‘Fuck! Fuck this place. Fuck! Get me out of here, will you?’ His friends hauled him out of the water, laughing hard at his misfortune, and he continued to use the f-word more liberally than Clara and Katie put together.
‘Simone said that those girls come out here,’ said one.
‘Who?’
‘You know, Katie Edwards and her stupid mates. The ones that fucked you up, Luke.’
‘I know that, obviously, that’s why we’re here, you knob. Who the fuck is Simone?’
‘Jenk’s sister. She talks to ’em. She knows that Philippa.’
‘I’d fuck her up if she was here. She ain’t doing that to me, the bitch. I’d show her. That’d show her.’ He turned to his friends and I could see through a gap in the leaves that he was grabbing his crotch and thrusting it at them. ‘Oh yeah, I’d teach her something.’
‘This place is a dump, though. All this mud and weed and fucking birds.’ I couldn’t see who’d said it and didn’t know the gang well enough to recognise their voices. ‘Glad you’ve got a pool, Luke.’
‘Fucking right, much rather be at mine having a swim than here.’ Luke’s parents had money, and were the first people in the village to build their own swimming pool.
The boys walked past the bank where we were hiding and out of sight – they must’ve been walking across the short spur of land that ended in the tree with the rope swing. I moved across the dip, staying in a crouch and saw them again through the bushes at the beach on the far side. We never went to the far beach because it was always noisy with birds and at over halfway round the lake you were almost in sight of the farmhouse, and you certainly were if the farmer was in any of his outbuildings. Without looking back, I raised my hand so the others would know to stay as they were. The boys must’ve decided to camp there and have a swim, because they all started to strip off, and I got my first glimpse of adolescent manhood. I slowly backed away as they shouted and screamed at the cool water when they went in, picking up my bike, knowing that we could escape under the cover of the racket they were making.
‘Go, go,’ I said in another loud-as-I-dare whisper, following the others as they clambered up the steep bank on the far side of the copse, up and out onto a narrow path bisecting the hill – probably an animal trail – where the others waited for me.
‘Close run thing?’
‘Not really, Janes, once they started posing with their dicks out it was easy to get away.’
‘Ooh, let’s see,’ said Katie.
‘Haven’t you seen them all already?’
‘Nice.’
‘Let’s get out of here,’ I said. ‘There’s only so long idiots like that are gonna spend down here before getting bored.’ Forced to move in single file, we pushed our bikes along the trail, occasionally having to negotiate brambles or large patches of nettles. The trail continued to rise and we could see the steep bank to our left was fenced off above us.
‘Must be the top lake,’ said Janey looking up at the chain link.
‘It’s funny how we’ve never come up here,’ Katie added.
After a further hundred yards or so the trail reached the top of the bank and became a wider path, revealing a small lake on the other side of the fence, almost completely hidden by undergrowth. One of the fence panels had partly fallen and the chains had ripped, leaving a gap big enough for us to go through. So we all did.
‘Hold the frigging wire back a bit more would you, Flip? I can’t squeeze through.’ Katie just managed to fit through the gap as I pulled the chain-link fence back on itself, the cold rusted metal digging into my fingers. We pushed through the wall of brambles and nettles and there in front of us was the top lake. The third of the three lakes made by the quarrying company in the seventies it was small and shallow, not much bigger than a pond, with wide muddy banks and squadrons of mosquitos buzzing around.
‘What’s that smell, it’s like something’s died in there?’ Katie asked.
‘Don’t think it’s that, I think the water’s just stagnant. Look at all the mozzies flying around,’ Janey pointed to the clouds of flies over the water.
We walked around the periphery, arms waving wildly to keep the insects away. Above the far bank, a flattened plateau of compacted gravel and dust opened out, at the back of which was a squat zinc shed like a double garage. The zinc sheets were rusted and some had fallen away, and the roller shutter doors were half open. We ducked underneath and went inside. The dusty workshop smelled of oil and fuel. Workbenches were cluttered with piles of boxes containing machine parts, shelves were overloaded and buckled under the weight of their contents. There was stuff everywhere.
‘What was this place?’ Katie wondered aloud as she stepped over a collapsed shelving unit.
‘Must be the garage they used when they were quarrying,’ I replied.
‘Garage?’ Sal was looking up through gaps in the zinc wall at a large rusted tank outside.
‘For their machines – diggers and stuff. They can’t just take one of them to Jenkins’ garage in the village can they?’ said Janey.
‘They’ve just piled all this stuff up then left. That’s odd,’ I said, poking around in boxes.
‘I guess if they shut down pretty quickly they would leave stuff.’
Clara stepped outside, her shoes crunching on the hard-core. ‘Come and look at this, you lot,’ she called. Taking care where we stepped we emerged into the sunshine and looked across at Clara, who was standing halfway between the workshop and the lake. The gravel surface here was more uneven and rocky, with several large boulders breaking through the hard-core. Between these stones the ground disappeared into a large hole.
‘What the hell is that?’ Katie asked.
‘A sink hole, maybe’ replied Janey. ‘It’s where the ground just opens up and swallows whatever was above. You get it in limestone, sometimes, because it dissolves quite easily.’
