Ravenous

by John Inman

A rumble of laughter erupted from inside Terry’s helmet. “That’s because it’s hidden,” he said.

  Dropping to his knees, Terry crawled through a clump of blackberry briars and instantly disappeared.

  “What?” Jonas cried out. “Wait! Where’d you go?”

  When he didn’t get an answer, he reluctantly dropped to his hands and knees and followed Terry into the prickly brush.

  Chapter Fourteen

  TERRY CREPT forward on his hands and knees, continually plucking his clothing free from the barbs of the blackberry vines he was crawling through. A moment later, darkness began to swallow him up as he entered the small entrance tunnel that led to a larger cavern inside. Jonas bumped along at his heels, grumbling and grunting, touching Terry’s calf now and then as if he needed to reassure himself with human contact. Six feet into the shadows, the tunnel opened up around Terry. He stumbled to his feet and brushed the muck off his hands and knees.

  “We’re there,” he announced as Jonas clambered to his feet behind him. “Just watch your head. The ceiling’s a little low.”

  Jonas reached up and took a fistful of Terry’s leather jacket to pull himself up with, rather like a panic-stricken drowning man clutching the life vest of the poor guy floundering in the waves beside him.

  Terry covered Jonas’s hand with his own and gave it a pat. “Easy there, tiger. It’s just a little darkness, is all. We’re not even fully inside yet.”

  Jonas sounded tense. “I thought you said we were there.”

  “We will be in a minute. You got your flashlight? If you do, this might be a good time to turn it on.” Terry flicked the switch on his own Maglite, and the enclosed space they were standing in burst to life around them.

  Jonas fumbled around for his flashlight, and a second or two later, with two Maglites shooting off beams of light in every direction, the tiny cavern was lit up like a crime scene. Some sort of large bug or spider, spanning six inches across, went scurrying off between their boots and ducked under a shelf of rock to the left. “Holy shit!” Jonas barked as he broke into a nervous tap dance, hopping from one foot to the other and spinning around, looking for more spiders. Finally he swiveled the flashlight forward and shot the beam directly into Terry’s face, blinding him.

  Terry batted it aside none too gently.

  “Oh. Sorry,” Jonas stammered.

  “It’s okay. You’re not claustrophobic, are you?” Terry asked.

  “I wasn’t yesterday,” Jonas feebly joked, his voice quivering in the dark. “Don’t like bugs, though. Especially ones as big as dinner plates.” He pushed the visor up on his helmet and sucked in a deep breath of cold cavern air.

  “I’d keep that closed if I were you,” Terry said, indicating his face mask. “God knows what else is down here. We don’t want the scent of blood leaking out if one of those plate-size bugs drops down from the ceiling and bites you on the nose.”

  “Oh yeah,” Jonas muttered, flipping his face guard closed. He seemed to suddenly realize he had a death grip on Terry’s jacket, so he forced himself to let go with evident reluctance.

  Terry grinned and gave him a hip bump. “It’ll be okay,” he said. “Just stay close to me.”

  “Oh gee, must I?” Jonas snapped, dribbling sarcasm. “I thought I’d take off exploring on my own!” Then he mumbled, “Dumbass,” and huffed out a breath of air, clearly trying to calm himself down.

  Following their flashlight beams, they scoped the place out. The opening in the earth was little more than a slit in the face of the mountain. Where they stood, the cave was less than three feet across and maybe five feet high. They had to continually duck so they wouldn’t bang their head on the rocky ceiling.

  It had been almost a year since Terry was inside the cave. He had been there with Bobby.

  “Wait a minute,” Jonas said. “Is this all there is?”

  “No,” Terry said, his voice hushed in the darkness. “We have to go deeper in. Then the cave opens up. Like I told you before, I don’t know how far back it goes. Maybe not far at all. I’m not sure.”

  Jonas tucked his hand into Terry’s jacket pocket and left it there. It seemed to give him courage, so Terry didn’t say anything. Truth was, he liked the connection. Terry wasn’t much more thrilled to be in this black hole than Jonas was.

  “Maybe that’s why this cave isn’t on my geological survey map. It isn’t big enough to be measurable.”

