Ellen Datlow - The Best Horror of the Year. Volume 4

The path we’d followed petered out, or more into accurately disappeared into that treacherous surface. Two big, flat-topped boulders jutted out of the scree, one about twenty yards down the ravine floor, the other about fifteen yards on from that, at the mouth of a gully that gaped in the side of our peak.

The mist drifted. I couldn’t see any sign of man or beast. “Hello?” I called.

After a moment, there was a click and rattle somewhere in the ravine. Rock, pebbles, sliding over one another, knocking together.

“Bollocks,” I said.

“Easy,” Diane said. “Looks like we’ve found some low ground anyway.”

“That doesn’t mean much. We’ve lost our bearings.”

“There’s somebody around here. We heard them. Hello?” She shouted the last — right down my earhole, it felt like.

“Ow.”

“Sorry.”

“Forget it.”

There was another click and rattle of stone. And the voice called out “Hello?” again.

“There,” said Diane. “See?”

“Yeah. Okay.”

There was a bleat, up and to our left. I looked and sure enough there was the sheep we’d heard, except it was more of a lamb, picking its unsteady way over the rocks on the lower slopes of the neighbouring peak.

“Aw,” said Diane. “Poor little thing.” She’s one of those who goes all gooey over small furry animals. Not that it stops her eating them; I was nearly tempted to mention the rack of lamb in red wine jus she’d enjoyed so much the night before. Nearly.

The lamb saw us, blinked huge dark eyes, bleated plaintively again.

In answer, there were more clicks and rattles, and an answering bleat from further down the ravine. The lamb shifted a bit on its hooves, moving sideways, and bleated again.

After a moment, I heard the rocks click again, but softly this time. It lasted longer too, this time. Almost as if something was moving slowly, as stealthily as the noisy terrain allowed. The lamb was still, looking silently up the ravine. I looked too, trying to see past where the scree faded into the mist.

The rocks clicked softly, then were silent. And then a dog barked, twice.

The lamb tensed but was still.

Click click click, went the rocks, and the dog barked again.

The lamb bleated. A long silence.

Diane’s fingers had closed round my arm. I felt her draw breath to speak, but I turned and shushed her, fingers to her lips. She frowned; I touched my finger back to my own lips and turned to look at the lamb again.

I didn’t know why I’d done all that, but somehow knew I’d had to. A moment later we were both glad of it.

The click of shifting rocks got louder and faster, almost a rustle, like grass parting as something slid through it. The lamb bleated and took a few tottering steps back along the slope. Pebbles clattered down. The rock sounds stopped. I peered into the mist, but I couldn’t see anything. Then the dog barked again. It sounded very close now. More than close enough to see, but the ravine floor was empty. I looked back at the lamb. It was still. It cocked its head.

A click of rocks, and something bleated.

The lamb bleated back.

Rocks clattered again, deafeningly loud, and Diane made a strangled gasp that might have been my name, her hand clutching my arm painfully, and pointed with her free hand.

The ravine floor was moving. Something was humped beneath the rocks, pushing them up as it went so they clicked and rattled in its wake. It was like watching something move underwater. It raced forward, arrowing towards the lamb.

The lamb let out a single terrified bleat and tried to turn away, but it never stood a chance. The humped shape under the scree hurtled towards it, loose stone rattling like dice in a shaken cup, and then rocks sprayed upwards like so much kicked sand where the lamb stood. Its bleat became a horrible squealing noise — I’d no idea sheep could make sounds like that. The shower of rubble fell back to earth. The lamb kept squealing. I could only see its head and front legs; the rest was buried under the rock. The front legs kicked frantically and the head jerked about, to and fro, the lips splaying back horribly from the teeth as it squealed out its pain. And then a sudden, shocking spray of blood spewed out from under the collapsing shroud of rocks like a scarlet fan. Diane clapped a hand to her mouth with a short, shocked cry. I think I might have croaked ‘Jesus’, or something along those lines, myself.

The lamb’s squeals hit a new, jarring crescendo that hurt the ears, like nails on a blackboard, then choked and cut off. Scree clattered and hissed down the slope and came to rest. The lamb lay still. Its fur was speckled red with blood; its eyes already looked fixed and unblinking, glazing over. The rocks above and around it glistened.

With any luck it was beyond pain. I hoped so, because in the next moment the lamb’s forequarters were yanked violently, jerked further under the rubble, and in the same instant the scree seemed to surge over it. The heaped loose rock jerked and shifted a few times, rippled slightly and was still. Even the stones splashed with blood were gone, rolled under the surface and out of sight. A few glistening patches remained, furthest out from where the lamb had been, but otherwise there was no sign that it’d even existed.

“Fuck.” I definitely said it this time. “Oh fucking hell.”

There was a moment of silence; I could hear Diane drawing breath again to speak. And then there was that now-familiar click and rattle as something moved under the scree. And from where the lamb had been a voice, a low, hollow voice called “Hello?”

Diane put her hand over my mouth. “Stay quiet,” she whispered.

“I know that,” I whispered back, muffled by her hand.

“It hunts by sound,” she whispered. “Must do. Vibration through the rocks.”

There was a slight, low hump where the lamb had been killed; you had to look hard to see it, and know what it was you were trying to spot. A soft clicking sound came from it. Rock on rock.

“It’s under the rocks,” she whispered.

“I can see that.”

“So if we can get back up onto solid ground, we should be okay.”

“Should.”

She gave me an irritated look. “Got any better ideas?”

“Okay. So we head back?”

“Hello?” called the voice again.

“Yes,” whispered Diane. “And very, very slowly, and carefully and quietly.”

I nodded.

The rocks clicked and shifted, softly. Diane raised one foot, moved it upslope, set it slowly, gently down again. Then the other foot. She turned and looked at me, then reached out and took my hand. Or I took hers, as you prefer.

I followed her up the slope. We climbed in as near silence as we could manage, up towards the ravine’s entrance, towards the solidity of the footpath. Rocks slid and clicked underfoot. As if in answer, the bloodied rocks where the lamb had died clicked too, knocking gently against one another as something shifted under them.

“Hello?” I heard again as we climbed. And then again: “Hello?”

“Keep going,” Diane whispered.

The rocks clicked again. With a loud rattle, a stone bounced down to the ravine floor. “John?” This time it was a woman’s voice. Scottish, by the accent. “John?”

“Fucking hell,” I muttered. Louder than I meant to and louder than I should have, because the voice sounded again. “John? John?”

Diane gripped my hand so tight I almost cried out. For a moment I wondered if that was the idea— make me cry out, then let go and run, leave the unwanted partner as food for the thing beneath the rocks while she made her getaway, kill two birds with one stone. But it wasn’t, of course.