Into the dark

It’s light when I wake up, and colder than it should be – that’s the first thing I notice. If I was where I’m supposed to be, it would be warm, almost too warm to be comfortable. But the air around me as my senses slowly clear is cold and has a dampness to it, like the bank of a river before the morning sun hits.
Second to come to my attention is the fact that I’m outside. The dew on the damp grass tickles the back of my neck as I move; when I open my eyes I see the thin, slender branches of a young ash tree looming over me. The pale light of a September dawn fills the sky above, the clouds tinged with the red of that old saying. Red sky in the morning; shepherd’s warning, my mind chants automatically. Up until now I’ve never given it much credence. As I lie there on the grass, I start to wonder if that might’ve been a mistake.
The third and last thing I notice is that I have no idea at all where I am.
The room around me has four walls all of equal height, but no roof. Grass has replaced whatever floor was there once; two square holes in the brickwork are all that remain of the windows. Directly opposite where I’m lying, a larger gap stands in for the door. Beyond that, all I can see is mile after mile of open hillside.
I sit up as quickly as I dare; once my head stops spinning I look down at myself. The green linen trousers and pale blue t-shirt I remember dragging on yesterday, but I can’t believe I’d have been stupid enough to venture out barefoot. What shoes did I put on last night when we’d left the hotel? Was it even last night I set out; how long have I been here? With every memory more blurred than the one before, it’s hard to tell.
Clinging to the wall as though my life depends on it, I haul myself to my feet and stagger across to the empty doorway. The room I’ve woken up in is one of a row of identical buildings, I discover when I look out, third in a line of squat, uniform square structures running along the side of a single-track road. To my left, the road snakes away into a tangle of woodland, ash, oak and sycamore trees all knotted together in one dense darkness. On the right, it stretches out invitingly towards the distant hills.
But aside from me, there isn’t a soul in sight.
“Danni?” I call out hopefully. “Jess? Come on, guys; you’ve had your joke now”.
Where I expect to hear my friends’ poorly-supressed giggles, or see them crouched behind a nearby boulder, phones in hand ready to capture my undignified awakening on film forever, I find only emptiness. Instead of Danni’s high-pitched cackle or Jess’s low snigger, all I hear is the early breeze rushing gently through the leaves.
“Jess!” I try again. “Danni! Seriously, guys, where are you?”
Nothing.
I reach instinctively for my rucksack and realise it isn’t with me. In fact, nothing is – not my phone, not my wallet, not even the iPod Nano I’ve owned for three-and-a-half years. Not only am I lost; I’m also empty-handed.
I’m still shivering at this realisation when the air shatters like a glass pane hit by a brick and the force of a hurricane knocks me off my feet. As I tumble to the ground, I see the smoke rising on the other side of the road; a shrill whistling fills my ears and then the force hits again. I close my eyes and clamp my hands over my ears, but I can smell it as well now, the thick stench of vegetation burning. I try not to let it frighten me but there’s no way of stopping it. The fear rushes through me in a wave no amount of positive thinking can halt.
When the brief chaos subsides, silence falls over me – heavy and sudden, so heavy that I can’t even hear myself breathing. It’s as though the world’s on mute; my legs scrape against the gravel of the road as I sit up but I don’t hear a sound. I call out again and my voice isn’t there.
And that’s when I see them.
Danni and Jess are at the end of the road where it starts to twist away towards the hills; my head’s still swimming but I know my friends anywhere. I don’t know the two men and three women stood with them, who I guess from their uniforms must be something to do with the army, although truth be told by this point I couldn’t care less. I’m tired and cold and confused, and all I want is to crawl back to the hotel and sleep the rest of the day away in an actual bed.
“We didn’t know it was part of the ranges”, Danni’s saying as I draw nearer; I notice when I get close that tears are pouring down her face. “It was just a joke…we just wanted to wind her up; we never meant for anything to happen…”
She starts to sob noisily. Jess puts an arm round her shoulders but isn’t much better herself, and it’s not long before they’re both on the way to hysterical. The soldiers – or whoever they are – wait for them to go quiet and then murmur something about paying attention to warning signs in future.
“We don’t put them there for fun”, one of the women says sharply. “It might’ve been funny at the time but I doubt your friend had much to laugh about when the ranges were opened”.
“Oh god, Ella; I’m so sorry”, Jess wails as Danni collapses against her. At the mention of my name I feel a sudden chill shoot down my spine. They’re all talking like I’m not here; what do they think is going on?
