Glancing across, I said, ‘I thought we’d eat al fresco.’
‘I thought we were having sandwiches?’
‘Oh, very funny. We are.’
‘But I thought you said we were eating al—’
‘Al fresco is French for eating outside.’
‘Oh….’
He collected the drinks. I put the sandwiches on the plates, added kitchen roll in lieu of serviettes and headed for the back door.
Jake opened it for me and grinned. ‘Oh, by the way, Dad. Al fresco is Italian for “in the open air”. Not French.’ Kids get to that age too: when they think they’re smarter than their parents. Trouble is, they generally are.
That was the shape of the afternoon. In fact, the shape of most afternoons. I made sandwiches for the family before Kathy got home from work. While I did that I traded a fair deal of good-natured banter with Jake. Paula was a little more distant these days. She was seeing a boy in a ‘significant’ way, and when she wasn’t somewhere canoodling under a tree she was working part-time to finance driving lessons, or chewing the fat with hip friends.
As I headed for the door with the sandwiches Jake said, ‘Want me to tape anything while you’re at work?’
Before I had chance to reply there came a sound like rubble being dumped into metal skips far away. A deep thundering sound felt deep in the bone as much as heard by the ear.
‘Hey.’ Jake grinned. ‘That was the sound I heard before.’
‘At least I’m in the clear about the plates.’
‘Looks as though Mum won’t have your nuts for pudding after all.’
‘Jake.’ I automatically delivered the fatherly reproach for slightly off-colour language.
Meanwhile, however, something had caught Jake’s attention. I looked back in the direction he was frowning. ‘What’s wrong?’
‘I hadn’t noticed that before.’
‘Noticed what?’
‘That crack by the sink.’
I looked. People talk about crack-ups. Or cracks appearing in society. In its way this crack was going to be as profound. The effects as far reaching. Yet this crack was in the wall. It was new. No doubt about that. I’d not noticed it a moment ago as I stood rinsing tomatoes in the sink. Thin as a pencil line, it ran a jagged path from sink to window. A powdery deposit of white paint lay dustily on the aluminum surface of the sink as if freshly fallen from the wall.
‘Remind me to buy some Polyfilla tomorrow,’ I told Jake. Then I smiled while giving a parental (not to say stoic) shake of the head. ‘Didn’t I say to get a bottle of beer, not a can?’
Three-quarters of an hour later I was at one with my conveyor belt. The machine hummed. The mail flowed as fast as a mountain stream beneath my eyes. The sorting office was in full swing. For my contracted four hours I threw parcels into the concertinaed holds. If Nirvana is the attainment of bliss through the annihilation of self then I was very blissful indeed. Concentrating on sorting the fast-flowing mail excluded any other thoughts from my head, whether it was the new crack in the wall – or that bounced script – or the beer I’d drink that night. For those four hours I ceased to be aware of myself. I was merely an unthinking cog in the great British postal machine.
Driving home that night, my body tingling pleasantly after my paid workout on the conveyor belt, I switched on the car radio. Straight away a news report relieved me of my ignorance. A minor earthquake had struck the town that afternoon. So that explained the noise like rubble being dumped into steel containers, as well as the cause of the crack in the kitchen wall. The report, if anything, was light-hearted. The town certainly didn’t lie in an earthquake zone. England just doesn’t suffer from earthquakes full stop. Damage was slight to trivial. A few vases. Maybe the odd busted picture frame. Those would be the sole entries on the casualty list. Pretty small beer when all’s said and done.
I arrived home at 9.40. Parked the car, then laid the dust of the sorting office with a glass of cold water before pulling a beer from the fridge. Kathy appeared in the kitchen. Her eyes, as always, were tired; but she’d spent time on her hair and she looked nice. I kissed her. And the brown eyes did manage a twinkle.
‘Good day?’
‘Busy,’ she replied, with that slow-breaking smile of hers that was like the sun slowly peeking over the horizon. ‘How was yours?’
‘Cryer at DTV bounced the script. Just as I thought he would.’
