The Underdwelling by Tim Curran

“What the hell was that?”
    They all looked at him.
    In the glow of the lanterns, his face had taken on the color of yellow cheese. His eyes were wide and white, his lips pulled away from his teeth.
    “I didn’t hear anything,” Jurgens said.
    But nobody was saying it was his imagination. They were all looking around them now as if the unpleasant possibility that they might not be alone down there had just occurred to them, had just settled into them like venom. Flashlight beams scanned about, but no one heard anything but that continual, morose dripping of water. The air smelled like it had been blown from a crypt…yellow bones and flaking shrouds, dust and advanced age.
    “I heard it,” Maki said. “Up there…up on one of those trees. A kinda scratching sound.”

 
     
     
    10
    All flashlights went up.
    Beams arced through the darkness.
    There were lots of the other trees around them, the gymnosperms and cycads standing about like posts. Some were fifty feet in height and the flashlights played about their tops.
    “There’s nothing up there, Maki,” Jurgens said.
    “Wait,” Breed said. “I heard something, too.”
    Then they all did. A sort of knocking sound like a woodpecker working a dead tree. It had that same hollow, continual rapping. It went on for maybe five seconds, stopped, then started again. It was coming from high above, from the apex of one of the trees…but they could see nothing up there.
    “Fuck is that?” Breed said.
    McNair swallowed. “I assumed this cavern was sealed, but something could have gotten in through a crevice. Bats, maybe.”
    “I never heard bats knock like that,” Maki pointed out.
    Boyd stood there, his heart pounding and the cylinder of the flashlight in his hand feeling very greasy like it might slide out of his fist at any moment.
    Jurgens cleared his throat. “Well, let’s get on our way—”
    “Shut up,” Breed said.
    They were hearing more noises now. Not just that knocking, but a scraping sound from high above them like tenpenny nails were being scratched over petrified wood. A flurry of noise that went on for maybe thirty seconds. Then nothing. Nothing at all.
    “There’s something up there,” Breed whispered, like he was afraid that whatever it was might hear him.
    All lights were up in the petrified treetops now. Most were just posts lacking branches. The lights swept over them and there was absolutely nothing up there. Nothing that the lights could find.
    The sounds started again, knocking and scraping, not from one particular tree, but from many as if whatever was up there was leaping from trunk to trunk over their heads. It stopped again and they all stood there, silent and motionless, sensing something but not knowing what it was. Boyd’s flashlight was shaking in his hand, his beam jumping around. He wanted badly to run, to get the hell out of there, before whatever it was showed. Because he had a bad feeling that it was about to. That whatever was up there was about to drop down amongst them in a flurry of scratching limbs.
    What they heard next was a clicking.
    Click, click, click.
    The sound of a deathwatch beetle in the wall of a deserted house or a cicada up in a gum tree. Just that repetitive, chitinous clicking like some insect rubbing its forelegs together or tapping them on its carapace. Whatever it was, it was not a good sound and nobody dared speak. Dared acknowledge what they were hearing.
    It’s like Morse Code, Boyd thought. Like something up there is trying to communicate with us.
    “I’m getting the fuck out of here,” Maki said.
    But he didn’t move. What came next stopped him dead.
    Stopped them all dead and took away any slim hope they had that what was up there was a bat or something ordinary. It started as a low whistling sound and built to a screeching, strident piping that went right up their spines. It sounded almost frenzied, desperate, the shriek of some mountain cat crying out in agony and despair and maybe even