by Stephen Laws
I examined the cliff-face with the torch beam.
There were lots of ledges, jutting rocks and boulders, lots of handholds—and lots of opportunities for me to go plummeting down into the darkness.
But there was only one way to go.
Slowly, carefully, and with the anger like a slow burn inside, I began to climb.
Chapter Twenty-One
Last Defence
“Let me!” hissed Juliet, reaching for the shotgun.
They had taken refuge behind a tangle of pipes on the other side of the bridge. Annie had rested the barrel across an iron rail, pointing back along the bridge to the other side. Her face was white after she’d thrown up. The shock of what had happened to Luanne had robbed her of strength. Even now, an hour after their flight over the bridge, the horror of what had happened was overwhelming. She looked at Juliet, saw the fury and the grief on her face.
“Are you sure…?”
“I’m sure,” hissed Juliet. “Let me have it!”
But as Annie moved back and allowed Juliet to slide the weapon over to where she crouched, Lisa’s hand suddenly closed on the barrel.
“I know you want to kill one of them,” said Lisa. “For what’s happened to Jay.”
Juliet tried to yank the shotgun back all the way, but Lisa held tight.
“But we’ve only got one shot left, Juliet. And they know it.”
Juliet looked back across the bridge. There was no one to see over there. The children had vanished into the ruins, and the Caffney family—minus two—were nowhere to be seen.
“We can’t afford to waste that shot, Juliet.”
“All right…” said Juliet at last. “All right…I’m okay now.”
Lisa remained fixed on Juliet’s strained, white face. When Juliet nodded and seemed to be more in control, she let go of the barrel. Juliet slid the shotgun over, and pointed it across the Chasm to the other side.
Tracey Caffney was behind them, being carefully watched by Candy. She was sitting miserably, head in hands. She hadn’t spoken since their flight across the bridge, back to the petrol plant. And there was something about her utter misery that had stopped them from sending her back. There was no denying her utter terror of her own family.
There was a noise from behind, and they whirled as Alex came back from the depths of the petrol plant with a bucket in either hand. Stooping, he brought the buckets to where they all crouched behind the tangle of pipes and valves at the foot of the petrol tank nearest to the bridge.
“I’m going to need help,” he said breathlessly. “We need more containers, more buckets or whatever. I got this stuff from the same valve that they used to kill Damon…” He glanced at Candy, but she was looking down into her lap. She shuffled, and began to rise. “No,” Alex went on. “Not you, Candy. It’s best…best that you don’t see any more of what’s back there.”
“I’ll help,” said Lisa, shuffling carefully towards him on all fours.
“Someone’s moving over there,” said Juliet tightly, levelling the shotgun.
Lisa glanced back apprehensively, waiting for Juliet’s finger to tighten on the trigger and for their last shot to be used uselessly in anger.
They all peered back. There was movement in the ruins, but now darkness was creeping over New Edmonville, and it was difficult to make out the shapes moving out there.
“The kids,” said Alex, at last. “They’re rounding up the kids from the ruins. Bringing them back to the edge.”
“Why?” asked Candy, her voice breaking. “What are they going to do? What are we going to do?”
“I’ve got a bad feeling in my bones,” said Alex, carefully positioning the two buckets. “We need to get as much petrol back here as we can. And we’d better pray that Henry Caffney spilt some matches back there, or we’re never going to be able to light any fires.”
“We don’t need any,” said Annie. “I’ve got a lighter.” She swallowed hard. “Just call me Ms. Do-It-Yourself.” She was trying hard to shake off the horror of what had happened, and it wasn’t working. “What’s your bad feeling?” she asked, wiping her mouth. She was struggling hard to reconnect with their present danger again, but her eyes were constantly returning to the small dark shape of Luanne Caffney lying faceless and in a bloody mess on the far side.
“Yeah, they’re rounding the kids up all right. See over there?”
“Alex!” snapped Candy. “What’s your bad feeling?”
