IT WASN’T LONG before they were lost.
Ashley couldn’t understand it. The journey from the cellar had been relatively straightforward, but clearly Malory had dragged Ashley some distance while she was unconscious. When she asked Penny if she knew the way back, the girl shook her head.
‘We came here in the dark,’ she said quietly. ‘He used the light on his phone. He said it was too dangerous to light the candles.’
‘Bloody hell.’
What was worse was that it felt like they were already going the wrong way. The tunnels were less even, the walls formed of bare rock. In one or two places, water trickled in icy rivulets across the stone, and the ground was so uneven that every now and then they would have to stop and climb up a short drop. Ashley couldn’t shake the feeling that they were heading deeper into Red Rigg Fell. Yet there was nothing they could do but keep heading forward.
‘There will be a way out eventually,’ said Ashley, trying to sound like she believed it. ‘We just have to stick together.’
After they’d been walking for some time, a terrible howl broke the silence. It started off low, a sound of misery and anguish, and then became a high-pitched screech, a banshee yell. The tunnels took the sound and rolled it around the jagged walls, but Ashley knew what it was without a doubt: Malory had realised they were gone. And she would be coming after them.
‘Keep moving.’ Ashley put her arm around the girl’s shoulders and steered her ahead. ‘Just keep in front of me, all right? Watch the floor.’
They moved as quickly as they could, trotting over the treacherous ground, only lit now by the occasional candle rammed into a sconce, but Ashley knew – could feel, almost – that Malory was coming along behind them much faster. She knew these tunnels, these caves; she had walked in them since she was a child, apparently. Ashley pictured Melva leading Malory underground, whispering poisoned secrets into her ear. She shivered.
‘Where are you?’
The voice echoed along the passage, eerie and almost inhuman.
‘Where are you, Ashie? We’re so hungry.’
Ashley swallowed. Was she sure it was Malory? Did it really sound like her? Or was it something else entirely? She remembered coming to in the round chamber, how she’d known that something was watching them, and that it meant them harm.
‘Don’t listen to it,’ she said brusquely to Penny, who was looking extremely pale. ‘Just keep moving.’
‘So hungrryyyyy.’
Eventually, they came to a place where the candlelight ended, and all that was ahead of them was a deep and velvety darkness, so complete it almost felt like a solid thing. They both stopped. The voice behind them was getting closer, and Ashley thought she could hear footsteps now too, or something very like them. A thudding and a scraping, as though something large were dragging itself along. It’s just Malory. It’s just Malory.
‘We have to keep going.’
‘But how?’ Penny’s voice wobbled dangerously. She sounded like a little girl of nine or ten, up far too late and terrified out of her wits. ‘We can’t see.’
‘It’s okay. Look, take hold of my hand. All right? Don’t let go of me. We’ll go slowly, and I’ll go in the lead.’
It took everything she had to sound calm, but in truth, Ashley’s heart was trying to burst through her chest; her head throbbed relentlessly. What if there was a hole in the ground somewhere ahead, and they fell in it and broke their legs? What if the ceiling fell and suffocated them? Or what if, in the dark, they missed the turning they needed to get out? But there was nowhere else to go.
They stepped into the dark. Very quickly, the watery light of the last candle was lost to them, and they had to feel their way ahead, clinging to the left-hand wall. It was an agonisingly slow process, and all the while, the sounds of pursuit were growing closer.
‘We’re going to die down here,’ Penny whispered. ‘I want my mum.’
‘Shhh, sweetheart. Just hold on to me and keep moving. It’ll soon be over.’
‘You won’t let it take me, will you?’ Now Penny sounded even younger, like a child of six, afraid of the monsters under her bed. ‘You won’t let them eat me?’
‘Absolutely not. They have to get through me first.’
And then, a glimmer of something moved in the darkness ahead. At first, Ashley thought it could be daylight, but then it shifted and turned its snub face towards them. It was a Heedful One. It looked at them as though it wanted to be sure it had their attention, and then it headed forward. A moment later, another one appeared, and another, all moving in the same direction. There was a flurry of movement, and several passed them by, surging like salmon in a mountain stream. Following them, Ashley felt more confident.
They’re showing us the way, she thought in wonder. All we have to do is follow them.
