CHAPTER 13. IT MUST BE HELL
The stairs led down, down deep below Callowleigh’s hundred year-old foundations, and seemed to wind endlessly through jagged rock formations and dark earthen chambers. Jane’s flashlight did little to penetrate the terrible darkness that was closing around us.
For the first leg of our trip, it seemed no one breathed, let alone spoke. The roughly hewn stairwell looked hand-cut from the earth a very long time ago. And yet, despite the age, I didn’t see any footprints, handprints, or human markings of any kind. For all we knew, no one had been this way since Callowleigh had closed its doors, maybe even earlier than that.
We passed through a few small rooms–functioning as little more than landings connecting stairwells–before we actually came to a manmade room. It was not especially long, nor was it very wide, but it was the first place we’d entered since leaving the library that was bigger than a walk-in closet and seemed to have a defined purpose. It was also the first room that showed any sign of life.
We had seen the light first. It came flickering up the stairwell when we’d gotten within about thirty feet of the room. When we cleared the steps, we saw there were torches mounted on the walls, lit and burning with unnatural, white, smokeless flames, casting a pale light across the expanse of the tiny chamber.
From one end of the room to the other, it was probably twenty feet, but considering I had to stoop to fit in the room, it made me feel claustrophobic.
“It’s an office,” Jane said.
“How do you know?”
“Look.”
A desk sat against one wall. It was clear of clutter, although a few books were scattered across the blotter. Jane picked one up and read to cover aloud. “The Key of Solomon, The Munich Necromantic Handbook, The Seven Days of Peter de Abano, Three Books of Occult Philoso–”
“Hold on,” Gil interrupted. “No Harry Potter?”
“Y Ddraig Goch isn’t here.”
“No kidding,” Gil chuckled. “Looks more like bait than anything else. Shall we continue?”
The second leg of the trip was worse. Condensation was beginning to form on the walls and ceiling, sending thick droplets of water pattering down occasionally on our heads like a lazy rainfall. The sound of running water had also begun to grow, first little more than a distant shhhhhh and soon becoming a muted roar.
“You know,” Gil said, “Callowleigh is up on a big hill, so we’re really not that deep I don’t think. So don’t be getting all Journey to the Center of the Earth on me here. I don’t think we’re gonna find dinosaurs at the end of this tunnel.”
“Not hell either, huh?” I asked. I meant it as a joke, but a little assurance never hurt anyone.
“I mean, I don’t think so?” Gil said. “No guarantees, though. Staircases that spiral into the abyss can lead anywhere, really. Hell, Wal-Mart, Cleveland. You never know.”
“Great.”
We turned another corner and descended down a final ten feet before coming out on a landing overlooking a roaring snake of a river. The water cut a swath through the rocky earth, passing east to west in front of us before disappearing into a gaping mouth at the far end of the room.
For the first time since our descent, a chamber spared no sense of grandeur. Lit by well-placed torches that burned pure and white, the room was huge, larger than a cathedral and just as darkly ominous. Above us, the ceiling rose at least fifty feet or so, long stalactites hanging down like teeth. Before us, a hand-fashioned stone bridge, flat and smooth and void of railings or guide rails, rose over the roiling river, connecting the tiny rock island on which we stood to another in the center of the room. A second bridge connected that island to a third at the far side of the room. The third rock island, much like our own, had the pale outline of a doorway visible. That island’s doorway, unlike ours, was lit by one of the white torches that burned slowly and steadily. The island in the center was nothing more than a bare rock circle in the center of the great subterranean waterway.
“Why do I not like this?” I asked aloud. It was kind of like I was looking out over one of those 1980s American Gladiator obstacle courses, rife with horrible surprises. I was certain no good could come from going forward.
“Shall we?” Jane said, taking a step forward and approaching the smooth slope of the bridge.
“Wait,” Gil said. He turned to me. “Big man, what do you feel in here? You’ve been practicing, what are your senses telling you?”
I had been practicing honing my senses, working long nights repeating exercises with Finch. You can usually feel magic like the static charge in the air prior to a thunderstorm, and with enough training you can usually begin to sense it. Gil and Finch had been doing it for years, so for them it was second nature. I was still a bit of a magical rube.
I closed my eyes and tried to reach out with my senses. Finch and I had been working hard to get me up to speed, but recently I was running at about a 50/50 success rate. Not terrible, but not great. With my eyes closed, I tried to process what I was sensing in the room and beyond.
I felt the spray of the fast-moving river kicking against the rocky shoreline. I heard the crackling of the white torches. I felt the damp air that had grown stagnant in the cave for so long. I smelled the mold and mildew that had been growing on the rocks for untold years. I heard Jane’s nervous toe-tapping. I smelled Gil as his deodorant failed him.
