I started to straighten, then stopped. A half-dozen paces away lay a jean-clad leg. Okay, now that I would have noticed. They looked about the same size, probably from the same person. Maybe they weren't real. They certainly didn't look real. The torn flesh was clean and bloodless, like a movie prop before someone splashes on the fake gore. I bent to touch the hand. Cold, but definitely flesh.
As I took a step toward the leg, I let out an oath. A second leg lay behind the first, and, a few feet away, the other arm. Okay, now I was creeped out. What the hell had happened down here? I was better off not knowing, not thinking about it. And if I stayed in this room, that was exactly what I would do. Time to find a new hiding place.
Turning to leave, my gaze swept the left side of the room. A bowling-ball-shaped rock rested by the wall. Yeah, a rock, that's it. Bullshit. I knew exactly what it was. And I knew what had happened here. They'd done this-the villagers-turned on one of their own and ripped him apart. Then they hid the body in here, and sealed it up, hoping the Fates wouldn't notice.
With a shiver, I turned away. As I did, I heard a faint clacking. It came from the direction of the head. I turned, more instinct than intent, swinging the light-ball that way. The head of a dark-haired man lay there, blue eyes staring at me, blank and unseeing. Then he blinked.
"Jesus fucking-!" I yelped, jumping back.
The man's eyes focused and his mouth opened wide, as if to scream, showing a bloodless stump where his tongue had been. He clacked his teeth together. Beneath his neck, something long and white snapped against the dirt-his spine, the only thing still attached to his head, twisting and jerking like a macabre tail.
I ran out of that room faster than I'd ever run from anything in my life. Once back in the tunnel, I leaned against the wall and rubbed my face, trying to rub the image from my mind. I couldn't, of course, no more than I could stop my brain from churning through the implications of that image. I should have known he was still alive. He was a ghost. He couldn't die. The true horror of that hadn't struck me until now. If you couldn't die, but you could feel pain, you could be ripped apart and still live.
With a growl, I shook the picture from my head. I had to concentrate on staying hidden and safe, not on what they could do to me if I failed.
I looked along the tunnel. Staying in that room was out of the question. I needed to go deeper, find a better place to-
A noise cut my thoughts short. Even as I glanced back toward that room, I knew it hadn't come from there. The sound came again, a dull thump. Then a harsh whisper, like something being dragged through the dirt. Another thump, and another drag.
Without thinking, I wheeled around the corner, back into the room. As I moved, my brain screamed for me to stop, stay where I was, and cast a cover spell. Whatever happened, I did not want to be stuck in the same room as that thing. But it was too late. By the time I ducked into the room, the noise in the tunnel was too close for me to risk going back out. Time to cast a cover-Shit! The light-ball. I dowsed it, then cast my cover spell.
As I recited the incantation, I could feel it watching me. Was it watching? Could it still think, feel, a full consciousness trapped within-
Goddamn it, stop that! He's a rucking psychopath. Otherwise he wouldn't have been down here. I'd do the same to the rest if I could. But it wasn't him I was worried about; it was the thought of him, what it could portend for me. When the Fates said I was in danger, I sure as hell never thought-
Don't think. Turn it off and pay attention.
The noise was close enough now for me to hear something else accentuating the thumps and drags-a low, wordless mumble. A shape passed the doorway. With only the sliver of distant light from around the boulder to illuminate the passage, I saw little more than a shape, but I could tell it was human, a squat lump of a man, one leg dragging as he shuffled along.
He was midway past the room door when he stopped, head whipping around so fast I nearly jumped and broke my cover spell. His face hovered there, a thin pale streak in the darkness. He snuffled, as if sniffing the air. After a low mumble of unintelligible gibberish, he crouched and peered at the ground. He traced his fingers in the dirt, then chortled and clumped forward, still squatting as he followed something in the dirt. Followed my footprints.
I held myself still, but my thoughts whirred. Would my binding spell work yet? Could I outrun him? And run where? I'd locked myself in. Wait, there had to be another exit, the one he'd come through. The moment I thought this, I knew he hadn't come through anywhere. If he could see my footprints in the dirt, in this darkness, that could only mean that his eyesight had adapted to this near-blackness. And that meant he'd been here a helluva lot longer than a few minutes.
The men in the village hadn't ripped their fellow inmate apart. He had-this man-this creature lumbering toward me, mumbling in a language that had long since sunk below any standard of human communication. He'd ripped his victim limb from limb and they'd locked them both in here. And now I'd locked myself in with them.
Goddamn it, don't just stand here and wait for him to bump into you! Cast something. Launch the damn fireball spell. No, better yet, the gouging spell, explode his eyes from their sockets, see how well he can track you without them. Blind him, then get that tree limb and beat the living shit-
Stop that! Stop and think. I hadn't recovered enough for a foolproof binding spell yet. Cast anything stronger and I'd end up in pieces on the floor, still alive, trapped in-
Stop that!
I could smell him now, a sickly sweet smell like rotting meat. Where was that smell coming from? His breath? Did he eat-?
I gritted my teeth and fought to shut my brain down, to concentrate on the moment. He kept shambling forward, still crouched, pale fingers glowing as they traced my steps in the dirt.
I'd have to risk the binding spell. It should hold for at least a few seconds, long enough for me to get past him and run like hell farther into the cave. With that bad leg, he couldn't catch me.
He stopped. After a moment's hesitation, he veered to the right, following my original tracks into the room. He scuttled to the arm where I'd first paused. At a noise across the room he leapt to his feet. He looked around, head low, sniffing the air. Another noise-the click of teeth. With a roar, he lunged forward and kicked the head into the wall. It hit with a splat, but rolled back again, spine still jumping. He kicked it again, still bellowing, frustrated by his inability to end its life.
After a few more kicks, rage sated, he looked around the room, then strode out. He'd forgotten me. Thank-
Grunts drifted from the main passage, near the entrance, as he tried to move the boulder. He hadn't forgotten me, he'd just changed tack and gone to see how I'd gotten in… and whether he could get out.
How long had he been in this cave? How long had this other thing-this head-I couldn't think of it as a man, that just started my brain spinning-how long had it been here? Like that?
This was the true hell of this dimension. Not the thing on the cave floor, but the never-ending possibility of it. Trapped for eternity in a world of other killers, any of whom could, at any moment, do this to you. All you can do is trust that they won't, trust that if you don't touch them, they won't touch you, rely on honor and decency from men who have none. And when they do exactly what you fear they'll do, you band together and lock them up with their victim, barricade them in and leave them there, alone… until some goddamn idiot walks up, goes, "Hmmm, what's this boulder doing here?" moves it, and barricades herself inside with them.