“First,” said Alex, wiping his mouth with a trembling hand, “it’s getting dark. And we know that the Vorla comes out of the Chasm in the dark. So we’d better make sure that we’ve got some kind of fire going for protection before that happens. Second, the Caffneys know that we’ve only got one gun, and one shell left in it. My guess is they’re not going to risk one of themselves by rushing the bridge. But if they can get those kids rounded up…”
“Then they’ll herd them across the bridge,” said Juliet tightly. “Use them as a barrier. Get us to use the shot, then just swarm over here and take us again.”
“Right,” said Alex. “So we’re going to have to rig something with that bridge. Soak it in petrol, or something. Make sure we can fire it if we have to. That’s all we can do if…”
A shot rang out from the far side.
Everyone ducked and the bullet ricocheted, screaming amidst the steel canisters.
“If,” said Lisa, “we can get to the bloody thing from here.”
“Those mad bastards might just do our work for us,” said Alex, shaking his head. “Who knows what a gunshot might do if it punctures one of these canisters?”
“Alex,” said Juliet, “you’re full of comforting thoughts.”
“We’ve got to do what Jay would have done,” said Alex.
Juliet looked intently at him. Her voice was strained when she spoke again.
“What’s that?”
Alex stared out across the Chasm as the darkness began to creep swiftly amidst the ruins.
“We’ve got to get angry…and stay angry.”
No one spoke for a while. Tears were flowing down Juliet’s cheeks when she turned back to level the shotgun across the bridge.
“Come on,” said Lisa at last. “Let’s go, Alex.”
Alex nodded, and the next moment they vanished back into the darkness.
The others steeled themselves.
And waited.
Chapter Twenty-Two
The Journal of Jay O’Connor:
To Hell and Back
Back at the beginning, I told you what it was like in the ruins of that school building just after the ’quake hit. Trapped and blinded in the absolute darkness and the fallen rubble. Scrabbling through broken masonry, burst pipes and water-filled, stinking pools. The feeling of suffocation, the confused memories of being locked in my mother’s wardrobe and the nightmares it had brought. The sounds of my terrified sobbing bouncing back at me, confirming that I was stuck in this terrible, confined place. Clawing towards the light, like a mad animal. The grumbling sounds of an approaching avalanche. Running on the spot, groping upwards, waiting for everything to cave in all around me.
I said then that something happened to me.
Something went wrong inside.
In a crazy sort of way, the terror catapulted me out of my mind for a moment. I was suddenly somehow up in the air, above myself and looking down. And despite the darkness, I could see where I was. In a rubble-filled pit, and the mad, clawing, thrashing thing that was beneath me was more like an animal than a human being. From a detached distance, I could see my mad, scrabbling fever to crawl out of that hell-hole. Now I wonder if that first nightmare in the ruins of the school building was also the nightmare of crawling up out of the Chasm. I know it doesn’t make sense, but that feeling of being catapulted was like a flash-forward or a flashback. All I know is the terror was the same, and now I can’t distinguish between the two. I can’t remember much about the climb up out of the Chasm. Only terrible images of the tor
ch flashing in the darkness, and of the great rippling, hissing Darkness recoiling from me on all sides. Did the fear make me go mad again down in the Chasm, the way it made me go somehow “out of my mind” in the school ruins? I don’t know.
All I know is that the nightmare seemed endless, flashing backwards and forwards.
I do remember the faint light above me fading to black as the nightmare went on and on. I remember the torch beam beginning to flicker.
And as I climbed, perhaps a part of me believed that I hadn’t been able to get from the rope to the cliff-side. That same part believed that I really was in the hands of the Vorla, as Daddie-Paul Caffney had promised, and that this was the thousand-thousand deaths that he had also promised.
Suddenly, there was flickering light up above. Flames, definitely. Rippling and dancing on the cliff-face. I clung there, looking at the light. For a moment, still out of my mind, I felt as if I were climbing down. These had to be the flames of the Vorla’s Hell, at the bottom of the Chasm. Christ, I’d been going the wrong way!
