by M. T Hill
The ridge flattens and dips into a valley. They leave the main path to join a skinny dirt trail going into the shedding pines, patchy ground for the most part, occasionally given over to nettles. Shep listens to the rhythmic shuffling of Freya’s bin bag in her hands. Her breathing. The air smells gamey, and he’s aware of their growing solitude. Then they meet the hiking trail proper, arrowed signposts marking the easy route, stiled off. A single tyre mark crosses through the clayish mud – possibly from his own scrambler. A territorial line.
‘Cut over here,’ he says, pointing to a collapsed section of dry-stone wall. They scramble into undisturbed woods where the ivy has thickened and noosed the tree trunks.
‘What was that?’ Freya hisses.
‘What?’ he says over his shoulder.
‘Shep.’
He turns round. She’s squatting.
‘It’s near us,’ she whispers.
He creeps back to her. ‘What is?’
‘I heard branches.’
Shep’s back sparkles. ‘A deer,’ he tells her.
‘It was breathing.’
He grips her shoulder. The sap on his hand sticks to her jacket. ‘Forest whispers,’ he says. ‘Your ears are tuning in.’
‘What if it’s a boar? Or a—’
He stands her up. Cobwebs in her hair and an insect smeared across one cheek. For the first time, his sense of responsibility manifests as a load. A reminder of what he’s done in bringing her along. He helps her put the bin bag on.
‘Come on,’ he says.
She touches his hand. Her fingers are sticky with sap. He loops her index finger around his, and she doesn’t resist, so he pulls her with it. Then he can only hear the leaves, and her breathing.
The angle of ascent increases, and by Shep’s reckoning they’ll shortly meet the walking trail. He decides they can’t risk the longer trek, however, lest she lose her legs for it. This way has more open ground, but it shortens the route to the bunker door.
Freya coughs, lets go of his finger, and Shep’s excitement returns. This quiet addiction. Only minutes from now, Freya as witness will help Shep concede to his imagination – or give it credence.
‘Really close,’ he tells her.
After the next incline, Freya is breathing raggedly. Sweat on both of their faces like grease in the light. The midges are billowing now, bolder by dusk, and several times there’s a crack as Freya slaps at bits of exposed skin.
‘This can’t be urbex,’ she comments. Her mouth sounds full, like she wants to spit.
‘You’re crossing over,’ he tells her.
‘I’m knackered,’ she says.
He pauses briefly to let her catch up. ‘It’s worth it.’
‘Yeah,’ she says. She has her hands on her knees, sniffing loudly.
Shep goes to her and retakes a handful of the bag on her shoulder. ‘We’ll have to get you registered on the boards after this,’ he says. ‘Captain Bin Bags.’
Freya gives him two fingers, then inverts them to indicate walking on. ‘Unless you manage to kill me first.’
‘Exactly,’ Shep says. ‘Or it gets too dark to see the mantraps.’
Freya doesn’t seem to find that funny.
The Journalist
Shep leads her deeper into the woods, tracking unknown quarry through a dampening matrix of tree limbs and undergrowth. Soon it’s too dark to see, so he puts on a headtorch and angles it low. She trails the light in dazed reverence, there in person but not properly there, as if operated by proxy. A cold nose and wet feet, and the bin bag already heavy with condensation. Her heart thuds distantly but it’s full in her mouth. Her senses are blunted but sharply present in the taste of blood. The cold is getting into her bones, but her skin is slick. The ground is soft and bodily, and the air is crisp. Strongest and strangest of all is the feeling that Shep really does want to get them lost.
Beyond a clearing, humming with invisible life, Shep and Freya reach a dilapidated brick wall that bulges precariously in several places along its length. A barrel of new-looking razor wire runs along the top, secured in place with masonry bolts. Freya doesn’t need to tell Shep that the wall is too tall for her. Instead, she stands there while Shep, silent and concentrating, searches for a good spot from which to try and get over.
‘Here,’ he says, trampling nettles. ‘They forgot to join the wire.’
