Ellen Datlow - The Best Horror of the Year – Volume One

The three of them went in, paying out the string as they went. They'd go a distance, wait. Listen. Switch off the torch at times. Listen. No sound. Any rats there were silent.

So they moved on. And paid out a little more string as they went.

Time passed. And in the end they started to get bored. And tired. And fed-up. And low on confidence.

See, Jeff? It's not so easy, is it, being in charge? Wait till you have the responsibility. Easy to criticise, from the sidelines. When it isn't you.

And yes, I realise, thinking that even to myself, how like the politicians I always most despised I sound.

Wait till you see what I've seen, then you'll know I'm right. Oh God. All the things happening to me that I can't bear. Is this the price of survival? How much of myself will I give up to stay alive, of what I was?

So they retraced their steps, following the string, and then they found-

The string was lying in the middle of a narrow, the tied end frayed and unravelled.

Shouted recriminations, near-panic, quelled by Jeff's fists-Jason has the split lip to prove it. Jeff taking charge. They headed back up the narrow. The string couldn't have trailed far. They can follow their tracks in the dust of the narrow's floor. Retrace their steps to the cavern. If they stay calm.

They follow the marks in the dust.

To a fork they don't remember.

And the dust of each branching narrow's floor is disturbed (by what?) and it's impossible to tell which is which, which they might have come down.

Panic in the air again; Jeff quells it. They go right. More narrows branching off.

Which way?

At last they hear the trickle of water. We go towards that, Jeff tells them. It'll be runoff from the cavern. See? We'll be okay. Forrester found his way out like that, didn't he?

Not quite, Jeff. But it was worth a try.

They keep going and they find the water, alright. But it's not the cavern. Oh, it's a cavern, yes. But not the one they were looking for. A small chamber, almost wall to wall water, running down from a narrow high up in the cavern wall.

Mike yelping, shouting that he saw something in the water. Big, white, moving. Not a fish. Jeff slaps him into silence, the crack of flesh on flesh ringing in the wet, trickling dark. He saw nothing. Imagining things, seeing things that aren't there. Like that puff Forrester did.

They climb the wall to the narrow the water's coming through, none of them admitting what they know; the torch's beam is starting to dim.

They follow the stream that trickles down the narrow's floor, praying for the cavern that's hearth and home in their mind's eye now.

And it opens out into another cavern. The floor awash to ankle or maybe even knee height with fresh water. They don't check the depth in this cavern. There are houses there.

("What?" "Houses?" "What're you-" "Sh. Go on, Jason.")

Not like houses you'd see up top, Jason says. Crude ones. Can't even call them huts. Just stacks of rocks, heaped up drystone, covered over with big heavy flat pieces, slabs. No windows, but a hole that might be a door. Jason reckons he counted about a dozen of them.

And the cave is not silent. Things are moving around. Inside the houses. Slithering and shifting, slumping and flopping around. And there are other noises too. Not noises a fish or even a very big fucking rat could make.

The boys start to go back the way they came, and then-more sounds, the same as from the houses, coming up the narrow, towards them. The dying torch shines: shadows flick across the wall.

They have to go round the edge of the water, past the houses, towards the only other narrow they can see. The noise from the houses grows louder; none of them look back at the sound of splashing in the water.

The torch goes out a few yards into the narrow.

Jason breaks and runs. He's screaming, but he thinks they aren't the only ones he hears.

He runs on-in the dark, cannoning into walls, scrabbling on, feeling ahead with his hands, terrified of what his fingers might touch.

But somehow-by pure, blind, lucky chance, it can only be-he finds himself crashing headlong into our own little lake. Screaming, splashing, blundering, and then he sees the dim distant glow of the fire, catches its gleam off the upturned hulls of boats, flounders and staggers to the shore and shakes me awake, all believing in Mr Forrester now, wanting answers, wanting someone to make it alright.

"This is why I warned everyone not to go into the narrows," I say. "As soon as you get out of sight of this cavern-they can start playing tricks with your head. It's very easy to get lost in there. We don't know where they all go."

Jason cries like a baby, and no-one blames him. Jean holds him tight, rocking him. All the kids' eyes are wide.

"Sir-" it's one of the little ones. "Sir-what about the monsters?"

"There aren't any," I say.

"There are," sobs Jason.

"No," I say. "Jason, listen. That place-the narrows-they play tricks on you, remember? They-" I look up, catch Frank's eye. He nods.

Frank Emerson-one thing about him, he can explain anything. Always had the highest pass rates in the school; he could make anything crystal clear and easy to understand. I've never been so grateful for that as now.

Hallucinations, Frank explains. It happened to Mr Forrester too, though not as badly because he didn't go as far in, wasn't so badly lost. Jeff and Mike are still in there somewhere, but there's nothing we can do. We can't go in there or we could end up lost as well. The best we can do is call them, shout down the narrows, hope they hear and find us that way.

The kids are wide-eyed. We're just leaving Jeff and Mike in there. Teachers don't do that, abandon their charges. But it's different now. The rules have changed. I used to despise people who said that too.

And so we try. In relays, groups of us, all through that night that is not a night, screaming ourselves hoarse.

But from the narrows, there isn't a sound.

Waking in the 'morning,' the mood's sullen and still, scared. We know they're dead. If they're lucky. My big fear was that we'd hear them but not be able to call them home. We'd have to listen to them dying slowly. At least it looks like they're doing that out of earshot.

Unless the things in the houses that don't exist got them.

Otherwise-we try not to think of them, still hopelessly lost, starving, dying by inches in there, wandering around.

As we are, will be. Jeff and Mike are just us in fast forward.

Jason has slept the night in Jean's comforting, maternal embrace. She releases him, comes over, leans against me.

I feel her weariness, her need, and I know I will sleep with her tonight.

We catch a bream. It's all we eat today. We've all lost weight; I've tightened my belt as far as I can, but my trousers still keep threatening to slip down.

We go to sleep still hungry.

No one goes near the narrows today.

Jean and I wait till the others are asleep. Then she crawls to me, takes my hand, draws me to my feet, and we head off to as quiet a part of the cavern as we can. There's little in the way of privacy here-we have a corner for purposes of nature, but even that's not very private. And we'd hardly go there. Inside one of the narrows might be private, but we'd fuck in the middle of a circle of the kids before we did that.

We kiss and fumble with each other's clothes. In the dark, I fondle the pale blurs of her breasts, rub at her cunt till it's wet enough to push my fingers inside. She moans into my neck, muffling her cries in my flesh, rubbing my cock. She moans with Anya's Polish accent.

We fuck on the gritty floor, taking turns on top. In flickers of chancy firelight, I see Anya looking down as she rides me.