The Year's Best Horror Stories XXII

UNDER THE CRUST by Terry Lamsley

Maurice began to feel ill as he came off the Chapel-en-le-Frith bypass and drove up the A6 to Dove Holes. Suddenly, his palms were damp, and his hands slithered on the steering wheel. He was trying to grip too hard, to compensate for a feeling he had that if he didn’t do so, his hands would start to tremble. Also, he was having trouble with his vision. The edges of things were hazy, and patches of blue sky that showed through the gaps in the high, blousy clouds, looked far too bright, like neon light shining off painted metal. He wanted to stop, but was caught in a line of lorries, and there was nowhere to pull off the road that he could remember. He wiped his hands on his shirt. They became sticky again at once. There was a droning sound somewhere. He wasn’t sure if it was coming from the car engine or inside his skull.

He blinked and shook his head in consternation. He had been feeling uneasy all day, all week even, and there was plenty in his life to feel uneasy about, but he had thought he was fairly fit. Now, it seemed, his body was going to let him down, and play host to some sickness, on top of everything else. He slammed the steering wheel with the heel of his hand in disgust, wound down the side window a couple of inches, and leaned forward tensely against his seat-belt.

As he drove through the tight, dusty village of Dove Holes, he started to experience a sensation of more general disorientation. He saw a narrow turning forking to his left and, on impulse, took it much too fast. The unfamiliar road curved and dipped between two low stone walls and, hardly slowing at all, he rocketed along it for a few hundred yards, feeling almost helpless, as though the car had taken possession of him. He made an effort of concentration, to gain control of the vehicle, but a square, dark shape sprang up to the right of him, as though it had pounced out of the earth, and plunged toward him. He swung the car to the left to avoid whatever it was; it seemed to be a huge black, windowless van; and rode wildly up and along a low, steep, grassy bank. He sensed, rather than saw, the other driver staring down at him. The car scraped against a wall and he had a vague impression of stones tumbling away into a field beyond. The car pulled up sharp at last, its front end pointing to the sky.

Maurice glanced back to see what had happened to the other vehicle, but it had vanished. Could anything that size, traveling that fast, not have gone off the road?

Then he recalled that the van, or whatever it was, had made no attempt to avoid him. It had taken no evasive action in the seconds it had been visible, as though the driver had not even seen him! Thoughts of insurance bleeped on and off in his mind as he freed his seatbelt buckle, opened the door, and stumbled out onto the road.

There was a strong, gusting wind blowing. He gulped air desperately through his half-open mouth, feeling its cold shock on his lungs, and cursed the world in general.

Food poisoning! he thought. The meal earlier on, at the reception. Something, the chicken? the pork pies? had tasted strange, but he had eaten it anyway, in his hunger. The contents of his stomach flipped over painfully, causing him to double up over the car bonnet.

He forced himself upright and went to inspect the damage. One of the fronts lights was smashed, the left wing dented, and there were scratches, some deep, along that side. He’d lost a lot of paint. Still, it could have been worse. The wall he had hit some dozens of yards back must have been ready to collapse, or the car would have been in a very bad way.

He sat down on the grass bank and waited for his heart to stop racing. His head felt clearer, but things still didn’t look quite right; the world was still hazy and slightly out of kilter.

Next to him the car clicked and sighed as the engine cooled. After a while he glanced underneath to check that nothing was leaking, got back inside, and carefully backed onto the tarmac. He continued along the little back road at about ten miles an hour until a further spasm in his stomach made him shut his eyes in agony, and he had to stop again.

He got out, slammed the door behind him, and looked around.

He was near the top of a hill. Open countryside lay spread around him on all sides. Ahead of him a row of scraggy, dark-leafed trees stretched to the right towards acres of torn-up fields and pyramids of raw earth; a scene of tortured ugliness. In front of them a deeply scarred path of churned mud led to a set of old diggings, called the Victory Quarry, that had partly been turned into a tip by the Borough Council. A multitude of large skips, painted drab brown, sprawled away at all angles beyond the end of the line of trees; a porta-cabin guarded the entrance at the other side. A skimpy gate of wire grill on an iron frame gaped wide to give access to dust carts and private vehicles arriving from time to time with cargoes of every kind of rubbish.

He wandered down the path, thinking he would take advantage of the shelter of the trees to relieve his bladder.

It was not easy going. The mud was scored with the tire marks of huge machines, that had to be stepped in and out of with care. The rain of the previous weeks had sunk deep, turning the mangled soil oleaginous, but the mix of sunshine and strong wind of the last three days had formed a crust overall that looked solid, but gave way under his feet, precipitating him awkwardly into the mire below. His light town shoes became heavily caked with clumps of dirt, like thick black paste, and his progress was marked by an uneven sequence of gross squelching sounds that complemented the sensations he was experiencing in his belly.

He grabbed at a half-broken branch and pulled himself along it into a space between two trees. He noticed that their trunks on the pathward side had been hacked and wounded by passing vehicles. Great scabs of bark were missing, revealing the plants’ fibrous flesh. Crosses, in faded orange paint, had been daubed on the trees, presumably to indicate that they were to be preserved. Stumps of others, less fortunate, remained here and there, like the broken pillars on tombs.

Immediately at the rear of the trees, shrubs and flowers grew in the shaded dimness. He stepped a little way in among them, relieved himself, and stooped to wipe the mud from his shoes with a clump of grass.

Above him, something moved heavily among the branches. For moments there was silence, then the bird, or whatever it was, shifted clumsily again. It made a sudden, rattling, cackling sound that made him start. ‘Like the noise a toy machine gun would make if it laughed!’ he thought, and wondered at his own wild simile. But it was reasonably accurate! There was something taunting and mechanical in the creature’s call that unnerved him in his weakened, jittery state. He looked up in the direction of the sound, but the sun was shining directly through the leaves above him, punching blinding slivers of light through an otherwise featureless silhouette. It was impossible to distinguish anything in particular.

There was movement above again. A shower of twigs descended around him, and something else fell, that hit the ground by his feet. After the briefest hesitation, when he felt a stab of regret that he had ever stepped in among the trees, he bent down and picked it up. It was a purple-brown, egg-shaped object, a little more than three inches long. Surprisingly heavy, and icy cold, it looked more like some kind of fruit, but not, he thought, edible! There was something distinctly unappetising about it. It looked old; dry; preserved.

After rolling it on his palm, Maurice went back onto the path again to get a better look at it.

Both ends were quite smooth, with no indication that they had ever been joined to any plant.

Not a seed, he thought. And not an egg; far too heavy and too hard. Anyway, an egg would have smashed on its fall from the tree. He pressed harder and harder, and it seemed to give a bit. He closed both hands over it, to obtain more pressure, and gripped them together.

The thing burst and his hands slammed shut on what was left.

He felt something moving in his two-handed fist. He opened his hands and saw what seemed to be a myriad of tiny, dark creatures running out onto his fingers and up his wrists. He held his hands up to his eyes. He was not sure if what he could see was a multitude of tiny entities moving together, as though with one mind, or a single creature made up of almost microscopic sections. Both his hands were covered, as though by thin gloves. He became aware of a slightly painful sensation in the affected areas, and brushed his hands together. After a few moments of vigorous washing motions the “gloves,” and the pain, began to subside. Whatever had come out of the egg turned to dust that blew away in the wind as it fell.

