The Underdwelling

10

All flashlights went up.

Beams arced through the darkness.

There were lots of the other trees around them, the gymnosperms and cycads standing about like posts. Some were fifty feet in height and the flashlights played about their tops.

“There’s nothing up there, Maki,” Jurgens said.

“Wait,” Breed said. “I heard something, too.”

Then they all did. A sort of knocking sound like a woodpecker working a dead tree. It had that same hollow, continual rapping. It went on for maybe five seconds, stopped, then started again. It was coming from high above, from the apex of one of the trees… but they could see nothing up there.

“Fuck is that?” Breed said.

McNair swallowed. “I assumed this cavern was sealed, but something could have gotten in through a crevice. Bats, maybe.”

“I never heard bats knock like that,” Maki pointed out.

Boyd stood there, his heart pounding and the cylinder of the flashlight in his hand feeling very greasy like it might slide out of his fist at any moment.

Jurgens cleared his throat. “Well, let’s get on our way—”

“Shut up,” Breed said.

They were hearing more noises now. Not just that knocking, but a scraping sound from high above them like tenpenny nails were being scratched over petrified wood. A flurry of noise that went on for maybe thirty seconds. Then nothing. Nothing at all.

“There’s something up there,” Breed whispered, like he was afraid that whatever it was might hear him.

All lights were up in the petrified treetops now. Most were just posts lacking branches. The lights swept over them and there was absolutely nothing up there. Nothing that the lights could find.

The sounds started again, knocking and scraping, not from one particular tree, but from many as if whatever was up there was leaping from trunk to trunk over their heads. It stopped again and they all stood there, silent and motionless, sensing something but not knowing what it was. Boyd’s flashlight was shaking in his hand, his beam jumping around. He wanted badly to run, to get the hell out of there, before whatever it was showed. Because he had a bad feeling that it was about to. That whatever was up there was about to drop down amongst them in a flurry of scratching limbs.

What they heard next was a clicking.

Click, click, click.

The sound of a deathwatch beetle in the wall of a deserted house or a cicada up in a gum tree. Just that repetitive, chitinous clicking like some insect rubbing its forelegs together or tapping them on its carapace. Whatever it was, it was not a good sound and nobody dared speak. Dared acknowledge what they were hearing.

It’s like Morse Code, Boyd thought. Like something up there is trying to communicate with us.

“I’m getting the fuck out of here,” Maki said.

But he didn’t move. What came next stopped him dead.

Stopped them all dead and took away any slim hope they had that what was up there was a bat or something ordinary. It started as a low whistling sound and built to a screeching, strident piping that went right up their spines. It sounded almost frenzied, desperate, the shriek of some mountain cat crying out in agony and despair and maybe even stark melancholy. It rose up to a shrill cacophony and then slowly faded. And by then, they were all scared.

Nothing with a voice like that could be remotely normal or remotely sane.

Boyd just stood there, trying to pull air into his lungs. He could not get past the idea that there was an almost feminine caliber to that cry. Anguished, haunted, and demented, but somehow female. Like some big and hideous insect imitating a human cry. The idea of that made his flesh crawl in waves. It was not a human voice or even a tone a human would be capable of producing, yet it was not strictly bestial and there was no denying a certain sorrow in its pitch.

But it was enough.

It was plenty.

“Let’s get the hell out of here,” Jurgens said and the desperation in his voice was real.

They made it maybe ten feet before things started to happen.

The earth below and above them rumbled like a hungry belly and things began to move and shake and tremble. Rocks and dust fell from overhead. The prehistoric trees began to sway back and forth. Everything was in motion, including the men who tried to stay on their feet. Lights went spinning in all directions as their owners pitched this way and that.

“A cave-in!” Breed called out. “A fucking cave-in!”

Boyd hit the ground, waiting for millions of tons of rock to come down on top of him, for the lot of them to be squashed flat like his old man in the Mary B. mine. He heard that rumbling from the distance and realized that whatever was happening, it was apparently not happening in the cavern. Rocks were falling and dust was kicked up, but the real thunder came from the distance. And then a shock wave rolled at them, throwing everyone to the ground. In the glow of a dropped lantern, he saw one of those giant stone trees sway back and forth and come right down on top of him. He felt the impact as its trunk trapped his leg with a white-hot rush of pain.

And in the back of his head, a voice said, yer probably the only guy ever crushed by a falling tree out of the Permian.

Then there was darkness.