‘Oh, I’m sorry, John.’ Then she scowled. ‘The little bastard; he was the one who asked you for it in the first place, wasn’t he?’
‘It was. That’s the curse of modern television. They’ll ask twenty writers to supply scripts on spec with no money up front; then they cherry pick the ones that suit their schedules. Beer?’
‘Please. But he as good as promised you a contract. He was already talking about budgets. Even who’d star in the thing.’
‘Well, he speaks perfect TV bullshit-ese. There you go. Where’s Paula?’
‘At Kirsten’s.’
‘Jake?’
‘Upstairs.’ Kathy didn’t want to be deflected from the great script fiasco. ‘So, what happens to it now?’
‘I’ll try it with another one of the independents. It’s still warm out. Do you fancy sitting in the garden?’ I tried to sound light-hearted. ‘Then I can serenade you under the stars.’
Kathy nodded. Her brown eyes said it all. She was disappointed for me. Three months of work were in danger of evaporating under our very noses. Even though a contract for the script had been a longish shot, we’d already let ourselves do the foolish thing of ring-fencing the fee for the future. A chunk would offer a worry free Christmas. Presents for all. Plenty of Christmas cheer in the pantry. Now it looked like extra shifts at the Royal Mail sorting office.
Kathy sighed. ‘Why can life be so bloody difficult, John?’
Hell. Is there an answer to that one? I put my arm around her and hugged her. Then, before I followed her out into the garden, I looked back. The doors had swung shut behind us. Something they’d never done before. And I wondered if the earthquake (that ever-so minor earthquake, the radio assured) had tipped the house a little off kilter. Outside was warm. As if maybe the door of some great furnace had been opened far away. A slight scorching smell tainted the air, too. The sun had not long since quit the sky; it had left behind a blood-red stain on the horizon. The first stars glinted. A bat, nothing more than a flicker of membranous wings, picked insects from the air.
As we sipped the iced beer we gazed over the wheat field that backs onto our garden and quietly pondered our own thoughts. It was Kathy who first noticed something wasn’t right. I had to have it pointed out to me.
‘Don’t you see it, John?’ She nodded. ‘Over there … toward the middle.’
I strained my eyes into the gloom. At dusk the wheat resembles a grey lake spreading out; generally, flat and motionless.
‘There, John. More to your left. See them?’
Perhaps it was the note in her voice. But despite the heat I felt a cold chill spread out from the marrow of my bones. And, with it, a shiver came like a goose over my grave.
‘Damn me,’ I said in a tone close to awe. ‘It must have been the earthquake.’
‘But they said on the news that it was a minor one.’
‘There can’t be anything minor about that.’
Daylight was dying fast. But I could still make out four circular depressions in the wheat field. Each one perhaps twenty feet across and a foot deep. The corn itself hadn’t been disturbed that much; it had simply dropped to a lower level. Kathy headed for the gap in the hedge.
‘Where are you going?’ I asked her.
‘To take a closer look of course.’
‘Wait, you’ll see nothing in this. I’ll get the torch.’
When I returned she’d already vanished. It was as if something had reached down to pluck her from the face of the Earth.
A sense of unease seeped into me – some primeval hazard warning light started to flash red
in the core of my brain.
‘Kathy … Kathy?’
The world was a considerably darker place now. Starlight touched the corn with spectral flashes. In the distance a dog started to howl, as if it had caught the scent of something alien on the night air.
‘Kathy?’
I flicked on the torchlight. The beam splashed against corn. Then, turning away from the field, I glanced round the garden. In the shadows the hood of the barbecue sat there blackly like a gigantic skull. Bushes crouched in monstrous silhouette; a breeze touched their leaves; they rustled with the restless sound of wings fluttering in a cave.
‘Kathy … where are you?’ I looked back to the house, thinking maybe she’d returned there when I’d gone for the torch.
Ours is the sole house in Meedholme Lane. Just then its dark shape masked a hundred or so stars as squarely as a gigantic tombstone. Jake’s bedroom light burned; the curtains were closed.
‘Kathy. Where—?’ Suddenly, rearing up from the shadows came a dark shape with glinting eyes.