A mottled, bruiselike stain remained to mark where the contents of the object had spread. He tried rubbing his hands in the grass, but without effect. The stain seemed indelible.

His skin itched. His hands and wrists looked horrible, as though his skin was diseased. Rubbing them fretfully against each other, he peered up into the trees again.

He saw a branch sway down, as though something was walking along it.

He picked a large stone out of the mud and threw it at where he judged the source of the movement to be.

There was a commotion among the leaves, and the harsh, cackling sound recommenced with a vengeance. Nearby, all along the line of trees, other, presumably similar creatures, took up the call. Their combined din became a terrible cacophony. Large sections of all the trees began to heave agitatedly. In his almost-hysterical state of confusion Maurice thought he could see thin arms waving and gesticulating among the branches.

He turned and ran, but in the wrong direction, away from his car. He realized his mistake almost at once, but dared not stop.

Once, he glanced to the left. Behind the trees, in among the shrubs and bushes, spidery shapes seemed to be scuttling up out from between the roots buried there. He got the impression that they were moving along parallel to him. Their movements were slow, but so were his, hampered as he was by the deep tire tracks and the clinging mud.

He reached the porta-cabin. A shuttered window was open on the side. He ran to the far end, where he could see the edge of the lowest of a set of wooden steps protruding. The door above the steps was open, held back against the wind with a twist of wire. He collapsed on his knees on the steps and looked into the cabin. A young skinhead with a tattooed scalp, in overalls and a black donkey-jacket, sat at an improvised desk, stirring the contents of a mug with one hand and clutching a coverless paperback in the other. The young man regarded him inquisitively over the book, which he lowered a couple of inches.

Maurice got awkwardly up off the steps, turned, and looked back into the trees. He realized the scolding sounds had stopped. The trees swayed gently, normally, in the wind. As far as he could see, nothing moved among them that should not. The mud lane leading to the road was empty.

“What have you got?” a voice asked from inside the cabin. It was a tired, old man’s voice.

He turned and looked at the skinhead, who shrugged, and gestured back over his shoulder.

Half way into the cabin, on a pile of filthy mattresses, lay an elderly, whiskery man, also in overalls. He was on his side, with his head propped in his hand.

“Is it household? Garden? That sort of thing?” the old man demanded.

“I’m sorry…?” said Maurice, uncomprehendingly.

“Yer rubbish,” said the young man irritably. “What is it?” He sneered at the muddy, frightened man in front of him, who could only press his hand against his brow and shake his head.

“Bloody Hell!” the skinhead said, “what we got here?” and held the tattered book up to his face in a contemptuous, dismissive gesture.

The old man turned and sat up. “You got any rubbish to deposit at this tip, or haven’t you?” he asked.

“Oh, I see what you mean! No, I haven’t.”

“Then why are you here? What can we do for you? This is Council land, you know. Private.”

“Well, to tell the truth, my car had a bump on the road back there. Nothing serious. I’m a bit shaken. Thought I’d get some fresh air to clear my head. Is that okay?”

“No harm in that,” the old man conceded. “As long as you don’t hang about. Trouble is, we get people in scavenging. Can’t have that, for health reasons. Know what I mean?”

“Yes, I do,” said Maurice vaguely. “I won’t be long.”

He stumbled as he walked away towards the tip.

Behind him, the skinhead said, “Pissed!”

“As a rat,” the old man agreed.

Maurice didn’t want to go back past the trees. He didn’t feel ready for that. Perhaps he could find another way out onto the road? He looked around. The whole area was enclosed by wire fences, as far as he could see, and he was in no mood to climb over them. He was barely able to walk, to keep upright, as it was.

He wandered into a mangled landscape of many levels. The earth rose and fell away in strange, half-related planes, like a cubist composition. Rough roads of cinders swooped up to sudden edges that led nowhere, or down and around to pools of oily, glinting rainwater and randomly dumped heaps of soil or refuse. It seemed that whole buildings had been dropped from the sky. Piles of bricks, toys, carpets, plaster, furniture, in violent juxtaposition, were dotted everywhere, and mounds the size of small hills, the remnants of unimaginable ruins, formed miniature alpine chains down into the old, unused quarries. All was covered by a dust-crested crust of varying thickness that split under him as he walked. His footsteps behind him oozed fleshy mud.

Paper and plastic scraps drifted endlessly across the site in the wind. Occasionally, larger segments of lightweight litter broke loose from the clotted mass and carved into the air, scaring up flocks of shrieking gulls and starlings. Smoke, or steam, puffed up mysteriously from various points, as though a huge engine was building up pressure deep under the earth. A machine made a pumping, clunking sound somewhere out of sight, and the strident alarm of a reversing earth-moving vehicle called out every few minutes from some hidden excavation.

He almost tumbled into a deep hole, about two feet wide. It reached diagonally down, like a giant rabbit’s burrow, into the compacted garbage. At first he thought that someone had been tunneling, for some unimaginable reason, but noticed that loose matter from underground had been pushed up around the lip of the hole, as though it had been dug out from under. He found other similar holes. He knelt beside one, and peered down into it. Buried wires, wooden laths, and plastic pipes had been torn apart by some powerful, or desperate digging. He couldn’t even guess at why the holes were there.

He wandered aimlessly amid the desolation, stumbling like a blind man searching for his lost stick, until he came to the edge of one of the so far unused quarries. Down inside it there was a small lake of pure, shining water reflecting the scudding clouds and the vivid blue of the sky. The sides of the quarry were steep, bare cliffs, or slopes of tumbled stone covered with blossoming shrubs and rich grass. To Maurice, it glowed and beckoned like the Promised Land. He looked for a way down into this pleasant place, but saw that he would have to walk a long way round to gain access. Too tired and depressed to make the effort, he sat down on a chunk of creamy marble, part of an old fireplace, to review his situation.

He still felt wretched. His body ached. Obviously, he needed to get to a doctor. He hoped that, when he got back to his car, he would be able to drive. It was only three miles into Buxton, but somehow, that sounded like a long way. He dreaded the thought of the journey.

He sat for a while, still as a stone, trying to read his own mind, to make sense of his recent experiences.

He seemed to be gazing out from some painful place deep within his skull.

The landscape in front of him, beyond the quarry, had a hectic look. Cars passing on the A6 chased each other viciously, the sound of their passage an angry, waspish buzz. Sheep, grazing in the long sweep of fields that climbed up the side of Combs Moss to the rough crest of crags called Black Edge and Hob Tor, looked like fat, lazy maggots browsing on a green corpse. The hurtling clouds cast swooping shadows, like dark searchlights, across the pastures. He felt that he had slipped into another reality, similar to, but alarmingly unlike, the one he had previously inhabited.

