On Deadly Ground Read online

  Again I shook my head and walked on. I’d heard nothing. It was only imagination playing tricks. After all, we all must have been affected by the way Stenno plunged into the garden like that, his face covered in blood. Then there were his eyes. The way they had stared out from that mask of blood. How white and round they were, like discs of white plastic. And why had the pupils and irises shrunk to tiny black dots? Why, you couldn’t even see any colour at all. And that look of terror had hit you like a punch. Just what the hell had he encountered in this wood?

  Leaves rustled. I looked round quickly, my mouth dry; my heartbeat cranked up a notch.

  Thud-thud. Thud-thud—

  Christ…there really was someone there. I froze. My eyes were wide, as with sheer will-power alone I tried to punch my vision through the gloom.

  I could see nothing.

  Maybe I should shout? But if there was nothing there when the others came running I’d be a laughing stock. I wasn’t ready for that humiliation. Rick Kennedy. The man who was afraid of the dark.

  I headed for where I judged the noise was coming from. I stretched out my hands, going by touch alone now.

  Fingers touched my palm.

  Hell!

  I grabbed.

  And grabbed a sapling.

  Idiot.

  My mouth was dry now. My heart beating faster; breath coming in shallow pulls. Someone was there. I was sure of it. The sense of ... of presence was just so strong. Palpable. Yeah, that was the word. Palpable. You could reach out and touch that sense of presence hanging in the air.

  Every five paces I stopped, held my breath, listened hard.

  But my heartbeat was like a bass-drum now. I could hear nothing but that lump of muscle in my chest going:

  Thud-thud-thud-thud…

  ‘Come out, come out, wherever you are,’ I whispered.

  I stepped sideways now, so strongly did I anticipate someone aiming a blow at my face or my bollocks.

  My skin crawled as though insects with pointed feet were marching over it.

  This dark…this fucking darkness. I could see nothing. But I knew, by Christ, I knew there was someone there. They moved just ahead of me, teasing me. I knew it. I had this absolute, total, utter conviction they knew perfectly well where I was all the time, and that they were just playing a game with me.

  Any moment now they might double back…maybe I’d see a glint of a knife blade, too late, as it sliced the air down to my face, cutting my—

  ‘Hell.’

  I felt it in my face. I swung my fist. It hit me again. This time I grabbed with both hands.

  A branch. A stupid branch.

  I patted it with a sense of relief. But I knew it was idiotic to carry on like this. It was too dark to see anything at all now. For all I knew I might be heading for the old quarry. All I needed was to step over the edge of that and I’d find myself Glory bound, complete with wings and harp.

  It was as I started back—or at least what I thought was the way back—when I smelt that odour.

  I sniffed. It came up at me so strongly it took me by surprise. It struck me then that it was the same kind of smell you get on a hot summer’s day when there’s a thunderstorm and the rain hits the sunbaked soil. But this soil smell was just so strong it seemed to force its way up my nostrils to penetrate right into my brain.

  Shaking my head, I walked on.

  Then with a burst of surprise, even a level of gratitude that was so high it was almost bizarre, I found myself in a small clearing where a big tree had toppled in a winter storm. Above I could see a ragged hole in the canopy of branches; stars pricked the deepening blue.

  Here the smell grew even stronger. I remember looking round at my feet, puzzled, wondering what on Earth caused it.

  For Christsakes, I reasoned, it’s just some stupid smell. Probably badger wizz or weasel spoor or something. But it was so strong and so out of place I found myself looking down at my feet.

  Then I saw the weirdest thing.

  All around me the soil was moving. It moved in a slow undulating motion. I shook my head. It was just so impossibly weird. That, and this warm soil smell.

  I crouched down trying to see what was happening. Then my eyes adjusted to the gloom. And I saw it wasn’t the soil that was moving: it was what was coming out of the soil.

  There they were. Thousands of them. For all the world it looked as though men by the hundred had been buried alive, and now they were just slowly, slowly, slowly easing their fingers up through the soil; up ... up until they broke through the surface. Then they slowly flexed their fingers, enjoying the warm evening air against their skin after years of confinement, locked inside a cold, damp grave.

