Like Wes, this one stood over six feet. Only this new guy appeared to be in a furry suit. A high quality one that looked like some movie monster genius had built the costume. It had a beastly, rubbery face that looked like a cross between a cat and a bat. Huge, batlike ears tilted towards them. The body looked lean, though muscles rippled under the coarse brown fur, almost like real muscles might. It was a very convincing costume. If they hadn’t already tried to scare her with the party store alien costume, she would have been terrified by it.
Matt shrieked like a girl in a horror movie, and Sarah shook her head at the theatrics “Give it up, man. You aren’t getting any more footage out of scaring me.”
The new arrival swung its arm, claws extending on the end of its hand in a very realistic way as it swiped at Matt.
Something wet and warm splattered Sarah’s face. She stared at Matt as he spun around from the momentum of the attack, his throat slashed open. Blood spurted everywhere.
Someone else screamed in a high pitch. The additional lights from Beth’s lamp disappeared in the wake of receding footsteps.
A quick glance showed that both Beth and Wes had run from the suddenly very realistic creature that Sarah was still struggling to process.
It growled at her, lifting its bloodied claws to its mouth. A human looking tongue darted from between its beastly lips, revealing a row of sharp teeth, framed by long, vampiric-like fangs. Tasting the blood, its black eyes lifted from Matt’s still-twitching body to pin Sarah.
Sarah spun around and took off running in the same direction as the others, heading towards the tunnels that led back to the shaft. The creature’s footfalls behind her caught up to her as it shrieked in a sound that made her cry out in terror. The bouncing light from the headlamp caught its shadowy form as it leaped to the wall and started scaling the stone like a spider. It climbed rapidly along the wall around her path, moving upwards until it hung upside down above her. She skidded to a halt as it suddenly dropped down in front of her to block her escape.
It could have captured her at any time. It was so much faster than her. She realized in that moment that it was enjoying the chase. Like a housecat with a mouse, it wanted to play before it killed. She spun around and took off in the opposite direction, running deeper down the tunnel that passed the concrete barrier as the thing shrieked again. This time, she heard the excitement in the sound. The anticipation of the hunt.
She had no idea where she was going, or how she could possibly escape the creature, but a primal need to survive filled her. It drove her steps forward, pumping adrenaline through her blood. The fact that the thing wanted to draw out the chase might just serve to give her a fighting chance. Her rational mind told her there was no way she was getting out alive, but she wouldn’t quit trying until she was dead.
Her headlamp cast wild shadows as she ran, illuminating side tunnels only when she was too close to them to change direction. There could be safety in those offshoots, but most likely, they were dead ends. In this case, that would be quite literal.
The creature would occasionally shriek behind her as if to goad her on. Sometimes, the sound would be distant, and other times, terrifyingly close, just beyond the darkness that she left in her wake. At this point, she had no doubt that it was playing, running her like dogs chasing a fox. Reveling in her terror and panic.
Suddenly, the stone beneath her disappeared as her footsteps thudded over wood. The hollow sound gave her a clue of what that change meant, but not before the rotting wood collapsed beneath her weight.
She screamed with a new terror as the boards covering a vertical shaft shattered, sending her crashing down onto the platform that supported the first ladder of the manway. She’d been lucky enough to fall through on this side of the shaft, rather than down the elevator side. Her luck didn’t hold as the narrow platform cracked beneath her weight while she struggled to climb to her feet.
It snapped in half, sending her smashing into the ladder below. The first ladder kept falling to bust apart the next platform.
Sarah’s screams mixed with the sounds of breaking wood and the thuds of her body against ladder and platform. She grabbed desperately for the wood slats that formed the collar of the shaft as she struck one platform or ladder after another, each one more rotted and fragile than the last. Not one held on her way down, but they broke her fall enough to slow her descent to a survivable speed.
Survivable, if she didn’t get crushed by the debris falling around her, much of it striking her body in places that she would certainly feel later when the adrenaline wore off.
Finally, her desperate grasp caught onto a collar board, stopping her plummet. The sudden halt in her momentum jerked at her arm as it was forced to support her weight. Her nails tore on the soft rock behind the collar slat. Even with the adrenaline still flowing, her hand felt like it was on fire and her arm like it was being slowly ripped off.
Then the creature’s shriek sounded from above her as she dangled in the shaft, a pile of shattered, rotten wood below her, splintered ends jutting upwards like spikes.
She kicked her foot, desperately seeking purchase on a slat to support her weight before her fingers gave out. Her panicked breaths sucked in musty air clogged with dust from her fall. Sweat poured down her face, running in rivulets through the coating of dirt that masked her.
She whimpered as she heard the sounds of the creature’s claws clicking on wood. Those sounds grew closer as her foot finally caught on a lower slat. Her heart pounding so loud it nearly deafened her, she was able to push herself upwards enough to capture the slat above her with her free hand.
Finally, able to brace all four limbs, her entire body trembling from reaction, adrenaline, and the effort it took to support herself in that fashion, she started climbing downwards. She heard the creature above her rapidly descending.
It released short shrieks and huffing and snuffling sounds, as if it were excited. Or as if it was sniffing her out, still able to detect her despite the clouds of dust particles that slowly drifted in the still air in the wake of the manway’s collapse.
Though Sarah was climbing down as fast as she could, it felt like it was taking forever. She could hear the creature’s claws digging into the slats right above her head when the slat beneath her foot snapped in two.
She’d been reaching for a lower slat at that moment, which forced the weakened board to take most of her weight. That left her off balance.
She screamed as she fell backwards, closing her eyes to avoid seeing the creature above her being illuminated by her headlamp as she plummeted to her death.
She must have been further down the shaft than she thought because she struck ground with a hard impact that stole her breath, but didn’t shatter her bones. Shivering in reaction, she turned her head to see that she had fallen into the pile of broken wooden platforms and ladders. Just above her, the boards of the collar buckled beneath the pressure of the soft stone they held back.
The shaft was on the brink of collapsing completely at the lowest level, and her fall had not helped. The already strained collar boards had splintered from the passage of the masses of wood that had come down before her. She felt the soft brush of cleaner air from the drift that was hidden behind the crumpled pile of fallen wood.
She had to get out of there quickly. At the same time, any rash movement could slam more debris into those weakened boards and cause a collapse of the shaft.