The Cavern Read online

  Jelly mixed with blood oozed between lacerated eyelids. He might need his voice to drive the hunger of her children, but he could do without functioning eyes.

  Her stomach growled, hunger once more needling her gut, forcing her to action. She dropped to all fours and walked to the chamber’s watery exit, tail held stiff at the prospect of another hunt. After the challenge of the last fight, she would bring her young mate to join the attack. The Miner’s Mother took a deep breath, filling each of the four separate air reservoirs in her thorax with the air, and dived.

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  What had seemed like a narrow crack in the rock wall was larger than expected. There was no discussion needed as they plunged into it, leaving the underground lake and cavern behind. The passage opened wider a short way in, enough room for three men to walk shoulder to shoulder, and Sam barely had to duck his head as they ran. The ground, however, was a treacherous obstacle course of rock, gravel and ankle-turning irregularity. He winced as his heel trod on a sharp spike of rock, biting his lip to stifle a yelp of pain as he ran on.

  “There’s a blue light ahead, must be glow-worms or something,” panted Ellie. The steady incline was starting to tax Sam’s strength as well. Spotting the nebulous glow, he grunted an acknowledgement, not having the breath to reply.

  As the glow-worms came properly into view, he remembered where they’d seen evidence of the creatures earlier in the week. In the mine they had explored, there’d been a blue glow coming from the breach into the cave. His chest tightened at a fresh spurt of hope, but he kept it to himself, refusing to jinx the chance as he ducked beneath the first hanging threads. Glowing tendrils, beaded by globs of sticky mucous, hung from the ceiling to catch unsuspecting insects. The air movement of Sam and Ellie’s passage caused the blue threads to sway, making the entire ceiling look like a writhing sea anemone as they streaked underneath.

  And then suddenly – there it was. As the roof lowered and cave gave out, a hole appeared in the ceiling, opening into the square cut lines of a mine tunnel. Ellie whooped with excitement and Sam found himself joining in. He scrambled over the lip into the tunnel, then hauled his girlfriend up by her hand.

  They set off again, the stone shrine flashing past on his right. Light started to filter into the tunnel from above, rendering his failing torch obsolete, and suddenly he was standing at the base of a shaft beside Ellie, looking up to what seemed an impossibly bright blue sky. Sam’s muscles felt like jelly, his hands shaking.

  They were alive.

  ***

  Jack dumped a pair of tanks on the dirt, then rubbed absently at his left bicep. The old bite wound ached like a bitch, while his arthritic knees felt like they were lined with barbed wire. But the job was done. Between Mia and himself, they’d managed to move everything of value out of the tent and well back from the growing sink hole.

  Mia looked up from where she knelt, uprooting tent pegs to pull the structure back. “Did you hear that?”

  Jack paused, and then he caught the sound as well, a muffled chirp of a mobile phone coming from one of the backpacks. Body aches instantly forgotten, he darted over and yanked the bag in question off the ground. He fished a smart phone from a side pocket, the same one Mia had found on the tent floor, and hit the green button.

  “Hello?”

  Jack’s shoulders sagged with relief. “Bloody good to hear your voice, Sam. The shaft you climbed down is, ah…” he paused, eyes scanning the expanding sink hole. “Out of action, permanently. Where the hell are you? I’ve got Mia here with me, we can come and get you.”

  He nodded, listening to the destination for pick up. “Right we’ll be there ASAP.” Jack shoved the phone in his pocket and saw Mia already hastening for the ambulance.

  “Where’s the pick up?”

  Jack climbed into the passenger seat of the ambulance and slammed his door shut. “No idea, but Sam said you’d know. They climbed out of a disused mine shaft supposedly not far from here. Abandoned house, pine trees. You guys attended a prank call there?”

  ***

  Mia struggled to keep her eyes on the road as she listened to the conversation behind her. They had found Sam and Ellie standing on the driveway of the deserted old farmhouse with the old opal mine shaft. If it was possible, the place had seemed even more oppressive this time around compared to when they’d attended the prank call.

