Scavenger Summer by Steven Savile

Author:Steven Savile [Savile, Steven]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: british, british horror, Horror, psychological
Publisher: Horrific Tales Publishing
Published: 2020-04-16T04:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER EIGHT

My lungs were on fire long before I reached the nine heavily eroded stone steps up to the castle door.

I grabbed back for Poppy. She’d struggled, so I’d carried her part of the way. She’d stumbled on another part of the way, and finally I’d had no choice but to drag her up the steps behind me.

There wasn’t much of a door. It wasn’t like there were iron bands and bolts we could slam in place. It was white. Wood. And it was rotting around the bottom edge and the side panel was crumbling badly. But it was a door.

I slammed it behind Callie and leaned with my back against it, panting. I’d started smoking that summer. Only for two weeks. But in those two weeks my general stamina had gone down the toilet. I could still taste the cigarettes in my lungs as I heaved down another deep gulp of air even though it was more than five weeks since I’d snuck my last fag.

Poppy cuddled up next to me.

I thought she was being affectionate, then I realised she was peering out through the crack where the wood had flaked away and was staring at the beach. Part of me wanted to know what she could see, but a bigger part of me just wanted to shield her eyes so she didn’t have to see it.

The castle’s interior was much less spectacular than my first impression.

There was nothing to it but four crumbling walls, some moss and mildew, grass and mud for a floor, no ceiling or roof. It was hardly grand enough to deserve being called a castle. It looked as though a huge bite had been taken out of the upper reaches of the sea-facing wall, leaving the middle fifteen feet lower than the corners. It was maybe thirty paces, side to side. There was nothing you couldn’t see. No other, better way out. The only option was to batten down the brittle hatches and hope they forgot we were here. Which wasn’t exactly long-term thinking.

Callie started pacing around the space.

There was a pile of crap, bits of wood and broken bricks from where the wall had crumbled that had been piled up against it.

She went straight for it and started pulling the driftwood away from the pile like she was trying to get at something beneath it. I couldn’t see what it was from my vantage point, but the urgency behind her actions was enough to convince me that it was important. “Go and help her,” I told Poppy, who rushed over and started pulling the boulders and bricks away.

It took less than two minutes between them to expose what looked like a trap door.

Callie wrestled with it, but it wasn’t budging.

She yelled at me for help, “Don’t just stand there gawping like a Muppet—get your arse over here and help me get this thing up.”

Even together, it took all our combined strength before something gave. The iron ring wrenched free of the wood, coming away in my hands and tearing a gaping hole in it.

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