slithering out of the reed-beds. 'This stuff is flowing from the coast, and that means if we head directly in the opposite direction we've got to reach the road. We've got to!' Trying to sound confident for the sake of the others. But at least the foul brackish water was on the move now, propelled by this vile substance that was seeping up out of the ground to cover the wood. Right now he couldn't think of anything else.
'Keep going and don't stop for anybody or anything.'
A howl, escalating into a baying, dying away as suddenly as it had come, a chilling sound that echoed in their brains.
'That must be the Alsatians, they've found a scent,' the detective grunted. Somehow he did not sound convincing.
'It's. ' Carol checked herself just in time.
'It's the Alsatians,' Andy snapped. Except that Alsatians don't bay on a scent. He checked his Luger and suddenly it was a futile encumbrance. Bertie Hass had not managed to stop the wolf pack with it. 'Don't take any notice of anything, concentrate on keeping our direction.'
Several times they had to make a detour, pools that had previously been shallow enough to splash through were now bubbling morasses of what looked like untreated sewage. Andy's greatest fear was that they might be tempted to take an easier path and double back on themselves. Fearfully he watched the murky gloom ahead, afraid that that turreted house might loom into view again. Welcome back, this is the home of Ross Droy and none shall leave it. The sea was louder now, almost as though a huge tidal wave was pursuing them, a raging vengeful mass of water determined not to be deprived of its prey. They glanced behind them and then suddenly they felt the wind fanning their faces, an unmistakable cooling freshness laced with a tang of seaweed.
'The wind's getting up,1 Andy yelled above the noise in an attempt to make himself heard. 'That's why we can hear the sea. And look. the mist's thinning!'
True enough the thick grey vapour was losing its density as it was swirled, lurking grey shapes being blown into nothing more harmful than twisted trees. Branches snapped, splashed and floated in the treacly spreading mire. A shrieking that might have been the wind, a screaming and wailing like that of souls in torment.
'My God!' Jim Fillery gasped, 'what the hell's going on?' His features were pale and he still gripped his pistol.
'The elements are battling it out.' Andy Dark was reluctant to delay. 'The wind and sea versus Droy Wood with its foul mists and polluted mud.' The termination of centuries of strife, Nature taking on the forces of evil in a way which none would ever truly understand. The final conflict, a kind of Armageddon.
The road!' It was Carol Embleton who spotted that unmistakable line of ragged hedgerow beyond the trees less than a hundred yards away. 'It's the road!'
It was. A straight stretch of B-road surfaced with worn tarmac and sparse chippings. They broke into a run, cursed the mud which made one last effort to suck them back, prayed that that which they saw ahead of them was not a mirage sent to taunt them by the dying spirits of the wood. People were walking along it, standing talking in groups, mud-splattered bewildered searchers who had been lucky enough to make it back to dry land. Some were still out there. Occasionally, borne on the gale, they heard the barking of a dog, a human cry of anguish. But none was prepared to go back in there.
Gratefully Andy Dark grasped at the stools of the hawthorn hedge, heedless of the spiky thorns, pulled Carol up the bank with him, forced his way through the branches. There was no time to search for a gap, they would not be safe until they were clear of Droy Wood.
'Jesus wept!' Jim Fillery followed them, and only when his feet were on solid tarmac did he turn back to look the way they had come. 'Just look at that wood, it's awash, half the trees are floating. This tide'll reach the road.'
'It will that,' Andy Dark agreed, holding Carol close to him. 'The sea's been chipping away at that coastline for centuries and now it's finally broken through. I guess that's the end of Droy Wood. and everything in it!'
For a few seconds they stood and watched the final destruction of the wood, swirling foaming water washing over the foul mud, cleansing it, sweeping away the trees whose shallow roots had been dislodged. The mist was gone, replaced by driving spray. Shapes that were gone before you had a chance to identify them. A ruined house which might or might not have been turreted; it crumbled and fell. Within a few hours it would all be one huge seascape. Nature had fought fiercely… and won.
'We'd better go home and get some clothes,' Andy smiled wryly at his companions. 'A hot bath, something to eat and then sleep the clock round. And after that I guess we'll be plied with questions to which there aren't any answers, eh?'
Jim Fillery nodded. This was one report which he wasn't looking forward to writing. It was going to read like some weird way-out piece of fiction.
