But even after the child woke, the echoing steady breathing in the chamber didn’t change.
It went on as it had been, rhythmic and deep, not an echo, Apollo realized, but a matched pattern, something else breathing in sync beside the child. But now even that sound stopped, and all around them came a low rumble, like a bowling ball rolling on wood.
They’d thought the storage box had been sitting beside a portion of the amphitheater wall, but now the wall moved. The wall rolled like an alligator spinning its prey in the water. Apollo and Emma were still on their knees. There, in the dark, an eye as large as a manhole cover opened.
Jotunn.
Trolde.
Troll.
A HOT, DANK WIND blew out from the hole in the wall, a gas that stank of dirt. In the cave’s chill, the creature’s exhalation became a cloud of fog that filled the floor. Apollo and Emma went back on their asses. Emma held tight to Brian as she fell. Brian squirmed in her arms but could hardly wriggle in her grip. She would not let him go again.
A shape emerged from the hole, but in the darkness and cover of the cloud, its particulars were tough to see. Its dimensions were clear though. An arm as thick as a tree stump moved above their heads. Emma fled awkwardly, stumbling off. Apollo looked up and felt as if he’d been caught before a great, yawning door and he had let this thing in.
Another breath, another cloud filled the dark amphitheater. The arm hung in the air a moment, then its tip trembled and stretched, an enormous fist opening. Hard to call the digits fingers—there were either too many or too few. Apollo couldn’t get his bearings for the fog. But in a moment he smelled its body, a stink like rotten milk, and he nearly went sick right there. He looked to his left to find Emma and Brian weren’t there. That, at least, relieved him.
The fingers on the misshapen hand showed great nails at the tips. The troll slammed the fingers down into the dirt. The thumb landed right in the middle of the open storage bin. If Brian had still been inside, he would’ve been impaled. Emma yelped nearby. Brian, hearing her, reached up and found her chin.
With the nails dug into the dirt, the troll pulled its body out of the hole where it had been sleeping. It rose to its full height, the body unfurling until it stood as tall as the sail of a sloop. Its mouth opened wide, and it breathed a third breath, deeper than the others. Once more Apollo found himself swimming in that mist. It snorted heavily through its nostrils twice. He felt the moisture dapple across his scalp and forehead like dew. He couldn’t move, and worse still, he felt a sick wave of something like nostalgia. To his horror, he almost called out Brian West’s name.
The troll pulled its thick nails out of the dirt. It slapped the storage bin, one quick touch, and the container flipped end over end, landing about a foot away. The air filled with dead leaves and dirt. Apollo threw up an arm to shield his eyes. When the bin landed, its thump echoed, and the troll moved fast, a massive shape loping forward on short, thick legs, something simian about it, even more so when it bent to the ground, sniffing closer and closer to the bin.
Apollo turned on his feet to try and track Emma, but his shoes scuffed the dirt louder than he would’ve expected. Or maybe there weren’t any other sounds to compete.
Before Apollo could move, the creature’s eyes were on him. Nothing to do. No time to run, nowhere to hide. Two strides, and it came near. The troll stooped so close now, Apollo could reach out and touch it. From here he saw its greenish skin with collected dead leaves and clots of dirt; tiny bones—from squirrels or birds—were embedded in its flesh like pins in a pincushion. It snorted and breathed again, and this time Apollo’s whole face went wet with moisture, but he stifled the impulse to retch. Its enormous eyes faced Apollo, and they were flat, off-white disks. The troll couldn’t see him because the troll was almost blind. No wonder it relied on its nose. Its nostrils were recessed like a bat’s.
It sniffed the air around Apollo. Sniffed again, and finally a great rip appeared in its face, somewhere below the nose. Its teeth were as large and jagged as its nails. But the creature didn’t tear into Apollo; instead it yawned and blew another wave of fetid breath. The pair of them lost in the cloud. When Apollo blinked, he could almost hear water running nearby. It sniffed near him one more time, then turned away.
What saved me? he asked himself.
Now that it had moved, Apollo could see where it had been sleeping, not a nook but the mouth of a tunnel. A different quality of darkness lay at the far end of that passage. Moonlight. He saw moonlight out there. And small stones running up a slope. The park, the outside world—their escape lay fifty feet ahead.
The troll brought a hand tight around the bin, crushing it. It scanned the amphitheater, and its mouth opened, its belly expanded, filling with air. Now it produced a howl like a nightmare from some distant age. Nearby, Emma had been trying to make her way back the way they’d come. Jorgen’s house might be burning, but it wasn’t a fucking monster on the hunt. She wasn’t thinking clearly, but it was the best idea she could form. And yet when she heard that howl—like standing with your ear to a foghorn—she collapsed into a crouch just as Apollo did. She saw the iPad lay a foot from where she went down.
The only one not thrown by the bellowing, in fact, was the baby. Emma’s arms couldn’t keep hold of him because she’d stretched out to grab the iPad. She couldn’t hold on to both, not with one wriggling to break free. Brian rolled himself into the dirt, then did the most shocking thing Apollo and Emma had yet seen.
He walked.
And where was he walking?
Back toward the troll.
Only three steps, arms out in the dark, but it was enough for Emma to feel wounded, nearly mortally. Should she run after Brian, or was there a better strategy? She activated the iPad, and when the screen lit up, she became bathed in the light of the home screen.
The troll sensed the change in the gloom. It turned in her direction. Brian turned back toward her too, then threw one arm over his eyes, unaccustomed to the glow. He squeaked, a cry of distress. Both Emma and Apollo tried not to notice how close in tone this cry sounded to the troll’s bellow. Emma didn’t look up. She had to work. She found the app and turned the screen so it faced the others. She stood and held the device higher, hoping to spare her son’s eyes. She tapped the icon once, and the chamber flared.
Brian screeched like a tiny primate and fell forward on his face, flailing with surprise that seemed like pain. The troll stumbled too, slumping backward and making that foghorn sound.
But it didn’t turn to stone.
The fucking app did not win the day. In a moment that thing would find its balance and be all over them. They needed a new plan.