  I crouched there. Stared in amazement at the pink sticks standing proud out of the ground.

  My eyes were wide enough by then to admit any available light. At last the penny dropped.

  ‘Worms.’

  Thousands of damned worms. All sliding out of the ground at once. But for some reason they had all, down to the last one, decided to stand on their tails and hold their bodies erect so that they stood out from the ground like some loony-tune crop of fingers. The guys should take a look at this, they really should. Even better, I told myself, grinning, bring the camcorder. This would make one of those great tail-end stories on the news. You know the sort: cute dog goes windsurfing, amusing cat drives golf buggy—that kind of thing. The money it earned might buy a set of new microphones for the band.

  I could, I decided, get home and be back with a camcorder inside half an hour. I checked the time. 9:47. Yeah, could do it easy. Then video the little buggers doing their strange night-time dance.

  I stood up.

  The first thing I saw was the face. In the gloom it seemed to hang suspended in midair. No body. Only a face.

  A face with two eyes that seemed to stare right through to the back of my skull.

  I opened my mouth to shout for the others. But no sound even got past my lips. For some reason I locked up tight as a statue.

  The next thing I knew I was flat down on the ground with all those dancing worms.

  Immediately I tried to get up. But I couldn’t move. I couldn’t breathe. I was only conscious of being held face down by a hand pressing between my shoulder blades while another hand forced my face against the soil. Now I could see the worms in close-up as they stretched toward the sky. The worms’ bodies—pink, wet, segmented.

  That’s when I knew I wanted to scream.

  Because I knew what it was that Stenno had encountered. It had been that face in the darkness.

  And as I felt myself being held there I felt this great wave of terror. It came from somewhere in the depths of my guts. It swelled up and up and up. A brutal terror. A ruthless, overpowering terror that stabbed at my heart; a sheer terror that swamped every other thought and sensation.

  No sound came from my mouth; but, as those strong hands forced me down against the ground, inside my head I screamed and I screamed and I screamed.

  Chapter 5

  It was dark now, the party in full swing. People danced on the lawn or on the patio to a string of old rock-’n’-roll standards.

  Howard Sparkman grinned as I walked in through the garden gate. ‘What kept you, Rick Kennedy, old son?’ The grin widened. ‘Or should I say who kept you?’

  ‘No one kept me anywhere. I’ve been looking for whoever attacked Stenno. How is he, by the way?’

  ‘Someone’s taken him to the hospital to have the eye looked at but it doesn’t seem life-threatening. He managed a couple of beers and even laughed at one of Dean’s filthy jokes. Now…’ His eyes beamed through the gold-rimmed spectacles. ‘Aren’t you going to tell your old buddy Howard who you’ve been pressing up against a tree?’

  ‘Chance’d be a fine thing…oh, pass me a beer, my mouth tastes like you’ve slept in it.’

  ‘Charming.’ Howard winked. ‘So you’re playing the gentleman, then? You’re not going to kiss and tell?’

  F
or a joke it was wearing a bit thin. ‘You’ve lost me, Howard. What do you think I’ve been up to?’

  ‘You must have done something, the time you’ve been gone.’

  ‘Time I’ve been gone? That must be all of five minutes longer than the rest of you. We looked round the woods for the Beeston gang. I found sweet FA and I take it you found nothing, either. Then we all came back.’

  ‘But we’ve been back ages, dear boy.’

  ‘Ages? We’ve been all of twenty minutes.’

  ‘Rick ...’ Howard tapped his watch. ‘Everyone bar you came back here an hour ago.’

  ‘An hour? Pull the other one, Howard.’

  ‘OK, OK, I’ll mind my own business; too nosy for my own good. Here…have one of these chops. They are absolutely freaking amazing.’

