by Will Maclean
‘I won’t!’ said Graham. He looked up defiantly at the source of the noise.
Thud.
‘Graham!’ yelled Sally, her voice close to breaking point. ‘Please!’
Thud. Maybe something had come loose in the rain, I thought. Some giant tree branch, which was now banging mindlessly against the side of the house. Maybe.
Thud.
‘I won’t go!’
Thud. Like a great heartbeat now, regular and strong. Thud. Thud. Thud.
‘GRAHAM!’
Graham took off his glasses and cleaned them, very slowly and deliberately.
‘All right then,’ he said at length. ‘We’ll go back to my place near the College for a day or two and regroup. I will talk to the fellows at the Institute, try and salvage something from this mess. You clear out your room, and Sally and I will clear out our rooms and the study.’
‘The study?’ Sally spat incredulously. ‘That’ll take ages! We need to leave now!’
‘I’m not leaving without my findings,’ said Graham. ‘We have to salvage something.’
‘You can come back for them. I’m not staying here a moment longer.’
‘No, look, Sally—’
‘YOU DIDN’T SEE IT!’ shouted Sally. A reply died on Graham’s lips.
‘You didn’t see it.’
Whatever I felt about leaving Yarlings, there was nothing but relief at abandoning my bleak little room. I had brought very little with me to the house, and it didn’t take long to gather it all up and throw it into my rucksack. I was fiddling with the straps when I happened to glance up at the bed.
I froze.
There, on the pillow, as if placed there deliberately, I saw the awful face that was no-face, staring out of the photograph that Abi and I had taken, a lifetime ago. The photograph I had found with the notebook as I had fled home.
I supposed it was just about plausible that Seb had found it, that it had fallen out of the notebook whilst he was searching for the whisky in my bag earlier. It was just about plausible that he had thought it amusing to place such a thing on my pillow, to scare me. Just about.
The skin of my arm, goosebumped by a feeling I didn’t want to examine too closely, felt both too hot and too cold as I reached for the picture.
I snatched it up and stuffed it into my bag.
Sally was too distressed to drive, and I couldn’t, so the decision was taken to simply load everything into Graham’s car, leaving Sally’s in the driveway, to be collected later. After clearing out our rooms, Graham and I set about removing the heavy technical and recording equipment from Tobias Salt’s room together, as Sally refused to go back in there. We exchanged only a few necessary words as we did this. Once the equipment was loaded into the boot, we bundled our own bags into the car. The rain continued, unrelenting. As Graham padlocked the front door, and Sally sat in the front passenger seat, staring straight ahead, I looked up at the dead black windows of Yarlings, and thought how empty and utterly devoid of life the place looked, almost as if it had been empty for years. The evening had begun – months ago, it seemed – with a group of happy young people drinking and laughing and sharing stories. And now, it was past midnight, and the place was abandoned. Graham jogged over to the car, and we both got in. Yarlings shimmered briefly in the silver light of the car’s headlamps, then we turned away down the gravel drive and out onto the tree-lined road outside.
We passed through the village, but the place was so dark and the rain so heavy I could barely make out individual buildings, let alone see familiar landmarks like Hattie Wells’s shop. Soon, all signs of human habitation dropped away and the fields opened up, vast and uniform, as the sky rumbled. We passed the station, closed for the night, the final local landmark I recognised. The car wound along the web of B-roads, as the roof thundered incessantly and the wipers squeaked across the windscreen.
‘Sally,’ I said, at length. She glanced back at me.
‘Are you OK?’
She gave a small, barely perceptible nod.
Then silence fell again, for half an hour or so.
I got the strong impression that Graham was lost. He was increasingly hesitant when turning corners, and on two occasions almost committed to a right turn before thinking better of it and heading left. Whenever the headlights picked out a signpost, he would lean forward and squint at it, then sit back with a tangible air of defeat.
‘Are we lost?’ I said, after the fifth or sixth time that Graham had done this. Graham ignored me.
‘I said—’
‘I heard you, Tim. No, we’re not lost.’
‘You just don’t know where we are. Well, at least you’re consistent, Graham.’
