The River Dark

by Nicholas Bennett

  That was when the call came through about what was taking place half-a-mile away on the banks of the river at Cornhill.

  *

  14

  Henderson knew that the tunnel wound upwards because in places he had to grip blindly at the wall to avoid slipping back the way had come. Even Gerry scratched at the floor for purchase where it was particularly steep. The ceiling became lower intermittently causing him to bend forward, his shoulder blades touching the uneven brickwork uncomfortably; the sensation of claustrophobia was heightened by the fact that all he could hear was his own laboured breathing and Gerry's panting.

  He thought about turning back but Gerry pulled him on urgently. He flexed his sore neck and shoulders, stiff from continually crouching and leaning forward. He felt the direction of the air change and swung his torch around in an arc. He stood at an intersection- a perfect crossroads. Gerry immediately pulled to turn down the left tunnel but Henderson held him fast. He stopped to think. He tried the radio. No signal. Fuck. He felt close. Gerry growled down the tunnel to his left, the dog's snarl echoing away into the distance. Christ, there could be miles of tunnels down here, he thought.

  He should turn back- in the event of radio failure, return to the surface. Stick to the plan. Gerry pulled at his arm again. Henderson understood. Being this close to their quarry- as he was sure they were- the idea of turning back was beyond frustrating.

  "No, boy," he whispered not enjoying the way his words seemed to slide over the surface of the tunnel. "We can't." He yanked at Gerry's collar and turned back the way they had come. Gerry squirmed awkwardly and Henderson felt the collar leash slip out of his hand. Gerry dashed into the darkness of the left hand tunnel barking wildly. Henderson saw his hind quarters briefly as they scampered beyond the range of the light cast on the tunnel by his torch beam.

  "Gerry!" he roared into the tunnel. "Here!" In the distance he heard Gerry yelp in response but nothing more. For the first time since he had been a puppy, Gerry did not obey Henderson's command.

  "Fuck!" Henderson headed into the tunnel after his dog.

  He did not dare to raise his pace above a long-legged gait for fear of running headlong into jutting rock and knocking himself unconscious; he also wanted to keep his torch light fixed firmly on the tunnel ahead.

  "Gerry! Come here boy! Come on!" He called to the dog at intervals but did not hear Gerry's bark again. He stopped- once more breathing hard- and surveyed the tunnel walls. Moss and damp- a slimy residue coated the interior of the tunnel but now the brickwork appeared to be more definite. He continued to walk. For the first time he wondered what purpose these tunnels had served and the words Abbey Ruins from the map he had been referring to on his fruitless search over the last thirty-six hours returned to him. These were probably the remnants of the old abbey used by monks over five hundred years ago. He shuddered. Did anyone even know that these tunnels were here? He heard the echo of a human voice ricochet of the walls as though fading, from a long distance. Although he could not discern the meaning, he was sure that it was Pat Marsh obviously beginning to worry about him. They had lost radio contact more than five minutes before- how long? Ten minutes? Fifteen? –and Marsh would have called for back-up by now. Thick, sticky residue covered his face causing him to flap at his cheeks madly causing the torch light to dance wildly about the passageway. He felt something with many legs tickle his cheek. Shit. He hated spiders. He shivered again. This was all too much. He thought he felt something large push passed his ankle and shrieked, flinching away. He didn't like rats much either. More than anything he was afraid that the torch batteries would die and- stupid bastard! – he'd forgotten to replace his spares. He hated the dark, always had done. He remembered clearly the feelings that he would have when his overly strict father would use the dark as a punishment for his young son's failings. He remembered the way that, in the darkness of his bedroom, even the most innocuous piles of clothing had taken on the monstrous forms that his imagination created. He would put his face beneath the covers and then become afraid to look out, no matter how overheated he became, for fear of the grinning heat of the evil clown's face in the blackness only inches away from his own. Henderson shook his head and felt sweat sting his left eye. This was ridiculous.

  Stupid fucking dog. It could find its own way out.

  In the distance he heard Gerry bark wildly.

  Henderson staggered down the ancient subway less mindful of protuberances now. He felt the tunnel angling downwards once more and his own pace pick up until he was almost running. "Gerry!" He shouted into the darkness just before he lost his footing. The toecap of his right boot bashed painfully against broken brickwork and his own impetus sent him reeling forward, sprawling in the stagnant water and God knew what other slime there was down here. His right wrist slammed painfully into the uneven ground causing him to relinquish his grip on the torch. It skittered across the floor and came to rest no more than ten feet from the policeman, the beam- mercifully- dipped along the floor. Henderson pushed himself up onto his hands and knees and crawled towards the torch. Breathing hard, he picked it up and pushed himself against the curvature of the tunnel walls. He touched his left knee gingerly. It was painful and slippery to the touch. He shone the torch on the wound and saw a horizontal gash across his kneecap. It would be sore tomorrow but it could have been so much worse. That decided him. Enough was enough. Back to the surface. The dog could follow its own scent to get out. He pivoted his torso forward and placed a hand on the wall to push himself back to his feet.

