The Devil's breath

17

For a moment, Max was floating, suspended on a cushion of air. He watched!Koga vanish, felt rather than heard the water pressure roaring below him, and then he plummeted into a gray soup of spume and fog. Darker and darker the funnel grew as a bizarre jumble of thoughts and panic confused his mind.

They had gone to the big swimming baths in town and the fifteen-meter board was a test of nerve. There were a couple of boys who could dive from up there, but most found an excuse to not even climb the three-story platform. Except that Max could not turn away from a dare, particularly when it came from Baskins and Hoggart. It was sheer bravado, and he swore he wasn’t ever going to do it again. If they did it, he’d do it, he had responded to Hoggart’s challenge.

As it was, Baskins was nursing a bruised shoulder from a rugby game, which let him off the hook. So Max and Hoggart had made their way up to the top. Max was surprised when he got up there to find just how high fifteen meters was. It didn’t look that bad from poolside, but now that he stood on the two-meter-wide board, gripping the handrail-God, it was a long way down. A hell of a long drop. Further than he’d imagined. His knees felt a bit wonky and his knuckles whitened. He could see that Hoggart was probably more scared than he was, because his jaw had slackened and his eyes were screwed up, as if trying to shut out the distance. Thankfully Max had kept his fear under control.

These two senior boys were always going to give him a hard time, it was in their nature, so by taking this leap of faith, literally, Max reasoned he would get them off his back once and for all.

He let go of the rail and turned to Hoggart. He remembered saying, “Last one down’s a sissy!” And without allowing himself to think any more about it, he stepped into space.

His arms flailed, his feet pedaled, and he kept falling and falling, his stomach lurching over and over again until he hit….

The water sucked him under. The Devil’s Breath was now a seething turmoil. He fell through the surface and kept going down. He remembered seeing the entrance to the tunnel and even more rock face below that, so he must have fallen twenty meters or more, but his descent was stopped by the upwards surge.

Instinctively he had held his breath the moment he sensed the fingers of water reaching at him, but the sucking water seemed to go in different directions and the pressure was crushing him.

Fragments of light from above splattered across his vision as he was tossed this way and that, as if by a giant washing machine; after a few seconds his brain told him that there was no way he could fight this kind of underwater turmoil. He had to let the water take him. He had to stop fighting. The more he struggled, the less his chance of survival.

What survival? Already his lungs were bursting, his ears hurt like hell from the pressure and he was being tossed around like a rat savaged by a terrier. He curled up in a ball, hoping that might reduce the thrashing from the water, but it only made matters worse; by trying to hug his knees he squeezed his chest and there was precious little air left in his lungs. Clamping his jaws even tighter, he tried to swallow, simulating a breath, but that was a momentary distraction from the pain in his chest. This was the end now. He could swim the length of an Olympic-sized pool underwater by taking time to build up the amount of air in his lungs and then taking a strong dive for momentum. That was right on the edge of his endurance. This was like being smashed, time and again, by a tidal wave. The pounding water was pulling him this way and that. His legs felt as though they were being wrenched out of their sockets and his arms were stretched like a contortionist’s.

Blackness. His mind or the pit? He didn’t know. His last fragments of consciousness called on God, his mother, his father, and settled finally on a desperate internal cry for help to anyone who was listening-as long as they helped him. And behind it all was the glimmer of thought that tried to make him fly. As he had before. If he could just burst through the surface and fly, he would be free. He could breathe again.

But the power was not there.

He had to open his mouth and suck in the water. He would choke and vomit, and he would die but he had no choice, his burning lungs were going to explode anyway.

The sensation altered. There were flecks of foam close to his face-that meant there was air. It was almost completely dark, but now there was some gray light above his face and he reached out through the frothy water. He was sure he felt cold air. Kicking and twisting, he arched his back, forcing his head upwards. His head broke the surface, his ears thundered with the sound of something like a waterfall, and he was barreling along, but his face was clear of the water. He gulped, the pain in his ribs eased, but his lungs felt raw. Time and time again, he kept gulping.

As he gobbled up the air, he could see he was being pushed along as if he were on a water slide. He was inside a vaulted cave, half-filled with the water that forced him along. Paper-thin beams of light, deflected from fissures in the roof, gave just enough illumination to see by. He was traveling fast on a white-water ride, and if he could keep his body in a fairly stable position he might be able to keep himself from being pulled under again. How fast and how far he had gone he couldn’t even guess, but the white water reflected what little light there was, enough for him to see a couple of hundred meters ahead.

