Eldren: The Book of the Dark Read Online Free Page B

behind him. Suddenly he stopped and began to tap on the wall, concentrating on a different part of it each time.
    “Hey. It’s hollow behind here,” he shouted across at Tony. “There must be a secret tunnel or something. Help me find something we can use to break through.”
    “I don’t know about that” Tony replied while backing away. “We don’t know what’s on the other side. What if Granddad was right?”
    Tony was still shaking his head as Billy started to unscrew a leg from one of the bunks.
    “Don’t be so daft,” Billy said, his face a picture of concentration as he worked on a wing nut. “There’s no such thing as Morlocks...your Granddad got the story from a film...my Dad told me about it.”
    Sudden tears welled in the corners of Tony’s eyes.
    “And what does your dad know about anything...he’s just an old drunk.”
    As soon as he said it he clamped a hand over his mouth. That was one of the things they never spoke about.
    Any other subject was fair game, but the two taboo subjects...Billy’s dads’ drinking and Tony’s fathers’ use of his fists...they were never to be mentioned.
    Billy didn’t even seem to have noticed though...he had succeeded in getting the metal leg off the bed and started to attack the wall, knocking chunks out of the plaster with fast, furious jabs. Soon he had reached the wooden struts behind the top layer. He turned back and smiled at Tony, and Tony almost ran then...Billy’s face was caked with sweat and plaster...a dull gray coating through which only his blue eyes showed with any color.
    “Come on Tony, give us a hand here...we’re nearly through.”
    But still Tony didn’t move. Behind his eyes pictures were playing, lurid scenes of bloodletting as a hand came from the other side, a gray hairy arm that tore at Billy’s face even as it pulled him dragging and screaming down to the bowels of the earth.
    It didn’t happen…not in that way.
    Tony watched as Billy smashed his way through the loose timbers and poked his head and shoulders through the resulting gap.
    “Hey,” Billy shouted, his voice muffled. “Come over here with that torch will you...it looks like there’s a cave through here, and it’s dark.”
    At first Tony still refused to move. It took another shout from Billy, more insistent this time, before he could join his friend at the hole in the wall.
    As he approached the hole his legs started to tremble again, but he forced the fear aside as he peered through to the space beyond the hole.
    “Here,” Billy said, pointing off to the left. “Shine the torch over here.”
    The torchlight showed the boys a rough-hewn chamber, some ten feet wide. Lank gray mosses hung from the stone, wafting sluggishly in the slight breeze that flowed through the hole. But what got Billy excited was the thing he’d pointed to.
    Over in the left of the room was another entrance, a passage off the blackness.
    “Hey. Caves. Come on.” And, before Tony could stop him, he had pushed himself through the hole and down into the chamber.
    “Well?” Billy said, his blue eyes shining in the reflected torch beam. “Are you coming? Or are you still waiting for the Morlocks?”
    He turned his back to Tony and shouted, his voice ringing harshly against the rock walls.
    “Come out come out wherever you are.” He put his hand to his ear and struck an exaggerated listening pose that he held for long seconds before turning back to Tony.
    “Nope. No Morlocks here. Come on...there’s only the two of us here, and there might be treasure and stuff down here.”
    The thought of treasure was what got Tony moving.
    “Indiana Jones would’ve been in and out already.” Billy said, and that was what got Tony over the lip of the hole and down to join Billy.
    “Shine the torch over there,” Billy said, pointing at the entrance they’d noticed previously. Tony did as he was told, but the light seemed to be soaked up by the blackness, barely penetrating a foot into the