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. Goose 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.