The Labyrinth,
Sarisariñama Tepui,
Venezuela
BENJAMIN King crashed through the ancient wall, dust pluming around him. His head smashed the ground, his yellow hard hat taking the brunt of the impact, even as he rolled down the steep incline, leaving it behind. Jagged stone blocks tumbled after him, clattering down the slope to slam into his ribcage.
"Ben!" Sid screamed.
"Get back!" Nadia shouted as the destruction King had wrought continued.
Unlike the refined engineering precision of the rest of the subterranean tunnels, the wall that the three archaeologists had stumbled upon seemed crude, little more than a barrier of rocks and stones pasted together with blobs of grey mortar.
Karen's team had investigated this part of the Labyrinth before her medical evacuation two days ago. They had determined the poorly constructed barrier to be nothing more than another dead-end.
The jig-saw puzzle walls of the rest of the tunnel system, reminiscent of the Incan Polygonal Masonry found throughout the distant Andes, were polished smooth. The blocks sat so snuggly together that few roots from Sarisariñama's jungle-choked summit had broken through. Indeed, Andean examples of the construction technique were cut so precisely that they formed structures strong enough to withstand earthquakes that would topple modern buildings.
Yet, the blocks the three archaeologists had found here were rough. Their unfinished surfaces and ill-fitting shapes allowed thick roots to snake down, cocooning the stone face in a spiderweb-like crust of vegetation.
"It's a partition," King had realised, pushing against the structure, feeling the blocks shift under his weight, unsupported on the far side. "Added after the tunnels' original construction."
That was the moment the wall had given out. Unable to regain his footing, he had smashed through it, triggering a domino effect as block after block tumbled and fell.
Now, all King could do was huddle into the foetal position and clamp his eyes shut until the rumble of falling rock eased.
"Ben?" Sid called again.
"I'm okay," he coughed, uncertain he was telling the truth. He opened an eye, squinting into the darkness of the Labyrinth, his breath pluming around him in rapid puffs of vapour.
The term 'Labyrinth' was an unofficial designation for the Sarisariñama Ruins. It was a sprawling array of tunnels twisting and undulating through the table mountain, often running into dead-ends, sometimes looping around to re-join other branches.
The passageways went nowhere. They achieved nothing beyond channelling rainwater runoff from the surface. But even that seemed to have no place to go, merely sluicing around the bends like some Indiana Jones-themed waterpark.
King had suggested that the ancient facility was a water management system. However, Professor McKinney and her UNESCO funders were uncomfortable with that notion. It was embarrassing to admit they had mounted a multi-million-dollar, high-profile, public-facing expedition to investigate what amounted to an ancient sewer.
Not that the foul-tempered Scottish Lara Croft-wannabe ever entertains my theories anyway, King thought.
She could have utilised the expertise of one of the co-developers of the Universal Motif Language to interpret the single piece of epigraphic evidence found at Sarisariñama. Instead, she had him wandering the corridors, recording measurements and scribbling down observations that any first-year undergrad student could have completed.
"Ben?" Sid called, her torch beam zipping around the corridor he had fallen into, struggling to find him. "Where are you?"
"Here," he said, wincing as he scrambled upright. Chunks of ancient masonry rolled off him, but he was unharmed other than a few bruises.
"I can't see you."
"I'm here," he shouted, coughing to clear his throat. He couldn't see his hard hat or its attached torch. He guessed it lay buried under the rubble.
"This is precisely why it is a requirement for all expedition personnel to wear hi-vis jackets while in the tunnels," Nadia's clipped, Russian accent highlighted.
King rolled his eyes just as Sid's torch beam locked onto them, blinding him. "Whoa," he snapped, shielding his face.
"Sorry." The light shifted away-
"Shit!" King yelped, bounding to his feet and back-peddling away, any ache and pain forgotten in his terror.
As his girlfriend's torch beam had swung away from him for a fraction of a second, he saw a face glaring at him from the darkness.
The ghost stories he had scoffed at exploded in the front of his mind.
Other expedition members reported seeing movement in the empty tunnels. They had heard strange sounds, like the rasping breath of a dying man, whispering from the darkness. Tools and equipment had vanished, only to be found far from where they had been used last.
"I don't believe in ghost stories," he had scoffed at each report. He put the paranormal scenarios down to the overactive imagination of men and women working underground for hours.
But, as a cold hand clutched his heart, he knew there was no explanation for what he had seen.
It could not be a fellow teammate. The wall he had accidentally demolished was the western-most point of the Labyrinth yet investigated, the other teams far away. Nor was what he saw a mere shadow; the vision was etched in his minds-eye, a vivid, white face glaring at him, teeth bared as though a rabid animal, ready to strike.
I don't believe in ghost stories!
"Ben?" Sid called from the other side of the wall, her torch beam whipping around, disorienting him.
He couldn't have rolled further than two metres from the partition, yet it felt like an acre, the darkness pressing onto him. He kept his eyes fixed on the point where he had seen the apparition, but it felt as though the monster was all around him, as though a thousand pairs of invisible eyes were watching him.
"Ben, what's happening?" Nadia demanded, pushing past Sid to clamber over the demolished wall.
"No!" King barked. "Get back, get back!"
Something brushed his shoulder, and he spun around.
Shit!
Another face was there, inches from his, dancing in the panicked torch beams of his companions, leering at him with malevolence.
"There's something in here!" he shouted, pulling himself free of his captor. He scrambled towards the wall like a swimmer thrashing for the shore, knowing a shark hunted from below.
An explosion of light overloaded his retinas, outlining the lithe silhouette of the Russian woman. Nadia stood on top of the half-demolished wall. She cracked a light stick with a single smack against her thigh, the chemicals mixing to illuminate their surroundings for the first time in thousands of years.
She threw it over King's head, his eyes drawn behind it as it revealed his monstrous hunters in all their horrific glory.
His step faltered; he sagged to the ground in front of the wall. The overdose of adrenaline made his heart jackhammer against his ribcage. A wave of embarrassment washed over him, amplified by the patronising arch of Nadia's right eyebrow and the merest hint of a grin on her usually stoic face.
