Unreal City Read Online Free PDF Page A

meant to say anyone but it came out wrong. I waited, listening to the drumbeat of blood smashing rhythmically in my ears. There was no reply.
    The idea of climbing down that ladder on a cheerful day would’ve seemed daunting. I won’t pretend that it didn’t take me quite some time to pluck up the courage to peer deeper into the hole. I was stuck. It was the feeling of being so averted to an inevitable future, coupled with a sick, fascinated yearning in the pit of my stomach. As I sat there, getting queasier by the minute, I just knew that whatever was down there was the same creature that had been hiding in the trees this morning. I felt that same sense of a looming, unnamed threat. It was the thing that had thrown me the tennis ball—like it had been fishing for me.
    As anticipated, my fear gave way to anger and I threw my leg over the edge and began the descent into the dark. Halfway down, I fished my phone out of my pocket and turned on the camera flash to shine a feeble light down into all that dark. It came as a shock when the ladder turned flat and ran across the ground, and I stumbled with a little yelp, half-expecting something to start snapping at my sneakers.
    Shaking from head to toe, I at last hit the bare bottom of the cave. The chunk of light from the world above seemed too far above my head to keep up any illusion of safety. I turned around slowly, gasping in a lungful of the stuffy air. It smelled of dank earth and marijuana, increasing my nausea.
    “I saw you come in here. Where are you?” I tried to shout, but it came out in a pathetic whisper. I raised my phone with my shaking, grimy hand. Webby black plants that looked like veins hung from the cave ceiling and bits of discarded garbage floated around in the shallow, filthy pools of cave water.
    I turned in a complete circle, and my shoulders slumped. It’s gone . How could it just be—
    My phone light fell on a crevice to the side of the ladder, and I caught a glint of green. The cave went deeper. Balling up my fists and gritting my teeth, I approached the narrow passage that led deeper into the cold, moist earth on uncertain legs.
    “Come on out, you little shit. I know you’re there,” I snarled with a confidence I didn’t feel.
    The way down was tight and slimy, caking my hands and jeans in grimy clay. As I shone my tiny circle of light ahead, it caught the edge of a black, bat-like ear. There it was.
    I screamed, feeling my panic spike. I couldn’t get out; I was stuck down here with it and I couldn’t get out . I scrambled up the rocky slope and slammed my knee into the stone. It hurt so bad that I wanted to double over, but I needed to get away—it was just too damn close. When I turned back, sprawled on my back and trembling like a leaf in the wind, it was still there. It put an experimental, black paw forward and cocked its head at me, as if my terror confused it.
    “Wh-what are you?” I demanded, my teeth chattering.
    It answered me with unwavering composure, its voice echoing inside my skull. “Hungry.”
    An awful thrill shot through me, as if I’d been injected with poison that swept through my veins with every frantic pump of my heart. I braced my back against the cave wall, getting as far away from the creature as I could. I was too scared to run, too scared it would chase me.
    “Are you gonna eat me ?” I breathed.
    “Not unless you ask me to,” it replied conversationally, yet with a hint of sadistic playfulness. There was no doubt in my mind he meant it. The creature— demon was the word I was thinking at that moment—laughed at me. His mouth never moved when he spoke or chuckled, but I heard it all the same, as if the intention was beaming into me like a laser.
    It was as if in that moment a window of fogged glass had shattered and revealed an entire world beyond everything I had thought to be true. And it wasn’t beautiful. It was petrifying. I wasn’t ready; no one could be. It’s easy to sit there and say