The Best Horror of the Year. Volume 4

THE MORAINE Simon Bestwick

The mist hit us suddenly. One moment we had the peak in sight; the next, the white had swallowed up the crags and was rolling down towards us.

“Shit,” I said. “Head back down.”

For once, Diane didn’t argue.

Trouble was, it was a very steep climb. Maybe that was why we’d read nothing about this mountain in the guidebooks. Some locals in the hotel bar the night before had told us about it. They’d warned us about the steepness, but Diane liked the idea of a challenge. All well and good, but now it meant we had to descend very slowly; one slip and you’d go down the mountainside, arse over apex.

That was when I saw the faint desire-line that led off, almost at right angles to the main path, running sideways and gently downwards.

“There, look,” I said, pointing. “What do you reckon?”

Diane hesitated, glancing down the main path then up at the fast-falling mist. “Let’s try it.”

So we did.

“Look out,” I said. Diane was lagging a good four or five yards behind me. “Faster.”

“I’m going as fast as I bloody can, Steve.”

I didn’t rise to the bait, just turned and jogged on. The gentler slope meant we could run, but even so, we weren’t fast enough. Everything went suddenly white.

“Shit,” Diane said. I reached out for her hand — she was just a shadow in the wall of white vapour — and she took it and came closer. The mist was cold, wet and clinging, like damp cobwebs.

“What now?” Diane said. She kept her voice level, but I could tell it wasn’t easy for her. And I couldn’t blame her.

Don’t be fooled by Lakeland’s picture-postcard scenery; its high mountains and blue tarns, the boats on Lake Windermere, the gift shops and stone-built villages. You come here from the city to find the air’s fresher and cleaner, and when you look up at night you see hundreds, thousands more stars in the sky because there’s no light pollution. But by the same token, fall on a slope like this and there’ll be no-one around, and your mobile won’t get a signal. And if a mist like this one comes down and swallows you up and you don’t know which way to go — it doesn’t take that long, on a cold October day, for hypothermia to set in. These fells and dales claimed lives like ours each year.

I took a deep breath. “I think…”

“You OK?” she asked.

“I’m fine.” I was a little nettled she’d thought otherwise; she was the one who’d sounded in need of reassurance, but I wasn’t going to start bickering now. It occurred to me — at the back of my head, and I’d have denied it outright if anyone had suggested it to me — that this might be a blessing in disguise; if I could stay calm and lead us to safety, I could be a hero in her eyes. “We need to get to some lower ground.”

“Yes, I know,” she said, as if I’d pointed out the stupidly obvious. Well, perhaps I had. I was just trying to clarify the situation. Alright, I wanted to impress her, to look good. But I wanted to do the right thing as well. Honestly.

So I pointed down the trail — the few feet of it we could see where it disappeared into the mist. “Best off keeping on. Keep our heads and go slowly.”

“Yes, I worked that bit out as well.” I recognised her tone of voice; it was the one she used to take cocky students down a peg. There’d been a time when I used to slip into her lectures, even though I knew nothing, then or now, about Geology; I just liked hearing her talk about her favoured subject. I couldn’t remember ever seeing her in any of my lectures — not that she was interested in Music. Maybe it had never been what I’d thought it was. Maybe it had never been for either of us.

Not an idea I liked, but one I’d kept coming back to far too often lately. As had Diane. Hence this trip, which was looking less and less like a good idea all the time. We’d spent our honeymoon here; I suppose we’d hoped to recapture something or other, but there’s no magic in places. Only people, and precious little of that; less and less the older you get.

And none of that was likely to get us safely out of here. “OK then,” I said. “Come on.”

Diane caught the back of my coat and pulled. I wheeled to face her and swayed, off-balance. Loose scree clattered down into the mist; the path had grown rockier underfoot. She caught my arm and steadied me. I yanked it free, thoroughly pissed off. “What?”

“Steve, we’re still walking.”

“I noticed. Well, actually, we’re not just now, since you just grabbed me.”

She folded her arms. “We’ve been walking nearly twenty minutes.” I could see she was trying to stop her teeth chattering. “And I don’t think we’re much closer to ground level. I think we might be a bit off course.”