Graham snorted. ‘Tim, I know you’re upset. But there’s no need to take that tone.’ The paternalistic, teacherly edge was back in his voice.
I didn’t answer.
‘Besides,’ Graham added, ‘it hasn’t all been a waste of time. In fact, I’d very much like to ask you some questions about your experiences at Yarlings.’
‘No thanks,’ I said. ‘In fact, after tomorrow morning, I doubt you’ll ever see me again, Graham. Sorry.’
‘Oh.’ Graham sounded genuinely sad. ‘Well, Sally and I will be very disappointed not to have your contribution.’
‘Oh, Sally and I will see each other again,’ I said. ‘Won’t we, Sally?’
Sally’s head sank onto her chest. Graham snorted again. ‘I think you’ll find it very difficult to see Sally without seeing me, Tim.’
And then I saw. The thing that had been staring me in the face all along. Graham and Sally were together. They were a couple. Whatever had taken place between her and me was a diversion, a distraction, without meaning or weight. Sometimes, facts that are obvious have to scream at the top of their voice to be heard, to be noticed. Polly had seen it, a long time ago, and had tried to warn me.
‘You’re with … Graham?’ I shouted. ‘Bloody Graham?’
‘Tim—’ Sally began.
‘But we – at Rollright, I mean – we—’
Graham turned to look at Sally. ‘What?’ He sounded exasperated more than anything. ‘Again?’
‘What do you mean, again?’ I gasped. ‘Stop the car.’
‘Now, Tim—’ Graham began.
‘Stop the fucking car,’ I said.
Graham pulled over at the side of the road. The car was filled with a hot, tense silence, as if the storm were about to erupt in here too. The rain thundered over the roof and the bonnet, an inexorable noise that spoke not of intention or purpose, but just blind, dumb circumstance, human beings and their schemes and plans running up against this filthy rat-black night, and its endless downpour. The wipers continued to squeal and labour at the windscreen, the headlights beyond barely cutting through the rain, just showing pools of descending white sparks that fell and fell relentlessly.
I felt – or imagined I felt – Sally’s mood, as she sat, her back to me, her shoulders clenched tight. I was furious at that moment, more angry than I think I have ever been, before or since.
‘Tim,’ she said, without turning to look at me. ‘Please let me—’
‘Shut up. Both of you.’
Graham turned round, an elbow hanging over the driver’s seat. I wanted desperately to smash his face in.
‘I know you’re upset, Tim …’
That was all it took. Turning from him, I shoved the door handle downwards and kicked the door open, jumping out onto the grass verge of an empty country road.
‘Tim!’ shouted Graham. ‘You can’t get out here! It’s the middle of absolutely bloody—’
I slammed the car door, and threw my rucksack over my shoulder. The rain was even heavier than I had anticipated, but I walked on. The car crawled alongside me for a short while. I heard Sally calling my name, appealing to me to get back in. I got the impression she was crying, but I didn’t want to look at her, didn’t want to look at either of them. The car continued to keep pace with me as I stumbled along the
verge. The rain plastered my hair to my head, to my ears, ran down my back. I shoved my hands deep into my jacket and kept on walking.
Graham’s voice, then, shouting. ‘Stop being a bloody idiot and get back in the car!’ He sounded furious, for once. Good, I thought.
‘Go to hell, Graham,’ I muttered into the downpour. Ahead of us, the headlights picked out something from the hedgerow. A wooden sign, blackened by mould. I saw the words PUBLIC FOOTPATH, the sign pointing into a much-overgrown gap in the hedge. From some distant, dry place, I watched myself slink away from the road and down the muddy pathway.
‘Jesus Christ!’ I heard Graham say. His voice sounded even more annoying when he was angry. I heard a car door open, and kept walking.
The overgrown hedge obscured a dark wooden stile, glistening in the rain. I felt Graham’s hand on my shoulder but slapped it away and climbed the stile, taking care not to undermine the gravity of my departure by slipping and falling.
