“Is that better?” she asked.

“Fine,” said Garbarla.   He thought, ‘Let’s hope it doesn’t light up something so awful that we wish we couldn’t see it!’

The tunnel seemed endless as they inched forward.   Garbarla remembered Bear Ross’s remark that it could go kilometres into and under the mountain.

“We should have brought some string or something so we wouldn’t get lost,” suggested Garbarla.   Although it had been his idea to check the cave in the first place, he now hoped this might give them an excuse to return to Geraldine’s flat.

“Too late now,” said Geraldine, dashing his hopes.

‘The walls are not really closing in!’ thought Garbarla, trying to ignore the scuttling, rustling sounds from the walls of the cave as they crept forward.   Although the tunnel was almost tall enough for him to stand erect, Garbarla crouched low, afraid of brushing against the things that went scuttle in the night.

“It’s starting to widen out,” said Geraldine.

Shining his light around, Garbarla saw that she was right.   Instead of tapering out as he had expected, the tunnel began to widen until he could stand safely without crouching.   Then it enlarged until they could stand side-by-side.   Finally it enlarged into an underground cavern.

“Wow!” said Geraldine.   She shone her torch around the cavern, whose walls seemed to vanish for kilometres in front and on both sides of them.   Her eyes shone from excitement.

“Maybe we’d better not go any deeper?” said Garbarla, trying to keep the fear out of his voice.

“Yeah, all right,” agreed Geraldine.   However, she sounded entranced by the cavern; obviously not sharing Garbarla’s unease.

“Pooh, what’s that smell?’ she suddenly asked.   At the same time there was a loud scuttling which echoed off the cavern walls, booming like the footsteps of a SF-monster movie giant spider.

Smelling the strong sulphurous odour which had made Geraldine cry out, Garbarla shone his halogen beam behind her.   And almost dropped the torch in shock at what he saw.

“My God, what is it?” cried Geraldine.

From the front the creature looked like an oversized fried egg: a large white mane ringed its head, which was dominated by a single great yellowy eyeball.   But as the creature turned slightly to one side, they saw the black chitinous body.   A segmented torso like that of a gigantic, hairy spider or ant.