Disgusted with the increasingly morbid turns his mind was taking, he got to his feet and looked back the way he had come. In spite of the indications of activity suggested by the various, continuous mechanical noises, he had seen nobody since he had left the two men in the porta-cabin. Now his eye caught the movement of five long-shadowed shapes moving slowly toward him across an area strewn with household waste. The figures stooped from time to time to lift objects from the ground, and stood still, heads down, as though inspecting their finds. Then, they would either drop whatever they had discovered, or walk over to one of their number who was awkwardly hauling a little cart of some kind, and carefully place their discoveries inside it. Their movements were even-paced, and languid to the point of listlessness.

With the low sun behind them, it was impossible to make out details of their features. He thought that two of them, including the smallest, who was tugging the cart in some sort of harness, were female. He got the impression they were dressed rather quaintly. As they got nearer, he could hear their voices, quiet and even-toned, like people at prayer. Presumably, they were discussing the treasures they were finding. They gave no indication that they were aware Maurice was there until the tip of the hugely extended shadow of the most forward of them touched his feet. Then, that figure stopped, raised his right hand to his shoulder, and the others behind him ceased all movement, as though they had become unplugged from their energy source. The man at the front raised his hand even higher, with his index finger close to his brow, and tapped a battered cap lodged above his ear, in an antiquated gesture of respect.

Maurice, embarrassed and irritated by the subservient gesture, which he automatically assumed was one of mock humility, found himself lost for a suitable response. He said, “Hello there!” in the tone he would use to greet one of his colleagues, met by chance on the streets of Manchester.

“I wish you a good day,” said the man who had touched his cap, then, after the slightest pause, he added, “Sir.” His voice was strangely accented, but there was no note of mockery in his unassuming tone.

Maurice looked hard at him, trying to read his expression, but the man’s face was in shadow, and he was too far away. There was a similarity in the posture of the five people, and Maurice was sure that they were a family. They all had a similar shape and stance. The woman pulled the cart was older than the other female, and he guessed she was the wife of the man who had addressed him, who had the air of a paterfamilias. The other three appeared to be in their late teens.

Their stillness (they remained static as waxworks) and their dumb silence as he stared at them, quickly got on Maurice’s frazzled nerves.

They’re wondering what I’m doing here, he thought. I must appear very odd to them. It’s obvious why they’re here; they’re scavenging, but what the hell can they hope to find that’s worth taking away? Can people be so desperate, that they have to search in this foul place for the battered, useless things that others have thrown away?

And; yes, he thought, they do look that abject.

Tired of standing pointlessly in silence, Maurice decided to return to his car. He set off in a line wide of the right of the group who, to his surprise, began themselves to move. They went to their cart and began sorting through its contents.

“Sir,” called the man. “Would you be at all interested in anything we’ve got here? Come and see. We’ve a few choice articles.” He held some object up. “Look at this. This is for you, sir, don’t you think? This is something you should have.”

Maurice glanced across, and shook his head. He couldn’t make out what the man had in his hand, and, for some reason, he was glad of that. “I have to go,” he called, and quickened his stride.

“Give us a chance, sir,” the man pleaded, in his odd accent. “Just look what we’ve got here. You’ll curse yourself, if you don’t.”

“That he will,” called a female voice, in a kind of soft wailing drawl. “You’ll curse yourself later, sir.”

Maurice hurried on, almost at a run. They continued to call after him, but he couldn’t hear what they said. He looked back a couple of times. They seemed to be following him, but he was well ahead of them, and the distance was welcoming.

The porta-cabin was shut when he reached it. He looked at his watch. It was almost seven, hours later than he thought! Where had the time gone?

He didn’t look at the line of trees as he passed, but something in them called out its chattering, scolding cry.

He drove home along the empty back lanes slowly and furtively, glancing in his rear view mirror every few moments.

Maurice’s wife was a hypochondriac. In the three years of their marriage she had built up an impressive collection of pills and potions for all her ills, real and imagined. They filled two drawers of a medium-sized chest in the bathroom. She kept alphabetical lists of them, stating what each one was good for.

Next morning, after a troubled night, Maurice browsed through the lists, selected four bottles, and gulped down a possibly dangerous mix of medication. He checked his post (more confirmation from the bank of what he already knew; he was on the brink of bankruptcy) then went to see if he had been Faxed any better news. He found more of the same.

He sat for a while in the cold gray computer-dominated room he used as an office, listening to a CD of natural and electronic sounds his wife had bought him to help him relax after he had told her they were going broke. She had left him three weeks later.

The pills started to work, and he fell into a deep sleep. The door bell rang twice before he was even half awake.

He got to his feet too quickly. The room wobbled under him. His eyes wouldn’t focus, and his mouth tasted and felt like the inside of a carpet sweeper. The bell rang again. Whoever it was, was in a bloody hurry! He glanced at himself in a mirror as he passed along the hall, and hated what he saw.

The front door was a fancy affair with beaded glass panels, and lots of expensive brass fittings. He had seen one like it on a backdrop representing the Ugly Sisters’ house in a pantomime version of “Cinderella” at the Buxton Opera House. It represented the taste of the house’s previous occupant. What he liked about it was that you could get a good idea who was on your front step through the glass without being seen and, if expedient, could take evasive action. He was finding he had to do that more often recently.

This time however, his caller was standing well back, and was just a thin blur.

As soon as he opened the door a man stepped off the drive and held a card up in Maurice’s face. The card was a dirty, eggy yellow and bore a tiny photograph of someone who may have been the person holding it. It was creased in a hundred places, as though its owner had used it to practise Origami. Maurice didn’t even try to read what was printed on it.

“I’ve been unemployed,” the man on the step said, “and I’m trying to do myself a bit of good. Trying to help myself.” He had a pallid, pinched boy’s face, with small features and a gap between his eyes so wide it seemed to be an effort for him to see straight. His head kept drifting evasively round from side to side. He looked in need of a lot of square meals. He could have been any age between fifteen and fifty. He poked the card down into his shirt pocket and started to open a cheap, bulging plastic sports bag.

“No thanks,” said Maurice, “I never buy anything at the door.” He began to push the door shut.

“You never do?” echoed the man in a bewildered tone. “But I’m trying to keep myself, I’m not just sitting back. It’s to make a living.”

Maurice was about to say something like, “That’s highly commendable, but no thank you,” when he realized that the man had an unusual accent; one that he had heard before; yesterday, in fact! The pills had blurred his mind, or he would have noticed it at once. He looked keenly at the man and, yes! he could have been one of the people he had seen scavenging at the tip. He couldn’t be sure, but he had the stance, the pleading, praying voice. He had opened the zip along the top of the bag and was pulling things out—a child’s shoe, a partly melted and twisted comb, a two foot length of hose-pipe, a battered, lidless coffee jug, a tangle of used bandage…

“Is any of this any use to you?” the man asked, like a child or a simpleton, totally unaware of the inappropriateness of his words and actions. He spread the bandage out along his arm, as though it were particularly worthy of attention.

Maurice looked at the dirty, bloodstained strip of muslin, and hoped that he was asleep and dreaming. He placed his hand over the sports bag to stop the emergence of more items. “You couldn’t have followed me here,” he said. “No one did; I watched the road. How did you find me?”

“Were you lost?” the man asked, puzzled. He didn’t seem to be joking.

The pointless, silly question enraged Maurice. He growled something like, “Get out!” and was about to slam the door shut with his foot when the man slid his thin fingers round inside the door frame.

