Night Chill by Gunhus Jeff

Author:Gunhus, Jeff [Gunhus, Jeff]
Language: en-us
Format: mobi, epub
Publisher: Seven Guns Press
Published: 2013-05-11T16:00:00+00:00

FIFTY-THREE

Narrow rock pillars formed the walls of the cage. They were spaced at irregular intervals, though none of the spaces between the bars was large enough to push more than a fist through. The pillars extended over fifteen feet into the air where thick rope weaved in and out between the bars, binding them together. The rope was now broken and frayed, in some places hanging limply in dried tangles.

Jack walked around the entire cage, exploring it from every angle. He felt that something was missing but he couldn’t place it. Then it occurred to him. There was no door. No opening of any kind. Whoever was put in this cage was meant to stay in it for a long, long time. Given the contents of the cage, it seemed the presumed sentence was forever.

There was a pile of bones in one corner, heaped up like the discard pile at a rib house. Balanced on top of this pile was a skull, clearly human, the black holes of its eyes staring at them, intact teeth set in a disturbing grin.

It was confusing at first, there were so many bones, but Jack’s eyes slowly picked out a pattern. It wasn’t just a random pile. There was a story in front of him. One large skeleton sat in the corner, its legs straight out, back upright against the stone bars. Gathered on top of it Jack counted four or five smaller bodies. Children. Small skeletons of children. Some of them babies.

“Oh my God. They were just kids.” He moved closer. “The adult. It’s a woman, right? Their mother?” Jack asked.

“I assume she’s their mother. All the adults here are female.” Lonetree looked around the cave. “Every single one of them.”

Jack could imagine their deaths. The mother, imprisoned, maybe abandoned in this dark underground pit, gathering her children to her as they died one by one. Or did the mother die first? Her children climbing on her. Crying. Trying to shake her awake as they lost energy and finally their will to live. Either way, it was horrible, too horrible.

Jack jumped, the image of the deaths vaporizing as Lonetree tapped him on the shoulder. He pointed to an arm of one of the small skeletons, the child buried beneath the others, maybe the first to die. Jack saw gouges in the bones but he didn’t understand what it meant. “What is it?”

“Bite marks. By the end, they were eating the dead to stay alive.”

Jack saw that he was right. The marks were all over the bones. Judging how small the skeletons were, it could only have been caused by the adult.

He looked back into the vacant eyes of the skull. Her head was cocked at an angle toward him and she stared him down, as if daring him to judge. A chill passed through him, a cold as the thought filtering through his consciousness; Did you wait until they were dead? Did you at least wait for that?

“Let’s keep going,” Lonetree said.

Jack was thankful to leave the cage and its tragic occupants behind.

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