The Shelter Read online

  (Above Duncan gave a cry of anger, an uncharacteristic rage. "Fuckin' psycho!" Tom cried out, then he yelled, as if he'd been hurt. There was the noise of one of them sprawling across the lid of the shelter, and metal scraping.)

  Someone's finally done it, Alan thought, finally spilt blood onto the stone. He heard a buzzing sound in his head, as if some of the wasps had got down into the shelter with him. The sounds of fighting continued above, but he didn't look up. For he was now convinced something was in the shelter too, something pursuing Martin. Something nebulous that could be made real by a spilt drop of blood. There was a roaring sound, but it seemed to be all in Alan's head, and he suddenly realised his nightmares and wet dreams had been one and the same, for he could remember now: he was chasing a fleeing girl through the darkness, eager with an overwhelming lust, but simultaneously scared of what chased him behind. And Martin Longhurst's body sprawled forward as if he had been tripped, and even as he fell Alan could see how he tried to look behind him with a terrified glance... and then it was as if something was pulling the boy by the legs, away from the ladder and escape. Martin's hands groped for purchase on the smooth dirty concrete floor, and in their slow struggles they were like pale undersea crabs scuttling. He was dragged backwards, and upwards, as if the thing holding him by the legs was straightening as it pulled him back. And into blackness, for Martin was fading now, his glowing image being swallowed up in the darkness of the shelter. Swallowed up by whatever hunched thing had him by the legs (which were already not visible). Alan had one look at the terrified and bruised face, and then that was gone too, and all that were left were the boy's hands, like two separate creatures scrabbling with a desperate and alien slowness to stay on the ground. As one vanished upwards into the darkness it opened so that Alan could see the palm again, and he saw that it wasn't just burnt, but cut and dripping with blood; one diagonal slash on the inside of the left hand. Like Martin had cut himself deliberately there with a blade... with a Swiss Army Knife.

  ("Yeah you'd better run away, freak!" Tom was shouting; his voice grew louder as he turned and spoke down to Alan. "Your fuckin' pussy psycho mate just tried to slash me in the face with a tent peg! Scarred me probably! You coming up?)

  With Martin gone the strange, glowing light disappeared too. There were no figures to replace Martin.

  But Alan's feeling that something tall and hunched and malignant was down in the shelter persisted, as if the things that had happened here had all happened now, and simultaneously. As if something was still hungry.

  He remained still and silent, but imagined he could sense something's attention switch from Martin to him; as if the angry buzzing wasp sound in his head was giving him away.

  Just a drop, he thought incoherently, just a drop of blood because Tom's still blabbing. How long would just a couple of drops call it up for?

  Something was definitely coming towards him in the darkness.

  "No!" he cried out.

  He turned to run, and dazed himself against the wall behind. He had forgotten that the darkness wasn't infinite at all, but close in and confining, like the insides of a trap. He shook his head, and looked up to the pinprick of light from the shelter's hatch, like a diver to the sunlight above. Then he started to climb the ladder.

  He was simultaneously relieved that it was all over, and convinced something was still after him, something light-hating that lived in the darkness. He imagined one of the masked men looking up the shaft at him; imagined the bandaged and bleeding hand of one of the tramps reaching for a rung of the ladder to start climbing. But he knew whatever might be down in the shelter was neither of those.

  One of Alan's sweaty hands slipped as he climbed, and for one minute he thought he was going to fall down the shaft, and that if he did fall it would be into the clutches of whatever was below. But he didn't, and continued climbing, telling himself that there was nothing down there; that he was being a baby. The ladder moved back and forth slightly as he climbed, and he could hear the dull scrape of metal on metal as it dragged across the rusty bolts. With that, and the buzzing pressure in his head, he couldn't hear anything else, couldn't conclusively prove that there was silence beneath him. His arms and legs ached and he felt himself tire, moving in the same dead-slow way as the figures he had seen.

  Alan only realised he'd reached the top of the ladder when he banged his head on the metal hatch. He cried out, then swore. He tried to push the hatch up with his shoulders, but it wouldn't budge. He punched it with one fist but just numbed his hand. He heard faint laughter from the other side of the hatch, and then silence. Tom and Mark were obviously trying to keep quiet.

