A scraping noise had him jerking his head back upwards; she was here again, struggling to drag something along the ground. He gasped as he saw a criss-cross of uprights and rungs: the ladder! Christ, she was strong, that thing must have weighed several hundredweight, huge boughs cut from growing timber, crosspieces roped on to it. It could still be a trick, though; let the poor bastard think he's going to escape then chase him like a pack of beagles after a hare, set him up for some sport.'
He didn't have much choice, though. The ladder was being eased slowly over the side and now he could reach it, take the strain and help her to lower it. If I stop here I'm at their mercy, at least in the open I do have a slim chance, better than dying like a badger in a baiting pit.
The ladder was down, resting firmly on the bottom; all he had to do was to climb up it. He grasped the rungs, looked up at her again, the reflection of the faint moonlight showing pity and . . . pleading. Please climb up because I need you!
He moved slowly, uncertainly. It could still be a trap, they had forced her to lure him up against her will. Somewhere in the distance dogs were howling, their eager primitive tongue sending a chill up his spine as though they had already scented him and were straining at their leashes.
Phil Winder scrambled out of the deep hole, knelt there looking at his rescuer. She was beautiful all right, but why was she naked? These people wore rough clothing so she didn't have to come to his aid in the nude. Again his inhibitions troubled him as her gaze ran over his body, her eyes wide with amazement. I've never seen anybody quite like you, mister, but I like what I see.
She glanced around, raised a finger to her lips. He listened, heard only the pounding of his own pulses (or hers) and that constant canine noise that reminded him of the howling of wolves in those north-west movies which they showed on TV periodically. She pointed away to the skyline where he saw a black uneven outline that could only be a forest. Pointing again, grasping his arm urgently. We must flee to the woods before they find out that we are missing. Both of us, I'm going too. They'll kill me if they catch me. You, loo.
He followed in her wake, the firm outline of her body, buttocks that wiggled seductively even in primitive flight, moving as lithely as a hunted deer. He would go where she led, unquestioningly; she wanted to leave this place for some reason and he would go with her. He didn't want to think beyond that.
The eastern sky was beginning to pale when they finally came to the fringe of the big pine forest, another world, dank and evil-smelling. A stench like that of rotting corpses; stinkhorn, a fungus that crawled with flies perhaps even fooling them that they were feeding on decomposing flesh.
A magpie chattered a machine-gun-like early warning and a jay screeched its acknowledgement, set a carrion crow cawing. Man was abroad, he had infiltrated one of Nature's fortresses. Beware!
Phil Winder held back a second, hesitated. He would not have ventured in there under normal circumstances, still pandered to his childhood fear of the dark which he had never really overcome. It was the sort of place where your imagination could run riot and after what he had already seen and experienced . . .
The girl turned, grabbed him by the wrist. Come on, we've got to go this way because if we don't they will catch up with us. They will have missed us by now, be on our trail.
He did not resist, allowed her to pull him gently along. Winding paths through towering dark green trees, an occasional clump of grass or some ferns in those places where the sun found a way through. You got the impression that this coniferous monster was slowly swallowing you up and there was no way back. Ever.
Phil noticed his companion glancing behind her every so often, once stopping to listen. Total silence, even the corvines weren't calling any longer. Probably they had flown out to the fields for their morning feed, found death in a variety of forms and scavenged hungrily. A train of thought that led back to himself; Phil was aware how dry his mouth had gone, a sour taste on his furred tongue. He and the girl could end up like that, maybe not even dead when those filthy birds flew in, not enough strength to ward them off. Feeling your flesh being gouged by claws, sharp beaks ripping it from the bones. They always went for the eyes first . . .
The sun was up. Occasionally they glimpsed it through the dense fir branches, felt its heat. Next came the flies, black swarms which had possibly grown tired of feeding on stinkhorn. His companion seemed oblivious of them even when they settled on her, crawled over her face. Phil swatted at them ceaselessly, futilely. A kind of game which you couldn't win, like a rigged fairground gallery; you hit one but it didn't drop, buzzed angrily and came in at you again.
They had to emerge from the wood soon, surely. Phil knew the place vaguely although he had never ventured up here before, a skyline view from his parents' farm. Once his father had gone up there looking for missing lambs but Phil had stayed behind with his mother. The wood couldn't be all that big. If you kept walking you had to come out at the other end eventually. He wondered if the girl knew where she was going or whether she was just running blindly. He wished he could talk to her, make her understand things beyond the simplicity of sign language. No sign of life, not even a rabbit or a grey squirrel; a dead, dead place. A host of fears. Perhaps they were going round in circles, would still be in here when night came again. Their pursuers must realise where they had fled, might be in here now searching for them, crouching in the trees, listening for soft footfalls on the thick carpet of dead pine needles. Phil Winder found himself watching the uppermost branches of the trees as they passed beneath them. When he had been captured the attack had come from above.
Suddenly the fugitives were out of the trees. The path veered sharply to the right, then a left-hand bend, and before them were the familiar bracken—and heather-covered hillsides sloping steeply downwards. The other side of the Hill.
They stood there just looking at the scenery like a couple of holidaymakers who had spent the day climbing to the summit of a fell just to look back on the panoramic view. A patchwork of green quilt untidily stitched together with ragged hedgerows that had been mutilated by modern flail-cutters and which Nature was doing her damnedest to hide with lush new growth, farm buildings which had stood for a century or more, sheep grazing peacefully. Nothing untoward about it from this distance, you might even have kidded yourself that everything was perfectly normal, that the wood behind you had conjured up some awful nightmare but you were fast getting it out of your system.
But it was the sheer silence that told you everything wasn't all right, told you that it wasn't just a dark dream brought on by that forest. It was real.
A familiar scene viewed from a different angle. Phil Winder noted the farms and holdings, found himself working out their locations, their ownership. Gwyther's in the hollow, and if you followed the Hill right round you came to that new chap's place. He tried to remember the fellow's name. It eluded him. And then he found himself staring directly down on his own folks' farm, identification slow to filter through because he had never imagined it would look quite like that from above. The house, the yard, that dutch barn with just a few bales of last year's hay left in it whilst the growing crop was already starting to spoil in the fields. Sheer waste, but it didn't damned well matter any more, did it?