  He shone the torch back the way he had come and looked into the silently screaming faces before him.

  Henderson fell back to the floor and shone the torch on the gathering that blocked his way. To his horror, the man in front of the group was naked. He saw four of them crushed into the narrow tunnel, shoulder to shoulder but there were more of them behind, he could sense them. He backed away from the filthy group before him until his back touched the wall.

  The wall moved under his weight.

  He directed the torch upwards and saw the face of the man that had once been Andrew Davies- different now. He was completely hairless. His skin was like parchment. His mouth yawned down at him as though it wanted to gobble him up. Henderson could feel himself about to scream but as the mouths of those surrounding him stretched wide and the voices began to assail him from all directions the cry died in his throat.

  The torch went out then and the voices in the darkness became one.

  15

  Marsh looked at his watch anxiously. Twenty-three minutes had elapsed since they’d lost radio contact. He walked up and down nervously. "Fuck, fuck, fuck," he muttered. There was no back-up on the way. Apparently there was trouble on the Cornhill estate. Something about gypsies and immigrants. That meant that he was going to have to go into the mouth of the hillside that had swallowed up Henderson and he really did not want to do that. He’d called down the tunnel several times but even that act of leaning down into the darkness and shining his torch into along the beginnings of the subterranean passage was enough to turn his abdomen to jelly. He was not a coward but he wasn't a mole either. He didn’t like narrow, enclosed spaces. The feeling of all that earth above his head made him feel dizzy. No Channel Tunnel for him. No fucking way. He decided to call down the hole again.

  As before, he got down his knees and leaned on one side of the fissure while lowering his head as far into the hole as she could. He shone the torch into the darkness and illuminated Henderson's face.

  "Holy shit," Marsh exclaimed and leapt away from the hole. He shone the light over the hole once more in time to see Gerry's snout and ears as Henderson lifted him out of the hole. As soon as the dog gripped the earth, it pulled itself through the opening and sat, waiting, for his master. Henderson stood up in the rainy gloom and blinked, adjusting his eyes to the light.

  "Are you alright?" Marsh asked. Henderson nodded and began to push himself out of the hole.

  "Yes, I'm fine," the o
lder man said quietly. He stood next to Gerry and studied Marsh impassively. "Nothing down there," he said. "Dead ends."

  "But what about Gerry? What about the scent?" Marsh was confused.

  "He picked up the scent of an animal and your dog got excited too."

  Harvey whined.

  Marsh looked down at Harvey. The German Shepherd seemed to shrink away from the other dog, pushing itself against Marsh's leg. Your dog, Henderson had called him. Strange. They always referred to their dogs by their given names. Christ, it was Henderson that had told him that the dogs were more important than they were any way, so should always be treated with respect. It was part of their code.

  "I'll radio in," Marsh said and lifted his radio to his mouth.

  "Tell them that there's nothing down there," Henderson said. "Tell them it's a dead end."

  Marsh looked warily at Henderson and spoke into the radio.

  *

  Chapter Eleven

  1

  In the evening that followed the scene at Carter's Field, a third of a mile along the river from Ross's and the black bridge, the skies opened and the rain came down with such ferocity that it did indeed seem as though the end of the world had arrived. The armed forces arrived just after that.

  The river continued to creep into the homes and businesses of Measton.

  All along Riverside and up onto

  Rennick Road water lapped against sills and invaded homes. Where the water was at its deepest, car rooftops were multi-coloured islands shifted to bizarre angles by the sheer volume of the flood waters. By six in the evening all of those that could be coaxed from their upper floor havens had been transported by the Marines to church halls and leisure centres where blankets and soup were handed out to one and all by Red Cross volunteers and WI members alike. Those among them that were old enough to remember the war, experienced the fear of displacement once more; a feeling that had been consciously forgotten but subconsciously stored until this day when it came lapping against the door like an unwelcome visitor from the past, a harbinger of death and suffering.

  At the foot of Measton Hill, one cottage floated in the flood land. The cottage was only accessible by boat. Royal Marine Private Jason Anderson shut down the outboard while Private Mansfield tossed a rope with practiced ease over top of what he guessed served as a washing line pole. It was all guess work now given the fact that the garden was probably beneath six feet of water. More rainfall in two days than in six months they were saying. The tethered dinghy arced towards the top of what Anderson guessed to be the front door. Only the apex of the arch above the door was visible as the river patted against the pebble dashed white washed walls.

  "Hello?" Mansfield called expecting to see eager heads bob up at the bedroom window. "Private Mansfield and Private Anderson, Royal Marines!" There was nothing. It was amazing how many of the homes they had visited had been deserted already; they had only picked up six families so far, less than a tenth of what they had expected to carry to safety. Other crews had experienced the same phenomena too. They waited for several minutes calling again at the windows. Sometimes the elderly were slow to react, slow to trust the veracity of their claims. But still there was nothing. "Come on then," Anderson said and Mansfield untied the line. The outboard buzzed back into life and the launch headed away from the cottage.