Maurice strode onto the step. He grabbed the intruder’s wrist, and hauled him to the front gate. The man’s loose skin slid back alarmingly along his almost fleshless bones. He put up no resistance. He was surprisingly lightweight. He made sad, bleating sounds. He was searching automatically in his bag with his free hand. As Maurice forced the man out onto the pavement, he was aware that something was pushed into his jacket pocket. He gave the man a final shove on the back, to get him on his way, and marched back into his house.

He waited a few moments, then glanced out of a window to check that his visitor had gone.

The creature was on his knees, carving something on the wooden gate post with a pen-knife.

Maurice’s frayed patience stretched and snapped. He ran out and kicked the man on the upper arm. He felt and heard something break inside the shirt sleeve. Turning an anguished face toward him, looking totally lost and confused, the man reached up and seemed to be trying to protect his whole body with a single, upraised, skinny hand. Feeling furiously disgusted with himself and the pathetic being in front of him, Maurice kicked out again. The heel of his shoe hit the man in the breast bone, and his chest gave way! Maurice felt his foot sink in, and he was reminded of the sun-dried crust he had broached with every step he had taken at the tip.

Evidently, unsurprisingly, the man had had enough. He lurched away, clutching his bag in front of him with both arms. He sounded as though he were choking. He didn’t look back.

Maurice bent down to see what he had been carving on the post. Underneath a deeply scored, slightly wavy line was a matchstick figure with over-long legs, rudimentary arms, and a tiny head, in a breaststroke posture. He seemed to be swimming downward.

Some sort of Hex, thought Maurice, contemptuously. A tinker’s curse! He spat on the crude drawing, and went indoors.

He was horrified at what he had just done. He was still experiencing the sensation of the second kick; of feeling the man’s chest caving in under his foot.

He went into his office, sat in the armchair he kept there for visiting business associates, and pulled out from his pocket the little parcel that had been pushed into it. He unknotted some thin string tied around it and removed a layer of charred newspaper. Underneath was a grubby pale-pink plastic box such as a child might keep cheap jewelry in. He pressed it open with his thumbs. Inside, in a bed of more crumbled half-burned paper, was a purple-brown egg like the one he had burst. He placed it carefully on his desk. He spread his hands out in front of him and studied them. The blotchy stains had almost gone, but the skin still looked chapped and raw.

After a while, he got up and turned on all the machines in his high-tech office. He had the latest of everything a computer could do to assist him with his work. He was continuously updating his equipment. To stay ahead in his field, he had invested a fortune, and what he produced was acknowledged to be the most advanced work of its kind in the country.

Even so, he had gone bust; he was ruined!

When everything was on and running, the room was full of a soft humming sound that sometimes soothed him. But not this time! He went around the house in search of strong drink.

Before he had located a bottle, phone bells rang all over the house. He went to the nearest receiver, a black, Bakelite antique, hesitated for seconds, obscurely reluctant to answer at all, then snatched it up.

It was Neville Gale, one of the partners in his firm calling, ostensibly, to commiserate with Maurice on the departure of his wife. He soon got round to the real subject on his mind, however; the failure of their business. Maurice was aware that Gale blamed him for much that had gone wrong, and could tell by his tone that the man wanted to scream and swear down the phone at him like a drunken football fan. But he wouldn’t ever do that. Old Nev was far too civilized.

Maurice listened to Gale’s reasonable despair for some time, then shouted, “It’s too late, Nev; I’m sunk, and you’re sinking. We’re all going under, and there’s not a thing we can do to stop it. We’re in very deep shit, so get used to the idea, and get off my back!”

He slammed the phone down.

Then, feeling the need to make one more gesture of finality, he picked the instrument up and hurled it at the wall.

Maurice went into his back garden. He poured a heap of charcoal into the middle of the barbecue, placed the egg-like thing on top, and pressed it down a little so it couldn’t roll off. He sprayed the pyre with “Betterburn” lighting fluid from a dispenser, and set a match to the lot. He stood well back, half expecting a small explosion, or even a big one. The egg burned slowly, and made a lot of smoke. It hissed and spluttered like breakfast in a pan, emitting tiny crimson flames. When it had almost gone, he poked the ashes and returned to the house for an hour. When he came back, there was no trace of the egg.

He swallowed another mouthful of medicaments, got in his battered car, and drove to Dove Holes the way he had come back last time, along the side lanes.

As he approached the entry to the tip, he saw a huge black van—the one that had forced him off the road, he was sure—gliding out through the gates. It turned into the road and moved away from him very fast. Thinking about his insurance again, like a drowning man clutching at the proverbial straw, he pushed down the accelerator. He was determined to overtake and stop the van.

He made some progress; got a bit closer.

The van was as large as any he had ever seen. It was quite smooth, with no visible panel joins, and was completely unmarked. He couldn’t even see a number plate. It was a miracle the driver was able to steer anything that size round the sharp bends in the narrow lane. He had trouble keeping his own vehicle on the road, and had to slow down. He was astonished to see the van draw away from him until it was almost out of sight. In seconds he was at a crossroads on the A6 in the center of Dove Holes, and there was no sign of the van in any direction. He gave the steering wheel a characteristic, ineffectual thump with the heel of his hand, and swore. Then he turned round and drove back to the tip.

He sensed he was being watched as he walked past the line of trees, but did not go to investigate what might be observing him. Half-formed shapes moved stealthily among the shrubs behind the trees, that he tried not to see.

He made his way through the mud to the porta-cabin. Inside, the old man was alone, spread out on his multimattress bed. He jumped when Maurice banged on the open door, and sat up.

“What you got?” he said automatically, like a talking machine. Then he recognized Maurice, and got to his feet. A deeply uneasy expression appeared on his face, that he tried to conceal by turning away.

Maurice, not quite sure what he was doing there, felt slightly foolish. At last he said, “I wonder if you can help me? I want some information about the scavengers on the tip. I met some people out there, and one of them must have followed me home. At least, I think he was one of them. Turned up on my door step and started pestering me.”

“That’s nothing to do with me,” the man said sullenly.

“I realize that,” Maurice said, “but I thought you might know who they are. They don’t seem like locals, the ones I met. They spoke differently, they act differently; do you know what I mean?”

“Perhaps,” the man said. “I don’t talk to them. I keep away. I’d do the same, if I were you. Let them get on with it.”

“Get on with what?”

The man shrugged. He filled an electric kettle from a plastic bottle and plugged it in a socket close to the floor. Slowly, and somewhat clumsily, he went through the motions of setting up a brew of tea. Maurice noticed he only washed out one mug. “Where’s your friend?” he asked, “the lad who was with you before?”

“Jed? He went out to scare them off, the scavengers. Hours ago.” The old man squinted up at Maurice from under his creased, dirt-smeared brows. “He’s not come back. I think he’s jacked in the job. He said he was pissed off working here. The place gave him the creeps; got on his nerves. It gets on mine, too, but I can’t just bugger off. He can get another job, at his age, if he’s lucky, but I can’t.” He spooned sugar angrily into his mug, spilling a trail of white crystals along the newspaper that served as a cloth on the ancient ironing board that was his table. “I’m stuck here,” he concluded.

