Chapter 7
"There is no way out of Ravenspur...."
The words repeated themselves. They were words of mockery, words of cruel jest, and even as they were spoken Paula knew that they were true.
"I have many things in store for you both," Veena was saying as she took a step towards the two frightened people. "Many things that you would not believe the nature of even if I were to tell them to you."
She pointed her spear at Carl. "A touch of my spearhead on your unworthy flesh," she announced, "and your penis would develop a life of its own, twisting and struggling between your legs like some kind of serpent that hungered to sink its fangs into some maiden's flesh."
She came a step closer. "And your fingers will turn into penises, each one twisting and squirming independently of the others, each one a living creature wholly independent of yourself, yet growing out of your body. And your eyes will become penises, and your tongue, and your ... " She saw the expression on Carl's face and laughed. "Perhaps the thought is a bit too sickening for you, eh?"
She turned towards Paula. "And as for you ... you have such a deliciously large cunt, I wonder if you would allow me the liberty of making it oh, such a tiny bit larger. It would grow another inch, and then another inch, and then another, until it would be a hole the size of your stomach. And your legs and your hips would disappear into it, and it would keep getting bigger, and your tits would fall into it as well, and then ... " Her eyes narrowed to darkened slits of unadulterated sadism. "Or perhaps another means of torture. I could have you molested by one of my creatures, and the moment you felt the beast's sperm within your loins you would now that it had mingled with your own eggs, and that a creature even more monstrous than the one that had raped you was coming to life inside your body. And it would get bigger and bigger, before your very eyes, and it would CRAWL out of your cunt, literally CRAWL out, and you would see the awful inhuman thing that you had mothered, that had come out of YOUR body. And then your own monstrous offspring would rape you, and you would feel the product of THAT grow large within you, and you would give birth to a child more monstrous than the last one, and THAT would rape you, and...."
"Stop it! Stop it! STOP IT!" Paula screamed until she was sure that she would go deaf from the sound reverberating through her eardrums.. She could not tolerate the thought of sexual torture at the hands of this sadist any longer.
"I am sending my creatures to torment you now," the woman intoned. "You thought that you had done away with my servants, with Frog and Cyclops and Bertie and the others, and perhaps you have. But I have other servants. You are going to spend the rest of Eternity here, performing acts of sexual degradation for my amusement. This will be your jail. So it is only proper that I summon the Jailers."
Veena extended her spear towards the sky, and a moment later there was heard a far-off "thump ... thump ... thump ... " The Jailers were coming. They were miles away and they were approaching very slowly, but Paula knew that they would be here eventually. There was nothing in the universe that could stop them.
"Now then," Veena was saying. "What is the next act that I shall have my two prisoners subject themselves to? Something simple, I believe, and only moderately painful. The pain and the degradation shall increase slowly as the punishment progresses."
Thump ... thump ... thump ... The Jailers were coming closer.
"GOD DAMN YOU TO HELL!" Carl bellowed. No longer, even bothering to think, he was hurling his hate-ridden body directly towards the laughing Veena, and it happened so quickly that neither the tall woman nor the blonde girl had time to see it happen.
Thump ... thump ... thump....
"Ouf." Veena's spear went flying in one direction and her whip went in another. And then Veena was lying face upwards in the sand, and Carl was on top of her, pinning her down beneath the weight of his body, and suddenly both he and Paula knew without knowing why they knew that without her spear and her flail Veena was absolutely powerless....
Thump ... thump ... thump....
"Damn you, damn you, DAMN you!" the boy shouted. Flecks of foam spattered out of his angry mouth and across the face of his struggling captive, the woman who called herself the Countess of Ravenspur. "You like to see people suffer? You like to see people get hurt? I'll make YOU hurt, and see how you like it! I'm going to RAPE you! I'm going to stick my dick in you until you beg for mercy!"
Even in the eternal dimness of this twilit world Paula could see the look of unfathomable horror on the face of Veena. A moment ago Veena had been the overlord, the taskmistress, the person in command and the one who gave the orders. But now she was naught but a helpless sexual plaything in the hands of the angry Carl. It was more than embarrassing; it was downright humiliating.