The noises behind them continued, but now that she had a clear path, Ashley moved much more quickly, and the more she walked with the Heedful Ones, the more clearly she saw them. They flowed together, a shoal of fish or a murmuration of birds at dusk, moving and turning and thinking as one. There was something glorious to it, or almost joyous. When they brushed against her, Ashley didn’t feel disgust or terror, only a kind of fond familiarity. They don’t mean me harm, she thought. They never have. They’ve only ever tried to warn me, to show me the way.
Ashley and Penny made their way through the secret interior of Red Rigg Fell in this fashion for an unknowable period of time. They came to rough-hewn steps, worn in the centre as though they had been used for millennia, and they climbed them. In the dark, out of sight of sun and stars, with the damp cave air on their faces, it was as though they had fallen out of the natural world into some sort of in-between place, an underland. Time was broken. They had been there hours, minutes, years; all of them seemed possible to Ashley.
Finally, the steps ended, and ahead of them Ashley saw something that wasn’t a Heedful One. A glimmer of bluish light, soft and uncertain.
‘Do you see that?’ Ashley croaked. They hadn’t spoken aloud for some time. ‘I think it’s snow.’
‘Snow?’ asked Penny.
They hurried towards it. Down a slope of scree they came to a natural cave. Halfway up the other side, there was a chink in the stone; through it Ashley could see a band of shining white, and the air was fresher and cleaner.
Behind them, much closer than ever before, a voice called out. ‘Don’t leave me, Ashie. You don’t want me to starve, do you?’
‘Quickly!’ Ashley threw herself down the slope, Penny’s hand still grasped in hers. The Heedful Ones scattered. When they got to the far side, Ashley felt her stomach turn over; the rent in the rock was very narrow indeed. She shoved Penny towards it. ‘Get through it, now. Go!’
When she turned back to look, she saw Malory. Her friend’s hair was hanging in her face, and her usually immaculate clothes were wet and streaked with dirt. She had Richard’s knife in one hand.
‘The kid can go,’ Malory said, gesturing with the knife. ‘But you have to stay. It was always supposed to be you, Ashie. It’s what you were meant for, don’t you see?’
‘Fuck off.’ Behind Ashley, Penny was squeezing herself through the hole, blocking out most of the light.
‘Don’t you want to do something good though, Ashie?’ Malory continued. She began to pick her way down the slope, stones scattering before each step. ‘All your life conning people in the worst way, playing with their grief and their sorrow to line your own pockets. What if letting the fell have you meant that no more children had to die?’
‘Except that’s not what it would mean, because you’re a fucking lunatic.’ Ashley raised her voice. She felt angrier than she’d ever felt in her life. ‘You’re a parasite, feeding off people less fortunate than yourself and calling it charity! Richard thought you were a monster, and he was more than halfway there himself. Melva thinks you’re cracked.’ She laughed, a sharp, bitter sound that echoed strangely in the cave. ‘Imagine being so worthless that a fellow child killer thinks you’ve gone too far.’
The snow light grew stronger again. Penny was through the hole. Ashley backed up towards it, but Malory was running now, across the cave floor and up the slope. With a kind of hysterical desperation, Ashley turned sideways and began to squeeze herself through, but as she had suspected, even her slim frame was just slightly too big. She got her right-hand side through, her right arm and leg, and then the rock seemed to catch at her and squeeze her, pinning her by the chest.
‘Fuck.’
From outside, Penny took Ashley’s hand and began to pull. Although she couldn’t see the girl, Ashley could hear her grunting with the effort of it.
‘Stop, stop it!’ Malory reached the top of the slope. ‘You have to stay here. This is where you’re meant to be!’
Malory grabbed her other arm, and with a surprising amount of strength, pulled it towards her. She took the knife and sunk the blade in sideways, digging deep into the fleshiest part of Ashley’s forearm. Ashley screamed.
‘If I have to feed you to it piece by piece, that’s what I’ll do!’ Malory pulled the knife towards her, as though she were paring the flesh from a fishbone. Agony shot through Ashley’s body. She saw her own arm turn crimson, and then the rock seemed to give slightly. She looked up, past Malory’s contorted, blood-flecked face, and saw a great dark shape on the far side of the cave. She had a sense of bulk, of incredible age and unending patience, and it shifted, as though it, too, were about to creep down the slope towards them.
Penny gave another tremendous yank, and Ashley fell backward onto a bed of hardened snow.