Ghostwalkers (36 page)

Then they came to a break in the ground. A chasm a dozen feet across that dropped down into inky blackness far beyond the reach of their lantern. The cleft seemed to run on for miles in either direction, and yet the slimy trail continued on the other side as if the thing they pursued was so massive that it could thrust itself across the divide without tumbling into it.

“That's done it then,” said Looks Away. “We should have brought a coil of rope.”

“We should have brought an army and some dynamite, too,” said Grey. “But we didn't. We either solve it or go back.”

The cry of a hungry pteranodon behind them seemed to cancel out the latter suggestion.

The alternative was daunting. There was a broken crystal shaft above them that leaned out over the chasm. The jagged point reached almost to the other side, but fell short by six feet. It was not a tremendous jump in regular circumstances, but to manage it here they would have to climb onto the shaft and run along it to get up enough momentum to carry them over.

When Grey explained this to Looks Away, the Sioux stared at him with frank astonishment. “You have clearly gone 'round the bend, haven't? You're barking mad.”

“It's not the ideal plan…,” Grey admitted.

“It's suicide.”

“Then we go back and deal with those birds.”

“Pteranodons are not birds.”

“Who cares? Pick a card here.”

The choice, however, was made for them.

A scraping sound made them spin and look back the way they'd come, and there, filling the mouth of the tunnel of quartz spears, was a gigantic cat. It had massive shoulders and huge paws from which claws like baling hooks dug into the ground. Massive oversized fangs dropped like daggers from its upper jaw, and embedded in its chest was a large black stone laced with white. And everywhere were signs of advanced decay. Rotting flesh, open sores, bloated pustules, and masses of wriggling maggots. It reeked of its own decay.

The saber-toothed cat wrinkled its face in a silent snarl of pure animal hate, and yet its eyes held a darker and more complex expression than should be evident in a simple beast. A cruel, calculating intelligence glimmered in those eyes.

They were trapped with a bottomless pit behind them and a monster before them.

Looks Away whipped the Kingdom rifle around, staring with wild eyes that were filled with the dangerous lights of panic. He uttered a cry of sick fear and began raising it to his shoulder, but Grey leaped at him and pushed it down.

“Stop, you damn fool!” he snapped. “You'll bring the whole ceiling down on us.”

Above and around them the crystal spears—clear or blue or smoky gray—were shot through with cracks.

The wild look in Looks Away's eyes turned to panic. “We have to do something.”

“Yes we damn well do,” Grey said, “but I don't want to die trying. Give me your shotgun.”

The undead saber-toothed cat took another step forward. Its eyes narrowed as it read the scene. It crept forward, one deliberate step at a time.

“Give me the damn shotgun,” said Grey in a fierce whisper.

Looks Away clutched the Kingdom rifle and sought to raise it against the downward force of Grey's restraining hand. “Let me go, damn your eyes, I can kill it—.”

“Sure, and kill us both at the same time,” said Grey. “Snap out of it, man. We need a bang—just not the voice of goddamn thunder.”

With a dubious nod, Looks Away drew the weapon and extended it stock-first to Grey. “I hope you know what you're doing.”

“Me, too,” said Grey quietly.

The big cat kept coming. It was now only forty feet away, but as it approached one section of the tunnel, it paused. There were two crystal spikes laid like crossed swords above the narrow walkway. Grey and Looks Away had needed to crouch to pass beneath them, but the cat was so massive that it would have to crawl on its belly to pass beneath. The narrow bottleneck was the only reason it hadn't charged them, and Grey knew it even if his companion was too frightened to grasp it.

Even with the shotgun Grey doubted he could drop so monstrous a creature with a couple of shots. And driving it mad with the pain of buckshot did not seem like the smartest of plans in so tight a spot.

“Looks,” snapped Grey, “see that arch? You're the rock expert, tell me the best place to hit it.”

Looks Away began to argue, but then he abruptly seemed to come back to himself. He studied the fragile crystalline structure and nodded.