‘John.’
‘Kathy. Hell’s teeth … do you want to give me heart failure?’
‘Sorry.’ Her teeth showed white as she grinned.
‘Where were you?’
‘I thought I’d have a quick look first.’
‘You don’t want to go running around out here at night.’
‘Frightened the old man with the claw will get me?’
I squeezed her arm, part gesture of affection, part reassurance that she was all right.
When she spoke it was with a note of wonder. ‘Wait until you see what I found.’
We waded through the wheat until we reached the largest of the depressions. Unlike the other three this sloped down toward the centre to form a funnel shape. Corn still grew straight and unruffled on the ever-increasing incline. It was what lay at the bottom that had caught Kathy’s eye.
‘Shine the torch in the middle,’ she told me. ‘See it?’
‘My God … a cave?’
‘More like an old coal-mine working. The place is riddled with them under here.’
‘I see you haven’t forgotten all those history lessons of old man Leeson’s. Hell, look at that. How deep does it go?’
There, in the light of the torch, was an oblong hole in the ground. Maybe ten feet long, it was black as ink. Raw, dark soil showed around the rim. Even as we watched a little broke away to disappear underground with a rattle that turned into phantom echoes.
‘Don’t get any closer,’ I warned, as Kathy edged her way down the incline, arms held out like airplane wings as she balanced.
She said, ‘If it’s one of the old coal shafts it’s going to go down a long way. Eighty years ago they were sinking them a thousand feet deep around here.’
‘Then for Godsakes get away from it.’ This time I spoke with real feeling: the mental image of Kathy sliding screaming down the funnel and into that gluttonous mouth of the pit was shockingly vivid. I held out my hand; she accepted the offer and I pulled her firmly back to level ground. ‘This’s got to be sealed off. All you need is a couple of inquisitive kids and they’ll disappear into that thing forever.’ With growing distaste I eyed the pit. It had all the ominous presence of an open grave.
‘John. Look!’ Without waiting for me to direct the torch the way she was pointing, she grabbed my wrist, then swung it to the right.
‘What’s wrong?’
‘I thought I saw something moving through the corn.’
‘Something? Not someone?’
‘No … an animal – definitely animal.’
‘It might have been a rabbit.’
‘No. It was …’ She paused, puzzled as if her recollection of it didn’t match with anything she’d ever seen before. ‘Black. About the size of a large dog.’
I shrugged, grinning. ‘Then it probably was a dog.’
She shook her head. ‘No. It can’t have been. There wasn’t any fur. At least I don’t think there was.’
‘Well, it’s scarpered now. Come on, we should telephone someone about this.’ I directed the torch back at the pit. Doing so, I caught the smell of scorched air. Once more I pictured a vast furnace door that had swung open. An ear of corn nodded at the lip of the hole as if disturbed by some subterranean updraught.
Now the darkness of the pit was strangely compelling. It sat in the raw grave of an opening as if it were a liquid, or oil – like rich, dark oil that had seeped up from beneath the surface of the ground. Just for a moment I could imagine that viscous darkness oozing out over my feet, over the field, over my house, over the town to engulf the whole world.
Just then Kathy said unexpectedly, ‘I might have left the back door open.’
‘The door?’ I wondered what had prompted her to mention it.
‘Don’t worry. Jake’s at home.’
‘I know. But that animal …’ Suddenly she sounded uneasy. ‘I mean … I wonder where it went.’
We turned and breasted our way back through the corn as if we walked through a swimming pool. All the time I was conscious of the pit behind me. A raw wound in the surface of the earth. I pictured seeping darkness that had the velvet touch of a tomb.
Ahead was the silhouette of the house. Jake’s light burned in his room. We’d no sooner reached the back garden than we heard the scream. Kathy’s glance at me said far more than words ever could. The scream sounded again. Only this time it had taken on a strange muffled quality.
‘Jake.’ Kathy’s voice was sharp with worry. ‘It’s Jake!’
