The Door to September: An Alternate Reality Novel: Survival in Prehistoric Wilderness (Back to the Stone Age Book 1)

by R Magnusholm

  He whipped his head around. No one.

  He exhaled slowly. Must have imagined it. Or was he hallucinating? Out of the corner of his eye, he watched Liz cleaning the deerskin. She’d heard nothing. But the voice had been so loud and clear. It sounded as if it belonged to an old man.

  Please God, don’t let me be mad, he prayed silently. Since none of his relatives had been even slightly insane, this would be particularly embarrassing.

  “Eat,” the mysterious voice spoke again.

  John grabbed his spear and jumped to his feet. Ten yards away, close to the ground, branches swayed despite there being no wind. As he watched, they slowed down. Stopped.

  “Did you see that?” he asked.

  “The moving branches?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Just a bird,” she said. “Or a squirrel.”

  “You didn’t hear anything?”

  “No.”

  He considered telling her about the voice but decided not to alarm her. No sensible person wanted to be stuck in the woods with a man who was hearing voices. Surely he’d imagined it. In the last two weeks, he’d had enough excitement to fray even the steadiest of nerves.

  “Anyway, no animal will come close to the fire,” she said, quite reasonably.

  John tried to keep his tone nonchalant. “Sure.” He picked up a long piece of a deer gut and twisted it into a cord. Was it long enough for a bowstring? At some point, he’d have to make a bow and learn to use it. He couldn’t rely on bopping tigers on the head with a rock as a valid hunting strategy. And as for voices, he’d just ignore them.

  As if on cue, the voice came back: “Hungry, hungry, hungry.” John had an image of a dog begging for food.

  Oblivious to the voice, Liz was scrubbing the hide scraps and humming a tune.

  Slowly, he peered over his shoulder. A stone’s throw away, a gray wolf sat on its haunches, regarding them with its sharp yellow eyes. Its muzzle was speckled with white—a sign of age? The animal’s eyes shifted to the pile of hide scraps and licked its lips. Above its left eye was a distinctive light gray, almost white, spot. For some reason, John thought of a dog called Spot from a children’s book.

  He picked up a handful of gristly scrapings and tossed them over his shoulder.

  Startled by the sudden movement, the wolf bounded into the bushes, dragging one rear paw awkwardly.

  In his mind’s eye, John saw a flash image of two wolves, huge and terrifying, sitting by the fire, tearing meat with their paws, their eyes glowing like red coals. Fire-wolves. His hair stood on end.

  “What’s wrong?” Liz asked.

  “There’s a wolf.”

  He pointed at the swaying branches. “There!” As they watched, the branches stopped moving.

  Liz chuckled. “I wouldn’t worry. It won’t come near.”

  “I know. It’s scared of us,” he said. It thinks we’re fire-wolves with burning eyes. Fancy that.

  She stared into his face. “You look awfully pale, darling. It’s only a wolf.”

  “It’s not that.” His laughter sounded brittle. “I may have eaten too much meat.” He closed his eyes and pulled himself together. So what if he could read the animal’s mind? Did that make him crazy? Maybe oui, maybe non.

  Telepathy was useful, unlike schizophrenia or paranoia.

  He collected the deer hide scraps and rinsed them in the brackish water. Now, they’d dry and oil them with tiger fat. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw the wolf sneaking out of the bushes, low on its belly, to snatch a morsel.

  “Meat!” it said in an old man’s voice. It added something that sounded vaguely like: “Thanks, fire-wolf.”

  Liz noticed the wolf and said, “Poor thing. It’s starving.”

  At the sound of her voice, the animal fled.

  “He’s an old man with a hurt paw,” John said.

  They gathered their deer hide scraps, and he hefted the tiger pelt over his shoulder.

  The return trip passed without incident. As they trudged up a low incline, John pondered his newly discovered telepathic ability. He tried to read Liz’s mind and failed. She was probably thinking about fashioning deerskin moccasins, but he was guessing.

  Back at camp, he stretched the deer hide pieces by tying them between the branches of a birch tree growing next to the fire. The hides would have to be worked over once they were partially dry. Or maybe they could be molded into a boot shape with Liz’s one remaining shoe and left to stiffen.

