by Lee Thomas, Gary McMahon, S. G. Browne, Michael Marshall Smith
"Frank," Sandy cried out ahead of him. "What is that?"
When Frank caught up to her he saw a large animal lying motionless in the weeds near the stream. At first glance it appeared to be a mountain lion, but he'd never heard of mountain lions roaming the English country. As he stepped closer, Frank noticed that although the animal had a powerful body and sharp claws, it had a head that resembled a possum and a long, leathery tail that looked like it belonged to a rat. Whatever it was, it was dead.
"I don't know what it is," Frank said.
From what he could see, the animal appeared to have been partially devoured, probably by scavengers. Or maybe it had been brought down by a larger animal, though Frank couldn't imagine what kind of predator would feed on an animal as powerful as this.
"Come on," Frank said, steering Sandy away from the carcass. "Let's go."
"Maybe we should head back," Sandy said, glancing once at the dead animal, her childish enthusiasm flagging.
Frank should have agreed with her, told her that was the best idea she'd had all day, and led the way back to drink a pint or two before catching the bus. Instead, he offered his wife encouragement because he knew that's what she wanted.
"Lower Slaughter can't be much further," he said. "Why don't we keep going. Once we get there, if you still feel the same way, we'll turn around."
"Okay," Sandy said.
She remained subdued until they reached Lower Slaughter, which turned out to be only a few hundred yards further up the stream. No sooner had they caught their first glimpse of the town when Sandy's gloom slipped away and she transformed into a kid walking through the gates of Willy Wonka's Chocolate Factory, oohing and aahing, pointing at the cobblestone alleys and the small stone cottages and the ducks swimming through the stream. Lower Slaughter was like a smaller, thrift store version of Bourton-On-The-Water – barely more than a city block from end to end and worn out from years of neglect. Frank didn't see any shops or cafes or anything that resembled a pub. And except for an old man pushing a wooden, single-wheeled cart piled with what appeared to be burlap sacks filled with grain or potatoes, there didn't seem to be anyone else around.
"It's so peaceful," Sandy said. "I could spend hours just enjoying the tranquility."
"Yeah, well, we don't have hours," Frank said, regretting that he hadn't turned back when his wife had suggested it. "The bus leaves at 5:23 and I want to get back..."
Frank stared at his watch. Instead of twenty minutes, it had taken them thirty-seven minutes to get here. Even with a brief stop or two along the way, Frank didn't see how it could have taken them more than half-an-hour to walk one mile.
The old man with the wooden cart turned down an alley, losing his balance and dumping the cart on its side, spilling several of the burlap sacks on to the cobblestones. He uttered no complaints and showed no signs of frustration, but silently righted the cart and lifted the sacks back on board. Frank watched the old man absently, trying to figure out where the time had gone, realizing that if they spent more than fifteen minutes here and it took them another thirty-seven minutes to get back, they'd barely have time to catch the bus. He knew Sandy would fight him to stay longer and that he'd probably have to drag her out of here, and he was preparing to do just that, when one of the burlap sacks that had fallen from the cart twitched, as if something inside was trying to get out.
"Frank, look!"
Frank jumped, his heart pounding as he turned to find Sandy standing near a foot bridge that crossed the stream, pointing to the other side at a two-story stone house with a stairway leading past a garden to the front door.
"Isn't it beautiful?" she said as she walked toward the foot bridge, lost in her own little world.
When Frank looked back toward the alley, the old man with the wooden cart was gone.
What was in those sacks?
He decided he didn't want to know. He just wanted to get his wife and get the hell out of here.
"Come on, Frank," Sandy said, already halfway across the foot bridge.
"Where do you think you're going?" Frank asked.
"I want to see if anyone's home."
"We don't have time," Frank said. "We have to leave."
"Oh don't be such a wet blanket." Sandy reached the other side of the stream and stood in front of the house. "It's our last day in England. Let's have some fun."
"Damn it Sandy! We're going to miss the bus!"
