Argleton, Chapter 4: Ibemcester
Matt and Charlie visit their second phantom town, which bears a striking resemblance to Argleton in more ways than one.
Read Chapter 3 first or start at the beginning.
Charlie chewed her lip thoughtfully as they reached Dorchester, scanning the road signs intently as they pulled up to a roundabout.
“Second exit, onto the A35,” said Matt, reading from a print out of directions provided by GeoMaps. Charlie made a vaguely affirmative noise. They skirted the new town of Poundbury, an ‘urban extension’ to Dorchester that was based on traditional rather than post-War town planning ideals. Under normal circumstances, Charlie would have stopped off for a peek at this controversial development by her slightly mad royal namesake, but she barely even thought about it.
“A354,” Matt said at the next roundabout. He pointed at the third exit and Charlie grunted again.
“Are you OK?” Matt asked.
“Yeah, fine.”
“It’s just you’ve barely said a thing since we got in the car four and a half hours ago.”
“I’m fine, really. Just a bit tired is all.”
“Are you sure?”
“I didn’t sleep well last night.”
“Ah. Sorry to hear that. You know I’d offer to drive if I could.”
“You never learnt to drive?”
“Well, yes, technically. But, well, I’m not very good at it.”
Charlie smiled. She’d never worried that much about driving, but then, she had well-developed depth perception, speed sense, and hand-eye coordination. She put it down to misspending her youth playing computer games. Her shoulders relaxed a little as she drove through the countryside. Undulating fields on both sides of the road gave her a sense of liberation. Eventually the countryside began to turn into the outskirts of Weymouth.
“OK, we need to turn right up here, by a golf course,” said Matt. “Then it’s back roads through a housing estate, if the satellite picture is anything to go by.”
Modern houses gave way to fields briefly, before they came upon a much older village. A grey limestone wall, crenellations giving it a manorial air, ran by the side of the road. A perfectly trimmed grass verge ran at its foot.
“You want to take a right now, onto Camp Road,” Matt said, peering at his map. Ahead stood an impressive fifteenth century church, its bell tower presiding proudly over the parish. Soon the houses began to peter out. A beautifully kept white bungalow signalled the edge of town as the road narrowed and the sea hove into view.
They passed a caravan site on their left and Charlie glimpsed a family with bright plastic buckets and spades, and tiny nets on long bamboo poles ready for scooping fish out of pools. The road dipped down into a small valley before heading onwards towards the blue band across the horizon.
“That’s odd,” said Matt. “Look at all that barbed wire.”
On their right, low white utilitarian buildings lurked behind a razorwire-topped six-foot fence. A green-roofed Nissen hut, which looked like it had been thrown up in a hurry during the Second World War, sat squat next to locked gates.
“I wonder what that’s all about,” Charlie said. “Zombie sheep, perhaps?”
A horse in the field beyond the compound galloped alongside the fence, perhaps expecting to be fed. On each side of the road stood white and red striped gates, pinned back for now, but ready to swing closed when required.
“Danger. Large Vehicles Turning.” Matt read the sign as they passed.
“I’m not sure we should be driving down here.” Charlie slowed the car right down.
“I’m sure it’s fine. I mean, if we weren’t allowed, they’d shut the gates, right?”
“I wonder who ‘they’ are.”
Another sign gave them at least a partial answer: Wyke Regis Training Headquarters.
“Looks like the Army,” Matt said.
“We ought to go back.”
“Why?”
“I just have a bad feeling about this. I…” she hesitated. More six-foot fences topped with tangles of razorwire loomed on their right, then a small manned gatehouse set back from the kerbside. “We really shouldn’t be here.”
“Look, ” Matt said as they crested the small hill. “There’s a fingerpost, which means a public right of way. And dog walkers.” A few cars were parked up at the end of the road, where it was cut abruptly off by the camp’s perimeter fence.
Charlie snorted.
“Honestly, don’t worry,” Matt said. “The Army has to have training camps somewhere. And if there are dog walkers here, it’s all cool.”
“I’m not sure,” said Charlie, as she pulled up behind a large hatchback. As she turned the engine off, she made no move to get out of the car.
“What’s the matter?”
Charlie paused, staring at the dashboard.
“Come on,” Matt said. “I can see there’s something up.”
