Colin Cotterill - Thirty-Three Teeth

Still he focused. Still he breathed. No sort of attack or defense would be possible if he were unconscious. He devised a plan. When he had enough breath to carry it through, he would return to the room through which he’d just passed. There were corners there, perhaps other tunnels. These could give him a chance.

Because of the natural deadening effect of the earthen walls, it wasn’t possible to tell just how far off the creature was. But from the steady increase in volume, it was evident that it was traveling at a rapid pace.

Siri breathed. He concentrated. He heard other sounds. He heard footsteps, heavy shuffling steps, and, between the howls and grunts, a heavy wheezing breath like that of an old man with a hole in his windpipe. He heard a low steady dragging sound and a sniff. The tunnel was now carrying noise with a frightening clarity.

It was time. Siri got to his feet and walked slowly back toward the last room. Since he’d entered the tunnel, he’d counted the distances in paces. It was forty back to the deep well. At thirty-eight, he’d stop and proceed carefully until he found the drop. But as he walked, the sounds grew even louder behind him. He was tempted to run, but he knew the limitations of his lungs.

Then, one new sound made him stop completely. It was brief but unmistakable: it was the sob of a woman. He listened for a repeat of it, but heard nothing but the snarls and ever-loud howling. Could it have been …?

He reached the end of his count and began to tread carefully, bent over using his iron as a walking stick. The step was further than he’d calculated: annoyingly further. By the time he finally reached it, his breathing was strained again, but there was no chance to rest. He stepped carelessly down into the pit and crunched some of the debris under his foot.

The sounds behind him immediately stopped, and he froze in position. There was the standoff: Siri fighting for breath, half up, half down, not daring to make another sound. And there was the dilemma: was the creature also frozen, listening for other sounds, or was it already running silently in his direction? If the latter were true, it could be on him at any second.

He looked back over his shoulder, fearing the worst.

“Breathe, Siri.”

The view there should have been the same black tar he’d stared into since he arrived. He shouldn’t have been able to see a thing, but for some reason, deep, deep at the end of his tunnel, there was a gray speck. It hadn’t been there when he’d walked in that direction a while earlier.

It hadn’t occurred to him for a second that the creature might need artificial light. Something had always made him believe it could find its way through the maze in darkness, using its instincts. But if it were part human, part Mr. Seua, perhaps it needed to use a lamp to see its way. Perhaps the distant grayness was the reflection from that light source. And perhaps that could be his one chance.

There came an almighty howl that echoed along the walls and passed Siri in a gust. The creature was on the move again, and Siri could indeed see that the gray shadow shimmered in time with the footsteps. He sighed with temporary relief.

Once again he waded through the matter in the pit, skating his shoes so as not to make undue sound. He skirted the perimeter of the room on one side, tapping the wall with his iron. He passed two corners. He found no other exit. He arrived at the opposite tunnel with time running out and inspected the other side of the room with new urgency. His premise was mistaken. The room had one entrance and one exit and no alternatives. His only hope was the pit.

Light, like a very distant sunrise, was beginning to filter down the tunnel. With a lamp, Seua would see him soon enough if he stayed in the room. But the creature might not think to look down below the lip of the step. Siri carefully cleared a space by the aperture through which the creature would arrive. He was a little off to the right, so he wouldn’t be trodden on when it stepped down. He would have very little time to act.

There were two possibilities. If the creature’s destination lay beyond this room, he would stay hidden and let it go. If its goal were the room itself, he wouldn’t know until it had stepped down to where he was. He would eventually be discovered. But there might just be a few seconds in which to attack the creature, to spring at it from behind and hit it with the iron bar.

He knew he wouldn’t be allowed more than one thwack, so he would have to be deadly accurate. It would need every last gram of Siri’s strength. So he lay down against the step, practiced his meditation, and slowed his heartbeat to gather his resources for that one attack. And as more light filtered into the room, he could make out the carcasses of small creatures in varying stages of decay a foot deep all around him.

“Breathe, Siri.”

Events that until that moment had been happening so fast, suddenly slowed as if time were stalling. The tunnel must have been longer than Siri had anticipated. The approaching sounds continued but the doctor felt as if he’d been lying there for an age. He had the opportunity to think about Yeh Ming and wondered why the old sage had failed to send warnings of this danger.

If ever his temple-he, Siri-were under threat, it was now. A terrible feeling of guilt came over Siri. Despite all the careful planning that had gone into his choice as host to the grand old shaman, he’d let him down. He’d knowingly put himself into a life-threatening sit-

Suddenly the creature was there. The beam of a flashlight dazzled directly into the room from just behind the step. From where he lay squashed tight against the dirt wall, Siri couldn’t see who was holding it, but the sound of snarling was almost directly above him. Only a wedge of black shadow kept the doctor from sight.

His heart beat so loudly, he felt sure it could be heard. He breathed silently to a rhythm he’d set himself and gripped the iron bar tightly in his fist.

What happened next wouldn’t be fully explained for a very long time. There were two halves to the mystery-one to baffle his hearing, one his sight-that wouldn’t ever completely fit together. The sounds came first.

They began with footsteps shifting away from the step and the continued sound of dragging. There was one final howl. Then, from a point way beyond, came three incongruous sounds one after the other. First was the clucking of a chicken. Unlike all the other sounds, it didn’t resonate around the room.

There followed two heavy thumps and a loud crack.

Finally came the scream of a woman.

Then there was silence.

When he heard the scream, Siri abandoned all caution and clambered noisily to his hands and knees. But before he could hoist himself into a position to see over the step, the light from the flashlight went out.

It was a darkness more profound and a silence more total than he’d ever encountered in his life, because it followed directly on the heels of chaos. He had no idea what he’d just heard or what to expect. He couldn’t get the eerie scream from his mind.

“Dtui?” he shouted.

His voice exploded in the new silence like thunder.

“Dtui? Is that you? … It’s Siri.”

There was no reply.

If the creature were there in that blackness, Siri was now exposed. But there was no calling back his voice. There was no turning around. Something awful had just happened, and he needed to know what it was.

He climbed the step and shuffled forward, expecting his feet to find evidence of some horrific scene. His left foot kicked against something that rolled away. He knew it had to be the flashlight. He took a step forward and fumbled around in front of him on the packed earth. But his hand came to rest in something warm and wet and sticky like molasses.