6 #2
My ears pricked up and I pushed myself away from the wall I’d been leaning on, listening. For a moment there was nothing, then Ingold paced by again and I caught the sound, just at the edge of my hearing, a quiet slap like a damp towel dropped onto a stone floor.
Your ears are playing tricks on you, old fellow, that’s all. It’s this place .
That was almost certainly the case, but I kept listening anyway, and heard it again and again. Soft and wet and somehow sly in the way that it stopped as soon as we stopped, and did not start again until we did. Nothing at all like a human footstep.
And it seemed to be between us and the main shaft.
Under the pretext of looking over Ingold’s shoulder at the map, I whispered, “Don’t say anything, but I think there’s something following us. Listen for a wet slapping sound.”
“Yes,” said Ingold, a little too loudly, “it’s coming along well, I think.” He stood up, giving me a wide-eyed look, and I remembered that he was a civilian. I led the way forward, then stopped abruptly, and there it was again, that soft wet sound, caught out in mid-motion.
What the hell would make a sound like that?
I was pretty sure it had to be intelligent, whatever it was, or it wouldn’t have been trying to hide the sound of its movements. But intelligent like a stalking cat, or intelligent like a human being?
Firing a gun inside a mine seemed like a terrible idea, between Ingold’s firedamp and the chance of the ceiling coming down on us. Nevertheless, I wished desperately that my pistol wasn’t with my other gear at the top of the shaft.
“Perhaps it’s time we go back,” I said aloud.
“Certainly,” Ingold said. “I need to compile these notes anyway.”
We turned around and started walking.
Slap ... slap ... slap ...
It was ahead of us now. Between us and the exit. Christ’s blood. It was still moving, though, and I hoped like hell that it was retreating from us.
We reached a point where three tunnels merged into the main one. We had only mapped the leftmost of the three. Had it gone into the main tunnel? Was it waiting to attack or trying to get away from us in hopes of remaining unseen?
It had plenty of chances to attack you while your backs were turned, and even while you were a dozen yards apart and nicely split up .
If it was trying to get away, I wanted to give it plenty of opportunities. “Let’s check this one tunnel,” I told Ingold, and went down the right-hand passageway, mostly at random.
I regretted my choice almost immediately. The tunnel narrowed down until our heads brushed the ceiling, then farther yet. I paused, listening hard, but couldn’t hear any slapping noises. It wasn’t following us.
Maybe it doesn’t plan to attack us .
Or maybe it went back for reinforcements .
“It didn’t follow us in,” I whispered to Ingold. “But I don’t want it between us and the shaft, so I’m giving it time to get out of the way.”
Ingold nodded. He went past me, first hunching over, then practically bending double. I reminded myself just how claustrophobic I wasn’t and followed.
“Did they not excavate this far?” I asked.
“That’s not it,” he said. “Here, it opens up ahead.”
“Oh thank God,” I muttered in Gallacian. Sure enough, a few yards up, the ceiling rose and we could stand normally.
“That was a squeeze,” said Ingold.
My stomach clenched around the word. “Is sha going to fall on us?”
“Sha?”
“It’s what we call rocks instead of it .”
“Really? How interesting. Is it just rocks? Or would the tunnel also be sha?”
“No, tunnels are it , but they’re made of rocks, which are shan .
” I felt lightheaded and the conversation wasn’t helping much.
“Maybe this isn’t the time for comparing languages.
” I took a few deep breaths, trying to steady my nerves, but it didn’t help.
The air felt stale and thick. When I turned, the walls kept turning a little too long without me, as if I was drunk.
Ingold frowned at me. “Are you alright?”
“I’m fine,” I lied. “Just tense.”
His eyes narrowed. “No,” he said. “No, I don’t think you are.”
“Believe me,” I said grimly, “I am definitely tense.”
“Yes, yes. Not that.” He waved a hand. “Do you feel queasy?”
I opened my mouth to deny it, but my stomach hadn’t unclenched at all. “I suppose? A little?”
“Firedamp,” said Ingold grimly. “We’re standing in a pocket of it. We have to go back.”
“Oh,” I said. I felt somewhat pleased by this revelation. See, I’m not claustrophobic. The squeeze was nothing. It’s the mine gas that’s killing me, that’s all .
“Now , Alex,” said Ingold.
I fired off a salute, spun in place, watched the walls spin on without me, and staggered sideways.
It’s just like being drunk , I told myself. You understand being drunk. You have been epically, amazingly heroically drunk before. Remember that time in Greece?
Ingold was pulling at my arm for some reason.
Did he want my coat? He could just ask. Nevertheless it was awfully hot, so I began trying to take my coat off, but that didn’t seem to satisfy him.
He grabbed my shoulder and pushed my head down toward the floor, which isn’t behavior that I tolerate from anyone, friend or not.
I attempted to explain this to him but he did not seem to be paying attention. Instead he shoved me into the wall. No, not the wall, the tunnel. Unless the wall had opened up at the bottom? Tricky wall.
A light zipped crazily from wall to floor and back again. Ingold was still pawing at me. Obviously he was drunker than I was. I was going to have to take a swing at him in a moment if he didn’t stop.
He shoved me again, hard. I lost my footing and went to my knees. Then someone bellowed, “ Forward! ” and that meant march , or at least crawl , an order which bypassed my brain entirely. I crawled. The light kept wobbling around in front of me like it was drunk, too.
