Of all the animals, man is the only one that is cruel.
Chicago, Illinois
The last time he saw his father alive, Jackson David Kendrick was only nine years old.
The gray light of dawn was seeping in between his bedroom curtains when Jack woke to find him standing in the doorway. Dr. David Kendrick was a willowy, spectacled anthropologist at the University of Chicago. His black skin and wide brown eyes gave him a youthful appearance, but the flecks of silver frosting the edges of his hair made him look more distinguished and professorial. So people who didn’t know him could never tell if he was twenty-nine or forty. But this morning, his normally thoughtful eyes looked weary as he sat on the edge of Jack’s bed.
“Sorry to wake you so early, but my flight leaves at seven thirty.”
“Where are you going this time?” Jack sat up and asked through a husky yawn.
“Out west,” his father said. “Some field research on an old Indian legend.”
His father had often explained the kind of work anthropologists did, but all Jack really knew was that he was gone more often than not. Always traveling around the world to study some obscure ancient culture. He said he was trying to learn more about them—who they were, where they had come from, and why they had disappeared. But Jack had always felt there was something in particular he was searching for. Something that continued to elude him. Most of the time he would come home from his trips looking tired and disappointed.
“What kind of legend?” Jack persisted, figuring that if he kept peppering his father with questions, he could keep him from leaving as long as possible.
His dad stared out the window for a moment. In the shadows, Jack thought he saw hesitation in his eyes, as if he was pondering exactly what to say. “One about a very old civilization that I believe actually existed out there. A long time ago, before most of the other tribes had even migrated to this continent.”
“Who were they?”
“Well, that’s just it—nobody knows for sure. One legend says they built a whole subterranean city under a mountain somewhere. And that they may have been very advanced… maybe even more advanced than the Egyptians.”
“That’s cool.”
“Very cool.” His dad grinned. “Anyway, it’s kind of a mystery I’ve been working on for a few years now. So if I can find some proof that they actually did exist… well, it could change most of what we know about human history.”
“Change it how?”
His father laughed and rubbed Jack’s hair. “I’m on to you, kiddo. I’m running late, so we can talk more about it when I get home.”
“Fine,” Jack huffed. “Are you gonna be back for my soccer game on Saturday?”
“I’ll try, but Aunt Doreen’s bringing her video camera just in case.”
Jack’s shoulders drooped. His father’s sister had moved in with them after Jack’s mother died in a car wreck six years earlier. It wasn’t that he disliked his aunt—indeed, she was the closest thing to a mother Jack could remember. It was just that his father had missed five of his last seven games, and watching Aunt Doreen’s shaky video footage wasn’t the same.
His father stood to leave, but Jack clutched his wrist. “When can I start going with you?”
His father looked down and sighed. “Maybe when you’re a little older.”
Jack groaned and lay back on his pillow. “You always say that. But you never say how much older.”
His father gave a soft chuckle. “Just a little more than you are now.”
He kissed Jack on the forehead and slipped out of the room. Jack listened as he collected his bags from the hallway and carried them out to the car. A minute later the engine chugged to life, and Jack ran to the living room window as the car backed out of the garage. He watched his father drive off down the street, turn the corner, and disappear.
Chicago, Illinois
Twelve years later
“Jack… you haven’t gotten any further.”
Jack Kendrick looked up from behind his father’s old mahogany desk as Rudy finally returned with the pizza. “Because I’ve been too weak from hunger. What took you so long?”
Rudy shrugged. “It’s Friday night. The place was packed.”
Jack had spent most of the day sorting through the contents of his house, trying to get it ready for the estate sale. He’d been making great progress until he got to his father’s study. In that room Jack felt more like he was emptying memories out of his own head, dredging up a strange concoction of old emotions.
Rudy set the pizza on a stack of boxes. “You’ve been stuck in here for the last three hours. What’s up with that?”
Jack sighed and shook his head. “I guess I just put it off too long.”
Jack and Rudy had been best friends since their sophomore year in high school, when Rudy’s parents relocated from New York. Jack had first seen the scrawny white kid getting harassed by a gang of juniors and couldn’t help but feel sorry for him. He had intervened on Rudy’s behalf and wound up getting suspended for the ensuing fistfight—just one of many during his teenage years. His aunt Doreen had grounded him for a week, but he had won a loyal friend in Rudy Peterson.
Jack took a slice of pizza and looked around the room. “He never even let me in here when I was a kid. Dad was always pretty guarded about his work.”
“I guess.” Rudy chuckled. “So, what? You got this psychological never-measured-up-to-my-old-man’s-expectations-and-now-I’m-all-filled-with-regret thing going on?”
“No, it’s just that there’s so much stuff,” Jack said through a mouthful of pizza. “He never threw anything away. I guess he was a more meticulous researcher than I remember.”
“Y’know, Jack, no offense, but some people call that being obsessed.”
Jack stared at the stacks of boxes filled with files and books and a host of obscure artifacts his father had collected from all over the world. The man had apparently not been able to part with any of them. And neither had Jack.
The last twelve years had been filled with regret. A day hadn’t gone by that Jack didn’t wish he could travel back in time and beg his father not to go on that trip. But research had been the man’s sole passion in life.
He’d written several papers on his theories about the lost pre-Columbian civilization, none of which were very well received by his peers in the anthropological community. In fact, they had largely repudiated them. After his disappearance, one had even written an article for the American Journal of Archaeology titled “David Kendrick’s Fatal Obsession.”
The scurrilous piece had been intended to lay his father’s crackpot ideas to rest once and for all, but it had only served to strengthen Jack’s resolve, and he promised himself that someday he would make them eat their words.
So when he finally arrived at the U of Chicago, Jack pursued his degree in anthropology with the goal of salvaging his father’s reputation and following in his research. It had been no easy task enduring the insufferable arrogance and condescension of his father’s former colleagues. Yet for Jack, rehabilitating his father’s legacy had now become his life’s expedition. His odyssey.
His obsession.
After graduation, Jack was set to start working on his PhD and decided it was time to finally sell the old house to help finance this new stage in his life. And part of him was well ready to be rid of it. The place had become a brooding mausoleum of sorts, haunted by the ghosts of a father he had barely known and a mother he couldn’t remember.
It had only been on the market for two weeks when he’d gotten an offer, and now he was in a rush to clean it out. Aunt Doreen and his other relatives had already divided up most of the furniture, and Jack was going to box up the files and artifacts from his father’s office to go into storage. Everything else was slated for the estate sale. Jack would’ve loved to bring the massive, ornate desk with him, but he knew it wouldn’t fit in his apartment. He just hoped it would go to a good home. A doctor or a lawyer perhaps. Or maybe another teacher.
They polished off the pizza, and Rudy started hauling boxes to the garage while Jack finished cleaning out the desk. He pulled the drawers out one by one to wipe the insides with a damp rag. Years of dust and moisture and more dust had built up a mucky residue.
Jack was stacking the drawers in a clear spot on the floor when he noticed something strange. One of the drawers was a little shorter than the rest. And the back panel looked like it had been glued together with considerably less craftsmanship than the others… as if someone had lopped four inches off the drawer’s length to make room for something inside the desk itself.
Jack peered in and saw a crude wooden box mounted to the back with something wedged inside. His heart was pounding as he pulled out a large yellow envelope and tore it open. Inside was a brown folder.
Rudy returned for more boxes, and Jack showed him what he had found. Rudy’s eyebrows curled into a frown. “What is it?”
“I don’t know,” Jack said, almost too excited to talk.
The folder contained several loose pages, and Jack laid them out on the desk. One of them looked like a copy of some kind of official document. Large portions had been blacked out, but it appeared to be a journal entry or maybe part of a report. The date in the corner was four months before his father had disappeared.
…suggests similarities to original piece found in… pre-Columbian engravings, even though the peripheral markings point to a later dating; the design and construction are definitely Bronze Age or earlier….
Access to the original data is extremely limited…. has been kept under tight security at… The first artifact discovered in… and the next stage is to determine location of second site… hopes to find the second piece at that location.
There were also several photocopied pages from an old National Geographic article titled “Diminishing Caieche Population Raises Concerns among Anthropologists.”
The body of the article largely discussed the plight of an obscure American Indian tribe in western Wyoming called the Caieche. Anthropologists worried that the decline of the enigmatic tribe could lead to a total loss of their history, still relatively unknown. But there was no mention of an artifact or anything else related to the first document.
The final page contained what appeared to be a hand-drawn depiction of a circular emblem with various figures scattered around the interior.
There was some text in the lower corner of the page that had been blacked out completely. Everything except a string of numbers: 520712.
Rudy peered over his shoulder. “What is that thing?”
Jack could barely contain himself as he paced the study. “I’m guessing it’s a drawing of the artifact the report mentions.”
“Yeah, but what kind of artifact?”
Jack shook his head. That was the million-dollar question. The mystery only seemed to deepen. He had spent the better part of the last twelve years looking for an answer to his father’s disappearance. The FBI had searched for months but found no trace of him. No clothing, no equipment, not even his rental car. Yet after all these years, these documents had to hold some significance. Some clue to what had happened.
Rudy continued, “Why would he hide these in here?”
“And who was he hiding them from?” Jack muttered, lost in thought. Then he perked up. “I need a map of Wyoming. I have to find this reservation from the article.”
They went to the kitchen, where Rudy had his laptop sitting on the table. He booted it up and typed Caieche and Wyoming into the Internet search engine.
“Not much here on the Caieche,” Rudy said. “But it mentions the small reservation in Wyoming. Eagle Creek.”
“That’s got to be where my dad went. I bet someone there talked to him. They might even remember him.”
“Jack, look—” Rudy held up his hands—“I don’t mean to rain on your parade, but that was twelve years ago. And you don’t even know if that’s where your dad actually went.”
“It’s got to be. The only clue the FBI had to where he went was his plane ticket to Salt Lake City. And this Eagle Creek reservation is only a few hours’ drive from there.”
Rudy snorted. “And a much longer drive from Illinois.”
“I know.” Jack grinned at him. “That’s why you’re coming with me.”
Rudy shook his head and laughed. “Uhh… no, I’m not. I’ve got a research internship lined up for the summer, remember?”
“C’mon, Rudy, all I need is a week,” Jack persisted. “Two, tops. We can take my dad’s old Winnebago and make a whole road trip out of it. It’ll be fun.”
“Dude…” Rudy rubbed his eyes. “I’m telling you, I am not going to Wyoming. Especially in that ratty old RV. Does that thing even run?”
“Of course it runs. It runs just fine.” Jack tried to sound confident, though he hadn’t had the vehicle running in over a year. “I’ve just… never actually taken it that far before.”
“Which is another reason why I’m not going with you.”
Jack grew serious. “Look, this is the first real clue to finding out what happened to my dad. Do you have any idea what that means to me?”
“That’s exactly my point. You’re not thinking straight. Your dad disappeared out there somewhere, and now you want to go after him? You don’t think that’s a little dumb? Not to mention dangerous?”
“That’s because he was alone. He didn’t have anyone to watch his back. I’m not going to make that same mistake.”
“No, you’re going to make a whole new one.”
“That’s why I need you,” Jack said. “I need your expertise.”
“Really? I have a molecular biology degree. How much good will that do you?”
“Come on. You’ve forgotten more about science than I’ll ever know. Plus, you’re the only person I really trust on this.” Jack sighed, and his voice softened. “I’m asking you… please. You’re my best friend. I need your help.”
Rudy stared at him for a moment. A long, painful moment. At length he rolled his eyes and took a breath. “Fine. Two weeks. Just don’t get all sappy on me.”
“Great.” Jack grinned and slapped Rudy’s shoulder. “I knew I could depend on you.”
Eagle Creek Indian Reservation, Western Wyoming
Rain fell in raucous volleys, drumming down on the ramshackle 1978 Winnebago as it crept along a gravel road. Jack gripped the wheel with the resolve of a grizzled sea captain. A metaphor, he decided, that at present was not so far off the mark. Beside him, Rudy was slouched in the passenger seat, baseball cap pulled down over his eyes. Snoring.
Jack had begun planning for this expedition immediately after the estate sale two weeks earlier. He bought all the gear he thought he might need for the trip and packed up his father’s old RV. Then the two of them set out four days ago, making the road trip from Chicago to Wyoming. Rudy had come along as Jack’s science expert, to document the trip on video, and for general moral support.
They lurched through water-filled potholes in the road, some of which looked big enough to have their own lifeguards. The tattered wiper blades swish-swashed valiantly in a hopeless struggle against the barrage of raindrops pelting the windshield like an angry mob lobbing water balloons. Jack knew they could get mired in one of the massive puddles at any second, but he had to keep going. Sheer anticipation was driving him now.
After all these years, he was finally on the cusp of finding some answers.
He could see the A-frame visitor center ahead through the rain and pulled into the small parking lot. The place was empty with the exception of the guy managing the gift shop. He was a burly, middle-aged Caieche with a name badge that read Ben Graywolf and a thick mane of gray-streaked hair pulled back in a braid.
Jack explained that he was an anthropologist curious about Native American myths and legends. “My father was doing research a while back on a lost civilization that he believed may have existed out here a long time ago. And he seemed to think the Caieche might have some stories about one.”
“Lost civilization?” Ben frowned. “You mean like the Shadow People?”
“Shadow People?” Rudy snorted. “Yeah, that sounds innocuous.”
But Jack ignored him. “What can you tell me about them?”
Ben shrugged. “Well, they’re just a bunch of old ghost stories, really. The N’watu, they’re called. The Shadow People. The legends say they lived inside caves somewhere in the mountains.”
“What mountains? Someplace nearby?”
“No one knows for sure,” Ben said. “Like I said, these were mostly stories we heard as children. But if you really want to know more, you should probably go talk to Running Bear.”
“Running Bear?” Jack said, looking around. “Great. How do I find him?”
“He’s the oldest man on the reservation.” Ben gestured out the window. “He lives in a little shack up in the hills. I close up in a half hour. I can take you past his place if you don’t mind waiting.”
Forty-five minutes later, Jack and Rudy were following Ben’s battered white pickup along the gravel road deeper into the wilderness. They arrived at a dilapidated log cabin perched alone on the crest of a rocky knoll jutting out of the forest and sloshed through the mud onto the sagging front porch, where Ben knocked on the door.
“I can stick around if you want,” he said. “You’ll probably need me to translate anyway.”
“He doesn’t speak English?” Jack said.
Ben chuckled. “Oh, he speaks it okay. He just doesn’t always want to. He can be a bit stubborn that way.”
After several long moments the door finally opened, and Jack immediately understood why it had taken so long. Peeking out from inside was a shriveled old man. His face was gaunt and leathery and stippled by enormous moles and liver spots. Had Jack not witnessed him moving under his own power, he’d have sworn the little guy was just some mummified museum exhibit.
Ben gave the old man a greeting in the Caieche language and then introduced Jack and Rudy. Running Bear nodded brusquely with his pale eyes sparkling and waved them inside. The one-room hovel was quite warm and smoky with a fire crackling in a small stone fireplace. He motioned for them to sit down, and since there was only one chair in the place, they all took a seat on the dusty wooden floor near the fire.
The rain continued to drum softly on the roof in a mesmerizing rhythm as Ben asked Running Bear to give a brief history of the Shadow People legends.
The old man sucked in a raspy breath and spoke in the Caieche language with a voice that sounded like a box of rattlesnakes. Or at least what Jack imagined a box of rattlesnakes would sound like. It crackled and hissed, barely above a whisper and with little inflection, fading beneath Ben’s stronger baritone interpretation:
“When the Caieche first arrived on this land, there was already a tribe dwelling in the mountains. No one knew how long they had been there. The Caieche called them…” He paused and cast a quizzical glance at the old man.
“N’watu keetok taw’hey,” Running Bear repeated.
Ben seemed to have difficulty translating the phrase. “The shadows… that… walk.”
Running Bear shook his head, his pale eyes flaring as he said again, “N’watu keetok taw’hey.”
“Sorry. They who walk in shadows.” Ben rolled his eyes and muttered, “He’s very picky about the language. We always just called them the Shadow People.”
Running Bear continued with his discourse and Ben hurried to catch up.
“Anyway, they used to say the N’watu worshiped the spirit of the mountain.”
“Spirit?” Jack said, taking notes in a journal. “What kind of spirit was it?”
Running Bear went on.
“They called it Sh’ar Kouhm—the Soul Eater,” Ben said. “They believed there was a gateway to the underworld deep inside the caves. Sh’ar Kouhm was the queen of the underworld and would come up at every full moon to feed on a human soul… or…” He seemed to search for the right word. “On the emotions. Fear and anger. The strongest emotions of a person’s soul.”
“Soul Eater?” Jack frowned. “So what happened?”
“Apparently their elders made a bargain with Sh’ar Kouhm. If the N’watu could provide her with souls from other tribes, she would leave them in peace.”
Rudy raised an eyebrow. “Why didn’t they just move out of the caves altogether? Y’know, find somewhere else to live?”
Running Bear peered at him in the firelight for a moment. Then he spoke in soft, broken English. “Would you give up your home so easily?”
Rudy shrugged. “Well, I wouldn’t resort to human sacrifices just to hang on to it. That’s for sure.”
“Look,” Ben interjected, “this is all just a bunch of old stories. I mean, nobody actually believes this stuff anymore.”
Running Bear seemed to grow agitated and responded to Ben’s comment. Ben rolled his eyes again and replied in Caieche.
Jack interrupted their argument. “What’s he saying?”
Ben sighed. “He claims the N’watu took his great-grandmother when his granddad was just a kid. Apparently he saw them. They were like ghosts or something.”
“Wait a minute,” Jack said. “He says his great-grandmother was actually kidnapped by the N’watu?”
Ben shrugged. “Like I said, that’s what he says his grandfather used to tell him. But I think he may have been a little, y’know… few eggs short of a dozen or something. That’s what I’ve heard, anyway.”
“Were there any other witnesses? Did they try to go after her?”
“I think they just assumed she had run off with another man or gotten killed by a mountain lion or something,” Ben said. “Nobody ever talked about it much.”
“Still,” Jack said, “it’s a pretty compelling story. Does he know where the caves are?”
Running Bear spoke in a heated tone, and Ben appeared to be trying to calm him down.
“He says not to go off looking for the caves,” Ben explained. “He says there’s something evil in that place.”
“No doubt,” Rudy offered in agreement.
Jack reached into his pack and produced the papers from his father’s desk. “Look, my father disappeared somewhere out here twelve years ago, and I’m trying to find out what happened to him.” He pulled out the page with the image on it. “He had this drawing. I think it was some kind of artifact he was searching for. Does this look familiar at all?”
Running Bear’s eyes fixed on the drawing. He seemed intrigued and yet a little sad at the same time. He spoke slowly.
