The Shelter

by James Everington

  They were just putting his body into the ambulance; he was being carried on a stretcher and had a blanket over his body and face. One arm had fallen free, and maybe it was the low sunlight but his hand looked bloody and torn as if it had been scratching at concrete.

  Then the paramedic twisted me away and stopped me looking. I never saw Mark again; I didn't go to his funeral. I wasn't invited.

  No one seemed surprised that I started to have bad dreams, nightmares from which I'd wake screaming and kicking at the blankets as if something was trying to clutch at my ankle. That I slept with a light on, and that wasps and crabs and other things that crawl have sent me into an itching, nervous sweat ever since. I didn't tell anyone what my dreams were about though; that would have surprised them. All teenage boys have wet dreams, but I doubt any have had ones like mine.

  Months passed. I went back to school, and got into my fair share of fights. "Seems continually angry about something," one report card said, but it wasn't continual. They were just brief, outrageous stabs of fury, that made me want to make someone bleed, before the moment passed. But by then I was often already in a fight. Fortunately those spikes of anger faded with the months, like everyone told me the dreams would. But they didn't. They haven't.

  Duncan died two years later; I'd stopped being his friend after that day, so I didn't go to that funeral either. He'd been the same age as Mark. He'd been on his bike with two younger friends, pulled over at the side of the road on a grass verge. A local minibus had swerved out of control and hit him dead on; the driver was laid off and told anyone who would listen that he'd swerved only because of a wasp buzzing around inside the bus, around his face and ears. People laid flowers at the junction nearest to where it had happened, the main turn off to Clipston, where Duncan and the boys had been heading.

  Tom finished school with few qualifications; he was one of those boys who everyone had assumed would work down the pit, until the pit was closed. He worked at a garage for a while, before he was caught stealing. He hung around the village for years with his few friends, growing even fatter on beer and causing trouble, until the three village pubs had all barred him. I wonder if he was drinking to forget. But who knew, with someone like Tom - couldn't he have ended up like that anyway?

  They never found out who murdered Martin Longhurst; they never even found a body. No killer ever struck again, so the local paper's fear of some serial predator died, replaced by other front-page worthy news. His name gradually faded from everybody's lips, for which I was grateful, for every time I heard it I remembered pale and bloody hands scrabbling in slow motion at the filthy concrete, before being pulled up and devoured by the darkness.

  And me? Alan Dean?

  I told everyone I was fine, that it had just been an accident and that none of us was to blame. That there'd been nothing down in the shelter beyond, maybe, a rat. The inquest declared that Mark had died from injuries sustained during the fall, although the way the papers reported it there was a sense of something not being said, of bafflement. Everyone left me alone, as long as I did okay at school, which after I'd got the fights out of my system I did. I had no friends or girlfriends to distract me, and as soon as my marks were back to where they had been, my parents assumed I was back to normal. I'd learnt not to shout out when I woke up in the night. I faded back into the background as my parents were distracted by my younger brother's first words, first steps, and by Kate's sheepish return to the flock after she'd decided to skip university to live with her mechanic boyfriend; she went to Leeds the following year. By then I'd figured out that was what I wanted to do too; because it would get me away from the village, from the proximity to the shelter, just a few miles across the fields at the back of my house. So I worked hard, and a few years later chose a university that seemed far enough away, but not too far to make it obvious that I was running. I didn't want anyone to know I was still scared.

  At university I discovered drink and drugs; I think I discovered them for different reasons than most students though.

  I told the few girls who came back to my room that my impotence was due to the drink, the drugs, and not the fact that every time I felt aroused and closed my eyes I saw glowing figures embracing in the shadows; saw a girl ugly with tears and pimples running from me and felt myself give chase; felt chased myself, by something vast but unseen. Ordinary pornography did nothing for me, and although I masturbated it was with an odd sense of anger.

  When one girl overcame all this, and took me to bed with her normally, I guess it was obvious that I'd fall headfirst in love with her. And my life seemed to improve, from then on, for somehow she fell in love with me too. And she told me about her older brother, who had spent all of his student life in the bar, and despite his middling degree was now back living with their parents because he couldn't get a decent job. And I realised that would be me¸ a drunken few years leading to nothing but a third-class degree, and being back home, in the same bedroom, staring out across the fields to the rise of the hill, and knowing that the shelter and whatever was in it were just the other side. So I suddenly applied myself to my university studies with the same diligence as I had to my schoolwork, and it was not too late to catch up. After graduating I took the first job I was offered, and encouraged my girlfriend to move in with me so that I could stay living up in the Northern city where I'd studied. Somehow she still loved me, and said yes. She's always said yes to me.

