Mark Haddon - The Pier Falls - And Other Stories

Edgar took from his travelling bag the slim volume belonging to the Royal Geographical Society. He opened it at the bookmark and laid it beside Semperson’s sketch. The maps were not identical but they were close enough to make the hairs stand up on the back of my neck.

“And how do we navigate through the jungle?” said Edgar. “This is a vast area.”

“There is a natural lodestone in the cave,” said Semperson. His voice was small and timid. “Your compass will become useless as you draw near. The effect extends for some twenty miles about. It is quite extraordinary.”

“What happened to Carlysle?”

Semperson said no more. His eyes became vacant and I saw that he was weeping.

“If you gentlemen are finished,” said the director, stepping between the two men, “then I will give Mr. Semperson his laudanum.”

“I think we have what we need,” said Edgar. “Thank you, Dr. Fairweather. Thank you, Mr. Semperson.”

The director handed his patient a small willow-patterned cup of suspension. While Semperson drank it I leaned close to Edgar. “I doubt the Carlysles will pay a thousand pounds on the evidence of a map drawn by the man who also believes that this higgledy-piggledy manticore stalks the Gloucestershire countryside.”

Edgar folded the paper neatly, took the paper-knife from the desk and ran it along the fold, excising the monster. “I have no memory of the animal to which you are referring.” He laid the creature on the hot coals and it became briefly incandescent before it was swallowed by the flames. “Gentlemen, you have been generous with your time. We must bid you good day.”

We found the cave towards the end of the afternoon. The trees thinned, the earth gave way to rock and we walked up a shallow slope to find ourselves on a low, stony plateau some five or six acres in size. At the far end the granite rose vertically, and cut into this cliff was a hole shaped almost exactly like the lopsided parabola in Semperson’s drawing. We had taken the picture literally, however, and misread the scale by a factor of eight or more. Hazlemere House would have sat comfortably within its maw.

We could see the sides of the moss-covered vault receding into the dark but they did not narrow noticeably and beyond a hundred and fifty yards all light was swallowed up. The air emerging from the interior was fetid and chill and seemed unwilling to mix with the warm vapour rising from the jungle and as we moved around we passed in and out of rank, wintery currents.

I walked to the edge of the plateau and looked out across the jungle, the uninterrupted green canopy blurring in the vaporous distance. The space should have offered me some relief but I felt nothing of the dizzying elation which had overtaken me on the bridge over the gorge. I could hear no animal cries of any kind, nor any birdsong, not even the buzzing of insects.

Arthur and Bill returned from a brief reconnaissance having found the dark star of a long-dead fire burnt into the rock. Edgar appeared only vaguely interested. It was the cave itself which had now captured his imagination, to which end he suggested that he and I make a short foray inside to gauge its size and ascertain whether it was the lair of any creatures against which we should protect ourselves overnight.

I armed myself with a machete, Edgar clipped his handgun to his belt and we stepped into the dark. The temperature dropped rapidly as we made our way down a gradual slope in the dying light and I was soon shivering in my sweat-soaked shirt. If we paused we could hear only the occasional splash of water dripping from the roof onto the wet floor. Here and there a sour, chemical smell became particularly intense and I found it difficult to shake the suspicion that some beast was only inches away, shrouded completely by the near-absolute dark. Our weapons, I realised, would be of little use against such invisible adversaries.

We were clearly in a chamber of extraordinary size. The echoes coming from the walls on either side of us were like those one might hear in an empty cathedral, but we could hear no similar echoes returning from walls ahead. I pictured the trees above and thought that one might correctly refer to this as the underworld.

After a quarter of an hour or so Edgar suggested that we save our resources for the morning and when we turned we saw, suspended in a great, starless dark, a droplet of bright green light within which tiny figures moved and I had the uncanny sensation that this was the world in its entirety and that I was looking upon it from the moon.

We re-entered the day to find Bill holding a broken shovel with a bent and rusted head. He and Arthur had also found a rudimentary cross, but a good deal of dense undergrowth would need to be cleared before we knew where to begin digging in search of a grave, if indeed there was one.

Edgar announced that Bill and I would do this in the morning while he and Arthur undertook a proper exploration of the cave. In the meantime we would pitch camp on the rock. A brief silence fell and I realised that I was not alone in the unease I felt about the place. Bill suggested that we spend the night instead in a clearing through which we had passed some twenty minutes before arriving at the cave, but Edgar replied that if we were to be attacked in the night he would rather see our assailants coming across a hundred yards of open ground than dropping from an overhanging branch. He untied his pack, extracted his canvas, poles and mosquito net and the subject was closed. We headed off to the tree line to find rocks and logs with which to hold our guy ropes down.

After we had erected our own shelters Bill and I built a fire and plucked and roasted the large flightless bird we had trapped the previous night. The sparse flesh was surprisingly good despite a strong aftertaste of aniseed. We followed it with several chunks of Quiggin’s mint cake, watery coffee and two shots each of the ten-year-old Glenturret which Arthur had brought, wrapped in a blanket at the base of his pack, to celebrate the midpoint of our journey.

I felt unwell on account, I assumed, of so much rich food after weeks of meagre fare, and was therefore in no mood for conversation. I offered my apologies and slipped away to the edge of the rock with my battered Ovid whose fine pages were now speckled with mould. I found it difficult to read, however. So I put the book down and watched the sky. Night fell fast at this latitude, and while I would be denied the spectacle of the sunset by the position of the hill into which the cave was cut, I would, in compensation, be able to see the Milky Way in all its glory for there was no trace of cloud and, apart from our fire, no other light for three or four hundred miles.

I was beginning to discern the faintest points of light against the darkening indigo of the eastern horizon when I became aware that Edgar, Arthur and Bill had fallen silent. Something was about to happen but I was ignorant of how I knew this. There was a brief pause, then a faint susurration from the mouth of the cave, like the long receding of a wave on a gravel beach. An object of great size was moving swiftly towards us out of the subterranean dark. I briefly considered running but no one else had moved and I was unwilling to be judged unmanly. The susurration became a roar and I could feel a cold, ammoniac wind being driven from the cave’s mouth by the mass of whatever was speeding behind it. The fire, I recall, began to burn with a fierce green light. The noise continued to rise in volume until it was almost unbearable, at which point the very darkness inside the cave erupted into the surrounding air and the sky went black. I pressed myself to the ground, covered my head with my hands and felt something like hail pummel my exposed back.