I realised my teeth had started chattering too. It was hard to be sure, but I thought she might have a point; the path didn’t look like it was sloping down any longer. If it’d levelled off, we were still halfway up the damned mountain. “Shit.”

I felt panic threatening, like a small hungry animal gnawing away inside my stomach, threatening to tear its way up through my body if it let it. I wouldn’t. Couldn’t. Mustn’t. If we panicked we were stuffed.

At least we hadn’t come completely unprepared. We had Kendal Mint Cake and a thermos of hot tea in our backpacks, which helped, but they could only buy a little more time. We either got off this mountain soon, or we never would.

We tried our mobiles, but it was an exercise; there was no reception out here. They might as well have been bits of wood. I resisted the temptation to throw mine away.

“Should’ve stayed on the main path,” Diane said. “If we’d taken it slow we’d have been OK.”

I didn’t answer. She glanced at me and rolled her eyes.

“What?”

“Steve, I wasn’t having a go at you.”

“Fine.”

“Not everything has to be about that.”

“I said, fine.”

But she wouldn’t leave it. “All I said was that we should’ve stuck to the main path. I wasn’t saying this was all your fault.”

“Okay.”

“I wasn’t. If I’d seen that path I would’ve probably done the same thing. It looked like it’d get us down faster.”

“Right.”

“I’m just saying, looking back, we should’ve gone the other way.”

“Okay. Alright. You’ve made your point.” I stood up. A sheep bleated faintly. “Can we just leave it now?”

“Okay.” I saw her do the eye roll again, but pretended not to. “So now what? If we backtrack…”

“Think we can make it?”

“If we can get back to the main path, we should be able to find our way back from there.”

If we were very lucky, perhaps; our hotel was a good two miles from the foot of this particular peak, and chances were the mist would be at ground level too. Even off the mountain we’d be a long way from home and dry, but it seemed the best choice on offer. If only we’d taken it sooner; we might not have heard the dog bark.

But we did.

We both went still. Diane brushed her dark hair back from her eyes and looked past me into the mist. I looked too, but couldn’t see much. All I could see was the rocky path for a few feet ahead before it vanished into the whiteout.

The sheep bleated again. A few seconds later, the dog barked.

I looked at Diane. She looked back at me. A sheep on its own meant nothing — most likely lost and astray, like us. But a dog — a dog most likely had an owner.

“Hello?” I called into the mist. “Hello?”

“Anybody down there?” Diane called.

“Hello?” A voice called back.

“Thank god for that,” Diane whispered.

We started along the rattling path, into the mist. “Hello?” called the voice. “Hello?”

“Keep shouting,” I called back, and it occurred to me that we were the ones who sounded like rescuers. Maybe we’d found another fell-walker, caught out in the mists like us. I hoped not. What with the dog barking as well, I was pinning my hopes on a shepherd out here rounding up a lost sheep, preferably a generously-disposed one with a warm, nearby cottage complete with a fire and a kettle providing hot cups of tea.

Scree squeaked and rattled underfoot as we went. I realised the surface of the path had turned almost entirely into loose rock. Not only that, but it was angling sharply down after all. Diane caught my arm. “Careful.”

“Yeah, okay, I know.” I tugged my arm free and tried to ignore the long sigh she let out behind me.

The mist cleared somewhat as we reached the bottom. We could see between twenty-five and thirty yards ahead, which was a vast improvement, although the whiteout still completely hid everything beyond that point. The path led down into a sort of shallow ravine between our peak and its neighbour. The bases of the two steep hillsides sloped gently downwards to a floor about ten yards wide. It was hard to be certain as both the floor and those lower slopes were covered in a thick layer of loose stone fragments.

The path we’d followed petered out, or more into accurately disappeared into that treacherous surface. Two big, flat-topped boulders jutted out of the scree, one about twenty yards down the ravine floor, the other about fifteen yards on from that, at the mouth of a gully that gaped in the side of our peak.

The mist drifted. I couldn’t see any sign of man or beast. “Hello?” I called.