She’s seen him hunt like this before – at Big Walls. One eye closed, he ducks low, digs in his toes, pushes in his fingertips, and lifts himself up. Graceful, like he’s underwater. He pushes the razor wire aside and hops back down, silent but for a tiny boot scuff on landing. It’s not just careful, it’s studious. He assesses and tests and mutters to himself.
‘How solid are your toes?’ he asks her. He angles his head towards a pair of bricks he’s worked loose. ‘Footholds here. I can give you a leg-up.’
Freya smiles weakly as Shep kneels in the mud. He cups his hands, long fingers interlacing. ‘Best you don’t think too much,’ he says. Freya steps up from his hands with a groan and feels him tense and wobble with resistance beneath her. She pushes off, not caring – not in that instant – if it hurts him. A quick sadism, cut through by the harshness of the wall on her palms. A flash of dream-Stephen climbing her body, planting his mouth above her pubic bone, working his splitting face into her lower abdomen—
Freya’s on the wall. Clumsy, but up there. Shep grins up from the dim below, teeth blue in a black frame. ‘Now straddle it,’ he says, and the fillings in his molars flash. A lurch of fear, but she does it, one leg in the everyday and one in the new, and Shep seems impressed, eager. ‘Here,’ he says. He passes her a headtorch.
‘Pull it on,’ Shep tells her. ‘Tight. Your dust mask as well. It can’t be loose.’
Freya does as she’s told.
‘Now, recce the place. Sweep left first, the far side. Can you see anyone?’
The suggestion shocks her – does he expect her to see someone? And sent her up here anyway? The mask’s elastic pinches the soft hairs at her temples, and its synthetic smell is awful. Glue and rubber and something else.
‘No,’ she says. ‘No one.’
‘And the rest of the site?’
She scans the plot. Tendrils of mist caught in the beam. Distant shapes, shadows on the far walls. A pile of debris, pieces of gnarled machinery. A digging machine with a clawed bucket. A rough square of missing earth. Over from that, two slanted concrete buttresses built into a mound of earth, between which is set a heavy door.
‘It’s quiet,’ she whispers through her mask. ‘A digger and a pile of junk. I can see an entrance.’
‘They’ve tidied up,’ Shep says quietly. Then, louder, ‘You see the bunker door?’
A bunker? That’s what this is?
‘I think so,’ she tells him. ‘In a mound. Two big concrete bits.’
‘And we’re close? Coming at the entrance from the right-hand side?’
‘Diagonal-ish. Shep… listen, I don’t feel great.’
He takes a few steps back from the wall. ‘Like how?’ he asked. ‘Gippy? Like you could throw up?’
She nods.
‘It’ll smooth out. You’re rushing.’
‘I’m cold,’ she says. ‘Look at the state of my hands.’
He bounds up the wall to join her. Breathing harder beside her. ‘You’ll warm up when we get underground,’ he says, balancing on one foot, knee bent, his other leg extended fully downwards, ballet toes. ‘This is the worst bit. See all that shit, down there?’
Freya follows the choppy torchlight. At the base of the wall there’s a border of concrete covered with broken glass and ripped-up cans. She looks closer. Metal offcuts and rusted nails. ‘Hang on,’ she says. ‘It’s bedded into it?’
She turns the torch to his face in time to catch a smirk. ‘Spiker line,’ he says, covering his eyes, and she shivers, looks beyond towards the woods. They’re so dense she wonders if they’ll ever get out again.
Shep tap
s her. ‘Jump away from the wall, right? Don’t overthink it. Don’t count yourself down. Like this.’ And he goes.
‘Wait!’ she says. ‘Fuck’s sake.’ She turns so she’s facing him, both legs hanging over.
Clear of the border sharps, Shep raises his hands. ‘I’m spotting you,’ he says. ‘So jump. Don’t even think about it. Your knees’ll take it. Use the momentum to roll. Land arse-over-tit, I don’t care – just clear the spiker line.’
There’s frustration in his tone now. Does he mean to belittle her? Does he regret bringing her?
No, that’s projection. This is on her. She approached him at Big Walls. She got in his van. She steadies herself with both of her hands out-turned.
‘You’ve got this far,’ Shep says.
‘Oh, piss off,’ she says. And she leaps off the wall, lands heavily, and piles straight into him.
