Тим Леббон - New Fears 2 - Brand New Horror Stories by Masters of the Macabre

“But not in yourself.”

It wasn’t a question. She felt a hollowness in her stomach.

“No, I… no.”

“Well, that must be horrible. I hope I don’t sound patronising, but I think you’re very brave to tell me about this. You must have been petrified, this last week.”

She nodded, as the hollowness in her stomach spread to her legs and chest, bringing a numbness that was chilling, yet also vaguely comforting.

“Luckily…” He opened a drawer in his desk, and took out a small plastic container. “…we’ve got just the ticket here. We’ll have you right as rain in no time.”

She watched his bloody hand open the box and saw the set of silvery hooks twinkling on a bed of cotton wool. She felt the numbness creep into her mind, filling up behind her eyes. Her scalp prickled.

“It’ll only take a few minutes, and then it’ll all be over. I promise.” The doctor took her right hand, and she felt it move, something attached but distant. The warmth of his touch felt insubstantial. A single tear welled up in her eye. She blinked and barely felt it roll down her cheek.

“Just a small pinch…” He slid the hook into the back of her hand. There was a momentary tug, the welling of blood, and then the hook and wound both vanished.

The doctor held up his own right hand, and she saw his hook had vanished too.

His ruined face wrenched into a smile. “See?”

She nodded.

“Ready for the next one?”

She gave no reply, only offered her right hand and turned her head away.

The pinch of the second hook was even fainter than the first.

Sometimes it’s turning left or right that changes your life. Sometimes it’s staring straight ahead, not paying attention to what’s around you in case it’s dangerous, or unpleasant, or something you wouldn’t want to go to sleep that night remembering. On occasion closing your eyes and just standing still will alter everything, because as the world parts and flows around you, you cannot help but feel its tides.

Sometimes, it’s recognising that a place you once thought of as normal really, really isn’t.

That was why I went closer to the tunnel. I’m naturally curious, and hidden places fascinate me as much as paths that lead away from the beaten track. I like to explore. I don’t know why it was that particular day and hour, but something about it drew me when I passed. It could be that I glimpsed the skull from the corner of my eye. Maybe it was the smell.

I’d climbed this steep path and run back down it thirty or forty times. It was a favourite run of mine, starting with a solid, unrelenting thousand-foot climb from the small car park to the top of the mountain, then a good trail run around the summit until I descended back down to the car. I’d cover seven or eight miles and spend two hours on my own, just me and the wild and the breeze, the views and the sheep, the sense that I was alone in a wilderness only barely touched by humankind. It was glorious.

Halfway down the heavily wooded lower portion of the slope, I skidded to a stop and stood staring at the tunnel mouth. I was panting, sweating, and I couldn’t quite explain the draw it had over me. I’d glanced at it a dozen times before but never gone closer than this. It was little more than an arch of rough brickwork, partly broken away by years of plant growth and frost damage, half-buried by leaf falls and tumbled tree branches, and enclosing a half-moon of deep darkness that seemed to lead nowhere. I’d often wondered why it was there and who had built it. I assumed it was the remains of an old drainage culvert constructed by some farmer or landowner long ago. The hillsides were scattered with such remnants, evidence of past labours that seemed to serve little or no purpose. It was something else that attracted me to places like this.

I climbed the small bank and moved closer. The darkness inside didn’t feel intimidating, I wasn’t afraid, but it was deep and heavy, like a weight luring me down. In the shadow of the brick overhang was a skull, picked clean by birds and insects. It sat on a carpet of old leaves and twigs. Scattered around were smaller bones, the shattered remains of whatever creature had come there to die. A sheep, probably. I’d seen them before, corpses taken apart amongst the heathers and ferns of the wild hillsides. The skull was smallish, and there were scraps of wool snagged on brambles and rolled into dirty clumps. A lamb, then. I wondered what had killed the poor creature.

I edged closer and saw more of the tunnel mouth. It was strange seeing such skilled brickwork in this wild place, and I tried to imagine the people who had worked there. It must have been an effort lugging bricks and mortar up the steep slope, and the purposes of the tunnel still eluded me. It was set deep into a steep bank, trees growing above it. I could see heavy roots dangling down inside, and dislodged bricks littered the ground.

The entrance was half-buried by years of leaf falls, much of it turned to mulch and providing home to ferns and on one side a bramble bush.

I dug into the hip pocket of my rucksack and pulled out my head torch. The batteries were new, but I paused just for a second before turning it on, wondering how long it had been since the tunnel’s interior had been touched by light.

I looked down at the skull close to my left knee. “So what were you doing here?” I asked. For a second afterwards, the silence was loaded. I laughed and turned on the torch.

It revealed no surprises inside. The curved ceiling sloped down, as did the floor, the tunnel burrowing gently beneath the bank. There were more fallen bricks, plants, dead leaves, a few pieces of lonely litter either dropped there by snacking hikers or blown by the wind. I played the light around, crouching in an effort to see further. I already knew I was going to venture inside.

When I was a kid, two friends and I found the remains of an old air-raid shelter close to some allotments, left over from when a row of houses had been demolished. We’d all got cuts and bruises from going down there, and Gavin had ended up in hospital having a gashed thigh sewn up. But we’d all come out with something too. I still had the old gas mask I’d found in its cloth bag, tucked away in the attic at home where plenty of old memories withered and faded.

Faded until something like this brought them crashing back again.

I remembered Jimmy’s taunting when the three of us were egging each other on, all afraid, all trying to be brave enough to go first. Gavin had been the brash one, but his fear of the dark had made itself apparent. We’d gone exploring down there three times before Gavin slashed his leg open on a ragged shard of metal protruding from the old brick wall. They were good times. I hadn’t seen either of them in over fifteen years.

“Not worth it,” I said, glancing down at the sheep’s skull one more time. It grinned up at me. Maybe I’d seen this creature alive on an earlier run that year. A memory of me might once have resided within its now-empty cranium.

I put the head torch around my head to free up both hands, then slipped feet-first into the low tunnel.

Enveloped by the tunnel’s darkness, everything felt very different. The smells of the hillside changed, becoming wet and dank, the scent of old things and decay. As I made my way down the gentle slope, my boots dislodged clumps of mud and rocks, and the rich fug of darkness rose around me. The cool, wet ground soaked through my long-sleeved T-shirt, and my shorts were soon heavy with mud.