Stephen Jones - The Mammoth Book of Terror

There was a strong, gusting wind blowing. He gulped air desperately through his half-open mouth, feeling its cold shock on his lungs, and cursed the world in general.

“Food poisoning!” he thought. The meal earlier on, at the reception. Something – the chicken? the pork pies? – had tasted strange, but he had eaten it anyway, in his hunger. The contents of his stomach flipped over painfully, causing him to double up over the car bonnet.

He forced himself upright and went to inspect the damage. One of the front lights was smashed, the left wing dented, and there were scratches, some deep, along that side. He’d lost a lot of paint. Still, it could have been worse. The wall he had hit some dozens of yards back must have been ready to collapse, or the car would have been in a very bad way.

He sat down on the grass bank and waited for his heart to stop racing. His head felt clearer, but things still didn’t look quite right; the world was still hazy and slightly out of kilter.

Next to him the car clicked and sighed as the engine cooled. After a while he glanced underneath to check that nothing was leaking, got back inside, and carefully backed onto the tarmac. He continued along the little back road at about ten miles an hour until a further spasm in his stomach made him shut his eyes in agony, and he had to stop again.

He got out, slammed the door behind him, and looked around.

He was near the top of a hill. Open countryside lay spread around him on all sides. Ahead of him a row of scraggy, dark-leafed trees stretched to the right towards acres of torn-up fields and pyramids of raw earth; a scene of tortured ugliness. In front of them a deeply scarred path of churned mud led to a set of old diggings, called the Victory Quarry, that had partly been turned into a tip by the Borough Council. A multitude of large skips, painted drab brown, sprawled away at all angles beyond the end of the line of trees; a porta-cabin guarded the entrance at the other side. A skimpy gate of wire grill on an iron frame gaped wide to give access to dust carts and private vehicles arriving from time to time with cargoes of every kind of rubbish.

He wandered down the path, thinking he would take advantage of the shelter of the trees to relieve his bladder.

It was not easy going. The mud was scored with the tyre-marks of huge machines, which had to be stepped in and out of with care. The rain of the previous weeks had sunk deep, turning the mangled soil oleaginous, but the mix of sunshine and strong wind of the last three days had formed a crust overall that looked solid, but gave way under his feet, precipitating him awkwardly into the mire below. His light town shoes became heavily caked with clumps of dirt, like thick black paste, and his progress was marked by an uneven sequence of gross squelching sounds that complemented the sensations he was experiencing in his belly.

He grabbed at a half-broken branch and pulled himself along it into a space between two trees. He noticed that their trunks on the pathward side had been hacked and wounded by passing vehicles. Great scabs of bark were missing, revealing the plants’ fibrous flesh. Crosses, in faded orange paint, had been daubed on the trees, presumably to indicate that they were to be preserved. Stumps of others, less fortunate, remained here and there, like the broken pillars on tombs.

Immediately at the rear of the trees, shrubs and flowers grew in the shaded dimness. He stepped a little way in among them, relieved himself, and stopped to wipe the mud from his shoes with a clump of grass.

Above him, something moved heavily among the branches. For moments there was silence, then the bird, or whatever it was, shifted clumsily again. It made a sudden, rattling, cackling sound that made him start. “Like the noise a toy machine gun would make if it laughed!” he thought, and wondered at his own wild simile. But it was reasonably accurate. There was something taunting and mechanical in the creature’s call that unnerved him in his weakened, jittery state. He looked up in the direction of the sound, but the sun was shining directly through the leaves above him, punching blinding slivers of light through an otherwise featureless silhouette. It was impossible to distinguish anything in particular.

There was movement above again. A shower of twigs descended around him, and something else fell, that hit the ground by his feet. After the briefest hesitation, when he felt a stab of regret that he had ever stepped in among the trees, he bent down and picked it up. It was a purple-brown, egg-shaped object, a little more than three inches long. Surprisingly heavy, and icy cold, it looked more like some kind of fruit, but not, he thought, edible. There was something distinctly unappetising about it. It looked old; dry; preserved.

After rolling it on his palm, Maurice went back onto the path again to get a better look at it.

Both ends were quite smooth, with no indication that they had ever been joined to any plant.

“Not a seed,” he thought. “And not an egg; far too heavy and too hard. Anyway, an egg would have smashed on its fall from the tree.” He pressed harder and harder, and it seemed to give a bit. He closed both hands over it, to obtain more pressure, and gripped them together.

The thing burst and his hands slammed shut on what was left.

He felt something moving in his two-handed fist. He opened his hands and saw what seemed to be a myriad of tiny, dark creatures running out onto his fingers and up his wrists. He held his hands up to his eyes. He was not sure if what he could see was a multitude of tiny entities moving together, as though with one mind, or a single creature made up of almost microscopic sections. Both his hands were covered, as though by thin gloves. He became aware of a slightly painful sensation in the affected areas, and brushed his hands together. After a few moments of vigorous washing motions the “gloves”, and the pain, began to subside. Whatever had come out of the egg turned to dust that blew away in the wind as it fell.

A mottled, bruise-like stain remained to mark where the contents of the object had spread. He tried rubbing his hands in the grass, but without effect. The stain seemed indelible.

His skin itched. His hands and wrists looked horrible, as though his skin was diseased. Rubbing them fretfully against each other, he peered up into the trees again.

He saw a branch sway down, as though something was walking along it.

He picked a large stone out of the mud and threw it at where he judged the source of the movement to be.

There was a commotion among the leaves and the harsh, cackling sound recommenced with a vengeance. Nearby, all along the line of trees, other, presumably similar creatures, took up the call. Their combined din became a terrible cacophony. Large sections of all the trees began to heave agitatedly. In his almost-hysterical state of confusion Maurice thought he could see thin arms waving and gesticulating among the branches.

He turned and ran, but in the wrong direction, away from his car. He realized his mistake almost at once, but dared not stop.

Once, he glanced to the left. Behind the trees, in among the shrubs and bushes, spidery shapes seemed to be scuttling up out from between the roots buried there. He got the impression that they were moving along parallel to him. Their movements were slow, but so were his, hampered as he was by the deep tyre tracks and the clinging mud.

He reached the porta-cabin. A shuttered window was open on the side. He ran to the far end, where he could see the edge of the lowest of a set of wooden steps protruding. The door above the steps was open, held back against the wind with a twist of wire. He collapsed on his knees on the steps and looked into the cabin. A young skinhead with a tattooed scalp, in overalls and a black donkey-jacket, sat at an improvized desk, stirring the contents of a mug with one hand and clutching a coverless paperback in the other. The young man regarded him inquisitively over the book, which he lowered a couple of inches.