ might actually mean in a series of very small tunnels? Explosions need an outlet, Stonehenge. I’m beginning to think that you don’t actually know what the fuck you’re doing. And that worries me, to put it fucking mildly.” I think I might have waved the broken bottle around a little, underneath Stonehenge’s chin. Maybe I did, maybe I didn’t. I don’t remember.
“Valpolicella. Take it easy.” He sounded a little worried. Yeah, well.
“How easy? So easy I don’t care about being a part of the wreckage after I pump a few shells into a huge vat of very flammable dry-cleaning fluid?” This was boring me. I didn’t need an argument, not now. Not down here. Not with . . . .
“Did anyone hear that?” asked Kafka.
His voice was flat. The contrast with our own voices was enough to make us stop bickering. We listened. I couldn’t hear anything at first. But then it was clear. Squealing. The pigs were back. I could hear them. It was a terrifying sound. Could I hear their trotters on the wet flagstones as they thundered closer, or was I imagining it? I didn’t think so. The squealing was getting louder, for sure. I was suddenly aware of everything—the water falling constantly from above, the black mould below, the soul-destroying depth and magnitude of the catacombs, the impossibility of any kind of escape . . . .
I hefted my gun. The sound of the pigs was getting louder, I was sure. They were coming for us. I didn’t know if they’d smelt us or been set on us or what. It wasn’t relevant. They were coming. The Fleet Pigs were coming.
“Get your fucking guns ready. Stonehenge? Flick off the safety. Remember, it’s aiming that’s the important thing. Steady, squeeze . . . okay?”
And that was all that I could say. There was no point in running along a tunnel with a prehistoric herd of man-eating pigs snapping at our heels. We were going to have to wait. We were going to have to wai
t for the pigs. They still sounded some distance away. Maybe they were having some kind of pig gathering in the cavern. Maybe they’d choose some other tunnel to cruise. I didn’t know anything about a pig’s sense of smell. But I knew that they had very, very big snouts. Good for unearthing food. And somehow, I didn’t think it would take very long before they found us. And you know what? I wasn’t wrong. I wasn’t wrong at all.
It was obvious that the pigs sniffed out our tunnel. The squealing became amplified beyond my belief. It was deafening, a reverberating echo of hell that thundered along the tunnel and assaulted our ears. It was all we could do to hold our guns steady at the inky darkness that contained that demonic cacophony. I held my gun in one hand and my broken bottle in the other, trying desperately to hold both steady. The beam from Kafka’s flashlight wavered around.
Nothing happened. Not just yet. Just the squealing, growing louder and louder, filling the tunnel and surging towards us like a wave of hideousness. Now we could hear their trotters thundering on the flagstones, dozens of them, closer and closer.
And now they were right in front of us, a heaving pale mass of snouts and broad backs. They were ghastly, with skins that looked like they’d been left too long in stagnant water.
I fired once, then twice. Kafka’s gun roared in my ear, then Stonehenge’s, again and again and again. At first I thought we hadn’t even slowed them down—they came rushing on, a ghostly sinuous mass of hungry teeth and muscle. But two pigs had gone down, and the others seemed frightened. Maybe.
They came to a gradual, shuffling halt, sniffing the bodies of their dead, then eyeing us with slowly swaying heads, grunting and sniffing the sulphurous air that surrounded us. There must have been maybe a hundred of them. More, probably. I wasn’t counting. I couldn’t see the end of the herd. The tunnel was full of pigs, as far back as the feeble beam from my flashlight would penetrate. Their wet white skins filled me with dread. Their eyes were jet black, gleaming in the yellow light. They were big. I wasn’t an expert, but they were big. I couldn’t see their teeth. Their mouths were hidden under their great snouts, their nostrils contracting and dilating as they scented us. As they figured out whether or not they could take us.
Catacombs of Terror! Page 13
