Torrential rain was pouring down from a dark, forbidding night sky.
Apart from the dull orange glow of Jane Wilson's dying torch beam, an incoming thunder storm was the only source of light capable of penetrating through the darkness.
It was getting closer.
She could now only count three seconds between the lightning striking across the black clouds and the ground-shaking thunderous boom which followed it.
How had she got herself into this mess?
Jane prided herself on being a very sensible and organised person. In the midst of her family and close friends, she was the one who made the plans for days out and made sure that everything went occurring to plan each time.
If only they could see her now, lost in the middle of the woods with no idea on where she was and no signal on her mobile phone from which to call for help, all with a horrific storm bearing down upon her. They might laugh, most likely becoming concerned as she continued to stumble and slip through the dense woodland that made up most of the New Forest.
But her family and friends were not with her.
Jane was on her own, desperately searching for the only other living soul she knew to be out on such a terrible night. The same person who had brought her here in the first place.
But he had simply disappeared.
"Tom!" She cried out. "Tom, where are you!?"
Part of her was still angry at her boyfriend. Mostly it was due to there being little doubt as far as Jane was concerned, that when he did eventually reappear, he would have some stupid excuse for where he had been, along with his usual silly grin plastered across his face.
Yet, his boyish charms were one of the many things she loved about Tom Richardson. He was tall, strong and extremely good looking with thick blond hair and a tight behind that turned many female heads wherever they went.
Jane too didn't do such a bad job herself in capturing the attention of the opposite sex.
Slender and red-headed, she was not unattractive and often had to pretend not to notice when men stared after her as she walked down the street or up to a bar to order a drink.
But if she had to choose just one downside concerning her boyfriend, aside from dragging her to this godforsaken woods. It was that his job as a chartered accountant meant that he worked well beyond Jane's hours as a human resources administrator.
"We need some time together, just you and me." Tom had announced one Saturday afternoon. "Don't you think so?"
He was sitting at the dinning room table, half hidden away amongst the considerable pile of spreadsheets and paperwork which would always follow him home from work almost every evening and weekend.
"Yes, that would be nice."
Sat curled up on the sofa with a cup of tea in one hand and the latest issue of Vogue in the other, Jane had barely bothered to give the idea much thought.
Every few weeks for a while now, Tom had either insisted that he was going to start cutting his hours down or that he would try moving to a different firm. More recently, however, he had been mentioning the idea of them going away together on a weekend break.
"Let's do it then. Next weekend."
Jane had only agreed to keep him in a good mood and avoid another argument about his work. Yes, he complained about it, but she knew that he would never be happy doing anything else.
It was only when she returned home from the office the following Friday evening and saw two small suitcases sat at the bottom of the stairs did it occur to her that Tom had actually been serious about it this time.
"Where are we going?" She asked, beaming at him as the Ford Focus reversed out of the driveway.
"Ah, it's a surprise."
Jane immediately began envisioning a cottage in the Cotswolds, or even a mini break to Paris if Tom was hoping to impress her. But as they joined the M4 and drove away from the sprawling mass of London, she realised that they were traveling south-west and towards the south coast.
"Tom, where are we going?" She asked again as they passed Basingstoke and carried on down the M3.
"You'll just have to wait and see." He replied, smiling at her teasingly. "Hopefully it won't be too dark by the time we get there."
It was late February and the sun was already beginning to sink towards the horizon. In another hour it would have vanished completely. But that wasn't going to be a problem, was it? Surely, Jane thought, they were staying somewhere civilised, even if it was out in the countryside?
The short answer was no, they were not. Tom had chosen camping in the middle of the New Forest.
He'd brought everything with them, including a gas stove, torches, sleeping bags, clothing, food and a modest two-man tent that Jane had long since assumed he had disposed of for lack of use.
"We can't just camp here." She told him as he went about setting everything up. "This could be private property."
"Nope, I've checked the map. There's nothing around for miles. Well, nothing except for us and the ponies."
As much as Jane hated the idea of being in the middle of nowhere with no phone signal and nobody else around for miles, she could not bring herself to voice her concerns about the situation.
Tom looked so happy, securing the guy ropes and warming up the kettle over the little camping stove. He soon even began to attempt building a small campfire for them to huddle around against the bitter cold of the wintery night. It was just them, alone together and without the stresses of work hovering over them like a persistent dark cloud.
"Okay, then." She eventually agreed. "As long we don't get into any trouble."
Despite that only being three hours ago, Jane found herself now wishing for nothing more than to be able to go back in time and order him to turn the car around the moment they had pulled up.
Why? Why had she agreed to this!?
She had reached the edge of the woods now, having followed the direction Tom had gone off in search of firewood two hours previously. Stretched out before her was open countryside that she already knew from the map would go on for miles before any form of civilisation would be chanced upon.
Where could he have gone? How long did it take to collect firewood? Something must have happened. Something...
A loud, high pitched whinny pierced through the darkness and nearly gave Jane a heart attack.
She relaxed only when she heard the repetitive thudding beat of hooves running along the sodden ground. The incoming storm was scaring some of the wild horses that roamed this part of southern England.
Another lighting bolt flashed across the sky and quite suddenly, as if she'd been struck by it, she realised that she was standing under a very tall tree in the middle of a thunderstorm.
The fields ahead of her weren't a much better prospect. But Jane had studied the map Tom had brought with them. She had wanted to make sure that they weren't going to be woken up in the early hours of the morning by a very angry farmer telling them to get off his land.
There was a small cave less than two miles away from here.
On the map it was no bigger than her thumbnail, but it would in real life perhaps be big enough to crawl into until the storm passed. It was certainly worth a try. Perhaps Tom had gone there too, and was there right now. At the very least it was closer to her than her tent was, and would most likely prove to be a much more sturdier shelter.
With a new found sense of purpose, Jane stepped out of the woods and began making her way across the fields.
It was by sheer luck that she chanced upon the entrance of the cave. A well timed lighting strike briefly illuminated the few slanted slabs of rock which rose up above the ground. Shining her torch inside, Jane could see a small space within that looked habitable.
Crawling inside, and fearing more than once that she would get stuck between the roof and the muddy ground, she quickly discovered that the space inside was not as cramped as it had first appeared to be from the outside.
A large round hole extended the cave far beyond the first cavern Jane was now sitting in, and what lay beyond it continued deep enough into the earth that her torch beam did not extend far enough to see what lay ahead of her.
But though it was just a big, damp gap in the rock, there something not quite right about it.
The cave's entrance had been uneven and weatherbeaten. It had been formed and worn into its current shape by hundreds of years of wind and rain. This second opening, however, was perfectly circular and looked as though it had been created yesterday.
Examining it in closer detail, the very obvious and terrible truth struck Jane as quickly as if she'd been struck by the lighting that was rumbling overhead just outside of the cave.
The hole had been made yesterday, or very recently at least.
Huge claw marks ran deep along each side of the wall, giving a clue as to what had made such easy work of the slicing through the gravelly soil. Following them with the light from her torch, Jane could trace them upwards towards the roof as they dragged along the...
A low, menacing growl echoed back down in response and she realised in that moment that she was no longer alone. But it wasn't Tom that had joined her. Looking up, Jane saw it. Beyond her imagination, worse than her darkest nightmares, she opened her mouth to scream.
But against the ranging storm outside, her cries went unheard.