by Guy N Smith
The Walking Dead - Kindle Version 1.0
(c) Guy N Smith 1984 - 2011
Published by Black Hill Books, November 2011
ISBN : 978-1-907846-335
First Published by New English Library (NEL) October 1984.
Converted to Ebook from original paperback by Scan2Ebook.com
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Contents
Title
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
The End
CHAPTER ONE
Once it had been a wood. Now it was a barren, unsightly wilderness, a festering sore on the landscape, the ultimate example of modern man's unceasing efforts to despoil Nature's beauty, decades of natural growth destroyed in a matter of weeks by cruel chainsaws with merciless bulldozers following in their wake. A battle that the might of modern machinery won easily, and then the victors departed and left their desecration behind them.
The maroon Subaru estate slowed on the adjacent main road, seemed to hesitate before pulling into the wide lay-by, came to a halt amidst smaller mounds of sand and gravel; a storeage place for the remnants of worked-out seams and soon it would all be gone. After that, nothing. A tract of once-beautiful countryside abandoned, ugly scars that would never heal.
There was a marked tenseness about the driver, a tautness of his body, lips a thin bloodless line beneath the new growth of beard, blue eyes that took in everything and were never still. Hands still clutched the steering wheel as though he was fighting against an urge to drive on and be away from this place, forget that he had ever pulled in here.
Once he had been lithe, athletic, but these last few years had seen a growth of surplus flesh, the waistband of his trousers a fraction too tight for comfort. Uneasily his hand fell to the door lever, hesitated. A decision; his better judgment warning him not to get out. Drive on, for this place has too many awful memories that will only bring back the old nightmares. Waking, lathered in sweat, seeing those faces in the darkness of the bedroom as though they still lived and had returned to exact a terrible revenge upon him. Snatching at the light pull and only then did they fade. But he would see them again and again in patches of shadow. Fiends that had lived in human form and had not been destroyed as he tried to force himself to believe they had.
Other memories, pleasant ones, sad ones; that was why he had come back. His fingers depressed the lever, clicked the door open a couple of inches. A sweet smell of May countryside pervaded the interior of the Subaru, a contrast to that which lay outside, a freshness where there was only barren land. His eyes misted briefly and he swung his legs outside.
Traffic; it was impossible to listen. He straightened up, let the door swing shut. Waiting his chance to cross the road, almost hoping that there would be no break in the flow of traffic and he would be forced to return whence he had come. He had tried, done his best. But his conscience would only drive him back here so it was best to get it over and done with, try to forget.
He made it, stood in the gateway opposite. The gate had long gone, just two rotting posts. His keen eyes picked out a broken sign lying in the grass, lettering which was barely legible but he knew the words by heart, had read them so many times before. DANGER - GUARD DOGS PATROLLING. There would be no dogs now because there was nothing to guard except maybe some heavy machinery in one of the quarries beyond. That rotted sign had once been nailed up by his own hands.
The Lady Walk. It was funny how names came back, hit you like a physical blow when you weren't expecting them. A soft sandy track, the only right of way that circled the perimeter of what had once been Hopwas Wood. A favourite place for lovers and courting couples, their cars often getting stuck in the deceptive surface, but they kept on coming because it was a kind of tradition. He wondered if they still came now.
His feet moved, he walked forward like an automaton, forcing himself to gaze upon the upheaval, the desolation.
Perhaps it was for the best, that this whole place should be destroyed, wiped off the face of the earth as though it had never been. No, not destroyed, just … altered.
A few hundred yards further on he stopped again and a faint smile touched his lips. Once he had owned this place, or rather Pat, his wife, had. Beyond that sandy rise, hidden by the last surviving belt of Corsican pines, their tops just visible, stood the big house. Unless it had been demolished along with everything else. Forbidding, but it had given him a few years of happiness, the only times he wanted to remember about this place and even they hurt now. Events came flooding back; Clive Rowlands and Jenny Lawson, victims of an ancient evil that had emanated from … The Sucking Pit!
Oh God, he'd never get it out of his system! Again he wanted to run but he couldn't. He had to see for himself if the quarrying had unearthed that awful bog that had been buried a decade ago beneath hundreds of tons of rubble. Surely they would not exhume the old evil, resurrect it. If that was the case then there was no hope for any of them.
He lit a cigarette with trembling hands, inhaled the smoke with relish. The Sucking Pit, a gypsy burial ground and a lot more besides. It had had its revenge on himself, given him Rowlands' wife, enough money, and more, to last him for the rest of his life. Taunted him, played cruel games with him. Woodland, a country mansion - all his, and a beautiful loving wife thrown in as a bonus. For a time the trauma had seemed worth it. Those faces came at night but they couldn't hurt him. Cornelius, the gypsy leader, mouthing Romany curses; Jenny Lawson a spiteful young witch now trapped in the shadows where she could not harm him. Old Lawson, the woodman, too. And Clive Rowlands shrieking for his wealth and lands to be returned to him. You stole my land and my wife, Latimer! [i]
You could not escape them, no matter what you did, Chris Latimer reflected. They had got at Pat, too, and eventually she was waking up in the night screaming, clutching at him. ‘They're still here, Chris, I know they are!’
