Catacombs of Terror! by Stanley Donwood Page A

have rolled this far.
    â€œMaybe we missed it. Maybe it got stuck in a niche or something. Rolled up against a rock. I don’t know.”
    â€œWhat was that?” Kafka said.
    â€œSssh.”
    There was a sound. It was very quiet. But not as quiet as silence. Like a low, droning mechanical chant. An indistinct murmuring. It was coming from somewhere ahead of us, in the dark. Fighting every urge of self-preservation we walked towards it.
    â€œTurn off the light,” I said in a low voice. “Don’t say anything at all.”
    Colin killed the flashlight. The darkness was suffocating. The sound was still there, moaning from somewhere. I trailed my hand against the wall to keep some idea of where I was. The surface was wet and slick, and sort of ridged under my fingers. It was very cold. Like something dead.
    Nothing happened for a time. We were walking. The sound was droning, with slight variations in its tone. It didn’t seem to be getting any louder. Then the wall disappeared. My hand touched nothing. I pulled my hand away as if it had been burnt. I grabbed for Kafka, and he stopped.
    â€œOkay,” I said in a voice only one notch above silence and one degree from panic. “Point the light at the floor. Turn it on.”
    A couple of agonising seconds passed while Colin felt for the switch. Then a blurry circle of flagstones was illuminated. But faintly. As if the batteries were dying.
    â€œRight. Move the beam—slowly—so it points to the right of where I’m standing.”
    The illuminated circle travelled across the floor and up the wall, then forward along it. Where my hand had been was another tunnel, leading straight off to the right. The beam lit it only for three feet or so.
    â€œShit,” I whispered. “Shine it at the other side.” The light moved back across the floor and up. There was an identical tunnel the other side. I let out a long, slow breath.
    â€œWhat are we going to do?” It was Kafka. His voice sounded controlled. Almost too controlled. “If this is some kind of maze . . . .”
    â€œThen we’re okay so long as we just keep straight on. If we don’t take any turnings then we’re . . . okay,” I ended, limply.
    â€œAll right. We’ll walk straight on. For another ten minutes. Then we turn round. We get out,” he said firmly. “Ten minutes. Then we leave.” There wasn’t much room for argument in his tone. I didn’t feel like arguing anyway. We walked. The droning chant carried on at the same almost inaudible volume. Kafka kept the flashlight switched on, aimed at the ground. There were a lot of flagstones down here. Whoever had built this had been serious about it. I kept my hand trailing on the wall. After a while there was another absence. We stopped. Moved the light around a bit. There were another two tunnels off, one at each side. And the beam from the flashlight was definitely fading.
    â€œRight,” murmured Kafka. “That’s enough. Let’s go back.”
    It was then that we heard another noise. Squealing. Distant, but a lot of it. It was like, I don’t know, children. It sounded like children. A lot of children. But not human children. There was something unearthly about it. Like the squealing of hungry children, blind, hairless children who’d never seen the sun. Who knew they were getting fed soon. And it came from somewhere behind us.
    I seized Kafka’s arm and pulled him sideways, along the left-hand tunnel. And we ran. We just ran. The squealing seemed to be getting louder, and we just ran. The tunnel wasn’t straight, not like the one we’d walked down. It curved around all over the place, and we careened off the muddy walls every few feet. The floor was sloping upwards now, slightly, but enough to notice that the running was getting to be harder work. We came to a fork in the tunnel and for no reason took the right-hand turn. And after a