Ben translated. “He says he’s seen this before.”
“He has?” Jack leaned forward. “Where?”
The old man rose from his chair and shuffled over to a shelf on the other side of the room. He returned with a folded piece of cloth, carrying it gingerly in his arthritic fingers, and sat down again. Unfolding the cloth, he revealed a swatch of something that looked like animal hide. He held a narrow strip of soft leather up in the firelight, where Jack could see faded red markings. Several bands of lines connected in parallel and perpendicular designs across the length of the material.
The markings looked nearly identical to the ones in the artifact. As if they were characters from the same alphabet.
Running Bear nodded and spoke.
“He says it’s the language of the N’watu,” Ben said. “His grandfather wrote them down long ago. He claimed to have seen this writing inside the cave where his mother was taken, then wrote it down from memory.”
“His grandfather was inside the cave?” Jack said.
Running Bear’s soft voice replied, and Ben translated.
“His grandfather once told him the story about how he had been inside the cave when he tried to save his mother.”
“Did he tell him where the cave is? Does he know where to find it?”
Running Bear nodded and spoke as Ben translated. “Through the waters at the head of the Little White Eagle. In the cleft of the mountainside.” Ben leaned aside. “I’m pretty sure that’s White Eagle Creek. Just a couple miles north of here.”
Running Bear went on.
“He wants to know where your father saw this figure,” Ben said.
Jack shook his head. “I don’t know. I just found his papers a couple weeks ago. But this could prove his theories weren’t so crazy after all. If I can find this cave and get pictures of the writing inside it… that would be huge.”
Running Bear spoke in a weary tone.
“He warns you not to go,” Ben said, almost apologetically.
But Jack was having none of it. He wasn’t going to stop for the sake of some old Indian ghost story.
“No way. I can’t quit now.” He turned to Rudy. “I have to find it.”
Rudy held up his hands. “You didn’t say anything about crawling around in caves. I’m claustrophobic.”
“C’mon, Rudy,” Jack said. “You know I can’t do this alone.”
Rudy grunted. “Dude, this trip just keeps getting better and better.”
“Well, I can show you where White Eagle Creek is,” Ben said. “I suppose you can try to follow it upstream and see where it leads. See if there really is a cave up there.”
“I’d appreciate that,” Jack said.
Then Ben went on with a grin. “Of course, you two look like a couple of city boys. Not sure it’s the safest thing for you to do. Not without a guide, anyway.”
“A guide, huh?” Jack raised an eyebrow. “And I suppose you have someone in mind?”
“I sure do.” Ben thumbed his chest. “US Army Rangers for ten years. I’ve lived in the area my whole life. Plus, I’ve even done a fair bit of caving in my day. If you need a guide, I’m your man. Provided the price is right.”
“Price…” Jack rubbed his jaw and peered at the Indian. It would definitely be helpful to have someone on his expedition who was familiar with the area. As long as it fit in his budget. “How much?”
They were beginning to haggle when Running Bear stood up and shook his head. His eyes flared in the firelight.
“If you go… death will find you there.”
Jack and Rudy followed Ben Graywolf along the rocky bank of White Eagle Creek. The stream snaked a winding path down a rough, boulder-strewn slope through the woods. After the recent storms, water was rushing past them in a foamy torrent. The morning air was crisp, and patches of sunlight filtered down through the trees onto the forest floor of damp pine needles.
Through the branches ahead of them, Jack caught glimpses of the looming gray mountains against a magnificent blue sky. They’d gotten an early start, meeting Ben at eight o’clock at the spot where the highway crossed the creek. There was an area off the road where they could park their vehicles and head up on foot, following the creek bed westward.
Jack had to stop several times so he and Rudy could catch their breath. They weren’t nearly as acclimated to the higher elevations as their older Caieche guide. For his part, Ben carried no map or compass, at least none that Jack could see, and appeared to have no pressing need to engage in conversation, either.
After another half hour of walking, Ben finally announced, “We should be getting close now. I can hear the falls.”
Jack, on the other hand, couldn’t hear anything over the stream and his own labored breathing.
Within ten more minutes, they emerged over a ridge onto a broad, wooded shelf at the base of a rocky cliff. A white spray of water poured out from a crevice about fifty feet up like a spigot on the side of a house. It sprayed into a large pool at the base of the cliff before flowing down the creek bed. To one side of the falls, the cliff face was sheer and smooth, but the other side was jagged and uneven, enough to afford a possible way up.
Rudy dug out his minicam to film the waterfall and surrounding area. He zoomed in on the crevice. “Don’t tell me that’s the cave.”
Ben studied the cliff, his eyes squinting against the bright sky. “That would be my guess. It almost looks big enough to squeeze inside.”
Jack drew up beside him. “Whattaya think?”
“Looks like there’s some kind of ledge up there,” Ben said. “But the trick will be getting to it.”
They proceeded to check their gear. Ben had brought plenty of rope and climbing hardware, while Jack had brought flashlights, a couple boxes of glowsticks, and a package of flares. Their food consisted mostly of beef jerky, nuts, protein bars, and plenty of water. In addition to the supplies, Ben had also brought along a large hunting knife in a leather sheath, strapped around his waist.
“You never know what you might run into,” he had said with a wink.
He took a moment to go over some safety instructions, warning Jack and Rudy of the dangers of unexplored cave systems. “Remember, when we get inside, the most important thing is to stick together. Don’t go wandering off alone,” he said as he adjusted his gear. “I’ll climb up first and let down a safety line.”
Jack could feel his heart racing as he wondered if this was the very path his father had taken during his last expedition. Running Bear had not recalled speaking with him twelve years ago, but Jack felt a sense of certainty that he was on the right trail. He was eager to find out just what kind of cave system was under this mountain.
At length Ben found a suitable area along the cliff to attempt an ascent, and he scrambled up the mountainside like a squirrel up a tree.
Jack chuckled. “Wow, he moves pretty good for an older guy.”
Rudy shook his head and grunted. “Army Ranger.”
Within ten minutes, Ben had scaled the cliff and pulled himself onto the narrow ledge. He scooted along until he came to the opening and slowly climbed inside. He disappeared from view for a minute and then reappeared, waving at them.
“It looks big enough to fit inside,” he called. “It’s maybe three or four feet wide and extends up into the cliff at about a thirty-degree angle.”
“How far up does it go?” Jack said.
Ben glanced back. “I didn’t see the end.”
They tied their packs one by one to the rope, and Ben pulled them up. Next, Rudy and then Jack attempted the fifty-foot climb while connected to the safety line. The climb was steep and laborious, but forty minutes later they had both managed to reach the ledge.
Jack gazed out as he caught his breath. The cliff dropped off right at their feet, straight down into the forest below. From this vantage point, Jack could see the foamy creek tumbling back down the slope through the woods and into a rough meadow beyond. The entire countryside below him was lit beneath the blazing sun.
Rudy stood beside him, flipped open his minicam, and panned across the vista. “Nice view, huh?”
“I’ll say.”
Rudy shut off the camera. “So… you still think your dad came this way?”
“I know I can’t explain it,” Jack said, “but I’m almost positive he did. I have to believe it.” He turned to Ben. “So what do we do now?”
“We follow the same procedure heading up into the tunnel,” Ben said. “I’ll go in first and set an anchor. Then you guys follow me up.”
Ben pounded an anchor into the base of the ledge to secure a safety line. Then he climbed up into the crevice over the stream of water, bracing himself against the sides. Jack peered in and watched as Ben disappeared into the darkness, trailing the rope behind him.
They waited outside for several minutes until Ben appeared again in the mouth of the opening.
“Okay, the tunnel opens into a larger chamber about ten yards up,” he explained. “There’s a big pool that’s feeding the waterfall, maybe twenty or thirty feet across. And it looks like there’s a couple other passages leading off the main room.”
Jack rubbed his hands. “Let’s go.”
They secured themselves to the line and pulled themselves up the incline, keeping their feet to either side of the gushing water. At one point the passage grew so narrow, Jack could barely squeeze through. He had no idea how Ben had managed to get his larger frame past it.
But the passage leveled off and opened into a large, rounded chamber just as Ben had described. Jack stood in the mud and rocks at the edge of the pool, ankle-deep in water. A narrow glint of daylight filtered up the passage and illumined part of the room, but they explored the rest of it with flashlights. The chamber was wide and low, so they had to stand slightly hunched, and a steady stream of water poured down from overhead through a number of cracks and crevices.
Rudy had unpacked his minicam again and filmed the chamber.
“Caves are very delicate ecosystems,” Ben was saying, “so we need to make sure we minimize our impact. There’s an old saying: ‘Take nothing but pictures, leave nothing but footprints, and kill nothing but time.’”
“Yeah, well, we’re having an impact just by our presence,” Rudy said. “We’re producing carbon dioxide and perspiration, leaving epithelial cells, and introducing new bacteria. Even our footprints could have a butterfly effect in this place.”
As they talked, Jack searched the walls for evidence of the N’watu or some of the writing Running Bear’s grandfather had supposedly seen. He waded around the edges, shining his flashlight along the walls, but found nothing.
Ben inspected the ceiling with his flashlight. “I’m guessing that during the spring thaw this whole chamber gets flooded.”
“Is this the tunnel you were talking about?” Rudy pointed out an opening off to one side, where a trail of water trickled down and disappeared into the darkness.
“That’s one of them.” Ben shouldered his pack. “There’s one on the other side that leads up.”
He pointed his flashlight across the room to a smaller crevice. Jack could see Rudy shudder at that prospect. It did look like a tight fit. The one leading down was wide by comparison. And probably an easier climb.
“Well—” Jack swiveled his flashlight between the two options—“I vote for the lower one. It looks more promising.”
“All right,” Ben said. “Let me take a look around first.”
He crouched to squeeze himself through the opening and crawled a few yards down the passage. “Looks like it goes on a ways.”
He continued on until his light disappeared altogether. A minute later, his voice echoed back up the passage. “Okay, come on down. It looks like a pretty easy tunnel.”
Jack motioned for Rudy to follow. “I’ll bring up the rear,” he said.
“Great,” Rudy grunted as he crawled into the passage.
Jack watched him go and followed a few moments later. While he had to hunch to get through the opening, he found that he was nearly able to stand upright just a few feet into the tunnel. It led downward at a steeper angle than the waterfall shaft outside but was also rougher. The trail of water at his feet had obviously not been enough to wear the rock smooth.
Soon the passage tapered considerably and the incline grew steeper. Moreover, the ground was becoming slippery with mud as the water flow seemed to have increased, dripping down from the ceiling.
Ben signaled them to stop. “It’s getting pretty steep here,” he said. “And slick. I think we should keep ourselves spaced out and link up.”
Jack raised an eyebrow. “Link up?”
Ben produced the rope they had used earlier and tied it to his belt harness, then to Rudy’s, and finally to Jack’s. “You’re the anchor.”
“Great.”
“Keep a good ten to fifteen feet between us,” Ben said. “Just in case.”
They continued on, weaving between sharp outcroppings. In the meantime, the floor was growing increasingly slippery. Jack found his boots losing traction repeatedly.
Ben came to a halt. “Hold up. I want to set an anchor just to be safe.”
Jack tried to stop but lost his footing and skidded into Rudy, knocking him off balance as well. They both landed on their backs but kept sliding down the passage.
“Whoa!”
It was a surreal experience as Jack felt himself gaining momentum. Kicking his feet against the sides of the tunnel, he tried to stop, but it seemed like the mud was everywhere. Limbs flailing, the two of them slammed into Ben, who was also struggling to keep himself from falling.
The chain reaction sent all three racing down a chute without a sled. Suddenly the tunnel dropped away sharply beneath them, and they plummeted nearly straight down for an endless moment through solid darkness.
Jack plunged into a dark pool of frigid water. The cold tore through him like icy razors slicing his skin as he struggled to keep his thoughts from scattering into panic. He could feel gravel and rocks beneath his feet, but he was in water up to his waist and the cold was nearly overwhelming.
A light blinked on in the darkness, and Jack could make out Ben’s large frame standing a few yards off clutching one of the flashlights.
Now Jack saw the pit was maybe fifteen or twenty feet across. Smooth rock walls loomed on all sides, and water cascaded from above in a steady stream. There was no place to climb up out of the cold. It looked to Jack like they had fallen into the bottom of a well.
“This is just great.” Rudy’s frantic voice sounded from the shadows behind Jack. “What are we gonna do now?”
“Don’t panic, for one thing,” came Ben’s gruff reply. “Get your ropes off.”
Jack untied the rope from his waist and fumbled beneath the water for his own flashlight. He could feel his teeth chattering. “Wh-where are we?”
Ben was scanning the walls. “Looks like some kind of pit.”
Jack found his light and peered up at the ledge. He spotted the tunnel they had fallen from about twenty feet up. A grim realization was beginning to set into his mind. He looked at Rudy and could tell he’d come to the same conclusion.
“W-we can’t climb back up that w-way,” he said.
“Check your packs,” Ben said. “Make sure we have everything.”
Jack swung his pack around and inspected its contents. His minicam was moist but not ruined; his canvas pack had obviously protected it during the initial fall into the water. He slipped the camera back into its nylon case and zipped it tight. It wasn’t waterproof, but hopefully it would stay dry enough. Although from the look of their predicament, the fate of his video equipment hardly seemed important anymore.
He continued struggling to keep his mind off his father, but he couldn’t help wondering if he had fallen down this shaft as well and died alone here in the dark. He shuddered at the thought of stumbling across his father’s bones somewhere under the water.
“W-we’re gonna freeze down here.” Rudy shivered.
“Shut up!” Ben’s voice took on an irritated edge. “Quit talking like that. Just keep looking for a way out.”
Jack pointed his light back up at the ledge. “Do you think if we boosted Rudy, he could climb back up?”
Rudy shook his head, shivering. “It’s too high.”
Ben shone his beam on the streamlets of water pouring down from the darkness overhead. “The shaft isn’t filling with water, so it’s got to be going somewhere.”
Jack nodded. “Another tunnel?”
“Probably underwater somewhere.” Ben began searching the perimeter of the shaft. “There’s gotta be an outlet.”
Then Jack got an idea. He unzipped his pack, unwrapped one of his granola bars, and set the plastic wrapper on the water like a tiny canoe. It spun in the eddies and swirls but soon began drifting toward one of the walls. As if drawn by an invisible thread.
He looked up at Ben. “What do you think?”
Ben didn’t reply. His stern, leathery countenance seemed fixated on the wrapper as it picked up speed. In moments it bounced into the smooth rock wall and bobbed against the side.
Ben looked at Jack. “Glowsticks.”
Jack dug further in his pack and produced a couple of the chemlights. He snapped them and shook them up until they gave off a pale green glow.
Ben grabbed them, sucked in a few deep breaths, and ducked under the surface. Jack was shivering at just the thought of being fully submerged again in the bone-chilling water.
A moment later Ben came back up, shaking. “L-looks like some kind of sh-shaft down there,” he said. “But I can’t see how far it goes.”
Jack was heartened by the news. “How wide is it? Can we fit through?”
“I dunno. A couple feet.” Ben set about uncoiling another length of rope and tied it onto his belt.
Rudy was shivering worse now. “Wh-what are you d-doing?”
Ben slipped off his pack and handed it to him. “I’m gonna see how far it goes.”
“Through there?” Rudy’s eyes widened. “Y-you’re c-c-crazy.”
Ben handed the other end of the rope to Jack and took a handful of glowsticks. “Keep it tight. If I tug twice, pull me back through.”
He sucked in a few more deep breaths and disappeared under the surface again. Jack felt the rope slip through his hand as he fed it into the tunnel. He soon lost track of how much length had gone in. Maybe twenty feet. Maybe thirty. Finally the rope stopped pulling, and Jack stood with his flashlight tucked under his chin, holding the coil in his numb hands above the surface.
“What happened?” Rudy asked, his face drained of all color.
Jack shrugged and pulled back gently on the rope to keep the tension. Then he gave it one short tug. A moment later he felt a single tug in reply and breathed a relieved sigh. “I think he’s okay.”
Nearly a full minute later, Ben emerged again, gasping for breath, his teeth chattering. “It c-comes out into an-nother chamber. The tunnel’s about twenty-five feet long, and it gets a little narrow in the middle.”
“How narrow?” Rudy said.
“It was t-tight for me, but you g-guys should make it no problem.”
Rudy turned to Jack, shaking his head. “Jack… I’m telling you, I will freak out down there.”
“Well, we don’t have any choice,” Jack said, trying to sound firm but supportive. The last thing he needed was Rudy getting hysterical.
“I’m gonna get stuck!”
“If Ben can make it, you can too.”
“But I can’t—”
“Rudy.” Jack grabbed the collar of his sweatshirt and jerked him close, shining the light in his face. “It’s real simple. You either stay here and die for sure from hypothermia or take your chances down there. Now man up and let’s do this.”
Ben was already uncoiling several lengths of rope. “I’ll go first. Then you send the packs through, and you two come last.” He turned to Rudy. “All you gotta do is follow the rope. Hand over hand. Got it?”
Rudy was shivering too badly for Jack to tell if he was nodding or not. He slapped him on the shoulder. “You’ll do fine. You’ll be through before you know it.”
“I’ll tug three times for you to send the packs,” Ben said. “Then I’ll give three more tugs when you’re clear to come through.”
Jack and Rudy nodded.
They tied their packs to the rope, and Ben started sucking in deep breaths. Jack could see he was fighting off the effects of the cold, and Jack himself was starting to go numb. He could feel his mind shutting down as the blue beams of their flashlights began to flutter in his eyes.
Ben ducked under again, trailing the rope behind him. A minute later Jack felt three tugs and began feeding the rope through the tunnel. He could tell by the feel of the rope that one of the packs snagged a bit somewhere in the darkness, but after a sharp yank, it continued pulling through.
Rudy was rubbing his arms and hugging his slim frame. “I c-can’t believe this is hap-p-pening. I knew I should’ve st-tayed home.”
“Keep it together, Rudy,” Jack said as he waited for Ben’s signal. “You got to stay focused.”
Suddenly the rope tugged three more times.
Jack clutched Rudy’s arm. “Okay, it’s our turn,” he said. “You go first and I’ll be right behind you.”
Rudy’s lips trembled. “I c-can’t….”
Jack shook him. “Rudy—you can do this. You’re not going to get stuck.”
Jack thrust the rope into his hands and pushed him toward the tunnel, shouting positive reinforcements like some kind of desperate life coach.
Rudy sucked in several deep breaths; then Jack pressed his head under the water and guided him to the opening. A moment later Jack followed, ducking under the surface as a thousand needles of ice pricked his flesh. He fumbled blindly for the rope, following it into utter darkness.
