Lost Worlds

by Andrew Lane

  ‘You know what – don’t worry,’ she said. ‘I’ll just walk back the way I came.’

  The shadowy figure didn’t move, and didn’t say anything. Natalie almost convinced herself that it was a trick of the light, maybe a tree or something that looked like a person, but she could suddenly smell something really pungent, like the kind of smell you got in the elephant house at the zoo. Despite herself, she winced and waved a hand across her nose. Before she could stop herself, she said, ‘Did you get that aftershave for Christmas?’ Even as she heard the words come out of her mouth she wished she hadn’t said them. The only thing that was likely to save her from violence was the fact that the person she faced probably didn’t understand English.

  The figure in the shadows made a strange snuffling sound and took a step backwards. As it did so, a sudden strong waft of that zoo smell made Natalie cough and nearly retch.

  The wind chose that moment to push away the rag-like clouds covering the moon. Strong, bright moonlight illuminated the village like a stage spotlight, banishing the shadows for a few seconds.

  Natalie found herself face to face with something from a nightmare.

  It was halfway between a chimpanzee and a man. Its arms were hairy and longer than they should feasibly have been, and it stood in a half-crouch, but it was the face that made her gasp and clutch a hand over her mouth. The face was grey and wizened, like that of an old man, but fringed in wild black hair. The forehead jutted out sharply, casting the eyes in shadow. The thing had a distinct but flattened nose. Its teeth, revealed as it snarled at her, were massive slabs of yellow ivory.

  Natalie backed away, hand still over her mouth. Her heart was pounding.

  The creature – the Almast? – stepped forward. Its back was curved, giving it a hunched look. Its shoulders were almost level with its ears. Its hands were large, and tipped with thick, dirty nails that looked like they could disembowel a pig.

  It was only when she saw its body clearly that Natalie realized why this wasn’t a chimpanzee, or a gorilla, or some other kind of monkey that had somehow ended up in a small village in the wilds of Georgia.

  It was wearing a rough linen shirt and something that looked like a kilt. A turquoise pebble with a hole drilled through it dangled from a leather thong round its neck.

  The Almast took a step towards her, holding out its hand. Was it trying to make friends, or was it reaching for her throat?

  She made a quick decision, and screamed.

  The creature stepped backwards, shocked. Its eyes opened wide. They were startlingly brown and mild. It raised its hand in a stop kind of gesture. Natalie noticed that its other hand was holding a bag, little more than a long length of cloth that had been wrapped round something – probably meat, or grain, or a chicken that the Almast had stolen from the village.

  The ape-like Almast glanced left and right, looking for any sign that Natalie’s scream had alerted anyone to its presence. Nobody else appeared. Natalie couldn’t hear anyone shouting or running towards them.

  The Almast turned back to Natalie. With incredible speed it reached out and clamped its right hand across her mouth. Its skin was dry and hard, like leather, and she could feel the prickle of hairs on its palm sticking into her lips. Her heart was racing so fast that she was worried it was going to burst under the strain.

  Bizarrely, she became fixated with the hairs on its chest, and the polished turquoise stone that hung from its neck.

  The Almast moved closer to her. Tucking the raggedy bag it was holding beneath its right elbow, it raised its left hand to its mouth and pinched its lips together. It stared at Natalie meaningfully. It was trying to tell her to shut up! It was communicating!

  If Natalie wouldn’t take orders from her own mother and father, then she was damned if she was going to take orders from a dirty ape. She wrenched herself free from its grip and shouted at the top of her voice, ‘Help! Anyone, please help!’

  The Almast snarled at her, teeth bared in obvious anger.

  ‘Hey!’ a deep voice shouted. ‘Get off that woman!’

  Natalie turned her head to see Levan Ketsbaia running along the path towards her. He came to a stop a few metres away, mouth open to say something else, but his eyes widened in shock as he suddenly realized exactly what was standing in front of him.

  The Almast dropped the bundle it was holding beneath its right elbow. It stepped forward, arms reaching out for the guide.

  Levan took a step towards the Almast, bringing himself within the circle of its arms. He pushed it hard in the chest. The creature staggered backwards, arms flailing wildly.

  ‘Are you OK, girl?’ Levan asked breathlessly. ‘I heard you scream.’

