The Disappearing Dwarf by James P. Blaylock Read Free Book Online

said, putting his ear to the door. ‘Hello, monsters!’ came an answering echo which made both of them jump and took some of the life out of Jonathan’s lark.
    ‘I hear something,’ the Professor whispered. ‘Listen!’ The two of them held their breath and heard a faint sloshing sound away off in the darkness. Suddenly the glow of the oil lamp seemed feeble and the circle of light around them seemed to shrink. Jonathan shouldered his club like a ball bat, waiting in horrified anticipation for the door to creak open. The sloshing sounded more loudly off to their right in the darkness of what might well be a tunnel parallel to their own. A faint, damp, fetid breath of wind touched their faces and a pale tentacle arced out of the darkness and dropped between them, feeling the ground roundabout as if searching for something. It wasn’t difficult to guess what.
    Jonathan quelled an urge to slam at the thing with his club as he and the Professor edged back along the wall toward the ladder, both of them watching in horror as a second and then a third tentacle followed the first. A heaving and sloshing sounded from the darkness.
    The Professor was up the ladder first, moving wonderfully fast for a man of his age. Jonathan was close behind, just far enough back so as not to be kicked in the face. He felt, just when the Professor reached the summit, a rubbery tentacle brush along his pant leg, tickling his bare leg above his sock.
    It seemed to take an hour for the Professor to hoist himself over the rim – enough time anyway for whatever it was below to snake a cold tentacle around Jonathan’s calf. Jonathan shouted, nearly losing his hold on the rough iron rung of the ladder. He kicked his leg uselessly, unable to detach the thing which seemed to be feeling about as if trying to determine what manner of prey it was that had stumbled into its lair.
    ‘The lamp!’ the Professor shouted.
    Ahab barked furiously and capered back and forth before the mouth of the pit.
    ‘Throw the bloody lamp at it!’ the Professor yelled. And Jonathan, not waiting for a third invitation, slid the lamp down his arm into his hand and flung it down into the darkness below. There was a flash of burning oil and a weird ululating howl followed by slapping and sloshing and the release of Jonathan’s leg. Jonathan hauled himself out like a sprung jack-in-the-box, and, before groping away down the darkness of the corridor, turned with the Professor to watch the thrashing of the thing below. It seemed to be all head with pink, blind protruding eyes like the pink bat things. Its long slash of a mouth twitched and slavered and it slammed itself with mottled blue tentacles in a seeming effort to extinguish the fire which it could feel but couldn’t see. Behind it, down the tunnel from where it had come, shone a dozen sets of pale eyes glowing in the firelight. Jonathan and the Professor decided to leave.
    When they could no longer hear the thing’s cries, they slowed down a bit. Jonathan had taken the lead, banging along like a blind man with his stick in front, and the Professor simply followed along, one hand on Jonathan’s shoulder. Ahab didn’t seem to need a stick or a hand on anyone’s shoulder, and it was the realization of that that made Jonathan hold up finally. They decided against lighting the torch, knowing that they’d need it later, especially given the possibility of their running into more pits of the sort they’d just clambered out of. Candles wouldn’t do since the small weak flame would keep going out as they traveled. So instead of lighting anything, Jonathan tied a lead to Ahab’s collar, the Professor kept his hand on Jonathan’s shoulder, and the two of them followed Ahab back along the passage until they burst out finally into the great cavern below the trap door. There they lit two candles and discussed further plans.
    They decided, in the end, to take the tunnel which, on the chart, led to the Cavern of Malthius.