The Runner

by P. R. Black

  Freya frowned. ‘I hope it’s more obvious. I don’t fancy having to root through the cupboards and split floorboards in there.’

  ‘I’ve had a look online… There doesn’t seem to be anything that indicates a Cyclops or one eye or anything like that. Anyway, best we keep our eyes peeled. Or one eye, I should say.’

  ‘Weather’s about to turn crap,’ Freya said, indicating a malevolent bank of grey cloud gathering overhead.

  ‘Weather forecast told me it was going to be fine.’

  ‘The sky’s telling me it isn’t. In fact…’ Freya held out her hand, to catch the first heavy drops as they began to fall.

  ‘Damn it.’ Glenn shucked out a hood from a compartment at the back of his jacket. ‘Best we pick up the pace, anyway. You’d think it was getting dark already.’

  ‘I don’t think we need to go too far,’ Freya said, hunching as the rain came on more heavily.

  ‘How’s that?’

  She pointed. ‘Check it out.’

  One of the buildings closest to the entrance to the street was shorter and blockier than the rest, with a full garden growing out of its roof. An ancient, pitted metal sign swayed slightly, at a right angle to the building; a pub sign, surely. Glenn squinted, but even from a distance Freya could make out the image on the front of the sign.

  A giant, with what appeared to be a monk’s tonsure, reaching out for tiny screaming matchstick men. A giant with one eye. ‘The Blink And Miss It’, was just about legible below.

  ‘That’s us,’ Glenn whispered. ‘In we go.’

  As they drew closer, Freya made out a pair of pinwheeling legs angled out of the side of the giant’s mouth. She felt a sudden sickness, and she stopped.

  ‘Everything all right?’ he whispered.

  ‘We just take a look around,’ Freya said, quieter still. ‘Nothing daft. Agreed?’

  ‘Course,’ he said.

  22

  They used one of Glenn’s shovels to pry open the chipboard that enclosed the front door. Immediately they were hit by a terrible smell; old books, soiled things, mould that would never be conquered.

  Glenn cranked up a head torch, and fixed it around his head. Freya pulled out a heavy-duty torch, and soon the twin beams illuminated a musty, uneven wasteland. ‘It’s a real mess in there. And Jesus… Something moved.’

  ‘Rats, surely,’ Glenn said. ‘Not a great fan of those.’

  ‘After you, then.’

  ‘Yeah. After me.’

  Freya jerked back the board; it splintered in her hands, and she tossed the broken parts away. Glenn stepped through the gap. Something crunched under his feet.

  ‘Was that glass?’ Freya shone the torch onto the floor in the gloom of the pub. She could not quite dismiss the notion that the jagged aperture was a mouth, ready to seize her the moment she set foot over the threshold.

  ‘Nah… Just old pallets, I think. No glass around here. No one’s been squatting here for a while, and that’s the truth. Just our four-legged friends, maybe.’

  Freya stepped in alongside him. Their twin torch beams criss-crossed through the darkness, illuminating a horseshoe-shaped bar. The light bounced off some cracked mirrors hanging around the back, but everything else had been stripped out. There were no taps, brasses or drinks gantries, no railings or jacket pegs. The top of the bar was garlanded with grime and dust, and some of the wooden panelling was scored with tiny claw marks.

  ‘To be fair,’ Freya said, ‘I’ve been in pubs that looked worse.’

  Glenn didn’t laugh – but she saw a look of irritation cross his face. ‘Maybe we should listen out, and maybe cut the jokes?’

  ‘Sorry,’ she whispered.

  Maybe if I don’t joke, Glenn, I’ll scream.

  Beneath some cracked shards of pallet, some chequerboard tiling was just about visible. Footprints were apparent in places, some bearing the heavy tread of hiking boots in thick brown islands, isthmuses and archipelagos.

  ‘Those footprints – any of them look fresh to you?’ he asked.

  Freya shook her head. ‘Hard to tell. What’s the next part of the plan?’

  ‘Well, I have a horrid idea that whatever we need to find in here is in the cellar.’

  ‘Of course. The fucking cellar.’ She regretted saying it; her voice quivered a little as she did so. Scaredy cat. She took one or two deep breaths, but they were not enough to still her heart. Get away from this. This isn’t like at the care home. Get out. Go home. This is not a place for you.

