The man probably needed encouragement. She made a seductive wriggle with her body while pretending to draw her wrap more tightly around her body.
Fergus coloured slightly and forced a grin.
“Another idea,” he said, trying to make his tone light and adopting the “man of the world” stance. “I think there is more to this situation than the police are revealing.”
Sheila grimaced in disappointment. Business! She sat on the bed and reached for a cigarette. She had not been able to break the habit which was a constant source of annoyance to Fergus and his fellow workers in the ecology movement.
“I believe that the police invented this idea about a creature being trapped down the mine and savaging people. It’s too preposterous. We know Wheal Tom was used as a nuclear waste dump. I believe that both the missing men — Penvose and Pool — were exposed to radiation poisoning and have been taken to a secret isolation hospital or, worse still, have died from the poisoning. If we can prove that, it would give some strong ammunition to the society in our fight against the Government’s nuclear power station programme.”
Sheila blew smoke through her nostrils.
“How do you expect to prove that, Tom?” she asked, slightly bored.
Fergus leaned forward.
“I’ve brought down a geiger-counter,” he said eagerly. “It’s in the car. The mine shaft is only guarded by a local policeman. What we shall do is this…take the geiger-counter, slip past the policeman, go down Wheal Tom and check out the radiation levels. If they are abnormal, then we will know that the radiation levels are the problem — that there has been a leakage. We can make a statement to the press tomorrow and start the ball rolling.”
Sheila frowned; she didn’t fancy the idea of scrambling about a dark, wet mine in the middle of the night.
“Won’t it be dangerous?” she ventured. “And what if there is a creature? I think it is very risky.”
“Nonsense! I wouldn’t do it if I wasn’t sure. The creature is just a load of nonsense to put the press off the real story. It will be as safe as houses. I’ve been down deserted mines lots of times. And if you are worried about the radiation, we won’t be down long enough to suffer any ill effects. But just think what this will mean for our society — for the cause!”
Sheila gave a half-hearted nod.
It certainly wasn’t her scene but if she didn’t show willing she might be put in bad standing with the society. After all, she had gained the position in the first place by convincing the governing council of the society that she was mad on conservation and ecology and would do anything to further the cause.
“When do you think we ought to try?” she asked, resigning herself to a sleepless night.
“I’m afraid we will have to wait a bit,” replied Fergus with ill-disguised enthusiasm. “I suggest we go down about two o’clock.”
Sheila glanced at her watch, lying on the bedside table, and stubbed out her cigarette. It was only eleven-fifteen.
She leant languidly back on the bed, her wrap slipped open to reveal a long length of leg from foot to thigh. She smiled inwardly as she saw the expression on Fergus’s face.
“What can we do until two o’clock?” she murmured softly.
Fergus could not mistake the invitation in her voice. He moved forward and sat on the bed beside her, a hand reaching forward to draw the material from her shapely shoulders. As their lips met, and tongues fought to find each other, he could not help feeling a passing distaste that her lips and tongue were still coated with the stale odour of tobacco. The thought passed. It was of no importance.
Claire awoke with a feeling of unease. The hands of the luminous travelling clock by her bedside showed it to be fifteen minutes after midnight. She lay in the darkness wondering what had woken her and then, with a shudder, the events of the last day came back with vivid clarity. She was not a nervous person, otherwise she could not have continued to stay in Tybronbucca. Even Neville had suggested she move into a room in The Morvren Arms but she wanted to avoid possible contact with the reporters there. Anyway, there was a policeman not far away, guarding the entrance to Wheal Tom. That was within earshot of the house. Besides, what could harm her in the house? The creature that Constable Roscarrock described so vividly was down the mine.
Nevertheless, she had awoken feeling nervous.
