by Guy N Smith
Oh, Jesus, the machine fell yet again, a long drop this time, several feet for sure, perhaps yards, an ungainly descent into the earth, bouncing and jerking as though its sheer weight was cutting a passage downwards. A grinding and snapping of metal; that was the bucket sheering off.
Now it was almost total darkness. Mick Treadman whimpered softly, writhed as the pain in his back linked up with the one in his head, a sensation as though his whole body was about to split in half in the same way that the ground had done. He closed his eyes but could not shut out those dancing, searing lights.
Crying softly; he hadn't cried since he was a boy and that stray cat he had fostered had been run over by a passing motorist. The bastard hadn't even stopped, had left him there on the kerbside nursing the dying animal, sobbing to it not to die. But it had. He'd almost forgotten the incident until now. This was a fitting place to think of death. Weeping unashamedly. In a way crying was a relief; men were conditioned, brainwashed, from adolescence not to cry, which was stupid. Why should women be privileged to show their feelings openly?
Another fall, a more severe one, and he felt the sides of the cab buckle under the strain, the shatterproof windows cracking but, true to their claim, not breaking. One last tiny sliver of light from the world above penetrated the interior and then that was obliterated as rocks and soil began to avalanche on to the roof, bouncing at first then filling up into a solid block, wedging and burying the digger so securely that surely it could not move any further. Pebbles spilled down the sides, clattered against the damaged glass like thousands of tapping fingers.
Silence, so utter and complete, that it triggered off a new wave of mind-blowing terror inside the injured man. Catalepsy! he didn't know the meaning of the word but he knew only too well what being buried alive meant - a slow, fearful death all alone in the darkness, gulping down every last breath of stale air until all the oxygen was gone. A lot of people preferred cremation for that very reason.
‘No!’ he screamed. ‘I don't want to die, not like that anyway.’
His voice was flat and muffled, not even echoing. Staring into the blackness, trying to see, but all he saw were those blinding flashing lights that seared his eyes. Breathing heavily, trying to think of a dozen reasons why he should not be left to die like this. They had to come and look for him. Maybe that crazy guy who tried to make out that he once owned the place had heard the JCB being swallowed up. Maybe he had been buried too! Oh, Jesus Christ!
Treadman tried to move again but it was impossible. Pointless because even if the full use of his body had been restored to him there was nowhere he could go. Breaking a window would be futile because it would need another JCB to get him out of here. Possibly the crack had filled right up to the surface and they wouldn't even know he was down here! Another missing person, taken off with his only item of machinery to start a new life under another name somewhere else.
He lay there, gave up thinking about how he was going to get out of here, just wished that he could die quickly, get it over with. And if they did not find him then one grave was much the same as another.
A timeless void. He did not have a watch with him so it was impossible to check the passing of minutes, hours. The agony in his head subsided to a dull throbbing and the flashing lights faded. Just black impenetrable darkness. And if he lay still then his back stopped hurting.
It was beginning to get stuffy and he found himself consciously drawing breath, warm stale air that had him fighting for more. If only he could sleep then perhaps he would drift off and not be aware of death when it finally came.
He dozed, hovered on the brink of blissful unconsciousness. Then suddenly he was wide awake, jerking up into a half-sitting position and crying out aloud as his spine twisted, fell against a lever that gouged viciously into his ribs. A noise; perhaps he had dreamt it, his mind beginning to play weird tricks on him. Or maybe help was at hand and a rescue party was trying to dig down to him from above.
It was all in his fevered imagination. No, it wasn't; it came again. Tap … tap … tap …
A knocking on the window, tiny fingers rapping.
‘Who's there?’ he called out instinctively, immediately laughed at his own reaction. Don't be a bloody fool, there's nobody there because nobody could get down here. It was those falling stones again, a trickle of fine gravel finding its way down through the piled up rubble, determined to fill up every last nook and cranny as Nature completed her burial of the living, made sure no air could find its way down.
Tap … tap.