‘How the hell do you know this stuff, nerd-girl?’ Katie playfully punched her on the shoulder and Janey looked uncomfortable to be the centre of attention.
‘Actually it’s not,’ said Janey, contradicting herself, walking in front of Clara, approaching the hole.
‘Janey,’ I called after her, worried the ground might not be stable.
‘It’s a cave.’ Janey stood with her toes hanging over the edge of the hole, peering down into the darkness. We joined her and sure enough could see that after a drop of about five feet, there was a definite floor that sloped downwards to disappear under the ground. Janey pulled a torch from her backpack – there was little she didn’t carry with her on days at the lake – and took a step out over the edge.
‘Janey, no!’ I cried, but it was no use, Janey stepped off and landed with a thud on the dusty floor below – the top of her head protruding above ground. With a click her torch came on, illuminating a narrow circle in front of her.
‘It’s okay – I’m okay!’ she smiled. ‘There’s definitely a bigger cavern down here, this is like an entrance hall.’ She walked forwards, following the torch beam.
‘Yeah but don’t go –’ The torch light disappeared as Janey ventured underground. ‘– any further. Talk to your bloody self, Flip,’ I said, exasperated.
‘Come on then, sisters together,’ said Katie, lowering herself in a more ankle friendly fashion over the side of the hole. Soon we were all peering through the darkness and the dust into the gloom of the big cavern.
‘Through here,’ Janey said as she set the torch on the floor, standing it on end and pulling the middle up to turn it into a lantern. The room was bathed in a harsh blue-white light. The cave was the size of a large living room, with a domed roof and curved walls reaching down to the floor. In the far corner, there was another hole, going deeper underground.
‘What the hell?’ Sally was looking at the walls, where there were etchings and rough drawings. Drawings of monsters and flames, of people next to fires or standing over them. Towards the middle of the room, slightly nearer the mouth of the cave, w
as a pile of ash, and the earth around it was blackened. Next to it was a pile of bones.
‘It’s the Shadow Man,’ said Janey, matter-of-factly.
‘The what?’ replied Katie.
‘I’ve been reading about Lincolnshire legends, and there’s one from here.’ Janey seemed a little far away, as if in a trance, her voice sounding different somehow. Maybe she was concentrating to remember what she’d read. ‘It’s about Laurendon. When it was just farming folk living on the hill, working on the local landowners’ estates.’
‘When are we talking, Janes?’ I asked as she squatted down by the lantern.
‘The village has been around for a really long time but this story goes back to the late seventeen hundreds, Flip. I don’t know how many houses there were back then but I’m guessing it was dozens, maybe a few hundred, but not thousands. There was a pond, though.’
‘So what happened?’ I asked, trying to keep Janey focused as she looked around. What the hell was wrong with her?
‘Kids started to go missing. Taken from their homes and never seen again. And apparently there were some cases where people got burned. Mysteriously. Just like now. There was this guy, William Tullock. He was a bit of an oddball. There wasn’t a police force or anything but the local magistrate led a group of people – vigilantes I s’pose – who searched everyone’s houses. At Tullock’s place they found things belonging to the missing kids.’
‘You read all this?’ asked Katie.
‘So it was him?’ I asked.
‘The magistrates found him guilty and burned him at the stake.’
‘Jesus,’ said Sal.
‘Did bad things stop happening?’
‘Yep, it seems like they got him.’
‘You said it was the Shadow Man?’ asked Katie.
‘It’s what they called him – the village children. They said that the Shadow Man would come to get you, to take you away and burn you to ash. They even came up with a rhyme to protect themselves. They reckoned that singing it would protect them from him.’
‘Wonder how it went?’ said Sally as she looked around.
‘I can remember it if you want to hear?’ Janey seemed a lot less dreamy now.
‘Go on then.’
‘The Shadow Man comes out at night
The Shadow Man in plain sight
The Shadow Man is gone by dawn
Taking souls for us to mourn
The Shadow Man prowls around
Without noise, without a sound
And if he should catch your eye
Then you know you’re going to die
The Shadow Man haunts our home
You’re safe until the sun goes down
The Shadow Man will wait his turn
To hold you close and make you burn.’
‘Shit, that’s as scary as Ring-a-ring-a-roses,’ Katie was looking at the hole in the far corner of the cave. ‘Let’s have a look down here.’
‘Okay, can I have the torch?’ I picked up the chunky light, pushing down on the top to turn it back from a lantern to a torch, the beam dancing wildly around the walls as our shadows were thrown around. I bent forward and shone it into the hole – it looked like a drop of about three feet before the cavern opened up further down. I sat on the edge and slid forward and down to the ledge below, taking the torch with me. ‘Sorry guys, it’s gonna go dark.’
‘Yeah, thanks a lot.’ Katie mimicked a Scooby Doo evil laugh.
‘That isn’t even remotely funny,’ said Clara.
‘Who said that?’
‘Still not fucking funny.’
