‘He had an accident!’ shouted Roydon. He recalled that Phil was usually brought home by some rather older children from infant school. Sobbing, Miriel told him that Phil and his friends had run into an unexpected pocket of terror in a dip in the road coming home. They had scattered, Phil darting insanely across the road, it seemed, and straight under a car. It was all over in a moment.
After the funeral, which ironically took place on a gay, serene morning, Miriel, who had kept herself on a tight rein, seemed to go to pieces. She refused all drugs, scarcely roused on the most cheerful of days, and gave herself up to a sort of resentfulness of sorrow. Roydon’s parents, who had stayed on for some days, took May under their roof not far off; and for the rest of term were to fetch her to school and back. Roydon managed to secure leave and took Miriel west to a wild part of the country neither of them had seen before, which she could not associate with Philip. They left the two city-cars behind and hired a runabout. Gradually she began to pick up, but there was a ghostly something about her look, an air of looking through or past Roydon, which worried him. It was a fine spring and the mood-weather was optimistic, with only the occasional grief. Roydon let the griefs wash over Miriel when they were out walking, and sometimes over himself, as he felt they would help to purge the emotional load.
The first Sunday they went to church. The rather meagre congregation huddled in the cool Early English interior. The sermon was uninspiring. But there was a soothing quality about the grey-green gloom and the thin arches. The motor of the tranquillizer-cordial hummed gently in the silences. Afterwards Roydon was rather sorry they had gone, for they were strolling through the churchyard when Miriel stopped with a shudder. The funeral was too recent. Drunken gravestones, their inscriptions worn to rivers in the soft local stone, leant around them. But she had stopped at a very tall and broad headstone.
‘Look,’ she said uncertainly. ‘Roy, you could have had an ancestor here.’
‘Well, could be, certainly ends with “Back”, and it certainly has an R as second letter, and the length looks right. Can’t make out the forename, can you?’
‘No, I don’t think I can. And what a long inscription.’
‘From the few words I can make out, it was one of those paragons of all the virtues. Local bigwig, I expect. They used to make them out to be saints on their tombstones in those days; whereas they probably fathered half the brats in the parish really, and twisted their tenants. I must have a look at the parish register some time, just in case he really had the same name. Still, it’s not absolutely unique as a name.’
~ * ~
‘What is all this about the Snevley Fields?’ said the big man at the bar.
Roydon turned half round from his half-pint. Miriel was upstairs. The big man, who looked like a landowner or businessman, was talking to a squat little fellow who might be a farmer or a lawyer.
‘What do you want to know about the Snevley Fields?’
‘Something queer is going on there — what is it?’
‘Something decidedly queer is certainly going on there,’ said the squat man, who, like the big man, had a whisky in front of him. Roydon cocked his World-Day-educated ear. ‘It seems that all Morris’s cattle have disappeared there. So has Midgley’s dog. Midgley was walking the Carruthers side and his dog went after rabbits. That was a week ago and no one has seen the dog since.’
‘But it’s perfectly open country, no badger holes or fox holes either.’
‘Exactly. And no cow holes! ... Midgley’s a bit scared to go in himself. As for Morris, he thinks the place is bewitched. Talks about fairies and I don’t know what. Won’t stir near there. A bit superstitious, old Morris is.’
‘Was it in daylight?’
‘We don’t know about Morris’s cattle. But Midgley’s dog went early one afternoon.’
‘Any clues?’
‘No! Only thing is, the Snevley Fields seem to have been re-hedged by someone. The old hawthorn’s given way to hazel, Morris says. He looked through binoculars. Says it goes beyond the brook too.’
‘Snevley’s is let, isn’t it?’
‘Yes — to someone from Scrutton. But they haven’t been there for weeks.’
‘You talking about them Snevley Fields?’ put in a long man in an overcoat, drinking stout on the far side.
‘Yes, and Harry says it goes on beyond the brook.’
‘Too true; and another thing,’ said the long man: ‘you know that brook runs straight down a fair way between them two hedges? Someone digged it that way long since.’ The other two nodded assent. So did three other listeners. ‘Well now it don’t. It runs all squiggly-squaggly. And them hedges — they’ve gone!’
There was a heavy silence. ‘I know another man as lost a dog thereabouts,’ called a dark man in a corner. Silence. Heads turned. “Twere Ted. His bitch were round Parker’s Knoll, a week come Friday ‘twere. She were chasing rabbits too. Ted says he had his eye on her, and she just vanished.’
