Untcigahunk: The Complete Little Brothers

by Rick Hautala

  Meanwhile, Watson replaced the spent shell and stood with his back to the cave wall as he stared intently down the tunnel, his ear cocked as he listened. The torchlight highlighted the lines in his face, making him look even older than he was. Deep shadows carved trenches along his cheeks and forehead, and his eyes, almost lost in shadow, held a wicked gleam. Kip could tell he felt exhilarated from having killed one of the little brothers.

  “You sure you’re up to this?” Watson asked, his voice hissing sharply, making Kip think he sounded like Gollum. “It ain’t too late to turn back now. And—” with the toe of his boot, he nudged the still form of the untcigahunk “—we got at least one of ‘em. Maybe that’s enough.”

  Kip considered for a moment, trying to balance his mounting fear and his deep need to avenge his mother.

  Maybe one is enough—one of them for...

  He squared his shoulders.

  She’s worth more than one of these! She’s worth all of them!

  “I’m up to it,” he said, forcing strength into his voice.

  “Then let’s try like a son-of-a-bitch not to let somethin’ like that happen again, ‘kay?” Watson said. He bent down and picked up the flashlight and shook it. “This one’s dead. I’ll use the one I got. You carry the torch for a while.”

  Kip nodded. “And if any more come, I’ll make sure I hit the dirt so you don’t blow my head off, all right?”

  “That’d be nice,” Watson said with a nod as a faint smile split his lips.

  They started out again, moving like before with Kip walking close to the left wall and Watson on the right. Both of them were tenser than they had been, and they both strained all of their senses, trying to hear and see the approach of any more untcigahunk. They kept talk to a minimum.

  The cave floor continued to slope down at an increasingly steep angle, and the farther they went, the cooler and damper the air became. The dank, rotting smell seemed to lessen, but Kip thought it might be because they were getting used to it. He kept checking to make sure his string was still unwinding behind them whenever Watson inadvertently stepped on it.

  In places, the passage narrowed, and in other places it opened up wide enough so they could have easily walked side by side, but Watson kept a step or two behind. Suddenly Kip jolted to a stop. Craning his neck forward, he held his forefinger to his lips and signaled silence.

  Watson froze in mid-step and also strained to listen. After a few tense moments, he shook his head and whispered, “I don’t hear anything. You think it’s one of ‘em?” Kip squinted in concentration, then shook his head. “No, it sounds like...running water.” He pointed down the corridor with Marty’s hunting knife as he started cautiously forward again.

  The tunnel narrowed even more, and when they turned a corner, a black hole in the floor suddenly loomed open at their feet. Kip jerked back just in time to keep from falling, and Watson almost bumped into him.

  “Christ! Watch it!” Watson snarled, but Kip ignored him as he crouched down and held the torch close to the cave floor. The floor pitched down more steeply for a drop of about twenty feet. At the bottom of the drop, the corridor opened into a wide, cavernous area.

  “I’ll be a son-of-a-bitch,” Watson muttered as he swept the flashlight beam around the cave room. He estimated the room to be at least fifty feet or more in diameter.

  “Will you look at that,” Kip said, scanning the cave room walls. Lining the perimeter of the room were several tiers that had been carved out of the stone. It reminded Kip of a model of an ancient Greek theater with the tunnel leading them out onto the center of the floor, which looked like the bottom of a large, stone bowl.

  “We gotta go down there ‘cause that’s the way the path leads,” Watson said, squatting beside Kip as they surveyed the area. “‘N we’re gonna have to keep our eyes and ears open real good.”

  “What is this place?” Kip asked, his voice hushed with awe. “It looks like a theater or something.”

  “And we’re gonna be center stage.” Watson said as he craned his head up and up, looking at tier after tier. “This sure as shit ain’t natural. Someone—”

  “Or some thing,” Kip added.

  Watson nodded. “Yeah, something excavated this, all right. Look over there.”

  He directed the flashlight beam over to one of the lower tiers that was on eye level. Where the ledge had been cut out of the wall, the stone was smoothed off. It looked polished, and away from the edge along the back wall were several indentations. They looked like doorways, leading further back into dark rooms.