Carl could feel his manhood surge within his body as his cock began to stiffen and a surge of sexual excitement flowed into it. For what had seemed like an eternity this woman Veena had subjected him and Paula to the most painful and degrading acts that any mortal mind could conceive of. And now he was going to get even, now he and Paula were going to get their own back. The youth licked his lips hungrily as he saw the trembling Veena pinned so enticingly beneath his own body. She looked ' so helpless, so powerless, that suddenly the boy knew just how Veena must have felt when she had seen Carl and Paula struggle in her grasp.
The breath was rising hot and heavy inside Carl's throat now, and Paula was startled to see that the boy was actually DROOLING! He was almost like an animal now, a mindless beast that understood nothing save the concept of pure driving Lust. And now, even as Paula watched, the man's powerful hands were reaching out to grasp Veena's body and to hold it captive against his own flesh.
Veena shrieked as she felt Carl's hands against her, tearing the leather from her helpless form. Again and again the clothing was torn away, faster and faster, until white patches began to form underneath it: patches of Veena's naked white flesh. Crisscrossed against the bare white expanse were lines of scarlet, lines that showed where Carl had been a little too rough for Veena's good. For the first time Veena knew what it was like to bleed....
The woman who called herself the Countess of Ravenspur was naked now, naked and trembling in the grasp of this sexual madman. And he himself was naked, and his corded muscles rippled beneath his gleaming and sweat-glistened flesh as he pressed forward to push Veena's body even farther beneath his own. His hands were on top of her arms now, pressing them down into the harsh gray sandy expanse, making it harder for her to escape the onslaught of his ravishing phallus. And then his legs were forcing their way between her legs, forcing them apart, forcing them open to reveal the thing underneath that was what this man lusted for: the Countess of Ravenspur's cunt.
Paula felt her breath leave her body in one long, drawn-out gasp. For it seemed to her that the thing between Veena's thighs was not a vagina but an EYE, a glistening orb surrounded by thick black ciliate lashes. And then the eye turned to look at Paula, and then it blinked several times, and Paula groaned and turned away, for she knew that she was going to be sick.
Carl looked down at the thing between his captive's legs, and he saw that it was indeed a vagina; a raw, red, practically bleeding, clean-shaven vagina. He wanted that thing, he wanted to plunge his hard meat into it and feel this woman cry out in pain and protestation. He wanted to feel his cock explode into hot love-lava inside this woman's cunt, and he wanted her to feel his hard hotness.
"I'm going to FUCK you!" Carl bellowed, and with a howl of inhuman glee he thrust his powerful torso forward and sent his throbbing cock-javelin deep into the confines of Veena's innermost womb. Deeper it went, and deeper, until suddenly he could hear the woman cry out in pain, scream out in agony, and he knew that she was feeling his bigness inside her.
"Stop it! Please STOP it!" The woman was moaning. "You're going to give me an orgasm!"
"Damn right I'm going to give you one," the boy muttered darkly, and there was no mistaking the sound of the words as he bit them off and spat them out. "I'm going to make you cream from here to Kingdom Come! I'm going to give you an orgasm to end all orgasms!"
"But you MUSTN'T!" the frightened woman bellowed, and there was an undeniable aura of panic attached to the words. Her eyes had widened until the whites seemed to be an inch across. "You mustn't do this! I have never had an orgasm! And if I have one the spell will be broken!"
But Carl wasn't listening. He wanted this woman's flesh, he wanted to feel her pelvic regions shudder and gasp out a sexual climax in time to his own, and the harder it was going to be for him to do this then the more he wanted to do it. He spread the girl's thighs even wider apart, wider apart until she screamed in agony, and then he rammed his huge cock even deeper into the chasm that lay waiting below.
And then his buttocks were rising and falling, rising and falling to the beat of the cock, and his voluminous pillar of manhood was shooting up and down within Veena's body, harder and harder, faster and faster. More of it, more of it, more of it, more....
The speed picked up, and the cock went faster and faster, humping and pumping and bumping and thumping, and as it beat out its thumping rhythm Paula could hear the thumping of Carl's heart as his desire for this woman increased. Thump ... Thump ... Thump....
Suddenly Paula screamed and drew back. That thumping was not the sound of Carl's heart, nor was it even the pounding of his organ inside Veena's shaking flesh. It was the approach of the Jailers, the faceless unmentionable things that Veena had summoned before Carl had taken away her power. Her power was gone, but the Jailers were coming closer....
"CARL!" Paula shouted, and her call was the call of a person who must be answered. Carl did not stop his raping, his sexual ravishment of Veena, but he managed to look up. A glance at Paula's face told him that something was wrong, something was very wrong indeed. "What is it?"
