“It’s…too…late,” it rasped with an alien accent before closing its hideous eyes and pitching itself backward off the ramp and into the beast’s waiting, hungry maw.
17
Carise rushed to help Marcel. “Are you okay?”
Marcel stumbled, shook his head. “I’m okay.” But his voice was weak and strained. She put his arm over her shoulder and helped him walk back down the ramp.
Rocks began to fall from the vaulted ceiling, and long cracks appeared in the wall. All the time the beast rose higher.
“We’ve really got to go,” Carise said, wincing in pain from the various wounds and bruises. She took a quick look behind her and the sight of the gigantic fanged mouth sent a bolt of primal fear through her like nothing she had experienced.
Then, as she turned back around, she halted. The massive, swirling black orb of its eye stared at them from the left of the ramp; it took up most of the void, and she felt herself swimming as she looked into its distorted reflective surface.
“Don’t look at it,” Marcel warned and pulled her face away. He slipped and fell to his knees.
Carise reached to help him up when myriad tentacles struck out and wrapped around the stone ramp. The end was ripped clean off, taking the altar with it. She lost her footing and fell onto her back. One of the tentacles grabbed Marcel and dragged him off to the end of the ramp.
She screamed, reached out for him. “No! Marc!”
Scrambling to stand, she sprinted after him and dived to clasp his outstretched hands. They both held each other, useless against the pull of the beast. They couldn’t escape; it was too strong and soon they would be devoured.
“I love you,” she said, not caring what a cliché it was, she had to tell him, to make sure he knew.
He was so weak he could barely speak, but he croaked out, “I know.” He gave her a wan smile.
They were near the edge; the thing’s fangs, like stalactites, dripped with a gooey substance. As they neared the point of no return, Marcel said, “Let me go.”
“I can’t!” she cried, not understanding.
He reached for her bandolier and pulled the sticks of Tovex from her, all the time they were dragged closer and closer.
They looked each other in the eyes and she knew what he wanted to do.
“I’m already dead,” he said. “Save yourself—for us.”
The beast roared and yanked Marcel over the edge. He slipped out of her hands and she screamed until she choked and watched in horror as Marcel, with a smile on his face, fell into the beast’s gaping mouth.
He mouthed, Go, and when he disappeared into the darkness, she belched out a yell of pain and grief, but behind it was the purest hatred and fury. Taking Marcel’s advice, she stood and ran down the ramp with all the strength she could muster.
Tentacles whipped at her and crashed into the ramp.
She jumped over one, sidestepped another, and ducked still more, only she didn’t move quick enough and its hooks cut her across the face, sending a burning pain through the flesh of her cheek, but she didn’t slow down. Carise rounded the ledge, all the time dodging falling rocks. The bridge had collapsed, and it lay uselessly down the other side. A limb cracked above her head and tore loose a chunk of rock that smashed down in front of her, tearing away the rest of the ledge.
She couldn’t go forward or backward, and the whole place was crumbling around her.
For a moment she couldn’t think, drowned in grief and fear.
The image of Marcel inside that thing…
She screamed out and beat her fists against the rock in frustration.
The ledge jolted and cracked away from the wall; she scrambled for grip, but the polished surface had nothing for her to grip onto, and then she was falling and screaming and praying.
She didn’t fall very far, but the crash of the rock sent her spiraling head over heels. She landed heavily on her chest.
Ahead of her one of the tentacles withdrew from the rock and flew round to whip at her. She just managed to avoid its first attack and dove into the tunnel in the rock that it had previously created.
It was a tight fit but she managed to crawl inside on her elbows and knees in a blind panic to get away. She got about ten meters in when it started to rise upwards. She managed to grip the grooves the hooks from the tentacles had created as it burrowed upwards through the rock. She was making good progress when she felt something grab her by the ankle and pull her back down.
She knew she couldn’t fight back; she was out of weapons.
Carise closed her eyes and thought of joining Marcel. Although she didn’t believe in an afterlife, it was preferable to dying alone. As she was slowly pulled out of the tight tunnel, she placed her hands in her pockets and found the electronic detonator that Marcel had given her before.
Not thinking it would work, and as an act of finality, she activated the device.
Nothing happened, and she was almost out of the tunnel when in her mind she sensed confusion. The dark shadow twisted, looked in on itself and retreated. The tentacle let go of her leg, and then like a single, sudden earthquake, the entire place shook.
The beast didn’t scream or roar, but when she looked behind, she saw that great eye look at her with…sadness? It was a pitying sight despite the horror it induced. The eye turned matte and milky, and a thick, membranous lid closed slowly as its seemingly infinite limbs became slack and dropped from their hold on the side of the chamber. The beast fell into the void, and the shadow in her mind retreated.
She clung to the tunnel and wept. Grief for Marcel, and strangely for the old one—how long had it slept, waiting for the stars to align, for its advocates to feed it and prepare its rise? And yet she couldn’t grieve for it for long. It was abhorrent, from another time and dimension. It didn’t belong.
Carise fixed the image of a smiling, content Marcel in her mind. She remembered the warmth of being in his arms in bed earlier that day and crawled up the tunnel, not even aware of where she was going or whether she would get out. It didn’t matter in any case.
Live or die, it all felt pointless without Marcel.
* * *
After an unknowable amount of time, Carise thought she could feel moving air on her face: a chilled, frosty breeze. She raised her head and delighted in the cleansing, sharp feel of it. At first she didn’t think much of it until the realization dawned on her: she must be getting near the surface. Or at least another tunnel connected to the outside.
Spurred on by the thought of freedom, Carise scrambled quicker, banging and scraping her elbows and knees, desperate to feel the fresh air.
The tunnel widened, allowing her to stand. The aches and pains from the cramped crawling eased out in relief.
