Ian let go of the breath he’d been holding. “Thank you, my lord,” he said.
The earl looked round at the others as if to let them know that they were not to hold Ian in judgment, and said, “Let’s move forward, everyone, and look for the beast. Maybe we’ll learn more about who it was that wanted Ian, in particular, to travel deeper into these tunnels.”
Ian walked over to the tunnel leading out of the cavern, anxious to get the attention off him and back onto hunting the beast. He paused and glanced back at the earl, unsure if his patriarch wanted him to go first.
The earl waved his hand and said, “Yes, Ian, you lead us forward. Perry, stay right behind him and have that rifle ready.”
“Yes, my lord,” said Perry, pulling his hunting rifle off his back and readying it to follow Ian.
Ian gave one more look behind him and noticed anxiously that Thatcher was scrawling the message from the wall down in a small notebook he’d brought with him. Ian frowned, because he thought he might not have heard the last about his role in the writing on the wall. Still, as he turned toward the dark tunnel in front of him, he reasoned that Thatcher could at least double-check his translation and might even discover he’d gotten it wrong.
He almost felt better until he remembered with a quick twang of apprehension that the sides of the second cavern held far more writing. He wondered if Thatcher’s translations there would point an additional finger of suspicion at him. He could only hope that his name wasn’t among the scribbling on that wall, and he wondered what he might say in his defense if it was.
He waited until Thatcher had finished his copying, and with a hand motion from Perry, he entered the narrow tunnel. Over his shoulder Perry said, “Here, Ian, you’ll need this to see.”
Ian glanced back and saw that Perry was handing him a torch. “Thank you, sir,” he said, feeling relieved that he wouldn’t have to venture forward without any light. He clicked the switch on the heavy torch and bounced the beam all around in front of him. Nothing moved within the beam, so he took some slow, careful steps forward.
Ian could feel the schoolmaster nearly on top of him, and out of the corner of his eye, he noticed the long barrel of the rifle extending above his shoulder. Still, he was very nervous about going first, as he was terrified of the beast, especially since the hellhound seemed barely to flinch at being shot twice before.
The entire group walked stealthily without speaking, careful not to make much noise until they reached the next cavern, where Ian braced himself again as his torch lit upon the walls covered in large black Grecian letters. “My word!” said the earl as he entered the cavern and moved his own torch along the sides of the space. “Look at this place!”
Thatcher quickly took out his notebook again to write down the lettering. “Do you know what it says?” asked the earl as he watched Thatcher scribble.
Thatcher shook his head. “Some of the letters and phrases I think I can make out, but I’d rather have this translated by my professor friend at Cambridge.”
“Ian,” said Perry, “is this the room where you discovered the box?”
“Yes, sir,” said Ian, stepping forward to the far corner of the cavern and kneeling down. “It was here, sir. Right—” Ian stopped abruptly.
“What is it?” asked Perry, stepping close.
“The beast,” whispered Ian, pointing to the ground, and his heart thumped hard as he took in the large dig marks surrounding the area where he and Theo had pulled the box free. Next to the clawed earth were the crumpled remains of his pocket torch, compass, and Swiss Army knife, which looked as if they’d been sent through some sort of grinder. “It’s been digging here and chewing on my things.”
The men gathered round where Ian knelt and all of them pointed their torches to illuminate the spot where giant claws had scarred the ground and bits of metal lay scattered about. Perry knelt by Ian and picked up the flattened compass. “He’s an angry beasty, he is,” he muttered.
The earl cleared his throat. “Shall we move on, then?”
“Just a moment,” said Thatcher as his scribbling intensified. “I’ve almost finished. …” Ian and the men waited while Thatcher turned in a circle to jot down the last of the writing on the walls. Finally, looking satisfied, he closed his notebook and said, “Got it.”
Ian held his breath again, waiting for Thatcher to declare him a fraud, but Thatcher merely smiled reassuringly and said, “After you, lad.”
