Page 34

But I keep moving, despite how suffocatingly dark this place is and how fucking terrified I am.

Maybe this was a dumb idea. I mean, I can't see shit. Using a hand along the jagged tunnel wall to guide myself is pointless, and I swear a fucking rat brushed past me just a second ago.

Every scrape of my body across the stone echoes throughout the chasm. Sometimes, the sound comes back immediately, and other times it seems to travel deeper into the tunnels first. I hate it. I don't even know where I am, or… what's watching me.

Another few feet pass beneath me before my hand brushes against something that definitely isn't rock. I pause after yanking my hand away, then slowly reach back to touch it again, feeling something thin and sticky stretch across my fingers. It's not until I move my palm up to follow the substance that I realize–too late–what I’m touching.

Several large spiders skitter down my arm, causing me to scream as I jolt backwards. “Son of a bitch.”

Webs. Everywhere. At least, from what I felt. And who knows how many cave spiders could be lurking down here. That thought alone is almost enough to make me turn back, until I remember what waits for me if I do.

Ironically, I've found myself between a rock and a hard place. Eaten alive by spiders or a monster? Which one's worse? Fuck, at least the spiders won't force me to eat my uncle before they kill me. Which might be the weirdest thought I've ever had.

“Fuck it,” I mutter into the dark, gritting my teeth as I prepare to crawl forward.

The web instantly catches on my arms, but I persist, keeping my head down while I pull myself forward. Another wave of tiny legs skitters across my skin.

“Get the fuck off me!” A strangled noise tears out of my lungs as I slap frantically at my shoulders and head. One of my hands catches another strand of webbing, stretching it across my face. The sensation is so revolting that bile rises in my throat once again.

I can't even see the spiders, but I can feel them. Lack of eyesight has my imagination running wild, convincing me that hundreds of the little bastards are swarming me. My shoulder catches on something hanging from the ceiling, and a thick strand snaps across my chest.

The movement causes whatever is attached to drop onto my forehead before it scrambles through my hair.

"Oh my God!" Panic obliterates all rational thought. One hand leaves the ground as I claw wildly at my curls, sending me off balance enough that I roll forward… and leave the ground completely.

For one sickening second, I'm weightless.

Then gravity takes over. The tunnel abruptly drops away into a steep incline hidden beneath layers of web. I tumble down headfirst, stone slamming into my shoulder and hip. Pain explodes through my body as I bounce violently down the slope, unable to stop myself until I crash into something solid.

The fall knocks the wind out of me, and several seconds tick by while I simply lie there gasping, trying to remember how oxygen works. A burning ache sears through every inch of me, and it takes whatever strength I have left not to pass out.

When my vision finally steadies, the first thing I notice is… stars. Well, it looks like them, at least. Tiny points of blue-green light glitter overhead. It takes a few blinks to realize that they're actually clusters of strange mineral deposits embedded into the ceiling.

Slowly, I push myself onto one elbow and take in the large chamber I've fallen into. “Jesus.”

It's enormous. Much bigger than the one that creature kept me in. The ceiling disappears high above, lost in shadows of stone. Jagged rock formations jut from the ground at strange angles, covered in some kind of green glowing fungus or moss.

It's almost pretty, how it sets the glistening walls alight. Mesmerizing.

In a daze, I reach out to touch one of the rocks beside me, wondering how things like this can grow in such a harsh environment. No sun, no water, nothing but darkness and stale air. How could something so beautiful form in such a pit of despair?

When my fingers brush aside the emanating substance, another shout barrels out of my throat at the two empty eye sockets staring back at me.

I jerk backward so violently that agony explodes through my thigh. The human skull tumbles from atop its mound and clatters across the stone floor, echoing throughout the chamber before fading into silence.

My heart pounds hard enough to make me dizzy, but I keep my bleary eyes on the rock formation. Only now, I realize it isn't a rock formation at all, but a pile of bones—human ones, draped in glowing moss. A femur protrudes from beneath, then a rib cage. Another skull.

Slowly, I turn my head and finally see for the first time that the entire cavern is covered in remains.

Bones scatter between stone outcroppings and cluster in enormous heaps against the walls. They’re all layered in that same ethereal glow. A rusted mining helmet sits on top of one pile and nearby, a boot still contains part of a foot.

“Holy fucking shit,” I whisper to myself in horror.

This isn’t a cave at all. It's a graveyard.

Wait, no. That's not even true. Graveyards imply respect and burial, but this… Nobody buried these people. Nobody laid them to rest. The dead were simply left where they fell, or where they were dropped.

A violent shudder works its way through my body as the words I'd said to Uncle Gale ring through my head.