THE GREAT OUTDOORS

THE GREAT OUTDOORS
By Richard Tristram

Sylvia learnt sign language but she wasn't deaf. Barry enjoyed the
outdoor life but he wasn't a tramp. He went camping every so often.
Sylvia had taught Barry a little sign language, and Barry could
interpret certain words; the basics like "death", "murder", "scythe",
"self protection", "Help! I need somebody".
Barry and Sylvia, both in their late twenties, from the north, set off
to the south, and into Wales, hoping to come across any campsite to
spend a fortnight in late summer. They found themselves in idyllic
surroundings; green hills, forest, shimmering streams. A train track
ran alongside the road they were travelling along. Barry checked the
map and was confused to find no symbol that would indicate a rail
track, in relation to where he was certain they were. But he discovered
a campsite (tent) symbol, and worked out that there would be a campsite
half a mile further along that road. He suggested to Sylvia that that
was where they should go. And that is where they went.
The campsite owner was a Mr Shaw; a pleasant enough chap who didn't
hesitate to point out to the young couple the fact that he couldn't
tolerate too much noise. An agreement was made amicably and they
checked into a field. There were two other tents pitched in opposite
corners of the field. Barry queried the old single train track that ran
close by to the site; just on the other side of the perimeter wire
fence in-fact. When asked about this, Shaw suddenly, unknowingly,
switched moods. His pleasant, bubbly nature changed and he became
agitated. He struggled to make eye contact and fiddled with his
thinning brown hair. Barry imagined Shaw was forty-two and a
quarter.
'The er, the track is ? er, just, er ? just hang on a sec, er, I can
hear the wife calling. Excuse me.' So Shaw made a hasty retreat to see
to his wife. It was only when Barry and Sylvia were pitching their
tent, up the other corner, by the fence, by the track, that Shaw's wife
arrived home from her dry slope skiing lesson.
Barry noticed a retired couple staying in a four man tent to the right
corner, and there was a man in his thirties with dogs in a one man tent
to the left.
After a quick sign language session, Barry and Sylvia walked over the
mysterious unmapped train track, through woodland to a nearby village
called Llwyllwyllwn. In Llwyllwyllwn Sylvia purchased a newspaper. She
shivered slightly at the main headline. "Group of hikers vanish in
Llwyllwyllwn", it read. And she read on. The hikers had spent a few
days at Shaw's campsite a week ago. It was believed they had left for
the hills but there had been no trace of any of them.
That evening they had a barbecue and a few drinks. A train sped by.
There was just the single carriage. Barry believed there had been no
driver on board, there had certainly been no passengers. Sylvia argued
that she had seen a driver. Dusk turned black and they hit the sleeping
sack. It was at around two o'clock that Barry was awoken by Shaw
shouting. He poked his head out of the tent. Shaw was yelling at the
man with the dogs. But he wasn't just yelling, he was having some kind
of fit.
'I've told you, you utter bastard!'
Barry had never heard anyone so angry in all of his life.
'Why do you keep making so much fucking noise? It's driving me insane.
Do you hear? It's fucking driving me fucking mad!'
Barry couldn't help but laugh to himself.
'Those cunting dogs keep me up all night and I'm sick of them!'
Barry went back to bed but the campsite owner's bollocking continued.
The man with the dogs must have been mortified. He couldn't get a word
in, or out, even. This was the last anyone saw of dog man. He vanished
and made the papers the following evening. His dogs were gone
too.
Barry kept his eye out for the trains that passed by a couple of times
a day. He was almost certain that there were no drivers on board, and
Sylvia became doubtful as well. It was difficult to tell at such a
speed. The drivers' compartments were always dimly lit or cocooned in
dark tinted glass.
Barry had major suspicions about Shaw but Sylvia just thought he was
paranoid. When the police arrived to question the owner, Barry wanted
to leave, but Sylvia liked it there and convinced him to stay just a
little longer.
During the course of that week, the weather picked up. It became sunny
and very hot. Shaw was always in a bright mood, offering assistance if
ever they should require it. They went into the village and got drunk
every night. There were no more odd incidents, and perhaps there were
people driving those trains after all.
One week into their holiday, the weather turned; there were gales
coupled with torrential rain. It was on their last night that Barry
didn't feel very well. He and Sylvia went to the main pub in the
village where they met up with a group of deaf people. Sylvia got on
well with them but Barry couldn't, and not feeling his best, went back
to the campsite alone. He took an early night but was awoken again by
Shaw grilling his customers; the retired couple in the only other
remaining tent. He was screaming at them, accusing them of dropping too
many pins.
'It echoes round this valley!' he screeched. 'Don't you have any
cunting consideration?'
Barry felt too tired, and drifted off to sleep again. He awoke an hour
later. Shaw was revving his car. Barry peered from the tent. It was
pitch dark now and the light in the retired couple's tent was out. The
only light source round here came from Shaw's Landrover. Where was he
going at this time of night? Barry got out of the tent but stayed
