White and Other Tales of Ruin

evidently not expecting one, and I realised that she was taking over. Before, leaving the coach and challenging the group of people head-on, my hurt and desperation for Laura had driven me. Now that I had Laura back perhaps Chele thought that I was losing focus, my attentions divided two separate ways: internally, to what I should be doing for Laura; and externally, trying to get us out of this. Whatever this may be, exactly.

“What are they?” I asked Laura, whispering because I was still listening out for the sounds of pursuit.

“Dad,” she said, and fell silent without turning to look at me.

“Honey? What?”

She glanced over her shoulder, and it hit me hard how much she had grown up.

I remembered the time when I thought that I’d grown from a child into an adult. It was when I fought back against the bully at school, a fat, ugly prick of a kid, who seemed to relish taking out all his own inadequacies on other people. He had terrible acne, so he beat up little kids. He had big ears and a long, hawkish nose, so he beat up little kids. He was fat as a cow, so he beat up little kids. Many times one of those little kids was me, because I was small and weak and insecure, and fighting back had just never even crossed my mind.

Until the bully slapped me around the head in front of a girl I was desperate to impress.

My reaction was instant and unconscious, fuelled as much by raging hormones as a need to protect myself. One kick to the balls and a flurry of little fists to the fat bastard’s nose, and he never picked on me again. He hit on other kids more than ever… I’d beaten him up, so he beat on other kids… but never me. And people looked at me slightly differently after that. Not only because I’d fought back, but because I’d stood up for myself in the face of superior odds. And that, as any kid knows, is what you’re supposed to do when you’re an adult.

Kids have a lot to learn.

“I really don’t want to talk about it right now, Dad,” Laura said, and I wondered whether she’d ever look back and realise exactly when she’d grown up, and what she would she see in that memory. Faces beneath the trees, metal barbs sinking through her skin, demons storming in from blackened skies, forcing themselves down to her, onto her…?

It didn’t bear thinking about, but I knew that I’d have to ask her soon.

“Stop!” Chele said suddenly, and like three drunken Stooges we walked into each other in the dark. The light from the torch blazed across the jagged tunnel walls, revealing an intricate map of dust-strewn spider webs. No spiders, just their ancient webs. Somehow that was worse.

“What!” I hissed. I was jumpy enough without Chele pulling a stunt like this, and for the briefest moment I was actually pissed at her. Then I remembered what she had done and I felt ashamed at my blaze of anger.

“What’s that noise?” she said. She was holding the torch in both hands, away from her body so that the light from the flames did not dazzle her. “It sounds like… something moving down the tunnel. Lots of somethings. Scraping the walls.

Laura hugged herself to me and I could smell her, stale blood and bad breath and fear. I kissed her on the temple. I was determined not to picture what was coming along the tunnels at us, but the more I tried the worse the images were; demons merging with the dark, black body-suits, their antenna twitching at the dank air like mandibles, legs and arms stretching out to fend themselves from walls and floor and ceiling, scampering along and feeling more at home when their hands clawed through the thick spider webs -

“Water,” Laura said. “It’s water, and it’s coming from that way.” She pointed past Chele in our direction of travel.

“Underground river,” I said. “That may not be such good news.”

Chele looked at me and her expression was a mystery. I thought she wanted me to say or do something, but I couldn’t figure out what. I shrugged and raised my eyebrows instead, and she was about to speak when we heard more noises in the cave tunnel. And this time they were coming from behind us.

Clicking, like the chatter of a thousand electrical switches, or a field full of crickets in intense discussion. The echoes added to the effect. It sounded wholly alien and threatening, and I could not believe that whatever was making that noise would be good for us. The fact that it was approaching at a staggering rate did not bode well.

“That’s how they talk!” Laura said, and her eyes were so wide and terrified that I felt my knees weaken with fear.

I held her, both of us sharing in the comfort. Chele moved and I thought she was coming into the embrace as well. I would have welcomed it. But she changed her position slightly, cocked her head, looking first up the tunnel and then down.

“We go down, we hit the water,” she said. “We go back… we have to face whatever’s making that noise.”

Again I thought of man-sized spiders, or spider-sized people, scampering through tunnels with automatic weapons held to bear.

“The water,” Laura said. She broke away from me and staggered down the tunnel past Chele.

“I’ll go first,” Chele said, trying to slip past Laura without harming her with the flaming torch.

“Hurry!” Laura said. “Hurry, Dad!”

I glanced behind me but couldn’t see much. The tunnel had narrowed down considerably and my bulk blocked most of the light, casting my shadow far back along the floor. I wondered whether I would be able to tell when the first of the demons came out of its own shadow into mine.

The clicking increased in volume and intensity, as if they could smell us.

As we turned a sharp corner, the sound of water changed quickly from a whisper to a roar. It drowned out the noises of excited pursuit. That wasn’t necessarily a good thing. Each passing second I expected a hard hand to settle around my neck, or a slew of bullets to blast out my heart and lungs onto the damp cave floor.

“Dad!” Laura screamed, and her voice was fading away fast.

And then the light went out.

I realised why as I too started to fall, tumbling in the pitch blackness, falling into another world entirely.

A world where Hell was wet.

The room was a pool of mud. I had time to make that out before I plunged straight in, and also in that split second I caught sight of two shapes struggling on the surface, twisting and writhing themselves deeper even as they tried to escape, sweeping the muck in swirling patterns with their hands, kicking it into slow-motion ripples, bubbles popping from their mouths and noses, slower bubbles rising to the surface from their clothes and popping ponderously, releasing the stench of underground, and the smell filled the air above it as the mud filled the room below, an almost visible miasma that stung my lungs as I inhaled before I plunged in.

I managed to hold my head up, keeping my eyes and ears and mouth free of the viscous mess, but the rest of my body felt twisted all ways with the suction hauling me down. I kicked for something solid to stand on but there was nothing. The mud oozed around my legs and body, cold and wet and sickeningly intimate. I looked to where I thought was up but I saw a window, smashed and allowing more mud to flow into the room. I glanced to my side and there was the ceiling.

I listened for the clicking of the pursuing demons, but such clean sounds would have been so out of place here. They were gone. Where they had gone I had no idea. Where we had arrived at was equally bemusing, but thinking about it would be of no help. Survival was my main concern.

That, and Laura.

I’d rescued her from one hell and taken her into another, and now there she was rolling in the mud, thrashing herself lower and lower, sinking, sinking…

“Laura!” I yelled, and it must have been a mumble to her mud-cloaked ears.

“Dad!” A bubble formed at her mouth and burst her plea into the air.

“Keep still! Don’t struggle, you’ll go deeper!” Saying that, I trusted my arms and tried to swim to Laura. She was closer to the wall than me, the parts of her that did show above the surface quickly being swamped by the tonnes of mud gushing through the broken window. And in thrashing my arms and kicking my legs, the mud’s hold on me was tightening. I slipped deeper, feeling the cold kiss of filth on my chin and earlobes.

What sort of God…? I thought, remembering my recent conversation with Black Teeth so far away. What sort