The Devil in green da-1

by Marc Chadbourn

  'What's going on?' Gardener said. The scene had an unnerving element of ritual about it.

  'A warning,' Mallory said. They eyed the grisly display warily, each of them trying to discern some meaning in the arrangement of carcasses. Though it was probably their imaginations, the wind appeared to pick up at that particular spot.

  Drawing his sword, Hipgrave cautiously approached. The others followed, keeping watch on all sides.

  Beyond the barrier, they could just make out a series of shadowy pits scattered seemingly randomly. They were surrounded by a complex arrangement of twisted bramble torn from another location, and more embedded branches that had been fashioned into lethal-looking spikes.

  'It's a maze,' Daniels said.

  'What's behind all this?' Gardener said uncomfortably.

  'Call out to him,' Miller said, patently hoping they wouldn't have to venture further.

  'I don't think it would be too good an idea to announce our presence.' Mallory moved up beside Hipgrave to scrutinise the area more closely. 'It's a trap. Got to be.'

  Hipgrave had already come around to the same way of thinking. 'If he's in there, we've got to go in. It's our duty.'

  'I know,' Mallory replied, 'but the question is, is he really in there?'

  'You think all this is.some kind of elaborate plan to get at us?' Daniels said. 'With all due respect to my esteemed colleagues, we're not worth the effort.'

  'Look, here.' Mallory pointed to a route amongst the pits and barricades. 'If you go carefully, you can enter. But you wouldn't be able to get out at speed. It'd be easy to slip into those pits — God knows what's at the bottom of them — or trip and get caught up in the brambles, or fall on those spikes. It's cunning, in a basic kind of way. Even worse if it's dark. We should leave it till morning.'

  Hipgrave fingered his chin nervously, but kept his implacable face turned towards the pits. Mallory could see that the captain didn't know what to do, and was desperate not to make the wrong decision.

  'He looked all right when he went in, didn't he?' Mallory pressed. 'We can afford to wait.'

  But just as he appeared to have swayed Hipgrave, Miller piped up, 'Whatever built all this might have got him.'

  Mallory flashed him a black look, but it was already too late. 'OK,' Hipgrave ventured uncertainly. 'We go in, but with extreme caution. Draw your swords.'

  'What kind of thing would do something like this?' Gardener said again. He sounded sickened.

  'Maybe it's not here right now,' Miller said, with forced brightness. 'We could get the vicar, get out and be off.'

  'Maybe it's out hunting,' Daniels said blackly, 'for a few more little birds.'

  'Those are the things it doesn't eat,' Mallory said. They all fell silent at that.

  To his credit, Hipgrave led the way. The stink of decomposing animal flesh was unbearable as they passed the boundary line. Beyond it, the entire area felt different; it was almost too subtle to register, but it hummed away insistently deep in their subconscious: a sense of tension, a feeling of detachment as if they were just waking, or just falling asleep. The wind disappeared completely.

  Mallory stuck close behind Hipgrave, followed by Daniels, then Miller, with Gardener bringing up the rear.

  'I don't hear any sign of him,' Hipgrave hissed. 'He could have fallen into one of the pits… unconscious…'

  Mallory wasn't listening for the cleric's cries — he no longer believed they would ever hear them.

  At the first pit, they all peered inside in turn. The clustering shadows gave the illusion that it went down for ever, though from the echoes of a displaced pebble Mallory guessed it was no more than fifteen feet deep. A damp, vegetative smell rose from within.

  The construction of bramble and spike was complex and deadly, hinting at the arrays of barriers and barbed wire that littered First World War battlefields. It was impossible to tell what kind of intelligence could have established it, how long it had been in place. It was structured to form an impenetrable obstacle in some areas while simultaneously serving to direct them along a prescribed route that wasn't clearly visible from a distance. As they walked the precarious path amongst the pits — some of which were shallower than others, barely trenches — Mallory was struck by the design.

  'It's like a ritual pattern you see in some ancient structures,' he said. Hipgrave was clearly suspicious of this show of information. 'It was symbolic, designed to put you in the right frame of mind before the revelation of some secret or mystery.'

