Hellhole Read Online Free Page B

moved on with their lives, and the few honest-to-God paleontologists who showed up to properly search the area ended up finding nothing but more ugly dirt and a bunch of used condoms. So everyone gave up on it.
    Except for Max.
    The discovery had come at the height of his childhood obsession with dinosaurs, and it had lit such a fuse within him that he made it his goal in life to keep the investigation alive. So intent was he on finding The Next Big Fossil that he trudged up the hill every chance he got, shovel in hand, and dug until calluses formed on his fingers and his clothes were soaked with perspiration. He never found anything, but he liked digging, and the thrill of possibility was enough to keep him coming back. Of course, with his mother’s health problems, he hadn’t been able to return as much over the past couple of years, but every once in a while he still went up there for old times’ sake.
    Or to vent some pent-up frustration.
    So it was from the top of Ugly Hill that Max planted his shovel, sank it deep into the ground, and dug. He went at it for a solid hour, muscles screaming, cones of dirt piling up around him as he tried out different spots. The wind stung at his sweaty face, but it felt amazing, and the aches in his arms were good aches—they took away his cares and worries, one knot at a time.
    Max shone his keychain flashlight down into the hole he’d just made. Seeing nothing, he put the light back in his pocket, chose another spot, and started all over again. In, out, in, out, in—
    In . . .
    In . . . ?
    The shovel kept right on going, swallowed by the earth. Max lost his balance and stumbled forward, catching himself at the last second—just before the ground started to collapse.
    He let out a shout and wrenched his body backwards to keep from falling in. Landing flat on his butt, he scuttled back like a crab, hands and feet frantically scrambling away from the sinking dirt. The abyss grew and grew, all while a low rumble sounded through the air, as if the planet itself were growling.
    Then: silence.
    Max groped in his pocket for his flashlight, clicked it on, and pointed the beam into the darkness. The dirt had stopped falling, but the damage was done. Stretching out before him was a massive dark hole.
    Shaking, Max got to his feet and started to make his way around the void, confusion growing with every step. It was a perfect circle, about six feet in diameter. Dust stung at his eyes; a sour stench choked his lungs. He could taste something awful on his tongue, like the gagfest that results from drinking orange juice right after brushing one’s teeth. But other than an occasional, eerie clicking noise coming from deep within, he couldn’t hear a thing.
    Max took a cautious step up to the rim. He could see only blackness inside, the hole so deep his flashlight couldn’t reach the bottom. A gentle pulse of warm air puffed up into his face, the smell of sulfur tickling his nostrils. And in that moment—he was sure he was imagining this, but that didn’t make the sensation any less intense—an overwhelming
something
came over him, an emotion he’d never felt before that was sadness and terror and suffocation and grief all at the same time.
    Max had been up on Ugly Hill hundreds of times, alone and in the dark, but this was the first time he’d ever been truly scared.
    â€œWhat the hell?” his voice quivered.
    Just then an air pulse sent up small fleck of ash—black, as light as air, a gothic snowflake. It floated out of the hole, then descended and landed on the back of Max’s hand. He tried to wipe it off, but all that did was create a black smear across his skin.
    And then, as abruptly as it had come, the strange fear began to fade. Sleep tugged at his body, and Max started to feel a little foolish. He hadn’t been up this hill in months; maybe the gas company had done some faulty pipeline laying or someone