Hills End (19 page)

Adrian shivered and looked up into the blackness towards the old log trail. The rain has ceased, but it had been replaced by a thin mist that turned the glass of his ugly storm lantern into a glowing form that reminded him of old-world Christmas pictures. It was this mist that had sharpened the air. He wondered what it might mean to him. If it were the cloud base sinking deeper and deeper into the valley, it might thicken as he climbed the hill. It might become a dense fog through which he could see nothing, not even the way back.

He wiped the mud from the rifle and then checked it, ejecting the spent cartridge from the breach and ramming a fresh one home. He engaged the safety catch firmly, but the gun was ready to fire in an instant, and Buzz was watching him curiously, with his head cocked to one side. The gun was a comfort. It really was. It was like a friend with a strong arm.

Slowly, then, and still not without fear, Adrian made his way along the road, through the maze of debris and rubble, with that strange little dog trotting at his side. Adrian saw nothing of the bull and heard nothing of it, but not for a moment was it out of his mind. So afraid was he that he stumbled along in all but total darkness rather than turn his lantern up. Even when he was out of the township and had begun the climb that would take him past the schoolhouse, he stood still for almost a minute of indecision, not knowing which was the greater danger, to grope in the dark or to turn up the flame.

He shivered with his fear and peered into the night and heard again the hooting of the distant owl. It was an awful sound, and he turned the lamp up sharply, panting, glancing round about into the fog, and his teeth started chattering and his legs were almost too weak to support him.

He realized then, with a shock, that the dog was no longer with him.

‘Buzz,' he cried.

But the dog didn't answer. All he heard was a peculiar sound that no dog could ever have made. His fears began to run riot, and because no one was there to hear him he didn't try to stop the whimper of terror that welled up from within him. He didn't wait any longer, couldn't wait any longer. His indecision was gone, but not the way he had hoped.

Adrian stumbled back down the hill, hating himself, terrified by the images of nameless perils that he knew he was creating in his own mind.

 

Paul sat up suddenly.

It was a strange feeling, though it had happened to him once or twice before—once at Christmas when someone had entered his bedroom, and another time when Gussie had been ill at night and no one else had heard her call.

Wide awake. As alert as though he had not slept at all, and he saw the light in the window opening.

‘Who's that?' he whispered fiercely.

Adrian came round the front of the counter walking unsteadily, carrying the rifle, and breathing so heavily that Paul could hear him.

Paul wriggled out of his sleeping bag and quickly stepped over the sleeping figures round him, for some reason deeply anxious to get to Adrian as soon as he could.

‘What's wrong?'

Adrian slumped into his chair and dropped his rifle. ‘That rotten bull.'

Paul gasped. ‘You
haven't
been outside?'

Adrian looked washed out, but his sigh expressed more than exhaustion. ‘Yeah, I've been outside. Butch…'

‘What about Butch?'

Adrian told him.

‘So,' said Paul, ‘you decided to look for Miss Godwin?'

‘Yeah. But the mist is getting bad. It's hard to see. And it's—hard to see.'

‘What about the bull?'

‘I heard the thing. Up on the hill, I heard it.'

‘Up where Miss Godwin might be?'

Adrian nodded in despair.

‘I couldn't face it, Paul. I couldn't.'

‘Don't worry. I wouldn't have been able to, either.'

‘But you
did
face it.'

‘That was different. Golly, that was different altogether…What's the time?'

‘About half-past ten.' Adrian peered at his watch. ‘To be exact, twenty-five to eleven. Why?'

‘I'm thinking you'd better turn in. Forget the rest of your watch. Doesn't matter much now, anyway, now that we know Butch is all right.'

Adrian thought about it, but couldn't look at Paul directly, didn't want to meet his eyes, because he knew what Paul was thinking. Then he peeled off his coat and headed for his sleeping bag. From there he whispered hoarsely and lamely, ‘Don't
you
go!'

‘I'm not that silly.'

Adrian grunted and unlaced his shoes and squirmed into the warm security of his blankets. It was so wonderful to lie down, to be safe, to be cosy, and to escape from himself. He closed his eyes tightly and clenched his jaws and sobbed to himself so that no one could hear. In three minutes he was asleep.

