The Other Face

A dare takes Conor onto an abandoned building site, where something older than the houses has already been disturbed.

By R. D. Kerr

The padlock lay outside the gate, pressed into the mud. Conor picked it up. The shackle had been pulled almost straight.

Police tape rattled against the fencing above him. Beyond it, unfinished houses stood wrapped in plastic against the rain, their plots churned to mud. The digger hadn't moved since its bucket uncovered the first stones that morning. Patrick Doyle had stayed behind to lock the site that evening and never made it home.

Liam's dare had sounded easy enough in the pub.

Conor ducked beneath the tape and crossed towards the excavation. Its gate was already open, the lock torn apart rather than cut. Two deep grooves crossed the mud and disappeared beneath the trees. A scrap of yellow high-vis trembled on the wire.

Patrick had been wearing one.

The marks continued into the forest before vanishing beneath wet leaves. Conor carried on until he realised he could no longer hear the loose plastic knocking against the unfinished houses. He turned for the security light above the site office.

There was nothing but trees.

His shoe caught something beneath the leaves. A small stone head rolled against a root, wet with earth. Conor picked it up and wiped the mud away: deep eyes, a heavy nose, a narrow mouth.

He turned it over.

The same face stared back.

A scream came from deeper in the forest. Conor dropped the stone and listened.

“Conor!”

Sean.

Relief loosened his chest. The idiots had come looking for him.

Another scream followed.

Conor ran.

Smoke reached him first, followed by the smell of fat catching over a fire. He slowed when orange light appeared between the trees and crouched behind the remains of a stone wall.

A figure sat beside the flames. Conor couldn't understand its size until it reached across the fire.

The hand was enormous.

It held a chipped stone blade in the other. It tested the heat, shifted a wooden frame away from the flames and turned what was cooking across it. A yellow jacket lay crumpled near its feet.

A boot protruded beside one knee.

Liam's.

Sean lay nearer the fire.

Conor pressed his hand against his mouth.

The giant muttered while it worked, sometimes shouting into the trees and waiting. A few sounds caught at Conor's half-remembered school Irish. Nothing answered.

Sean's phone lit among the leaves. The giant stared, reached down and touched the screen. When the image changed, it recoiled, then brought one hand down over it.

The light disappeared.

Conor shifted his knee.

A twig broke.

The giant stopped.

Something cracked inside its neck.

It screamed.

Its shoulders remained towards the fire while its head began to turn. Another crack forced the round skull farther around. One hand clawed at the earth as it screamed, the head still turning while the body remained fixed.

Then the other face came round.

Conor recognised it before the screaming stopped.

The face from the stone.

The giant returned to the fire.

Conor waited until the new face looked towards the trees, then eased one foot beneath himself.

An eye appeared around the other side of its skull.

He stopped.

Conor moved his hand.

The eye followed.

The giant placed the blade beside the fire.

Its neck cracked.

The screaming started again.