  Suddenly they noticed a rapid flapping sound coming from overhead. Kip and Watson flattened themselves against the wall in defensive postures, tensed and ready for another attack from one or more untcigahunk.

  Then Watson’s flashlight beam swept upwards and caught the motion of something wheeling high overhead. At first it was just a blur of activity, but them—at the same instant—they realized what it was.

  Watson chuckled and shook his head. “I ‘spoze you gotta ‘spect bats in a cave, huh?’

  Kip nodded agreement, then quickly had to duck to one side as leathery wings swiped close by his head. Reflexively, he swung at the bat with the torch, which made a loud whizzing sound as the flames swished through the air.

  “Whoa, take it easy,” Watson said.

  “I don’t wanna get one of them in my hair,” Kip said. “Bats have rabies.”

  Once the dive-bombing bat had rejoined the swirling mass circling overhead, Kip and Watson remained quiet for a while as they studied the open chamber. There was a wide opening directly opposite them on the other side of the cavern, but in order to get to it, they were going to have to walk straight across the chamber floor.

  “What’s all that white stuff on the rocks down there?” Kip asked.

  Watson chuckled softly as the circle of light swept across what looked like frosting-coated rocks. He realized that the edges of the rising tiers all had the same white coating. That’s what made them look so smooth.

  “That, m’boy, is a couple of hundred years accumulation of bat shit,” Watson said, smiling at Kip.

  “And we have to walk through it?”

  Watson nodded. “No way around it that I can see...unless you can fly.” He laughed softly. “There’s one good thing about it that I can see.”

  “What’s that?”

  “If yah look carefully, you’ll see. Then again, maybe that’s ‘spectin’ too much of a white boy, but look down there.” He pointed at a dark line that ran straight across the floor. “See that track there? That’s gotta be where the untcigahunk come through when they use this tunnel.”

  “What’s so good about that?”

  Watson shrugged. “Put it together for yourself. For one thing, it’s pretty obvious they don’t come through here all that often. ‘N not many of ‘em, either. Otherwise, that path’d be a lot wider. That means the stone me ‘n my grandfather put across the exit point worked. It kept ‘em from usin’ what you kids call the Indian Caves to get out, ‘least until recently.”

  “Yeah,” Kip said, remembering the blood-filled sneaker, “but where’d that one you killed back there come from?”

  Again, Watson shrugged. “I dunno. Maybe they come down here whenever it’s time for ‘em to come above ground—yah know, just to check if the exit’s still blocked. The other good thing about all of this is that, even if this room was made by the untcigahunk, they ain’t usin’ it now. If they were, the edges wouldn’t be covered with bat shit.”

  Kip snickered softly and said, “So what you’re saying is, we have a lot to be thankful for because of bat shit, huh?” Looking up at the swirling funnel of bats overhead, he shouted, “Thank you, bats, for shitting so much!”

  Watson angrily waved his arm, hushing Kip even as the echoes of his shout reverberated in the chamber. “For Christ’s sake, boy, do yah wanna bring all the untcigahunk down on us?”

  Kip cringed, embarrassed by his moment of foolishness. He
couldn’t stop wondering if even now, deep within the bowels of the earth, the little brothers were stirring and moving toward them.

  “Sorry,” he said softly.

  “Sorry won’t be enough if it gets us killed. Use your brain, boy, before you do somethin’ like that again, ‘kay?”

  Kip shrugged uneasily under the weight of the things he was carrying.

  “Well, if they know we’re comin’, we might’s well go meet ‘em,” Watson said. He approached where the cave floor suddenly sloped downward and, crouching down to keep his center of gravity low, started inching down the steep incline.

  Kip held back, fearful that the light of the torch might draw the bats to him. His mind filled with horrible image of dozens—hundreds of tiny, furry brown bodies swarming over him, their needle-sharp teeth drawing the lifeblood out of him. And then—even worse—the mental image returned of the little brothers, much larger than bats, but in some ways exactly the same—thin-limbed, gnarly brown bodies with razor-sharp claws that ripped and shredded.