  A crow flapped its wings and landed in the pine, watching him with a beady eye. John tried to read the bird’s mind but drew a blank.

  Chapter 23

  The Dream Walker

  One stormy night, John got up to check on the fire. He pushed open their hut’s door. The first snow of the year crunched underfoot as he crossed what they called ‘their courtyard’ to the open-air lean-to overhang they’d constructed to protect the fire from the rain.

  The orange eye of Jupiter peeked from behind harried clouds, bathing the clearing in an eerie bronze light. A thin crescent moon was caught in the treetops to the west. The biting wind tore at his clothing, robbing him of the heat he’d accumulated while sleeping under the tiger pelt. He pulled the crude cape they’d fashioned out of the deerskin scraps tighter. It covered his shoulders, extending half-way down his back.

  The diverse pieces were stitched together with thin strips of rawhide threaded through holes, which Liz had made along the edges by burning them out with the glowing end of a large paperclip.

  He’d have to kill another deer to have enough material to complete the cape. And of course, that was just one garment while they needed two. As it was, they took turns wearing it.

  The fire burned low, and John added a couple of fresh logs, frowning. They weren’t using the fuel efficiently, leaving the flames to blaze constantly, but they dare not let it go out. As a result, they had nearly exhausted the deadwood supply near their camp.

  He surveyed their glade thoughtfully. Bare branches of hazels swished in the wind. All the fallen nuts were now stored in a woven willow basket stowed in their reed shelter. Strips of drying tiger meat hung from the sloping ceiling of the lean-to. Liz estimated it was enough to feed them for two months if they ate frugally. And they had nuts and dried mushrooms to last them another couple of months. Enough until spring, hopefully.

  He sensed the old wolf prowling by the deadfall barricade blocking the entrance to their bramble enclosure.

  John focused on transmitting a thought: “What’s up, Spot? Hungry?”

  “Hungry.” The reply flared like a flash of light in his mind. Not so much a word, but an image and a feeling of all-encompassing, rib-rattling starvation.

  John strode over to where the tiger bones lay and wrenched off a bone. The birds had pecked off all the meat, but there was still marrow inside. He carried the bone across the clearing and tossed it over the barrier. Bon appetite, you filthy animal, Har-de-har-har.

  A dark shadow detached itself from the rest and slunk closer. Spot’s eyes glinted in Jupiter’s golden light. Their eyes met, and a secret understanding passed between them: wariness and gratitude from Spot. Amusement and pity from John.

  Spot lowered his head, and the greedy crunching began in earnest. John supposed he would have to tell Liz that he’d been feeding the wolf nearly every night. But then, he’d have to confess that he could talk to animals. Or at least, to this particular animal. Or he only imagined he could. In which case, he might be insane, and the next thing he’d do is climb a tree and holler until blue in the face. Twit-to-woo. Twit-to-woo. How’s that for sensible behavior, friends and neighbors? Yo-ho-ho! And a bottle of rum.

  Except, John had never wished to do anything irrational in his life. He imagined doing it, though. Not seriously, of course—just in his imagination. To jump on the boardroom table and dance a jig in front of the astonished executives just to see their faces. An artistic protest against the absurdity of modern existence in general and arbitrary business ta
rgets in particular.

  Once back inside their hut, he pulled the door closed, cutting off the wind. In the dark, his frozen fingers fumbled with the deerskin cape’s fastenings. If only he had gloves. Eventually, he got the garment off and spread it over the foot of their sleeping area. He climbed under the tiger pelt and snuggled up to Liz. So warm.

  In the woods surrounding their clearing, trees groaned in the icy wind.

  Despite being under a thick pelt, he continued to shiver. The latest cold spell arrived suddenly and with a distinctly un-British ferocity. It reminded him of a winter trip to Canada. If it became as cold as Canada, they’d be screwed. Unless—

  Unless they managed to obtain more hides. He had no means of killing a deer, no bow, and now since his clothing stunk of fire, he’d never get close enough to spear one. Which left traps. Except he knew nothing about traps. But Liz might—

  He slept, and in his dream he loped on all fours, his nose close to the ground. His left leg hurt, but he had to keep moving. Amid the banging of drums and guttural calls, the implacable hunters circled him on three sides and drove him toward a patch of dense undergrowth. His nose told him that going there was a bad idea, for an ambush party waited to greet him with clubs and sharpened sticks.