  Natalie nodded, unable to form words.

  ‘What is this thing?’ he continued.

  ‘It’s the thing we’re looking for,’ she finally managed to say.

  ‘It seems to have found you first,’ he said, but he had taken his eyes off the Almast, and while he was distracted the creature took its chance to spring at him, teeth bared. It was going for his throat!

  Levan grabbed the Almast’s head in both hands and tried to keep its teeth from fastening about his throat, but its hands were scrabbling at his chest. Natalie could see the material of his shirt shredding beneath its nails, and blood begin to splatter across his chest as the nails grazed his skin. His face was creased in pain and exertion.

  The Georgian guide fell backwards. Natalie thought for a second that he had been pushed, but he brought his right leg up, bent tight, and pushed his foot into the Almast’s stomach. As Levan’s back hit the ground, he rolled, still holding on to the creature’s head but pushing up with all the power of his right leg. The Almast flew over him and he let go of its head. It flipped through the air, grunting in fury, and hit the side of a barn. Natalie heard its head connect with a solid thud. It slid down the side of the barn, but, amazingly, when it crumpled to the ground in a heap of tangled limbs, it immediately tried to stand up again.

  ‘Stay back,’ Levan cautioned as he rolled on to his stomach and pushed himself to his feet. His chest was a mass of ripped fabric and bright red blood. He staggered over to where the Almast was holding on to the barn wall in an effort to stay upright. Levan lashed out with his right fist, catching the Almast on the chin. Its head snapped to one side, but it remained upright and conscious. Natalie had a feeling that Levan’s blow would have paralysed an ox, but the Almast seemed to just shake it off.

  Levan tried to bring his left fist up in a hard uppercut that surely would have knocked the creature out, but it grabbed his hand and squeezed. Levan’s expression changed from one of concentrated anger to one of shock as the Almast ground the bones of his hand together, knuckle against knuckle. Natalie braced herself for the cracking sound of something breaking in Levan’s hand, but before things went too far Levan stepped forward and brought his knee up into the Almast’s groin. The creature let go of his hand and squealed. Protecting itself from another attack with its left hand, it swept its right fist sideways across Levan’s face. The guide flew through the air and hit the ground with an audible grunt. Rolling over on to his back, he clutched at his shoulder in agony.

  The Almast glanced from Levan to Natalie and back again, and then at the bag that it had dropped. It seemed uncertain what to do. For a long moment the three of them waited, each for the other to make a move. Eventually the Almast snarled. It took a step towards Natalie, hands outstretched and claw-like. For a second she thought it was going to rush at her again, but the sound of shouts from the direction of the village centre distracted its attention. It darted towards the bag, snatched it up and loped towards the edge of the village.

  There was some kind of disturbance behind Natalie: she could hear voices calling, and torches appeared to be pointed her way, making her shadow flicker in front of her. In the distance the Almast was running past the final building and towards the scrubby bushes that marked the place where the local countryside began. A sudden flash of bright
white light made Natalie blink. The Almast lurched to one side, throwing an arm up to protect its eyes and almost letting go of its stolen bag. The source of the light seemed to be an apple-sized sphere that had been planted on top of a metal pole just past the final building.

  The light vanished, leaving a green, blobby afterglow in the centre of Natalie’s vision. By the time the blob had faded away, the Almast had vanished into the bushes.

  Someone grabbed her shoulder. She turned to find Rhino and Gecko standing beside her, poised for action. A handful of villagers were bent over Levan Ketsbaia, talking to him in rapid Georgian.

  ‘Are you OK?’ Gecko asked, pulling Natalie’s attention back.

  ‘You shouldn’t have wandered off by yourself,’ Rhino said in an irritated tone.

  ‘It was one of those things we’re looking for,’ Natalie gasped. ‘And, by the way – you’re not my father. Or my mother.’

  ‘For which I’m sure we’re all equally grateful,’ Rhino murmured. He glanced towards the village boundary. ‘Are you sure it was an Almast?’

  ‘Either that or they’re making a horror movie around here and they’re doing some late-night filming.’ She sighed. ‘Yes, it was an Almast, not a villager, or a dog, or anything like that. I know what I saw.’

