Cauldwell's office was a cramped and tiny room, stacked with yellowing papers, forgotten and half-read books, various brick-a-brack. The filing cabinets in the southwest corner seemed caught in the act of disgorging their contents like some partially-digested dinner, the result of this act lying in loose and uncategorized piles on the floor in front of them. An ashtray perched precariously atop the leftmost cabinet, a relic from a time when they had occasionally invited clients to the office, its contents like some grim museum of defunct and abandoned cigarette brands. Cauldwell thought about removing it at times, as he thought about cleaning, or organizing, or in any way altering this office which seemed to have grown up organically around him and his partner. These thoughts were fleeting, as tenuous and intangible as dreams in the night, and soon after they flashed their way across his mind they would be gone, and he would turn back to the work at hand, and not consider the office again for some great span of time.
He shared the room with Worthy, whose first name was Clarence, though it had been so long since Cauldwell had last used it that he sometimes struggled to pull it from the depths of his memory. The man was his partner, and they worked well together, but they were not friends; their substantial differences made friendship impossible. Cauldwell was tall and thickly built, with dark hair and strong, square features. Worthy's short height and slightness of build was belied by his heavy-jowled, porcine face, from which his sunken and watery blue eyes greedily peered. Cauldwell was well-groomed, neatly dressed, fresh of breath and agreeably scented. Worthy was slobbish and unkempt, sometimes went without bathing, and whether by nature or by choice of food was often responsible for mephitic emissions of such enormous strength that anyone not long-used to them would have been forced simply to cry out and flee.
They had been in business together for twenty-three years, since a chance meeting at University had brought Cauldwell's business sense together with Worthy's inheritance, and though their tiny, rented office gave no indication of it, they had been tremendously successful in that time. Neither man had married; neither man lived ostentatiously; neither man made a show of his money. Their business was that of private inquiry; they did not track the movement of men, but the movement of men's assets. It was not their concern. Their clients gave them names; Cauldwell and Worthy gave their clients bank balances, gambling records, receipts from hotels, stocks and bonds ... they were experts at uncovering things perhaps best left covered. Powerful men paid them great sums for their efforts. Cauldwell and Worthy did not ask what their clients did with the information they uncovered, thought neither man felt any pang of guilt at the idea that this information might be used unscrupulously.
Some might have considered it a miracle that it was not their business which proved their undoing. Some would have thought that one powerful man or another would have decided to remove Cauldwell and Worthy from the world and thus eliminate any future trouble this might bring him. Some would have expected this, would have called it karma, or divine intervention, had it happened. It did not. The thing which eventually killed Worthy and drove Cauldwell from their long-inhabited office lived below them, in the caves below the basement.
* * *
The caves were myriad, twisting their way through the strata of rock and earth upon which the building had been built, and Cauldwell had known about them for sixteen years. He had stumbled upon their entrance late one evening, while working late, when a need for some stored documents (the filing cabinets having long-since been filled) had sent him to the basement. There in a far, dim corner he had chanced upon a door of heavy oak slats, barred and locked and half-buried with boxes. This, now, was something curious, for as best Cauldwell could tell, he was facing the south wall of the building, and there were no other substructures in that direction, the above-ground landscape being nothing more than a barren and vacant lot of some size. The lock, and antique contraption vastly older than the building around him, had nearly succumbed to rust and rot, and it was no great thing for Cauldwell, using a steel ruler as a lever, to break it and raise the wooden bar.
Inside there was only rough-hewn rock leading into darkness, the smell of mold and wet earth, the faraway echo of some dripping liquid. The air in the tunnel was fetid but not noxious, and as Cauldwell had stood there peering into darkness it seemed to him as if he felt some sense of longing, not within himself but from some foreign entity there in the depths. A slithering noise? He had not been able to be sure then, and time had dimmed the memory and made it all the more questionable. Had something moved there in the dark, had it sensed him or smelled him or heard his slow and steady breaths?
Cauldwell had shut the door with unsteady hands, barring it again -- though without the capacity to lock it -- and shoving yet more old and forgotten boxes in front of it. He had not returned to the spot since, and in the rare moments when he thought about the experience at all, it was with distaste. Something about the caves had inspired revulsion and a kind of languid fear within him that he had never felt, before or since. Cauldwell would have been happy to let the caves go on existing without ever troubling with them again, and indeed this was the case for the better part of two decades more, before one evening just as he was pouring his nightly glass of scotch, Worthy returned to the office from some errand and asked him "Have you seen them? Have you seen the caves?"
* * *
Cauldwell looked up at Worthy, surveying the man for a moment. His partner looked even more ragged than usual; sweat-stains were forming below his arms and he seemed winded, as if he had run all the way from the basement to their eighth-floor office, instead of using the elevator like a sensible man. Worthy's pale blue eyes were wide, or as wide as they could be, couched between his sagging brow and doughy cheeks. A fine web of broken veins had bloomed on those aging cheeks, though Cauldwell could not remember when first they had started to appear, and he wondered if Worthy's nightly scotch had not become two. Or three.