Jack kept his eyes squeezed tight as the sharp edges of the tunnel scraped past him, closing in tighter the farther he went. It was smaller than he had expected, and at one point he felt like he would get stuck in the middle of the passage and drown. Panic began to swell inside his chest.
He could still feel Rudy’s feet ahead of him, thrashing wildly, and at least took some comfort in knowing he wasn’t completely alone. As the chill of the water sliced through him, memories burst in his brain like flashbulbs going off. Memories of his father. A funeral without a body. The big, empty rooms of his house.
He fought back his terror and tried to concentrate on the rope. Move forward. Hand over hand. Keep moving forward.
His lungs burned.
Hand over hand.
His arms throbbed from the cold.
Hand… over hand…
And then he was out.
Jack surfaced, coughing and gasping for breath. He retrieved his flashlight from under his belt and flicked it back on, finding himself in a secondary pool within a much larger chamber. Ben was standing nearby, helping Rudy climb onto the rocky bank.
Jack waded to the side and scrambled onto the rocks. He lay there, clutching his flashlight and shuddering uncontrollably. “Wh-what do we d-do n-now?”
Ben had arranged their backpacks along the bank and was already going through them. “We need to take inventory of everything we have. I need to see what we’ve got to work with here.”
He was moving like some kind of robot, seemingly no longer affected by the cold. Probably due to his military training, Jack thought. Meanwhile Rudy was huddled on the shore, hugging his shoulders.
“I suggest you guys get changed,” Ben said. “We need to get out of our wet clothes.” He stripped off his shirt and slipped on the extra clothing he’d brought along.
Jack inched his way over and felt his own extra clothes. They were still mostly dry. He pulled off his wet clothing and slipped into his shorts and sweatshirt. It wasn’t much to keep him warm down in this cave, but it was better than staying in his wet clothes.
“What are we going to do?” he asked again.
Ben didn’t look up. “Find another way out.”
Rudy stirred at that comment. “What if there isn’t one?”
Ben shone his flashlight in Rudy’s face. “There’s always another way out.”
Rudy had brought along a pair of sweatpants and a nylon jacket in his pack. Jack tossed them over to him. “Rudy, get changed. You’re not going to do us any good if you get hypothermia.”
Rudy took his clothes and quietly began changing as Jack inspected the rest of the chamber. It was larger than he had first thought, more than a hundred feet across with a high, arched ceiling. Ben was already moving around the perimeter, shining the beam along the jagged black walls. The pool they had emerged from flowed out down a shallow trough along the floor of the chamber and disappeared again into a side tunnel. That tunnel seemed to be the only way out of the chamber.
Ben pointed his light down the passage. “Looks like we follow the stream.”
Ten minutes later, they had repacked their gear and were headed off down the side passage. Before long, Jack began to smell something. A sharp, pungent odor.
“Ugh, what is that?”
“Sulfur,” Ben said. “This whole part of the country is very geologically active. A lot of hot springs and geysers and stuff. We’re pretty close to Yellowstone.”
They walked down the tunnel for several minutes and emerged again in a chamber even larger than the previous one. Jack could tell it was warmer here than in the tunnel. And he was thankful for that, but the smell of sulfur was stronger as well.
The chamber was uneven, with several side passages and large boulders scattered throughout. Twisting white stalagmites rose from the floor along with various other rock formations, which gave the cavern a crowded and cluttered appearance. And the most curious thing was that everything seemed to be covered with a pale, glossy substance. It was spongy, fibrous, and slick, and it shrouded the entire room.
They’d just begun moving through the chamber when Ben stopped and pointed his light at the floor, where a large puddle of water frothed and bubbled. “It’s a hot spring,” he said. “Some kind of hydrothermal vent.”
Jack drew up beside him and cast his light across the steaming pool, gurgling beneath a layer of thick foam. He swept his light forward and found a second pool a few yards ahead. In fact, the more he scanned the cavern, the more he found.
He noticed Rudy crouching down, video camera in hand, filming the slimy substance covering the rocks. It looked like his fear had gone—at least temporarily—and now the biologist in him seemed to be taking over. “D’you guys see this?”
Jack turned his attention to the spongy material as well. It was a light color, appearing nearly white in the glow of their lights. “What is it?”
“It looks organic,” Rudy said. “Like some kind of bacterial slime.”
“It’s everywhere,” Ben said, shining his light across the walls. He shook his head. “I’ve heard of bacteria growing inside caves. But not like this.”
“How does anything even survive this far underground?” Jack said.
“Bacteria are very adaptable,” Rudy said. “Some strains can grow in total darkness. Even in toxic waste. Whatever this stuff is, it’s obviously adapted to the dark. And it looks like it’s adapted pretty well.”
“That’s cool,” Jack said.
Rudy nodded. “It’s pretty incredible, actually. We used to think all organisms needed sunlight to exist until we started exploring the bottom of the ocean and found complex ecosystems thousands of feet deep thriving around thermal vents where no sunlight ever reaches. So instead of the sun, these organisms get energy from the heat and chemicals coming up from those vents.”
“Makes sense.” Ben seemed to catch on. “Probably why this stuff seems to be growing more around the hot springs.”
“Exactly.” Rudy nodded. “The heat and water—maybe sulfur dioxide or hydrogen sulfide. I mean, I’m just guessing here. But this… this is incredible.” He turned to Jack with a slight smile. “This could be a whole new microorganism.”
Jack grinned back at him. “Aren’t you glad you came along now?”
Rudy continued filming, but after a minute he stopped. “Hey, guys, do me a favor and shut off your lights.”
“What?”
“Just shut off your lights for a second. I want to see something.”
They snapped their flashlights off, and darkness fell around them like a blanket. Jack could almost feel it draping over him. They stood in silence for a few moments until Rudy spoke up.
“Do you guys see what I’m seeing?”
As Jack’s eyes adjusted, he saw that the entire chamber glowed with a pale light that seemed to come from all around them. It had been nearly imperceptible in the glow of their flashlights.
A sinewy network of glowing tendrils shrouded the cave floor and walls. Jack could even make out Rudy and Ben in the light.
“Whoa,” Ben whispered.
“Glow-in-the-dark slime?” Jack quipped.
“Bioluminescence,” Rudy said. “This stuff just keeps getting more impressive.”
The light was nearly hypnotic as Jack found himself staring at the substance. For a moment he felt oddly detached, like he was far off somewhere, watching himself from the outside.
Then he shook himself out of his trance. This discovery—as awesome as it was—didn’t change the fact that they were still lost. More than that, he had yet to find evidence of the N’watu. Despite their circumstances, he needed to find some answers. He wasn’t about to leave these caves empty-handed. “So which passage do we take?”
Ben stood, hands on hips, surveying their surroundings. After a minute he pointed up ahead. “That looks like a way out.”
The fibrous growth clung to the floor and crawled up the walls like a network of glowing veins and arteries. Ahead of them appeared to be a small opening, as if the luminous tendrils had grown around the mouth of another tunnel.
They found a tunnel about five feet wide, though less than four feet high. The slime continued far down the passage but became less dense the farther they got from the springs.
They found they could navigate the passage by the light of the microorganisms alone. It reminded Jack of a carnival fun house he’d been to once as a kid where the trail was marked by phosphorescent paint on the floors.
“This is a little psychedelic,” he said.
Ben stopped abruptly and held up a hand. Jack and Rudy froze in their tracks.
“What is it?” Rudy whispered.
“Something’s moving up ahead.”
Jack drew up beside Ben, who was pointing down the passage. He saw an elongated black shape detach itself from the wall and glide across the ground maybe twenty feet away. It almost seemed like a hallucination—just a long shadow that flitted across the glowing veins on the cave floor.
In the dim light, Jack saw Ben slowly remove his flashlight and point at the switch. “Watch your eyes,” Ben whispered.
Jack winced as the light flicked on, and he felt Ben move away quickly. In the commotion, Jack found himself momentarily stunned, surprised by how bright it seemed. He shielded his eyes and spotted Ben ahead of him, shining the flashlight around the passage. Then Jack felt Rudy brush past him and heard their voices elevated in excitement.
“Did you see it? Did you see that thing?” Ben was saying.
“I—I didn’t get a good look.”
“It was huge!”
“What was it?” Jack stumbled up to where they were standing.
Ben climbed onto a jagged rock formation along the side of the tunnel and shone his light into the cracks behind it. “I don’t know. It was… like a centipede or something. But I mean, the thing was huge!”
“A centipede?”
Rudy shook his head. “I don’t see anything.”
“It crawled back behind this rock,” Ben said.
Jack crouched beside the rock to inspect the opening. It was far too narrow to crawl through—not that he would’ve gone into it even if it were big enough.
“Shut your lamps off,” he said. “Whatever it is, it’s obviously trying to avoid the light. Let’s wait a minute and see if it comes back.”
Ben switched off the light again, and in several seconds Jack’s eyes readjusted to the lower luminosity inside the tunnel. They moved away from the wall and waited.
Jack bit his cheek absently. He’d only seen a shadowy shape with no real detail. But it was far too big to be a centipede.
He felt a tap on his shoulder. Ben motioned for him to keep quiet, then pointed at something moving farther down the tunnel. Jack spotted a second shadow as it crept out from the side and paused in the middle of the passage.
Jack inched closer. It was definitely some type of elongated creature—as Ben had described. And it was enormous—he estimated its length at roughly five feet. He also heard a gentle scraping sound, like a mouse scurrying across linoleum.
Ben pulled a bandanna out of his pocket and wrapped it over the lens of his flashlight. Pointing it away from the creature, he flipped it on. Jack could see the light was dimmed considerably but still bright enough to illuminate the area around them. Then Ben turned the light toward the animal in front of them.
Jack suppressed a gasp. “Whoa.”
The creature had a solid black body five or six inches thick that looked more like a section of segmented industrial tubing than a living animal. It didn’t flee but instead turned toward the light, lifting the front portion of its body. Its legs—dozens of red, fingerlike claws—wriggled in the air, and a pair of long antennae snaked forward from its bulbous head. It had no eyes that Jack could see, and only a small, horizontal opening for a mouth that munched on a glowing wad of the yellow slime.
Its antennae groped about in the air as if trying to determine where the light was coming from. Then after a moment it settled down and resumed feeding.
Jack whispered, “What is it?”
Rudy had his video camera rolling again. “It looks like some kind of… millipede. A very large millipede.”
“Yeah, but how’d it get this big?” Jack said.
Rudy shook his head as if at a loss for words. “I have no idea.”
“It looks like it’s eating the slime. Do you think it has some kind of supernutrients or something?”
“Possibly.” Rudy seemed mesmerized by the creature. “There… there are some pretty big insect specimens in the fossil record—centipedes and dragonflies. But there’s no record of anything this big living today. This thing shouldn’t be alive at all.”
“Why not?”
“Well, there’s not enough oxygen, for one thing,” Rudy said. “The oxygen levels in the atmosphere were a lot higher in the past. But they’re too low today to support the respiration of an insect this size—especially at this elevation. And on top of all that, we’re underground, where the oxygen content is even lower.”
“Right.” Jack gestured toward the millipede. “But there it is.”
Rudy rubbed his eyes. “Y’know, we might only be seeing the tip of the iceberg. There could be a whole separate ecosystem thriving down here, completely cut off from the rest of the world for ages.”
Jack noticed the millipede raise its head and turn toward them, wiggling its antennae. Then it beat a hasty, zigzag retreat down the tunnel and disappeared behind another rock.
“Where’s he going?” Jack said.
Ben snorted. “Maybe he got tired of listening to you guys yak.”
But Jack wasn’t quite so amused. He flicked on his light and swept it around the passage but saw no trace of the millipede. They stood in silence for a moment. Jack could hear the faint echo of water dripping somewhere off in the darkness. Then something caught Jack’s attention. Another sound. Faint, almost imperceptible at first. But within a few seconds he could hear it clearly.
A sharp tapping sound echoed in the tunnel, like someone knocking two rocks together. Jack couldn’t tell which direction it was coming from.
Only that it was getting closer.
They stood in the tunnel listening to the tapping noise getting louder. Jack felt himself holding his breath.
At length Ben said, “I don’t mean to be a killjoy or anything, but maybe that millipede knows something we don’t.”
“I agree,” Jack said, gesturing to the passage ahead. “Let’s keep going.”
They made their way up the passage in the direction the millipede had departed. Soon the tunnel began to narrow sharply and eventually came to a dead end. Jack could tell that the bizarre sound was coming from behind them, which gave little comfort since they now appeared to be trapped.
“Okay,” Rudy said, “anybody have any other ideas?”
Ben was busy inspecting the walls of the passage. “Just keep your shirt on. Let’s see if there’s another way out of here.”
“It’s still getting closer,” Jack said. He could hear the click-clack sounds more distinctly now, but they weren’t just getting louder; they had multiplied, like several people were off in the dark tapping rocks together.
Ben had apparently realized the same thing. “I think there’s more than one thing making that noise.” He pointed his light up at the ceiling of the tunnel. “Here! I think I found an opening.”
With that, he climbed up the wall and disappeared into a small hole above them.
Meanwhile the tapping grew more intense.
Rudy aimed his camera back down the passage. “I gotta tell you, I’m starting to get a little creeped out here.”
After several seconds Ben’s voice came from above them. “I found another tunnel.”
Jack peered up into the shaft. It was a nearly vertical passage with jagged walls, not even three feet at its widest point, but he could see Ben’s flashlight shining down over a ledge about fifteen feet up.
“It’s a bit of a climb.” Ben’s voice echoed down the shaft.
“No kidding.” Jack shouldered his pack. He wondered how Rudy would manage if his claustrophobia began to kick in again. “It looks a little tight.”
Rudy spun suddenly and pushed Jack up into the passage. “We don’t have time to think about it.”
“What’s wrong? Did you see something?”
“Just get moving.” Rudy’s voice was tense.
Jack groped around the passage for a handhold. Sharp outcroppings on the rough surface gouged his hands, but at last he was able to pull himself higher into the tunnel. He could feel Rudy beneath him, pushing hard against his feet.
“Hurry up!”
Jack pulled himself higher up the shaft, ignoring the pain of rocks scraping his hands and arms.
Beneath him, Rudy’s voice grew more urgent. “C’mon, keep going!” He gave another thrust against Jack’s feet.
Jack groped around blindly, pulling himself up foot by foot. His heart pounded as he wrestled his fear both of getting stuck and of whatever was in the tunnel beneath them.
Then his hand reached up but felt only a smooth section of cold rock with no ledge or outcropping. Nothing with which to pull himself up. And Rudy was still pushing against his feet, shoving him higher into the tunnel, pinning his other arm against his side.
“Hold on,” Jack said. “I’m stuck.”
“Keep moving!”
Jack struggled to twist his body free, but it was no use—he couldn’t pull or push himself any higher. His heart thrashed inside his rib cage like a wild beast ready to burst out. “I’m stuck!”
Then he felt warm flesh clamp down around his uplifted hand, and he was yanked up through the passage until at last the rock seemed to open around him, freeing his other arm.
Ben pulled Jack into the tunnel, where he rolled onto his back, gasping for breath. A moment later Ben helped Rudy scramble up out of the hole as well.
The sounds drew closer, echoing up the shaft. Click-clack-click-click-click-clack. Ben switched off his light, and the three of them lay in complete darkness. The noise grew louder until it sounded like the source was right at the bottom of the shaft. Jack held his breath and waited, measuring the time by counting his pulse as it throbbed in his ears. Then the sounds began to grow fainter again, and within minutes they disappeared altogether.
Jack fought to calm himself and slow his heart rate. “What was it? What did you see?”
Rudy sat up, shaking his head. “I’m not sure. I saw something moving… back up the tunnel. I don’t know what it was. But there was definitely more than one.”
“What did they look like? Did you get anything on video?”
When there was no response, Jack flipped on his flashlight. Rudy’s face was white in the glare, and his eyes seemed distant and unblinking, staring into the darkness.
“Rudy.”
Rudy started as if snapping out of a trance. “I… I don’t know what they looked like. I just… I didn’t get a good look at them, and I didn’t exactly want to stick around for one.”
Rudy played back the video recording. With the night-vision setting, the amplified glow of the slime showed up as bright patches of pale-green veins running over the floor and up the sides of the passage. They were lit so brightly that the rest of the detail was fuzzy and out of focus. It looked like some kind of crazy, neon house of horrors. Suddenly a dark shape flashed into the frame. A blurred black silhouette skittered across the passage, but then the picture jerked hard as Rudy turned away and stopped filming.
“Rewind it,” Jack said.
They rewound and paused the footage, advancing it frame by frame as the shape moved into view. But it was too hazy to discern any details.
Rudy was still breathing heavily. “I think they were some sort of arthropods, but I couldn’t tell how big they were.”
“Look.” Ben rubbed his eyes. “I hate to remind you guys that we still need to find a way out of this cave. Let’s take a few minutes to eat something; then we should get moving.”
It was shortly before noon when they broke out packages of beef jerky and protein bars. Jack hadn’t thought about food until now and was surprised at how hungry he was. And thirsty.
“Careful with your water,” Ben warned as Jack chugged his bottle. “We need to ration it until we get out of here.”
They had each brought along a pair of one-liter bottles, which would last them the rest of the day, but if it took any longer to find another exit, they’d be in trouble.
There were still patches of the glowing slime nestled in various nooks and crannies of the passage, though considerably less dense than it had been in the tunnel below. They had to proceed on hands and knees through the mud and puddles. The passage wound and zigzagged through the darkness for several dozen yards until Ben stopped them again.
“You guys might want to have a look at this.”
Jack inched forward and saw something that looked like a crescent-shaped melon rind wedged between some rocks. And as he looked closer, he spotted several more scattered along the passageway as though someone had just enjoyed a picnic of melons and left the garbage strewn about the tunnel.
Jack picked up one of the pieces and turned it over in the light. He held it up for Rudy to film. Its curved outer surface was smooth and black; the interior dripped with gelatinous yellow goop.
“What do you think it is?” Jack asked.
Rudy wrinkled his nose. “It smells terrible, but I’d say by the size and shape… it looks like it belonged to one of our millipede friends.”
“Uck,” Jack grunted. “What happened to it?”
“I’m not sure, but I think this guy met with a pretty unpleasant end.” Rudy pointed out the other pieces. “There are segments of its body all over the tunnel. I’d say this one was, um… torn to pieces.”
Jack just stared at him. Rudy’s face was pale. Ben didn’t look well either. Jack sifted through more of the pieces and found fragments of the dark-red leg segments and a bit of an antenna.
“Okay, so—” Ben rubbed his eyes—“these millipedes feed on the slime. And now there’s something else down here that’s feeding on the millipedes.”
“Yeah,” Rudy grunted. “It’s called a food chain. We just haven’t come across the predator yet.”
“You think it was those things that were making the clicking sounds?” Jack said.
