"Mein Gott!" His exclamation echoed around him like a thousand mocking voices until it faded into strange reverberating whispers into the far unseen distance. It was a catfish. It was definitely a catfish, but its pallid skin was almost translucent in the yellow light of his lantern, and it had no eyes. It writhed blindly and helplessly on the end of the line. He quickly extracted the hook and dropped it back into the water. Somehow he couldn't bring himself to even think of eating such a strange looking creature. He sat, debating with himself about whether he should try another cast and see if there was anything else to catch in this subterranean tarn, watching the ripples cast off from the fish as they died away and the water was once again perfectly still.

As he sat in the near-darkness where the only sound was his own breathing, a disturbing thought suddenly came to him. He looked again over to where the other lantern was lying on its side, broken and bent. He had dismissed it as having been hit by rocks that fell during his climb up the Chimney, but now he realized that there were no loose rocks lying about--nothing that could have fallen and broken the lantern. As he looked around, peering into the darkness, large swells suddenly rippled toward him and splashed against the rock where he sat. It was only then that he had realized there was a breeze, a cold breeze that tugged at his hair and made his breath come out in moist clouds. He stood up to leave and the breeze turned into a wind that pulled at him, almost throwing him off balance into the water. Leaving the old lantern and the fishing pole, he crammed himself into the crevice and scrambled through into the outer cavern. The wind was whistling eerily through the crevice and he shielded his good lantern as it guttered and almost went out. It pulled at him as if with cold, unseen hands as he made his way back toward the entrance, failing in intensity as he went through one cavern after another, until it was hardly noticeable when he finally stood blinking in the bright sunlight in the gully at the cavern's mouth.

So here he stood once again, staring into the gloominess of the last room before the lake. Overhead the hole in the ceiling stared down like an irregular sky-blue eye. The room was filled with the small rustling sounds of the hundreds of bats that were hanging above him, and the floor was moist and soft with a thick layer of guano. He shielded his lantern and waited.

He would wait until he heard them coming before he slipped through the crack into that last vast cavern of the lake. He had never intended to go there again, but now he thought it would be the best way to elude them. He had no idea what it was in there that had broken his lantern and caused such huge wave-like swells to ripple across the otherwise still waters of the lake, but he thought that he wouldn't be in there long enough to arouse it again anyway. Just slip through the crack and go straight up the Chimney.

A faint sound in the distance followed by the echoes of a curse alerted him. He hurriedly wedged himself through the crack into the last cavern.

"How far back you reckon this damn thing goes?" Joby whined.

"Just keep goin'," answered Buck. "It cain't go on forever. He's got his whole stash of gold back in here, I'd just bet."

Their makeshift torches guttered and flickered, throwing uneven light that highlighted strange, shifting shadows along the walls and over their heads.

"Well, I sure wish we'd find the end of this thing, anyway," muttered Joby.

Karl Sommer left his lantern by the crevice where the two men would be able to see it shining through. He hoped it would be enough to draw them into the cavern of the lake, and buy him a few more minutes before they decided to come back out. He glanced around hastily. There was the old lantern, somehow seemingly more battered than when he had seen it the last time. The abandoned fishing pole was lying partially submerged in the water; he lifted it to see it had been broken off a few feet from the end--the other part was nowhere to be found. Just as he was about to make his way over to the Chimney he saw a faint suggestion of an imprint in the sand a few inches into the water.

He stooped to look at it more closely. Some kind of footprint, he mused. There was another one--farther out just where the shallow sloped away into the unplumbed depths of the lake. They were unlike any footprints he'd ever seen. A peculiar, large, rounded footprint with...five toes? But the toes were arranged around the circumference of the central print, almost like a star, it seemed. There certainly were many strange new wonders in this America, he thought, but he didn't have time to stop and investigate it now. He climbed into the Chimney and feverishly scrambled toward the waiting daylight above.

