The Darkening (22 page)

The tunnel’s length, all four or so metres of it, was thick with spider webs: some were fresh and shining like silver wire; some were loose and dusky as old shrouds. Among the webs, dotted like black stars in a diseased firmament, were spiders. Thousands of spiders. The shaking torchlight scanned them: some had round, shining bodies with black osseous legs that stroked the air; others had abdomens orange as spoiled juice, swollen thick and looking full enough to pop; some were small and busy, tending webs with legs that moved as delicately as human fingers; others were as big as tea saucers, hairy and fleshy. Some fussed with spindle limbs over the silk-wrapped corpses of their prey or silk-wrapped bundles of their eggs. The torchlight winked off thousands of black, unblinking eyes.

Nicholas felt gorge rise from his stomach.
How did Tristram force himself through there? How did he not go instantly mad being dragged through that?

Then another thought struck him:
Maybe he did go mad. Maybe he was lucky to, considering his bloody, lamb-like fate.

Nicholas swallowed back the peppery bile and took the plastic lid off the can. It was a bug bomb. The illustration on its side showed a variety of cartoon insects clasping their hearts in theatrical death. The can rattled as he shook it. Satisfied, he aimed its nozzle at the pipe mouth, put his thumb on the tab and pressed it down with a plasticky click. Insecticide hissed out as the tab locked on, and he threw the erupting spray can hard into the curtains of web in the pipe. He guessed it travelled nearly halfway into the pipe until the webs snagged it.

He backed away till he could barely see the pipe’s black mouth through the fog. The echoing hiss of the spray in the tunnel sounded low and mean, like the sighing exhalation of some entombed dark god, unhappily woken. The hissing slowed and thinned and died down to a stop.

For a few moments, nothing happened. Then spiders came crawling from the pipe - first in ones and twos, then by the dozen. They rushed out on panicked legs, or staggered out to perform mad pirouettes, or crawled out weakly, stunned. Some curled and perished on the spot. Some scuttered left and right into the woods. Some scrabbled weakly towards Nicholas; he crushed them with his shoe, nauseated by the dark liquids and small, glossy organs that shot from them.

It took fifteen minutes for the exodus of dying spiders to cease. Nicholas checked his watch. It was just after nine thirty. He waited a few more minutes for the poison to finish its killing work, then looked around for a stick with which to clear the cobwebs. He found one as thick as a pool cue, and returned to the pipe’s mouth.
They’ll all be lying on the bottom of the pipe. Oh, Jesus
. He hadn’t thought of that. If he’d planned this at all, he’d have bought a disposable pair of plastic overalls, thick gloves, goggles and a mask. Moreover, he realised he couldn’t hold the torch, crawl and clear cobwebs at the same time. He’d have to go in the dark.

He tucked the torch in the back of his jeans, slipped the one plastic bag he had over his left hand, gripped the stick with his right, sucked in a mighty breath and crept in.

As his body blocked the already thin light, the tunnel ahead fell into instant, sepulchral dark. He whisked the stick in front of him, left and right like a blind man’s cane. It tick-ticked off the sides, echoing like chattering teeth.
Move fast. Don’t breathe.
The first few feet weren’t so bad, but he felt the give of spiny things crushing under his hand and under his knees. But as he went deeper, so became the bed of fallen spiders. His flicking stick grew heavy with web, coated thickly as if with hellish spun sugar from some demented circus sideshow. His knees grew sodden with the juices of squashed arachnids. But what was underhand was worst. The thin bag felt woefully insubstantial as he placed it again and again on the ragged, sometimes shifting bed of spider bodies. He felt the twiggy legs and rounded bulges of the large ones. As his weight shifted onto his arm, it pushed his hand down through a centimetre, then two, then three of inhuman flesh. He vomited. Tears welled and flowed. He sucked in lungfuls of acrid air and filaments of web invaded his mouth. The fumes made him retch again. He scurried forward. The stick, heavier and heavier, failed to clear the curtains of web and they shrouded his face and hair. Dead spiders knocked against his cheeks and eyelids. Those not quite dead clambered up his arms and in his ears. His bagged hand slipped forward and he fell like a horse on ice, his face burying in the hard-soft, dead-alive carpet of spider flesh. He screamed and let go of the stick, propelling himself forward as fast as he could. The circle of light at the other end grew larger and larger. His wet shoes slipped as he scrabbled for purchase, his hands squelched and his sleeves grew soaked. He hurled himself out of the tunnel.

