by Guy N Smith
He tried to stand up but his feet slid away from him. As he fell, a blinding white crevice opened up, and snow showered down on him. Panicking, fighting desperately, he was conscious of a new fear, that of being buried alive. Catalepsy in a white tomb; death by suffocation or exposure—it was a toss-up which would come first. Something gouged his hand and drew blood, which spotted the snow crimson, making him think about the stains below the circle again. He was gripping a hawthorn branch which offered a lifeline and he pulled himself up with it. He was on top of the hedge but it was strong enough to support his weight if he crawled and didn't mind spiking his hands and knees. Now there was only one way to go—back to Hodre.
Peter bathed his cuts and scratches in the sink and tried to work out a plan of action. If only it would rain, pour down so that the snow was reduced to a thick slush and then washed away. What the hell did these hill people do in an emergency when they were cut off by ten-foot drifts? They phoned for help, and if the snow plough couldn't get to them then the RAF sent a helicopter.
But I haven't bloody well got a phone! And nobody's going to come looking for me in a helicopter.
He knew that he was going to make another bid for freedom, that he wouldn't rest until he tried again. He'd been too hasty, that was his trouble. He had settled for what he'd considered was the obvious route without really making a decisive plan of action. The lanes had accumulated the worst drifts because the high hedges on either side had banked up the snow. So forget the lanes and go across country; many of the steep slopes were bare where the strong winds had cleared them and it would be just like walking on rock.
That was the answer. In his mind he mapped out a direct route from Hodre to Woodside. Almost a straight line from the rear of the cottage, past the stone circle . . . alongside the big forest . . .
Peter tensed at the thought. Jesus Christ, no! But it was the only way. If he started out right away he could make Wood-side by dusk. It was imperative that he was clear of the hills before darkness fell.
Oh God, the place reeked of ancient evil and he wasn't going to risk being caught up in any more. The druids could have their stone circle for all he cared. Ruskin could do as he liked. Peters and Bostock could poach rabbits on the gorse bank every night if they wanted; if they dared. And if the Wilson boys wanted to burn the place up with their scrambling bikes that was fine.
To hell with Hodre, he was getting our right now
Pale sunlight flooded the snowy slopes of Hodre as Peter Fogg left by the back door. Two-thirty—he'd have to get a move on. Much of the snow had fallen off the tops of the trees which formed the fringe of the big forest on the skyline; no longer was the wood able to hide its sinister appearance beneath a virgin white mantle. Still, he' needn't go through it, he'd keep to the outside, to the farmland adjoining—Ruskin's land! To hell with trespassing, he wasn't coming back here again except to collect a few belongings.
The slope was slippery. He took two steps forward and slid back one; but he knew he'd crawl on all-fours if necessary. Anything to get out of here before dark. Maybe he should have brought the gun. No, it'd be too cumbersome and he needed both hands.
Slow progress; almost twenty minutes to reach the stone circle. He tried not to look at the blood-stains in the snow but his eyes seemed automatically drawn towards the crimson spotting. Ugh. He shuddered, remembering the white cowled figure, the sacrifice of the cat and the rabbit, the other things . . .
There was a new urgency, a desperation bordering on panic about his flight now. He cursed when he fell, and had difficulty in getting up again. He wanted to run but realised the futility of it; he only had to slip awkwardly and he could break a limb and lie helpless as night fell, at the mercy of whatever it was that prowled the dark hours and lurked in the shadows.
He was sweating heavily by the time he reached the hedge at the foot of the big steep field leading up to the forest. Suddenly the snow was much deeper where it had drifted against the obstruction. Peter sank in up to his thighs and pulled himself out by hauling on a branch. It didn't look so bad the other side, just deep drifts in odd places.
The snow had soaked his jeans so that they clung wetly to his legs. He was tiring, too, his calves aching, but there was a long way to go yet. This incline was steeper; he found himself looking for patches of snow that gave him a foothold, struggling to keep his balance.
He looked up. The horizon didn't seem any nearer and the forest appeared to glare balefully down at him as though warning him. A movement made him catch his breath and think that maybe the glare of the winter sun on the snow was playing tricks with his eyes. Trees didn't move; there wasn't even any wind. They couldn't, it was impossible. But they did, coming forward, dark shadows moving out of the white background . . .
Deer! Relief flooded over Peter, his pulses speeding up then slowing down, alerting him that his nerves were in a bad way.
The herd was in full strength, huddling together as though something had frightened them and driven them out of the forest. They didn't see him because the sun was in their eyes. They turned, looking back the way they had come as if some fearful beast was in pursuit, snuffling on their scent through the deep snow amidst the trees, relentlessly hunting them down.
There was no sign of the big buck. Peter scanned the animals but he knew he wouldn't find the once-majestic male of the species because if it had been there it would have been at their head, marshalling the others into some semblance of order. It would have known that Peter was there watching them. Instead they were reduced to a rabble, fear portrayed in their every movement, jerky like an artist's animated cartoon drawings.
