No Sharks in the Med and Other Stories

THE VIADUCT

Horror can come in many different shapes, sizes, and colours and often, like death, which is sometimes its companion, unexpectedly. Some years ago horror came to two boys in the coalmining area of England’s north-east coast.

Pals since they first started school seven years earlier, their names were John and David. John was a big lad and thought himself very brave; David was six months younger, smaller, and he wished he could be more like John.

It was a Saturday in the late spring, warm but not oppressive, and since there was no school the boys were out adventuring on the beach. They had spent most of the morning playing at being starving castaways, turning over rocks in the life-or-death search for crabs and eels—and jumping back startled, hearts racing, whenever their probing revealed too frantic a wriggling in the swirling water, or perhaps a great crab carefully sidling away, one pincer lifted in silent warning—and now they were heading home again for lunch.

But lunch was still almost two hours away, and it would take them less than an hour to get home. In that simple fact were sown the seeds of horror, in that and in one other fact—that between the beach and their respective homes there stood the viaduct…

Almost as a reflex action, when the boys left the beach they headed in the direction of the viaduct. To do this they turned inland, through the trees and bushes of the narrow dene that came right down to the sand, and followed the path of the river. The river was still fairly deep from the spring thaw and the rains of April, and as they walked, ran and hopped they threw stones into the water, seeing who could make the biggest splash.

In no time at all, it seemed, they came to the place where the massive, ominous shadow of the viaduct fell across the dene and the river flowing through it, and there they stared up in awe at the giant arched structure of brick and concrete that bore upon its back one hundred yards of the twin tracks that formed the coastal railway. Shuddering mightily whenever a train roared overhead, the man-made bridge was a never-ending source of amazement and wonder to them…And a challenge, too.

It was as they were standing on the bank of the slow-moving river, perhaps fifty feet wide at this point, that they spotted on the opposite bank the local village idiot, ‘Wiley Smiley’. Now of course, that was not this unfortunate youth’s real name: he was Miles Bellamy, victim of cruel genetic fates since the ill-omened day of his birth some nineteen years earlier. But everyone called him Wiley Smiley.

He was fishing, in a river that had supported nothing bigger than a minnow for many years, with a length of string and a bent pin. He looked up and grinned vacuously as John threw a stone into the water to attract his attention. The stone went quite close to the mark, splashing water over the unkempt youth where he stood a little way out from the far bank, balanced none too securely on slippery rocks. His vacant grin immediately slipped from his face; he became angry, gesturing awkwardly and mouthing incoherently.

“He’ll come after us,” said David to his brash companion, his voice just a trifle alarmed.

“No he won’t, stupid,” John casually answered, picking up a second, larger stone. “He can’t get across, can he.” It was a statement, not a question, and it was a fact. Here the river was deeper, overflowing from a large pool directly beneath the viaduct in which, in the months ahead, children and adults alike would swim during the hot weekends of summer.

John threw his second missile, deliberately aiming it at the water as close to the enraged idiot as he could without actually hitting him, shouting: “Yah! Wiley Smiley! Trying to catch a whale, are you?”

Wiley Smiley began to shriek hysterically as the stone splashed down immediately in front of him and a fountain of water geysered over his trousers. Threatening though they now were, his angry caperings upon the rocks looked very funny to the boys (particularly since his rage was impotent), and John began to laugh loud and jeeringly. David, not a cruel boy by nature, found his friend’s laughter so infectious that in a few seconds he joined in, adding his own voice to the hilarity.

Then John stooped yet again, straightening up this time with two stones, one of which he offered to his slightly younger companion. Carried completely away now, David accepted the stone and together they hurled their missiles, dancing and laughing until tears rolled down their cheeks as Wiley Smiley received a further dousing. By that time the rocks upon which their victim stood were thoroughly wet and slippery, so that suddenly he lost his balance and sat down backwards into the shallow water.

