Out of Time (3 page)

Was he being tested by some unknown, malign god, were these happenings a trial of strength? If so, he had to meet the challenge or else die?

Joe did not favour speculation. It seemed to him a vain and useless waste of mental energy. His solutions to problems were purely practical.

He remembered now that he had been to a school camp at a farm which lay some five miles northwest. The farmer and his wife had been welcoming, they might remember him, might help. He dressed, brushed himself down and set off. He would cut through the wood until he reached the main road; it would be easy going after that. But once under the canopy of trees, without a path to guide him, he lost his sense of direction. The way was barred at almost every step by rioting bushes, fallen tree trunks and branches obscured by thick moss and lichen. He pushed his way angrily through long ivy tendrils that hung in thick, twisted ropes from overhead. The wood, like the townspeople, was attacking him and he was powerless to fight back.

Each step released a volume of sound, twigs snapping, the crunch of rotting wood beneath his feet, quick slithers in the undergrowth. If he stood still the silence was oppressive, relieved only by the chatter of birds high above and the scraping of countless insects below.

Only small plants could thrive in the lush dark of the wood; white wood anemones, sorrel and, here and there, glossy green leaves where earlier bluebells bloomed. He found an anthill, two feet high and poked a stick into its summit. The ants, red, large and fierce, scurried to rebuild. He felt panic rising, alone in this wild wood, and sat down on a nearby tree stump. What had he been taught to combat it? - take a deep breath in and then a long one out. He tried, but it did little to still the pulse beating in his throat. He pushed on.

It was impossible to know where he was heading. Everywhere looked the same, an endless forest of gnarled trees and undisturbed vegetation. He was probably going round in a circle, would stay here forever, never be found. Panic gripped him again as he thrashed through with brute force, tripping and falling constantly. What was once a wood had become a forest, unyielding in its cool, somber light.

Sobbing with frustration, he forced himself to stand still and let his heartbeats settle. He had time, it was still morning, ten o’clock by his watch, and there was surely a way out to the road. ‘Keep calm,’ he told himself, ‘think laterally.’ The obvious answer presented itself almost at once. Grasping the low branch of a nearby oak he hauled himself on and climbed laboriously to the top. He broke through to sunshine and the blue canopy of the sky. Scanning the horizon in every direction he was amazed to see nothing but acres of trees, their undulations in every possible and impossible shade of green; only the distant roofs of Bantage broke through the quivering carpet. Of buildings, roads or cultivated fields there was no sign. Man had left no mark on the landscape. Nature held sway, untroubled.

Joe climbed to the ground no longer able to think or reason or make sense of the insane universe imprisoning him. He wandered, directionless, in numb despair. Later, he found himself again by the stream.

He fell asleep, waking only when the sun lay low. The day was fading and with it came a desperate longing for home. Joe crept to the edge of the waste ground and parted the bushes to get a clearer view, praying to see once again the lost paradise of his youth, the cars’ rusty and jagged edges; but outlined against the sky was the same rotting furniture. In a forlorn desire to touch a familiar object, he made his way to the broken bed on which he had slept, wondering for a wild but hopeless moment if stopping here again for the night would dissolve whatever fantasy he inhabited.

The pole and net that had so nearly caught him lay on the ground beside the purloined sack. He picked them up and slowly made his way back to the wood.

*

In the town a gaggle of men are gathered in a low, oak beamed room. It has no windows and is lit by braziers on the walls and two flickering lamps. The men’s skin is grey, as though rarely exposed to light. One, a tall man of indeterminate age, is sitting at a long refectory table. Ten heads incline towards him. This man, known as Helmuth, exudes a deadly power. No one dares speak as he gives short, sharp orders. Four guards who have been concealed in the shadows come forward, listen and then leave by a central door.

Helmuth nods. The meeting is dismissed. The Councillors rise and with an obsequious bow follow the guards. Helmuth remains seated.

Opposite him, on the wall, his portrait observes him thoughtfully.

