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

“Shona?” This time the voice was a man’s, likewise Scottish-accented. “Shona, where are ye?”

Neither of us answered. A cold wind blew. I clenched my teeth as they tried to start chattering again. I heard the wind whistle and moan. Shrubs flapped and fluttered in the sudden gale and the surrounding terrain became a little clearer, though not much. Then the wind dropped again, and a soft, cold whiteness began to drown the dimly-glimpsed outlines of trees and higher ground again.

Stones clicked. A sheep’s bleat sounded. Then a cow lowed.

Diane tugged my hand. “Come on,” she said, “let’s go.”

The dog barked two, three times as we went, sharp and sudden, startling me a little and making me sway briefly for balance. I looked at Diane, smiled a little, let out a long breath.

We were about nine feet from the top when a deafening roar split the silence apart. I don’t know what the hell it was, what kind of animal sound — but even Diane cried out, and I stumbled, and sending a mini-landslide slithering back down the slope.

The broken slate heaved and rattled, and then surged as something flew across, under, through the ravine floor towards us.

“Run!” I heard Diane yell, and I tried, we both did, but the shape was arrowing past us. We saw that at the last moment; it was hurtling past us to the edge of the scree, the point where it gave way to the path.

Diane was already starting back down, pushing me behind her, when the ground erupted in a shower of stone shrapnel. I thought I glimpsed something, only for the briefest of moments, moving in the hail of broken stone, but when it fell back into place there was no sign of anything — except, if you looked, a low humped shape.

Diane shot past me, still gripping my hand, pelting along the ravine. Behind us I heard the stones rattle as the thing gave chase. Diane veered towards the nearest of the boulders — it was roughly the size of a small car, and looked like pretty solid ground.

“Come on!” Diane leapt — pretty damned agile for a woman in her late thirties who didn’t lead a particularly active life — onto the boulder, reached back for me. “Quick!”

The shape was hurtling towards us, slowing as it neared us. Its bow-wave of loose stones thickened, widened; it was gathering speed. I could see what was coming; I grabbed Diane and pushed her down flat on the boulder. She didn’t fight, so I’m guessing she’d reached the same conclusions as me.

There was a muffled thud and the boulder shook. For a moment I thought we’d both be pitched onto the scree around it, but the boulder held, too deeply rooted to be torn loose. Rocks rained and pattered down on us; I tucked my head in.

I realised I was clinging on to Diane, and that she was doing to the same to me. I opened my eyes and looked at her. She looked back. Neither of us said anything.

Behind us, there were clicks and rattles. I turned slowly, sliding off Diane. We both sat up and watched.

There was a sort of crater in the layer of loose rocks beside the boulder, where the thing had hit. The scree at the bottom was heaving, shifting, rippling. The crater walls trembled and slid. After a moment, the whole lot collapsed on itself. The uneven surface rippled and heaved some more, finally stopped when it looked as it had before — undisturbed, except of course for the low humped shape beneath it.

Click went the stones as it shifted in its tracks, taking stock. Click click as it moved and began inching its way round the boulder. “John? Shona? Hello?” All emerged from the shifting rocks, each of those different voices. Then the bleat. Then the roar. I swear I felt the wind of it buffet me.

“Christ,” I said.

The rocks clicked, softly, as the humped shape began moving, circling slowly round the boulder. “Christ,” my own voice answered me. Then another voice called, a child’s. “Mummy?” Click click click. “Shona?” Click. “Oh, for God’s sake, Marjorie,” came a rich, fruity voice which sounded decidedly pre-Second World War. If not the First. “For God’s sake.”

Click. Then silence. The wind keened down the defile. Fronds of mist drifted coldly along. Click. A high, thin female voice, clear and sweet, began singing ‘The Ash Grove.’ Very slowly, almost like a dirge. “ Down yonder green valley where streamlets meander… ”

Diane clutched my wrist tightly.

Click, and the song stopped, as if a switch had been thrown. Click click. And then there was a slow rustling and clicking as the shape began to move away from the boulder, moving further and further back. Diane gripped me tighter. The mist was thickening and the shape went slowly, so that it was soon no longer possible to be sure exactly where it was. Then the last click died away and there was only the silence and the wind and the mist.

Time passed.

“It’s not gone far,” Diane whispered. “Just far enough that we’ve got some freedom of movement. It wants us to make a move, try to run for it. It knows it can’t get us here.”

“But we can’t stay here either,” I pointed out in the same whisper. My teeth were already starting to chatter again, and I could see hers were too. “We’ll bloody freeze to death.”

“I know. Who knows, maybe it does too. Either way, we’ll have to make a break for it, and sooner rather than later. If we leave it much longer we won’t stand a chance.”

“What the hell do you think it is?” I asked.

She scowled at me. “You expect me to know? I’m a geologist, not a biologist.”

“Don’t suppose you’ve got the number for a good one on your mobile?”

She stopped and stared at me. “We’re a pair of fucking idiots,” she said, and dug around in the pocket of her jeans. Out came her mobile. “Never even thought of it.”

“There’s no signal.”

“There wasn’t before. It’s worth a try.”

Hope flared briefly, but not for long; it was the same story as before.

“Okay,” I said. “So we can’t phone a friend. Let’s think about this then. What do we know about it?”

“It lives under the rocks,” Diane said. “Moves under them.”

“Likes to stay under them, too,” I said. “It was right up against us before. That far from us. It could’ve attacked us easily just by coming up out from under, but it didn’t. It’d rather play it safe and do the whole waiting game thing.”

“So maybe it’s weak, if we can get it out of the rocks. Vulnerable.” Diane took off her glasses, rubbed her large eyes. “Maybe it’s blind. It seems to hunt by sound, vibration.”

“A mimic. That’s something else. It’s a mimic, like a parrot.”

“Only faster,” she said. “It mimicked you straight away, after hearing you once.”

“Got a good memory for voices, too,” I whispered back. “Some of those voices…”

“Yes, I think so too. And that roar it made. How long’s it been since there was anything roaming wild in this country, could make a noise like that?”

“Maybe a bear,” I offered, “or one of the big sabre-toothed cats.”

Diane looked down at the scree. “Glacial till,” she said.

“What?”

“Sorry. The stones here. It’s what’s called glacial till — earth that’s been compressed into rock by the pressure of the glaciers coming through here.” She looked up and down the ravine.

“So?”

The look she gave me was equal parts hurt and anger. “So… nothing much, I suppose.”

Wind blew.

“I’m sorry.”

She shrugged. “S’okay.”

“No. Really.”

She gave me a smile, at least, that time. Then frowned, looked up at the way we’d come in — had it only been in the last hour? “Look at that. You can see it now.”