Black Mountain

THIRTY-ONE

‘Charles?’ Matt swung around to the cave’s dark interior, and then back the way they had come. He held up his hand to Thomas who was about to speak, and tilted his head to listen for another few seconds. ‘Charles? Hey, where the hell did Charlie Brown go?’

Sarah glanced around, then crowded in close to him, the small boot still tucked under her arm. ‘He’s not here. I didn’t see him go.’

Matt swung his flashlight back and forth, taking a few steps deeper into the cave. ‘Charles… Charlie Brown… you there?’

Sarah joined in the calling, her voice bouncing away into the darkness.

‘Keep your voices down,’ Thomas said sharply.

Matt turned his flashlight on the old Indian. His usually impassive face held a look of resignation, and something else… fear perhaps. Matt didn’t like it. In the flashlight’s glare, Thomas was bleached of all colour, and even the cynical half-smile he seemed to permanently wear had fallen away.

Thomas motioned with his head towards the cave’s dark interior. ‘Mr Schroder’s tracks lead that way… along with tracks from the thing I feared we might find.’ He looked briefly back the way they had come. ‘I say it again: I think we should leave… now.’

‘We’re not leaving without our friend, or without knowing what happened to Emma Wilson,’ Sarah said.

Thomas lifted his arm and pointed to one of the passages off the main cave. ‘He went in there. If you choose to follow, I think you will find what you seek, Ms Sommer.’

Sarah moved towards the passage, but Matt grabbed her arm. ‘Hang on a minute.’ He turned to Thomas. ‘What if…’ He couldn’t finish. The words he wanted wouldn’t come. Already his mind was becoming crowded with memories of a terrifying journey miles beneath the Antarctic ice… a trip that had ended badly for a lot of people.

‘Can you…’ Matt swallowed and tried again. ‘Thomas, can you please stay here… and, ah, cover us?’

Thomas unzipped his jacket, the noise extraordinarily loud in the darkness, to expose the oversized grip of the Colt Anaconda. He touched it briefly as if for reassurance, but didn’t pull it free. Instead, his hand travelled up to the small leather bag around his neck. With a swift tug, he ripped it free and wrapped the leather string around his fist, tucking the cord ends under the loops to keep it fastened to his hand. The gesture seemed so… final. It scared Matt more than the sight of the huge gun sticking out of the old man’s belt.

‘I will wait for you,’ Thomas said.

Sarah made a tsking sound at the sight of the gun, then pulled away from Matt and stepped into the smaller cave. Almost immediately, she vanished into the darkness.

Matt took a half-step after her, then turned back to Thomas. He felt his heart pounding in his chest. ‘Okay… thanks,’ he said, and held the old man’s eyes.

‘Matthew Kearns,’ Thomas said softly, barely above a whisper.

Matt blinked as if a spell had been broken.

‘Be careful… some legends are real.’

Matt nodded. He’d heard that phrase before, but couldn’t remember where. He turned to jog after Sarah and found her fifty or so paces ahead along the dark tunnel.

A rank stench filled his nostrils, and he held his hand over his nose and mouth and spoke in a pinched whisper. ‘Holy crap, this can’t be good for you.’

Sarah stumbled, and stopped. She moved her torch beam in broad arcs over the cave floor. ‘Bones,’ she said.

Matt caught up with her and grabbed her upper arm. ‘Slow down. If Charles isn’t here, we’ll try the next cave. I don’t want to go too deep… Huh, what did you say?’

He took another step and heard something brittle crunch underfoot. He swung his beam to his feet and saw a piece of smashed moulded plastic — part of the dart gun Charles had been carrying.

‘Charles?’ he whispered, and swung his beam in wider arcs, stopping it on a rivulet of dark lumpy fluid that ran down the wall twenty feet in front of them.

‘Oh no, that’s clotting blood,’ Sarah said.

Together, they lifted their flashlights up along the blood trail… to illuminate a ghastly sight.

Sarah screamed, a high-pitched sound that threatened to damage Matt’s ears in the small space.

Charles’s head sat at a slight angle on a natural rock shelf, his mouth pulled open in a scream that would never end, the stump of his neck ragged and uneven where it had been torn from his body. It rested next to other heads — some fresh, some desiccating.

Matt doubled over, a whining mewl coming from his mouth in the instant before he vomited onto the bones at his feet. The repulsive, pervasive stench was in the air all around him — in him, in his nose, his mouth, his lungs. I killed him, he thought. I brought him here and now he’s dead.