With a sigh, she realised that she was wide awake and it would be impossible to get to sleep for a time. She did not feel tired and her mind was hyper-active. She reached out for the switch on the bedside lamp, turned it on and picked up the book she had brought to read on holiday. She had barely read a paragraph when the light flickered. Blast! she thought, the bulb must be going. She swung out of bed and turned on the main light. Just as she did so, both bedside light and main light flickered again and went out.
Damn! The fuses.
She felt her way back to the bed and found her torch. By its beam she found her way down the stairs to the kitchen. Checking in the cupboards she discovered a couple of candles which she lit. Morally reinforced by their flickering light she looked round for the fuse box. After a few minutes she recalled that it was in the cellars by the electricity meters. She opened the cellar door and tried the switch. It was dead. The fuses for the entire house must have blown.
Slipping the torch into her dressing gown pocket and holding the candle aloft with one hand, she started down the cellar steps. At the bottom she placed the candle on one of her uncle’s work benches and looked round for the black metal box which housed both the meters and fuses. It was easy to unclip the cover of the fuse box.
Without warning the flame of the candle went low, almost extinguished. Claire suddenly smelt a vile odour — something like rotting vegetation only worse. Then the candle brightened and seemed to shine with a ghastly green effulgence. Claire stared at it for a moment, then shook her head and bent to resume her task.
It was then she heard the sound. It seemed so familiar. A sliding, squelching sound; the sucking noise.
She started up and peered nervously round the cellar.
The candle was burning low again and it was impossible to see properly. She reached for her torch. It was as she did so that something brushed against her — against her bare arm. Something soft and wet and sticky.
She could not suppress the scream.
The candle finally extinguished itself and her eyes stared wildly into the darkness.
As her eyes became accustomed to the blackness of the cellars she became aware of a dark shape moving close to her, menacingly close. She screamed again and this time the scream seemed to end the paralysis which had momentarily overtaken her. She turned and fled up the stone cellar stairs. Her legs felt like lead. It seemed an impossibly long way to the top. A few steps from the doorway she slipped and nearly fell. Something wet and sticky touched her leg. She screamed again and scrambled through the door into the kitchen.
Then she was on her feet, tugging at the kitchen door, sobbing in her efforts to open it. Somehow she managed to draw back the bolts, turn the lock and was out, the protruding door latch catching at her dressing gown and ripping the garment off as she passed through. Then she was racing down the garden towards the roadway clad only in her nightdress.
In her panic it did not occur to her to run towards Wheal Tom to find the police officer. Instead she ran out into the roadway. Even the tall hedges seemed to rise to impede her progress and threaten her. Still sobbing, she swung open the great wrought iron gates and halted in the middle of the moonlit road. Everything was strangely quiet, almost ethereal in quality. The autumn moon was strangely blood red in colour, giving an odd heavy crimson quality to the twilight that doubled the depth of blackness in the hedge groves and spread its luminescence as if blood had been splashed across the landscape.
For a second Claire stood hesitating.
The faint sighing of the breeze through the boughs of the trees sounded like the soft moaning of an animal. It spurred Claire to turn and run towards t
he dark silhouette of Bill Neville’s cottage, just visible against the skyline. She ran, stumbling and falling several times. The spikey fingers of the hedges tore at the thin cotton of her nightdress.
Eventually, after what seemed an eternity, she collapsed at the door of Neville’s cottage and, crying his name, she pounded on it with her fists.
Finally a nearby window threw a fierce light on to the pathway and there came the rattle of bolts being withdrawn.
Bill Neville gazed at the half naked girl, who fell sobbing into his arms, with astonishment.
“Claire! For God’s sake, what’s happened?”
She was too hysterical to say. anything but clung fiercely to him.
Feeling awkward, Neville patted her gently on the shoulder and made reassuring noises as he drew her to the couch and sat her down. After a while he managed to disentangle himself from the girl’s clinging form, shut the cottage door against the night and go for a blanket to wrap around her. He then moved towards the kitchen but Claire moaned in terror: “Don’t leave me, Bill!”
