Chasm

by Stephen Laws

  Alex halted in mid-charge, no more than ten feet from Simon, who was now also staring in horror at his dead sister.

  Annie swung the shotgun round to cover everyone as Lisa pulled away from Patrick. He remained kneeling, hugging his head; like someone trying to keep their wig on in a heavy wind. Blood was seeping down from his scalp and between his fingers.

  “Jay!”

  Alex had reached Candy and was dragging her away from Simon when Juliet’s agonised cry came from the cliff-edge. He looked back to see that Don-Paul was running back from the platform, keeping well out of the way. There was a young boy there too, also running hard, taking a different route from Don-Paul and following the other members of the tribe as they disappeared into the ruins.

  But there was no sign of Jay on the edge of the platform.

  Juliet clambered desperately out, right to the edge.

  “Oh Christ…” said Alex. “Jay’s gone.”

  Annie kept the shotgun levelled as everyone headed for the platform.

  The Caffneys seemed frozen, staring at Luanne’s still body.

  Throughout, the other Caffney sister had stood on the cliff-edge, hands to her mouth. Now Tracey staggered towards Luanne’s body. Hands still to her face, she looked from the body to the others, who retreated to the wooden platform. Suddenly, she whirled away from her family and ran towards them.

  “Stop there!” snapped Annie, swinging the shotgun on her.

  Tracey halted.

  Fearfully, she looked over her shoulder towards her family; then back at Annie.

  “Take me with you.” It was the first words she’d spoken since their arrival at the Caffney’s Hell on earth. Her voice was high-pitched and tremulous, a child’s voice in a young woman’s body. “Please don’t leave me here with them. Take me with you…”

  “Help me!” shouted Juliet. She was balanced precariously on the edge of the platform, trying in vain to pull the rope up.

  “Please!” screeched Tracey. “Don’t leave me with them!”

  Lisa had reached the platform first. She rushed out to join Juliet. Annie kept swinging the shotgun from Tracey to the others, who were still apparently too shocked by what had happened to their father and sister to act yet.

  The wooden platform juddered and cracked.

  Juliet cried out and almost fell. Lisa grabbed her by the shoulder and pulled her back. There was a grinding sound from the Chasm.

  “Oh Christ!” screamed Juliet. “It’s got him!”

  The wooden supports groaned. Soil began to crumble and patter all around the frame of the platform at the cliff-edge.

  “Lisa!” yelled Alex, starting out over the shivering boards. “Get her back here!”

  “Jay!” yelled Juliet down into the darkness. “Jay!”

  The rope stretched and vibrated. The platform began to bow downwards into the abyss.

  “Juliet!” Lisa grabbed her hard, and began dragging her back towards the cliff-edge as Alex finally reached them. He grabbed her other arm, but now Juliet was fighting back, trying to reach the edge of the platform again. “We can’t do anything! It’s too late!”

  “It can’t be too late! This can’t happen! Not now, not after everything we’ve been through!”

  A wooden support beneath the platform shattered and split. The platform tilted to the right. Lisa and Alex were already holding a rail on the left. Juliet’s feet swung into empty space as they clung on to her, now dragging her back to the cliff-side as boards on the platform itself began to crack and splinter loose.

  “JAY!”

  “We can’t do anything!” yelled Alex. “Juliet, we can’t do anything for Jay now!”

  They fell back on to the cliff-edge, stumbling together as the platform suddenly disintegrated. The rope did not snap this time. The demonic force on the other end dragged the winch from its moorings. In the process, the entire structure of the platform fell apart. The winch hurtled down into the darkness, followed by the tumbling, shattered wreckage of the platform itself. The supports that had anchored it to the cliff-side followed, huge chunks of earth cascading down into the depths. Everyone recoiled from the cliff-edge in case a section of it should also be dragged down into the Chasm. Alex and Lisa hung on tight to Juliet as she strained to return to the edge. She didn’t seem to care whether she went over with the wreckage of the platform or not.

  The roaring descent of the platform dwindled to a shuddering echo as the last of the wreckage vanished into the darkness.

