The Grimm Dossier

Chapter 56 - The Hoard

At the same time...

England, West Coast
Devonshire, Dartmoor
Dyowl's Hollow - Caves
5 November 1898, 11:14 pm

Damp, clammy, and musty darkness invaded the cave. There was black darkness everywhere. Kyles body ached from the top of his head to his toes. Just dull, nasty pain everywhere. He couldn't breathe and there were sharp, pointy stones stuck in his body.

Kyle groaned. Then he coughed, gasped, and regurgitated the earth he had inhaled. He jerked up and immediately wanted to curl up and writhe in agony. He bumped his back against a hard, unyielding resistance and immediately fell back onto his chest. A myriad of lights flickered before his eyes and Kyle tried to fight unconsciousness. Only slowly did the memories seep back into his mind. The monster had caught him and then the ground had simply collapsed beneath him.

Kyle blinked against the darkness. Above him he felt the weight of fallen earth, a thick branch lay across the small of his back, and only the fact that he had wedged himself in the narrow crack saved his spine from being broken by the weight of the log. All around him he felt damp earth, stones, and sharp edges of rocks. He could hardly breathe. The impact against the tree had bruised his ribs, maybe even broken them. Kyle didn't want to think that any further movement might dig his ribcage into his lungs, ending his suffering and gurgling on his blood.

Taking compressed breaths, he reached into the dim darkness. Above him, the crack gaped several feet in the air. Below him was a thick smear of leaves and churned earth that must have broken his fall. Kyle groped forward and hissed, he pulled his left hand back as he felt the sharp pain in the open wounds. The price of blood magic would haunt him for a long time, perhaps for the rest of his life. The wounds healed badly, sometimes not at all. Now he clenched his teeth, angled his arms slightly, and pulled himself out from under the trunk, crawling. Everywhere his muscles and bones were aching from the fall. Kyle felt the dull throbbing and burning in too many places to go after them. His leg ached as soon as he stepped on it, so he could only hiss and limp for now. But all the scrapes and scratches were beside the point.

Kyle squinted his eyes and put his head back. Between the fallen tree on the surface and the fallen earth, he could make out a few gaps, probably from treetops far above. The stone walls were crumbling and Kyle couldn't risk climbing up them and tearing everything down. Groaning, he pressed a hand to his ribs and limped a step, then his gaze swept around. The darkness of the night and the light intercepted by the rubble and the tree made him stumble ahead as if blind. Then suddenly a shapeless hole opened up, big enough for him to slip crouched in the cold stone. 

"Please, please be a way out," Kyle thought pleadingly as he stumbled into the darkness. He had to get back to Dr. Archer as quickly as possible.

Limping, he felt his way along the cave wall. The rain of the night before had made the air damp and thick. It should smell like earth and wet stone down here. Instead, the smell of coal and sulfur was in the air. His fingers kept fumbling over rough stones, overgrown with moss and some slippery spots that he definitely didn't want to think about what it was. Suddenly he tripped over a root, fell forward, and rolled down the sloping cave floor a little. He was jolted into the depths as gravity claimed its right and he fell again. But this time his fall ended unexpectedly quickly. And hard.

Something jangled as Kyle rolled a little way down with a muffled gasp, a bright clang pressing into his nose along with the smell of rust and sour metal. Down here the stench of sulfur was almost unbearable. Small streams of water flowed down the cave walls around some large rocks where earth and decayed wood were piled up. They formed small brown puddles at the edge and got lost somewhere in the stone. Moss covered the walls thickly, where furrows of claws could be seen, but he had no view of that.