  Rhino looked at Gecko, then out into the darkness. Gecko nodded and ran forward to where the buildings ended and the bushes began. He stopped and stared out into the darkness, pointing his torch in various directions.

  Rhino bent down and examined the ground. ‘The earth’s too hard to take any tracks,’ he said to himself. ‘No rain for a while. We won’t be able to follow it.’

  Gecko walked back more slowly than he had gone out. He was shaking his head. ‘I cannot see anything. It has run away.’

  Rhino crossed over to where the villagers were clustered around Levan. He bent down and talked to the injured guide for a few moments before returning to Natalie and Gecko. He looked angry and frustrated.

  Before he could say anything, Tara arrived. She was breathless from running. ‘I got a signal from one of the sensors. What happened? What did I miss?’ She glanced at Levan, who was being helped to his feet. ‘My God – is he OK?’

  ‘Fortunately, he’s going to live,’ Rhino said. ‘His chest is a mess, and his shoulder appears to be dislocated. There’s some discussion about whether he should be put in the back of a car and driven straight to hospital, or whether a local doctor ought to be called out, or whether the villagers can reset the shoulder themselves. Apart from giving him a tetanus shot I can’t really help.’

  ‘What did that to him?’ Tara breathed, wide-eyed.

  ‘Natalie had a close encounter with one of the Almasti,’ Rhino explained.

  ‘And she survived?’ Tara gave Natalie a thumbs-up. ‘Well done, you.’

  ‘Is that thing something to do with you?’ Natalie asked, indicating the globe on a stick that had given out that bright white flash of light. ‘It’s just that it looks kinda geeky.’

  ‘Yeah, that’s one of our sensors.’ She frowned. ‘Don’t you remember me talking about them on the flight out?’

  ‘Sorry.’ Natalie shrugged. ‘I must have been asleep.’

  ‘I only got one signal.’ Tara looked at Rhino. ‘That means it’s still in the village. If it had come in and then left again there would have been two signals.’

  Rhino shook his head. ‘Natalie said she saw it leaving the village. That means it must have been here before you put the sensors up and activated them.’

  ‘Here in the village?’ Tara repeated. ‘You mean, while I was wandering around alone, that thing might have been watching me? Following me?’

  ‘And you survived?’ Natalie said brightly. She gave Tara a sarcastic thumbs-up. ‘Well done, you!’

  Tara narrowed her eyes and stared directly at Natalie, but Natalie had been stared at by experts – not least, her mother – without being fazed. She just smiled back innocently.

  ‘Well, at least we’ve got a photograph of Natalie’s latest boyfriend,’ Tara said, looking away. ‘Let’s go and take a look at it.’

  Tara led the way back through the village to the inn. Some of the villagers were around, disturbed by the commotion, but the guide, Levan, told them that there was nothing to worry about and encouraged them to go back to bed. There being no street lights to speak of, and no electricity in the houses, Natalie got the impression that they pretty much went to bed when the sun went down and got up when it rose.

  Back in the inn, Tara led them all to her room, which was, Natalie noticed, just as rough as her own.

  Tara’s tablet was on the bed. She flung herself down in front of it and typed some instructions into the keyboard. The screen flashed to life with a photograph.

  Natalie shuddered.

  It was the thing she had seen, captured in mid-stride. Its mouth was open, revealing its yellow, tombstone-like teeth, and its eyes were wide. It definitely wasn’t a villager – not unless they’d been keeping some deformed monster-child hidden away. The picture looked like a brighter, sharper image of the photograph that Calum had found on the internet, the one that had sparked off this whole crazy expedition.

  ‘The hunt is on,’ Rhino murmured.

  ‘The question is,’ Tara added, ‘who is hunting whom?’

  CHAPTER

  fifteen

  Calum sat in front of his computer screens, staring at the image that Tara had emailed through from the village of Ruspiri.

  He couldn’t quite believe it. The picture taken of the Almast by the backpacker had been blurry and difficult to make out. This one was perfectly sharp. There was no doubt this time, no ambiguity. The Almasti existed.

  As well as the image on his central screen, three of the surrounding screens were all showing grainier versions of the same image but seen from various directions, transmitted from the headbands of Tara, Gecko and Rhino. He’d insisted that they all wear the headbands every moment they were awake, now that they were sure they were on the right track. As Natalie’s experience had proved, anything could happen without warning. He was pleased to see that she was wearing hers now, although she kept pulling at it as if she really wanted to take it off.

