Fall Down Dead

5

And then the walking group had reached the Downfall. Sophie Pullen shuddered as the air began to grow chill on Kinder Scout, the atmosphere even colder, the sense of foreboding stronger and stronger.

The Downfall was the tallest waterfall in the Peak District, with a hundred-foot drop where the River Kinder tumbled off the edge of the plateau. The rocks below looked like the debris of a massive explosion, hurled across a cleft in the hillside. The path had become a long streak of exposed ground scoured by rainfall. Pools of water lay stained red by the peat.

Yet this was part of the Pennine Way, the national walking trail that ran two hundred and sixty-seven miles all the way to the Scottish border, rerouted from its original path across the plateau because of the erosion from thousands of hiking boots.

On a clear day, the outline of Madwoman’s Stones would stand out clear on the horizon at the eastern edge of the plateau. But it wasn’t clear today. There were no landmarks, no points of reference on the plateau and no way of navigating a route across the featureless moor without a compass.

The track they’d been following seemed to have disappeared, too, and was no more than a flattened trail of soggy ground, barely a sheep track. Everyone’s feet would be wet now.

Sophie broke into a trot and overtook Liam, who grumbled in protest. She was determined to catch up with Nick and the others before she lost contact completely. The burly shoulders of the Goulds came into view, but there was no sign of Faith or Jonathan. Faith was sensible, though. She wouldn’t stray too far. She’d probably only veered away to shepherd her younger brother back to the route. He had a tendency to wander off, as if following a route and destination of his own.

She could hear Darius again now. He was laughing at the fog and calling to Elsa as if he couldn’t see her. The poor woman would be distraught. She stuck to Darius like glue and hated to be parted from him. His joke wouldn’t go down well.

Then she saw Darius and Nick. They’d stopped and were looking vaguely around them.

‘We’re lost, aren’t we?’ she said.

‘Completely,’ agreed Nick.

‘Well, that’s just great.’

‘If we keep walking, we’ll find our way eventually,’ said Darius.

‘Eventually?’ said Sophie. ‘I’d like to get off this mountain today, if you don’t mind.’

Faith Matthew’s red hat and jacket appeared again through the fog. Nick peered over his shoulder towards Sophie and waited for her to reach him. Faith stopped too, and they were both watching her as she stumbled over a rock and splashed into a patch of boggy ground, the peaty water leaking instantly into her boots and soaking her socks.

‘Damn,’ she said.

Sophie felt her cheeks burn, even as her feet became cold and wet. Nick said nothing about her stumble as she shook a clump of mud off her boot.

‘What do you think?’ said Faith, gesturing at the surrounding plateau.

She was speaking to Nick, but he turned away as if he hadn’t heard her.

‘I think there could be anything out there in this fog,’ said Sophie. ‘Or anyone.’

‘I know. It’s a bit scary, isn’t it? I wouldn’t want to be up here on my own.’

‘Sometimes there are worse things than being on your own,’ said Sophie.

They were silent for a moment, listening. The only sound Sophie could hear was the distant crash of water at Kinder Downfall.

Faith had heard it too.

‘If we follow the sound and make our way to the waterfall, surely we’ll know where we are,’ she said.

‘Perhaps you’re right,’ said Sophie.

‘Have you seen those rocks?’ broke in Nick. ‘Did you notice the drop? Do you want to risk wandering off the edge? You’d only need to get a couple of feet too close and you’d be gone.’

Sophie looked at him in surprise. He seemed to be genuinely worried.

‘It’s hard to tell the direction of sound in these conditions anyway,’ he said more calmly. ‘You get an echo. We could be completely misled.’

‘I suppose we could just keep going, then,’ said Faith, and walked away with a glance back over her shoulder.

A few moments later, Sophie heard a distant, echoing yelp and pictured a fox somewhere out there on the desolate moor. Or perhaps it was a pheasant, calling to its mate.

She’d stopped again for a minute to try to get her bearings and suddenly she found herself alone. She looked around, straining her eyes to see through the mist. It swirled around her, forming unrecognisable shapes from the rocks, suggesting movements that didn’t exist, breaking to allow the occasional shaft of sunlight through, then closing into an impenetrable wall again.

Sophie made out a tall figure. Was that Jonathan Matthew? Jonathan was unsuitably dressed for the moors. He was wearing black jeans and a grey jacket with a hood pulled close around his face, almost concealing his blue slouch beanie. They were the wrong colours for these conditions. When he was only a few yards away from her, he merged into the fog and became invisible. But she could see a red jacket standing out brightly in the fog. Who was wearing red? Faith Matthew, of course.