"The Jailers!" Paula stretched out one quivering fear-stricken finger towards the gray-fogged horizon. Somewhere in that direction lay the Jailers, the Jailers that were coming closer, and both Carl and Paula knew that when those creatures got here then any hope they had of salvation would be dashed to the rocks....
T h u m p ... T h u m p ... C I o se r and closer ... Thump ... Thump ... Closer and closer....
"You FOOLS!" Veena laughed, and her mocking yowl of triumph reverberated darkly in the hollow stillness. "You bloody FOOLS! You thought that you had me, you thought that you took my powers away! Well, when the Jailers get here you'll see which of us is victorious! When my Jailers come you shall not have a prayer!"
"We'll see about that, bitch." A grim line of determination slashed across Carl's face as he spoke. His cock was still inside this woman's body and he could feel it getting bigger with every passing second. "I'm going to give you an orgasm. I'm going to make you come. And then WE'LL be the winners."
"NO!" shouted Veena, and as she said it both Carl and Paula knew that the outcome of the battle had already been determined. If they could only make Veena orgasm before the Jailers arrived, they would be free. If not, then they both knew that all would be lost. The Jailers would be here and the Countess of Ravenspur would emerge triumphant and glorious. And then neither Carl nor Paula would ever be shown mercy again.
"I'm going to FUCK you!" Carl bellowed, and as he spoke he plunged his organ even deeper into Veena than it had gone before. She moaned softly in anguish, but she knew that nothing she said or did would make this man pull his cock out of her body until both he and she had had a climax. Veena had never had an orgasm, and she shuddered at the thought of being forced to receive one now. It was very humiliating....
"You're SCARED of an orgasm!" hissed Carl, as his rock-hard pillar of manhood boomed up and down within her loins like some sort of erogenous pile driver. "You're SCARED to have an orgasm! Admit it! ADMIT it! ADMIT IT!"
Thump ... Thump ... Closer and closer ... Closer and closer they came. Thump....
Paula shuddered in panic. She could hear the oncoming sound of the Jailers and she knew that they would be here soon, very soon. The eternally unceasing thump sounded like stone against metal, or the bounding of a one-footed behemoth as it leaped again and again across the barren half-formed wasteland.
Faster and faster Carl pumped. He was determined to make Veena orgasm, determined to make her cream out her sensuous guts on the sandy stretch of this oceanless beach. His huge hairy cock rose and fell, rose and fell deep within her. Thump ... Thump ... Thump, it went Thump....
Veena moaned softly in pain and self-pity. Against her will she could feel herself being dragged slowly and inexorably towards the edge of a swirling vortex of sexual climax. Against her will she knew that she was being forced to have an orgasm....
NO! She told herself it was impossible for her to climax. She had never had an orgasm before and she was not going to have one now. It was against all the laws of Nature....
THUMP ... THUMP.. THUMP....
In the dimly lit twilight of this godforsaken world Paula was sure that she could see the Jailers coming. The distant horizon was scattered with rocks and boulders and menhirs of every size and description. And far off, on a high hill of mineral matter, she was sure that she could see a movement, she was sure that she could see a change, that she could see a shadow passing across the face of the void like some sort of gigantic hand to snuff out their lives and their hopes of salvation. The Jailers were coming closer....
THUMP ... THUMP.. THUMP again ... THUM P....
"Take my meat, you bitch!" Carl ranted incessantly. "Feel my hot meat up inside that worthless cunt of yours. You're going to cream! You're going to cream out your fuckin' guts all over this god-blasted planet!"
And he fucked her, he fucked Veena harder and harder, and as his cock rose and fell he could feel a far-off rumbling, a distant sensation that swirled and echoed within his own organ of manhood, and Carl knew that he was going to have an orgasm. And the thought of it, the knowledge that he was going to have an orgasm and Veena was not, somehow brought him to the peak of an interminable rage.
"You bitch!" he shouted. "You BITCH! I hate you! I HATE you!" And he brought his big booming cock down farther into this woman, sent it so far down into her that Veena screamed out in bottomless anguish. She was being crucified on the hot redness of this big man's organ. It was filling her body with pain, and her heart was pounding out a death-riddled rhythm....
THUMP ... THUMP ... Faster and faster....
THUMP ... THUMP ... Faster and faster....
