Authors: Colin Griffiths
Peter lay on the bed until the alarm clock went off, but he was awake well before it did, his mind was racing to much to sleep, and when he did doze the dreams were haunting, he had thought about contacting family at home, they would be wondering why no contact had been made, their numbers were in his phone which he had left in underwood, but he wouldn’t be contacting them, at least not for the moment, what could he say, what could he tell Eileen’s mother and father,
‘your daughter and grandchildren have been kidnapped by an alien force’
who in their right mind would believe that, ‘who in their right mind would believe that there was a hidden world somewhere and a storm had took them to it, ‘
The police?’
what would he tell them, what could he say, the only conclusion he could come to was sit it out, wait for a storm then see what happened.
He had a much appreciated shower, relishing the hot water as it hit his naked body, he got dressed and went downstairs to the reception area, behind the reception desk there was a pretty young girl in a hotel uniform and she smiled at him as he approached, and that simple act made him realise how much he had missed normal people, ever since he had been in Underwood all he had seen was fear on people’s faces.
‘Can I help you’ she asked as Peter approached the desk, Peter’s heart went into his mouth, he didn’t know why, he gulped, he was at a loss about any of this, he felt like half the time he was walking around in a day dream and the other half was a nightmare, he didn’t know who he could trust, he was on edge, not in control of his emotions and he felt his actions were showing it.
‘Can you tell me how to get to Underwood’ he asked her, he watched her eye’s he was sure he was going to see a look of shock on the receptionist face, as if he had sworn at her or made some inappropriate comment.
‘Sure’ she said ‘go out of the services, turn right onto the Magor road, follow that for about 2 miles and when you come to the dip, it’s on your left, it’s signposted just go up the hill, you can’t miss it really’ and she smiled at him again.
The response took Peter aback, he wasn’t sure what answer he was going to get, for a split second he thought the girl was part of it all, and he wanted to challenge her, but that went out of his head when he saw the young girl smile once again, she looked so innocent,
‘How can she be part of this’
he told himself.
‘Are you okay’ she asked him, noticing the look of shock on his face, her smile wavered to a look of concern.
Peter composed himself, he noticed the name tag on her uniform, and he chastised himself for his own thoughts,
‘Yes thank you Frankie’ he told her ‘I didn’t realise it was still there’
‘Where else would it be’ said the girl with a slight look of confusion on her face,
Peter smiled and thanked her, he didn’t know the answer to that question.
He left the reception and got into his car and followed the directions he was given, and he was soon passing the church into Underwood, he slowed down to look at it, there was no fear within him, he drove over a bridge with a Motorway running underneath it, his heart was in his mouth as he drove up the incline and to the sign that read Underwood, there was nothing written underneath it and for that he felt thankful, but there was also a tinge of regret, he wanted it to be the same place, and Peter crawled along as he entered the estate, looking around all of the time, then he parked the car and looked on in shock at what he saw, he didn’t know what he was expecting
,’ maybe I was hoping for a miracle,’
he thought as he sat in his car open mouthed.
It was the same road he had entered Underwood during the storm, that was quite clear to him, not as badly worn but he knew it was the same road, but this time to his right where the army huts should have been, were houses, newly built houses, and as he looked down Waltwood road all he could see was cars parked outside the houses and on the drives, behind the houses still stood the woods, but they looked different, they did not look scary, they did not represent fear, in fact Peter thought that they looked quite welcoming, as he looked between the gap of two houses into the woods he could see that someone had built a swing on the tree that overhung into the garden, it was definitely the same place, but somehow it looked different, this wasn’t the same place that he had tied himself to the railings the night before, yet in some ways it was exactly the same place.
A shiver went through his body and he looked around and expected to see Steve Duce there, but he wasn’t, and again he didn’t know whether to be disappointed or pleased, all the pent up emotions were confusing him, he started answering his own questions in his head, until he run out of questions.
He put the car in gear and drove on, if he was right the social club should just be down the road, or at least that’s where it was when he first entered Underwood, but then he remembered it had changed so he wasn’t sure what he was going to see, he pulled into the car park and got out of his car, it was exactly where it was the first time he entered Underwood, he shivered again at the thought of it, the building was still there, the first thing Peter noticed was the windows, the one he had left had no windows at the front, this building did, but it still bore the same shape as the one he remembered, the same construction, there was outside seating areas and a new side entrance, with a smoking area, and a new sign adorned it’s walls, now it wasn’t Underwood social club, it was the Iscoed Tafarn and it looked a dam site more welcoming than the Underwood social club he knew and he hated that about it.
Peter stood there for a while in utter confusion, he really felt like calling the police and telling them everything, but when he went over it in his mind, however he put it, it just seemed so unbelievable that he thought he may be sectioned, then he thought they would look for his family and when they couldn’t find them he would be accused of murdering them, there would be no body’s, his mind was spinning, he thought of life imprisonment if he reported this, he was on his own, no one could help him, not now, the only hope he had was Tony Griffiths and he didn’t live here, not in this Underwood.
He watched as people were going in and out of the pub, he stood and as he watched them, he was trying to see if there was fear on their faces, the fear that everyone in the town he knew had, the fear of desolation there wasn’t, people were walking up and down the streets and children were out playing, what really threw him was a No.64 single decker bus drove by and stopped at the bus stop, people got on and off, Peter ran in a panic over to the bus stop and someone told the driver to hold on as they thought he was running to catch the bus, but he only wanted to look at the driver, the driver stared at him waiting for him to step onto the bus, but it was not the man who picked his family up in the mini bus and as his heart sunk he realised he wanted it to be Steve Duce, he wanted someone he had met, he wanted answers, the driver closed the bus door, mumbling to himself as he did so.
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,