After a moment, there was a click and rattle somewhere in the ravine. Rock, pebbles, sliding over one another, knocking together.

“Bollocks,” I said.

“Easy,” Diane said. “Looks like we’ve found some low ground anyway.”

“That doesn’t mean much. We’ve lost our bearings.”

“There’s somebody around here. We heard them. Hello?” She shouted the last — right down my earhole, it felt like.

“Ow.”

“Sorry.”

“Forget it.”

There was another click and rattle of stone. And the voice called out “Hello?” again.

“There,” said Diane. “See?”

“Yeah. Okay.”

There was a bleat, up and to our left. I looked and sure enough there was the sheep we’d heard, except it was more of a lamb, picking its unsteady way over the rocks on the lower slopes of the neighbouring peak.

“Aw,” said Diane. “Poor little thing.” She’s one of those who goes all gooey over small furry animals. Not that it stops her eating them; I was nearly tempted to mention the rack of lamb in red wine jus she’d enjoyed so much the night before. Nearly.

The lamb saw us, blinked huge dark eyes, bleated plaintively again.

In answer, there were more clicks and rattles, and an answering bleat from further down the ravine. The lamb shifted a bit on its hooves, moving sideways, and bleated again.

After a moment, I heard the rocks click again, but softly this time. It lasted longer too, this time. Almost as if something was moving slowly, as stealthily as the noisy terrain allowed. The lamb was still, looking silently up the ravine. I looked too, trying to see past where the scree faded into the mist.

The rocks clicked softly, then were silent. And then a dog barked, twice.

The lamb tensed but was still.

Click click click, went the rocks, and the dog barked again.

The lamb bleated. A long silence.

Diane’s fingers had closed round my arm. I felt her draw breath to speak, but I turned and shushed her, fingers to her lips. She frowned; I touched my finger back to my own lips and turned to look at the lamb again.

I didn’t know why I’d done all that, but somehow knew I’d had to. A moment later we were both glad of it.

The click of shifting rocks got louder and faster, almost a rustle, like grass parting as something slid through it. The lamb bleated and took a few tottering steps back along the slope. Pebbles clattered down. The rock sounds stopped. I peered into the mist, but I couldn’t see anything. Then the dog barked again. It sounded very close now. More than close enough to see, but the ravine floor was empty. I looked back at the lamb. It was still. It cocked its head.

A click of rocks, and something bleated.

The lamb bleated back.

Rocks clattered again, deafeningly loud, and Diane made a strangled gasp that might have been my name, her hand clutching my arm painfully, and pointed with her free hand.

The ravine floor was moving. Something was humped beneath the rocks, pushing them up as it went so they clicked and rattled in its wake. It was like watching something move underwater. It raced forward, arrowing towards the lamb.

The lamb let out a single terrified bleat and tried to turn away, but it never stood a chance. The humped shape under the scree hurtled towards it, loose stone rattling like dice in a shaken cup, and then rocks sprayed upwards like so much kicked sand where the lamb stood. Its bleat became a horrible squealing noise — I’d no idea sheep could make sounds like that. The shower of rubble fell back to earth. The lamb kept squealing. I could only see its head and front legs; the rest was buried under the rock. The front legs kicked frantically and the head jerked about, to and fro, the lips splaying back horribly from the teeth as it squealed out its pain. And then a sudden, shocking spray of blood spewed out from under the collapsing shroud of rocks like a scarlet fan. Diane clapped a hand to her mouth with a short, shocked cry. I think I might have croaked ‘Jesus’, or something along those lines, myself.

The lamb’s squeals hit a new, jarring crescendo that hurt the ears, like nails on a blackboard, then choked and cut off. Scree clattered and hissed down the slope and came to rest. The lamb lay still. Its fur was speckled red with blood; its eyes already looked fixed and unblinking, glazing over. The rocks above and around it glistened.