‘How d’you mean, vanished?’ put in the big man.
‘Vanished in full view, right in the middle of the next field. Here, Fred, turn up the aero-whatsit. That crossness is seeping in again — I can feel me hackles rising.’
“Tis the whisky in you, Bill,’ called the squat man amid general laughter, but the landlord picked up an aerosol hand-sprayer and pumped the cordial-tranquillizer over the room.
‘Well, as I were saying. She vanished in full view. One moment she were there, going hell for leather in the middle of a field. Next moment — she weren’t there. Never came back no more.’
‘That’s a hell of a lot of land that is. From Snevley’s to Parker’s Knoll.’
‘And from Goff’s Brook to t’other side of Snevley, I shouldn’t wonder,’ came from a small man who had not yet spoken.
Roydon, who was used to interviewing, or failing to interview, rural types, held his peace, but after a moment or two found occasion to ask the barman the name of the long man and the squat man, and still later buttonholed the landlord and got from him their addresses (they turned out to be the village grocer and the local garage man) and the approximate location of Goff’s Brook, Snevley’s and Parker’s Knoll. He represented himself as an amateur landscape painter with some ideas about later fishing.
Next morning, with a strong instinctive drive prevalent and a cordial temperament abroad, Roydon took Miriel out on foot looking for the mystery area. The forecast was fairly optimistic and he thought it would be good for her to tramp around with him while he tried to work up what promised to be something of a news story. In two hours they were in sight of the farmhouse known as Snevley’s. Beyond it down a slight slope were the Snevley Fields, a set of meadows already powdered with buttercups. The pair paused. ‘Let’s work round this field and up to that copse. We might get a better view of that break in the hedges they were talking about.’
When they reached a field corner next to the copse, where a distinct drop in the emotional temperature could be felt, Roydon took some photographs. The chilliness was becoming palpable hostility, and his wife was unprotected by drugs. ‘You stick it out here, Miriel. I’ll walk uphill and see what can be seen from that tree.’ Roydon strode off. A brusquely suspicious mood dominated the summit. Reaching the tree at the top he turned. Miriel was not to be seen.
Roydon, shouting her name at the top of his voice, glared round an arc of countryside. Away down a narrow meadow between two hedges he thought he saw a flickering speck running, running very hard. An instant later it was swallowed up, in the line of the nearer hedge. Perhaps it was a rook in the air between. Moving cloud-shadows confused the view. After a minute of calling, Roydon ran back down the long slope and at length arrived, gasping and dizzy, his knees aching, at the spot where he had left her. There were some snapped twigs, and after staring around he thought he could see the imprint of her shoes in the earth not far off, pointing homeward. But beyond this on all sides tall wiry grasses swallowed up everything. T
he feeling of hostility grew, mingled with acute fear. The wind hissed among the twigs and grasses. ‘Bitch, bitch!’ Roydon found himself muttering. He forced himself to swallow a pill, but found minutes later that it must have been a slow-acting one he had chosen. Hoarse with shouting and cursing, he began to stumble back the way they had come, convinced that she had started home. As he approached Snevley’s a squall of rage and grief burst upon him. Sobbing and swearing, tears coursing down his cheeks, he ran round the yard and burst in through the open doorway. No one was at home. He rushed through the rooms without finding anyone or any trace, tried all the cupboards, and finally ran out again and on to the village. At last, in a state of maudlin warmth now that the pill had taken effect in more cordial surroundings, he stumbled into the inn. Miriel was not in their room. No one had seen her. Someone brought him to the police station, in whose tranquillized air he told his story.
‘That settles it,’ said the sergeant. ‘I’m ringing HQ. These disappearances are beyond us.’
Roydon found himself at the receiving end of the interviewing on that evening’s World-Day. Ken had shot up from London by jet to see him personally. By next day the CID and half the newshawks of the west of the country were in the district. No one dare enter the ‘Forbidden Zone’ and a cordon was to be thrown up by the army. During the week a helicopter and a set of tracker-dogs on the end of microphoned long lines were brought up.
