Silence came and it was more frightening than the sound. They listened and were afraid, and their fear lasted for as long as the sound lasted. They were still, many risen on haunches, snouts twitching, fur stiffened. They tensed as one when their keen, long ears picked up a distant wailing, a haunting whining they had never heard before. They sniffed at the dank air and a deep instinct within craved for a different scent, a scent which they did not yet know was the sweet odour of running blood. They moved in the darkness black, bristling beasts, with huge, humped hindquarters and long, jagged incisors, their eyes pointed and yellow. And when there was not enough food, they ate each other. To kill other creatures, but never to leave remains. To take food, but never enough to arouse unwelcome attention. To keep themselves from the eyes of their enemy. And made them alien even to those of their own nature. An event that had changed their pattern of progression. Yet in this, too, they were cautious, never taking too much, never returning to the same source, for they possessed an innate cunning, born of something more than fear of their natural enemy it was an evolution accelerated by something that had happened to their species many years before. The taste was not as exciting as the moist and tepid moving flesh, but it filled their stomachs. They fed on night creatures like themselves, and often came upon food that was not warm, that did not struggle against the stinging caress of the creatures’ jaws. They had learned to be timid in exploration, never moving far from their sanctum.

Yet these were feeble, and created shadows that were veiling allies. But even then the darkness was not absolute different kinds of individual lights pierced the night. A being who existed in the upper regions where there was vast dazzling light, a place that could be explored safely only when the brilliance diminished and succumbed to concealing and pleasurable blackness. For they had a distant race-memory of an enemy, a being whose purpose was to destroy them. They had learned to keep within the confines of their underworld, to venture out only when their own comforting darkness was sistered with the darkness above.

They would cower as the ground beneath them shook, the walls around them trembled and they would wait until the rushing thing had passed, not afraid but necessarily wary, for it was an inveterate invader but one which killed the careless. They had learned to become still, to be the darkness, when the huge monsters roared above and filled the tunnels with thunder, assaulting the black refuge – their cold, damp sanctuary – with rushing lights and deadly crushing weight. They scurried through the darkness, shadowy creatures living in permanent night.

James herbert domain review