He then realized he’d been talking to himself for some while, and so started feeling a bit embarrassed, as well as scared. Which he knew, in the circumstances, was a bit daft really. He should just be scared!
He then had the idea, and he didn’t really know why, but he just felt that somehow, here in the so-called Bad Wood, even tiny unimportant creatures, like his Fleas were supposed to be, would indeed be safe and be able to flourish.
Roger was now fully prepared. There was only one thing left for him to do, and that was ... to just do it!
CHAPTER 10:
DOWN THE SLIPPERY SLOPE
Roger got to his feet and again approached the edge of the yawning pit. The sky up above was streaked with the bloody colors of the darkening sunset, and all around him was a strange air of silent expectation.
As he prepared to lower himself down into the depths of the pit, in between the Smoking Tree’s roots, he felt a sudden shudder, as of icy fingers running up and down his spine, or of a thousand piercing eyes boring into his back. His skin crawled with a clammy, cold fear as he gave a final look to the darkening world around him.
Directly above him, within the grey gloom of the Smoking Tree’s foliage, he thought he’d fleetingly glimpsed a pair of pale luminous eyes. They flickered then vanished into a patch of shadow that seemed to rapidly melt away.
“There’s something very w-w-weird going on here, that I just d-d-don’t understand,” he whispered to himself, feeling the hairs rise on the nape of his neck. He again had the definite idea that he was being watched.
He got to his hands and knees and prepared to lower himself down into the waiting crack between the tree’s roots. As he was doing so, he thought he saw, or at least, half saw, several flickering shapes, flitting between the trunks of the trees, at the edge of the distant clearing. He also thought he saw strange, dark, spidery things, falling from the branches there, as well as bat-like shapes flapping about between the trees.
He couldn’t really be sure, but right now, it didn’t really matter.
Whatever was out there would just have to wait. The only important thing now was to rescue Mary!
One thing he briefly noted though was that as the deepening gloom of night descended, there were scattered clumps of eerie, pale light glowing and lighting up, all around the wood. He dimly registered that more and more of the Moon-berry orbs, glowing with their unerfly, pearly-light, were appearing, giving the Bad Wood an even spookier look than it had before.
But Roger was fully committed, there was no turning back now, and anyway, he thought, what was there to stay for? Whatever was happening above-ground, would just have to wait. His one and only quest now was to descend into the dark and unknown depths of the Erf, down beneath the Smoking Tree; to seek and hopefully find his new-found, dearest and only, human friend, Miss Mary Maddam.
As Roger cautiously lowered himself over the edge, grabbing hold of any roots he could find and with his torch weakly beaming from between his clenched jaws, he heard the faint, restless murmur of the shady thing or things, above him. He tried to ignore whatever uncanny goings-on were taking place up there. He had decided and was now absolutely determined. He had some very important rescuing to do!
“I do hope Mary’s all right, she must be all right, she really must be!” he prayed fervently, as he lowered himself into the fuming pit.
He lowered himself just a few yards down into the crevice, clinging on to a nearby root. The light from his torch was weak, only illuminating a small patch of darkness around him. But already, the world had changed. The dank smell of the erf and decaying vegetation filled his nostrils and the cloying combined sensations of dread and claustrophobia filled his mind.
“By the Fearsome Fur of Faraday’s Face! This could be a bottomless pit; or just an endless void of Nothingness down here, for all I know!” he exclaimed to himself, aghast. “This torch is next to useless. Just how am I going to do this?”
Despite the chill of the air, he was sweating already, and his heart was beating like a Big Band’s Drum Solo. He at last found some hopefully safe foot and hand holds, and as he went lower, the inky darkness relentlessly drew in, smothering and blanketing him with blindness. He tried his best to just concentrate on making his descent and to just ignore the distant and mysterious whines, whistles, croaks and cackles coming from the mysterious creatures above.
Then, to his great horror, his concentration slipped, and so did he!
He had lost his footing and his torch at the same time and found himself swinging in the dark now desperately hanging on by one hand, to just a single, frayed tree root.
It was only that one hairy root that had saved him though. That miraculous old root had somehow managed to get itself snagged under his belt buckle as he fell; and that one stroke, of so-called ‘luck’, was all that now separated him from plummeting to his certain death.
“Oh, Ruddy Rutherford’s Rabbits, help!” he cried feebly, swinging in the inky darkness, and feeling totally helpless and utterly alone.
As he swung there, back and forth in the inky dark, desperately trying to keep a tight grip of the root, he just managed to keep his courage intact, as well as the contents of his belly.
He really wasn’t built to be any sort of a Tarzan, at all. The real problem now though, was to get back to the wall of rock and erf he’d been climbing down. He had to get a good, firm grip there again. But how? His eyes were slowly getting used to the dark but weren’t yet good enough to see any clear route by which he could rescue himself.
Also, he now realized, his hand was starting to hurt, he must have strained his wrist when he grabbed onto the snagged root and he knew he couldn’t hold on for much longer.
“Right! About now is the time for a bit of clever scientific thinking,” he thought.
But without his torch, there was nothing to show him how deep the drop below him was. He then had a brilliant, ‘Roger the Swot,’ idea:
“So, I need to know what the depth below me is, don’t I? So, let’s get a measure of that first, eh? That’s what I need to do,” he muttered earnestly.
With that, he looked around for something he could drop down into the chasm below him. All he could find though, were three penny coins, one of which he managed to scrabble from out of his trouser pocket.
He took a deep breath and dropped the coin beneath his feet and waited anxiously to hear it strike the bottom of the pit.
He had been tensed and ready to count out the passing seconds and calculate the distance before the coin hit some solid surface below. But before he’d managed to even draw a single breath, the tinny clink of the coin rang up from below him, in fact, just a couple of feet below where he was hanging.
He in fact, wasn’t swinging over a bottomless chasm, after all.
Roger steeled himself and just jumped, trusting to science and its physical laws. But also adding a silent prayer to whatever God might have any interest in him, just as extra insurance.
It was actually less than a yard down, and his feet thumped firmly onto a solid ledge with a satisfying crunch. He took a step backwards and accidentally stood on his battered, old torch, ‘luckily’ it had been caught in a root sticking out just where he’d landed. He picked it up and found it wasn’t working but he gave it a shake and it flickered back to life.
“Must be a loose wire or something,” he thought, “only hope it doesn’t die on me now.”
He quickly pointed his torch down onto his feet and found he had indeed landed on a rocky shelf. A ledge that lay at the bottom of the cliff of the pit he had been climbing down. He cautiously sidled up to its edge to see what he could see. But with only the weak light of his torch, no matter how much he strained and stared, he couldn’t see much at all.