Escape into Daylight

by Geoffrey Household

  As for the sill under which he had been swept, he could understand that too. At the bottom of the well they had made an outlet much narrower than the inlet so that the level of water was always high. In winter floods it might come nearly up to the floor of the cellar; in drought the stream perhaps ran straight through without piling up in the well at all.

  Now able to guess at the ‘why’ of everything he was a lot more hopeful than when his world had been a nightmare of darkness with no sense in it. If the water somewhere flowed into the open there was a chance that he could make his way out with it. But first he had to climb the blockage.

  The main mass of fallen roof was a huge slab of solid stone. The sheer face was overhanging a pile of broken rock and rubble. A grown man might perhaps have reached some sort of handhold and climbed it, but Mike could not. The only hope was to build a rough platform on which to stand.

  He began to roll loose rocks down the channel and lift them into position. The job was interminable, and soon his arms were too tired to do any more heaving. He nearly gave up, for there was no telling how far he would have to go and if at the end of it all he could escape. He was tempted to return into the well though he knew it would be quite impossible against the rush of water.

  Standing there hopelessly, he suddenly noticed that he had an unexpected result from all his work. His wretched, unfinished platform had dammed one of the channels through which the stream was running under the slab; it was now flowing along the side of the tunnel and rapidly sweeping away a bar of earth and gravel. In a little while he heard a growl of pebbles and a crunch as the whole mass, its support worn away, abruptly shifted sideways.

  Mike jumped back in alarm and waited for disaster, but the unsteady lump of limestone had come to rest, leaving a narrow chimney between its side and the wall of the tunnel. It could be climbed with knees and elbows so long as the slab did not move another few inches and squash him.

  He wriggled nervously up to the top and found that the rock was lying with its downstream end much lower than the other, giving plenty of room to pass under the roof. The black tunnel beyond was higher than it had been, free of all but scattered rocks. Though he could not even see the water, the stream seemed to be deeper and running more slowly. He had no idea of time or distance. Since his fall from the ladder he might have travelled a mile or only a few hundred yards.

  At last the darkness was suffused with a greenish pallor in which he could see – but as little as at the bottom of a deep dive in a cloudy river. Further on the light became clearer until he stopped and stared at the dreamy, mermaid beauty of the scene before him. The stream had spread out into a deep pool. The green radiance was coming from a point under water at the far end, reflected by smooth rock. Higher up the specks of shell in the limestone sparkled like dark emeralds.

  It was the gate to freedom. He waded in and took to swimming when nearly out of his depth. Over the green light a current tended to drag him down, so he clawed his way out of it along the rock and tried to make up his mind what to do. Without a doubt this was the outlet where the water bubbled to the surface as a powerful spring; and if it was like other springs there would be a number of separate openings, none of them large enough to let him through. But all of them had to be tried.

  Mike drew several deep breaths and dived for the light. Under water he could see the openings and a scatter of sunshine in the outer world. There was one and only one possible route if a big, round boulder could be shifted. He lay on the gravel like a spawning salmon, clinging to it with both arms. Twisting and turning, he tried to drag it back with his feet against rock, and could not clear it. But again the water helped him. When he had to let go, the boulder rolled a little forward.

  He came up for air and dived at the stone, kicking with all the strength he had left. It rolled once more and settled for ever, firmly jammed between solid rock above and below. The stream carried him with it through the wider passage. He stuck, but now it was only mud and pebbles which held his shoulders; one heave, and he was floundering in another and shallower pool surrounded by trees. The blessed sun, which for four days he had not seen, patterned the water with the shadow of branches, and that grim, buried stream rippled and raced downhill as if it had innocently sprung from nowhere.

  It was a gloriously hot day. By the sun he reckoned that it was a bit after midday and four or five hours had passed since he fell down the well. His first thought was to rush off for help, but he could not do it. He was shivering uncontrollably and his knees would not hold him up any longer. The very first necessity was to get warm again. So he struggled out of his clothes and tumbled them on to a blackberry bush to dry. For himself he found a warm, flat patch of bare rock in full sun above the spring, and there he collapsed.

  There was no guessing in what part of silent England he was. The copse of hazel and mixed timber might be anywhere. He hoped that someone would appear and that he could tell his story, but nobody did; nor was there any sound of life on the land – no cattle or sheep, no voices, no rattle of a tractor. It did not look like mountain country but it must be fairly wild. A big hawk, which he believed was a peregrine, sailed overhead. In the afternoon he saw a vixen playing with her cubs before she scented him.

  That brought him back to life. He had toasted both sides again and again and was warm. His clothes were not yet dry, so he turned them and spread them out on the thorns. Staying in cover, he followed the stream down to the edge of the trees and found himself on the lower slope of a hillside with another hillside opposite and patches of woodland in the valley. There were no houses anywhere near, but he could see the grey, square tower of a village church in the distance. The copse was what they called a hanger – a strip of beech, fir and hazel running directly down the hill.