hidden, and he carefully climbed into his car. Shaw seemed to have
problems getting his car going. He seemed to be in a right tizzy;
tense, panicky, impatient and crazy. When he got moving, Barry followed
at a very safe distance and kept his lights switched off. Shaw drove a
mile, then down a steep dirt track to a clearing in dense undergrowth.
There was a train, stationery on the old track under a canopy of
leaves. Shaw drove on to a platform, opened up the boot and dragged the
corpses of the retired couple from the car. He manually pulled open the
train's sliding doors and dumped the bodies on board.
Barry quietly got out of his car and darted into the bushes. He crept
through the undergrowth, down to the side of the track, roughly fifty
feet to the left of the platform. He had to abandon his car and he knew
that Shaw would see it on his way back up the dirt track.
Rain began to pour in huge warm droplets. Shaw shut the train's doors,
got in his car and drove off. When he had gone, Barry went up onto the
platform. The train began to move. He quickly slid open the doors and
leapt inside of the carriage. The train pulled away from the black
forest station and headed west. Barry grabbed his mobile phone and rang
Sylvia; no answer. He checked the front of the train; no driver. He
called Sylvia again and got through to the voice mail, so left a
message. 'Get out of the campsite! Go to the police! Shaw's a homicidal
maniac. I'm on the train.'
The rain came down really hard, giving the windows a melting black
appearance. It was impossible to see out. Barry gazed at the two
corpses on the floor. They were blood-soaked; the necks were gaping,
having been sliced with a scythe.
Sylvia's phone lay with one bar of battery power remaining, in the
tent. Barry had left the message but he tried calling again, in the
hope that she would answer. The phone rang and lit up the pillow in the
tent as the train roared past. And this time, there was a soul on
board.
The train sped on for another mile but then something extraordinary
happened. It hit a wormhole; a gateway to another universe, another
planet in another solar system in another universe. Suddenly, but so
smoothly, the carriage filled with bright, bright sunlight. The train
broke up into thousands of pieces. Barry and the dead bodies fell for
thirty seconds, and into a massive lake. The water in the lake was
thick, like treacle, and big globules rose from its surface and floated
to the sky like upside down rain. Barry noticed how silent it was.
In-fact there was no sound, no noise whatsoever. This world was
completely mute, void of sound waves. There were two suns in the sky.
The planet was orbiting a binary system. The lake stretched in all
directions for yards. Obliterated train debris littered the nearby
horizons, and the curvature of the world was all too apparent. Barry
floated on the surface of the lake, surrounded by corpses. He saw the
butchered man and his butchered dogs. He saw the hacked hikers and
their maps, flasks and rucksacks floating all around them. There was no
way back for Barry; he would just have to wait until the next train
crashed through the existence barrier, the one that would surely hold
the body of his murdered girlfriend.
Sylvia stumbled back to the tent in the dark and soaking rain. She was
far too drunk and she knew it. She found Barry was not there, so called
out for him.
Shaw was in his bathroom, washing blood off his hands. He heard the
girl. 'Barry ? Barry?' The voice was slurred but loud. Shaw put his
hands to his ears and it looked as if they were bleeding. He made for
the spare room where he kept his scythe.
Sylvia fumbled around for her phone in the dark. Her hand landed on a
kitchen knife and it cut her skin. She cursed and put her hand to her
mouth, then she searched some more and found the phone. She listened to
the voice message once but then the phone went dead. She heard
footsteps, trudging feet getting closer and closer. Then came the
sickening swing of the scythe. It cut the canvas, took the zipped up
door off its pegs, and introduced a gust of freezing rain into the
tent.
Barry moved very little on the syrup lake, but he managed to clamber on
to a makeshift raft, which on Earth would have been the side of a
train. He sat, hungry and thirsty, waiting. He gazed at the gluey water
as it poured to the bi-solar sky. Hours passed until the change came.
The sky split open like a fabric, or a mirage in a liquid desert. From
the hazy gap came a train, beyond the train there was a background of
bright white. The carriage disintegrated as it fell closer to the
world's surface, but there was not a sound. Two humans emerged; one was
male, one was female, one was alive, one was dead. They hit the surface
seconds later, fifty feet or so from Barry's raft. He paddled towards
them but it took a tremendous amount of energy. The water was so
viscous; it was strenuous on his arms. But he made it eventually.
Sylvia floated, unconscious, Shaw floated, dead, a knife piercing his
throat. Sylvia awoke from her shock sleep and Barry pulled her onto the
raft. She told him how she killed the campsite owner in self-defence
after he went for her with a scythe, but she could only explain with
the usage of sign language. Barry couldn't lip read, but at-least he
knew a few basic words. He attempted to tell her that they had entered
a wormhole into another universe and there was no way back, but he
struggled with this and was reduced to the system they adopted on "Give
Us A Clue". He also mentioned he had gone off camping.

THE END