*

Joe was hungry. This was real hunger, gnawing hunger that made him feel sick, faint and unsteady. He had seen on television, read in the papers, learned in geography, that millions of people were starving, a statistic that, until this moment, had evoked little beyond a brief stab of pity. Now the images of stick people with swollen bellies grew into sharper focus; but while they died in their barren and desolate landscape here, with abundant nature all around, he ought to be smart enough to survive. He lacked the know-how. Pity, he thought wryly, he had always scorned joining the boy scouts. It might have prepared him for this bizarre and inexplicable ordeal.

A hedgehog and four small young scuttled past. He had once been told that gypsies ate hedgehogs, baking them in clay. He looked at them with interest. Delicious evidently. But where would he get a clay pot? Shocked and amazed at the impracticability of his situation - he had nothing, out here in the wild - he turned out his pockets. They revealed the house keys, a few coins, about £2.75 in all, a calculator, a box of matches, a broken felt-tip pen and an old, two bladed penknife. It had belonged to his father, a tactile contact Joe valued. Crumpled into a tight ball at the bottom of one pocket he found a sheet of glossy paper, a page from an old copy of The Face with an article on what was termed ‘the biggest star of 2001, Andrew WK.’ He could no longer remember why he had kept it so long but shoved it back. He switched his calculator on, played with it for a while and wished again he had his phone, though he doubted that it would have worked in this mast-free wilderness.

The stream was teeming with fish, silver minnows darting in and out of the shallows, now and then larger fish that looked like trout. The net that had so nearly caught him, a neat construction made from thick, wispy rope knotted loosely and attached to a knobbly pole, would now be put to better use. How many people had it captured? Joe brushed the image aside. Without food he would be unable to continue, might lie helpless until ‘they’ found him. He cut off the broken half of the pole and, weighing the net down with a stone, placed it in the stream’s bed. He waited for the ripples to fade and fish to swim into his trap. But they knew better and swam past or straight through. His stomach turning on its juices he finally caught a big, silver grey trout. Joe lifted it out and watched it thrashing inside the net, helpless but with surprising strength. Then it slid through a hole and hit land. The extra purchase gave it lift and it leaped high and forward, teetering at the water’s edge. Joe pounced and, holding the slithering fish with one hand, reached for a stone with the other. The fish flapped its tail in a last helpless gesture as, eyes half closed, Joe bashed its brains out. He picked it up and it lay wet and slimy in his hands. His gorge rose. He was tempted to throw it back.

Having learned from countless Westerns that smoke would reveal his whereabouts, he knew better than to light a fire within limited distance of the town. He placed the fish inside the sack and walked further upstream until he came to a secluded clearing. Here he gathered handfuls of dry grass, small twigs and rotting branches and built them into a pyramid in best boy- scout style. Thankfully he had matches. These he had always hidden from his mother, taking them carefully out of his pockets before the trousers were washed, for he and his friends smoked out of school, in local cafes and in homes that tolerated it. Joints were passed round regularly. This now made him pause. Was he, could he be on a shitty weed? He had taken Ecstasy once or twice and had watched others habitually on harder drugs. Had someone laced his drink? He didn’t quite see how. He had not been to Dick’s and it was not the kind of thing his friends did, making it unlikely that this experience was drug induced; in any case, no matter how bizarre his surroundings, his thinking was too ordered, too logical.

He lit a match impatiently and put it against the dry grass. The fire, smouldering at first, sprang to life. Skewing a twig into the fish, he hung it over the flames and, after an agony of impatience, tore into its flesh, burned and half-raw. He caught another, swiftly dispatched and swiftly eaten. Then another. Satisfied at last, he doused the fire and sat beside its embers, preparing for the next part of his journey. He had to keep going. Death in a dream, if such it was, might spell death in life.

*

Four men and four dogs advance along the stream, dogs straining at the leash. Each man carries a man- sized net. No words are spoken but their determined tread and their cold eyes express an implacable desire to subjugate whoever crosses their path, an uncompromising determination for mastery untouched by pity. They move forward.