My eyes adjusted to reveal a muddy path curving away into blackness, between a dark pine wood and a field of waist-high wheat, almost ready for harvest. A wire fence, recently erected, delineated the border between the path and the pine trees. Without thinking, I set off, marching along the path. The mud squelched and oozed underfoot. Within seconds, my socks were wet.
‘Tim!’ shouted Graham, although his voice was growing fainter. He had not climbed the stile. ‘Oh, bloody hell! TIM!’ Rather than anger, Graham’s voice contained an exasperation I had heard many times in my short life, from youth leaders, supply teachers, school counsellors – the universal whine of the weak adult who has failed to control young people in his care, and blames them for the chaos he now finds himself surrounded by. I realised that I despised him. I hated both of them. I had a very clear mental image of me walking back and calmly bashing Graham’s head in with a rock.
Instead, and with some effort, I forced myself to keep walking, although the darkness quickly became so total I had to feel my way along the wire fence with my right hand. I heard distant voices, but they became quieter and less important, until the booming sky and the seething rain covered them up. About a minute later, I heard the sound of a car engine, then that too melted away, and then there was only the restless sky and the endless rain.
They had left me. True, that was what I had wanted, but I had also wanted them to plunge after me, regardless of the night and the rain, to demonstrate that I was worth enough, to both of them and in the grand scheme of things, not to be left here in this godforsaken place.
It occurred to me for the first time that I was not of sound mind, and hadn’t been for a long time. My decisions should not be respected, especially not this one. I should not have been allowed to walk away from the car. I should not have been allowed anywhere near Sally. I should not have been allowed anywhere near Yarlings, or Graham, and his experiment. Mr Henshaw had been right all along and had tried to make me see.
I stumbled off into the torrential rain.
47
The fence gave way to a trail that ran into the pine woods, where it was quickly swallowed by darkness. Wrapped up in my anger, I walked perhaps a hundred feet along the trail, the soft, damp carpet of needles beneath my feet. It was silent in the pines. Stupidly, I spun on the spot, turning back round to see that the trail had vanished, and then I no longer knew which direction was forward and which back. I picked a direction and kept walking. The pine trees closed over my head, obscuring even the frail light of the storm, but the spongy floor of the forest was even and I didn’t stumble. I walked on, feeling my way from tree to tree in what I hoped was a straight line.
Overhead, the sky cracked. I almost fell over the half-buried spine of a drystone wall, glowing green-white in the scant light. My eyes were adjusting to the almost complete darkness.
Lightning ticked overhead, and some distance away I saw a line of brilliant white where the trees gave way to open ground. It was up a steep incline, and, with only the after-image of the treeline dancing in my vision to guide me, I tripped and cursed up the slope. The trees ended abruptly, and I found it difficult to shake the idea I had just risen from the depths of a dark sea, to finally break the surface. Where the forest stopped, a field of rapeseed sloped downwards. There was no hint of a path. The clouds flared with trapped charge once more and I saw that the field terminated in a hedge, or a fence.
Keeping to the treeline, I made my way along the upper edge of the field. The mud was thick, with the consistency of wet cement, and the soles of my shoes grew heavy and uneven. And still, I wasn’t afraid. I believed that at the foot of the hill, there would be a village, or a road. A way out, of some kind. And if not this field, then the field afterward, or, at most, the field after that.
I stumbled downwards along the border of the field, where the rapeseed gave way to a thin line of grass. The mud was treacherous, and I almost lost my balance every few steps, reaching out to flail at thin air, but I remained on my feet. The rain, which seemed to have briefly thinned to almost nothing, now began to fall heavily again. I half-fell into the bottom edge of the field, which turned out to be a tall chain-link fence with concrete posts, over and through which brambles, hawthorn and ivy grew. I couldn’t see clearly through the fence, but what was beyond looked dark, and long, and straight. I assumed it was a road. The fence extended as far as I could make out in either direction; I would have to climb it.
I threw my knapsack over first, then put the toe of one shoe into one of the diamond-shaped gaps in the wire mesh. My shoe, greased with mud, slid out of the fence again almost immediately, and I had to pause to wipe as much mud off my shoes as I could before trying again. I scaled the fence slowly and cautiously, my legs twitching and wobbling unreliably after my slog through the field. I swung over the top and dropped down the other side, almost oblivious to what might be there.