Rudy shrugged. “I’m as much in the dark as you guys.”
Ben’s lips tightened. “Well, whatever it was, it managed to tear this giant millipede apart.”
“That’s one possibility.” Jack tried to offer another, less-alarming hypothesis. “Of course, we don’t know if this millipede was even alive when it got eaten. It could be that whatever did this is just a scavenger. You know, feeding off carrion.”
“C’mon, Jack,” Rudy said. “Scavengers don’t tear a carcass apart like this. I mean, it looks like this guy put up a bit of a fight.”
Jack surveyed the tunnel. Rudy was right; the segments and legs were cracked and separated, strewn about the passage.
Rudy went on. “This looks more like a predatory kill. Maybe multiple predators, operating with a pack mentality. Or like a feeding frenzy.”
“A feeding frenzy,” Ben repeated and shook his head. “That’s great.” He shifted the leather sheath around his waist and started crawling forward again. “Let’s just find a way out before we run into one of them.”
They crawled through the tight, damp passage, sometimes having to squeeze through sections barely eighteen inches wide. Jack was covered in mud and started feeling a chill in his arms and feet. But mostly he struggled to keep his mind off the thought of an unknown predator lurking somewhere in the tunnels.
Ben stopped and dimmed his light. Jack could see a dark shape moving between the rocks up ahead. His heart raced.
Ben whispered over his shoulder, “It’s more millipedes. Two of them.”
Jack and Rudy crept closer. Two of the creatures milled lazily in the passage, munching on a small patch of the slime. One appeared to be an adult, roughly four feet long, with a juvenile maybe half its size.
The two animals scurried off in the glare of Ben’s flashlight, disappearing into a small side tunnel. Ben led on, and soon they emerged into a larger open area. Jack sighed in relief. His back and legs ached from crawling through the narrow passage, and he was glad now to stand straight again.
They inspected their new surroundings and found themselves at the bottom of a deep shaft. A steady trickle of water cascaded down from somewhere above them.
Rudy was filming up the length of the shaft with the night-vision setting. “This place is huge. I can’t even see the top.”
The other side of the shaft opened to a narrow passage that seemed to twist and turn on an angle downward like a very narrow canyon.
Ben shone his light into the mouth of the tunnel. “Looks like we go this way.”
They proceeded along the passage slowly. The water trickling from above snaked along the ground in tiny rivers as if leading them on, deeper into the mountain. They’d traveled for less than five minutes when Ben stopped again.
“I see light up ahead.”
“A way out?” Rudy said.
Ben looked closer and shook his head. “Don’t think so. I don’t feel any wind.”
They moved forward, and soon Jack could see the light as well. It grew brighter with each twist in the passage until finally the tunnel opened.
Ben stood still and Rudy drew up beside him. “Wow.”
Jack stood, openmouthed, staring at the sight in front of him.
“Whoa” was all he could think of to say.
They stood at the mouth of an enormous cavern, easily the largest chamber they had encountered so far. Jack tried to estimate the dimensions and guessed it to be nearly three hundred feet across. Like a huge, domed amphitheater rising to a height of a hundred feet or more. Frothy springs peppered the floor and bizarre rock formations rose up across the chamber. Fat, gnarled stalagmites twisted upward from the ground; long, slender stalactites reached down from above. A few met in the middle to form statuesque pillars around the edges of the great hall.
And the glowing slime was everywhere. It grew in dense, foaming patches around the pools. Winding tendrils spread out through the cavern, creeping up the columns and walls toward the ceiling.
Jack could see several of the millipedes munching lazily on the slime like cattle out in a meadow. And there were other creatures as well. Fat, round beetles the size of overturned coffee cups marched across the cavern in a little tea-set caravan.
The light was mesmerizing. Almost dizzying.
Jack found his voice first. “It’s like Las Vegas.”
Rudy switched on his camera and began filming. “This is incredible.”
Jack was grimy and sore, but he and Rudy spent the next several minutes traversing the chamber end to end, getting shots of rock formations, the pools, the slime, and the millipedes. And they found more of the big, plodding beetles they’d seen earlier. Rudy said he thought they looked like dung beetles. In fact, he discovered three different species and took copious shots of them all. It was odd that none of the creatures appeared to be disturbed by their presence but rather seemed content to simply graze on the slime.
They gathered around one of the larger hot springs, observing the foam being generated by the slime.
“So what’s with all the foam?” Jack said.
“Well…” Rudy bent down to inspect the pool. “I think it’s hydrogen peroxide.”
Jack frowned. “How do you know that?”
“I’ve been working on a theory,” Rudy said. “Chemiluminescent reactions require hydrogen peroxide in order to work, right?”
“Chemi-what?”
“Chemiluminescent.” Rudy stood and pointed to the slime. “A chemical reaction that generates light. Glowsticks, fireflies, or our slime here. They all need hydrogen peroxide in order to glow.”
“Okay…”
“And hydrogen peroxide is produced naturally in most organisms as a by-product of their metabolic activity.”
“Of course it is.”
“So this slime, whatever it is, must be generating copious amounts of hydrogen peroxide to cause it to glow like it does. It’s called oxidative phosphorylation.”
“It’s kind of funny.” Jack shook his head. “I know you’re speaking English; I just have no idea what you’re saying.”
Rudy sighed. “If this slime is producing hydrogen peroxide and there are other microorganisms in the water that produce catalase, it would cause a chemical reaction.”
“Catalase?” Jack snorted. “Y’know, I slept through biology.”
“It’s the enzyme used to break down hydrogen peroxide into oxygen and water. So basically this could all be part of a symbiotic ecosystem that acts like a natural oxygen generator.”
Jack was starting to understand. “Oxygen… So that’s how the millipedes get so big?”
“It’s just a theory,” Rudy said. “But we got in here through that underwater tunnel. So if these caverns are sealed off from the outside and this slime is somehow giving off oxygen, it could easily raise the levels in here considerably.”
“Makes sense, I guess.” Jack nodded. “But my question is, why haven’t they found this slime in other caves before? Why only this one?”
Rudy shrugged at that. “Maybe it’s all the hot springs and geologic activity or something indigenous to this region; I don’t know. But this cave has an ecosystem that’s developed totally isolated from the rest of the planet. We have no idea how many other caves like this there are throughout the world. We’re just now discovering new species on the ocean floor and places we’ve never explored. Think about it—we know more about the surface of Mars than we do about some places on Earth.”
At that point Ben spoke up. “Hey, I think you guys might want to take a look at this.”
They made their way over to where Ben was shining his light on an object wedged in the rocks. Jack bent down for a closer look.
It looked like some type of segmented appendage—almost like a crab leg. But bigger than any crab Jack had ever seen.
Much bigger.
Rudy gently pried it loose and held it up in the light. The smooth, hard claw portion was about twelve inches long, black with a gray underside and curved down to a point like a sword from one of those old Sinbad movies Jack used to watch. The rest of the limb was segmented by two connecting joints and snapped off just past the second joint. Shreds of white tendons and pink muscle tissue dangled out of the jagged end.
Jack straightened up. “I don’t even want to know what that came from.”
Ben grunted. “Looks more like something that belongs at the bottom of the ocean.”
“It’s definitely some kind of arthropod.” Rudy turned the appendage over in his hands. “It’s gotta be at least eighteen or twenty inches long. That’d give this thing—whatever it is—over a three-foot leg span.”
“Probably closer to four,” Ben said. He stood and looked around. Then he pointed his light toward the wall of the cavern. “I say we keep moving. Looks like there’s another tunnel over there.”
“Fine, but I want to take this with me,” Rudy said. He got his wet shirt out of his pack, wrapped the appendage tightly, and stuffed it back inside. Then he produced a small plastic Ziploc bag of peanuts and dumped them into his pack. “I’m going to take a sample of this slime too. Just in case we actually make it out of here alive.”
They made their way through the passage Ben had indicated. The tunnel narrowed quickly and soon the slime had dissipated, leaving them relying again on their flashlights for navigation. The luminescent slime had given Jack a sense of space, but now the darkness seemed to huddle around them, making the tunnel feel even more cramped.
Finally the passage opened onto a wide, oval-shaped cavern. The walls swept upward, nearly vertical, giving the chamber a basin-like shape. This room, however, had no cheerful tendrils of glowing slime. It was completely dark, and the darkness felt even heavier than inside the passage.
Jack swept his light around. Ahead of them, twenty yards or so, the chamber curved slightly and extended out of their line of sight. Jack pointed the light back toward Ben and noticed that he was staring at the wall behind them.
“Jack, you might want to get a shot of this,” he said.
Jack turned to see markings scrawled on the surface of the rock with what looked like white chalk. They consisted of vertical lines with smaller lines protruding out at right angles in varying spots.
Rudy leaned in to view them. “Looks like the same kind of writing from your dad’s drawing.”
“We’re not the first ones here,” Jack said, digging out his camera to take some shots of the wall.
Ben stood with his hands on his hips. “Well, at least we know there’s probably another way out of here. I’m guessing whoever drew these came in by some other entrance.”
Jack zoomed in on the writing. “I wonder if these are the markings that Running Bear’s grandfather saw.”
They checked the wall for additional images but found none. So they spread out to inspect the rest of the chamber. Jack was searching along one wall where he’d discovered several side passages leading away from the main chamber. But they all looked too tight to crawl through. He was crouched down, shining his light into one of the tunnels, when he heard Rudy let out a sort of low groan.
Ben’s voice echoed in the dark. “What’s wrong?”
Rudy replied, “Just tell me this isn’t what I think it is.”
Jack scrambled up the rocks to where Ben and Rudy stood with their lights aimed at the ground. “What is it? What happened?”
In the dim circle of light Jack could see what looked like several long sticks lying in the mud and gravel at Rudy’s feet. They had a pale, ashen color that stood in stark contrast to the black rocks. So pale, in fact, that they seemed to glow in the light. Jack tried in vain to suppress a gasp.
“Bones?”
Rudy knelt down for a closer look. “Looks like a couple femurs and maybe some ribs.”
“They’re human, all right.” Ben’s voice sounded distant and detached.
“How do you know that?” Jack said.
“Because here’s the rest of him.” Ben swept his light to the side, where it fell upon a skull perched amid a small pile of other bones. Wide, hollow eye sockets stared back at them, and an open jaw gaped as if frozen in the midst of a silent laugh.
Additional arm and leg bones lay strewn within a ten- or fifteen-foot radius. Jack struggled through his revulsion to maintain a level of professional detachment, but there was something sinister he noticed in the discovery. Something familiar and darkly unsettling that he wasn’t sure he wanted to share with the others.
“He’s, uh…” Jack didn’t know quite how to put it. “He’s sort of… all over the place.”
Ben flicked his light up into Jack’s face, then back down at the skull. “Like the millipede in the tunnel. He’s been torn limb from limb.”
Jack nodded slowly. “Kind of looks that way, doesn’t it?”
Ben turned away as Jack knelt beside the skull and lifted it, inspecting it for gashes or other marks of violence. He saw none. The surface was smooth, free from any bit of flesh. Like it had been picked clean.
“Jack.” Rudy’s voice was so soft that Jack at first didn’t heed it. “Jack.”
Jack looked up and saw Rudy standing on the edge of a rise, shining his flashlight down into the cavern on the other side.
“What?”
Rudy’s voice sounded grim. “I think you should see this.”
Jack drew up beside him. “What is it?”
Rudy pointed down into the cavern. “It looks like there’s more.”
Jack could see more white slivers glowing in the light near the bottom of the pit. He picked his way slowly down the rocky slope as his stomach tightened and his hands grew cold. He had never been this close to death before, and he fought his rising fears. Fear of never finding a way out of this cave and of whatever might be lurking in the stifling blackness. Fear that he would end up like these corpses, lost in the dark and the mud.
And a cold, paralyzing fear that one of them might be the remains of his father.
He reached the bottom and stopped in his tracks. The shapes of white bones littered the ground amid the rocks and mud. Maybe dozens of them. Parts of an arm and a leg, at least two skulls, and what looked like collarbones and more ribs. His jaw tightened as he swept the light across the rocks.
Rudy’s voice came from the top of the rise. “What do you see?”
Jack willed himself to move farther down into the chamber and saw still more pale fragments. More skulls.
“Yeah, there’s more down here,” he heard himself say, like he was having some kind of out-of-body experience. “I’m guessing… maybe a dozen or more.”
Jack’s legs froze and he could go no farther. He moved the light ahead and upward and his eyes widened at what he saw. Then he turned away and retched the contents of his stomach into the mud.
Moments later he could hear Rudy and Ben shuffling down the incline.
“You okay?” Rudy said.
“Not really, no.” Jack wiped a muddied sleeve across his mouth and then pointed his light up again ahead of them. As he did, he could see Rudy take a step backward.
The light chased off distorted shadows, unveiling bit by bit a tangled mass of pale bones, stacked high against the far wall of the chamber. Gaping skulls and misshapen spines and legs and arms, all twisted and contorted and heaped into a brutal white edifice. As if someone had just bulldozed them into a pile.
Rudy’s breath came in throaty gasps. “There’s… got to be… hundreds…” His voice trailed off.
Jack stared at the grotesque mound. “What is this place?”
Ben squatted down and hung his head for a moment. Then he looked up again and wiped his hair out of his face. “It’s a bone pit.”
Jack tore his gaze away from the hideous sight and turned to Ben, who wore the vacant expression of a sleepwalker. “What do you mean, a bone pit?”
“Remember…” Ben hesitated a moment as if searching for a way to explain it. “The legends about how the N’watu would give Sh’ar Kouhm an offering of souls to appease her.”
“So it is true?” Jack grimaced. “They really were making human sacrifices?”
Ben rubbed his eyes. “They were just a bunch of old ghost stories. I never took them seriously.”
“Well, apparently they were based in some kind of fact,” Jack said. “We’re standing in front of it.”
Rudy took a few hesitant steps closer to the pile. “There’s so many of them.” His light flitted across the mass of bones. “Look at them all.”
Jack felt as if he’d stumbled across a subterranean Nazi concentration camp. Hundreds of victims killed and their bodies just dumped into this pit. His nausea was quickly turning to anger. His face flushed with emotion. “What did they do to these people? How could they do this?”
“Beats me,” Ben said. “I wasn’t there.”
“Well, you seem to know a lot about them. You said this was all a Caieche legend.”
“Look, man.” Ben stood, and his tone grew sharp. “The N’watu were here way before any of us. My people weren’t responsible for this.”
“Hey, there’s something here,” Rudy said, pointing his light at the base of the pile. “I see something in there.”
But Jack was preoccupied with Ben’s comment. “I didn’t say your tribe was responsible. I’m just struggling with the idea that someone—anyone—could do something like this to other human beings.”
Rudy was still talking. “It looks like it’s a…”
“Oh, really?” Ben snorted and spread his hands. “Welcome to the human race, kid. Let me tell you, this is nothing compared to what happened to thousands of Indians at the hands of—”
“Don’t lecture me about suffering! You know how many Africans died in the holds of slave ships?”
“Both of you, shut up!” Rudy’s voice rose. “Get over here and take a look at this!”
Jack took a breath and tried to calm himself. Clearly the gruesome discovery had put them on edge, and he needed to get a handle on his emotions. He made his way over to where Rudy was inspecting the bone heap. Rudy turned and held up a small, metallic object.
Jack aimed his flashlight at it and gasped. “Is that a—?”
Before Jack could say anything further, a section of the bone pile burst outward, knocking them both off their feet. Rudy yelled and scrambled away. His light flashed back and forth, and Jack caught a glimpse of a jagged shape occupying the space where they had been standing—just a fleeting, skeletal shadow before it slipped out of view again.
Rudy scrambled backward on his heels and elbows, kicking and shrieking. Jack saw flashes of a dark shape following him. And he could hear a sort of growling hiss along with the same clicking sound they’d heard earlier.
The thing pursued Rudy with jerky movements, and only when it paused momentarily was Jack able to finally train his own light on it. In that brief second, he saw it more clearly. It was crablike in appearance and enormous—about the size of a large dog—with what looked like a bony, armored shell. And it had multiple segmented legs like a crab, with two longer ones jutting forward. Then it reared back as if up on its haunches, with its front legs coiling like cobras ready to strike.
The creature flicked forward again, out of the light. Rudy’s scream jolted Jack out of his daze, and he jumped to his feet, looking around for something to use as a weapon. Just then another dark shape flashed through his beam.
It was Ben. He looked like he was carrying something. Jack thought it might’ve been a rock, but it was all happening too fast. Between Rudy screaming and the lights zipping back and forth across the cavern, Jack only managed to discern a flurry of movement and sounds. There was a loud, rattling hiss and three heavy thumps before his light caught up with the action again.
Jack found Rudy lying on his back, chest heaving, and Ben kneeling a few feet away with a large rock in front of him. Under the rock was a motionless, contorted mass of limbs.
Jack shone his light on Rudy. His pant leg was torn and a trail of blood dripped down his calf.
“You okay?” Jack said, but Rudy’s eyes looked as round as saucers and he gasped for breath. Jack raised his voice. “Rudy!”
Rudy blinked and snapped his head toward Jack. “I’m… I don’t know.”
“You’re bleeding.”
“I… I think I got cut or something.”
Ben crawled over to Rudy and inspected his wound. “It doesn’t look too bad.” He dug in his pack for the first aid kit.
Meanwhile Jack found his attention drawn back to the creature, now lying crushed and twitching beneath the rock. He rolled the stone aside with his foot and circled the body from a safe distance. The animal lay with its legs splayed out. Jack counted eight of them. Each of the longer forelegs contained the same curved claw as the specimen Rudy had discovered.
“Is it one of those… things?” Rudy’s voice was shaky.
“Looks like it,” Jack said, kneeling to inspect the creature more closely. Its outer shell was roughly circular and about the size of a large serving platter. It was black with gray patches and had a bumpy, pebbled texture. The edges were ringed with small, hornlike protrusions. Jack made a quick mental estimate of its size. It was about three feet wide from leg tip to leg tip, and maybe four feet front to back with the longer front legs.
Jack nudged the body with his foot. “I want to try to flip it over and get a look at its underside.”
Ben turned around. “Be careful with that thing. I think these cuts are puncture wounds.”
Rudy seemed surprised. “What do you mean? Like bite marks? Did it bite me?”
Jack carefully lifted the outer shell and rolled the animal over. It was heavier than it looked. Its armored legs seemed to curl inward reflexively as he laid the creature on its back. From this perspective, Jack could see a distinct set of long, meaty fangs that curved out and downward. And between them protruded a pair of short, bony, fingerlike appendages, like the palps that spiders use for sensory purposes. Between them was a large slit that Jack assumed was the creature’s mouth.
“Whoa,” he whispered.
