Denny wiped his eyes, tried to see Paul but it was sheer darkness. “And it killed my dog… he helped make it… my grandfather… and he knows how to kill it.” And suddenly the freight-train roar started and the rocks began falling again.
(101)
Robert Ortiz and Chris McCauley had no trouble finding the entrance to the tunnel left open by Mossy and the boys. Once they descended, they had trouble finding anything. Ortiz had a keen sense of direction but had no idea what he was looking for and had them zigzagging back and forth, all the while trying to stick to downward slopes that he knew would take them toward the lake. Ortiz was armed with a powerful flashlight and an equally powerful gun, this one his own, not police issued. McCauley was armed with nothing but the camera Mossy had bought for his brother. Perhaps, he thought, it was always meant for him. Bittersweet memories of his brother came, and with them came fear. Something scared him bad enough to take his own life after spending 17 years trying to drown the memory of it, and I’m in its lair.
Time was irrelevant down here; it could have been ten minutes or two hours since they had climbed down the ladder. They had already drained the small canteen that Chris had hooked to his belt. Now the only thing that mattered was walking behind the beam cast by Ortiz’s four-D-cell flashlight and trying not to turn and run the other way. That and the unbearable quiet broken only by their own shuffling footsteps and heavy breathing. As they moved deeper, McCauley began to pick up another sound. Ortiz had figured it out before he could.
“Sounds like water. We’re heading in the direction of the lake, there must be some run-off…”
The rest of his theory was cut off by another sound, and this one McCauley could identify even with the strange echoey acoustics; it was a gunshot.
“That came from up ahead!” Ortiz was already moving that way, fast.
They made their way as quickly as they could through the labyrinth of tunnels, and time played its tricks again. Finally, McCauley heard shouting, much closer than the gunshot: they were heading in the right direction. After a few steps, more shots rang out followed by screaming like he’d never heard before. But it wasn’t that sound that stopped him, it was the next. A distant rumbling growing louder, then the tunnel began to shake violently and rocks began to fall around him. “Robert!” Ortiz hadn’t stopped at the sound and had turned a corner out of sight, leaving Chris without light in the thickening dust and crashing rocks. This is how it’s going to end, he thought. With only thoughts of his father and brother, he pinned himself as close to the side of the tunnel as he could and continued forward.
(102)
Mossy turned when he heard the panicked screams of Dale Crawford and found himself reliving a nightmare. The beast reared out of the water and the gunshots began. It moved with inhuman speed but Mossy’s eyes followed it. He bent slowly and shifted the backpack from his shoulder. He felt for the buckle, not wanting to take his eyes off the beast even for a split-second. Then the cave-in started and the gloomy, flickering darkness was obscured by thick dust. The sound was like nothing Mossy had ever heard… deafening and terrifying. He rose to his feet, the canister in the backpack forgotten. Where was the beast? He was struck from behind with enough force to send him sprawling headlong. He struggled to catch his breath while trying to turn and get to his feet. He got a hold of an arm and a throat and suddenly realized he was not battling the beast; just a boy.
“Denny?”
“No, it’s me. Billy. What the hell is going on?”
Mossy wasn’t sure if he was talking about the beast or the cave-in. “No time, let’s find a safe place before this whole place comes down on us.” He kept his grip on Billy’s arm and started to move, but Billy didn’t budge.
“My sister… Denny…”
“We’ll find them, I promise, but we can’t if we’re dead. Let’s move!” He dragged Billy toward the back of the cave, in the general direction of where Julie was. And more important, away from the beast. They found their way to the cave wall as rocks and dust continued to fly. The train-like rumble began to subside as they huddled under an overhang in the rear of the cave. Finally, it stopped, and with the exception of a few random rocks and pebbles falling, all was quiet. Mossy sensed Billy starting to get up. “Hold tight, Billy. Let’s just make sure it’s really over.”
Billy uttered a frustrated sigh that turned into a dust-provoked coughing fit. A light clicked on and illuminated the dust-filled air into a swirling craze of shadows. “Reminds me of the moors from an old werewolf movie,” Billy croaked.
“Indeed. It might not settle for a while but the shaking seems to be done. Let’s find who’s… let’s find the rest of them and get out of here.”
Billy handed him the light and together they began to tentatively explore their surroundings. They began moving in the direction they agreed Julie was, but were met immediately by a wall of rock. It went as high as they could reach. They began following it by feel in the direction of the water, and were stopped again by solid rock on that side. Fear crept into Mossy’s heart; coldness spread from his chest to his limbs. Were they entombed? Left to starve or suffocate? He didn’t realize Billy had left his side until he heard the voice through the dust.
“This way, Mossy.”
The voice seemed to come from everywhere… and nowhere. He moved toward Billy, not because he could follow the voice through the strange acoustics of the cave, but because it was the only direction he could move. They picked their way through the cave blindly until they once again hit a wall of rock. Mossy closed his eyes; certain this time that they would have to dig for their lives, then felt a tug on his leg.
“Bend down; I think there’s a way through.”
Billy had found a tunnel down at ground level. Mossy bent down and followed Billy through on hands and knees. As they crawled through the tunnel the dust began to dissipate. Mossy’s light caught a flash of something on the tunnel floor and for a moment he thought it was a trick of his mind. “There are markings on the ground, Billy! Someone has been here.”
Mossy heard a hitching sob before Billy answered. “I know, it was me and Denny. We can get out this way, and get back to the underground lake the other way.”
Mossy uttered a non-committal grunt and kept crawling. If they got out, he didn’t know how to tell Billy that going back in wasn’t a good idea. In his heart, he knew they were the only two getting out. Other than the God-forsaken creature that had drawn them there in the first place.
(103)
Denny and Greymore ran through the tunnel as fast as the light from Greymore’s flashlight would allow. If the noise wasn’t bad enough, the thickening dust was making breathing difficult. They rounded a sharp bend and came to a dead end. They doubled-checked the markers they left, knowing before they did that the way out was blocked. The cave-in subsided; faint rumblings continued but they were more like a hungry belly than a freight train.
“This way.” Paul grabbed Denny’s arm and pulled him down a smaller side-tunnel. It ended in a small cave that seemed intact. “We’ll wait it out here for a bit, rest, make a plan. And you can tell me about your grandfather’s theory on killing that thing.”
Denny and Paul sat down against the cave wall and Paul switched off the light. “Gotta conserve the batteries.”
Denny nodded, not realizing Paul couldn’t see him. Then he began telling the story of Mossy. Paul interjected a couple times with questions, but for the most part Denny rambled on, barely stopping to take a breath, until he had brought Paul completely up to speed.