Simon Clark - The Fall

He’s crazy enough to do it.

And he was. There was no doubt about it. He made barking sounds now; his eyes were wild. He gripped the pebble hard, because the pebble was slippery with Marion Bostock’s blood. And he’d need a good, tight grip on the pebble when he used it on her.

He was ten paces from her and closing fast.

Growing close to the sheer rock face of the quarry from the ground below was a horse chestnut tee. Perhaps 30 feet high, it was soft and green and billowing as a cloud. The uppermost branches, she saw, were level with her feet.

The man clumped towards her, swearing; raising the pebble.

Nicole judged the distance.

It was a crazy leap.

But she had no choice.

Cutting to her left, she ran as hard as she could towards the edge of the cliff. Then she leapt.

Her body followed a downward curve. Arms held out as if she was some great hairy bird, she closed her eyes and gritted her teeth.

Behind her the man snarled in fury. ‘Stupid-stupid-stupid…’

Then she heard the God-Almighty crashing and snapping of twigs and branches as she landed on top of the horse chestnut tree. Her momentum carried her down into the green heart of the tree, a dizzying breathless dive, cracking twigs, ripping away leaves in a spray of green, then bumping against the thicker branches before coming to a sudden – and bonejolting – stop.

Lee Burton stood at the bus stop on the main road to Casterton. He looked round at the fields of potatoes, wheat and sugar beet, all drenched in dazzling sunshine. The only building he could see was the Plough Inn; a typical country pub, whitewashed walls, black slate roof, with a small car park and a children’s play area complete with swings and a slide.

On the walk up here from the amphitheatre he had realised that whatever mechanism had pitched them back through time had just gone and done it all over again. He clearly remembered being shot, how he’d caused the robbers’ car to crash and losing his arm on the railway line, then how it’d all gone dark until he opened his eyes in the sun-filled amphitheatre again.

He hadn’t a clue how far they’d travelled back in time. A few hours? A few days?

But as he stood there and saw the cars running by on the road he knew it must be much farther than that.

He saw an old Ford Capri.

Rather, it should have been old. It should have been a superannuated rust bucket with a clapped-out motor. But this was a gleaming new model. The registration would have given him an approximate date but he realised he just didn’t care that deeply anymore what year this was.

Shock still numbed him.

He wanted to get into town, then get a few drinks down him.

No. Scratch a few . He wanted lots and lots.

A double-decker bus rumbled up the hill and stopped with a hiss of hydraulics. The door opened.

At least the bus didn’t look that much different from those he was familiar with. He climbed on and handed the driver a 50 pence piece.

‘Casterton, please.’

‘Ent ya got any less, son?’ the driver asked.

‘How much is it?’

‘Eighteen new pee.’

Lee forced his hands into the tight pockets of the black trousers he was hating more and more with every passing minute.

The driver drummed his fingers impatiently on the steering wheel and hummed while Lee fiddled with small change, eventually counting 18 pence out in copper. ‘Don’t forget your ticket,’ the driver told him as he went to find a seat.

Seconds later, Lee sat absently rolling the ticket into a tube as he watched the passing scenery. Most of the cars he couldn’t even identify, but he’d seen them often enough in old TV programmes from the ’70s.

He still felt a glassy indifference to it all. At first he ascribed it to the shock of nearly dying twice in what would have been the space of a few hours. The physical pain of both incidents was still pungently real to him. He still found himself rubbing his stomach where the bullets had punched holes through the skin.

But now he wondered if it was more than pure shock that made him feel this way: he was indifferent to his surroundings; this was a sense of detachment from reality. Perhaps I feel like this because I’ve lost control of my life , he thought. Something else pulls the strings now . Here he was, riding on the bus to town. Only at any second he might blink and find himself back in the amphitheatre with the rest of the accidental time travellers.

The only reality he could centre himself on was his thirst, and his longing for that first mouthful of beer.

Nicole Wagner climbed down the trunk of the tree. The hefty gorilla suit repeatedly snagged on branches.

She panted hard, her long blonde hair messed, knotted, the strands speckled green with pieces of leaf

She guessed that, after hitting the top of the tree, she’d fallen perhaps halfway through the branches before landing face down on a more unbending – and unforgiving – branch. Her boobs and stomach ached furiously from the collision.

Right now the only thought in her head was to get down to the ground, then run.

William Bostock would soon realise she hadn’t broken her neck. Soon, he’d find a way down into the quarry.

‘C’mon, c’mon, Nicole… faster… faster,’ she panted to herself. She had to get out of the tree. She had to run.

Back to the amphitheatre. That would be best. People there. Bostock wouldn’t dare touch her.

She looked down through the web of branches. There was the ground, perhaps eight feet below.

Just swing down, holding onto the bottom branch, dangle there for a second, then drop to the ground.

Then get the hellfire out of there. Run.

She sat on the lowest branch above the ground; little thicker than her wrist, it creaked and swung beneath her. Her feet moved as though she was sitting on a playground swing.

She took a deep breath. Almost there…

‘ Gerr-darn-here! ’

The animal-like roar startled her.

She cried out as Bostock lunged out of nowhere to grab at her foot.

He must have found some path down into the quarry more quickly than she’d thought possible.

Now he clung to one of her feet. She screamed as he pulled.

Instantly he’d pulled her half off the branch by her foot.

Her rump was no longer seated on the branch: it rested in mid-air. The only thing stopping her falling to the ground below, and a certain bloody and painful death at Bostock’s hands, was that she’d instinctively grabbed the higher branch in front of her face.

This was as thin as a child’s arm and so springy it bent with her weight.

Screaming, she kicked with her free leg. But Bostock stood with both feet firmly planted on the ground and was tugging her by her left ankle. With every pull she dropped by about a foot or so as the flexible branch bent.

Every time he straightened his legs ready for the next tug, the springy branch lifted her back up by a foot.

Christ… The man was like a bell-ringer; she was the bell rope.

Up and down, up and down…

And it felt as if her shoulder joints would pop from their sockets.

She couldn’t hold on. She’d have to let go…

The pain was immense now in her arms and back.

She couldn’t breathe.

He pulled down hard.

Down she went like that bell rope.

Then suddenly she shot back up, almost catapulted back into the tree by the branch in her hands.

He’s let go…

Dazed, she shook her head, trying to understand why he’d released his grip.

Nicole glanced down as she swung there like a gymnast.

He was sitting on the ground. Gripped in his hands was one of the feet from the gorilla costume. He was glaring at it while swearing loudly.