  She grit her teeth. Rubbish. Get on with it.

  ‘Don’t suppose you’ve got any heavy-duty tools in your backpack? Getting into the cellar might be a problem otherwise.’

  ‘Sure.’ Glenn rooted around in the bag, and removed a sledgehammer. It looked as if it was from a different era in human history, its head rusted, its corners out of shape. Glenn let the head drop into the palm of his free hand with a smack; it still had some weight to it. Freya understood now why he’d been sweating so freely on the walk. ‘I came prepared.’

  Freya smiled, and reached into her own backpack, bracing the torch awkwardly under her chin as she did so. ‘As did I.’ She produced a crowbar, thick, black and with a wicked curve at the edge; a harpooner’s instrument.

  The weapons caught the bluish light; Freya felt a curious sense of impotence, now that she held the crowbar in her hands. She imagined having to smash it into someone – perhaps a moving target, a spindly figure creeping after them in the shadows.

  Something shifted in a corner, out of the torchlight, and she came close to panicking then. The crowbar clattered to the floor; her torch beam scored crazed arcs and loops over the damn walls until Glenn’s hand steadied her.

  ‘Easy. It was a bird, flying out one of the broken panes.’

  ‘Definitely?’

  ‘For sure. I saw it.’

  ‘OK.’ She was not OK, though. Her heart was pounding, and sweat dripped down her chin. She heard herself say: ‘I’m going to get this over with.’

  Wincing, Freya vaulted onto the top of the bar, slid her legs over to the other side, and then lowered herself to the floor. For one awful moment, she couldn’t see the floor beneath, and wondered if it had perhaps been eaten away, or collapsed into the cellar below. But she landed on old floorboards, which sprung slightly under her weight. She brought the torch down to focus on the grimy flooring. Brass edges delineated the cellar; there was a lock at the far edge.

  ‘That’s it,’ she said.

  ‘Dammit, that looks awkward,’ Glenn said, his face obscured by the blue flare of light at the centre of his forehead. ‘I was hoping for a padlock we could get through, easily enough.’

  Freya held up the crowbar into the light. ‘Here we go, then. Best to start with this.’ She eased off her rucksack, then braced the crowbar in the gap between the edge of the trapdoor and the edge of its frame.

  She gritted her teeth, took the strain, and heaved.

  ‘Hey,’ Glenn said, ‘it’s moving.’

  With a brittle crack, something gave way under the crowbar, and the trapdoor opened. A quite awful smell appeared; Freya was reminded of an underpass her mother had warned her about in childhood, but which she dared herself to go down, anyway. It had smelled a bit like this: old beer, old piss, and sheer, throbbing malice.

  All the way through her life, there had been no one to hold her hand. No one to put their hand to her back, when she was frightened. Her mother’s love had been strong, but it had been smothering, in its way. She’d recognised that, but never shied away from it. So when Glenn’s hand touched her back, briefly, she felt an absurd sense of gratitude.

  ‘Nice work,’ he said.

  They stooped, both gaining a fingertip’s width of grip around the gap. Glenn’s face was very close to Freya’s, fully lit by the torch she’d placed on the floor – so much that she could feel warmth radiating off him. ‘On three,’ he said. ‘One, two…’

  The hatch sprung open after some initial resistance.
It leaned slightly to one side, and wouldn’t quite remain upright. Freya was reminded uncomfortably of a shark’s fin. ‘Fair drop, down there,’ she said, picking up the torch.

  ‘Looks like there’s some barrels.’ Glenn shone his light off metallic edges.

  ‘Any coffins?’

  At this, something shrieked and burst out of the trapdoor.

  Glenn screamed and sprang back. Freya was too shocked to move; finally her torch beam lit on a scuttling brown shadow, just in time to see its flapping worm tail whip the edge of the bar and disappear over the top.

  ‘God almighty,’ Glenn said, his breathing stertorous. ‘God help us if someone is waiting for us down there.’

  ‘Don’t even think it. Surely not… It’s been sealed, and it’s dark.’ She tried to banish some juvenile, but truly awful fantasies, then; images of silver-eyed vampires, of slavering demons.

