by Julia Green
‘Can she?’
‘Yes, of course. What about you? Any plans?’
Simon shakes his head. ‘I’m going to have a shower.’
‘OK, love. I’ll finish off out here.’ She waves the garden shears at him. ‘It looks so much better already, doesn’t it?’
It all looks the same to him. Why’s she so cheerful suddenly? He kicks his muddy boots off and goes into the kitchen. He cuts a huge slice of bread, loads it with butter, then honey, and shoves the whole lot in his mouth. He pads upstairs to the bathroom.
After his shower, Simon puts on clean boxers and lies on the bed. Dozes. Replays the day, with different versions added in. The window’s open. He can hear someone singing. Leah.
He picks up the small book on the bedside table: The SAS Survival Guide. He reads the section called ‘Essentials (Facing Disaster)’, and then ‘Reading the Signs’.
He strains to hear the lyrics of the song that’s drifting in through the window. His face and arms are glowing from the day’s sun.
The phone rings.
‘For you,’ Nina calls up the stairs.
Simon bounces down, two stairs at a time. Nina’s still hovering in the kitchen doorway so he turns his back on her.
‘Hi,’ he says into the phone.
‘Want to come out tonight? Go hunting again? Dan’s allowed out. We can get some cans.’
Simon feels a stab of disappointment. It’s Johnny. He’d expected — who?
‘Si? Are you still there? Well? About eight? No point in going earlier. The rabbits don’t come out till it’s dusk. Bring your catapult, yes, and some ammo? Dan and I’ll call for you.’
‘OK.’ He puts the phone back.
Nina reappears from the kitchen. ‘Well?’
‘What?’
‘What did he want? Are you going out?’
Simon frowns. ‘Yes. So?’
‘Well, it’s helpful to know, so I can make my own plans. I might invite someone round.’
‘With me safely out of the way, you mean.’
‘Probably not at all safely!’ Nina laughs.
She’s refusing to get wound up by him. Won’t notice his sarcastic tone.
‘So get yourself something to eat, Si. I’ll eat later.’
Back upstairs, the singing has stopped. Simon picks up his book again and reads through the advice on finding your way at night: ‘Using the Moon for a Rough East-West Reference’; ‘Using the Stars for Navigation’.
He starts thinking about Dan and Johnny and him. He might as well make the most of it. Why don’t they take a tent? Stay out all night? Or, even better, make their own shelter for the night? He looks up the section in the survival book and then goes back downstairs to phone Johnny. He won’t tell Nina till he’s got it all planned and the other parents have agreed, and then she won’t be able to say no. She’ll have made her own arrangements for the evening by then anyway. He won’t think about that.
‘We’ll make a fire and cook rabbit, if we get any, and let’s take marshmallows, and I’ve made some of that dough stuff to cook on sticks.’
Dan and Johnny wait in the kitchen while Simon packs his rucksack with billycans and two different sorts of knife, and his survival fuel stove for emergencies, and matches, and his army surplus water bottle. He retrieves the dough, wrapped in a plastic bag, from the fridge, and three packets of marshmallows from the top cupboard.
Nina comes in from the garden. ‘So, where’s your tent? And sleeping bags?’
Dan answers her. ‘We’re gonna make a group shelter with a tarp. And it’s too hot for sleeping bags.’
‘Hmm.’
Johnny chips in. ‘It’ll be fine, honest. We’ve got a groundsheet. We can shove bracken underneath for insulation.’
‘In any case,’ Simon says, ‘we’re only going to be over in the fields. We can just come home if we’re cold.’
‘You will be really careful, won’t you, of the cliffs in the dark? No swimming off the rocks, either, or anything else foolhardy.’
Johnny and Dan will take the piss later.
He doesn’t turn back to wave or anything, although he knows his mother’s there at the gate, watching them go. He’s vaguely aware of someone at the window in the house opposite too. He doesn’t look up. As soon as they leave the road and take the footpath over the fields he eases up. It’s going to be a good night, after all. The air’s still warm even though it’s after eight. Long shadows stretch over the hayfield. They’ll choose a place to rig up the shelter first, and get wood for a fire, and then they can start hunting.
