The Best of the Best Horror of the Year

by Ellen Datlow

  The sheep bleated again. A few seconds later, the dog barked.

  I looked at Diane. She looked back at me. A sheep on its own meant nothing—most likely lost and astray, like us. But a dog—a dog most likely had an owner.

  “Hello?” I called into the mist. “Hello?”

  “Anybody down there?” Diane called.

  “Hello?” A voice called back.

  “Thank god for that,” Diane whispered.

  We started along the rattling path, into the mist. “Hello?” called the voice. “Hello?”

  “Keep shouting,” I called back, and it occurred to me that we were the ones who sounded like rescuers. Maybe we’d found another fell-walker, caught out in the mists like us. I hoped not. What with the dog barking as well, I was pinning my hopes on a shepherd out here rounding up a lost sheep, preferably a generously-disposed one with a warm, nearby cottage complete with a fire and a kettle providing hot cups of tea.

  Scree squeaked and rattled underfoot as we went. I realised the surface of the path had turned almost entirely into loose rock. Not only that, but it was angling sharply down after all. Diane caught my arm. “Careful.”

  “Yeah, okay, I know.” I tugged my arm free and tried to ignore the long sigh she let out behind me.

  The mist cleared somewhat as we reached the bottom. We could see between twenty-five and thirty yards ahead, which was a vast improvement, although the whiteout still completely hid everything beyond that point. The path led down into a sort of shallow ravine between our peak and its neighbour. The bases of the two steep hillsides sloped gently downwards to a floor about ten yards wide. It was hard to be certain as both the floor and those lower slopes were covered in a thick layer of loose stone fragments.

  The path we’d followed petered out, or more into accurately disappeared into that treacherous surface. Two big, flat-topped boulders jutted out of the scree, one about twenty yards down the ravine floor, the other about fifteen yards on from that, at the mouth of a gully that gaped in the side of our peak.

  The mist drifted. I couldn’t see any sign of man or beast. “Hello?” I called.

  After a moment, there was a click and rattle somewhere in the ravine. Rocks, pebbles, sliding over one another, knocking together.

  “Bollocks,” I said.

  “Easy,” Diane said. “Looks like we’ve found some low ground anyway.”

  “That doesn’t mean much. We’ve lost our bearings.”

  “There’s somebody around here. We heard them. Hello?” She shouted the last—right down my earhole, it felt like.

  “Ow.”

  “Sorry.”

  “Forget it.”

  There was another click and rattle of stone. And the voice called out “Hello?” again.

  “There,” said Diane. “See?”

  “Yeah. Okay.”

  There was a bleat, up and to our left. I looked and sure enough there was the sheep we’d heard, except it was more of a lamb, picking its unsteady way over the rocks on the lower slopes of the neighbouring peak.

  “Aw,” said Diane. “Poor little thing.” She’s one of those who goes all gooey over small furry animals. Not that it stops her eating them; I was nearly tempted to mention the rack of lamb in red wine jus she’d enjoyed so much the night before. Nearly.

  The lamb saw us, blinked huge dark eyes, bleated plaintively again.

  In answer, there were more clicks and rattles, and an answering bleat from further down the ravine. The lamb shifted a bit on its hooves, moving sideways, and bleated again.

  After a moment, I heard the rocks click again, but softly this time. It lasted longer too, this time. Almost as if something was moving slowly, as stealthily as the noisy terrain allowed. The lamb was still, looking silently up the ravine. I looked too, trying to see past where the scree faded into the mist.

  The rocks clicked softly, then were silent. And then a dog barked, twice.

  The lamb tensed but was still.

  Click click click, went the rocks, and the dog barked again.

  The lamb bleated. A long silence.

  Diane’s fingers had closed round my arm. I felt her draw breath to speak, but I turned and shushed her, fingers to her lips. She frowned; I touched my finger back to my own lips and turned to look at the lamb again.

  I didn’t know why I’d done all that, but somehow knew I’d had to. A moment later we were both glad of it.