  Freya leaned over the edge, her torchlight reflecting off rows of sullen-looking beer barrels. Some looked modern, while some were wooden, like casks of whisky she’d seen on a distillery tour in Scotland her mother had taken her on when she was younger. Some had tarpaulin covering them, spectral figures in the gloom. Freya imagined children hidden underneath, stifling giggles.

  ‘How’d the rat manage to get out of there, anyway?’ Glenn said. ‘And more importantly, how are we going to get down? That’s quite a drop.’

  ‘Over there.’ Freya pointed, just inside the trapdoor, and to the left. ‘There’s a ladder. It’s hidden among the old pump fittings. Hang on…’ She reached across the gap, trying not to imagine a swarm of pointy-nosed, shrieking demons suddenly flooding over her hand and engulfing her. She used the hook of the crowbar to snag the end; it was on a pulley of some kind. With a grating sound, the ladder rolled across its fitting, before presenting itself to Freya.

  ‘All the rungs and in place,’ she said. ‘Hold the torch, a minute.’

  ‘You’re going down now?’

  ‘Yeah. Why else did we come here, if we’re not going to have a proper look?’

  ‘I didn’t think we’d have to do a ladders ’n’ levels kind of puzzle,’ Glenn said, tetchily.

  ‘We’re coming down here to clear my father,’ she said, her voice harsher than she’d intended. ‘If it wasn’t for that, you wouldn’t get me within a mile of this place.’

  ‘I didn’t expect some kind of board game,’ he muttered, a little hurt.

  ‘Stands to reason that our tormentor wouldn’t make it easy for us. If there’s something hidden down here, then he would want it to stay that way, surely. It wouldn’t be too easy to spot.’

  ‘It also looks like a trap.’ His head torch beam swung away, and he made eye contact. ‘Doesn’t it?’

  ‘You stay up here. I’ll go down.’

  Glenn glanced around. ‘I don’t think I got the better deal, all told. Can’t we both go down together?’

  ‘Nope. We both go down there, and we both get trapped, that’s senseless. But if the killer sneaks up on you, and sticks an axe in the back of your head, then at least I’ll know he’s around and I’ve got something to deal with.’

  ‘Ten out of ten for pragmatism,’ Glenn said, uneasily. ‘I’ll try to scream before I die, so that you get a warning.’

  ‘Good lad. Right – here goes.’ The first rung creaked, theatrically, but the ladder held strong. Freya tucked her torch into her pocket, and then lowered herself down into the pit.

  23

  Freya turned the torch onto the first cask. God knew what they would discover. She had to find out, but also didn’t want to find out. This was the kind of dread and gloom and darkness that people tried to pretend didn’t exist; she was flirting with the knowledge of an everyday thing that was best known by undertakers, care workers, the police, paramedics – things she’d known from her work in the care home, though never so gothic as this. The stuff of grim, ugly, grimy death.

  Desiccated wisps of dead spiders added commas to the folds in the tarpaulin, knuckled legs bent over their heads. Freya pulled at the bluish material. Her nose was instantly tickled by the dust, and she sneezed.

  ‘What’s happening?’ Glenn asked. She had moved out of the reach of his torch beam.

  ‘Nothing. I’m having a look around.’

  ‘Maybe see if you can break into one of the casks?’

  ‘No, I want to check the place out first. If we’re being guided towards something, they’ll have left a sign.’

  Underneath the tarpaulin was a large brandy barrel. It looked like it might have rolled off a merchant ship sometime in the early eighteenth century, perhaps somewhere with blue water and palm trees. She tested the wood with her finger; still solid, though the varnish had flaked away long ago, leaving burnished streaks.

  She tested it with her shoulder; something sloshed inside. Keeping the beam fixed on the wood, Freya walked around the barrel. Then she gasped.

  ‘Everything all right?’ Glenn called.

  ‘You should get down here,’ she said, her throat dry.

  ‘Hold on…’ The ladder creaked; Glenn lowered himself down.

  ‘Wait. Stay there,’ Freya said. ‘We shouldn’t both be down here at the same time.’

  ‘What is it, then? What can you see?’

  Freya gripped the edges of the barrel and wheeled it round so that Glenn could pick it out with the torch beam. It was lighter than it appeared.