"Ayaaarghh!" And then Carl's cock was exploding in a shower of erogenous fireworks. He had creamed, he had blasted out every last drop of his glimmering love-sauce like some sort of red-hot lava. And he knew that the battle had been fought and he and Paula had lost, because he had shot his wad and Veena had not ... THUMP.". .THUMP ... The Jailers were coming....
THUMP ... THUMP ... The Jailers were near ... "You fools! You fools! You gambled and lost!" And Veena's mocking laughter rang out hollowly in the distance, and as if in response to it the sound of the oncoming Jailers increased, the tempo got faster, and now they were near....
THUMP! THUMP-THUMP-THUMP-THUMP! THUMP-THUMP-THUMP-THUMP! Paula could see the shadow on the distant hill coming closer, crawling towards her, and now she could see something SOLID coming over the crest of the rocks, and she knew that the Jailers were arriving. There was not very much time left....
"DAMN you!" Carl shouted, and he gave one last thrust to his cock, and it blossomed out into hot steaming orgasm that shot and reverberated around and around inside Veena's cold body.
And then suddenly she screamed. She had never felt a man's hot creaminess inside of her, and yet Veena was feeling it now. It was like a key that had opened the vault, for now all the years of pent-up sexual tension were spilling out of Veena's pussy as she creamed in an orgasm that could never be equaled.
"NO!. . .NO!. . .STOP it!" she cried, but there was no stopping the orgasm now. It tumbled out of her like a sensuous flood, it poured out and bled onto the landscape like a thousand gallons of sexual tidal wave. More of it, more of it, and as Veena's vaginal muscles shook in the welter of orgasm her voice rose until it was a high-pitched squeal of damnation, and it seemed to both Carl and Paula that her body was melting away into flames, into the flames of a thousand hell fires of Hades.
And then suddenly Carl and Paula were in each other's arms, sobbing and gasping and laughing and crying and moaning and shouting all tumbled together. They had won. They had WON!
Suddenly Paula looked up, and her soft golden hair whipped over and across her young face as she did so. A high wind was rising, and it was slowly getting stronger.
They were back at Ravenspur, they were back at the huge stone altar at the entrance to the fortress of torture. It was daylight now, but near dusk. The sun glowed dully on the western horizon, and it was far too big and too red for any sun that had ever warmed Earth. And the wind was getting stronger.
And then Carl and Paula heard something that made their blood turn to ice water in their veins.
THUMP ... THUMP ... THUMP....
The Jailers were coming! They were miles away but coming closer, coming steadily towards them from over the hills. And then there was another sound, a rumbling sound, the sound of centuries-old masonry beginning to powder and crumble at last.
Ravenspur was dying.
The girl and the boy watched in horror as the castle began to shrivel, and swivel and wizen, and then it fell in upon itself with a crash and a shower of dust. And the THUMP of the onrushing Jailers was still heard, a bit closer and a bit louder, and mixed in with this sound came another sound, an even more bone-chilling one.
It was the squeal of a thousand inhuman voices in a thousand inhuman throats, and a dark black-blotted shadow crawled out of the depths of the ruins and across the empty expanse towards the two lovers. A SOMETHING was coming out of Ravenspur and crawling towards them in the darkness, a Something that had a thousand limbs and a million eyes....
Paula knew what it was, and just the thought of the nature of the thing made her blood run colder still within her. The half-human creatures of Veena's grotesque Menagerie were escaping, were crawling gradually towards them with ever-increasing speed. Things that had too many limbs or no limbs at all, things that had two heads or three heads or mouths in the tops of their necks that opened and closed, opened and closed.
The Menagerie's beasts were loose upon the face of the earth.
And the Jailers were coming closer ... THUMP ... THUMP....
From the throats of the beasts rose a shrill piercing whine: "We accept them ... we accept them ... we accept them, freaks like us ... " And the things came nearer, the things came closer until both Paula and her boy friend were too petrified with panic to move, to stiffened with fear to turn and run....
"We accept them ... THUMP ... THUMP ... We accept them ... THUMP ... THUMP ... " The twisted half-humans came forward, and behind them was a death-blackened shadow, a shadow that fell slowly across the countryside and turned it into a vast and barren wasteland.
The twisted limbs came closer to the naked girl and the naked boy, the limbs with feet for hands and stumps for feet, the limbs with fingers like spidery tendrils that seemed to reach out and grasp at the emptiness as they slowly and gradually came closer and ever nearer to their unclothed prey.