  He paused, and became aware of two things.

  The ladder was still moving slightly back and forth, as if he were atop a tree in a breeze. And he could still hear it squeaking, the rhythmic high pitched scrapes. Something was coming up after him.

  "Let me out!" he shouted, not at the two boys outside but as if at the shelter itself. He stared downwards but couldn't make out anything in the darkness. There's nothing there, one part of his mind said, while another thought that whatever was approaching was coming up slowly, clumsily, as if it had something slung upon its back. As if it had Martin Longhurst's body slung across its back.

  Someone above rammed a tent peg into the gap between the concrete and the metal lid, which opened an inch before snapping down again with an angry clanging noise. Alan heard Mark swear.

  He could smell blood now, he was sure of it. Whatever was coming up the ladder after him was stained with blood.

  "Let me out! Please!"

  Something grasped Alan's ankle and started to pull. He cried out, closed his eyes, and tightened his grip on the rungs. He felt his body being pulled downwards; imagined his hands letting go of the ladder one by one, just like Martin's had come away from the ground against which they had scrabbled for purchase...

  Suddenly, even behind his closed eyes he was aware of light flooding the shaft. The hand (if it was a hand) grasping Alan's ankle seemed to let go; the pressured buzzing noise in his head faded, as if with a final whine. He opened his eyes and saw blurry hands reaching for him from the hot, bright air above. And as the two boys grabbed him by his t-shirt and hauled him up, Alan took one final look down the shelter's shaft. The distance to the bottom seemed puny, and didn't tally with how long he had seemed to be climbing the ladder in the dark. The shelter's floor was squalid and dirty, and there was nothing down there.

  Then the hands which had hold of him pulled him up, up and out of the shelter, into the summer light.

  ***

  Alan let his body go limp and closed his eyes, letting the others support him as they pulled him away from the shelter and laid him on the parched ground. He could feel the sun on his face as he lay there; hear the faint buzzing of insects.

  "Alan? Alan?" - Mark was shaking him. "Alan what the hell happened? It was only a joke, shutting you in, only a joke. What happened?"

  I was just seeing things, Alan answered inside his own head, eyes still tightly shut. The words sounded hollow and paltry. Nevertheless he knew he should keep saying them to himself; what else could he say? He realised that all the kids books he'd read with titles like Strange But True! were comforting only because he hadn't believed them to be true at all, not the telekinesis or the Bermuda Triangle or the... ghosts. Comforting because they were just books.

  "Alan, fucking hell, get up!" Tom said loudly. "Alan!"

  Just let me lie here..., Alan thought. In the sun. Just let me...

  Tom shook him with rough hands. It wasn't the shaking that caused Alan to open his eyes, to angrily wave Tom away, but the other boy's smell, his hot perspiration up close. He got up, shaking his head to rid it of a humming sound.

  He looked around but saw no sign of Duncan.

  "Alan?" Mark said.

  He didn't answer, but turned quickly, to the shelter. The lid was up, like a waiting mouth. The concrete looked old and worn, ancient like a monument. There
were spots of Tom's blood on there still, Alan knew, although he couldn't see them.

  "What happened?" Mark said. "Alan?"

  "Nothing I just... nothing," Alan said, his voice sounding tetchy and childlike. I was just seeing things, he thought again, stop asking me.

  "Alan for fuck's sake!" Mark said angrily, and grabbed him by the arm. Alan looked down and saw Mark's hand gripping him tightly below the cuff of his t-shirt. It hurt and the skin was already going red. He looked up into the older boy's eyes, and saw how angry Mark was at his evasiveness. Saw the blazing, unreasonable anger that he'd felt himself, and seen in others ever since they'd come to the shelter.

  He pulled away, and spoke reluctantly to the dusty ground.

  "There's something down there."

  "Something down there?" Mark said, looking puzzled. He glanced towards the shelter. "What? What's down there?"

  Alan opened his mouth, but what could he say? Glowing people? Something worse that used the glowing people as bait? But if he didn't say anything the unnatural buzzing of this place would make Mark angry again, the blood rush to his head and...