  The click of shifting rocks got louder and faster, almost a rustle, like grass parting as something slid through it. The lamb bleated and took a few tottering steps back along the slope. Pebbles clattered down. The rock sounds stopped. I peered into the mist, but I couldn’t see anything. Then the dog barked again. It sounded very close now. More than close enough to see, but the ravine floor was empty. I looked back at the lamb. It was still. It cocked its head.

  A click of rocks, and something bleated.

  The lamb bleated back.

  Rocks clattered again, deafeningly loud, and Diane made a strangled gasp that might have been my name, her hand clutching my arm painfully, and pointed with her free hand.

  The ravine floor was moving. Something was humped beneath the rocks, pushing them up as it went so they clicked and rattled in its wake. It was like watching something move underwater. It raced forward, arrowing towards the lamb.

  The lamb let out a single terrified bleat and tried to turn away, but it never stood a chance. The humped shape under the scree hurtled towards it, loose stone rattling like dice in a shaken cup, and then rocks sprayed upwards like so much kicked sand where the lamb stood. Its bleat became a horrible squealing noise—I’d no idea sheep could make sounds like that. The shower of rubble fell back to earth. The lamb kept squealing. I could only see its head and front legs; the rest was buried under the rock. The front legs kicked frantically and the head jerked about, to and fro, the lips splaying back horribly from the teeth as it squealed out its pain. And then a sudden, shocking spray of blood spewed out from under the collapsing shroud of rocks like a scarlet fan. Diane clapped a hand to her mouth with a short, shocked cry. I think I might have croaked ‘Jesus’, or something along those lines, myself.

  The lamb’s squeals hit a new, jarring crescendo that hurt the ears, like nails on a blackboard, then choked and cut off. Scree clattered and hissed down the slope and came to rest. The lamb lay still. Its fur was speckled red with blood; its eyes already looked fixed and unblinking, glazing over. The rocks above and around it glistened.

  With any luck it was beyond pain. I hoped so, because in the next moment the lamb’s forequarters were yanked violently, jerked further under the rubble, and in the same instant the scree seemed to surge over it. The heaped loose rock jerked and shifted a few times, rippled slightly and was still. Even the stones splashed with blood were gone, rolled under the surface and out of sight. A few glistening patches remained, furthest out from where the lamb had been, but otherwise there was no sign that it’d even existed.

  “Fuck.” I definitely said it this time. “Oh fucking hell.”

  There was a moment of silence; I could hear Diane drawing breath again to speak. And then there was that now-familiar click and rattle as something moved under the scree. And from where the lamb had been a voice, a low, hollow voice called “Hello?”

  Diane put her hand over my mouth. “Stay quiet,” she whispered.

  “I know that,” I whispered back, muffled by her hand.

  “It hunts by sound,” she whispered. “Must do. Vibration through the rocks.”

  There was a slight, low hump where the lamb had been killed; you had to look hard to see it, and know what it was you were trying to spot. A soft clicking sound came from it. Rock on rock.

  “It’s under the rocks,” she whispered.

  “I can see that.”

  “So if we can get back up onto solid ground, we should be okay.”

  “Should.”

  She gave me an irritated look. “Got any better ideas?”

  “Oka
y. So we head back?”

  “Hello?” called the voice again.

  “Yes,” whispered Diane. “And very, very slowly, and carefully and quietly.”

  I nodded.

  The rocks clicked and shifted, softly. Diane raised one foot, moved it upslope, set it slowly, gently down again. Then the other foot. She turned and looked at me, then reached out and took my hand. Or I took hers, as you prefer.

  I followed her up the slope. We climbed in as near silence as we could manage, up towards the ravine’s entrance, towards the solidity of the footpath. Rocks slid and clicked underfoot. As if in answer, the bloodied rocks where the lamb had died clicked too, knocking gently against one another as something shifted under them.

  “Hello?” I heard again as we climbed. And then again: “Hello?”

  “Keep going,” Diane whispered.

  The rocks clicked again. With a loud rattle, a stone bounced down to the ravine floor. “John?” This time it was a woman’s voice. Scottish, by the accent. “John?”

  “Fucking hell,” I muttered. Louder than I meant to and louder than I should have, because the voice sounded again. “John? John?”