  I took a swallow of beer. It felt like liquid ice in my throat. Why was I so thirsty? I felt as if I’d just hiked across the burning sands of the Sahara. And what was all this leg-pulling about me disappearing? I’d looked at my watch not more than five minutes ago and the time had been 9:47. I checked my watch.

  ‘Rick. Rick old buddy? Are you OK?’

  ‘Fine…yeah, fine.’

  ‘Well, you don’t look fine. You got a piece of bone stuck in your throat?’

  ‘No…really, Howard. I’m fine. If you could pass me another beer?’

  ‘Sure. You sit down. No, Rick, on the wall just there, you don’t look too steady.’

  ‘Steady?’

  ‘You look as if you’re going to keel over.’

  ‘I’m fine.’

  ‘Rick. Sit.’

  ‘Hell, Sparky, you sound like my mother.’

  ‘Yeah, I’m two years older than you so it’s my prerogative to be your mother, father and your dear old Aunt Nellie rolled into one. Sit there, I’ll get you a drink.’

  I watched Howard bustle away to get the beers. And just for a moment it seemed I was peering at him from the bottom of a deep, deep pit. I could even see the dark sides going way up into the distance, with a blob of light at the end containing Howard hurrying to the drinks table.

  And I knew why I felt the way I did. It wasn’t the booze. It was because I’d just gone and looked at my watch. In my heart of hearts I knew it should have shown it was coming up to ten o’clock. But I’d just looked at the thing and it read 11:01.

  But just minutes ago I’d looked at the watch in the wood; the time had been 9:47.

  OK, I’ve a reputation for being a little careless sometimes. I’ll lose the change out of my pocket, forget my jacket in a restaurant or mislay a friend’s telephone number. But I’d never lost a whole hour before.

  I went over what I’d been doing in the wood. We’d been hunting for the Beeston gang. We’d split up. I’d ended up blundering through the darkest part of the wood. Then there was the clearing created by the fallen tree. Oh, yeah…I remembered now. There was something about the soil; something…comical? Yeah, comical; it’d been funny the way…the way…

  The way what happened? Damnation, Rick, why can’t you remember?

  Funny smell?

  Yeah, I remembered that all right. Like rain on sunbaked earth.

  ‘But what was so funny about that face?’ I bit my lip. The words came out of my mouth but it didn’t seem as if I’d spoken them.

  Then, all of a sudden, a splash of memories erupted inside my head. The worms. The face. Then suddenly…what? Just what in Sweet Fanny Christ’s name had happened?

  My mouth turned dry. My heart began to beat hard again. I remembered seeing the face, the staring eyes. Then I was flat on my face. I was being held down. I couldn’t move. The sense of sheer strength had been enormous. But what then?

  I remembered feeling afraid. But it all seemed so muted now, as if it had happened years ago. I took a swallow of beer and shook my head. I was unharmed. My clothes weren’t even crumpled. Sure, there was a flake or two of dried leaf here and there on the front of my shirt, but they brushed off without leaving a mark. So why did I feel so weird when I pictured that face staring at me, how it hung there in the darkness like there was no body attached?

  I drained the can thirstily. Maybe I’d been working too hard with the band the last few weeks. With most of them having day jobs we had to practise in the evenings in Pete’s garage. Sometimes the rehearsal sessions could go on into the small hours. More than once I’d still be hitting the guitar strings at two in the morning, knowing full well I’d have to be up at seven to reach the supermarket by eight.

  I yawned and pinched a chop from where Howard had left his plate on the wall beside me. That’s it, Rick, old buddy. You’ve just been flogging away too hard. So relax, enjoy the party.

  The air was warm. Above the stars were shining in all their heavenly glory; the Milky Way left its creamy smudge down the centre of the sky. The music sounded good. Twenty lanterns hanging in trees filled the garden with this soft amber light.

  The sense of near-panic I’d had a moment or two ago at losing an hour vanished as quickly as it came. I felt part of the human race again. The world was normal once more. I was normal.

  Now where the Hell was Howard Sparkman with that beer? He’d probably been lured away by a bowl of potato salad or a particularly wicked blue-cheese dip. People stopped by to chat.