"I've seen them," he told his partner. "Once. Stumbled upon them one evening, took a look, decided it was better not to look again."
He stressed this last, hoping it would douse the wild light in the man's eyes, but it did no such thing. Worthy's hands worked at his sides for a moment, as if trying to grasp something with no form - this was a common gesture: it meant that Worthy was working out what to say next. Cauldwell waited, patient, already knowing what was to come.
"They're older than the building," Worthy said finally.
"So are a lot of things." Cauldwell's tone was nonchalant, but he felt anything but. He knew where this was leading, and though his brain was desperately searching for an exit, he was not sure one could be found in time. He could simply say no, when the question came, but he wouldn't. If he resisted, Worthy would work at him, worrying away like a dog working a bone until in frustrated, resigned defeat Cauldwell agreed to accompany him. It would be better simply to get on with it.
"There might be something there," Worthy said, and his voice had a high, squealing note to it that Cauldwell found quite grating. "Something old. Something valuable!"
"Or there might be nothing," Cauldwell reminded him.
"Could be. Worth a look, old man. Wouldn't you say?"
Cauldwell, who hated it when Worthy called him 'old man,' said nothing.
"Will you come?" Worthy asked at last.
Cauldwell sat back in his chair with his scotch, an absolutely exquisite 24-year bottle, and sipped at it. He looked at Worthy, and wondered how it was that he had come to spend nearly a quarter of a century in a room with this man. He thought about time, and about who or what must have built those caves.
They were most certainly ancient, and clearly not built by men. There were no stairs, no sconces or torch holders, no indication of anything human. There was only the rock, and the earth, and the wet. Cauldwell thought about shuffling along through the tunnel, a lantern in one hand, the other stretched out before him to provide some sort of protection should he lose his footing. He thought of the feeling of cold, damp roots touching his neck from where they hung above him, thought of the scurrying, sightless beetles that no doubt infested the cracks and crevasses between earth and rock, trundling along their unlit paths, ever on their unknowable errands.
He thought of the slither, and the sense of longing, and wondered if he followed both what unspeakable things he might eventually come to, lying there in the dark. He thought of all these things and still he knew, before he again raised the glass to his lips, what his answer would be.
Cauldwell drained the rest of his scotch in one large, burning gulp. He winced, got to his feet, and nodded to Worthy, who said nothing, but only nodded in return.
* * *
After only a few twists and angles, it became painfully obvious to Cauldwell that Worthy would not be able to find his way back to the surface. The man had no sense for direction, and more than once Cauldwell had to stop him from taking a turn which would likely lead them back upward, toward the door from which they had entered the cave. Nonetheless, Cauldwell let Worthy lead the way, content to use the smaller man as a sort of guide dog and thus hopefully avoiding any sudden drops, twisted ankles, or other undesirable occurrences. There was no malicious intent in this, only prudence of a type so ingrained in Cauldwell that it would never have occurred to him that he was doing it. It was a trait which eventually saved his life.
At length there came again the slither, just as Cauldwell had heard it before, though much closer this time. Wright stopped in front of him, pausing alert like a dog which has scented something but is yet unsure if pursuit is warranted. Cauldwell felt the anxiety and dread, which had been weighing upon him since he had acquiesced to Wright's exploratory desire, leap suddenly to the forefront of his mind, like living things springing forth to sink their teeth into his body. There could be no mistake this time; he was not standing at the mouth of the caverns, but was rather deep inside them, and something was there with them, something which moved. Something large.
"This was a mistake," he heard a voice say, and realized it was his own, speaking out as if beyond his control. "Wright, we must go back."
Wright opened his mouth, but whether to argue or acquiesce, Cauldwell never knew, for at that moment the thing in the caves took him. Cauldwell could not say what it was, exactly, though the images of that moment were forever after imprinted on his brain, to be called up, it seemed, whenever he closed his eyes. Something in the darkness just beyond the reach of their lantern moved, something of such ponderous bulk that its very existence seemed an impossibility. Cauldwell had the impression of some great and cavernous maw opening somewhere in the dark, and there was a low groaning noise of such depth and volume that it was more felt than heard. With a sound like thick, wet ropes lashing outward, sinuous grey tentacles emerged from the tenebrous depths of the cavern before them, affixing themselves to Wright before he had a chance to react.
Cauldwell stood rooted, his legs like concrete, unable to move, unable even to react at any base level. His jaw hung wide, his eyes straining as if they meant to leap from their very sockets. Whatever words Wright had been preparing for him turned into a muffled shriek of abject horror as one of the veined, mucous-covered phalange wrapped around his head. Another slid its way in tight coils around his waist, flexing horribly, and even in those few split seconds Cauldwell saw Wright's shirt tear, saw the flesh of the man's abdomen swell up and turn purple-black with the pressure. In another few moments, surely, Wright would simply burst, crushed by this thing in the depths like a man might crush a tomato in his hand.
