The Darkness Within: A heart-pounding thriller that will leave you reeling. Lisa Stone

be seen on the dark and wet road, apart from something that could have been glass glinting in the light of his headlamps. There was no sign of the vehicle.

      A car came towards him from the opposite direction. It was going slowly, the driver proceeding with caution, just as one should on this narrow slippery road. It came to a halt and he went over. The woman driving peered at him through her window and then lowered it a little.

      ‘Have you broken down?’ she asked.

      ‘No. I’ve been involved in an accident. Just now,’ he said anxiously, nodding down the road to where it had happened.

      ‘Are you OK?’.

      ‘A bit shaken,’ he admitted. ‘He was driving like a maniac.’

      ‘Not that small Fiat?’

      ‘It might have been.’

      ‘It overtook me back there. Blaring its horn, flashing its lights. I’m not surprised it’s been involved in an accident. He nearly killed me.’

      The lorry driver began to feel a little better knowing that someone else had been subjected to the driver’s dangerous manoeuvres. ‘I’ve no idea where the car is now,’ he said, frowning. ‘There’s some damage to my lorry but I can’t see the car. I’m going to fetch my torch from the cab and take a look.’

      ‘Perhaps he’s driven off?’ the woman suggested, opening her car door.

      ‘Perhaps,’ he said. But he doubted it, not from the strength of the impact. And if he wasn’t mistaken he thought he might have caught sight of the car in his wing mirror just after it had hit him, spiralling towards the edge of the road. He couldn’t be sure though, since it had all happened so quickly and in the dark and the rain.

      Without being asked, the woman got out and offered to help him look. He thanked her and she switched on her hazard warning lights, pulled up the hood on her coat, and went with him to his lorry. He took his torch and anorak from the cab and slipped on his jacket. With the torch held in front he led the way past the lorry in the direction the car had been going. Further up the road they came across a pile of broken glass and a piece of chrome almost certainly from a car’s bumper. But there was no sign of the car. He swept the torch around, scanning as far as the beam fell, left, right and in front. A car came from the direction of the hypermarket, slowed and pulled over. Lowering his window, the driver asked. ‘What’s up? You OK, mate?’

      ‘There’s been an accident,’ he said. ‘Did you pass a small car just now? Possibly a Fiat?’

      ‘No,’ the man said, and glanced at the woman seated beside him. She shook her head.

      ‘I think it could be in the ditch,’ the lorry driver said.

      The man immediately got out and joined in their search, while his wife stayed in the car. The torch beam shone brightly into the dark, sweeping through the drizzle to the bare trees and grassy banks which flanked the ditches either side of the road. The three of them moved forward in silence, watching and listening, the air quiet, save for the sound of their shoes on the tarmac and the rain dripping from the trees. Then, further up the road, the beam fell on the outline of something more solid, something partially raised and sticking out above the ditch.

      ‘Over there!’ the lorry driver cried, and the three of them ran to the spot.

      ‘Jesus!’ he gasped.

      ‘Bloody hell,’ the man said.

      ‘I’ll call an ambulance,’ the woman said, taking out her phone.

      The car was completely upside down in the ditch, fitting in so exactly it was almost as if it had been made for it. The doors and windows were compacted against the sides of the bank; only the underneath of the car and the bottom of the doors were visible. It was as though the car had been turned upside down and then dropped in directly from above to fit in so precisely, the lorry driver thought. And in a way it had, for the impact had flipped it over and sent it flying to land squarely in the ditch.

      ‘There’s no way we can get into that,’ the man said, and the lorry driver nodded.

      As the woman spoke on her phone, giving details of their location to the emergency services, the man from the car began knocking on the metal of the upturned car and calling, ‘Anyone in there? Can you hear me?’

      But there was no reply.

      ‘I suppose he could have been thrown clear,’ the lorry driver said.

      ‘It’s possible,’ the man from the car agreed. Together they began walking slowly up the road, peering where the torch beam shone – on either side of the road, into the ditches and up the bank, but there was no sign of anybody, dead or alive.

      Other vehicles began joining the slow-moving queues forming in both directions from the hypermarket. Some of the drivers wound down their windows and asked what had happened, and, their curiosity satisfied, continued around the lorry and parked cars, driving over the glass which crackled like ice. The two men, having found nothing, returned to the woman, who said the emergency services were on their way. The men began tapping on the metal of the upturned car, calling out, ‘Anyone in there? Help is coming.’ Just for a moment they thought they might have heard something, possibly a groan, but then another car passed and sirens sounded in the distance, after which they heard nothing further from the wrecked vehicle.

      Police, ambulance, and fire tenders arrived within minutes of each other and the officers immediately took control. The police closed off the road in both directions and rerouted the traffic. Portable spot lamps flooded the scene and the fire crew quickly established that there was one male in the vehicle, then set about cutting him free. Sparks flew as they worked and the man and the woman who’d stopped to help told the officers what they knew, which wasn’t a lot as neither had actually witnessed the accident. However, the woman did tell them about the driver who’d overtaken her on a blind bend, and the police officer included it in his notes. Once she and the man had given their statements and contact details, they were allowed to leave.

      The lorry driver meanwhile was in a patrol car giving his statement. The police had already completed an initial safety check of his lorry and had found nothing untoward. They’d also looked at his driving licence and insurance, breathalyzed him, and checked his mobile phone, all of which they said was now standard practice at the scene of a road traffic accident. Everything had been in order and the last call he’d made had been before he’d left the hypermarket. As he finished making his statement, they saw the fire crew finally cut the driver free from the now backless car. They laid him on the waiting stretcher where the paramedics took over. An oxygen mask was placed over his mouth and nose and a line ran from his arm to a bottle held up by one of the paramedics. As they prepared to load the stretcher into the ambulance, the lorry driver turned to the officer beside him and asked, ‘Do you think you could find out how he is?’

      ‘I’ll see what I can do,’ he replied helpfully.

      The driver watched through the windscreen as the officer went over and spoke to two of his colleagues. It had stopped raining now but a damp mist hung over the scene. They talked and nodded and at one point smiled. The ambulance sped away, its siren wailing and light flashing.

      ‘He’s got a broken leg and arm and a head injury,’ the officer said on his return. ‘They’ll know more once he’s at the hospital, but it seems he’s lucky to be alive.’ He paused, then added, ‘He’s known to us. He’s already lost his licence and there’s alcohol in his blood.’

      The lorry driver let out a sigh of relief. He was very sorry that the accident had happened at all, but it could have been a lot worse. Supposing there’d been a seriously injured woman or child in the car – or even someone killed? He’d never have forgiven himself.

       Chapter Four

      Rosie had almost stopped shaking now. She’d had to