Something underfoot caught her attention: a bone fragment, much like those found on the ledge in the chamber beyond the lake. The thought of those winged creatures in the dark came to her and the insidious tickle of paranoia came upon her as each shadow beyond her flashlight was a potential hiding place.
But nothing came.
Ever since the explosives went off—muted and insulated by the great old one’s vast flesh, she had noticed both an internal and external quiet. It was as if the mountain itself had died: nothing more now than a hollow vessel, devoid of energy and life.
Carise shuffled onwards, no longer caring what might lurk in the shadows.
The tunnel arced round, and as she exited into a small corridor, she recognized her surroundings. To her right, a tunnel led into the cavern filled with those weird bats.
Inhuman and distortedly human noises echoed off the walls from that direction, as if they were wailing with grief. A shudder crawled through her at that sound and, worse, she felt some kind of twisted sympathy for them.
Ahead of her was the slim entrance into the lake chamber. Now she ran, desperate to be away from that awful place.
A lack of red glow within the lake, and the dull marks on the cave walls were yet another indication t
hat the life force that dwelled in the depths had lost its connection to the mountain; the threads and tendrils severed by a single—albeit large—explosion.
She took some comfort from the thought that it was Marcel, with the Tovex, that was the weapon of destruction, that had ended the nightmare.
She stumbled past the lake and into the small chamber where she saw the bags of ANFO lined up around the entrance, the detonation cord running outside.
Her radio crackled for the first time since she entered the cave system.
Static followed, and then a voice.
“Marcel, Carise, this is Smith checking in. Over.”
His voice was shaking, despondent. Had he felt the explosion? Assumed they were dead?
With pain blooming across her body, she reached into her chest pocket and retrieved the small two-way radio.
“Smith, this is Carise.”
“My God, Carise. You’re alive! I’ve been trying for ages.”
“Is the chopper in good order?”
“Yes, its fine. Are you ready to leave?”
“Fire it up, I’ll be right out.”
“And Marcel?”
What could she say? Numb, she replied, “He didn’t make it.”
* * *
From the safety of the air inside the chopper, Carise pulled the trigger on the radio detonator they had left outside the cave, and the ANFO exploded with a loud, booming crack. The rocks crashed down to fill the narrow valley and block the cave for good.
She sat in silence as Smith flew her back to the truck.
The drive home was equally silent. When she finally arrived at her cabin, she collapsed onto her bed and gripped Marcel’s pillow. She wept into it and let out all her fear and grief in uncontrolled, choking sobs.
* * *
For an hour Carise remained facedown in her bed, catatonic.
Eventually she stirred, turned over and felt something in her side: Marcel’s laptop.
She remembered him talking about the forum on which he saw the satellite images of the cave. She flipped the lid, the browser popped up, the forum was already loaded.
It took just a few minutes to find the forum thread, including the images. The original poster had the initials of TEJ. She thought back to what Marcel was saying about the climbing forum belonging to the local university. A search for the key staff quickly led her to the head of History: Terrance Edward James.
That was her first target. She knew from his face that he had…seen.
Outside in the kitchen, she heard Pebbles, her cat, meow and claw at something.
“What’s up, girl?” she asked as she wiped the tears from her eyes, and shuffled out of her bedroom. The cat was pawing at her backpack, and she remembered: the book.
Inside her study, she placed the book on the desk and opened the heavy cover. Her heart rate spiking, she carefully scanned the page, waiting to see those terrible images again.
But it no longer made sense to her, nor held that diabolical influence it once had when the shadow lurked within her mind. It was unintelligible for the most part, but as she flicked through the thick leaves, she noticed patterns.
The standings stones at the base of Dead Five’s Pass seemed to appear in the book in various places. That semicircular structure of five points showed up in no less than thirty-five other pages within the book. On each one was a symbolic illustration of a pyramid. Within that pyramid was a great black eye, and spreading out from that triangular tomb were lines that reached up to what looked like stars—the same kind of constellation that she saw hanging above one of the cots in the cultist’s room.
“There’s more of them!”
The pages were maps, locations…
Famous places too: The Storr, Isle of Skye; Shiprock, Mexico; Devil’s Tower, Wyoming; Three Sisters, Australia; Eyre’s Rock, Australia; Ko Tapu Island, Thailand…on and on, pages and pages of recognizable landmarks.
She shook her head at the enormity of the task that lay ahead of her, and it was then she realized her work had only just started.
On the wind, a low bass note mourned as if beckoning her, and then she felt the itch—the wound on her ankle. She lifted her trouser leg and recoiled as the black flesh had crawled up to her knee. Was she becoming one of them? Something else? Whatever it was, she knew this was her life’s work, knew that she had to honor Marcel’s sacrifice, knew that she had to find and destroy all involved: starting with Terrance Edward James.
About the Author
Colin F. Barnes is a publisher and full-time writer of horror and techno thrillers and a member of both the British Fantasy Society and the British Science Fiction Association. He honed his craft with the London School of Journalism and the Open University (BA, English).
Colin’s latest book, an SF thriller, is ARTIFICIAL EVIL: Book 1 of The Techxorcist. The second book: ASSEMBLY CODE is due out in spring 2013.
He has had a number of short stories publishing via various small presses (10 titles in 2012) and has two more accepted for 2013. A full publishing list can be found via his about page here: http://www.colinfbarnes.com/about.
About the Publisher
DarkFuse is a leading independent publisher of modern fiction in the horror, suspense and thriller genres. As an independent company, it is focused on bringing to the masses the highest quality dark fiction, published as collectible limited hardcover, paperback and eBook editions.
To discover more titles published by DarkFuse, please visit its official site at www.darkfuse.com.
Table of Contents
DEAD FIVE’S PASS
Connect With Us
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About the Author
About the Publisher
Dead Five's Pass Page 11
