He walked back to the pub and around the back, a bit more purposeful than he had been, the entrance was still there, but it wasn’t the same, it had a canopy over it and another smoking area, there were a group of people outside smoking, they didn’t acknowledge him, never gave him a second look, so different than when he first went to Underwood, where everybody looked at him as if he was a condemned man, he went inside the pub and immediately noticed how different it was, it had become modern and friendly looking, no longer that fear of remorse filled the air, no longer that haze of smoke that you could taste as it hit your lungs, as there was clearly no smoking in the modern Underwood, the pool table was new, the dartboard was not falling off the wall, the TV screens showed sky sports, and as he walked to the bar the young female server smiled and for the second time in a short while Peter was taken aback, he ordered a pint of John Smiths as he thought of the homebrew that Craig would pull.
‘Is Craig about’ Peter asked the barmaid’ he didn’t know why he asked it, it just seem to come out,
‘I’m sorry who?’ she replied,
‘The bar man Craig’
She handed him his pint, ‘There’s no Craig here I’m afraid’ she told Peter, he cursed himself again, he needed to get his head straight, he kept telling himself this was not the same place.
Peter thanked her took his beer and went to take a seat,
‘excuse me’ said the voice from behind the bar’ Peter turned around to look at the barmaid ‘you haven’t paid’ she added, and then for the first time that day Peter laughed to himself as he paid, the Underwood he knew, the Underwood where he came from the beer was free.
He sat down and drank his beer, people watching as they came and went, there was no one he recognised, he drunk his beer and got into his car and started driving around, there was no car lot to be seen, this Underwood was smaller than the other but the same in so many ways, there were certainly a lot more people on the streets, they all looked normal, his heart missed a beat as he drove up Hawthorne, the close was full of cars and Peter only just managed to park up, he shivered as he stood at the top of the path of No. 12, it looked different, deep down he somehow thought and hoped that he would knock the door and Eileen and his children would be there, but he knew that wouldn’t be the case, he walked down the path and knocked the door anyway, the door was quickly answered by a man in his twenty’s and Peter apologised saying he had got the wrong address, he knocked the door at No.13, a man in his forties answered, again Peter apologised, he got in his car and drove around the estate a few more times, trying to see if he recognised the people, anything that would give him a clue, but there was nothing there, then Peter done something so simple, something he had wanted to do ever since he heard of Underwood, ever since that night when they were somehow pulled in, something he had wanted to do ever since he had heard of the place, with his head in a daze and a tear on his cheek, he got into his car and drove out, the Underwood he knew was no longer there.
Just outside of Underwood and just before the church, he pulled into a layby, he didn’t know if this layby was there on the night they fell into Underwood, somehow he doubted it as it would have been so easy just to turn around and head back, had he missed it through the storm?, was it all so simple as that?, could he have turned around that night?, these were all the questions he was asking himself, he gripped the steering wheel as tight as he could, he was out of ideas, he lit a cigarette and got out of the car to walk, hoping the fresh air would clear his head and he wanted to go to the church, to the graveyard and see what it was that frightened them the first time they passed it the first time he took his family on a holiday to hell.
But there was no fear as he stood in the church grounds, the grounds were kept well and the grasses mown, fresh flowers were put on a couple of graves, the stones looked an age and some of the words he could not make out as the elements had worn them away, then something happened that seemed to be happening a lot that day, his heart missed a beat and his hand automatically went to his mouth as he read the grave stone, the stone was for Tony Griffiths beloved Husband of Alice, he had died at the age of 52, the age that he was in the Underwood he had come from, he sat on the wall around the church graveyard and lit another cigarette, trying to work out what all this meant, he wondered about Alice, she had died in the other Underwood, was she alive in this one? The gravestone suggested she was when Tony had died, but how could he be dead, it was only yesterday he was chained to a fence with him, with his mind totally confused he checked all the other gravestones, trying to see names he had recognised, he could find none, he got back into his car, he thought that he had been planning an escape with a dead man, the more he thought of that the more ridiculous it sounded, the Tony Griffiths he knew wasn’t dead, he had been planning their escape, and at that moment he knew that Tony would be looking after his family, after all what else did he have to live for?, he needed to find an internet café and he headed to the City of Newport.
He sat in the internet café, not really knowing what he was looking for, until his search let him to the prison of war camp in Underwood, indeed it did have a history behind it, but most of it seemed to be after the war, it was reported that after the war there was an attempted escape which resulted in a shootout in 1946, this resulted in all German prisoners being killed, Peters heart raced when he read the rest, the only British survivors were officers, Philip Lenan and Allan Herapath, along with the camp vicar Andy Thomas, he stood staring at the screen, reading the words and names over and over again, these were the three people that Tony Griffiths had said he had never seen together, after further searches he found out that all three of them had since passed, he wondered how many more people he had Met in Underwood were dead, then he wondered if they were all dead, but he blocked that out of his head, he had got out and he was very much alive, any information on the fight that had occurred just after the war seemed vague, it was reported as an attempted breakout where shots were exchanged and many deaths had occurred, he wondered why when the war was over would people be attempting to break out, something didn’t stack up, but one thing became more clear to Peter, the 3 rulers of Underwood were not human, they were part of some entity, and Peter guessed that entity could be found in the woods,
Tony Griffiths was right, destroy what is in the woods and you destroy the Underwood that to most people didn’t exist, what become of its inhabitants he wasn’t sure, but that’s what he had to do, he googled the weather, there were no reports of storms, as he walked out of the internet café, he realised he had found out more questions than answers,
he went into a local clothes store and bought himself some more clothes, then made his way back to the travel lodge at Magor services, tonight he wanted to go and have a beer and what better place than the Iscoed Tafarn of Underwood.
The weather forecast was humid and sticky for the evening, no sign of Storms, But as Peter got into his hire car, dressed in his new jeans and t-shirt, he knew that a warm sticky period in the UK usually ended with a storm, he just hoped the next one would be all empowering and would consume him up into the new Underwood, the one that didn’t exist.
Chapter 17
‘So why would you want to be the new driver’ asked Allan the sheriff to Tony,
His answer was easy he had it all planned,
‘I maintain the bus anyway and besides Steve, other than the deputy’s I was the only one who done any driving, just sort of makes sense’,