Three Mile Drove, Chapter Three, part two (standard:horror, 4065 words) [4/29] show all parts
Author: Brian Cross	Added: Apr 09 2006	Views/Reads: 2914/2019	Part vote: 0.00 (0 votes)
continuation of a completed horror story set in remote fenland in the UK

Click here to read the first 75 lines of the story

events had all conspired to produce such lethargy. The solicitor's 
haughty attitude hadn't helped, it had infuriated him but in simple 
truth he knew it didn't take much to do that. Among the things that 
aroused his emotions were needless exhibitions of pomposity, they 
created in him an anger that sometimes defied his accustomed laid back 
nature. He had been known to erupt on occasions and afterwards he found 
himself cross for allowing his blood to boil over on account of things 
he knew he should simply let fly over his head. 

Petulance was one of those things, however much he fought to stop
himself succumbing to it. Take Goldie, her exhibitions of temper were 
fired by petulance, there was neither rhyme or reason behind her 
ravings, purely childish motivations aimed at provoking him to respond 
in similar fashion. And of course it worked, it always did. 

Well not any more sunshine, not any more. 

His foot was hard on the accelerator and the signpost seemed to rear
right up as though it would strike him in the face. He had to slam 
heavily on the brake and ram the gear change firmly into reverse to 
check that it actually signified the turn for Bramble Dyke. 

It was a dangerous manoeuvre, reversing at speed on any road, but at
least this one was flat and straight, and the road behind had been 
clear. He glanced to the left, sure enough the sign had indicated 
Bramble Dyke, he should have trusted his intuition but just recently he 
had been less inclined to do that. But in any case there it was, nearly 
at journey's end, and now Darren wondered just how accurate Mr. Pompous 
Henley's description of the bungalow had been. 

He turned right onto a road that seemed to become narrower the further
he progressed along it. There were deep dykes on either side and beyond 
them extensive fields of now familiar black earth, seeming to blend in 
only too readily with the rapidly approaching night sky. The only 
respite from the pervading darkness was provided by the occasional, 
forlorn looking willow tree, its squat trunks and bare branches 
stubbornly set forward as if in deliberate resistance to the strong 
wind. It was a wintry, unwelcoming landscape overlooked by a sky now 
turning violet, and despite his problems there, Darren found he was 
increasingly questioning his judgement about leaving the leafy suburbs 
of Nottingham. 

Just as he thought the straight road would go on forever he saw a sharp
bend up ahead and slackened his speed appreciably. Why on earth the 
bend had to be so sharp when they had all this vast expanse of land to 
play with was beyond him, though once he was around it he was in for 
something of a surprise. 

The road broadened with the arc of the bend and he found himself in
something of a high street as his passage straightened out again. He 
passed a petrol station to his right, and then a general store come 
post office, followed by a small green with a couple of bench seats, at 
the back of which, lay a butcher's shop and a greengrocer. 

Darren wondered briefly why he'd seen no sign of the community until
he'd turned the bend; it had all seemed to appear as if by magic, but 
when he recalled that the road had been dipping all the while, he 
marked the reason down to the lie of the land 

Reddish brown terraced cottages were appearing on both sides of him now,
late nineteenth century he supposed as he neared some crossroads. But 
where did he go from here? He noticed a small pub on the far right hand 
side of the crossroads, its thick white walls standing out amidst the 
gathering gloom. 

The lights were on inside and he could see a few silhouettes outlined
against them. He swung the Jeep into the car park and clambering out, 
wandered inside. It was a quaint pub, in what he had to admit on first 
impressions, seemed an agreeable village. There was a small lounge bar 
on the left hand side that seemed empty, and a larger public bar to the 
right. The lounge looked as though it was hardly larger than the 
average living room, though equally as comfortable, with three or four 
sets of high backed chairs and highly polished dark tables. 

Darren made for the basic, rectangular public area, where fur farmhand
types were gathered around a pool table, smoking and laughing in 
unison. They all glanced up as he walked in and for a second Darren 
felt like a gunslinger entering a saloon in an old time western movie. 
Only he had no gun, and these folks weren't hostile, or so he hoped. 
All he wanted were directions, not a shoot out. 