With any luck it was beyond pain. I hoped so, because in the next moment the lamb’s forequarters were yanked violently, jerked further under the rubble, and in the same instant the scree seemed to surge over it. The heaped loose rock jerked and shifted a few times, rippled slightly and was still. Even the stones splashed with blood were gone, rolled under the surface and out of sight. A few glistening patches remained, furthest out from where the lamb had been, but otherwise there was no sign that it’d even existed.

“Fuck.” I definitely said it this time. “Oh fucking hell.”

There was a moment of silence; I could hear Diane drawing breath again to speak. And then there was that now-familiar click and rattle as something moved under the scree. And from where the lamb had been a voice, a low, hollow voice called “Hello?”

Diane put her hand over my mouth. “Stay quiet,” she whispered.

“I know that,” I whispered back, muffled by her hand.

“It hunts by sound,” she whispered. “Must do. Vibration through the rocks.”

There was a slight, low hump where the lamb had been killed; you had to look hard to see it, and know what it was you were trying to spot. A soft clicking sound came from it. Rock on rock.

“It’s under the rocks,” she whispered.

“I can see that.”

“So if we can get back up onto solid ground, we should be okay.”

“Should.”

She gave me an irritated look. “Got any better ideas?”

“Okay. So we head back?”

“Hello?” called the voice again.

“Yes,” whispered Diane. “And very, very slowly, and carefully and quietly.”

I nodded.

The rocks clicked and shifted, softly. Diane raised one foot, moved it upslope, set it slowly, gently down again. Then the other foot. She turned and looked at me, then reached out and took my hand. Or I took hers, as you prefer.

I followed her up the slope. We climbed in as near silence as we could manage, up towards the ravine’s entrance, towards the solidity of the footpath. Rocks slid and clicked underfoot. As if in answer, the bloodied rocks where the lamb had died clicked too, knocking gently against one another as something shifted under them.

“Hello?” I heard again as we climbed. And then again: “Hello?”

“Keep going,” Diane whispered.

The rocks clicked again. With a loud rattle, a stone bounced down to the ravine floor. “John?” This time it was a woman’s voice. Scottish, by the accent. “John?”

“Fucking hell,” I muttered. Louder than I meant to and louder than I should have, because the voice sounded again. “John? John?”

Diane gripped my hand so tight I almost cried out. For a moment I wondered if that was the idea— make me cry out, then let go and run, leave the unwanted partner as food for the thing beneath the rocks while she made her getaway, kill two birds with one stone. But it wasn’t, of course.

“Shona?” This time the voice was a man’s, likewise Scottish-accented. “Shona, where are ye?”

Neither of us answered. A cold wind blew. I clenched my teeth as they tried to start chattering again. I heard the wind whistle and moan. Shrubs flapped and fluttered in the sudden gale and the surrounding terrain became a little clearer, though not much. Then the wind dropped again, and a soft, cold whiteness began to drown the dimly-glimpsed outlines of trees and higher ground again.

Stones clicked. A sheep’s bleat sounded. Then a cow lowed.

Diane tugged my hand. “Come on,” she said, “let’s go.”

The dog barked two, three times as we went, sharp and sudden, startling me a little and making me sway briefly for balance. I looked at Diane, smiled a little, let out a long breath.

We were about nine feet from the top when a deafening roar split the silence apart. I don’t know what the hell it was, what kind of animal sound — but even Diane cried out, and I stumbled, and sending a mini-landslide slithering back down the slope.

The broken slate heaved and rattled, and then surged as something flew across, under, through the ravine floor towards us.

“Run!” I heard Diane yell, and I tried, we both did, but the shape was arrowing past us. We saw that at the last moment; it was hurtling past us to the edge of the scree, the point where it gave way to the path.

Diane was already starting back down, pushing me behind her, when the ground erupted in a shower of stone shrapnel. I thought I glimpsed something, only for the briefest of moments, moving in the hail of broken stone, but when it fell back into place there was no sign of anything — except, if you looked, a low humped shape.

Diane shot past me, still gripping my hand, pelting along the ravine. Behind us I heard the stones rattle as the thing gave chase. Diane veered towards the nearest of the boulders — it was roughly the size of a small car, and looked like pretty solid ground.