Ian turned toward the second tunnel, with Perry again right behind him. He gulped at the entrance, knowing that they were nearing the beast’s lair, and tried to summon some courage to move steadily forward.
“What’s at the end of this vein?” whispered Perry as he leveled the gun over Ian’s shoulder again.
“I’m afraid I don’t know, sir,” Ian said hoarsely, remembering the horrible digging sounds followed by pounding paws and terrible howls that had come from this tunnel. “Theo and I only got as far as that last cavern before we had to run for our lives.”
“I thought you said Theo stayed aboveground,” Perry said.
Ian nearly faltered as he walked. “Er …,” he said, knowing he was caught. “I may have fibbed that part a bit, sir. You see, I pushed Theo into coming down here, and I didn’t want her to get in trouble with the headmistresses.”
The sound of Perry’s quiet laughter filled Ian’s ear. “It’s all right, lad,” he said. “Your secret is safe with me.” Then his schoolmaster changed the subject. “So, the beast came through here?”
Ian nodded gravely. “Yes, sir. We barely got out with our lives.”
“How did you manage to escape it?”
“We heard it digging and scratching; then it made that awful howling noise, so we had a bit of a head start. We were lucky. That last tunnel is so narrow, I believe it might have slowed the beast down a little.”
Perry grunted. “Yes, you were both very lucky indeed. We’ll hope that if that creature is up ahead, it gives us one of those warning howls again.”
Ian gulped as he realized that all the beast had to do was lie quietly in wait for them and he’d have little chance against it. It was certainly large enough to swipe at him before Perry was able to get off a shot. With trembling knees he continued forward, gripping the torch tightly in his hands.
After a time Ian heard a sound filtering down the tunnel toward them, and he also felt a slight breeze on his cheeks. “What’s that noise?” he asked in alarm. “And that breeze?”
“We must be close to another opening,” said Perry, sniffing the air. “I’d say we’re close to the cliff’s face above the strait. You can smell the sea on the breeze.”
Ian sniffed too, and he could just smell the briny scent of open water. After making a slight turn, they came to a sizable pile of rocks in their path. Beyond the pile came a cold breeze and the strong smell of the sea.
Perry put his hand on Ian’s shoulder, squeezed past, and picked his way along the many large rocks littering the ground. “It seems the beast’s lair must be beyond this pile of rubble,” he said as the others moved in close to have a look. “It must have made a home for itself in one of the caves along the face of the cliff and I’d guess that the creature either heard or smelled the children and dug its way through here to get at them in the cavern behind us,” he said.
Ian’s gaze never left the large pile of rocks strewn aside like toy blocks. The sheer strength of the hellhound continued to astonish him.
“That’s odd,” Perry said, pulling Ian’s thoughts away from the floor. Perry was staring at the ceiling of the tunnel.
“What’s odd?” asked the earl from just behind Ian.
“Well, I would have thought there had been a collapse of some sort from the ceiling, and that’s how these rocks became piled here, but it’s smooth and even, consistent with the rest of the cave’s ceiling. It looks undamaged.”
“So these rocks were placed here on purpose?” the earl asked.
“By the amount of liche
n on these rocks it appears they were placed here a long time ago to seal this side of the tunnel off, but why I can’t fathom.” Perry glanced at Ian, a bit of wonder in his eyes. “And a good thing too,” he added, “because if this barricade hadn’t been here, and if the beast hadn’t had to dig through it to get at you, I’m very certain you would not have made it out alive.”
“I wonder why someone would go to all that trouble to seal this section off?” Thatcher mused from behind the earl.
“It is strange,” Perry agreed, and Ian had an odd sense that the rocks had been purposely placed there as a barrier to help him, but he immediately dismissed the thought, because it was foolish, of course. “My lord,” said Perry, “to your knowledge, have any of the other tunnels had sections sealed off like this?”
The earl shook his head. “No,” he said. “None of them.”