Climbing clumsily, soggily to his feet, he was greeted by howls of laughter from across the river, which drove him to further excesses of rage. His was a passion which might only find outlet in direct retaliation, revenge. He took a few paces forward, until the water swirled about his knees, then stooped and plunged his arms into the river. There were stones galore beneath the water, and the face of the tormented youth was twisted with hate and fury now as he straightened up and brandished two which were large and jagged.

Where his understanding was painfully slow, Wiley Smiley’s strength was prodigious. Had his first stone hit John on the head it might easily have killed him. As it was, the boy ducked at the last moment and the missile flew harmlessly above him. David, too, had to jump to avoid being hurt by a flying rock, and no sooner had the idiot loosed both his stones than he stooped down again to grope in the water for more.

Wiley Smiley’s aim was too good for the boys, and his continuing rage was beginning to make them feel uncomfortable, so they beat a hasty retreat up the steeply wooded slope of the dene and made for the walkway that was fastened and ran parallel to the nearside wall of the viaduct. Soon they had climbed out of sight of the poor soul below, but they could still hear his meaningless squawking and shrieking.

A few minutes more of puffing and panting, climbing steeply through trees and saplings, brought them up above the wood and to the edge of a grassy slope. Another hundred yards and they could go over a fence and on to the viaduct. Though no word had passed between them on the subject, it was inevitable that they should end up on the viaduct, one of the most fascinating places in their entire world…

The massive structure had been built when first the collieries of the north-east opened up, long before plans were drawn up for the major coast road, and now it linked twin colliery villages that lay opposite each other across the narrow river valley it spanned. Originally constructed solely to accommodate the railway, and used to that end to this very day, with the addition of a walkway, it also provided miners who lived in one village but worked in the other with a short cut to their respective coalmines.

While the viaduct itself was of sturdy brick, designed to withstand decade after decade of the heavy traffic that rumbled and clattered across its triple-arched back, the walkway was a comparatively fragile affair. That is not to say that it was not safe, but there were certain dangers and notices had been posted at its approaches to warn users of the presence of at least an element of risk.

Supported upon curving metal arms—iron bars about one and a half inches in diameter which, springing from the brick and mortar of the viaduct wall, were set perhaps twenty inches apart—the walkway itself was of wooden planks protected by a fence five feet high. There were, however, small gaps where rotten planks had been removed and never replaced, but the miners who used the viaduct were careful and knew the walkway’s dangers intimately. All in all the walkway served a purpose and was reasonably safe; one might jump from it, certainly, but only a very careless person or an outright fool would fall. Still, it was no place for anyone suffering from vertigo…

Now, as they climbed the fence to stand gazing up at those ribs of iron with their burden of planking and railings, the two boys felt a strange, headlong rushing emotion within them. For this day, of course, was the day!

It had been coming for almost a year, since the time when John had stood right where he stood now to boast: “One day I’ll swing hand over hand along those rungs, all the way across. Just like Tarzan.” Yes, they had sensed this day’s approach, almost as they might sense Christmas or the beginning of long, idyllic summer holidays…or a visit to the dentist. Something far away, which would eventually arrive, but not yet.

Except that now it had arrived.

“One hundred and sixty rungs,” John breathed, his voice a little fluttery, feeling his palms beginning to itch. “Yesterday, in the playground, we both did twenty more than that on the climbing-frame.”

“The climbing-frame,” answered David, with a naïve insight and vision far ahead of his age, “is only seven feet high. The viaduct is about a hundred and fifty.”

John stared at his friend for a second and his eyes narrowed. Suddenly he sneered. “I might have known it—you’re scared, aren’t you?”

“No,” David shook his head, lying, “but it’ll soon be lunch-time, and—”

“You are scared!” John repeated. “Like a little kid. We’ve been practising for months for this, every day of school on the climbing-frame, and now we’re ready. You know we can do it.” His tone grew more gentle, urging: “Look, it’s not as if we can’t stop if we want to, is it? There’s holes in the fence, and those big gaps in the planks.”