The roar of the water, magnified by the tunnel’s walls, dulled his thoughts, but his mind was clearing sufficiently for him to realize what had happened and where he was. The surge had taken him into the very entrance he was trying to climb down to. Pushed up by the water into the fluted walls, he was being washed along the channel that would eventually smash into the churning blades of a generator. Even if he had not fallen and had clambered down here, the unexpected surge of water would have caught him. In fact, he would probably have been crushed by the sheer weight and power of the water as it forced its way into the tunnel. By falling into the upwards surge, he had become part of the mass, and that had cushioned him.

As quickly as possible he took in as much of his surroundings as he could. Vaulted cave-possibly twenty-odd meters high to the first rocks? Then broken layers that kept going up and up-slabs of uneven rock that became cracks and slits for the deflected light from somewhere way, way above. The walls were smooth because of the thousands of years’ worth of water traveling through them, and he hadn’t felt anything like a riverbed beneath his feet yet, so the water was probably pretty deep. Must be, to have this power.

He was being pushed past a cave system. Cathedral-sized chambers went off to the left and right, but they only sipped away the overspill from the main flood that carried Max along. This wasn’t a sightseeing trip. As amazing and awe-inspiring as these underground caves were, he was still fighting to stay alive. His brain was back in gear, so he tried to alter the course of his journey. By dropping a leg down he could steer his body slightly, and if he combined that with an arm-dragging movement he could almost spin himself around in the water. More confident now that he had at least some control over this pell-mell ride, he peered forward into the half-light.

Sooner or later he would have to make a life-saving decision, because wherever this water went and whatever it went into, he would have only a hundred meters or so before he saw it. And judging by the smooth walls, there seemed little chance of clambering out of this underground river, especially at this rate of knots.

He tested the strength in his arms and legs, each one in turn. Sore and strained but still working OK. Nothing broken, nothing torn. Aching muscles he could deal with. He had been lucky.

The roar of the water had diminished, the deeper underground he had gone, and he realized he was not traveling in any kind of downwards direction, so it was the sheer weight and volume of water that carried him along. It still ran deep-no bottom to reach down and touch. His breathing had steadied, the giddiness was gone. He was alert, but he gulped more air when the river took him into a black spot, where no light penetrated from above. That was scary, until the opaque glow picked up the rocks and white-flecked water again.

There was a different sound now: a hum-a deep, low resonance that intruded on the water’s gurgling. Max peered ahead anxiously. The walls obviously were throwing the sound, so it was impossible to tell how close he was to the source of the hum. But he knew the generator had to be at the end of this tunnel, and hydroelectric blades spinning at the rate needed to generate enough power for Skeleton Rock were going to be the equivalent of him going through a juice extractor.

A bend ahead in the tunnel’s wall, like a fast curve on a race track, swept the water in and around, changing its direction completely. Max went with the water, trying to keep himself above the surface as the speed churned the torrent over itself. Now he faced a black tunnel-a green-hued light in the distance. A blinking eye. The water reflected no light from above; the green tinge barely registered at the end of the tunnel, and the sound was now a deep-chested hum. This was it. That fast-approaching green light must be from the machinery. He had to get off this ride in the next thirty seconds.

He pulled and pushed himself from one side of the water to the other, but all he managed to do was bump into the walls. The channel narrowed, creating extra power to hit those blades at the end. Max tried desperately to gauge the size of the generator sitting at the end of the narrowing tunnel, hoping there was a gap, a crevice, anything he could try to aim for, but the blackness was swallowed whole by the green monster.

As he sped closer, the blinking eye became more obvious; it was the blades rotating so quickly-they flickered the light. It was mesmerizing. Not only were the blades spinning at a blurring speed, but the size of the machine filled the whole cavity. It was as big as a shipping container. The light settled in a sickly reflection from the walls onto the water, rivulets of green picking up its currents like strands of weed.

There was no way for Max to fight the force of water behind him. He had only seconds left. Then he saw one of the green strands slither away to the right, as if going straight into the wall, barely four meters before it met the churning blades. Was it only a reflection? A trick of the water and light? No, the tendril of light was being snatched away into a crevice that ran from top to bottom-a tall, narrow canyon, barely wide enough for his body to fit through, but it was a chance!

He jammed his right arm into the water, felt the tug of resistance, urged his body to fight the grasping current; tried to ignore, unsuccessfully, the smashing blades that sounded like a huge ship’s propeller threshing water, and yelled as loudly as he could, sending a bolt of energy into his body. He spun crazily, felt the sharp, jarring shock of impact on his shoulder as he collided with the crevice’s wall. Then he was through.

Within moments the water calmed. The sounds behind him were blanketed by a wall of rock as the torrent became a meandering stream, and he felt, for the first time, coarse sand and gravel beneath his feet. The water became as placid as a village pond.

