Tom Pawlik - Beckon

Vale picked up a large stone and pounded it against the wood. A dull, hollow thump rang out in the cavern. Then he stepped away. The other two men retreated even farther, taking cover behind a large rock.

At first nothing happened. And then came a long, low creak as the door swung open. Vale shut off his flashlight, plunging the entire chamber into blackness.

In the middle of the darkness, Elina saw two lights glowing. She peered more closely, her heart racing now. These weren’t flashlights or torches she saw, but rather they emitted a soft, steady glow. Two orbs of pale-yellow light suspended in the darkness.

And yet Elina saw the lights were moving, floating closer until she could see they were in fact two lanterns of some sort, being carried by a pair of human figures walking toward them. It wasn’t until they were much closer that Elina was able to determine what they looked like.

And then she wished she’d never seen them.

They were tall and gaunt and ghostly pale, their skin reflecting the light of their lanterns with an eerie luminescence. They moved with smooth, sure-footed strides through the dark cavern, naked except for the loincloths tied low around their hips. Their translucent white skin was covered with strange black markings, just as Jack had described. But in fact the N’watu were more terrifying by far than Elina had imagined from Jack’s account.

Now she could see four of them, each one carrying a thick spear topped with a long, serrated tip that looked like it had been carved from some sort of bone or shell. And behind them, Elina spotted a diminutive shadow moving. Black against the darkness beyond.

The N’watu approached Elina and loomed over her with eerie, colorless eyes gazing down. Their skeletal faces were hideous—fierce and misshapen. If Carson hadn’t stuffed the rag in her mouth and tied it there, Elina would have been screaming.

Then the fifth figure drew up behind them. The woman Jack had described, dressed in veils and dwarfed by her accompanying warriors, approached Elina. She bent down as if to inspect her, like a woman examining a cut of meat at a butcher shop. She hissed some muttered incantation over her, then straightened and faced Vale.

Vale bowed low in her presence. “Nun’dahbi.”

“Another outsider,” the woman’s voice hissed. The sound was somewhat unnerving to Elina, at once beautiful and yet filled with venom.

“Yes,” Vale said. “She… she wandered into town—and she knew too much for us to let her go.”

“She will be missed. More will come searching.”

“No, Great Mother, they won’t find anything,” Vale said. Elina could tell he was trying to exude confidence, but he looked nervous. “I’ll make sure of it.”

“There were other intruders. You could not keep them away.”

Vale nodded in earnest. “We captured one of them, and the others are dead. They had discovered another entrance into the caves. A hidden entrance. But we will block that also so no one else will find it. Your home is still safe.”

Nun’dahbi paused. Elina could not see her face and so could not tell if she was satisfied with his assurances. “They are growing too numerous,” she said at last. “More and more they come.”

“Your home is safe, Nun’dahbi.”

“But for how long?”

Vale looked surprised. “I… I assure you,” he stammered, “we… we have everything under control.”

Nun’dahbi paused a moment—perhaps to let Vale stew in a bit of uncertainty, Elina thought. He might have been in charge up on the surface, but clearly he was the subordinate down here.

Then Nun’dahbi produced a vessel of some sort from the folds of her cloak and held it out in white, bony hands. It was a tall, dark-colored decanter that Elina could see held some sort of liquid. Vale bowed his head and reached forward to take the jar from her hands, but she clung to it a moment.

“Do not fail me.” Her tone was soft but strident.

Vale looked up sharply. “I… I have never failed you, Great Mother.”

The faceless veil issued a soft hiss, a sigh perhaps. Or perhaps it was a laugh. Elina couldn’t be sure. But after a moment Nun’dahbi released the jar into his grasp.

“See that you don’t.”

Then she turned away and with a brief gesture of her clawed fingers waved him off.

Vale skulked away, clutching the jar in both hands as two of the N’watu lifted Elina by the ropes and carried her through the doorway into the tunnel beyond. She could hear a heavy, wooden groan as the door swung shut behind her. Elina found her pulse racing as she struggled against the ropes.

They carried her through the passage. Elina could see one lantern ahead of her and one behind, both casting a pale glow against the jagged walls and ceiling.

Before long they came into an open space, a larger cavern. Situated about the chamber were dozens of lanterns like the ones the two warriors carried. Their glow lit the cave in a mesmerizing yellow light. Elina struggled to stay focused and aware of her surroundings. The room was about a hundred feet across and the floor was smooth and flat, almost artificially so. Not like a natural cavern. The walls as well were too straight to be natural formations, with openings cut into them leading perhaps into other rooms.

They came to the edge of a precipice that plunged into darkness. She glanced, wide-eyed, down at the abyss.

They moved along the edge of the pit until they came to a wide, stone slab and laid her on it. Elina noticed now that several other warriors had joined them, and she fought through her fear to try to count them. Nearly a dozen of them but still the woman, Nun’dahbi, was the only female Elina had seen.

She was lying on some sort of table in a large oval-shaped chamber. Recalling her training, Elina tried to get her bearings. In the middle of the chamber was the large, round pit. Elina guessed it was twenty or thirty feet across. And on the ledge she could see the outline of a large structure—a stone base supporting a thick log that extended out over the mouth of the pit.

Nun’dahbi strode into Elina’s view, carrying a staff with beads and feathers dangling from the top. She swept it over Elina’s body from head to foot and back again, muttering a gargled series of incantations. She motioned to some of the men standing around her, and they brought a few lanterns closer, setting them on the edges of the table. Another man brought a small wooden bowl, the size of a coffee cup, and set it beside Elina’s head. She squirmed and rolled on the table, determined to make whatever procedure they might have planned as difficult for them as possible.

But apparently Nun’dahbi would have none of it. She hissed something at her men, and four of them stepped up to place their long hands firmly on Elina’s body and hold her still. For all their lean and bony appearance, these men seemed to possess great strength. Elina felt like she was being held by iron restraints.

Nun’dahbi leaned close over Elina’s face. Behind the veil, Elina could see vague, pale features and colorless eyes gazing down at her. The woman reeked of human stench. Elina’s breath came in sharp, rapid bursts, and she could feel herself choking on the rag.

Nun’dahbi whispered another unintelligible phrase and then slowly lifted her veil.

Elina’s heart pounded hard inside her ribs.

The woman’s face was as hideous as it might have once been beautiful. Her skin held no pigmentation whatsoever, though it was perfectly smooth and without blemish, like a layer of white latex stretched over a human skull. Only her thin lips and eyelids held any color, painted as black as her fingernails. And she was completely hairless. No eyebrows or even eyelashes that Elina could see.

She picked up a stick out of the bowl. It was long and slender like a quill of some kind, and Elina could see the tip dripping with a viscous black liquid.