Journal entry (excerpt) of Stuart Horner, President of the Natural History Society, April 10, 1865:
I am quite at a loss with how to proceed concerning the remains of this most curious batrachian creature. My purview does not encompass the biological sciences; however, an innate thirst for knowledge impels me to request the services of a herpetologist who is willing to perform a necropsy to determine whether the unique morphology of this toad is explained in its physiology…
Dana looked around her hideout. The boy was right; it was creepy and coffin-like. If something unpleasant were to happen, no one above ground could hear her cries for help. She considered the worst possible sequence of events: her family would never find her; Tunnel Pluto would be her final resting place; she'd die and lay entombed, like a mummy whose treasures for the afterlife were sooty candles and a tattered porno mag.
In preparation for vacating her fort, she began to stuff everything into her crumpled book bag. While packing the books, she thought the noises she made were somehow doubled, almost like echoes, but without reverberation. They seemed to occur a fraction of a second before she made noise. The air in the chamber felt heavier and colder; the unexpected flickers of candlelight created ugly patches of shadow on the walls.
Suddenly, a cold, hard hand clamped her shoulder. "Kill the lights. Now."
Dana choked on an unvoiced scream, and turned to face the terrified countenance of the boy who had so recently vacated her hideout. The paleness of his face contrasted against the dark, damp strands of hair on his forehead.
"I said now," he whispered. "There's something in the tunnel."
Dana froze. She watched the boy shove past her and blow out the two candles. The orange, glowing wick-embers faded too quickly to black. In the assailing darkness, the smell of scorched wax stung their sinuses.
Dana then heard sniffles issuing from the outer tunnel.
Sniffling, snuffling, inhuman breathing sounds, barely audible, echoed through the pipe. They grew louder by unwelcome degrees as the minutes passed. The most alarming aspect about the sniffing was the apparent diligence of the sniffer, and the care it took to inhale the scent of every inch of concrete on its approach.
Dana crept as noiselessly as she could to where she thought the boy crouched. She nudged his side, gripped his arm, and pressed her lips to his ear.
"Dog?" she breathed, knowing somehow that whatever was out there was not canine.
She felt him shake his head in negation. He turned, and pressed his mouth to her ear.
"It walks. Two legs."
Dana felt her rapidly beating heart flutter, felt the rush of blood to her ears squelch all other sound. Her lips silently formed a familiar mantra: Hail Mary, full of grace… pray for us sinners now and at the hour of our death…
The noises grew louder, closer. The boy drew himself into a tighter huddle.
Suddenly, the sniffing stopped. The boy's body stiffened abruptly. Both children held their breath and strained to hear; the silence was like a soundless scream. No matter how hard they stared in the direction of exit, the darkness remained impenetrable.
Dana felt, rather than heard, a presence approach them with infinite slowness. A sharp, chemical scent filled the chamber and gradually intensified.
In an odd perceptual flash, the image of The Nuclear Mutant Toad leapt into her mind, summoned by a shred of memory: Her little brother Charlie had followed her once to Tunnel Uranus, only to be repelled by his sister's preposterous but effective confabulation of a giant, eyeless toad on the hunt to pluck out someone's eyes for its own use. "Come on," she had said. "You can go first and see if it's true."
To suspect that the unseen presence which currently threatened her were the manifestation of her own spurious toad story caused Dana's fear to dissolve into shame. The older boy trembling beside her no longer reinforced her terror, but aroused her sympathy. His vulnerability to fright in her own hideout, whose refuge had been a secret luxury to her amidst the clamor of a large family, elicited both a protective instinct and a primitive rage within her. She could no longer cower when her legs itched to run, to kick, to stomp. The blood in her head boiled into anger and demanded immediate action.
Dana's sweaty hand aimed the flashlight and flicked the switch.
Nothing happened.
That is, the flashlight's beam did cast forth its stuttering light, but it illumined nothing save the same old chamber, and the same old tunnel - empty.
"Holy crap," sighed the boy, in an exhalation of cautious relief. "Do you think there's still something in the outer tunnel that we can't see?"
"Nah. It was nothing," she said with artificial calm. "It must be nothing. Follow me." Dana scooted down the tunnel, playing the jittery flashlight beam in all directions. "Nothing. See? Nothing, nothing, noth—"
In the concrete tunnel Neptune, giant, wet, animal tracks spiraled up and around the walls. They discontinued at the entrance to Tunnel Pluto. The prints appeared as slanted fans with knobs at the outer ends: toad tracks.
"You'd better take a look at this," she called to the boy, who had not followed her. Her pounding heart had nearly subsided to a dull tattoo.
"You'd better take a look at what's in here, first," he called back.
Dana returned to the chamber to see the boy picking at something in the ceiling.
"Turn off that damn light," he ordered, his voice revealing no trace of fear.
"I'm not falling for that one again."
The boy turned to her, impatiently. "Listen; when you left with the flashlight, I could see a blue outline of light in the stone, right here." He slapped the low ceiling from his crouching position. "I think there's a room above us, and that's a trap door."
"But there's humongoloid giant toad tracks out there," she countered. "They stop at Tunnel Pluto. They might evaporate before you get to see them."
He closed his eyes and took a deep breath, as though the act of inhaling her opposing urgency would fortify his patience. "Look, I take your word for it," he said, opening his eyes and fixing them on hers. Although his eye color was lost in the dim light, his sincerity was not. "This door might only open while the blue light is glowing behind it. Just point the light away, and maybe you'll see."
Dana reluctantly smothered the lens against her stomach. In the darkened chamber, she looked to where the boy had been trying to pry the camouflaged stone tile. Just as he had said, a thin, blue line of light traced a square roughly the size of a medicine cabinet.
"Oh my god. I've never noticed that before."
"Gimme a hand."
Dana set down the flashlight, and instead of trying to pull down the tile, she pressed upward. A stony, grating sound rewarded her efforts, and the tile budged noticeably. Their two pairs of hands lifted and slid the stone to reveal a squared opening into another chamber, which was suffused with a dim, bluish phosphorescence.
"Chickenshits first," she quipped.
Without hesitation, the boy picked up the flashlight and wielded it before him as though it were a gun. He raised it into the opening, casting the flickering beam around before slowly following the flashlight into the upper chamber with his head.
"Like wow! Far out shit!"
"Lemme see! I wanna see!"