James Jenkins - The Valancourt Book of World Horror Stories. Volume 1

‘Hey, don’t you even think about dy—’ he said and took the three, four long steps that were necessary to reach the edge of the well and shine light into the pit.

But he couldn’t finish what he was saying. The lantern cast waves of light on Stere, but Stere was not alone in the pit. On top of him was seated a pale woman, with red, disheveled hair, naked and filthy with dirt. She was crouched up on Stere’s chest, with her head thrown back, looking at Nicu with a crooked smile on a chipped face. A loud hissing rose up from the woman’s throat and her black pupils slid upward, disappearing into her head, leaving visible only the total whiteness of a pair of dead eyes.

‘What . . .’ Nicu said, but he didn’t have time to say anything more, because the woman shot out towards him and in three movements had arrived up beside him.

One: her right hand embedded in one of the walls of the well.

Two: her left hand embedded in the opposite wall, higher up, lifting herself, hurling herself towards Nicu.

Three: her right hand caught the edge of the well and the woman leapt toward Nicu, taking him by the T-­shirt and dragging him furiously into the well, throwing him alongside Stere.

As he fell, Nicu saw the lantern hitting the sides of the well, and then darkness all around, before the great darkness from within his head, in the moment in which his skull shattered, his neck dislocated, and the blood shot out of his mouth.

Stere felt the shock. Nicu’s body was lying breathless beside him, his head crushed in the impact with the ground. He was terrified at the woman’s strength and his fear sent a wave of blood to his head and his limbs, waking him. He couldn’t see anything, but he was beginning to understand what was happening. He was at the bottom of a well and Nicu was beside him. Probably dead. Someone had been next to him, a woman. Now she was no longer there. She had dragged Nicu, well no, she had thrown him headlong into one of the walls of the well. Probably. Then the woman had gone. It was quiet. They were alone. Probably. He tried to move, but the pain stung him in both legs. He tried to shout. He choked. Coughed. Tried once more and a weak sound issued from his throat. He tried again. Louder. He gave free rein to his voice, fighting against the pain, and screamed. The echo traversed the galleries. He fumbled in the darkness to his left and wet the tips of his fingers in something warm and sticky, thick, pasty. Stere then prodded the indentation in Nicu’s skull, from which a steaming broth was flowing. His hairline descended into a little valley filled with liquid and bone chips, then rose again and descended at the back of his head. Stere was gripped with a feeling of powerlessness and tried to stop his tears, clenching his teeth and hitting the ground under him with his fist.

He cried out. The echo was broken by the walls. A cry of fear. A cry of fury, of impotence. A cry of death.

No one responded, there was only the echo striking the walls then dying away.

Crying, he began to sing, softly, in a whisper:

And then he heard footsteps. He was quiet and listened: the scuffling of dragging footsteps above. The steps stopped at the well’s edge. He heard breathing – heavy like the wind through the valleys of his childhood. A snarl, then silence. His heart pumped blood, too much and too quickly, and Stere felt that all that blood must be flowing out of unknown orifices in his body, somewhere in the darkness, into the black earth beneath him. Another snarl and Stere heard clumps of dirt breaking loose from the walls of the well as the creature slid slowly into the pit.

A thud and the creature was beside him. Stere wanted to scream, but he no longer could; his jaws were clenched with fear, so he began to cry and squeezed his eyelids shut, but in vain: the darkness in his head was just as black as the darkness outside.

The creature bent over him and emitted a disgusting stench from its open mouth. Then it left Stere and went over to Nicu. Stere listened in the darkness: a sound of ripping – Nicu’s T-­shirt was torn in one motion. Then a powerful blow and Stere could hear Nicu’s ribs crack noisily. The creature dug around in Nicu’s innards and Stere could almost imagine it all and vomited. He smelled the scent of warm, fresh blood, and that of urine and feces almost made him faint. He turned around part way, dragging his legs and whispering through his sobs, no no, please, no . . .

He felt a hand, a human hand, twisting his back around. The creature had taken his shoulders with both hands. Stere raised his arms and groped at the body: human back, chest, hips. The creature sat on him and Stere felt its thighs around his hips. The creature let go of his shoulders and after a moment of silence pounced with both fists in his chest. Stere let out a broken sound, emitted from his mouth at the same time as a gush of blood.

In his last instants of life, Stere felt a dull pain in his chest, heard his ribs cracking, and felt the flesh tearing beneath the creature’s fists, heard a loud ringing in his ears and felt something warm flowing from his ears. The creature burrowed its head into Stere’s body and began to tear at his flesh with its teeth. With the last of his strength, the man raised his arm and set his hand on the head of what was devouring his body, a head covered in short hair, with large, sharp ears, with a bloody muzzle and big round eyes: the head of a dog.

Stelică jumped off the cart first and rushed towards Vasile. He found him pale and trembling.

‘Vasile, you didn’t go back in? What are they doing in there alone?’

The five men untied the horse from the cart and started off towards the mine’s entrance with ropes and shovels, with long boards and lanterns. Stelică and Ion had gathered them from among the neighbors, whispering through the doors so that the women would not hear, careful not to be seen by too many people on their way towards the mine.

Vasile didn’t respond, he was ashamed to say anything, to confess his cowardliness, to tell them what he had seen in the tunnel.

Stelică wanted to rush towards the entrance, but Vasile stopped him, without saying anything more. Stelică looked at him and understood all. Something had happened in his absence, Vasile had seen or heard something, the earth had caved in, or gas had come to the surface and exploded. Something had happened there, at the entrance to that hell, but Stelică was too afraid to ask anything, or even to say anything, so he was silent and turned towards the Turk’s Mouth mine. The Devil’s Mouth, as he had heard Valeria saying, when he departed through the gate accompanied by Ion and left the women alone in the house, crying and clutching at their scarves under the icons.

Stelică made a sign to the men not to enter the mine. They stopped and looked at him dumbfounded.

‘Hey, there’s men dying in there, isn’t that what you said?’ one of them said.

But Stelică didn’t look at him and didn’t answer him. He climbed the hill with his left hand raised to the right side of his chest, forgotten there after he had made the sign to them to stay where they were. Like that he arrived at the mine’s entrance, where he stopped and let his hand fall limp at his side. He stopped there, looking into the distance, into the blackness of the tunnel, and his glance received a response: a pair of eyes looked at him from the darkness. There was no life in those eyes and yet they moved – the creature took several steps towards him and Stelică observed what it was: a white ram with milky eyes looked at him and blew out thick steam like smoke.

Stelică didn’t take another step, he turned around and looked at the men. He wanted to signal to them to leave, to go back to their own world, but he stopped with his hand in mid-­air, the gesture cut off as if in forgetfulness.