Dark Winter Tales: a collection of horror short stories. Paul Finch

was now in the process of collapsing on itself. Flames still blazed at ground-level, but otherwise only a bare, blistered framework remained. Sharon stood numbed while her two colleagues tried to get closer, wafting at the pungent smoke. Ellis gave a sharp cry. “Christ! There is someone here!”

      “I … I lit him up,” Sharon said, suddenly giggling.

      Lewton stole an astounded glance at her.

      “There’s two of them!” Ellis blurted. “Bloody hell!”

      The fumes had turned foul with the stench of charred meat, but the flames continued to recede and Sharon could distinguish two blackened shapes lying in the glowing wreckage. Lewton swung back to her, face pale. “Shaz … what have you done?”

      She shook her head, still giggling. “Not the winos … they were already dead.”

      “You say you lit this fire? Why?”

      “He was in there. He murdered them.”

      “Who?”

      “He killed Sergeant Pugh as well.”

      “Who killed Sergeant Pugh?”

      Lewton’s expression was so earnest, so honestly mortified by what he was seeing here, that Sharon now thought it better to stop sounding so amused and actually try to assist. “Blair McKellan, obviously.”

      “Shaz …” Lewton shook his head. “Blair McKellan was arrested forty minutes ago. His boat ran aground near the pier.”

      “Mike!” Ellis shouted.

      Lewton darted back to his side. Sharon ventured over there as well, vaguely amazed by that last piece of news, though not necessarily mystified. The object of their interest seemed to be a square aperture in the middle of the hut’s scorched floor. A steel grille lay to one side of it. That made sense too, now that she thought about it.

      “If there was someone else in here, that’s how he got out,” Ellis said.

      Lewton kicked a heap of embers aside and crouched to get a better look. “Shit,” he breathed. “There’re hundreds of channels and culverts down there.”

      “And they all lead to the sea,” Sharon said. “But that’s just about right.” The two men gazed at her blankly, at which point she began giggling again, her giggles soon transmuting to full-blown laughter. “He’s so, so angry.”

      “Who’s angry?” Lewton asked. “Who the hell are you talking about?”

      She made a big effort to control herself. “Who do you think? … Bubbles.”

      Children Don’t Play Here Anymore

      Paul Finch

      Contents

       Cover

       Title Page

       Children Don’t Play Here Anymore

      Geoff slows his Chrysler to a halt on the road called Woodcock Close.

      It is a cul-de-sac, as its name suggests, with a turning circle at the end and detached middle-class houses at regular intervals along its western side. Opposite these, on the east, the ground flows away downhill, a rough uncultivated pasture of brambles, ragwort and rich, thick meadow-grass. At the bottom, perhaps two hundred yards down from Woodcock Close, a dense stand of trees encloses a woodland pond. Beyond this there is a fenced-off paddock, which is periodically used for exercising dressage horses, though the stately residence to which it belongs lies half a mile to the north, only accessible from the paddock by a winding, unmade lane, and when you reach it, well concealed within a manicured spinney of sculpted evergreens; out of sight, out of mind – and thus unattached to the green and pleasant area which lies below Woodcock Close, tucked away like a secret garden.

      While dreary enough in the winter – unless there is snow, in which case it becomes an exceptional sled and toboggan run – this small but hidden valley is a magical place at every other time of the year. It is no more than ten or twelve acres in total size, yet, in appearance at least, it is deep, secluded, mysterious – even though in reality it sits in the heart of the town’s sprawling suburbs, and is perhaps only five minutes’ walk from the ever-rumbling M6 motorway. Locals like us have always known it as ‘the Dell’, and probably every generation of our boys, going back to the pre-war years, waged their own battles down in its leafy heart, explored their own jungles, fought their own dinosaurs, built their own treehouses and swung on their own makeshift rope swings.

      But that was then and this is now. And children don’t play in the Dell anymore.

      “You know, Dad,” Geoff says as he parks, “… you don’t have to do this.”

      “I know,” I reply.

      “It’s not as if you’ve got anything to prove.”

      I consider his words, which I hear every time we come here, and then take my stick from the footwell.

      “You really expect to find something?” he asks. “After so long?”

      I throw him a look – one of those short, shrewish looks I increasingly throw at people these days, and which I’ve recently made a mental note to try and clamp down on. “It … it isn’t that. You know it isn’t that.”

      “I know.” His voice softens. He smiles sympathetically. “It’s become an annual pilgrimage, this, hasn’t it?”

      “Something like that.” I button up my overcoat and climb from the car.

      It is a cool day in early September. It would probably be warm if not for the gentle easterly breeze, which rustles like paper in the grass atop the Dell. The sun is mellow and misted in a pebble-blue sky, against which the foliage of the woodland below is bright emerald in colour, deep, succulent in texture.

      “I wish you wouldn’t do it, though.” Geoff climbs out of the car on the other side. He nods at my stick and at my slight grimace of pain as I straighten my ever-creaking back. “I mean … you’re not going to be able to get up and down that hill much longer. Not at your age.”

      I’m not sure whether this is an intended wind-up.

      “I’m only sixty-seven, you know,” I remind him.

      He doesn’t smile (which means that it isn’t a wind-up at all). “You’re a sixty-seven-year-old with chronic sciatica.”

      “Well you’ll be around to help me, won’t you? If things get tough.” I use that terse, fatherly tone, which always suggests that you’re telling your son something rather than asking him.

      He shakes his head as he slips his rolled-up newspaper from his jacket pocket. “Oh no … nooo, no. I’m not helping you punish yourself. No way.” He leans back against the car and starts to read. “I’ll happily give you a lift here … so long as you want to come, but that’s as far as it goes.”

      I look at him for a long moment, before setting off down the slope.

      He is a handsome enough man, my son; thirty-nine now and with a growing-up family of his own. He still looks youngish, though. His hair is jet-black and thickly layered on his scalp. He plays football at weekends and looks after himself, as his tall, spare physique suggests. People have always said he reminds them of me, but I