He leapt to his feet and jumped in circles like a mad dog, wiping his hands furiously on his jean legs and clawing at the grey caul over his face and head. His lungs roared and his head swam. His stomach heaved again, vomiting nothing but salty spit. His heart raced and tears poured from his eyes.

‘Jesus, Jesus, Jesus!’

He pulled spiders from his hair and wiped them from his jacket. Some had gone down the front of his jumper and T-shirt, so he jerked his shirt out violently, shaking the spiny cadavers onto the ground. He stopped his rabid dance. His panicked panting slowed to shuddering breaths.

He was through.

Clear of the pipe, Nicholas realised he had no plan beyond getting through the spidery tunnels. Without any other clear choice, he began following the rock wash bed of the gully floor.

The woods here were even denser than on the other side of the pipe. Ancient trees conspired together, dark limbs intertwining so closely that it was almost impossible to tell where one ended and another began. Vines with ribbed stalks thick as shins curled up trunks and over one another. The forest floor was an unsteady sea with tall waves of damp roots and deep troughs filled with decaying leaves that smelled as cloying and vital as human sweat. The fog was lifting, yet here it remained as dark as evening, and Nicholas couldn’t see more than five metres ahead before the trunks and curling vines merged to become a thick curtain. No breeze stirred the dark ceiling of leaves overhead.

How could he possibly explore the entire area? What would he find? And if he did find something, what could he do once he had?
Did you bring a camera? A compass? A weapon?
No, no and no
.
What an idiot
.
And then a thought bloomed brightly, trampling his foolish feeling and chilling him:
Nobody knows you’re here.

He noticed the stream bed underfoot was narrowing. He sensed that he was heading slightly uphill, but the hunched trunks, the fallen trees leaning against each other like drunken titans, and the clutching undergrowth made it impossible to judge. Roots arched over the rolling ground like stealthy fingers. He knew from the street map that if he could travel straight, he would eventually meet the river. He couldn’t be sure whether the dry watercourse was running straight, twisting left or right or meandering wildly - it hunted under dark schist and round knobbed elbows of roots. So was the river half a kilometre distant, or would he cross the next ridge and slide down into brown, frigid water?

He was lost.

Worse, he was thirsty and, now his empty stomach had recovered from the crawl through the tunnel, hungry as hell. As he climbed, the rocks grew sparser and the undergrowth wilder. Leaning trees had been covered in thick curtains of vines so they took the form of elephantine beasts, hulking antediluvian monsters with shimmering hides of shadowy jade. Soon, Nicholas was scrambling, climbing hand and foot over saplings and fallen, rotting trunks hoary with moss. He seemed to reach a low crest, and stopped.

Below, visible through a narrow gap between the tight-packed trees, was a path.

He carefully edged his way down to it, pushing aside thorny shrubs and crawling between close trunks. After much panting and straining, he slid out onto a narrow stony track that wended between the trees. To his left, the path seemed to go slightly uphill; to his right, it seemed to fall slightly. Which way? Any sense of direction was long gone, and without glimpse of the sun, he couldn’t pick north from south. He was trying to decide when a flicker of red caught his eye.

