Free The Battle for Duncragglin by Andrew H. Vanderwal Page B

scrambled to catch him, but partway up, his legs started trembling, his eyes lost their focus, and the arch wavered. Alex dropped to his hands and knees and took to crawling.
    The eerie sounds from below were becoming stronger. They resembled the babble of thousands of people speaking at once, rising up, coming closer – close enough for Alex to imagine that at any moment ghoul-like creatures would claw at his feet. A shriek shattered the air. Alex leapt up, running the rest of the way up the arch. At the top, Craig was standing stock-still on the circular platform.
    “Get down!” Alex prayed the platform would offer some shelter from what lay below. They curled up and pressed their hands tight against their ears to block out the awful noises. It was futile – the cackling, shouting, moaning, and shrieking were all around them. In the grip of an ice-cold fear, Alex watched ghostly gray shadows flash up and vanish. Non sensical words leapt out from the roar, as if all of humanity swirled and spun around them. There were flashing moments of joy and unbearable screeches of pain. Contorted, shadowy faces and figures emerged and disappeared in seconds: a chalk white, screaming newborn with the face of a bat; a severed hand that twitched; leering faces with menacing eyes.
    Alex felt that it was not the gray shadows, but him and Craig who were spinning, bucking, heaving among the howling masses. The watery ceiling Alex had seen earlier as a tranquil shimmering surface was now a twisting vortex, amulticolored cyclone. It seemed to be slowly descending on them – or were they rising up to it? Alex no longer knew if it was him or his surroundings that were moving, spinning, rising, falling; if the shrieks were from the shadows around them, or from Craig, or from himself. Numb with shock, Alex saw the howling whirlpool vortex spin around them. Then, mercifully, all went dark and still.

PART II

A C HANGE IN T IME

8
W ITHIN D ARK F ORESTS
    A lex felt as if he were awakening from a very, very, deep sleep.
    Wherever he was, it was warm and bright. He slowly raised his head and squinted against the sun. He was on a grassy knoll of an otherwise rocky hilltop, where the blue horizon stretched out in all directions and where clouds drifted lazily overhead. Curled up beside him was Craig. Alex gently shook his shoulder.
    “Where are we?” Bewildered, Craig blinked slowly, as though, with each blink, he thought all this would go away and he would be back in a dark cave, or maybe even back in his bed waking up from a bad dream.
    “I have no idea.”
    “Where's Annie?”
    Alex frowned. “She's probably going back through the caves to get help. If we can get from here to the coast fast enough, we might meet her when she comes out.”
    “Won't she be surprised!” Craig managed a small chuckle.
    Alex tried to spot the ocean past the surrounding hilltops. He wished he had Annie's compass. Everything they'd brought was left with Annie. But where were the caves and that circular chamber, and how did he and Craig get from there to here?
    Alex scuffed away some tufts of grass and moss, thinking that perhaps they'd been blasted up from somewhere far below. But there were no openings in the ground anywhere near them – not even so much as a rabbit burrow. The rock under them looked completely solid.
    Alex and Craig climbed a crest and were overjoyed to see the ocean sparkling off in the distance. Between them and the sea was a densely wooded valley that was nestled between rocky, tree-studded hills.
    “Anything look familiar?” Alex asked hopefully.
    Craig shifted his gaze from up and down the coast to inland. “I didn't even know there were forests in this part of Scotland,” he said. “Maybe we'll figure it out when we get down to the coastal road.”
    “That one?” Alex pointed to a small dirt road that came out from between two distant hills and disappeared in the forested valley.
    “No, of course not – that's just a country