Three Mile Drove, Chapter Six

CHAPTER SIX

Darren arrived at the Fox and Hounds to find it all but empty. He supposed that the place relied for much of its trade on reps and businessmen who passed along the busy highway. The sole occupants of the brightly lit lounge bar now, were a group of five sober suited businessmen, too deeply engrossed in technical twaddle of some kind that they never spared so much as a glance, as he pushed through the double doors and walked to the bar.
There was a man with a moustache behind the counter, sporting a white shirt and black tie. 'Yes sir?' the man asked as he approached, placing the glass he'd been cleaning into a rack beneath the bar.
'Is it possible to speak to the landlord,' Darren said, feeling indignant about the fact that no matter whether they be farmhands or jumped up businessmen, people in this area seemed to find something curious about him. Or was he slowly developing some kind of paranoia?
'I'm the manager sir, how can I help?'
'I'm looking for accommodation for the night,' Darren said, vexed, 'I understand you might be able to provide it.'
'Well there is renovation work going on sir,' the manager said doubtfully, 'I think that all our single rooms are taken, I'm afraid. I'll need to check.'
He felt that he'd received a quick once over, before the man walked to an alcove behind the bar and drew a book from a shelf.
No chance Darren thought. In your present state he probably thinks you're of no fixed abode, likely to slip quietly out at first light leaving an unpaid bill.
After several seconds the manager returned glum faced, 'As it happens sir, a guest checked out this evening unexpectedly. We do have a single room, the only one available. It's not en-suite I'm afraid, but we can provide a discount off our normal rate.'
'Fine, I'm not choosy,' Darren smiled, relieved not to have to take to the road again that night. He accepted the keys from the manager and was shown the way upstairs to room ten.
*
Darren was served a hearty breakfast at the inn the following morning, but he found he hadn't the stomach for it. He wasn't prone to nightmares but the one he'd just experienced had left him reeling, his stomach churning as if from one humdinger of a hangover.
He'd been clawing desperately at the bank, driving his fingers so deeply into the earth that clods of the stuff had driven into his nails, ripping them to shreds. He hadn't been able to feel the pain though, so intent had he been on hauling himself out of the raging mini-torrent which surged waist high around him.
But he was never going to make it, because out of the all-encompassing darkness which was the night itself, a white clad figure had appeared. It was kneeling on the dyke edge, a white hood covered its head and where the face should have been there was nothing, just a dark vacuum. The figure stretched its arms, they were so long he was spellbound by them, and then huge hands had emerged from beneath the white frock and had begun weighing heavily down on his shoulders. He'd felt he was beneath a huge mechanical press, such was the force exerted on him as his wretched hands simply slid from the crumbling wet clay of the bank.
Despite the fierce wind pounding in his ears he'd smelled the stench of the foul odour that was the creature's breath, and then as he'd slid down towards the raging water he'd seen her. He'd seen Goldie kneeling beside the hooded figure, her face luminous as if in stark contrast to the blackness of the night. She was laughing and yet angry at the same time, gloating at his demise. There'd been green bile coming from her mouth, it had vomited out at him just before he slumped below the water's surface, too shocked, too exhausted to struggle any longer. As the water had flowed over him he could hear her hideous, ear-piercing shriek. It had sounded like nothing on earth, derived from pure madness, as from the watery depths he had made out her head floating down towards him, as if it were to be his tortuous, eternal partner in a nightmare that was to continue beyond death.
Goldie's head had vanished as the tumultuous rolling funnel of water had seemed to carry him ever more quickly. Every so often his head had been thrown above water as if his sufferings weren't enough, as if an invisible force was saving him from a yet more harrowing end. The sound of the water had been growing, the rushing in his ears intensifying as carried to and fro he'd seemed to be pitched from the channel into a lethal waterfall. He'd thought this was to be his doom, his tomb '
Darren had felt his head spinning as he was tossed through the air, crashing down into a dark, boiling sea. He'd thought he could see a hint of light through the darkness above, like a tiny hole in a black cloud. He'd thought this must be the last he could see of the sky before being submerged forever, and then suddenly he'd heard the throbbing of an engine, a motor boat perhaps coming to save him from burial in the vast dark waters of the ocean. Then, thankfully, slowly, consciousness had finally come to him. Consternation gave way to puzzlement and then relief, as getting groggily to his feet he'd heaved back the curtain from where the tiny source of light had filtered, to reveal an overcast morning, and out across the fens, a tractor was hard at work.
So it had all been a dream. But he'd lived his nightmare to the brink, the thunder still inside him, which was his heart pounding at the walls of his chest, bore testimony to that.