The living-dead cat flattened out and began crawling through the arch. Grey could swear there was a dark humor interwoven with the hunger and hatred on its face. It
knew
it was going to win. The very fact of its obvious confidence made Grey tremble.

“Talk to me,” he said in a quiet voice that was at odds with every screaming nerve in his body and mind.

“There,” said Looks Away, pointing, only to immediately change his mind and point to a different spot. “No—
there
!”

“Make up your damn mind…”

“That spot. See that dark smudge inside? It's a fracture point…”

The cat was more than halfway through. Already the muscles in its haunches were bunching in anticipation of slaughter.

God, the thing was huge.
It was as massive as a full-grown bull and infinitely more dangerous.

“There,” insisted Looks Away, stabbing the air with his finger. “Shoot—shoot!”

With a scream louder than thunder, the saber-toothed cat began its killing leap. And Grey took three fast steps forward and fired. One barrel. Then the other.

Boom.

Boom.

The concentrated buckshot hit the flaw in the smoky quartz pillar.

Chunks of crystal exploded outward, scything through the air. The whole structure of the arch groaned and shook. The cat screeched in fury and fear. A shudder rippled along the corridor of spears. The echo of the shots made stalactites shiver on the ceiling and snap off to drop down like falling daggers. They struck the archway, cracking every single spike of crystal so that the whole world seemed to splinter and shatter. The crossed-sword arch trembled.

Trembled.

The cat squirmed forward to free itself before the crushing weight of a hundred tons smashed it to pulp. Deep cracks spider-webbed out from the impact points, and smaller patterns of lace spread from where the pellets on the edges of the spray had struck. The air was filled with a sound like breaking ice.

The huge cat froze, its massive muscles quivering with tension.

Looks Away and Grey stood stock-still. Smoke curled from the barrels of the shotgun. They all looked up at the archway. The cracks ran on and on, deepening, widening, and the predatory gleam in the saber-toothed monster's eyes quickly changed to a fatalistic dread. Even the animal knew what was happening.

Snapping sounds filled the air all around them.

Grey felt a triumphant smile begin to take shape on his mouth.

“Kiss my ass, you overgrown house cat,” mocked Looks Away as a massive chunk of the crystal leaned out and fell. It smashed down onto the causeway and shattered into ten thousand glittering pieces.

But that was it.

The rumble stopped.

Just like that.

The cracks seemed to freeze as if they had always been there. The crystal arch did not fall.

The last trembles shivered through the crystal tunnel and then there was a deep silence that was heavy with all of the wrong implications. The saber-toothed cat looked up at the archway, then down at the broken chunks, then up at the two men who still crouched, hiding behind the now empty shotgun. The fatalistic gloom on the cat's face vanished and triumph blossomed on its hideous face as the grins drained from Looks Away and Grey like blood from a corpse.

Looks Away said, “Oh…”

And Grey said, “…
shit
.”

The monster cat bared its teeth and sprang.

 

Chapter Sixty-One

They both wanted to scream.

They did not have the time for it.

Looks Away flung the lantern at the monster as it broke free of the tight crossed-swords arch. It struck hard and burning oil splashed the thing. Instead of stopping the beast, the fire and pain galvanized it. The monstrous cat threw its massive weight against the structure and they could see its muscles rolling and bunching as it simply tore itself from the narrow passageway.

Grey thrust the shotgun back to Looks Away and drew his Colt and snapped off three quick shots. The fire hit the impact points, but that did not seem to matter. The creature was not even slowed. It was what Grey feared. A handgun was not an elephant rifle and this brute had to have bones as thick as marble slabs.

For a fraction of a second he thought about the Kingdom rifle but he was still convinced that it would bring down the whole ceiling. Grey did not want to die down here, buried under ten billion tons of rock.

However there were few choices left and none of them good. All of them were insane. Most were suicidal. Only one offered a chance. A slim, knife edge of a chance. It was something only a complete madman would consider.

So he spun, grabbed Looks Away's shoulder, and shoved him toward one of the broken spears of rock that leaned out over the chasm.

