The Best Horror of the Year. Volume 4

Hope flared briefly, but not for long; it was the same story as before.

“Okay,” I said. “So we can’t phone a friend. Let’s think about this then. What do we know about it?”

“It lives under the rocks,” Diane said. “Moves under them.”

“Likes to stay under them, too,” I said. “It was right up against us before. That far from us. It could’ve attacked us easily just by coming up out from under, but it didn’t. It’d rather play it safe and do the whole waiting game thing.”

“So maybe it’s weak, if we can get it out of the rocks. Vulnerable.” Diane took off her glasses, rubbed her large eyes. “Maybe it’s blind. It seems to hunt by sound, vibration.”

“A mimic. That’s something else. It’s a mimic, like a parrot.”

“Only faster,” she said. “It mimicked you straight away, after hearing you once.”

“Got a good memory for voices, too,” I whispered back. “Some of those voices…”

“Yes, I think so too. And that roar it made. How long’s it been since there was anything roaming wild in this country, could make a noise like that?”

“Maybe a bear,” I offered, “or one of the big sabre-toothed cats.”

Diane looked down at the scree. “Glacial till,” she said.

“What?”

“Sorry. The stones here. It’s what’s called glacial till — earth that’s been compressed into rock by the pressure of the glaciers coming through here.” She looked up and down the ravine.

“So?”

The look she gave me was equal parts hurt and anger. “So… nothing much, I suppose.”

Wind blew.

“I’m sorry.”

She shrugged. “S’okay.”

“No. Really.”

She gave me a smile, at least, that time. Then frowned, looked up at the way we’d come in — had it only been in the last hour? “Look at that. You can see it now.”

“See what?”

She pointed. “This is a moraine.”

“A what?”

“Moraine. It’s the debris — till and crushed rock — a glacier leaves behind when it melts. All this would’ve been crushed up against the mountain-sides for god knows how long…”

I remembered Diane telling me about the last Ice Age, how there’d have been two miles of ice above the cities we’d grown up in. How far down would all this have been? And would—could—anything have lived in it?

I was willing to bet any of our colleagues in the Biology Department would have snorted at the idea. But even so… life is very tenacious, isn’t it? It can cling on in places you’d never expect it to.

Maybe some creatures had survived down here in the Ice Age, crawling and slithering between the gaps in the crushed rock. And in every food chain, something’s at the top — something that hunted blindly by vibration and lured by imitation. Something that had survived the glaciers’ melting, even prospered from it, growing bigger and fatter on bigger, fatter prey.

The lost lamb had saved us by catching its attention. Without that, we’d have had no warning and would’ve followed that voice — no doubt belonging to some other, long-dead victim — into the heart of the killing ground.

Click click click, went the rocks in the distance, as the creature shifted and then grew still.

And Diane leant close to me, and breathed in my ear: “We’re going to have to make a move.”

To our left was the way we’d come, the scree-thick path sloping up before blending with the moraine. Twenty yards. It might as well have been ten miles.

The base of the peak was at our backs. It wasn’t sheer, not quite, but it may as well have been. The only handholds were the occasional rock or root; even if the fall didn’t kill you, you’d be too stunned or injured to stand a chance. The base of the opposite peak — even if we could have got past the creature — was no better.

To our right, the main body of the ravine led on, thick with rubble, before vanishing into the mist. Running along that would be nothing short of suicide, but there was still the gully we’d seen before. From what I could see the floor of it was thickly littered with rubble, but it definitely angled upwards, hopefully towards higher ground of solid earth and grass, where the thing from the moraine couldn’t follow. Better still, there was that second boulder at the gully mouth, as big and solidly rooted-looking as this one, if not bigger. If we could make it that far — and we might, with a little luck — we had a chance to get out through the gully.

I looked at the boulder and back to Diane. She was still studying it. “What do you reckon?” I breathed.

Click click click, came softly, faintly, gently in answer.

Diane glanced sideways. “The bastard thing’s fast,” she whispered back. “It’ll be a close thing.”

“We could distract it,” I suggested. “Make a noise to draw it off.”

“Like what?”

I nodded at the rocks at the base of the boulder. “Pick a spot and lob a few of them at it. Hopefully it’ll think it’s another square meal.”

She looked dubious. “S’pose it’s better than nothing.”

“If you’ve got any better ideas.”

She looked hurt rather than annoyed. “Hey…”

“I’m sorry.” I was, too. I touched her arm. “We’ve just got to make that boulder.”

“And what then?”

“We’ll think of something. We always do.”

She forced a smile.