We ran through the tunnel. I wasn’t going to be slow like last time. As we went through a thick blue mist seemed to stick to us. All traces of the time we had spent together started to disappear. Mary’s candle evaporated leaving her stumbling in the gloom. The deer hide clothes and shoes, which had taken so long to make, started to fall apart leaving some of us almost naked.
We stumbled on, back into the earthquake. Lisa did stop and tried to turn back, but Matt grabbed her and pulled her onwards.
Then we were out on the other side. Different blue lights flashed in all directions, their hazy light giving an eerie glow. Sirens wailed and I heard loud shouts. There was a full moorland rescue going on. Not that they had found us. As we looked back, all sign of the tunnel vanished in the mist.
We were grabbed by the rescue team and there were masses of questions. Lots of parents had turned up along with the TV. It was mayhem. Helicopters whirred in the distance. They wrapped us in foil blankets and gave us hot drinks.
I remember asking how long they had been searching for us.
‘All day, love, searching all day,’ had replied a lady handing out tea.
I thought that couldn’t be right. Hadn’t we been away for nearly a year? Now it seemed as though this was the same day we had started the walk. We’d only been missing for a few hours not months. Time seemed to have changed in the tunnel.
Police came with clipboards. Everyone talked at once, asking the same questions: ‘What happened?’, ‘Where are the rest of you?’ as it became obvious that not everyone had been found.
So we told them and of course no one believed a word. They thought we’d invented it – some sort of stupid game. People got really angry.
Miss Tregarthur had been found unconscious. She had been hit by a boulder and whisked off in an ambulance. None of the other walkers had been harmed. It seems a lot of them hadn’t got far enough up the hill to be hit by the earthquake.
We were moved on. Transported to hospital and examined but despite the cuts and grazes from the tunnel no one needed to be kept in for treatment.
More questions followed, not all the police questions were friendly. Eventually we were taken home. The television carried news bulletins from serious looking people talking of terrible events. The newspapers said something had to be done. The news story went on for weeks. Searching went on for months. The earthquake and the mist on a treacherous moor were the only explanations. But no one took any notice of our story and the tunnel.
In time, our life returned to its normal pattern. Slowly I stopped being able to remember what had happened. Small fragments sometimes returned in flashbacks. But brief flashbacks were all I had. Mary and I stuck together.
School started again after the summer holidays. Our friends seemed to think we were strange. From time to time people asked more questions. TV and newspaper reporters often wanted stories. Christmas came and I had strange dreams.
One night I lay in bed. Then I heard sniffing. I felt a cold shiver running up my spine. The door pushed opened, and my dog bounded in and jumped onto my bed. I was just sure that it had been a huge bear pushing at my door.
Miss Tregarthur
-21-
(Epilogue)
‘Jack, we should go and see her,’ said Mary.
We were walking home from school and I knew she meant Miss Tregarthur. It was almost one year since the moor walk.
Miss Tregarthur had not recovered and had been moved to a nursing home in the West of England. We had to wait several days before we could get away unnoticed. We took the train and walked from the station to the nursing home.
‘Can we see her?’ and Mary explained who we were to the nursing staff.
‘Of course, you can,’ said the nurse. ‘But don’t expect anything – she doesn’t speak at all.’
We went up to Miss Tregarthur’s room.
‘Don’t worry about Smut,’ the nurse called as I opened the door, wondering what she meant.
Miss Tregarthur, bed ridden, lay with eyes closed with an ancient mongrel asleep in a basket on the floor.
‘Miss Tregarthur,’ Mary said from the bedside. ‘It’s Mary and Jack from the school. We want to find out what happened on the moor.’ No response. ‘We want to know why you wanted to take us there. Why did you do it?’ Mary sounded angry. ‘I don’t think we’re going to get any sense from her.’
‘He’s dead, your brother’s dead,’ I blurted out.
Silence. Then Alice Tregarthur’s eyes snapped open. She raised her head, fixed me with a stare and said in a trembling voice, ‘Why did you come back? You weren’t meant to come back.’ She collapsed back onto the pillows, and seemed unconscious.
Smut growled and we prepared to leave. As we opened the door Miss Tregarthur’s voice rang out one last time, stronger now: ‘Go and look under the stone. Then you’ll see. It’ll never end.’
Very early one morning we travelled to the moor.
‘We go that way,’ Mary said, looking up from the map she had brought with us. ‘Along the stream in the valley. I think we stopped for lunch somewhere near a bridge.’
‘Can you see the hill from here?’ I looked over her shoulder. ‘All I seem to remember was a lot of mud.’
‘I think that black mound is where we have to make for.’ Mary pointed again.
The sun shone as it had done at the start of the previous expedition. This time we reached the summit of the hill.
‘Looks like it’s going to fall.’ I pointed at a granite rock that looked dangerously balanced on another.
‘I don’t think so,’ said Mary. ‘It’s been like this for thousands of years.’
‘What are we looking for?’ I said as Mary searched around the stones.
‘No idea.’ Mary turned her head, staring past the hanging stones. ‘But I’ve done this before.’
We searched and found nothing. We started to leave. Then Mary saw another stone nearby.
‘Wait,’ she said as though a memory suddenly came back to her. ‘Dog food,’ she muttered, rolling the stone over and scrabbling in the ground underneath.
A little later, with hands black from the peaty soil, she held up a small package wrapped in something that looked like very old leather – or deer skin – and crumbled to dust, leaving Mary holding a flat piece of stone.
‘It’s a message ...’ she said peering at deep scratches on the stone, ‘... from Jenna.’
I leant over her. ‘But she’s still back there isn’t she ... how ... what does it say?
‘Help – come back – Zach’s not dead.’
- End of Book 1 -
About the Author
This is Alex Mellanby’s first novel, although not his first work of fiction since, as a doctor, he has had many research papers published. Unable to stick general practice, psychiatry or even being a physician, he took up a senior post in Public Health - which mostly involved drain sniffing. He was brought back to sanity with an MA course in creative writing at the Anglia Ruskin University, Cambridge. Inspired whilst living in Devon, Alex is writing the Tregarthur's series, following his characters through some of the worst of possible and impossible times.
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Also by Cillian Press
The Union Trilogy - Book 1
Blinded by the Light
by Joe Kipling
In the near future, when the world's population has been decimated by disease, the fortunate few live inside the Boundary, while the unl
ucky ones are left to die on the Outside. MaryAnn is one of the privileged. It doesn't matter that her friends can sometimes be cruel or that the boy she likes just threw up on her shoes, it's all about being noticed at the right parties.
But it takes a single event to rip her life apart.
Struggling with physical and psychological scars, MaryAnn must face up to the truth about the foundations of the Neighbourhood and the legacy of her family. Once she learns the truth she can never go back, but can she really put her faith in the Union?
Blinded by the Light is about death and coming to terms with loss, the abuse of power, discrimination and the fear of the unknown. It is the first book in The Union Trilogy.
This dystopian young adult fiction book set in the near future critiques aspects of society such as a preoccupation with celebrity, materialism and privilege. It shows that in real life good and evil are never clear cut and we all have to decide what it means to 'do the right thing'. Told from the point of view of a girl from a privileged background, it follows the course of MaryAnn's awakening as she learns the truth about her life and the lies she has been told by her family and by her government, leading her to question everything she believes in. But whilst things may seem black or white to some, MaryAnn learns that there are grey areas too - nothing is as clear cut as it might seem. In real life people are not always good or bad, sometimes they just are.
Available in Paperback and eBook Formats at Amazon
Tregarthur's Promise Page 19