But then I could see the ragged cliff-edge up above.
The Darkness hissed below me.
I stabbed the flickering torch down, heard the Vorla retreat in anger.
There couldn’t be any flames in the Vorla’s Hell. It hated fire.
That last twenty feet might have been the most dangerous of all. I’ll never know. But I flew up the side of that cliff-face, clawing and gouging soil all around me. If my fear had guided every careful hand and foothold with a desperate sense of self-survival, that was all forgotten in the mad scramble up that last twenty feet.
When my hand finally gripped the cliff-edge, I hung there for a long time, fingers gripped in tufts of grass and clumps of soil. The torch beam flickered and wavered down into the Chasm. I could still hear the grumbling of that black sea, somewhere below.
The torch went out.
I don’t remember clawing my way up on to the cliff-top.
But the next moment I was lying there, face down and trying to find my breath. My body began to shudder uncontrollably. I didn’t know whether this was real or imagined, didn’t know whether I was alive or dead.
I could see the rough-hewn bridge that led over to the petrol plant.
Someone had started a fire over there, back in the tangled pipework and canisters. That was the reason for the flickering reflection of flames on the cliff wall as I climbed. Were there people over there? I was overwhelmed by the feeling that, whoever they were, those people were important. There were things I had to do. Urgent, important things. Desperately important things. But I was still in my nightmare, and I couldn’t think straight, couldn’t remember a thing.
A deep grumbling came from the Chasm.
I could feel the ground vibrating beneath me.
The Vorla was coming up.
My torch had gone out, and I might have reached the cliff-top but I still wasn’t safe. I was still locked in this hellish nightmare place. I began to slide away from the edge, keeping down low on all fours. There was danger here up top. But I couldn’t remember what that danger might be. Only that I had to stay low, had to get away from this place without being discovered.
Fifty feet or so from the edge, I looked back.
Something black and glinting rolled up from the Chasm.
A wave of oil and tar flowed and spread over the edge, surging over the grass towards me.
I lunged to my feet and ran.
Behind me, I heard the roar of the Vorla as it erupted from the pit and gushed after me.
Suddenly, there were people everywhere!
Kids who had been hiding behind tangled fencing or shattered cement blocks were suddenly leaping and running and screaming all around me. A man’s voice began to yell, as if trying to calm the kids down. I collided with several of them, throwing them out of my way as I ran, and everything was bloody pandemonium. A gun went off somewhere in the darkness.
Suddenly, there was a car up ahead, slewed sideways on to a pile of rubble.
The dark shape of a man suddenly pushed away from where he had been leaning against it. At first he looked unsure as I flung myself forward over the rubble towards him. Then he began dodging from side to side, ready to grab me, trying to guess which way I might go to avoid him.
He guessed wrong.
I hit him hard, square on.
The impact threw us both over the hood of the car.
I grabbed his legs and heaved him over to the other side of the car, heard him cry in pain when he landed awkwardly on the rubble.
I didn’t consider my next move. It was just pure instinct. Maybe there weren’t any keys in the dash, maybe the damned thing didn’t work. Maybe the car had always been there and I just hadn’t seen it before. It might have crashed into this rubble when the ’quake first hit, the driver long gone.
But the next moment I was in the car.
The keys were there, and when I twisted them the engine roared into life.
And right in front of the windscreen, a great tidal wave of bubbling black ooze was rushing at the car.
There were no people now. No running, screaming kids. No men yelling. No figures trying to bring me down.
Just this gigantic wave of glinting black filth, ready to crash down on the car. It would scoop it up, toss it around, tear open the roof. It would fasten its dripping black tentacles on me, tear me apart, devour me body and soul. It would feast on me with insane, inhuman anger, revenged at last for having been denied once again.
I switched on the headlights.
The Vorla shrieked as the twin beams played on its massive black surface.