“The first gap,” David answered, noticing how very far away and faint his own voice sounded, “is almost a third of the way across…”

“That’s right,” John agreed, nodding his head eagerly. “We’ve counted the rungs, haven’t we? Just fifty of them to that first wide gap. If we’re too tired to go on when we get there, we can just climb up through the gap on to the walkway.”

David, whose face had been turned towards the ground, looked up. He looked straight into his friend’s eyes, not at the viaduct, in whose shade they stood. He shivered, but not because he was cold.

John stared right back at him, steadily, encouragingly, knowing that his smaller friend looked for his approval, his reassurance. And he was right, for despite the fact that their ages were very close, David held him up as some sort of hero. No daredevil, David, but he desperately wished he could be. And now…here was his chance.

He simply nodded—then laughed out loud as John gave a wild whoop and shook his young fists at the viaduct. “Today we’ll beat you!” he yelled, then turned and clambered furiously up the last few yards of steep grassy slope to where the first rung might easily be reached with an upward spring. David followed him after a moment’s pause, but not before he heard the first arch of the viaduct throw back the challenge in a faintly ringing, sardonic echo of John’s cry: “Beat you…beat you…beat you…”

As he caught up with his ebullient friend, David finally allowed his eyes to glance upward at those skeletal ribs of iron above him. They looked solid, were solid, he knew—but the air beneath them was very thin indeed. John turned to him, his face flushed with excitement. “You first,” he said.

“Me?” David blanched. “But—”

“You’ll be up on to the walkway first if we get tired,” John pointed out. “Besides, I go faster than you—and you wouldn’t want to be left behind, would you?”

David shook his head. “No,” he slowly answered, “I wouldn’t want to be left behind.” Then his voice took on an anxious note: “But you won‘t hurry me, will you?”

“’Course not,” John answered. “We’ll just take it nice and easy, like we do at school.”

Without another word, but with his ears ringing strangely and his breath already coming faster, David jumped up and caught hold of the first rung. He swung forward, first one hand to the rung in front, then the other, and so on. He heard John grunt as he too jumped and caught the first rung, and then he gave all his concentration to what he was doing.

Hand over hand, rung by rung, they made their way out over the abyss. Below them the ground fell sharply away, each swing of their arms adding almost two feet to their height, seeming to add tangibly to their weight. Now they were silent, except for an occasional grunt, saving both breath and strength as they worked their way along the underside of the walkway. There were only the breezes that whispered in their ears and the infrequent toot of a motor‘s horn on the distant road.

As the bricks of the wall moved slowly by, so the distance between rungs seemed to increase, and already David’s arms felt tired. He knew that John, too, must be feeling it, for while his friend was bigger and a little stronger, he was also heavier. And sure enough, at a distance of only twenty-five, maybe thirty rungs out towards the centre, John breathlessly called for a rest.

David pulled himself up and hung his arms and his rib-cage over the rung he was on—just as they had practised in the playground—getting comfortable before carefully turning his head to look back. He was shocked to see that John’s face was paler than he’d ever known it, and that his eyes were staring. When John saw David’s doubt, however, he managed a weak grin.

“It’s OK,” he said. “I was—I was just a bit worried about you, that’s all. Thought your arms might be getting a bit tired. Have you—have you looked down yet?”

“No,” David answered, his voice mouse-like. No, he said again, this time to himself, and I’m not going to! He carefully turned his head back to look ahead, where the diminishing line of rungs seemed to stretch out almost infinitely to the far side of the viaduct.

John had been worried about him. Yes, of course he had; that was why his face had looked so funny, so—shrunken. John thought he was frightened, was worried about his self-control, his ability to carry on. Well, David told himself, he had every right to worry; but all the same he felt ashamed that his weakness was so obvious. Even in a position like that, perched so perilously, David’s mind was far more concerned with the other boy’s opinion of him than with thoughts of possible disaster. And it never once dawned on him, not for a moment, that John might really only be worried about himself…

Almost as if to confirm beyond a doubt the fact that John had little faith in his strength, his courage—as David hung there, breathing deeply, preparing himself for the next stage of the venture—his friend‘s voice, displaying an unmistakable quaver, came to him again from behind: “Just another twenty rungs, that’s all, then you’ll be able to climb up on to the walkway.”