Lost for words, Maurice gazed around the interior of the cabin. It was stacked with rescued furniture and other junk. An artificial Christmas tree, its branches bent and draped with fragments of faded tinsel, lay on the ground at his feet. Rolls of worn carpet were lined up along one wall, and bursting suitcases and boxes, packed with god-knows-what rubbish, were piled everywhere. An old tin bath was full of bones! Maurice was startled to see, among them, two skulls. He must have gasped, because the old man looked up from pouring his tea.

“Christ!” Maurice said, stepping towards the tub. “Where did they come from?”

A concatenation of expressions passed over the man’s face; annoyance, anxiety, confusion, fear, and others indefinable. He lifted his mug in both hands and sipped his drink. “They were dug up,” he said, reluctantly at last. “Out there.” He pointed beyond the line of trees opposite the cabin.

“But they’re human remains, surely?” said Maurice.

“Some of them are,” the man admitted, “and some of them aren’t.”

Maurice squatted down next to the tub. “I see what you mean,” he said. Many of the bones were undoubtedly human, but others were far too long and thin, like the leg bones of an ostrich, or some huge bird. He picked one up. It was extraordinarily light, as though it was made of paper.

“Never mind them,” the old man said irritably, and threw a blanket over the bath tub. “That’s all going to be taken care of. They’re all going back.”

“But have you notified the relevant authorities?” Maurice said, awkwardly aware of the foolish pomposity of the phrase. “I mean, people may have been murdered and their bodies concealed there.”

“Look,” the man said sharply. “Mind your own business, if you know what’s good for you! Keep your nose out. I know what I’m doing. No one’s been murdered; at least, not recently.”

“Then you know whose bones they are?”

“I’ve been told.”

“I still think you should tell the police.”

“And have the bloody place closed down? And lose my job? That’s what would happen! That’s a graveyard out there, and a very old one. The place would be crawling with bloody priests and what-you-call-its?… archy…?”

“Archaeologists?”

“Those are the buggers. They’d love this place, if they got to know about it, but they’re not going to. When the lads started digging up those bones with the J.C.B., Mr. Mycock, our gaffer, said to keep it quiet, if we wanted to stay in work, and we have done. There’s only a few of us knows about it, and it’s going to stay that way. You start blabbing about it, and it’s your fault if we lose our jobs! You wouldn’t want that, would you?”

“No,” said Maurice, thinking about the imminent loss of his own livelihood, “perhaps not.”

“Never mind perhaps,” the man growled.

“At least you can tell me about it,” Maurice added, “if I promise to keep the information to myself.”

“I don’t know much,” the man admitted, “just what old Mr. Snape told me. He knows all the history of this area. Got loads of books about it. Goes about with a metal detector all the time. He’s found a lot of stuff. There was a thing about him in the paper not long ago. He found the remains of a village or something, up on Combs Moss. Well, I told him about it, because he’s done me favors, bought bits from me that have turned up at the tip, and given me a good price. He’ll keep his mouth shut, I know.”

The old man scratched his chin anxiously, as though he wasn’t quite as confident as he sounded, or perhaps he had lice in his stubble of beard.

“So whose graveyard is it?” Maurice asked, wanting to get to the nub of the matter.

“Some miners. Hundreds of years ago. It’s a local legend, according to Mr. Snape. He’s read about it in one of his old books. They were digging, and they found something they weren’t looking for, deep underground, not far from where we are now. Some sort of cave, I suppose it was, though they thought they’d dug their way down into hell. They had a name for it; they called it ‘The Devil’s Spawning Ground.’ They found things there, and saw things that scared the daylights out of them, but I’m not sure what. They brought out some objects that looked like eggs and, would you believe it? they started eating them. It was a bad year, the crops must have failed, Mr. Snape thinks, so they were all starving. They’d eat anything, in those days, of course.”

“They were poisoned?” Maurice ventured, thinking he could foresee the end of the tale.

“Not exactly. It wasn’t like that. Something dreadful did seem to happen to some of them at once; though old Snape says he thinks that part of the story was probably just invention. Something to do with the ‘folk imagination.’ He says when one strange thing happens, people add an extra half dozen other things in the telling to spice it up. And you can’t believe tales of men and women turning into something else, can you?; into tall, thin, spidery things, overnight?”

Maurice shook his head, but peered uneasily out towards the line of trees.

The old man slung the dregs of his tea out the door and wiped his shirt front round the rim of his mug. “As for the others,” he continued, “for a while, nothing happened to them. Then they started changing, behaving different. They developed nasty habits, and people roundabout didn’t like them.”

“What sort of habits?”

“I don’t know. Mr. Snape didn’t want to go into that side of things. He’s like that, he doesn’t talk about anything unpleasant. He just said that people started avoiding them, and for good reasons.”

“They became isolated.”

“That’s it. Formed their own little community. That got a name, too. They called it Devil’s Hole. Old Snape thinks, over the years, it got shortened to Dev’s Hole, then the locals forgot the original name, and it got twisted to Dove Holes, but I don’t know about that. Anyway, things went on without too much trouble, until some of the miner’s wives started having babies. The kids weren’t right at all, and the women tried to hide them. There was something unpleasant about them.”

“You don’t know what?”

The old man shook his head. “Snape wouldn’t say. But they were bad enough to force the miners and their families up onto Combs Moss, out of the way, where they couldn’t be seen. They built a little village of sorts, the one Mr. Snape found the remains of.” The old man took a step towards the door and pointed a grubby hand at the lines of rock that marked Black Edge and Hob Tor. “Just there, I think.”

“It seems they made a deal with the other villages hereabouts to keep out of their way, in exchange for food and other things they needed to survive. They used to send a few people down from the Moss with hand carts, to collect stuff. That went on for years, then those children I mentioned started to get loose, started roaming about the countryside. It seems they looked very strange. People didn’t like the look of them at all. And bad things happened.”

Once again, Maurice would have liked more details, but the old man was plainly unable to provide them, so he didn’t interrupt. The story, odd, even outlandish as it was, had the ring of truth, and was exacerbating a feeling of unease that had dominated Maurice’s mind and body since just before the accident, prior to his visit to the tip. He was still feeling wretchedly ill, and the medicine wasn’t working.

“Things got so bad,” the old man continued, “that one day, people for miles around got together, went up onto Combs Moss, and slaughtered everyone there, kids and all. They brought the bodies down and buried them in a pit they dug here, near the cave they’d found. They sealed off the cave and filled in the diggings that led to it.”

“And those were the people whose remains you’ve found?”

“So Mr. Snape says. If anyone knows about these things, it’s him. It seems right, as though there may be some truth in it, when you looked at some of those bones.”

Maurice glanced down at the blanketed bath tub, and imagined the peculiar things hidden there. “You should put them back,” he said. “I’ll help you. They should be reburied, right now, at once.” Suddenly, he was convinced that such action was urgent and necessary.

At first, perhaps from simple laziness, the old caretaker was reluctant to cooperate. He shook his head and made a woofing noise, as though he was being intolerably harassed. “Never mind that now—” he said, but Maurice decided to act.