  Alan turned and was messily sick on the ground.

  Tom sneered at him in disgust. "There's nothing down there. We saw."

  "Then what happened to Alan?" Mark said, sounding irritated. Alan felt giddy in the summer heat and with the sudden nausea that had overtaken him, but he could sense the continuing anger in Mark's manner, now directed at Tom not him. Sense too how Tom was too sullen to notice.

  "I don't know, he's just a kid after all!" Tom said. "I didn't want him hanging around with us! He was probably just imagining things and wet himself or something."

  "Has your imagination ever got you scared like this?" Mark said, gesturing at Alan, who was still bent double.

  "I don't have much of an imagination," Tom said smugly. "Maybe it was a... a rat or something. He's just a kid."

  Mark shook his head absently. Alan had straightened up and felt embarrassed by his retching. He met Mark's questioning gaze, and got the obscure feeling that the older boy was begging him to say that it was a rat, that he was just a stupid imaginative little kid.

  "I've had a bad feeling about this place ever since I heard about it," Mark said, as if to himself.

  "What?" Tom said. "C'mon, are we leaving? I wanna catch that retard who did this to me." He fingered the scratch on his face.

  "Alan, please," Mark said. "What's down there?"

  I was just seeing things; it was a rat, Alan thought...

  "I'm not sure. But Martin Longhurst was down there, at some point," he said.

  "Martin..?" Mark said slowly. His eyes looked angry for a second; a real, sad anger, not the inflated rage that had been pumped into each of them all day. "Fuck this. I'm going back down there."

  Before Alan could react Mark had walked to the concrete shelter, and was getting ready to swing his legs onto the ladder.

  "No, let's leave, don't go down there!" Alan shouted. "There's something..."

  "It's okay Alan," Mark said. His eyes looked both scared and angry, like he'd been edged into doing something he didn't want to. Mark deliberately looked away from Alan to Tom. "I'm not a pussy, I'll be okay." Then he looked down, frowned, and set his first foot onto the ladder.

  "No!" Alan ran forward, kicking up dust from the ground. Mark put his other foot on the ladder, although his body was still above the opening and his hands on the concrete outside. Alan reached the shelter and grabbed one of Mark's sleeves, pulling. "Mark c'mon, let's leave."

  "Shit," Mark muttered, and tried to pull away. "Get him off me!" he shouted over at Tom. Alan felt suddenly furious. Couldn't Mark see he was trying to save him?

  Two fat arms grabbed him around the waist and pulled. Angrily Alan elbowed Tom in his flabby stomach; Tom fell over on his ass in the ground behind, crying out in pain and embarrassment.

  "Get off me you little shit!" Mark shouted, flailing his arm, but Alan still hung on. He was being dragged further forward across the concrete; his face was level with the sun heated stone. Mark had let go of the ladder with both hands now; he was balancing on the squeaking ladder with just his legs and struggling with Alan.

  "You bastard!" Tom said behind him, still sprawled on the ground, but Alan ignored him in his struggle with Mark.

  Alan's face banged against the concrete and his lip split; he tasted blood in his mouth and saw it smeared on the shelter. In a rage, instead of pulling Mark forward, he pushed at him, and the boy over-balanced and one foot seemed to slip from the metal rung of the ladder... but Alan had hold of Mark's shirt and he didn't fall...

  Tom, his face flushed, brought his leg up in a vicious kick that caught Alan straight between the legs. The sudden pain in his balls caused Alan to cry out and double-up; his hands lost their grip on Mark's clothing.

  Mark, looking furious, still hadn't regained his purchase on the ladder, but had been pulling away from Alan's grip. He pulled with all his strength at the very moment Alan let go of him. His feet skidded and slipped on the smooth metal rungs of the ladder; his hands caught at the concrete lip of the shelter...

  There was almost a pause before he fell, as if he would have been okay if not for something reaching up and dragging him down.

  The sound of his legs snapping as he landed was audible to the two boys above. Then there was silence.