  His resolve almost weakened, but by now Watson was halfway down to the chamber floor. He looked back at him and waved him on.

  “Com’on,” he called, brandishing the shotgun.

  Kip nodded and started down the slope, but where Watson had moved slowly and cautiously, Kip hurried to catch up. He had taken no more than three steps when he slipped, and his feet shoot out from under him.

  He had just enough time to shout, “Aww—shit!” before he skidded down the slope on his ass. The torch fluttered behind him. His ball of string was knocked loose and bounced down beside him. Somehow, he kept hold of the torch and knife. The backpack jabbed into his back. The gasoline sloshed in the can, sounding like a tidal wave rushing up behind him. Sharp stones cut into the backs of his legs and butt as he fell in a swirl of dust and rock. When he reached the bottom of the slope, he pitched forward and landed face first in a thick, spongy mat of bat shit.

  Dust from the rotting bat shit filled his nose and mouth, making his gag, and he was only vaguely aware of Watson’s barking laughter as he scrambled to his knees, spitting viciously to get the stinking crud out of his mouth. In his panic, he dropped the torch and knife. He wondered if he could get rabies or some other fatal disease from swallowing bat shit. He hurriedly spun off the canteen cap, filled his mouth with water, swished it around, and then spat it out in a noisy spray.

  “Oh, boy,” Watson said as he crept the rest of the way down the slope. “You are nimble on your feet today.” He picked up the torch and waved it in the air to keep it burning brightly.

  “Cut the—” Kip said, but then he started to chuckle because he had almost said shit. His voice choked off because his mouth still felt like it was lined with fur, so he took another mouthful of water, swished it around in his mouth, and spit. Then he sat down on the ground and looked up at Watson with wide, glistening eyes.

  “The way you’re goin’, we’ll be lucky to get out of here alive even if we don’t find any more untcigahunk.” Watson’s laughter rose louder, echoing from the curved cave walls with a weird Doppler effect.

  Kip spit noisily onto the floor. “Cut me some slack, all right?”

  “Hey, no harm intended,” Watson said. He held his hand out to help Kip to his feet, but Kip ignored it as he stood up on his own. He reached behind and felt the seat of his pants, surprised that the fabric wasn’t shredded.

  After picking up his ball of string and carefully replacing it on his belt, he took the torch from Watson. He was about to tip the canteen back for another swig of water when the old man touched him on the arm.

  “I told yah,” he said, softly and firmly. “We gotta go easy on that.” In the back of his mind, Watson was irritated that he hadn’t picked up that pint when he had the chance. Just one, tiny, little pint of whiskey. What was the harm? He had the money right there in his hands. In fact, he had circled the liquor store three times when he went to fill up the gas cans.

  One small pint bottle would cut through any thirst...and Kip could drink all the water he wanted.

  “C’mon,” Watson said. His voice betrayed his irritation, but Kip wasn’t sure why he was upset as they started across the chamber floor, carefully keeping to the thin black trail that had been worn out through the white mat of bat shit.

  When they were in the center of the chamber, a sudden panic gripped Kip. It wasn’t the bats still spiraling overhead. In a calmer moment, he realized the torchlight would keep them away rather than attract them. And it wasn’t that he thought he could feel unseen eyes, glowing dully as they watched these invaders walk further into the caves. It was nothing like that. It was—

  When it hit him, the impact was almost physical.

  This area was—maybe “city” wasn’t the right word, but the untcigahunk had made this. They had carved and chiseled it out of the stone spine of the mountains with their non-human hands. If he and Watson weren’t walking through the center of a “town,” if those shadowed openings on the tiers above weren’t doors leading into rooms, even if the best you could call this was a “nest,” whoever or what ever had built this was intelligent...much more intelligent than Kip had assumed they were before now, in spite of everything Watson had told him.

  Kip was trying to reconcile this with the glimpse he’d had of the little brothers yesterday when they had opened the doorway in the cellar hole. There, the creatures had looked slow and stupid, like dim-witted animals frozen in surprise by the sudden burst of light.

