by L. P. Davies
It led to the unknown, and I didn’t feel at all happy about what that unknown might turn out to be. There was something about all this artificiality that grated on my nerves and set my teeth on edge. And the persistent feeling of being watched didn’t make things any better. I wondered absently if perhaps one of Lee’s guesses wasn’t right, that all this had grown up around us when the sun had risen, and that when darkness came again it would all melt away and we would find ourselves back on the rocky slope again. But that was an assumption we couldn’t bank on. There was no point in just staying here and waiting for night to return to prove or disprove the theory. For one thing, there was no way of knowing how long daylight would last. For another, we would have to find food and drink. That was something Lee hadn’t apparently thought about. “The first thing to do,” I said, “is to get organised.” Lee threw me a mock salute. “Yes, sir. For a start, we haven’t the makings of a full-scale safari. Nor anywhere near it. I don’t know about you, but I’ve only the clothes I stand up in.” He patted his pockets. “Plus one dirty handkerchief and a comb that’s missing most of its teeth. Oh, and a watch that doesn’t
g°—” My contribution was much the same, only my
handkerchief was clean and I didn’t carry a comb. But checking possessions wasn’t what I had in mind.
I pointed. “We know the door lies somewhere in that direction, somewhere behind the trees. I think we ought to mark this place in such a way we’ll be able to recognise it again.”
“The lad has brains.” Lee looked about him. “No stones, so no cairn. Only the one your hand was resting on, and that’s not enough.” He looked at the place where I had been lying. “It would be a start, though.”
But the stone had gone, and so had the circle of brown that had enclosed it. The rich green carpet extended unbroken across the glade.
“Someone,” he observed a little shakily, “has done a pretty snappy repair job. And it’s no use trying to guess who, how, and why. All right, so let’s find some sticks we can drive into the greensward to mark the scene of the crime.”
We parted bushes to peer into the undergrowth. I found nothing; neither did he.
“Not even dead leaves,” he reported. “All neat and tidy as if a vacuum cleaner had been used.”
We worked our way round the fringe of the glade with no success. Straightening, I reached to grasp one of the overhanging branches, intending to snap it off. As my fingers moved towards it, the branch moved away. Thinking the breeze had been the cause, I tried again. This time there could be no doubt at all that the branch had pulled itself away from my hand.
“More and more curious,” Lee said, watching my efforts. “If I didn’t know better I’d say that that tree —an ordinary oak by the look of it—is dead set against being touched. Let me try.”
“Better not,” I said.
He grinned. “Afraid it’ll snap back at me?”
“How did it know I intended breaking a piece off?”
“I get it.” He rubbed the side of his nose, dislodging his spectacles and then having to adjust them. “But trees can’t see. And they can’t read thoughts. Not usually, that is.”
“These aren’t ordinary trees.”
“The hell with it!” he exclaimed, suddenly angry, and reached up to grasp the branch. And it stayed still and allowed his fingers to close round it. He tugged, there was a sharp crack, and he stepped back, holding the branch in front of him, looking at me over a plume of leaves.
“I know,” he said wearily. “It doesn’t make sense. Maybe I’ve got green fingers and you haven’t. Or t’other way round. What’re the odds, anyway.”
He carried his trophy to the centre of the glade, there to force the broken end into the ground. It went in a few inches and then met resistance, toppling over when he took his hands away. He tried several other places with the same result. For all the rich, sappy appearance of the grass, it seemed to be nothing more than a thin carpet laid over solid rock. In disgust, he tossed the branch into the centre of the glade and left it there.
“That’s the best I can do,” he said. “Any more bright ideas before we hit the trail?”
“We’re going to need food and water sooner or later,” I said.
“Yes.” He nodded without levity. “You’re right, Gerald. Neither of us has had anything to eat since supper last night. And this sun’s warm, very warm already. It’s going to be hot later on. I’m thirsty now.”
Just for a moment the feeling of invisible eyes boring into the back of my neck became very strong. I swung round but as usual there was nothing to be seen.
“Trees,” Lee mused. “Any number of them, and a fair assortment. I wonder if it’s likely there are any fruit trees among them?”
For some reason, perhaps because I had been thinking so much about the past these last few days, bis words evoked a picture from my childhood. I was walking back home through the woods. At the old apple tree near the gate I stopped to pluck one of the fruits, taking it with me, polishing it on my sleeve, to the brook. Squatting on the grassy bank, one hand dabbling in the water, I sank my teeth into the sweet, juicy flesh. I came back to the present with the taste of apple in my mouth. The bird whistled again. And now there were other sounds—the gentle rustling of branches, and from somewhere not far away, the gurgling and bubbling of water.
“The place is waking up,” Lee said. “You hear it?”
“Like the lavender,” I said. “We talked about it having no smell. Then someone gave it a smell. We remarked on the absence of birds. A bird started to whistle. You said you were thirsty, and now we can hear water.”
