As Elara and I settle into the bed, Elara gives me a hug as she snuggles in.

  “Is it my imagination,” she asks me, “or do fun and interesting things seem to happen around you?”

  I ponder that for a moment. “In what way?”

  “Well, I travelled for over three weeks from the Homewood, across the High Hills before I was caught by those goblins,” a frown crosses her brow. “Never came across anything other than normal plants and animals until then and your rescue.”

  “Maybe,” I suggest, “it’s just we are getting into more travelled areas now so we find more interesting things.”

  “Perhaps,” she replies with a little shrug, “but it does make it fun to travel with you. Never knowing what may come next.”

  With that, she gives a little shimmy to get comfortable and soon her gentle snores help me to also drift off.

  I am in a tunnel, yet I’m not. You know those times when you’re so aware that you’re in a dream.

  But it’s too real to be a dream.

  Isn’t it?

  ‘Okay, Del, are you asleep or awake?’ I’m feeling cross right now.

  ‘How the fuck am I supposed to know? This whole damn thing is pretty freaky.’

  I hate talking to myself, so why the hell do I do it?

  ‘Bad habits are the hardest to break.’ I mean, obvious really.

  ‘So you are saying I am a bad habit?’

  And none of this answers if this bloody tunnel is real. Or if the damned BB has shoved me somewhere, or if it’s just my warped imagination playing tricks again.

  ‘Well, I hope it’s a damn dream.’

  I hear a skittering sound ahead, out of sight but getting closer. Rather than take a chance,

  I run.

  My feet pound against the uneven ground, the sound echoing through the tunnels. The air feels thick, each breath catching in my throat, as if the walls themselves are alive, pressing in closer with every step.

  The light—what little there is—seems to flicker, casting long, distorted shadows that twist and writhe along the jagged walls. My heart races, hammering against my ribs, the sound almost drowning out the skittering behind me. Almost.

  It’s there, always there. A faint clicking, then a scrape—closer now, echoing from every direction. The tunnels stretch endlessly, branching off into countless paths, each one darker and more oppressive than the last. I don’t know where I’m going. I don’t care. I just know I can’t stop.

  My foot catches on a loose stone, and I stumble, crashing against the cold, damp wall. The scent of earth and something faintly metallic—blood?—fills my nose as I push off and keep moving. Behind me, the sound changes, a new rhythm. A chittering, like teeth grinding together, and something wet—a dragging, slithering noise that makes my skin crawl.

  I turn a corner, then another. Every path looks the same. The walls glisten as if sweating, the ceiling hanging low enough that I have to duck. The skittering sound is closer now, the scrape of claws or talons—or something worse—rising above the pounding in my chest.

  I don’t dare look back. I don’t want to see it.

  The tunnel narrows, forcing me to squeeze through a gap barely wide enough for my shoulders. My hand brushes against something slick and cold. My stomach lurches, and I bite back a cry. It’s not stone. It can’t be stone.

  The sound stops.

  I freeze, chest heaving, ears straining. The silence is deafening, as if the world itself is holding its breath.

  Then it comes. A single, sharp click.

  Right behind me.

  I bolt forward, the walls closing in, my breath ragged and tearing at my throat. The path dips suddenly, and I skid, barely catching myself before tumbling into the darkness. I don’t know how much farther I can run.

  The tunnels stretch on, unending. The thing behind me doesn’t tire. Doesn’t falter.

  And I know—deep down, with a bone-deep certainty—I’ll never find the way.

  I slip forwards, a slope, I can’t stop.

  Barrelling forwards, I land in a tangled mess, my head pressed into something hot and soft.

  Something brushes against my face, and I jerk upwards but am restrained.

  “Del, hush Del,” her voice is gentle, tender, calming.

  I take a shuddering breath and open my eyes. My hair feels slick with sweat and my heart clamours in my chest. But all I see is her delicate eyes, looking down on me with concern and compassion. Her hand gently strokes my face as she sits in the bed, my head in her lap.

  I kick my legs, trying to free them from the tangle of blankets knotted around them.

  “Damn, Elara. That was one bitch of a bad dream.”

  “Do you want to talk about it?” she asks.

  I consider the panic and the… Even as I try to recall the details, they slip away. All I am left with is the feeling of terror and darkness.

  “It’s gone,” I tell her, frustrated that something so vivid can just vanish. “I can’t recall any of the details, just it was dark, the rest—nothing.”

  Finally free of the covers, I straighten the bed and lie back down. There is nothing I can do about it now.

  “We still have a way to go before morning, let’s try to get back to sleep,” I suggest and pull her in close beside me.

  A crow from a cockerel wakes me as dawn is starting to light the sky.

  Stolen from its original source, this story is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

  Memories of the night before are vague, leaving me with a bit of a headache. I know it was a rough night, but nothing else.

  ‘Damn dreams!’

  Elara mumbles a bit as she slowly rouses from her slumber. Sleepy eyes look at me.

