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

I shone the torch all around, moving slowly, checking the tunnel structure above and around me, and the floor ahead. I probed with my boot, digging at the ground in case any holes had been covered over with detritus. Fall in, break a bone, shatter my torch, and over time my bones would join those of the dead sheep guarding the entrance.

Soon the tunnel levelled and the ceiling grew a little higher. The floor was comprised of damp, hard silt rather than leaves and loose soil, and I guessed the leaves would not have been blown in this deep.

I turned and crawled on head first. It would have been easy to lose track of time down there. I checked my watch and realised it was still ticking along recording my run, although it had lost satellite reception so the GPS would no longer be working. I paused it and switched it back to showing the time. 11:18. I’d been in the tunnel for maybe five minutes.

It felt longer.

I should turn around and go back , I thought. There’s nothing down here. It’s just an old drainage tunnel or something. Goes nowhere. I should go back.

But I didn’t go back, because that old curiosity drew me on. Though there was still a vague light behind me from the entrance, my main source of illumination was now the head torch, and I played it around as I continued to crawl. The walls were wet and slick with moss, the ceiling broken here and there where tree roots had grown through. I had to push some of them aside and they trailed cool fingers across my skin.

The tunnel seemed to be growing wider and deeper. I crawled on all fours, careful where I placed my hands, watching every move. Glancing left and right, I saw hollows in the vaulted walls that might once have led elsewhere, but each one was blocked from a cave-in, bricks and soil forming solid barriers.

This tunnel will cave in one day , I thought. I was moving deeper on trust, hoping that my being there didn’t cause a fault, a tumble, a roar of old frost-shattered bricks, soil and rock thumping down from above to trap me there forever. Jayne knew where I’d gone, but there was no phone or GPS reception this deep. If a search party did come looking and eventually found me, it would likely be way too late.

The danger was something like a thrill.

Next time I glanced at my watch, twenty minutes had passed. I paused at that, staring at the illuminated digital time blinking back at me. It hadn’t felt like more than a couple of minutes, but I couldn’t doubt what I saw. I’d reached a place in the tunnel where the walls were slick and wet, the floor increasingly boggy, and the roots protruding through the joints between bricks in the ceiling were pale and fine, hanging still like an upside-down forest. Some of them snapped as I brushed by, as if dead and petrified. Others caressed the back of my head and neck.

“Time to turn around,” I whispered. My words carried, and as I glanced ahead––imagining my voice winging its way deeper, into a darkness that might not have heard a human voice since this place was built––I saw the faint glow of daylight.

Excitement took me once again. The idea of seeing where this tunnel ended gripped me, and I felt like a true explorer. Maybe I’d emerge wet and muddied, and surprise someone looking into the far entrance and wondering where it went.

I scrambled onwards, and this lowest part of the tunnel was also the wettest. I slopped through mud, shaking my hands and spattering it up the walls. It was thick and black, and it smelled of forgotten places and age. I hurried on towards the glow, and soon the ground sloped up enough for me to see daylight.

Minutes later I approached the opposite end of the tunnel. I could see that it was somewhere still within the woods, and for a moment I was disappointed. I’d imagined emerging into an old tumbled building, or perhaps on to part of the barren hillside where I had never been. In truth, it was probably only a hundred feet from where I’d gone underground.

As the daylight grew stronger, so I anticipated its touch even more. I had no wish to go back into that gloom. There was nothing down there to concern me, but something about the darkness I was leaving behind started to repulse me, urging me onwards into the light.

Close to the entrance I saw the pale gleam of a skull.

I frowned. I was convinced that I’d crawled into the tunnel at one end and out the other. I moved closer, and as the sun touched my skin I realised that it was the same lamb’s skull.

Weird.

The sun felt good, dappling down through the tree canopy to speckle my arms and face. I stood and stretched, shaking mud from my hands, brushing it from my knees and bare legs, hearing the slosh of water in my backpack’s water bladder. I hadn’t taken a single drink while I’d been underground, and now thirst burnt in with a vengeance across my throat and tongue.

I sucked at the nozzle. The water was warm but welcome. I blinked and sighed, then looked up.

The sky past the trees was a blazing blue, scorched by sunlight. Wispy clouds streaked the heavens high above. Closer, the trees swayed in a gentle breeze, leaning back and forth as if whispering to one another about me. I looked up as they looked down.

I shivered. It was an unsettling thought.

Dropping back onto the path leading down through the woods to the road, I pushed through a spread of nettles. They kissed against my bare legs and fire tingled there, spiky, almost pleasant in its low burn. I didn’t recall the nettles being there a couple of hours before when I’d climbed towards the summit. Their leaves were speckled with some sort of fungus, making them hang heavy and low. I crouched down to look. Maybe being underground in the dark had made me so much more receptive to detail.

The fungus was pale grey in colour, each growth the thickness of a matchstick and just a few millimetres long, topped with a darker, globular speck. There were perhaps a hundred stems on each leaf, all of them curved and pointed in the same direction like miniature soldiers stood to attention. Although the nettles were still a rich, healthy green, I couldn’t help thinking that the fungal growths were parasitic.

Energised by my unexpected mini-adventure, I scanned the ground ahead as I started running downhill, dodging rocks, leaping down some of the steps that had been built into the path by local scouts a few years before. I always enjoyed running downhill, even though I was heading towards fifty and becoming more concerned about my knees. I needed to look after my joints if I was going to continue doing what I loved into my old age. But every time I thought that, I countered with, But this is looking after myself .

Something about my visit down into the tunnel niggled at me, like a whisper behind a door I couldn’t quite make out. It worried and scratched, and as I glanced around I felt unsettled in this, one of my favourite places, for the very first time.

The path followed a wide gulley carved into the mountainside over millennia by a stream. There were a few small waterfalls along its course, and now I noticed that the pool at the base of one was dammed with several fallen trees and debris accumulated against their trunks and branches. It formed an expanded lake where water gathered before slinking its way past or through the blockage. I briefly considered stripping off and taking a dip. The water looked cool and inviting.

It also looked dangerous.

I paused and frowned, catching my breath and trying to open the door on those niggles and whispers. Being below ground had unsettled me more than I’d believed, and I’d brought that feeling up with me, carrying it down towards the road, car park, and the car where a fresh change of clothes and a flask of coffee awaited.

I haven’t seen this pool before , I thought. I had no recollection of the falls being dammed like this, but then I always climbed the hill with my head down, checking the uneven path for trip hazards, pushing down on my knees so that I could achieve the best climb possible. My record so far was a little under half an hour. Maybe today I’d have broken it.