*

Clearing away all traces of the fire Joe trekked on. In other circumstances he would have appreciated the wildness of this countryside, untamed by man, so different from the neat fields and bordered woods to which he was accustomed. He remembered now with wistful pleasure a cycle ride some years ago in the Chiltern hills with his mother, one of the many rambles they had enjoyed together in the days of short haircuts and neat clothes, before being uncouth became necessary for survival. They had approached from Hambledon, coming on it by chance and seeing, lying snugly at the foot of a steep incline, a small village of red roofs and curling smoke. As they stopped, looking down, Joe had felt a rush of affinity with this land as though he had inherited its memory, aeons ago from another life. No sense of that now. Here nature was untrammelled, stretching to he knew not where.

Faintly at first, he heard dogs barking. Was he approaching civilisation at last? His heart beat with hope. But not for long. The dogs were behind him, downstream in the direction of Bantage. This could mean only one thing. They were after him. His mind told him he must flee but his body refused to move. He crouched instead in the undergrowth, the hood well over his head and waited to be captured.

A blackbird, disturbed by the noise of the approaching dogs, launched itself from a nearby branch and Joe, released from his trance of terror, sprang forward, falling over branches and dead trees in headlong flight, feet and frayed trouser bottoms caught by long grass, ivy and twisting convolvulus. Out of breath, slowed by a painful stitch in his side, he fell over a tree trunk that blocked the way and plunged into the water, slipping and slithering over wet, mossy stones on which his worn out trainers failed to find purchase. His way was barred by the overhang of a tree growing sideways from the far bank.

Joe hesitated. The baying was moving closer and he was exposed, in the open. He grasped a branch above his head and with his last breath hauled himself up. Crawling on all fours, he reached the tree trunk. Here, huddled into a fork and shaded by leaves, he was for the time being out of sight.

Four men cleared the trees, their dogs, noses to ground, inexorably following his trail. He realised with sudden panic that he had dropped his net and sack in the grass, a clue so telling that he must be discovered. He closed his eyes and waited for the end.

The men stopped at the point at which he had slipped into the stream. Tongues lolling from heat and exhaustion, the dogs lay in the grass. One man and one dog crossed the stream immediately below Joe. Pressing his back against the tree trunk until the hard crusty bark hurt his skin, he saw his pursuer hesitate, shake the short chain on which the dog was leashed and, with low grunts that were clearly commands, walk up and down. The dog looked up at its handler with fear, head down, tail drooping, slinking behind as he was dragged through the wood. On the far side another dog stood alert, pointing towards him, a huge wolf like animal. It seemed impossible that, bathed in a sweat of fear, he could avoid detection.

They waited, three men and a dog, the boy camouflaged in a tree while the wild world went its way. The hunt, the predator, the victim. It was the way.

No one moved until man and dog emerged below him without warning - how close had they been? - recrossed the stream and joined the waiting party. Joe expected them to confer and perhaps fan out, but they moved off, back towards Bantage. Joe watched them go until they disappeared. Unable to believe in his escape he remained in the tree long after they had gone. The chase, for the time being at least, was over.

Later, much later, he unlocked himself, clambered to the end of the branch and jumped. He grazed his knee and all the aches from his initial flight returned. Blood poured from his wound into the water. He waded back across and found, miraculously, the sack and net hidden in the topmost tangle of a bush. He picked them up with relief, plunged once more into the water and stumbled upstream. Progress was slow. Uprooted trees, their leafy branches growing upright from fallen trunks, formed an almost impenetrable barrier. He had to give up, return to the grassy bank and hope his scent was lost. He was intent now only on putting mileage between himself and the town. He urged himself forward.

In the late afternoon he collapsed in the shade of a tree and lay, semi-comatose, until twilight fell. It was quarter to five. Joe studied his watch in amazement and disbelief. Eleven hours only since he had woken that morning. He had lived an eternity and covered, according to his reckoning, some ten miles in this wild country which stretched ahead without a break.

*

The four men return to the town. Their journey has been in vain. They know they will be punished and try to make themselves invisible by keeping close to the wood’s shade but as they emerge from Cat Walk they are seized by rough hands and dragged to a heavily fortified building. A thick wooden door is wrenched open and the four are thrown down stone steps into a dark, dank cellar. They cry in protest but the door is clanged shut and bolted from outside. Their shouts are ignored. The dogs are led away.