"Hsst!" warned Buck, whispering. "There! Ya see? There's his lantern. He must be tryin' to hide behind those rocks over there."

"Hot damn!" said Joby, also whispering. "We got 'im now!"

"Let's give him a warning," said, Buck. "We'll let 'im come out on 'is own."

"All right," Buck spoke loudly. "Come on out and you won't get hurt." He looked at Joby and winked, and they both chuckled silently as the echoes died away and the bats above them rustled and shifted restlessly, disturbed by the unusual noise.

"I guess he ain't comin' out," said Joby, after waiting a minute or so and hearing no response. "I guess we'll have to go in and get 'im."

"All right, go ahead," ordered Buck.

Grumbling under his breath, Joby handed his torch to Buck and crammed himself through the narrow crevice. "Okay, I'm through," he said after a few seconds. "I don't see him nowhere, Buck. He musta doubled back on us somehow or somethin'."

"You want somethin' done right..." muttered Buck, and began pushing his way through the crack into the room beyond.

Karl had just emerged from the Chimney into the fading light of late evening when he heard shouts coming up from beneath him. The sounds were faint and hollow, but he understood them well enough.

"You just come on out now!" he heard one of them yell. "You cain't hide from us no more! Come on out and you won't get hurt!" Now! More! Hurt! Their echoes reverberated eerily out of the small sinkhole as he scrambled out onto solid ground. This time he didn't wait to rest, but ran back toward the mouth of the cavern where he hoped they had left their horses.

"Damn!" Buck's exclamation followed the echoes of their previous shouts, turning into small whispered curses that faded into the blackness of the unseen reaches of the cavern. "Damn," he repeated with less vehemence. "Looks like he got away from us somehow. Well, let's make a good search and maybe we'll find his stash anyways. I don't reckon it's in here, it's prob'ly back in that last cavern we were in where all the bats were. Let's go on back."

"Yep," agreed Joby, then he added, "Hey, wait a minute..."

The thunderous blast of his revolver sounded like a cannon in the low-ceilinged cavern, the concussion almost stunning them both.

"What the hell did you do for, dammit!" Buck yelled, his ears ringing from the gunshot.

"Sorry," said Joby sheepishly, picking up the tattered remains of a crayfish. "I just ain't never seen nothin' like this before."

Buck looked at it curiously for a few seconds before his anger returned. "It's just a damn crawdad, you idiot! Liked to make me go deaf, dammit."

Joby shrugged and dropped the crayfish back into the water. "Sorry," he repeated. Buck was already exiting through the crevice. Joby turned to follow him.

A sudden gust of wind pulled at him, just as a large swell lapped and splashed against the rock where he stood. "Hey Buck," he called. "I think there must be something..."

"Just shut up!" Buck yelled back him. "Just shut the hell up and come on."

A wave of relief washed over Karl Sommer as he caught sight of the outlaws' two horses tied to trees in the thicket of live oaks that clustered around the gully that concealed the cavern's mouth. He even smiled for the first time in days as he saw that they had left their rifles behind, along with his own rifle that had been tied behind one saddle. They must have gone into the caverns with only their revolvers.

He mounted one horse and took the reins of the other, leading them back toward the big sinkhole that opened into the cavern where the all the bats lived. He checked his rifle and found it still loaded. The smile on his face was replaced by a more grim and determined expression as he levered a shell into the chamber and kicked the horse up to a trot.

A cold, whistling wind blew--no, sucked past Joby as he stood still on the smooth stone shore of the lake, peering into the vague darkness as the swells of water grew larger and splashed against the stone with such force that a frigid spray spattered his face.

"Hey Buck?" he repeated. "I think there must be something in here." He turned suddenly and ran the few steps to the crevice that led back into the bat-room. The wind howled viciously at him as he forced himself through the narrow opening.

"Damn it, Joby!" cursed Buck. "You shoulda brought that fella's lantern back with you, it woulda been a lot better than these damn torches!" As if in answer, his torch guttered and flickered in the mounting wind, almost going out. "Go back and get it!"