"THUMP ... THUMP ... Freaks like us ... We accept them. . .Freaks like us ... THUMP ... THUMP:. . " Closer they came....
A single limb, a single half-human appendage that might once have been christened an arm reached out from the mass of teeming inhumanity and probed delicately towards Paula's naked foot. She watched in rapt fascination mingled with horror as the thing crept closer, as it slowly raised like some sort of snake ready to strike, as it came up slowly and then flung itself at her foot.
The spell was broken, and Paula screamed.
Instantly the squadron of beasts were upon her, flinging themselves obscenely on top of both Paula and Carl, who battled and twisted and fought to shake the things off. Hands snatched and grasped and closed tightly around Paula's breasts, Carl's cock. Fingers and lizard-like tongues tried to force their way into the tight buttocks of both the girl and the boy, spreading the ass-cheeks to get into what lay beyond.
"RUN, Paula!" Carl shouted, and as he opened his mouth a horde of black beast-things tried to force their way inside it. He bit down on something soft and hairy, and he felt the sickness rise within himself, and then he was running with both arms outstretched to ward off the inhuman attack of this bestial Menagerie.
THUMP! THUMP-THUMP-THUMP-THUMP! THUMP-THUMP-THUMP-THUMP!
Closer and closer and closer they came....
Paula was running blind now, her long blonde hair streaming behind her and her naked white flesh gleaming in the yellow moonlight. She knew that Carl was running too, but she did not know where he was, or even if the two of them were running in the same direction.
An awful thought occurred to Paula: how did she know that she was running in the right direction? For that matter, how did she know that ANY direction was the right direction? It seemed to the terror-crazed girl that the Jailers were coming from all sides at once, and that she was in the very centre of a maelstrom of gibbering beasts, the contents of Veena's awesome Menagerie spilled out over the face of the planet. The freak-things were on all sides of her now, on all sides and coming closer.
"CARL!" the girl shouted, and as she yelled it she saw the thing that convinced her that now there was absolutely no hope at all. For a dozen yards away stood Carl, legs spread wide, frantically doing battle with a half a score of the monsters at once. And more were approaching from every direction. Two were attached to his forearm like leeches, a third was entwining itself round his body like a tree root, and another was attacking his penis, sucking it fiercely like some sort of inhuman leech....
Tears of agonized anguish shot through Paula's mind as she stumbled forward, into the very thick of the swirling mass of monstrosities, the clicking clittering creatures that called out "We accept them ... Freaks like us!"
THUMP! THUMP! THUMP! THUMP!
THUMP THUMP-THUMP! TH UMP THUMP-THUMP! THUMP-THUMP THUMP-THUMP!
Closer and closer the Jailers came.
Paula was being attacked from every angle by a couple of dozen of the creatures, and they were crawling and writhing all over their flesh. They tried to force their way into her mouth, into her ass, and especially into the moist redness of her vagina ...
Paula was only a few feet from Carl now, and she tried to get closer. He didn't see her, he didn't know she was there, he only kept on battling the writhing lumps of twisted bleeding flesh that surrounded them both. But the Menagerie beasts saw Paula was there, and they struggled to hold her back, to keep her from touching her lover.
"No! No!" shrilled a chorus of voices. "You mustn't! You mustn't! You mustn't go near!"
THUMP!
THUMP!
"DAMN YOU TO HELL!" Paula wept in her rage as she fought against the mass of Hell-spawned creatures, the beasts from the Menagerie of Ravenspur. The leaping, prancing, quivering things were just human enough to be terrifying, and Paula knew that she was about to be sicker than she ever had been in her life.
With a moan of exhaustion and grief she slipped, she stumbled and feel against the throbbing masses of quivering flesh, and as Paula fell one of her hands flew out and touched against the torn flesh of her boy friend Carl's ankle.
THUMP!
THUMP!
And that touch was the touch of Creation, of everything beautiful that had ever been or would ever be upon the face of this or any other planet. It was the touch of a man and a woman, the most beautiful combination of objects that had ever been made. Those ill-brained agents of the Devil who would sever that combination, that teaming of Male and Female, to match Male with Male or Female with Female, or something more odious than that, could never hope to succeed. For the touch of a man and a woman, of a boy and a girl, is the most beautiful damn thing that there ever will be.
