“What the hell do you keep down here?” I asked.

The guard slapped me across the face and snapped “Silence! This has nothing to do with you.”

Somewhere among the cells, something heavy dropped and clanged against the bars.

“They can’t all be dead!” the second guard shouted. “There were ten men on this level!”

“Calm yourself, we’ll go back once I check something.”

“I’m going back now!” he ran back, past the desk and tried to walk out the door, but in his panic he tripped and fell against it, locking it.

The first guard drew his raygun, which he pointed at me, not his companion “Dammit, pull yourself together.”

The panicked guard climbed to his feet and rushed at the other “Give me that key, I’m not staying here.”

His attention divided, the guard lowered his weapon. I slapped it from his hand grabbed the torch from his other. He tried to kick me, but I’d already started down the way.

“Damn you, come back!”

I turned off the current for the torch and rushed past the corpses, doing my best not to slip in their mess. I had no idea where I was headed, and my chances were poor, but I thought that I just might have a shot at getting the key from him if I could get him alone someplace.

I kept close to one wall, feeling my way in the dark. At times I stopped to listen for sounds of pursuit.

In a way I needed to be found, if I got the gun away from them the odds would improve vastly.

No sound broke the stillness, except my breathing, and I tried with everything in me to slow that down. A current of air moved through the passage, something cooler than what I’d found in the rest of the place. I remembered hearing as a young man that one could find his way out of a cavern by following such currents. Even if it was just a vent, it might lead to something.

Why weren’t they following?

I risked flashing the torch briefly, showing an empty hall and empty cells.

These prisons were made by men who liked to be cruel for the sake of it, most of the cells were separated by large distances. One man would never see another confined here.

The silence persisted.

Could that guard be trying to draw me out? It stood to reason that a cell-block, even one in a dungeon, would have just the one entrance and exit. All he needed to do was wait, or to simply lock me in.

I resolved to be bold about this. I turned the torch on and marched back the way I’d come.

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A horrible scream echoed down the way.

I heard something being battered around, another sound of something ringing against the bars. Then came a pitiful cry, and a choking sound.

Who had died? Could there truly be a monster here? I began to tell myself that one guard had gone mad and killed the other. One guard would be an easier job than two, certainly easier than a monster.

The two corpses still lay where the had before, the blood disturbed in a few places, my own boot prints, and a set of flatter ones that might have belonged to the guards.

I expected raygun fire to come my way, but none did.

I held the torch over my head and looked at the entry. A man lay twisted against the hood. His head had been forced between them and his legs half dangled. Wide claw marks covered his face and chest. His features were distorted from the horrible method of his death, so I could not determine which of the two had died.

Holding the torch high, I looked to see if the dead man had the key, but there seemed to be no trace. I checked the desk, and found odds and ends, but no ring of keys and no weapons.

Just then I remembered that I’d disarmed the guard and looked on the floor around where the encounter had taken place.

Nothing on the ground but blood and bloody tracks.

The tracks were long paws with thick claws and large toes. They came towards the gate and then headed back into the dark. A real live monster, something with a thirst for blood that could see in the dark!

Raygun fire broke out from the shadows, set to destroy, for it tore off a piece of the wall. I dropped to the ground and turned out the torch.

If he meant to get me he’d come again or fire again, I guessed.

A sound came, an impact, one body against another. Something crashed and then “Get away! You devil! Go! No. Nooo!!” the first guard, he screamed, and the screams contorted, the sounds of the claws rending out his throat and his life with it!

That was too much for me, I turned on the lantern again, thinking maybe I could still save the man, running to where the sound had been.

The way ahead was musty, the ground buckled and cracked in places, the cells along the wall were rusted shut.

I slowed when I saw the blood flowing out from a cell ahead.

No sound of eating came, of growling, of movement. Had this creature simply vanished?

The bars of the cell were shattered, broken into crumbling rusted pieces. On the floor lay the guard, he’d been crushed into the bed, which had collapsed under the weight of the beast’s attack. He’d been killed just like the others.

The raygun lay in the blood on the floor and I took it without hesitation. I looked around briefly before holstering it. I looked back to the dead man.

One arm was crushed crazily under him. It was hard to look at, since it was bent in a way a man wasn’t meant to bend, even an evil blue one. His other hand caught my attention, though.

The guard’s dead left hand held the key.

I leaned forward to get it, and as I leaned, only then did I understand the strange angle of the body and of the cell, for the floor sloped inward, away from the hall. I held up the torch, leaning down, trying not to put my weight on the dead clay, hardly understanding the way the shadows shifted.

My fingers closed on the key, and as I grabbed it, my right foot began to slide. Before I could correct myself, I was off my feet.

The shadow beside the body was no shadow, but a hole where the stone had broken away. A huge crack had formed through the back of the cell, and now I fell through it.

The torch spun and I lost my grip as the jagged side of the hole moved past me. My body knocked against one of the sides and my shadow engulfed the view. I was aware of sliding along, then rolling. The slope of broken stone evened out and tumbled down along a nearly even surface.

The surface came to an end and dumped me out into dark empty space.