Yes, David thought, I’ll be able to climb up. But then I’ll know that I’ll never be like you—that you’ll always be better than me—because you’ll carry on all the way across! He set his teeth and dismissed the thought. It wasn’t going to be like that, he told himself, not this time. After all, it was no different up here from in the playground. You were only higher, that was all. The trick was in not looking down—

As if obeying some unheard command, seemingly with a morbid curiosity of their own, David’s eyes slowly began to turn downward, defying him. Their motion was only arrested when David’s attention suddenly centred upon a spider-like dot that emerged suddenly from the cover of the trees, scampering frantically up the opposite slope of the valley. He recognized the figure immediately from the faded blue shirt and black trousers that it wore. It was Wiley Smiley.

As David lowered himself carefully into the hanging position beneath his rung and swung forward, he said: “Across the valley, there—that’s Wiley Smiley. I wonder why he’s in such a hurry.” There had been something terribly urgent about the idiot’s quick movements, as if some rare incentive powered them.

“I see him,” said John, sounding more composed now. “Hah! He’s just an old nutter. My dad says he’ll do something one of these days and have to be taken away.”

“Do something?” David queried, pausing briefly between swings. An uneasiness completely divorced from the perilous game they were playing rose churningly in his stomach and mind. “What kind of thing?”

“Dunno,” John grunted. “But anyway, don’t—uh!—talk.”

It was good advice: don’t talk, conserve wind, strength, take it easy. And yet David suddenly found himself moving faster, dangerously fast, and his fingers were none too sure as they moved from one rung to the next. More than once he was hanging by one hand while the other groped blindly for support.

It was very, very important now to close the distance between himself and the sanctuary of the gap in the planking. True, he had made up his mind just a few moments ago to carry on beyond that gap—as far as he could go before admitting defeat, submitting—but all such resolutions were gone now as quickly as they came. His one thought was of climbing up to safety.

It had something to do with Wiley Smiley and the eager, determined way he had been scampering up the far slope. Towards the viaduct. Something to do with that, yes, and with what John had said about Wiley Smiley being taken away one day…for doing something. David’s mind dared not voice its fears too specifically, not even to itself…

Now, except for the occasional grunt—that and the private pounding of blood in their ears—the two boys were silent, and only a minute or so later David saw the gap in the planking. He had been searching for it, sweeping the rough wood of the planks stretching away overhead anxiously until he saw the wide, straight crack that quickly enlarged as he swung closer. Two planks were missing here, he knew, just sufficient to allow a boy to squirm through the gap without too much trouble.

His breath coming in sobbing, glad gasps, David was just a few rungs away from safety when he felt the first tremors vibrating through the great structure of the viaduct. It was like the trembling of a palsied giant. “What’s that?” he cried out loud, terrified, clinging desperately to the rung above his head.

“It’s a—uh!—train!” John gasped, his own voice now very hoarse and plainly frightened. “We’ll have to—uh!—wait until it’s gone over.”

Quickly, before the approaching train’s vibrations could shake them loose, the boys hauled themselves up into positions of relative safety and comfort, perching on their rungs beneath the planks of the walkway. There they waited and shivered in the shadow of the viaduct, while the shuddering rumble of the train drew ever closer, until, in a protracted clattering of wheels on rails, the monster rushed by unseen overhead. The trembling quickly subsided and the train’s distant whistle proclaimed its derision; it was finished with them.

Without a word, holding back a sob that threatened to develop into full-scale hysteria, David lowered himself once more into the full-length hanging position; behind him, breathing harshly and with just the hint of a whimper escaping from his lips, John did the same. Two, three more forward swings and the gap was directly overhead. David looked up, straight up to the clear sky.

