We are not alone. Some call them devils or demons. But they are real. They are down there. And they are waiting for us to find them. In a cave in the Himalayas, a guide discovers a self-mutilated body with a warning: Satan exists. In the Kalahari Desert, a nun unearths evidence of a proto-human species and a deity called Older-than-Old. In Bosnia, something has been feeding upon the dead in a mass grave. So begins mankind’s most shocking realization: the underworld is a vast geological labyrinth populated by another race of beings. “An imaginative tour de force...equal parts Ray Bradbury and Robert Stone, Michael Crichton and T.C. Boyle. It is a rip-roaring good read. Jeff Long has written a remarkable novel...that somehow succeeds both as a sober-minded allegory and a nail-biting thriller.” —Jon Krakauer, author of Into Thin Air “Would give Stephen King and Dean Koontz the night sweats. A flat-out, gears-grinding, bumper-car ride into the pits of hell. Jeff Long has delivered what is bound to be this summer’s really hot read.” —Lorenzo Carcaterra, author of Sleepers and Apaches “ The Descent is simply the best horror novel since Ghost Story , and, on pure literary merit, it could even be called a masterpiece.” —Fort Worth Star-Telegram “A return to the fantastic epics readers associate with H.G. Wells or Jules Verne…[A] high-spirited tale of good versus evil, faith versus reason, and the power of the human heart to overcome even the darkest obstacles.” —Chicago Tribune “As frightening and exhilarating as anything in heaven or hell...[and] impossible to set down. Part thriller, part horror story and part mystery...an all-engulfing reading experience.” —Denver Rocky Mountain News “Perfect...right out of the stephen king mold, with a touch of Dante’s Inferno .” —Denver Post “Deeply piercing terror. A sweeping, dark epic.Entertains the senses and challenges the mind [with] new levels of visual wonder.” —Milwaukee Journal Sentinel “Horrific...takes the reader into a Dantesque world,a journey to the center of the earth for the new millennium…Long deftly blends science, myth, and a superb imagination to provide an entrancingly dark novel...a novel for the thinking reader — bright and scintillating, illuminating the darkness it so smartly depicts.” —Baltimore Sun “A dizzying synthesis of supernatural horror, lost-race fantasy and military SF...Like the subterranean trail blazed by its adventurers, the narrative twists, turns, dead-ends and backtracks. Brims with energy, ideas and excitement.” —Publishers Weekly Jeff Long is a veteran climber and traveler in the Himalayas. He has worked as a journalist and an elections supervisor for Bosnia’s first democratic election. The Descent is his fourth novel. He lives in Boulder, Colorado. Chapter 1: Ike It is easy to go down into Hell . . . ; but to climb back again, to retrace one's steps to the upper air-there’s the rub. . . — Virgil, Aeneid The Himalayas, Tibet Autonomous Region 1988 In the beginning was the word. Or words. Whatever these were. They kept their lights turned off. The exhausted trekkers huddled in the dark cave and faced the peculiar writing. Scrawled with a twig, possibly, dipped in liquid radium or some other radioactive paint, the fluorescent pictographs floated in the black recesses. Ike let them savor the distraction. None of them seemed quite ready to focus on the storm beating against the mountainside outside. With night descending and the trail erased by snow and wind and their yak herders in mutinous flight with most of the gear and food, Ike was relieved to have shelter of any kind. He was still pretending for them that this was part of their trip. In fact they were off the map. He'd never heard of this hole-in-the-wall hideout. Nor seen glow-in-the-dark caveman graffiti. "Runes," gushed a knowing female voice. "Sacred runes left by a wandering monk." The alien calligraphy glowed with soft violet light in the cave's cold bowels. The luminous hieroglyphics reminded Ike of his old dorm wall with its black-light posters. All he needed was a lash of Hendrix plundering Dylan's anthem, say, and a whiff of plump Hawaiian red sinsemilla. Anything to vanquish the howl of awful wind. Outside in the cold distance, a wildcat did growl. . . . "Those are no runes," said a man. "It's Bonpo." A Brooklyn beat, the accent meant Owen. Ike had nine clients here, only two of them male. They were easy to keep straight. "Bonpo!" one of the women barked at Owen. The coven seemed to take collective delight in savaging Owen and Bernard, the other man. Ike had been spared so far. They treated him as a harmless Himalayan hillbilly. Fine with him. "But the Bonpo were pre-Buddhist," the woman expounded. The women were mostly Buddhist students from a New Age university. These things mattered very much to them. Their goal was-or had been-Mount Kailash, the pyramidal giant just east of the Indian border. "A Canterbury Tale for the World Pilgrim" was