Paul still stood at the counter, wondering what he should do, really knowing what he should do, but every bit as aware of the dangers as Adrian had been. Wondering whether he should venture out, wondering whether the mist was as bad as Adrian said, even wondering whether Butch's sketchy account was reliable. Butch could have been imagining things. Adrian could have been imagining things. Adrian so often did.

Paul put on his shoes and the coat, took the rifle and the lamp, glared at Adrian for a moment or two, and departed through the window.

He plodded up the street, feeling the bitter coldness of the air and the growing weight of his responsibilities. Adrian was too scared to do anything. Unless someone was beside him to hold his hand all his brave words meant nothing. Adrian was just a great balloon. Sometimes he was blowing himself up and other times he was flat. That's what he was. A balloon. All puffed up until someone let the air out or stuck a pin in him.

Paul came to the place where Adrian had lost his nerve, or near enough to it. This was where the mist seemed to be thicker, seemed to surround him and press upon him. Paul paused and listened carefully, because Adrian had said he had heard the bull, but the stillness was so intense it throbbed in his ears.

He turned the lantern as high as he dared, and peered into the cold and wet little world that was about five yards square, because beyond it he could see nothing except the fog, tinted yellow by the flame of his lamp.

He was scared. Couldn't see far enough. Could so easily become lost. If Miss Godwin were out in this she'd be dead. It would kill her.

He couldn't go back. If he turned away he would be no better than Adrian. He would be a big balloon, like Adrian.

He climbed a few more yards, along the path that he used every schoolday of his life, and suddenly his hair almost stood on end.

He inhaled sharply, almost dropped the lamp, but it was Buzz, Buzz bounding out of the invisible world beyond the light.

Paul's nerves prickled up and down his spine and he panted, ‘Golly, Buzz! Golly, boy, you nearly killed me with fright.'

Paul was very wary, tensed to dodge the snapping jaws of the beastly little animal, but Buzz wagged his tail brightly. The dog was as friendly as it could have been.

‘What's come over you?'

Paul deemed it wise to cement their friendship with a pat and he gingerly stroked the dog's head, and froze.

He didn't know why a sheet of paper on the ground should startle him so, but perhaps it was that he recognized it before he reached for it. It was a quarto sheet, typewritten, and it bore the number 206.

This was part of Miss Godwin's manuscript, part of her dearly loved book, blown from its rightful place on her cottage desk by the howling and heartless wind.

Paul felt suddenly desperate, suddenly frightened in a way he had never been frightened before. Homes might have crumbled, precious things might have been smashed, but this was something else. This sheet of paper was more than property; it was part of a person, almost a living thing.

He looked again, carefully, and saw two more sheets, one numbered 207 and the other 219.

Paul placed his rifle down and gathered them up gently and shivered in his sorrow for Miss Godwin. Not fully realizing why, he began to hunt for more, and in a few minutes had found thirty sheets of paper, all sodden, all muddied, and most of them unreadable.

Then he found something else, or perhaps it would be fairer to say that Buzz found something else, because Paul certainly would not have found it at that stage. Buzz's insistence was annoying because Paul had realized that he had mislaid the rifle, and he was anxious to get his hands on it again, but Buzz would not allow him. He barked and yelped and whined and did everything but talk.

Paul gave way and followed the dog only a short distance and came upon a heap of humanity, more muddied than any piece of paper, huddled at the foot of a tree, a woman, with a hundred or more rescued pages of her manuscript still clutched in her hand.

Paul's legs weakened and he found himself sitting beside her, too afraid to touch her, too nervous to reach out his hand to determine whether she was dead or alive.

There was in the world an absolute stillness. That was how it seemed to Adrian. The earth had stopped revolving; moon, sun and stars had ceased to be; every living thing except himself had died. He was suspended in space, alone, and chilled to the marrow of his bones.

For a while his thoughts wandered in a wilderness, because everything seemed to be wrong. His bed was wrong; his body seemed to be bruised; and he couldn't break through to the reason for his confusion and anxiety.

