by Tim Lebbon
--and it was flowing the wrong way. Earlier he had not believed it; now it was undeniable. He was running with the flow, when normally the stream flowed down into the square and out the other side, next to the old slaughterhouse.
He would have stopped and stared were it not for the psycho nightmare chasing him.
Andy watched the ground before him, dodging rocks protruding to trip him, mounds of dog shit to slip him up, and he tried to concentrate on escape rather than worry and wonder about how his surroundings were changing.
That cry ... it was Rachel.
Rachel! her mother had said. She’s gone, I know she’s gone. It’s my nightmare come true.
He’d been running for three or four minutes, yet he was exhausted. Adrenaline kept his muscles loose and his breathing strong, but his mind was weakening. Acceptance had come far too easily, he knew that, but it could not prevent images of his father and Stig bombarding him: his father frozen into one moment on their driveway; Stig being carried away by that thing, bleeding, screaming, and perhaps it was perched on the church spire even now, Stig’s remains clasped in its impossible talons and slipping down the steep slates on the spire, collecting in the old holed gutters, a ran of sacrificial blood.
“No,” he hissed, gasping the word out. “No, no, no!” He’d left home ten minutes ago on an adventure. Now he was in hell.
The book turned him right. He approached a path leading off perpendicular to the stream and he spun into it, under no apparent motivation of his own. To pause even for a second was to be caught, so he followed through with the movement and pelted along the path. Brambles reached out to tangle in his shoelaces and trip him. Rose bushes overhung a garden wall, their flowers fat and stinking, smelling rich and sweet rather than subtle and perfumed.
Bad hearts on stalks, Andy thought. Sounded like a good book title.
The footsteps behind him were fading, and yet he could still feel Bradfield’s breath on the back of his neck.
One more corner and then the road, he knew, but he turned the corner and there was only more path. Stitch stuck a dagger in his side but he ignored it. The path undulated before him, the mounds not staying still but actually moving, flowing towards him as if some humped creature was swimming just below ground level, the path cracking and settling again. Andy leapt the mounds and landed in between, leaping again, again, hearing a scream from somewhere to his left as a wall cracked open and glass shattered. He wondered whose nightmare he was intruding upon.
The pursuing footsteps were fading, as was the light. The walls were high here, but not high enough to keep out the sun. It should still be bright but looking up Andy saw that the sky had turned a deep evening blue, as if he was escaping the day.
He risked another look behind him and saw no one. He slowed, stopped, leaned down and rested his free hand on his knee, trying to hold his breath so that he could listen properly.
Gone. The path was deserted, the air was clear of the sounds of pursuit, and that feeling of dread which had clasped him to its bosom since he’d seen Bradfield waiting for him .. it had vanished completely.
Perhaps because room was required for the new dread seeping into his heart.
The place was changing. And he didn’t think that this was a nightmare of his, or even one for him. It was a definite change, a slewing of things to the side, a darkening. The sky was a rich, deep blue now, like bottomless water or the Royal blue a small kid would use for the sky in a painting.
Andy walked on and the path ended.
It should be the main road here, but it was not. He thought he recognised one of the houses, but its roof pitch was steeper, its windows older and more decrepit. There was no road, only a rough courtyard, one side of which was taken up with a massive wall of roses, striving skyward like the bushes covering Sleeping Beauty’s castle. Andy searched for a sight of stone through there, but he could see none.
All changed, he thought. He glanced down at the book in his hands, perhaps expecting some change there as well. It was the same as ever.
“Andy!”
Rachel again!
“Rachel! Where are you?” No answer. Perhaps she was still shouting from too far away. He would have to go further into this strange place, accept more change, because he had to find her. Not because it was Rachel and he fancied her. Not only because he was a kid turning into a man; he noticed how Rachel was changing too, and sometimes he jerked off. And not simply because he was a good, friendly boy who could not face letting another one of his friends get stolen away.
He had to find her.
He had to talk with her and seek forgiveness, and give the same. It was what Mengezah wanted and needed. It was her unfinished business. And as in all the best adventure stories he read or watched on television, the future of the village – and his friends and family – depended upon it.
“Soon you’ll rest in peace,” he whispered into the darkening sky, and he hoped she heard. “Soon you’ll sleep.”
Nightmare
She hears.
Not in any sensory way, because her senses are long since given out to time. She feels the truth behind the words – the long awaited possibility of eventual, eternal release – and yet they come from further away than she had expected. They’re fainter, more remote, more removed than the person approaching her now. Their speaker is young and strong, young and known, and now there are three … herself, the one trapped so close, and the talker coming nearer. He has a way to travel yet but he’s on the right track and Mengezah has no reason to doubt his abilities. No reason at all. Because once they had been her own.
Three.
At last it begins to make sense.
Twelve
“Rachel!” Andy called, running along unknown streets and shouting into unseen corners. “Rachel!” The place felt cold and dead. If this is a nightmare, he thought, it’s not so bad. But what if there are nightmares within nightmares?
Anything could come at him at any time.
