by John Booth
Shep stood with legs apart and his long bushy tail in the air, swinging from side to side. He isn’t any kind of a pointer, but as soon as he saw me arrive, he turned his attention back to the thing he wanted to show me and it was a sight that certainly made me stop and catch my breath.
A stunningly attractive young woman wearing nothing but some sort of see-through cloth stood by the edge of the wood, about a hundred yards along from where Shep and I had come up the hill. Whatever she was wearing was a bit like what brides wear at weddings but looked sheerer than that, if that’s the right word. It looked as if it was made of spiders webs and would blow away in the slightest breeze.
Almost in answer to a teenage prayer, a gust of a breeze caught the garment and I caught a glimpse of darkness between her legs. I put my hands in my pockets to cover up the inevitable result of that sight and called to her.
“Hello! Are you lost?”
Possibly the dumbest thing I’ve said since the time I asked a girl why she squatted to pee when I was four years old.
She gave me a look I found difficult to interpret. Not of anger and almost of relief mixed with exasperation. Those seconds are burned in my mind, so it’s easy to go over it now. Perhaps I didn’t really understand because the next thing she did was wave at me before turning around and running into the wood.
Shep gave one of his eager ‘woofs’ and ran after her. Me, I fell down the side of the Barrow in my eagerness to follow them.
Picking myself up and suddenly worrying if she would think me a slob because my windcheater was covered in mud, I raced into the woods after them.
Running into woodland on a slope without sorting out your path first is stupid, but I did it anyway. Ferns covered the ground, though they were still relatively short. By late summer, I would be able to hide in them standing up, but right now, they caused enough of a problem by covering up every hole and tree root along the way. It was very unlikely I would fall far if I was to fall, but there are places the ground drops away without warning, and I might fall ten feet onto stone if I was very unlucky. It would be very easy to break a leg.
If it hadn’t been for Shep’s barking I would have given up, but Shep kept giving me clues as to where they were, so I followed his calls.
I burst through some particularly tall ferns into a gully. An ancient tree had fallen over, taking the earth with it. We lose some trees in the winter, especially if we get a storm after a long period of rain. The rain loosens the roots of the trees and a strong gust of wind in the right direction is all it takes to topple one. Three of four hundred years of growing brought to a sudden end. Some people claimed some of the trees were much older than that.
This particular tree was a blasted oak. That is, an ancient oak tree struck by lightning in the past which creates a hollowed out center. When I was a little kid, I’d take note of such trees as you can usually get inside and use it as a pretend fortress. Of course, it’s also used by owls, grass snakes, and birds of prey, but that just adds to the fun. I knew this tree, as it was something I’d played in, in the past.
When it tipped over, its roots tore a gaping gully in the ground and, astonishingly, this revealed a tunnel going into the earth through the side of the hill. Shep stood by the tunnel entrance and at his feet was the gossamer thin cloth the woman wore. Surely, she wouldn’t have been stupid enough to go into a tunnel naked?
Actually, it took me nearly five minutes to have that thought as I was held the clothing of the most beautiful woman I’d ever seen in my hands, and my thoughts were temporarily elsewhere. When I came back down to earth, I was sure she couldn’t have been stupid enough to go into the tunnel. But even so, it must have been a possibility.
I called down the tunnel, but there was no reply. I went twenty feet into it, but I was conscious of the soft earth above my head and ran back out again. It was getting dark. The sun had already set over the hills, though it was probably still shining on the other side of the valley. There wasn’t enough light to see my own footprints in the tunnel, let alone hers.
Shep stayed well clear of the hole. As I’ve said before, he’s a clever dog. Finally, I decided I might as well go home. She must have had proper clothes somewhere and dropped this one to tease me. No one would believe me anyway, and what would they do if I told them? It’s probably illegal to wander around the English countryside with nothing on. These days, practically everything is illegal, but I doubt anybody was going to go to the trouble to catch her. Bring their cameras up in hope of a good photo, possibly, but try and catch her, no.
So I went home and to bed. I had something to do in bed that night. No, not that, well that as well, but also planning how to explore the tunnel in the hill the next day.
Next morning, exploring had to wait until I completed my paper round and my cleaning chores around the house. Then I had to find my torch, go into the village to get new for batteries for it, and so on. The point is, dear journal, I’m ready to go into the hole in the hill right now. If I don’t come back, only you will know where I have gone. Excited about it? You bet I am.
3. Ancient Serpents
Well, you’re not going to believe this. It just happened to me and I don’t believe it, so why should you?
When I left you last, I was about to set off on my mission to explore the tunnel under the tilted oak tree. I packed a small rucksack, filling it with essentials. The essentials consisted of, a squat black plastic torch that can be put down to work as a lantern, a small plastic bottle of cola, a roll of garden twine and the foldable spade we keep in the car to dig ourselves out of snow drifts in the winter. At the last moment, I added a couple of rounds of sandwiches filled with crunchy peanut butter and wrapped them in a plastic bag. I prefer smooth myself as crunchy gets stuck in my teeth, but Mum always buys crunchy. Go figure.
