A Season For Everything - Matthew Fairman (pocket ebook reader .TXT) 📗

of this place. She hated it, wouldn't come in with me. Said that it gave her the creeps to think about all the miners who were trapped and killed.

There were two tunnels leading directly off of the entrance chamber. Two black sockets quarried from the skull white rock. The walls were sprayed with graffiti. Some of it the work of kids but most of it was the work of caving enthusiasts who had explored and surveyed the mines. Arrows and letters in varying colours gave directions to various routes through and around the hillside. Beaton took the tunnel to the right. Great hulking pieces of limestone had fallen from the roof of the cave and he had to scramble over them to continue. As the tunnel began to bend the light faded and his legs refused to take him any further. He was about to turn and make his way back but something made him hesitate.

'What was she so afraid of in here'. There was nothing down here save for the darkness and the rock. He sat down on a low flat slab, the cold seeped through his trousers into the backs of his thighs. 'Why should anyone be afraid of the dark'. It was no accident that he found himself here, he knew it existed and he had chosen to come here. But why?

In the midst of the deafening silence he heard the clatter of a stone falling. A sound that echoed through the tunnel and was made louder by a complete lack of sound and sight. Most likely the click clack of loose stones falling from a crack in the crumbling ceiling. A logical, innocent, explainable noise that turned Beaton's blood into glue and sent his whole body into a spasm, his whole being rigid with fear.

'What was it, what could it be, but nothing, did I hear it at all. I should leave, this is

ridiculous, I should be at work not scaring myself down here, what was I thinking'. The noise replayed in his head, again and again. Each time it was amplified and distorted, over and over. He gave it a face, a body, a translucent shell. A thousand rangy insect limbs crept towards him. Moving through the dark, an eyeless white insect that crept towards him, aware of his every move. It reached out a feeler to touch him. Suddenly his legs were free again and moving with great speed, he ran towards the entrance chamber and clambered up the steep slope. The scree beneath his feet gave way underfoot and the world came crashing up to hit him in the chest. Rolling over and lying on his back, he looked up into the canopy above him and laughed at what his own childish fear had made him do.'You fool, you stupid fool.’

 

The first flakes of snow that winter drifted down. They briefly clung to his skin before melting away. He lay like that for a while with his eyes closed. His hands resting on his stomach, he ran his hands up over his rib cage.

'I'm so hungry, It must be lunch time. I must of just forgot'.

The light was beginning to fade but it must have been only just a little past three in the afternoon. Raising himself onto his elbow, Beaton looked out across the approach to the mine entrance. There on a rock, no less than a few metres stood a large Alsatian dog. It was staring at him like a ghost from the past, he didn't know how long it had been there. The wiry brown and black fur of its coat was well camouflaged against the dim shades of the trees and the rocks. Behind him and further off in the distance stood a woman. She wore a green waxed jacket and was holding a leash. From such a distance, he could not tell if she was young or old. Her mousey blond hair was pulled back into a pony tail. Her face was lean, her stare was blank and gave nothing away.

'Maybe she doesn't see me, she maybe looking at the dog'.

As he went to raise his hand to say hello the woman turned and continued on her way and passed from view. The Alsatian, turned to watch the woman disappear, took one more look at Beaton and then hurried off in the same direction. The silver loops of its collar jingling as he went.

Beaton got up dusted himself down and walked to a bikeway that ran in front of the face of the quarry. There was no sign of anyone. A thin footpath led down the hillside through undergrowth that was tangled thick with dark green ivy. The path left the woods and met a steep road at the back of some allotments near to a small housing estate and some wooden sheds. The street lamps had come on and from where he stood, Beaton could see the lights of the city laid out before him in the distance. A dense cluster of orange and yellow stars. He Stumbled forward down the hill as fast as he could go with an aching hunger deep in his gut and his fingers numb with the cold. The road soon levelled out at the bottom of the hill where a low stone bridge forded a weir. The buildings here were much older than those further up the hill and although at one point this small medieval hamlet had boasted six public houses, today only one remained. The two storey building was low and long made of the limestone pulled down from the quarry above. The pains of the leaded windows winked as he walked by. Inside looked warm and welcoming. Fitting then that it should have been aptly named The Quarrymen's Arms.