“Very obliging of that someone,” he said dryly. “All the same, I wish whoever it is would come out and show himself. Or herself.” He cocked his eyebrow at me. “Or itself.” He shook himself. “The hell with it! Let’s go find where this path leads to.”
So we set off along the path, always with that uncanny sensation of being watched. From time to time the bird gave its queer little trill of liquid notes, but we were never able to catch sight of it. The path curved between the trees. The sound of running water grew louder. We emerged unexpectedly into another glade, this one much larger than the one we had left. All around were the inevitable trees and bushes and flowers. And facing us, set in a nest of trees with a stream nearby, was, incredibly, a cottage.
I came to a halt, staring at it, refusing to believe what I saw.
“A refinement to the scene,” Lee’s voice said softly in my ear. “All very cosy. The finishing touch to the sylvan set-up.” I felt rather than saw him turn to look at me. “What’s the matter, Gerald? You look like you’d seen a ghost. You should be getting used to their tricks by now.”
It was a few moments before I was able to control my thoughts, longer still before I was able to find my voice.
“This is different,” I said with an effort. ‘The trees could be any old trees. But this isn’t any old cottage. I know every brick of it. It’s my home. That’s where I was born. My parents still live there.”
CHAPTER FIVE
The cottage nestled among the trees as if it had always been there. Ivy clung to one of the white walls, the ivy that as a boy I had used times without number to climb down from my bedroom window. The curtains at the windows were the pink and white chintz of my memory. The stream that sparkled at one side was my stream. There was the stone I had dragged to the side and heaved in with great effort to serve as a private stepping-stone. This was my home.
It was impossible. I tried to force my numbed thoughts into some semblance of reason. My home was outside a Dorset village. It couldn’t be in two places at the same time. It couldn’t have been picked up bodily, transported from our world to this and set down here for my benefit.
Lee voiced the only conclusion as it took shape in my mind.
“A. reasonable copy?” he wondered.
“The spitting image,” I told him, voice steady again.
“I figured it had to be by your
face. A new effort on the part of our invisible friend or friends. Not like the woods—nothing to distinguish those. This is something purely personal. So how did they come by their building information?”
I was almost over my shock now. Just a copy … In a way, the lavender, the birds, and the rest of it all over again, but on a much larger scale. And with the added refinement that I had only thought about my cottage, not spoken of it. Which meant our invisible friends, as Lee had called them, had the ability of being able to read thoughts and lift pictures out of minds. And having done that, turn those pictures into solid reality, building something out of what—nothing? I offered this refinement for Lee’s consideration. He had already seemingly worked it out for himself.
“It has to be,” said he. “Another item to be added to the list. Extrasensory perception de luxe. From now on we’ll have to watch our thoughts.” He nodded towards the cottage. “Do we take a look inside?”
But that was something I was reluctant to do. I’m not sure why. Those were thoughts I didn’t want to take shape. I think it was because I was afraid the people or things who lived in this weird dimension might, having made the cottage, have also gone on to make the people who lived there. That was something I preferred not to check on. Just because they had made a good job of the house didn’t mean they could have made an equally good job of its occupants.
So I let Lee go on alone. He walked across the impossible grass, opened the gate, went up the path and knocked calmly on the door. He stepped back as people do, just as if we were back home, out for a stroll, and had decided to drop in on friends. A cold feeling inside me, I watched the door, wondering who or what might answer. Thankfully, I saw that it stayed closed. He knocked again, tried the handle, pushed the door open, peered inside, then turned to beckon me. I had to make myself go to join him.
The cottage was nothing but an empty shell. The brick walls were bare and unpapered. The floor was thick, spongy grass. There was no ceiling, no division of rooms, no fireplaces—for all there was a chimney outside—nothing except the windows and the curtains.
“Another piece of stage scenery,” said Lee when we were out in the sunshine again. “Maybe they didn’t have enough information to get cracking on the interior decorations. But they’ve made a damned good job of the outside. Bricks and mortar and timbered roof. This couldn’t have grown up overnight. This has been made.”
He examined the wall by the door, running his fingers over the brickwork.
“Looks like plain ordinary brick but isn’t. Too soft for one thing. I can mark it with my nail. Looks like that sandstone rock that was scattered on the hillside. I’m guessing from the colour it’s some kind of sand-stone. So it’s been made from local materials.” He stepped back to look up at the roof; “Any more discrepancies?”
“Let’s get out of here,” I said.
He grinned at my voice. “Frightened, Gerald?”
I was, and there was no point in denying it. This, this copy of my home, had been the last straw. In nightmares the unseen horror that you know lurks round the corner is more frightening than the monster with which you come face to face. I was positive now that there was something invisible watching our every move, weighing up our reactions to the things it had made. There was the feeling of being a rat in a cage in some laboratory. I said as much to Lee.