He scrambled onto what felt like a small beach. There was no light here, only the dull glow that barely reached him from the main tunnel. But he was out of the water. The place had a dank, wet-cellar smell but, compared to the smashing sounds still going on twenty or thirty meters back, it was a haven of peace and quiet.

He stood shakily on the crunching gravel, but his legs wouldn’t carry him. The spasm in his stomach made him retch, then he puked, mostly water. He must have swallowed liters of the stuff, at least that was how it felt. Better out than in. He sank down, rubbed warmth and circulation back into his legs and then, finding a boulder for support, pulled himself upright. This time his legs held. His shoulder hurt, but that would only be a hefty bruise. He waited, his eyes trying to penetrate the darkness, but it was almost pitch-black in there. The pool of water settled like oil once it had escaped the flowing main channel, from where the threshing sounds still reached him. The air barely moved; although slight, it was obviously the result of those blades causing a backdraft.

He looked harder into the darkness, desperately trying to pick up any fragment of light reflected from the main tunnel. Something which looked like the sharp, curved branches of a tree protruded from the narrow opening. It was obviously something spewed up from the belly of the pit he’d fallen into that had been swept along with the tide of water, finally getting snagged and jammed at the entrance to this side pool. Maybe he could use a branch as a support and probe the water for a way out. Edging around the wall, he waded back into the water. He had not noticed these branches as he was being funneled into the chamber. Had one of the tree’s points snagged him-because he could now see it was clawlike, as big as a barrel-it could have speared him right through. He grabbed hold of one of the branches and realized that the smooth surface was not actually wood but bone. He was grasping the stripped rib cage of a big animal, something like a wildebeest or a gemsbok. Obviously the animal had fallen into the Devil’s Breath and endured the same terrifying journey as Max, ending up jammed and drowned at the entrance. Only the rib cage remained, and most of the ribs were shattered into ragged points, lethal spears which would have killed him if he’d struck any of them. They might still be of use. He yanked hard at the rib with the least curve to it. It came away and, using it as a bent staff, he made his way back to the shore.

What to do now? He should explore the cave and its pool further, but the more he thought about that, the less appealing the idea became. There was no shred of light and if he fell and injured himself he was finished. His right shoulder already throbbed from the impact with the wall, and his back and side were grazed from being bounced down the tunnel.

His original idea had been to climb down to the tunnel and try to gain access to the fort. And that was still his objective, but, as long as the water turned those lethal blades, he had no chance. Well, the water had to stop at some stage because the Devil’s Breath erupted at different times, so the water surge would stop and probably leave only a shallow level of water in the tunnel. He would move back into the main tunnel and see if there was any way through the blades. Satisfied he had some sort of plan, however risky, Max was suddenly very thirsty, but the brackish water smelled too off-putting; besides, he had already vomited everything he’d swallowed, so he would just have to sit tight and wait for the water to stop flowing.

The green light weakened to a barely luminous glow. The threshing calmed, though it still continued, and the hum subsided. The whole place suddenly became still. The whooshing tide no longer slapped the tunnel’s walls and the river became as fearsome as an English canal on a beautiful summer’s day.

Now he noticed for the first time how humid the cave was and he heard the splash of condensation dropping into the quiet water. He dare not stop and rest now. Not only was he afraid of falling asleep in that darkness, but he knew that unless he used this adrenaline to carry him onwards, sleep would seize up his muscles. He’d be as stiff as a board and would never manage to crawl through anything. No, the blades had to be confronted, because behind them must be a generator room and above that the fort … and in there, his father.

He was about to ease himself back into the pool when he sensed a movement in the water. Barely a ripple at first, then it became obvious. Like the effect of a stone being tossed into a pond, this undulation signaled something in the water. Something pushing the water ahead of itself, and it was coming towards him.

His eyes strained, peering into the cave, following the curve of the small beach as far as he could, but he saw nothing. Then the faint light caught a movement. Something slithered. Like a giant white slug. And then another. The water ripples increased. Whatever the creatures were, they had sought refuge further back from the noise and turmoil of the channeled water and, now that everything had fallen quiet, they had returned from the blackness and the depths.

He stared as hard as he could, straining to see what the creatures were. Only when he heard a heavier splash of another giant white slug entering the water did he realize what was coming towards him.

Albino crocodiles. Blind, never having seen daylight, the offspring of ordinary crocodiles swept down here who-knew-when. They had survived and bred, their bodies adapting to their dark environment, gradually losing their sight and color, living on carcasses washed down the tunnel.

They didn’t need to see; they could smell meat and they could sense movement of a distressed animal.

And Max was both.