They had tried to console each other but it had not worked. Always there was something lurking in the background, an intangible force that had you looking behind you, sleeping with a light burning. That was what had come between them, destroyed their love and turned it into bickering and hate, wrenched them apart and set them against each other.
There were other contributory factors which you tried not to relate to the Sucking Pit. It was dead and gone, anyway. Wasn't it? The timber market had virtually collapsed. You blamed that on the economic recession like everybody was blaming everything, an excuse for bad management, inefficiency and a lot of other things. Hopwas Wood was a wealth of growing timber that was fast outgrowing itself: Christmas trees that were now too big for the seasonal boom, if it ever came back; larch that had grown straggling, some of it stunted because you couldn't afford to brash and clear the undergrowth when nobody wanted to buy the trees. In the end all you had was a forest wilderness that was no good to anybody except for firewood that was too costly
to harvest.
Chris had agreed to sell up. They didn't have any other choice. If Pat had stayed here much longer her mind would have snapped. That sand and gravel firm had come in with an offer. In better times the Latimers would have stuck out for another fifty grand but there was no sign of the recession easing yet so they had accepted. Then the villagers had been up in arms, petitions and everything they could think of to prevent their natural heritage from being turned into … this! Latimer grimaced as he stared around him, knew that they had been right. He had really sold them down the river.
In more prosperous times their protests might have found a sympathetic ear but the planning permission had gone through and within a year the timber had been felled and quarrying had begun. The Latimers had moved away, to an executive-style bungalow in Warwickshire where they should have been able to shake off the Hopwas memories.
But they hadn't! The gypsy curse and Cornelius reached beyond the boundaries of the old wood. Indeed, they were restricted by no boundaries. Faces in the night, a cold clammy touch to wake you, and in the end the Latimers were sleeping with the light on again. And other things had started to go wrong too.
Chris had suspected that Pat might be having an affair but he stubbornly chose to ignore the signs. She had never taken to going out on her own at nights the whole time they had lived at Hopwas. But this was a different environment. Suburban. They had a wider circle of friends … no, acquaintances! Boredom was creeping in and when you got bored you did things totally out of character in an attempt to relieve monotony, to create excitement.
Oh Jesus, that day he found out! Just remembering it had him clutching his hands to his head in utter despair. The shock, the revulsion of actually coming home and finding them using the marital bed. A big man, huge and muscular, his dark skin reminding Latimer even in the midst of his mind-numbing daze of … Cornelius!
Truly the gypsy curse had turned a full circle: there was no escape from it, neither for himself nor Pat. For their marriage this was the end, that was an undisputable fact. Only now was he able to face up to it, a bitterness that ate into him like a malignant growth. It was stupid to have come here today, a pointless mission that could only bring back the heartaches and the … fear.
He shivered in the humid warmth of a May mid-morning, found himself glancing round. That same old feeling, the way it used to be, a sensation of being watched so that your skin tingled and you broke out into a cold sweat. That was ridiculous because the old wood was gone and there was nowhere here for anybody (anything?) to hide. All the same he scrutinised his surroundings. Nothing but sand and more sand so that you almost convinced yourself that you were standing in the midst of a desert. A number of quarries, some large, others small, one already beginning to fill with sandy coloured water. Like the Sucking Pit. No, nothing could be compared with that devilish boggy pool. The police had partly drained it that day when they were looking for bodies; they'd found Clive Rowlands, Lawson and Cornelius. That private eye, Kilby, too. And hundreds of skeletons from Romany ‘burials’ over the centuries. That was when the excavators began to push tons of rubble in to fill it up, because they couldn't go any deeper. The pit just went on and on. a seemingly bottomless mire. God knows what other secrets it held, refused to yield, horrors that were only covered up, not destroyed. He had to go and see for himself that it was still buried.
A monotonous hum attracted his attention. At first he thought it was the traffic on the distant road but no, it was nearer than that, heavier. A movement, a mechanical bucket swinging into view then disappearing again behind a sand mound. A JCB, still excavating, the company determined to exhaust every last seam before they … What the hell would they do with this place now it was virtually played out?
It's none of my business, Chris Latimer told himself. They can do what the hell they like with it. They paid for it, it's theirs. I should be grateful because they made me independent. But he wasn't; in his mind this was still his land, they had disfigured his empire. Usurpers.
He walked on slowly following the winding course of the Lady Walk. In his mind he saw his surroundings as they once were: tall pines lining the bridle path, the sweet scent of their needles heavy in the air. Nostalgia could often be cruel; frightening, too. He should not have come but it was too late now. He quickened his step, an air of urgency about his movements. Better get it over and done with, check that the Sucking Pit was still buried deep, satisfy himself. After that he would leave, never come back. Ever.