“Come on!” Diane leapt — pretty damned agile for a woman in her late thirties who didn’t lead a particularly active life — onto the boulder, reached back for me. “Quick!”

The shape was hurtling towards us, slowing as it neared us. Its bow-wave of loose stones thickened, widened; it was gathering speed. I could see what was coming; I grabbed Diane and pushed her down flat on the boulder. She didn’t fight, so I’m guessing she’d reached the same conclusions as me.

There was a muffled thud and the boulder shook. For a moment I thought we’d both be pitched onto the scree around it, but the boulder held, too deeply rooted to be torn loose. Rocks rained and pattered down on us; I tucked my head in.

I realised I was clinging on to Diane, and that she was doing to the same to me. I opened my eyes and looked at her. She looked back. Neither of us said anything.

Behind us, there were clicks and rattles. I turned slowly, sliding off Diane. We both sat up and watched.

There was a sort of crater in the layer of loose rocks beside the boulder, where the thing had hit. The scree at the bottom was heaving, shifting, rippling. The crater walls trembled and slid. After a moment, the whole lot collapsed on itself. The uneven surface rippled and heaved some more, finally stopped when it looked as it had before — undisturbed, except of course for the low humped shape beneath it.

Click went the stones as it shifted in its tracks, taking stock. Click click as it moved and began inching its way round the boulder. “John? Shona? Hello?” All emerged from the shifting rocks, each of those different voices. Then the bleat. Then the roar. I swear I felt the wind of it buffet me.

“Christ,” I said.

The rocks clicked, softly, as the humped shape began moving, circling slowly round the boulder. “Christ,” my own voice answered me. Then another voice called, a child’s. “Mummy?” Click click click. “Shona?” Click. “Oh, for God’s sake, Marjorie,” came a rich, fruity voice which sounded decidedly pre-Second World War. If not the First. “For God’s sake.”

Click. Then silence. The wind keened down the defile. Fronds of mist drifted coldly along. Click. A high, thin female voice, clear and sweet, began singing ‘The Ash Grove.’ Very slowly, almost like a dirge. “Down yonder green valley where streamlets meander…”

Diane clutched my wrist tightly.

Click, and the song stopped, as if a switch had been thrown. Click click. And then there was a slow rustling and clicking as the shape began to move away from the boulder, moving further and further back. Diane gripped me tighter. The mist was thickening and the shape went slowly, so that it was soon no longer possible to be sure exactly where it was. Then the last click died away and there was only the silence and the wind and the mist.

Time passed.

“It’s not gone far,” Diane whispered. “Just far enough that we’ve got some freedom of movement. It wants us to make a move, try to run for it. It knows it can’t get us here.”

“But we can’t stay here either,” I pointed out in the same whisper. My teeth were already starting to chatter again, and I could see hers were too. “We’ll bloody freeze to death.”

“I know. Who knows, maybe it does too. Either way, we’ll have to make a break for it, and sooner rather than later. If we leave it much longer we won’t stand a chance.”

“What the hell do you think it is?” I asked.

She scowled at me. “You expect me to know? I’m a geologist, not a biologist.”

“Don’t suppose you’ve got the number for a good one on your mobile?”

She stopped and stared at me. “We’re a pair of fucking idiots,” she said, and dug around in the pocket of her jeans. Out came her mobile. “Never even thought of it.”

“There’s no signal.”

“There wasn’t before. It’s worth a try.”

Hope flared briefly, but not for long; it was the same story as before.

“Okay,” I said. “So we can’t phone a friend. Let’s think about this then. What do we know about it?”

“It lives under the rocks,” Diane said. “Moves under them.”

“Likes to stay under them, too,” I said. “It was right up against us before. That far from us. It could’ve attacked us easily just by coming up out from under, but it didn’t. It’d rather play it safe and do the whole waiting game thing.”

“So maybe it’s weak, if we can get it out of the rocks. Vulnerable.” Diane took off her glasses, rubbed her large eyes. “Maybe it’s blind. It seems to hunt by sound, vibration.”

“A mimic. That’s something else. It’s a mimic, like a parrot.”

