Cavern Of Fear

17 - Nightmare

Glock stared, stunned, at his broken sword. He seemed unable to believe what had happened. He did not react to the rasping growl that echoed around the cavern. He did not move as the bruised tentacle shifted.

‘Glock! Beware!’ Jasmine screamed.

The tip of the tentacle lashed upward, striking like a snake. Slimy white threads caught Glock around the neck, the hooks burying themselves deep in his flesh. He fell to his knees, screaming in agony. In an instant the tentacle had whipped around his body, and he was being lifted into the air.

Jasmine darted forward.

‘No, Jasmine!’ shouted Lief.

But Jasmine either did not, or would not, hear. With Kree shrieking above her head, she leaped to the rising tentacle as once she had leaped from tree to tree in the Forests of Silence. She clung motionless for a moment, then, thrusting her dagger between her teeth, she began to climb, her fingers digging into the hard, slimy surface.

‘Your dagger will be useless against it, Jasmine!’ cried Barda. ‘Glock is lost. Save yourself!’

But Jasmine had already reached Glock’s limp body and was climbing over it, to the tentacle’s tip. The tip was bent, the white threads stretched taut as they kept their strangling, stinging hold around the groaning man’s neck.

Jasmine snatched her dagger from her mouth and slashed at the roots of the white threads. One by one the threads fell away, thick, green liquid bubbling from the ragged wounds.

The Fear bellowed in rage. The injured tentacle writhed. Its grip on Glock loosened and he fell like a stone. Jasmine jumped after him, shouting to Kree.

Rigid with horror, Barda and Lief looked down. They caught sight of Jasmine’s dark head break clear of the water, saw her stagger upright among the heaving mottled coils of the beast. She was dragging Glock by the shoulders, holding his head out of the water.

Shrieking, Kree swooped at the tip of the injured tentacle, stabbing at it, darting aside as it lunged for him. He could not hope to save Jasmine. All he could do was try to distract the beast, and give her time to save herself.

Did Glock still live? Lief could not tell. But his heart seemed to rise to his throat as he saw a jagged slash of silver in the churning water.

Glock’s huge hand still gripped his sword as though, alive or dead, he would never let it go.

The Fear’s terrible, ear-splitting roars echoed around the cavern. It thrashed the water, and Glock and Jasmine disappeared in a whirlpool of foam. Great waves swelled and rushed towards the cavern entrance, and into Lief’s mind flashed a picture of the Plumes waiting on the shore.

The tentacles around the cage tightened and the bars cracked like twigs. The tentacles above Lief and Barda began uncoiling and writhing downwards, their pale undersides ribbed like the belly of a snake.

The light flickered, and went out.

‘Jump!’ Barda roared.

Lief leaped for his life as the cage collapsed beneath him. He hit the foaming water and went under. He tumbled helplessly in the deathly chill, his mouth and nose filled with the taste and smell of the beast. Splinters from the shattered cage and the bones of long-dead victims of The Fear swirled with him in the stinking froth.

His right shoulder slammed against something solid, and agonising pain jolted down his arm. Blindly he reached out with the other hand, felt rock under his fingers and managed to haul himself to his feet.

He had been swept against the cavern wall. Shivering and panting, water foaming to his waist, he clung to the rock. His eyes were tightly closed, but slowly he became aware of wavering light against his eyelids. Somehow, as waves pounded their island, a little band of Plumes had managed to summon up their power once more.

Lief forced his stinging eyes open and, through a flickering red haze, saw a scene of nightmare.

Vast, thrashing tentacles filled the cavern. The water heaved and boiled with their writhing. One of the tentacles, the one Jasmine had attacked, twisted more wildly than the rest, its blunted tip jerking horribly, spattering the walls and roof with thick blobs of slimy green.

Lief shrank back, and only then realised that he was clutching a thick rock shelf that jutted from the cavern wall at water level.

Slowly, painfully, he hauled himself onto the ledge. He crawled to his feet, flattened himself against the rock and began searching desperately for some sign of Jasmine, Barda or Kree.

But he could see nothing. Nothing but the coiling tentacles, quietening now, beginning to search more patiently, more thoroughly. The threads at the tips of the nine uninjured arms wriggled, stretched and pulsed like hideous worms as they probed the rocky walls, combed the dark red water. Seeking, seeking…

How many crushed, drowned bodies were drifting just below that scum-covered surface, waiting to be found? Was Glock there? Barda? Jasmine?

Lief closed his eyes, fighting down the despair that threatened to engulf him. He tried to block everything from his mind but the need to survive. Cautiously, wincing with pain, he moved his injured arm.

Only then did he realise that his hand was not only numb, but empty. His sword was gone.

Forcing down panic, he made himself think. He was certain that he had been gripping the sword when he hit the water. He could remember the feel of the hilt in his hand as he was being tumbled about in the foam.