  I've told her the dreams (which I have less frequently now) are something left over from my childhood, but nothing more. She doesn't say anything anymore when I awake kicking at the sheets and blankets; doesn't mention it when about once a year I have a wet dream, like I'm still a sex-scared and nervous teenager. She just kisses my brow, and holds my hand until it unclenches and I can fall asleep. I haven't told her I dream of running in the dark towards a distant shaft of light - both chasing and being chased - and then, with an echo, the lid of the shelter comes clanging down and I can't see anything anymore, but can hear something large and quiet (except for maybe a faint buzzing) moving towards me. Sometimes it overtakes me before I can move; other times I start climbing and the sound of rusty shrieking doesn't stop but gets louder and louder... Although I can't see it, sometimes I imagine it has Martin Longhurst's body slung across its shoulder, sometimes Mark Galloway's.

  My girlfriend doesn't say anything, but for how long can she not say anything? That's why I'm writing this down, maybe I can show her this rather than speaking to her. Would she believe it? Would I want her to? Or maybe I will just write it down and then burn the paper; watch the ashes spread on the wind and pretend they are my memories. Maybe this will help me forget.

  Was it even an air raid shelter? It doesn't seem plausible, now, to think of an air raid shelter all the way out there, in a dry field near such a small place as Clipston. But what else can it have been? An odd word, shelter. Shelter who? Or what?

  I really shouldn't be writing thoughts like that down.

  This is supposed to answer questions, not open up new ones. I've avoided thinking too much about whether it was real or all in my mind. It messed me up regardless, so it was real enough. The images seemed real, I saw them. But why were they there, and why did they glow and move so slowly? And surely even if they were 'real' in some way there was nothing physically present? "There's nothing down there" as Tom said. "We saw."

  But... Mark didn't die of his injuries from the fall, did he? He could talk, he could shout, only his legs were hurt. Did shock kill him? Maybe. I was just a kid, it's unlikely my memories are accurate; I was in shock. Probably nothing was down there, and Mark just died because of shock or a smash to the head I didn't notice. But I'd like to know for sure.

  And maybe if someone, some kids looking for excitement, were to find the shelter like we did, and managed to open it (or had it open up for them...) and were brave enough to climb down that rusty ladder then maybe those children would see things in the dark. See things that happened at that very spot - slow moving
acts of lust, of hate, of fear and of anger, always anger. And maybe, in among those scenes, they'd see Mark's death. See what really happened to him.

  The anger too, the anger was real. That I remember.

  But the anger has faded, and maybe in time the dreams will too. I do have them less often, so that is hopeful. My girlfriend is calling me up to bed, and normally now I sleep soundly by her side. She has no need to see this - I'm no writer, and this has taken me weeks. I'll tell her it was a failed pretentious attempt at a novel, and that I've given it up as a bad job. I won't burn it, but I won't show it to anyone either. This was written just for me, to get rid of the guilt, the fear, the memories. To say a goodbye to that boy who set out across those summer fields; that boy who set out and never really came back from under the ground. I've written all I can. It's finished, it's over - that boy isn't me anymore. I hope I don't dream of him tonight, or any night.

  ***

  I never expected to pick this up again, and certainly not to write any more, but I have to. Which fool said writing things down helped you rid yourself of them? All it's done is brought things back to light.

  And a new, adult thought that never occurred to the teenage me - if there wasn't really anything down in the shelter, then I killed Mark.

  I'm so tired, I dread night, the dark in which I'm expected to trustingly close my eyes. Why can't I let things go, let them rest? There must have been something down there beyond my imagination. There must, but how can I be sure?

  My girlfriend is worried about me, so she hasn't questioned the fact that I'm going away without her. A camping trip with friends she's never met, I say, rolling up the canvas, and packing the metal tent pegs into their bag.

  I've told her it's a reunion. And it is. Sort of.

  I'm going home.

  There's a person I used to know.

  I need to see him.

  Author's Afterword

  The shelter is real.