“What is it?” Rudy’s voice rose. “Is it poisonous? Did it bite me?”
“Hold still.” Ben was busy cleaning and dressing the wound.
“Well…” Jack couldn’t tear himself from the specimen. “It looks like some kind of giant spider with an armored shell. I’ve never seen anything like this before. It’s huge.”
“But is it poisonous?”
Jack shrugged. “How would I know? You’re the biologist.”
“Well, we know it’s predatory,” Ben said without looking up. “It attacked from out of cover of the bones. Like it was waiting there to ambush prey.”
“Jack.” Rudy grimaced, pointing to the bone pile. “Did you see the watch?”
Jack remembered why Rudy had called him over in the first place. He swept his light across the ground and saw the scuffed and battered wristwatch lying in the mud where Rudy had dropped it. He picked it up.
“This looks pretty new,” he said. “I mean, like a modern watch.”
Rudy was shaking his head. “What’s going on here?”
Jack peered at Ben through the lights. “Obviously we’re not the only people in this cave. You said the N’watu would offer human sacrifices to the Soul Eater.” He held up the watch. “I think they’re still doing it. Or at least somebody is.”
They stared at each other for a hushed moment as that thought sank in. Only the sounds of their breathing echoed in the cavern.
Ben shook his head. “This is crazy. They’re just a legend.”
“You saw those drawings on the wall. And all these bodies got down here somehow. They didn’t just wander in on their own.”
“Then we better find a way out pretty quick.” Ben finished wrapping Rudy’s leg with gauze. “We don’t know how many of those spider things are down here, and we should probably get him to a hospital.”
For a moment, Jack bristled at the thought of leaving. He knew there was real danger here and that they needed to find a way out, but still, his curiosity had been piqued. They had just discovered some actual hard evidence that the N’watu might in fact be real. And that notion was mind-boggling. Part of him wanted desperately to find out more.
He helped Rudy to his feet. “Are you okay? Can you walk?”
Rudy tested some weight on his leg. “Yeah, it just tingles a little, but I can walk.” He limped over and stared down at the creature.
Jack nudged it again with his foot. “What do you suppose it is?”
Rudy shrugged. “It does look like some kind of arachnid or an entirely new species of arthropod. We’d need to do a comparative DNA analysis to modern arachnids to be sure. But these things could have been down here since prehistoric times.”
He turned to Ben. “We have to bring it with us.”
Ben winced. “What? You’re both crazy!”
But Rudy persisted. “This is a huge scientific discovery.”
Ben rolled his eyes. “Whatever. I’m not carrying the thing. You guys figure out what to do with it.”
Rudy bent closer and inspected the carcass under his flashlight. “You realize we’re going to be famous with this discovery.”
“No doubt… but hopefully not posthumously,” Jack said.
Rudy chuckled. “What should we name it?”
“What d’you mean?”
“Well, whoever discovers a new species of animal always gets to name it,” Rudy said. “How about Cavernous Arachnis Giganticus?”
Jack just raised an eyebrow. He was thankful at least that Rudy was feeling well enough to joke, bleak as their circumstances were. “Maybe I can carry it with something or at least drag it along.” He unpacked his rolled-up wet jeans and knelt down to slip them under the spider.
Suddenly the carcass jerked and erupted into a seizure. Jack leaped out of the way as the spider bumped and jittered on the ground. Rudy and Ben jumped back as well.
The creature growled and hissed, kicking in violent spasms. All of its legs thrashed about, stretching out and digging into the mud as if trying to flip itself back over.
“I thought you killed it!” Jack heard himself scream.
“I did,” Ben shouted back at him.
“Apparently not all the way!”
“Shut up and kill it!” Rudy yelled, hobbling backward. “Kill it! Kill it!”
Jack was scrambling in the dark, searching for another rock, when he heard the hisses and growls turn into high-pitched squeals. He turned back to see that Ben had pounced on top of the animal and was ramming his knife deep into its center. He plunged it over and over into the soft underbelly as a viscous yellow fluid spattered his arms and face. The animal’s legs thrashed and clawed in furious tremors but gradually slowed until at last the only movement was a slight twitching in one of the rear appendages.
Jack stared at the grotesque sight, not sure what to say. His heart was still pounding. Finally Rudy spoke up from his vantage point several feet away. “Is it dead this time?”
Ben stood over the animal, wild-eyed and grimacing. He wiped his face on his sleeve. “It better be.”
Jack inspected the carcass and cringed. The underbelly was a mass of shredded flesh and yellow goop. Its legs had contorted and curled inward but were finally motionless.
“You must’ve just stunned it before,” he said after a moment.
“No way.” Ben shook his head. “I hit it three or four times. And that rock weighed a good thirty pounds. No way it survived that.”
“Well, that shell must be harder than it looks.”
Rudy snorted. “Or maybe it was just playing possum.”
Ben glared at them. “I’m telling you, I killed that thing.”
“Great,” Rudy muttered. “Giant zombie cave spiders.”
Ben swore. “Y’know, if it weren’t for me, both of you guys would be dead by—” He stopped his rant short and looked around the cavern, cocking his head.
“What?” Rudy whispered. “What’s wrong?”
“Shh!” Ben snapped his palm up and tilted his head the other way.
Then Jack heard it too. Somewhere in the darkness, an eerie clicking sound echoed off the cavern walls. It was soft and indistinct at first but growing steadily louder.
Ben turned. “We need to get out of here now!”
“Wait!” Jack grabbed his camera out of his pack. He couldn’t leave without recording what they’d found. “I have to at least get a shot of this place. I have to document—”
Ben clutched him by the back of his shirt and tugged him away, but Jack shrugged himself loose. Ben yelled, “You idiot, we have to get out of here!”
Rudy’s breath was growing labored. “Which way?”
“Up,” Ben said. “We need to get out of this pit.”
“Up… up where?”
Jack pointed the camera around the chamber. With the night-vision setting, he could see a couple of side passages leading off the main room. One looked big enough to stand in, but the others were barely large enough for them to crawl through.
Jack got a quick shot of the giant spider and then panned over to the bone pile. In that shot, he could see Ben in the foreground shining his light up the cavern walls. Rudy was bent over and holding his side. Beyond them both, Jack could see a wide ledge just above the heap of bones. It looked maybe twenty feet high or so, but it wasn’t that far from the top of the pile.
“Up there.” Jack pointed. “There’s some kind of ledge up there.”
Ben ran to the edge of the heap and scanned his light along the ledge. He turned back and said, “We’ll have to try it.”
“Guys…,” Rudy wheezed, clutching his side. “I’m kinda… starting to feel a little… not so good.” He staggered a few steps toward Jack and then fell to his hands and knees, vomiting.
“Rudy!” Jack stopped filming and ran to help, but Rudy had already collapsed into a quivering heap. Ben was there in a moment as well.
In their lights, Jack could see the ground stained dark red. Blood frothed from Rudy’s mouth and nostrils, down his chin. His entire body quaked with violent tremors, and Jack could hear him struggling for breath.
“Jack,” Rudy’s voice rasped. His chest heaved like he’d just run a marathon, but his breath was lost in a thick gurgling sound. He gagged and coughed. “I can’t… I can’t…”
“Rudy, it’s okay. We’ll get you out of here. Just hold on.” Jack’s own heart was pounding now. He felt utterly helpless. “Stay with me. Just try to slow your breathing. Take deep breaths. Stay with me!”
“I… can’t…” Rudy managed two last words before his entire torso stiffened. His head arched back in a wide-eyed, silent scream. A tremor shook his body once, and then he was still.
“Rudy!” Jack shook his shoulders. “Rudy!”
Ben shone his flashlight into Rudy’s eyes, still wide open in a look of terror. His pupils were dilated; there was no sign of any reaction to the light.
“Rudy!” Jack’s voice trembled, and a strange sense of detachment flooded over him. A feeling that he was outside of his body somehow, sitting in a theater or at home watching a horror movie.
“Jack!” It seemed Ben’s voice called him from the other side of the cavern. “Jack, we have to get out of here.”
Jack looked up to see Ben nose to nose with him. His lips moved as if in slow motion.
“Jack… he’s dead. There’s nothing else we can do.”
Ben shook him by the shoulders, and Jack blinked back to consciousness.
“He’s gone,” Ben kept saying. “We have to get out of here.”
“No!” Jack grabbed Rudy’s shoulders and tried to drag him toward the bones. “We have to get him to a hospital. Help me!”
Jack felt his head snap sideways as Ben’s hand connected with his cheek. The sharp sting brought him out of his fog. The whole side of his face seemed to burn.
Ben glared at him. “He’s dead! We have to leave him and get out of here.”
The clicking noise was growing louder and now seemed to fill the entire cavern like an approaching chorus of castanets playing somewhere in the dark. But it was more intense now than when Jack had heard it before. And he could hear other sounds over the distinct clicking noise. Growling and hissing, like the animal that had attacked them.
Ben leaped onto the bone pile and scrambled toward the top. Bones slipped and cracked under his weight, but he kept clawing his way up.
Jack looked back at Rudy, his body limp and contorted. And still.
He grimaced, fighting back tears as he picked up Rudy’s backpack and slung it over his shoulder along with his own pack. Now Jack could sense a growing shadow approaching from somewhere in the darkness behind him. He jumped onto the bone pile and clawed his way up to the ledge.
It was like climbing a snowbank; his own weight caused him to sink farther down than he was able to pull himself up. His hands clutched at thick leg bones, round skulls, and smaller ribs and hands and feet. Hard and cold to the touch, they shifted and snapped like old branches beneath his feet. The putrid scent of decay wafted up from the heap with each move he made, choking him in its stench.
He struggled to turn his brain off to the horror of Rudy’s death and the corpses beneath him and focus solely on climbing, forcing his hands to keep moving and his legs to keep pumping.
As he neared the top, he saw that the ledge was higher than he’d expected. He clawed at the rock wall to find some kind of handhold. And even as he did, his feet sank deeper into the bones. It was as if the corpses were grabbing his legs to pull him down into their tomb.
But then he looked up again and saw Ben’s arm extended toward him. Jack gave one final push with his legs, hoping there were enough bones beneath him to hold him stable. He jumped…
And felt Ben’s hand close around his wrist. Jack reached his free hand up, kicked his feet against the rock, and scrambled over the ledge.
He rolled onto his back and closed his eyes, gasping for breath.
But he had left Rudy behind. Down on the cave floor. A few minutes ago, he was alive. Lungs breathing, heart beating. And now…
Jack peered back over the ledge into darkness. Ben switched off his light and hunkered down beside Jack, peeking over the ledge as well.
Below them, Jack could see an eerie blue cone of light shining off into the dark. It was Rudy’s flashlight. Everything else around was lost in the inky black of the cavern. But the clicking sounds flooded the cave now, sounding as if they were coming from all around them.
Jack reached for the video camera and peered into the view screen. Through it, he could see the pale-green shape of Rudy’s limp body lying in the mud. Then, beyond, Jack saw movement. Several shadows appeared over the rim and scurried down the incline. Sharp, bony limbs scuttling in a flurry of movement.
It was more of the spiders, some nearly as big as the one that had been hiding in the bone pile, others considerably smaller. They skittered down into the pit, converging on Rudy’s corpse, tearing into it like a pack of wild dogs. Hisses turned to coarse growls and high-pitched shrieks. The flashlight shook and jittered, shooting its beam in various directions until finally it went out.
Jack closed his eyes and rolled onto his back, suppressing a sudden wave of nausea.
He thought of Rudy’s parents. How would he tell them? How could he explain the kind of gruesome death their son—his best friend—had just experienced?
These creatures were everything they had feared. Ravenous and violent. Despite the presence of the enormous millipedes, the food supply in this isolated ecosystem must have been scarce.
And yet it wasn’t so isolated, for they had stumbled across a subterranean killing field. Someone had been feeding these monsters human flesh, and now Jack wrestled to keep his fear from controlling him.
His nausea rose again, and this time he couldn’t stop it. He rolled to his side and vomited onto the rocky ledge, convulsing in choked sobs. Rudy had been the only real friend he’d ever had. The only one he’d ever trusted. They’d been a pair of outcasts in school. A couple of geeks with only each other for company.
And now, just like that, he was gone.
Jack felt Ben’s hand on his shoulder. “You okay?”
He choked back his tears and wiped his mouth. “Yeah.”
“You didn’t get bit too, did you?”
Jack scooted himself away from the ledge and sat up. “No… sorry, I just lost it there.”
In the darkness, Ben’s voice replied, “I’m sorry about Rudy.”
“He was my best friend,” Jack said. “My only friend. He didn’t even want to come on this trip, but I talked him into it. I put a guilt trip on him.”
“This wasn’t your fault.”
Jack wiped the tears from his eyes. “Yes, it was. If I wouldn’t have made him come along, he’d still be alive.”
Below them, he could still hear the noises of the spiders feeding. He shook his head, dazed. “He seemed fine. You bandaged his leg…. He was okay.”
“It must’ve been some kind of venom. But it was so fast-acting.”
“What did his wound look like? When you were cleaning it, was there any discoloration or swelling?”
Ben paused before answering. “There were two puncture marks on his calf. Big ones. And the area was pretty red and swollen. I cleaned it as best I could with antibacterial ointment and wrapped it up. It didn’t seem to bother him that much.”
Jack just stared into the dark and shuddered.
“Bottom line is, we need to avoid getting bit at all costs,” Ben said with a grim tone.
Jack rubbed his eyes as a rush of frustration and anger ran through him. “This whole trip was a bad idea.”
“It wasn’t your fault,” Ben said again. “There wasn’t anything you could’ve done.”
Jack fell silent for a moment as his thoughts returned to Rudy. “How am I gonna tell his parents? What do I even say to them?”
“Let’s just make sure we get out alive so we can tell them,” Ben said. “We should get going. I don’t want to take the chance those things will find us up here.”
After several more minutes the frenzy below seemed to die down. Jack gathered his mental courage enough to take one more look through the camera. All was dark and quiet and the ground was still littered with bones. But Jack couldn’t tell which ones had belonged to his friend.
Ben clicked on a flashlight and scanned the pit below them. He shook his head. “I can’t believe this. They came out of nowhere, and now they just disappeared again.”
“Probably in one of those side passages,” Jack said, reeling with disgust. “Off digesting their meal.”
They inspected the ledge, which turned out to be larger than they’d originally thought. They had been sitting off to one side where it was only a few feet wide, but to their right, the ledge widened further into what appeared to be a sort of natural parapet or balcony overlooking the entire pit below. And behind them a tunnel led off into darkness. It was wide and relatively level, but it twisted and turned completely out of sight.
Ben pointed down the passage. “I guess we follow this tunnel to see where it leads.”
Jack felt numb and sick, and his mind was still in a fog of sorrow. “Let’s go.”
Ben stuck out an arm. “Hold up.” He peered into the tunnel.
“Now what?” Jack said.
“Turn off your light.”
Jack’s arms and neck bristled as he shut off his flashlight. Inside the tunnel he could see a dim yellow light flitting erratically across the rock walls.
Ben spoke in a tight whisper. “Someone’s coming!”
“Get back against the side,” Ben said, herding Jack along the ledge.
Jack’s throat was dry with fear as he flattened himself against the rock wall. His head was still spinning from witnessing Rudy’s death. And now, when he thought things couldn’t get any worse, they had. The day had begun so innocuously but had suddenly turned into a nightmare of epic proportions.
He could hear voices echoing faintly down the passage—deep and guttural sounds, but distinctly human. And there were more than one. Jack could tell some sort of conversation was taking place, though he couldn’t discern anything specific. No recognizable words. And in moments he understood why.
They weren’t speaking English. In fact, it didn’t sound like any language he’d ever heard before.
The light coming down the tunnel was growing brighter and the voices more distinct. Jack’s heart pounded, and he fought every instinct inside him that screamed for him to run. It was an unnerving experience to feel so trapped, yet so completely exposed to whoever—or whatever—was approaching through the tunnel.
Ben tapped Jack’s shoulder and made some gesture, though Jack could barely see him against the glow emanating from the passage beyond. Jack shook his head, trying to indicate he didn’t understand what Ben was trying to communicate.
Ben pointed over the ledge into the pit and whispered, “We have to hide.”
“What? I’m not going back down there.” Not with those spiders lurking about. Not where what little was left of Rudy’s body lay torn to pieces.
The voices were growing steadily louder.
Ben moved to the rim of the ledge and pointed straight down. “We can hide in the bones.”
The bones? Jack blinked. The bones? He wondered now whether this whole situation had caused Ben to completely lose touch with reality. But before he could say anything further, Ben crouched down and slipped over the edge, disappearing into the darkness. Jack could hear the clack and rattle of bones below him. He pressed one hand to his eyes, grimacing with frustration. Now he really was alone.
He leaned his head back against the rock and tried to slow his breathing. He had to control his thoughts and analyze the situation. It might be possible that the men in the tunnel weren’t even dangerous, though his gut told him that was extremely unlikely. Everything he had witnessed—everything he had learned about this place—told him otherwise. Whoever was approaching most likely knew their way around these caves well enough. And the watch Rudy had discovered earlier seemed proof that whatever horrific events had led to this chamber of corpses were still going on to this day.
In any case, the spiders appeared to have departed, and the men in the tunnel would surely find him if he stayed where he was. So Jack knew with a sickening realization that Ben’s plan—as crazy as it seemed—had actually been the best course all along. Jack scooped up the backpacks and paused a moment to gather his courage. Then he lowered himself over the edge.
He landed in the pile of bones, sinking to his waist in human remains. Fighting back his nausea again—which was easier now since he no longer had anything left in his stomach anyway—Jack rolled slowly to the bottom of the pile and burrowed underneath a mass of skeletal pieces. The stench was overwhelming, reminding him of a time he’d gone to the beach with his father as a boy and discovered that the tide had deposited a horde of dead fish onto the sand. He had all he could do to keep from gagging in the darkness.
He couldn’t see anything but utter blackness and hoped desperately that he was buried far enough to remain hidden from whatever might be coming along. He wondered again if some of these could be his own father’s bones. If his dad had met this kind of horrible death alone in these caves twelve years ago. But Jack pushed away those thoughts, determined to keep his wits about him. He had to keep still and stay quiet.
The voices continued in a stilted, halting conversation above him. Jack couldn’t tell how many men there were. At least three, he guessed. Maybe four. And the words themselves were a guttural, throaty dialect.
Jack wondered if it was possible that a remnant of an ancient tribe could still be living in these caves. Had they remained concealed from all modern knowledge? Or was it merely some bizarre cult that was using a hidden entrance to come and go from the cavern, bringing terrified victims for their demonic death rituals? Whoever they were, he could only assume for now that they were responsible for the horror in this place. The cave spiders were just animals, predators doing what they needed in order to survive. It was the humans who were the real monsters.