  'Listen,' Daniels interrupted. 'Can you hear anything?'

  They halted, bumping into each other nervously. The wind had picked up again faintly, soughing along the edges of the area so it was difficult to identify any other sounds. But as their ears adjusted, they could just make out another noise, low and rough, rising and falling.

  'What is it?' Miller looked like a ghost in the twilight.

  Mallory knew what it sounded like, and he could tell that Daniels and Gardener thought the same: breathing.

  At their backs, darkness drew close to the horizon.

  The path wound amongst the barriers until they were presented with a pit that hadn't been visible before. They knew instantly it was what they had been working towards. It stood alone, large and round where the others had been ragged holes torn from the turf and soil; its sides sloped down, but it was positioned so that the fading light allowed them to see the eighteen or so feet to the bottom where five dark holes indicated branching tunnels. More bleached skulls had been carefully placed around the perimeter, all looking out. Next to it, two tree branches had been strapped together with brambles in the shape of a tilting cross, a marker, and from it hung the tattered remnants of some kind of pelt.

  'Oh Lord, I have a horrible feeling about this,' Miller muttered.

  'That makes two of us,' Gardener said in a low, gruff voice that didn't draw attention to itself.

  'If he's anywhere, he'll be down there,' Hipgrave noted. He peered into the depths, then spied something. 'Here!' He proudly showed them a shiny cuff link.

  'There you go again,' Mallory said.

  Hipgrave drew himself up in a bid to imbue himself with some gravitas. 'OK, Mallory, you'd better go down, check it out-'

  'You can't send him down there!' Miller protested. 'Not alone!'

  'We're not going to risk all of us.' Hipgrave's demeanour left no doubt that he had made his mind up; it was pointless Mallory arguing. 'The sooner he gets down there, the sooner we can all get out of here.'

  Steeling himself, Mallory stepped over the edge and skidded down the slope in jerks. At the bottom it was cold and there was an unpleasant smell of decomposition drifting from one of the tunnels. He looked around: no footprints anywhere; there was no point mentioning it to Hipgrave — he'd long since given up listening to reason. The knights were all peering over the edge, their faces white. They all looked human, their emotions clear — apprehension, bravery, compassion, contempt — and he couldn't help thinking back to the glimpsed face of the cleric and the gulf between the two.

  He moved around the tunnel entrances, trying to decide which one to explore, though he had no intention of venturing in too far. He could no longer hear what he had thought of as breathing. Perhaps he had been mistaken. Or perhaps it was simply holding its breath, waiting for him to draw near. He looked back up. Hipgrave gestured vehemently for him to press on.

  'Bastard,' he said under his breath.

  He went around the tunnels again, listening, peering into the dark, smelling the air currents that came from them for any clue. Eventually, he chose one at random and edged his way in, his sword held out in front of him. With the fading light, the dark within became impenetrable after a matter of feet. The tunnel was small — his head brushed the ceiling and barely a quarter of an inch of space lay beyond his shoulders on either side — and the claustrophobia was palpable. Caught in there, he wouldn't stand much chance of getting out alive. He brushed the packed earth of the ceiling, afraid of a collapse. I
f Hipgrave wanted to investigate further, he'd have to do it properly, with a team and lights and supports.

  Returning to the foot of the pit, he attempted to convey this information to Hipgrave in sign language, but if the captain understood he wasn't having any of it. He jabbed a finger in the direction of another tunnel. Cursing, louder this time, Mallory turned back.

  The shape erupted out of one of the tunnels, hitting him like a wrecking ball. He went flying on to his back, seeing stars. He could hear the others yelling something, urging him to get up, get out, and then there was a tremendous weight on his chest and a sickening blast of hot, foul breath on his face. Slowly, his scrambled thoughts coalesced and he realised he was looking up into something that swirled with brilliant flecks, like a distant galaxy hanging in the cold void. They were eyes, he presumed, though he couldn't be sure, and if there was any human intelligence there he saw no sign of it.