Tucked nearly out of sight behind a tree root off the path was a small patch of strawberries. The plants’ serrated leaves were peppered with tiny fruit each as small as Nicholas’s thumbnail. Seeming to sense that food was near, his stomach growled. He pinched one of the berries off - it was firm but yielding and ripe.
Well, thank God for small mercies
, he thought, and popped the fruit in his mouth. It was deliciously sweet. He knelt and plucked and ate, only stopping when he recalled standing on St James’s Street eating a large punnet of strawberries while Cate had a job interview; the runs they gave him an hour later were a loud and painful reminder of the paucity of public toilets in central London.

Cheered by the pleasant fullness in his belly, Nicholas regarded the path again. The trees lining the downward slope seemed less tightly packed and sinister, so he headed that way.

A small thought nagged him:
Why is there a path here at all?

Never mind
, he told himself,
I’ll find out soon enough
.

And why haven’t you seen any dead children?
Clearly, he was in the wrong part of the woods.
Let’s see where this path goes, and if it goes nowhere, I can eliminate it from my next search
. This seemed completely reasonable. He’d follow this path to its terminus and then follow it back.
Yes, but why is there a
path
?

Nicholas grew annoyed with his own arguing voice.
Animals? Maybe a feral goat or something - who cares?
This was the easiest going he’d had all morning. He could walk without being scratched, there was a mild breeze, glimpses of sunlit sky winked between the leaves overhead. The woods either side were actually quite pretty. Elkhorn ferns grew from the trunks of some, their green fronds hanging pleasantly like peacetime pennants. The air was crisp and smelled clean and lively. He was, he discovered, in a good mood. Regardless of this hunt for . . . whatever, he must make a point of returning to this delightful little track.

The path curved as it circumvented first one wide, friendly trunk of a fig tree, and then another, and then straightened again.

As Nicholas stepped around the last trunk, he stopped and stared.

The path kept straight ahead, widening slightly. The woods each side retreated to allow a clearing. Its gently sloping ground was a carpet of low ferns and guinea flowers; at the bottom of the grade was a fast-running creek that burbled over glistening rocks before its clear waters broke into a wide pool a stone’s throw across. An almost perfect circle of blue sky rode overhead.

But what made Nicholas blink in wonder was the boat.

Moored at one edge of the pond was a wooden sloop. It was, he thought, the loveliest ship he’d ever seen. She wore white lapped timbers, a fresh blue canopy and waxed hardwood rails. Her style was old, from the century before last, but her proportions were neat and spry, and she sat very prettily parallel to the shoreline. Sunlight winking off the glass portholes of her wheelhouse made her seem to smile and sparkle.

Nicholas beamed back, delighted.

Why is there a boat here?

‘Shh,’ he hushed himself again. He stepped off the path over the soft, fragrant blanket of green down to the water’s edge, and ran his hands along the boat’s timber flanks. Her white paint was almost blinding after the gloom of the forest. What a beautiful surprise!

Footsteps. Nicholas turned.

Coming down the path was the old woman in the pink cardigan, walking her tiny white terrier - the pair he had seen outside the woods on Carmichael Road so many hours ago. The old woman was speaking quietly to her dog, whose tail wagged contentedly at the praise. She held herself tall, reminding Nicholas of the proud elderly women of Paris, always dressed beautifully, walking with grace. Suddenly, the woman noticed him and stopped in her tracks; she was so startled that she dropped the dog’s lead.

‘Garnock,’ she called to the terrier.

Garnock took a few brave steps towards Nicholas.

This isn’t right . . .

‘Shh,’ he reprimanded himself again - he didn’t want this good mood to pass, and here was someone to share it with.

‘Hello!’ he called.

The woman looked anxiously behind her to see if there was anyone coming up the path who she might summon help from.

‘It’s all right,’ called Nicholas.

It’s not all right.

‘I don’t usually see others here,’ said the woman. Her voice was clear and strong. Nicholas could see that she would have been a pretty thing in her youth. Garnock took a few more steps towards him, and his tail wagged cautiously.

Now you have to go
, said the voice in Nicholas’s head.
It’s not too late if you go now
.