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

I glanced at my watch. It was still searching for a satellite signal.

Passing the pool I carried on, and it was only as I approached the bottom of the winding path that I acknowledged what was worrying me. The door opened and the truth roared in.

Everything was different. Only slightly, but there was a rough edge to things, like a sheen of wilderness smothering my surroundings.

The trees above me were heavier with leaves. A few had fallen, with several lying across the path and forcing me to squeeze underneath or climb over them. They had not been there before my ascent, and I could tell from one of their exposed root balls––the hole filled with a swathe of nettles, no bare soil showing, and the cracked timber pale from weathering—that it had not happened recently.

The path emerged onto a gravelled area beside the canal, the wide driveway and parking area attached to a low wooden house. There was a narrow tunnel leading beneath the canal and down to the car park beyond, but this side was a private residence, the public footpath running across the gravel to the tunnel. I’d seen the elderly owners of the house several times, and they always spared a wave or nod for those passing across their land to or from the steep path up the mountain.

The gravel was churned, and in places overgrown with weeds. The house looked abandoned, with smashed windows and paint flaking from its previously pristine woodwork. A Range Rover rested on flat tyres beside the house, its windows misted with a hazing layer of moss on the insides.

“What the hell?”

I stopped and looked around. Birds flitted from branch to branch, a few of them landing in the long grass of the canal’s towpath on the opposite bank. The towpath was overgrown. I could just make out a bike leaning against a wall. Plant tendrils had curled around its spokes and uprights.

“Hello?” I called. Some birds took flight at my shout, but they quickly landed again and started singing as if I wasn’t there. I frowned and shook my head. Maybe I was dehydrated. I took a drink and suddenly the taste of my water had changed, from warm but clean to stale and dirty, as if I was sucking up water from the canal.

This was all wrong. There was so much I hadn’t noticed on the way up the mountain, so much that I’d been certain of but which now was being proved less certain. When had the old couple moved out of their home and left it to decay? Why leave their vehicle behind?

I took a few steps towards the tunnel beneath the canal, and paused.

It had caved in. The steps down to it were piled with tumbled stones, and the tunnel itself was filled with dried mud and rocks, blocking it completely. If I hadn’t known it was there, it would not have been at all obvious.

“That’s just not right,” I said. “I came up through there two hours ago. Just a couple of hours.” I checked my watch. It was still searching for a satellite signal. Not right . “Hello?” I shouted louder, the sound of my voice the only thing pinning me to the world. Birds took flight again, but I didn’t seem to trouble them unduly. If I remained silent, if I did not interact with the world, I might as well not be there at all.

The canal bridge was fenced off, meant for exclusive use by the owners of the dilapidated house and enclosed within their garden and land. The tunnel was the public access, but now that it was blocked there was no other way across the canal. I skirted around the garden, pushing through waist-high undergrowth until I passed the garden area and stood close to the canal.

The water level was vastly reduced. That’s what’s happened , I thought. Maybe there’s been a breach and everything has changed . But a breach in the canal wouldn’t have changed so much in such a short time.

And this damage had been wrought a long, long time ago. There were still pools of water across the canal bed, but most of it had gone, perhaps flowing downhill from the fracture that had filled the tunnel. The pools remaining looked surprisingly clear, reflecting the blue sky and fluffy clouds as if presenting a memory of better times. Weeds grew across the rest of the canal’s uneven, dried-silt bed.

I climbed down, walked across, and scrambled out onto the towpath. It was deep with knee-high weeds.

It was impossible, yet the evidence was there before my eyes. Everything has changed .

I made my way to the steps that led down to where the tunnel emerged on the other side, at the top of the gentle slope that descended to the car park where I’d left my car. I needed to be there. I had to reach the comfortable Mazda, to see whether it was new and clean from the polish I’d given it last weekend, or old and rusting, wheels flat, windows grimy, metalwork fading from so long sitting unused and exposed to the harsh sunlight.

While I’d been down in the tunnel the world, and time, had moved on. All I could hear was the chatter of birds and the conspiratorial whispering of the trees as they observed my growing panic, laughing amongst themselves.

I climbed down the steps and saw that much of the landscape on this side of the canal had changed. The breach must have caused the cave-in, and tens of thousands of gallons of water had cascaded down the slope, carrying silt and rocks with it and washing away the gravelled road, hedges, and many tonnes of soil. The resulting slick had spread wide, and in the time since the breach had provided fertile ground for new plant growth. I ran through the low shrubs and long grasses, hearing creatures scurrying from my path, kicking my way from the canal and down what was left of the path to the car park. I heard no traffic. I smelled no fumes, and I realised just how clear and clean the air seemed, untainted by humankind.

I’m still underground , I thought. I fell and banged my head. I’m semi-conscious in that tunnel, and unless I wake and move I’ll be there until dusk, and then I might never find my way out .

The grasses felt cool and sharp against my bare legs. Seeds carried on the air tickled my face. Sweat ran down my back. Everything looked lush and rich, as if the plants were relishing this new-found freedom. And yet many plants were also home to that strange fungus I’d seen on the nettles back up the slope. It provided a haze across everything that seemed to knock my vision out of focus.

If I was still beneath the ground, my imagination was running riot.

I reached the road and ran straight across. The buildings to my right were familiar, but I barely glanced at them. I knew what I would see.

I knew because I could see my car. It might have been there forever.

I ran the three miles home. It was the strangest journey of my life, but running gave me the rhythm, pace and room to try and rationalise what was happening. It didn’t work, but just as concentrating on my breathing and footfalls helped occupy my mind, the attempt to make sense of what I was seeing, hearing and smelling diluted some of the terror that was settling over me.

I’d tried starting the car, of course, but the battery was flat. It was strange sticking the clean, shiny key into a vehicle so obviously degraded by time.

I was worried about Jayne. If everyone and everything had gone, then what about her? Where was she? On the other side of the tunnel , I thought, but I tried to silence that idea.

I lived three miles from the bottom of the hill. Usually I would have run that distance in a little under half an hour, but today I was faster. Everything I saw gave me energy, fear driving my legs and muscles.

Strange, faded red circles decorated the doors of at least half the homes, hints at something terrible. And although the town was empty of people, it was far from dead. By the Indian restaurant where we had celebrated our tenth anniversary I saw a small herd of deer, milling in the overgrown car park, wary as they watched me pass. A pack of half a dozen feral dogs stalked from an alley a few minutes later, and the hairs on the back of my neck bristled as they growled. I threw stones at them and they stalked away. Squirrels sat on rooftops and window ledges, rabbits frolicked across roads where weeds grew through cracked tarmac, and what might have been a big cat flowed through the shadows beneath a bridge. Nature had made this place of people its own now that the people were gone.