  A gunshot sounded behind them.

  Annie recoiled instinctively, looking at the shotgun. But it hadn’t gone off in her hands. Tracey was suddenly right beside her, long dark hair flying in panic as she looked back at her sister’s body.

  The Caffney brothers had vanished in the darkness.

  Another shot split the air, ricocheting wildly.

  Annie swung the shotgun around, but could see no one.

  “Everyone,” shouted Alex. “Run!”

  And suddenly they were all racing along the cliff-side, away from where the platform had been dragged down into the Chasm and back towards the rough-hewn bridge leading across the abyss to the petrol plant.

  “Where are they?” yelled Candy. “Where are they?”

  “Please!” yelled Tracey, running with them. “Don’t let them kill me. Please God, don’t let them kill me!”

  Another shot, and this time a furrow of earth erupted right next to Alex’s foot.

  “The bridge!” yelled Alex. “It’s the only way to go!” Juliet looked back at the ragged cliff-edge where the platform had vanished.

  “Jay…”

  “Come on, Juliet!” yelled Lisa. “He’s gone, and there’s nothing we can do!”

  “Oh God, Jay…”

  “Come on!”

  Another shot sang past their heads.

  They ran.

  Chapter Twenty

  The Journal of Jay O’Connor:

  In the Chasm

  The drop might just pull your legs off, Patrick Caffney had said to me.

  Was that what had happened?

  I’d fallen into darkness, my entire body frozen rigid. I’d stopped breathing. There’d been only the wind whipping past me and the certain terrible knowledge that I was about to die. Then something had hit me hard. I was flung around, whirling and spinning. This was it. I was dead. My legs had been torn from my body and this whirling dizziness and the absolute darkness was Death.

  But if I was dead, why was I hurting so much? Why couldn’t I get my breath?

  Something hit me again, sending me spinning once more. I could feel gravity sucking at me, could feel the blood running to my head. At last, I remembered what had happened to me. I’d been thrown into the Chasm. I panicked, thrashing and lashing out all around me in the darkness.

  Another great dragging at my body, another whirling blow—this time much weaker than the others. Now I knew what was happening. I was bouncing and rebounding on the end of that fucking rope. I’d dropped as far as it stretched, hundreds of feet down, and without the brace and supports for my legs. By some miracle, maybe the angle at which I’d gone off the wooden platform, the fall hadn’t torn me in two. But any second now I would surely smash into the cliff wall as the rope swung wildly in the darkness. I covered my head with my arms and waited for worse pain to come.

  Another bounce, this time nowhere near as bad as the others.

  I tried to yell, but nothing would come out. My lungs were hurting, and I was hyperventilating.

  Something brushed my legs in the dark. I recoiled. Now I could hear soil pattering in the darkness. I bounced and spun. My legs brushed against something solid again. Was it the cliff wall?

  Then I heard the noise from below.

  At first it sounded like surf breaking on a beach. A low and distant rumbling sound. It began to grow louder as I spun in the darkness. Now it was a wind, blowing up from this bottomless canyon. The wind was a whisper, now it was many voices, all whispering. There was
hatred in that sound. Hatred and anger. It was growing and swelling. Now it was a familiar and horrifying sound. It was the many whispering voices of the Vorla. It was surging up from the Chasm, ready to take its next human bait.

  I thrashed and spun desperately, feeling it draw close.

  Somewhere far below, I seemed to see something glint, like tar or oil.

  The Black Stuff was rising; surging up the sides of the canyon. Hungry and eager to give me a thousand-thousand deaths.

  My legs brushed against that solid something again. I lashed out, felt the cliff-side, and spun away again on the rope, fists full of stones and soil. The Chasm was filling with the grumbling roar of the voices now; like some terrible express train on its way up from a hellish underground tunnel. Arching my back, I grabbed for my legs. Not far enough, and I was still too winded after the fall. I spun again, out of control.

  Was the rock-face vibrating beside me? How soon before the Vorla snatched me and dragged me from the rope?