“Only faster,” she said. “It mimicked you straight away, after hearing you once.”

“Got a good memory for voices, too,” I whispered back. “Some of those voices…”

“Yes, I think so too. And that roar it made. How long’s it been since there was anything roaming wild in this country, could make a noise like that?”

“Maybe a bear,” I offered, “or one of the big sabre-toothed cats.”

Diane looked down at the scree. “Glacial till,” she said.

“What?”

“Sorry. The stones here. It’s what’s called glacial till — earth that’s been compressed into rock by the pressure of the glaciers coming through here.” She looked up and down the ravine.

“So?”

The look she gave me was equal parts hurt and anger. “So… nothing much, I suppose.”

Wind blew.

“I’m sorry.”

She shrugged. “S’okay.”

“No. Really.”

She gave me a smile, at least, that time. Then frowned, looked up at the way we’d come in — had it only been in the last hour? “Look at that. You can see it now.”

“See what?”

She pointed. “This is a moraine.”

“A what?”

“Moraine. It’s the debris — till and crushed rock — a glacier leaves behind when it melts. All this would’ve been crushed up against the mountain-sides for god knows how long…”

I remembered Diane telling me about the last Ice Age, how there’d have been two miles of ice above the cities we’d grown up in. How far down would all this have been? And would—could—anything have lived in it?

I was willing to bet any of our colleagues in the Biology Department would have snorted at the idea. But even so… life is very tenacious, isn’t it? It can cling on in places you’d never expect it to.

Maybe some creatures had survived down here in the Ice Age, crawling and slithering between the gaps in the crushed rock. And in every food chain, something’s at the top — something that hunted blindly by vibration and lured by imitation. Something that had survived the glaciers’ melting, even prospered from it, growing bigger and fatter on bigger, fatter prey.

The lost lamb had saved us by catching its attention. Without that, we’d have had no warning and would’ve followed that voice — no doubt belonging to some other, long-dead victim — into the heart of the killing ground.

Click click click, went the rocks in the distance, as the creature shifted and then grew still.

And Diane leant close to me, and breathed in my ear: “We’re going to have to make a move.”

To our left was the way we’d come, the scree-thick path sloping up before blending with the moraine. Twenty yards. It might as well have been ten miles.

The base of the peak was at our backs. It wasn’t sheer, not quite, but it may as well have been. The only handholds were the occasional rock or root; even if the fall didn’t kill you, you’d be too stunned or injured to stand a chance. The base of the opposite peak — even if we could have got past the creature — was no better.

To our right, the main body of the ravine led on, thick with rubble, before vanishing into the mist. Running along that would be nothing short of suicide, but there was still the gully we’d seen before. From what I could see the floor of it was thickly littered with rubble, but it definitely angled upwards, hopefully towards higher ground of solid earth and grass, where the thing from the moraine couldn’t follow. Better still, there was that second boulder at the gully mouth, as big and solidly rooted-looking as this one, if not bigger. If we could make it that far — and we might, with a little luck — we had a chance to get out through the gully.

I looked at the boulder and back to Diane. She was still studying it. “What do you reckon?” I breathed.

Click click click, came softly, faintly, gently in answer.

Diane glanced sideways. “The bastard thing’s fast,” she whispered back. “It’ll be a close thing.”

“We could distract it,” I suggested. “Make a noise to draw it off.”

“Like what?”

I nodded at the rocks at the base of the boulder. “Pick a spot and lob a few of them at it. Hopefully it’ll think it’s another square meal.”

She looked dubious. “S’pose it’s better than nothing.”

“If you’ve got any better ideas.”

She looked hurt rather than annoyed. “Hey…”

“I’m sorry.” I was, too. I touched her arm. “We’ve just got to make that boulder.”

“And what then?”

“We’ll think of something. We always do.”

She forced a smile.

Reaching down to pick up the bits of rubble and rock wasn’t pleasant, mainly because the thing had gone completely silent and there was no knowing how close it might be now. Every time my hands touched the rocks I was convinced they’d explode in my face before something grabbed and yanked me under them.