  I know, because I've been inside it. While it would be patently ridiculous for me to claim the story you've just read is autobiographical, I can say that much of the flavour of it is true to my childhood - the long summer holidays with nothing to do; the shadow still cast by the absent mine; the one day of the year when all the spider webs were black with flies from the fields behind my house.

  And like Alan Dean, I once crossed those fields with three friends, looking for an air raid shelter some other boys had told us about (fortunately in real life I wasn't stuck with friends quite like Alan's). Somewhat surprisingly we found it, forced it open with tent pegs, and climbed down into it.

  No, I'm not going to tell you what happened down there.

  The first draft of The Shelter was started about seventeen years ago, not long after the events on which it's based took place. I was just starting to write seriously then, and my literary idols were people like Stephen King and Dan Simmons. It probably shows. In particular I remember being mightily impressed by two novels, one by King and one by Simmons, featuring a group of children on the cusp of adulthood - IT and Summer of Night. Because adolescence is a scary time, full of unasked for change; I think we sometimes forget this as we become older. I started writing the first version of The Shelter at my desk in my room, with a view across the very fields I was describing, while I was supposed to be revising for my A-levels.

  The story was finished and buried in the back of my writing drawer; I went to university and for a while forgot about writing mere horror stories, more impressed with the likes of Conrad and Beckett... (actually no slouches in the horrific scene department themselves).

  But I never really forgot about The Shelter, in part because of the real life experiences it was based on, and earlier this year I dug out the dog-eared manuscript and read through it.

  It was dreadful.

  I mean, truly bad - strained, stumbling sentences and clichés lurking around every corner... A youthful exaggeration of sex and violence, obviously written by someone who had no real idea about either.

  But there was also a certain energy and accuracy to some of the descriptions and... the plot seemed quite good. I read it again, trying to see beyond the awful prose to the structure underneath. Maybe it was because I could still picture the shelter so vividly, but there seemed to be something salvageable. And I'm used to rewriting from poor first drafts - most of my first attempts at stories are hurried, handwritten rubbish; it's during the second and third drafts where I actually hit my stride. I don't think I'm a good writer, but just maybe I'm a good re-writer.

  So I rewrote and rewrote The Shelter until I was happy with it. It seemed to have a simple, commercial feel to it that I can't manage nowadays. I knew it wouldn't fit with the stories I was planning to publish as The Other Room, nor in the collection which is to follow. And at 15k words it was just big enough to publish on its own as a novella. (I hate the phrase 'novelette' and refuse to use it, although I suspect some people would claim The Shelter's word count makes it a novelette - a hateful, cutesy sounding word I've been forced into using twice now. The same writers who use the word 'novelette' are undoubtedly those who also think 'shorts' is an acceptable contraction of 'short stories'. Have they no shame?)

  But here's something odd:

  Whilst I was rewriting this story, I thought I'd look online to do some research about where the original was, when it had been built, if it even was an air raid shelter (which was starting to seem doubtful to my adult mind). Like most of us nowadays, I assumed that the information I wanted would just be an internet search away - an air raid shelter would be mentioned somewhere; would have been photographed and discussed and even tweeted about...

  Nothing.

  As far as the internet is concerned, the shelter doesn't exist. There's not a mention of it, or anything else resembling it, anywhere I can find. Nothing on the local history sites; nothing visible on maps or aerial photos of the area. No dusty earth with a concrete cylinder rising up from it; no depression or moved soil to indicate it's been filled in. Not even any beer cans or faded girlie mags scattered around.

  But it was real, I remember it was - it's true I'm no longer in touch with any of the friends I went there with, so I have no independent confirmation. But I remember how old it looked in the sun; how cold and dank it was when you went down into it; and the scraping noise of the rusty ladder as I descended into the dark...

  Part of me is tempted to gather some tent pegs and go back to my old home, to cross those fields at the back of my house, and find it again. Just to prove to myself what I already know:

  The shelter is real.

  ***

  Thanks for purchasing this book; I hope you enjoyed it. If so, you might like to know about two other books I've written. The Other Room is a collection of my short horror fiction, including both magazine reprints and new stories. Feed The Enemy is a non-horror story published by Books To Go Now; it is about the threat of terrorism and its effects on our lives and relationships.

  I can be found rambling on about books, horror, music, and whatever else takes my fancy at my Scattershot Writing blog.