“Strange,” repeated Perry, but then he shrugged and poked his rifle over the pile of rubble to the tunnel beyond, using his other hand to point his torch and illuminate the dim space. After a few moments he waved everyone forward, and Ian and the others stepped carefully among the fallen stones and scrambled over the main pile to the other side of the barrier.
When they were clear, they discovered yet another cavern, this one the largest of all. Ian had explored many of the caves along the cliff’s face, but he’d never been in this one. The ceiling was high above the earl’s head and the cavern was enormous. As the group filed in and waved their torches about, their footfalls and hushed voices echoed off the walls. Ian bounced his own torch beam around, looking for more of the lettering, but none of the walls appeared to have any sort of writing at all. Slowly, the hunting party spread out, investigating the cavern’s nooks.
“Look here!” exclaimed the earl, and Ian saw that he was kneeling beside a small pile of fur and bones. Ian hurried over to have a better look. “The beast has made a meal of something,” he said, his face pulled down into a scowl.
“That’s not all it’s been up to,” said Alfred from the far end of the cavern. “Or rather, she’s been up to.”
Henry, Ciaran, the earl, Ian, and the schoolmasters quickly gathered around Alfred, who was also kneeling by something on the ground. When Ian got close, he could see that the beast had hollowed out a space in the soft lime, lined it with fur from its own coat, and padded it with bits of grass and dried leaves. But that wasn’t what was so shocking. Between the matted fur and leaves were other scratch marks carved into the chalk floor, only these were much smaller, though just as distinct. “Oh my,” said the earl as he knelt beside Alfred and ran a hand along one of the smaller grooves. “Our hellhound’s had pups.”
THE PHOTO
I an gasped. If the beast had given birth to pups, it meant that she had a mate that might also be loose about the countryside. And, he thought with a lead feeling in the pit of his stomach, if she had a mate nearby, was it even larger and more terrifying than she was? Ian shuddered at the thought of facing not one hellhound but two. And what if they didn’t find the she-beast and her litter soon? What if it took months to track her, her mate, and their offspring? That could mean that a whole pack of wild beasts would soon be terrorizing the area.
Perry knelt beside the earl. “How many do you think she’s had?”
“Four,” said the earl, his face grim and hard. “And I’d say they were at least a few weeks old by the look of these marks. You can see here in the center of her nest where they began, rather small compared to the ones out at the edge over here.” Ian leaned in to get a better look. Even the pups’ claw marks looked large to him.
“And look there,” said Ciaran as he pointed his torch outward from the nest. “They’ve been digging in other parts of the cave as well.”
“So, where are they?” asked Perry. “Where are the mother and her litter?”
The earl stood and looked toward where the wind was whistling in from an opening at the other end of the cavern. “I suspect she’s moved them,” he said. “And I think that her fury with Ian was instigated by her natural instinct to protect her litter. You entered her territory, and she might have considered you a threat that needed to be hunted down and eliminated.”
“But we … er … I didn’t come anywhere near this side of the tunnel,” insisted Ian. “Plus there was that sealed wall to separate us,” he added.
“Doesn’t matter,” said the earl, standing up and wiping the white dust from his trousers. “You must have come close enough for her to feel threatened. And in the wild there is nothing more dangerous or unpredictable than a mother predator protecting her young.”
“There’s dried blood over here,” said Alfred, calling everyone’s attention away from the nest.
Ian and the earl walked over to where Ciaran’s son stood pointing his torch beam down on the cavern floor. “Yes,” said the earl, kneeling again beside several drops of blood on the ground. “We managed to get a bullet or two into her last night. Although it doesn’t seem to have slowed her down much.”
“What do we do now?” asked Henry.
“We keep hunting,” the earl said simply, standing. “We know that the she-beast has moved her litter somewhere else in the hours between yesterday afternoon and this morning. We also know that she’s injured, so it’s likely that she hasn’t gone far. If we can find her new lair, we might be able to catch her by surprise and kill the whole despicable bunch. I tell you, I’ll feel a great deal better when I’ve got that beast’s ugly head mounted on my trophy wall.”