10
Sparks from the fire float up into the night sky. Simon’s still hungry; they haven’t caught any meat and the dough sticks don’t fill you up, and the marshmallows have started to make him feel sick. He lets one drop into the fire on purpose, watches the sticky goo melt, blacken and crisp on the logs. He’s the only one in a fit-enough state to keep the fire going, feeding it with more wood. They’ve finished all the beer. Johnny and Dan seem to find everything incredibly funny. They’ve been telling each other ridiculous stories.
‘And then there’s this boy,’ Dan goes on. ‘This is true, right? About fifteen years old. They found his body lying on the path near the big standing stone on the moor. Stone cold dead. Like some sort of human sacrifice, only no one ever found out what had killed him. No marks on him, no reason at all. It was as if he’d died of fright. And on moonlit nights, his ghost can still be seen, making its spooky way along the field path to the ancient stone.’
‘Whooooo!’ Johnny warbles, in a mock ghostly voice. ‘And if you see him, you know you’re next.’
‘… But the scariest of all is the living, not the dead. Scariest of all is Mad Ed.’ Dan lowers his voice to a dramatic hiss. ‘Armed with a loaded shotgun, patrolling his land, searching out enemy snipers. Mad Ed, who doesn’t understand the war is over. Who plays it out in his mind over and over, the scene where his brother got shot and he didn’t. Waiting to get his revenge.’
‘What do you mean, revenge?’ Simon asks. ‘You’re kidding, right?’
Dan shakes his head slowly from side to side, for effect. ‘For real.’
‘I thought you said —’ Simon looks at Johnny. ‘Well, that’s not what you told me before. You said about his dad having shell shock. Nerve-gas poisoning or something. And that Mad Ed was a loner, a bit weird. You didn’t say he was out looking for revenge… thinking he’s still fighting some war…’
Johnny glances back at Dan. ‘Well, whatever. Anyway, scar-y!’ He laughs.
‘It’s not funny,’ Simon says. ‘It’s serious. I mean, if he’s got a gun, and we’re out here — and it’s his land…is it his land?’
Both Johnny and Dan shrug. ‘Lighten up, Si. We’re just winding you up.’
Now Simon can’t be sure. Both Dan and Johnny are too pissed for him to be able to trust anything either says. He’s starting to feel really spooked. He knows they were messing about earlier, but he’s seen that bloke with his own eyes. Seen the gun. It isn’t funny.
‘Perhaps we should go back?’
‘No way!’
‘I’m serious. What if he comes across us when we’re asleep and thinks we’re the enemy, and shoots us? Think about it.’
‘It’s dark. It’s nearly midnight. No one is going to be snooping around this time of night. Anyway, we were just messing.’
Simon doesn’t like it. He’s the outsider again. The joke’s at his expense.
Dan seems to have collapsed on the grass, still laughing.
Johnny’s pissing into the hedge.
Simon moves away from the firelight. He can see the stars that much better now. Hundreds and thousands of them. Billions. Light shining from way back in time. Light from stars that aren’t even there any more.
Dan’s virtually asleep, and Johnny’s stirring up the embers of the fire with one of the arrows he whittled earlier. They’re going to put flights on the end when they can get some big enough feathers. Go
ose feathers are best, but seagulls’ will do. Or magpies’. It’s called fletching. Johnny’s designed (but not yet made) his own crossbow; they cost more than seventy quid if you buy them over the Internet. Simon’s not sure they’re even legal. In the meantime, the arrows can be shot with their catapults. With a metal tip they’d be deadly.
There’s no way Simon can sleep yet. His head’s too full of wild imaginings, his own and Dan’s. ‘I’m going for a walk,’ he says aloud.
No one answers.
Simon walks slowly away from the encampment, climbs the wall into the next field to get back on the footpath. The moon’s risen above the horizon; huge and silver. It lights the way. When he looks back, he can see no trace of the camp, or the fire. Perhaps it’s safe after all. No one could know they were there, sleeping under the tarpaulin cover. Not until they were right close up.
