Simon Clark - Humpty's bones

You can’t out-run it, I told myself. Gotta hide!

The light flickered on in this section of tunnel. To my left and right, the tunnel was drowned in blackness. I couldn’t see a thing there. But I knew the monster charged toward me. Yes! I screamed the word inside my mind: monster! It couldn’t be anything else but a monster. I’d seen the gouge marks in the steel door. Then those helmets with holes bitten into them. Now — down in this maze of tunnels a monster ran as fast as a train. It was fierce and crazy — and hungry. A blazing hunger for human flesh. Instinct told me the brutal truth.

In three seconds flat I ducked under the plastic, opened the door to the truck’s cab, then hauled myself inside. There I sat behind the huge black ring of the steering wheel. I saw nothing much through the windows, only plastic rippling against glass.

Once again, the light went out. Dark. So dark I couldn’t see my own hands. No way would I be crazy enough to switch on the cab light, even if the battery still worked. A light, a movement, just a tiny, little sound from me would tell the monster where I hid. What followed then… good grief, I didn’t even want to think about it.

But what did happen then was so strange. For a moment I wondered if I imagined it… so weird… disturbing… unpleasant…

As I sat there in the cab of the truck I tried not to move. All of sudden it went quiet. The blast of air stopped. All those plastic sheets stopped their flapping. I could see nothing… way too dark for that. But from the soft, rustling noise I could picture the truck covers settling back down to hang limp… just like shrouds that cover the deceased. My heart beat with a dull rhythm. Time seemed to stand still. A pain started in my head. A thin, sharp one. A bit like an ice-cream headache. Brain freeze.

Strange.

I tried to rub my head but could hardly lift my arms. Why had I gone so weak? A dizziness made my head droop. All of a sudden I felt half-asleep. My head tilted again. Kinda woozy. My arms were peculiar. Floppy. All strength gone.

At that moment the light returned. Only much dimmer than before. A grey radiance seeped through the plastic. I gazed down almost dreamily at my hands; they sagged limp as dead birds on my legs. The headache got worse. It should have made me wake up, only I became even more drowsy. This was like being in bed and hovering in that floaty borderland between being awake and sleep. I gazed at the dashboard with its big speedometer and rev counter staring back like round eyes.

Then… a sound…

With a huge effort I turned my head. I looked out through the door window at the plastic sheet. This time I realised that it was semi-transparent. Through the milky grey material I saw a shape.

A shape that hadn’t been there before.

One that moved slowly… very slowly. I couldn’t say how big it was. But it must have been far bigger than a man. Colours were impossible to distinguish. All I could make out were patches of light and dark. It moved slowly. Yet an altogether different aspect of the massive body troubled me more than words could say. And it was this. When the thing stopped moving there was something on its back that continued to move. My heart thumped. My blood became ice. Because it was this strange effect that disturbed me most. Objects were in motion at the top of the shape. I couldn’t see what they were because the plastic wasn’t properly transparent. All I could make out were blurred patches. They moved fast. A kind of scrambling motion. Then came a growling voice: ‘Neefer-ratt-saaar.’

At that time I could barely move. Dizziness gripped me. A pain still shot through my head.

‘You’re doing this to me,’ I murmured. ‘You’re affecting my brain. You’re causing the pain in my head.’ Drowsily, I continued to stare.

In that weird state of mind I didn’t worry about being found. At any moment, I expected the plastic to be ripped aside. I’d be face-to-face with this creature. This monster of the labyrinth.

But as I sat in the truck, waiting for the monster to lunge through the plastic then drag me, howling, out of the cab, something else happened. Something unexpected. And somehow so worrying that at times I thought the shock would make my heart stop dead.

The pain in my head, the dizziness, the strange attack of exhaustion — I knew the monster did this to me. A sixth-sense inside of me warned that it had the power of mind control. That it could induce paralysis along with the headache and tiredness. Then came something extra. A weird sensation crept into my brain. It arrived in invisible waves from that figure, with the squirming back shapes, at the other side of the plastic cover.

At first I thought it was because I was so drowsy. Yet all of a sudden images flashed through my head. They seemed like fragments of a dream. At the time, I couldn’t say for sure if they were dream or not. Or whether the monster fired these pictures into my head.

The weariness grew worse. I could hardly focus my eyes the headache was so painful. But creeping through my skull like cold, menacing phantoms came images — these images were of my friends. Jenny, Pitt, Adam. Wide-eyed. Anxious faces beneath harsh lights. I grew tense. Maybe it would be like when I imagined the police in those white forensic suits? Only there was something different about this. Although I sat behind the steering wheel in that truck I seemed to be able to see my friends in another part of the tunnel. However, I didn’t see all three at once. This wasn’t like watching CCTV. This was seeing through their eyes. One moment, I looked through Adam’s eyes, then Jenny’s, then Pitt’s. When my vision was channelled through them I caught snatches of their thoughts. Adam’s, especially, resonated with fear. Cold, cold terror crept into his heart. It’s not good down here… bad things happen in these tunnels… danger… horror… people have cried down here… with loneliness… fright… despair… they were chased… caught… hurt… badly hurt… I want to go home…

Jenny and Pitt were entering a warehouse. Even though they were deep underground the roof must have been nearly twenty feet above them. Lining this cavern of a place were huge steel shelves that filled one wall.

I tried to stop the stream of pictures gushing through my head. Yet this didn’t seem like a dream, or imagination. By some telepathic power I knew I was seeing what they were really doing… and through their eyes. But what if it turned bad? Really, really bad? My heart lurched as I imagined their fate.

With all my will power I tried to snap out of this trance, but I couldn’t. What’s more, I couldn’t move a muscle. All I could do was sit there, frozen. Using all my strength, I managed to turn my eyes to where the creature stood. At that moment it moved away. The plastic blurred everything. Far too blurred to make out any detail. Yet I saw squirming objects appear to ride on its back. Call it intuition, but I sensed the creature had noticed something that needed a closer look. Then I slipped into that trance again. With an uncanny clarity my friends’ actions were recorded by my mind’s eye. Their thoughts pierced my nerves. Deep down I knew exactly where the monster was headed. Worse, I couldn’t do a thing to warn the three. This is what I saw inside my head — and through their eyes:

‘How do they reach the ones higher up?’ Adam asked. He was staring at the shelves. But his thoughts clamoured: Want to go home… Not good here. Something might hurt us…

‘See those ladders set on runners?’ Jenny pointed. ‘They can be rolled to wherever they’re needed.’

Pitt said, ‘I’m not bothered about shelves full of boxes. Where’s Naz?’