Brian Lumley: Necroscope: Invaders

At that moment it was Liz Merrick who felt like some small, terrified, trapped animal — but a human animal. While the thing striding silently, ever closer to her along the shaft was anything but human, though it might have been not so long ago.

It was almost upon her; she smelled the hot stench of its breath!

Liz had squeezed her eyes shut in a desperate effort to locate the padlock. Now she opened them…

… And it was there, it was there! Its face, caught in the upward-slanting beam of yellow light from the torch in her arm-pit, looked down on her! And:

'Ahhh!' It — or he, the 'creechur' — sighed. 'A girl. No, a woooman. And a fresh one. How very good to meet you here.' How very… provident. AM!' And as simply as that his cold, cold hands took the padlock from hers, freed it from the chains, and let it fall with a clank to the dirt floor…

24

Meanwhile, Jake Cutter had proceeded maybe a hundred yards down the gradually sloping shaft, deep into the earth. The shaft was quite obviously the entrance to an old mine; the walls and roof were timbered, and there were sleepers and rusty, narrow-gauge rails in the fairly uneven floor. In places there was some evidence of past cave-ins, where holes in the ceiling and boulders on the floor told their own story. Since the surviving supports seemed stout enough, Jake wasn't worried for his safety in that respect.

But in one other respect, he was. And he kept finding himself wishing that right now he wasn't somewhere but rather someone else — despite that he would usually prefer not to be! All very confusing and paradoxical, but it was something which had only ever' happened twice, and then in the most extreme of circumstances. And for the time being Jake was only Jake Cutter.

Such were his thoughts when the narrow but adequate beam of his pencil-slim pocket torch picked out the first of several side tunnels, shafts that radiated off from the main, the original mineshaft.

Until now the floor had borne a thick coating of dust and sand, much of which had settled against the walls. Towards the centre, however, and between the rails, most of this had been

scuffed away, presumably by the recent passage of several or many persons. But persons going where? Of course, the old proprietor might be using this place as a warehouse or stock room; indeed, back where the shaft opened into the shack that fronted the mine Jake had passed a jumble of old crates and cardboard boxes, and labels on the latter had declared their contents as wiper blades, fuses, various grades of motor oil, spark plugs, and spare parts and vehicle accessories in general. Naturally, he would have expected as much that close to the entrance.

But all these signs of recent disturbance — or of occupation? — all this way back here? Why would anyone want to come back here, except perhaps on exploratory forays; maybe someone who was curious about old mine shafts? But recently? And how many someones? It was beginning to look like this might be the place. In which case he and Liz should never have split up and gone their own ways. Oh, he knew why she'd done it, all right, but now…

… Now what was that? Jake froze.

The side shafts weren't recent diggings; they were probably old exploratory digs from the days when prospectors sought an ultimately elusive 'mother lode.' Certainly quartz was present in the walls where the subsidiary tunnels had been hewn or blasted from the rock. It was here, too, that the scuff marks on the floor

— in places actual footprints — were most in evidence, and it was from the first of these lesser branching diggings that the sound had issued. A sound like a sigh or a yawn, like someone waking up.

Jake knew that by now it would be night in the valley in the Gibson Desert, dark in the outside world. But not nearly as dark as it was in here. And Liz was back there somewhere, alone with the old man. Or maybe not alone. And hadn't his 'Orstrylian' accent been a little too thick, and hadn't there been something

— maybe just a trace — of the Gypsy about him?

Jesus! Jake was now aware of fumbling movements from the side tunnels — from more than one of them — and was

immediately galvanized to action. But at a time and in a place such as this there was only one action he could take: flight!

Behind him, the main tunnel curved, however slightly, back towards the entrance. Setting off at a loping run, Jake played his torch beam on the ceiling in order to avoid the jagged ends of dangling timbers in a number of places where pressured beams had popped. And as he went he felt for his pager, making ready to send out his distress call. Not that he felt panicked or in immediate danger himself, but Liz might well be. If she wasn't already aware of the danger, the beeper would give her advance warning. He wouldn't use it just yet, though, because to do so would be to alert whoever she was with that he was on his way, perhaps precipitating some undesired activity.

In a matter of twenty seconds or so, when he was in sight of the bead-curtained rear entrance to the shack, Jake skidded to a halt. A figure, momentarily silhouetted by the light from the shack, had appeared on the other side of the curtain; Jake recognized it as that of the old proprietor. Switching off his torch, he flattened himself to the wall behind a support beam, took out his 9mm Browning and soundlessly armed it. And none too soon.

Grumbling to himself in his fashion, the old man came on through the curtains and made straight for Jake; there was no other way he could go. But as he blotted out some of the light from the shack, so Jake noticed that his movements weren't any longer those of an old man! He came on at a sprightly, almost youthful lope, and his previously dim eyes were no longer hidden in wrinkled folds. Instead they were a glowing, feral yellow, and in their cores burned red as fire!

Jake needed no further warning or convincing. He now knew for a certainty what this place was, if not exactly what he was up against. Going into a professional shooting stance, he took careful aim and squeezed the trigger.

But the other had seen or sensed Jake in the moment that he fired; seeming to flow to one side, he moved closer to the wall. Jake knew he'd missed and got off a second shot; the bullet whined where it ricochetted from the shaft's wall, hurling sparks and splinters of rock at the 'old' man's face and neck.

He jerked at the impact of the stony fragments, then stood up straighter and stepped out into full view. And putting up a hand to his neck under the ear, he glanced at it almost curiously and said, 'Blood?' That was all, 'blood? But his voice was no longer old, and his furnace eyes had turned uniformly crimson.

Knowing he couldn't afford to miss a third time, Jake moved forward. Behind him there was real activity now: voices calling out wailing questions, and the sounds of stumbling feet. And:

'Lead, is it?' said that low, growling, dangerous voice as the distance narrowed between them. 'Oh, ha! Ha! Ha! Then come on, son, fire away. For as you'll discover, I've something of an appetite for lead.'

'How about silver?' Jake said, squeezing the trigger again. His words were pure bravado for he was by no means sure of himself, but it was a nice line.

And perhaps in that last second the vampire sensed that his opponent had the advantage. Whichever, he once more caused himself to relocate, used that weird flowing motion to move to one side. But not quickly and not far enough. The silver bullet hit him in the right shoulder, spun him around and slammed his back against the wall. With a gurgling cry of (Ah! Ah!' he clawed at his shoulder and fell to his right knee, and Jake leaped around him to carry on headlong through the bead curtains, taking them with him in a jangling tangle.