  Chapter 24

  Born to Kill

  Fleet Woods: north of Camp Bramble

  John bent a pine sapling, and Liz fit its top into a notch in an upright stick, the other end of which had been hooked under a heavy log. A long elderberry shoot, acting as a tripwire, was strung across the narrow path between two stands of hawthorn bushes and tied to the upright stick.

  “And now the moment of truth,” she said.

  He reached with his spear and tapped the elderberry shoot. In a blur of motion, the bent sapling sprung forward. The three sharpened stakes tied to it flashed across the path. The deadly prongs swished violently back and forth like a deranged pendulum. The prongs had been set too high to strike a fawn, but they would certainly nail a large deer.

  He whooped and grinned at Liz. “You’re a devious woman.”

  “I know.”

  “Where did you learn this?”

  “Dad showed me pictures of whip traps in a Special Forces manual. The Vietcong used them to kill our troops.”

  He said nothing. Sometimes it seemed to him there were three of them in the woods: him, Liz, and the indomitable spirit of her dad. After resetting the trap, they camouflaged the trigger-stick with dry ferns and fallen fir fronds.

  Liz picked up their clay pot of smoldering embers. “In a day or two, our scent will fade from the scene, and hopefully we’ll get ourselves a new deer hide.” She wore their one and only deerskin cape.

  John wore a woven reed poncho over his pinstriped suit, the pockets of which he’d stuffed with dry grass. He knew he looked ridiculous, and his legs were freezing every time the wind gusted. They were three miles north of their camp because no deer came closer since he and Liz had managed to make fire.

  He hefted his spear and started trudging back home through the snow. They’d have to revisit the trap once a day—a two-hour round trip. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw Spot lurking in the bushes. “Liz—” he began, but at that moment he heard a faint drumbeat drifting from the north. He lifted his hand in a warning, and Liz froze. He held his breath, straining his ears.

  The drumbeat continued, but it was no longer coming from the north. Now it seemed to originate inside his head. Just his heartbeat? He wasn’t sure.

  “Danger,” Spot spoke in his mind. “Far.”

  Liz craned her neck, her face rigid with concentration. After a while she relaxed. “What did you hear?”

  “Drums. I thought I heard drums, but now I’m not sure. Did you hear anything?”

  “Just the wind.” She peered at him thoughtfully, then frowned. “How’s your blood pressure?”

  “Elevated.” He laughed bitterly. “The doctor told me to cut down on stress, red meat, booze, and to exercise more.”

  “Well, we have plenty of exercise here and no booze at all. As for red meat and stress . . . ah well . . .”

  They walked in silence. John cut down two long poles, and they dragged them into camp, adding them to the growing frame of the new and larger shelter. After they finished, Liz peered at the tiger bones covered by a sprinkling of snow and frowned. “Most of his ribs are gone.”

  He shrugged. He might as well tell her. “Do you believe in telepathy?”

  “What does telepathy have to do with the missing bones?”

  “Watch this.” He wrenched one of the last remaining ribs. “And please don’t be alarmed.”

  “Huh?”

  “Just watch,” he said. “Come, Spot. Food,” he spoke in his mind.

  “Food,” Spot echoed as he slunk out of the bushes. He sat by the entrance to their enclosure and waited.

  “That’s the same wolf,” Liz exclaimed.

  “Yeah, the old man. I call him Spot.”

  John tossed him the rib. Spot snatched it and settled down to gnaw it.

  “So, you’re taming him. Good,” she said. “But what’s that got to do with telepathy?

  “We talk to each other. In here.” He tapped the side of his head. “Look, Liz, I know it sounds crazy, but I assure you there were no lunatics in my extended family. Of course, it doesn’t preclude me being the exception, but still . . .” He realized he was babbling.

  Liz made a dismissive gesture as if the possibility of him being crazy was of no consequence. “Nothing surprises me anymore. So what does he say to you?”

  John felt as if a great weight he’d been carrying for days had been lifted. Well, after falling into the hole in space-time and Liz’s scar disappearing, why should she be surprised? “He calls us fire-wolves, and he’s respectful.”

