Tania Carver - Cage of Bones

‘So you’ve gained a son?’ said Don, quietly, apology in his eyes as he looked at Donna.

She nodded.

‘That’s good,’ he said. ‘Very good. You look after him, mind.’

‘I will.’ And she knew, as she said the words, that she would.

Don sighed. ‘I just hope I’ve still got one… ’

The three of them fell back into silence and watched while the impossibly beautiful people saved the world.

Phil clawed his way down the tunnel. Slowly, elbows tucked underneath his body, arms and shoulders scraping the sides as he pulled himself along, his body being dragged over the uneven, jagged rocks. The ceiling was low. He could barely bring his head up to look forward.

Someone had been along this tunnel before him. That didn’t make it any easier, though. The rocks were centuries old, not about to be smoothed down any time soon.

The tunnel twisted, turned. Phil, torch clamped between his teeth, had no option but to follow it. He noticed other fissures in the walls as he went, the beam of light swinging from side to side as he turned his head in the cramped space. Some were larger than others; a couple looked big enough to get his body into. He wondered whether he ought to try one of them.

Then he stopped. The tunnel forked before him. Two rocky pools of darkness ahead, leading off in different directions. He tried to look behind him. Couldn’t. Wondered if he could crawl backwards, shuffle back the way he had come. Marina might be there by now, Calling down to him, throwing a rope for him to climb up.

He tried. Elbows moving in reverse, pushing his body backwards over the rough rock, away from the light in front of him, back into the darkness. His shoulders hitting the low ceiling as he went, scraping pain down his back, gasping, crying out.

He stopped, unable to move any further. Flattened his body out, dropped. Sighed. Dust flew up in front of him.

He tried not to panic. No good; he could feel it bubbling up inside him. He hated confined spaces, felt claustrophobic even in a lift. Why had he done this? Why had he subjected himself to it?

Because he’d heard a cry, the rational side of his brain told him. He’d heard something that sounded like a person in pain. Or an animal.

Or a child.

And finding the skeleton back there had given him no choice.

He sighed once more, craned his head upwards as far as he could, looked in front of him.

The torch fell from his mouth, slick with saliva. He groped round for it in the semi-darkness, his hand still tucked under his body, unable to move too much. Found it. Tried to wipe away the grit and dust the handle was now coated with, replace it in his mouth.

He looked ahead once more. The fork in the tunnel. Which way to go.

He closed his eyes, listened. Any sound, any cry…

Kept listening.

Heard nothing.

Panic attacked him once more, clawing at him, making his body want to get up, jump around, stretch. Kick out at being enclosed. Scream.

He bit down on the torch handle to stop himself from doing that. Let out a strangled cry instead, forced his body to remain still. Not to kick. He wouldn’t just injure himself; he could bring the whole cave roof down on his head.

The wave of panic subsided. He lay still, breathing deeply, not caring about the grit, the dust he was inhaling. He moved forward towards the fork, still listening.

Nothing.

He tried something else. Taking the torch from his mouth, he turned it off. Lay there in absolute silence, pitch blackness.

Maybe this is what it’s like to be dead, he thought. Lying all alone, still, cold, in the darkness. In nothingness.

No. That wasn’t death, he thought. That was just self-pity. He wasn’t dead yet. He had a job to do. He listened once more. Waited while his eyes focused on the darkness, studied the two tunnels ahead of him. There was a faint, flickering light coming from the one on the left. That was the one to aim for.

Turning the torch on once more, he crawled towards it with renewed vigour.

It was even narrower than the previous tunnel. Lower. Phil struggled to pull himself along. Started to worry whether it was going to get narrower still, whether he would just end up wedged inside it. Whether that was the sound he had heard: a child or an animal that had gone exploring and become trapped down here, stuck immovably in the rock. Wondered whether that would be his fate.

Tried to shake those thoughts from his head, keep going.

He felt air on his face. A small breeze, blowing towards him. It didn’t last long. There was something at the end of the tunnel. Adrenalised by this, he tried to ignore the pain of the rock as it gripped him harder, squeezed him tighter, and began to move faster towards the air, the flickering light.

He rounded another corner. And saw the exit ahead of him.

Smaller than the entrance, but he could still get through it, if he pushed himself. He had to. He reached it. Pulled himself through. Ignored the pain screaming from his shoulders, his ribs, the jagged rocks as they cut into him through his clothes; just kept going. He managed to pull his legs out. And he was free.

He lay on the stone floor, gasping for air, willing his injured body to mend.

Eventually he opened his eyes. Looked round.

And felt his body shiver.

It looked like a chamber dug beneath a graveyard. Skulls and bones lined the walls. He wasn’t sure if they had been piled there or if they were actually the walls themselves. There were a lot of them. The floor he was lying on was flagged, old. He recognised it, but couldn’t place it. It was strewn with flowers.

He pulled his body into a sitting position, ignoring the pain as he did so. He knew what he would see next. Wasn’t disappointed. An altar. And beyond it, a cage of bones.

And in the cage was Finn. Cowering, terrified.

Phil tried to pull himself to his feet, cross the floor to help the boy. He stood up, head throbbing, spinning. Heard a noise behind him.

He turned.

And there was the figure from his dream.

A hood of sacking and a stained leather apron. In his hand, something sharp and gleaming.

Moving quickly towards him.

Phil raised his hands, tried to stop him, tried to cry out. But his body wouldn’t move, his mouth wouldn’t work. He wanted to fight him off, call for help.

Nothing.

The figure was in front of him now. Eyes like darkness. Eyes like death.

He raised his hand.

And Phil was back in blackness again.

‘Here it comes… ’

Fennell’s voice once more.

The van had followed the two trucks as they made their way to the lock-up. Not wanting to raise suspicion, they had driven past as the trucks turned in, went through the gates.

Now they were parked up down the road, waiting for the other van to arrive.

The road was deserted. Nothing out but the rain and them.

The two other vans arrived. Clemens caressed the trigger of his gun. Mickey tried not to look at him.

Instead he looked at Fennell. ‘What’s the signal?’

‘Wait for it,’ Fennell said. ‘We’re just checking everyone’s in position… ’

Mickey said nothing. Around him he was aware of the rest of the team, all pumped up and ready to go. Guns ready. Heads focused.

He tried to look out through the windscreen, see what was going on beyond the gates. All he could see was a high metal fence topped with razor wire, arc lights aiming inside the compound. There was a large warehouse in the centre, where the two trucks had gone. The rest of the space was taken up with metal containers. Hundreds of them, piled tall and wide, like a modernist architect’s dream city. Multicoloured high-rises.

The door of the warehouse was still open.