  Alan and Tom leaned over the shelter's edge, and stared down into the darkness. They could just see Mark's limp figure in the gloom, sprawled at the bottom of the ladder shaft. He wasn't moving; from twenty feet above they couldn't even see if he was breathing. Alan felt the entire hot summer press down on him as he stared into the darkness below; felt the pressure and hum in his head intensify.

  "Jesus," Tom whispered. "Jesus, you fucking killed him." He looked suddenly enraged, and raised his pudgy fists at Alan. But Alan didn't react at all, just kept staring downwards, and Tom lowered his fists, blinking rapidly. He looked down at Mark's still body again, and turned and ran without a word.

  Alan was left alone, staring downwards at his friend. He realised, with a sick feeling, that he hoped Mark was dead, because then he wouldn't have to go back down. As he tried to visualise such a thing, he realised that he simply wouldn't be able to do it - to climb down that ladder, and hear its rusty squeaking again; to stand down in that blackness again and peer into the gloom where visions might appear - he wouldn't be able to do it.

  "Alan...." Mark's voice said weakly.

  Oh you bastard, Alan thought furiously, staring down to where the voice was coming from. He saw Mark's body stir slightly, although the boy remained prone on the floor.

  "Mark?" he said. "Are you... alright?"

  "No you stupid bastard..." Mark said, and took a heaving breath. "My legs are broke." Alan got the impression he was smiling down there despite the situation.

  I just can't, he thought. What if the shelter lid shut while he was down there with Mark, trapping them in the dark with no one above to let them out?

  "I'll go and get help!" Alan shouted.

  "No!" Mark coughed, and tried to raise himself. "No, that fat bastard will, don't leave me alone..."

  "I have to! He might not, I have to phone an ambulance! I'll run to Clipston, I'll only be gone ten, five..."

  "No Alan, please, don't leave me alone down here," Mark said. He sounded more like a child than Alan had ever heard him before. He'll talk me into it, Alan thought, he always talks me into doing what he wants... And there was a hint of anger in his thoughts, even now. He'll talk me into going back down there...

  Without saying anything more, Alan turned and ran away from the shelter.

  "Alan?" he heard Mark shout. "You there? Alan?"

  There's nothing down there, he thought, I was just being a kid seeing things; it was just a rat... He could taste blood in his mouth from where he had split his lip, and hear the delighted buzzing of wasps...

  "Alan!" Mark shouted, as if terrified. "Alan please don't leave me alone
down here!"

  I just couldn't...

  "Alan, please!"

  Then the hatch of the shelter snapped shut, cutting off Mark in mid-cry.

  ***

  ... mid-cry.

  Later, when glowing figures enfolded their arms around me, I screamed and kicked. The ambulance men in their fluorescent jackets took me in a firmer grip, pulling me away from the shelter's lid. I had been trying to get it open, but scared of cutting my fingers on the metal hatch, for I didn't want to bleed any more onto its concrete. I'd been too unhinged to find any of the tent pegs, or maybe they had been down underground with Mark. As I was pulled away the shelter had been lit up by the livid summer sunset, and I could see the dry stains of my blood aglow upon it too. And behind it the twisted trees writhed in a wind I couldn't feel, and the wasps swarmed. I don't suppose anyone would ever have cleaned my blood from the shelter. Who would bother?

  All the time I'd been struggling to open the shelter, I hadn't heard a single noise from down below. No sound from Mark, or from anything that might be down there with him.

  They wrapped me in a blanket despite the heat, asked me what had happened. Had Mark been conscious when the shelter lid had shut? Yes. Did I know the extent of his injuries? His legs were broken, both of them. Had his head been hurt? No, I didn't think so.

  "Your friend will be alright then," one of them said to me kindly. "Kids don't die from broken legs."

  They let me watch, as they opened the shelter lid - it opened easily for them, eagerly - and shone a torch down, shouted out. Then there was some kind of commotion, more shouting, and they didn't let me watch anymore. It was then that I knew for sure that Mark was dead - when they didn't let me watch anymore. They took me away, down the flat fields towards the gap in the hedge through which the four of us had come hours earlier. I knew I'd have one chance to look behind, that I could take them by surprise but that they wouldn't let me twice.