  I arched again. This time one hand connected with my jeans, at the knee. I hauled myself up; painful grab by painful grab, spinning and swaying in the utter blackness. My stomach was hurting, my lungs were on fire. Whatever the Crying Kid had stuck in the back of my belt was only making it more difficult for me to right myself. But my fear of what was surging up from below spurred me on. I was sobbing with effort when my hands finally reached the rope tied around my shins and I managed slowly to haul myself upright. The effort had almost exhausted me. What the hell could I do now? I was upright, hanging on the rope. But the Vorla was surely only moments away.

  I don’t know how or why, but suddenly I’d dragged the thing from the back of my belt, hanging on to the rope with one hand. Some kind of weapon to deal with Don-Paul up top? It didn’t feel like a gun or a knife. It felt hard and rubbery, some kind of small cylinder. There were notches and buttons on it.

  The Vorla roared in its million voices, just below my feet.

  I could sense it opening beneath me, like some gigantic black mouth. It was surging and swelling on all sides around me, ready to swallow me whole and take me to the real Hell that it had promised. It stank of Death and Madness and Hate. When it closed over me, I’d be in the belly of this hideous thing; swallowed whole, my soul to be ripped, shredded and tortured for ever.

  My hand gripped the rubber cylinder hard in terror.

  I felt the indentations, the circular buttons. I squeezed it hard and waited for the Horror to drag me from the rope.

  And suddenly there was light.

  It glared in my face, lighting up the top of my body. It reflected on the shiny, hideously rippling black mass all around me. My body spun on the rope, the light spinning with me.

  The Crying Kid had shoved a torch into my belt.

  I felt the Vorla shrinking from me as I swayed and spun.

  Heart pounding, I knew what to do.

  Holding the torch out, I shone the beam directly into the mass. As I slowly spun, the beam moved across its immense black, formless shape.

  And it was like a laser beam cutting through cancerous cells.

  The Vorla shrieked in its multitude of voices. It deafened and terrified me. As if it were a black curtain being ripped and gashed, the light beam cut through it on all sides. There was a crash like surf again as the Black Stuff splashed back from me, splattering the cliff walls. I saw black waves flowing quickly downwards over the ragged stone walls and if I could have yelled then I would have. But I still couldn’t find my voice, and my lungs were still burning. I stabbed the beam downwards into the Chasm. There was a great hissing, like water on hot coals. I could sense its pain and its hatred. It simmered and boiled down there out of sight, waiting for the moment when it could surge up again and take me.

  I glanced up.

  How far had I fallen? Several hundred feet by the look of it. I could see the platform up there now. A tiny thing on the cliff-edge. Was there something moving up there? I tried to shout; again, nothing would come.

  I would have to climb the rope.

  It was the only way, if I was going to get out of this alive.

  I sensed movement beneath me, and on the cliff wall.

  I swung the torch out.

  The Vorla retreated on all sides from the beam, hissing its hatred.

  Christ, if I dropped the bloody torch…?

  I started to climb.

  I’d managed about two feet or so and had to stop. This was fucking impossible—holding the torch with one hand, trying to climb with the other. I jammed the torch into my belt, at the front, and tried again. Even before I’d made the effort, I felt the Vorla racing up the cliff wall at my side. Frantically, I pulled the torch out again and swung it around the Chasm. The Black Stuff ripped and parted, some of it dropping from the cliff wall in great splattering globules, like a rain of oil.

  How long before the torch batteries ran out?

  That’s when I felt the strain on the rope.

  I could feel it in the very fibres, could hear it stretching. I gripped the rope tight as 1 swayed there. I could feel a tearing, from higher up. And in that moment I knew what the Vorla had done.

  Part of it had managed to race past me, up the cliff wall. Somewhere above, it had reached out its long black tentacles and fastened on the rope. It would snap it there, and drag me down.

  I flashed the beam up again, heard the Vorla hiss and screech in pain; saw a black, disintegrating cloud of wetness explode away from the rope and back to the cliff wall where it fled into the crevices and cracks, hiding in the darkness.

  Movement below, grumbling and shuddering.

