Errantry: Strange Stories (16 page)

The walls were gone. He stepped backward, counting five paces, and again extended his arms. Still nothing. He dropped his hands and began to walk forward, counting each step—five, six, seven, ten, thirteen—stopped and slowly turned in a circle, holding the phone at arm’s-length as he strove to discern some feature in the encroaching darkness. The pallid blue gleam flared then went out.

He swore furiously, fighting panic. He turned the phone on and off, to no avail; finally shoved it into his pocket and stood, trying to calm himself.

It was impossible that he could be lost. The mound above him wasn’t that large, and even if the fogou’s passage continued for some distance underground, he would eventually reach the end, at which point he could turn around and painstakingly wend his way back out again. He tried to recall something he’d read once, about navigating the maze at Hampton Court—always keep your hand on the left-hand side of the hedge. All he had to do was locate a wall, and walk back into daylight.

He was fairly certain that he was still facing the same way as when he had first entered. He turned, so that he was now facing where the doorway should be, and walked, counting aloud as he did. When he reached one hundred he stopped.

There was no way he had walked more than a hundred paces into the tunnel. Somehow, he had gotten turned around. He wiped his face, slick and chill with sweat, and breathed deeply, trying to slow his racing heart. He heard nothing, saw nothing save that impenetrable darkness. Everything he had ever read about getting lost advised staying put and waiting for help; but that involved being lost above ground, where someone would eventually find you. At some point Thomsa and Harry would notice he hadn’t returned, but that might not be till morning.

And who knew how long it might be before they located him? The thought of spending another twelve hours or more here, motionless,
unable to see or hear, or touch anything save the ground beneath his feet, filled Jeffrey with such overwhelming horror that he felt dizzy.

And that was worst of all: if he fell, would he even touch the ground? He crouched, felt an absurd wash of relief as he pressed his palms against the floor. He straightened, took another deep breath and began to walk.

He tried counting his steps, as a means to keep track of time, but before long a preternatural stillness came over him, a sense that he was no longer awake but dreaming. He pinched the back of his hand, hard enough that he gasped. Yet still the feeling remained, that he’d somehow fallen into a recurring dream, the horror deadened somewhat by a strange familiarity. As though he’d stepped into an icy pool, he stopped, shivering, and realised the source of his apprehension.

It had been in the last chapter of Robert Bennington’s book,
Still the Seasons
; the chapter that he’d never been able to recall clearly. Even now it was like remembering something that had happened
to
him, not something he’d read: the last of the novel’s four children passing through a portal between one world and another, surrounded by utter darkness and the growing realisation that with each step the world around her was disintegrating and that she herself was disintegrating as well, until the book ended with her isolated consciousness fragmented into incalculable motes within an endless, starless void.

The terror of that memory jarred him. He jammed his hands into his pockets and felt his cell phone and the map, his car keys, some change. He walked more quickly, gazing straight ahead, focused on finding the spark within the passage that would resolve into the entrance.

After some time his heart jumped—it was there, so small he might have imagined it, a wink of light faint as a clouded star.

But when he ran a few paces he realised it was his mind playing tricks on him. A phantom light floated in the air, like the luminous blobs behind one’s knuckled eyelids. He blinked and rubbed his eyes: the light remained.

“Hello?” he called, hesitating. There was no reply.

He started to walk, but slowly, calling out several times into the silence. The light gradually grew brighter. A few more minutes and a second light appeared, and then a third. They cast no glow upon the tunnel, nor shadows: he could see neither walls nor ceiling, nor any sign of those who carried the lights. All three seemed suspended in the air, perhaps ten feet above the floor, and all bobbed slowly up and down, as though each was borne upon a pole.

Jeffrey froze. The lights were closer now, perhaps thirty feet from where he stood.

“Who is it?” he whispered.

He heard the slightest of sounds, a susurrus as of escaping air. With a cry he turned and fled, his footsteps echoing through the passage. He heard no sounds of pursuit, but when he looked back, the lights were still there, moving slowly toward him. With a gasp he ran harder, his chest aching, until one foot skidded on something and he fell. As he scrambled back up, his hand touched a flat smooth object; he grabbed it and without thinking jammed it into his pocket, and raced on down the tunnel.