“It’s alright, Jess”, I shout; maybe they just haven’t seen me yet. “Guys, I’m here; it’s fine!”
Not one of them reacts.
“Jess! Danni!” I’m yelling so loud that my voice cracks under the strain, but still they don’t hear me. “Guys, I’m over here! Nothing happened; I’m alright!”
Nothing.
My skin starts to crawl; I don’t know what’s going on and every thought brings worse possibilities for explanations, each one more terrifying than the last. Ignoring the gravel digging into my bare feet, I sprint down the road towards my friends and the soldiers and bellow Jess and Danni’s names with every step.
Finally, as I draw close enough to reach out and touch them, Danni looks up in my direction …and the girl who’s been my friend since the age of two stares right through me as though there’s nothing there.
“If only we knew where she’d gone”, she mumbles sadly. Her eyes are looking right into mine but she doesn’t see me.
“You’ll be wondering a long time”, another of the women tells her, blunt as a dull knife. “We keep this place off-limits for a reason, for your safety as much as our own. There’s too much in those walls that we don’t understand; if you’re there when the ranges open you won’t be turning back”.
What d’you mean? I want to scream, but it’s too late – they’re already leading Jess and Danni away, back towards the dark green truck parked further down the road. In one last desperate bid for their attention I try to run again—
I’ve barely taken one stride when I’m knocked to the floor a second time; there’s no blast or smoke on this one and yet I’m sprawled in the dirt again, doing an accurate impression of a large starfish across the middle of the road. I sit up and stare, my heart starting to race under my thin blue shirt. There’s nothing blocking my way – no gate or barrier, nothing to suggest any kind of force-field, even – but I can’t go any further down the road. I can’t go towards the hills, and I can’t follow my friends.
And, I realise with rising horror, I can’t leave either.
“Don’t worry”, a different voice says behind me, “I know it feels strange, but you’ll get used to it eventually”.
I turn around and see a woman several years older than me, late thirties or early forties, maybe, standing on the road about six feet away, in front of the building two up from the one where I came to. She’s dressed slightly strangely, I think as I see her – like something out of an old book, a character from a wartime drama. She smiles warmly at me but I’m in no mood to make friendly conversation just yet.
“What’s going on?” I have to ask; my heart feels like it might actually leap out of my chest at any second now. “Where am I; what is this place?”
“We called it Tymonton, when it was still a normal village”, she replies, as carefree as a summer afternoon. “Some of us still call it that, even though it’s been like this for centuries – old habits die hard, you know”, she adds, as if we’re having a perfectly normal conversation.
“I…I guess they do”. I try to play along in the hopes it might keep my panic from rising up and overwhelming me. “You don’t know how I got here, do you?”
“Last night”. She’s still smiling, still acting like this is entirely ordinary. “Those two other girls brought you – all smirks, they were; said it’d be funny when you woke up and found yourself here. They thought it was all a joke”.
I remember the soldiers’ words to Jess and Danni and shiver again.
“Why can’t I leave?” I decide to ask, even though I’m fairly certain I won’t like the answer.
“You were here when the gates opened”, the woman answers, “just like the rest of us. It’s like the corporal told that other girl – you’re here when it opens; you don’t turn back”.
My heart stops racing; in fact I think it misses about four beats in succession.
“What d’you mean?” I wonder out loud. “Turn back from what?”
“From this road”. She turns and points back along the other half of the road, the half leading into the dense darkness of the trees. “You’ve crossed the veil; you’re with us now. Once you cross the veil, you don’t go back the other way”.
My heart seems to stop altogether.
“Don’t worry”, she says again, holding out her hand, “like I said, you’ll get used to it all eventually. Come with me – I’ll show you what the soldiers are too afraid to see”.
They’re not the only ones, I think to myself, but I don’t seem to have much of a choice. I can’t get out and I don’t have the faintest idea what I should do; the only option open to me is to follow her and see where she leads me.
I take her hand and allow her to lead me down the road towards the darkness. What lies round that corner I can’t tell…I only know that the stones aren’t hurting my feet anymore, nor is the breeze raising goosebumps on my skin. The sun’s rising higher into the sky but where I should feel its heat burning me by now, I feel as little as Danni saw when she looked me in the eye.
I decide not to think about what that means; instead I smile and walk onwards into the cool of the trees.