“Hurry!” said John, his voice the tiniest whisper. “My hands are starting to feel funny…”

David pulled himself up and balanced across his rung, tremulously took away one hand and grasped the edge of the wooden planking. Pushing down on the hand that grasped the rung and hauling himself up, finally he kneeled on the rung and his head emerged through the gap in the planks. He looked along the walkway…

There, not three feet away, legs widespread and eyes burning with a fanatical hatred, crouched Wiley Smiley. David saw him, saw the pointed stick he held, felt a thrill of purest horror course through him. Then, in the next instant, the idiot lunged forward and his mouth opened in a demented parody of a laugh. David saw the lightning movement of the sharpened stick and tried to avoid its thrust. He felt the point strike his forehead just above his left eye and fell back, off balance, arms flailing. Briefly his left hand made contact with the planking again, then lost it, and he fell with a shriek…across the rung that lay directly beneath him. It was not a long fall, but fear and panic had already winded David; he simply closed his eyes and sobbed, hanging on for dear life, motionless. But only for a handful of seconds.

Warm blood trickled from David’s forehead, falling on his hands where he gripped the rung. Something was prodding the back of his neck, jabbing viciously. The pain brought him back from the abyss and he opened his eyes to risk one sharp, fearful glance upwards. Wiley Smiley was kneeling at the edge of the gap, his stick already moving downward for another jab. Again David moved his head to avoid the thrust of the stick, and once more the point scraped his forehead.

Behind him David could hear John moaning and screaming alternately: “Oh, Mum! Dad! It’s Wiley Smiley! It’s him, him, him! He’ll kill us., kill us…” Galvanized into action, David lowered himself for the third time into the hanging position and swung forward, away from the inflamed idiot’s deadly stick. Two rungs, three, then he carefully turned about-face and hauled himself up to rest. He looked at John through the blood that dripped slowly into one eye, blurring his vision.

David blinked to clear his eye of blood, then said: “John, you’ll have to turn round and go back, get help. He’s got me here. I can‘t go forward any further, I don’t think, and I can’t come back. I’m stuck. But it’s only fifty rungs back to the start. You can do it easy, and if you get tired you can always rest. I’ll wait here until you fetch help.”

“Can’t, can’t, can’t,” John babbled, trembling wildly where he lay half across his rung. Tears ran down the older boy’s cheeks and fell into space like salty rain. He was deathly white, eyes staring, frozen. Suddenly yellow urine flooded from the leg of his short trousers in a long burst. When he saw this, David, too, wet himself, feeling the burning of his water against his legs but not caring. He felt very tiny, very weak now, and he knew that fear and shock were combining to exhaust him.

Then, as a silhouette glimpsed briefly in a flash of lightning, David saw in his mind’s eye a means of salvation. “John,” he urgently called out to the other boy. “Do you remember near the middle of the viaduct? There are two gaps close together in the walkway, maybe only a dozen or so rungs apart.” Almost imperceptibly, John nodded, never once moving his frozen eyes from David’s face. “Well,” the younger boy continued, barely managing to keep the hysteria out of his own voice, “if we can swing to—”

Suddenly David’s words were out off by a burst of insane laughter from above, followed immediately by a loud, staccato thumping on the boards as Wiley Smiley leapt crazily up and down.

“No, no, no—” John finally cried out in answer to David’s proposal. His paralysis broken, he began to sob unashamedly. Then, shaking his head violently, he said: “I can’t move—can’t move!” His voice became the merest whisper. “Oh, God—Mum—Dad! I’ll fall, I’ll fall!”

“You won’t fall, you git—coward!” David shouted. Then his jaw fell open in a gasp. John, a coward! But the other boy didn’t even seem to have heard him. Now he was trembling as wildly as before and his eyes were squeezed tight shut.

“Listen,” David said. “If you don’t come…then I’ll leave you. You wouldn’t want to be left on your own, would you?” It was an echo as of something said a million years ago.

John stopped sobbing and opened his eyes. They opened very wide, unbelieving. “Leave me?”

“Listen,” David said again. “The next gap is only about twenty rungs away, and the one after that is only another eight or nine more. Wiley Smiley can‘t get after both of us at once, can he?”

