fallen and exposed clumps of roots twice a man’s height — colossal, arthritic fingers probing the mist.
As he moved deeper, the fog drew even closer about him and moisture beaded on the fabric of his jumper and jeans. The half-light of misty dawn dimmed further as the dark canopy overhead closed tighter. He walked cocooned in a silent dusk, and had to stretch out his arms so he wouldn’t collide with tree trunks that loomed suddenly, their limbs so madly twisted that they reminded him of Mexican catacombs where the dried dead were stacked standing, their leather-and-bone limbs crooked at angry angles.
He lost track of time. When he reached the low cliff that led down to the gully and the water pipe, he was unsure if he’d been walking ten minutes or fifty. The gully was thick with fog, and the dark green tops of shrubs poked through it like the mouldering heads of drowned people. He checked his watch and a shudder ran through him. It was nearly eight. He’d been in these cheerless woods an hour and a half.
He slung the plastic 7-Eleven bag over one shoulder and carefully descended the gully face. At the bottom, he walked cautious steps away from the steep bank until his feet clacked on the stones of the wash bed. Then he turned and followed the dry creek until a dark shape coalesced from the thick fog. The pipe. Its flanks loomed like the hull of some ghost ship. Below the red metal, the twin skull eyes of the tunnels watched him.
He felt his body vibrate with the hard thudding of his heart. He took a breath, feeling the biting harshness of cold air lick his throat, and knelt. From the plastic bag he pulled out a new torch and a squat spray can with a plastic lid.
‘Shh,’ he told himself. He couldn’t go back. Something was in there, beyond the pipe. Something that took children. Something that had taken Tristram.
Something that wanted him to come in.
He flicked on the torch. In the crepuscular gloom of the fog-bound woods, the white-yellow beam was cheery and bright. He clenched his jaws and shone the light into the nearest of the twin pipes. What he saw made him reel.
The tunnel’s length, all four or so metres of it, was thick with spider webs: some were fresh and shining like silver wire; some were loose and dusky as old shrouds. Among the webs, dotted like black stars in a diseased firmament, were spiders. Thousands of spiders. The shaking torchlight scanned them: some had round, shining bodies with black osseous legs that stroked the air; others had abdomens orange as spoiled juice, swollen thick and looking full enough to pop; some were small and busy, tending webs with legs that moved as delicately as human fingers; others were as big as tea saucers, hairy and fleshy. Some fussed with spindle limbs over the silk-wrapped corpses of their prey or silk-wrapped bundles of their eggs. The torchlight winked off thousands of black, unblinking eyes.
Nicholas felt gorge rise from his stomach.
Then another thought struck him:
Nicholas swallowed back the peppery bile and took the plastic lid off the can. It was a bug bomb. The illustration on its side showed a variety of cartoon insects clasping their hearts in theatrical death. The can rattled as he shook it. Satisfied, he aimed its nozzle at the pipe mouth, put his thumb on the tab and pressed it down with a plasticky click. Insecticide hissed out as the tab locked on, and he threw the erupting spray can hard into the curtains of web in the pipe. He guessed it travelled nearly halfway into the pipe until the webs snagged it.
He backed away till he could barely see the pipe’s black mouth through the fog. The echoing hiss of the spray in the tunnel sounded low and mean, like the sighing exhalation of some entombed dark god, unhappily woken. The hissing slowed and thinned and died down to a stop.
For a few moments, nothing happened. Then spiders came crawling from the pipe — first in ones and twos, then by the dozen. They rushed out on panicked legs, or staggered out to perform mad pirouettes, or crawled out weakly, stunned. Some curled and perished on the spot. Some scuttered left and right into the woods. Some scrabbled weakly towards Nicholas; he crushed them with his shoe, nauseated by the dark liquids and small, glossy organs that shot from them.
It took fifteen minutes for the exodus of dying spiders to cease. Nicholas checked his watch. It was just after nine thirty. He waited a few more minutes for the poison to finish its killing work, then looked around for a stick with which to clear the cobwebs. He found one as thick as a pool cue, and returned to the pipe’s mouth.
He tucked the torch in the back of his jeans, slipped the one plastic bag he had over his left hand, gripped the stick with his right, sucked in a mighty breath and crept in.
As his body blocked the already thin light, the tunnel ahead fell into instant, sepulchral dark. He whisked the stick in front of him, left and right like a blind man’s cane. It tick-ticked off the sides, echoing like chattering teeth.
He leapt to his feet and jumped in circles like a mad dog, wiping his hands furiously on his jean legs and clawing at the grey caul over his face and head. His lungs roared and his head swam. His stomach heaved again, vomiting nothing but salty spit. His heart raced and tears poured from his eyes.
‘Jesus, Jesus, Jesus!’
He pulled spiders from his hair and wiped them from his jacket. Some had gone down the front of his jumper and T-shirt, so he jerked his shirt out violently, shaking the spiny cadavers onto the ground. He stopped his rabid dance. His panicked panting slowed to shuddering breaths.
He was through.
Clear of the pipe, Nicholas realised he had no plan beyond getting through the spidery tunnels. Without any other clear choice, he began following the rock wash bed of the gully floor.
The woods here were even denser than on the other side of the pipe. Ancient trees conspired together, dark limbs intertwining so closely that it was almost impossible to tell where one ended and another began. Vines with ribbed stalks thick as shins curled up trunks and over one another. The forest floor was an unsteady sea with tall waves of damp roots and deep troughs filled with decaying leaves that smelled as cloying and vital as human sweat. The fog was lifting, yet here it remained as dark as evening, and Nicholas couldn’t see more than five metres ahead before the trunks and curling vines merged to become a thick curtain. No breeze stirred the dark ceiling of leaves overhead.
How could he possibly explore the entire area? What would he find? And if he did find something, what could