But then he had crashed against the rock—against the rock ledge on which he was standing now. He peered into the dark, foam-flecked water lapping at his feet. His stomach lurched as he saw the long, slow turn of pale, ribbed flesh.

One of the beast’s tentacles was writhing just below the ledge. If he had still been standing there…

The tip of the tentacle broke the water’s surface. Lief watched in fascinated dread as the worm-like fingers stretched towards the ledge, touched it, and began to ooze forward.

He stood rigidly still, hardly daring to breathe. If he tried to edge away, the fingers would sense movement and lash out, as they had lashed out at Glock. But if he stayed where he was, the fingers would soon reach his feet. Then they would creep up to his ankles. And as soon as they felt warm flesh…

‘Be very still.’

The voice was just a breath. Stiffly, Lief turned his head to the right and saw Barda edging out of a shallow hole in the cavern wall, only an arm’s length away.

Barda was dripping and bedraggled. His face was smeared with blood, and blood matted his sodden hair. But his sword gleamed as he raised it high.

Lief looked down again. The toes of his boots were covered in a mass of squirming, hooked threads. Cold sweat broke out on his brow. His stomach churned with revulsion.

The threads oozed forward. The tentacle tip from which they grew rose higher from the water, nodding horribly…

‘Go!’ roared Barda, and struck, his blade slicing cleanly through the white threads, a hair’s breadth from their roots.

Slipping and sliding on the uneven footholds in the wall, Lief scrambled aside. The water beneath the ledge began to heave and bubble as though it were boiling.

‘Get behind the shell!’ he heard Barda shouting.

Lief glanced over his shoulder. Huge coils of the injured tentacle were heaving upward, bursting out of the water in cascades of spray. The jerking, blunted tip, oozing slime, was dashing itself against the ledge where he had been standing.

Barda was hurriedly squeezing back into his shallow hiding place. But he would not be safe there for long. Nowhere would be safe for long.

The beast was screeching ferociously, its tentacles pounding the water once more. The light began to flicker. A wave crashed into Lief, throwing him to his knees, jarring his injured arm which throbbed agonisingly. Gasping, he crawled on, half in and half out of the water.

He could not move back. He could not stay where he was. His only choice was to move on.

For long, agonising minutes he crawled, expecting every moment to be snatched into the air. But at last he realised that the water beside him was calming. The rock shelf had broadened. Bleached, white bones lay in heaps all around him. He dared to look up.

He had reached the end of the cavern, the heart of The Fear.

Now he could clearly see what lay behind the huge mass of tentacles. He could see the cruel, tearing beak He could even see the small, pale eyes staring vacantly ahead. He could see the shapeless body and the vast, stone-like shell which rose halfway to the cavern roof, dull blue, ridged with the growth of centuries.

The shell had become part of the cavern wall. The Fear could not move. But it did not need to. Its mighty arms were more than long enough to reach every corner of its domain. No prey could escape it.

A small movement on the shell caught Lief’s eye. He stared, and almost cried out.

For the movement was Jasmine! Jasmine was crawling up the stony blue ridges, dagger in hand.

As if Jasmine felt Lief’s gaze she looked down. Their eyes met, and her face broke into a broad smile.

Perhaps she saw Lief’s joy at seeing her alive. Perhaps she felt joy of her own. But she did not speak. She simply pointed downwards, lifted her hand to Lief, palm outwards, and climbed on.

His heart beating wildly, Lief looked to where she had pointed. He saw Glock slumped against the shell, his broken sword still clutched in his hand.

Glock was breathing in shallow, painful gasps. Great, swollen wounds burned scarlet on his neck and face. Kree was standing motionless beside him, as though on guard.

By the time Lief looked up again, Jasmine had reached the top of the shell. As Lief watched in terror, she jumped lightly onto the billowing flesh that spilled from it, lay face down and began to wriggle forwards.

The Fear’s tiny eyes showed no sign that it felt her. Perhaps it did not. Or perhaps it thought no more of Jasmine than a human would think of a crawling fly.

Half sliding, half crawling, Jasmine moved on until she was just behind the beast’s eyes. Deliberately she raised her dagger. Lief stood, paralysed, helpless, unable to do anything but watch.

His heart leaped as Jasmine thrust the dagger down with all her strength, burying it to its hilt between the creature’s eyes. But then, with a thrill of terror, he saw those pale, vacant eyes roll back and fix on Jasmine’s face. He saw Jasmine stare, unbelieving, as the dagger sprang back in her hand, rejected by the rubbery flesh it was supposed to pierce.

Then, with a strike so fast that it was like a blur, a tentacle whipped backwards, curled around Jasmine’s body and snatched her, screaming, into the air.