The drop was further than I anticipated and one of my knees gave under me, driving itself painfully into the bed of stones that formed the floor of this place.
It was a railway cutting. Two sets of rails, side by side, curving away over the hard, glistening stones into black nothingness in either direction. Grabbing my knapsack, I retreated to the shadow of the fence I had just climbed, driving my back into it, and clutching my knee. The rain was a wall of water, and anything more than ten feet away from me was lost to sight. I got to my feet and picked my way carefully across the first set of tracks, my eyes and ears straining for any sign of a train. If one came, it would be here practically before I was aware of it; I would have to throw myself clear. And still I was calm. Still, I resisted seeing my situation for what it was.
I looked up, for the first time, at the opposite side of the tracks, and saw. A bank of dark purple brick, at least ten feet high, entirely smooth apart from a few tufts of weeds, with no hand- or foot-holds to be seen.
I began to walk quickly along the slick, dark sleepers, then broke into a jog. I was aware of a tenseness that seemed to thicken the very air. Far above, the sky rumbled and laughed.
Something made itself known, or I became aware of the noise of it; a whisper of a sound, at the very edge of the perceivable. Stupidly, I froze, cocked my head to listen. The sound grew, slowly but purposefully, and I listened and listened until the whooshing gathered and grew and the sound became unmistakeable.
And then, all reason left me. In blind panic, I ran along the tracks, suddenly and completely aware of the realness of the situation. The noise grew and grew, rattling around the cutting, multiplying, coming from all directions at once, with no way of knowing which was genuine. I ran like an animal, with no thoughts in my head, just the terror of the present moment.
At first I thought it was just shadow, but a second rain-soaked glance revealed it: an ancient iron ladder, set into a shallow vertical recess in the brick. Without thought, I leapt for it, grabbing the rusted metalwork, crushing myself into the dark space as, inches behind me, the blare and roar of a train flooded by. Noise and light, noise and light, and I pr
essed my face into the wet brick and gasped. The whooshing continued, so very close to my head, tugging at me, threatening to pull me from the ladder and churn me to pieces under the wheels. Noise and light, noise and light, and the final blast of a horn like the cry of some biblical monster.
And then silence, arriving instantly, as if a curtain had fallen, and it was impossible to believe the train had ever been there.
I forced my hands to uncurl, to loosen their grip on the iron rungs, and lifted my sodden shoes up rung by rung until I reached the ledge created by the top of the brick bank. The rain was, impossibly, coming down even harder now, and when I held my hands up to climb another chain-link fence, the raindrops bubbled over them like hot fat.
I hoisted my body to the top of the fence. I was aware I was sobbing. With no small effort, I forced myself to make the encounter with the train a distant thing, something that had occurred to someone else, to push away the nearness of it and concentrate on a this latest challenge. Sitting atop the fence, I looked down and saw a chaos of low-growing ivy covering the ground beyond, which I expected to be soft and spongy, but when I landed it was as hard as concrete, and a thrill of pain squirmed through the knee I had already injured clearing the first fence. Confused, my fingers sought the ground through the tendrils of ivy and found a slab of stone; in the darkness I made out a line of lead letters: AKEN FROM US AGED 4. I was in a graveyard.
This was almost comforting to me. If there was a graveyard, there might be a church, and if there were a church, there might be a village, even a telephone box. As my eyes became accustomed to the gloom, I saw the shadowy shapes of a mute crowd of crosses, pillars and obelisks gathered around me. Ahead, an ancient yew squatted, its extraordinarily ugly trunk twisted and split into two, and beyond that, my heart leapt to see the dark outline of a church. A gravel path, flooded now, wound through the bare earth under the yew, soaking my shoes afresh.
My excitement was short-lived. Rounding the corner, I saw that heavy barred gates had been drawn across the church porch and padlocked shut: a piece of hardboard with a handwritten notice stapled to it was tied to the bars, but rain had washed the words away.