  “Maybe,” Terry said. “I don’t know. I’m not a geologist. You ready to go deeper?”

  Jonas didn’t hesitate. “Nope. Not ready. Not ready at all. I’ll never be ready. Ready and me aren’t getting along right now. Ready took a hike, I think. Off to Tucson, maybe. Or Guatemala.”

  Terry snorted back a laugh. “Good. Glad you’re on board. Let’s go deeper, then.”

  “Perhaps you misunderstood….”

  Terry sidled forward, slipping between the stone walls, which quickly closed in as he moved deeper into the crevice. Jonas edged his way along behind him, grumbling under his breath. At a place where the rock narrowed to such a point that it touched both Terry’s chest and his back at the same time, he felt Jonas stiffen up like he’d been tased. The hand in Terry’s jacket pocket knotted up into a fist.

  “Don’t worry,” Terry whispered. “You won’t get stuck. We’re almost there. It opens up in a minute.” He wasn’t sure why he was whispering. Well, yes, he was. The place was creepy as hell, and Jonas’s fear seemed to be contagious, burrowing its way into Terry the same way the two of them were burrowing between the rocks.

  As Terry promised, a few feet farther in, the walls opened up. Terry stretched his shoulders wide and breathed a sigh of relief. The air was colder here, seeping under his clothes even through the leather he wore, brittle and windless and utterly frigid. It was like stepping into a walk-in freezer. The darkness closed in around them, hand in hand with the cold. The shadows were so thick and dense, he imagined them spilling over his skin like a slathering of black paint.

  He reached behind him and clutched Jonas’s arm. “It’s okay,” he whispered. “We’re in. Turn your flashlight off.”

  Jonas clearly didn’t like that idea. “Are you nuts? Why?”

  “I want to show you something.”

  “No.”

  “Do it!”

  Jonas growled, but he switched his light off.

  Terry did the same, and suddenly the shadows seemed to recede a little bit. The ceiling had opened up above them, stretching as high as they could see. Sparks of what looked like foxfire appeared along the cavern walls, undulating in seams of speckled light, trailing off into the distance.

  Jonas sucked in his breath. “It looks like stars. Galaxies.”

  Terry pressed himself to Jonas’s side, pulling him close. Deep inside, he suffered a tiny spasm of guilt knowing he had shared this sight with only one other person in his life.

  “It’s some kind of fungus,” he explained. “It’s bioluminescent somehow. Glows in the dark. But when you aim a light at it, it blinks out. Bobby and I discovered it a couple of years ago. Isn’t it beautiful?”

  The beauty seemed to be lost on Jonas. He switched his flashlight back on and sent the beam shooting around the cavern floor looking for more spiders. “It’s so cold! Does anything live in here?”

  Terry paused before answering. “I guess that’s what we’re here to find out.”

  Terry switched his Maglite back on, and the shimmer of fungus on the cavern walls disappeared. “Listen,” he hissed.

  Jonas tensed beside him as they both leaned forward listening to a trickling sound up ahead.

  “Water!” Jonas said.

  “Yeah. It seeps through the rocks and forms a little pool back there. Bobby and I found that too. The water is clean and clear. The fungus forms a ring around the pool, making a luminous circle along the edge of the water when the lights are off. Bobby always thought it was the fungus that cleansed the water.”

  “What’s on the other side of t
he pool?”

  “I don’t know. The pool is as far as we went.”

  Jonas still sounded nervous. “Did you see bats when you were here before?”

  “No. But we didn’t stay long.”

  “Should we go deeper?”

  Terry was curious now. They had come all this way. All their efforts would be wasted if they turned back now. And too, there was a twinge of bravado tickling away at his ego. He didn’t want Jonas to think he was a total wuss.

  “We’ll go a little past the pool. How’s that? As long as we can hear the water, we won’t get lost. I promise.”

  Jonas didn’t sound entirely convinced. “Well, if you’re sure.”

  “I’m sure,” Terry lied, and taking Jonas’s hand, he moved deeper into the shadowy cave. For the heck of it, they stopped a few feet in and switched off their lights again. The fungus was thicker here, and where the pool lay in front of them, it formed a donut-shaped circle of light around it.

  Jonas sucked in his breath. “It’s beautiful!”