  Time locked, sealing him in that moment of connection with a presence he couldn't begin to comprehend; it was his only world, alien and terrifying.

  But then the bubble burst and everything rushed in with an unbearable frenzy. The thing on him became a whirlwind; limbs lashed (he couldn't be sure if they were arms or legs or tentacles or something else), their sharpness tearing through his clothes, his skin. Desperately, he kicked and scrambled to free himself. Sickening sounds burst around him, at times high-pitched, then a low bass rumble, moving off the register; hot wetness suffused his clothing.

  It lasted for only a few seconds and then the thing was away from him, bounding out of the pit with a single leap. Shattered by the attack, with blood seeping from him and the pain only just making its way to his brain, he was vaguely aware of the others yelling. Someone was shouting, 'Attack! Attack!' over and over again. Someone else was urging them to scatter. A crashing and splintering as the barriers were torn up was followed by a scream of agony, suddenly cut off.

  Mallory's consciousness returned with a lurch. However badly wounded he was — and he didn't want to begin to check — he knew he had to get out of there quickly before the thing returned. He threw himself to his feet only to feel his legs turn to jelly, pitching him back down on to the ground. His head spun; nausea turned his stomach upside down. With a tremendous effort, he managed to find enough equilibrium to get him to the side of the pit, where he hauled himself up on his hands and knees.

  At the surface it was as unbearably dark as it had been at the bottom. Night had fallen, the thick cloud cover obscuring all moonlight. It made the sounds even worse: cries off in the blackness, panicked, pained, the terrible thrashing of something enormous and unimaginably wild moving too fast for its size.

  One thought surfacing above all others: We were led here, to find this.

  Briefly, he wondered what he was going to do, but there was no way out apart from the way he had come in. It was all he could do to pick out the path amongst the rubble of the smashed branches and torn bramble. He had taken some sharp blows to the head and it felt as if concussion was coming on fast. Every time he moved he lost more blood; he could feel it running into his trousers, puddling in his boots. It made him light-headed, broke his thought processes even more, so that he could only really concentrate on the here and now: getting out of there as quickly as possible.

  He lurched along the path, desperately trying to keep his balance so he didn't plunge into one of the other pits, while at the same time continually wiping the stinging blood from his eyes. There was more frantic movement ahead, running, the sound of boots on grass, more crashing.

  He blacked out briefly, waking to find himself face-down in the mud.

  Somewhere there were screams. It felt like a nightmare, as if he wasn't really there at all, merely watching himself going through inexplicable motions from a vantage point deep inside his head. Why was he trying to escape? Why was he there? What was moving just beyond his perception? And then the image of the fire in the dark, urging him to go forwards, not back.

  Pulling himself to his feet once more, the brambles tore at his hands. One of the jagged branch-spikes ripped through his trousers into his calf. Away to his left he heard whimpering, instantly drowned out by the wind. 'Miller?' he called out feebly.

  Before he could turn in search, there was another explosion of movement as the hunting thing launched itself from the periphery of his field of vision. He ducked just in time, but he felt it pass only inches over him to crash into the barriers ten feet to his left. He scrambled on, almost slipped into another pit, caught himself with his legs dangling over the abyss. More movement, more running, sounds bursting from periods of silence like explosions on a battlefield. His foot kicked something that bounced a few feet ahead of him: a severed hand, now caked in mud. It was impossible to tell which knight it belonged to, but the sight of it filled him with a deep dread, and he knew he would never be able to shake the image of it lying there, like discarded rubbish.

  Somehow, he found himself near the display of skulls that marked the boundary, and then he was out, crossing the hill-fort, tripping over the holes in the turf, sliding down the ditches. He could barely walk, barely think. No one else was around, and he couldn't help believing they were all dead.

  He was too weak to walk far. He went down the hillside head over heels, ricocheting off tree trunks, crashing through bushes that ripped at his skin and hair, using his body weight to keep the roll going as die only way to put distance between himself and the monstrous thing that still roamed the hilltop.