‘Bastard of a day,' Darren said, looking the nearest of the four in the
eye, youngish, early twenties he supposed, longish fair hair, check 
shirt and jeans, broadly built with no noticeable fat. 

‘Aye,' the man said, turning to his colleagues with a look that seemed
to Darren to say, “we've got a right jerk here.” 

‘I'm after some directions,' Darren said straightening, his introductory
smile fading, ‘I'm looking for Three Mile Drove, if any of you blokes 
can help me.' 

The eyes of all four men seemed to interlock together as if he'd asked
for some secret or perhaps unspeakable destination, reviled or perhaps 
sacrosanct, he wasn't sure which but instinctively felt he'd struck an 
unwelcome chord. 

‘Three Mile Drove eh?' What seemed to be the eldest of the four, a
wizened man with a stoop that might have overstated his age, looked at 
him through narrowing eyes, ‘Not often somebody asks for Three Mile 
Drove...' 

‘Maybe not, but that's what I asked for,' Darren said in a voice while
not unfriendly, nonetheless betrayed irritation. The man's remarks 
seemed to have been made purely for him to explain his reasons for 
wanting to go there. He wasn't going to do that, somehow his instincts 
stopped him from doing so. 

There was an uncomfortable pause, before the oldest man sighed, ‘Turn
out of the car park to your right,' he said, his thick, rustic accent 
noticeably lower in tone, ‘carry on straight, if you ignore the private 
roads you'll come to a right turn on a bend just about a mile on, 
that'll be Three Mile Drove.' 

The man immediately turned his back on Darren as he finished speaking
and the four men stood looking at each other though nobody spoke. He 
found it eerie, had to admit that. It seemed as though they were 
communicating by telepathy, though he knew even thinking as much was 
nonsense. 

Now, feeling disturbed and agitated by the attitude of the four rustics
he was off balance and pre-occupied as he walked into the narrow 
corridor separating the two bars. He'd thought that the lounge bar was 
empty and hadn't expected to see the athletic looking dark haired woman 
who marched quickly out of it. He stumbled clumsily into her, feeling a 
transient, but warm rush of blood as his body brushed against her and 
he felt the firmness of her breasts. 

He halted abruptly and became so rigid that he might have been a statue
but for the blazing crimson cheeks that he willed unsuccessfully to 
turn to their normal colour. ‘I'm sorry love, clumsy of me,' he said, 
shaking himself free of the plaster cast that seemed suddenly to have 
developed around him. 

‘One two many is it?' she asked, her fine brows arching. 

‘Hardly,' Darren said, reflecting ironically that for once it wasn't. ‘I
was after directions, actually.' 

There was a smile on the woman's face, not a big one, more of a tease he
thought. ‘I suppose I'll get over the shock of being barged in the 
chest by a total stranger, but just remember if you're coming again 
that there are two bars, and they meet at this point.' 

‘Yeah,' Darren said sheepishly, while admiring the attractive full face
and intelligent looking eyes. 

As they made their way out into the car park he could see that she had
great legs, great shape, great hair and great – 

‘And did you get the directions you were wanting?' the woman asked
glancing back and annoyingly interrupting his personal observations. 

‘I was looking for Three Mile Drove,' Darren said, trying his best not
to ogle the woman but accepting he'd already lost the battle. He saw 
her look away just as the last word left his mouth, ‘It might be my 
imagination,' he pressed on, ‘but the blokes at the pool table in there 
seemed to act strange when I asked the way to the place.' He shrugged, 
‘They're probably just a bunch of rustic weirdoes but it did make me 
feel a bit awkward, is everyone around here as oddball as them?' 

He thought he heard her sigh, and as she turned back to him, her face
illuminated by the car park floodlight, he thought it had hardened. 
‘You're Midlands born and bred I guess from your accent, the first 
thing you need to know about fenland people is that they're a 
suspicious lot until they get to know you. They don't take to newcomers 
easily, that's probably all it is.' 

He noticed the way her voice had dropped away as she spoke; it seemed
edgy and uncertain. Did everybody turn funny at the mention of Three 
Mile Drove or was it purely a product of his tired imagination? 

‘I've been left a place there; I've just come down to check it out. Old
Bridge Farm it's called.' 