We were well past the squeeze before I realized that it was my own headlamp making the zigzagging light. A minute later I realized that I was not drunk, and a minute after that, Ingold said, “That’s probably far enough.”
“Ah,” I said, after a long few minutes. The walls were stable again and I could stand up, which I did, cautiously. “We nearly died just then, didn’t we?”
“I believe so.” Ingold mopped at his forehead. “I’ve poisoned myself in the lab once or twice, but it usually took a lot longer.”
Everyone handles a brush with death differently.
I have a system where I think, Christ’s blood, I nearly died!
until my body finally catches up with my brain.
Then I have the cold shakes for a few minutes.
Then I stare off into space for a few minutes.
Staring off into space in a mine is quite dull though, so when Ingold suggested we go back up to camp, I agreed.
By that point, I also felt well enough to be embarrassed. “Sorry about that,” I muttered.
Ingold shook his head. “Not your fault. It’s mine gas, not a personal failing.”
Which was true, but still, I was the one who had succumbed, not him. He’d had the sense to shove me out of the gas, while I was still spinning in place.
“Yeah, let’s go back up,” I said. I hadn’t heard any wet slapping for some time, but that might just have meant that whatever it was knew about the firedamp.
Which wasn’t a particularly happy thought, so I put it on the pile of other unhappy thoughts that I’d been having since we reached Hollow Elk Mine.
Still, as we followed the main tunnels back to the shaft, I strained my ears and heard nothing but our own footsteps. Whatever had been shadowing us was gone.
***
I smelled ham cooking before we were far enough up the shaft to see firelight.
Kent had set up the campfire in the mouth of the mine entrance, and I was very glad to drop down next to it and pretend my hands weren’t shaking.
Night had fallen while we were down there, not that day and night matter much underground.
“A wet slapping noise?” asked Denton, when we finished recounting the details. “Are you sure it wasn’t water dripping?”
“Very sure,” I said, warming my hands by the fire.
The adrenaline was wearing off, but my hands always stay cold for a bit after a brush with death.
I wished that my horse, Hob, was here. I could have gone and shoved my face against his neck until I felt better.
But the horses were picketed in full view of the cave entrance, and anyway, I doubted the mare would have appreciated it.
“Oscar talked about a squelching in his letter,” Denton said. “Do you think it’s the same thing?”
I shrugged helplessly. “Maybe? How many words does English have for a weird wet noise?”
“I think it was probably the same,” Ingold put in. “And it wasn’t mine gas, because we both heard it. There’s definitely something down there, and it followed us for a good distance.”
Denton pinched the bridge of his nose. “Dammit,” he muttered. “I really hoped I was wrong about all of this.”
“If it helps any, so did I,” I said.
He was all for leaving at once to try to track down the source of the sound, but Ingold put his foot down.
“Let us get a little more air in us before we go haring off again.” (It was kind of him to say us , since I suspected that I’d been knocked down much harder by the firedamp than he had.) Denton agreed, grudgingly, but kept looking over his shoulder at the entrance to the shaft.
Soldiers look like that when they know their comrades are dead, but they can’t shake the urgent sense that if they just go back out soon enough, maybe a miracle will be waiting.
Kent, who could cook a three-course meal over a campfire, announced that dinner was served. I took my tin plate of beans, ham, and biscuits and dug in.
“On the bright side,” said Angus, sitting down beside me, “at least this means we didn’t waste a boat ride.”
Denton was on his feet as soon as our plates were empty.
I really didn’t want to go back down, which of course is why I did it.
We have a saying in Gallacia: “When the wolf bites your heart, don’t wait for him to shit,” which means, “If you’re scared of doing something, don’t put it off.
” (Ingold tells me there’s a similar American saying about getting back on a horse.) The longer I waited to go back down, the more I’d keep reliving drowning in mine gas, and the worse it was going to be.
The wolf’s teeth were firmly in place as we made our way back down to the third shaft.
We gave the squeeze a wide berth and returned to the tunnels where we’d heard the strange wet sound, and began to go back and forth, listening.
I felt like an ant moving in the darkness of an anthill.
Do individual ants ever think about the earth over their heads and feel uneasy?
If so, I bet they don’t tell the other ants about it.
It would have been nice, since I was being quietly stoic, to be rewarded by hearing the ... whatever it was ... but we walked around for the better part of an hour without hearing anything more alarming than the creaks and groans of an old mine. (Which are quite alarming enough, thank you.)
“Are you sure this was where you heard it?” Denton asked.
“Absolutely,” said Ingold.
Denton didn’t ask again, and he didn’t ask if we were sure we had heard it, which perversely made me less certain than I had been.
If I’d had to argue that there had been a sound, I would have convinced myself thoroughly, but now I began second-guessing everything.
Could it have been a strange echo? Some drip into the poisoned lake at the bottom of the shaft?
Some whiff of mine gas turning both our heads?
“We can try again tomorrow,” Ingold said finally. “It’s getting late.”
I didn’t need any encouragement to turn back toward the main shaft. Denton lagged behind us, still listening. I glanced over my shoulder, worried about leaving him behind, when he stopped dead, yanked off his helmet, and hissed, “Turn off your lamps!”
Years of worrying about a careless cigarette giving away our position to the enemy snapped into place.
I had my lamp off and extinguished in seconds.
Ingold, perhaps unwilling to be stranded completely in the dark, turned his light to point away from Denton.
“What—” he started to say, and then he stopped.
Far down the tunnel, a spark of red burned against the darkness.