Joby shook his head. "I ain't going back in there, Buck. I'm gettin' outta here right now!" He had already made his way to the outer edge of the cavern, pausing to scrape the guano off his boots with a convenient rock. Cursing to himself, Buck began to go back for the lantern. He had only taken one step when he saw the light of the lantern suddenly vanish. He stopped and stepped backward, bracing himself against the wind that now howled down into the depths of the earth with new intensity. He drew his revolver as something moved in the flickering shadows of the torchlight. There was a rumble that turned into a roar as the pile of fallen stones that had been almost entirely blocking the entrance of the lake-cavern fell outwards, and the in last second before both torches blew out, a huge shapeless something floated silently into the room.

Karl had dismounted and began approaching the big sinkhole on foot when a sudden dark, shifting cloud of bats swarmed out of the hole into the mellowing twilight sky. Almost simultaneously, gunshots and inarticulate screams erupted out of the earth before him. Surprised, he dropped to the ground, thinking they were shooting at him, before he realized that the screams were not of anger, but of abject terror. The gunshots ended and there three sharp, staccato shouts of apparently insane laughter. Then silence.

He crawled to the edge of the big hole, feeling curious tendrils of cold wind begin to suck at him as he gained its perimeter. There were strange sounds coming up out of the hollow earth beneath. Moist, somehow solid, sounds. He called out.

"Joby!" No answer. "Buck!" No answer. Maybe they were waiting for him. Maybe it was a trick. He held his hat by the brim and eased it out over the opening of the hole, trying to tease them into shooting and revealing themselves. Maybe they would see the silhouette of his hat and think it was him. Nothing happened.

"I got your horses and rifles," he shouted. "You go your way and I'll go mine." Still no answer. "If you come after me again, I will kill you." Nothing. "Joby? Buck?" The only answer was a hollow whistling that somehow didn't seem to come from the wind that continued to blow chillingly around him, but rather somehow seemed to come out of the cavern yawning beneath him.

He retreated from the hole, uncertain about what he should do. He noticed a flask hanging from the saddlehorn of the horse he had been leading. Opening it, he found a few ounces of coal-oil left in it. Hastily securing a fallen tree branch, he dipped it into the oil and struck a Lucifer match to create a quick torch, and once more approached the hole, crawling on all fours as the wind continued to mount.

Carefully, he extended the torch over the edge of the open hole, then crawled forward enough to peer down into the inky blackness of the cavern. He stared downward in stunned silence for a few long seconds.

Several feet beneath him, apparently floating in the air in the middle of the cavern, he saw it. It was huge, yet somehow its size was deceiving. He felt a sudden inward vertigo as its dimensions shifted, twisted, whirled in upon itself, extending tendrils that suddenly vanished and were replaced, it rolled and spun, yet somehow was absolutely still. Though it had no eyes that he could see, still he could tell that it saw him, was looking at him, was looking inside him to awaken unknown primitive memories that welled up out of him in a long, low howl that was somewhere between a scream and a moan. The torch fell from his nerveless fingers into the cavern, where it fell completely through the thing and flickered weakly on the floor for a few seconds before it was extinguished. The wind redoubled itself with a sudden vengeance that slammed him into the ground and almost tipped him into the hole. He threw himself backward, fighting the howling tempest, rolling over and over away from the sinkhole that now seemed to open for him like a hungry, toothless mouth. He regained his footing and ran, screaming into the deepening twilight, the horses bolting as he ran past them in blind terror. He kept screaming as he ran, vanishing into the darkening night, his screams gradually fading as he disappeared into the distance.

The wind slacked and became an almost gentle, chilling breeze. Then even that was gone. Darkness came to the quiet Texas hill country. Somewhere in the distance and owl hooted. A few minutes later a whippoorwill answered. Everything was quiet after that.

© 1998 by Alan D. Peschke

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