Simon takes his catapult out of his pocket and loads it up with a stone from the wall. Just a stone.
His heart stops thudding so hard after he’s crossed two fields, two stiles. It’s so still fhe can hear the sound of the sea crashing over the rocks even though it must be half a mile to the cliff from here. His boots are damp from the dew; he’s leaving a trail of silvered footsteps in the grass. Some small creature scurries and scratches along the wall near the next stile; he waits and watches.
Out of the corner of his eye he glimpses something else moving, pale and ghostly in the moonlight. It’s coming right at him. He turns, gives a strangled squeal and finds himself face to face with an owl. For a brief moment they stare into each other’s eyes: two creatures of the night, on equal terms. It’s a moment of recognition. You too? Hunting? Then the owl floats silently on, its white wings stretched out, its claws curved ready for the kill.
Wow! He wishes there was someone with him now, someone to feel it too. He imagines telling Leah. There it was, a barn owl. Looking at me right in the eye. With its huge dark eyes in a heart-shaped face, this close. He’ll hold out his arms to show her how close. And then she’ll do the same, like the owl. Look at him that close. And… and…
He almost trips. A rock jutting out of the path. He’s been lost in thought, hasn’t noticed how the path’s changing. More stones, and instead of rough field grass either side it’s short grass, like a lawn. There’s a building of some sort.
As he gets closer he can see huge stones, but it’s not a house, or a barn even. The stone slabs are roofed with turf; it’s a burial chamber, a long barrow.
It’s just some old monument, there’s nothing to worry about. You get them all over the place, this part of the country. So why does he just stand there? Those stupid stories Dan was telling. The dead who come back to haunt the living. The restless dead, whose spirits inhabit the land. But it’s more than that. He’s felt it before, the strange sensation that somehow the past isn’t past, but still going on. People and events trapped in the places where they happened, like fossils in rocks, except there’s nothing to see with your eyes. You just feel it. If you really pay attention.
It’s so very still and silent. As if any noise is sucked up and absorbed in the deep stone chambers, muffled by the still-growing turf roof. Simon dares himself closer. He treads softly between the two outer stones of the entrance tunnel, takes a last look at the star-studded sky and ducks in under the huge lintel stone of the first chamber.
There’s a different quality to the darkness inside. It’s thick and soft. It pulls him in deeper.
From the main chamber, a sort of corridor, smaller ones branch off. He creeps through one of the low doorways and crouches in the space, and suddenly he hears a new sound, like a whisper echoing round, a sound that might be in his head, or might be in the chambers, like the murmur of sea in a shell that is only the sound of your own blood in your ears. It seems to get louder. He puts his hands over his ears to see what happens. It muffles the whisper. So it must be coming from outside himself. He leans over and lays his ear against the stone walls. They are warm. It’s like being inside the body of a stone creature, living and breathing. The stones have a voice of their own, and a language he doesn’t understand. He starts to feel dizzy. He dips his head back out through the doorway, takes a breath, but there’s no more air in the central chamber either. He can feel a sort of pressure on his lungs. It’s so dark he can’t make out his own hand right in front of his face, as if someone has blocked up the entrance and shut out the moonlight. He can’t see which way to go, which way takes him out, which takes him further, deeper into the hollow chamber. He starts to sweat; it prickles along his neck and his forehead. His hands are clammy. The noise seems louder still. And then he blacks out.
11
When he wakes up, he finds himself lying just outside the burial mound, on damp grass. He lies there with his eyes open, trying to make sense of what has happened and work out how he got here, like this. Above him, the huge sky is ablaze with stars, more than he can ever remember seeing before. He starts to make out the patterns he knows: the seven stars of the Plough; Cassiopeia; Orion the hunter.
His head aches as if he’s knocked it really hard. Or something hit him. His hand feels the place. There’s a bump, big as an egg.
What happened?
His legs are stiff and his sweatshirt is damp from dew. He sits up and automatically feels for the catapult in his jeans’ pocket. Not there. He stands up, searches the grass. It must have fallen out when he was in the stone chamber. But he’s not going back in there. No way.
