The Dark - part 2
By mark_b
- 550 reads
Then he spotted the torch symbol on the screen. He pressed it and followed the instruction. Sarah was right, this thing did work as a torch. He swept it up and down the verge. The torch wasn't strong enough to show colours, but it did show a small pool of the dark foliage wherever he pointed it. It was very dense, made up of a rough hedge of old coppiced trees left for centuries to grow tall, filled in with vines and brambles. David walked more slowly up twenty meters or so of the verge, and then repeated this coming down the other side in case John had been mistaken. Nothing, no body, no obvious gap through which someone could have fallen. Someone could have pushed through - but why? David remembered his conversation with his daughter. Was someone, something watching him in his pool of torchlight. He could feel his aloneness, he could feel the eyes on him.
Ian came running up the hill first "what's up mate, is she still lost?" David nodded. "So no one has seen her down the hill?" He asked hopefully. They had not. Ian went to recheck the hedgerows and David thought again of calling 999. It had only been five minutes, hadn't it? She can't have gone far, but why didn't she call out? If she was hurt they needed help.
David wasn't able to make a decision, it was all happening around him, people shouting for Sarah, asking questions, walking up and down the road. It didn't feel real. He felt a drop of rain as it hit his arm, a large, heavy drop, a harbinger of a storm to come. It hadn't been overcast when they left for the walk, but now the air felt heavy, with a thick silence, a closing down of the senses as the wind dropped, that feeling of anticipation before a deluge. A few more drops, then the rain proper. The hissing of the rain as it streaked down, the sound of the water batting the leaves and bouncing of the road and the sudden release of all the smells of the earth and the undergrowth overloaded his senses. But it also woke David up to the understanding that his little girl was lost in this storm. He decided to call.
The 999 operators were fast and efficient - a missing child in the dark was treated as a top priority, and he was told a vehicle and a helicopter were on their way. While David waited, he tried to help the others to search but he felt completely useless. Why had he left her, she had been scared, what had he been doing? He heard the shoutings of her name, the occasional shouts to be quiet so people could listen. Everyone's phones were being used as torches, lights dotted about the hedgerows held by figures in the shadows like some strange film. David wondered if he shut his eyes whether all this dark activity would go away, if only we could return to the cheerful family walk of half an hour ago. He tried to check the hedge again, this time pushing through with his eyes shut - the phone was useless here and he wanted to feel what Sarah might have been feeling. Thorns scratched his hands and face, the smell of damp mud and the herby smell of the crushed stems in the undergrowth, a bosky fug that was overpowering made him feel sick again, but he kept pushing through. Water was dripping off the leaves now, the rain having penetrated the branches of the trees above. Soon David felt the water trickling down his neck, beginning to run down inside his shirt. Behind the first few feet the thorns thinned out, but a lattice of vines, twigs and branches made it almost impossible to move through. David wriggled in as far as he could and groped for his phone in his pocked. He fumbled it to be level with his head and, squinting at it as it was so close to his eyes, prodded at it to get it to light up again.
David made a stifled groan. Faces, strange gnarled faces were staring straight at him with gaping toothless mouths. David tried to pull himself out, but he was stuck, he looked up again and realised that these were the gnarled bases of ancient stunted bushes and trees, the narrow angle of the light, his fear and panic were making them faces. He contorted himself, winding himself out of the hedge and back into the black lane, he must have only been four feet in.
Now he became aware of the regular thud of an approaching helicopter and the blue lights of the police car were coming up the hill. The car stopped in the middle of the road and two policemen got out. The ensuing conversations were calm, methodical and thorough. They checked the children's stories with those of the adults and were soon on the radio to the helicopter, which had heat sensing equipment. A police van arrived with an ambulance and policemen were soon scouring the undergrowth with powerful torches and the lights of the vehicles.
And then, a change in the activity. The policeman on the radio to the helicopter was standing next to David and he exclaimed that they had a faint heat signal, about 30 feet into the undergrowth close to where they were standing. They plunged in, the policeman protected by his thick coat and gloves, David not caring about the thorns. This time they went over the branches rather than under, and made quicker progress, the helicopter was in constant communication, guiding them, and David imagined the ghostly heat images that they would be looking at up above, of him, the policeman and his daughter, slowly converging.
They were clambering through branches, twisting around the old gnarled trunks, pushing through more vines and brambles, until the policeman said to stop, "quiet, this is the spot". They listened for a few seconds, but nothing, just the sound of the rain, beginning to tail off now. Then David called "Sarah, can you hear us?" Still nothing. They pushed themselves through the brambles and felt with their hands on the damp ground. Here it was covered with a dense lattice of branches and vines, wound and rewound over decades of growth into something almost resembling a cage. The policeman was shining his torch over this and they both searched for a sign of life - and then David saw it, a flash of red from deep within the prison of branches. She was wearing a red coat. David shouted and pointed.