"Oh pooh," she said, waving a hand at him before she turned and headed up the stairs.
Frank yelled after her in exasperation, then marched to the foot bridge and started across. In front of him the house sat cold and silent, the stones old and weathered, the windows dark and lifeless. Large pieces of the flagstone stairway had broken off, creating a treacherous path that cut through a weed-filled garden, then disappeared beneath an arbor that was a twisted nest of dead wisteria. Beyond the arbor the grounds existed in deep pools of shadows, while the oak trees behind the house looked like mangled hands. Above the house, the sky was the color of funeral ash.
To Frank's left, the stream continued past a small, grassy pasture, where three goats stood watching him, as if waiting for something to happen. Frank shivered, reminded of a story he'd heard as a child – one about three billy goats and a troll that lived beneath a bridge. In the story, every time the goats tried to cross the bridge to reach the fresh meadow on the other side, the troll would jump out and cry: Who's that trip-trapping on my bridge?
Something splashed loudly in the water below him and Frank let out a shout of alarm, racing to the other side of the bridge and turning around, heart pounding, half-expecting a troll to come crawling out from beneath the bridge's shadow. Instead, he saw two ducks flapping their wings and settling back to the surface of the stream.
Frank took a deep breath and turned toward the house, a chill settling into his spine as he walked past the weeds and shadows and crumbling stones.
"Sandy," he called out from the bottom of the steps. "Sandy, come on. We need to get going. It's almost..."
Behind Frank came a loud splashing, accompanied by frantic quacking that escalated and then suddenly stopped. When Frank turned around, the two ducks were gone. All that remained were a few feathers floating on the rippling water.
Frank backed away up the stairs, watching the stream, looking for the ducks, trying to convince himself they'd just flown off. Then he saw several air bubbles rise to the surface of the water.
Part of the flagstone fell away beneath him and he slipped, falling to one knee and nearly tumbling down the stairs to the edge of the stream. He stared at the water, at the bubbles and the feathers floating away, and felt himself slipping, losing his grip, sliding toward the end of an old, frayed rope. Before the rope unraveled, Frank scrambled to his feet and dashed up the stairs beneath the dead, twisting wisteria, stopping when he reached the shadows of the open front door.
"Sandy." Frank's voice came out in a choked whisper. A faint, gray light emanated from beyond the door. He glanced back toward the stream, then took several steps forward. "Sandy?"
Beyond the front stoop, just inside the open door, Frank spied a small, dark shape attached to what appeared to be a dead snake. Only when he reached the edge of the stoop did he realize that the dead snake was the broken strap of Sandy's blue Italian leather purse.
From somewhere deep inside the house, Frank heard a loud, heavy thump followed by soft, high-pitched laughter that turned into a series of hungry, slurping sounds. Something scraped along the floor down the front hallway. A black, shapeless shadow slowly approached, growing larger, spreading across the walls. With it came a stench of decay, like wet garbage that's been sitting for too long.
Frank backed away from the front door, watching the shadow grow larger, impossibly large, too big for whatever threw the shadow to fit through the d
oor. The shadow spilled out on to the stoop. Behind it, a pair of yellow eyes appeared in the gloom. Frank turned and ran, down the crumbling flagstone he went, slipping and falling, scraping his hands and banging his shin.
When he reached the bottom of the steps, he raced along the cobblestone path with shadows stretching toward him from the house, reaching out as if trying to grab him and pull him back. He slipped and fell, crying out in a choked gasp, then scrambled to his feet and started over the foot bridge. Something splashed in the stream below. Frank heard a grunt, followed by a deep, wet, belching chuckle. A pair of hairy, clawed hands grabbed on to the side of the foot bridge. One of them reached out toward him as a low, guttural voice called out:
"Who's that trip-trapping on my bridge?"
Frank screamed as the claws hooked on to one of his trouser legs and sliced across his calf. For an instant he was being dragged toward the edge of the bridge, then the fabirc tore loose and he was running, screaming his throat raw, fleeing down the deserted street and out of town – the asphalt turning to earth and the stone houses giving way to hunched, haunted willows and tall grass that whispered.
