Fresh Mountain Start

4

A week passes quickly when it's filled with work. That first day they had the bedroom entirely gutted and washed down, and had made the kitchen just about fit for cooking. The next two days, they woke in the mornings and started cleaning what needed cleaned, and throwing out what wouldn't serve. Then they began to strip the house of everything that couldn't be repaired, and to fix up all the things they could do themselves. Every wall was scrubbed, every floor and surface drowned in bleach. Every cluster of mould was exorcised, and every long dead light bulb exhumed and replaced. The curtains that Gary's mother had donated to the move were put up, and the cupboards, after being meticulously cleaned, were filled with what supplies they had brought with them. The kettle and the microwave found their new homes, and the television was awkwardly set on the floor until a table to rest it on could be bought. The water came, and the electricity, but they discovered that the boiler wasn't working, so they had to resort to washing themselves by boiling the kettle, filling a small bucket, and giving themselves sponge baths. It was as good as it was going to get without having to pay someone to fix things, and that would have to wait; Gary started work again the next day. It was their last day of freedom together. John still had a week by himself, waiting for the wifi antenna that had been recommended to them and that they had blown the last of their budget on, delayed by shipping issues.

In the whole week, John had not noticed anything weird. The first few days he had been a little on edge, but as the exhaustion of hard work wore him down, the note and the strange warning had slipped from his mind, and he had started to settle and relax.

The noise woke him at 3AM.

His eyes opened, and he lay for a few minutes in that state of half sleep, half consciousness, where he wasn't quite sure if he really had heard something, or if what he had eaten for supper and his bladder were playing tricks on his mind.

Had he been alone, his first instinct would have been to get up, turn on every light in the house, and then return to the bed with the door closed. Then he would have drank some water, and sat for a few moments, letting the adrenaline drain out of him and settling in to attempt to sleep. But that would have woken Gary up, and it would have been unfair to rouse him when he had such a long journey and such an early start back in to the city in the morning.

Instead, he waited, hoping the blanket of sleep would settle back over him.

The noise came again.

A crunch. A scrape. Something was moving outside the house.

And there was a feeling. An oppressive, heavy feeling, as though someone was lying on top of him, or as though someone had forgotten to plug him in.

He rolled out of the bed, and gently crept forward.

One foot.

The other.

Pause.

A rustle from below. A clicking, like nails finding the joints in the car.

A squeak.

Click, click, click.

Forward, forward.

Step over the creaky floorboard, not on to it.

The new curtains reached down to the floor.

A sound like creaking wood, as though an entire tree had decided to awkwardly shuffle from one side of the forest to the other. He pulled the curtain opens lightly and then crept up to the bottom of the window, looking over as best he could.

Darkness.

What moonlight there was was dimmed by the passage of clouds overhead.

His eyes scanned the treeline, just about able to make out where it started, and saw nothing. He tried to pierce the darkness around the house, but lacking any kind of light source, it was hard to make sense of anything. He thought he could dimly see the car-

Something moved.

Four long lumps, standing high, like the crowns of the heads of four very large men, shuffling awkwardly, strangely, bobbing from side to side, making their way slowly around the car.

He breathed in sharply.

A bang, and this time, he saw the car shaking clearly. The four bobbing heads seemed to knock into it. He was surprised Gary didn't wake up from the noise, but he was sure he'd see a dent in the body of the car in the morning.

The heads shuffled round.

Whatever they were, they were lined up with the house.

The clouds shifted slightly, and he could see a little more clearly that the four men were not men, but something else, something supporting a bulbous lump in the centre- and then there was a stem shooting up, stretching higher and higher-

The creature's face turned.

He knew instinctively that it was the tree he had seen earlier. He knew that he shouldn't have been able to see it at all, of course. It was still dark. But its eyes had their own light; two piercing white eyes, and piercing white teeth, floating in the darkness, looking right at him. They moved, raising higher and higher into the air. They were almost level with the window now as the head continued to stretch upward. He watched the head tilt, like a dog looking questioningly, staring at him-

'Hey,' Gary said, and John nearly jumped out of his skin. 'What're you doing?'

'There's- there's something out there,' he said. 'Quick, look-'

Gary shuffled in beside him.

'Do you see it?' John asked. 'The eyes, the teeth-'

He pointed.

'That's just the moonlight,' Gary said. 'Look, it's poking through the clouds.'

'No it's- it was- there was a noise, and the car, it shook the car-'

'You probably heard a fox or something,' Gary said.

'I swear Gar, I saw something-'

'I know babe,' Gary said, putting his hand on John's shoulder. 'I know. Come on. I'm tired. I have to leave in a few hours. Let's just go to sleep, and we can talk it all through in the morning, right?'

'I'm telling you-'

'John, come on,' Gary said. 'It's nothing. It's your night terrors. Don't worry about it. Your mind is playing tricks on you. Let's just sleep, okay?'

There was no further discussion. Gary's hands were pulling him gently back to the bed, and then an arm was draped over him, and the heat of sleeping breath uncomfortably caressed the back of his neck.

Sleep took its time coming.