It splashed away on all sides, the beams cutting through its hideous bulk and into the night.
I dragged the gear-stick into reverse, and the car screeched and bounced away over the rubble. The headlights stabbed through the darkness as I frantically jammed the stick into first. In the rear-view mirror I saw the black tide rising and reforming again behind me. Gushing and bubbling, and shrieking in its thousand-thousand voices.
I put my foot down and the car roared away on the main road down which we had all been brought by the Caffneys. In that moment I suddenly remembered everything.
“Juliet…”
The black tidal wave roared and surged in anger.
There was a shotgun on the passenger seat beside me, but it wasn’t going to help me against what had come out of the Chasm.
I gunned the engine and raced on into the night.
Shrieking its rage, the Vorla came right after me.
Chapter Twenty-Three
The Devil and the Deep Black Sea
“Something’s happening over there!” hissed Juliet, and instantly everyone was alert.
They’d managed to start a fire between themselves and the bridge, using assorted flammable wreckage that Alex and Lisa had managed to find within the plant, keeping it going with the fuel from the opened valve where Damon had met his horrible end. Night had fallen, and with it came the knowledge that the Vorla could erupt at any moment from the Chasm. The flames would be a defence against the hideous Black Stuff as long as they could keep the fire going, and the flickering of the flames against the far cliff-face was some small comfort. But while it illuminated the far side, it also meant that they themselves were much clearer targets for any pot shot from the Caffney’s side. And at any moment, when they’d managed to round up enough terrified kids from the ruins, they might follow through with a plan to rush the bridge.
“The Vorla?” Alex moved close to Juliet, scanning the upper part of the cliff which had been illuminated by the fire.
“No.” Juliet edged around, keeping the shotgun barrel levelled. “I think I saw someone running on the edge. Can’t be sure in this light, though. For a moment it looked as if someone was trying to lower themselves down or… There! Look, there he goes!”
A silhouette was dashing away from the cliff-edge.
“Jesus!” Juliet’s grip froze on the gun. The others
tensed all around her in fear as a great black wave surged up from the Chasm, obliterating the running figure from sight. The reflecting light from the fire glinted on its great oily black surface. Screeching in pain from the light, unable to tolerate the glare any longer, it dissolved to right and left into the darkness, emerging again to ripple up over the cliff-edge in the darker areas, away from the fire. Now they could see that children were running and screaming on the other side; silhouettes dodging and weaving, arms flailing. It was chaos, and they couldn’t make out what was happening now.
There was the roar of a car engine.
“Get ready,” said Lisa. “I think they’re going to charge the bridge.”
They’d gathered makeshift weapons from the ruined petrol plant, to supplement the one shotgun shell. Twisted pipes, jagged glass. As Tracey huddled back in the darkness, moaning and curling herself into a foetus shape, they snatched up the first thing they could lay their hands on and prepared. Grimly, Juliet kept the gun levelled, waited for the surge of kids on the bridge, and prayed that somewhere in there she’d see Henry Caffney.
But the children were not swarming over the bridge.
They had vanished once more into the darkness.
And the screams of fear and terror were continuing.
A churning wave of Darkness, blacker than the night, seemed to spout from the ruins; falling from sight again in the chaotic confusion. The car engine roared again and there was a screech of tyres. Twin headlights stabbed into the sky, swept out over the petrol plant, momentarily blinding them. Then they were gone. There was another screech of tyres and the car engine roared off into the night. They listened to the droning as it dwindled and faded.
Now there was only quiet.
“The Vorla’s gone,” said Candy. “Thank Christ, it’s gone.”
“No it hasn’t,” said Annie.
And when they looked at her white face, they instantly followed her shocked expression back into the depths of the petrol plant behind them.
Where the reflection from their fire finally muted into flickering shadows, something was moving amidst the pipes, the bent fences and the giant containers. Something that flowed and spread, glinting black, its oily tentacles creeping and dripping on the metalwork, testing the barrier between light and darkness, looking for a way in.