  “That’s nice.”

  John told Liz about the dream he had of running on all fours, being chased by drum-beating hunters.

  “Could it be that the drumbeat you heard came from Spot? Animals have far better hearing.”

  “If that dream was real, and if I really heard that drumbeat, it means there are people here.”

  “Savages.”

  “Yeah.”

  Her face paled, and her eyes widened. “If they find us . . .”

  “Maybe it was just a dream. But all the same, let’s not go too far north.”

  Liz peered about their camp. Her gaze lingered at the beginnings of their new hut, and then she turned to face him. “We must make bows and practice archery. The wigwam can wait.”

  John nodded. If the locals came upon them, and they happened to be hostile, he and Liz would have to fight and run. But where would they go from their shelter and their fire and their supplies? They’d only starve and freeze to death. Just when things started to look up . . . “But listen, Liz, I’ve seen a documentary, and it might be possible the strangers here are friendly. I mean, the forest is immense, and it’s swarming with game. It’s not like we need to fight for limited hunting grounds.”

  She remained silent for a long time. Then she said, “The chances of a friendly encounter would increase if we’re well-armed.”

  ***

  John cut a sizeable curved stave from an uprooted yew tree. The wood was dry and springy. He hefted it, surprised by its weight. He turned to Liz. “Are you sure we shouldn’t get a thinner stave? I would have to shave off a lot of excess wood.”

  “I’m sorry. Just a tree limb won’t do for a good war bow.”

  He sighed, and they headed back to camp.

  She shrugged apologetically. “There’s no other way. A proper bow needs heartwood on the inside and sapwood on the outside.”

  “That’s an awful lot of work.”

  “Yes, but heartwood resists compression and sapwood resists tension. That’s how English yew bows were made in the Hundred Years War.”

  “I suppose your father taught you that.”

  Liz fingered the strap of her canvas bag where she carried the fire
pot. When John caught her glance, she quickly looked away, but he saw the glint of tears in her eyes.

  “Liz, I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to upset you.”

  They entered an aspen grove, and Liz stopped. A green squirrel scuttled down a gray-barked trunk and froze, upside down, to stare at them with its big shiny eyes.

  Liz said, “It’s not your fault.” Her eyes had a faraway look. “I can’t believe I’ll never see my boys again. Josh and Eric . . . They used to be mad about bows and arrows.”

  John propped his spear and the yew stave against a tree and hugged her quivering shoulders. Frightened by the sudden movement, the squirrel turned its bushy tail and scurried higher up the tree. Aspen leaves trembled in the wind, and the air smelled of leaf mold and wood smoke wafting from the firepot.

  “I’m okay, I’m okay. Honestly, it’s nothing,” Liz protested. She slipped out of his arms. “Look at all those mushrooms. Let’s gather some.”

  They returned to camp and set about work. John spent two or three hours thinning out the stave with an axe, while Liz sharpened his cutlery knife on a flat stone.

  Finally, the bowstave was ready. The axe-worked edges were rough, so he whittled them with the knife and polished the wood with a rough stone.

  Long, straight shoots of an ash tree provided them with two dozen arrow shafts. Using thin strips of soaked tiger gut, John fit sharp slivers of flint to the business ends of two arrows. Once the gut dried, it would shrink and set the points securely. Liz used woodpigeon feathers for fletching, setting them in place with chewed sinews. Thank God, he’d filched a pair of scissors from his desk the day he’d been fired.

  The twisted deer gut was long enough to string the bow. He oiled the string with tiger fat to keep it supple and prayed it wouldn’t stiffen and snap. They desperately needed more material. They had a good length of tiger guts soaking in the peaty bog, but they wouldn’t be ready anytime soon.

  Liz propped a human-sized sheaf of reeds against a juniper shrub and stepped aside. “Time for some target practice.”

  Ten paces away, he lifted the bow and nocked a training arrow. That arrow had been fletched like the rest, but it had just a sharpened woody point—it wouldn’t do to lose their only two good arrows. He pulled the string back, aimed, and loosed. The bow went twang, and the arrow flashed across the clearing. It struck the ground about three feet short of the target and a foot to the left. He felt his face heating up with embarrassment.