‘Yes, I know it.' There seemed a sudden expression of surprise as the
woman swept slender fingers through her long hair, ‘You'll find it at 
the bottom of the drove, it's a dead end by the way.' She left him at 
that point, marching across to the far side of the gravel car park. He 
watched her go, ‘See you again,' he called out, though in the wind he 
hadn't any idea whether she'd heard him. In any case she didn't 
respond. 

‘I hope we meet again,' he whispered, then remonstrated within for
talking to himself as her silhouette disappeared amidst the gloom. 

He found it surprisingly easy to reach Three Mile Drove, despite the
gathering darkness. The road was straight and flat, but as he 
approached the first bend he saw the Drove running directly off to the 
right. In complete contrast to the road he'd just travelled along this 
one was narrow and anything but even. He was glad of the luxury of a 
four-wheel drive as the Jeep cruised along the barren road negotiating 
crate-sized potholes. 

He'd been travelling along it for a couple of minutes, craning his neck
for a sign of the dead end when a sharp thud struck the side of the 
Jeep, for a second he thought it must have been a large piece of the 
loose gravel which littered the road but he soon realised it was too 
heavy for that. He swerved, almost ditching the vehicle into one of the 
deep dykes that lined both sides of the road, before slamming on the 
brakes so fiercely he feared his seat belt would snap like a paper 
chain. He unclipped it and leapt out of the cab. The evening was cold 
and draughty, looking around he shivered beneath his black silk shirt. 
A dark crimson sky was laced with a sickly yellow where the sun had set 
some time earlier. Only the sound of wind rushing through his ears like 
distant thunder disturbed the silence, and then the most hideous 
ear-piercing scream he had ever heard shrieked through his ears. In 
that instant he felt eerily alone. He might have been an impostor on a 
distant planet, plucked from the hub of civilisation and flung into a 
vast alien wilderness. 

And then, beyond the dyke to his left Darren saw something moving
quickly. Something in white, something screaming. Even the most 
hysterical groupie that plagued the band in its early days couldn't 
have come within an octave of matching the sound. 

Darren flung open the glove compartment of his vehicle and fumbled for
his torch. He found it and shone it into the darkness. It focused 
immediately on a figure fleeing along a track that separated the fields 
beyond the roadside, fields which were rapidly absorbed by the night 
sky. 

His natural instincts demanded that he gave chase. Gone were his
inhibitions, it was pure anger that drove him now. Anger, that somebody 
apparently conjured up from nowhere, had had the audacity to stone his 
vehicle, not merely to stone it but hit it with such force that the 
reinforced plates on the Jeep's left hand side had been dented. 

He positively shook with rage as three rapid strides took him to the
roadside verge, but in his blind fury he'd forgotten about the dyke 
that lay hidden, both by the darkness and the tall reeds that bordered 
it. 

There was sudden disorientation and the shock of falling, and then the
sensation of cold, flowing water surging through his clothes and into 
his limbs. His body had slithered out of control, his feet were leading 
the way all right but they were merely floundering in space as though 
caught in a vacuum. His head spun as it struck the near wall of the 
dyke, as writhing in discomfort and confusion he tasted the rich, acrid 
earth of the bank. 

It was probably the rain-sodden softness of the dyke wall that saved him
from being concussed and in all probability swept helplessly along the 
frothing channel, but he'd retained enough sense of awareness to raise 
his head above the water, as coughing the foul tasting stuff from his 
lungs he hauled his body free from the furious cascade that could so 
easily have despatched them to oblivion. 

He hung his head, placing his hands on his kneecaps and coughing up the
last dregs of water. Forcing himself upright he took a deep breath and 
turned to look back at the fields, now totally submerged in darkness. 
There was no prospect now of pursuing the vandal who'd damaged his 
Jeep, they would be long gone, finding refuge somewhere amidst the 
large blanket of darkness that had descended on the fens. Besides, his 
right leg ached rotten and seemed in direct competition with his head 
to decide which area of pain held ascendancy. He thought he'd probably 
torn a ligament, and so even if he had possessed x-ray eyesight the 
chase was up for the time being. But there would come another day no 
doubt, and right now his anger was such that even if he found he 
couldn't stand the area, which seemed to him highly likely, then he'd 
make this little ambush a reason for staying on just so that he could 
get even. One thing was for sure, he might be a newcomer but he'd be 
damned if he'd tolerate incidents such as these. 