  But this chamber put the lie to all of that. This “nest” looked carefully planned and constructed.

  “Are there—” Kip cut himself short when his words rebounded back from the surrounding stone walls. They were so magnified even a whisper sounded like a shout.

  In the corner of his eye, a sudden scurrying motion of something moving between the shit-covered stones caught his attention. He dropped into a crouch and shifted to one side, staring at the cave floor as he waited for the motion to be repeated. The torchlight cast wavering shadows across the cave floor. The stones looked like they were covered by a smooth blanket of fresh snow. Kip wasn’t sure, but it looked as though the entire mat of bat shit was seething and undulating with a subtle waving motion.

  Kip cleared his throat and, lowering his voice, asked, “Are there any—you know, any other forms the untcigahunk take? What we saw in the cellar hole yesterday, is that how they always look?”

  Watson glanced at Kip with a curious expression on his face.

  “Whadda yah mean?” he said.

  “You said they’re like cicadas that come out every twelve years, right?” Kip started walking slowly forward.

  “According to our legends, yeah.”

  “You know cicadas go through a metamorphosis, like a butterfly. Those ten or twelve years they’re under-ground, they’re like worms called larvae.”

  Watson boomed laughter. “‘N just what makes you such an expert on this all of a sudden?” He shook his head from side to side as though disgusted.

  “We studied it in science class this year,” Kip replied.

  They were more than halfway across the chamber floor, moving slowly and being careful not to wander off the well-worn trail. The bats fluttered overhead, and every now and then one would swoop down close to them.

  Watson didn’t seem to notice or, if he did, not to mind, but Kip kept glancing from one side to the other, convinced there was something crawling among the shit-covered rocks. Maybe it was just the wavering shadows cast by the torchlight, but now and again he was sure he caught a glimpse of long, wrist-thick, wormlike creatures burrowing through the shit. When he listened carefully, beneath the tread of their footsteps, he thought he could hear soft, sucking noises as those worm-things tunneled in the bat shit. The chilled air of the cave made him shiver, and he quickened his pace to catch up with Watson.

  Up ahead, the floor slanted upward, toward a wide entrance that branched off into several cave mouths that looked dark and foreboding. Kip patt
ed the unspooling ball of string on his belt just for the security of knowing it was still there and still working. He tried not to think about having to find his way back on the run, with or without the string as a guide.

  Once they were across the chamber floor, Watson stopped at the base of the incline leading back up into the tunnel. His flashlight beam made an elongated oval on the ground slanting up to the doorway, and the muzzle of his shotgun followed it, ready if any untcigahunk burst out of the darkness.

  Kip stopped a few paces behind him. His throat was parched, coated with the dust—the bat shit dust—they had raised while crossing the chamber. He watched as Watson scanned the opening.

  “What do you think?” Kip whispered, glancing behind them, just in case. He tried not to think about those sluglike things tunneling in the darkness, but he couldn’t forget the sucking noises he’d heard as they burrowed.

  “Looks to me as though the cave branches off up there,” Watson said. “Which way d’yah think we outta go?” Before Kip could answer, Watson bent over and, skimming his fingertips across the rock to keep his balance, scrambled up the incline. Kip quickly followed.

  Once they were at the top of the cliff, they paused, careful to keep their backs to the cave wall. The chamber was once again shrouded in the darkness. The only sound was the soft flutter of bat wings overhead.

  “It’d be interesting, come sunset, to see which way those bats go to get out of here,” Watson said. “They gotta get outside to eat insects, don’t yah think?”

  Kip shrugged, not sure what he thought.

  “Well,” Watson said, “if that’s the case, it must mean I haven’t closed off all the exit points. Not if them bats are still gettin’ out.”

  “We aren’t going to have to worry about closing all the exit points,” Kip said, trying not to let his nervousness show. “Not if we do what we came for.”

  Watson hacked something up from his chest and spat. “I ‘spoze you’re right. But you still ain’t answered me. Which way should we go?”