"Oh, Carl!" Paula moaned. "Oh, darling! I love you!" And as the words came out the thumping sound stopped, and the clittering creatures of the night fell back in horror, and glinting through the trees in the distance was a single golden beam of sunlight, marking the way for freedom for both of these people.
"RUN!" Carl called out. "Run with me, darling!" And then the two of them were holding hands and running, their naked bodies gleaming in the stillness. And then a many-throated squeak of anger was heard from behind them, and the beasts of the Menagerie were pressing forward, and the Jailers came near with a THUMP, with a THUMP....
The boy and the girl ran, faster and faster, harder and harder. Once Paula looked back and saw that the creatures were almost upon them, and when she saw that she gripped Carl's hand tighter in her own, and then their pursuers fell back another few inches. That was when Paula knew that Love was the answer, that the physical attraction that she and this boy had between each other was the shining weapon they had that would defeat the powers of Evil.
Faster and faster the boy and girl ran, but no matter how fast they went or how quickly their naked feet pounded against the earth they could still hear the squeakings and the clitterings of the obscene creatures behind them, and the never-ceasing THUMP! THUMP! of the oncoming Jailers that grew louder and more insistent as it came.
Paula was beginning to stumble, was starting to slip and fall, but each time she did so Carl pulled her closer to himself, and then they were running again. They had reached the edge of the woods, and Paula recognized them as the woods that she had been in before, when Veena and her minions had first abducted the girl and brought her to Ravenspur. They were running back down the forest path that Paula had once been forced to walk along so many interminable eternities ago.
Far ahead of them Paul and Carl could see a thin golden thread of daylight, that called to them and beckoned from the far edge of the woods. They ran towards this, but it seemed to Paula that the faster they ran the farther away the daylight was. As though they were running away from it, rather than towards it.
"We'll never make it!" Paula called out, and as she did so she could hear the squeakings in triumph of the creatures behind her, shouting to each other: "She won't make it! She won't make it" And the THUMP! THUMP! of the Jailers grew louder in her ears, until it seemed to Paula that the noise was booming out from inside her own naked body, from inside her feverish brain.
"We've GOT to make it!" Carl replied, and as he said this he pulled Paula closer to himself. And then the beasts of the Menagerie groaned in consternation when they saw that their prey had been snatched from their jaws.
"You've got to keep on telling yourself we're going to make it!" Carl called out to the girl that he loved, and then they were both running faster and faster. They were Adam and Eve in a Garden of Evil, and now the Serpents were closing in on all sides at once.
THUMP!
THUMP!
THUMP-THUMP-THUMP-THUMP!
Faster and faster the two of them ran. "We will not be cheated!" squealed the Hell-spawned demons that pattered behind them. "You belong to us all ... you belong to us all ... the Menagerie calls!"
This only made the two run even faster.
Suddenly Paula slipped and fell, and she felt her hand slip out of Carl's, and then she was face downwards in the mud and the slime and she could feel the myriad horrors of Veena's Menagerie crowding around her, gnawing at her body, licking at her flesh.
"CARL!" the girl whimpered, trying to get up. She turned, lashing out at the gibbering creatures with both hands, and as she turned she could see that the shadow from the hills was almost upon her, and over the crest of the horizon she could see the first of the Jailers. And it was a sight that, made Paula faint in terror, too frightened even to scream. Her heart raced in her unconscious body, with a loud and interminable THUMP THUMPTHUMPTHUMP....
"Who ARE you?" Carl bellowed at the slavering beasts that darted around them, that nibbled at the prostrate body of Paula and that reached out to grasp hold of Carl's organs. In the distance Carl could see the Jailers, and the sight of them made his heart pound faster than Paula's, but he managed to remain standing upright. "Who are you and what do you want?"
"We are bunyips! Bunyips! Bunyips! Yes, and you're a bunyip too!" And the voices kept up their unsavory rattling, their lecherous whining, their bestial shrilling as they flung themselves upon the helpless boy and his golden-haired girl, and the Jailers joined in with a THUMP! THUMP! THUMP! THUMP!
The gibbering creatures pressed Carl back against the stump of a fungus-encrusted tree, and he cast one frantic look backwards and saw that the single thread of daylight was beginning to fade. And when he saw that the boy staggered backwards and fell to the earth, and the last thing he heard before he lapsed into oblivion was the THUMP of the Jailers ringing in his ears.
And then the bunyips began to feed....