  In the circle of bluish light, a single eye had been spray-painted.

  ‘This is where we stop,’ Glenn said. ‘I say we call the cops. We’re already in way over our heads, here. We should get in touch with the police, tell them what we know, and leave this the way we found it.’

  ‘You’re getting scared.’ Freya nodded. ‘I’m glad. I was worried you weren’t getting scared. Because I’m absolutely bricking it. I am one hundred per cent getting scared.’

  ‘I’m getting sensible. We could be messing with evidence, here. We contaminate something, the cops might think we put it there. But before we do…’ He raised something that interfered with the steady beam of light.

  ‘What are you doing?’

  The click and whirr of his camera provided the answer. She hadn’t even seen it in his hand. ‘Already done,’ he said, smugly, and disappeared back up the ladder.

  Freya’s torch beam danced over another tarpaulin-covered barrel. She noticed something spray-painted across this covering, the same colour of paint as the eye on another barrel. ‘TWO WAYS’, said the message.

  ‘There’s something here,’ she said. ‘Could be another message.’

  The torchlight revealed something that looked like a trail of blood, poking out from underneath the tarpaulin – then she noticed that it was more spray paint: an arrow, heading into the filthy tarpaulin.

  ‘Don’t,’ Glenn whispered.

  But it was too late. She had already taken the tarp between her fingertips, lifted it, and there was the head of an axe, buried deep in the splintered barrel, the handle laid lengthwise across the top.

  ‘Oh Christ,’ she said, almost in a squeak.

  ‘Be quiet,’ Glenn hissed.

  ‘You be bloody quiet!’

  ‘There’s someone out there!’ His voice dropped to a whisper. Then the blue light from his head torch extinguished. ‘Turn out your torchlight.’

  ‘What do you mean?’ Freya’s heartbeat seemed to swell, soaking up all available space in the room. ‘Can you see someone?’

  ‘I can see them – there’s someone walking around outside! Wait. Stay in there, and don’t make a sound.’

  ‘What? Don’t you dare close that door!’ she cried. But it was too late. Glenn slid the trapdoor shut. Then she heard his footsteps creaking across the floor overhead, towards the front door.

  Trying to control her breathing, she clicked off the torch beam, and waited.

  There was silence from above. Then a sudden, grinding crash as something struck the panelling they had crept through at the front door. Then another. T
hen another. With every impact, Freya’s shoulders cinched up tight. Her free hand flew to her mouth. There was no mistaking what this cacophony represented.

  It was the sound of wood being chopped.

  24

  With a final crash, something heavy fell to the floor above. The board at the front entrance – no doubt about it.

  Freya pinned herself against the far wall. Though it felt stuffy and dusty down there, the concrete at her back was cool. Sweat nonetheless began to form at her forehead, and tickle the base of her spine.

  Footsteps, now, across the floor. Heavy boots, lumpen steps, almost as percussively brutal as the axe blows. And then something else; a heavy scraping or scoring sound.

  Freya could picture the blade of the axe, dragging across the floor. Perhaps it left tiny shavings in its wake, a splintered slalom traced across the grain.

  The footsteps were directly overhead. Whoever had come into the room had stopped at the bar.

  The person up above tapped their feet once, twice, three times. Then they began to move around the bar, heading towards the trapdoor.

  Freya darted forward, using the footsteps as cover for her own. She stopped at the ladder; placed her foot on the bottom rung, then boosted herself up.

  She had spotted it on her way down – there was a catch, which she had broken when she’d used the crowbar to jemmy open the trapdoor. Like an unbuckled belt, two parts of the latch hung downwards – it was where the padlock had hung in place, above.

  She placed the crowbar in between these two bent pieces of metal, closing the two halves of the latch. At that precise moment, the trapdoor jerked.

  The latch held; the crowbar clanked. Freya stepped back a moment. There was a sudden silence, then a clearly audible, ‘Hmm.’

  Then a terrible blow struck the trapdoor. The end of the crowbar jerked and dangled like a landed fish. Wood splintered, and a thin grey line appeared above Freya’s head, as the entire trapdoor buckled.

  Another blow staved it in even further. Freya saw a heavy black boot shifting; then a third crash brought the blade through the wood. Splinters cascaded down the ladder.