ICE (sequel to Horror)

The End☠️

Elena grabbed the spear with both hands and tried to pull it out. It would not budge. She cursed Martin under her breath for leaving. It would have been so much easier if they had both pulled.

She sat back to catch her breath. And that was when she saw it, covered in dust in a dark corner of the Barrow. She realized what it was straight away and left off trying to extract the spear to fetch it.

The head of the beast. It was big, far bigger than the size of the body would have suggested ----but there could be no doubt it belonged, for it was as strange as the skeleton at her feet.

What had this creature been? What kind of thing had teeth like that: Elena had never heard of any kind of animal with jaws like that. She whistled appreciatively.

Kneeling down, she placed the skull in position at the head of the skeleton to try to get some feel for what this strange creature must have looked like. As she got up to admire the completed skeleton, she grabbed the spear for support and it fell sideways.

Her earlier efforts had evidently done their work. The spear was now free of the earth and the tip rested loosely among the ribs of the beast. Elena grinned and lifted it up for a better look.

The tip was less interesting than she had hoped. It seemed to have been made of iron and had corroded over the centuries so that it was black and scabrous and eaten away.

But however badly Elena wanted to show Martin that she was determined to investigate more, there was no way she was going to stay there on her own with that skeletal shark-toothed beast.

       Elena cambered out of the barrow and called to Martin, whom he could see had deliberately dawdled, not wanting to leave her brother alone.

        She called and waved the spear over her head, and Martin turned round and squinted into the sun, which was skirting the tops of the trees, throwing them and Elena into silhouette.

    "What's that?" Shouted Martin.
     "It's the spear thing!"

       "Put it back, Elena," came the disappointing response from Martin. "We should go home and tell father, like you said."

       "You're such a bore sometimes, Martin," Elena yelled back. "I found the skull. You should see the teeth!"

      "I don't care," he said.

      Elena sighed. Martin was as stubborn as a mule and there would be no changing his mind.

      "All right," said Elena. "But I'm bringing this spear thing with me."

      "You said you were going to leave it there and fetch father!"

     "Well, I've changed my mind. I'm going to show him instead."

       "I don't see why you have to take charge of everything all the time, Elena!" Shouted Martin.

      "It was me who found it." Elena said.

      "All the same," said Martin, determined not to let his sister have everything her own way.

      "Very well, then," said Elena. "You take it!"

       With that, she threw the spear and it flew in a shallow arc, landing with a thud in the ground between them.

       But Elena didn't see the spear land, because as she had released it into the air, there was a noise behind her that made her turn in alarm. Something large seemed to have shifted noisily nearby. She wondered if another part of the Barrow had collapsed.

       "Elena!" Martin shouted cross. "That was really stupid. You might have broken ---"

        Elena looked back across the barley towards his brother, but Martin was no longer there.

She stared around in confusion. It was as if Martin had simply vanished mid-sentence. But then he detected a movement some way off, near to where he had last seen his brother. The barley was bring flattened in a narrow channel coming back in a wide arc towards the island.
Elena climbed down from the barrow with a grin.

"Very funny, Martin," she said. "But I can see you. Some boy scout you are!"

But the stalks of barley continued to fall and Martin made no reply. Elena shook her head indulgently and waited for her brother to get bored with this lark and reveal himself.

The trail of falling barley reached the island, but just round the back, beyond Elena's line of sight. A moment later she could see movement behind the yew trees and again she smiled at Martin's lack of stealth. But then she saw something move among the trees, something that made her shudder to her guts.

"Martin!" She screamed. "Martin!"

The thing loomed out of the shadows into a clear patch on the barrow's ridge. It was big and on all fours. It was dragging something wet and ragged: it was dragging Martin ---- or something that had once been Martin --- into the barrow.
Elena turned to run,  sobbing to herself as she did so. She was not that far from the road. She was fast. She was the fastest in her year in school.

But then she thought of the spear. The spear must have been pinning that thing to the earth. Maybe if she could get to the spear....

Elena went back and tugged it from the ground. She pulled her arm back to launch the staff, but even as she did so, she could see the barley flattening in a path that hurtled towards her. The thing was on her before she could cry out.

*****

A search was undertaken for the missing siblings. The farmer and two constables found their bodies and the circumstances of their discovery was so unusual it made The Times Newspaper.
The siblings were found in a partially collapsed barrow in the middle of a field. The farmer himself had no idea it was even there.

They seemed to have been attacked by a wild animal, and stories abounded for several weeks, with reports of sightings of everything from rabid dogs to escaped tigers. There was even an old tramp on the Avebury road who swore he saw a crocodile!

Near to the barrow detectives found a curious iron-tipped copper-shafted spear, the significance of which is still being debated by experts at the British Museum.

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THE END

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