The shed was obviously not what it at first appeared. An ingenious camouflage indeed. But to camouflage what, and, most importantly, where was John? Obviously somewhere behind the simulated reality of the empty shed lurked another something, and obviously it was a thoroughly unwholesome something which boded ill for unwary golfers.

Pooley approached the doorway once more, and thrust the rake in up to the hilt. He waggled it about and swished it to and fro; it met with no apparent resistance. Jim pulled out the rake and stood a moment rescratching his head. It really was a very clever thing indeed. Possibly that was how these council lads had eluded them before. Probably the one in the Swan’s bog had simply switched on some sort of 3-D projector, whipped up an image of an empty cubicle and sat down on the seat for a good sneer whilst Omally got foamy about the jaws. They were probably standing there in the shed even now doing the same.

Pooley took a step backwards. He’d show the buggers! Wielding the rake in as menacing a manner as he could, he took a deep if drunken breath and rushed at the image. “Ooooooooooh,” went Jim Pooley as the concrete floor of the shed dissolved beneath his feet, plunging him down into the perpetual darkness of the now legendary bottomless pit.

How far Jim fell, and how long his plummet into the nether regions of the great beneath actually took, must remain for ever a matter for conjecture. That his life had plenty of time to flash before his eyes was of little consolation, although it did give an occasion for him to recall that during it he had consumed a very great deal of alcohol. Also, that should he survive this, he had every intention of consuming a great deal more.

Finally, however, after what had been up until then a relatively uneventful if windy fall to oblivion, Pooley’s descending form made a painful and quite unexpected contact with a body of ice-cold and seemingly unfathomable water.

“Ow… ooh!” wailed that unhappiest of men. “Ow… ooh and glug.” Pooley surfaced after several desperate and drowning moments, mouthed several very timely and well-expressed obscenities and sank once more into the subterranean depths.

“I forgive all,” he vowed as his head bobbed aloft for a second time. Possibly Jim would have survived for a goodly while bobbing up and down in this fashion. It is more likely, however, that he would have breathed his last as he went down for that famous old third time, had help not arrived from a most unexpected quarter.

“Climb aboard, Jim,” said a voice which struck a strange chord in Pooley’s rapidly numbing brain. Jim squinted up from his watery grave to realize for the first time that he was no longer in darkness. Above him he could see the cowled head and shoulders of a man, leaning from what appeared to be a coracle of skin and bark, extending a rugged-looking oar. Without hesitation Pooley clutched at the thing and was unceremoniously hauled aboard. Huddled low in one end of the curious craft lay John Omally, swathed in blankets.

“Nice of you to drop in,” said the Irishman with the rattling teeth. Pooley made some attempts to wring out his tweed lapels, but soon gave up and resigned himself to death by pneumonia.

“Where are we?” he asked, peering about him.

A wan light emanating from some luminescent substance within the very rocks, which swept dome-like and dizzying high above them, illuminated a monstrous cavern. The black waters of the subterranean lake spread away in every direction, losing themselves into a great vastness of absolutely nothing.

It all looked a little worrying.

Jim shuddered, and not from the icy cold which now knotted his every muscle. It was the sheer mind-stunning hugeness of the place, and the fact that it actually existed somewhere deep beneath the roads where he daily set his feet. And those waters, what might lurk in them? It didn’t bear thinking about. Jim turned to his saviour.

“You have my thanks, sir,” said he, “but tell me…” His words trailed off as the dark figure turned from the oar he had been carefully slotting into its rowlock and confronted the dripping Brentonian. “Soap?” said Jim. “Soap, is that you?”

The boatman slipped back the cowl which covered his head and grinned wolfishly, “Have I changed so much then, Pooley?” he asked.

Jim surveyed the darkly-clad figure, whose black robes threw the deathlike pallor of his face into ghastly contrast. His hair was peroxide blond and his eyebrows and lashes naught but snowy bristles. Soap was as white as the proverbial sheet. Pooley recalled the ruddy-faced Hollow Earth theorist with the sparkling green eyes who had regaled them with talk of Rigdenjyepo and the denizens of the world beneath. He also recalled only too well that terrible night when Soap had invited him and Omally down into a fantastic tunnel system beneath his house to witness the opening of what Soap believed to be the Portal to Inner Earth.

Pooley and Omally had made a rapid exit from the workings, but Soap had gone through with the thing and opened what turned out to be the stopcocks of the old flood sluices of Brentford Docks. An entire stretch of Grand Union Canal had drained forthwith into Soap’s diggings and that had been the last Brentford had seen of the Hollow Earther.

Pooley stared at Soap in disbelief. “You do appear slightly altered in your appearance,” he said carefully, as he gazed into the latter’s eyes, now pink as an albino’s, and slightly luminous.

“Five years below can alter any man,” said Soap, readjusting his cowl. “I have seen things down here that would stagger the senses of the strongest man. I have seen sights which would drive the sanity from your head quicker than shit off a shovel.”

Pooley now also recalled that he and Omally had always been of the opinion that Soap was a dangerous lunatic.

“Yes,” said Jim, “indeed, ah well then, again my thanks for the old life-saving and now if you would kindly show us the way out of here. I feel that it must be nearing my breakfast time.”

Omally piped up with, “I have pork in the press if you’d care to come topside with us, Soap me old mate.”

The hooded figure said no more, but sat carefully down and applied himself to the oars. The curious little craft, with its extraordinary crew, slowly edged its way across the pitch-black waters. How Soap could have any idea of which way he was travelling seemed totally beyond conjecture. Hours may have passed, or merely minutes; time did not seem to apply here. Pooley’s Piaget wristwatch had now ceased its ticking for good and all and maintained a sullen rusting silence. The high dome of rocks seemed unchanging and Omally wondered on occasions whether they were actually moving at all. Presently, however, a thin line of white appeared upon the horizon.

“Land ho,” said Soap, grinning at his marrow-chilled passengers.

“Would there be any chance of light at the end of the long dark tunnel?” Pooley asked. “Such as nutrition, or possibly the warming quaff of ale or lick of spirits?”

Soap tapped at his nose in a manner which the two remembered only too well. “You will be well cared for, you have been long expected.” Upon that doubtful note he withdrew once more into silence and rowed on towards land. The island, for such it now showed itself to be, was a strange enough place by any reckoning. As Soap beached the craft and ushered the two ashore, Pooley viewed the place with the gravest misgivings. There was a dreadful prehistoric gloom about it; if the black waters were bad enough, this was somehow worse.

The island was a long, rough crescent, covered for the most part with enormous stalagmites. These gave it the appearance of the half-submerged jawbone of some long-dead behemoth. Pooley felt instinctively that to set foot on such a thing was direly wrong and his thoughts were shared by Omally. Yet both were wet, cold, hungry, and demoralized, and with little complaint they numbly followed Soap along the bone-white beach to a craggy outcropping which seemed the highest point of the bleak landfall.