She shuddered, holding her cup in both hands. “You’re taking it well. How do you know I’m not still possessed?”
“Oh, wow! If you could have seen yourself—! Don’t you remember anything?”
“I remember... hate. There was something evil beneath me. I wanted to dig down and get it, destroy it.”
I took her hand and saw that two nails had broken off. Blood oozed from the quick. I opened the glove compartment and took out a vial of merthiolate.
“Why’d you attack me?”
“I thought you were going to do something to me. Something terrible. Oh!”
Ann jerked as I daubed the merthiolate on her fingertips. I held her hand and blew softly. “You know what I think? You tried so hard to find a vampire you turned into one — just for a minute. Hunters do that. To find a rabbit you have to think like a rabbit.”
“Maybe.” Ann looked out the window and frowned. “What do you suppose is under that spot?”
“It used to be a sinkhole, but old Charley Grant kept throwing in bed-springs, old mattresses and dead cows until it got plugged up.”
“I see. And what’s beneath the plug?”
“An underground river. We can get a good view from the knob.”
I drove up Gubb’s Knob, and we climbed the fire tower. I showed Ann the blotches of richer vegetation forming a sinuous line across the valley.
“There’s only a thin limestone mantle covering the granite. Used to be full of gold and silver, but that’s gone now. This knob we’re on is what’s left of a volcanic plug that spewed out when the granite formed. The reason we’ve got an underground river is that water sinks through the porous limestone, hits the hard granite, and can’t go any deeper. So it cuts a channel through the limestone.
“Sometimes the roof caves in, and the surface of the ground sags like wet ceiling plaster. That’s your sinkhole. I didn’t remember it until now, but Robert got drunk and fell into one about two months ago. He was lucky to get out alive.”
“Which one?”
I traced a line with my finger, starting at the cliff near the river cabin to the valley below Robert George’s trailer. “You see that black smear where the trailer burned? And down at the bottom of the hill, a circular grove of tall trees? That’s it.”
“How do we get down into it?”
“You’re not going. You’re too susceptible.”
“Don’t, talk rot. I got caught because I let my guard down in order to track the beast. It won’t happen again.”
I gave in and took Ann back to the motel, where she changed into her jumpsuit. Then I drove to the house of a mountaineering friend and borrowed rope, cleats, pitons, pick, spray paint, flashlights with extra batteries and drinking water.
VIII
The sun was sinking when we walked down the hill past the blackened concrete slab. Inside the ring of trees the ground sloped down like a gigantic funnel. I tied the rope around a sycamore, and we passed it through our beltrings and rappeled down. The limestone blocks pinched into a circular hole about three feet across.
I played out the rope until it hit bottom, then took hold and slid down until my feet struck rock. I jerked on the rope and after a minute Ann slid down beside me. I held her around the waist until she found footing on the damp rocks. The entry hole was a pale silver coin hanging high above us.
I unclipped my flashlight and played the beam around. We were standing on a pile of rocks washed clean by the inflow of water. A domed chamber had been gouged out of_ the soft rock, and a black stream trickled around the foot of the mound.
“That way,” I said, pointing downstream.
We followed the flashlight beam into a narrow tunnel. Rats perched at eye-level along niches in the wall, and I could hear them scurry and chitter behind us after we passed. After about twenty yards the roof dipped down and forced us into a crouching duck-walk. Then it lowered still more, and we had to drop to our hands and knees.
After what seemed twenty minutes, we came to a narrow crevice which could admit only one person at a time. I squeezed in first, shining the light on the ground. The stench was a forewarning. There was nothing I wanted to do less than go on, but Ann was behind me, so I dragged myself forward on my elbows. After a minute I froze and let out a yelp.
“What did you see?” Ann’s muffled voice sounded behind me.
“A foot.”
“Alive?”
“Dead. Long dead.”
I pulled myself forward and stood upright in the fetid chamber. The foot belonged to a male corpse in a rumpled, mud-stained business suit. Patches of white hair clung to his dry wrinkled scalp. I moved the light and saw four other bodies sitting up in their burial finery, their jaws gaping wide.
“Recognize any of them?” asked Ann, standing beside me.
“Of course.” There was Vera. Death had continued the process of decay I had seen in her face the last time I’d been forced to take her into court. Her baby-blue burial dress was twisted askew on her body, her arms twisted impossibly behind her back. A cast-off doll. And Burt Reisner with the bullet hole in his forehead leaking a powdery brown stain down into his right eye socket.
I played my light across the grisly rank, holding my hand over my nose. The others, I supposed, had died much earlier; in any case they were too far gone in decay for recognition.
My hand jerked as the light struck a figure hidden behind the others. “My God, what’s that?”
“A baby,” Ann breathed.
“You mean it was a baby.”
Now it was a monstrosity. A huge leathery abdomen swelled out; it must have been at least a yard in circumference. Patches of fuzz grew on a wrinkled gray-white scalp. Grime encrusted a toothless slit-mouth. Its legs were thin as pipe-cleaners, with joints swollen like grasshopper legs. Obviously it had never used them for support; they were set too wide on the pelvic cradle.
A sheet of callous on its belly revealed its method of locomotion. Long nails curved like sabers. It seemed to look at me with its large dark eyes, but the sockets were empty. It was like all the others in this devil’s displayroom. Dead.
“That could be the original,” said Ann, “A baby fell in, couldn’t get out. It grew in here, living off lizards, rats, insects. Then Robert George fell in and the creature shifted to George, took him over, and then...”
I interrupted. “Ann, I don’t think we ought to stand here theorizing. The body of Carla Frick is missing. That’s the one that’s inhabited.”
“Yes, you’re right. But where—?”
I felt an icy chill on my back. I whirled and aimed the flashlight, and the light went out.
I reached back and grabbed Ann’s hand, pulling her down with me to the floor of the cavern. I lay holding her tight, breathing her hair which lay across my face, curving my body around her in a protective fetal posture. You never know real darkness until you’re underground. It doesn’t stop at the eyeball, but presses in upon your brain until you can’t think for panic.
I whispered in her ear: “Did your light go out too?” It was a dumb question.
“Yes. Try a match.”
I had to stretch out my leg to get my hand into my pocket. The match flared, enclosing us in a capsule of flickering light. I reached back into my pack and fumbled for the spare batteries. Fire nipped my fingers and I dropped the spent match. I found Ann’s hand and pushed the match folder into it.
“Light another match while I change batteries.”
Haste and nervousness combined, so that I dropped one of the cylinders into the dirt. I finally got the batteries in and the cap screwed on, then I fixed Ann’s light. When both flashlights were working, I took my snub-nosed automatic out of the pack and attached the clip-holster to my belt.