Everything seemed to be damp and bitter and he wasn't breathing easily. Couldn't breathe properly at all. The air was like a poisonous gas.

He tried to sit up, but a pressure like a band of metal was bearing against his chest. He struggled against it and was suddenly wide awake and the mystery rolled back into the shadows of his mind.

Yes, he knew where he was. He knew that the town was dead and that a new day had come, and that the band across his chest was the constriction of the sleeping bag, and that the air wasn't poisonous, though it was certainly bitter, and that something truly was wrong.

It was daylight, yet it wasn't daylight. It felt very, very early in the morning, but he knew it wasn't. He knew he had slept, but he wasn't refreshed. It was a quarter to seven.

The light was strange and grey and unearthly. It wasn't an even light, but seemed to wander through the shop like a cloud, as though it were a cloud of pale light in a dark world.

There were no sounds from the birds, no barking dogs, no crowing fowls. Nor could he hear the beating of the diesel in the power shed, or voices, or cattle, or anyone splitting wood for the morning fire.

There never had been a day like this, never before in the history of Hills End. This wasn't an ordinary day. This was the day of desolation, of empty streets, and empty houses.

They were on their own. It was like waking up in a graveyard and then wondering how one came to be there. One never really heard sounds until they were not there to hear. One never recognized them until they ceased. One never knew how friendly they were—all those families, all those sounds—until they had gone.

Adrian felt his courage withering. Could anything be worse than this? Was anything worse than a dead town?

He wriggled out of his sleeping bag and apparently the others still had not wakened. Even Butch was sleeping peacefully, with an oddly dirty face. That shouldn't have been, because Frances had cleaned his face with a damp towel. Adrian peered at him closely. Chocolate!

The last curtain in his mind was withdrawn. Of course there would be chocolate. There were the wrappers of two quarter-pound blocks near his pillow. And there was more, too—the inflooding of a deep depression, the memory of his failure on the hillside.

‘Is that you, Paul?'

‘No.'

Gussie emerged from her sleeping bag, groaning a little and puffy round the eyes. ‘Morning! Thank heavens!'

‘Yes.'

‘What an awful night! I don't think I slept a wink. I'm frozen stiff.'

She'd slept all right. Adrian knew that, and Frances was stirring and Maisie opened her eyes.

‘Washing with that lemonade,' said Gussie, ‘was a glum idea. My skin feels terrible.'

Adrian didn't hear her. He was on his feet looking for Paul, wondering where he had slept. Only two lamps were burning; the third, perhaps, had gone out, but where was it? And the trouble with the air in here was fog, a thick and nasty fog. It could not have been worse outside. It seemed as though the outside had come inside—as it had. The panel in the boarded-up window was down and the fog had drifted in, crept in, writhed in like something evil.

Adrian already sensed what had happened, but he didn't want to admit it, not even to himself, for many reasons.

‘What's wrong, Adrian?'

He glanced down and Frances was looking at him.

‘I don't know,' he said.

‘Where's Paul?'

‘He doesn't seem to be here, and there's a lamp missing.'

‘What do you mean?' screeched Gussie. ‘Paul not here! Why isn't Paul here?'

Adrian didn't know what to say, and they were all awake now, even Butch, and Butch seemed more refreshed than any of them. Butch was padded so well with fat that any bed was a soft bed. And no smell, even fog, worried him.

‘Hi, everyone,' he said. ‘Miss Godwin here yet?'

Adrian shook his head. ‘How do you feel, Butch?'

‘Goodo.'

‘What's the chocolate doing all over your face?' said Frances quietly.

‘Chocolate?' squeaked Harvey. ‘Gee, I didn't get any chocolate.'

‘No one had chocolate,' said Frances, ‘except Butch. And why wasn't I wakened at three o'clock? Paul was going to wake me then. It was your watch, Adrian, until midnight; Paul's watch until three, and then mine until six. Something's gone wrong.'

‘Don't be silly,' snapped Adrian. ‘Of course nothing's gone wrong.'