Before this could happen - and if Cauldwell had anything left for which to be thankful, this perhaps was it - the tentacles snapped in unison and Wright was jerked, flailing and still screaming his muffled screams, into the darkness. In moments, the thing in the tunnels began the loud, noisome process of eating Wright. Cauldwell could hear the man's bones snapping like kindling wood, his flesh being yanked and torn and sucked apart, the tentacles slapping greedily at his corpse. There was a smell in the air like electric copper and a lower, deeper reek that could only have been the thing that had taken Wright. Cauldwell felt suddenly and with perfect clarity that it was looking at him, this thing, watching him with innumerable, covetous eyes, and it was this more than anything that finally allowed him to regain control of his limbs.
Cauldwell turned and fled blindly into the caves, and in only moments the thing that lived within them followed.
* * *
Left, first, then right. Cauldwell was moving by instinct, his innate sense of direction leading him not back along the exact path they had come, but simply in a way his body told him must be taking him up, and out. His mind, mostly occupied with the great and terrible thing giving chase behind him, still managed to clamor that this was foolish, that he would only lead himself deeper into the caverns, perhaps even directly into the searching tentacles of the beast itself. Cauldwell tried to ignore it. If he spent time thinking about his route, he would freeze, would be simply overwhelmed by the horror and sheer madness of what he was facing. He would slow, perhaps even stop, lost and confused and afraid, and the creature would be upon him.
Another of those low, hungry mewling noises rose up from behind him, as if to confirm this belief, and Cauldwell turned left, then left again, then moved straight for some time, up a long but slow incline. He still gripped his lantern, gripped it so tightly that the outline of the handle would be visible, bruised into the flesh of his palm, for several days. He was no longer concerned with losing his footing, no longer attentive to the roots and the beetles, the damp and the dirt. He was concerned only with moving forward, with staying out of reach of those tentacles which he could hear shuffling and slapping and grasping behind him. The movement of the great beast, that slithering noise, was now a constant rumble, low and wet, like the passage of some clogged and clotted fluid over mildewed stone. Cauldwell became aware that he was exhaling in great, high-pitched moans, long and ragged, in between his gasps for air.
The caves twisted again and Cauldwell felt, for the first time, a hint of hope. The beast was no further behind, but neither had it closed the distance, and he was sure that the air here was less fetid than that which he had been breathing. The exit was close, and this was truly a wonderful thing, because he had nearly reached the limits of is physical strength, to say nothing of his mental fortitude. Cauldwell wondered in a dim, hysterical sort of way if he would ever sleep again. Wouldn't it be funny, he thought, if I made my way into the basement, slammed the door behind me, and promptly went stark raving mad?
Funny, perhaps, but this seemed a very real possibility to him and so Cauldwell chose not to dwell on it. Instead he ran, making another right, then a left, and now there was no question: the tunnel was thinning, heading upward, leading to the exit. From behind him, the beast gave forth a tremendous wail, plainly furious at being denied. Cauldwell felt his heart leap; the tunnel was too small now for so great a creature! It would have no choice but to abandon the chase. It would ...
But then the tentacles came, not shuffling now but flying forward in great leaps, making noises like amplified whip cracks, slinging their damp and sticky filth forward in great gouts. It fell around Cauldwell, spattering, and he wondered briefly how long these tentacles might be, before redoubling his efforts. Pain lanced through his side as he began to cramp, but the thought of what it would be like to feel those grim pseudopods wrap around his waist as they had Wrights, and he ran, and ran, and ran. Behind him, the tentacles gained, but now he could see light ahead of him. The door. The entrance to the basement beckoned, more comforting a vision than any lover, its glow extending toward him like welcoming arms.
In the end, the thing took only his shoe from him, as he dove forward into the basement, skinning his hands and tearing the cloth at his knees apart on the concrete floor. One of the tentacles made a last, desperate grab and Cauldwell felt the painful wrenching as it stripped the brown leather from his foot, but when he turned to look, the tentacles had receded. Now came only a long, hateful wailing noise that seemed as if it would shake the very earth apart. Cauldwell lay on the cold concrete floor, hands on his ears, until this too passed. At length he heard, or thought he could hear, the thing moving its way slowly back down, into the mazelike depths from which it had come.
At length, Cauldwell stood, wincing. It seemed as if every part of his body had been exercised nearly to the point of destruction. He found it surprisingly easy to move toward the door, to shut it carefully and bar it. He thought of Wright, who had died in a most horrible manner, down in the darkness, keeping the beast busy just long enough for Cauldwell to regain control and take flight. Cauldwell wondered if he should feel guilt, that it had been his partner and not him, but he felt only relief and a cool, detached sympathy for Wright.
He went upstairs to his office, and put on his hat and overcoat. He looked at the mirror and saw there a palid, dirt-streaked man with torn knees and a missing shoe. This sight was not interesting to him, so he moved on toward the door, shut off the light, stood for a moment in the glow from the hallway and then turned his back forever on the office he had shared with Wright.
As he left the building he thought he heard, just one last time, below him in the dark, something slither.
* * *
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