The tracker-dogs found nothing, but two disappeared, their lines neatly cut. The helicopter only discovered fields empty of all but birds; but two locals (Midgley and the squat man) who were persuaded to go up in it, averred that (so far as they could tell since they had never flown before) the country had changed quite a lot. The area was closed off now with rolls of barbed wire, military posts established round it, and a desultory watch was kept up, with an occasional searchlight at night. ‘I’d sooner run straight acrost a bleedin’ minefield ‘n gow in theer,’ Roydon heard one soldier say to another.
‘Reckon it is a minefield — only the other sort. I reckon it’s holes in it, bloody great pits, all camouflaged up,’ said the other.
Roydon flew up to London. He meant to resign. The city seemed to him meaningless, like an undubbed film in a foreign language. Its noise and bustle seemed to be all on the other side of an invisible barrier.
‘Look here, Royo,’ said Vic, taking him aside near the studio. ‘A team of investigators is going up there; why not join them as a reporter? Panset’ll recommend you, he says.’
‘Who are they?’
‘Scientists of some sort. You know they got some anomalies with their lidar probe when Ken was there — or perhaps you don’t? Some of them think there’s something odd about the spacetime geometry of the region. That’s the line they’re working on now.’
May was adopted by her aunt and uncle. Roydon was attached to the group of scientists, shut up the house, and returned to that accursed green countryside to which he was now bound, as with the thongs of a rack, by ties of fear, hatred, memory and love. He came gradually to follow, in a hazy way, the investigators’ reasoning and the drift of their experiments with masers and charged particles. So it was that six months later Roydon himself, carrying out a prepared ‘interview’ of the group’s spokesman on TV, gave the public its first picture of what was happening.
‘A set of anachronistic cells or domains has come into being on the landscape, covering a wide area. Each cell has reverted to an earlier point in time — we are not at present sure exactly what point — and its neighbour cells have similarly reverted, but apparently with no discernible pattern. We have a patchwork quilt of time-levels.’
‘How far back are these time-levels from ours?’
‘We don’t know. Some may be only a few seconds or even microseconds. Others may be a few weeks, years, even centuries. Some are certainly many years back. The change in visible landmarks fits that, according to early tithe maps.’
‘But if we can see the country, how is it we can’t see the persons and animals that have disappeared?’
‘We think they have moved out of the area, but in the time of the cell in which they found themselves.’
‘Does the first cell you meet fix your time-level, then?’
‘We don’t know. It may — or it may not.’
One day Roydon, allowed past the army posts as one of the team, slipped quietly away towards the spot where he had last seen his wife. He was certain now that she had run off further into the area and believed he might have caught a glimpse of her running and not of some bird flying. But the landscape was confusing, was difficult to identify. Where he thought to have found the field corner below the hill there seemed to be a long stone dyke with stone steps jutting out of it, and a fence to one side. He climbed over the dyke, keeping bent low in case he was spotted from outside. He was determined to follow Miriel and search, if need be for years, in this past world. The atmosphere was serene, with a slight intellectual drive in it. He combed the copse, returned, walked along the fence, slithered down some rocks which he never remembered seeing before, ran into a richly cordial atmosphere, skirted a round dewpond, and past a gnarled old thorn came face to face with a stinking old man in tatters, who touched his forehead and sank on one knee.
‘Where do you come from?’
Roydon had to repeat this three times before the man answered: ‘Scrootton, ant plaze thee, serr.’
‘Have you even see a young woman in strange dress in these parts?’
‘?’
‘Have — you — seen — a young — woman — near here — ever — wearing — strange — dress?’