“You go,” said John, his voice taking on fresh hope and his eyes blinking rapidly. “You go and maybe he’ll follow you. Then I’ll climb up and—and chase him off…”

“You won’t be able to chase him off,” said David scornfully, “not just you on your own. You’re not big enough.”

“Then I’ll…I’ll run and fetch help.”

“What if he doesn’t follow me?” David asked. “If we both go, he’s bound to follow us.”

“David,” John said, after a moment or two. “David, I’m…frightened.”

“You’ll have to be quick across the gap,” David said, ignoring John’s last statement. “He’s got that stick—and of course he’ll be listening to us.”

“I’m frightened,” John whispered again.

David nodded. “OK, you stay where you are, if that’s what you want—but I’m going on.”

“Don’t leave me, don’t leave me!” John cried out, his shriek accompanied by a peal of mad and bubbling laughter from the unseen idiot above. “Don’t go!”

“I have to, or we’re both finished,” David answered. He slid down into the hanging position and turned about-face, noting as he did so that John was making to follow him, albeit in a dangerous, panicky fashion. “Wait to see if Wiley Smiley follows me!” he called back over his shoulder.

“No. I’m coming, I’m coming!”

From far down below in the valley David heard a horrified shout, then another. They had been spotted. Wiley Smiley heard the shouting too, and his distraction was sufficient to allow John to pass by beneath him unhindered. From above, the two boys now heard the idiot’s worried mutterings and gruntings, and the hesitant sound of his feet as he slowly kept pace with them along the walkway. He could see them through the narrow cracks between the planks, but the cracks weren’t wide enough for him to use his stick.

David‘s arms and hands were terribly numb and aching by the time he reached the second gap, but seeing the gloating, twisted features of Wiley Smiley leering down at him he ducked his head and swung on to where he was once more protected by the planks above him. John had stopped short of the second gap, hauling himself up into the safer, resting position.

Above them Wiley Smiley was mewling viciously like a wild animal, howling as if in torment. He rushed crazily back and forth from gap to gap, jabbing uselessly at the empty air between the vacant rungs. The boys could see the bloodied point of the stick striking down first through one open space, then the other. David achingly waited until he saw the stick appear at the gap in front of him and then, when it retreated and he heard Wiley Smiley‘s footsteps hurrying overhead, swung swiftly across to the other side. There he turned about to face John, and with what felt like his last ounce of strength pulled himself up to rest.

Now, for the first time, David dared to look down. Below, running up the riverbank and waving frantically, were the ant-like figures of three men. They must have been out for a Saturday morning stroll when they’d spotted the two boys hanging beneath the viaduct’s walkway. One of them stopped running and put his hands up to his mouth. His shout floated up to the boys on the clear air: “Hang on, lads, hang on!”

“Help!” David and John cried out together, as loud as they could. “Help—Help!”

“We’re coming, lads,” came the answering shout. The men hurriedly began to climb the wooded slope on their side of the river and disappeared into the trees.

“They’ll be here soon,” David said, wondering if it would be soon enough. His whole body ached and he felt desperately weak and sick.

“Hear that, Wiley Smiley?” John cried hysterically, staring up at the boards above him. “They’ll be here soon—and then you’ll be taken away and locked up!” There was no answer. A slight wind had come up off the sea and was carrying a salty tang to them where they lay across their rungs.

“They’ll take you away and lock you up,” John cried again, the ghost of a sob in his voice; but once more the only answer was the slight moaning of the wind. John looked across at David, maybe twenty-five feet away, and said: “I think…I think he’s gone.” Then he gave a wild shout. “He’s gone. He’s gone!”

“I didn’t hear him go,” said David, dubiously.

John was very much more his old self now. “Oh, he’s gone, all right. He saw those men coming and cleared off. David, I’m going up!”

