Yes, that’s exactly what he needed to do, but the idea of moving, of making noise and drawing those things to him was unthinkable. There was no choice, though. He waited a few more minutes, listening not only for the things but a sound that would tell him he was not alone down there because that was the greatest horror of alclass="underline" being trapped alone in this flooded tomb.
Move.
He started inching his way back down the passage. He came to where they split and tried to remember which one he had come from. Christ, it was hard to be sure. It must have been the left one, though. Yes, it had to be. If he followed that one down, it would lead into the main passage where he had been attacked. Or had there been another tunnel?
No, no, no! Jesus Christ, don’t second-guess yourself!
He started moving down the passage, only there was really no way to know if he was going in the right direction. Everything looked the same and in his panicked flight he had not taken the time to notice any details. He moved deeper into the passage. The farther he went, the more he became certain that it was not the right one at all. He didn’t remember the walls being so narrow. And the water was getting deeper, the mist more dense.
This wasn’t right at all.
The smell of dank rot was filling his head. He felt almost giddy.
The gases, you idiot. The gases.
He pulled the mask back on and his head cleared after a few moments. He was in the wrong passage. He would have to go back… yet, he wasn’t sure if that was the right course of action. His light showed him that the passage widened considerably just ahead. In his flashlight beam, he could see the mist was moving in that direction, which told him there might be an opening to the surface up there somewhere that was sucking the mist up and out.
He moved forward carefully.
The water went down gradually until it was slopping around his ankles. He came to another set of passages. There were three of them this time. His light showed him that one was basically a crawl space; the other sloped very low in the distance as if it might be caved in. He chose the third. The mist was being pulled into it. He would follow it for a bit and if he saw nothing promising, he would backtrack and take his chances in the main passage.
If you can find it, dummy. You keep taking different tunnels and you’ll be chasing your own tail in no time. Ten years from now someone will find your yellowed bones.
No, Iversen decided that was not going to happen.
He liked this new passage. It was essentially no different from the others—muddy walls and dripping ceiling and abundant foulness—save that the mist was moving faster now in his flashlight beam. He was getting close to the source and he could feel the sweet touch of freedom reaching out for him. Maybe it was all in his head, but he honestly did not think so.
He was going to fucking do this.
The passage widened and he ducked under some gnarled tree roots—and his feet went out from beneath him. The floor suddenly canted downward at a 45° angle like a kid’s slide and then he was on his ass sliding down a forking, nearly triangular tunnel with more twists and turns in it than the ductwork of an old building. He slid with gathering speed, bumping against walls and hydroplaning first on his back then his belly until he finally splashed into the mother of all mud puddles.
He came up with a cry, pawing clay from his face and spitting out mud.
The puddle was up to his waist, a turgid, slimy pool of drainage that bobbed with floating mats of fungi and bloated rats that were feverish with flies. The buzzing was so loud he could barely hear himself think. Slime dripped from the walls and water trickled from the ceiling in a ceaseless flow that sounded like a dozen men pissing simultaneously. The chamber reached as far as his light could see. After three or four abortive attempts at trying to crawl back up the passage, he resigned himself to the fact that he was seriously screwed here.
He was trapped.
His only hope was that rescue got to him before the things did.
Knowing this, watching his flashlight beam steadily dimming, Iversen began to sob deep in his throat as the darkness pressed in closer.
33
As Kenney and the others first encountered the inhabitants of the underworld, Sheriff Godfrey, Beck, and Chipney entered a flooded cavern.
The tunnel they followed had opened now into a huge, natural chamber where the water washed around their chests. It was about twenty feet wide, but less than seven in height. Had they been any taller, their heads would have brushed the muddy, rocky ceiling.
The sheriff knew it was getting too deep.
Just like he knew this was all pretty hopeless and that he should take these men up and out of there, come back with a properly equipped demo team and blow this place… but he couldn’t. He’d put a call into above said, yeah, everything was fine, fine, but it was a lie and he knew it. He’d seen so much now that had withered his soul, but he needed more. He needed to actually see them.
And then he did.
A half dozen of them rose from the water gradually as if they were being lifted from below and he saw, he finally saw what had haunted Bellac Road for so very long.
And, Jesus, just like Pearl… or the thing pretending to be Pearl.
Leprous and blotched, pale as parchment, their distorted and sunless faces were cut by agonized grins and sunk with glistening, sightless eyes like graveyard pits. Their hair was long and white and threaded with filth, hanging over their features in greasy, wet braids. They had flesh like cooled, puddled candle wax. It barely covered the skeletons below—ribs burst forth and cheekbones thrust from faces and orbits jutted obscenely and everywhere, he could see their bones. And the flesh itself… more like rotting garments, it hung and pulsed and dangled in fearsome loops and strands. Veils of it trailed out around them, floating like grim bridle trains.
And then they surged forward and the deputies started shooting and gnarled hands were reaching out for them and someone was screaming and the water was boiling around them and the lights were flashing and jumping and on they came, those grisly faces coming out of the misting darkness like cloven spookshow skulls.
Godfrey and his deputies were stumbling away, shooting and shooting, except Chipney was gone and there was no hope of saving him or even knowing where he was. The lights bounced with each explosion of the riot guns and Godfrey caught a sight that turned his mind to sauce—dozens of them wriggling and crawling and creeping like maggots on roadkill.
And then they disappeared.
In no hurry, they sank below the surface and the water bubbled and went still, strands of sloughed skin drifting like confetti.
Godfrey and Beck charged through the chest-high swamp, but it was slow going and they knew they didn’t stand a chance. They fought through shivering nets of fungus that were warm and greasy. But they would not give in, not yet. And then, just ahead, a cavern mouth opened above the waterline and they pulled themselves up and in and it was dry in there. Rubble and debris covered the rocky floor and water stood in slimy puddles, but, Jesus, for all that it was dry, dry.
They had barely made it in there, wildly stripping off their masks, not caring about the smell anymore, when a profusion of clown-white hands erupted from the slimy water and began to drag themselves up.
They ran, stumbling in their waterlogged waders, and the cavern narrowed, widened, narrowed again. The sloping ceiling forced them down to their hands and knees and then spit them out in a grotto that was huge and wide and squeaking with countless rats. Before them was a wall. A wall easily thirty feet high and twice that wide. A wall built completely of bones. Skulls and femurs and tibias and scapulas all arranged with an exacting precision that was frightening. It was almost like some kind of shrine and Kenney wondered crazily what sort of minds could conceive of something like that.