‘Nice one,’ Shep whispers in her ear. She pushes him away and straightens her jacket under the bin bag. Shep gestures towards the bunker. ‘Now it’s your turn to lead.’
‘Over there? Isn’t it locked?’
‘Yeah. Wait in the alcove-thing.’
‘The porch.’
He laughs under his breath. ‘The porch. Go on. I’m checking what’s down that hole.’
For some reason she defers to him, agrees to this, and sets out across the outground, keeping her headtorch angled towards her feet like Shep did in the woods. Everything glows green: a range of textures – woodchip, sponge-like soil, randomly laid paving slabs. ‘What is this place?’ she asks, turning back to him. He’s vanished. No torchlight, movement. Her pulse running in every joint.
‘Shep?’
Nothing.
‘Shep?’
Freya swears. What’s she doing? She continues to the bunker’s porch and switches off the headtorch so she can watch for Shep across the site. Wait for his torch to reappear in the distance.
‘Shep,’ she says, louder this time.
He’s gone. She edges back until her shoulders are flush against the cold bunker door and stares into the night, trying to pick him out. There’s only empty space, the angles of the digger’s simple limb. The air has taken on a thickness, a closeness, a resonance. She could almost cut a chunk from its volume.
Shep’s headtorch clicks on. He’s jogging, casually, towards her.
‘Where the hell did you go?’
‘Boxes,’ he hisses. ‘They’ve burnt all the fucking boxes!’
‘What? What boxes? Where were you?’
‘They burned the fucking lot,’ he says. ‘From the corridor.’
‘Who did?’ she says, panicking openly. ‘What boxes?’
Shep huffs impatiently and pushes past her to the bunker door.’I needed a piss, Freya. It’s not a big deal.’
‘Shep, what boxes?’
‘Nothing matters,’ he says, and for a second, she can’t be sure he isn’t sniffing at his sleeves, his chest.
She raises her hands and steps away. ‘I’m going home.’
‘You aren’t.’
‘What?’
Shep shines his headtorch in her face. She winces, kneads her eyes.
‘Arsehole!’
‘Aren’t you having fun?’
‘God’s sake, you’ve blinded me.’
‘We’re here, see? Let me sort the door.’
Freya scowls at him. Even if she really wanted to leave, how could she? Shep is her Sherpa. She thinks of Stephen. She thinks of the strange look Shep gave her in the van.
She looks again, relenting. He’s tampering with the door. Snipping, a gentle scraping sound. The clacking of a keyboard, loosely mounted. A soft pop.
‘Open sesame,’ Shep says, and even in those two words she can tell his mood has lifted again.
She tells herself to follow him.
‘You first,’ Shep says.
‘What?’
‘Like I said. It’s your go now. This is it.’
‘That was out there. Walking to the door.’
He shrugs, moves back. Against every impulse, Freya takes a step forward. Half hoping he’ll bar the way, make some smart-arsed comment. Another delicate step, both hands on the nearest wall, as though she’s on a tightrope. And still no word. She fumbles on her headtorch. Through the white spots in her vision, the bunker shapes up. The walls resolving in fragile lines. The smell of earth and the tang of must. The sound of trickling water, Shep’s breathing. She’s standing in a narrow corridor spotted with pools of fetid water, stripped out brackets and dangling wire enclosures for utility lights.
Deeper, where the torchlight deforms the angles either side of her. Her own shadow stretching ahead from Shep’s torch behind.
‘Expected more graffiti,’ Freya says.
‘It’s virgin,’ Shep tells her. ‘They don’t know.’
‘It’s like a tomb,’ she says.
‘You’d have to die for that to make sense,’ Shep replies.
Freya stops. She closes her eyes for a moment. The dense earth, thin air. Her electric nerves.
‘What are you doing?’ he asks.
‘My eyes hurt.’
‘Are you loving it, though?’
‘What?’
‘Are you scared?’
She exhales. ‘Yes.’
‘Then use it.’
Freya opens her eyes and continues. Fairy steps now. Another doorway over there.
