From all points of the allotment shadowy forms were moving, figures indistinct and fuzzy about the edges, striding like automata, ever in the direction of the weird red light. “Ye gods,” whispered Jim as one passed near enough to expose his angular profile, “the council spies, dozens of them.”
Omally dragged Pooley once more towards terra. “I would counsel silence,” he whispered, “and the keeping of the now legendary low profile.”
“I feel sick,” moaned Jim.
The gaunt figures strode ever onwards. Silently they moved amongst the many scattered obstructions upon the allotment soil. Never a one turned his head from his goal and each walked with a mechanical precision.
Pooley and Omally watched their progress with wide eyes and slack jaws. “We should follow them,” said John, “see what they’re up to.”
“With the corner up we should.”
“Poltroon. Come on man, let’s sort the thing out.”
Pooley sloped his drunken shoulders. “John,” said he, “are you honestly suggesting that any good whatsoever will come from following this gang of weirdos? I feel rather that we would be walking straight into a trap. This is only my opinion of course, and it is greatly influenced by the state of blind panic I find myself in at present. There is something altogether wrong about every bit of this. Let us leave the allotment now, depart for ever, never to return. What do you say?”
Omally weighed up the situation. Things did seem a little iffy. They were greatly outnumbered and there was definitely something unnatural about the striding men. Perhaps it would be wiser to run now and ask questions later. But there were a lot of questions that needed asking and now might be the best time to ask them, emboldened as they both were, or he at least, by the surfeit of alcohol pumping about the old arteries. “Come on, Jim,” he said, encouragingly. “One quick look at what they’re up to, what harm can it do? After the day we’ve had nothing else can happen to us, can it?”
Pooley thought that it possibly could, and as it turned out Pooley was absolutely correct.
13
Ahead the red light glowed evilly and the spectral figures moved into its aura to become cardboard silhouettes. Pooley and Omally lurched along to the rear of the strange brigade as silently as their inebriate blunderings would allow. None of the queer horde turned a head, although the sounds of their pursuers, as they stumbled amongst corrugated plot dividers and galvanized watering cans, rang loudly across the silent allotments. As the stark figures neared the light they fell into line and strode through the doorway of Soap Distant’s hut like so many clockwork soldiers.
When the last of them had entered, the light grew to a blinding intensity then dimmed away to nothingness. “There,” said Pooley, faltering in his footsteps, “a trick of the light, nothing more, probably landing lights on a Jumbo or some such. Off to our beds now then, eh?”
Omally prodded him in the loins with the rake he had wisely appropriated in the interests of self-preservation. “Onward, Pooley,” he ordered. “We will get to the bottom of this.”
His words, as it happened, could not have been more poorly chosen, but Omally, of course, was not to know that at this time. The two men neared Soap’s hut and peered through the open doorway. There was nothing to be seen but sheer, unutterable, unfathomable darkness.
“Lighter,” Omally commanded. Pooley brought out his aged Zippo and sucked at the wick. Omally snatched at the well-worn smoker’s friend and as the flame bravely illuminated the hut’s interior the two men gave forth with twin whistles of dismay.
The shed was empty: four corrugated walls, a ceiling of slatted asbestos and a concrete floor.
John Omally groaned. Pooley shook his head in wonder. “These council lads certainly leave the great Houdini with egg on his chin!” he said respectfully. “How do you suppose they do it?”
“I utterly refuse to believe this,” said Omally, holding the lighter aloft and stepping boldly through the doorway. “There is no conceivable way they could all have…”
He never actually finished the sentence. Pooley’s lighter was suddenly extinguished and Omally’s words were swallowed up as if sucked into some great and terrible vacuum.
“John?” Pooley found himself alone in the darkness. “John, this is not funny.” His voice echoed hollowly in the sinister hut.
“Oh dear me,” said Jim Pooley.
The moon slowly withdrew itself from its cloudy lair and shone a broad beam of light through the open doorway. The tiny hut was empty. John Omally had simply ceased to exist. Jim snatched up Omally’s discarded rake, prodding ahead of him as he gingerly moved forward. The moon was still shining brightly and now, along the nearby rooftops, the thin red line of dawn was spreading.
“Oh!” The tip of Pooley’s protruding rake had of a sudden become strangely fuzzy and ill-defined. Another step forward and Pooley noted to his utter stupefaction that it had vanished altogether into empty air. He withdrew it hastily and ran his finger along its length; it was intact. Jim looked at the rake and then at the empty shed before him, he scratched at his head and then at his chin, he weighed the thing up and tried to make some sense of it.
The shed was obviously not what it at first appeared. An ingenious camouflage indeed. But to camouflage what, and, most importantly, where was John? Obviously somewhere behind the simulated reality of the empty shed lurked another something, and obviously it was a thoroughly unwholesome something which boded ill for unwary golfers.
Pooley approached the doorway once more, and thrust the rake in up to the hilt. He waggled it about and swished it to and fro; it met with no apparent resistance. Jim pulled out the rake and stood a moment rescratching his head. It really was a very clever thing indeed. Possibly that was how these council lads had eluded them before. Probably the one in the Swan’s bog had simply switched on some sort of 3-D projector, whipped up an image of an empty cubicle and sat down on the seat for a good sneer whilst Omally got foamy about the jaws. They were probably standing there in the shed even now doing the same.
Pooley took a step backwards. He’d show the buggers! Wielding the rake in as menacing a manner as he could, he took a deep if drunken breath and rushed at the image. “Ooooooooooh,” went Jim Pooley as the concrete floor of the shed dissolved beneath his feet, plunging him down into the perpetual darkness of the now legendary bottomless pit.
How far Jim fell, and how long his plummet into the nether regions of the great beneath actually took, must remain for ever a matter for conjecture. That his life had plenty of time to flash before his eyes was of little consolation, although it did give an occasion for him to recall that during it he had consumed a very great deal of alcohol. Also, that should he survive this, he had every intention of consuming a great deal more.
Finally, however, after what had been up until then a relatively uneventful if windy fall to oblivion, Pooley’s descending form made a painful and quite unexpected contact with a body of ice-cold and seemingly unfathomable water.
“Ow… ooh!” wailed that unhappiest of men. “Ow… ooh and glug.” Pooley surfaced after several desperate and drowning moments, mouthed several very timely and well-expressed obscenities and sank once more into the subterranean depths.
“I forgive all,” he vowed as his head bobbed aloft for a second time. Possibly Jim would have survived for a goodly while bobbing up and down in this fashion. It is more likely, however, that he would have breathed his last as he went down for that famous old third time, had help not arrived from a most unexpected quarter.
“Climb aboard, Jim,” said a voice which struck a strange chord in Pooley’s rapidly numbing brain. Jim squinted up from his watery grave to realize for the first time that he was no longer in darkness. Above him he could see the cowled head and shoulders of a man, leaning from what appeared to be a coracle of skin and bark, extending a rugged-looking oar. Without hesitation Pooley clutched at the thing and was unceremoniously hauled aboard. Huddled low in one end of the curious craft lay John Omally, swathed in blankets.