And now, impossibly, in the vast darkness before him he saw a jot of light that might have been reflected from a spider’s eye. He kept going. Whenever he glanced back, he saw the trio of lights behind him.

They seemed to be more distant now. And there was no doubt that the light in front of him spilled from the fogou’s entrance—he could see the outlines of the doorway, and the dim glister of quartz and mica in the walls to either side. With a gasp he reached the steps, stumbled up them and back out into the blinding light of afternoon. He stopped, coughing and covering his eyes until he could see, then staggered back across first one field and then the next, hoisting himself over rocks heedless of blackthorns tearing his palms and clothing, until at last he reached the final overgrown tract of heather and bracken, and saw the white roof of his rental car shining in the sun.

He ran up to it, jammed the key into the lock and with a gasp fell into the driver’s seat. He locked the doors, flinching as another car drove past, and finally looked out the window.

To one side was the gate he’d scaled, with field after field beyond; to the other side the silhouettes of Gurnard’s Head and its sister promontory. Beyond the fields, the sun hung well above the lowering mass of Zennor Hill. The car’s clock read 15:23.

He shook his head in disbelief: it was impossible he’d been gone for scarcely an hour. He reached for his cell phone and felt something in the pocket beside it—the object he’d skidded on inside the fogou.

He pulled it out. A blue metal disc, slightly flattened where he’d stepped on it, with gold-stamped words above a beacon.

ST. AUSTELL SWEETS: FUDGE FROM REAL CORNISH CREAM

He turned it over in his hands and ran a finger across the raised lettering.

Becca gave one to each of us the day we arrived. The fudge was supposed to last the entire two weeks, and I think we ate it all that first night.

The same kind of candy tin where Evelyn had kept her comb and Anthea her locket and chain. He stared at it, the tin bright and enamel glossy-blue as though it had been painted yesterday. Anyone could have a candy tin, especially one from a local company that catered to tourists.

After a minute he set it down, took out his wallet and removed the photo Evelyn had given him: Evelyn and Moira doubled-up with laughter as Anthea stared at them, slightly puzzled, a half-smile on her face as though trying to determine if they were laughing at her.

He gazed at the photo for a long time, returned it to his wallet, then slid the candy lid back into his pocket. He still had no service on his phone.

He drove very slowly back to Cardu, nauseated from sunstroke and his terror at being underground. He knew he’d never been seriously lost—a backwards glance as he fled the mound reassured him that it hadn’t been large enough for that.

Yet he was profoundly unnerved by his reaction to the darkness, the way his sight had betrayed him and his imagination reflexively dredged up the images from Evelyn’s story. He was purged of any desire to remain another night at the cottage, or even in England, and considered checking to see if there was an evening train back to London.

But by the time he edged the car down the long drive to the cottage, his disquiet had ebbed somewhat. Thomsa and Harry’s car was gone. A stretch of wall had been newly repaired, and many more daffodils and narcissus had opened, their sweet fragrance following him as he trudged to the front door.

Inside he found a plate with a loaf of freshly baked bread and some local blue cheese, beside it several pamphlets with a yellow Sticky note.

Jeffrey—

Gone to see a play in Penzance. Please turn off lights downstairs. I found these books today and thought you might be interested in them.

Thomsa

He glanced at the pamphlets—another map, a flyer about a music night at the pub in Zennor, a small paperback with a green cover—crossed to the refrigerator and foraged until he found two bottles of ale. Probably not proper B&B etiquette, but he’d apologise in the morning.

He grabbed the plate and book and went upstairs to his room. He kicked off his shoes, groaning with exhaustion, removed his torn windbreaker and regarded himself in the mirror, his face scratched and flecked with bits of greenery.

“What a mess,” he murmured, and collapsed onto the bed.

He downed one of the bottles of ale and most of the bread and cheese. Outside, light leaked from a sky deepening to ultramarine. He heard the boom and sigh of waves, and for a long while he reclined in the window seat and stared out at the cliffs, watching as shadows slipped down them like black paint. At last he stood and got some clean clothes from his bag. He hooked a finger around the remaining bottle of ale, picked up the book Thomsa had left for him, and retired to the bathroom.