“Go!” he bellowed. “It's our only chance.”

Looks Away staggered to the edge, then half turned. “You're insane!”

Before Grey could answer, the cat screamed again. And they saw it break free of the tunnel. The creature's head and shoulders were ablaze, the hairs withering to black wires, the skin retracting to pull its lips back into a permanent scream.

Perhaps the fire would ultimately kill or cripple it, but the beast was determined to take them first. It came forward, slowly at first and then, driven by rage and pain, faster and faster.

“Go—go—go!” shouted Grey as he gave Looks Away another shove.

The Sioux leaped up onto the broken shaft, staggered for a moment with flailing arms, steadied himself and ran.

The cat jumped into the air, slashing toward them with the massive claws on its front paws.

Grey flung himself sideways. As he fell, he saw Looks Away race along the length of the spear and then leap high into the air, his legs continuing to pump as if he was trying to run across the air itself. His arms reached toward the far side of the chasm, fingers clawing. He hit the edge and bounced backward.

And down.

Down, down, down.

Into darkness.

“Nooooo!” cried Grey, but then the cat swiped at him and he had to dive away to save his face from being torn away. He landed hard and rolled badly, then frog-hopped forward to evade a second slash. The whole back of his vest tore away and he felt the tips of two claws trace burning lines across the skin over his kidneys.

He flattened out and rolled sideways like a log until he was under the broken crystal shaft that leaned over the drop-off. The cat reached after him, slashing at the ground, shredding the last of Grey's vest and tearing away most of his shirt. But Grey kept rolling until he was on the other side of the spear. Then he was up onto fingers and toes, running like a dog for ten feet until he could get to his feet again.

He looked wildly around, but there was still no other choice. The only possible way out was the same suicidal route that had claimed Looks Away. Either he got to the other side of the chasm, or he died right there and then.

The cat was still trying to find him under the spear and Grey knew that as soon as it realized that its prey was not there, the cat would simply climb over and that would be it.

Grey steeled himself and scrambled up the side of the spike. The smell of burning cat filled his nostrils. He marveled that it could still come after him even as the burning oil was consuming its flesh.

Then he remembered the chunk of ghost rock imbedded in its skin. Could that be driving it? Was that why there was such a dangerous intelligence in the monster's eyes? Grey was certain of it.

He got to his feet and, as Looks Away had only seconds ago, he had to fight for balance. The top was not a flat walkway but rather a lumpy, cracked and distressingly rounded surface. The cat either heard or sensed that its prey was about to escape. It pulled sharply back from the spear and raised its burning head. For a moment it stared through flames right into Grey's eyes.

That's when he heard the sound. Not the scream of the cat, but a scream nonetheless.

It was the ghost rock.

It was burning.

And the demons within it were screaming.

Screaming.

Screaming.

The sound tore at Grey's mind.

Then he was running along the shaft. His path to safety ended too soon. With a howl of desperation, Grey Torrance flung himself toward the far side of hope. And, like Looks Away had before him, Grey hit the edge of the cliff. And, like Looks Away, he fell.

Down.

Into darkness.

 

Chapter Sixty-Two

He slid down the side of the chasm.

Down and down. He scrabbled for purchase and found none. He kicked at the sheer wall and could find not the slightest toehold. Grey went down deeper and deeper, and in his panic he thought he could hear a chorus of ghostly voices crying his name. Even as he fell he knew that this was no fantasy. He knew that the ghosts who followed him saw him about to escape into an ignoble death in a forgotten hole, and they cried out in joy.

Was Annabelle's voice among them? Would she—even she—delight at the thought of his bones lying here at the bottom of the Maze for all eternity? Could his betrayal of her have truly turned her to such cruelty? The mind is quick and ruthless at such times. Grey thought he could see her there, at the top of the chasm, leaning over to stare down at him as he fell.

And he did fall.

Down, down, down.

But …

But not …

But not faster and faster.

His gunbelt and hands scraped down the side of the cleft as he dropped, but he felt his body slowing.