The cavern opened out and looked more like a proper cave than a weird living room. The array of stalactites just above my head dropped mineral filtered water onto the floor below, creating corresponding stalagmites. It was the same height as the cave above but about three times as long, with the wet floor sloping down towards the far end, the humidity making it hard to breathe. The smell down here was worse – it smelled like something had died, the stench of decay and rotting flesh catching at the back of my throat, almost making me gag.
‘How is it down there, Flip?’
‘It stinks, smells like something rotten.’
I walked down the slope toward the far end of the cave to where I could see a dark shadow, concentrating hard to keep my footing on the wet stone, my fake-Converse threatened to slip at any moment. As I approached, the torch showed it was a round hole about ten feet across, with water in the bottom about ten feet below.
‘There’s a stagnant pool at the bottom here,’ I called back, my voice echoing. ‘Really stinks. But there’s also some light.’ The murky water below was illuminated to a degree, as if someone had put a pond light on the bottom.
‘Could it be coming in from the lake outside – is there a tunnel between them?’ Janey’s voice echoed down.
‘Dunno and I’m not jumping in to find out. Okay, this is officially the weirdest thing I’ve ever done and I’m coming back now.’
‘Good, hurry up with the bloody torch.’
‘You’re all self, Clara.’ I’d reached the step and clambered up, swearing as I hit my head on the overhang, forgetting how little space I had. I handed the torch to someone and took the other proffered hands to help me scramble back out.
‘Look over here.’ Janey had gone into the opposite corner to the hole in the first cave and was squatting down. ‘See these?’ She was pointing at something on the floor. ‘There are brackets bolted into the floor. They’re rusty and look old, really old.’
‘What do you think they are?’ I bent down to join her.
‘Not wanting to jump to conclusions, they could be anything. But why would you bolt some metal brackets into the floor of a cave? Unless you were hiding here. Look at the fire and the rabbit bones or whatever they are – somebody was laying low in here.’
‘They can’t date back that far anyone could’ve come in here and left them.’
‘Maybe. And did the cave paintings while they were down here as well, perhaps?’
‘Point taken. The quarry and the lakes are recent – so what was here before?’
‘I’m guessing it must’ve been a cave at the top of this rise. There was plenty of rolling farmland here, maybe it was just too stony to farm this bit and they ignored whatever cave was here. The history book said they couldn’t find Tullock when they raided his place. I can’t remember, but I don’t think it said how long it took to find him, but it implied it was a while – maybe a few weeks I’m guessing.’
‘And he was holed-up here?’ I said, nodding.
‘Well, let’s not get ahead of ourselves – all of a sudden this day out is turning into some kind of Hardy Boys and Nancy Drew mystery,’ Katie wasn’t convinced. ‘Doesn’t this all seem a bit convenient – we discover a cave, and all of a sudden there’s a local legend that nobody’s heard of and the two are linked and I don’t fucking know but it just seems –’
‘I’m not making this shit up – I’ll show you the fucking book, K, I have looked into this. Just because people are ignorant of their own local history doesn’t mean that bad shit couldn’t have happened.’
‘Yes, Janey, I know, and I wasn’t saying that I thought your story was wrong or anything. Quite frankly I dunno what I was saying. Sorry if I put my fucking foot in it. I dunno, it’s all a bit weird.’
‘It’s okay. It’s definitely weird.’
‘Do you think this Tullock guy really was the Shadow Man?’ Katie asked to make the peace. ‘Or did they fit him up?’
‘There can’t have been a lot of people round here who, down the years, are going to do cave paintings of people being burned alive, can there?’
‘And those bolts? I know you’ve got an idea – can see it in your face.’
‘What if he brought the children here – to kill them? What if he chained them up there and did whatever the fuck he did?’ We all looked from the bolts and brackets to the fireplace and the small pile of bones. They’d looked like
rabbit bones at first glance. But what if they were something else?
‘So that was two hundred-odd years ago. What do you think is happening now?’ said Katie.
‘What do you mean?’ Janey’s eyes met with ours.
‘Well, they found Tullock guilty. He’s obviously dead. But now there’re people being burned in the village. Is somebody copying him or something?’
‘Either there’s some kind of copycat setting people on fire, or somehow the Shadow Man is still here. Tullock never went away.’
‘They burnt him at the stake and he’d be, like, two hundred and fifty fucking years old,’ said Katie, our common-sense barometer.
‘I don’t mean him, knobhead, I mean his spirit, his essence, his –’
‘You’re going to say evil aren’t you?’ said Sally, in an accusing tone.
‘Yes, why the hell not?’
‘Because it’s not fucking possible, that’s why. The spirit of a long dead kiddy-fiddler doesn’t just come back. This isn’t a horror novel. How would it – a ghost maybe – are we believing in ghosts now?’
‘I do,’ Janey said.
‘You fucking would.’
‘Hey, calm down guys, let’s not get our hair-off. What do you really mean, Janey?’ Once again I found myself the peacemaker.
‘Plenty of people believe in the soul, right? The essence that is you, that turns this,’ she pulled on the skin of her cheek, ‘into us. You go to church don’t you, Clara?’
The Shadow Man Page 9