The Book of Doom - By Barry Hutchison Page 0,54

all.

It was coming from downriver.

It was coming, he realised, from the waterfall.

Zac swore loudly. A waterfall. Argus hadn’t mentioned a waterfall, and yet there a waterfall was. Zac could see the black gloop foaming and frothing as it flowed over the edge of what sounded like a very long drop.

Kicking wildly, he struck out for the shore. The sludge and the currents pulled him down like quicksand. The more he thrashed the faster he sank, and so he focused on every movement, concentrated on his technique, ignored the panic that threatened to overwhelm him.

And all the while the things that may have been necks kept coming closer.

Dark grey rocks jutted up from the water around the shore. They broke the flow, making it erratic and difficult to swim through. Still kicking, Zac grabbed for the closest rock. His fingers brushed by it as the current dragged him closer to the waterfall’s edge. The sound was all he could hear now, the dark misty spray almost all he could see.

The creature in the water droned again. It was closer this time, close enough to vibrate his whole skeleton and make his teeth ache. Something brushed against his leg from below and he found the strength to grab for another jagged rock. This time he was able to hold on, and with a final, desperate kick, he dragged himself up on to the shore.

Winded and exhausted, he crawled across a ground of polished black until his arms gave way beneath him. His brain screamed at him to move further from the water. His body said it would take the suggestion on board, but warned the brain not to get its hopes up.

And Zac just lay there, breathing in the ground and listening to the fury of the falling water.

Then, despite his body’s better judgement, Zac stood up. He looked back at the River Styx. Whatever had been trying to come out, had gone back in. Either that, or it had been swept over the falls. Whatever, it didn’t seem to be after him any longer.

The boat bobbed on by, upside down and spinning lazily as the currents caught it and pulled it towards the edge. Zac watched it go past, heard it bump against the rocks, and then it tipped over the waterfall and was gone.

Zac kept staring at the falls, long after the boat had vanished. “Told him he shouldn’t have come,” he whispered, and he put the crack in his voice down to the fact that his body was still shaking with shock.

Cautiously, he approached the boulders over by the waterfall and peered down over the edge. A rainbow of blacks and greys arced out across the thundering torrent as it tumbled several hundred metres down a sheer cliff face to more rocks below.

Argus and Steropes must have known about the falls. They must have. And yet they hadn’t said anything. Zac didn’t think Argus had been sending them to their doom. What would have been the point? If he’d wanted to destroy them, he could’ve done it in person, without sacrificing his boat or the dart gun he’d handed over as they’d said goodbye.

So either they didn’t know about the waterfall, which was unlikely given that Argus was apparently the all-seeing, or – Zac turned away from the falls and gazed across the landscape beside it – they’d travelled too far.

A path of polished onyx led from the shore towards a towering set of wooden doors. A signpost stood just off the path, its metal surface pitted with rust and stained with spots of dried blood.

Words were written on the sign in jagged black print. Zac wiped the last of the gunge from his eyes and read the text:

WELCOME TO HELL

And below that, in smaller writing:

TRESPASSERS WILL BE INCINERATED

Zac stared at the sign. He was staring so intently at it that he almost cried out in shock when something large and lumpy splattered against it at tremendous speed. Despite the force of the impact, the sign remained undamaged and intact, which was a lot more than could be said for the thing that had hit it.

The flabby body burst like a bag full of warm custard, spraying yellowish-green gunge in all directions. Attached to the body were eight or nine long appendages, which may have been tentacles and may have been necks. Whatever they were, they all stopped moving as everything that had been inside the beast exploded out through the nearest available exit.

From the shore behind him, Zac