Shep didn’t want to come. He was having a bad day. He got up as I put on my coat, noticed the rucksack and went back to kip beside the fire. The fact we haven’t lit the fire in the last month doesn’t bother him. I think he sleeps by it, because to him the fireplace is filled with the idea of fire.
I went the direct route up to the tree, hardly paying attention to anything except the obstacles in front of me. This would prove to be a mistake, but then, how was I supposed to know? It took me twenty minutes to get to the tree according to the stopwatch thing I’d started on my watch.
I have one of those Japanese watches that sets itself against a radio time pulse every night. It’s great, because it’s never more than a second wrong and has an old fashioned analogue dial with actual hands as well as a techie bit for counting seconds and telling me what year it is. (Apparently, I might forget.) It even has that fantastic green glow dial effect so you can read it in the dark.
Naturally, stopping, setting the stopwatch mode and then setting the watch back into normal mode takes about ten button presses, but you can’t have everything. The watch was a present from my Dad a couple of years ago, which shows he does understand his son a little. Either that or it might have been me going on about it in the months coming up to Christmas, one or the other. Take your pick.
So there I was resetting the watch, and getting my torch out of the rucksack when this voice out of nowhere says, really sarcastically.
“Getting your porno mags out to have a wank, I suppose?”
It was a girl’s voice and for a second I think the beautiful woman from last night has returned, but when I turn round, I see it’s far from that. There’s this girl, standing with the hands in the pockets of her hoodie, hood down, looking at me with a sneer on her face. She’s got one of those ‘Adele’ figures, you know, not model, more real girl who’s been cast from the rounder mold. Difficult to tell her age, because she had no make-up on, and her long dark brown hair was pulled back tight in a ponytail giving her face a stretched look. Her jeans were far too fashionable for wearing in the woods and her trainers were totally wrong for the wet ground. She might be reasonably pretty, if she ever stopped with the sneer.
Now I’d like to say I responded with something truly cutting or outrageous like ‘I was going to, but since I’ve seen you I’ve lost the urge,’ but in reality, I blushed bright red and mumbled “No” which was pretty feeble, even by my standards.
“You’re Andy Hawks,” she said with absolute certainty.
“Andrew,” I replied, “I hate Andy, that’s a prat’s name.”
“I totally agree with you… Andy,” she continued unabashed, “I’ve come to live here and my aunt tells me you’re the only person my age in this village. So I guess we’ll have to be friends.”
“And your aunt is?” I said, still trying to regain my cool, which appeared to have taken off on vacation and deserted me just when I needed it.
“Jen Lord. She lives…”
“I know where she lives,” I interrupted, determined to get some control of the conversation, “I deliver the newspapers. I know where everyone lives.”
“Hark at you,” she said, “But then you are a Hawk aren’t you? Andy Hawks, the paper boy.”
“Hello.” I said as firmly as I could, “Who are you and what are you doing here?”
“I was following you. Aunt Jen told me where you lived and as I was coming up your path to introduce myself I saw you heading into the woods, so I followed. Did you know there’s a tunnel in the hill behind you?”
I tried again. Mum has taught me to be polite by the simple expedient of cuffing me round the ears whenever I wasn’t from the day I was born. Many people have remarked my ears are a bit large and stick out. I have my own theory as to why this is, and one day, when Mum is too old and feeble to hit me, I shall have this issue out with her.
“What’s your name and why are you in the village? Just visiting, I hope?”
“No, worse luck. I’ve come up here to live because Mum’s ill and other stuff. My brothers have gone away and it upset Mum. Having two older brothers, I know too well the things boy’s get up to.” She paused for breath, but not for long enough for me to get a word in edgeways.
“You’re not planning to go in there are you?” She pointed at the tunnel. “You’d have to be totally insane to go in there, and it’ll collapse on you for sure. Can I come with you?”
“Not until I know your name,” I said, totally stupidly. Even as the words left my mouth, I knew I was doomed to go into the tunnel with this obnoxious girl. That was all I needed.
“Don’t laugh when I tell you it,” she cautioned, as if, after insulting me for ten minutes, I should be the slightest bit sensitive about her feelings. I’d already passed far into insane behavior, so it didn’t surprise me at all when I felt my head nod my agreement.
“It’s Kylie Morris,” she said.
She wasn’t the slightest bit Australian which left one other possibility.
“Your mum was a big fan then?”
“Still is. I should be so lucky…” Kylie said, and I had to grin. “You got a torch?”
I took the lantern torch out and showed her. “Great! I hate those little pocket things that always give out at the worst possible moment.”
“I have spare batteries so we should be fine.” I squatted down besides my rucksack. The next thing I know, she has her hands in it and has purloined my peanut butter sandwiches. I tried to grab them back, but she moved away faster than I would have thought possible. Being brought up with older brothers had probably given her an unfair advantage, food snatching wise.
“So, are we going in, or what?” Kylie said munching on one of the sandwiches. “Hey! This is crunchy peanut butter. You should use smooth because the bits don’t get stuck in your teeth.”
I noted she made no move to hand the other sandwich back, and she kept on biting into the one she’d started.