* * *

The wind was whistling through the row of willows as she reached her uncle Sam's house, like a frenzied fiddle player who'd lost his sense of rhythm, she later thought, though to a nine year old child it spoke in the chilling voice of another world.
Bare branches blowing in the wind seemed to bend and thrust out at her like long, grey fingers, warning her away, to keep away.
Only she couldn't keep away.
Because her Uncle Sam was ill, he needed his bottle of tonic. It would help make him better, her parents had said that when they'd asked her to run the errand.
She'd tapped on the door and her uncle had called out in a throaty voice, for her to go in. The door was on the latch, but it was a rickety thing and got stuck when it was damp, she'd managed to push it open only by placing all of her six stone against it.
She'd found her uncle in bed. He looked better than she'd thought he might, his dark, lined face was smiling at her, and he asked her to fetch a spoon from the kitchen. The kitchen had been in a mess, she couldn't find a clean spoon, so she'd had to wash and dry one. She would have done all the washing up for her uncle, but her parents had told her to come straight back once she'd given him the tonic.
Her uncle had been sitting with his back and head against the iron railings of the bedstead. He looked too uncomfortable like that, so when she got back into the room she took the pillows and propped them behind his back, then at least he could settle better.
He'd leaned forward, she'd thought it was too help her. There had been a smile on his face but it hadn't seemed friendly. She would always remember the way his yellow teeth gaped out of a widening mouth, so that with a sudden startle she thought they might eat her up, and with her throat thickening at the sight of it, she'd watched froth from his mouth drip onto a dirty eiderdown.
Uncle Sam had asked her to sit down on the side of his bed but she hadn't wanted to do it. She didn't like the way he was looking at her, but she'd done it anyway, since she'd been brought up to do what her elders told her to. He was her uncle, after all.
But it wasn't only that '
Because with a sudden sense of alarm she'd realised that it was his bony hand that had pulled her down onto the bed.
He'd asked her to feed the spoonful of tonic into his mouth, but she hadn't wanted to do that either. His breath stunk and it made her feel sick. She'd held her own breath as she'd spooned the tonic into his mouth with an unsteady hand.
Then something had happened which seemed to make her heart bang against the walls of her chest, that made her feel like it was leaping and battering in an attempt to get out.
His hand had gone under her skirt.
It had clasped her thigh so tightly, but the action alone, rather than the force of it had held her rigid. She'd started to utter a feeble cry when his hand let go its hold and shot quickly to her crotch. She felt his fingers probing her and struggled to get away, though she couldn't. His other hand was now pressing so heavily on her shoulder that she couldn't move.
No, this shouldn't be happening. I'm only a nine-year-old child but this shouldn't be happening. But it is.
Why?
Suddenly the offending hand had been withdrawn. Oh thank God, it was all some kind of silly game that her uncle had been playing. A game that she didn't understand, but now it was finished with '
Over '
But of course it wasn't, that simple thought had been summoned by the naivety of a child. Because moving faster than she'd ever seen him before, in that split second he'd flung back the covers and through the hole in his torn pyjamas she'd seen his "thing. It was stumpy and ugly, swollen and covered with thin lines.
He'd pointed it towards her and she'd lashed out blindly in sheer panic. Her young arms couldn't have had much power but she'd got lucky, striking him in the eye, making him groan and release the grip on his shoulder.
Confused, shaken and angry she'd run from the house as fast as her legs could carry her. Outside, the leaning branches of the willows pointed down the drove like exposed tendons which shouted, "Go, be on your way!
And on her way she'd rushed, grabbing her cycle and heading home like one who'd been taught a cold, grim fact of life in the most painful manner.
It had stayed with her all these years, the memory of those few agonising moments had lasted a lifetime. Even now she hated the sound of the wind, whenever there was a gale she'd press her fingers to her ears to keep it out, and when she wasn't alone, when she wasn't able to cover her ears, then the sound would torment her, shout its howling, whistling messages deep into her head.
And the embarrassment, anguish and confusion she'd suffered that day seemed to go unnoticed. Her parents hadn't seemed to notice the way she was shaking when she got home, the way she was breathing so quickly that the breath wasn't entering her lungs. Perhaps they thought it was due to the cold, to the wind, or whatever. But perhaps, a doubting voice spoke to this day; it was because they had been too wrapped up in their own little world to really notice about her.
At any rate, when she'd learned that her uncle's bungalow would become hers she'd been horrified at the very thought of it. Darren Goldwater was welcome to it, both the bungalow and the fiendish existence, which lay just beyond its boundaries.