The moon has moved into quite a different part of the sky, so hours must have passed with him lying out stone cold. Why has no one come to find him?
He’s suddenly freezing cold. The entrance to the burial chamber looks like a huge dark mouth. He can’t imagine what made him want to go inside it, before. Before what? What exactly happened in there? He starts to shake quite violently.
A wind has got up. It makes a low moaning sound as it whistles through the grass, through the dry bracken and low heather. He can hear the sea thundering on the rocks below. It sounds so close now.
He’s got to get back, find the others, check that they’re all right. Walking without the catapult in his hand, Simon feels vulnerable and small. Every sound makes him start. He retraces his steps. Starts thinking back to Dan’s stories. What would he do if he met that mad bloke here, now? He’s defenceless. He looks around for something that might make a sort of weapon: a stick at least, or a stone. There aren’t any proper trees, though, just thin, blown thorn bushes, and the only rocks are wedged deep in the earth, part of the land itself. So he walks quietly, every sense alert, ready to hide, or run. What if Mad Ed has already come across the sleeping figures of Johnny and Dan? They’d have been too pissed to defend themselves. Whose stupid idea was this, anyway, to camp overnight?
He’s almost there now. There’s the faintest flush of light in the east. Dawn. It lifts his spirits to see the light beginning to spread out across the sky. Everything changes; the dark shadows pale to fuzzy grey. Nothing looks quite so scary. A low mist rolls along the grass like something on a film set. He crosses the last field towards the stile. And then stops. There, neatly laid out on the top of the stile, is his catapult and five small stones arranged in a circle.
He swings around, searching for someone lurking in the hedgerow, watching him, lining up the sights on a gun, getting him into focus. But there’s nothing to see, just the grey shapes of a thorn bush, the stone walls, the damp grass ruffled by the wind that’s blowing in off the sea. He grabs the catapult and scatters the stones, even though they are the perfect size for ammunition, climbs the stile and runs towards the camp where he left Johnny and Dan.
His breath rasps in his throat. His chest feels tight again, like it did in the burial chamber, as if there’s not enough air, only that can’t be true here. If anything, there’s too much.
He sees the dark green tarpaulin strung between two thorn trees, and then at last makes out the two huddled shapes beneath.
‘Johnny?’ Simon pushes
the inert figure with his boot toe. ‘Wake up.’
His throat feels tight. He kicks him again, more insistently.
Johnny’s in such a heavy sleep he doesn’t even stir. Simon crouches closer. Now he can see Johnny’s face. In the pale light of dawn it’s ashen. Sudden terror clutches Simon all over again. What if he’s not asleep, but…?
He prods the shoulder nearest him, half expecting the body to roll over, to reveal a bloody, gaping wound.
There’s a groan and then Johnny opens one eye.
‘What?’
‘You’ve got to wake up.’
‘What? It’s still dark. We’ve only just got to sleep. Where the hell’ve you been?’
‘I went for a walk — I told you — but something happened —’
Johnny rolls back over and buries his head in his hood. His voice is muffled. ‘Yeah. Right. Wait till morning, OK? Some of us need sleep.’
Simon rocks back on his heels. He looks across at Dan, slumped over and breathing noisily through his mouth. What’s the point? But he’s so far from sleep himself now. It’s too lonely, awake by himself. Or worse, awake with someone else, someone unseen, watching him. He takes the catapult out of his pocket again and examines it more closely. It’s definitely his, worn in the same places, the same make. And he definitely had it with him when he was walking along the path towards the burial chamber. So unless he dropped it earlier, and Johnny or Dan found it when they were searching for him (did they? In the state they were in?) someone else must have. Someone out walking in the middle of the night.
He shivers. The fire’s out. He tries blowing on the ashes to raise a spark, but the fire’s dead. He scurries around for a while, gathering up twigs and dry lichen for kindling, and some bigger sticks to burn. There isn’t much, and it’s all a bit damp from the dew. He concentrates on getting a spark with the flintstriker, and then carefully feeds and shelters the tiny flame until the twigs catch light. A thin spiral of white smoke rises and he hears the first shift and rustle of fire. He’s done it. He warms his hands and face.