Oh, merciful God, there was somebody out there! Through the thick glass he could just discern an outline, a pale oval shape pressed against the cracked pane. A face!
‘Help me!’ In his desperation he became oblivious to the agony brought about by the movement of his limbs. If only he could find that spanner again, smash the glass. Scrambling feverishly on the floor of the cab but it was nowhere to be found.
Tap … tap … tap, tap, tap. An urgency about the tapping now, trying to attract his attention again. He stopped, stared. Good God, it was getting lighter now, it had to be for he could make out the features. They must have dug right down to him and yet there was no perceptive shaft of daylight visible, more a kind of glow like that of some cheap kiddies' luminous paint that was only partly effective.
She was young, no more than twenty at the most, would have been attractive if she had not been so haggard and dishevelled. He couldn't make out her body, just a face and a hand, slender fingers that tapped on the glass with broken and blackened long nails. The long hair was matted, fell from her in straggling strands and there appeared to be bald patches in her skull as though she suffered from some kind of mange. Probably a trick of the light, daylight playing on shadow.
Eyes that burned brightly, feverishly, with a greenish hue like sunlight dancing on algae-covered water. Unblinking, regarding him voraciously as a hunting stoat might look upon a rabbit trapped in a dead-end burrow. A finely tapered nose and a pert mouth except when it opened, the lips receding wolfishly to reveal a dark cavern that appeared toothless. She was saying something, seemed angry, but Mick Treadman could not make out the words. He wished that he had learned to lip-read.
‘Who … are you?’ It was an effort to speak, his lungs feeling as though they might collapse at any moment.
Now he could hear her, her reply like a gust of wind in an underground cavern, a chilling sound. ‘I'm Jenny. Jenny … Lawson.’
And who the hell was Jenny Lawson and how had she got down here? Surely a rescue party hadn't sent a strip of a girl down into the bowels of this black suffocating hell. It was crazy. But there was … something strange about her, something not quite … normal. Something he didn't like.
Something that frightened him far more than the suffocating blackness and the prospect of a terrible slow death!
He could see more of her now. Perhaps she had been kneeling and now had stood up. He was afforded a view down as far as her thighs. Oh Jesus, she was stark naked! In other circumstances the sight of this unknown nude girl who called herself Jenny Lawson would have aroused Mick Treadman, but here it was revolting. Her flesh … it should have been smooth and unblemished, perhaps virginal, but instead it was dirt-grimed and in places gave the impression that it was already in a state of putrefaction even though she lived and moved!
His eyes travelled on down, rested on the lower tuft of sprouting hair and as if she read his thoughts her legs eased open provocatively. Oh Jesus, he wanted to turn away, could not bear the thoughts she was trying to fill his mind with.
‘Look at me …’ A command that held him transfixed. ‘Would you like me? Open up and let me in, then I shall be yours.’
No way. You're bloody crazy. I don't know how you got down here but I'm not letting you touch me!
‘They've all had me.’
Her fists pummelled the window, soft thuds that had the cracked glass creaking. Her face was pressed against it, those awful features squashed into a horr
ific caricature, her eyes burning into him, scorching his brain in the same way that the bright sunlight had done earlier.
‘Go away, damn you, and get help. I'm dying, can't you see that? I'm bloody well dying!’
‘We're all dead down here. Soon you will be, too, and then you will be mine!’
He screamed, tried to turn his head away but it was impossible. She was angry, in a rage, beating frantically at the glass, trying to get to him, her pitiful breasts flattened but the nipples somehow remained erect. And he knew in that instant that, revolting as she was, she was arousing him also. If she got to him then he knew that he would mate with her, welcome the closeness of her seemingly decaying body against his own. Oh, Christ, I've flipped my top. She isn't really there, it's all in the mind! But the girl was still clawing frantically at the glass, flaunting her slim body, splaying her legs and laughing hysterically.