“I don’t mind admitting,” he confessed, “that I felt a damned sight happier out there in the open. At least it was natural—if that’s a word one can use in this damned place. A specimen in a lab, you say. I feel like we’re in a waxworks with the proprietor trying to make up his mind whether or not to include us in his exhibits.”
He stared at me as the notion took root.
“You don’t suppose it could be like that, Gerald? Exhibits in their natural surroundings …” He shivered. “Let’s get the hell out of here. Do we go on, or turn back?”
“Not much use going back. That’s a dead end.” I looked up at the sky, but the sun hadn’t risen enough to show above the trees and so we couldn’t use it as a guide. But there was a change to the sky. It was still cloudless, but the blue seemed to have darkened and now there were streaks of lurid purple laid across it. I drew Lee’s attention to the change.
“Storm brewing?” he hazarded. “No clouds though. Unless that violet stuff passes for clouds.” Then he rubbed the side of his face, and I found myself doing the same, not unconsciously copying him, but suddenly aware that the exposed flesh of my hands and face was tingling. The light breeze had died; the leaves hung motionless and heavy on the trees.
To leave the glade we had to cross the stream. Up until the moment we actually reached it neither of us had thought of the stream as being water. Thirsty as we both were, there had been other things on our minds. Now, using his handkerchief to wipe the sweat from his forehead, Lee stood on the grassy bank and looked longingly at the clear, sparkling water.
Something made me say, “No, Lee. Better not.”
He crouched on his heels. “Looks all right.” He touched it with a cautious finger, plunged his hand into it. “Feels like water.”
“We can’t be sure. Not in this place.”
“I know what you mean. A fake like all the rest. It’s one hell of a temptation for all that. I’d give anything for a drink.”
“Only as a very last resort,” I said.
“It’s almost that now.” He straightened reluctantly. “You’re right, of course. We can’t be too careful. Let’s go before I weaken.”
We used my stepping-stone to get across. Even its feel under my foot was familiar. I didn’t look back as we left the glade, following the path which led back into the trees.
It was getting noticeably darker now, the purple streaks—when I glanced up at the sky—deepened, gathering and coiling ominously. The breeze that had previously died sprang up suddenly, but with a new, harsh feel to it, hot and tingling on bare flesh.
And after a while I began to have the impression that the many twists and turns of the path were leading us back in the direction from which we had come. With the return of the breeze, the weather was getting warmer. The light faded into a violet twilight, making it difficult to see for any distance ahead. Lee passed some comment about the tingling on his face and then frowned at the sky.
“Something nasty going on up there by the look of it,” he diagnosed. “At least we’ll have plenty of shelter if the rains come.”
The warmth became an uncomfortable heat, a dry, prickling heat that was made all the worse by the ovenblast of the rising breeze. My clothes, sodden with sweat, dragged uncomfortably under the armpits. The tingling sensation increased, the feeling of a million needle-points being jabbed into exposed flesh. Rubbing only seemed to increase the discomfort. I tried covering my cheeks—the worst afflicted places —with my hands, but it made little difference.
We both heard the distant sound at the same time, stopping together in our tracks.
“Thunder?” Lee wondered, head cocked to one side.
But it was a steady roaring rather than an intermittent rumble. Overhead the branches were rocking violently, creaking with the rising wind, branches jostling angrily against each other. In the purple-tinged darkness we could barely make out each other’s faces, even standing close together by the trunk of a tree where we had instinctively drawn for safety.
There was a strange moment of silence, and then the storm broke with startling, terrifying suddenness. But such a storm as I had never experienced before. There were no lightning flashes, no peals of thunder, no rain. Just the wind—a shrieking, howling inferno, a solid wave of searing heat that struck like a tornado, threatening to lift us off our feet and fling us away, and would have done so if I hadn’t wrapped my arms tightly about the tree trunk. The pressure of Lee’s body against my side told me he had done the same.
Our tree, massive and solid as it seemed, swayed alarmingly. The noise was deafening. My eyes closed tightly. I clung on grimly, desperately, the force of the wind
driving my legs tight against the bark. A crash loud enough to be heard above the storm was presumably a tree brought smashing down. A series of smaller crashes marked its distant course. The very ground under my feet seemed to rock with the fury. Something—a broken branch it must have been— struck my shoulder and went hurtling on.
And then the solid trunk to which I was clinging melted from my grasp so that I was left holding nothing. Immediately, the wind sent me staggering forward. I fell ‘to the ground and crouched there on my knees, my arms wrapped about my head to form some sort of shield. Blinded and deafened, my body as close to the shuddering ground as it would go, with no way of telling what was happening, how Lee was faring, I was alone with the storm. The wind, a continuous, solid driving force, threatened each moment to drag me bodily from the ground and send me sweeping before it.