  Albert Pinchin waited for the engine to fade into the distance before stiffly pulling himself out from under his bed. He patted the sheep dog that had lain quietly next to him and put down his shotgun. He had waited under the bed with the double-barreled held across his wheezing chest with the forefinger of his right hand over both triggers as he had stroked Bob's snout with his left.

  He sat on the edge of his bed and reached into his coat to find Bob a treat as he watched the marine boys fizz across the river to Old Stan Fletcher's place. Wouldn't find anyone there either, Albert thought. He had watched Old Stan follow the two crusty looking townies down his garden path and along

  Rennick Road late in the afternoon. The odd trio had put Albert in the mind of a solemn procession down into Ross's one late summer night almost forty years before. No. The army boys wouldn't find Old Stan. He was gone. In every sense of the word. They were probably good honest service boys, Albert thought but he was not prepared to take the risk. He had seen and heard too much over the past forty-eight hours. There was a madness abroad and somehow it was being passed around the townsfolk like a common cold on pension day at the Post Office. No. He would stay where he was and wait for the madness to subside along with the water. For as he knew, the two were inseparable. Always had been, would be always.

  2

  "What the hell's this?" The woman in the passenger seat asked of her driver.

  "Search me," came the reply.

  The sound engineer poked his head between the seats and said: "No way."

  "Pull over, Ken," the woman said, "let's find out what's going on here."

  Two military trucks were parked across the road before them.

  They pulled onto the muddy grass verge and two uniformed men approached the vehicle carrying rifles. They wore water proofs over their combats like something out of a Vietnam movie, Ken thought. But this couldn't be happening. This was middle England- the Cotswold's- for fuck's sake. The anchor woman, Harriet Mason, pushed open the van door. One of the soldiers was immediately there.

  "Please don't get out of the vehicle, ma'am," he said. The Marine was young, twenty at most but his voice had cold authority. Harriet paused for a beat before continuing to open the door. The marine, incredibly, pushed the door closed causing Harriet to pull her foot back into the car to avoid injury. At the same moment the other Marine yanked open the driver's door.

  "You are to turn around and drive away, sir. Please do not attempt to enter Measton at any of the other roads in to the town. You will find blockades at each of them." The Marine had the tone of one that has repeated the same phrase many times previously.

  "What's going on, Private?" Harriet asked in her clipped, no nonsense-investigative journalist- tone.

  "its Corporal ma'am," the marine returned without emotion, "and I don't know what's going on down there. All I know is what my orders are so, if you'll just turn around-"

  "But this ridiculous," Ken said to the Marine. "We're Press, carrying out our duty to inform the country of what's going on here."

  "I understand, sir, and I am sure that a statement will be released soon enough" the Marine replied politely, "but we are following orders. These orders have been put into place for your safety."

  "But surely-" Harriet began.

  "There is nothing else to say, ma'am," the polite marine cut in to which Harriet adopted her we'll-see-about-that tone.

  "Well perhaps your commanding officer might have something to say-"

  "He would, ma'am," the marine agreed affably enough, "he'd tell you to turn back or take you into military custody. Now I suggest that you leave before that happens, ma'am."

  As the silver Mercedes van headed away from the blockade, Ken said: "Can you believe what just happened?"

  "This is all fucked up," the sound engineer offered from the rear.

  Harriet took out her compact mirror and began powdering her nose. "Pull over as soon as we're out of their sight," she snapped. "Do they really think that some kind of half-arsed martial law can be imposed without the public being informed?" Ken sighed and nodded. It was going to be a long night.

  *

  3

  On Carter's Field, two groups of men emerged from the rain mist and faced each other in ragged lines. They faced each other with grim determination. From this point there would be no backing down. The gypsies never backed down from a fight: of the twenty-two men that faced the migrants, men ranging in age from sixteen to sixty-two, all were or had been competitive bare-knuckle boxers; they were all hard men brought up on a diet of road dust and of bitter refusals at small shops and other so-called respectable outlets; they were accused of thieving and vanda
lism; their refusal to swallow the dogma that society- of which they lived on the edge- forced down their children's throats. They objected to the taxes imposed on the Gaje by the government for living, breathing, eating and shitting and still they were the fucking thieves. Not the fat cats at the top of the hill living off the hard work of others who did not seem to realize that they were selling their time for nothing more than enough to give their earnings to the man at the top of the pyramid. It was a con so old that these people no longer realized that they were its victims. And they had the tars to call the travelers thick because they wouldn't swallow the learning that the man at the top thought suitable for them. The Gaje were like the dogs they trained to hunt in the woods: intelligent enough to do what they were trained to do while docile enough to accept a meager meal for a hard days graft and to come back with a wagging tail, after a good beating.

  Farley's people were old stock. They were the remnants of the people that had presented themselves to James II in the sixteenth century as travellers from Ancient Egypt; a people with a number of women in their midst that could look into the hands of those that desired and see fantastical things there. They were survivors of two-centuries of attempted genocide when the existence of the Romani was outlawed, a law for which there was never a repeal or apology.