All stories

Nobody noticed them at first, of course. Who notices if a homeless guy is there one minute and then not the next? But one day the guy with the long dreadlocks and the dog wasn’t where he usually sat, and, the day after, the lady in the ragged trousers wasn’t dancing along to the high street buskers anymore and people started to wonder to each other on their walks to work where they had gone.

It was a lot more obvious to Joe. He saw them around, got to know one or two of them. Spent a few evenings sharing fags and chips round a bin on fire. It had taken a bit of getting used to, but for the most part the city’s homeless had been pretty accepting of Joe, as a newby.

When Patrick, the guy with the dreads, wasn’t around anymore, that’s when Joe started to worry. Patrick was alright. He’d shown Joe some good places to sleep when it rained and had become a sort of fixture in his little routine. They’d sit together and share a coffee most mornings and Patrick would scratch the ears of his mud-brown shaggy dog and tell Joe stories. Joe would listen, scarcely believing a word, but enjoying the rare companionship.

It had been Patrick who’d told Joe about the bridge. Tucked away in a run-down part of town in an industrial estate, the bridge seemed to draw the city’s down and outs to it like moths. It was sheltered from the wind and rain, an ideal place to sleep, to use, to talk, if talking was what you wanted, to keep a fire going. In fact, the last time Joe had seen Patrick he’d invited him along to the bridge, but he told him no that time, couldn’t remember why now, but he’d had some reason he was sure.

Tonight it was raining hard. Patrick had been playing on Joe’s mind a lot and before he really realised what was happening, Joe had made his way to the bridge. For the first time Joe had been there it was completely abandoned. The grey, crumbling buildings dribbled sludgy runoff into the brown waters that gurgled noisily under the bridge. Far away a street light glowed a surreal orange, bathing the scene in a weird, ethereal light. Joe wiped the rain from his drenched forehead and looked around him. The whole place stank of rot and something long dead.

Too tired to wonder much about the abandonment of the place Joe trudged on forward, not noticing the limp, mud-brown pile of shaggy fur oozing rainwater and something darker onto the uneven, cracked road, or the many single abandoned boots that lay ripped and scattered about the place, or the piles of gleaming white bones, picked clean and lying in neat piles here and there...

As he wandered under the bridge the gurgling noise became a low, dark, rumbling laugh and Joe disappeared into the shadow of the troll’s lair.

It was the rain drove her back across the bridge, the fear of it slicking the floral print dress and then having to walk past the diner letches with it stuck to her body. Down the steps at the end to where the mouths opened black in the side of the ravine, and then to the fourth one along, that same old tingle rising inside as she followed the short tunnel until it widened into a cavern twenty foot across.

She lit her torch and traced her fingers along each of the rusty metal ring bolts set in the rock. Back when it was still a working mine thick ropes ran through the loops to guide the path but now they hung empty and cold for most of the time.

She grinned to herself at the feel of a rope knotted through one of the rings. The first time she went into the dark she was twelve years old, dragging the rope so tight through her fingers that it burned. Better that then lose yourself in the dark, in these caves that went for miles.

She played her torch along the openings; three more strands of breadcrumbs to mock her, and there, at the far end was a strand of blue rope. A lurch went through her stomach and her legs turned weak. Evan’s rope, the same light blue flecked through with red that she’d told him was icky when he said it was Dad’s before him. It felt like they walked for miles till he slipped off his rucksack and laid down the blanket.

It was a stupid fight, one of those with no reason on either side, only neither of them had called each other for eight days. It was a week of gut churning anguish, of half a stone lost despite all the chocolate. One measly week and now he was here.

She took hold of the rope and began to follow it.

He was here getting high. He was here with his buddies and some beer.

The further she went so the shorter her steps, creeping her feet one after the other to keep them quiet until it wasn’t her footsteps or her breathing that was with her. It was the sound of the wet slap of thighs, it was grunt followed by squeak, over and over and over again.

One fucking measly week.

Always take your knife on a hike her Dad said, because you never know. Always keep it sharp as well, and it went through the rope so easy and then she was balling it up in her hands as she ran, burning tears pricking through the great red hot ball of her face.

When she burst out into the chamber she heaved down a sobbing gasp of breath, down on both knees, fingers painful against the rough floor rock. She spent the whole of the walk home trying to think of what to do with the rope.