Charlie thumped blindly into the back wall of the tunnel, his nose striking the wall hard and fiery pain blossomed across his face. Something wet and hot burst from his nose, which must have been blood, judging by the taste. He knew he’d broken his nose again; it was an all too familiar feeling that brought back memories of a cackling Darren Holding.

He must have cried out because George, Carmen and his father all shouted his name in alarm simultaneously but he was really too shaken up to notice. He simply spun away from the wall, holding his hands to his face as blood dripped through them in a steady stream. Oh, god! Why does it ways happen to me, he thought with resignation through the pain.

Straightening up as the initial shock wore off, he remembered in a flash why they had been running down the tunnel. He looked back towards the mouth and froze. Clustered around the entrance, soft blue globes of light drifted here and there, crossing and re-crossing the mouth of the tunnel. The eeriness of the scene was only added to when Charlie remembered with a stab of fear that the lights were stalking them. Shakily, he stepped backwards and he felt his back press up against the cool concrete of the back of the tunnel.

He wasn’t sure how many lights there were, and the tears that blurred his vision didn’t help much to resolve that. Were there eight? Ten? With them moving to and fro it was so hard to tell, especially as they passed out of sight beyond the mouth of the tunnel. However, they were so close he felt he could reach out and touch them.

The whispering that he could hear at the edge of his hearing seemed to soften a little, becoming less harsh, less sinister. In fact, it almost became melodic. Soothing. The pain in his nose and jaw subsided a little. The weariness in his limbs lifted a little, leaving only an empty, languid peace. For some reason that he couldn’t think of, he found that the blue lights seemed less ominous. Why did I think they were unfriendly? They look so peaceful floating around like that. Charlie wanted to touch them. He wanted to feel what it would be like to let his fingers drift through the azure luminescence. Are they alive? Can they talk?

The soft scrape of Charlie’s shoes, as he took a step towards the mouth of the tunnel, announced to the rest of the party that something was amiss.

“Charlie!” Carmen cried out. “Stop!”

The whispering had become something rather like a lullaby. Come and join us, come and join us, it insisted to Charlie over and over again. His head seemed full of the chant and he could not stop himself from thinking that it was a really good idea, even though a tiny spark at the back of his mind told him he was fooling himself.

George and Rick had been looking for some sort of doorway in the wall. They had been hindered by their own injuries as well as the dark that dusk had cast in the depths of the tunnel. Working only by touch, their experienced fingers had found what they were looking for, as they traced the heavy steel frame of what could only be an entrance to the bunker. Carmen’s cry of alarm alerted them to Charlie’s danger and they managed to turn and grab him by the arms just in time.

Charlie struggled briefly to escape their clutches before his mind suddenly cleared, panic, fear and dread replacing his sense of peace in a flood of realisation. He sagged in their grip and shook his head. “I’m OK, I’m OK! Really, I am!”

“We’ve got to keep moving,” Rick said. “Can you do it?”

Charlie nodded in the darkness. “Yes.”

“How did they get in? How did they open it?” George grunted as his strong hands searched every nook and cranny of the door.

“It’s some kind of blast door, but there must be a way of opening it from the outside. It was shut when I looked before.” Rick said. “It’s not defensive, so there’s got to be a way of getting it open from the outside.”

“There’s an opening to one side of the door frame,” Carmen almost shouted. “I can get my fingers in. There’s something greasy in there. It feels like a cog!”

“I wonder,” Rick muttered. Suddenly his voice rose with excitement, “Listen, everyone! Look around on the floor for something, anything, that’s metal and long. It’s just possible that witch left something behind.”

Keeping a nervous watch on what the spectral lights were doing at the tunnel mouth, George, Rick, Carmen and Charlie groped around in the darkness on the floor. Fingers dragged through the detritus of decades of drifting leaves and soil washed in during rainstorms past. It was a far from pleasant experience. Charlie felt nauseous as he bent low, the pain from his injuries made his head swim and throb. However, he persevered, fighting the dizziness, dragging his fingers carefully through the soft, sometimes slimy, earth of the tunnel floor, searching for what he didn’t know.

“Charlie,” Trev whispered. “I’m scared.”

“You’re scared? If you’re scared what am I?”

“You don’t understand. I know what they’re saying. They’re talking to me all the time.”

“So what are they saying then, Trev? What can spook a spook?”

“They want me to bring you out. They want me to join them.”

Charlie stopped searching, and crouched in the dirt. There was something that Trev wasn’t saying; there was something that Charlie was missing. “Well, how are you going to do that? It’s not like you can force us out and it’s not like we’re going to go.”

“I don’t think I can stop them, Charlie. They don’t want me with living people. They say it’s not right. They say I’ll be punished if I stay with you any longer,” Trev swallowed. “They’re calling me to them and …I… I’m not sure I can stop myself from going.”

“Trev, you’ve got to fight back!” Charlie said urgently. “You’re not like them. You can’t go!”

“You don’t understand…I think I have to go. It’s like I’m being pulled out of here.”

“Give me your hand, Trev. I’ll keep you safe!” Charlie cried.

“I don’t want to go, Charlie. I’m scared!”