He pushed his way deeper into the cabin and lifted the tub of bones up to his chest. He was a big man; the sort few people would chose to argue with, and the old man decided not to even try.

“Come with me,” Maurice ordered. “There’s a spade over there. Bring it with you. And show me where they found these bones.”

The old man trudged ahead, slithering from time to time, as did Maurice, on the mud under the dried earth crust. He stopped at a spot quite undistinguished by any obvious mark, apparently at random, and pointed down at the ground. “Here,” he said.

“Are you sure?” Maurice asked, suspiciously.

The old man nodded emphatically, and repeated, “Here, or hereabouts.”

Maurice took the spade and began to dig. It was hard work. He had to cut through a mesh of impacted household waste that lay deep under the thick, heavy mud. He was sweating in streams, probably from fever as much as from his exertions. He paused from time to time to wipe his brow, and noticed small groups of people standing immobile in the distance. They seemed to be observing him, though he could not be sure.

“Are those men who work with you?” he asked his companion.

The old man glanced around, obviously not liking what he saw. “No, that’s them,” he said. “The scavengers.”

“And who are they?” Maurice asked, as he resumed digging.

After a while, after quite a long pause, the old man said, “I think you know as well as I bloody do,” and shuffled off toward the cabin. Maurice did not try to stop him.

When he had dug a shapeless hole about three feet deep, and about twice the volume of the tin bath, he poured the bones carefully into it, and spread the blanket over them. He shoveled the mix of garbage and earth back on top of them quickly.

When he had finished, he slung the shovel over his shoulder and traipsed back toward the cabin. The groups of people appeared to have moved nearer, but were still not close enough to be seen clearly. Their faces were pale, featureless blobs. Some of them, he noticed, had very long arms and legs, but tiny bodies. The harder he stared, the stranger some of them became.

He thought he must be hallucinating; his fever was raging; he needed more medication.

His foot struck something. It looked like ivory, but was probably yellow plastic bleached by the sun. Curious, he bent and tried to pick it up. It would not move. He dug his fingers down around its curved surface and pulled hard. It moved up slightly, and he realised he was holding a bone. It looked very much like a human femur! He straightened up and twisted round, studying the surface of the ground about him intensely. Here and there other whitish lumps protruded. He stalked over to the nearest and gave it a prod with his shoe. It was another bone. He quickly identified half a dozen more, within a ten-yard circle of the first he had found. Some of the bones were… unusual.

A feeling of despair washed over him. He was convinced there were hundreds more of them, scattered out there in the tip. For a reason he could not isolate or understand, the knowledge appalled him. He panicked.

He left the spade on the ground and ran to the porta-cabin. The door and the window were both shut. The door was locked. Maurice was convinced the old man was in there; had deliberately shut himself in. He banged the door with his fist like a fool, and shouted. When he tired of this he trudged bleakly back to his car.

Before leaving, he took one last look round at the tip. There was nobody there. The scavengers had gone.

He wondered where.

He was having a bad night.

He had gone to bed early, at nine thirty, after taking a cocktail of his wife’s pills and potions, washed down with a beaker of whiskey. He had slept like a dead thing for about an hour, then had jerked awake as though someone in the room had shouted. Perhaps he had shouted. His dreams had been that bad.

Once awake, he felt terribly disappointed. He had expected to be knocked out well into the next day, but was aware his mind would permit him no more rest. He longed for sleep. He was stuck instead with a nervous, infuriating wakefulness.

He pitied himself. He felt like a tiny child locked in a cold, dark place as a punishment for something he had not done. He was alone there. He was alone in the world.

His loneliness was something he had been trying to avoid, to bury away deep in his mind. He had been partially successful in doing this, but the knowledge of his solitariness, of his lack of friends, and now, of even a wife, had festered there. Now, under pressure of the strange events of the day, and of his sickness, his isolation had burst out, and bloomed in his brain like a huge and hideous flower.

He needed to talk to someone, needed sympathy, and help of some kind.

But he had no one to turn to, no real friends. Previously, all his social life had involved his business associates. He had been closest to the other partners in the company they had created together, but they were the last people he wanted to talk to now. He had no children, his parents and other relatives were dead or estranged, and he had never joined things. He didn’t play golf, perform in amateur theatricals, or belong to the Rotarians like Neville bloody Gale.

God, he thought, I am pitiable!

Then, No, make that pathetic.

He lay alone with this insight and other thoughts, at times almost dozing, for some hours, until his door bell rang. Someone seemed to have their finger glued to the buzzer. The single ring went on and on. Every nerve in Maurice’s body jangled with it.

He sat up, switched on the bedside light, and grabbed his watch. It was ten past two in the morning.

The ringing stopped at last.

He thought he heard a thump on the door.

His house, in spite of the fact it was secondhand, was one of the most recent of its kind built in Buxton. It was big, pretentious, had been very expensive, but the walls and ceilings were thin. Sound traveled from room to room without hindrance. A radio playing softly in the kitchen could be heard clearly in the bathroom one floor up at the other end of the house. Maurice was sure someone was doing something to the front door; perhaps forcing the lock.

He sneaked downstairs in his dressing gown, shaking with sickness and, yes, he acknowledged, fear, as well!

The street light outside cast enough illumination for him to make out the shape of a figure on the other side of the distorting glass in the front door. Well enough for him to be sure that his visitor earlier in the day, who he had kicked, had returned. The man was bending forward, pushing clumsily at his letter box, trying to get something through. Part of a small package and the tips of two fingers and a thumb protruded through the slot.

Maurice went and picked up the telephone he had flung at the wall in rage after his conversation with good old Neville Gale.

The ancient instrument had survived in one piece. It was satisfyingly heavy. He went to the door, held the phone up high, and brought it down with brute force on the letter box.

There was a sound from beyond the door that made Maurice drop the phone and hide his face in his hands. It was a wall of pain, outrage, and despair, and somehow it expressed, with acute accuracy, the fears, thoughts and emotions that had been haunting him that night, and during the recent past. It gave voice to them exactly. It was as though his own soul stood out there, lost, alone, and in great agony. Maurice felt a sickening mixture of compassion and self-pity.

He was sick. He tried to reach the washing-up bowl in the kitchen, but didn’t make it.

After he had cleaned himself up, he forced himself to inspect the letter box, expecting to see blood. There was none. Fragments of charred newspaper were caught in the flap, nothing else.

No finger tips, he thought, thank God!

On impulse, he turned the locks, shot back the absurd, over-ornate bolts, and opened the door wide. He peered out at his morbidly tidy garden (his one hobby) and found it empty. All was quiet.

His cat ran urgently toward him across the road, then changed its mind, and scampered back. Something behind the privet hedge, near the spot where the cat had changed direction, moved heavily, shaking the bushes. Maurice stared hard, but could see nothing through the darkness under the tight, trimmed leaves.

A shadow passed swiftly across his lawn towards the house, as though a large bird had passed above.

But that was impossible! Nothing had moved below the streetlight, that could cast a shadow!

Then he saw something tall and thin, like the trunk of a narrow tree, in his neighbor’s garden. He was sure it had jerked into brief motion; had scuttled quickly a little closer, then gone still.

