TRANSCRIPTION OF AUDIO
DOCUMENT CONFISCATED FROM
Dr. Jordan Johnson

I want to get out of here eight hours ago. Now I do little beyond squatting in the sand and pitching fits when people ask me for information or to move out of the way (the former happening more often). With the first speleologist dropped in the cave killed within minutes and the second team playing Wild West with some monster, things have gotten out of hand. The three or four specialists that first arrived to assist the police chief have spawned another dozen or so, and the ladder of authority keeps rising with each phone call. Next thing you know the bloody president is going to be on the horn and they'll chain whatever thing they find up in Madison Square Garden.

Standing over the lip of the yawning, treacherous cavern. Waiting for screams or laughter or whatever madness that defies logic to swim up out of the darkness. Team three has been down there for about fifteen minutes, and we've yet to hear anyone die or fire a weapon. We don't hear anything at all.

The mother of the missing kid is pacing a few yards back. If they'd let her, she'd jump in the hole right now. But as it stands we'll fill the entire desert with the opinions of every expert known to man before we find out exactly what's going on. No one is letting that lady near anything. She keeps whimpering to everyone with ears about her boy, and our people are either too busy trying to calm the mayor down or deciding whether the thing on the tape has scales or feathers.

Walkie-talkie barks behind me. Not the chief, one of the reptile gurus. They want a gurney of some sort. Whatever it was that the cop shot, they want to haul it up out of the hole. A few of the learned folks standing within earshot get hot feet and start making calls and discussing the gurney's specifications. On the walkie-talkie, the guy is describing something that won't fit on any gurney I know of. Suddenly a few screams leap into the background, forcing the walkie to crackle and peak. Then comes the voice of a child weeping and screaming, "Belial! Belial! Daddy, you shot Belial! He's dead!"

The mother of the missing child comes plowing through the congestion of scientists and practically bulldozes the guy holding the walkie-talkie. She yells, "Joseph! That's my boy! That's him!" and between her yelling and the kid yelling, everyone's ears are perked up half expecting a gunshot or the snarl of some cave monster to come next.

The chief's voice comes through on the walkie, says they're coming up. In the distance, the scientists are saying, "Now wait just a minute, chief; we haven't begun to assess the enormity of this discovery—" The chief cuts him off and yells, "You can stay down here with your new pet if you want to, doc; I came for the boy, and we've found him." The kid continues to scream about someone called "Belial" being shot and dead, and next to me the mother is getting so carried away I wonder if someone is going to slap her. "He's alive!" she keeps screaming, jumping up and down, her eyes full of madness and sleep deprivation.

Everyone on the surface stares at one another. Finally I break the silence by yelling, "Pull them up for Christ's sake!" and two grunts run to the pulley and get to work at reeling in the team. In a moment the chief appears at the mouth of the cave along with officer Phinney, who is clutching his crying son. The other two ropes return with open clips and no reptile experts in tow.

"Idiots unhooked themselves," the chief grunts. "You egg heads better get on the horn and tell them I'm coming back for them with or without the body of some dead alligator." In the distance, two men are on the phone with animal control trying to figure out how to extract the carcass. The little boy keeps whining about Belial, and by the time he and his father are freed from the cable system the mother is crushing the boy with her embrace.

"Daddy killed him, Momma," the boy sobs. "Daddy killed Belial."

The mother isn't listening. She's rocking the child back and forth, humming, verging on post-traumatic stress disorder. The chief, after seeing to the safety of his officer and the recovered youth, begins to lock himself back into the cable system and calls for someone to lower him down.

"If you'll wait a moment," one of the researchers interjects, "we'll be happy to send you back down. But the doctors aren't coming up without the specimen."

"They might not come up one way or another," the chief grunts.