Eyes in the Dark

In the beginning, mankind’s hubris met an abrupt and violent end.

Someday, once, people may have cared about the cause, but to the families who took refuge in the caves there was little benefit to knowing why. What mattered to them was shelter; the cold and sturdy rock; the reprieve from howling sandstorms and the vicious, radioactive wind.

In times of plenty the caves had been nothing, but now that there was nothing they were a cornucopia. The families ventured cautiously inside them, wary of animals and raiders, and to their delight discovered thin streams of water trickling from the aquifer and cool air scrubbed clean by moss. There were long and winding corridors, high roofs and abundant space. So in scarves and coats and breathing masks the families dragged the last of their worldly possessions into the gaping cavemouth, and collapsed amongst their crude sleds in exhaustion, relief and, for the first time, hope.

The next day they found the monster.

Three young men, Ian, Devrik and Panesh, were the first to lay eyes upon it. Brave with a sort of naivety and possessing curiosity stemming from intelligence, they had been engineers in the old world, and took to exploring the caves’ expanse in search of some conclusion or egress. They found, once the light of the outside world was long distant, a sheer and circular cliff – and beyond that a drop into ink-black darkness. Their flashlights, solar-powered things incapable of holding potent charge, were of little assistance, and so they resolved to lower Devrik down to scout the canyon floor – for he amongst them had abseiling experience and their curiosity had yet to curdle. So they struck in a peg and threaded rope, checked carabiners and belay, and lowered their companion down into the waiting dark.

Where with a thick, rumbling growl, something rose and tore him apart.

It happened in a flash. One moment, Devrik’s light was slowly descending and the next a titanic, glistening talon slashed out and severed the man. Devrik’s lips let out a second’s scream and then there was nothing – no light, no body, no movement. Just a shredded rope dangling out into nothingness and a wet, distant crunching rising up from the abyss.

Ian and Panesh fled.

Their breathless report caused amongst the families, naturally, much consternation. They were refugees, not soldiers, and they were no more equipped or inclined to face death in here than they were on the surface. They had the odd weapon and perhaps more to be jerry-rigged, explosive compounds, canisters of gasoline and the like – but these were precious necessities and not lightly hurtled haphazardly against some unknown foe. A second, more cautious investigation was mounted – this one moving not with optimism but with shaking hands, clenched teeth and sweat‑beaded foreheads which turned at every sound and step. Eventually they too reached the cliff and shone their better, stronger lights down; and when their pinpricks illuminated what awaited them, their hearts beat a feverish pace.

It was difficult to make out amongst the darkness – the drop from the top of the cliff was sizable and the base seemed to lead to some sort of outcrop under which most of the creature lay. But there was undoubtedly a creature down there; the edge of its claws visible amongst the rubble, with silver talons as large as a woman’s leg and scales the colour of coal and crimson. It shifted and the lights went off instantly, each person amongst the investigators petrified of rousing the thing to act. They had only caught a glimpse, but a glimpse was all they needed.

A monster lived within their cave.

*

It is a testament to their desperation, and to the desolation of the outside world, that the families did not immediately flee. Granted, it was argued for – by the engineer Panesh most strongly, as well as several other panicked voices in a meeting convened in the higher caverns. They knew not what the creature was but it was clearly huge and deadly, and far better to take their chances finding other shelter than risk falling here as prey. Yet there were others who argued otherwise – who saw staying put the lesser of two evils, who stated reluctantly that to wander the surface now and chase further fleeting luck was to court death, now a quick and eager suitor. The caves were huge, they argued, and extended in many directions – and so far, it seemed, the creature had not stirred beyond the cliff‑face. They were tired and weak and their belongings unloaded; they could not leave now without forfeiting their lives.

The arguments raged throughout the day and long into the night. Plans on how to kill the thing were conjured and dismissed for finite resources and lack of knowledge, both of the enemy’s strength and its response to attack. Another scouting party was sent out and returned with much the same tidings – their torches granted little more than glimpses of the creature, but from what they could see it was no smaller than a townhouse. In the end, unwilling to separate and unable to leave, the families settled for an unhappy compromise – a row of wires, carefully constructed as a fence around the cliff and connected to bells within the upper caves. If the monster were to emerge it would disturb the warning, and give the families time to get away.

At least, that was the theory.