“You’re forgetting one thing, my lord,” said Ian glumly.
“What’s that, lad?” asked Ciaran.
“Her mate,” he said. “If she had pups, she would have needed a mate.”
The men stared in shock at Ian and around at each other for a long moment. It was quite evident that none of them had thought of that.
Finally, the earl said, “A very good point, Master Wigby Let’s start with the she-beast and that frightful litter, then work around to her mate after she’s been dealt with, all agreed?”
“Agreed,” said the group.
The earl gave Ian a pat on the back and looked down at him with a reassuring smile. But Ian hardly felt comforted. He noted that many of the other men looked even more determined and were gripping their rifles firmly, but Ian was terribly unsettled. He hated being in the beast’s lair, even though it was clearly abandoned. It still held a nasty energy that made him shudder.
“Are you cold, Master Wigby?” Perry asked him.
“A little,” he admitted. “Mostly I’d just like to get out of here.”
“I agree,” said Perry. “My lord, might we proceed?”
“Yes, of course,” said the earl. “Come, gentlemen, this way.” The earl led everyone out of the cavern and into the last of the tunnels. This time Ian walked in the middle of the group, which made him feel more secure than being on point. The wind picked up considerably. It was a cold and bitter blast of air and it moaned forlornly along the walls as it whipped past the group.
As they marched, the tunnel widened into a low cave that faced the Strait of Dover directly. “We’re on the face of the cliffs,” said the earl, raising his voice above the wind while they all lined up beside him. Ian looked over the cave’s edge to the swirling water far below. The horizon had turned a mean, dark gray and thick clouds covered the skyline.
“I can see why a beast like her would choose that cavern as a whelping ground,” said Perry, raising his own voice above the sounds of wind and surf. “Back there, her litter was protected from the wind and she still had close access to the outside for hunting.” He pointed to a narrow path along the edge of the cliff that seemed to lead straight up to the top bluff.
Ian gulped as he thought about how many trips he and Theo had taken near the edge of these cliffs in the past few weeks, and how on any one of those trips the beast could have easily snatched them without anyone ever finding a trace.
“It’s amazing to me that we’ve had this enormous bea
st in our own village for so long, and no one has noticed it until now,” said the earl. “Surely, some of the local farmers must have talked about a sheep or two missing?”
Ciaran perked up at that. “You know, Hastings,” he said to the earl, “I have had a few complaints from my herders. They said that they’ve noticed a few of the sheep missing from their morning head counts in the past fortnight with-out a trace—but my men thought for sure we had a problem with poachers, not some giant hellhound.”
“How far away are your herds, sir?” Perry asked Ciaran.
“About five kilometers west of here,” Ciaran replied.
“Then we know how long she’s been in the area,” said Perry. “At least a fortnight.”
“But where did she come from?” asked Ian, puzzled. “And why hasn’t anyone seen her or her mate until now? I mean, a giant dangerous animal like that is likely to draw some attention.”
No one had answers for him, but the earl did say, “I’ve seen this sometimes in Africa, Ian. A lone female will get close to whelping her litter and set off to a place she thinks will be safe from her jealous mate. Male lions sometimes eat their own young. Perhaps it’s the same with these ghastly creatures.”
Ian could only hope that the earl was right and the mate to the she-beast was somewhere far, far away.
“Still, my lord, the lad has a point,” said Alfred. “She had to come from somewhere, and surely she could not have traveled the countryside without at least someone taking note.”
“If I didn’t think it impossible, I would say that this isn’t the she-beast’s first visit to our village,” said Ciaran.
“Excuse me, sir?” said Ian. He had no idea what Ciaran was referring to.
Ciaran and the earl exchanged looks that Ian couldn’t read. “Remember that report about the missing rider and his horse?” the earl’s friend said. “That was in our own backyard, Hastings.”
“I’m sorry, but what report are you referring to, sir?” asked Perry, and Ian was grateful that someone else was just as confused as he was.