Peter started off again. The going was easier, or perhaps it was the brief rest that had recharged him. He found himself searching for the deer again but they had gone. He stared in disbelief. They couldn't all have retreated back into the forest in those few seconds whilst he had been looking away. But they must have because they were nowhere to be seen and they couldn't have gone anywhere else. They were damned edgy. More than that: scared to hell! >-
Almost at the brow of the hill now. He reckoned it must have taken him a good half-hour. Every muscle in his body was complaining and the whiteness of the snow had brought that damned headache back again. But he'd got to keep going.
He had to stop and get his breath. God, he wasn't as fit as he thought he was. That was why he was shaking: exertion, not fear. This place was getting on his nerves, making him look about him as though he expected to find somebody creeping up on him. He should have gone with Janie and Gavin; it would have been better for everybody.
A steady dripping sound. The snow was melting off the trees, A slow thaw, but how slow? He couldn't see the boundary fence that separated Hodre from the forest, there was just a long white wall incorporating designs that would have taxed the skill of any architect or sculptor; nature's beauty alongside her cruelty. Hoofprints had compressed the snow where the deer had gone in single file between two high drifts; that was why they had been invisible from the lower ground. Peter began to follow their tracks. Perhaps the herd's trail would lead him to safety.
He stopped and drew back. No way was he going in there. The tracks turned in a sharp right angle and disappeared between the low branches of firs weighed down by snow, leading away into the gloomy interior of the forest, which even the whiteness of the buzzard had failed to penetrate.
The deer had turned off because it was the only way. Behind lay the steep fields and the treacherous descent to Hodre; ahead impenetrable ten-foot high drifts that spilled across into the fringe of the forest.
I'm not bloody well going in therel His mute cry of despair almost had him panicking. Then I'll have to go back! No! Or stay here until the snow melts.
Peter had begun to back away without realising it, a subconscious decision to retreat. Maybe if he had known the forest he would have risked it and followed rides and firebreaks that had been sheltered from the snow out on to Ruskin's land the other side. But he didn't; he'd neve
r set foot in the big wood before. In all probability he would gel lost and still be wandering around in circles when darkness fell. Afraid to shout because—because they might hear him! Dead by morning, from exposure or ...
He had to go back, there was no other way. He experienced a sudden urge to burst into tears, to fling himself down into the snow, to give up. Surrender. His legs were on the verge of buckling, screaming at him ro lie down in the soft feathery snow. He'd read somewhere that if you buried yourself it was all snug and warm, that you drifted off into a gentle sleep and . . .
That was when he saw the man! At least he thought it was a man; a white shape that vaguely resembled a human body lying half-buried in the big drift which had caused the deer to turn off into the fir wood. He might have been asleep, except that his posture was so unnatural that nobody could possibly have slept in that position even out here, finally pulled down by fatigue: spread-eagled, the legs higher than the body. He'd been like that before the buzzard came because he couldn't possibly have got into the drift afterwards. That was one reason why he wasn't just asleep. Looking at his upside-down face, Peter found another reason: the side of the head had been staved in by a heavy blow, splintering the skull, burying the left eye deep in a gouged-out socket that was thick with congealed blood. His mouth was wide open as though the man had managed one last scream before he had died.
Peter's stomach seemed to contract and he almost vomited. He wanted to look away but that single fish-like eye seemed to hold him with a baleful stare. Look at me, see what's happened to me because I trespassed up here in their domain. You know who I am, don't you?
Peter knew; recognition filtered slowly into his numbed brain. Less than a week ago this very man had been warning him of the perils which surrounded Hodre and its druids' circle—now that same evil had claimed Don Peters' life.
It was the poacher all right, clad in some kind of homemade garment, an old white bedsheet fashioned into a cloak and cowl—the figure in the snow last night.
A limp arm slipped and brought a shower of snow down with it, as though to hide the bloodstains below the head, then straightened out, finger extended, pointing, accusing. You did this to me. You shot mel
Peter thought he was going to faint. A red and black haze before his eyes. He tasted bile at the back of his throat and knew he was going to throw up.
You killed me! Murdererl
'No!' Peter managed a denial, a hoarse shout before he was doubled up, vomiting. Then logic came from somewhere and steadied his reeling brain, pulling him back from the brink of the abyss into which he was slipping. That's no shotgun wound. Birdshot couldn't inflict an injury like that except at point-blank range. You've been bludgeoned to death. Not by me. I'm innocent! D'you hear me, I'm innocent!
The solitary eye maintained its malevolent stare of accusation; the forefinger rigid with rigor mortis was still trained on Peter.
He tried to find an explanation as he backed slowly away. The druids? If they could kill animals then they were capable of murder. That was ridiculous. The deer, then; Peters had been caught in the path of a frenzied stampede? No, that didn't seem feasible either. What then?
He didn't know; that was the most frightening pan of all. Just that they had done this—those who lurked in the darkness, the gloom of the deep woods. Even now he sensed them watching him, and turned to flee. He cast one last glance at the bloodied, mutilated, barely recognisable face. / didn't do it, so help me God, I swear I didn't!
Then Peter was running, floundering, not daring to look back, hearing muffled pursuing footsteps, whispered voices; ready to scream the moment they pulled him down.