The silence was eerie now, every sound deadened by the blanketing mist. But it wasn’t peaceful. It was a threatening silence.

When Darius appeared from the fog ahead, he was followed closely by Elsa and the two students, Millie and Karina, gleaming ghosts in their white Eco jackets.

‘Hold on,’ he said. ‘Where are the others? Liam Sharpe and the Warburtons. And Jonathan too.’

‘Jonathan went that way.’ Sophie pointed, but Jonathan had vanished from sight. ‘And the rest were just behind us.’

‘No, they weren’t. They dropped back.’

‘They’ll catch up in a minute.’

The group of walkers clustered together now for the first time. Nick and Faith and the Goulds stood around Sophie, while Millie and Karina fidgeted anxiously in the background as they waited behind Darius and Elsa. Even Jonathan had emerged from the mist, watching with a wry smile. But there were still three members missing.

‘They must have got separated. Go back and look for them,’ said Darius finally, looking at Nick.

‘Oh yeah. Then I’ll get lost too. Is that what you want?’

‘Shout for them, then.’

‘We should all shout,’ said Nick. ‘Then they can follow our voices.’

‘Right.’

For a long moment, no one shouted. Sophie could see that none of them wanted to be the first person to break that eerie quietness. It felt like a sacrilege, a violation of the silence that nature had imposed on them.

Sophie took a deep breath and felt a draught of cold, moist air enter her lungs as if she was drowning in a raincloud. Some of the others turned to look at her, Darius with a smile, Nick with an expression of shock or perhaps admiration.

‘Liam!’ she called, her voice cracking on the second syllable. ‘Pat! Sam! This way! We’re over here!’

And then the others began to shout too. The taboo had been broken, the inviolable stillness already shattered by her nervous, wavering cry.

Was that an answering call from deep in the mist? A male voice, she felt sure. Then a second shout, getting nearer. The group redoubled their efforts.

‘This way! Over here!’

The group around Sophie shifted uneasily as a muffled, rhythmic thudding penetrated the silence. Something was coming towards them and getting closer. A curious rustling and a deep panting, like a mysterious beast that existed only in the fog.

At last a figure erupted from the mist, a burst of vibrant orange like a warning signal. Sam Warburton, hobbling up the path as fast as he could go, his rucksack bouncing awkwardly on his shoulders. Sophie could hear his breath rasping in his chest before he got within fifty yards.

‘Sam, what’s wrong? Where’s Pat?’ said Sophie.

Warburton couldn’t get his breath. He staggered as he reached them, and Sophie stretched out a hand to support him. His eyes were panicky, and his chest rose and fell under his waterproof jacket. He was sweating despite the chill in the air, a sheen of perspiration on his forehead and trickling in glittering beads from his temples. His waterproof gleamed with water too. It was as if the mist had settled on him, soaking him with its insidious dankness.

Sophie glanced at the rest of the group. All of them were wet. She’d underestimated the degree of moisture in the atmosphere. This wasn’t just a light mist. They were actually walking through a raincloud.

‘He fell,’ gasped Sam. ‘Liam — he had an accident. He slipped on a wet rock. He’s sprained his ankle, I think, or maybe it’s broken. I can’t tell. He’s in a lot of pain, though.’

Sophie realised that the yelp she’d heard a few minutes ago must have been human. She’d pictured an animal, but instead she’d heard a man’s cry of pain as he became a victim of the moor.

‘Can you lead us back to where he is?’ asked Darius.

Sam looked over his shoulder, an expression of doubt crossing his face.

‘Of course,’ he said, trying to sound confident. ‘We just have to go downhill, don’t we?’

‘What are we going to do when we get there if he’s injured?’ said Nick.

‘Well, I don’t think he’ll be able to walk,’ said Sam.

‘We need to call for help, then.’

‘I’ve tried my phone. I’ve got no signal.’

‘Me neither,’ said Faith, tapping at her phone. ‘We must be in a dead spot.’

After a few minutes of almost aimless stumbling among the rocks, they found an anxious-looking Pat Warburton standing over Liam Sharpe. He lay between two boulders, clutching his leg, his face twisted in pain.

Sophie gazed around the faces of the group, seeking some sign of initiative but seeing only uncertainty. They stood helplessly, their clothes glistening with moisture from the fog, as useless as just one more rock formation frozen in the landscape.

‘Someone should go for help,’ said Darius. He turned to Nick. ‘Find a place on the moor where there’s a signal and call 999 for an ambulance.’

‘How the hell is an ambulance going to get all the way up here?’ said Nick.