  On the way over, Jack had given her a rapid backstory to the Miner’s Mother, a tale that despite all the weird shit she’d seen over the past day, seemed a step too far for belief. But that was before she’d pulled Sam and Ellie into her ambulance. The pair’s story matched the old barman’s perfectly, their shell-shocked expressions devoid of artifice.

  Ellie had directed her to return to the sink hole at speed, where she and Sam had frantically rummaged through the rescued pile of gear until the equipment needed was found; two tanks of air mix suitable for diving at greater depth, along with other items needed to re-enter the water.

  “So, you’re sure you want to go back down there, even after everything you’ve experienced?” asked Jack. “You were lucky to make it out this time, she might not let it happen again.”

  Ellie’s expression was fatalistic as she met the old man’s gaze, like she knew she was living on borrowed time, and accepted the deal without question. “While there’s a chance my brother is still alive, I’m not leaving him behind.”

  “Nor will I,” said Sam. “Without his help, the first beast would have had me. I owe him.”

  Jack looked slowly between the pair before sighing. He looked every year of his seven decades, skin pale, the lines of his face like cracks in stone. “If we’re going to do this, we’ll do it properly. And that means taking on the bitch with more than a bloody knife.”

  “Mia?”

  She took her eyes off the road for a second, glanced over her shoulder to see Jack staring at her. “Take us back to the hotel. We’ve got some firepower to pick up.”

  ***

  Trevor drummed his fingers on the desktop, agitation leaking despite his attempts to maintain a calm façade before his colleague. It had taken a threat of physical violence to stop his Constable driving out to the cave. Brown had eventually capitulated, but Trevor didn’t think he’d let the issue go, not with the way he kept throwing sullen glances whenever he thought his Sergeant wasn’t looking.

  Trevor pulled up his sister’s number on his mobile, hit call and put it to his ear. “Come on Kaz, pick up the bloody phone,” he muttered under his breath. Trevor cursed as the call went straight to voicemail for the tenth time. Something had gone wrong.

  Unable to sit a moment longer, he got up and walked to the window, peering between the venetians at the deserted main street. Movement to the right caught his attention, and he watched with growing consternation as the town’s ambulance squealed to a halt in front of the Pintalba Hotel.

  You got to be fucking kidding me. His eyebrows drew together, jaw clenching in fury as Trevor saw Jack disembark along with two of the cavers.

  “Constable Brown!” he shouted over his shoulder. “Hold the fort. I’ve got some unfinished business to attend.”

  “The bar’s closed. Everyone out!” shouted Jack. The handful of patrons scattered like he’d just lobbed a grenade amongst them, casting worried glances over their shoulders as they made for the stairs. A local remained at the bar, apparently unperturbed by the outburst.

  “That includes you as well, Bob,” growled Jack as he took the SLR off the shelf above the war memorial.

  The man drained his pint of beer, Adam’s apple bobbing, before placing his glass on the bar. “Easy on, mate, I’m going.”

  He’d made it half way to the street door when he paused and turned back. “Wait, are you going after it again?”

  Jack looked at him warily. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  “Bullshit you don’t.” He glanced at a framed drawing of the Miner’s Mother behind the bar. “Everyone knows wh
at you did back in the seventies. And now that Brooke Smith and the Carmichael boy have disappeared, rumour is that she’s hunting again.”

  Jack gave him a hard look. “Are you volunteering for service, then?”

  Bob put his hands palms up and began backing to the door. “Fuck no.”

  “Then get the hell out, we don’t have time for this shit,” growled Ellie.

  Bob glanced at Ellie, his face pale before he scarpered for the door without another word. Jack waited for the man to leave, then ran through a weapon’s check of the SLR with the practiced ease of a veteran. He paced over to the bar where he retrieved a loaded magazine from a cupboard below the register.

  “Just a sec,” said Sam. “You said the firing pin was removed?”

  Jack shrugged as he rested the weapon on the top of the bar. “I lied. This rifle’s as good now as it was when I carried it in Vietnam.”

