Hi, I'm Llrâc Nôdbé (Pronounced ‘Lark Nod-Bee’), or simply 'Lark' for short.
I'm a British Armed Forces and Gulf War Veteran, with a sarcasm to match.
I write whatever the voices tell me to write, and they don't always have something nice to say.
Because I've spent most of my life there, I tend to live in the past, and you can find me lurking around the 80's.
Listen out for the voices HERE
THE WW2 BUNKER
by
Llrâc Nôdbé
They called us Urban Explorers but as Mike, Nick and I descended the thin metal ladder over fifty metres below the lush, green Pontyfechan valley in South Wales, it didn’t seem so urban.
There must have been over thirty rooms branching off the central corridor and all but one of them was unlocked, heavily graffitied and stripped bare. I sidled up to the only locked door, its green paint flaking off like dry, lip skin, and slid a black pouch into my hand.
‘What’s that?’ asked Nick.
I smirked. ‘A twenty-quid lock picking kit from Amazon.’
They both laughed and wandered out of sight as I jiggled the picks and listened for the clicks. Less than three minutes later and the door swung inwards with a reluctant squeak. Mike slapped my back and he and Nick barged past with a whoop whoop!
Maps on walls, decades-old paperwork, food rations, medical supplies and both adult and child gas masks, but no weapons.
We had hit the jackpot!
Seven rooms in total: a canteen, two storerooms, office, dormitory, surgery and a cell!
#
Despite the guys frenzied excitement, I took my time studying and photographing everything this Royal Observer Corps WW2 bunker had to offer. The air inside was stale and damp, and I expected a carpet of dust but, strangely, only the edges of the corridor floor were thick with it, as though the place was used regularly.
Something didn’t sit right with me, but I was probably just being paranoid.
A strange sound emanated from the canteen as though the guys were wading through a metallic sea. I wandered in and discovered them in the dining area up to their waists in thousands of unlabelled, gold and silver, empty tin cans.
‘There’s tables and chairs buried beneath this lot,’ noted Mike. ‘This is mad.’
I shook my head in disbelief but didn’t reply. I followed the corridor to the next door; a huge store room roughly ten by fifty metres with five rows of racking disappearing into the darkness. The shelves were rammed. Near the door was a dusty, purple, telephone switchboard, strange electronic devices and an inventory filing system, but the rest of the room was piled high with tinned food — over eighty thousand tins at least. I backed out and nudged my head into the other rooms … but then I stopped dead.
Was that a child crying?
The sound came from the direction of the cell and I approached it with scepticism, my mind whirling. The cell door was solid metal apart from a small, barred window at head-height and an open, elongated flap near the bottom, presumably for sliding food to prisoners. A half-inch gap along the frame told me the cell was unlocked and I was just about to push it open when a small hand slid through the flap and grabbed my ankle causing me to yelp and jump backwards, heart racing. My camera flew from my hand, lens shattering on the floor.
Fuck! Calm down, it’s just a child.
‘Wait, I’m not going to hurt you!’
Sudden loud thuds and crashing sounds behind me heightened my fear, and I turned to see the dormitory door moving slowly.
What were those idiots up to?
I took out my torch and poked it through the bars, swinging the beam around. The floor was covered in horsehair and human bones. I gulped, the air suddenly lumpy. Shadows shrunk away from my torch beam until it found the girl, aged roughly eight or nine with straw-like, matted hair. She was naked, and her chest was almost skinless; the skin stripped away, layer by layer, like a leg of Serrano ham. Impossibly, the flesh and gristle beneath still glistened, although the edges were curled and brown like leather. I looked away, gripping the bars tight, my strong shoulders compensating for the sudden weakness in my legs. When I looked back, the child had vanished.
I swung the torch sideways, searching, but the circle of light found a naked woman, instead. I’m embarrassed to admit that my eyes lingered on her large breasts before guilt drew them upwards over shiny, curly locks to her hypnotic, obsidian eyes, which seemed to beckon the child forward.
The girl cupped the woman’s chest and leaned in, her mouth wide, but it wasn’t the girl who fed. I watched in horror as claws protruded from the woman’s fingers and sliced a long sliver of skin from the girl’s stomach, which she slid down her throat like a slimy, bloody oyster. I froze, my brain uncomprehending my eye’s data, but then a hideous laugh escaped the woman’s mouth and snapped me out of my stupor.
The woman’s thighs were clamped around the girl but her right leg was jointless and slithered along the floor before disappearing out of sight. Before the torch beam could locate it, it snaked out of the flap, wrapped itself around my legs and yanked them. My skull crunched on the floor and everything went black.
#
I woke dizzy, unsure how long I’d been out. I ran my fingers through my hair but there was no blood, however, when I got on all fours I saw a streaked trail of blood between the canteen and surgery, and a naked man standing in the corridor less than five metres away. His chest was totally void of skin; strips of wire held back his innards and organs, which throbbed with each heartbeat. One arm held a hammer, which dripped of blood, but the other limb was unlike anything I had ever seen. Scales ran from his shoulder downwards but there was no elbow, wrist, or hand; just a writhing, lizard-like, tentacle.
‘I’m so glad you and your friends could join us for dinner,’ he said, with a crooked smile.