He struggled back into the Jeep, feeling like he'd been for a swim in a
rat infested bog, and in all probability that was exactly what he'd 
done. He felt his wet clothes discharging their contents deep into the 
costly leather upholster of the Jeep as he wrenched it into gear. 

Old Bridge Farm seemed to rear right up at him, at least the rusting
iron gates did. Perhaps he'd been travelling too fast, unnerved by the 
experience he'd just encountered, but the powerful headlights hadn't 
revealed the gates to him until the last few seconds. Now he had to 
slam on the brakes hard to avoid blasting his way right through. 

He got out, trailing his aching leg behind him and after pushing open
the gates, drove tentatively through. He must have travelled about 
thirty metres when he made out the dark outline of a single storey 
building laying to his left. He slowed the Jeep to a crawl as its 
headlights reflected what seemed to be a small farmyard, its surface 
consisting of broken chunks of concrete leaving small craters full of 
moss and weed. 

As he approached the building, he thought he heard a high-pitched scream
fill the air, the same kind of inhuman wail he'd experienced earlier, 
though this time he shrugged it off. This really was his mind playing 
tricks, because the yard was bordered by willows on either side, their 
branches rustling in the ever-increasing wind and seeming to stretch 
towards him like deformed human limbs. Darren pulled to a halt beside 
the structure and hauled himself out of the Jeep. 

In general keeping with what he'd seen so far, he'd half expected to
find the windows broken, the door hanging from its hinges and most of 
the tiles missing from the roof. It wasn't quite as bad as that, he 
couldn't be sure about the roof but the windows at the front appeared 
intact, and the door despite the peeling paintwork was secure. 

He turned his key in the lock and as the door creaked reluctantly open
he found himself overwhelmed by an odour which stunk to high heaven. It 
was the sort of smell which suggested to him that there wasn't a flush 
toilet in the place, and the old man's waste had stagnated within the 
confines of these walls since his death.  That was all he could think 
of, as, with his soaking shirt held to his face to try and alleviate 
the smell, he fumbled for the light switch. It was the ancient, 
circular sort with a small lever at its centre, he found it hard to 
believe there were any left these days, but as he flicked it down to 
find that the only light remained supplied by his torch, he turned in 
disgust with himself. 

‘Why the fuck didn't I think of it!' Cursing out loud he slammed his
fist against the door jamb. He hadn't considered for a single minute 
that there wouldn't be any electricity; it was the sort of thing you 
took for granted these days, but it had been several months since the 
old man's death and who the hell was there to sort out the bills? 

Sweet Fanny Adams. 

He ought to have thought of that, just as he ought to have arranged his
accommodation beforehand. It was next to useless trying to examine the 
place in the dark. He'd take a good look at it in the light of day, 
then he could see what kind of hell-hole he was walking into. 

Now he had to do something about accommodation, he wasn't prepared to
spend the night in a house that had the pungent smell of a portable 
bog. He didn't feel comfortable enough in the surroundings to spend the 
night in the Jeep either, he'd spent many a night in the thing after a 
gig, but then he was in civilisation, not in a black wilderness and 
besides, more often than not he was tanked up. 

So it had to be overnight accommodation, there were no two ways about
it. There was still plenty of time to sort something out, if he got a 
move on. 

Darren slammed the door shut and limped back to his Jeep. Still dripping
wet, he searched his holdall in the back. He'd brought a change of 
clothes and a towel, there might be nowhere for him to wash but at 
least he'd be more presentable when he asked for accommodation. 

He towelled himself down before changing into a faded pair of Levi's and
a black denim shirt, then wearily clambered back into the driving seat. 
He must have dozed for a while because when he next glanced at the 
Jeep's clock it had just turned eight. Darren was surprised he managed 
to lapse into a comatose state at all, but then it had been one hell of 
a day. Now, he'd seek out the nearest available accommodation, take a 
good bath and go to bed, he'd done enough driving for one day. *        
                                     * 


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