Eye of the Beholder: A Collection of Short Stories

By Peter Miles

Eye of the Beholder is a collection of short stories, in which nothing is quite what it seems and the outcomes never quite what expected.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris AU
• Release date: Mar 24, 2015
• ISBN: 9781503503502

Book preview

PHANTOM CROSSROAD

According to the map, the road ran straight through the valley, with no turns-offs. Yet clearly visible in front of the nose of the crop duster was a broad white strip, stretching from one side of the valley to the other. Either the map was wrong, or he was flying up the wrong valley!

Bill Bates looked again at the compass. Jeez! A fine time for the instruments to pack it in! The gyros had tumbled, and all the other readings were nonsensical!

Bill looked up again at the horizon and sighed with relief as he saw the twin peaks that marked the mountains to the north of the little township and its landing strip. This was his first contract in what was, to him, an entirely new area, but he had already noted the double peak as a dominant landmark in the region.

That evening, in the local pub, Bill was chatting up the barmaid. She was a tall, slim, friendly redhead, handsome in spite of the large tinted spectacles.

‘There’s no roads across that valley, Mister.’

‘Bill,’ he prompted.

‘Mind you, there may be old trails left by prospectors, Bill, but they’d be a hundred years old. Some mugs thought they’d find gold.’

‘Copper,’ chipped in the old codger beside him.

‘Whatever,’ said the girl and moved up the bar to serve another customer.

* * * * *

The next morning, Bill flew south, down the valley, looking it over carefully, but there was no sign of the crossroad. I must’ve been hallucinating! he concluded.

About an hour later he was flying north again, the assignment completed. Well blow me down, there it is again! Bill checked the instruments. Jeez! They’ve packed it in again, and I checked them all yesterday!

As evidence of this, as he noted ruefully, a bundle of improperly stowed wires was hanging under the panel. Never mind, he didn’t need the fuel gauge to tell him that he had at least another hour and a half of flying time, and this mystery was too intriguing to leave alone. He banked to the west and aimed the crop duster at the black hole in the hills where the crossroad appeared to end.

The engine sputtered. He switched to the reserve tank, but the engine was already dead. He went into emergency landing mode, switching off and lowering flaps. At about 200 metres, in the blink of an eye, the strip of white road had disappeared. The engine would not start, and he was committed to a bumpy landing in the scrub.

Fortunately, the land was relatively flat and the vegetation low. Climbing out of the aircraft, he stamped on the ground. It made a hollow-sounding thump, but that was no particular surprise; there were underground limestone caves all though this part of the country.

Out of the corner of his eye, Bill noticed a puff of dust near the hills. A vehicle was speeding towards him. As it drew nearer, he saw it was an open-topped, four-wheel drive of a marque he didn’t recognise. As it halted, he saw it contained five men, all dressed in some kind of uniform he didn’t know; a pale yellow-green, the same colour as their vehicle. They wore no insignia he could see, and all wore peaked caps and dark glasses.

The driver got out. ‘You are in a prohibited area.’

‘Aw, come on, fellows, all my paperwork has been filed properly, no one informed me of any prohibited area!’

‘You must come with me,’ intoned the driver.

‘Look, my engine died and I had to make a forced landing.’ Bill saw that two of the men had got out the vehicle and were advancing towards him on either flank. Each was carrying what appeared to be an automatic assault rifle of some kind.

‘You must come with me,’ repeated the driver.

‘Be reasonable,’ said Bill. ‘All I need to do is check out the engine and, if necessary, call up a mechanic. Perhaps you have a mobile I could use? My radio is dead, and my mobile doesn’t work here.’

‘You must come with me,’ repeated the driver.

Bill saw that the last two men had left the vehicle and were making for the crop duster with what looked like tool kits. ‘Hey, what’s going on?’ he cried out.

‘You must come with me,’ the driver said yet again.

By now, the two armed men were menacing him on either side with the barrels of their weapons.

* * * * *

Bill rode between the two armed men. All his questions met with stony silence. They arrived at a tunnel in the hills, lit above by fluorescent strips of some kind. Bill was pushed through a doorway into what he presumed was an office. It had a fluorescent ceiling and yellow walls, bare of any decoration. There was a desk with what appeared to be a laptop on it. Behind it sat a man in the same uniform as the others, also with dark glasses; but he wore no hat, revealing a short crew-cut of reddish hair. The two armed men still accompanied Bill. One of them produced a simple wooden chair as if from nowhere.

‘Sit!’ said the man behind the desk. Then, ‘You flew into a prohibited area.’

‘This is ridiculous,’ enjoined Bill. ‘No one ever said anything about prohibited areas in this region. All my flight plans were filed and accepted without question.’

‘Bureaucracy is sometimes slow. You must leave here as soon as we have fixed up your aircraft.’

‘Well, maybe. But I think you owe me some kind of explanation first. I’ve seen a road appear and disappear and my instruments have fouled up for no good reason. What’s going on here?’

The man stood up. He took off his glasses, and Bill found himself looking into a penetrating stare from the palest buttermilk blue eyes he had ever seen. Bill felt his heart and breathing stop. For a moment, he seemed paralysed by fear. Then the man put on his glasses and turned away.

‘Mr Bates, you have strayed into a weapons-research station. We are testing devices that confuse overflying craft, creating illusions and disabling instruments.’

He paused. ‘Your aeroplane is ready for take off now. You must leave with these men.’ He sat down at the desk and began working at the screen in front of him, ignoring Bill as though he were no longer there.

* * * * *

As they neared the crop duster, Bill could hear the engine was already running. The two men who had remained behind were now on either side of the aircraft, each holding a rope attached to chocks in front of the wheels. Bill climbed into the craft, mouthing, ‘Thanks for nothing, fellows.’

The chocks were pulled away, and