It did it again, seeming to cover ten feet of ground in a split second. It was now close enough for Maurice to form some idea about what manner of creature it was.

It had many legs.

Maurice ran inside and slammed the door. He locked and bolted it.

The door bell was operated by batteries. He removed them and put them into the pocket of his dressing gown. He sat on the stairs watching the front door for ten minutes, waiting for the bell to ring. He knew that it couldn’t, but thought perhaps it would.

He ran upstairs and threw himself into bed. He lay facedown, with a cushion over his head, cocooned in his sheets and blankets.

Later, he heard a movement on the roof. Something had climbed up there, and was making its way along the gable above his bedroom. It made harsh, scratching sounds on the tiles, and dislodged some of them. Maurice heard them crashing down into his garden. From the sounds, he judged that whatever it was had clambered out to a position just above his window.

As if to confirm this speculation, there came a loud, spasmodic tapping on the glass.

Maurice half sat up. He was glad that his curtains were pulled shut. As he stared at them, the window behind was shattered and one of them twitched open. A long, gray, scrawny limb, perhaps an arm, but without a proper hand on the end of it, waved a little bundle at him. It dropped the bundle and withdrew.

There were more scampering sounds from above as Maurice fled from the room.

He didn’t go near the packet; he thought he knew what was in it.

Something he didn’t want.

He locked himself in his office, turning all his equipment on, and played the CD his wife had given him, of soothing natural and artificial sounds, as loud as he could stand it. It had no calming effect, but it drowned out other noises. Maurice sat perfectly still in the one comfortable chair until daybreak.

Then he dressed and went out to his car.

To his surprise, hundreds of birds were singing enthusiastically all round him. It was the dawn chorus. It was just like the sounds on the CD he had been playing, and it scared him stiff.

He got hurriedly into his car and drove towards Dove Holes again.

When he reached the entry to the Victory Quarry he found the tip was closed. A heavy chain, joined at the ends by a fat padlock, was looped through the metal grill on the gates. He remembered then that it was four thirty on a Saturday morning. The tip would be shut for another forty-eight hours at least.

He got out of his car and pushed the gates hard with the heel of his shoe. They hardly moved. He climbed back into the driving seat, backed the car away as far as he could, keeping in line with the gate, then accelerated straight down the centre of the access path.

The chain and lock held when the car hit, but the hinges on the left split from the concrete gatepost, and the gates whipped up over the bonnet. Something smashed the windscreen, which fell in fragments on his lap. The car slew round out of control when he applied the brakes, and tobogganed along on top of the crust of dried mud which opened behind him like a huge wound. The line of trees flashed by as the vehicle spun. The air was full of flying earth, scraps of refuse and noise.

The rear left side of the car smacked against the right front end of the porta-cabin which reared up under the impact. It did not topple over, but jumped some distance out of its original position. The side caved in and the door flew wide open.

Maurice sat stunned in the driving seat. He didn’t seem to have hurt himself in the crash. He felt nothing except numb, possibly from all the pills he had been taking. Too many, maybe! He noticed his reactions were slowed down and movements faltering. His fingers felt wooden as he fumbled with the clip of the seatbelt. The door lock was jammed and he couldn’t open it. He crawled over the passenger seat and let himself out that way, emerging face down and on his hands.

He stood up, shook himself, and climbed onto one of the big skips to take stock of his situation.

Although the sun was hardly up, the landscape was bathed in clear, soft, almost creamy light. There were shreds of thin cloud squatting on the fields that clung to the sides of Combs Moss, and frozen billows of morning mist hovered above the surfaces of the small lakes that had formed, over the years, in the quarry bottoms. Something in motion caught his eye, running away from him along a line of wall, but he realised at once, from its russet coat, that it was only a large fox. There were rabbits, too, munching the tall grass around the edges of the tip. The air smelt clean and dry, as he imagined desert air must.

Except for the regular clanking and glugging of a distant pump engine somewhere down in the old diggings, all was stillness and silence.

Nothing moved or made a sound in the line of dark trees.

He clambered over the broken steps leading up to the cabin, and went inside.

The pile of mattresses had fanned out like a pack of cards. The old caretaker was spreadeagled across them on his back. His face looked raw, and was mottled with dark stains like those that had remained on Maurice’s hands after he had crushed the egglike object he had found. The man looked dead, but wasn’t. A heartbeat was just detectable under his overalls, and he was drawing rasping breath through his mouth. Maurice tried to rouse him, but soon gave up. The man seemed in a trance, or coma.

Many of the piles of cases and boxes scattered along the length of the cabin had toppled over and burst open. Maurice was not surprised to see that some of them had been packed with bones, and that two of them contained dozens of the eggs wrapped in scraps of grubby paper and plastic. Bundles of the long, thin bones, tied like firewood with electric cable, were revealed behind a half-fallen rubber sheet.

Maurice left the cabin and wormed his way back into his car. He tried the engine. It started without trouble and he found he was able to back the vehicle away from the cabin. He drove cautiously down into the tip. Something under the chassis was grating against the wheels, but he didn’t give it a thought.

The cinder path took him past a high wire fence marking no apparent boundary. Twice he stopped to look round, hoping to catch sight of some of the scavengers, but there was no one else about at all, he was soon convinced of that.

In one of the deeper sections of the recent workings he nosed the car out over what appeared to be dried mud when the caked surface broke and the vehicle tipped forward alarmingly. The back wheels spun strands of slime, like black mucus, out behind.

He could not reverse out. The car was sinking. Oily stuff oozed in through the bottoms of the doors around his feet.

He awkwardly hauled himself out of the passenger door again, and abandoned the car. He walked back the way he had come, out of knee deep, liquid filth, then climbed up to the top of one of the highest mounds of builder’s rubble. The position gave him a view over most of the tip. He noticed little clouds of smoke or steam were starting to drift up from the surface in various places, as though fires had been started underground. He went to investigate.

The smoke for that was what it was, was coming up through some of the tunnellike holes he had noticed on his first visit. It was slightly scented, not unpleasantly, and had a greenish tinge. He wandered round for a while, peering down into the openings, then sat down next to a large hole that was not emitting smoke. He could hear a sound deep down in the tunnel, a regular heavy pounding, like the bass line of a musical composition. He leaned out over the hole and cupped his ear with his hand. He thought he could hear other sounds down there, like snatches of a whispered conversation.

He was propped up on one arm with his hand outstretched on the encrusted mud. Suddenly, as he adjusted position, the surface gave under his weight and he dropped into the tunnel clumsily. He lay still for a moment, winded. Then instead of drawing back out again, he tentatively reached down even farther. The tunnel was quite wide enough for him to squirm into. It descended at an angel of about thirty-five degrees to the surface; a comfortable angle to slip down.

And, he judged, not so steep that he could not make his way back out again without too much trouble, if he had to.

It was not absolutely dark down there; there seemed to be some source of dim light ahead of him. Feeling his way carefully and methodically, he lowered himself into the ground. When he felt his feet slip over the lip of the tunnel, he had a momentary doubt about the wisdom of what he was doing, which he forced himself to ignore.