He straightened, wiping his mouth, and lifted a shaky hand to take hold of Sarah. Behind him, a sound smashed out, so loud and close it was like a physical blow to the back of his head.

Matt spun quickly, nearly slipping on his vomit. At the back of the cave stood a hulking form, so large he could barely adjust his eyes to take it in. Its face was that of a gargoyle, with pink boiled-looking skin, flaring nostrils, and patchy hair that peaked to a crest on its crown. Its mouth looked like that of a grotesquely painted harlot, its lips garish red with blood. From one of its shovel-sized hands dangled Charles’s limp and mangled remains.

The monster roared again, revealing enormous yellow canines as long as Matt’s fingers.

Matt did the only thing he could think of. He threw his flashlight into the creature’s face, grabbed Sarah and yelled, ‘Run!’ as loudly as his strangled voice would allow.

Thomas’s scalp crawled when Sarah’s scream came bouncing out of the dark cave. He had hoped they would find nothing, but in his soul he had known it was a vain wish.

A small glow appeared in the passage, becoming a beam of light that waved around madly as Matt dragged Sarah and her torch back to the main cave and the exit. He grabbed at Thomas as they passed, but the Indian shrugged out of his hand. He could see Sarah’s white face, hear her terror in her panting breath. Matt was babbling something about heads and bones, but there was no time for talk.

‘Go!’ Thomas shouted into the young man’s face. ‘The killing must stop tonight. Tooantuh will come and you must be ready for him. Help him to push the beast back into the mountain, or you will all die — like your friend.’ He gave Matt an almighty shove towards the cave mouth. ‘Go!’

Matt looked as though he was about to speak, but Thomas turned away. In another few seconds, he was inside the passageway and swallowed by the dark. He closed his eyes for a moment, trusting his senses. The warm breeze that flowed from the inner caves was snuffed out, as if something had moved to block the source of the draught. It is here.

Thomas began to chant softly. The words that he had only half-believed for most of his life, he now sang as if they were the only words that had ever mattered to him. He called on his forefathers for strength and courage. He asked them to prepare the welcome fire for he would be joining them soon.

It is close now.

He opened his eyes, but could see nothing in the pitch dark. A revolting smell enveloped him, along with a sensation of body warmth — something was moving stealthily around him, displacing minuscule amounts of air.

Thomas raised his gun and fired. The recoil jolted his thin arm all the way back to the shoulder, and his ears rang with the sound of a thousand sirens. But in that split second of muzzle flash, he saw the face of his ancestors’ enemy above him, a harbinger of agony and death. He brought the gun up again and fired, trying to locate the thing by the flash — but it was useless after the bullet had already flown. The only way he was going to hit it was through luck or the will of his ancestors.

He stood in the blackness, the ringing in his ears making them as useless as his eyes. His arm shook from the strain of holding up the heavy Colt, but as he contemplated changing hands a savage blow smashed into his forearm, its force almost dislocating his shoulder. His hand immediately felt light. He knew the gun was gone, but there was no pain. He brought his other hand up to rub his forearm, but there was nothing there — the arm had been severed at the elbow. His fingers came away hot and wet with blood.

Thomas sank to his knees, and hoped he had given Matt and Sarah enough of a head start.

He laughed softly in the dark and tilted his head upwards. ‘Oh, Great One, may your next battle be with a stronger warrior than an old man.’

He didn’t feel the horrific blow that came down on his upturned face.

The cold, the darkness, the closeness of the trees pressing in all around them; it was just like last time beneath the ice. Matt’s frightening memories began to overwhelm him. He sprinted down the path, trying to keep pace with Sarah, whose long legs seemed to dance over the deepening snowdrifts rather than sink into them like his did. He glanced frantically over his shoulder many times, even though whatever had been pursuing them seemed to have fallen back. He didn’t think for a moment it was Thomas; he’d heard gunshots from inside the cave. He also didn’t believe they’d outpaced their follower, and was damned sure he wasn’t going to stop or let it get in front of them.

Sarah carried the only flashlight, and he prayed that she was following the trail Thomas had brought them up on. It was too dark and too cold to get lost. He almost laughed; the cold was the least of their worries right now.

He thought again of Charles, his waxen face that would sit screaming in that dark cave until it dried to a leathery skull; a grisly trophy for a creature that he’d only half-believed existed. A wave of nausea washed over him. He wasn’t going to let Sarah or himself suffer the same fate.

‘Faster!’ he screamed at Sarah’s back, even as he knew that if she had any speed left in her legs, he certainly didn’t.