Still Life With Crows

Larssen ran like hell, Brast behind him, holding on to the rope, careering from rock wall to rock wall, somehow managing in his blindness to keep up. It had been a couple of minutes since the screaming had stopped but Larssen could still hear it in his mind, playing over and over again like some infernal recording: the final scream of Cole ending abruptly in the sound of cracking bones. Whatever had done that— whatever was pursuing them now—wasn’t completely human. It really was some kind of monster.

It couldn’t be true. But he’d seen it. He’dseen it.

He paid no attention to where he was going, what tunnel he was in, whether he was heading back toward the surface or deeper into the caverns. He didn’t care. All he wanted to do was put distance between himself and thething.

They came to a pool, pale, shimmering red in the goggles, and Larssen waded in without hesitation, the icy water eventually reaching his bare chest before shoaling. Brast followed blindly, as best he could. On the far side, the ceiling of the cave became very low. Larssen moved forward more slowly, sweeping his gun back and forth, breaking off the sharp stalactites that hung before his face. The ceiling dropped still farther, and there was an ugly noise, followed by a desperate curse, as Brast hit his head against it.

Then the ceiling rose again, revealing an odd, broken room with cracks leading off in myriad directions. Larssen stopped, looking up and down and sideways, and felt the scrabbling Brast blunder into his back.

“Larssen?Larssen? ” Brast clutched at him as if to make sure he was real.

“Quiet.” Larssen listened carefully. There was no sound of splashing behind them. The thing was not following.

Had they gotten away?

He checked his watch: almost midnight. God knows how long they had been running.

“Brast,” he whispered. “Listen to me. We’ve got to hide until we can be rescued. We’ll never find our way out, and if we keep wandering around we’ll just run into that thing again.”

Brast nodded. His face was scratched, his clothes muddy; his eyes were dumb, blank with terror. Blood was running freely from a nasty gash in his crew-cut scalp.

Larssen looked forward again, shining his infrared headlamp around. There was a crack high up on the wall, larger than the others, vomiting a frozen river of limestone. It looked just big enough to admit a person.

“I’m going to check something. Give me a hand up.”

“Don’t leave me!”

“Keep your voice down. I’ll only be gone a minute.”

Brast gave him a fumbling hand up, and within moments Larssen was into the high crack. He looked around, bare arms shivering in the chill air. Then he untied the rope from around his waist and dropped one end back down to Brast and hissed for him to climb up.

Brast fumbled and pulled his way up the slippery rock wall.

Larssen led them deeper into the crack. The floor was rough and strewn with large rocks. After a few yards, it became a tunnel that opened up enough for them to proceed in a crouched position.

“Let’s see where it leads,” Larssen whispered.

Another minute of crawling brought them to the edge of blackness. The tunnel simply ended in a sheer drop.

Larssen put a steadying hand on Brast. “Stay there.”

He peered carefully out over the edge of the hole but could see no bottom. He reached for a pebble, lobbed it in, and began to count. When he reached thirty, he gave up.

Overhead was a sheer chimney, with a thin thread of water spiraling down at them through space. There was no way the thing could come at them from that direction. He could come up only from the crack through which they’d just come.

Perfect.

“Stay here,” he whispered to Brast. “Don’t go any farther, there’s a pit.”

“A pit? How deep?”

“As far as you’re concerned it’s bottomless. Just stay put. I’ll be right back.”

He returned to the crack’s entrance and, lying on his stomach, began dragging over the surrounding rocks and fitting them into the hole. In five minutes he had piled the rocks high enough to completely seal off the crack. The killer, if he even got to the broken-up cavern below, would see only rock. No opening. They had found the perfect hiding place.

He turned to Brast, speaking very quietly. “Listen to me. No sound, no movement. Nothing that could betray us. We’ll wait here for a real SWAT team to come down and clear that bastard out of the cave. In the meantime, we stay put, and keep quiet.”

Brast nodded. “But are we safe? Are you sure we’re safe?”

“As long as you keep your mouth shut.”

They waited, the silence and darkness growing ever more oppressive. Larssen leaned back against the wall, shutting his eyes and listening to his own breathing, trying not to dwell on the madman roaming the caverns beyond.

He heard Brast next to him, restless, shifting. He felt irritated: even the smallest noise might betray them. He opened his eyes, adjusted the goggles, and looked over.

“Brast! No!”