But that was it. I couldn’t feel anything running beneath the surface of it all, invisible to the naked eye.
“I got nothing, Boss,” I said.
He smiled uneasily. “Me neither. That’s why I’m nervous.”
Gil grasped Jane’s arm and pulled her back. Slowly, he took the lead, climbing the bridge and stepping out over the first segment of river. The water seemed to bubble and churn angrily as the three of us began walking over the twenty or so feet of bridge, making our way to the small rock island sanctuary that waited in the center of the room.
I saw the first slice of color amid the white foam of the river just before we reached the apex of the bridge, a long, bright sword of color that slipped above the surface of the water for only a split second before disappearing again.
“Gil...” I said.
“I saw it.”
“What is it?” Jane asked. She turned to me. Her face stricken. “What did you see?”
“It’s all right,” I said.
She did her best to smile coolly. It didn’t really work. “You wouldn’t lie to me, would you Dylan?”
I looked back down into the water. More colors moving like water snakes in and out of the current.
“Uh, well.” I licked my lips and tried to look in control. It didn’t work so well. “Boss?” I said. “What are we–”
The tentacle ripped up and out of the water, slamming into the bottom of the stone bridge and knocking all three of us off our feet. Jane, eyes wide, opened her mouth to scream (a very un-Jane thing to do). She didn’t get the chance.
A second tentacle rose from the water on the other side of the bridge and closed around her waist, cinching tightly and squeezing the breath from her. It lifted her straight up off the bridge and into the air.
I stumbled to my feet as the ground beneath me cracked and began splitting. Jane’s feet were up in the air and kicking, but the tree-trunk sized tentacle was literally squeezing the life out of her. I reached out for her flailing leg, but as the stone beneath me gave way, I literally lost my footing and fell, the bridge breaking into smaller and smaller pieces around me. I scrambled for a fresh foothold or something to grab onto, but there was nothing. I slipped through the crumbling bridge as its center collapsed, nothing but the churning water to catch me.
The water was cold, and I landed on my back, but where there should have been a splash, there was a dull fwapp that jarred me and made the bones in my back crack. I opened my eyes as shattered masonry fell over me. I wasn’t falling, I was rising. There was some ground beneath me. I rolled over and saw vermillion skin. I’d landed on the cold and
powerful body of the Kraken, and as it rose against the river, I rose with it.
Above me, Gil jumped. Despite having no love or loyalty for the woman, I watched as he threw himself at the mercy of a monster for Jane. He flew off the bridge and wrapped his arms around her legs as the beast lifted the two of them higher up into the air. He scrambled for purchase, one hand on her belt, the second on the thick arm of the sea monster. Jane’s eyes were plastered wide, but whatever color remained in her face was nearly gone. Even from where I stood, I could see her lips turning blue. She was suffocating, the strength of the beast too great for her to take even a single gasping breath. The beast was crushing her to death.
The Kraken beneath dipped below the waterline, the river rising up to my knees, then to my waist. I struggled to stay on my feet against the churning current. Crouching, I rested a hand on the arm of the monster to steady myself and put my weight on it. Slowly, I began moving forward towards Gil and Jane. The beast’s skin felt like wet rubber, thick and flexible as rows of bones moved just beneath the surface.
“Hold on!” I shouted as I slowed, the tough flesh beneath my feet curving and rising out of the water. I wasn’t standing on the beast’s body, I was standing on the very base of the tentacle that held Jane and Gil. The further I walked, the unsteadier my footing became. I edged out over the water further, my boots slipping more with each step, until the angle of the arm was so great I could wrap my arms around it like a tree trunk.
Above me, Jane’s eyes had closed. Her head rested against her shoulder and her mouth was hanging open. Gil had thrown a leg over the tentacle and was prying at the tentacle, struggling to unwind it from Jane’s body.
As soon as I closed my arms around the thick tentacle, it swung downward, dropping the floor out from beneath me as it hammered Gil and Jane down into the water. I didn’t lose my grasp, but I slipped further down the arm, all three of us disappearing below the waterline.
I couldn’t see anything, and all I heard was the roar of water, but I followed the tentacle further under. The pale light from the torches was gone, everything below the waterline was black. I was lost until my hands found skin. It was Jane. Blindly, I found her waist, my hands closing over the thinnest band of tentacle within grasp. Tiny suction cups on the underside pulled at my fingertips. I closed my thighs around the tentacle and ripped with all my strength.
The fibrous muscle tore in my hands. Somewhere behind me, I heard a terrible bellowing roar as the tentacle began shaking wildly, bucking beneath me like a bull. I tightened my legs and continued tearing.