  “I know,” Terry whispered back.

  Their Maglites blinked on, and the light around the pool disappeared. They moved forward again to circle around the side of the pool, which was about four feet in diameter. As they passed it, something white splashed in the water, showing itself for a split second in the glare of their flashlight beams. A fish or some sort of amphibian. Frog, maybe. Pigmentless. As pale as milk. Creepy.

  Jonas’s hand tightened around Terry’s. “I saw its face. It didn’t have any eyes. This place is like a horror movie,” he hissed.

  Terry smiled in the dark. “I thought you said it was beautiful.”

  Jonas huffed in annoyance. “So I hate animals without eyeballs. I’m fickle. Sue me.”

  They eased their way past the pool. The floor was uneven beneath their feet. Loose scree and stones clattered as they walked. In other places, clumps of muddy clay squelched beneath their boots. They had to choose their steps carefully.

  “You’ve seen these creatures up close,” Jonas whispered. “The ones that kill people. How big are they? Crow size?”

  “Bigger.”

  “Owl size?”

  “Bigger.”

  He heard Jonas gulp in the darkness. “Eagle size?”

  Terry considered his answer. He didn’t want to exaggerate. The truth was horrible enough without exaggeration. He chewed on the inside of his cheek for a minute, thinking. Finally he said, “Bigger than an eagle, smaller than a condor. And meaner than either. But with shorter wings.”

  “Do they flit like bats?” Jonas asked.

  Terry gave a grim chuckle. “Does a freight train flit? No. These guys just barrel in. They barrel in en masse from high in the sky and rip you to shreds. Flitting is the last thing they do.”

  “You’ve seen them feed,” Jonas said, his voice a reverent hush. It wasn’t a question, because Jonas knew the truth as well as Terry did. They had talked about it before. Bobby’s death. All of that.

  A flash of memory seared through Terry’s brain. It was a memory he had been battling against for months, and a memory he could never seem to shake. The memory was brief and brutal. It brought into clear focus Bobby’s last seconds on earth before he was yanked through the canvas roof of the Jeep and pulled apart in front of him. Shredded in midair. All of his beautiful humanity reduced in a heartbeat to strings of flesh and tendon in an exploding mist of blood.

  “Yes,” Terry quietly answered as a familiar pain dug at his heart. “I’ve seen them feed.” The understatement of the century.

  Jonas’s hand came out and stroked his back. “I’m sorry,” he said. “I shouldn’t have brought it up.”

  Terry shook the apology aside. He turned and faced Jonas, holding his flashlight beam down so it wouldn’t blind him, but leaving it high enough that Jonas could see his face. Hoping Jonas could see the truth of what he was about to tell him as they stood together here in this miserable black hole in the mountain. It was a struggle to keep his voice calm. It was a struggle not to grab Jonas’s arms and shake him into understanding.

  “I know what you’re getting at, Jonas. You want to know if they feed like vampire bats. Well, they don’t. They don’t feed like anything on the planet. They’re monsters, okay? So don’t be lulled into comparing them to bats. Bats are sweet. Harmless.”

  Jonas looked unconvinced. “What about vampire bats? Maybe they—”

  Terry waved him silent. “Even vampires, Jonas. These things fly during the day. Vampire bats don’t do that. They soar high in the sky. Vampire bats rarely fly higher than a meter off the ground. Vampires drink blood, yes, but they don’t consume the flesh of the animals they drink from. They don’t tear their host to shreds. Vampires sip from teeny tiny slits they make in their prey’s skin. These things don’t sip, they devour. Blood, flesh, even the bones are torn to splinters. They’re strong, Jonas. Vampire bats aren’t strong like that. Plus vampires are tiny. Before they feed they weigh about two ounces. True vampires have a wingspan of seven inches. Seven inches. The wings on these things are four feet across at least, maybe five, and God knows how much they weigh! Ten pounds maybe? Fifteen? Twenty? While these creatures may vaguely resemble bats, you can’t compare them to bats in any conceivable way. You have to take my word on that.”

  “You’ve thought about this. You’ve done your research.”