Jack could see a faint light glimmering across the cavern from above. He peered out through a patchwork of bones and bone fragments. Minutes passed with occasional verbal exchanges from the men standing above him. Jack closed his eyes. Deep breaths would prove useless in the rotting stink around him.
After a minute or two there came another sound, a sort of soft rustling. Jack resisted the temptation to crane his neck for a better view. Meanwhile the faint light above seemed to grow brighter as well. He could hear more movement, this time clear and distinct. He wondered where Ben had gone, whether he had disappeared down one of the side passages leading from the main cavern or if he too was hidden inside the pile of bones. But all Jack could do was wonder and hope. He didn’t dare risk trying to communicate.
Jack’s heart began racing faster as a yellow light came into his field of view, lowering from above. He concentrated on moving only his eyes to track the light. Any turn of his head could cause the bones around him to shift, giving away his position. The light paused, lingering at the edges of his vision for several seconds, then continued its descent.
Within seconds, Jack could recognize the source of the light. A lantern of some sort was being lowered on a rope into the pit. It clanked softly against the cave wall and spun on the rope. Jack couldn’t see much detail, only that there was a pale-yellow glow inside it.
It descended like a spider on a line of silk into the pit until it finally came to rest on the floor of the cave no more than thirty feet from him. It had a square metal frame with a large ring at the top and dusty glass plates on each side. He couldn’t see a flame inside the glass, yet it lit up the surrounding area with a sickly yellow light.
Just behind the lantern, Jack spotted a second rope descending. Or rather, a crude ladder. A series of rough-hewn wooden boards with holes in each end were suspended between twin lengths of knotted rope.
Jack concentrated on his breathing. The terror welling up inside him had tightened his chest, constricting his airflow. So he found himself unintentionally gasping for air, yet he knew he needed to keep absolutely still.
The bottom of the ladder began jiggling and wafting back and forth. Someone was obviously descending it.
Jack caught his breath as a figure came into view.
It was human as far as he could tell. From his limited vantage point Jack could see only a torso, tall and rail thin and almost entirely naked. The skin was an abnormally pallid hue—very nearly translucent—and he was clad only in a loincloth tied around his waist with a crudely beaded length of twine. Moreover, his flesh looked to be covered with a jagged network of delicate black lines. Jack at first thought it was some sort of woven netting, but as the gangly limbs moved about, he could tell it was a body etching or tattoo of some kind. The markings looked similar to the characters Jack had seen written on the wall earlier and in his father’s drawing, but he couldn’t make out the details in the dim light.
Nor could Jack see the man’s face, merely his arms and torso up to the sinewy pectoral muscles. He was extremely thin though not sickly or malnourished. Rather, his musculature appeared to be quite well defined, enhanced perhaps by the lack of pigmentation in the skin. His hands bore long, curving fingernails also black in color. Jack guessed they’d probably been decorated by the same procedure with which the man had marked the rest of his body.
The figure stood motionless, half-crouched as if poised for action. Jack guessed he was listening for some sign of the spiders. Whatever the creatures used it for, the clicking sounds they made at least gave away their presence and warned of their approach. But other than the gentle echoes of water trickling somewhere in the big chamber, there was only silence.
Jack held his breath and waited. The man was no more than ten or twelve feet away, and Jack could hear something that sounded like sniffing. He bit his lip, hoping desperately that the man wouldn’t smell him, and after several seconds he strode off, out of Jack’s line of sight. Jack was amazed that with such a gangly body, the stranger moved with a fluid, almost-graceful manner, slipping barefoot across the stones without making a sound.
Terror and fascination each fought for dominance as Jack’s mind bristled with questions. Could this stranger really be one remnant of a lost tribe of humans? Had the N’watu actually survived in these caverns all this time? How many more of them were there? How could they possibly have gone undetected by the modern world for so long? And were they as primitive as they appeared? Little more than a Stone Age culture? The lantern they carried seemed to indicate that they’d had at least some interaction with the outside world.
But more immediate than all of these questions was, what would they do to him if they discovered him hiding here? His heart pounded against his ribs as he worked to remain still.
Meanwhile the rope ladder continued swaying.
Soon another figure descended into view. The second N’watu reached the bottom and stood facing the direction in which the first one had gone off. A moment later Jack heard a voice coming from the darkness. The first man spoke in choppy, guttural syllables. But in a hushed tone. The second N’watu, standing in front of Jack, replied in a similar volume.
The first N’watu moved back into Jack’s view carrying something. Jack suppressed a gasp as he saw what it was: Rudy’s tattered nylon jacket. It looked like it’d been ripped to shreds. And it was covered in blood.
The two men faced each other, the one holding up the jacket in front of the other. Jack could only imagine what they were saying—no doubt discussing how someone had gotten into their cave undetected. They would probably assume the intruder had not been alone, for that’s what Jack would’ve assumed. Living in this dark, dangerous environment, their senses—especially their senses of hearing and smell—were most likely heightened. Maybe they could even smell Jack from where he lay, under a pile of human remains.
The second man strode off into the dark and returned with the corpse of the spider Ben had killed. He held it up by its big front legs as the others dangled down, limp. Its punctured underside still dripped yellowish fluid. They talked further in what Jack thought sounded like an argument. Perhaps they were debating their next moves. Should they search for other possible intruders? Or maybe just let their spider friends take care of them?
The first N’watu kept shaking Rudy’s jacket. He seemed to be insisting on a particular point or a course of action. But his comrade did not appear convinced, nor was he quite as agitated. After another minute or two of discussion, the second man started climbing back up the rope ladder, carrying the enormous spider corpse along with him by a front leg.
The first man remained behind. He turned and faced out into the cavern again, perhaps searching for some sign of additional intruders. By now, Jack’s body was aching from remaining still so long inside the reeking mound of bones.
Then Jack noticed movement in his field of view. Something dark and shaped like an overturned coffee cup with multiple legs was crawling across the bones directly in front of his face. It was one of the species of beetles he’d seen earlier.
Jack gasped and jerked backward with an involuntary spasm. The bones shuddered and immediately the N’watu’s torso spun in his direction.
Jack could see the man’s sinewy abdomen moving with slow, steady breaths. He held out the lantern toward the bone pile and took a hesitant step closer. Jack fought the impulse to flee. Every nerve in his body screamed at him to jump out from the cover of his hiding place and run. But his sense of reason—as if barely clinging to the edge of a cliff—kept that impulse in check.
The N’watu held the lantern out before him and crept closer. In two cautious strides he was standing directly over Jack’s hiding place and crouched down to inspect the bone pile.
Then Jack got a look at his face.
The face Jack saw staring in at him appeared only remotely human, marred by the same black etchings that covered the rest of his body. Jack gazed into white irises, void of any pigmentation at all and glowing eerily in the light of his lamp. His gaunt cheeks and bizarre tattoos created a face that looked more like a skull covered by a pallid layer of skin. And his head was completely hairless. Not even eyebrows.
The face moved still closer. Large, moist nostrils undulated as they sucked in the scent. Cautious, translucent eyes peered in directly at Jack. Suddenly the face reared backward. Jack cringed as the N’watu thrust one of his hands into the bone pile. He knew his life was over; this human monster was going to yank him out by his hair.
But instead of grabbing Jack, the N’watu pulled his hand back again with a softball-size beetle wriggling in his grasp.
The insect’s legs clawed at the air as the N’watu held it up to the lamp, inspecting it with his ghostly, colorless eyes. Then his lips parted, revealing a mouthful of discolored, crooked teeth. He sank them into the beetle’s soft underside with a sickening crunch and tore off a stringy chunk of its innards. The beetle squealed, flailed its legs, and went limp as the N’watu chewed as casually as if he’d bitten into an apple. The tip of a leg protruded from between his lips.
Jack had all he could do to fight his gag reflex.
The N’watu took a second bite, ripping out more meaty guts and a couple more legs, crunching on them with ghastly relish. He polished off the remainder of the bug in two bites, wiping out all the juicy remnants from the inside of its shell and sucking them off his fingers like a kid cleaning the last drops of ice cream out of a bowl.
He tossed aside the beetle’s outer shell and wiped his mouth with the back of his arm. Then he looked around the cavern once more before climbing up the rope ladder, carrying Rudy’s shredded jacket with him.
Jack could hear the N’watu arguing on the ledge above him for several minutes. He tried again to determine how many of them there were altogether, but he couldn’t be sure.
The discussion continued as the rope ladder drew up out of sight, followed by the lantern, leaving Jack engulfed in darkness. In minutes, the voices faded as the N’watu moved off down the tunnel.
Jack closed his eyes, still afraid to move but too afraid to stay where he was. Then he heard Ben’s voice calling softly to him from out of the darkness.
“Jack? Are you here?”
Jack breathed a sigh. A wave of relief washed across his mind.
“I’m here,” he said and began digging his way out of the bone pile. “Where are you?”
A light flicked on in the darkness. Jack could see it sweeping across the chamber as he pulled himself free of the heap. He crawled out, onto the cold mud-and-gravel floor, and lay on his belly. He didn’t care about the cold or the mud. He was just glad to be free of those bones—the remains of people who’d once been living, breathing souls like himself, but who had each most likely died horrible deaths, like Rudy. He could almost hear their screams and shrieks of terror in his head.
Gravel crunched underfoot, and Jack opened his eyes to see Ben standing over him, shining the flashlight in his face.
“You okay?” Ben said.
Jack nodded. He was struggling through the numbing shock of Rudy’s death. But he also knew he was on the verge of confirming his father’s theory.
Ben helped Jack to his feet. “Was it the N’watu? Did you see them? I was hiding on the other side of the pile. I couldn’t see anything.”
“Yeah, I saw them.” Jack shuddered. “Almost wish I hadn’t.”
“What’d they look like?”
Jack forced his sorrow and shock to the back of his mind as he described the lanky bodies and the disfigured face of the N’watu. Ghostly, pale skin and demonic, colorless eyes. “They almost didn’t look human,” he said. “They were covered with some kind of markings. Tattoos or something—I don’t know. And they looked to be pretty primitive. Although they did have a lantern with them. An old-fashioned metal one. It looked like they’d filled it with the slime we found. Like maybe they use it for their primary light source.”
“All the legends say they were very clever,” Ben said. “They made good use of their resources.”
Jack flashed his light to the ledge. He was quiet for a moment, trying to determine what to do next. They couldn’t very well stay down in this pit. Not with the spiders still lurking about. Their best option seemed crazy on its face, but Jack decided it might be their only one.
“I think we should follow them,” he said. “Try to see where they went.”
“Follow them?” Ben gestured to the bone pile. “Maybe you haven’t noticed, but these people don’t take kindly to outsiders.”
“Well, it’s either them or the spiders. What do you feel more lucky with?”
Ben stared at him a moment and then grunted. “That’s like asking if I prefer leukemia or pancreatic cancer.” He sighed and peered up at the ledge. “I hate to admit it, but it’s probably the best chance we have of finding an exit.”
They climbed back up the bone heap and onto the ledge, where they took an inventory of their supplies before continuing. They still had two flashlights, both video cameras, a couple packages of flares and glowsticks, plus a fair amount of food and water. They loaded everything into their two backpacks for ease of transport. Jack also made sure he still had the spider appendage they had found and the specimen of slime Rudy had taken, glowing faintly inside the Ziploc bag. They were too important to leave behind. He had to get them out for someone to study. For Rudy’s sake.
They shouldered their packs and moved slowly into the tunnel in the direction the N’watu had gone. The passage ran thirty yards and then turned to the left. From there it narrowed sharply and wound in a zigzag path that slowed their progress considerably.
They moved in silence. Jack couldn’t stop thinking about the N’watu’s bizarre appearance, and after some time he spoke up. “Y’know, the tattoos they had all over them looked like writing—like the lettering from my dad’s drawing.”
Ben shrugged. “It doesn’t look like any Indian script I’ve ever seen.”
“That’s what’s so weird about it,” Jack said. “That they should look so unique. Typically neighboring tribes would tend to influence each other’s cultures, language, and communication. You’d think the N’watu would have at least some connection—some similarities to the surrounding tribes.”
Ben was silent for several seconds. Finally he issued a pensive grunt. “What if they’re not even human?”
“What?”
“I mean, what if they’re not even from… y’know… here.”
“You mean aliens?” Jack shook his head. “I don’t think there’s any reason to assume that.”
“You said yourself they didn’t look human. Maybe they’re not. Or maybe they’re some kind of hybrid. There are stories that say the N’watu were descended from a race called the Old Ones that originally came to Earth thousands of years ago from another world. Maybe they even brought those spiders with them.”
Jack’s chest tightened as he wondered what Rudy would have said to that. “Giant alien zombie cave spiders?”
Ben shrugged. “Just a thought.”
They continued on, and Jack—against his better judgment—began rolling that idea around in his head. History was replete with those kinds of stories. Ancient Egyptian, Sumerian, and Indian cultures all had similar themes in their mythologies.
“What exactly do those stories say?” he asked after a moment.
Ben paused in the tunnel. “One of them says that the Old Ones came to Earth and built a huge city or fortress under the mountain. But they were dying. They… I don’t know—they had some disease and were all going to die. And for some reason they couldn’t reproduce, so they would take human women to try to preserve their line.”
“So where was this underground city?” Jack said, now intrigued.
Ben shrugged. “I always thought it was here in these mountains. But I don’t think anyone knows for sure.”
They crept deeper into the tunnel until they came at last to a dead end. Ben’s light shone against a smooth black surface. As they moved closer, Jack could see it was made of wood. Rough-hewn wooden planks covered with a sticky black substance. He couldn’t see any indication of how the planks were bound together.
“It looks like some kind of doorway,” Ben whispered, inspecting the perimeter. “The wood is covered with tar or something.”
“Probably to preserve it from all the moisture in here,” Jack said.
Jack was fascinated by the structure. He could see the framework of an imposing doorway—over eight feet tall and four feet wide. The posts, header, and threshold were also formed of timber and covered with the same sticky substance. Around the perimeter was what looked like a gravel-mortar mixture that filled all the gaps between the timbers and the rocky wall of the passage, sealing it off completely. He could only guess what lay on the other side.
Ben patted the wooden surface. “It feels pretty solid. Like they were definitely serious about trying to keep something out.”
“It could be the gateway to their city,” Jack said. “We have to see what’s on the other side.”
Ben shone his light along the edges of the wooden doorway, revealing several markings carved into the wood. Jack could see they looked nearly identical to the marks he’d seen at the entrance to the tunnel and on the N’watu themselves.
“I wish I could translate this,” Jack said. “It’s not pictographic at all.”
“What do you mean?”
“Primitive cultures basically use pictures in their written communication. They draw images or symbols to represent objects in the world around them. But as a culture develops over time, their written language usually becomes less picture-based and uses more abstract symbols instead. And this stuff—” Jack tapped the symbols on the wood—“looks like a completely abstract alphanumeric system. That makes it harder to translate, but it’s also indicative of a more advanced culture. At least more advanced than the two guys I saw wandering around here in loincloths.”
Ben stared at the doorway. “So we have no idea if this says ‘Exit’ or ‘Warning: Giant spiders behind this door.’”
“Exactly. And since we didn’t see any other side passages, we can assume our N’watu friends came this way and got through somehow.”
Ben pushed against the timbers, but the door didn’t budge. “You think it’s locked from the other side?”
Jack studied the crease between the door planks and the outer frame. “There’s no handle on this side. I assume it opens inward, but I also don’t see any sign of a hinge system. We can’t even tell if it opens to the left or right.”
“It doesn’t matter if they have it locked or barred from the other side.”
They spent the next several minutes pushing against alternate edges of the door but had no luck. Whoever built this door had definitely constructed it with an eye toward security.
By now, despite everything that had happened, Jack felt a pang of hunger and checked his watch. It was nearly five o’clock, and he had no desire to spend a night in this place. They decided to break for water and food. Once he’d had a chance to sit and think further, Jack hoped an idea or opportunity might somehow present itself.
As he ate, he studied the door, feeling an almost-irresistible compulsion to press on. Now more than ever—not only for his father’s sake but for Rudy’s as well. He’d found evidence that there was in fact a remnant of a lost civilization hidden away in these caves. A barbaric and brutal culture to be certain, but one that might hold untold secrets of the ancient world. And Jack needed to bring it into the light. It was the discovery of a lifetime. It would silence his father’s detractors once and for all. And maybe, in some small way, it might bring Rudy’s death some meaning.
Jack stared at the doorway. After a moment he shone his light along the bottom and crouched down to inspect it more closely. “There’s a little slot cut into the wood here. I wonder if this is some kind of keyhole.”
Ben peered over his shoulder. “Maybe it’s like a garage door and swings up from the bottom. If it’s hinged near the top, it’d be easy to push open from the inside but more difficult to pull it up from the outside.”
Jack leaned back on his heels. “They’d just need to bring some kind of tool with them. Like a handle they can stick inside to pull it up.” He gathered his courage and felt inside the groove. “Yeah, there’s a space here. Do you have something we can wedge in here?”
They searched through their packs, and Ben pulled out one of his C-shaped metal carabiners. He worked it into the groove and twisted it to the side until it wedged into the wood. Then he pulled.
The door swung up toward them easily with only a soft creak.
“It’s lighter than it looks,” Ben said.
As the door swung upward, Jack could see a series of primitive ropes and wooden pulleys on the inside. “Looks like they have some kind of counterweight system rigged.”
“That’s not very secure.”
“It doesn’t have to be.” Jack shrugged. “All it needs to do is keep the giant spiders out.”
The doorway opened onto a narrow passage, so long and deep that their flashlight beams seemed to get swallowed by the black void.
Jack could feel his chest thumping but fought back his fear with a sober determination. He knew the answers he was seeking lay somewhere in the darkness ahead, and that compelled him forward despite his apprehension. “I guess we keep going, then.”
Ben removed his carabiner and let the door close behind them.
The air felt warmer inside the tunnel, which made sense if this was leading them to where the N’watu were living.
Ben cracked a couple of glowsticks and suggested that they proceed with their flashlights off. No need to attract unwanted attention. Besides, if the N’watus’ eyesight had adapted to the darkness, the lights might prove to be a useful weapon if the situation warranted.
They followed the tunnel, keeping as quiet as possible. Jack found his palms sweaty. Since the N’watu had found Rudy’s jacket, they would probably be wary of additional intruders. Then again, living for generations inside this cave system had most likely given them heightened senses of smell and hearing in order to compensate for the lack of light. For all Jack knew, the N’watu were already watching them.
The passage wound downward, and before long Ben put a finger to his lips, then stuck his glow stick inside his pocket. Jack knew Ben must’ve seen or heard something, so he stashed his stick as well. In moments, Jack could see a soft glow ahead of them. It was just bright enough to outline the walls of the passage.