  Diane gripped my hand so tight I almost cried out. For a moment I wondered if that was the idea– make me cry out, then let go and run, leave the unwanted partner as food for the thing beneath the rocks while she made her getaway, kill two birds with one stone. But it wasn’t, of course.

  “Shona?” This time the voice was a man’s, likewise Scottish-accented. “Shona, where are ye?”

  Neither of us answered. A cold wind blew. I clenched my teeth as they tried to start chattering again. I heard the wind whistle and moan. Shrubs flapped and fluttered in the sudden gale and the surrounding terrain became a little clearer, though not much. Then the wind dropped again, and a soft, cold whiteness began to drown the dimly-glimpsed outlines of trees and higher ground again.

  Stones clicked. A sheep’s bleat sounded. Then a cow lowed.

  Diane tugged my hand. “Come on,” she said, “let’s go.”

  The dog barked two, three times as we went, sharp and sudden, startling me a little and making me sway briefly for balance. I looked at Diane, smiled a little, let out a long breath.

  We were about nine feet from the top when a deafening roar split the silence apart. I don’t know what the hell it was, what kind of animal sound—but even Diane cried out, and I stumbled, and sending a mini-landslide slithering back down the slope.

  The broken slate heaved and rattled, and then surged as something flew across, under, through the ravine floor towards us.

  “Run!” I heard Diane yell, and I tried, we both did, but the shape was arrowing past us. We saw that at the last moment; it was hurtling past us to the edge of the scree, the point where it gave way to the path.

  Diane was already starting back down, pushing me behind her, when the ground erupted in a shower of stone shrapnel. I thought I glimpsed something, only for the briefest of moments, moving in the hail of broken stone, but when it fell back into place there was no sign of anything—except, if you looked, a low humped shape.

  Diane shot past me, still gripping my hand, pelting along the ravine. Behind us I heard the stones rattle as the thing gave chase. Diane veered towards the nearest of the boulders—it was roughly the size of a small car, and looked like pretty solid ground.

  “Come on!” Diane leapt—pretty damned agile for a woman in her late thirties who didn’t lead a particularly active life—onto the boulder, reached back for me. “Quick!”

  The shape was hurtling towards us, slowing as it neared us. Its bow-wave of loose stones thickened, widened; it was gathering speed. I could see what was coming; I grabbed Diane and pushed her down flat on the boulder. She didn’t fight, so I’m guessing she’d reached the same conclusions as me.

  There was a muffled thud and the boulder shook. For a moment I thought we’d both be pitched onto the scree around it, but the boulder held, too deeply rooted to be torn loose. Rocks rained and pattered down on us; I tucked my head in.

  I realised I was clinging on to Diane, and that she was doing the same to me. I opened my eyes and looked at her. She looked back. Neither of us said anything.

  Behind us, there were clicks and rattles. I turned slowly, sliding off Diane. We both sat up and watched.

  There was a sort of crater in the layer of loose rocks beside the boulder, where the thing had hit. The scree at the bottom was heaving, shifting, rippling. The crater walls trembled and slid. After a moment, the whole lot collapsed on itself. The uneven surface rippled and heaved some more, finally stopped when it looked as it had before—undisturbed, except of course for the low humped shape beneath it.

  Click went the stones as it shifted in its tracks, taking stock. Click click as it moved and began inching its way round the boulder. “John? Shona? Hello?” All emerged from the shifting rocks, each of those different voices. Then the bleat. Then the roar. I swear I felt the wind of it buffet me.

  “Christ,” I said.

  The rocks clicked, softly, as the humped shape began moving, circling slowly round the boulder. “Christ,” my own voice answered me. Then another voice called, a child’s. “Mummy?” Click click click. “Shona?” Click. “Oh, for God’s sake, Marjorie,” came a rich, fruity voice which sounded decidedly pre-Second World War. If not the First. “For God’s sake.”

  Click. Then silence. The wind keened down the defile. Fronds of mist drifted coldly along. Click. A high, thin female voice, clear and sweet, began singing ‘The Ash Grove.’ Very slowly, almost like a dirge. “Down yonder green valley where streamlets meander…”

  Diane clutched my wrist tightly.

