Kingsholt by Susan Holliday

unconsciously, of the sound as a string that would lead him out of the wood, but now it had gone, maybe forever! The quiet atmosphere had become threatening, the trees were like creatures who had joined hands and would not let go. They closed in overhead, their mattedleaves keeping the earth in shadow. In his momentary panic, Sam stumbled and might have fallen into the pit if the thorn bush that tripped him had not also held him above it. He looked down where the newly dug earth crumbled through flints and tree roots to the bottom. He couldn’t make out what was down there but he could smell it, a sludgy, pungent smell, like the dead rat he had once found in the shed at home. The smell engulfed him and he clung to the thorn bush with scratched hands. His heart beat loudly, he felt captured by the smell. He looked up and the trees above the pit shivered. There was the great bird, sitting high and half hidden. For a few moments, although it seemed like hours, Sam’s fear was so big he hardly existed, as if he had turned into his fear. Was this what Chloe felt, a terror so strong it made your normal self almost disappear? When once again he heard the high whine of the saw he shouted out with enormous relief, adding, ‘I’m not the sort of guy who shouts normally!’ He was pleased to know his cry was probably lost among the trees.
    He backed out of the thorn bush and began to follow the sound of the saw. For some reason he couldn’t make out, he felt as if he had a thousand miles to go. It was as if something weighted down his steps, trying to keep him back – trying to keep him in a time of fear; the same force, perhaps, that had rooted him in the bedroom. He expected to come across something terrible, a battlefield perhaps, or a massacre, and was surprised when he saw Aidan’s big haversack and then Aidan himself high up in the tree, striding a branch. Had he gone only a few metres? He sat at a distance on a patch of grass and tried to stop his whole body from shivering.
    The sawing noise stopped and at the same time a branch fell, almost in slow motion, through the lower leaves, then crashed quickly to the ground some way off. Sunlight suddenly played at the foot of the tree and Sam found his spirits lifted. He looked up and saw the gap in the trees waving like a bright blue flag. Aidan grinned then slowly descended, spiking his boots into the bark,leaning on his cradle of rope and sliding the noose that held him down and down the smooth tree trunk. When he touched ground he unharnessed himself and came over to Sam.
    ‘Enough for one morning.’
    He took out a large handkerchief and wiped the sweat from his face. ‘You look as if you need something as well!’ He rummaged in his haversack for a bottle of coke and they drank in turn until the bottle was almost empty. Sam wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. Sharing the bottle had somehow turned Aidan into a friend.
    ‘I found this pit, and it smelled awful. I’ve always had a weak stomach. So has Mum. Once she took me to France for the day and I spent the whole time with my head down the lavatory pan! Don’t you notice that smell?’
    Aidan nodded gravely. ‘It wouldn’t be so bad if it was just a smell.’
    He packed the bottle away carefully into his haversack. ‘You see up there?’
    Sam followed the direction of Aidan’s pointing finger. The blue gap in the trees cheered him still, even though its light was small and very high.
    ‘I’m bringing in the light. And when I’ve done that, I’ll set about building the chapel, just as Uncle George wanted, on the same site as the old one. I’ll make it from the wood and old stones that lie about. Have you noticed them?’
    Sam shrugged his shoulders. ‘I don’t normally go around looking at the ground.’
    Aidan laughed. ‘Sometimes it’s useful. Many of them are from the old chapel. Will you help me?’
    At that moment Sam didn’t even consider what Aidan meant. The thought of Balham flashed into