  ‘Calum, are you listening to this?’ Rhino said.

  ‘I am.’ He quickly flicked his gaze across the screens. ‘Gecko, can you turn round and face Rhino? I want to see him speak.’

  One of the screens displayed a blur for a moment, and then Rhino’s face appeared.

  ‘I’m not sure we can track the creature very well – certainly not now, at night, but even when the sun’s up I doubt that it’s left much of a track. The ground is too hard to retain any imprints, and the vegetation is too dry. It’s going to be difficult to work out where it went. Our best bet is to fall back on the original plan – look for likely areas in the foothills where a village or a settlement might be hidden.’

  ‘I understand what you’re saying.’ Calum sighed. ‘But I wish there was some way of capitalizing on the fact that you’ve actually had a face-to-face experience.’

  ‘Actually,’ a voice said, ‘I think there’s a way you might be able to track it.’

  It took Calum a couple of moments to identify the voice, and just as he did so all but one of the headband cameras suddenly slewed round to focus on Natalie’s face.

  ‘What do you mean?’ Rhino’s voice asked.

  Natalie looked uncomfortable at being the focus of so much attention. Her gaze flickered from side to side, as if she was looking for some way out, and there were spots of colour in her cheeks. ‘Well,’ she said, ‘I kinda slipped my mobile phone into one of the pockets on its shirt-thing.’

  There was silence in the room in Ruspiri. As far away as England, Calum could have heard a pin drop. ‘You did what?’ he asked eventually, if only to break the silence.

  ‘I slipped my mobile into its shirt pocket.’

  Rhino had found his voice by now. ‘Why did you do that?’ he asked mildly.

&
nbsp; ‘Well, it wasn’t like I was getting much of a signal, and I didn’t want to talk to any of my friends because it would just make me sad. And it occurred to me that you guys might be able to track my mobile’s signal.’ She looked concerned. ‘You can do that, can’t you? I mean, I’ve seen it on CSI.’

  ‘Yes,’ Calum said, ‘we can do that. Or, rather, I can do that from here. But, Natalie, that was a brilliant idea.’

  ‘Don’t sound so surprised,’ she said.

  ‘Won’t the Almast feel the weight of the phone in its pocket?’ Tara’s voice asked.

  Natalie shook her head. ‘It’s a really lightweight mobile. I keep forgetting I’ve got it with me.’ She paused, and smiled brightly. ‘And it’s pink!’

  ‘Battery life?’ Gecko asked.

  ‘I charged it yesterday from the lighter socket in the van. It’s got pretty much a full charge.’

  ‘Let’s hope your mother doesn’t ring it,’ Gecko’s voice said.

  Natalie flinched. ‘Actually, what worries me is: what happens if she rings and that creature answers?’

  There was silence for a few moments as the group tried to imagine the consequences, and then tried not to.

  ‘I’ll start the tracking programs,’ Calum said. ‘If I get a location, I’ll let you know.’

  Rhino started to say something, then paused as the sound of raised voices from outside intruded on the conversation. ‘Hang on a sec,’ he said. ‘I’m going to check on what’s going on out there.’

  ‘Tara,’ Calum said, ‘while I’m booting up the tracking programs and Rhino is talking to the villagers, can you run a check on the boundary sensors? I’d hate to have something sneak past them while we were distracted.’

  ‘Will do, boss.’

  ‘I’ll go with her,’ Natalie offered.

  The team in Georgia fragmented as each of them went different ways, and the computer screens in Calum’s apartment started to display different pictures rather than different versions of the same one. Calum switched his attention to a screen where he could flash up the apps that he could use to track mobile-phone locations. It wasn’t entirely legal, but then it wasn’t entirely illegal either. It was a grey area of law. It took him less than five minutes to call up a Google Earth map of northern Georgia with the position of Natalie’s phone on it. The accuracy wasn’t perfect – the cell size was pretty huge that far into the wilds of the country – but it was enough to work out the location of the Almast to within a mile or so. It was heading roughly north-west, away from the village and into the mountains.