Roydon had to repeat this once more, then: ‘Noo, serr, hant niwer seen noo witch, serr!’ and the creature took to his heels. As Roydon stared after him he vanished in mid-stride. Much shaken, Roydon walked slowly onward, stumbled over some gravel, was pushing through some lush undergrowth, and found himself on a sheep track among tussocks of grass. A grotesque sight met his eyes a few yards further on down the track. A thin man in a sort of sacking hood, ragged hose like ill-fitting tights and bare feet, was perched on a short ladder leaning crazily in towards the track. The ladder was leaning on nothing, and indeed its poles ended at their tops in a curious vertical chopped cut, which kept changing its pattern, yet this ladder stood still and only rocked slightly with the man’s movements. It was some time before Roydon realized that the changing texture at the tops of the poles coincided with their growing slightly shorter or longer as they rocked. The man kept descending and coming up again with bundles of what looked to Roydon (who had seen a museum of antiquities) like thatching straw, and thrusting them above the ladder, where, together with his hands, they disappeared. His handless arms, each obscenely terminated by a fluctuating blue-white and crimson cross-section, would ply about for a time, then the hands would reappear, but not the bundles. A great heap of these bundles lay on the ground. The place was thick with flies and gnats. The ladder-man was humming an endless, eerie, plaintive chant. Behind him was the rim of a forest clearing. Two lean dogs like lurchers, but with longish pointed ears, were slinking about near it. The trees of the forest seemed to be chopped short at about ten feet up. The ladder-man and his dogs were all totally oblivious of Roydon’s shouting and gesticulating. Something, however, held Roydon back from passing under or beyond the ladder. Perhaps it was that only ten feet on the far side of the man the forest clearing swung in abruptly to march right up to the sheep track. This part of the beheaded forest, moreover, was frost-laden, from the boughs to the ground, and devoid of undergrowth, and a light snow shower was scudding down from nowhere. Through this wintry woodscape, lit by a ruddy glow from the east, a pack of huge savage hounds presently broke, baying fiercely, and plunged obliquely towards the still oblivious ladder-man and his dogs. Instead of overwhelming them the pack vanished one by one in the still air of the clearing, and the silence returned piecemeal hound by hound.
A last hound, a straggler, was still bounding u
p, when the man called out, as if to someone well beyond Roydon’s shoulder: ‘Pest taak they, Will, maak hast, ‘tis aal boott nohn!’ He paused, apparently listening, then broke into a snort of laughter and resumed his whistling and humming.
An obscure trumpeting, mingled with cries, broke out deep in the frosty wood; crackling branches and rhythmical thuds intervened.
Seized with a kind of panic, Roydon turned down the track, thrust through a dark thicket, and found himself without warning in the middle of a curious wide tunnel or cave apparently made of blackish glass, and dimly lit from nowhere in particular. There was a marked cheerfulness and a strong organizing drive in the air. Coming out into the daylight he saw a wide flat level strip, like the track of a gigantic snail a hundred yards across, made of the same material, stretching out from his feet. On its edges a number of glassy boxes and tubes, on spring legs or spikes, were standing, some winking and clicking busily. The strip looked rather as if it had been sprayed on.
‘What kind of a past era is this?’ he thought. Beyond the strip were banks of rich shrubs powdered with exotic butterflies. The growl of a helicopter came from the west, and Roydon took cover beneath a shrub, disturbing the butterflies somewhat. When the helicopter appeared it had an unfamiliar look, and most of it was formed of greenish and blackish glassy material. After it had gone Roydon walked on above the shrubs. Then he took cover beneath the shrub, disturbing the butterflies, hearing the machine. When it had gone he began to walk on. Then he took cover under the butterfly-laden shrub, keeping the helicopter under observation. When it had departed he walked on, shaking his head uncertainly. There was something he could not quite remember. A deja vu sensation. Odd. He recalled the tunnel and the strip. What an odd strip! What kind of past age could this be? And what peculiar gadgets these are down its edges. Why do they click and blink like that? ... He found himself walking about the shrubs, feeling unaccountably odd and dazed. Then he saw Parker’s Knoll or what should have been Parker’s Knoll, miles ahead. It was topped by a device like a glass water-tower. The entire landscape between seemed to be dotted with tallish block buildings of greenish opaque glass, with banks of shrubs between. Men, women and children, in closely clinging clothing with a dull whitish lustre, were moving about. The sound of their voices came to him. The sky was pullulating with aircraft like a swarm of insects, and droned and screamed with them, but the voices could be heard quite clearly nevertheless. Only the strip and its neighbourhood seemed deserted. Then he saw a sort of Parker’s Knoll, but decorated with a glassy tower, and the people in their clinging clothes, and the aircraft overhead. He shook his head to clear it, and saw Parker’s Knoll, topped with a tower, and the population, and the crowded skies, and heard the noises. Roydon sat down, and in between the first bending of his knees and being seated had a visionary flash of millions upon millions of — what? Of the same event, which he instantly forgot. He sat down and tried to collect his thoughts. Could it be that he was somewhere in the future, not the past? Could the helicopter have come out of the world of that future? The machine came back and for the second time (was it the second time?) Roydon took cover, but he was astonished to hear a loudhailer of sorts address him:
Caltraps of Time Page 21