Beckon

light of his lamp. His gaunt cheeks and bizarre tattoos created a face that looked more like a skull covered by a pallid layer of skin. And his head was completely hairless. Not even eyebrows.

The face moved still closer. Large, moist nostrils undulated as they sucked in the scent. Cautious, translucent eyes peered in directly at Jack. Suddenly the face reared backward. Jack cringed as the N’watu thrust one of his hands into the bone pile. He knew his life was over; this human monster was going to yank him out by his hair.

But instead of grabbing Jack, the N’watu pulled his hand back again with a softball-size beetle wriggling in his grasp.

The insect’s legs clawed at the air as the N’watu held it up to the lamp, inspecting it with his ghostly, colorless eyes. Then his lips parted, revealing a mouthful of discolored, crooked teeth. He sank them into the beetle’s soft underside with a sickening crunch and tore off a stringy chunk of its innards. The beetle squealed, flailed its legs, and went limp as the N’watu chewed as casually as if he’d bitten into an apple. The tip of a leg protruded from between his lips.

Jack had all he could do to fight his gag reflex.

The N’watu took a second bite, ripping out more meaty guts and a couple more legs, crunching on them with ghastly relish. He polished off the remainder of the bug in two bites, wiping out all the juicy remnants from the inside of its shell and sucking them off his fingers like a kid cleaning the last drops of ice cream out of a bowl.

He tossed aside the beetle’s outer shell and wiped his mouth with the back of his arm. Then he looked around the cavern once more before climbing up the rope ladder, carrying Rudy’s shredded jacket with him.

Jack could hear the N’watu arguing on the ledge above him for several minutes. He tried again to determine how many of them there were altogether, but he couldn’t be sure.

The discussion continued as the rope ladder drew up out of sight, followed by the lantern, leaving Jack engulfed in darkness. In minutes, the voices faded as the N’watu moved off down the tunnel.

Jack closed his eyes, still afraid to move but too afraid to stay where he was. Then he heard Ben’s voice calling softly to him from out of the darkness.

“Jack? Are you here?”

Jack breathed a sigh. A wave of relief washed across his mind.

“I’m here,” he said and began digging his way out of the bone pile. “Where are you?”

A light flicked on in the darkness. Jack could see it sweeping across the chamber as he pulled himself free of the heap. He crawled out, onto the cold mud-and-gravel floor, and lay on his belly. He didn’t care about the cold or the mud. He was just glad to be free of those bones—the remains of people who’d once been living, breathing souls like himself, but who had each most likely died horrible deaths, like Rudy. He could almost hear their screams and shrieks of terror in his head.

Gravel crunched underfoot, and Jack opened his eyes to see Ben standing over him, shining the flashlight in his face.

“You okay?” Ben said.

Jack nodded. He was struggling through the numbing shock of Rudy’s death. But he also knew he was on the verge of confirming his father’s theory.

Ben helped Jack to his feet. “Was it the N’watu? Did you see them? I was hiding on the other side of the pile. I couldn’t see anything.”

“Yeah, I saw them.” Jack shuddered. “Almost wish I hadn’t.”

“What’d they look like?”

Jack forced his sorrow and shock to the back of his mind as he described the lanky bodies and the disfigured face of the N’watu. Ghostly, pale skin and demonic, colorless eyes. “They almost didn’t look human,” he said. “They were covered with some kind of markings. Tattoos or something—I don’t know. And they looked to be pretty primitive. Although they did have a lantern with them. An old-fashioned metal one. It looked like they’d filled it with the slime we found. Like maybe they use it for their primary light source.”

“All the legends say they were very clever,” Ben said. “They made good use of their resources.”

Jack flashed his light to the ledge. He was quiet for a moment, trying to determine what to do next. They couldn’t very well stay down in this pit. Not with the spiders still lurking about. Their best option seemed crazy on its face, but Jack decided it might be their only one.

“I think we should follow them,” he said. “Try to see where they went.”

“Follow them?” Ben gestured to the bone pile. “Maybe you haven’t noticed, but these people don’t take kindly to outsiders.”

“Well, it’s either them or the spiders. What do you feel more lucky with?”

Ben stared at him a moment and then grunted. “That’s like asking if I prefer leukemia or pancreatic cancer.” He sighed and peered up at the ledge. “I hate to admit it, but it’s probably the best chance we have of finding an exit.”

They climbed back up the bone heap and onto the ledge, where they took an inventory of their supplies before continuing. They still had two flashlights, both video cameras, a couple packages of flares and glowsticks, plus a fair amount of food and water. They loaded everything into their two backpacks for ease of transport. Jack also made sure he still had the spider appendage they had found and the specimen of slime Rudy had taken, glowing faintly inside the Ziploc bag. They were too important to leave behind. He had to get them out for someone to study. For Rudy’s sake.

They shouldered their packs and moved slowly into the tunnel in the direction the N’watu had gone. The passage ran thirty yards and then turned to the left. From there it narrowed sharply and wound in a zigzag path that slowed their progress considerably.

They moved in silence. Jack couldn’t stop thinking about the N’watu’s bizarre appearance, and after some time he spoke up. “Y’know, the tattoos they had all over them looked like writing—like the lettering from my dad’s drawing.”

Ben shrugged. “It doesn’t look like any Indian script I’ve ever seen.”

“That’s what’s so weird about it,” Jack said. “That they should look so unique. Typically neighboring tribes would tend to influence each other’s cultures, language, and communication. You’d think the N’watu would have at least some connection—some similarities to the surrounding tribes.”

Ben was silent for several seconds. Finally he issued a pensive grunt. “What if they’re not even human?”

“What?”

“I mean, what if they’re not even from… y’know… here.”

“You mean aliens?” Jack shook his head. “I don’t think there’s any reason to assume that.”

“You said yourself they didn’t look human. Maybe they’re not. Or maybe they’re some kind of hybrid. There are stories that say the N’watu were descended from a race called the Old Ones that originally came to Earth thousands of years ago from another world. Maybe they even brought those spiders with them.”

Jack’s chest tightened as he wondered what Rudy would have said to that. “Giant alien zombie cave spiders?”

Ben shrugged. “Just a thought.”

They continued on, and Jack—against his better judgment—began rolling that idea around in his head. History was replete with those kinds of stories. Ancient Egyptian, Sumerian, and Indian cultures all had similar themes in their mythologies.

“What exactly do those stories say?” he asked after a moment.

Ben paused in the tunnel. “One of them says that the Old Ones came to Earth and built a huge city or fortress under the mountain. But they were dying. They… I don’t know—they had some disease and were all going to die. And for some reason they couldn’t reproduce, so they would take human women to try to preserve their line.”

“So where was this underground city?” Jack said, now intrigued.

Ben shrugged. “I always thought it was here in these mountains. But I don’t think anyone knows for sure.”

They crept deeper into the tunnel until they came at last to a dead end. Ben’s light shone against a smooth black surface. As they moved closer, Jack could see it was made of wood. Rough-hewn wooden planks covered with