“I won’t, sweetheart,” he reassured her softly. “I’m just going to put the kettle on. You could do with a cup of tea. Then you must tell me what this is all about.”
She sniffed and realised that she was probably making a fool of herself. She made an effort to control her terror. The sound of Bill Neville moving about in the kitchen next door, the rattle of crockery and the whistle of the kettle, helped to calm her. He was soon back with a cup of strong, sweet tea which she gulped down at his direction.
“Now then,” he said gently, as she sank against the cushions of his sofa, “are you feeling up to telling me what happened?”
Briefly, but slowly, with long pauses between jerky sentences, she told him what had caused her fear. Neville bit his lip and nodded through the monologue.
“Well, one thing is for sure, you can’t go back to that house tonight. We’d better report the incident to the Chief Superintendent. God, Claire, I just remembered that your uncle once said he was sure that the old cellars were connected with the mine. If the creature that Roscarrock saw…”
Claire shivered violently.
Neville patted her hand.
“You’re safe now, Claire. Don’t worry. But I’d better report this right away.”
He picked up the telephone and dialled Roscarrock’s number. After a short while he had reported matters to the Chief Superintendent who was staying at Roscarrock’s cottage.
“What did he say?” asked Claire after Neville had put down the telephone.
“He is sending a couple of men round to Tybronbucca right away to search the cellars. He said he will see you in the morning and to get some rest.”
Claire felt reassured, a little ashamed of the extent of hysterical fear.
“Tell you what,” said Neville. “I’ll start running you a hot bath and you’d better change out of that torn rag that you’re wearing. ’Fraid the only thing I can offer you to wear is my spare pair of pyjamas. They will be a bit big but I think they will do.”
While he was gone Claire stood up and peered at her nightdress beneath the blanket. Bill was right. It was so torn and tattered that she looked frightfully immodest. Neville returned carrying a pair of men’s lurid red pyjamas and a bath towel.
“I’ve started to run your bath,” he smiled. “While you are in the tub, I’ll change the bed linen. You sleep in there,” he jerked his hand to the bedroom, “and I’ll make up on the couch.”
Claire shook her head vehemently.
“No, I can sleep on the sofa. I don’t want to put you out.”
“It’s no problem,” replied Neville. “Go on. Into the tub.”
When Claire emerged from the bathroom she was determined to force Bill to sleep in his own bed while she slept on the sofa. To her surprise she found the lounge in darkness and Bill Neville wrapped in a blanket on the sofa.
“Bill…are you sleeping?” she whispered.
She was answered by the sound of his deep, regular breathing. She hesitated then shrugged, went into the bedroom and closed the door. She suddenly realised that she was tired, terribly tired. She crawled between the crisp, freshly laundered sheets and fell into a deep sleep almost immediately.
Tom Fergus stood at the bottom of the main shaft of Wheal Tom and looked around in the beam of his flashlight. It was cold and dark. Just above him Sheila was gasping for breath as she negotiated the last ladder. It had taken them far longer to get down than he had estimated. It had been just over an hour since they had managed to slip by the solitary policeman on duty at the entrance to the shaft and commence to climb down. Fergus swung his torch upwards.
“How are you doing, Sheila?”
Above him Sheila paused and took some deep breaths.
“Pretty awful!” she returned petulantly. “No job is worth this.”
Fergus grinned.
“Ours is not a job, it’s a cause. This is going to be the story of the year and our society is going to become famous.”
He didn’t hear the girl’s muttered reply.
Within moments she was at his side, collapsing against him in exhaustion. His torch picked out some boulders which would serve as benches and he helped the girl to sit down.
“Relax for a bit, Sheila. I’m going to take some initial readings here.”
Sheila groaned and wondered why she had let herself be persuaded to come on this foolhardy adventure.
Fergus took his geiger-counter out of his back pack and fiddled with the connections before clicking a switch. There came a rapid ticking sound.
