Chapter one
They climbed up before dawn. Twelve of them, twelve young rascals clambering over the fallen boulders at the foot of the Hill of Dancing Ghosts. They slipped like wraiths into the hidden opening in the cliff face. Here torches were handed out. Young Dimpy grasped the rough wood of the handle, Big Balla lit the end from her torch half-blinding Dimpy, and he stumbled up the steps after the others feeling his heart thumping like a manic janzi pecker.
“Get on! Get on!” Sleed gave Dimpy a vicious push which sent him staggering up the steps. The stink of Sleed’s greased hair cut acridly through the smells of damp earth and burning torches and sweat. Sleed was bigger than the others and unpleasant with it. He was known as Sleed the Slick and was in command of this section of novices in the Hellraisers. “You’ll have to shape up if you wanna join us, you useless tanzy.”
Dimpy struggled on up the slippery ascent. He didn’t much mind being called a tanzy, for he knew he wasn’t. He didn’t care to be called Young Dimpy. Oh, sure, he was young all right, not as green as these scared novices, but younger than Sleed or Big Balla. Since the slide and the death of his father and brothers he’d matured in caring for his mother and sisters. The slide had knocked the heart out of his old gang, the Roaring Fifties, so that the Hellraisers had moved into the territory without serious opposition. Now, like it or not, he had to prove himself as a gang member all over again.
Screams splintered up from ahead and a couple of novices tumbled down the steps almost knocking Dimpy over. Confusion broke all along the line. Weird shadows fled across the stairway. Big Balla was already thrusting her way up and Sleed, with his customary vicious shove, pushed past Dimpy and started after her.
“If’n it’s them stinking Screaming Leems I’ll—” What Sleed intended to do to the rival gang was lost as his words drowned in the uproar. The Screaming Leems, considered Dimpy, had to be way out of their territory if they were mounting a raid here. He could feel the closeness of the walls, the slime underfoot, the dark stench of the place. The novices were caterwauling away, terrified out of their wits. Dimpy dragged in a gagging breath and started after Sleed. He was thinking of Big Balla.
Pushing novices out of his way Dimpy reached the top of the steps where the uncertain light revealed Big Balla and Sleed desperately using their torches to hold off a half-grown praxul whose three stalked eyes glinted red above the fanged slot between his jaws.
Dimpy knew about praxuls. Nasty beasts, squamous and scuttling, they inhabited the honeycombed interiors of the hills along with a whole horrendous slew of fellow monsters. Much of the hill’s interior was illuminated by a fungus which gave light enough for the praxul’s three eyes. He didn’t much like the orange glare of the torches.
“Get his eyes!” shouted Dimpy. He darted in, thrust and skipped back. He missed. Luckily for him, the praxul’s sweep of claw also missed.
“I know! I know!” snarled Sleed. “Get outta my way,