“You’d better wait,” David cried out as his friend slid down to hang at arm’s length from his rung. John ignored the advice; he swung forward hand over hand until he was under the far gap in the planking. With a grunt of exertion, he forced the tired muscles of his arms to pull his body up. He got his rib-cage over the rung, flung a hand up and took hold of the naked plank to one side of the gap, then—

In that same instant David sensed rather than heard the furtive movement overhead. “John!” he yelled. “He’s still there—Wiley Smiley’s still there!”

But John had already seen Wiley Smiley; the idiot had made his presence all too plain, and already his victim was screaming. The boy fell back fully into David’s view, the hand he had thrown up to grip the edge of the plank returning automatically to the rung, his arms taking the full weight of his falling body, somehow sustaining him. There was a long gash in his cheek from which blood freely flowed.

“Move forward!” David yelled, terror pulling his lips back in a snarling mask. “Forward, where he can’t get at you…”

John heard him and must have seen in some dim, frightened recess of his mind the common sense of David’s advice. Panting hoarsely—partly in dreadful fear, partly from hideous emotional exhaustion—he swung one hand forward and caught at the next rung. And at that precise moment, in the split second while John hung suspended between the two rungs with his face turned partly upward, Wiley Smiley struck again.

David was witness to it all. He heard the maniac’s rising, gibbering shriek of triumph as the sharp point of the stick lanced unerringly down, and John’s answering cry of purest agony as his left eye flopped bloodily out on to his cheek, lying there on a white thread of nerve and gristle. He saw John clap both hands to his monstrously altered face, and watched in starkest horror as his friend seemed to stand for a moment, defying gravity, on the thin air. Then John was gone, dwindling away down a draughty funnel of air, while rising came the piping, diminishing scream that would haunt David until his dying day, a scream that was cut short after what seemed an impossibly long time.

John had fallen. At first David couldn’t accept it, but then it began to sink in. His friend had fallen. He moaned and shut his eyes tightly, lying half across and clinging to his rung so fiercely that he could no longer feel his bloodless fingers at all. John had fallen…

Then—perhaps it was only a minute or so later, perhaps an hour, David didn’t know—there broke in on his perceptions the sound of clumping, hurrying feet on the boards above, and a renewed, even more frenzied attack of gibbering and shrieking from Wiley Smiley. David forced his eyes open as the footsteps came to a halt directly overhead. He heard a gruff voice: “Jim, you keep that bloody—Thing—away, will you? He’s already killed one boy today. Frank, give us a hand here.”

A face, inverted, appeared through the hole in the planks not three feet away from David’s own face. The mouth opened and the same voice, but no longer gruff, said: “It’s OK now, son. Everything’s OK. Can you move?”

In answer, David could only shake his head negatively. Overtaxed muscles, violated nerves had finally given in. He was frozen on his perch; he would stay where he was now until he was either taken off physically or until he fainted.

Dimly the boy heard the voice again, and others raised in an urgent hubbub, but he was too far gone to make out any words that were said. He was barely aware that the face had been withdrawn. A few seconds later there came a banging and tearing from immediately above him; a small shower of tiny pieces of wood, dust, and homogenous debris fell upon his head and shoulders. Then daylight flooded down to illuminate more brightly the shaded area beneath the walkway. Another board was torn away, and another.

The inverted face again appeared, this time at the freshly made opening, and an exploratory hand reached down. Using its kindly voice, the face said: “OK, son, we’ll have you out of there in a jiffy. I—uh!—can‘t quite seem to reach you, but it’s only a matter of a few inches. Do you think you can—“

The voice was cut off by a further outburst of incoherent shrieking and jabbering from Wiley Smiley. The face and hand withdrew momentarily and David heard the voice yet again. This time it was angry. “Look, see if you can keep that damned idiot back, will you? And keep him quiet, for God’s sake!”

The hand came back, large and strong, reaching down. David still clung with all his remaining strength to the rung, and though he knew what was expected of him—what he must do to win himself the prize of continued life—all sense of feeling had quite gone from his limbs and even shifting his position was a very doubtful business.

“Boy,” said the voice, as the hand crept inches closer and the inverted face stared into his. “If you could just reach up your hand, I—”

“I’ll—I’ll try to do it,” David whispered.