“I knew it!”
His voice was gleeful.
Sheila peered at him.
“What is it?” she asked, apprehensively.
“The readings here are seven per cent above normal. Let’s head along that gallery there. I think that will lead towards the area which stretches out under the sea. I reckon that’s where they dumped the stuff. We’ll check the readings every fifty yards. If it reaches to twenty per cent above the norm then we’ll turn back.”
Sheila grimaced in the dark.
If it was not for keeping her job…! Jobs were so damned difficult to come by these days. She certainly couldn’t afford to indulge her tastes on social security. She gazed at Fergus’s shadowy figure bending over the geiger-counter and found herself smiling. At least he had not been a let-down. He was a pretty good lover.
“Are you ready?”
“As ready as I’ll ever be,” she returned.
“That’s the spirit,” he said gaily.
He led the way, his flashlight picking out their route.
Sheila moved slowly behind him. After a while Fergus halted and checked the geiger-counter.
“No appreciable difference,” he muttered.
They continued on for about half an hour in this fashion. The readings wavered from seven to nine per cent above normal. They had turned into a larger gallery and Fergus paused for another reading. This time the clicking of the geiger-counter was more rapid, even louder.
“Holy cow!” muttered Fergus. “The readings here have suddenly shot up to fifteen per cent above normal. We are on the right track.”
Sheila shivered.
“Are you sure it’s safe?” she whispered.
“Don’t worry,” Fergus assured her. “We’ll turn back if it gets higher.”
“Damn!”
The vehemence in Sheila’s voice made Fergus turn and gaze at her in astonishment in the torchlight.
“What’s up?”
“I’ve just realised that we will have to climb all the way back up. It’ll take hours!”
“It’ll keep us fit,” grinned Fergus. “Let’s go.”
It was another fifteen minutes before he called a halt.
“This is strange,” he said, shining his torch across the entrance to a smoothly bored tunnel which pushed forward into the blackness through the granite. “This must have been made fairly recently and with some precision tools.
Look how smooth the sides are.”
“What makes it so odd?” Sheila sighed, leaning against the wall of the tunnel and rubbing the back of one leg with her hand, trying to ease the tortured calf muscles.
“Because no mining tool could have made this. The sides are perfectly smooth, there’s not a scratch or indentation anywhere. That means a very sophisticated high speed drill. Also, there are no growths or corrosion in the tunnel which indicates it is fairly recent. If I’m right, this must have been done during the storage of nuclear waste.”
He switched on his geiger-counter.
The response was shattering.
“Jesus! Thirty per cent above normal levels. Come on, Sheila, we’d better get out of here…”
He stopped, head to one side, listening.
“What is it, Tom?” whispered the girl apprehensively.
“Listen!” muttered Fergus sharply.
There came to their ears a strange sound. It was a squelching, sucking type of sound. It seemed to be coming from somewhere down the strange round tunnelway. It was growing louder.
Fergus took his flashlight, leant forward into the tunnel and flashed it downwards.
His reaction was surprising.
“Run, Sheila! For God’s sake run as fast as you can! Get out of here!”
He turned and the girl saw his face working in the semigloom.
Panic gripped her, a fear such as she had never known. She turned and began to stumble along the gallery. Fergus was close on her heels. Their breaths began to come as sobbing gasps. They were heedless of the knocks, grazes and cuts as they stumbled and banged into rocky obstructions. The noise was all around them. It was an ominous squelching, sucking sound.
And the smell…
An awful smell of decomposing vegetation permeated the air.
Sheila was crying as she ran. She did not know where she was running to. Both she and Fergus had become oblivious of the galleries and side tunnels, not knowing whether they were running towards the main shaft of Wheal Tom or in the opposite direction.
Still the noise grew louder.
Then Sheila halted, causing Tom Fergus to cannon into her.
A dark shape loomed in the tunnel before them.
The Morgow Rises! Page 13