  Finally, he came to a halt, lying on his back without the slightest strength to move, staring up into nothingness. The night was torn by sounds that could never have come from a human throat. Mallory felt as if he was in hell.

  Consciousness came in the grey light of morning. His body was a web of agony and he was frozen to the bone, but he was still alive, though he didn't know how much longer that would be the case. From the state of his clothes he could tell he'd lost an inordinate amount of blood, and more leaked out each time he shifted. Shakes wracked his body repeatedly. His head felt stuffed with cotton wool as if he were on the verge of a debilitating migraine.

  Nightmarish images flashed back from the previous night. He felt sick with shock, could barely believe he was still alive. A little joy filtered through, but it was dampened by the pain and his doubts for the safety of the others. He thought of the severed hand: one of them was certainly dead from blood loss. Could any of them have survived such an onslaught? He forced himself not to think about it, or the emotions that came with it.

  Apprehensively, he peeled open his shirt. A gaping wound ran across his stomach, filled with blood. Other gashes lay open on his chest and arms, and for the first time he was thankful for the classes the Church authorities had inflicted on him during his training. Moving as carefully as he could, though still punctuated with devastating bursts of pain, he managed to free his haversack. At the bottom of it was the small medical kit they all carried with them for basic treatment on the road. First, he removed the small jar of antiseptic salve created in the medicines quarter that lay off the cathedral's herb garden. Unscrewing the lid, he recoiled from the potent odour, as strong as any smelling salts. Then he removed the tin that contained the large needle and sturdy thread. This was going to test his willpower.

  Dipping three fingers into the jar of salve, he gingerly dabbed it on the stomach wound. The pain made him cry out, but he could instantly feel the area numbing. He left it a couple of minutes before threading the needle. He didn't have anything to sterilise it with, so he hoped the salve would do its job.

  The first stitch was agony. His stomach turned as he watched it pulling the two flaps of flesh together. By the fourth stitch, the sight was not so disturbing and he learned to cope with the pain by chewing on the end of his leather belt. When he had finished, he tied a knot as he had been taught, then rested for five minutes before moving on to the next wound.

  It took him an hour to finish the entire job. By then he felt like a shadow; he
didn't want to guess how much blood he had lost. He really needed a transfusion, a few days' bed rest. Instead, he was lying on wet ground in the middle of the countryside. He just hoped he had the strength to mount his horse and reach one of the villages that bordered the Plain.

  It took him fifteen minutes to get to his feet using a tree trunk as support, and even then he felt as if he was going to collapse with every step he took. At first, he lurched from tree to tree, pausing every now and then to dry-retch, but after a while he found it in himself to stagger unsupported. Even so, he lost his footing several times before he reached the bottom of the hill. There he found the remains of the horses; it looked as if they had been hacked to pieces by a chainsaw. He fought back the despair; it wouldn't help him. He'd just have to walk.

  The day was a little brighter than the previous one, with no sign of rain, but it was still windy. He remembered where they had seen the church steeple poking above the trees and thought he would use that as a marker and head for it. Yet when he eventually skirted the foot of the hill there was no sign of the steeple anywhere. It made no sense to him at all, but he didn't have the energy to consider what it meant. Using the occasional glimpses of the sun as a guide, he set off in what was undoubtedly the right direction. In his weakened state he could barely keep his eyes on the horizon; his concentration was mainly occupied with staying on his feet, staying alive. Many times, his consciousness slipped sideways so that he was moving in a dream-state, observing his surroundings without being aware of them; this condition became more and more the norm, and the remaining rational part of him knew that he was dying.

  He should have reached the neighbouring village within the half-hour; it never materialised, nor did any of the roads he knew skirted that edge of the Plain. He wondered if he had somehow got turned around and was heading back into the wilderness, but the surrounding landscape told him otherwise. Rolling grassland lay all around, rich and fertile, punctuated by copses and small woods. The trees were oddly fully leafed as if it were midsummer rather than crisp autumn, and there was an abundance of wild flowers scattered across the area in blues, reds and yellows.