entrance to come and go from the cavern, bringing terrified victims for their demonic death rituals? Whoever they were, he could only assume for now that they were responsible for the horror in this place. The cave spiders were just animals, predators doing what they needed in order to survive. It was the humans who were the real monsters.
Jack could see a faint light glimmering across the cavern from above. He peered out through a patchwork of bones and bone fragments. Minutes passed with occasional verbal exchanges from the men standing above him. Jack closed his eyes. Deep breaths would prove useless in the rotting stink around him.
After a minute or two there came another sound, a sort of soft rustling. Jack resisted the temptation to crane his neck for a better view. Meanwhile the faint light above seemed to grow brighter as well. He could hear more movement, this time clear and distinct. He wondered where Ben had gone, whether he had disappeared down one of the side passages leading from the main cavern or if he too was hidden inside the pile of bones. But all Jack could do was wonder and hope. He didn’t dare risk trying to communicate.
Jack’s heart began racing faster as a yellow light came into his field of view, lowering from above. He concentrated on moving only his eyes to track the light. Any turn of his head could cause the bones around him to shift, giving away his position. The light paused, lingering at the edges of his vision for several seconds, then continued its descent.
Within seconds, Jack could recognize the source of the light. A lantern of some sort was being lowered on a rope into the pit. It clanked softly against the cave wall and spun on the rope. Jack couldn’t see much detail, only that there was a pale-yellow glow inside it.
It descended like a spider on a line of silk into the pit until it finally came to rest on the floor of the cave no more than thirty feet from him. It had a square metal frame with a large ring at the top and dusty glass plates on each side. He couldn’t see a flame inside the glass, yet it lit up the surrounding area with a sickly yellow light.
Just behind the lantern, Jack spotted a second rope descending. Or rather, a crude ladder. A series of rough-hewn wooden boards with holes in each end were suspended between twin lengths of knotted rope.
Jack concentrated on his breathing. The terror welling up inside him had tightened his chest, constricting his airflow. So he found himself unintentionally gasping for air, yet he knew he needed to keep absolutely still.
The bottom of the ladder began jiggling and wafting back and forth. Someone was obviously descending it.
Jack caught his breath as a figure came into view.
It was human as far as he could tell. From his limited vantage point Jack could see only a torso, tall and rail thin and almost entirely naked. The skin was an abnormally pallid hue—very nearly translucent—and he was clad only in a loincloth tied around his waist with a crudely beaded length of twine. Moreover, his flesh looked to be covered with a jagged network of delicate black lines. Jack at first thought it was some sort of woven netting, but as the gangly limbs moved about, he could tell it was a body etching or tattoo of some kind. The markings looked similar to the characters Jack had seen written on the wall earlier and in his father’s drawing, but he couldn’t make out the details in the dim light.
Nor could Jack see the man’s face, merely his arms and torso up to the sinewy pectoral muscles. He was extremely thin though not sickly or malnourished. Rather, his musculature appeared to be quite well defined, enhanced perhaps by the lack of pigmentation in the skin. His hands bore long, curving fingernails also black in color. Jack guessed they’d probably been decorated by the same procedure with which the man had marked the rest of his body.
The figure stood motionless, half-crouched as if poised for action. Jack guessed he was listening for some sign of the spiders. Whatever the creatures used it for, the clicking sounds they made at least gave away their presence and warned of their approach. But other than the gentle echoes of water trickling somewhere in the big chamber, there was only silence.
Jack held his breath and waited. The man was no more than ten or twelve feet away, and Jack could hear something that sounded like sniffing. He bit his lip, hoping desperately that the man wouldn’t smell him, and after several seconds he strode off, out of Jack’s line of sight. Jack was amazed that with such a gangly body, the stranger moved with a fluid, almost-graceful manner, slipping barefoot across the stones without making a sound.
Terror and fascination each fought for dominance as Jack’s mind bristled with questions. Could this stranger really be one remnant of a lost tribe of humans? Had the N’watu actually survived in these caverns all this time? How many more of them were there? How could they possibly have gone undetected by the modern world for so long? And were they as primitive as they appeared? Little more than a Stone Age culture? The lantern they carried seemed to indicate that they’d had at least some interaction with the outside world.
But more immediate than all of these questions was, what would they do to
Meanwhile the rope ladder continued swaying.
Soon another figure descended into view. The second N’watu reached the bottom and stood facing the direction in which the first one had gone off. A moment later Jack heard a voice coming from the darkness. The first man spoke in choppy, guttural syllables. But in a hushed tone. The second N’watu, standing in front of Jack, replied in a similar volume.
The first N’watu moved back into Jack’s view carrying something. Jack suppressed a gasp as he saw what it was: Rudy’s tattered nylon jacket. It looked like it’d been ripped to shreds. And it was covered in blood.
The two men faced each other, the one holding up the jacket in front of the other. Jack could only imagine what they were saying—no doubt discussing how someone had gotten into their cave undetected. They would probably assume the intruder had not been alone, for that’s what Jack would’ve assumed. Living in this dark, dangerous environment, their senses—especially their senses of hearing and smell—were most likely heightened. Maybe they could even smell Jack from where he lay, under a pile of human remains.
The second man strode off into the dark and returned with the corpse of the spider Ben had killed. He held it up by its big front legs as the others dangled down, limp. Its punctured underside still dripped yellowish fluid. They talked further in what Jack thought sounded like an argument. Perhaps they were debating their next moves. Should they search for other possible intruders? Or maybe just let their spider friends take care of them?
The first N’watu kept shaking Rudy’s jacket. He seemed to be insisting on a particular point or a course of action. But his comrade did not appear convinced, nor was he quite as agitated. After another minute or two of discussion, the second man started climbing back up the rope ladder, carrying the enormous spider corpse along with him by a front leg.
The first man remained behind. He turned and faced out into the cavern again, perhaps searching for some sign of additional intruders. By now, Jack’s body was aching from remaining still so long inside the reeking mound of bones.
Then Jack noticed movement in his field of view. Something dark and shaped like an overturned coffee cup with multiple legs was crawling across the bones directly in front of his face. It was one of the species of beetles he’d seen earlier.
Jack gasped and jerked backward with an involuntary spasm. The bones shuddered and immediately the N’watu’s torso spun in his direction.
Jack could see the man’s sinewy abdomen moving with slow, steady breaths. He held out the lantern toward the bone pile and took a hesitant step closer. Jack fought the impulse to flee. Every nerve in his body screamed at him to jump out from the cover of his hiding place and run. But his sense of reason—as if barely clinging to the edge of a cliff—kept that impulse in check.
The N’watu held the lantern out before him and crept closer. In two cautious strides he was standing directly over Jack’s hiding place and crouched down to inspect the bone pile.
Then Jack got a look at his face.
Chapter 12
The face Jack saw staring in at him appeared only remotely human, marred by the same black etchings that covered the rest of his body. Jack gazed into white irises, void of any pigmentation at all and glowing eerily in the