  He turned on his heel and made for the door to his private quarters, waving them on to join him. “Come on, I’ll need a hand to get the rest of it.”

  Ellie hung back for a moment. “We’re wasting time. Every minute spent here is another that my brother’s alone with that beast.”

  “I agree with Jack on this one, El,” said Sam. “There’s no point taking it on with a knife, that’ll only see us add our heads to its collection. If we’re going to have a chance of bringing him back, we need proper weapons.”

  Sam looked across at the barman. “You said there was something here that we could take underwater?”

  He nodded, then continued through the doorway out of sight, leaving Sam no option but to follow. Sam caught up in the hallway. At one end of the hall was a room with a desk, probably Jack’s office, while another two doors exited off to the right. One had a heavy padlock and latch holding it closed. The barman opened the lock and pushed the door. He fumbled for a switch around the corner for a moment, then light flooded the space. It was a tiny box of a room without any window, but in reality, the space was more gun locker than anything else.

  “When I couldn’t find the creature after it took Dean’s kid, I figured she’d be back sometime again. I stockpiled this stuff just in case.”

  A gun rack on the rear wall held a selection of hunting rifles. Below the rifles was a smaller rack holding four hand guns. The barman claimed his old Colt service pistol, then placed three Glock hand guns into a duffle bag along with ammunition for the different weapons.

  “What about for during the dive?”

  “That’s what these are for.” Jack leant into the corner of the room and retrieved two spear guns that had been hidden behind the rack’s edge. “I would have preferred an APS underwater assault rifle to give you, but that sort of niche shit’s a little hard to come by in Australia,” he said with a shrug. “This is all I could come up with on the off chance someone could continue the fight underwater one day.”

  Sam accepted the two spear guns, along with a pair of barbed spears. “Is that all of it?”

  Jack nodded, already moving back into the hallway. They found Ellie pacing back and forth in the bar area, one hand at her mouth as she chewed her fingernails back to the quick. Jack placed his SLR in the duffle bag alongside the other weapons and headed for the street.

  Sergeant Trevor stepped into the doorway of the pub, blocking their exit. His expression was thunderous, eyes fixed on the old barman. The policeman stormed forward, plucked the duffle bag of weapons out of Jack’s grip and dumped it on the ground, then scooted it out of reach with his foot. “Where the hell is my sister? What have you done?”

  Jack eyed him warily. “If anything’s happened to Kaz, it was entirely of her own making. I haven’t touched a hair on her head.”

  “He doesn’t know, does he?” said Mia.

  “Doesn’t know what?” growled Trevor.

  Mia glanced furtively between Jack and the policeman. “There was some sort of explosion at the mine entrance which collapsed the main shaft. When we arrived on site, there was no one to be found, just some blood-soaked dirt.”

  Trevor’s face blanched. “She’s fucking lying.” He drew his service pistol and pointed it straight at Jack’s face. “Tell me she’s fucking lying, because if she’s dead and you had something to do with it, I’ll… I’ll…”

  Ellie shoved a Glock into the back of the Sergeant’s neck. “Put down your gun!” Whilst the policeman argued, she’d retrieved one of the hand guns from the duffle bag. Trevor flinched as she ground the end of its barrel against his spine. A click sounded as she took off the safety, and he finally complied, putting his gun on the floor. “Neither Mia nor Jack killed your sister,” grated Ellie. “But every minute we waste here, my brother faces greater risk.”

  She glanced over the Sergeant’s shoulder at Jack. “You want to get some karma for what he did to you earlier?”

  Jack grinned, but the smile didn’t reach his eyes. “With pleasure.” The barman unhooked the handcuffs from Trevor’s belt, then ripped each of his hands behind his back, clamping the steel bands tight about his wrists. Jack reached behind the bar, rummaging for a second before straightening again with a roll of duct tape in hand. He tore off a strip and plastered it across the policeman’s mouth before locking him in his office. He emerged, a satisfied gleam to his eye and barely a trace of his usual limp as he headed for the front door a second time.

