Guy Smith - The Lurkers

He wondered if there were any more candles anywhere. He should have searched for some during the daylight hours.

Doubtless Janie would know he was cut off here. But just being snowed up was no reason to send a helicopter to search for him. Up in these mountain regions it was a way of life; everybody accepted it.

The candle was getting low, melting its wax into the saucer, the flame larger and flickering fast. Peter estimated it might burn for another half hour. After that he might as well go upstairs to the bedroom.

Why not stay here in the kitchen? If they wanted him they had to come through the door and he had a loaded gun. He was tense, edgy at the prospect of darkness, man's oldest fear, once again. In a way the reflection of the snow made it worse because in the dim glow he thought he saw things.

He was listening to the silence again. He could hear something if he concentrated, like the wind—only it wasn't the wind. Something was moving . . .

Oh God, something really was moving1. There was a sound tike a heavy animal dragging itself along across the frozen snow, the ice cracking and giving way beneath it; perhaps the deer—limping, weakening, scraping its hooves, drawing in great gulps of frosty air, wounded; so it had to come to man, trusting him. Scratching at the door!

Peter whirled in his chair and brought the shotgun up so that the barrels were trained on the door, twin tubes of Damascus steel that wavered because the hands holding them were unsteady, the forefinger touching the front trigger lightly, poised to take a pressure.

He listened again. Laboured rasping breaths from outside, a scratching on the woodwork, then something heavy pounding so that the door vibrated .

The candle flickered and almost went out. Peter was aware of rivulets of cold sweat running down his forehead and making his eyes smart. The voice inside him, the one that always highlighted his worst fears, was screaming at him: 'That's not a deer. Deer don't come near human habitation, they can't knock on doors. It's them; they've come for you!'

He should have fired both barrels simultaneously, a double charge that would have ripped into the woodwork with the full force of the chokes, almost a lethal ball of shot shattering its way out, tearing into whatever was out there. Then reloaded and fired again and again, yelling through the thick cloud of acrid powdersmoke, 'Take that you bastards, and that. Never thought I'd have a gun, did you?'

But he didn't fire. Suddenly he didn't have that kind of courage. Murder. Manslaughter. A dozen or more reasons flitted through his frightened brain and prevented him from pressing the trigger. He remained poised. Waiting. Listening.

Then the candle went out; a final flicker of enlarged flame cast a wide circle of light that dimmed and died, leaving him in total blackness. Somehow he held the gun in one hand and groped for his torch with the other. Even as the beam of white light hit the door the pounding came again, louder this time, so that the bolt rattled.

A voice. He couldn't tell what it was saying but it was definitely a voice. A kind of desperate cry, fists pummelling the door again.

A lot of things went through Peter's fear-crazed brain: that the mad killer, Louvelle, had made it to a lone habitation, somewhere to hole up for the winter. If it was him he'd have a knife, and use it without hesitation. Or the white-cloaked figure, still dripping blood from its shotgun wound, come in search of revenge. / killed your cat and your rabbit, now I'm going to kill you \

Peter was on his feet. His legs felt weak and were trying to pull him back down into the chair. He moved forward a couple of steps and called out, 'Who's there?'

Silence for a few moments, then the scratching started again, lower down, almost at ground level. The blows were weaker than before as though the nocturnal visitor's strength was ebbing.

'I said who's there?' Peter scarcely recognised his own voice, a high-pitched shout that was almost a scream.

No answer. Just that same laboured breathing.

He reached out a hand and tugged at the bolt. He had to jerk it clear of its socket. The latch rattled, then steadied as something on the other side pushed at the door.

Peter backed away a step, and held the gun in one hand whilst with the other he leaned forward and flicked the latch with the end of the torch. The door creaked slowly inwards; he backed away another pace, his mouth so dry it was painful to swallow.

Then he saw it, clearly circled in the white beam of the torch: a figure that crawled on all fours and seemed to be caught up in the torn bedsheet, which had been fashioned into a cowled garment. The face was twisted with agony, hideously caked with dried blood.

A bloody hand was raised, pointing at him. Accusing. Words hammered into his brain: You killed me and now I've come for youl

He wanted to flee, to scream. But there was nowhere to run to and his vocal chords were paralysed. It wasn't possible, but it was happening before his eyes: the tattered, bloody corpse he'd left up in the big snowdrift was here, crawling in through his own doorway.

Don Peters, the Woodside poacher, had returned from the dead to exact a terrible revenge!

Peter had the shotgun loaded and cocked, yet for some reason he did not squeeze its double triggers. He just stared in disbelief, the barrels lowering until they were pointing down at the floor.

"Help me!

With that cracked, pathetic cry, the white-robed figure before him slumped down, breathing heavily, with a gurgling sound as though there was some obstructing fluid in the lungs. His head was raised, looking up, an expression of sheer terror on the blood-caked features. 'Help me, lock the door . . . They are out there!'

And in that instant reasoning came like a cooling wind across a parched desert, and Peter expelled his pent-up breath in one loud gasp of relief. The man who lay on the floor before him was not Don Peters; it was the dead man's poaching partner, Mick Bostock!

'Bostock!' he grunted. 'What's happening? What the hell are you doing here? And—'

'Close the door.' It was a croak of terror. "They are out there, I tell you.'

'They?' Peter reached the door, slammed it shut and shot the bolt. 'And who the hell are they?'

'My God, I wish I knew.' The poacher was close to breaking down. 'But they'll kill us both if they get us!'

Somehow Peter got Bostock into the kitchen chair, and by the light of his torch began to remove that snow-saturated, partly frozen bloodstained outer garment. It was a head wound of some kind, a gash above the left ear which had bled profusely before it congealed, and matted hair clung to the dried blood. Nasty but not dangerous.

'We'll have to wash this,' he murmured as he moved the kettle on to the wide Rayburn hotplate. 'Now, suppose you tell me what happened to you and your mate, eh.'

'Don—have you seen him?' Bostock gripped the sides of the chair and tried to sit upright, but immediately fell back again. 'For God's sake, where is he?'

Peter was trying to sort out some bandages from the meagre first-aid tin on the Welsh dresser. 'I've seen him but I'm afraid he's dead, a wound like a horse had kicked his head.'

'I knew it.' Bostock's voice trembled. 'I knew he'd never get out of that bloody wood alive.'

'Now suppose you stop talking in riddles and try and tell me what the hell is going on around here.' Peter found some rolled bandage and wondered how long it would take the kettle to boil. 'You and your mate were doing your best to try and frighten the life out of us in the Cat that night. Now it seems that all your bogeys have materialised.'

'We was poaching, Don and me.' Bostock's eyes widened as he began to relive the terrifying events which had led up to this meeting. 'Rabbits, mind you, nothin' else, no game or pheasants or the like. We was on Ruskin's land when we saw 'em. Christ, if only we'd seen 'em sooner we might've stood a chance, but the buggers were dressed like us, all in white. First we thought they was somebody else out after the rabbits but the way they started after us we knew then they was no warreners. We split up and took to the woods to try and shake 'em off. You could hear 'em all around looking for us, and then from afar off I heard Don's scream. Just one scream that was sorta cut off so sudden I knew he was dead. Then they was after me. I gave 'em a chase I can tell you, right out of the big wood on to Hodre ground. I reckon I might've made it down here but something hit me.' Bostock fingered his wound gingerly. 'Don't know what it was but it came with terrific force, and if it'd hit me fair and square I guess I'd've dropped there and then. It was a glancing blow and I staggered on somehow, bleeding like a stuck pig. How they never caught up with me I'll never know but eventually I found myself all alone with not a sound of anybody around.