Moving with great caution, he descended perhaps forty or fifty feet down the narrow passage without much trouble.

The tunnel got a little less steep after a while, however, and became narrower, and he found he was having to make more effort to make any progress. Also, the air was getting musty and unpleasant to breathe.

He rested, and began to worry about the sides of the tunnel collapsing on him. He would suffocate. No one knew he was there, or would come looking for him.

Total loneliness stabbed up inside him again, with an accompanying, enervating, surge of self-pity.

Although he was strong, he was not at all fit, and what he was doing, in his condition, seemed suddenly crazy.

He was just about to start wriggling back out when he saw and heard a motion in front of him.

Something reached out of the dark ahead, and clasped his hand. It was a thin, dry, loose-skinned hand, and it took a powerful hold on his. His fingers were crushed painfully together. Whoever was in front of him began to retreat, pulling him further down the tunnel. He tried to resist, but discovered he was at the end of his strength. He plummeted lower very fast, hurting himself against stones and other objects that protruded from the sides of the crudely dug hole.

He tried to keep his free arm bent across his face to protest it, but smashed his elbow against something sharp.

He thought whoever was pulling him was whispering something earnestly to him, that he could not catch. After a while he gave up trying to hear and started howling with pain.

Something hit him hard above the right eye. He became unconscious.

There were voices in the air around him. He knew they were conversing together, not trying to communicate with him. The words they used sounded like a distorted jumble of heavily accented English that he was too weak to make the effort to understand. He lay quite still for what could have been a long time, with his eyes shut. He slept, then woke when he felt himself being lifted and moved. He was lowered to the ground with a bump that hurt. He was vaguely aware of forms and figures moving away from him. He slept again.

He woke to absolute silence.

It seemed that he was blind. He passed his fingers over his eyes and felt a sticky crush covering the top half of his face, welding his eyelids shut. He scratched at his eyes with both hands, and was relieved when the substance began to crumble away. He managed to get his eyes open and saw, as he had suspected, that it was dried blood.

He turned over on his side and tried to get to his feet. Sharp pains shot through his body, causing him to yell. From the sound of his voice, he knew he was enclosed in a small space. He collapsed into a sitting position, and looked about him.

The circular, domed compartment had walls of smoothly worked bare rock. A pale illumination, falling from a number of narrow tunnels the led diagonally up and out, from positions about three feet from the ground, showed him he was alone. Except for himself and a number of piles of the egg-like objects that were now familiar to him, resting in nests of rubbish, the room was empty. He crawled about, trying to ignore the pain in his probably broken left arm, and inspected the nests. They were about two feet in diameter, and made of the shredded, entangled remains of the sort of refuse he would have expected to find in a dustbin.

He touched some of the eggs. They looked slightly different from the ones he had seen previously. They were very warm. He felt them quiver slightly under his finger tips. Their shells were soft. They had a peculiar, pleasantly spicy smell that made him feel hungry. His stomach growled, and he tried to remember when he had last eaten. He had no idea how long he had been underground but, from the sharp, agonizing pangs in his belly, he’d been there some considerable time.

The eggs looked more and more appetizing the longer he studied them. If they taste anything like as good as they smell, he thought, they would be delicious. He picked up a handful and, with great difficulty, resisted trying to eat one.

He put five of them in the inside pocket of his torn and filthy jacket, and scrambled into one of the passages leading out.

They all pointed upward.

Presumably, if he kept going, sooner or later, he would reach the surface!

He thought he was going to die down there.

The tunnels looped and twisted off in all directions. There were places where they forked and, when they did, he always chose the path that had the steepest gradient upward. It didn’t seem to matter as, round the first bend, he frequently found himself almost falling along a stretch that took him diagonally down again. The illumination in the passages was always up ahead; somehow he could never discover its source. He was always blundering on toward the light.

From time to time he stopped to doze, then started awake and continued on. His mind was empty; his brain felt as raw as his hands. He was bleeding from dozens of small wounds. He was drenched in the sweat of fever.

When he saw a clear, whiter light ahead, he stopped because it was hurting his eyes. He lay with his chin on the ground while his sight adjusted, and the awareness that what he was looking at might be daylight gradually dawned upon him.

Strangely, he felt no elation. He felt resentment.

About bloody time, he thought.

He hesitated before completing the last stretch, unaccountably reluctant to get to the surface, now that he was almost there. Something about the quality of light caused him some trepidation; it was eerie, and not quite right.

It was like moonlight, but far too bright.

The world he emerged into was well-lit, but there was no sun shining. There was no moon, either. Above him stretched an empty, cold, silvery sky.

The topography of the landscape around him was recognizable, but was stripped of its familiar features. The shapes of Combs Moss loomed unmistakably ahead of him, but the walls and fields along its sides were gone. What remained looked like a hill of lead. Everywhere, as far as he could see, the land was smoothed off into planes of gray that gave an impression of impenetrable solidity.

When he saw the dark line of trees and the porta-cabin where he had expected them to be, he felt a surge of wild hope.

The huge black van was parked between them! Its back was open. It was parked at an angle to his line of vision, so he could only see a little way inside it. He could see nothing there but shadows.

He started to run toward the van. He hurt in every limb, and stumbled like a drunk with a wooden leg, but he had discovered a resource of determination and energy at the sight of the van. It seemed to represent his last, best hope.

When he was about fifty yards from the vehicle a figure jumped to the ground out of the back and disappeared round the side farmost from him. Maurice shouted wordlessly and made frantic efforts to run faster. He thought he heard a door slam. An engine started. The back of the van started to close automatically; a black door descended smoothly, slowly, and silently.

Maurice tried to scream. He was crying, and waving and flapping both his arms to get attention. His feet were getting heavier every step he took.

The van jerked once, then moved away. It accelerated. Maurice continued trying to run to catch it, but gave up when the vehicle vanished over the crest of the hill.

Finally exhausted, he fell to his knees.

He was facing the line of trees. They were almost leafless now, and he could see, perched on the branches, some of the things that he had not seen clearly before. They were busy at some task, flittering about individually and in groups.

Perhaps they had seen him. One of them called out what could have been a chattering, imbecilic greeting.

A number of them ventured forward out of the trees. Moving in fits and starts, they came towards him, spreading out as they did so.

The closer they got, the worse they looked.

Maurice knew he could not move another step. Resigned, he sat and waited for them.

Remembering he was hungry, he pulled one of the eggs from his pocket and put it in his mouth. Keeping his gaze steadily on the creatures, who were almost upon him, he bit down hard on the egg.

Later.

He was lying down, so he stood up.

He opened his eyes, and found he could see in all directions at once.

But he could not see directly up or down.

He tried to touch himself, to find out what he was, but he had lost the use of his arms, if he still had any.

He was hungry, but there was nothing anywhere that looked like food. Then he realized he had no mouth.

He stretched his many legs experimentally. He discovered he could move easily across the crusted surface of the earth, with almost no effort.

He made a clattering sound by rattling parts of the top of his body.

He waited.

Then, feeling deeply anxious, he scuttled towards the line of trees to join the others of his kind.

At least, he thought, I shan’t be alone.

But, when he reached the trees, he realized they had been dead for a long time.

The place was deserted.