Night fell like a shroud.
Frank's knee cracked against stone and he tumbled through the air, landing with a grunt in a patch of weeds. He scrambled to his feet, then fell back to the ground with a cry and grabbed his knee. Clenching his teeth he rolled on to his hands and stood up, putting the weight on his other leg, and looked around.
The clouds had gone and the moon had risen, casting a pale, colorless light across the landscape, turning everything into ghostly shades of black and white. Ahead of him stood the grove of birch trees, bare and skeletal, packed together like spectral guards, the stream an ebony snake winding through them. Behind him sat the two-foot high stone wall he'd run into, hidden by the tall grass. The wall extended out in a U-shape marking a property boundary, though Frank didn't see any sign of a house or a barn or a stable. No help. No sanctuary.
Frank ran a shaky hand across his face and looked back the way he'd come. He shouldn't have run off and left Sandy like that. He had to go back and find her. But when he thought about the shape coming out of the house and the high-pitched laughter and the hands reaching over the side of the footbridge, the shaking in his hand spread to the rest of him. He couldn't go back. Not alone. There was something in the house. Something under the bridge. Something twitching in those burlap bags. He needed help. Someone back in town could help him. Or maybe someone along the way. He didn't recall seeing any homes on the walk from Bourton-On-The-Water, but there had to be someone who could help him, who could find Sandy. Someone had to find her.
Frank leaned back, grabbing his hair with both hands and sliding along the wall to the ground, his fear and guilt coming out in a sudden burst of tears and sobs. He didn't hear the approaching creature until it jumped over the wall less than five feet away.
Frank pressed himself against the wall, throwing his hands up to protect himself, then lowered them enough to glimpse the creature as it scampered away across the stream and into the grass on the other side. Even in the pale moonlight he recognized the large, muscular body of the animal he and Sandy had discovered earlier. Dead the creature had looked docile, in spite of the claws and the snout lined with teeth. But watching one run in the moonlight with its long, rat-like tail snapping back and forth, Frank thought it looked like Satan's familiar.
Behind him, on the other side of the wall, Frank heard something else approaching. He crouched down, expecting another of the creatures to leap over the wall. Instead, a black, sinewy shape passed overhead in a rush of whispers and icy air. Frank saw its wings flap once before it vanished beyond the stream and into the night. Seconds later an animal shrieked, the screams of a cat or a pig being attacked. Then the cries abruptly cut off.
Frank stood up and hobbled away from the wall, gasping and crying, his knee throbbing as he stumbled along the stream, past the birch trees and the tall, bleached grass, vaguely aware he was whimpering. All around him he heard animals crying out, things scurrying about in the grass, gurgling in the stream. And soft, sucking sounds. More than once he thought he heard the whisper of wings flapping behind him. Then the stream and the trees were gone and Frank found himself staggering along the path through the field of yellow heather. In the moonlight the field seemed to glow, as if the flowers were luminescent, and even without a breath of wind, the heather waved back and forth in the still night air.
More than a dozen stems snagged against Frank's jacket, tearing loose from the earth and sticking to his sleeves. Frank shoved his hands into his pockets until he made it through the field, then unzipped his jacket and shed it like an unwanted skin, leaving it on the ground as he stumbled away from the path into Bourton-On-The-Water.
"Help," he shouted, his voice cracked and dry. "Help! Somebody please help me!"
But as he fled past the stone buildings and into the town square, Frank noticed that the street was made of earth not asphalt. And instead of the stream running through the center of town, an old stone well sat in the middle of the square.
Frank turned around in a circle, staring at the dark buildings that surrounded him, his breath coming out ragged and shrill, tears running down his face as his reason unraveled. Behind him, Frank heard a wet, sloshing sound. He spun around and stared at the well as the noises grew louder, echoing off the dark, silent buildings.