*

Three more lives were lost to the monster before the year was out. This statistic, however, was slightly misleading – for although the creature, certainly, had been the one to do the killing, actual responsibility for the deaths, it was generally agreed, lay much more squarely on the deceased.

The first was a young woman named Valerie, who erroneously believed that without the noise and light associated with pigheaded menfolk she could approach the creature undetected and gain greater understanding of its nature and needs. She had three friends who she talked into helping her sneak through and disable the alarm netting, and she managed to get down about a foot lower than Devrik before an enormous bladed jaw rose and snapped her up whole. Her friends fled crying and screaming, their lesson thoroughly learned.

The second was an older man named Liam, Valerie’s step-father, a seasonal hunter who was just as convinced of his prowess as he was obsessed with his pride. He too snuck onto the cliffs, lowered himself down into the darkness and was eviscerated by the monster before he could fire a shot; though this time there was significantly less mourning, as it was generally agreed in private that an arrogance like his could never be sustainable. A small memorial service was held, but it was underscored primarily with barely concealed grumbling at the nerve of the man to be eaten while carrying one of their guns.

The third, too, was difficult to blame squarely on the creature, which some were taking to calling Redblades, or simply ‘The Maw’. A husband and wife, Arjun and Sneha, had come into serious dispute after it was revealed that the former believed the apocalypse had rendered his vows of monogamy obsolete – which caused the latter, in her fury, to lure her husband to the cliff’s edge and push him off. This, then, became a serious scandal, especially as it was alleged that Sneha spent several minutes after the deed was done listening to the monster crunch on her husband’s bones with hearty and vindictive glee. But again, it was generally agreed that this could hardly be blamed on the creature. Arjun would have been just as dead if his corpse had remained undigested at the end of a several hundred-foot drop.

By the second year though, it seemed like most of the madness and stupidity had worked itself out of the colony’s collective system, and there came no further deaths at the monster’s claws – the creature seemingly unroused by their nesting, and content to live out its days in the cold and silent dark.

*

It is a strange aspect of human nature that that which is anomalous can be fixated upon as dangerous, but that danger which is ever-present grows disregarded and ignored. Such it became with the creature, which, after the initial period of deep and resounding terror, became little more than a curiosity, overlooked like any hazard resting outside of people’s lives and control. The rotating sentry duty of the passage leading down to the cliffs became more a chance for relaxation than adrenaline, and the focus of the families shifted inextricably towards more pressing material needs. A well was dug into the aquifer; gardens seeded with soil and scraps. There were strings of lights to be installed and maintained, materials to be scavenged from the outside world and a constant need to stock the generator and ensure no blockage to its ventilation. Fear, despite its initial, all‑consuming gravity, was a fickle toxin, and one which without further development inevitably turned stable beneath survival’s ever-present needs.

The years stretched out, and at a point nobody recognised the colony crossed an indeterminate line. What had once been the refuge for the families transitioned into a home and settlement. The babies clutched feverishly to the breasts of the original survivors became children, and the couples that had sought whispered solace in each other’s arms gave birth. Soon, the sounds of playing and shrieking echoed through the caverns. Between lessons and chores and day-to-day survival these children of the apocalypse grew up in their strange underground world, and like every child before them thought their lives entirely sane; for they knew not the terror that lay above them nor the wonder that had been, and so were content in their simple pleasures, as only children can be. They played hide‑and‑seek amongst stalagmites; threw pebbles down echoing sinkholes; hunted rock lizards and cave bats. They pleaded with their parents in hysterical ignorance to be allowed to foray outside – and when their parents were gone, they snuck down to that which was most forbidden: the monster and its pit.

*

It is a generally unspoken truth of humanity that children are, more often than not, quite stupid. This is, of course, no fault of their own, nor any indictment on their personal intelligence – there are an infinite number of important facts a child has to learn while growing up, and inevitably a few things are going to get missed. It was perhaps this generalised ignorance, coupled with a less than firm grasp on the concept of mortality, that lead the children of the families to begin testing how far they could descend into the pit before something happened.

The reasoning, by child logic, was straightforward. The pit was somewhere the adults said they weren’t allowed to go. The monster in the pit was scary. Therefore it was only natural that those who would go nearest the pit – and nearest the monster – were the bravest and least submissive to parental authority, which, in turn, made them the leaders of the pack. Being children, the opinion of their peers was only fractionally less important than their continued survival, and in the face of repeated goading and chicken noises it was entirely possible for those positions to reverse.

