The feet shuffle a little further away.
Simon makes himself open his eyes. Mad Ed seems to tower over him as he cowers in the ditch. He’s holding the shotgun in one hand, muzzle down. Is this it, then? The place where all this has been leading?
Perhaps if Simon looks him in the eye it will help Mad Ed see who he really is. Simon. Only a boy. Not a soldier, or an enemy sniper, or even a fox.
Mad Ed in the farmhouse kitchen. The photograph. Two young men in khaki.
Not his brother, either.
Mad Ed’s eyes look empty. Then they seem to focus for a moment, as if seeing Simon again.
I should say something, Simon thinks. Thank him, even, for taking the blame. But his mouth is dried up. He can’t do it.
Mad Ed turns away abruptly, starts shambling away towards the cliff, his feet brushing through the wet grass leaving a silver trail. The darkness and mist swallow him up.
Simon lies in the ditch, shaking all over, for a long, long time. He can hear a strange muffled whimpering sound. It takes him ages to realize it’s coming from himself.
When he’s sure it’s completely quiet, he crawls out. He’s so cold and stiff from being curled up without moving for so long he nearly keels over. He rubs his legs, feels the blood begin to flow back. When he’s eased up enough, he creeps back along the wall, up the track, and retrieves his bike from the hedge.
All the way home, mostly downhill, fast on the bike, he tries to make sense of what’s just happened. Why didn’t Mad Ed say anything, if he thought in his crazy way that Simon was his brother? And if it wasn’t like that, if he knew all along it was Simon, why would he protect him like that, and not say anything afterwards? What the hell’s going on? How come he knew Simon was there? Is he watching him all the time now? Watching his house? Watching and following.
Simon thinks again about the lost catapult and the circle of stones, when they were camping that night. The heart of stones, on the rope cliff when he and Leah were there. His camping stuff, saved from Rick and his mate. The oyster shells.
All those times Simon’s glimpsed him, just at the edge of his vision, always just moving off, away. The loner, the wild man, the headcase. And something more sinister: the madman for whom the fighting has never stopped.
And then that time at the farmhouse, when he saw something more. The muddle and the sadness, the photograph, and the wounded bird. And something else too close to himself to even think about…
He cycles on. He has to slow down; the mist is thicker here, rolling in over the fields either side of the road.
Maybe, he thinks, maybe I’ve had it all totally the wrong way round. Maybe, just maybe, he’s never been dangerous at all. What if he’s been watching out for me, trying to keep me safe all along? In his own, mad way… And the stones, the shells, were not warnings, but gifts, offerings… He stopped Rick, didn’t he?
He starts to think what will happen when the police arrive. They’ll probably wait till morning; there won’t be anyone manning the local police station till nine. And they’ll start with questions and then they’ll look for evidence, and at some point someone will realize that Leah’s leg and Matt Davies’s stone sculpture have not been shot with Mad Ed’s shotgun after all, but with an air rifle. It won’t take much to work out the difference.
It floods Simon with panic all over again. How can he possibly take the air rifle home now? It’ll do his mother in completely if all this comes out. Supposing Leah is really badly injured? He’ll have to hide it somewhere. Chuck it over the cliff. Bury it. Something.
It comes to him in a flash of inspiration. The burial chamber. It’s so deep and dark and out of the way, no one will find it there. And even if they do, they’ll think it was Mad Ed who hid it there all along. Matt Davies won’t have seen the gun in Mad Ed’s hand, behind the wall, will he? It might just as easily have been an air rifle. Months later, when all this has blown over, when everyone’s forgotten, Simon can go back and find it again and everything will be all right.
He cuts down the track he took ages ago, when he first found the Coffin Path. He leaves the bike at the stile and crosses the field on foot, then cuts across to the cliff. It’s hard to find his way in the thick fog. The rifle feels heavy on his back, and getting heavier all the time. It must be really late. He’s exhausted. He thinks he hears a car back on the road he’s come off, but the sound is muffled. He hears the foghorn from the lighthouse. No light. The moon’s disappeared.
He moves slowly now; the air changes. He might be near the cliff edge. You’d never see in these conditions. The sensible thing would be to stop right now, stay in one place, wait for the fog to lift or for daylight to dawn.
Now he can see something dark within the darkness. He edges forward, hands outstretched. He feels the living, breathing stone, the guard stones at the entrance of the chamber, rough against his palms. He takes a deep breath and plunges in.
His ears are ringing. He puts his hands over them. They feel cold, but the air in the chamber seems warm. When he takes his hands away he hears another sound, like a deep sigh. He can see nothing.
Deep breath. Don’t think.
He edges forward. It’s hard to know where the ceiling is; twice he bangs his head. He ends up dropping to his knees and crawling, one hand pushing out ahead so he doesn’t hit anything. Bit by bit he feels his way through the series of chambers, deeper into the earth, it feels like. When he’s as far back as he can go, with bare rock ahead and on both sides, a space only just big enough for his body, he feels along the rock, searching for a crack or a fault line or a gap between stones where he can shove the air rifle. And it’s there, waiting: a smallish gap, just above his head, and he carefully takes off the gun and slides it into the space. It nestles there, safe. He can find it again, when the time is right. And so he edges back and finds a space big enough to turn his body, and then crawls back the way he came, feeling his way slowly, breathing deeply, focused entirely on his own movement. Don’t think. Don’t think.
He inches towards the grey light which must be sky. His hand touches something hard and cold; he flinches, then lets his fingers find the shape: a bracelet? Leah’s, of course! She lost it here when…
Leah, who he has just shot.
He almost crumples.
No, keep crawling towards the light.
He makes himself do it.
He shoves the silver bracelet deep in his pocket and crawls forward.
A strip of light shines under Nina’s door. Still awake, then. He tiptoes past.
‘Simon?’
Oh no! She’s heard him.
She opens the door. She looks awful.
‘Where on earth have you been? It’s so late, Simon. I can’t go on like this, not knowing where you are half the time. You’re only fourteen, for heaven’s sake.’
‘I missed you tonight. Feeling a bit lonely.’
Simon stares at his muddy feet.
‘Mart’s a bit preoccupied. His new stone carving. His new model.’ She gives a wry, sad smile.
‘She’s much too young for him,’ Simon blurts out. ‘You’re much better than her!’
‘Oh, Si!’ She gives a little sob.
He lets her hug him, briefly. She feels soft and small.
‘You’re wet through!’ she says. ‘What have you been doing?’
‘I went in the fields,’ Simon says. ‘I went to look at the burial chamber in the moonlight. Only the mist came down.’
‘It’s not safe,’ she says under her breath. ‘The mist, the cliffs…’
‘I know,’ he says, almost in tears. ‘But I’m here now, and safe, aren’t I?’
He lies awake for ages. His body is damp with sweat. The window rattles. The wind’s got up. It will blow away the mist by morning. Far out in the Atlantic, huge waves will be whipping up, starting the long roll in towards the shore.