Strange Stories Read Online Free Page B

come to and from the places where they live.’
    ‘I thought you said all the houses were empty.’
    ‘What I said was there are many empty houses.’
    ‘That is what you said. I’m sorry. But the track seems to come to an end. What do the people do then?’
    ‘They find their way,’ said the girl. ‘Stop worrying about them.’
    The water was still between them. Stephen was no longer in doubt that there was indeed something else between them. Really there was. The pool was intermittently throwing up tiny golden waves in the pure breeze, then losing them again.
    ‘We haven’t seen anybody,’ said Stephen. ‘I never do see anyone.’
    The girl looked puzzled.
    Stephen realized that the way he had put it, the statement that he never saw anyone, might have been tactless. ‘When I go for my long walks alone,’ he added.
    ‘Not only then,’ said the girl.
    Stephen’s heart turned over slightly.
    ‘Possibly,’ he said. ‘I daresay you are very right.’
    The kites were still flapping like torn pieces of charred pasteboard in the high air, though in the lower part of it.
    ‘You haven’t even looked to the bottom of the pool yet,’ said the girl.
    ‘I suppose not.’ Stephen fell on his knees, as the girl had done at the milestone or waymark, and gazed downwards through the pellucid near-nothingness beneath the shifting golden rods. There were a few polished stones round the sides, but little else that he could see, and nothing that seemed of significance. How should there be, of course? Unless the girl had put it there, as Stephen realized might have been possible.
    Stephen looked up. ‘It’s a splendid pool,’ he said.
    But now his eye caught something else; something other than the girl and the pool. On the edge of the rising ground behind the girl stood a small stone house. It was something else that Stephen had not previously noticed. Indeed, he had been reasonably sure that there had been nothing and no one, not so much as a hint of mankind, not for a quite long way, a quite long time.
    ‘Is that where one of the people lives?’ he asked, and in his turn pointed. ‘Or perhaps more than one? ’
    ‘It’s empty,’ said the girl.
    ‘Should we go and look?’
    ‘If you like,’ said the girl. Stephen quite saw that his expressed response to the glorious little spring had been inadequate. He had lost the trick of feeling, years and years ago.
    ‘It’s a splendid pool,’ he said again, a little self-consciously.
    Despite what the girl had said, Stephen had thought that to reach the house above them, they would have to scramble through the high heather. But he realized at once that there was a path, which was one further thing he had not previously noticed.
    The girl went before, weaving backwards and forwards up the hillside. Following her, with his thoughts more free to wander, as the exertion made talking difficult, Stephen suddenly apprehended that the need to return for Harriet’s teatime had for a season passed completely from his mind.
    Apprehending it now, he did not even look at his watch. Apart from anything else, the struggle upwards was too intense for even the smallest distraction or secondary effort. The best thing might be for his watch simply to stop.
    They were at the summit, with a wider horizon, but still Stephen could see no other structure than the one before him, though this time he gazed around with a certain care. From here, the pool below them seemed to catch the full sun all over its surface. It gleamed among the heathered rocks like a vast luminous sea anemone among weeds.
    Stephen could see at once that the house appeared basically habitable. He had expected jagged holes in the walls, broken panes in the windows, less than half a roof, ubiquitous litter.
    The door simply stood open, but it was a door, not a mere gap; a door in faded green, like the girl’s trousers. Inside, the floorboards were present and there was even a certain amount of simple furniture, though, as