  Ben Cavellero stood by a table, pulling corks from wine bottles. He looked up and gave me a cheerful wave. At thirty-nine Ben should have been someone’s favourite school teacher. You know the sort, they’ll begin the lesson, ‘today we’re going to have a rigorous appraisal of the work of Edgar Allan Poe.’ Then, five minutes later, he’s telling some hilarious story about a neighbour’s cat raiding his kitchen or the day lightning smote his chimney pot. He had greying curly hair and eyes that crinkled when he gave one of his characteristically friendly smiles. He never seemed to hurry anywhere, never had to raise his voice and young people gravitated to him for friendly and always wise advice and encouragement. Some parents wondered if there was something seedy going on, all these teenagers hanging round with an older man? But in all honesty there were never even any rumours. In his way he just seemed completely non-sexual. He appeared to be simply loyally wed to his twin hobbies of landscape painting and travel.

  For any wannabe musician, writer or artist Ben Cavellero was an inspiration. In his twenties he wrote serious plays about serious social issues, peopled with serious characters. They made no money whatsoever. He lived in a bedsit in Leeds, scratching a poor living writing reviews for the local papers. Then, when he was thirty, he wrote a light-hearted whodunit mystery for a local theatre group. The play had been picked up as a vehicle for some old TV detective. A year later he banked his first million. Ben was hounded by impresarios to write more plays. But then he realized that was not what he wanted. He’d made enough money to keep him comfortable for life. So he decided to devote his time exploring the world through travel, and himself through his paintings. And he was the happiest man I knew. To see him standing behind his easel in a field down by the river, the brush in his hand, taking infinite care and a hell of a lot of pride in painting a tree, you could see the man had found Heaven on Earth.

  ‘Sorry I was so long.’ Howard handed me a beer. ‘Ruth has been calorie-counting again. She reckons I’ve eaten enough to keep a family of four going for a fortnight.’

  ‘No worries, have a chop.’

  ‘Cheers.’

  What Howard had seen I don’t know but he shot me a strange, almost knowing look. Then I saw him catch Ben Cavellero’s eye. Some understanding passed between them. Howard said hastily, ‘Damn, I meant to tell Ruth about next Thursday’s bash at the Lotus.’

  He backed away from me, shooting me those strange knowing looks. I stood up and started to scan the party-goers for Kate. But that’s when I noticed everyone had turned to look at me. The music stopped in mid-flow, leaving the kind of silence that makes your ears ring.

  Everyone had stopped talking now. And I was the focus of their attention.

 
; They all shared Howard’s knowing expression. And for some reason I felt acutely embarrassed. As if they’d all somehow seen me do something shameful—something I wasn’t even aware of myself.

  The dryness came back to my mouth. Jesus. That lost hour. Perhaps something had happened in the wood. Everyone at the party knew about it. Everyone, that was, but me. My palms began to sweat, my face burned, my breathing turned into those shallow tugs of air that made my head begin to spin.

  It could have only lasted a second or two. But it was one of those occasions that seemed to last for minutes. I was the focus of attention. I felt like the suspect under the anglepoise lamp.

  And, by Christ, I found myself sweating. I was ready to crack and burst out, ‘Yes! I admit it. I was in the wood. And I went and—’

  Then it became bizarre—no, scrub that. It became surreal: they clapped me. They actually stood there and applauded. I stared in utter bewilderment.

  Ben Cavellero stepped forward and in that gentle voice of his said, ‘Rick, perhaps we shouldn’t have sprung this on you. But we’ve another guest.’

  Ben stepped back. Again I had the strangest feeling that my world had been knocked out of kilter that night and a string of bizarre events were parading themselves before my eyes.

  The new party guest stepped forward into the light. Immediately the sensation that gripped me was that the face of the new guest was uncannily familiar. Then I knew why. It was the face I saw in the mirror every morning.

  Or, at least, an extremely fine copy.

  The first time I tried to speak it was a croak. The second time my voice box worked, or just about. ‘Stephen?’