Hide and Seek (2 page)

CHAPTER 3

12:01pm

Peter turned around and could see a door on the other side of the small room. He stumbled
towards it and after rattling and wrestling with the old plastic handle it finally clicked into place and the door opened. The bedroom led out into the living room of the small cabin. Taking up the far corner at the back to his right was a sparse kitchen. To his right was another door. He peeked around and found a small bathroom with nothing more than a toilet, a sink with a dripping tap and a grimy bath. To his left he could see the doorway leading out into the woods. He tentatively crept out and peered around the corner beside the bedroom. There was a small space filled with a plastic covered couch overlooking another window. There was no television and no pictures on any of the walls.

‘Hello?’ He croaked.

There was no response. He walked over to the sink, turned on the tap, checked it with his fingers and cupped the water with both hands to drink greedily and wash his face. The water was cold on his face and woke him up. He massaged his forehead again; the headache continued to throb and it wasn’t subsiding quickly enough for his liking. Something felt wrong. He’d obviously been hung-over before but this niggling headache and the dizziness he was experiencing didn’t feel alcohol induced. Nor had he ever blacked out entire portions of a night before.

The last thing he could remember was
that the remaining members of the Excellent Eight had left the post funeral gathering at the Oaktree pub and all gone back to Colin and Michelle’s house. The mood had been surprisingly upbeat considering the sombre occasion, probably because the group of former childhood friends hadn’t all been together in one place for over twenty years. They had dubbed themselves the ‘Excellent Eight’ when they were younger, mimicking the Enid Blyton series of books for The Famous Five and The Secret Seven.

Peter estimated that he could remember up until about 9pm but then the rest of the night was completely gone. A fleeting thought passed through his head. Had he tried any drugs? That was not like him. He
’d tried a bit of weed during his university days, but nothing more than that. He did discover last night that Steve smoked a lot of weed and occasionally dabbled in ecstasy for nights out. He wondered if he had been drugged. He wouldn’t put it past Steve to do something stupid like that.

Steven ‘
Joker’ Jenkins loved to play pranks. He had always been a rascal in his youth and apparently this only got worse as he got older; and even more so after the breakup of his marriage. Peter had been told that his wife Lindsay was an extremely beautiful woman and Steve knew he was batting above his average with a girl like her. Hence when the whirlwind romance led to marriage, the birth of a child and divorce within the space of sixteen months Steve was diagnosed with clinical depression shortly after. The resulting counselling led to a rather flippant ‘devil may care’ attitude which meant that his pranks became more vicious, with less consideration for who he was hurting.

Peter had kept up with all the news on most of the Excellent Eight through Gavin Blair. They had stayed in touch over the years, sending the occasional letter,
then email, and more recently through Facebook. They only messaged one another every couple of months; usually when either party was drunk and reminiscing about old days.

Peter had been as shocked as everyone when he found out that Gavin had committed suicide. Yesterday morning, whilst travelling on the train to Bilton for his funeral, Peter had spent the time looking back over old Facebook messages and emails on his mobile.
He’d analysed them to see whether there was a cry for help which he’d missed, but he didn’t find even the remotest forewarning that Gavin was suicidal.

Michelle had somehow managed to get Peter’s phone number and rang to inform him of Gavin’s death. She had also spoken with the other two who had left the town, Laura and Cas. Although it was obviously a melancholy occasion Michelle was insistent that this opportunity should be used to regroup the remaining seven members of the Excellent Eight in Gavin’s honour. She and Colin volunteered to put up the three returning members. They had only recently moved into a new house in preparation for the arrival of their first baby, due in ten weeks time.

From what he could remember of last night, it had been going very well. Peter had been relieved that they had all instantly clicked, even after twenty years apart. They had spent the evening regaling each other with memories of their childhood days, and filling in the gaps with stories of what they’d been up to in the intervening years.

What happened after that? Why had he woken up in a cabin in the woods? Who did it belong to? If it was some kind of prank, why did they play it on
him? He felt slightly annoyed that he might be the butt of their jokes and thought it was in bad taste. Anyway, it didn’t look like there was anyone here who could give him answers. He’d have to make his way back to Colin and Michelle’s house.

Peter jumped as the loud bleeping sound of an alarm rang out again from the bedroom and broke his
train of thought.

‘Damn it, I thought I turne
d that thing off.’

He went back into the bedroom
, but the alarm wasn’t coming from the travel clock that he’d turned off earlier. He followed the source of the noise and found a second clock tucked into the corner of the room. He picked it up and turned it off. It had been set for 12:05pm, five minutes after the first one. As he turned he noticed a third clock on a small shelf above the bedside cabinet. He walked over and pulled it down. The alarm was set for 12:10pm, he turned it off prematurely.

‘Someone wanted to make sure I got up.’

He inspected his jacket pockets and then patted his trouser pockets. They were all empty. Where was his wallet, his mobile phone and keys?

‘Shit.’

He searched diligently around the sparse bedroom and threw the duvet off the bed to check the mattress but couldn’t find anything. He wondered if all his items might be back at Colin and Michelle’s house. He stood there for a moment, wondering what to do. Peter felt uneasy, he had been trying to convince himself that this was a prank but it didn’t make sense. He felt the overwhelming urge to get out of the cabin.

He came back out into the living room and was heading towards the front door when he saw a black metal ring handle laid flat across a door in the floor. The cabin must have a basement, he thought. He crouched down and pulled the ring to open the door half way. He stared down into the gaping black hole and shuddered. It reminded him of the grave from
the nightmare he had just had.

