Free The Underdwelling by Tim Curran

others over here. Because he was trapped with a madman and with something far worse. Any moment now, he expected that horror to come whispering out of the foul blackness on a thousand legs.
    But five minutes later, it still had not shown itself.
    Boyd knew it wasn’t over, though. He could feel it in his guts that now that they had communicated with it, it would never leave them alone. It would get more daring. It was curious now. Again, he was about to jump Maki for what he had done, but then he heard it out there, moving around. It was skittering. That was the only word to describe that ticking sound he heard, a skittering of many legs. It was running up one tree and down another, leaping from trunk to trunk. And that skittering noise…like dozens of scratching nails…seemed to be far distant, then very close. Off to the left, then the right. Moving away and then ominously coming right at them.
    Maki and he were pressed up against one another like lovers now, needing each other’s touch.
    They looked around, their helmet spots darting around in the darkness but never finding anything but the spokes of those prehistoric trees.
    “Fucking place is haunted,” Maki said with absolute conviction.
    Boyd did not argue with him: it was surely haunted, just not by ghosts as such. But at the same time, he could feel the atmosphere around him and it was charged with some ethereal energy, an oscillating discharge almost like static electricity.
    The thing out there clicked again. Twice.
    Maki did not dare answer it.
    After a few seconds, it clicked again: click, click, click-click-click.
    Maki made a low moaning sound in his throat.
    The thing clicked and clicked, repeating the previous exchange perfectly. It wanted to communicate again, but the men were silent and as its repeated attempts went unanswered, it began to click feverishly out of what seemed anger or frustration, not just clicking now but knocking loudly against a petrified bole.
    The sounds were very loud, echoing and echoing.
    After maybe five minutes in which Boyd and Maki were nearly holding each other out of terror, the sounds ceased. The silence that followed was somehow worse, just pregnant with nameless possibility. And then another sound rose up, like air blown over the mouth of a pop bottle. A steadily rising mournful wailing that was high-pitched and almost hysterical in tone. It got louder and louder like the night-call of some huge insect, then died away.
    The very timbre of it made the fine hairs at the back of Boyd’s neck stand up, made the flesh at his groin shrivel. Because although that shrilling was not remotely human, there was something almost despondent and melancholy about it.
    “Hell is that?” Maki said.
    “I don’t know what she is.”
    “She?” Maki whispered. “She?”
    It had been a slip of the tongue, but Boyd did not retract it. For the very sound of that crying voice had been very feminine somehow and that was sheer lunacy, yet the certainty of it remained. That thing out there…dear God…it was female.
    They sat there quietly for some time and the only sounds now were the distant dripping of water and the noise of Jurgens, Breed, and McNair clearing more rubble from the stope mouth. And Maki breathing with a hoarse, frantic sound.
    “What’re we gonna do, Boyd? Fuck are we gonna do?”
    “We’re gonna wait for them above to get us out,” he said. “Listen, Maki, I don’t know what’s down here with us, but just leave it be. Don’t fool with it. Don’t try and make sounds for it. Maybe it’ll…I don’t know, maybe it’ll just go away.”
    But he didn’t believe that, not for a moment.
    Because it was still out there and, God help him, but he could feel its eyes on them.

 
     
     
    14
    They’d been at it a good six hours that was closer to seven and Russo was feeling the heat. It was coming from every direction—the media, the families, the mine execs. Felt like every damn last one of them was standing on his