  I swung the beam down. The Darkness raced away on all sides from the beam.

  Movement above, a slithering and hissing. I swung the beam up. The Vorla retreated from the rope once more and took refuge in the fissures of the cliff-face.

  I couldn’t stay on the rope.

  There was only one other thing for it. I was sick with fear at the prospect. But there was no other way.

  I began to sway the rope back and forth over the Chasm, gathering momentum. As I did so, I kept the torch beam constantly playing up and down, knowing that the Vorla could come at me from any side, at any moment. I was a pendulum now, swinging faster and faster. I jerked the torch beam to the ragged cliff-face. The rope was about fifteen feet from the side. Just a couple more swings and I’d be able to grab one of those rock crevices. But even if I made it, even if I could get off the fucking rope and on to the cliff wall, did I really think there was a way to climb out of this hell-hole?

  I didn’t have a choice. I just had to beat down the fear and do it.

  I clawed at the cliff-face, got a handful of loose stones, and swung out over the Chasm once more.

  The rope strained and stretched. I could feel that the Vorla had seized it again from above. I felt something snap. But I was still swinging out; now swinging back again to the cliff wall. I didn’t have much time.

  The rope juddered and jerked.

  I dropped several inches.

  The rope was about to be torn loose.

  From above, I could hear groaning sounds. Wood cracking on wood. I could hear the distant sound of splintering timbers and screeching boards. The Vorla was tugging hard at the rope now. It was going to bring the wooden platform down on top of me.

  The cliff wall loomed large.

  This was my last chance.

  Jamming the torch down my shirt front, I grabbed at a boulder—and found a handgrip.

  The rope made a long ripping sound.

  This was my one, my last chance.

  I yanked hard at the wall, seizing another handgrip and hauling myself on top of the boulder that protruded from the wall. There was a rounded shelf there of perhaps two or three feet. Hardly enough to make use of. But I would have to do it.

  Suddenly, the tension on the rope was gone. Up above, the Vorla had either snapped it or the wooden platform was coming down. I felt the rope falling around me, coiling and looping.
Before the Black Stuff could seize the dropping loops and drag me from this precarious shelf, I tore my legs free and kicked the rope out into the void. It came away from my legs more easily than I had imagined, and I knew then just how easily my legs could have slipped from their bonds at any time and dropped me into the Chasm.

  I fumbled and groped for the torch, twisting around on my haunches.

  My hands were trembling so badly that the torch beam wavered all around me.

  The last coils of the rope fell past, vanishing into the darkness.

  And then the Chasm was filled with a great shuddering roar as the wreckage of the wooden platform and winch exploded and bounced from the cliff walls all around me. I shrank back against the wall, shielding my head. Shattered wooden spars whirled in the air, dust choked me. Rocks, stones and soil cascaded in the darkness. The smallest piece of this wreckage could dislodge me from this boulder, and then the Vorla would have me, after all.

  For the first time in my life, even since the nightmare of the Chasm had begun, I prayed.

  The shuddering became quieter. Now there were only small stones and soil pattering all around me. I waited for the boulder to suddenly slide out of the cliff wall, but it didn’t happen. The dust swirled and was gone.

  Somewhere far below, I could hear the distant echoes of the wreckage as it fell and bounced from the cliff-sides. Now it was only a faint whispering.

  Should I stay quiet? Could I fool the Vorla into thinking that it had cast me down into the Chasm? No, it knew I was here. It knew exactly where I was. Suddenly, I’d found my voice.

  “I’m still here, you bastard.”

  Something hissed in the darkness below and above.

  I swung the torch beam up and down, heard the Vorla retreat, hissing in pain—and was filled with a glad anger that I was able to hurt it. It might still get me…hell, it was odds on that it must get me. But I wasn’t finished yet, and I wasn’t going to give up without a fucking fight.

  Carefully, I stood up on the boulder.

  There were distant noises from above. Was it the Vorla? No. These sounded like gunshots. I remembered the others up on the cliff-top, and the anger came over me again. Just when I needed it.