“It’s just that I got…” She thought back to the threatening email she’d received and wondered whether she would sound silly and skittish if she mentioned it. “I’ve just got a headache, that’s all.”
Matt looked up at the darkening sky. “Oh, you poor thing. Well, I’d better get this done before it starts to rain. Why don’t you stay here.” He pulled his phone out and opened up his GeoMaps app. “I won’t be very long.”
“No, I’m fine. A bit of sea air will sort me out.”
“It’s not far, at least,” he said. “Just in that field, actually.”
They watched as a tall, slim, middle-aged woman opened up the back of her hatchback, the boot area caged off from the passenger compartment. A grey dog with a coat like steel wire jumped down, tail wagging, adoring eyes facing its mistress. Her own hair was as grey, as wiry, as wild as the dog’s. They looked like two halves of the same werewolf.
“I guess there’s a gate or a stile or something where that signpost is.”
“I would imagine,” Matt said as they watched the woman and her dog vanish through the hedge. Charlie locked up the car and they followed.
The road ahead of them veered off right, into the camp. Straight ahead, a path carried on down to a narrow, seaweed strewn strand. Beyond it, Matt could see the heaping mound of Chesil Beach, a 200 metre wide shingle storm beach which formed a sweeping curve from the Isle of Portland along the coast to West Bay. Between the mainland and the bulk of Chesil Beach lay trapped the Fleet, a long, narrow lagoon. Ripples fractured its surface, tiny brothers of the rollers that broke on Chesil’s seaward face.
Five thousand years of storms pushing down the English Channel had sorted Chesil’s shingle neatly by size, like a meticulous littoral librarian. The beach was made of fist-sized pebbles by the Isle of Portland, grading smaller and smaller as it extended west. Legend had it that local smugglers and fishermen could tell where they were in the dead of night simply by reaching over the side of their boat and picking up a handful of stones.
Instead of carrying on down towards the Fleet, Matt and Charlie bore left and crossed the stile between road and field.
“It should be just over here,” said Matt, consulting his phone.
“This is a bit easier than last time.”
They walked through grass damp from earlier drizzle. They could hear the sound of waves breaking on the Channel side of Chesil Beach. Salt air filled their nostrils and Matt found himself thinking of childhood trips to the seaside.
“Shame it’s not a better day for it,” he said. “Be a nice place for a picnic.”
“Except for the enormous Army base,” Charlie reminded him.
“Except for that, yes. You know, this field bears a striking resemblance to the last one.”
“Except that it’s right by the sea and smells of rotting seaweed.”
“Well, yes, except for that.” Matt checked their position. “Right, we are…”
Too busy looking at his phone, Matt didn’t see the steely blur barrelling towards him until it was too late. Charlie screamed. The dog leapt up, planting its front paws firm in his chest. He staggered backwards, trying hard not to go down. The dog was bigger close up than it had looked in the back of the car and it barked loudly. He couldn’t tell if it was being overly friendly or getting ready to rip his face off. He tried to push it away, but it had the weight advantage.
“Matt!” Charlie shouted, unsure quite what to do. She thought for a second, then said, “Go left!”
Matt looked puzzled for a moment, then saw Charlie kick out, her foot connecting with the dog’s ribs, pushing it off balance to his right. He dodged back and left, as the dog wobbled sideways and fell back onto all fours. It barked and set back on its haunches as if ready to spring. Matt stared at it.
Running probably wasn’t an option, he thought. A dog that big could catch him in no time and would make short work of his ankles.
“Go home!” Charlie yelled. “Go home, dog! Go on! Get out of it!” She raised her arms up and leapt about, trying to look big and scary. The dog shrank back. “Get! Go on! Go home!”
Matt took the cue and did the same, shouting and waving his arms about. The dog began to curl its lip in a snarl. Matt wasn’t entirely sure who was most shocked, him or the dog, when Charlie belted it round the muzzle with her backpack. The dog yelped and ran off, tail tucked tight between its legs.
“Christ, I hope it’s OK!” Matt said.
“It will be,” said Charlie. “There’s nothing heavy in this bag. But seriously, I’d rather hurt the dog than see you bitten. That could have been really bad.” She was flushed, the feeling of fear still surging through her veins.