Ben motioned for them to proceed, and they inched their way down the passage. At the mouth, Jack found himself staring into a large chamber perhaps fifty feet across. Several clay bowls and other pieces of crudely fashioned pottery were scattered throughout the cave, each filled with a copious amount of the glowing slime. The yellowish glow provided enough light to make out some of the main features of the room, though much of it was still concealed in darkness.
But the chamber itself was empty. At least empty of any N’watu, Jack noted. Or more specifically, any N’watu that he or Ben could actually see.
Ben swiped his hand across his throat as if to signal Jack to not make a sound. A moment later he gestured for Jack to follow him. They made their way slowly around the perimeter of the room, staying in the shadows and mostly trying to keep as quiet as possible.
The chamber seemed oddly smooth, as if the N’watu had carved away the floor and walls to enlarge the room. Jack wondered how many generations of this lost tribe had dug and chiseled away at the rock to fashion their living area. What kind of tools had they used? How long had it taken? He also noticed additional markings on the walls, identical to the others he had seen.
Jack wondered if his father had made it this far—if he had discovered the N’watu—or if his body was indeed among the skeletal remains back in the bone pit. Jack’s head reeled from the emotional toll of the last two hours. Who knew how long this tribe had been here? Ben had indicated the N’watu were here long before the Caieche. They could be looking at artifacts and a culture dating back thousands of years.
Ben signaled him to stop and then tapped his ear. Jack paused to listen. A low sound came from one of the openings leading off the chamber. A soft humming, deep in timbre. It was quiet at first, rising and falling in pitch and growing slowly in volume.
Jack leaned into the tunnel, trying to hear the sound more clearly. Without warning, it picked up in intensity and volume. He could tell it was the N’watu—he could hear multiple voices, though he could not discern exactly how many. It sounded like some sort of chant.
Ben gestured for him to back away from the entrance. “We need to find a way out of here,” he whispered. “It sounds like some kind of ceremony or something. But as long as they’re down that tunnel, we should try heading down one of these others.”
“Which one?”
Ben looked around the cave and then pointed to one of the openings across the way. “That one looks like it leads up.”
They crossed the chamber to the other side, and Jack paused to inspect one of the bowls of slime. They had been situated around the room like little tiki torches lighting up someone’s backyard deck.
They crept into the passage and found that it did indeed angle upward. And after a few yards it also narrowed considerably. Suddenly Ben motioned for him to stop.
The droning chant they’d heard coming from the other passage now seemed to be coming from in front of them again. Ben motioned him closer. “It looks like all these side passages lead to a common chamber. We’ll have to find another way.”
But Jack shook his head. His curiosity was breaking through his apprehension. “Let’s see what’s going on.”
Ben glared at him. “Are you crazy?”
But Jack dug his video camera out of his pack. “I have to see what they’re doing. I have to document it. I need proof.”
He crawled past Ben and within several yards he stopped, crouching low in the tunnel as Ben crept up behind him. They were looking down on a circular chamber much larger than the first and filled with bowls of the luminescent slime. There were at least a dozen N’watu figures throughout the room, crouched or kneeling in awkward positions with their heads lowered, humming a rather dissonant tune. Jack turned on the camera’s night-vision setting and peered at the screen. He could see that the walls were covered with various drawings and writing. It did indeed look like some kind of ceremonial chamber.
Jack could also see another figure, smaller than the others, standing at the far end of the room. It appeared to be a woman, clothed in what looked like a shroud of black veils and adorned with beaded armlets, necklaces, and bracelets. Her face was hidden by a veil that covered her head down to her chin, but she seemed to be the focus of all the attention.
Jack leaned back and whispered to Ben, “It looks like she’s the matriarch of the tribe. Like a female shaman.”
Jack noticed movement at the far end as two N’watu males entered from a side passage, carrying what looked like a large papier-mâché beach ball, though it was only roughly spherical. It was a lumpy gray monstrosity, yet they bore it with great care. They sported strange headdresses, each with a set of horns that curved up and forward. And they also wore what appeared to be short leather tunics with two more pairs of the horns sewn into them somehow. The tunics draped across their backs so that the horns stuck out to the sides. Jack looked closer and could see that they were in fact the legs of the cave spiders. It was obvious their garb was intended to mimic the creatures.
The chants in the cave grew louder when these men appeared, and the woman began moaning as they approached her—a soft, rasping sound more like the yowling of an angry cat than a human voice. If there were any words, Jack could not make them out.
They brought the ball in front of the woman, and Jack could see she was holding something in her hands. A tool or knife of some sort. Jack peered closer. It was a knife—a long, crudely fashioned blade.
She muttered some further incoherent words and plunged the knife into the ball, slicing open a small incision. Jack saw the gray mass shudder in the grasp of the two bearers. The sides quivered as if the thing were made of Jell-O. She slipped her hand into the opening and pulled out a fistful of…
There was something moving in her grasp, tiny, translucent, and wriggling. She held her fist up and spoke again.
Now Jack could see the thing in her hand was one of the cave spiders. A hatchling. Though only an infant, it looked to be about the size of her whole fist. Maybe three or four inches across, Jack guessed. Its transparent outer skeleton appeared to be still unformed, and its tiny limbs protruded between her clenched fingers. She lowered her hand and shoved the hapless creature into her mouth, chewing it with obvious enjoyment.
Jack recoiled, and beside him Ben’s face registered similar disgust.
Jack whispered, “It looks like an egg sac. But it’s huge. I’ve never seen anything like it before.” He wished Rudy could have been there. He’d be able to offer a better analysis.
The woman reached inside the egg sac and plucked out a second spider as one of the N’watu stood and approached her. He knelt down in front of the woman as she fed the wriggling creature into his mouth. One by one, the rest of the N’watu rose and approached the woman. As they did, she would pluck hatchlings from the sac, say a few words, and shove them into their mouths like some bizarre form of Communion.
After the dozen or so N’watu had come forward, she scooped the rest of the hatchlings into a large bowl as one of the men stood beside it with a stone, mashing their bodies into a writhing slush. Jack could hear faint squeals and squeaks as the baby spiders were crushed against the inside of the bowl.
They were careful not to let any escape.
Ben pulled Jack back from the ledge. “So they eat the baby spiders?”
“It’s like some kind of ceremony for them,” Jack whispered. “If they worship these spiders, maybe they believe that eating them… I don’t know… gives them a kind of communion with their spirits.”
Ben stuck his thumb over his shoulder. “We need to get out of here. Now.”
He crept back down the tunnel, and a few moments later Jack followed quietly, his head still buzzing and his stomach churning from the horrific ceremony he’d just seen.
As he reached the first chamber, Jack heard Ben swear and stood to find himself face to face with four N’watu warriors. Their tall, gaunt, and sickly pale bodies were covered with black tattoos, and they held long wooden spears in their hands. Pointed directly at Jack and Ben.
Jack stood, numb with terror, as more of the N’watu entered from the adjacent tunnel. In moments they were surrounded by at least a dozen pale-skinned warriors. Their tattooed faces held little emotion, but their fierce, colorless eyes glowed yellow in the dim light of the chamber.
Yet none of them spoke.
“What do we do?” Jack whispered to Ben. The sound of his voice sent a chorus of grunts and snarls among the warriors.
“Shh!” Ben hushed him. “Don’t say anything.”
Some of the N’watu leaned closer, driving the tips of their stone spearheads against Jack’s throat.
Jack fought the urge to attempt to communicate with them, to make some kind of peaceful gesture. This culture, isolated as it had been from the outside world for so long, obviously held more animosity than curiosity toward outsiders. They didn’t seem intrigued or fearful. They probably saw all intruders as a threat. Or more likely as a future sacrifice.
Suddenly a low, catlike voice filled the chamber. “Yey takka hey na kaynee.”
The N’watu parted slightly to reveal the black-veil-clad woman he’d seen earlier. She stood inside the entrance of the passage, regarding Jack and Ben as if they were a pair of foxes cornered by her hunting dogs. Then she moved across the chamber between the warriors. It was clear that she commanded a high level of respect. Jack noticed that they would avert their eyes from her as she passed by. Perhaps that was why she wore the veils, Jack thought. Perhaps she was so revered by the N’watu that they were not allowed to even look upon her.
The woman approached Jack and Ben. She was shorter than he’d expected, standing only up to Jack’s shoulders. In the dim light, Jack could see hints of ghostly white flesh beneath the layers of veils. She stretched a pallid hand toward Jack’s face without making contact. Her bony fingers were tipped with long nails filed down to sharpened points like talons and dyed as black as ink. They hovered less than an inch from his skin. As though she could feel him without actually touching him.
Then Jack caught sight of an amulet hanging down her chest. A round medallion fashioned from some sort of metal, with markings identical to the drawing he’d seen in his father’s papers. Jack froze as he recognized it. He didn’t dare move or he knew they would kill him. But in the dim light he could definitely see it was the same design.
The woman muttered something else that Jack could not understand. Strident, guttural words that seemed to drip with venom. Her voice was raspy and soft—both acerbic and somehow still feminine, something wholly unnerving to Jack. He could see the glimmer of her white eyes glowing behind the veil.
Then she turned her attention to Ben and seemed more intrigued by him than by Jack, perhaps seeing he was from one of the local tribes. She reached her hand up and this time made contact, sliding her elongated, talon-like fingers gently down his cheek and jaw.
Jack tried to see beneath her veil but could make out no discernible features or expression. Just a vague white outline of her countenance and her two colorless eyes. But the medallion consumed his thoughts. If he could only get his hands on it…
The woman stepped back and spoke again, her tone different.
“Chenok ta-neyhee,” she hissed. “Cah-hee-chay.”
Jack glanced at Ben, whose expression seemed calm. He replied, “Che-ahan ta-neyhee… keyanok Caieche.”
Jack’s eyebrows went up. Ben understood their language? Or perhaps the N’watu knew the Caieche language. Either way, if they could communicate, they might be able to talk their way out of this situation. Explain that they didn’t mean any harm and weren’t a threat.
“You can understand them?” he whispered.
Ben didn’t take his eyes off the woman. “She speaks Caieche. The old tongue.”
The N’watu men growled and pushed the tips of their spears closer against Jack’s neck. Jack swallowed; they apparently didn’t approve of them speaking to each other.
The woman spoke again—Jack couldn’t tell if it was to them or to her warriors. He tried to back away, but they crowded him closer. They were outnumbered, and Jack knew he wouldn’t be able to put up much of a fight before getting a spear thrust into his chest or throat.
In a kind of detached way, he saw what was left of his life play out in his mind. The N’watu would either kill them both here and feed their carcasses to the cave spiders or tie them up, drag them out to the bone pit, and let the spiders devour them alive. He hoped grimly it would be the former.
“Ben,” Jack whispered, “I don’t think this is going to end well….”
“Close your eyes.”
Jack had been hoping for something a little more encouraging. Frankly, that advice sounded a bit too defeatist for Ben.
“What?”
“Just close your eyes.” Ben’s tone was deliberate and tense. Maybe he hadn’t given up after all.
Jack closed his eyes just as the cave erupted into chaos. He could hear unintelligible shouts and a high-pitched shriek. Someone slammed into Jack’s shoulder, knocking him to the side at the same time that something sharp sliced across his upper arm.
Jack toppled over, and his eyes snapped open. A blaze of light sent bolts of pain into his skull. He was barely able to make out the image of Ben holding a bright-orange flare in one hand and with the other fighting off a barrage of flailing limbs and spears.
Above the tumult, he heard Ben’s voice shouting, “Run!”
Jack scrambled to his feet and flipped on his flashlight as Ben plowed through the group of warriors toward the tunnel from which they had first entered. Jack followed close behind.
His own eyes throbbing from the brightness, Jack could only imagine how the N’watu—who’d spent their entire lives underground—were feeling. But he knew they had only a few seconds to escape before the warriors recovered from their temporary blindness.
Jack stumbled through the chaos. He could feel hands clawing at him, trying to get a grasp. He swung his arms around, hard. Clutching one of the spears, he sliced and stabbed, hoping he could inflict at least some damage. He felt the weapon making contact with several other bodies and hoped desperately that none of them were Ben.
He fought through the confused and blinded warriors, following what he thought was Ben’s voice, but within moments, the howls of pain around him crowded everything else out, and he could feel hands clutching his arms and legs. They were groping for his head and neck, thrusting their spears wildly into the light.
Then Jack heard Ben calling him. “Over here!”
Jack followed in the direction of his voice but so did the N’watu warriors. Jack caught a glimpse of Ben amid flashes of light and darkness. He too had managed to commandeer one of their spears and stood by the tunnel, now with two flares and his flashlight blazing through the chamber.
Jack stumbled past him, into the tunnel, back toward the wooden door, not sure exactly why he was going that way. Maybe they could get through the door and hold off the mob.
He came to the black wood of the doorway and pushed it open, the counterweights on the inside making it easy to lift. A moment later Ben was beside him. But now they faced another dilemma. They needed to brace the door somehow, to block it so the N’watu couldn’t follow them. Or at least to delay them for a few minutes.
Then Jack had an idea. “I’ll hold the door, and you cut the ropes!”
Jack held up the massive wooden door while Ben crouched down and sliced his knife across the ropes holding the counterweights. The first one snapped, and the door shuddered. Jack grunted at the sudden addition of weight now transferred to him. He jammed the spear underneath to keep it propped up.
Jack could hear the N’watu approaching up the tunnel. Ben threw two flares into the passage. Maybe that would slow them down. Then Ben sliced the second rope and rolled back through the door as Jack let it slam shut.
He lay gasping for breath while Ben wedged the spear into the mud at the base of the door.
“We have to go,” Ben said. “I don’t think this is going to hold them for long.”
Jack rolled to his feet and gathered himself. Now they were out in the cave with the spiders. He was relieved to be free from the N’watu but couldn’t help feeling they had only jumped right back into the fire.
“Go where?” Jack breathed as they headed down the passage toward the bone pit. “If there was another way out, it was probably back there.”
“Then we go back the way we came in,” Ben said. “We just keep an eye out for those spiders.”
“We can’t get out that way.”
But Ben seemed undeterred. “We’ll figure something out. Or we’ll find another way.”
They reached the ledge overlooking the inky blackness of the bone pit and paused to catch their breath.
“And what if there isn’t one?” Jack said.
Ben shook his head. “There’s always another way out.”
They lowered themselves over the ledge into the bone pit, climbing down the pile of human remains as they had done before. They reached the bottom and paused to listen for any of the cave spiders’ telltale clicking sounds.
The place seemed deserted. Jack swept his light across the muddy ground and spotted the still-fresh puddle of blood. He quickly averted his eyes, not wanting to see anything of Rudy’s remains.
Ben seemed to sense Jack’s uneasiness and tapped his shoulder. “C’mon, let’s find that tunnel on the other side.”
They climbed up the slope out of the pit and were starting across the cavern when Ben motioned for Jack to stop.
“Hold up,” he said, tilting his head.
Jack held his breath and listened, cursing to himself. Nothing good ever happened when Ben did that.
Ben stood motionless, his flashlight shining weakly into the darkness ahead. Jack’s flashlight began to tremble in his hand after several moments, and he had to remind himself to breathe again. He couldn’t hear a thing except the echoes of water dripping onto the mud from somewhere above them.
“What is it?”
Ben’s voice was barely a whisper. “We’re not alone.”
Then Jack heard it too. A scraping sound, like something being dragged across the mud and gravel of the cave floor. But he couldn’t tell if it was in front of them or behind. The echoes seemed to come from all around them.
Jack spun around, shining his light behind them. Shadows skittered off the rocks and boulders strewn about the cavern floor, jerking and darting around the perimeter of his vision. Jack’s heart raced as he and Ben stood back-to-back, sweeping the flashlight beams across the cave. They illuminated the immediate area but seemed to get swallowed entirely in the inky blackness beyond.
Then came another sound. Both terrifyingly familiar and yet eerily new. It was a clicking, like the spiders had made, though this sound was deeper in timbre, slower and more deliberate. Like someone tapping gently on a hollow log in a continuous though uneven rhythm. And the scraping also grew louder.
Jack swept the light around, meeting the beam from Ben’s flashlight. It fell momentarily on a large rock formation directly ahead of them. An odd-shaped boulder…
That moved.
Jack couldn’t tell exactly what it was, nor could he determine its size or shape. Only that it was big. Very big.
Ben clutched Jack’s arm and pulled him off toward the right as the cavern was filled with a shriek like knives scraping across a chalkboard. They ran at an angle away from the sound and the movement, toward the side of the cavern. Ben scrambled across the uneven cave floor, darting and weaving between rocks and holes.
Jack followed close behind, now hearing more sounds behind them—the familiar clicking of the spiders. It sounded like a whole torrent of them. Had whatever made the shriek alerted the others to the presence of fresh prey? Terror rose in Jack, gripping his chest. His breath came like a steam locomotive chugging uphill. He could see only flashes of Ben’s back in front of him as his light jostled in his hand.
“Over here.” Ben’s voice emerged from the tumult. Jack lost sight of him and swept his light across the cave.
“Where are you?”
A light flashed in Jack’s eyes. Ben was standing several yards away to the left, waving his light. Jack hurried across the cave, stumbling over rocks. He jammed his toe against a boulder and sprawled headlong into the mud. His light tumbled from his grasp.
Out of the darkness, Jack felt something hard pounce onto his back. A shrill hissing sound growled in his ear. He cried out, rolling to the side to shake it loose. Sharp talons dug into his shoulders.
He fumbled with the clip of the backpack and shook his shoulders free of it. He scrambled to his feet, leaving the pack behind, and scooped up his light again. Without thinking, he spun back to see one of the cave spiders, a good-size one, tearing into the bag like it was dinner. It shook the sack almost like a dog shaking a rag. Suddenly it stopped and reared on its haunches, lifting its front legs up. Jack recognized that pose from the first spider they had seen. The one that had attacked Rudy. The creature’s hideous, gaping maw was overshadowed by a pair of clawlike fangs that clicked together with jerky, rapid movements.
Jack knew the pose most likely indicated that the creature was ready to strike, but he was frozen where he stood. The spider’s palps rapped together like castanets.
Jack blinked as another, larger shadow passed in front of him. Ben dashed into view and punted the spider off into the darkness. He turned and glared at Jack. “Are you crazy?”
Jack shook himself to his senses. The barrage of shrieks and clicking grew steadily louder, and he could see a wave of shadows moving across the cave floor.
Ben ran out of sight again as Jack scrambled to his feet and searched the ground around him. “My pack!”
Ben’s voice came from the darkness behind him. “Forget your pack, you idiot! Just get out of there!”
But everything Jack valued was inside that pack. His camera and the appendage specimen… No one would ever believe he’d been here without them. He’d never be able to prove anything. He lingered a moment longer, scanning the ground until Ben’s voice jolted him from his search and Jack took off after him.