Suddenly from out of the blackness a huge hand gripped her, pulled her back. Treadman heard her scream, saw her struggling with a gigantic muscular man who had her by the throat so that her eyes bulged like oversize green marbles. A roar of bestial fury, and the JCB driver tried to cover his eyes to shut out the awful scene being enacted only feet away from where he crouched, a single pane of shatterproof glass preventing him from becoming one of the actors in this macabre play.
The newcomer's hair was wild and unkempt, his features swarthy, twisted into an expression of sheer rage, a large gold earring swinging from the lobe of one ear. Tattered, colourful clothing attempted to cover flesh that peeled from his powerful body, dark sockets that might have been empty yet still flashed with animal fury.
‘Cornelius!’ the girl screamed once before she fell from Steadman's view.
Now the big man was beating on the window, his fury directed at the prisoner in the buckled cab, thick lips slobbering strings of saliva. Mick Treadman cowered on the floor, babbled incoherent pleas, for surely this fiend had the brute strength to break through to him. A small shard of glass fell, clattered and splintered. Then another … and another.
Oh, Mother of God, the stench that filled that small enclosed cubicle! A foul odour that reminded the terrified occupant of a burst sewer pipe; putrid gases that you tasted and choked upon, gulped for breath but only drew in more of it, heaved and threw up.
Glass shattered and smashed into a thousand particles. Treadman screamed again but he knew he could not stop the intruder who even now was clambering inside. A massive hand touched him, as cold as death itself. Thick fingers encircled his throat, began to squeeze. A throaty maniacal laugh as the pressure increased.
Mick Treadman was forced to stare up into those empty eye sockets as the remnants of his life ebbed away. He saw the hate in that sadistic smile, sheer malevolence which was beyond his comprehension, the dark face of one who killed because he enjoyed killing.
And slowly that ethereal glow faded so that only darkness remained, complete and utter blackness, as cold as the big man's strangulating grip, until finally everything faded and even the pain was gone.
CHAPTER THREE
Ralph Grafton watched from the edge of the big sand mound as the two JCBs worked systematically, digging down into the huge inexplicable crack in that acre of flat terrain. The missing digger was down there all right, because they had just unearthed the broken arm and crumpled bucket. The driver had to be down there too, buried alive and certainly dead by now. Some kind of subsidence collapse, doubtless caused by the quarrying; it could not be anything else.
Grafton threw his cigarette away, lit another. Damn it, this could hold up the site levelling for weeks. The police would demand a full enquiry, maybe the surveyors would say that the land was unfit for building purposes. All sorts of complications might arise that could lead to the building permission being revoked.
Ralph Grafton had just seen his fortieth birthday. Tall and lean, he had the look of one who got what he wanted, a mixture of ruthlessness and determination. Handsome, but if you studied him closely you detected something which made you uneasy, knew you could not trust him. You found yourself swallowing nervously in his presence, felt the force of his personality like an impending thunderstorm. His open-necked shirt and cords failed to destroy the businessman image; typecast, but in a mould of his own.
Grafton's success had begun at the age of fourteen. Even at that age he was determined to eradicate his humble upbringing, was ambitious enough to wrest what he wanted out of life. A newspaper delivery round gave him his first chance. A couple of pounds a week was useful but there were untapped resources which he vowed to exploit. His motto was: ‘why do something for somebody else when you can do it for yourself?’ At fifteen he had a market stall selling second hand paperbacks for a shilling each. By the time he was twenty he had purchased his first newsagent's shop which he sold as a going concern three years later. After that he ventured into the building trade, caught the boom at just the right time and within a decade had made his first million, but he still was not satisfied.
And now he wasn't going to suffer a setback tamely just because some bloody fool of a digger driver had buried himself. His eyes narrowed, his heartbeat quickened when he saw chains being fetched. They had located the missing machine; all they had to do now was to drag it out.
‘Ground's soft under the surface,’ one of the men shouted. ‘We'll have to watch we don't end up down there too.’
A conference, police and workmen grouped together, peering down into the ugly excavation. But Grafton was keeping his distance. Let them get the bugger up first.