‘Keep going,’ Shep urges. He touches the small of her back. She leans on his hand, lets him guide her. She closes her strained eyes again. She’d prefer to put her fingers in her ears, like her ex did to soften jump-scares in horror films. Here, though, not looking is all she can do. How will she ever write about this? Tomorrow morning, when it’s over, how will she come at it? Journalistically – which is to say coldly, by affecting a certain artificial distance, as though her mask and bin bag form some sterile barrier? Or floridly? Could she spill gleefully over her word counts? Come out with some pinwheeling stream of consciousness? She never gives much thought to creative writing – news writing being about form and concision, the doctrine that every published sentence must be a tightly bound fragment of truth, or at the very least digestible, comprehensible to anyone. This place, though, with its depths and its smells… She’d have to redraw her boundaries to do it justice. She’d have to slacken her grip.
Like Stephen did, in his posts.
Now the air cools and the sound of their feet is expansive. She opens her eyes to find they’ve entered a chamber with a higher ceiling.
‘I reckon it was a dining hall,’ Shep whispers. ‘See?’
Dark marks on the floor in a pond of combined torchlight. Rubber-footed tables or chairs.
‘Where now?’ she asks.
He touches her head. ‘Take off your mask.’
‘But you said—’
‘For a few seconds.’
She pulls the dust mask down around her neck.
‘Smell that?’
‘Rust?’
‘Please.’
Freya sniffs. Her nose is freezing. ‘Rust. Mould. Rot.’
Shep shakes his head and inhales deeply. A smile spreads from ear to ear.
‘Shep?’ she says.
His eyes turn glassy. He says, ‘You don’t get it,’ then whispers what she takes to be ‘stratosphere’, which makes no sense at all. He points past her head.
‘What is it?’ she asks. ‘What’s there?’
‘Can’t you see it, in the walls?’
When Freya turns back to him, Shep has his camera up. She raises a hand in protest.
‘Show me your teeth,’ he says. And the camera flash burns white. It’s like being stung. Freya trips back from him. She overbalances, hits the floor, and her headtorch falls around her neck.
‘Sepsis,’ Shep says, and fires the camera again.
Freya crabs backwards on her hands and her knees.
‘Where are you going?’ he asks her. ‘Why can’t you even taste it?’
A third blas
t from the void. Freya rolls to her front and trip-staggers to her feet; sprints into the chamber, bin bag inflating around her. She tears at it, pulls away scraps, and her torchlight bounces from floor to ceiling.
‘Freya!’ Shep shouts, echoless and direct. He could be right there beside her. ‘Where are you going? You can taste this!’
Freya twists round. A glimpse of Shep standing still, body rigid, neck bent back abnormally. His headtorch pointed directly at the ceiling.
‘It’s perfect!’ he calls, turning slowly where he stands. ‘They’re all here! Why can’t you taste it?’
Freya meets the far wall at full pace, hands and face into slimy bricks. Soil fills her mouth. Vegetation flashing pus-yellow. She steps back and hideous wet things come away, crumbling into her hair. She sinks to the ground. She wants to give in. Has a tooth come loose? ‘Please,’ she whispers, pointing her torch with both hands.
‘Don’t be mardy,’ Shep shouts from somewhere far away. He fires the camera again, a cone of light. A fifth time, closer: a sickening bleach.
‘No,’ she whispers, head swimming.
‘Glanding!’ Shep shouts, this time from the opposite side. ‘They’re glanding – for both of us!’
‘Shep,’ she pleads.
His laughter rings out.
‘Use it!’ he yells. ‘It’ll make you see!’
A sixth flash from the pitch. A seventh. He’s hunting her with his camera.
‘Stop,’ she whispers.
In the corner of her eye, a long silhouette crosses the floor at unnatural speed. A broken figure on its hands and knees, like the Stephen in her dream. It’s Shep, and his strong hands grip her calves, and she kicks back, connects with a cheek or maybe a throat, and draws from him a low grunt.
Running again. Iced veins and weak thighs. The bin bag a witch’s cowl. Hopelessly, endlessly lost – and missing in a way it’s so hard to go missing. No cameras, no transactions, no social or signal. Nobody knows where she is.
