Seed of Evil by Greig Beck (great reads .txt) 📕

“Let’s call it ‘The Temple’.” She turned to him expectantly for his reaction. “What do you think?”

Jim rolled the name about his mouth and found that it suited the cavern. He agreed, there was a feeling of power oozing from the area. “I like it. Just as long as we don’t have to leave a sacrifice to the temple’s deity,” he said with a short bark of laughter.

Beth looked at him sternly for a moment, as if checking to see whether he was making fun of her suggestion.

“No, babe, I like the name, I swear,” said Jim, holding up his hands in surrender. “But we should crack on and get a few photos of the place before we head back. The guys at the club will be sick with envy!”

Beth’s face brightened at his words, and she helped him unpack a small tripod and SLR camera from the bottom of his pack. They set up three lights to illuminate the ceiling and main cavern before Jim started clicking off some shots.

While Jim was occupied in the visual documentation of their find, Beth wandered closer to the water. The bottom looked to be less than thigh deep for about twenty metres prior to dropping away. The base consisted of fine silt interspersed with rock, much like the flooring in the dry sections of the cave. With any luck, The Temple would continue underwater, giving them a whole submarine system to explore.

She sighed at the thought of bringing in others to assist. Just the job of carting down the dive gear would require significant leg work, not to mention coordination - and that meant a larger group. Cave diving was inherently dangerous. She knew she was somewhat cavalier in her attitude compared to others in the Australian Caving Association, but if you planned on coming up the other side of a dive breathing, you had to take underwater safety seriously.

Movement in her peripheral vision caught her attention. Twenty metres off shore, slight ripples expanded in concentric circles. Something was in the water. Beth lifted her hand torch, pointing the beam for a clearer view into the shadows, just in time to see a child’s pink nose disappear under the surface. Her heart stuttered for a moment. Surely the sounds they’d been following hadn’t been actual footsteps?

Not trusting her eyes, she waited for the ripples to clear. Adrenaline surged, causing her heart rate to gallop. There it was again! Close to the drop off into deeper water, she saw the child again, just a face, the rest of its body obscured by silt and rock on the lake floor. Fear constricted her chest, breathing now quick and shallow.

Why the hell was a kid alone down here?

She froze, battling indecision. Beth’s gut screamed to run, every instinct telling her to retreat. She dry swallowed, concentrating on the child’s face to ignore her own terror and act. It didn’t make any sense, but surely she had to do something?

“Jim! There’s a kid in the water!” She started to strip off her heavy outer coveralls, ready to dive in.

“There’s a fucking what?” Jim’s face was white as he put down the camera and ran over.

“A kid – over there,” she said pointing off-shore. “He only just went under, we can still save him if we’re quick.”

“But we haven’t got any diving gear. What if there’s a current? If it pulls you under, you’re dead. Don’t do it,” pleaded Jim.

“Don’t be such a coward,” she answered scathingly. “Get one of the climbing ropes, I’ll tie it around my waist.  If anything goes wrong, you just haul me out. Quick!”

He jerked away as if physically slapped, and retrieved a coiled rope from his pack. Jim tied a length about her waist, and then she was off.

Beth churned into the water, spreading silt in cloudy blooms from the bottom, turning crystal clarity to an impenetrable haze in her wake. At waist depth she began to swim, powerful kicks driving her forward. When she thought she was in the right spot, she took a deep breath and duck-dived.

Two metres below she could see the boy. The child looked no older than six. Close cropped hair hugged his skull, the skin of his face white and hypoxic. She drove down with all her might, desperate to get the child to the surface before he suffered irreparable brain damage. She knew the stats; it only took five minutes without air before brain cells started to die, and Beth was determined to prevent that happening.

As she drew within arm’s reach, its eyes opened. Something wasn’t right with the picture below her, and she paused mid-stroke. The child’s pupils flickered as its gaze locked onto her, before lengthening into the slits of a serpent. The iris and white of the eye became a halogen green. Lips drew back in an animalistic snarl, exposing a jaw full of needle-sharp teeth.

Beth hung in the water, frozen in horror. The beast’s face deformed, mouth and jaw protruding as the skin darkened to black, shedding the chameleon-like colouration used to attract her into the water.

Bubbles exploded out of her mouth as she screamed. Beth felt two hard tugs on the rope about her waist, pulling her up to the surface. Spell finally broken, she kicked hard to follow the rope, her chest burning with the need for air, desperate to escape the monster beneath.

Jim let out lengths of rope as he watched his wife frantically swim offshore and then disappear beneath the surface. He forced slow breaths, trying to keep a lid on his own fear. It didn’t make sense. Surely if a child had gone missing, the town would have been up in arms trying to locate it before they’d entered the cave?

Another thought entered his head – air. He mentally kicked himself at his own stupidity. This far below ground and with such poor ventilation, it wasn’t unheard of to lose oxygen content in the air, leading to mental deterioration. Hallucinations weren’t such a big leap