The immense tub took ages to fill, but there seemed to be unlimited hot water. He put all the lights on and undressed, sank into the tub and gave himself over to the mindless luxury of hot water and steam and the scent of daffodils on the windowsill.

Finally he turned the water off. He reached for the bottle he’d set on the floor and opened it, dried his hands and picked up the book. A worn paperback, its creased cover showing a sweep of green hills topped by a massive tor, with a glimpse of sea in the distance.

OLD TALES FOR NEW DAYS

BY ROBERT BENNINGTON

Jeffrey whistled softly, took a long swallow of ale and opened the book. It was not a novel but a collection of stories, published in 1970—Cornish folktales, according to a brief preface, ‘told anew for today’s generation’. He scanned the table of contents—’Pisky-Led’, ‘Tregeagle and the Devil’, ‘Jack the Giant Killer’—then sat up quickly in the tub, spilling water as he gazed at a title underlined with red ink: ‘Cherry of Zennor’. He flipped through the pages until he found it.

Sixteen-year-old Cherry was the prettiest girl in Zennor, not that she knew it. One day while walking on the moor she met a young man as handsome as she was lovely.

“Will you come with me?” he asked, and held out a beautiful lace handkerchief to entice her. “I’m a widower with an infant son who needs tending. I’ll pay you better wages than any man or woman earns from here to Kenidjack Castle, and give you dresses that will be the envy of every girl at Morvah Fair.”

Now, Cherry had never had a penny in her pocket in her entire young life, so she let the young man take her arm and lead her across the moor . . .

There were no echoes here of
The Sun Battles
, no vertiginous terrors of darkness and the abyss; just a folk tale that reminded Jeffrey a bit of ‘Rip Van Winkle’, with Cherry caring for the young son and, as the weeks passed, falling in love with the mysterious man.

Each day she put ointment on the boy’s eyes, warned by his father never to let a drop fall upon her own. Until of course one day she couldn’t resist doing so, and saw an entire host of gorgeously dressed men and women moving through the house around her, including her mysterious employer and a beautiful woman who was obviously his wife. Betrayed and terrified, Cherry fled; her lover caught up with her on the moor and pressed some coins into her hand.

“You must go now and forget what you have seen,” he said sadly, and touched the corner of her eye. When she returned home she found her parents dead and gone, along with everyone she knew, and her cottage a ruin open to the sky. Some say it is still a good idea to avoid the moors near Zennor.

Jeffrey closed the book and dropped it on the floor beside the tub. When he at last headed back down the corridor, he heard voices from the kitchen, and Thomsa’s voice raised in laughter. He didn’t go downstairs; only returned to his room and locked the door behind him.

He left early the next morning, after sharing breakfast with Thomsa at the kitchen table.

“Harry’s had to go to St. Ives to pick up some tools he had repaired.” She poured Jeffrey more coffee and pushed the cream across the table toward him. “Did you have a nice ramble yesterday and go to the Tinners?”

Jeffrey smiled but said nothing. He was halfway up the winding driveway back to Cardu before he realised he’d forgotten to mention the two bottles of ale.

He returned the rental car then got a ride to the station from Evan, the same man who’d picked him up two days earlier.

“Have a good time in Zennor?”

“Very nice,” said Jeffrey.

“Quiet this time of year.” Evan pulled the car to the curb. “Looks like your train’s here already.”

Jeffrey got out, slung his bag over his shoulder and started for the station entrance. His heart sank when he saw two figures arguing on the sidewalk a few yards away, one a policeman.

“Come on now, Erthy,” he said, glancing as Jeffrey drew closer. “You know better than this.”

“Fuck you!” she shouted, and kicked at him. “Not my fucking name!”

“That’s it.”

The policeman grabbed her wrist and bent his head to speak into a walkie-talkie. Jeffrey began to hurry past. The woman screamed after him, shaking her clenched fist. Her eye with its bloody starburst glowed crimson in the morning sun.