Guy Smith - The Lurkers

A steady dripping sound. The snow was melting off the trees, A slow thaw, but how slow? He couldn't see the boundary fence that separated Hodre from the forest, there was just a long white wall incorporating designs that would have taxed the skill of any architect or sculptor; nature's beauty alongside her cruelty. Hoofprints had compressed the snow where the deer had gone in single file between two high drifts; that was why they had been invisible from the lower ground. Peter began to follow their tracks. Perhaps the herd's trail would lead him to safety.

He stopped and drew back. No way was he going in there. The tracks turned in a sharp right angle and disappeared between the low branches of firs weighed down by snow, leading away into the gloomy interior of the forest, which even the whiteness of the buzzard had failed to penetrate.

The deer had turned off because it was the only way. Behind lay the steep fields and the treacherous descent to Hodre; ahead impenetrable ten-foot high drifts that spilled across into the fringe of the forest.

I'm not bloody well going in therel His mute cry of despair almost had him panicking. Then I'll have to go back! No! Or stay here until the snow melts.

Peter had begun to back away without realising it, a subconscious decision to retreat. Maybe if he had known the forest he would have risked it and followed rides and firebreaks that had been sheltered from the snow out on to Ruskin's land the other side. But he didn't; he'd never set foot in the big wood before. In all probability he would gel lost and still be wandering around in circles when darkness fell. Afraid to shout because—because they might hear him! Dead by morning, from exposure or ...

He had to go back, there was no other way. He experienced a sudden urge to burst into tears, to fling himself down into the snow, to give up. Surrender. His legs were on the verge of buckling, screaming at him ro lie down in the soft feathery snow. He'd read somewhere that if you buried yourself it was all snug and warm, that you drifted off into a gentle sleep and . . .

That was when he saw the man! At least he thought it was a man; a white shape that vaguely resembled a human body lying half-buried in the big drift which had caused the deer to turn off into the fir wood. He might have been asleep, except that his posture was so unnatural that nobody could possibly have slept in that position even out here, finally pulled down by fatigue: spread-eagled, the legs higher than the body. He'd been like that before the buzzard came because he couldn't possibly have got into the drift afterwards. That was one reason why he wasn't just asleep. Looking at his upside-down face, Peter found another reason: the side of the head had been staved in by a heavy blow, splintering the skull, burying the left eye deep in a gouged-out socket that was thick with congealed blood. His mouth was wide open as though the man had managed one last scream before he had died.

Peter's stomach seemed to contract and he almost vomited. He wanted to look away but that single fish-like eye seemed to hold him with a baleful stare. Look at me, see what's happened to me because I trespassed up here in their domain. You know who I am, don't you?

Peter knew; recognition filtered slowly into his numbed brain. Less than a week ago this very man had been warning him of the perils which surrounded Hodre and its druids' circle—now that same evil had claimed Don Peters' life.

It was the poacher all right, clad in some kind of homemade garment, an old white bedsheet fashioned into a cloak and cowl—the figure in the snow last night.

A limp arm slipped and brought a shower of snow down with it, as though to hide the bloodstains below the head, then straightened out, finger extended, pointing, accusing. You did this to me. You shot mel

Peter thought he was going to faint. A red and black haze before his eyes. He tasted bile at the back of his throat and knew he was going to throw up.

You killed me! Murdererl

'No!' Peter managed a denial, a hoarse shout before he was doubled up, vomiting. Then logic came from somewhere and steadied his reeling brain, pulling him back from the brink of the abyss into which he was slipping. That's no shotgun wound. Birdshot couldn't inflict an injury like that except at point-blank range. You've been bludgeoned to death. Not by me. I'm innocent! D'you hear me, I'm innocent!

The solitary eye maintained its malevolent stare of accusation; the forefinger rigid with rigor mortis was still trained on Peter.

He tried to find an explanation as he backed slowly away. The druids? If they could kill animals then they were capable of murder. That was ridiculous. The deer, then; Peters had been caught in the path of a frenzied stampede? No, that didn't seem feasible either. What then?

He didn't know; that was the most frightening pan of all. Just that they had done this—those who lurked in the darkness, the gloom of the deep woods. Even now he sensed them watching him, and turned to flee. He cast one last glance at the bloodied, mutilated, barely recognisable face. / didn't do it, so help me God, I swear I didn't!

Then Peter was running, floundering, not daring to look back, hearing muffled pursuing footsteps, whispered voices; ready to scream the moment they pulled him down.

But they didn't. There was nobody there when he burst out of the drifts and fell on the smooth powdered slopes of the hillside, lying there breathless. No footsteps, just the thumping of his temples and the racing of his pulses.

The sun was dipping behind the highest peaks of the distant beacons, a deep fiery ball that threatened the return of a hard frost once its luke-warm rays had been replaced by the shadows of dusk,

He knew he had to get back to the cottage because there was nowhere else to go. His last outpost, a besieged blockhouse, the enemy forces already massing in the hills above, waiting for darkness.

The descent was far more treacherous than the ascent had been; he could see where he might end up if he slipped, a human snowball rolling and bouncing, growing in size, smashing asunder when it hit the sharp rocks below to reveal a battered bloody corpse, human carrion for the predators of the dark hours to feed upon. Like Peters.

Oh God, I didn't kill him, I swear it\

No, but I wounded him!

Peter glanced back just once to satisfy himself that they weren't on his heels already. There wasn't a living thing in sight. Even the sun was gone now and the evening shadows cast elongated tentacles down the hillside as though reaching out for him, trying to pull him back.

He wished he could have skirted the stone circle but it was the only way down. The deformed trees stood out starkly against a white background, the sun having melted the snow which had earlier hidden their scarred boughs. They, too, were pointing accusingly at him with crooked hag-like fingers. Murdererl

He was bleeding from a cut on his hand where he had scraped it against a sliver of jagged rock, leaving a trail, a scent that anybody or anything could follow! Tonight they would come for him for sure. They wouldn't wait any longer!

He grunted with relief when he made it to the back gate. There was still nothing behind him but a barren landscape that might have been in the depths of Antarctica, the dusk coming fast now that the sun had gone.

He was aware of the clinging coldness of his saturated clothes and shivered for a number of reasons. He broke into a staggering run towards the door.

Something seemed to hit him. It was almost a physical blow that stopped him in his tracks: a flash of crimson that dazzled in the surrounding whiteness like the blinding beam of an oncoming headlight in the blackness of the night. He recoiled as he thought of Peters again and the brightness of the blood on the snow. , .