The darkness felt dirty and imposed rather than natural. He could see the sun hanging low down in the sky, and it should still be light. At this time of year, it should still be light. But something seemed to be draped over the sun, a gauzy film that withheld light and heat and let through only a cursory glare, a glance of itself to merely touch the roofs of these buildings and cast wide, deep shadows where there should be none. Andy avoided these dark places where he could, but on occasion something stroked his leg as he ran by, pulling hairs and grazing his skin. He tried not to look because he did not wish to see.
The road forked. Left led away between leaning houses, the road formed from dried, compacted mud, rampant weeds poking up from where it was cracked. To the right the path turned quickly, seeming to meld in with the trees and overgrown shrubs bordering the road. Again it was hard earth that formed its surface, but no weeds grew. The plants on either side – wild, thorny, harsh-looking – must steal all the moisture away.
Right looked more threatening, so Andy went that way.
He could not reconcile this logic with his fears, did not know why he’d chosen the worst way to go, but it felt right. The path was narrower than it had seemed and before very long he was walking sideways, trying not to let his bare arms brush against the foliage in case it stung or grabbed him. The barbed thorns looked vicious. In between stems and leaves and fronds he could see fat green pods at the base of some shrubs, most of them open and wet, one or two of them closed around struggling things, throbbing and flexing as if the pods themselves were breathing. He thought he would fit into the largest of those quite well.
It stank. A smell had never actually hurt him but in here his nostrils stung from the odours, toxicity smoothed his skin with invisible fingers and drew it tight, drying and splitting his lips, inspiring a huge headache and an instant panic. He had to get out! He was trapped, and if he stayed any longer the plants would grab him, hold him tight and draw him down into one of those waiting pods, eat him up just as a Venus fly-trap consumes a
fly. Maybe he’d be digested over the space of a week, until only his trainers and the metal clasp on his belt remained. And maybe he’d be awake for the whole time.
Andy pushed through, shoulders and hips brushing the hedgerows on either side, and now his head was being stroked by errant fronds and scratched by thorns. He looked up and saw that the plant canopy had closed over him plunging him into a sickly green-tinged twilight. He gasped with the exertion, his throat stung with the heavy intake of breath, and it felt as if there were a hundred tiny things in there puncturing his skin and holding open the wounds, letting hot air hit exposed nerves. It could have been pollen or seeds or barbed offshoots, set free from the plants and breathed in to do their work, weakening him so that his eventual struggles when he was caught would be less damaging to the lucky growth that trapped him …
Andy held the book in front of his face to ward off the branches and thorns reaching down for him. He heard its worn covers being struck and felt his fingers scraped and cut, but he kept on pushing through. To stop would be to give in. A moving target was a harder one to catch.
But they were all around his feet now, trailing stems and bulging roots, not actually moving but given the impression of motion by his own struggling, each impact of his feet on the ground jarring his vision and jumping the plants an inch closer to his ankles. He kicked out as if wading through snow, pushing with his arms to keep the book out in front of him, thrusting out his elbows to deflect any sharp plants that might puncture his eyes. The surroundings had a sound now, a secretive rustling like a breath through autumn leaves. He could stop and listen, but perhaps it was a ploy, a way to make him pause so that the plants could grab him. He kept running and wondering. He was beyond breathless, overly conscious of his heart pummelling in his chest. For the first time in his life Andy imagined it stopping and dropping him dead, but the fear was not enough to give him pause. Nothing was enough to stop him. If he stopped he may not start again, and Rachel was in here somewhere, he’d heard her, and she had to forgive him, forgive what his family had done, because
she was only trying to help!
The voice was loud, unexpected, but it was his.
You pick up on things, his mum had told him.
Rose petals raised down as he bounced from a thick stem. He looked up into the weak light and saw the flowers disintegrating above him, heart-shaped petals fluttering to touch his cheeks like dead butterflies. In school he’d read about monarch butterflies and how their migration lasted two or three generations, and he wondered whether these rose petals knew their true purpose. Raining on me like blood, he thought, wiping at his face, fingers coming away tinged with pollen. Burying me. If I stay here they’ll keep pouring down and bury me, and I’ll drown in roses. The image held an unbearable romanticism.
Stig would have laughed.
Andy ran again, shaking petals from his hair. Some of them stuck to his sweaty skin, slipping down his face to cover his eyes. He panicked, closed his eyes, held the book out and continued running …
… and then everything changed. The air brushing his face felt cooler, sounds expanded out from him and the cloying, sweet-rotten smell of roses vanished.
He stopped and opened his eyes.
Andy had never felt so alone, so exposed and ironically so claustrophobic as at that moment. The initial impression that hit him was one of space: the horizon was as distant as he’d ever seen it, and it ran straight; the sky was wide, dark, endless; even the gentle hills to his left and right seemed ten miles high and a hundred wide. He was tiny, unknown and unknowing, and in that place where size was everything he was totally imprisoned by scale.