"Sarah, Sarah, is that you?" Again, nothing came back, but the torch showed through the mesh of branches the outline of a girl. She was motionless, lying completely flat on her front, as if she had been pressed hard into the ground. David and the policeman tore at the branches that surrounded her, clearing away the foliage and the thinner branches, and starting to make a clearing around the girl. The others began to arrive, starting with two ambulance men and another policeman. Between them they quickly cleared a space around the girl, but she was still encased in the mesh of branches and vines. "We need to cut her out", one of the ambulance men said, "I can't get close enough to get a pulse".
David's eyes were wide, his daughter, trapped, like an animal, not knowing if she was alive - how, how had they arrived at this place? It was mad, it couldn't be real.
Policemen arrived with cutting tools and, directed by the ambulance man, began to clear the lattice away from her. "I've got a pulse, she's breathing. Sarah, can you hear me darling? It's alright, we will have you out of there in no time, you must have fallen, don't worry". The policemen were gingerly pulling back branches from her body and cutting them as the ambulance man worked to make sure she could breath. One of the policemen exclaimed, "how on earth did she get in here? Look, these vines are wrapped round her wrists, it's like they have grown there". David looked closer and saw that indeed his daughters slight fragile wrists were encased, encircled with inch thick woody vines tying her down and holding her to the floor. The policeman looked at David, "how long did you say she had been missing, sir?"
"It was just five minutes before I called, it can't have been longer - at least I don't think so".
David saw the look of suspicion on the policeman's face, but he had no answers for who could be at fault here, so just concentrated on the job of extricating the child. It took fifteen minutes to cut her out, some of the branches having to be cut away close to her flesh. All this time, David tried to say soothing words, "its all right, we will have you out soon, I'm here", but she didn't respond at all. The ambulance man had inserted a drip and was monitoring her breathing and pulse, and he was happy that she was stable, but didn't know why she wasn't responding.
Then, at last, she was free. By now a light stretcher had been pulled into position, and the two ambulance men gently placed her on it and strapped her securely. David looked down at his daughters face, pale and waxy in the torchlight. Her eyes were open and she looked right at him, with large pupils. She didn't look like his daughter. He talked to her, more soothing words, but she didn't respond. She just looked away, looked back into the undergrowth.
Very soon they were all back on the lane, Sarah in the ambulance, and the policemen taking statements. It was clear that this didn't make sense, how had this small ten year old girl managed to get 30 feet into dense undergrowth, become completely tangled and enmeshed, in just five or ten minutes. In the pitch black of the night?
But all their statements tallied, and the policeman had a final conversation with David and Isobel, "this is very strange, We have no idea how she got in there, but she did and you two need to be with her now. Is there anything we can do to help? We can give you a lift to the hospital, and David, you need to get your cuts seen to". David realised that he was covered in scratches and dried blood. His hands were raw from ripping at the branches.
The group split up, Isobel in the ambulance with her daughter, David with the policeman on the way to the hospital and John travelling back to London with Ian and his family, and Doug and his family also returning home. At the hospital Sarah was checked over. She responded now to the requests from the doctor, mutely turning parts of her body when asked, but made no attempt to answer questions. Her face was blank, she showed no emotion at all and, after all the checks had finished she lay back in her bed, staring at the ceiling.
David also had been tended to, his scratches and cuts being washed and wiped. Now he was finally alone with Isobel. "Oh God", said David, "what a terrible day, I'm, so so sorry, I should never have left her". "Don't be stupid", replied Isobel, "you couldn't have known, you had to look for Eric. But what happened? How did she get there?"
"I have no idea, have you seen the marks on her wrists?"
"It's like she was tied down, what's happened, what is happening?"
"Do you... do you think she will be alright?" David asked.
"She is just very very scared, I am sure she will be fine in a few days, then we can find out how she got in there. I think she must have just panicked, sort of pulled herself further and further in, twisting under all those branches... It doesn't look possible, but, in her panic, she must have pushed herself really hard. She must be exhausted!"
Now it is three weeks later. Sarah came back home after a night in the hospital. The red welts on her wrists have become reddish scars. Witches marks, she calls them.
Sarah still doesn't talk much, just to answer direct questions. She doesn't mind the dark now, she keeps her light off in her room and, when she gets the chance, she wanders out into the garden after dark. Last night, when her parents were asleep, she crept out, just for ten minutes, into the garden, out the back gate and a little way down the lane. She wants to go back to that place, she wants to be back safe under the branches again. She will go a little further each night.
David doesn't sleep so well anymore. He sleeps with the light on now.
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Comments
You built the atmosphere
You built the atmosphere really well - all the 'normal stuff' - the slight middle age crisis, the family weekend, the conversation between the girl and the father about the phone's torch. The sudden panic when the girl disappears is convincingly written.
If you're looking for suggestions, I'd say that I found it quite hard to remember who all the characters were, perhaps because there were quite a few of them, and the dialogue was also therefore a little confusing. I can see how the story needs to have so many people, so maybe it would help if you gave the children more memorable names (maybe more typically middle class children's names - or use diminuitives?)
I also think a good edit - cutting out quite a lot, and quickening the pace in the middle of the story would help things along and change this from a very good idea to a compelling short. I hope that helps!
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