Jenny and Pitt were entering a warehouse. Even though they were deep underground the roof must have been nearly twenty feet above them. Lining this cavern of a place were huge steel shelves that filled one wall.
I tried to stop the stream of pictures gushing through my head. Yet this didn’t seem like a dream, or imagination. By some telepathic power I knew I was seeing what they were
With all my will power I tried to snap out of this trance, but I couldn’t. What’s more, I couldn’t move a muscle. All I could do was sit there, frozen. Using all my strength, I managed to turn my eyes to where the creature stood. At that moment it moved away. The plastic blurred everything. Far too blurred to make out any detail. Yet I saw squirming objects appear to ride on its back. Call it intuition, but I sensed the creature had noticed something that needed a closer look. Then I slipped into that trance again. With an uncanny clarity my friends’ actions were recorded by my mind’s eye. Their thoughts pierced my nerves. Deep down I knew exactly where the monster was headed. Worse, I couldn’t do a thing to warn the three. This is what I saw inside my head — and through their eyes:
‘How do they reach the ones higher up?’ Adam asked. He was staring at the shelves. But his thoughts clamoured:
‘See those ladders set on runners?’ Jenny pointed. ‘They can be rolled to wherever they’re needed.’
Pitt said, ‘I’m not bothered about shelves full of boxes. Where’s Naz?’
Adam shivered. ‘First, where’s the exit? Remember that thing we saw?’
‘Did anyone see what it looked like?’ Jenny asked.
Pitt shrugged. ‘Too far away. Just a speck in the distance.’
Adam said. ‘But you could tell it was huge. It nearly filled the tunnel.’
‘And it was fast,’ Jenny added.
Pitt looked back. Tunnel lights gleamed on vehicle shrouds.
Jenny’s eyes widened. ‘What’s wrong. Pitt? What have you seen?’
‘Naz?’ asked Adam, hopefully.
‘It’s not a person. Too big.’ He suddenly hissed. ‘It’s coming this way.’
Jenny whirled round. ‘Hide on the shelves. Get right behind the boxes.’
Adam groaned. ‘It’s bound to find us.’
‘Once you’ve found somewhere keep absolutely still. Don’t make a noise.’
The lights flickered. A breeze blew along the tunnel. Discarded pieces of paper and old gum wrappers slithered along the floor. They knew
Quickly, the three found their hiding places. Jenny climbed the ladder up fifteen feet to a shelf full of packed rice. There, she hunkered down behind dozens of boxes. Pitt hauled himself up to a shelf as high as his head. Engine parts, dozens of them, all wrapped in polythene. For some reason they made him think of human skulls in polythene bags. Adam went low. He wriggled under the bottom shelf then lay with his back on the concrete floor. Its coldness seeped through his clothes to touch his skin. The steel panel of the shelf was just two inches above him. He remembered how crabs lodged themselves into gaps between boulders on the seashore. For him this seemed the safest place.
A moment later the light died away until it was so dim Jenny could only make out indistinct box-shapes on the shelf. She winced. A pain flared up over her eye. Like when you drink ice-cold milk too fast.
On the shelf just at head height Pitt lay still. Then he realised that it wasn’t will-power keeping him immobile. He found it hard to move. A strange paralysis gripped him. When he heard the pad of feet in the tunnel he tried to shuffle even closer to the wall for protection. But he couldn’t lift his arm never mind move his body.
On the floor under the bottom shelf Adam found even moaning beyond him when the pain started in his forehead. His strength vanished. It was all he could do to turn his head to one side. When he did a dizzy, woozy sensation made him feel as if he was falling over the edge of the cliff. The moment he closed his eyes the vertigo grew even worse
All Adam could do was lie there as some enormous form entered the tunnel.
Thirteen
Peeping through gaps on the shelves, Pitt and Jenny tried to see what had arrived in this gloomy cavern. There was no doubting the beast’s size. Even from his hiding place on the floor, Adam looked, too. But all three felt strangely dizzy. Their limbs didn’t work properly. They felt sleepy. And all three had the same sharp pain boring through their skulls. This is how they stayed for the next thirty seconds. Then, as if the beast, had satisfied itself that there was nothing of interest in this area, it padded away.
When they felt that it was safe to emerge they crept from their hiding places. All three agreed amongst themselves how ill they’d felt. All of them noticed how the light had dimmed when the creature had entered this section of tunnel. But when they all tried to describe what they had seen of the beast no single one could agree on a description.
Adam declared, ‘I could see paws. Four of them. Like a lion’s.’
Jenny disagreed. ‘A lion? It was nothing like a lion. When I looked down at it from above I could see tentacles. Masses of tentacles. They were bright green.’
Pitt shook his head. ‘From where I was I could see bare skin, maybe its belly… there’s no fur, and certainly no tentacles. There were mottled patches on its body. I saw that kind of pattern once on something in a reptile house at the zoo.’
‘I had the best view,’ Jenny declared. ‘From right up there. It’s like a giant octopus.’
‘No way an octopus,’ Pitt insisted. ‘It’s a gargantuan lizard.’
‘You’re both wrong,’ Adam told them. ‘It’s a mammal. I saw furry paws. Probably a specially bred attack lion.’
‘Attack lion,’ Pitt snorted. ‘You’ll have had your eyes shut anyway.’
‘Are you calling me a coward?’
It was a dangerous thing to do. But for the moment they forgot about the real possibility the creature might come back. Instead, they bickered over what they did or didn’t see.
Fourteen
At the same time as the trio argued I was still in the truck. Five minutes ago, the monster had left my section of tunnel. Immediately the pain in my head went, too. But for those five minutes I was held in that trance. By some telepathic force I’d seen what was happening to Jenny, Pitt and Adam. What’s more, I knew what they had felt and thought. Somehow the creature had been responsible for that effect. Fortunately, as the minutes passed, and that thing moved further from me, I felt better. The light grew brighter. The dizziness vanished. I could move my arms normally again. The moment my legs worked as they should I climbed out of the cab, ready to search for my three friends.
When I turned a corner I started to find some answers. The next tunnel was different. Instead of bare concrete walls they were covered with white tiles. Kind of clinical. Here there weren’t any trucks under plastic sheets. Instead, four red cylinders in a row. Each as big as a car. They lay on their sides on V shaped racks. Odd… very odd.
These were troubling to look at. They resembled the thing you might see towed behind a farm tractor, but they were covered in warnings.