“Good, good,” his would-be rescuer calmly, quietly answered. “That’s it, lad, just a few inches. Keep your balance now.”

David’s hand crept up from the rung and his head, neck, and shoulder slowly turned to allow it free passage. Up it tremblingly went, reaching to meet the hand stretching down from above. The boy and the man each peered into the other’s straining face, and an instant later their fingertips touched—

There came a mad shriek, a frantic pounding of feet and cries of horror and wild consternation from above. The inverted face went white in a moment and disappeared, apparently dragged backwards. The hand disappeared, too. And that was the very moment that David had chosen to free himself of the rung and give himself into the protection of his rescuer…

He flailed his arms in a vain attempt to regain his balance. Numb, cramped, cold with that singular icy chill experienced only at death’s positive approach, his limbs would not obey. He rolled forward over the bar and his legs were no longer strong enough to hold him. He didn’t even feel the toes of his shoes as they struck the rung—the last of him to have contact with the viaduct—before his fall began. And if the boy thought anything at all during that fall, well those thoughts will never be known. Later he could not remember.

Oh, there was to be a later, but David could hardly have believed it while he was falling. And yet he was not unconscious. There were vague impressions: of the sky, the looming arch of the viaduct flying past, trees below, the sea on the horizon, then the sky again, all slowly turning. There was a composite whistling, of air displaced and air ejected from lungs contracted in a high-pitched scream. And then, it seemed a long time later, there was the impact…

But David did not strike the ground…he struck the pool. The deep swimming hole. The blessed, merciful river!

He had curled into a ball—the foetal position, almost—and this doubtless saved him. His tightly curled body entered the water with very little injury, however much of a splash it caused. Deep as the water was, nevertheless David struck the bottom with force, the pain and shock awakening whatever faculties remained functional in the motor areas of his brain. Aided by his resultant struggling, however weak, the ballooning air in his clothes bore him surely to the surface. The river carried him a few yards downstream to where the banks formed a bottle-neck for the pool.

Through all the pain David felt his knees scrape pebbles, felt his hands on the mud of the bank, and where will-power presumably was lacking, instinct took over. Somehow he crawled from the pool, and somehow he hung on grimly to consciousness. Away from the water, still he kept on crawling, as from the horror of his experience. Unseeing, he moved towards the towering unconquered colossus of the viaduct. He was quite blind as of yet; there was only a red, impenetrable haze before his bloodied eyes; he heard nothing but a sick roaring in his head. Finally his shoulder struck the bole of a tree that stood in the shelter of the looming brick giant, and there he stopped crawling, propped against the tree.

Slowly, very slowly, the roaring went out of his ears, the red haze before his eyes was replaced by lightning flashes and kaleidoscopic shapes and colours. Normal sound suddenly returned with a great pain in his ears. A rush of wind rustled the leaves of the trees, snatching away and then giving back a distant shouting which seemed to have its source overhead. Encased in his shell of pain, David did not immediately relate the shouting to his miraculous escape. Sight returned a few moments later and he began to cry rackingly with relief; he had thought himself permanently blind. And perhaps even now he had not been completely wrong, for his eyes had plainly been knocked out of order. Something was—must be—desperately wrong with them.

David tried to shake his head to clear it, but the action brought only fresh, blinding pain. When the nausea subsided he blinked his eyes, clearing them of blood and peering bewilderedly about at his surroundings. It was as he had suspected: the colours were all wrong. No, he blinked again, some of them seemed perfectly normal.

For instance: the bark of the tree against which he leaned was brown enough, and its dangling leaves were a fresh green. The sky above was blue, reflected in the river, and the bricks of the viaduct were a dull orange. Why then was the grass beneath him a lush red streaked with yellow and grey? Why was this unnatural grass wet and sticky, and—

—And why were these tatters of dimly familiar clothing flung about in exploded, scarlet disorder?

When his reeling brain at last delivered the answer, David opened his mouth to scream. Fainting before he could do so, he fell face down into the sticky embrace of his late friend.