He couldn’t see anything, but a strong smell emanat
ed from the basement. He scrunched up his face in disgust. It smelt like a cat litter tray which hadn’t been emptied for a long time.

‘Hello? Is anyone there?’ He whispered down into the open mouth of the basement but nothing stirred and there
was no reply.

He wondered if he should go down into the basement, if only to see what was causing the smell. He reasoned with himself that he had seen enough movies to know that when someone decided to investigate a creepy basement on their own, it usually
didn’t end well.

The door clattered as he closed it. He stood up and walked to the front door. With one hand on the handle he looked back one last time, panning the cabin wit
h his eyes, and shook his head.

‘What the hell is going on?’

CHAPTER 4

12:09pm

Peter opened the cabin door and walked outside. The early afternoon was cold and stark white, and a light frost twinkled on the grass. He walked away from the cabin onto the rough uneven ground and tried to get a bearing o
n his surroundings. He squinted and moved his head around trying to avoid the harsh light of the sun, which kept darting out from behind the cover of the trees. He looked for a landmark - anything recognisable - but all he could see were rows upon rows of trees, shed of their leaves from the autumn season that had just passed. He presumed that as long as he was still in Bilton that he must be in Durden Woods, which lay on the outskirts of the town. The Excellent Eight used to play games such as Hide and Seek in these woods when they were children, as well as build numerous elaborate dens. If this was some kind of prank how on earth had they got him way out here in the woods? He realised he had to find the walking trail which snaked through the middle of the woods and follow it to the exit. It was a guess, but he reckoned he was currently out on the east side of the woods and that he would have to head down into the middle to find the path. Without over thinking it too much he set off.

As he made his way through the woods he reflected on the nightmare he’d had earlier in the cabin. It was obviously based on the funeral he attended yesterday but the part with his wife and son trapped in the coffin disturbed him. He regretted not having his mobile phone because he hadn’t spoken to Janine since early last night. Even though he had just been to a funeral she had still taken the time to playfully scold him for not replacing the tyres on their car. It had been taken in for a service a few weeks ago and the garage recommended new tyres because the tread was very low. He
’d been so busy at work recently he kept putting it off, which had increasingly annoyed Janine but amused him simply because it wound her up so much.

He longed to talk to her now, to make sure she was alright. He wanted to hear his son, who would probably talk about the movie he was watching, completely unaware that his father was traipsing through some woods trying to work out how the hell he got there.

He felt a twinge of annoyance. If this was some kind of prank, probably headed up by Steve, it was irresponsible and dangerous to leave him in the middle of nowhere with no money and no way to contact anyone.

He thought about what he would do when he got back to Colin and Michelle’s. Would he just smile and laugh along and congratulate them on the trick? Or would he find them at the house laughing at him as he arrived and get angry and shout at them? He wondered to himself if he might actually hit Steve and imagined the shock on the others’ faces as he smashed his fist into Steve’s jaw. As he thought about it he became more and more wound up. He tried to calm himself down and reasoned with himself that, in truth, he would probably be mainly relieved to find it was just a prank. He wondered if he was the only victim or whether any of the others had similarly woken up in some strange place
.

Peter passed by a clump of trees and could see the walking trail in front of him. He smiled and congratulated himself.
He’d always had a good sense of direction and of his surroundings which had helped him out on numerous occasions. He passed a large dead tree and joined the walking trail. The tree looked like a headless body sitting by the side of the trail. Two bulky roots spilled out onto the path resembling a pair of legs, with two brittle branches sprung from the side of the torso like arms reaching out.

‘Creepy tree,’ he said to himself.

Peter walked down the dusty trail of dried mud. His feet crunched on small pockets of frost. He put his hands in his pockets to keep them warm as he continued down the path.

Eventually Peter reached the end of the trail and jumped over the rickety wooden stile at the edge of the woods and came out onto the hills. From this vantage point he could see the entire layout of the town.

Bilton was a post-industrial town with a population of around 20,000. To his right he could see the desolated industrial estate
, which used to teem with various businesses, and the mill factory that stood behind it. The tall thin chimneys of the factory used to pour out smoke continuously like lit cigarettes but now just stood there looking lonely. The town had been built in the '70s and expanded in the '80s to accommodate the rising workforce. It was a self-sufficient town then but after the factory closed it had withered away to nothing. Peter thought that if the town of Bilton was being advertised for sale like a house, the description would read something like:

‘Starter home, needs modernising, a good investment opportunity.’

The entire town lay in a valley, nestled in the bosom of hills which swept around the entire north, east and west side of the town in the shape of a horse shoe. From his position at the top of the hill Peter felt like he was looking into a goldfish bowl. He knew from his childhood that the overbearing hills surrounding the town gave it a claustrophobic feel. The town felt closed in and small and yet it was a maze of estates and shops riddled with little nooks and crannies hiding all sorts of things for people to find.

At the bottom of the hill
ran Wolviston Road, which began at the industrial estate to his right. It followed the line of the hills and then curled into town towards Colin and Michelle’s house.

Peter made his way down the hill, crossed the small field at the bottom and started making his way to
the house.

Peter walked along Wolviston Road, past Bilton Beck and entered the housing estate. The houses had passed him by in a blur as he trudged along with his head down. He was feeling especially grumpy from all the walking and the gnawing headache, which still persisted. His forehead was clammy and lined with perspiration.

It was still concerning him that he couldn’t remember anything from about 9pm the previous night. He had been hoping that by now he would have been able to recount something,
anything to jog his memory, but it was completely gone, like a wiped hard drive. He was looking forward to reaching Colin and Michelle’s house and getting some answers.