Thus it was in the face of peer pressure that the cavern’s children took to sneaking past the guards guarding the pit; then creeping to the pit’s edge; then sticking their arms into the pit itself; then holding onto the edge and dangling down. It was the culmination of months, years of this gradual one-up-man-ship, an arms race in recklessness and courage, that lead to the game finally going, inevitably, too far. Someone, Billy Croydon most likely, stole some rope from the communal stores. And then inch by inch, one further than the other, the children began lowering themselves down.

*

Her name was Samantha Ikeda and she was eight and a half years old. Her father was the man the families called their leader and it was probably this, more than anything, that spurred her on. Being teased for being a girl was bad enough; being teased for being a princess was unbearable. So it was, one fateful day, that Samantha – egged on by jeers and whispers from above – began lowering herself down the side of the pit. The first time, she got as far as her belly. The second, she held to nothing but the rope. And while she waited, hesitated, trying to summon the courage to do more, her hands began to sweat. The nylon rope grew slick; Samantha squirmed, and her fingers slipped from their hold; and in an instant the girl went tumbling down into darkness, swallowed by shadows without a sound.

Naturally, the other kids went screaming. As sacred as was their vow to secrecy there was no honour amongst thieves, and the gravity and terror of the situation had them all instantly running for their parents. The children’s panic soon ignited, and within minutes the entire colony was in uproar. Shouting gave way to running gave way to weapons, and before long a desperate and panicked mob swarmed the cliffs, crying out to Samantha and each other, shining torches, pointing guns. Seconds turned to minutes – but then suddenly, everyone stopped.

Because something in the pit was whimpering.

Breathless, frantic, not daring to believe, the adults of the families beckoned everyone to silence, and slowly, carefully, with Ian Ikeda at their lead, painstakingly lowered their longest rope down into the abyss. The wait, they estimated, was the longest of their lives – their bodies stiff and frightened, the rope slack against their hands. But then, to their amazement, they felt it tighten – felt something at the other end tug – and hoping against hope they pulled.

And Samantha Ikeda was lifted from the pit, bruised, crying and terrified out of her mind-

-but otherwise fine.

*

The monster did not hurt children. Inexplicably, impossibly, this was the only conclusion many amongst the families could draw. The girl had not only gone into the pit but had, by her own admission, landed straight on top of the monster – which, she told them through shell-shocked, hiccupping sobs, didn’t really do anything except slightly tilt whatever scaly part she’d landed on so that she slipped off and slid gently to the landing. She had not been menaced nor tasted; nor had the creature given any indication that it was interested in her at all. Samantha had simply sat there, rigid with fear, hugging her knees in the darkness as she listened to the creature’s bellow-like breathing, until a rope had dropped down onto her forehead. It was inexplicable yet factual. The girl was too petrified to lie.

This theory, of course, was met with resounding scepticism amongst most of the community. The monster had clearly not been hungry, they protested, or perhaps it had been asleep. Luck, above all, was the only explanation. The Ikeda girl had escaped death by the skin of her teeth, and the only thing left was for fire, brimstone and meteoric groundings to be laid upon the children to ensure they never, ever, tried something so resoundingly stupid again.

Then Billy Croydon dropped himself into the pit two months later and all bets were off.

*

Never the sharpest knife to begin with, Billy soon took to mocking Samantha for crying when the adults had pulled her out of the pit, which naturally resulted in Samantha angrily declaring that Billy had no idea what her experience was actually like. This argument went back and forth until eventually it became so intolerable to Billy that the ten-year old resolved that he would also be lowered into the pit to prove it wasn’t scary after all. In a perfect, Darwinian world, this would naturally be where Billy’s story came to closing – but to everyone’s shock and incredulity, when Billy Croydon inevitably panicked and lost his grip on the rope halfway down, he too was resolutely ignored. The again‑summoned adults panic-pulled him to the surface in a quivering mess of defecation and snot – but this was all his own doing, and the only injury he’d suffered, a twisted ankle, was a result not of the monster but the fall.

It was a bizarre truth to have to face up to. Mercy on behalf of something seemingly so merciless, that snatched men without provocation and had thus far been associated with nought but death and blood. Theories abounded. Children were too small a meal to be worth its notice. Some part of it was genetically crocodile and thought them plover birds, come to pick away at lice. Sheer divine luck. None of them felt satisfactory. But the fact remained. The children were never harmed.