I looked up at the bedroom window, willing the curtain to be pulled aside, then for Jake to look out. Next came a sound. I can’t describe it as a scream. It wasn’t. Not entirely. But it was a sound I’d remember until my dying day.
‘Jake!’ I yelled his name. Still no Jake appeared at the window.
The back door lay open; we raced at it, Kathy hitting the door first. The first thing we saw was Jake in the hallway.
‘Who’s that shouting?’ His face white with fright. ‘It sounded like someone’s hurt.’
‘I’ll check the road,’ I panted at them. ‘Stay here until I get back.’
Testing the weight of the torch in my hand as if it were a club, I went back outside. Tension had a handful of my intestine in its grip by this time. That scream… It had put a river of ice through me.
Outside, it was silent. The stars still burnt their immeasurable course above my head. Bushes and trees were dark, phantom shapes. The scream must have come from Meedholme Lane that runs at the front of the house. At its busiest it’s dead quiet, and generally traffic free. At this time it wouldn’t see so much as a pedestrian for half an hour at a time. With only one streetlight I had to rely on the torch to see anything at all. The road appeared to be deserted.
‘Hello.’ My voice, as you’d imagine, sounded pretty tentative. ‘Hello. Anyone there?’
A rustling noise. This, joined by a wet sound, almost like a dog lapping water, came faintly on the night air. I judged the sounds to come from some way along the lane. I listened for footfalls but heard none. No voices, either.
Just that faint lapping. A liquid sound. Cautiously I walked toward it, shining the torch. The beam only carried so far, lighting a few square yards of road tar and the luminous white lines that spat out toward a dark horizon. A foil chewing-gum wrapper glinted with the cold light of the evil eye against asphalt.
‘Hello.’ I said loudly this time. ‘Anyone there?’
No reply. With tension quickening my pace, I homed in on the lapping sound. Five seconds later I did see shapes there in the extremity of the torchlight. The light thrown at that distance was nothing more than a thin, silvery wash. But I could see something. And that something was dark and humped. I took another dozen paces forward, my heartbeat quickening in my chest.
There lay a man.
Aged about fifty-ish, he lay on his back, one arm stretched out as if pointing at the kerb; a knee raised into the air. I could see that much.
Then the knee dropped in a way to suggest someone relaxing or falling asleep. But they’re in the middle of the road for Godsakes. Quickly, I took another ten paces. I raised the torch higher. I saw more now. But what I did see made little sense. Sod that! It made no sense.
Because sitting there on the man’s chest was a dog. It licked his face in long, rhythmic laps; pretty much as a dog would lick a bone. So here’s the scenario: man collapses while walking dog. Faithful hound tries to wake man by licking his face. That’s what the rational quarter of my mind was proposing. But I knew the truth was far darker, far grimmer.
As I lurched into a run I shouted, ‘Hey!’
The black dog noticed me now. In the shaky light of the torch I fancied I saw it glare back in my direction; I fancied I saw a pair of eyes that were large and owlish, and the sickest yellow you’ve ever seen.
‘Hey, leave him!’
My shout seemed to do the trick. As I ran up, the black dog-shape slunk away into the darkness. I swung the torch, trying to catch a glimpse of it before it vanished into the field at the side of the lane. It had already gone. But even as I anticipated the sound of it dashing away into the corn I heard a swishing noise; something like a bamboo cane being whipped through the air. Instead of coming from the field, the sound swished above my head. I tried to follow it with the torch beam. I caught the flash of a black wing. Maybe the dog had disturbed a bird – something big – a crow? A raven?
By this time I’d reached the man. ‘Don’t worry, I’ll …’ get you to hospital. To finish the sentence would have been a waste of breath.
I held the torchlight on him for no more than a second. I had an impression of loose flaps of skin. Of tearing. But the overwhelming impression was of a human face that had simply gone.
‘John, did you find—’
‘Get back in the house.’ The emotion that drove the words from my lips was enough to get Kathy inside without asking questions.
In ten seconds we were all in the kitchen with the doors locked. By this time Kathy’s face was as white as Jake’s.
‘John? Was anyone there?’
Tight-lipped, I nodded.