  Terry gripped his flashlight tighter. “Yes, I’ve done my research. And trust me, these creatures are unique to the animal kingdom. There’s nothing else like them. They are fast, and they are ruthless. And when they smell your blood, Jonas, trust me, there’s no way to stop them. They’ll swoop in and kill you before you even have time to scream. That’s all you need to know. All right?”

  Jonas hitched in his breath and, without answering, pulled Terry to him, holding him close. “I’m sorry,” he said again, pressing his mouth to Terry’s shoulder.

  Terry eased himself from Jonas’s arms. “It’s okay. Let’s just be careful. We don’t want any surprises.” He took Jonas’s hand and, in a voice still wobbly with emotion, said, “Let’s keep going and get this over with. A few more yards in and we’ll call it a day.”

  Jonas nodded. He looked humbled and fearful again in the beam of Terry’s light. “Okay.”

  They turned together to face the deeper bowels of the cavern, and that’s when they heard the sounds. The faint click and clatter of tiny nails scrabbling at rock. The gentle swat of fleshy wings fluttering against plump bodies. The cry of tiny voices, chittering in the dark, somewhere high above their heads, near the unseen ceiling.

  Jonas yanked him to a stop. “Listen!” he hissed. “It’s them!”

  Spurred by the sound of Jonas’s startled voice, the cave suddenly erupted around them. Small black specks, like living scraps of ash, exploded to life, swirling through the air. Tiny wings flapped against their face plates, blocking what little light they had left to see by. Jonas and Terry slapped the beasts away from their helmets. Their flashlight beams bounced all over the place, stirring the specks of black into a frenzy. High-pitched voices of outrage, each as piercing and sharp as a pinprick, peppered the air around them like a million tiny fingernails scraping at a million tiny blackboards.

  Again, Terry flapped his hands in front of his face, and in that one strobe-like moment, he saw in his flashlight beam the clear outline of what it was they were flailing against. A benign face hovering in midair, peering in through his mask with delicate black eyes.

  He grabbed Jonas’s arm and cried out, “Stop! Stand still. They won’t hurt you.”

  It took Jonas a moment to comply, but when he did, Terry could tell he was beginning to understand. He edged closer to Terry and lowered his arms, no longer trying to swat the creatures away.

  The black swarm continued to tornado around their heads, spinning, whirling, still screaming curious cries in their chittering, birdlike voices.

  “Turn off the lights!” Terry cried. “Turn off the lights!”


  Terry and Jonas both switched off their flashlights, and within the thundering whirlwind of wings that circled maniacally around them, a sudden hush began to grow. Startled wings, as fragile as a child’s fingertips, stopped slapping against their helmets, ceased sweeping across their face masks. Small furred bodies brushed more gently against their backs and arms now, some landing, then quickly taking off again. No longer attacking. No longer terrified but judging the threat and finding it minimal. Relinquishing their fear and replacing it with curiosity.

  Terry stood in the dark and listened as the maelstrom slowly abated. Jonas remained close beside him, trembling in the dark. He seemed calmer now. As Terry was. As the animals were.

  “These really are bats,” Terry said softly, so as not to frighten the tiny creatures any more than they were already. “These aren’t monsters, Jonas. These are just bats. Mexican free-tailed bats, maybe. I think we scared them more than they scared us.”

  “Not sure you’re right about that,” Jonas groused, his voice still pitched as high as the bats around them.

  Terry groped for Jonas’s hand in the dark and gave it a squeeze. When Jonas squeezed back, he knew everything was all right. They stood motionless, hand in hand. For long minutes they waited while the mass of tiny creatures swirling around them began to thin out and eventually fade away altogether, melting back into the shadows from wherever it was they came.

  Edging backward through the cave they had just explored, Terry nudged Jonas along in front of him. When the trickling of the pool became loud enough that he knew they were close, Terry switched his Maglite back on and took the lead.

  “Let’s get out of here,” he whispered, feeling like an interloper and hoping not to stir the bats up again. “These animals are harmless. We’ve disturbed them enough.”

  They eased their way through old familiar shadows to the growing dot of light that showed them where the real world lay waiting for their return.

  As they crawled into the sunlight and burrowed their way through the briars, Terry was happy as hell to be out of the cave and away from the dark. But he wasn’t nearly as happy as Jonas.