Not that the families intended to take any chances. After the Billy Croydon incident, the guard on the tunnels to the pit was doubled. A town meeting was held and it was unanimously decided that the colony’s luck had been sufficiently tested – that all talk of the monster was to remain just talk. Nobody was to go there, and nobody was to tempt it. It was a steadfast, wise and sensible resolution. And it didn’t matter at all.

Because slowly, inevitably, despite every threat and punishment their parents could muster, the children of the colony began playing in the pit.

*

They went down as they always had, trepidatious but with increasing bravery. They took small torches and handfuls of glowing moss and lowered themselves ever further until they stood stock still on the cavern floor. The monster took no notice. They came down in ones, in twos, in threes, until there was a whole group of them, standing with wide and rigid eyes. Still the monster didn’t move. Slowly, the braver amongst them inched over, closer and closer, until finally they touched it, barely a fingertip, all hackles raised and ready to run – but this too provoked no reaction, and the monster continued its indifference, its gusts of warm breath rippling the dank air with carrion scent.

By this point the secret was no longer secret. Try as they might, the excitement of being so close to a gigantic, forbidden creature overwhelmed youthful discretion, and gushing, ecstatic descriptions of the monster reached older, horrified ears. It was as big as the cave-mouth; bigger. It had scales the colour of dying embers and teeth like burnished steel and a tail with a long, wicked blade on the end, bigger than a man. It did not move but barely, shifting its claws over piles of creaking bones, unless it was not there entirely, when it was nowhere to be seen. This last bit caused some concern amongst the families, but it made sense – the creature needed food to be that massive, and it must go out hunting through another egress in the caves. It still showed no interest in the children; even when they touched it, it did not react to their presence. Slowly the families were forced to accept the truth, no matter how unintuitive, regardless of how it galled them – the monster was safe for their children. It was simply a fact – only the mystery of why remained.

*

Of all the children who played in the monster’s pit, it was Samantha Ikeda who watched it the most. The others, reckless ignorants, were soon treating the creature like a bouncing castle – playing between its claws, jumping off its back, climbing and scrabbling over its neck and tail. This was all, of course, in lieu of any reaction; the moment the thing let out the slightest irritable huff after some child yelled too loud or touched it on the eyelid, they were all off scrambling wide-eyed up the ropes. But barring that, the creature was placid, so long as there were only children around it. The moment an adult poked their head over the precipice the monster’s hackles raised, and sharp sail‑like spines extended along its back in warning. It remained a tidy means of prisoner execution; raiders captured several times a year and occasionally an irredeemable outcast from the families were thrown to the pit and torn to pieces before they hit the ground. The children, of course, were always well clear when this happened. If there was a need to reconcile them to the duality of the creature, that method would have been exceptionally cruel.

Yet Samantha found herself ever more gripped by fascination. She returned to the pit whenever she could, every day almost, even when there were no other children around. As she grew older, the nature of her visits changed – less to play and more to be, to watch and contemplate and read from the few books the families possessed, either to the younger children or to herself. She took on the role of den mother, quieting the younger children, scolding them for playing too loudly on the monster or pulling at its scales. Sometimes, when there was no one there, she would sit across from the creature and simply talk to it; about her life, the problems of her growing world, the others. She talked until all words were extinguished, eaten by the swirling dark; until she could take contentment and comfort in the silence. Then she would rise and thank the creature for listening to her ramblings and excuse herself from its presence, finding solace in its indifference. It never responded to her speaking, never gave any indication it was listening or understood. And yet gradually, Samantha came to notice that what little movements it made quieted when she approached – that sometimes, when she walked away, she got the odd sensation that she was being watched. Occasionally, as she reached the ropes, she would turn and find the creature looking at her through a cracked eyelid – still quiet, still unmoving, yet following her every movement through a slit-wide golden eye.  

And slowly, a feeling began building in Samantha. A strange suspicion which only grew, day by day, month by month, as she spoke and read and watched and aged – a suspicion which would in time grow to theory, and from theory to unshakable faith.

*

“It’s intelligent.”

She stood in the council chambers, her father’s chambers, eyes bearing into him as he leant over a stone table, pouring over maps and hand-written reports and pretending to be too distracted to listen. Beside him Panesh, his old friend and sometimes rival, no longer a young engineer but a narrow-faced man in his forties, simply shook his head in disgust.