  She mumbles some more unintelligible sounds, then, pulling me into a deeper cuddle, slurs out, “not yet,” and goes back to sleep.

  ‘Well, I guess it is a bit early.’ I don’t really fight the idea.

  With a thump, a small ginger ball of fur lands on the bed and brings her face, fur damp with morning dew, up to nuzzle mine.

  ‘Gee thanks, Misty,’ I tell her grouchily. ‘Just what I always love in the morning is a face full of wet cat.’

  ‘Some of us have spent the night hunting, not sleeping.’ She curls up next to my neck and commences her morning ablutions.

  ‘And did your tireless efforts achieve anything?’ I ask her.

  ‘Of course.’

  ‘I don’t suppose, oh mighty feline,’ I request in a mocking tone, ‘you would care to elaborate?’

  She stops attempting to clean off a particularly stubborn bit of mud, looks at me with her most superior stare, then goes back to her mission to eliminate all traces of the night's activities.

  ‘I found a skep, I killed the skep, I know the direction from which it came,’ is her succinct reply.

  ‘Well done, girl,’ I give her a few scritches which are rewarded by her rumbling purrs. ‘You can show me after breakfast.’

  An hour or so later, Elara, Misty and I head downstairs to join the others for breakfast.

  Naomi is already there, tucking into a steaming bowl of hot porridge and chatting away with a much more animated Finn. It seems that her enthusiastic animation has served to draw him more out of his shell.

  “Misty, my cat,” I say to Joel, “was out roaming last night and I think she may have caught a skep.”

  He looks up from his bowl at that. “Really, how do you know?”

  “They have a bit of a weird bond,” Elara says.

  “Yeah, she talks to him all the time,” Naomi happily clarifies, although all this really does is cause Joel to look confused and Mara to chuckle.

  “Oh, you,” she says to Naomi. “Fanciful stories are a sign of too much energy.”

  Naomi looks about to start protesting, but Elara just gives her a look that stills her tongue.

  “Now, if you and Finn have finished breakfast, you might want to help him tidy his bed, as you slept there too, and then go fetch the morning eggs.”

  “Just mind you stay clear of the barn,” adds Joel.

  With happy giggles and lots of playful shoving, the two run off to do their chores.

  Breakfast now over and the last dregs of coffee drained.

  ‘That wasn’t coffee, idiot.’ Why can’t I have a simple internal conversation without mocking myself?

  ‘It was hot and wet, and tasted a damn sight better than those herbal tea things.’ I have never been a tea drinker, so this is a reasonable observation.

  ‘Doesn’t make it coffee,’ is my final defiant word on the matter.

  “So Joel, would you like to show us what you can of your pest problem?” I ask him. “Then we can see what we are up against.”

  With a nod, he stands up and leads us out of the house and towards the barn.

  “Most often they come in at night. What they don’t eat, they often foul, making it useless for anything except washing and keeping for planting.” He kicks a clump of weeds. “Even then, it only grows half the time, but we can’t afford to buy in fresh seed stock.”

  As we near the barn, Misty struts ahead, tail high, and promptly sits next to a dead animal.

  “Well, I’ll be damned,” Joel says in surprise.

  The corpse my cat proudly displays could, at a pinch, be most likened to a rat, unlike any I have ever seen before.

  Identify

  Skep – Beast, male

  Level – 8

  Scavenger

  Strengths: Strong olfaction

  Weaknesses: Light

  Skill: Unknown

  Lore: Skeps are pack animals, often living in large colonies underground or in cave systems. They have poor eyesight and can be easily disorientated by bright lights. They have a very strong sense of smell and use this to hunt out food to scavenge and return to the home nest.

  So, why, despite being very rat-like, was it unlike any rat I have seen before? Well, it was large, maybe the size of a medium dog.

  ‘No wonder Wren couldn’t handle one.’

  But most telling was the two pointed snouts. I take another look—not that it wasn’t really, glaringly fucking obvious.

  ‘The bloody thing has two damned heads!’

  “Alright then, Joel,” I look at the big man. “To recap, you have a problem with big fuck-off two-headed monsters eating your crop.”

  Joel scratches his head.

  “I guess that’s about the right of it,” he still looks puzzled. “But how in all the hells did your little cat kill one?”

  “What can I say, my friend? She is a talented puss.”

  “Del,” Elara chips in, “why don’t we let Joel get on with his day and we can have a look around.”

  “I do have a lot to do, so that sounds good to me,” Joel agrees as he turns to head back to the farmhouse. “I will see Mara watches out for the kids,” he adds.

  As he leaves, I look at my smug little cat.

  “Good job, Misty. Now would you like to show us where you think they are coming from?”

  She comes over, twines herself around both our legs for a moment, then heads away from the farm towards an uncultivated paddock and the rough terrain beyond.

  After perhaps a half mile, with Misty regularly stopping to sniff the air and study the ground, we round a patch of scattered rocks and boulders.

  Ahead is the entrance to a large burrow and the dark tunnels beyond.

  A shudder of half-remembered terror runs through me as I look at it.