My stomach lurched as the tentacle rose, the three of us breaking the waterline and rushing up into the air. Gil was still perched just behind Jane, his hands following mine as we tore into the monster’s flesh. Black blood was running freely from jagged wounds. I looked down to see the body of the beast break the surface of the water. The entire creature looked like a huge open hand, palm-up, a team of tentacles writhing around the monster's fleshly body. In the center was a great mouth, filled with row after row of razor-sharp teeth.
We were still rising, a fact that hadn’t bothered me until I looked up to see the ceiling approaching and one long stalactite racing towards my face. I twisted, shifting my weight and rotating my body to the underside of the tentacle as a stalactite sliced through the space I’d just vacated before it punctured down into the monster’s flesh. That stone was meant for me. Gil wasn’t so lucky. He crashed into the flat stone of the ceiling, his head cracking against the rock. His eyes fluttered and his grip loosened.
“Boss!” I reached out and grabbed him as he slipped off the tentacle. Wrapping one arm around his chest, I pulled him towards me, the muscles in my arms and thighs burning with exertion.
I slid, the tentacle now coated with the creature’s blood. I lost a few feet, slipping down the tentacle like a sliding board. My stomach twisted again as the tentacle dropped and the three of us plummeted earthward at full speed. I kicked my legs, pulling Gil with me, and leapt off the beast. Together, we fell towards the ground. I carried him with me and we hit the ground in a roll on the room’s center island, nearly careening straight off the rocky ground and back into the water.
I dropped him and stumbled to my feet as the tentacle slammed hard into the rocky island. With the impact, something in the monster’s grip loosened, because Jane’s eyes snapped open and she gasped. The tentacle withdrew and began slithering back slowly towards the water’s edge, weak from the deep gouge it had sustained against the stalactite. I grabbed at it, pulling at Jane before it could get her back underwater. More fibrous muscle tore to ribbons in my hands. The beast’s grip loosened further, but still not enough. I saw a second tentacle break the water’s surface and move towards me.
Magic. Like I said, it’s a love/hate relationship. I’d been told I had some in me, an impressive amount even, but my understanding of it was so tenuous that I feared to use it under even the best circumstances. With Gil laying unconscious behind me, I watched as Jane was dragged towards the Kraken's gaping jaws. I didn’t have much time to consider circumstances.
I felt the power come from deep down in my gut. It ran through my body like lightning, electrifying every nerve ending and filling me with an endless supply of power. I grabbed the sea monster’s tentacle that held Jane and pulled with everything I had.
Veins of power shot from my fingertips where they met the skin of the beast and lanced deep into the monster’s flesh like long needles. I set my feet and pulled. From below the surface of the water, the beast rose, huge mouth opening in the pale light and turning to us, tentacles closing in, ready to pull us into its waiting mouth. I didn’t let go.
I felt the muscles tear, the tendons snap like taut rubber bands. The skin ripped like wrapping paper. The bones were last. They cracked like huge branches. The entire tentacle ripped free from the monster in my hands in a spray of black blood. The beast shrieked a high and unearthly scream that echoed through the cave and shook dust from the ceiling. I fell backward, the tentacle in my hand, landing in a heap beside Jane at the center of the small island.
The beast, pulsing blood and still shrieking, withdrew. In a wash of black bubbles and vermillion skin, the sea monster disappeared beneath the surface of the river.
I sat up, watching as it slunk away. With a sigh, I collapsed back against the stone ground, eyes staring up at nothing.
Behind me, Jane was sputtering, her breath coming in gasps. I heard a groan, and then Gil’s voice. “You all right, little lady?”
The sound of tentacles. Wet and heavy. “Yeah,” she said, struggling to get her breath. “Damn, my chest hurts.”
“At least you can breathe,” Gil said. “Jeez, I’m seein’ like three of everything. How many huge gross tentacles are layin’ there? Did I hit my head or something?”
“Yeah, against the ceiling,” I said. “And there’s just one tentacle there.”
“Ceiling, huh? Yeah, that’d do it.”
“Guys?”
“I’m surprised you’re not still out cold, old man,” I laughed. “You really got slammed against it.”
“Guys?”
“Speak for yourself. I was a big hero, jumpin’ on that Kraken like a lady on one of those bull ridin’ machines.”
“Guys?”
I struggled to get upright. Behind me, Gil said, “What is it, Jane? Can’t you let me bleed in peace?”
“Do you see that?”
I turned. It was Deacons Fehr. He was standing on the third island at the base of the last bridge. He was beckoning us.
And he was a ghost.