Chet felt the silence pressing heavily upon him as he took his hand from the rock at his side and stepped out into the arena. And the vast amphitheater seemed peopled with phantom shapes that sat in serried rows and watched him with dead and terrible eyes, while he went the long way to the pyramid's base, and his feet found the rough stone ascent....
CHAPTER XXI
The Monstrous Something
The way to the top of the pyramid was long. One look Chet allowed himself out over this world—one slow, sweeping gaze that took in the bare floor at the pyramid's base, a level platform of rock some distance in front of the pyramid, the hard black and white of the walled oval, the sea of waving green that was the jungle beyond, and, beyond that, hills, misty and shimmering in the noonday heat. And nestled there, beyond that last bare ridge, must be the valley of happiness, Diane Delacouer's "Happy Valley."
Chet Bullard turned abruptly where the projecting capstone hung heavy above a shadowed entrance. He entered the blackness within, stopped once in choking nausea as the first wave of vile air struck him, then fought his way on till his searching feet found the stairway, and he knew he was descending into a pit that held something inhumanly horrible—an abomination unto all gods of decency and right.
And still there persisted that abnormal coolness that made him almost light-headed, almost carefree. Even the fetid stench ceased to offend. His feet moved with never a sound to find the first step—and the next—and the next. He must go cautiously; he must not betray his presence until he was ready to strike.
Just where that blow would be delivered or against what adversary he could not tell, and perhaps it would be given him only to save Diane and Walt by the grace of a merciful bullet. It made no difference. Nothing made any difference any more; they had had their day, and now if the night came suddenly that was all he could ask. And still his cautious feet were carrying him down and yet down....
He was far below the surface of the ground when he found the foot of the stairs. They had been a spiral; his hand had touched one wall that led him smoothly around a shaft like a great well. And now there was firm rock beneath his feet, where, with one hand still guiding him along the stone wall, he followed the wall into a darkness that was an almost solid, opaque black. He seemed lost in a great void, smothered in silence, and buried under the black weight of the pressing dark, until the sound of a footfall gave him sense of direction and of distance.