 

Chapter II

 

Pushing open the door and stepping over the threshold it took just three more paces to reach the bar. The ceiling was low and bridged by ancient oak beams. From the wood panelled walls hung the types of fittings and fixtures typical to public houses up and down the country. A fruit machine blinked in the corner. To the left, a good fire blazed in a good sized hearth. Hanging above the chimney breast was a huge rusted double handled bucksaw, its steel serrated edge with teeth as big as any found in the skull of a shark. A relic from the quarries themselves. A middle aged couple were sitting before the fire on a worn red leather sofa drinking and chatting amongst themselves. They didn't look up. To Beaton's right was a series of small wooden seating booths divided by screens of dark mahogany and frosted glass. In one of them, all alone, was an old man reading a newspaper. At the far end of the room two men held counsel over a round wooden table like two monks. One was in his early twenties and the other looked to be in his fifties. They could have been father and son but it was clear by their body language that they were not. Beaton chose an empty bar stool and rested his foot on the brass rail. The counter was tarnished with cloudy white water stains. The beer matts were grubby, there corners fibrous and blown from being used long after they should have been thrown away. He read the names of the beers on the pump handles. He didn't recognise any of them. He wasn't much of a beer drinker and he couldn't remember the last time he had been in a public house. Probably some work do he had been obliged to attend. Behind the bar was a mirror with shelves running across it. The shelves contained different coloured bottles of various shape and size. Bar snacks, in their metallic plastic wrappings hung from their cardboard backings. A chalk board that may once have had a menu or wine list on it had been hastily scrubbed out. A door behind the bar was slightly ajar but not nearly enough as to allow anyone to see inside. Beaton looked around to catch an eye but nobody seemed responsible for running the place. He thought about ringing the shiny brass bell that hung from the glass racks above the counter but he was not that brave. He turned on his bar stall and rested his elbows behind him on the counter top. He was studying the flames in the fireplace. They danced and licked and nipped out at the heavy log which looked as if it was squashing the life out of the glowing embers it rested upon.

'What'll it be' came a voice behind Beaton. He turned around. Standing behind the bar was a man in his late sixties. He had a full auburn beard. His hair was chestnut brown and streaked with grey at the sides. He was tall, thick set with a ruddy red complexion. He rested his two hands on the top of a beer pump like a lumberjack might lean on the haft of an axe.

'Do you have a menu please?' replied Beaton.

'No menu i'm afraid, all we have here you can see in front of you' Beaton looked around as though he was searching for something, he looked at the scrubbed out black board hopefully.

'You don't serve food.'

'No sir, as I said everything is right here. We got pork scratchings, peanuts and crisps,

plenty of crisps, if its a restaurant your wanting then you'll have to go into town.'The barman straightened himself up as if defending the honour of the pub.

'No, no its fine. I'll have a packet of crisps and a packet of pork scratchings, please.'

'You won't be wanting a drink?'.

'A drink, yes a drink too of course.' He looked around the bar again, searching.

'Do you have wine?' The barman released a short sigh from his nostrils.

'We don't have wine, If it's a wine bar your wanting then you'll…'

'No, no thats fine, beer is fine. I'll take that one there.’ Beaton tapped the pump that the barman was leaning on.

'Right O then.’ Bringing down a glass from above the bar and placing it below the brass tap, the barman pulled on the pump. He leaned his body into his work as though it took a great deal of strength to draw the liquid up from the casks in the basement below. The glass filled with the amber brown liquid, a weak foam settling on its surface. The barman set the glass down unceremoniously on the bar, causing the contents of the glass to slosh onto his hand. He wiped it on a grimy looking towel that was thrown across his shoulder.

'There ye are, anything else for yer?'

'No, thank you, thats fine.’

'Then that'll be four seventy please sir.'

Beaton paid the barman with a five pound note, received his change and carried his beer and his bar snacks to the back of the pub, as far from the publican as was possible. He sat in one of the empty booths near to the two men who were huddled over their table locked in conversation. He tentatively took a sip from his pint. The beer was warm and flat and tasted sour. He opened the pork scratchings, and bit into one. As his upper teeth worked to bite through the thick crust of the pig skin his lower teeth sunk into its soft moist underside.

'Ugh, Christ, thats awful' It was salty and unpleasant. He pulled another scratching from the bag and held it up for inspection. He could see the hairs on the surface of the brown fried skin. 'What was I thinking?’ He decided in stead to eat the peanuts. 'You know where you stand with peanuts.’ he thought to himself.

He dumped the bag of scratchings into a large ashtray, a couple of them fell into his lap. He started to work on opening the packet of roasted peanuts. Something powerful and heavy shoved against his legs beneath the table making them jerk upwards in surprise, bashing his knees hard against the table top.