But the most that happened was that once, nearby, the rocks clicked softly and we both went still, waiting, for several minutes before reaching down again after a suitable pause. At last we were ready with half a dozen good-sized rocks apiece.

“Where do we throw them?” Diane whispered. I pointed to the footpath; we’d be heading, after all, in the opposite direction. She nodded.

“Ready?”

Another nod.

I threw the first rock. We threw them all, fast, within a few seconds, and they cracked and rattled on the slate. The slate nearby rattled and hissed as something moved.

“Go,” Diane said; we jumped off the boulder and ran for the gully mouth.

Diane’d often commented on my being out of condition, so I was quite pleased that I managed to outpace her. I overtook easily, and was soon a good way ahead. The boulder was two more strides away, three at most, and then—

The two sounds came together; a dismayed cry from Diane, and then that hiss and click and rattle of displaced scree, rising to a rushing roar as a bow wave of broken rocks rose up behind Diane and bore down on her.

I screamed at her to run, covering the rest of the distance to the boulder and leaping onto it, turning, holding my hands out to her, as if that was going to help. But what else could I have done? Running back to her wouldn’t have speeded her up, and—

Oh. Yes. I could’ve tried to draw it off. Risked my own life, even sacrificed it, to save hers. Yes, I could’ve done that. Thanks for reminding me.

It got to her as I turned. There was an explosion of rubble, a great spray of it, and she screamed. I threw up my hands to protect my face. A piece of rock glanced off my forehead and I stumbled, swayed, losing balance, but thank God I hadn’t ditched my backpack — the weight dragged me back and I fell across the boulder.

Rubble rained and pattered about us as I stared at Diane. She’d fallen face-down on the ground, arms outstretched. Her pale hands, splayed out on the earth, were about three feet from the boulder.

I reached out a hand to her, leaning forward as far as I dared. I opened my mouth to speak her name, and then she lifted her head and looked up. Her glasses were askew on her pale face, and one lens was cracked. In another moment I might have jumped off the boulder and gone to her, but then she screamed and blood sprayed from the ground where her feet were covered by a sheet of rubble. Her back arched; a fingernail split as she clawed at the ground. Red bubbled up through the stones, like a spring.

Diane was weeping with pain; she tried to twist round to see what was being done to her, but jerked, shuddered and cried out before she could complete it. She twisted back to face me, lips trembling, still crying.

I leant forward, hands outstretched, but couldn’t reach. Then I remembered the backpack and struggled out of it, loosening the straps to give the maximum possible slack, gripping one and holding the backpack as far out as I could, so that the other dangled closer to her. “Grab it,” I whispered. “I’ll pull you in.”

She shook her head hard. “No,” she managed at last. “Don’t you get it?”

“What?” We weren’t whispering anymore. Didn’t seem much point. Besides, her voice was ragged with pain.

“It wants you to try. Don’t you see? Otherwise it would’ve dragged me straight under by now.”

I stared at her.

“Steve… it’s using me as bait.” Her face tightened. She bit her lips and fresh tears leaked down her pale cheeks. Her green eyes squeezed shut. When they opened again, they were red and bloodshot. “Oh God. What’s it done to my legs? My feet?”

“I don’t know,” I lied.

“Well, that’s it, don’t you see?” She was breathing deeply now, trying to get the agony under control. “I’ve had it. Won’t get far, even if it did let me go to chase after you. Can’t get at you up there. So stay put.”

“But… but…” Dimly I realised I was crying too. This was my wife. My wife, for Christ’s sake.

Diane forced a smile. “Just stay put. Or try… make a getaway.”

“I’m not leaving you.”

“Yes, you are. It’ll go after you. Might be able… drag myself there.” She nodded at the boulder. “You could go get help. Help me. Might stand a chance.”

I looked at the blood still bubbling up from the stones. She must have seen the expression on my face. “Like that, is it?”

I looked away. “I can try.” My view of the gully was still constricted by my position. I could see the floor of it sloping up, but not how far it ultimately went. If nothing else, I could draw it away from her, give her a chance to get to the boulder.