But they didn't. There was nobody there when he burst out of the drifts and fell on the smooth powdered slopes of the hillside, lying there breathless. No footsteps, just the thumping of his temples and the racing of his pulses.
The sun was dipping behind the highest peaks of the distant beacons, a deep fiery ball that threatened the return of a hard frost once its luke-warm rays had been replaced by the shadows of dusk,
He knew he had to get back to the cottage because there was nowhere else to go. His last outpost, a besieged blockhouse, the enemy forces already massing in the hills above, waiting for darkness.
The descent was far more treacherous than the ascent had been; he could see where he might end up if he slipped, a human snowball rolling and bouncing, growing in size, smashing asunder when it hit the sharp rocks below to reveal a battered bloody corpse, human carrion for the predators of the dark hours to feed upon. Like Peters.
Oh God, I didn't kill him, I swear it
No, but I wounded him!
Peter glanced back just once to satisfy himself that they weren't on his heels already. There wasn't a living thing in sight. Even the sun was gone now and the evening shadows cast elongated tentacles down the hillside as though reaching out for him, trying to pull him back.
He wished he could have skirted the stone circle but it was the only way down. The deformed trees stood out starkly against a white background, the sun having melted the snow which had earlier hidden their scarred boughs. They, too, were pointing accusingly at him with crooked hag-like fingers. Murdererl
He was bleeding from a cut on his hand where he had scraped it against a sliver of jagged rock, leaving a trail, a scent that anybody or anything could follow! Tonight they would come for him for sure. They wouldn't wait any longer!
He grunted with relief when he made it to the back gate. There was still nothing behind him but a barren landscape that might have been in the depths of Antarctica, the dusk coming fast now that the sun had gone.
He was aware of the clinging coldness of his saturated clothes and shivered for a number of reasons. He broke into a staggering run towards the door.
Something seemed to hit him. It was almost a physical blow that stopped him in his tracks: a flash of crimson that dazzled in the surrounding whiteness like the blinding beam of an oncoming headlight in the blackness of the night. He recoiled as he thought of Peters again and the brightness of the blood on the snow. , .
This was crazy—there was blood running down the door, scarlet and wet, so thick that some of it was already congealing!
Peter couldn't hold back his scream this time, a loud cry of fear and mental agony, knowing that he hovered on the brink of that dark chasm once again. Maybe it would be easier to slide into its cooling blackness, an oblivion that would destroy the mounting terrors of this awful place.
It wasn't blood, it couldn't be ... too bright . . .
No, it wasn't blood, even though a tiny hysterical voice somewhere inside him was screaming out that it was.
It was red paint, still wet, daubed on the woodwork within the last hour or so. He could see brushmarks in the form of a large cross, although in places the paint had run.
Peter almost screamed again. He clutched at some rotten trellis work and brought a shower of wet snow down on himself. A crudely painted cross that was not yet dry . . . They had been here whilst he was away, knowing that he couldn't escape, that he would be forced to return here.
But for God's sake why?
There could only be one answer to that: they had warned him and their warnings had gone unheeded. Their patience had run out and tonight they would come for him.
The lurkers had daubed the mark of death on the door of Hodre.
14
Peter checked every room, shotgun at the ready, hammers at full cock. Only when he had ascertained that there was nobody inside the cottage did he breathe a sigh of relief. For one awful moment he had feared that they might already be here. But they weren't; they were waiting for night to fall.
He peeled off his saturated freezing clothing and changed into rough working denims, wishing that Janie had had time to renew all the curtains in the cottage. . . He couldn't shake off the unnerving feeling of being watched all the time; that was how they wore you down, just watching you until you couldn't stand it any longer.
For God's sake
, I don't want to stay here. I'll go. You don't have to do this to me. I'll leave Hodre and I'll never come back He would have left there and then, only there was no way out. The choice wasn't his; he had to stay—but he wasn't giving in. He had the gun, he wouldn't make it easy for them. He'd take a few of them with him!
The change of clothing and the warmth from the Rayburn had brought back his resolution to fight. Anger, too, because they had no right to do this to him. And they were preventing him from getting on with his book; that in itself was a cardinal sin.
What the hell had happened to Peters? Certainly a terrible blow of some kind had smashed his skull, killing him instantly. But who had done it and for what reason? And where was Don Peters' poaching partner, Mick Bostock? Was he lying out there dead in the drifts, too?
Peter found himself doing a host of unnecessary things that he would not have bothered with under different circumstances. Like checking the doors to ensure that they were all locked and bolted, although that had been his first task upon his return to the cottage. And lifting the telephone receiver to see if by some miracle it was working again—but of course it wasn't. Then cleaning the shotgun again; he might need it very soon.
A tiny portable transistor radio stood precariously on the mantelshelf. It had been one of Gavin's presents last Christmas, and Peter wondered why the boy had not taken it with him; probably because it wasn't much good, more of a crackling toy than anything else, cheap imported junk.
Nevertheless Peter switched it on, primarily because he needed something to break the silence. Anything.
I should be listening for them coming.