Chains clanked, the machines took the strain, heavy engines roaring their protest at this sudden taxing of their power. Metal screeched, an ear-splitting, skin-prickling tearing sound; rock and soil showered. And then the buckled remains of Mick Treadman's JCB was dragged into view, scarcely recognisable for what it was, resembling a battered item from a scrap metal merchant's junk heap. It came free in a cloud of dust, was pulled clear.
The engines died away. Silence. For a few moments nobody moved; a horrific traffic accident and you had to be a brave man to peer into the wreckage.
One of the plain clothes CID officers clambered up, looked in through the shattered cab window. ‘Jesus Christ!’ was all he said and when he jumped back down he was white-faced and shaking.
Grafton moved forward, unobtrusively joined the throng. It was just another fatal accident, he told himself. In the building trade you accepted them. A percentage of labourers got killed every year, statistics that were accepted, because you could not eliminate the risk no matter how many security precautions you took. There was no point in getting squeamish about it. He remembered that time a guy had slipped off some scaffolding in Birmingham, fallen a hundred feet on to the pavement below. Passers-by were screaming, a woman had fainted. Half a day's work had been lost as a result. You couldn't afford that; labour was expendable during this era of mass unemployment. He hoped it wasn't going to happen here.
They had to use steel cutters to get into the cab, everybody standing back. Violent death was always frightening no matter how many times you had seen it before.
Silence again except for the efforts of the men dragging the corpse out. Then Treadman's body was being lowered down on to the rough ground, laid out.
Gasps of horror, even Ralph Grafton felt the bile rise in his throat and had to make a conscious effort not to turn his head away. The injuries were slight, a few cuts that would not in themselves have been fatal. But that face, oh Jesus! Purple and swollen where he had fought for remnants of stale oxygen, the neck puffed like that of a hanged man. But it was the expression on those distorted features that had you almost throwing up!
The face was frozen into a wax-like mask of sheer terror! Eyes bulged until surely they must burst like soap bubbles, the mouth still open in a scream that had never really ended. Still shrieking, you could almost hear the cries.
But of course that would happen to anybody buried alive, Grafton told himself. Not very nice, admittedly, but
you had to accept these accidents. Some were quick, others were painfully slow. Whichever, the unfortunate victim ended up dead.
‘Just look down there!’ One of the rescuers had clambered out of his machine, was standing nervously on the edge of the ragged hole from which the crushed JCB had been dragged. ‘Fucking hell!’
The others turned away from the corpse but Grafton beat them to it, was already peering down into the miniature abyss. Almost twenty feet in depth, a mixture of rubble and black slimy mud that gave off a nauseating stench, had him coughing, stepping back a pace. The bottom was a quagmire, already beginning to fill up with stinking stagnant water; you could hear it bubbling and squelching as though with jubilation at its new-found freedom, water that had been denied air and daylight for over a decade.
The Sucking Pit was alive again!
It was late evening when Ralph Grafton returned to the big house. The place gave him a depressing feeling but he tried to shrug it off; that was because it wasn't furnished yet apart from one downstairs room and a bedroom upstairs. Dereliction, dilapidation elsewhere but that would soon alter. Another week or two and the contents of his luxurious Home Counties mansion would be brought up here. The place had to be decorated first, some new windows fitted and a few other things besides. The builders and the decorators were due to start next week. Then Lynette would follow. He smiled at the thought. She was the only person on earth he had a soft spot for, drawing envious glances wherever she went. Without all this he wouldn't have her because basically she was as hard as he was but she knew which side her bread was buttered on all right. She needed him as much as he needed her.
He would eat out tonight. A wash and shave, a change of clothes and … the harsh ringing of the telephone in the hall interrupted his thoughts. He picked up the receiver, made a mental note to ring the telecom people tomorrow and ask them to replace it with a Trimphone, a wall model.
‘Grafton speaking.’
‘Good evening, sir.’ A condescending tone that at once had Ralph Grafton on his guard. ‘My name is Richardson … I work for the Star.’ An afterthought, almost an apology.