  He returned to his clothes and put them on. They were not so dry as his mother would have liked, but would be good enough after another hour of sun. Then he pushed his way up through the hazels, passing the fox’s earth on the way. The mouth of it was so wide and worn that generations of them must have lived there, and probably badgers too.

  From the top of the hanger he saw rolling downland with no visible villages. Sheep country it was, and here and there were the white dots of them on the turf. About half a mile away, out in the open except for a wood alongside it, were a cottage and some ruins. Remains of windows and archways suggested that it had been a church. That must be where Carrie and he had been held. The cellar beneath it was, he remembered, known as a crypt.

  Right! So the thing to do was to run down immediately to the village with the church tower and get help. He hesitated, thinking it out while he looked at the square of walls which cut the skyline. Tourists must surely visit the ruins. The crypt was in perfect condition and probably interesting to people who liked that kind of thing. They couldn’t be kept out, for it was not dangerous with crumbling stonework like the dungeon he had been shown. Suppose some teacher came along with a party of children? The teacher would go yarning away about history and architecture, and all of them would want to see the crypt. So it was not a safe prison at all. There must be another underground building which nobody knew about, either very deep down or some distance away so that visitors would hear nothing however loudly Carrie and he yelled for help.

  It was then that he remembered the missing bullock. In his district farmers had been having trouble with cattle rustlers, just as in the Wild West, but not on horseback. Men drove up to an outlying field in a truck, chose a good beast, shot it and loaded it. One night his father and some friends had nearly caught the thieves. They heard a truck drive off in a hurry, but all they ever saw were two men walking innocently along a bridle path against whom nothing could be proved.

  Next day a fine Angus steer was missing, to be discovered a week later tipped out into a ditch and carefully covered. What had happened was obvious. The rustlers had killed it but had to escape before they could load it.

  All this excitement had made a deep impression on Mike – especiall
y after seeing the poor, rotting bullock. He could imagine something of the sort happening up there at the ruins. The kidnappers would see the police coming and just walk off in different directions as harmless hikers. But they could not take Carrie with them.

  He himself could never guide the police to her. Then what was the chance of her being found? Of course, she would be found in time, but it might be too long a time. It took a week before his father’s nose had led him to that bullock.

  He was very much afraid for Carrie. He was sure that Beard had used the words ‘never be found’. It seemed unbelievable that they would let her die just because they couldn’t get money for her, but he had read of such things in the papers. People did kill rather than risk going to prison for a long time. And how easy it would be with that yawning hole in the second cellar! Down she might go at the first hint of police and nobody would suspect those casual tourists walking far away in the distance.

  So he decided that the most urgent task was to find out where Carrie was while the kidnappers were still confident that nobody had any clue to her whereabouts. As soon as they visited her and saw the well they would be quite sure that he was dead and that they had nothing to fear from him. They might, he thought with a bit of a shudder, even be mighty glad. If there was any risk of being seen and caught by them, he would have to run for it and run fast.

  Between the hanger and the cluster of ruins, cottage and wood a long, dry-stone wall curved along the slope, one end disappearing behind the wood, the other running up to a point which was high enough to give him a full view. In spite of the bare, open hillside he believed he could reach the cover of the wall crawling from patches of nettle to dips in the ground.

  He ducked behind the wall, still apparently unseen, and followed it up until he overlooked the site of the ancient church. There was not much still standing except a square with archways in it. The rest was mainly lawns and isolated masses of masonry. Foundation walls and stone pavements had been cleared so that the ground plan was clear as on a map. If their prison was underneath, the way in should be easy to find.

  The cottage was beyond the ruins, out in the open and close to a small car park with a single lane leading to it. So far as he could see there was no car or van near it and no garage. He thought again of the men he had imagined who could stroll off on foot if any danger threatened with nothing suspicious about them.

  Food was only brought at night. That suggested to Mike that Screw could not risk moving about by day when visitors might arrive at any moment to look at the ruins. Probably he walked over from the cottage; he must have cooked that rabbit stew somewhere. The best plan was to creep up in the dusk, watch where he went with Carrie’s food and follow him closely. When he had come up from underground and gone away it should not be hard to find the grating. Then he and Carrie, safely together, could run down to the village with the church tower and see that the police surrounded the ruins before dawn.

  He tried to remember when he had last seen the moon and what shape it was. Yes, on Friday night from his bedroom window, and it had been a bit bigger than the half. So it should be full moon that night or the next, and in a clear sky if the weather held. What a waste to have been underground for four lovely days in a summer which had had few of them! Anyway he could count on seeing whatever moved at over a hundred yards.

  Mike had always been a hunter in his small way. His father had taught him to shoot – though he was too young to be allowed a gun of his own – and Great-uncle Jim had taught him to pick up a meal without any gun at all. Jim was now seventy years old and had been a gamekeeper in his time. He knew every poacher’s trick and snare there were, and it amused him to pass them on down another two generations – on condition that his pupil promised never to try them on anyone else’s land without permission. The result was that Mike during autumn week-ends would be missing all day and would come proudly home after dusk with a couple of rabbits and occasionally a hare or a pheasant.

