Behind the Fire: A Dark Thriller (9 page)

He also carried a troubling thought with him. It had been eating at him since the encounter with the black thing.

What if this time the creature brought friends?

He checked his watch.
2.32.

That question, if anything happened—and he prayed it wouldn’t—was about to be answered.

Bobby stood and moved forward toward the mine entrance, toward the exact co-ordinates. There, he paced back and forth on the spot, scanning the area and checking the fence line. The solitude was unsettling. It took a lot to unnerve him, but the night and the isolation, and the thought he was out of his depth by a hundred miles had taken its toll.

He could not rid his gut of the sick, churning feeling. He thought he might even wretch if this went on much longer.

At 2.32 exactly, according to his watch, he took another step closer to the mine entrance. He was hesitant to move too close in case the thing appeared on top of him. Statue-like he stood listening, barely breathing, and regretting not leaving a message for Em in case this all went wrong.

Nothing happened. Again. Just like at Connolly Street.

He swiveled to the left. Then the right. Behind, looking to the fence. He checked his watch again.
2.34.

He felt a fool. Of course nothing would happen. This was crazy.
He was crazy.

A list with the times of strange creature appearances was just about as out there as it got. He didn’t know what he’d seen at Connolly Street, but it’d be his secret to file under
strange
,
unexplained
, and
get-more-sleep
. Thank God, he hadn’t told Em.

Stretching forward, he listened.
Wind?
Nope.
Black hole?
Nope. Nothing. Not even the scuttle of insects.

Perhaps the fire had scared them off. That one gone back to tell its buddies:
They got fire over there, best make a wide berth of planet Earth.
Or he really was under too much stress. Whatever the reason, this adventure was over. He turned away and headed back to his bag, shaking his head at his foolhardiness. Like there really could be black creatures climbing through whirling holes in his veritable backyard.

Perhaps one day—somewhere distantly in the future—he would tell Em. She’d find it funny considering his pragmatic nature. Then again, he’d have to admit he’d set a house on fire. Okay then, that story could wait until he was so old they wouldn’t jail him on compassionate grounds.

As he leaned down to reach for his bag, he sensed the barest movement of air against his skin. The night had been whisper-still until this moment. The swish of air came from behind, and felt as though someone had waved a large object or turned a fan on to low. By the time he turned to face it—his heart deciding it would kick up a storm, too—the wind had increased as though a floodgate holding back a tempest had been flung open. Gusts of air caught his shirt and shoved against him.

Only feet from the mine entrance, where he had just stood, the same shimmer he’d seen at Connolly Street appeared. The image folded in on itself like a mirror held against the sky, reflecting just the blackness of a star-less space.

The air felt instantly warm, as though he’d walked into a heated room. The descending gale picked up dust and leaves, which swirled around Bobby, flinging dust and grit into his eyes, causing him to squint. He hadn’t thought to bring goggles.
Why would he, for Christ’s sake?
He hadn’t truly expected anything to happen. Opening his eyes, he resisted the urge to close them against the onslaught of churning debris.

Through watering eyes, he saw the faint outline of a dark-blue face appear out of the blackness and become a head, then an arm, then two arms. It followed the exact transformation as the black thing he’d previously encountered.

This time, though, the head appeared longer, the face larger, and more an oval-shape; these altered features seemed far more intimidating. The mouth moved, creating impossibly stretched shapes as though it were speaking. But there was no voice or noise.

This one was markedly different from the Connolly Street creature, with its elongated features, and a depth to the nose he hadn’t seen in the other one. Then again, he could barely see for all the dust and wind, so it could be an optical illusion created by the disturbance. Were they related, part of a team, or an invasion crew?

For the second time he reached for his bag, crouching down next to it. Rummaging through it, he kept his stare ahead, never leaving the creature, until his fingers fastened around the lighter. Pushing it into his shirt pocket, he then retrieved several rolls of newspaper and the container of kerosene.

The black thing was growing rapidly, morphing into something solid and frighteningly real. He cursed himself for not having everything ready. He’d gone as far as collecting his
weapons
, but the absurdity of it had made him hesitant to go the whole way and treat this like an all-out mission.
That was sure dumb now.

The size surprised him; it was that of a bus. In the few seconds it took him to rifle his bag it had doubled in size and managed to free half of its head from the black hole.

The edges of the entry point had seemed ragged at Connolly Street, but he saw now they’d only appeared that way. They were, in fact, fluid—growing, and shrinking like an expanding and contracting heart muscle. This constant movement made the smooth edges appear uneven.

Now as the thing contorted and squirmed before him like a huge, blue-black genie, Bobby realized he had a problem. He hadn’t thought this whole thing through very well at all.

What was he actually going to do?

Run toward it waving the lit paper as though it were a wild animal afraid of fire? He’d had some vague idea he would have time to build a fire or light a bush. His luck, of course, meant it hadn’t appeared near any bushes or trees. He didn’t think it would wait for him to utilize his Boy Scout knowledge, either.

Bobby looked around again, noting the scattered pieces of wood left decades ago by the miners. They might work, but gathering those would not only take time, but involve running around directly in front of the thing.

What if it took exception to him building a bonfire? What if it carried weapons?
For all he knew it could breathe fire.

Bobby wanted to do something; he wanted to fight it, send it away, and prove he was as brave as all the movie heroes he admired. The reality was, though, he was just a guy who worked in a rental yard. What did he know about fighting things from beyond earthly realms?