And what then? If I couldn’t find a way out of the gully? If there wasn’t even a boulder to climb to safety on, I’d be dead and the best Diane could hope for was to bleed to death.

But I owed her a chance of survival, at least.

I put the backpack down, looked into her eyes. “Soon as it moves off, start crawling. Shout me when you’re here. I’ll keep making a racket, try and keep it occupied.”

“Be careful.”

“You too.” I smiled at her and refused to look at her feet. We met at University, did I tell you? Did I mention that? A drunken discussion about politics in the Student Union bar. More of an argument really. We’d been on different sides but ended up falling for each other. That pretty much summed up our marriage, I supposed. “Love you,” I managed to say at last.

She gave a tight, buckled smile. “You too,” she said back.

That was never something either of us had said easily. Should’ve known it’d take something like this. “Okay, then,” I muttered. “Bye.”

I took a deep breath, then jumped off the boulder and started to run.

I didn’t look back, even when Diane let out a cry, because I could hear the rattle and rush of slate behind me as I pelted into the gully and knew the thing had let her go — let her go so that it could come after me.

The ground’s upwards slope petered out quite quickly and the walls all around were a good ten feet high, sheer and devoid of handholds, except for at the very back of it. There was an old stream channel — only the thinnest trickle of water made it out now, but I’m guessing it’d been stronger once, because a mix of earth and pebbles, lightly grown over, formed a slope leading up to the ground above. A couple of gnarled trees sprouted nearby, and I could see their roots breaking free of the earth — thick and twisted, easy to climb with. All I had to do was reach them.

But then I noticed something else; something that made me laugh wildly. Only a few yards from where I was now, the surface of the ground changed from a plain of rubble to bare rock. Here and there earth had accumulated and sprouted grass, but what mattered was that there was no rubble for the creature to move under.

I chanced one look behind me, no more than that. It was hurtling towards me, the huge bow-wave of rock. I ran faster, managed the last few steps, and then dived and rolled across blessed solid ground.

Rubble sprayed at me from the edge of the rubble and again I caught the briefest glimpse of something moving in there. I couldn’t put any kind of name to it if I tried, and I don’t think I want to.

The rubble heaved and settled. The stones clicked. I got up and started backing away. Just in case. Click, click, click. Had anything ever got away from it before? I couldn’t imagine anything human doing so, or men would’ve come back here with weapons, to find and kill it. Or perhaps that survivor hadn’t been believed. Click. Click, click. Click, click, click.

Click. A sheep bleated.

Click. A dog barked.

Click. A wolf howled.

Click. A cow lowed.

Click. A bear roared.

Click. “John?”

Click. “Shona? Shona, where are ye?”

Click. “Mummy?”

Click. “Oh, for God’s sake, Marjorie. For God’s sake.”

Click. “Down yonder green valley where streamlets meander…”

Click. “Christ.” My voice. “Christ.”

Click. “Steve? Get help. Help me.” Click. “Steve. Help me.”

I turned and began to run, started climbing. I looked back when I heard stones rattling. I looked back and saw something, a wide shape, moving under the stones and heading away, back towards the mouth of the gully.

“Diane?” I shouted. “Diane?”

There was no answer.

I’ve been walking now, according to my wristwatch, for a good half-hour. My teeth are chattering and I’m tired and all I can see around me is the mist.

Still no signal on the mobile. They can trace your position from a mobile call these days. That’d be helpful. I’ve tried to walk in a straight line, so that if I find help I can just point back the way I came, but I doubt I’ve kept to one.

I tell myself that she must have passed out — passed out from the effort and pain of dragging herself onto that boulder. I tell myself that the cold must have slowed her circulation down to the point where she might still be alive.

I do not think of how much blood I saw bubbling out from under the stones.

I do not think of hypothermia. Not for her. I’m still going, so she still must have a chance there too, surely?

I keep walking. I’ll keep walking for as long as I can believe Diane might still be alive. After that, I won’t be able to go on, because it won’t matter anymore.

I’m crawling, now.

We came out here to see if we still worked, the two of us, under all the clutter and the mess. And it looks like we still did.

There’s that cold comfort, at least.