The excavators had had to leave the Lady Walk as it was because it was a public right of way; even they would not dare to incur the renewed wrath of the villagers. Sand spilled into Latimer's shoes, gave him a gritty sensation as though he was on a beach. Another bend, past a lone rhododendron which had somehow escaped the wholesale destruction of everything that sprouted green in this man-made arid landscape.
Another hundred yards at the most. His pulses quickened. The workings were petering out here, some sixty or seventy acres of scrubland, mostly silver birch and bracken, left untouched because the seams had ended. That meant they could not possibly have touched the Sucking Pit; it still had to be there deep down.
He barely recognised the place. Where the original rubble had been bulldozed level weeds had grown. The wind had carried silver birch seeds and now saplings sprouted. Land that was level, too level; artificial.
Latimer got the feeling again, almost smelled the evil, a powerful giant buried alive, screaming for his freedom. He held back, didn't want to go any further. He didn't need to because he saw everything that he had come here for, his worst fears groundless. They had not unearthed the Sucking Pit, thank God! He closed his eyes momentarily, offered up a silent prayer of thanks. He wasn't a religious man but there were times when …
And in that instant it was as though his prayer had been rejected, that evil had triumphed, had awaited his coming for this moment of freedom. He felt the vibrations, that buried giant growing stronger by the second, heaving at the soil and rocks. Any second they would spew up, the black waters of the pit being released in a gush of evil, the air thick with a foul stagnant stench. No, for Christ's sake, no!
Horror turning to relief, realisation as that JCB hove into view, a steel monster of destruction heading towards him, bucket raised. Slowing, stopping, the engine reluctantly dying away. A silence that was heavy in the humid atmosphere, a few seconds when nothing happened and did not look as though it was going to. Then the door swung open and a muscular man dressed only in a pair of jeans and heavy dusty working boots leaped to the ground. For his size he landed so delicately, the culmination of years of bulldozer driving; confident in an arrogant kind of way, clear blue eyes narrowing suspiciously as he sized up Latimer.
‘You lookin' for something, mister?’
‘Yes … and no.’ Latimer returned the other's stare, smiled. ‘You could say I've just come for a look, nothing in particular. I used to own this place years ago.’
‘That so?’ Disbelief.
‘I don't live round here now. I was just driving by and with an hour to spare I thought I'd look in and see what had happened to the old wood. But there isn't a wood any more. More like the Sahara Desert.’
‘The gravel's finished.’ The younger man kicked at a pebble, sent it spinning. ‘They can't complain, though. They found more than they expected, caught the market whilst it was right and now they've hit the jackpot a second time.’
‘How?’ A direct question from Latimer, an urgency that demanded an answer because it was of paramount importance to him. He still owned this place whether or not he held the title deeds; God damn, he'd never get it out of his system.
‘Haven't you heard?’ A slow soft drawl. ‘No, I suppose you haven't if you don't live round here. The sand and gravel firm are packing up, just a few bits and pieces of machinery to collect and then that's their lot. They've sold out to a building corporation … for an undisclosed sum!’ A harsh sneering laugh.
‘Building!’ Chris Lati
mer's brain reeled. ‘You must be joking, man. They can't build on here, it's Green Belt.’
‘Was,’ the other corrected him. ‘But it ain't no more. There was a hell of a hassle, scores of petitions. These villagers really got their rag off, employed a top lawyer from Brum but it didn't get 'em anywhere. If you ask me there was some jiggery-pokery going on behind the scenes. Even their MP couldn't help them and this feller Grafton won his case. He's got planning permission for fifty houses. They start levelling the site next Monday. Me, I'm self-employed and they hired me to clear this patch here. A piece of cake, most of it's level anyway, just these few young trees and some scrub. More a matter of just tidying up. Hey, were you serious, mister, about owning this place?’
‘I was.’ Latimer nodded. ‘Over ten years ago.’
‘Didn't live round here then. Thank God! Christ, it's a dead-alive hole. My missus hates it, but you can find yourself tied up in a place to such an extent that you can't get away, no matter how badly you want to.’
‘I know exactly how you feel,’ Latimer said, and thought ‘only too bloody well’. He went on. ‘but they're not going to build houses right here!’
‘They bloody are. They're starting this end, should have the first ones half built before those bleedin' excavations are finished being filled in and levelled.’
Chris Latimer was aware of sweat running down his face, tiny rivulets that suddenly chilled. He stared where the JCB driver pointed, saw the Sucking Pit as it used to be, every detail as though it was only yesterday that it had been filled in. Trees cast dark shadows so that the patches of water visible amongst the dense reeds seemed even blacker. So dangerous because you could not see where the pit itself really began, a stretch of grass that looked firm enough until you put your full weight on it, felt yourself start to sink in over your ankles, the thick black slime starting to pull you down. You struggled but it was hopeless, because you weren't just fighting against a bog - you were taking on a very powerful evil, one that had fed on human corpses for centuries.