The wind whipping up the sand and soil didn’t help either. That was another unanticipated problem. He could barely see. Each time he tried to open his eyes a little wider, grit and dust attacked his vision.

In the end, his courage proved as scattered as the dust flying about him. His best plan became: wait and watch. From watching could come knowledge. Knowledge could, also, be a weapon. A nearby largish rock offered some cover. Lowering himself to the ground, he lay sideways behind it, so it concealed most of his body. Pulling his jacket over his head, he tied the arms around his neck to form a kind of protective hood for his mouth and face.

The thing continued to struggle and contort, as Bobby lay there, watching horrified at this alien birth—although the thing emerging was the farthest thing he could imagine from a defenseless baby.

As each second passed Bobby considered and reconsidered his actions until his mind alighted upon probably his most sensible idea: get the hell out of there.

This plan meant turning his back on the thing and scaling the fence, leaving his body in full view and exposed.
What if those hands reached for him, clawed him down, and ripped him to pieces?
Nobody would know the black thing was responsible—that was if they even found his body. Maybe it didn’t leave bodies. He imagined the pain Em would endure wondering what had happened to him. It felt like a tremendous risk.

Even with the wind roaring around him, he still heard the mad thumping of his heart in his ears. At least at Connolly Street the neighboring properties surrounded him and, if push came to shove, he could call the police. Out here in this desolate place he was on his own, and nobody was coming to save him. He was no hero. In fact, he was an idiot to have even contemplated coming here alone. If only he’d told Em and created a back-up plan.

Wishing wasn’t going to help him, though. All he had left was to pray and, if he saw a chance, run away.

As Bobby watched, the black thing began to squirm violently like the desperate wriggling of a hooked fish. It seemed to him it was close to freeing itself and emerging fully into this world.

That’s when he saw that chance; while the thing was distracted with its final push, this could be the opportune time to escape. He didn’t want to know what would happen once it exited the hole. Well, he did, but not this close up.

Pulling his bag toward himself, he began inching backward, pushing with his hands as he crawled on his stomach. His stare never wavered from the black thing, partly out of curiosity and mostly from something he’d read about bears: if you stood your ground, met their eyes, they are less likely to attack.
Yeah, like this was anything like a bear.

The continuing dust storm whipped sand and grit against his face and exposed arms, stinging and scraping his skin. The makeshift hood provided little protection. The dust clogged his mouth and nose, choking him. When he tried to cough, he only swallowed more of it, causing him to cough even more violently. The idea he might die of asphyxiation seemed real and possible.

When his feet bumped into something solid, which gave a little when he pushed against it, he realized he’d reached the fence line. Now he had to decide to turn and climb, or to stay put and wait and see. Neither idea appealed.

Only thirty feet away, the head had begun to expand alarmingly like an inflating carnival balloon. The eyes bulged, the nose grew, and its red-black mouth stretched even wider. Bobby expected to hear a scream; it looked painful to him. But only the wind’s roar and the dry smell of the red dust permeated the air.

He was now pressed hard against the fence with nowhere to go. With the wind battering his body, Bobby decided no way would he make it over the fence. In case the wind turned into an instant tornado, he turned and huddled his body against the wire, clinging to the shaking fence. He could barely see through the grit and the resultant tears.

He closed his eyes and angled his arm across his face. Whatever happened next, he wasn’t going to see it coming. Bobby braced, prepared to probably die. For a moment he considered screaming out to the night sky a declaration of his love for Em and the kids, but he knew all he’d get was a mouth filled with cursed red dust.

The growl of the wind increased to a crescendo of chaos, and Bobby pushed his face harder into his arms. He sensed something was about to happen.

What came next, he didn’t expect.

Silence. Sudden and sharp.

As quickly as the tumult had begun, it ended.

Bobby opened his dust-coated eyes to find the black thing free, hovering a few feet above the ground, a big blob of rolling dark mass. It had no body, as he had initially believed. The stumps he imagined were arms were actually tendrils of a viscous green-black matter, constantly moving, solidifying and then liquefying again. It reminded him of the images of astronauts spilling water into their cabins, the lack of gravity turning the liquid into floating balls.

The enormous hole behind the black thing began fading and shrinking, absorbing itself while its passenger hung in the air before it.

Bobby stood ready. If it came toward him, without the wind to rattle him, he would make his best attempt to scale the fence in Olympic-record time. The lack of wind might even make it possible to set fire to something, scare the thing away like he’d done with the other one. His hand moved across the earth reaching for the bag. He grasped a handle and began to pull it toward himself.

Then the creature turned and more swiftly than a human could hope to run, travelled toward the opening of the mine. It had no hesitation, seeming to know exactly where to head.

In the seconds it took Bobby to understand he was safe—that it wasn’t coming for him and, in fact, seemed unaware of his presence—it entered the mine and disappeared.

Bobby pulled himself up and stood staring after it for as long as it took his heartbeat to slow and his breathing to ease. The newspapers he’d pulled from his bag earlier lay strewn around the mine entrance, making the area look even more derelict than when he’d arrived.

Why the thing had ignored him and what it was doing here were just more unanswerable questions to add to the growing mountain. Those questions could be pondered later, away from here, far from the dark and the shadows. And the thing.

He looked down at the lighter still clutched in his hand and thumbed it about in his palm. His experiment was a failure. He still didn’t know if fire had any power over the thing. He still didn’t know what it even wanted here. Even more key, he was no closer to understanding what the hell the thing was.

One thing he did know. Next time he would be completely prepared.

Chapter 11