‘I don’t know. There must be ways of getting casualties off the moors. A helicopter or something. Go and call.’

‘A helicopter won’t land in these conditions. They won’t be able to see anything. The visibility is too bad.’

‘Why are you still talking about it?’ demanded Darius, glaring at Nick. ‘Just go.’

Nick looked around for support. His eyes met Sophie’s. For a moment, she felt the old closeness between them, which had been drifting away in the chilly air.

‘I’ll come with you, Nick,’ said Sophie. ‘You shouldn’t be on your own out there, in case something else happens.’

Nick nodded and smiled, and held out his hand to support her as she moved towards him over the muddy ground.

Then Theo Gould stepped forward. ‘And we’ll come too. Strength in numbers and all that.’

‘Good,’ said Nick. ‘Besides, we might have different networks on our phones. I’m EE.’

‘My brother and I are both on Vodafone,’ said Gould.

‘I think—’ began Faith doubtfully.

‘Never mind,’ interrupted Sophie. ‘The sooner we get going the better.’

‘Should we go downhill, then? Towards the valley?’

‘Since we’re lost, we won’t know whether we’re going down into the valley or just into another clough with an even bigger hill on the other side.’

‘We’ll just have to try.’

The four of them stood up to leave.

‘And we’ll go another way,’ said Darius.

Nick stared at him. ‘What?’

‘Well, if we’re splitting it up anyway, it would give us a better chance of getting help if we try both directions.’

‘What do you mean, “both directions”? We’re in the middle of the plateau. There are dozens of directions to take.’

Darius looked unfazed. ‘We could try that way.’

He pointed into the fog as if he knew what lay out there, beyond the few feet of visibility.

‘I don’t think it’s a good idea, Darius,’ said Faith.

‘There haven’t been any good ideas from anyone so far, except me.’

Duncan Gould turned towards him.

‘If you find yourself heading onto the plateau, watch out for the lighter-green patches of vegetation,’ he said. ‘That’s wet bog.’

‘We’ll bear it in mind. Elsa will come with me, of course. And Millie and Karina?’

The two girls moved to stand with Darius. The Warburtons hesitated for a moment, then looked at each other and joined Sophie’s party, physically splitting the group into two factions.

‘I’m staying with Liam anyway,’ said Faith.

‘Of course.’ Darius sounded unreasonably relieved, as if that solved everything. ‘You’re a nurse, aren’t you?’

‘It just makes sense for me to be the one who stays.’

In the background, Jonathan had been leaning idly against a rock, as if he’d just paused for a rest or to admire the scenery. He began to sing quietly to himself.

‘Will you shut up, idiot?’ snapped Nick.

Sophie stared at him in surprise. He was in such a bad mood today. It was becoming more and more common. What was making him so tetchy?

‘Whoa,’ said Darius, raising a hand like an Old Testament prophet. ‘Let’s not get agitated, folks. We’re in this together, and we’ll sort it out together. One big family, right?’

He laughed, and Nick scowled at him.

‘You know, I’m not sure it’s a good idea for us to split up,’ said Sam Warburton.

Darius snorted. ‘We’re a bit past that now. You should have thought of it before you trailed behind and lost contact with the group.’

‘It wasn’t our fault,’ said Sam. ‘You left us behind.’

‘I said we should wait for you,’ muttered Nick.

Darius threw back his head and stamped on a lump of peat, which splatted with a loud squelch. ‘Will you all stop arguing about it? Are we going to go for help or not?’

A groan of pain from Liam seemed to settle the discussion. The Goulds and Warburtons began to move away, heading for small tracks that seemed to lead down through the groughs. To Sophie’s amazement, Nick didn’t move.

‘What is it?’ she said.

He didn’t meet her eye. ‘I think I’d better go with Darius’s group.’

She stared at him. What had happened during the last few minutes to change his mind? She couldn’t imagine. It wasn’t the time to argue, though.

‘Whatever you think best.’

Pat Warburton was calling back to her.

‘I’m coming,’ she said.

With a sense of despair, Sophie turned and watched Nick and the rest of the party disappear into the mist behind Darius as he strode in the opposite direction. It seemed to her that instead of going for help they were walking towards trouble.

For a moment, a break in the fog let through a burst of sunlight. And it was then she saw it. Below her on the hillside, a huge grey figure was silhouetted, far bigger than anything human. A rainbow of coloured light seemed to hover round its head like a halo.

Its appearance made Sophie’s breath catch in her throat.

‘What the...?’

But no one else seemed to have noticed it. And the figure was there only for a few seconds before it disappeared in a blur of motion and was gone.