She Walks in Shadows(50)

“Come out, come out, wherever you are!” I called out, lashing out with the whip again.

“Sam!” Laurie squealed, “Don’t provoke —”

The track turned sharply to the left and widened suddenly into a circular cul-de-sac. Massive sandstone walls reared up about thirty metres, dotted with hundreds of holes. The caves ....

The place reminded me of a beehive, a human beehive. People sat at the lip of those caves in complete silence, staring down at us with a kind of hungry patience. Hundreds of them. They all wore identical white robes. While most of them had normal features, some had the flattened skull and protruding forehead of the one I’d disturbed behind the boulder. There was something eerie about the unnatural passivity of these people, the feverish tension hidden behind unblinking eyes.

“Well, will you look at that,” Laurie breathed. “It’s like an ... like an arena. An arena of bones. And up there are the box seats.”

I sucked in a breath. Shade was fighting the reins like he wanted to bolt. I didn’t blame him. The ground was littered with sun-bleached bones, thousands of them. Most were unrecognizable, but I could make out skulls, goat mainly, but there was a fair number of human skulls, too. Shade balked as the bones crunched under his hooves and only the soothing murmur of my voice kept him moving.

“Mum!”

I hadn’t noticed the beat-up old truck parked in the shade cast by the walls. Hadn’t noticed it until Lula’s voice swung my glance that way. There she stood, dressed in the white robes, just like all the others. She was holding a rope tied around the neck of the scrawniest goat I’d ever seen, trying to pull it out the back of the truck.

“Hi, kiddo!” I called out to her, as if I’d just seen her on a street in Darwin. “How’s things? Thought I’d come and check out the stock. Buy a goat or two, maybe.”

She laughed at that, a horrible, shrill sound.

Laurie was kicking Blimp, trying to get the horse closer to follow Shade. But Blimp wasn’t planning on moving, not unless it was in reverse.

“You okay, Lula?” he said. “We’ve come to get you, if you want. No need to stay here with these people. Who’s in charge here, anyway? Where’s the Great Mother ...?”

Laurie was babbling and I wished he’d just shut up. Bad move, bringing him with me. You could feel the panic coming off him in waves. I knew that whatever lived in this place would feed off that.

“The Aboriginals call these caves the Sick Place for a reason, Lula!” Laurie was shouting across the cul-de-sac. “There’s radiation in those caves and it can hurt you bad. You need to come back with us before you get sick.”

Lula shook her head as if she didn’t want to hear what he was saying and tugged again on the rope. “I got a job to do here,” she threw back at him. “The Great Mother loves me. She gave me a job. I’m the Mother’s goat girl. Somebody’s got to look after the goats.” Then she gulped and made a funny noise. I wasn’t sure if she was laughing or crying.

“Well, the Great Mother can get herself another goat girl.” I dug my heels into Shade’s flanks, forcing him towards Lula. He was a big, strong animal and could carry the two of us back to Noonamah easily. But he trembled, fighting the reins.

As if Shade’s terror was some sort of trigger, the people in the caves started chanting. A hundred booming voices, bouncing around that cul-de-sac until you thought you’d go crazy at the sound. “I?! Shub-Niggurath, I?! Shub-Niggurath, I?! Shub-Niggurath.”

Lula had started to cry. It couldn’t hear it over the chanting, but I saw her contorted face, the uncontrolled shaking of her body.

I kicked Shade harder than I’d ever kicked him, or any other horse, and he leapt forward as if wasp-stung. In seconds, we were at the truck. I bent and grabbed Lula by the arm, dragging her across the saddle like she was a calf.

“Shub-Niggurath is my mother!” Lula was sobbing hysterically now. ”She won’t let me go. Not unless you pay the price. She won’t let me go. You’re a bad mother. And Shub-Niggurath won’t give me back, not unless you pay. She’s good to me. She’s a good mother and I’m her goat girl.”

“Bullshit,” I snarled, yanking on the reins and turning Shade towards the exit of the cul-de-sac.

That’s when I saw it. I guess it was human. Everyone has heard of people being born with two heads, so why not this? Radiation poisoning, I kept telling myself. That’s all it is. A mutation caused by the uranium. The cult had lived here for decades, bred here for decades. Who knew what kind of monster could come from that?

“I?! Shub-Niggurath! I?! Shub-Niggurath!” There was a sound of rapture in the chanting now. As if a signal had been given, the cultists began to sway from side to side in their beehive caves.

The creature they called Shub-Niggurath was standing over Laurie, who lay sprawled in the dirt like a broken doll. Unconscious or dead, I wasn’t sure. He wasn’t moving, though, and the angle of his neck made me feel sick. I’d seen rider’s heads twisted like that more than once in rodeo arenas.

Shub-Niggurath’s left arm was curled around Blimp’s neck, crushing it. That’s how big it was. Freakish big and freakish strong. Blimp’s struggles were about as useful as a kitten’s.

People are born with two heads. Extra arms and legs. So, why not this? Sure! my mind screamed. Anything is possible.