“What is?”

“Redblades.”

“The monster,” corrected her father, still not looking up.

“Whatever you want to call it. It’s intelligent. Sentient. It knows what’s going on.”

Panesh and her father exchanged a glance across the table. The former made poor effort not to roll his eyes.

“Sam please,” her father sighed, turning back to his papers. “Enough of this. We’ve got more important things to worry about. These raiders, this warband to the north; we need to know where they’re headed.”

“I’m serious,” Samantha pressed, “Father please. It’s intelligent. I know it is. Why else would it spare the children?”

“It’s a bioweapon,” Panesh snapped. He took a step around the table so as to place himself between her and her father. “Some man-made horror of reckless fools. That’s what they used to do in the old world – make better things for killing people. Never thinking whether they should.”

“But the children-”

“Programming, girl, for Chrissake. The thing’s clearly been programmed not to harm children. It doesn’t mean anything – it’s a moral salve, put there to ease the conscience of some dead scientist. Leave it be.”

But Samantha would not be deterred.

“It understands me,” she insisted, “It knows who I am. When I go down there, when I read to it, it listens. Its follows me with its eyes.”

“Of course it’s watching you,” Panesh snapped, “How old are you now, seventeen? It’s contemplating whether to eat you. You’re almost an adult.”

“Panesh.” Her father’s voice was warning but weary. Reluctantly, the engineer closed his mouth. Samantha’s father turned to her.

“It’s good that you’re able to feel compassion for the creature Sam,” he said, “But I have to agree. We don’t know what it is, where it came from, what it wants. It’s too dangerous. Leave it alone.”

He turned back to his papers, and the meeting was over. Samantha left without a word, angry and certain that both of them were wrong.

*

The attack came without warning.

The families had encountered raiders out in the wastes before; gangs of feral humans, mutated and deranged scavengers tearing scraps from the dead-strewn world. They had never been more than groups of four or five previously, and as long as those sent outside were cautious, they had never posed much threat.

But this time was different.

The warband moved with stealth, with precision, armed and armoured a hundred strong. The families were aware, distantly, of their approaching, but by the time they realised the danger it was already too late. The horde of attackers descended upon the settlement and with cackles and cries spilled settler blood upon the stone.

Chaos. Their few fighters slaughtered, the families scattered into the tunnels, heading for hiding places, for dark passages they’d hoped to never use. Parents clutched at their children, siblings carried the elderly. Ian Ikeda, shot twice in the leg, shouted himself hoarse as a bleeding Panesh dragged him backwards, calling over and over for his daughter, lost somewhere behind. The sound of metal and bootsteps thundered in the distance.

With hopeless anguish, then, they heard the sounds of laughter – of hoots and jeers and of Samantha’s hysterical screams. Shrill and desperate, her cries echoed over and over throughout the tunnels, down and through; and it was all any those hiding could do to listen and despair.

Until from the cavernous depths, something answered.

There came a roar; a colossal call of thunderous fury the likes of which they’d never heard. It rolled up from the depths like an earthquake, smothering every sound, shaking every wall. In the distance, the raiders’ laughter abruptly faltered. The footsteps suddenly stopped.

And from the blackness of the pit, something erupted.

Inside the tunnels, the families huddled as the walls around them trembled, as the shouts of invading raiders turned quickly to shots and screams. Huddled together in the darkness, in the hot and pressing air, no one spoke – nobody dared breathe. There came roars and snaps, thuds and shakes and distant violence – until within minutes, it was done. Until finally, there was nothing left within the caves but silence.

Shaken and bloodied, the families emerged, walking with trembling footsteps, terrified to find what had become of their home. The caves they shuffled back through were littered with corpses and bullet holes, eviscerated men and man‑sized gashes cleaved jagged through stone. They stepped over puddles of guts and body parts, shielding ineffectually their children’s eyes; until they came to the caverns’ central chamber and the remains of the bulk of the raiders, their bodies now scattered and torn.

Their eyes grew wide at the sight which awaited them. Some fell to their knees and mouthed wordless nothings – some clutched to each other so hard they bruised. All trembled and stared and stayed silent, for at that moment nothing else was possible.

For in the centre of their cave stood the monster, reared to its full imperious height, with its tail curled around Samantha, who sat shaken but unharmed.

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