  “Let’s get this show on the road, people!”

  Ellie was close at his heel. “That guy before, he said you fought it in the seventies, but then alluded to it only starting to feed again recently? That doesn’t make any sense.”

  Jack winced at the sun’s brightness as he stepped down from the sidewalk to the street. He placed the bag of weapons in the tray of an old Ford ute. “I’ll follow you guys out, too cramped with all of us in the ambulance.”

  Ellie grabbed onto his shoulder, forcing him to acknowledge her. “You didn’t answer my question. Why did it stop feeding for so long?”

  Jack sighed, rubbing a hand over his face irritably. “The short answer is – I don’t know. No-one does. All I have is theories, the main one being that it goes into hibernation or a type of dormancy where it needs minimal intake. But something struck me about your story on the way back.”

  “And?”

  “Well, the Miner’s Mother you saw was big, as tall as your brother when it stood behind him, right?”

  Ellie nodded. Sam and Mia had come closer to listen and Ellie reached out, gripping on to Sam’s hand for support.

  “Well, when I fought them, there was only one large one. The others were smaller.”

  “You think they were younger ones, like its offspring or something?” asked Sam, starting to put together the dots.

  The barman nodded. “Yeah, which kind of changes the picture. Makes me wonder if the creature only ramps up aggression and feeding during a breeding cycle. If you haven’t seen any of the small ones, maybe she’s just about to give birth again?”

  Ellie’s fingernails bit into Sam’s hand. “So, you think my brother might have been taken to feed its babies?” Her voice was ragged.

  “It’s only a theory. One of those things are hard enough to face, let alone a whole family.”

  Ellie let go of Sam’s hand. “I think I’m going to be sick.”

  She bent at the waist, emptying her stomach into the gutter. Her body heaved another few times, yellow bile splashing on the concrete in lessening volumes until there was nothing else to bring up. She stood, drawing the back of her hand across her mouth.

  “No fucking beast is going to eat my little brother. Let’s go.”

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Pain.

  White hot shards of agony that pulsed where his eyes should be, that sparked with electric intensity in his severed spinal cord, and burned amongst the mangled trauma of his shoulders. He’d passed out for a time from the agony, but now he was conscious and unable to escape the pain. Max screamed until his vocal cords were ruined. He knew he was a dead man breathing,
it was just a matter of time.

  Agony had become his world.

  Tears leaked from under his eyelids, mixing with the blood and jellylike vitreous humor of his punctured globes. He should have been in perfect darkness, but instead, all he could see was colour. On destroying his eyes with the tip of one cruel talon, the creature had taken away a legitimate visual data source for his brain. And now, it seemed his brain was making up for the loss by imagining false colours. Max stared upward, seeing a brown background, overlayed with an aqua luminescence at the centre, while flecks of orange floated over the picture like snow sifting through a landscape. He blinked, the movement of his eyelids sending a stab of agony deep into his skull, but the picture didn’t change one iota. Orange over aqua, over brown. He was blind, and yet stuck watching a kaleidoscope of fake colour. Max wanted to cry afresh.

  A squirming movement beneath his left armpit jogged him from his thoughts and gave a fresh spurt of terror. He knew the monster had placed something between his arm and chest. Although he’d lost the power to move either arms, sensation was fully intact on his chest wall, so he could feel that the object was warm and slick with some sort of mucous covering. Whatever it was, something moved within. The object under his right armpit now squirmed violently, the sides undulating and stretching.

  Realisation struck. They’re fucking egg sacs.

  And they were about to hatch.

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  Sam stepped from the rent in the stone wall and onto the silt beach beside the underground lake. Nerves twisted in his gut like a knot of snakes, a slight tremor in his hand the only outward manifestation of his anxiety. He swept his torch beam across the expanse of cavern, and despite new batteries, the light still failed to illuminate the far wall. Jack edged passed him, SLR at his shoulder as he scanned the room for a moment before dropping it down.