Frank backed away from the well as a tentacle appeared, then another and another, until half a dozen tentacles were crawling out of the well toward him. His knee buckled and he fell to the ground. The tentacles slithered toward him. One of them touched his ankle. Frank cried out and rolled away, struggling to his feet and hobbling to the nearest stone building, shoving open the heavy oak door, then slamming it closed and retreating into a far corner of the room.
He huddled there for several minutes, shaking and sobbing, waiting for the tentacles to push open the door or break through the single, small window that sat high up to the right of the door. But all that came through the window was filtered moonlight, illuminating half of the room in a pale, thin glow. A mixture of stale urine and sweat permeated the air. Except for a pile of rags and old blankets that looked like a makeshift bed, the room appeared empty.
Next to the bed, Frank saw a dead animal twisted up in a white, waxy looking cord, but when he looked closer, he saw the animal was a ragged teddy bear with its eyes torn out. He picked up the bear and tried to disentangle the cord, but it wouldn't come loose and stuck to his hand as though coated with glue. Frank pulled at the cord, trying to free his hand, his eyes following the cord away from the teddy bear, into the shadows, up the wall to the ceiling, where it connected to a series of criss-crossed cords that looked like some kind of netting.
Something stirred in the darkness beyond the room. Frank heard a soft clicking an instant before a figure scrabbled out of the darkness along the ceiling, its spindly legs reaching toward him as it descended from the web.
Frank's screams echoed off the stone walls. Outside, a dark shadow passed over the town square, then flew off into the night.
* * * * *
When Frank and Sandy Wheeler missed their flight the following day out of Heathrow and weren't heard from for nearly two weeks, their three adult children filed a missing person's report. Two of the children flew out to England to search for their parents, tracing them from London to York, then finally to a bed and breakfast in Cheltenham. From there they visited all the surrounding towns, including Stow-On-The-Wold, Moreton-In-Marsh, and Bourton-On-The-Water. They never found any trace of their parents. Nor did they find a path that led through a field of yellow heather or a sign directing them to Lower Slaughter, which is actually a charming, quiet village nestled in the heart of England's Cotswolds, just a mile's walk or so from Bourton-On-The-Water.
Year in and year out, busloads of tourists visit the
Cotswolds, venturing down paths both wide and narrow, some marked on maps and some not. Other than a few minor accidents ranging from trespassing to twisted ankles, most leave the same way they came in. But occasionally, someone wanders off down an unknown path and discovers too late that time has a habit of slipping away. And in England, where the weather can change unexpectedly and doors swing open into dark places, the nights fall faster than you'd think.
«-ô-»
The Lord of Words
By S. G. Browne
Grant stared at the white, taunting emptiness of the computer monitor – palms resting on the edge of the keyboard, fingers hovering over the keys, words and sentences arriving stillborn or with a fading pulse.
He shifted his gaze from the screen to the night pressing against the window and the lights glowing in the house across the street. The windows looked like eyes watching him, reminding him that he was no longer anonymous, that with the price of success came even greater expectations.
Grant tapped his fingers against the desk, his gaze shifting back and forth from his monitor to the window. Finally, he stood up and reached over to close the blinds. Across the street, Grant saw a man wearing an overcoat and a hat standing between a pair of birch trees. Then he blinked and the figure dissolved into the shadows. Grant pressed his face closer to the window, holding one hand above his eyes to cut out the glare from the desk lamp, but whatever he thought he'd seen was gone.
Grant closed the blinds, then sat down and stared at his monitor. Frustrated, he turned around in his chair as he leaned back and stared at the wall. A bookshelf sat beneath a movie poster from the original Invasion of the Body Snatchers, where the images of Kevin McCarthy and Dana Wynter ran for their lives from more than a dozen faceless figures. Above the poster, six feet of vacant white wall stretched to the top of the vaulted ceiling. Grant stared at the wall, thinking how it looked like the blank screen of his computer monitor, and wondered why he'd never hung anything else on the wall.