***

Rick had realised that something was wrong between Charlie and the dead boy. He had been listening to their frantic, whispered conversation for a while, pausing in his search, crouched in the darkness. He had not heard much of what was said but at Trev’s last, desperate shout he knew he had to say something. He could not deny that he was shaken by his discovery that Charlie shared his talent for seeing the dead. However, talking to Charlie about this would have to take a back seat since the day was already pretty weird and they had more pressing priorities. Just trying to live through the next five minutes might just be ambition enough.

“Charlie,” he said gently, “you can’t stop this. He’s got to go. There are some things that we can’t help with.”

”What do you mean?”

“I’ve seen this before. Your friend needs to go. He can’t fight this and there’s nothing we can do to stop it. The dead have their own rules.”

“It’s not fair! Trev’s done nothing wrong!” Charlie cried. “I don’t want him to go! I don’t want him to go!” He broke down, kneeling in the dead leaves on the floor, and sobbed.

“I have to go, Charlie. I’ll catch you later, huh?” Trev said distantly, vaguely, as he made his way to the mouth of the tunnel.

“Trev!” Rick called after him, setting himself down by his son, wrapping his arms round the distraught boy. “Don’t forget us! Whatever happens, you are loved and you are missed. Hold on to that! Keep it safe! Use it to find your way back!”

Trev was briefly silhouetted to Rick as he reached the tunnel’s entrance. The blue orbs stopped their oscillating patrol and drifted in to meet Trev as he stepped from the tunnel into the dusk. He appeared to cringe, as the orbs slowly merged into one that suddenly flared and deluged the tunnel with a fierce, bright light. Charlie, Rick, George and Carmen tried to shield their eyes against the glare but still it flashed through the flesh and bone of their hands, as well as their closed eyelids, burning deep into their retinas, leaving them momentarily blinded.

***

Charlie collapsed, sinking forward into the earth, trying to escape the appalling light that seemed as bright as the sun. He tried to steady himself with his hands and as he did so, his fingers dragged over something hard, something metallic. Clutching it like a drowning man grasps at a thrown line, he hauled it out of the dirt to his chest. It felt bent, a bit like an L shaped bar. His hands rapidly traced over the object and memories of vintage cars came to his mind unbidden. He knew what it was. He knew what it was for!

“I’ve got it!” he shouted. “I’ve got it!” He grabbed at his father, holding on to Rick’s shirt and pulled him. They both shuffled blindly to where they believed the door of the bunker was. As luck would have it, they headed in the right direction, disorientated as they were by the flash. Working only by touch alone, they located the hole Carmen had found and with more fiddling slotted the bar into it. With a grunt, Rick took over and tried to turn the crank, for that was what it was, anti-clockwise, Charlie attempting to assist with his own hand closed over Rick’s.

Nothing moved.

“It’s stuck!” Charlie wailed. The whispering had started again and he knew his father had heard it too. He could feel Rick’s muscles twitch under his palms. There was a different timbre to the whispering this time. There was a finality to it. In his blindness, Charlie imagined the blue orbs clustering around the tunnel entrance, shedding their reluctance to enter, and starting to drift inch by inch towards the party by the bunker door. How far away were they? Were they, even now, clustered over Rick and Charlie’s bent figures, waiting?

“Let me at it, Small American Man!” George boomed.

None too gently the big Tongan pushed Rick and Charlie away from the crank. There was a squeal as machinery shivered into motion and George turned the crank steadily and easily.

“It’s open!” Carmen's voice cracked with panic. “I can feel a gap. I can get through but you’ll need to open it a little more!”

“Get going!” George yelled. “Don’t wait!”

Groping in the darkness, eyes swimming with disorientating colours from the burst of light, Carmen, Charlie and Rick scurried through the bunker door on hands and knees. A moment later, George followed, his giant frame crushing them all as he collided into the back of the party.

“Come on! We’ve got to get it shut!” he ordered. “Find the lock!”

Frenetically, the four of them searched the inside of the door. A hand wheel was quickly located and duly revolved at some speed. The same soft grinding of machinery could be heard and with yet another squeal preceding it, the door boomed shut.

From the other side of the door came a sudden, savage hammering. The sound of it was deafening in the stillness of the bunker, like a drumbeat from Hell. Instinctively, the four of them edged away from the door, backsides sliding on the concrete floor. Abruptly, the beating stopped, leaving only silence.

“Well, that was a bit exciting wasn’t it?” sobbed Carmen, as she heaved in lungfuls of air.

Charlie wasn’t sure whether she was laughing or crying but he knew she felt the same relief as him.

***

Winthrop-Smythe careered through the forest towards the beach. He had taken one look at the approaching horror that had shambled into the camp and he had run. At one mind-numbing stroke, his entire understanding of the world he lorded over had been turned on its head. He was no longer a master of this universe. He had thought himself a man above other men who had commanded others to do his will. Many times in his life he had held the power of life and death in his hand and had exercised it. Yet now, his insignificance, the mote-like existence he occupied in all of creation, was rendered stark to him, when he looked on the face of Solitude’s past. A past that cared little for his hopes and dreams, nor for his plans and schemes. A past that wore green fatigues and a steel helmet blasted through with perforations from some catastrophic explosion. A past that leered at him with ruined teeth through shreds of lips. The past had climbed out of its grave and was grasping its way towards him, intent on dragging him down into the earth’s cold embrace. He had seen what he could become if he stayed.

Leaving the shattered Dusty behind to face that which he could not, he ran. Never before had early retirement in Switzerland looked so good.

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