I sighed as I got to my feet and, using the lantern in torch mode, shone it deep into the tunnel. Now the tunnel was remarkably square sided and was about three feet wide and less than six feet tall. I was going to have to crouch to get into it. With the torch casting its light on the sides of the tunnel, I was able to see its roof was made of slabs of stone and so were the sides.
The wall stones weren’t cut square except at the top as they met the roof, but they fitted together like a jigsaw puzzle and were well over six feet wide. Even the floor of the tunnel was stone, partially hidden under a layer of mud. Further into the tunnel, the floor was clean of dirt, as if nothing from the hill above had been able to get inside.
It was stupid to go in the tunnel. Even though it looked sound enough, I was hardly a structural engineer. But I didn’t see how I could back out of it with this sarcastic girl staring at me. Almost as if on cue, she said:
“Are you scared to go in then? Balls shriveled up have they?”
I made my way into the tunnel, and felt Kylie’s hands grab onto my waist as she followed me in. The tunnel went straight into the hill for about a hundred yards and then it looked as though it stopped with a stone wall ahead of us. I almost sighed with relief, but then noticed what I thought was the end was actually a right hand turn. The tunnel became narrower from that point on. It was less than two foot wide and certainly too narrow for Kylie to walk alongside me, not that it looked like she wanted to.
“Get on with it then,” she said, squeezing me hard enough to hurt, and so we continued down the tunnel. It was like a maze, twisting and turning every few feet. It felt as though the walls moved as we approached them and they were certainly getting closer. My biggest worry was that when we tried to leave I might not be able to turn around. I didn’t fancy trying to walk backwards with Kylie’s bottom leading the way out.
We walked for a very long time and I lost count of the number of twists in the tunnel at fifty three. Kylie felt my bottom at that point and said, “Firm. Nice,” and I totally lost my concentration for the next few minutes.
I stopped dead when the tunnel widened into a room. What stopped me what I saw. Right after the inevitable final twist I saw a man sitting on a stone throne. The image of the man faded away and I’m now almost sure it was a trick of the light.
What was undoubtedly real was the skeleton sitting on slabs of stone arranged like a chair with two blocks providing arm rests. If he had had clothes on once, they’d decayed away, but there were large bracelets on each of the skeleton’s arms. Somehow the skeleton had retained its shape as though the bones had been glued together.
“Get a move on! Did you just fart?” Kylie said from behind me and the skeleton crumbled to dust. All that was left were the two large arm bracelets. I let Kylie into the room.
“There was a skeleton sitting just there.”
Kylie grabbed the torch from me and scanned it over the stone throne. There were no trace of bone or skull. I wasn’t sure there was even any dust.
“Yeah, sure there was.”
I was beginning to doubt my own eyes by that time, so I didn’t argue.
The room was big enough for me to stand up in, which was a fantastic relief as my back was killing me. I stretched trying to get the kinks out while Kylie examined the bracelets.
Up close, they looked silver, though they were untarnished and shining in the torch light, which seemed unlikely for ancient silver. They’d been worked in the shape of a snake, each armlet being a silver snake curled around in a spiral like a slinky. They were exquisitely worked and they looked almost alive. They had small rubies for eyes that winked red in the torch light. They would fit either of us easily. In fact, they were so large I could have worn them on my upper arms.
“Put one on then. I dare you.” Kylie said, shouting in excitement.
These things were obviously valuable and I knew the British Museum would be all over them when we took them into town. The desire to try one on was almost overwhelming, even without her urging. I’m not into bling, but these were probably last worn by a Viking warrior or maybe a king.
“I will if you will,” I said in my best four year olds voice. It was just one of those moments and if I was going to defile this grave then I
wanted an accomplice. Kylie handed me the torch, and fitted one of the bracelets on her arm, sliding it above her elbow, with the snake head end pointing back towards her wrist. I did the same with the other one with a bit more difficulty, being reluctant to put the torch down.
We held out our arms with the palms of our hands upwards so they almost touched. I spun my bracelet around so the snake’s head pointed at my palm and Kylie did the same with hers.
A pulse of electricity shot through me and our fingers touched and locked together. It was frightening because I couldn’t move a muscle and Kylie was also locked in place. Then the snakes came to life. The one on my arm turned its head to stare at me and I saw its eyes glinting blood red.
The snakes slithered down our arms coming to a stop at our wrists. They opened their mouths, revealing razor sharp fangs and bit into our veins.
The pain was indescribable and I tried to scream, but I couldn’t even breathe, let alone shout. It was pure agony.
Then something stranger happened. Instead of the creatures sucking out our blood, the snakes slid into the holes they had made in our wrists. As the snake on my arm slithered into me, I saw my skin bulging out as it travelled up my arm and into my chest. As the last of its tail slid into me, the tear in my flesh miraculously healed and I was free and could move again.
Kylie screamed and crushed her body into my arms. I felt her trembling and tried to pretend I was unaffected and not shaking like a leaf. I stroked her hair as much to comfort me as to comfort her.
The weird thing was that this was the first time I’d held a girl like this in my life and it was completely un-sexual. All I could think of was how lucky we were to be alive, and to wonder if that state would continue for much longer.
Then Kylie hugged me closer with her left arm while her right reached up and grabbed me by the balls.
