Eventually he got to his feet, swayed unsteadily as a fit of dizziness engulfed him. An awful thought; suppose he fell and toppled back down there. Walking wasn't easy, he could have flopped down into the soft springy heather and just gone to sleep. But he had to get home; they would be searching for him, maybe even the police were out with tracker dogs, lines of civilians scouring the hills. He was not even sure if he had been below ground overnight, whether this sun which sweated him was the same one that had been rising upwards on its morning journey when he had left the farm.
A feeling that something was decidedly wrong but he couldn't place it. The silence. Even out here you always heard a tractor or a Land Rover in the distance, the constant hum of rural activity so much in contrast to the city clamour. That was what he hated about the country, so bloody quiet it gave you the creeps. A little shiver prickled his skin. This was just too bloody quiet, even for the country.
Walking down a sheep track that flattened out into a bridle-path, overhanging boughs lush with full summer greenery, the grass thick and strong. Everywhere smelled sweet, sickly sweet. That was because his stomach was empty, blackmailing him; give me food or else I'll throw up.
The silence was starting to get on his nerves. You always heard something. But not now. The path widened and he came to a stile, the beginning of his father's land. Wasn't anybody out looking for him, hadn't they even missed him?
Sheep; normally he would not have given them a second glance because they didn't interest him. In-bred, unhealthy, non-thinking, stupid animals. His head jerked round again and he stared in surprise. They were his father's white-faced Suffolks all right with a black 'W stamped on their fleeces, doing exactly what you would have expected them to be doing; grazing like they were starving, hadn't seen food for a week. Only they were grazing a field of growing barley!
He could not see where they had got in because the field was large and undulating; one weak place in the hedge adjoining the long stretch of pastureland would have been enough and they would have trotted through in single file, following the sheep in front like they always did. OK, everybody's stock got out sometimes but he knew his father well enough to know that the sheep wouldn't be out for long before John Winder discovered them and came post haste in his pick-up with Flook to round them up and drive them back. But there was no sign of anybody.
Phil stood watching for a few seconds and then he broke into a fast trot. Personally he didn't give a fuck about the sheep in the barley but he knew that something had to be wrong back home. Maybe they were too busy out looking for him. It was a logical explanation, but somehow it didn't ring true, even if it did make him feel guilty. You bloody selfish bastard.
He took a short-cut across the big grass field, saw the farmhouse when he topped the brow. Something about it added to his unease. Sure it was summer and there wouldn't be smoke coming out of the kitchen chimney. But there would be activity of some kind. The red pick-up was in the yard; there was no sign of the bantams which virtually lived by the back door. He started to run.
Breathless, he went in through the yard gate and that was when he first saw his parents. They were in the big dutch barn which still had a few bales of last year's hay in it and ... oh Christ, it wasn't really them . . . was it? No, for fuck's sake, you aren't my parents!
His logic tried to throw out all sorts of answers, tried to make him believe them. A couple of tramps, filthy dirty and with no clothes, they'd hidden in the barn. But these weren't tramps. Facially they resembled his mother and father, the man looking like his pubic hair had run riot and grown a widening path right up to his stubble of a beard. Instead of the old-fashioned short back and sides his hair curled greasily down to his shoulders. Phil kept his eyes elevated; it was too embarrassing to look below the waistline of your own father.
On to his mother: she had lost her false teeth so that her cheeks were hollowed, her mouth shrunken. Again an excess of hair but it was not so prolific on her body as on her husband's. Unsightly baggy breasts that sagged with age, a roll of waistline fat that she had hidden from him for years with a pair of corsets. A V of hair; he jerked his head away, saw their expressions of fear, the way they backed away from him. It was them.
'Father, mother.' He whispered the words, tried to will them to shout back, 'We're not your father and mother.' They huddled together pathetically, whined like a pair of collies that knew they were in for a good larruping. For maybe ten seconds parents and offspring stared at one another and then with a shrill shriek the two hideous caricatures broke into a shuffling flight, scrambling over hay bales, dragging each other in turn, out through the other end of the bay and into the fields.
Phil Winder stood and watched them go. He did not pursue them because he did not want to catch up with them again, did not want to have to look upon their wizened animal-like faces and have to convince himself once more that they were his parents.
He didn't need any more convincing, didn't look for reasons, accepted that some terrible change had come over everybody and everything. Except himself? Fearfully he smoothed his hands down his body, felt at his skin. He seemed OK.
It was a long time before he finally plucked up the courage to go into the house, kicked open the back door and almost shouted 'Is anybody there?' Of course there was nobody there. Then the stench hit him, a foul putrefying odour that would have had him spewing if he hadn't had an empty stomach. He retched and it hurt, recognised the smell even before he saw the mess on the red quarry tiles, patches of semi-solid excreta crawling with bluebottles. They lifted, settled again almost immediately, fed ravenously.
They've shit on the floor, a voice inside him gasped and he wanted to cry. Oh Jesus, who's done this to my folks?
Apart from that the house was much the same as it always was, working-class tidiness reminiscent of his mother's upbringing in a farm labourer's cottage in the days when people really were poor. He checked himself in the mirror, didn't really care now whether anything had happened to him or not. Physically he looked the same. But I'm going slowly fucking mad.
Looking back he could not really remember how he had passed the rest of that awful day. He had shovelled up the mess on the kitchen floor, thrown it out into the yard and the flies had followed it. After that he had just sat about, lying to himself that his mother and father would be back later and everything would be all right.
But they did not return and everything wasn't all right. Dusk merged into darkness and he still sat there in the old wooden rocking chair by the dead Rayburn. He was still there in the morning when the sun's rays gently eased him awake and everything came flooding back to him. I'm glad I don't believe in you, God, because you wouldn't have let this happen. He ate a tin of cold beans and cut his finger opening the can so that he spottled blood on the working surface. Eventually he stopped bleeding and made himself some coffee, tried to work out what he was going to do.
He needed help; he'd take the pick-up into the village and tell the police. The police always knew what to do, didn't get in a flap. His mind made up, he went outside, noted absent-mindedly that it was going to be another scorcher. He had completely forgotten about his experiences below ground; this was far more terrifying.
As he drove into the village he knew right away he wasn't going to get any help—because there wasn't anybody here to help him. Like a trained burglar sussing out prospective houses he could tell that every one was empty, whether the front doors hung open or not.