  Click, and the song stopped, as if a switch had been thrown. Click click. And then there was a slow rustling and clicking as the shape began to move away from the boulder, moving further and further back. Diane gripped me tighter. The mist was thickening and the shape went slowly, so that it was soon no longer possible to be sure exactly where it was. Then the last click died away and there was only the silence and the wind and the mist.

  Time passed.

  “It’s not gone far,” Diane whispered. “Just far enough that we’ve got some freedom of movement. It wants us to make a move, try to run for it. It knows it can’t get us here.”

  “But we can’t stay here either,” I pointed out in the same whisper. My teeth were already starting to chatter again, and I could see hers were too. “We’ll bloody freeze to death.”

  “I know. Who knows, maybe it does too. Either way, we’ll have to make a break for it, and sooner rather than later. If we leave it much longer we won’t stand a chance.”

  “What the hell do you think it is?” I asked.

  She scowled at me. “You expect me to know? I’m a geologist, not a biologist.”

  “Don’t suppose you’ve got the number for a good one on your mobile?”

  She stopped and stared at me. “We’re a pair of fucking idiots,” she said, and dug around in the pocket of her jeans. Out came her mobile. “Never even thought of it.”

  “There’s no signal.”

  “There wasn’t before. It’s worth a try.”

  Hope flared briefly, but not for long; it was the same story as before.

  “Okay,” I said. “So we can’t phone a friend. Let’s think about this then. What do we know about it?”

  “It lives under the rocks,” Diane said. “Moves under them.”

  “Likes to stay under them, too,” I said. “It was right up against us before. That far from us. It could’ve attacked us easily just by coming up out from under, but it didn’t. It’d rather play it safe and do the whole waiting game thing.”

  “So maybe it’s weak, if we can get it out of the rocks. Vulnerable.” Diane took off her glasses, rubbed her large eyes. “Maybe it’s blind. It seems to hunt by sound, vibration.”

  “A mimic. That’s something else. It’s a mimic, like a parrot.”

  “Only faster,” she said. �
�It mimicked you straight away, after hearing you once.”

  “Got a good memory for voices, too,” I whispered back. “Some of those voices…”

  “Yes, I think so too. And that roar it made. How long’s it been since there was anything roaming wild in this country, could make a noise like that?”

  “Maybe a bear,” I offered, “or one of the big sabre-toothed cats.”

  Diane looked down at the scree. “Glacial till,” she said.

  “What?”

  “Sorry. The stones here. It’s what’s called glacial till—earth that’s been compressed into rock by the pressure of the glaciers coming through here.” She looked up and down the ravine.

  “So?”

  The look she gave me was equal parts hurt and anger. “So… nothing much, I suppose.”

  Wind blew.

  “I’m sorry.”

  She shrugged. “S’okay.”

  “No. Really.”

  She gave me a smile, at least, that time. Then frowned, looked up at the way we’d come in—had it only been in the last hour? “Look at that. You can see it now.”

  “See what?”

  She pointed. “This is a moraine.”

  “A what?”

  “Moraine. It’s the debris—till and crushed rock—a glacier leaves behind when it melts. All this would’ve been crushed up against the mountainsides for god knows how long…”

  I remembered Diane telling me about the last Ice Age, how there’d have been two miles of ice above the cities we’d grown up in. How far down would all this have been? And would—could—anything have lived in it?

  I was willing to bet any of our colleagues in the Biology Department would have snorted at the idea. But even so… life is very tenacious, isn’t it? It can cling on in places you’d never expect it to.

  Maybe some creatures had survived down here in the Ice Age, crawling and slithering between the gaps in the crushed rock. And in every food chain, something’s at the top—something that hunted blindly by vibration and lured by imitation. Something that had survived the glaciers’ melting, even prospered from it, growing bigger and fatter on bigger, fatter prey.

  The lost lamb had saved us by catching its attention. Without that, we’d have had no warning and would’ve followed that voice—no doubt belonging to some other, long-dead victim—into the heart of the killing ground.