  So he knew how to move without being heard and to see without being seen. The kidnappers were certainly townsmen – he was sure of that, though exactly how he knew it he could not have said – and he was confident that their eyes would not be so keen as a wood pigeon’s or their ears as good as those of an old buck rabbit.

  He waited patiently behind the wall and at dusk started for the ruins. A brilliant full moon rose so that the church walls were black and white as an overexposed photograph. As long as he stuck to the patches of black he was invisible. Lights went on in the cottage and stayed on. He hoped that someone was making hot stew for poor Carrie. Whatever they were doing, it was reassuring to know that from the inside of the cottage nothing could be seen of the outside.

  However, it was not safe to assume that they were all in the cottage at the same time. Carrie and he, after comparing notes, were sure that there were three of them. Slinking from shadow, he entered the ruins. Stuck in the grass close to the cottage was a notice board with raised white letters easily read in the moonlight:

  SITE OF HILCOTE ABBEY

  National Trust Property

  Open to the Public 10 a.m.–6.30 p.m.

  This was followed by a short note of the history of the Abbey, from which he gathered that it had been built in 1146, suppressed by Henry VIII in 1539, then deserted and on its wild site half forgotten till little remained but tumbled stones overgrown by trees and bushes. The ruins had been cleared in 1906. Well, Mike thought, they might believe they had cleared all of them but they hadn’t.

  All the time he watched the cottage, expecting somebody to come out with food for Carrie; but nobody did. Perhaps the entrance to the crypt was actually inside the cottage? It seemed most unlikely. There was always a risk of visitors dropping in to ask questions or buy postcards, and how could the kidnappers be so sure that cries for help would never be heard?

  Mike left the ruins and very cautiously inspected the cottage. On the side facing the grey expanse of the car park there was no cover; on the other side were a low hedge, a bit of garden and the lit window. This was more promising. The edge of the wood was fairly close. He could escape into it if he was caught peeping through the window or listening. At least he hoped he could. That depended on how fast they could run and what obstacles were in the way.

  So first he entered the wood and found a path running through it to the cottage. That gave him more confidence. If he were spotted and chased he could swerve off the path into dark trees and would take some finding.

  He was still on the path when he heard voices approaching, which allowed him time to lie down in long grass and listen. Two men were strolling over to the cottage. One of them was Screw. The other was the very respectable driver who had pretended to Carrie that he was a studio chauffeur and to Mike that he was a film director; so it must be the man with the beard who was in the cottage and had turned on the light.

  He heard a scrap of their conversation as they came towards him and passed. Screw said:

  ‘She didn’t want any supper, so why bother?’

  ‘A bit hard,’ Chauffeur replied, ‘but what does it matter?’

  ‘Anyway, I don’t want to see her again if I can help it.’

  ‘Yes. Leave it to him!’

  Mike could not help understanding what they meant. He told himself that it was his imagination, that he must be wrong, that nobody would do such a thing. Following the two at a safe distance, he saw them enter the cottage and then crept up under the lit window where there was a strip of earth between the wall and a low, untidy hedge of box. He lay with his body stretched full length huddled in the angle. It was in black shadow, and his clothes, covered by dried mud, were dark as the earth. He reckoned that nobody would ever see him unless opening the window and looking directly down.

  One of them did open the window. He thought that was the end. He did not even dare to dig in his toes for a wild jump away.

  ‘God, it’s hot! And what a fug!’ Chauffeur said.

  ‘You’ll have the moths in,’ Screw�
�s voice remarked.

  ‘Well, we’ll be out of here tomorrow.’

  Voices turned away from the window, and Mike heard the splash of something in a glass. Then one of them asked:

  ‘What did you decide, boss? Wall it up?’

  ‘No,’ Beard replied. ‘Why give them the clue of fresh mortar if it’s ever found? First thing tomorrow we’ll remove the grating and put a flag-stone in its place. I’ve found the right size. It will never be noticed.’

  ‘You’re not going to just leave her?’ Chauffeur asked.

  ‘No. The way the boy went.’

  Mike hunched himself backwards till he was clear of the window and could stand up. Before stepping over the hedge he brushed out his footprints with his hand. Those they might notice, but it was a hundred to one against, anyone spotting that the earth beneath the window was flatter than it ought to be.

  Again his first impulse was to run for the police, but he was more than ever obsessed by the thought that the kidnappers would escape at the first sight of car headlights approaching and that Carrie might never be found even if she was still alive. He could not guide the police. He had not the remotest idea where the hidden entrance to the crypt could be.

  Yet only he could rescue her quickly and silently. Could he get back up the watercourse and under the sill? But he had long ago decided it was impossible. And even if it could be done would Carrie jump and would they both have the astonishing luck to be carried through before they drowned? Anyway it was lunacy to try the double journey when he remembered the deadly cold of his passage underground. His strength had so nearly given out.