Terror in the watermill

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He came to the great pound first; desperately thirsty.But the water wasn\'t the kind you drink.It lay the bottom of a stone wall, six feet below Simon\'s shoes.If you fell in you could never climb out again.And the water was dark grey,as thought somebody had mixed soot with it. Yet you could see down thought it,in the bright sunshine, to dim beds of weed that had grey scum growing on them. The only cheerful thing was masses of tiny bright-green leaves floating on the surface, almost a mad yellow in the sun. But they only made the pound seem deeper,darker,dirtier.

Further out were lily-pads-not well organised, but a wreck, a jumble of leaf-points sticking up like the bows of sunken ships.further out again, a densely-wooded island. Two brown ducks swam round the island as Simon watched. Normally,ducks cheered him; fat,quacky and bright.But these looked furtive,as if they knew they shouldn\'t be there.

Simon walked along the massive wall, towards the strange roof.Funny, the roof came right down to the pound-wall.Must be a very low building... But as he reached it he gasped. The ground suddenly dropped twenty feet. He was no longer standing on a wall, but on top a dam.And the roof belonged to water-maill,built against the dam.There was a huge water-wheel,red with rust.He ran down red stone stone steps into the garden in front of the maill.

Only it was no longer a garden. It was a jungle. Rose Trees extened long, thin branches like bending fishing-rods, ten feet in the air.Laden with tiny whiet roses.The branches looked unsafe;waved wildly with every breath of air.There were poor grey spiky lupin plants, too, desperately struggling not to drown in the engulfing sea of grass.Most of the grass was dead and rotting.

There was no pathway from the foot of the red steps, except the low tunnels wild things make.Nobody had come this way for a long,long time.

Dead grass had grown halfway up the front door; a front door that didn\'t really go with the rest of the mill. Modernish and painted a sun-blistered maroon, with two peddle-glass  panels at the top.One panel was neatly broken, just above the lock. Not vandals.Somebody had broken the glass to get in; somebody who didn\'t want to do more damage than he had to...The dooe opened inwards,but jammed halfway.Simon squeezed past.

He was in dim, whitewashed living-room. Though the fireplace was only a black hold in the whitewashed wall, with rusty bars across to keep the coals from falling out, there was still ash in the grate.A bed stood in one corner, under the window.Just a brown mattress,with a pile of brown blankets neatly foldsd.A wooden table, with a wooden chair pushed back from it.On the table,a stump pf candle,matches, a well-bitten pipe and a newspaper.

Simon began to back out in embarrassment. This was somebody\'s home.They mignt be back any moment.Somebody might be listening,beyoud that far door...

The newspaper on the table drew him irresistibly. But surely newspapers were smaller than that these days.

The headline said:STALINGRAD ARMY WIPED OUT.The date was Monday,February 1,1943.

He  grabbed it,and it crumbled to brown flakes under his hand.

He stared round the dim room, wrinkling up his eyes in bafflement. 1943? But he knew somebody had just left the room. He could feel their presence still.

Then he knew somebody was watching him; from the left.He froze,between embarrassment and terror.He could not move his leds;only turn his head, straining to see out of the corner of his eye.

There were three people, standing in the darkest place, watching him.They did not move either.