In moments they came to the edge of the cavern and what looked like a dead end. Ben pointed to another opening about six or eight feet up, just large enough to squeeze through. A thin stream of water was trickling out of it.
Ben climbed the wall and scrambled into the opening. Jack struggled up a couple feet but couldn’t find any grip on the wet surface until Ben reached a hand down and pulled him up.
They wasted no time climbing the tunnel, ascending at a relatively steep angle. Water poured past them, and Jack could barely manage to keep up. The only question he had now was, could the cave spiders climb as well?
Ben and Jack continued to claw their way up until Jack’s knees and elbows were scraped raw and throbbing. But he knew he couldn’t slow down. Within a few moments they emerged onto a cramped, level area where Jack had to stop and catch his breath.
Ben shone his light back down the tunnel and shook his head. “What were you thinking? Why didn’t you run?”
Jack closed his eyes. “I don’t know. I… I had to get a better look at it. To see what we’re up against.”
“Not sure if you know this, but we’re running for our lives here. It’s not like we have the luxury to sit around and study them.”
“Look, any details we can learn could help us survive.”
“Not if you get yourself killed learning it.”
Jack sat up. “Well, now I’m pretty sure they’re blind. That one didn’t react at all to my light. So that means they most likely make that clicking sound for echolocation. Like a bat.”
“Great, they’re blind,” Ben grunted. “They still don’t seem to have any trouble locating us.”
Jack figured it was valuable information nonetheless, despite the danger he’d put himself in. Even though, had Ben not stepped in, Jack would’ve likely ended up like Rudy.
Jack rubbed his eyes. “But anyway… thanks for saving me… again.”
“Yeah.” Ben pointed up the passage. “We need to keep moving.”
They crawled along on hands and knees, but the passage became increasingly narrow and soon they had to proceed on their bellies. Before long, Jack could hear the water flowing louder. And it sounded like more than just a minor trickle.
Finally the passage widened, and they found themselves in a small, mud-filled chamber. A steady stream of water poured down through an opening above their heads.
Jack’s lungs burned as he sucked in gasps of air. “I… could use another break….”
Ben paused and shone his light back down the passage. Jack rolled over to peer into the tunnel as well. Amid the shadows and rocks, he spotted a flurry of legs scurrying up the passage toward them.
“They’re coming up the tunnel!”
“C’mon.” Ben grabbed his arm. “I’ll boost you up.”
He interlocked his fingers, and Jack stepped into his grasp and scrambled through the opening overhead. Fighting to get a handhold amid the water and mud, he clawed his way into a low, wide space above them. Water streamed down through numerous fissures, some of it pouring into the opening he’d just climbed through, but the majority of the flow washed off down a secondary passage into complete darkness.
Jack heard Ben’s frantic voice from the chamber below.
“Pull me up!”
Jack reached down and caught Ben’s hands. He was tugging Ben up through the opening when suddenly Ben let out a terrified shriek. Jack felt him slipping back down the hole.
“My legs…”
Jack struggled to get a foothold, clinging to Ben’s hands as the cave spiders played tug-of-war with his lower half. Ben screamed in pain and kicked his legs furiously. But the passage was too low for Jack to orient himself to gain any leverage.
“Hang on to me!”
“Pull me up.” Ben grimaced. “Don’t let go! Don’t let—”
Something twisted Ben’s lower torso, yanking his hands from Jack’s grip and jerking him back down through the hole. Jack lunged forward to save him, but it had all happened too fast.
“Ben!” he screamed.
But all Jack could see in the chamber below was a light flashing erratically from inside the tunnel. Ben’s screams echoed up the passage for several seconds until they finally stopped, and the only sound Jack could hear was the steady drumming of water streaming down into the tunnel.
“Ben…”
Jack stared down into the dark chamber. Paralyzed by fear and shock.
He rolled away from the hole and lay on his back. Water cascaded onto his face and chest. He was cold and wet and surrounded by complete darkness.
And now he was utterly alone.
Jack lay dazed for several minutes in the darkness, water streaming across his face.
Finally he roused himself, moving purely on instinct, pulling himself down the tunnel for dear life. The passage sloped downward, and as Jack crawled forward, he could feel the angle increasing.
He had no idea where he was going, only that he couldn’t turn back. He could only feel his way inch by inch through the utter darkness and hope the passage would lead somewhere safe. For all he knew, the creatures could be climbing up the hole to pursue him. He couldn’t hear anything over the sound of the water rushing around him. It seemed to gain momentum the farther he crawled. Suddenly his hands slipped in the mud-slick passage, and he slid down the chute into darkness. He clawed futilely against the sides of the tunnel but couldn’t slow his progress.
Then without warning, he felt the rock disappear from underneath him, and the next thing he knew, he was falling through pitch-black emptiness. He seemed to fall forever through the inky abyss until he felt impact and plunged into icy water.
He surfaced again, gulping in a lungful of air as he was swept along in the current of an underground river. His feet slammed against rocks under the surface and something sharp scraped against his shin. Bolts of pain shot up his leg and Jack winced, though he knew the pain had been deadened somewhat by the cold. He flailed his arms desperately, trying to keep his head above the surface.
After several minutes the current subsided, and Jack felt himself floating in calmer waters. But he was numb and shivering. He knew he had to get out of the water soon, before the onset of hypothermia.
Realizing he was in some sort of subterranean lake, he decided to pick a direction and swim in hopes of finding a shoreline. Or at least shallower waters.
As he paddled blindly, a profound sense of isolation swept over him. A feeling of despair as he floated in a total absence of light.
Then just as he was losing all hope, he saw something in the cavern above him. Odd, disjointed gray shapes. He blinked and looked closer, wondering if he was hallucinating as a result of his trauma or the freezing water. But in fact he was seeing something. It was the ceiling of the cavern high above him. Vague outlines of the jagged rock formations dappled by light.
Light!
Jack looked around. Light was coming from somewhere. It was faint and diffused, but he could tell it wasn’t the sickly yellow hue of the bioluminescent slime. This looked like daylight.
He floundered in the water, searching for the source. Then his feet touched bottom. It was jagged and uneven, but Jack was able to stand and survey his surroundings. In fact, he could see faint reflections of daylight everywhere around him now, wavering and jostling against the black rock walls of the cavern. It was enough for him to see the dark silhouette of the shore not far off.
Jack stumbled to the rocky ground and collapsed on a bed of smooth stones and mud. A huge weight seemed to lift from him as he lay there gasping for breath.
After several minutes he crawled to his feet and tried to assess his surroundings. The cavern seemed long and narrow, though he couldn’t see to the other side. But daylight was coming up from the lake, and as Jack looked closer, he could see its source—a small, glowing patch beneath the water. He stumbled across the rocks for a better view.
The jagged outline of a narrow tunnel lay just under the water. Faint rays of daylight streamed in through the small opening, and Jack’s heart raced. He maneuvered as close as he could get to the mouth of the cave. It was impossible to tell for sure, but he estimated the passage to be twenty to thirty feet in length. A long way in his weakened state, but at this point he knew he had no choice. He wasn’t going to get any stronger by waiting. He took several deep breaths and submerged. It was a narrow, jagged passage, and his arms and legs ached from exhaustion as he paddled through the opening.
In the chilling darkness, Jack could make out the murky ring of daylight at the end of the watery tunnel and felt almost like he was having a near-death experience. Or perhaps it was more like being reborn.
Once through, Jack swam to the surface and emerged into a blinding glow. Daylight felt warm on his face, and he had never been so relieved to see the sun in his life. It blazed down from a cloudless sky onto the surface of a small lake. He couldn’t make out many details of his surroundings in the brightness—just a blurry shoreline several yards off—but he swam madly for it.
Stumbling through the mud onto the rocky bank, he collapsed again, faceup on the shore. The sun warmed his skin and a breeze blew across his face, carrying the scent of pine trees and field grass. The sensation filled Jack with a mixture of emotions. He felt genuine relief to finally be out of those caverns and free from the creatures inside. He felt a tempered exhilaration over the discovery of the N’watu but deep sorrow as well—an almost-unbearable emptiness at the loss of Rudy and Ben. He knew the images of their agonizing deaths would be burned into his memory for the rest of his life.
But Jack also knew he wasn’t finished. He had to find his way back to civilization. He had to find help. He needed to get to a phone and call the state patrol.
He rolled to his feet and tried to gain his bearings. According to his watch, it was going on seven in the evening, and the sun was starting to dip toward the horizon. He was on the shore of a small mountain lake, no more than three or four hundred feet across, with the sheer rocky face of a mountainside rising straight up on the far side and a carpet of tall pines on the other. Jack had no compass or map, but he could see the adjacent peaks running off to the right rather than the left, as he had seen when they first entered through the falls. He had obviously made it through the entire mountain and was now on the other side. It was probably a several-mile trek back to where they had parked the RV that morning. It felt like he’d been wandering through the caves for weeks, yet it had been less than twelve hours.
Jack decided his best chance was to make his way through the forest and hopefully find a highway. But he wasn’t familiar with the area, and for all he knew he could be lost in one of the national forests in western Wyoming, miles from any towns. Clearly he wasn’t out of danger yet.
He checked the gash in his shin. It was deep and had started throbbing. Jack guessed he would need medical attention soon. Yet another thing on his list of concerns.
Jack had never been much of an outdoorsman and now worried how he would fare out in the wild without Ben or Rudy. Logic dictated that he had better make the most of the daylight and get as far as he could while he had the light and warmth of the day.
The hot sun felt good on his wet clothes and shoes, and though the terrain was uneven through the woods, the semiarid climate made for less undergrowth. He found he was able to make good time through the forest, despite being slightly hobbled by his leg. He traveled down a rocky slope, heading on a path parallel to the mountains.
It was after seven o’clock when he finally came across a narrow, paved highway. Jack laughed and knelt down to kiss the asphalt. He knew his chances of finding help had just improved 1,000 percent. Plus, the pavement was smooth, requiring less energy to traverse.
He paused, trying to decide which direction to take. He figured that he’d already hiked a mile or two from the lake. He decided that his best bet for finding civilization was to head south. At least that would take him back in the general direction of the area where he had parked the RV.
But he had no water bottle and no food and had long ago grown thirsty. His clothes had dried and now were growing damp again with his sweat. Jack continued along the road, keeping an ear open for the sound of vehicles.
He had walked another half hour and the pain in his leg was just becoming unbearable when he finally heard a car approaching from behind. Jack turned and waved his arms as a rust-colored pickup truck appeared around the curve.
It approached, slowed, and pulled to a stop. Jack’s heart felt a wave of relief as the driver rolled down his window and leaned out. He looked like a cowboy’s cowboy. Lean and sinewy with short reddish hair and a large mustache sweeping out beneath his nose.
The guy nodded at Jack. “Need a lift?” His voice carried a heavy Western twang.
“Man, am I glad to see you. I got an emergency.”
He looked Jack over. “You all right?”
“Do you have a cell phone I can borrow?” Jack said. “I have to get in touch with the state patrol.”
The guy shook his head and waved Jack around to the other side of the truck. “You won’t get any cell signals out here, but there’s a little town a couple miles up with a landline.”
Jack climbed in, noting how incredibly comfortable the torn-up leather seat felt after spending the day crawling around inside a cave.
The guy put the truck back in gear and continued on. “Name’s Malcolm Browne.”
Jack shook his hand. “Jack Kendrick. Thanks for stopping.”
“So what’s up? You get in an accident or something?”
“Something like that.” Jack leaned his head back and closed his eyes. “We were exploring a cave up in those mountains. Two people—the two guys I was with—died in there.”
“Died?” Browne gaped at Jack. “What happened to them?”
“They were… killed.” Jack rubbed his eyes. “There’s something—some kind of animals inside that cave. I just need to get the authorities up here right away.”
“Well, you can get ahold of the sheriff in town. And Doc Henderson’s got a phone you can use,” Browne said, shaking his head. “I didn’t even know there was a cave around here. What kind of animal was it? A bear or something?”
“You wouldn’t believe me if I told you.” Jack’s voice trailed off and he shuddered.
They continued on for another mile or two before Jack spotted buildings through the trees. A wooden sign on the side of the road read: Welcome to Beckon. You’re not here by chance.
A weathered old gas station and garage stood on the outskirts of the town, welcoming visitors with a dirt-crusted red-white-and-blue Standard sign posted out front and a small salvage yard behind it. Within the sagging wooden fence, the battered remnants of cars lay hidden by weeds and brush like an automotive graveyard. Their burned-out frames, fenders, and hoods were all smashed and rusted beyond recognition and stacked in forlorn piles, overgrown by prairie grass. Next to the service station sat a general store and, beside that, a building marked Saddleback Diner. Across the road was a row of shops and storefronts. Behind them, several houses were huddled amid the trees. And beyond the houses rose a steep, wooded bluff with an enormous log home perched on an outcropping near the top. Directly behind the great lodge, Jack could see the looming steel-gray mountain peak.
Browne pulled to a stop in front of the doctor’s office, and Jack stumbled out of the truck. His leg was beginning to stiffen up, and the pain was getting worse.
Browne helped him hobble inside to a small waiting area with an empty receptionist counter and a closed-off section behind it, where Jack assumed the exam room was.
“Hey, Doc,” Browne called out. “You got a patient here.”
The doctor emerged from the back room. He was a bookish fellow of medium height and build, clean-shaven with light-brown hair that was sort of greased down and parted neatly to one side. To Jack he looked more like an accountant than a doctor. His eyes fixed on Jack and his forehead wrinkled. Jack assumed the guy didn’t get many strangers walking into his clinic right off the street like this.
“I picked him up on the highway,” Browne explained. “Just outside town. He said he had run into trouble in some caves.”
“Dwight Henderson,” the doctor said, shaking Jack’s hand. He nodded toward Jack’s leg. “Looks like you got a pretty good gash there.”
“I scraped it on some rocks. But I really need to use your phone.”
“Sure, just let me take a look at your leg first.” Henderson motioned for Jack to have a seat in the waiting area while he retreated into the back room.
He returned a moment later with what looked like a first aid kit and pulled up a second chair. He inspected Jack’s leg more closely. “We need to clean this out. You said there was some trouble in a cave?”
Jack nodded. “Yeah… it’s kind of a long story. But I need to contact the state patrol or somebody. Two guys—my friend and a guide we had hired—were killed.”
Henderson glanced at Browne and gestured toward the door. “Go on and get Carson. He’s gonna want to hear this.”
Browne nodded and bolted out of the office.
“Who’s Carson?”
Henderson began cleaning Jack’s wound. “The local law enforcement. He’ll get in touch with the authorities. But your friends—how were they killed?”
Jack winced as the doctor wiped iodine into the torn skin. “I don’t think anyone’s gonna believe me. It was some kind of… I don’t know, giant arthropod. Like a spider.”
Henderson looked up. “Spider?”
“That’s the best way I can describe them,” Jack said as a shudder raked through him. “I’ve never seen anything like it in my life. They’re huge. And they have a hard shell—like a crab—but they were more like spiders. They have venom that’s extremely poisonous. And they’re carnivorous. They hunted like a pack of wild dogs.”
Henderson looked incredulous. “How big were these… spiders?”
“They were huge! The biggest ones were… I don’t know—they had maybe four-foot leg spans. They were like big dogs.”
Henderson wrapped gauze around Jack’s calf, shaking his head. “Dogs? There’s no way…”
Jack studied the guy’s reaction. It seemed some part of him believed the story, and yet another part of him refused to. Like he was having some kind of internal battle. As if he didn’t want to believe it.
Jack grunted. “Look… I really don’t know what they are. I’m guessing they’re an entirely new species.”
“And you say they’re poisonous?”
Jack shuddered again as his mind replayed Rudy’s gruesome death. “My friend died from a bite in only a few minutes.”
At that point Browne returned with a guy Jack assumed was Carson. He had a couple days’ growth of black stubble on his square jaw and wore a tan shirt with a sheriff patch and a silver badge. A gun holster hugged his waist and a weathered black cowboy hat rode tight and low on his forehead.
Carson stood in the middle of the room with his hands on his hips. “Malcolm here tells me you had some kind of caving accident.” His voice was gravelly and terse.
“Uh… yes.”
“Some members of your party died?”
“Yes, two of my friends.”
“And where exactly is this cave?”
Jack pointed out the front window. “Somewhere under those mountains.”
Carson raised an eyebrow and produced a small notepad from his belt and a pen from his shirt pocket. “So why don’t you start from the beginning.”
Jack was hesitant at first but started to relate the story of his expedition. He decided to leave out the details about his father but told the rest exactly as it had happened. To hear himself tell the tale, Jack decided it all sounded too incredible to believe. Ancient Indian legends, giant millipedes and beetles, and enormous carnivorous spiders… like something out of a bad science fiction movie.
Then when Jack got to the part about the N’watu, he was sure they would think he was psychotic. But instead they all listened quietly, and when Jack had finished, no one said a word for a long moment.
Carson stared at Jack from under the brim of his hat. “You’re saying there’s a tribe of Indians living inside this cave too?”
Jack nodded. “I don’t know exactly how many of them there are, or if they actually live inside the cave or what… but from what I could see, I can’t think of any other explanation.”
“And you came out here to study them?” Carson said.
Jack sighed. He was growing weary of all the questions. “Look, I… I know this all sounds crazy, but I’m telling you, I saw them—and those spider things—with my own eyes.”
Carson leaned close. “Have you told anyone else about this?”
“No—I told you, I just managed to find my way out of the cave. You’re the first people I’ve seen since I got out of there.”
“All right…” Carson drew in a long breath as he paced around the room. “Where’d you say you parked your vehicle?”
Jack shrugged. “I… I don’t know exactly. It was near a bridge where we picked up the trail.”
“This trail to the waterfall at the head of White Eagle Creek?”
Jack was starting to get a headache. “Can we please contact the state patrol or whoever we need to contact? My best friend died in that cave, and I have to tell his family.”
Carson cut him off with a wave of his hand. “I’ll contact the authorities. I think right now you just need medical attention.”
Jack blinked and shook his head. “I’m fine. We have to do something.”
Henderson spoke up. “Listen, you’ve obviously been through some major psychological trauma—not to mention physical. I think it would be best for you to get some rest and—”
“I don’t want to rest.” Jack stood, his anger coming to a head. “I need to get out of here and find a phone!”
Carson stood by the doorway, tapping his holster and shaking his head. “Well, I’m afraid you’re not going anywhere.”
“What?” Jack’s face flushed with anger but then quickly faded. The three men just stared at him, their expressions darker now and more menacing.
Jack backed away from them. “What’s going on? Who are you people?”
A chill of fear rose inside his chest. What kind of town was this?