He sank to his knees and curled up, crying and grasping the old book to his chest as if it would save him. He glanced back over his shoulder at the wall of undergrowth he’d just burst through; there was no path, no way he could have come out of there without hacking down the branches and stems. “Mum,” he whispered, resting his forehead on the ground and trying to haul in his senses. He could not bear to see the distance, hear the wind howling in from a million miles away, smell scents that had been travelling forever. “Mummy!” Tears fell, starring the dry earth, and he wondered what new plants they may propagate.
“Andy!”
It was Rachel again, from much nearer this time. Andy looked up at the distance surrounding him. He had no idea where she could be calling from.
“Andy!”
“Rachel!” he called back, taking strength from her voice. She sounded as trapped and fearful as he felt.
“Andy?” Her voice was quieter, full of doubt and hope in equal measures.
“Rachel, it’s me, where are you? Keep shouting and I’ll come for you!”
“Over here, Andy, in the trees …. mind the trees … they move…”
They move, she’d said, but Andy could not see any trees. He ran in the direction he thought he’d heard Rachel’s voice coming from, slowly climbing an incline but seeming to travel nowhere. Perspective did not change at all as he covered distance. He wondered if he was truly moving, looked down, saw stones and cracked mud passing beneath his feet …
And when he looked up again he was at the edge of an orchard. He did not know this place – the sky was still a dark blue, the trees looked much older and more gnarled than any in the village, and the shiny apples stank of rot – but at least it was a point of reference.
He almost cried with relief.
“Rachel, I’m at the edge of an orchard, where are you?”
“In the middle!” she shouted. “Andy, I’m scared, what’s happening?”
“Are you sorry?” he called, but he knew that it would mean nothing to her.
“What?”
He did not answer. Instead he climbed onto the dilapidated timber fence, let its rotten post give out and dip him slowly down into the orchard. The grasses were long and could hide anything. The trunks were wide and the branches laden with fruit, but it all looked tainted. One bad apple affects the whole bowl, his nan had said, though she was rarely talking about real fruit.
Fear only gave him pause for a few seconds. And then Rachel called again, and her voice was further away and weaker, so Andy ran.
It felt like he’d been running all day.
Soon his pace was slowed down as the trees began to grow closer together. From a distance they looked evenly spaced, following the usual lines and ranks of artificial planting, but the further he moved into the orchard the less order it possessed and the less room there was between trunks. Branches merged overhead as if offering each other’s fruit. Roots curled out of the ground and entwined with their neighbour. He leapt roots and ducked branches, slipping more than once on a windfall and trying not to see what he thought he saw down there in the grasses.
“Are you sorry, Rachel?” he called again, hoping against hope that somehow she already knew who she was, what she had to do.
“Andy, I’m scared, don’t scare me more.”
“I really like you, Rachel,” he called ahead of him, hoping that truth would take him to her.
There was silence for a moment, save for his pounding feet and the impatient swish of grass reluctantly parting for him.
“I like you too,” she said, and she didn’t need to shout at all. Andy stopped, looked around and saw a knot of trees just off to his left. They had grown so close together that their trunks were combined in places, weird Siamese trees whose branches were so tangled as to be indistinguishable from each other. It may as well have been one tree with many boles … and, in the centre, a space just large enough to trap a little girl.
He walked up to the growth slowly, looking around for dangers. It held her close to its bosom, so likely it wanted to protect her. It may have slings or traps or sharpened branches to thrust his way … and he almost laughed at how seriously he was taking this. He was in the village, somewhere, yet in a place and world he did not know. He was worried about trees trying to kill him. And he wanted Rachel, a girl he fancied and could hardly br
ing himself to speak to without blushing, to forgive him for something one of his ancient ancestors had done to one of hers.
“Hello,” he said. “Nice day, isn’t it?”
She laughed and cried at the same time, scared and yet evidently relieved to see him. That made him feel good. “I’ve been thinking about you,” she said, and that made him feel better.
“Why?” He could barely see her between the tree-trunks, but he caught a movement that could have been a shrug.
“I thought maybe you could get me out of here.” She pointed at the trees, up at the canopy, past it into the dark-blue sky, and Andy noticed how her voice was now balanced and precise. A very good camouflage for the terror she must be feeling.
“If I tell you something, you have to believe me,” Andy said. “Really. If you don’t believe me then … I don’t think I can help you. I don’t think I can help any of us.”
“Any of who?”
“You’re not the only one who’s lost,” he said, thinking of his father and Stig and welcoming the tears that smeared the dirt on his face. A day ago he’d have never cried in front of Rachel. Perhaps he’d grown up.
“I’ll believe you, Andy,” she said.
“Well, it’s a bit wacky—“
“I’ll tell you what I’ve seen today, maybe you can let me know exactly what wacky is.”
Andy smiled, leaned to the side slightly so that he could maintain eye contact. She was swaying from left to right, and he wondered whether she needed to pee. “If it’s anything like I’ve seen,” he said, voice hitching, “wacky isn’t the word.”
“I’ll believe you, Andy, I told you. Now give me the chance to prove it.”