Matt took a deep breath, trying to calm himself. He looked for the dog but it had slipped into the next field. He thought for a moment he glimpsed a grey head behind the hedgerow and thought of the hatchback earlier.
“Are you OK?” Charlie reached out to touch his arm, but drew back before she made contact.
“I’m fine. We don’t have much luck with livestock, do we?” said Matt, regaining his composure.
“That’s putting it mildly. I can’t believe that dog just went for you, though.”
“Yeah! Still, we survived. Now let’s get what we came for.”
Charlie laughed at his single-mindedness, but she admired it too.
“Where’s the spot?”
Matt checked his phone again and took a few steps. “Here. Time for a picture?”
“Of your feet again?”
“Of course. We may be the only people to have visited two phantom towns!”
“Oh, stop the presses!”
The phone made a beeping sound.
“You are not going to believe this,” he said. “My wifi sniffer says there’s a hotspot.”
“You are joking, right?”
They both looked around them. There was no village hall. No houses. Just visible on the other side of the road where they had parked was the fence that marked the Army base perimeter but, bar the tiny gatehouse, there were no buildings nearby.
“You’re telling me the ants have broadband?” said Charlie.
“Or the seagulls. The network ID is ‘Be mi secret’, with the ‘my’ spelt M-I. Cryptic.”
“Wait. What did you say this phantom town was called?”
“Ibemcester.”
“I think I smell an anagram again.” Charlie pulled out her own mobile and typed into a notepad app. “Yep,” she confirmed. “It is. Which means that the password is going to be an anagram again too.”
“Can you find me some options?”
Charlie focused on her phone for a while, then groaned.
“There are 230 potential answers.”
“Oh, dear God.”
Charlie looked up at the sky, at the grey clouds and darkness looming in the west.
“It’s going to rain in a minute.”
“Good job the car’s not far away.”
Charlie grimaced and started reeling off possible anagrams.
“Scribe Meet.”
“No.”
“Ember Cities.”
“Poetic, but no.”
“Be mice rest.”
“Poor mice. No.”
“We got lucky in Argleton,” said Matt, half an hour later.
“We clearly did. Crib see met.”
“Nope. Is that drizzle I feel?”
“Yeah. Bite cremes. As in for mosquitoes, not kinky stuff with dairy products.”
“I could kill a creme egg right now. But still, no.”
“Re me bisect.”
“‘Re’ isn’t a word.”
“Yes it is, according to this site.”
“Oh! It is! We’re in! Right, time to upload.”
“I can’t believe we went through all that just to save you pennies on your data bill.”
“You know as well as I do that you can’t resist a good puzzle!”
Matt positioned himself squarely on the co-ordinates and snapped a picture of his feet, semi-obscured by wet grass. He started the picture uploading.
“Do you think there’s something more going on?” asked Charlie.
“What do you mean?”
“Well, there was wifi at Argleton. There’s wifi here. That doesn’t just happen by accident. Someone set it up. They must have had a reason.”
“It’s a geolocation game. A mate of mine ran one once. Some of us hid clues in our blogs and once you’d found and solved them all, you had a set of co-ordinates to plot on a map.”
“And what did the co-ordinates reveal?”
“The pins drew a giant penis in GeoMaps.”
“That was it?”
“He had a tight budget! Besides, it was more of a proof of concept. Anyway, that was a few years ago now, so someone was bound to do something more intricate. And this is obviously it.”
“I wouldn’t call this intricate as much as a bit bloody obscure, given that as far as I’m aware, no one else knows Ibemcester exists.”
“Oh dear,” Matt said, “that was a raindrop I felt just there.”
“Yeah. We’d better get going.”
“Dammit, this picture is still uploading.”
“It can’t be. It’s just not that big.”
“Slow as a wet weekend, this connection. Probably the router is hidden away in the hedge by the roadside.”
“Either that or it’s just below the surface here.”
Another large splat spread itself across Matt’s forehead. He glanced at the cloud in concern and muttered. His phone made a soft whoooooop noise and he thrust it in his pocket.
“Done!” he said, and the pair made a dash for the car, hoping to beat the rain.
If you want to read Argleton all in one go, download the free ebook now. And why not try The Gates of Balawat or The Lacemaker as well!