The Hiding Place(37)

“A way into what?”

“The pit.”

I stared at him, and it was weird. I felt like I had heard the words before. Or had been expecting them. A strange shiver ran around my body, like when you touch a shopping cart and your hand tingles with static. The pit.

Hurst loped over. “You found a way into the old mineshafts?”

“Fucking ace,” Fletch added.

I shook my head. “No way. They were all blocked off and, anyway, those shafts are, like, hundreds of feet down.”

Hurst looked at me then nodded. “Thorney’s right. Are y’sure, Doughboy?”

Doughboy was Hurst’s nickname for Chris because he was “soft as dough.”

Chris looked between us, helpless as a giant rabbit caught in our headlights. He swallowed and said, “I d–d–don’t know for sure. I’ll show you.”

It was only later, when I really thought about it—and I had plenty of opportunity to think about it—that I realized he never answered Hurst’s question.

“A way into the old mineshafts?”

We presumed that’s what he meant. But I don’t think he did, even then. He meant The Pit. Like he already knew what it was. And The Pit was something very different indeed.


—



The light was losing its grip on the day by the time we got up there. It was late August, the tail end of the summer holidays, and “the nights were drawing in,” as my mum would say (which always made me think of someone taking a great big piece of charcoal and scribbling out the day).

I think we all had that feeling of stuff ending, like you always do when you’re a kid and six weeks of holidays is almost over. I guess we also knew that this was our last summer of really being “kids.” Next year we had exams, and plenty of our classmates, even in the nineties, would leave school straight for work, although not straight down the mine, like they used to.

By this point the old colliery site was just a great muddy scar on the landscape. Grass and scrubby bushes were starting to take a grip. But the place was mostly still black with coal dust and littered with rocks, rusted machinery, sharp fragments of metal and lumps of concrete.

We hauled ourselves through a gap in the ineffectual security fencing around the outside where signs like danger, forbidden and no trespassing might as well have read: welcome, come in and dare you.

Chris led the way. Well, sort of. He scrambled and slid and tripped then stopped, looked around and scrambled and slid and tripped some more.

“Fuck, Doughboy—you sure you’re going the right way?” Hurst panted. “The old shafts are back that way.”

Chris shook his head. “This way.”

Hurst looked at me. I shrugged. Fletch made a whirling motion at the side of his head.

“Give him a chance,” I said.

We continued our awkward progress. At the peak of one steep, muddy summit Chris paused and looked around for a long while, like a large dog sniffing the air. Then he plunged down the almost sheer incline, scrabbling and skidding through the gravel and rubble.

“Fuck’s sake,” Fletch muttered. “I’m not going down there.”

I admit I was tempted to turn back, but I also felt a strange, bubbling excitement. Like when you see a fairground ride and you don’t want to get on it because it looks scary as fuck but another part of you does want to, really badly.

I glanced at Fletch and couldn’t resist: “Scared?”

He glared at me. “Fuck you!”

Hurst grinned, never happier than when there was discord within the troops.

“Pussies!” he cried, and then, with a wild whoop, he plunged down the slope. I followed, more cautiously. Fletch swore again then did the same.

At the bottom I almost slipped on my arse but just managed to keep my footing. I felt gravel lodge in my trainers and dig into the soles of my feet. Overhead, the sky seemed to hang lower, heavy with impending darkness.

“We’re not going to be able to see fuck all now,” Fletch moaned.

“How much further?” Hurst asked.

“We’re there!” Chris called back, and disappeared.

I blinked, looked around then spotted a flash of gray. He was crouched down in a hollow formed by a small overhang. If you looked quickly you wouldn’t even see him in the dip. We scrambled down after him. Patchy grass and bushes had started to make a tentative hold on the ground nearby, offering further camouflage. There were several large rocks scattered around. Chris moved a couple and I realized he had placed them there on purpose, as markers.

He shoved away dirt and smaller stones with his hands. Then he sat back on his heels and stared at us triumphantly.

“What?” Fletch spat in disgust. “I can’t see nothing.”

We all squinted at the uncovered patch of earth. Maybe a bit more uneven and a slightly different color from the surrounding earth, but that was it.

“Are you putting us on, Doughboy?” Hurst snarled. He grabbed him by the neck of his sweatshirt. “Because if this is some kind of prank—”

Chris’s eyes widened. “No prank.”

I would think later that, even then, half choked by Hurst, he still didn’t stutter. Not here.

“Wait,” I said. I bent closer to the ground, brushed away a bit more dirt and felt my fingers touch something colder. Metal. I sat back. And suddenly, I saw it.