The difference between life and death is a single step, Harri thought as she stood at the very edge of the cliff and peered into the ravine.
She remembered being afraid to look down after Sabih had fallen. Perhaps age had hardened her, or maybe she was less concerned by the prospect of her own death and was untroubled by the thought she might follow her friend. She could picture him now, his body on the mud-covered rocks below, broken, twisted and lifeless.
A step, a breath, a heartbeat – such transient, insignificant things were all that stood between life and death, separating light from endless night. She looked at the cube she carried on the book. She held it like a tray, and for a moment she thought about dropping it so it would smash on the very spot Sabih had fallen.
‘I don’t think you need to hold it like that,’ Elliot said, and she glanced over her shoulder to see him smiling uncertainly. ‘I don’t think it’s dangerous. I can carry it if you like.’
Harri shook her head. She felt there should be some memorial to mark the place where her friend lost his life, but she couldn’t bring herself to drop the cube, so she stepped away from the edge. She took the cube in her left hand and slipped the book into her coat pocket.
‘We should find the way down,’ Elliot said, and he started searching the undergrowth a short distance from where Harri was standing. ‘Ben brought me back here the night Sabih Khan died, after you and all the police and ambulance people had gone.’
‘It’s over here,’ she told him.
She walked past him and pushed through the bushes until she found the first stone step. She would never forget her journey down to Sabih’s body. It had been a descent into Hell.
They walked the old weathered steps, following countless others who’d worn away the stone over what might have been centuries. Who built the steps – and why – were secrets lost to time, but they had clearly been constructed long ago.
Elliot hesitated at the bottom and got his bearings.
‘I think about that night. About what I could have done differently,’ Harri said. She looked at the spot where she’d found Sabih’s body. ‘If I hadn’t shouted his name, would he still be alive?’
‘Would Ben be dead?’ Elliot wondered.
They considered their questions silently, while the leaves rustled high above them, and an unseen stream babbled over rocks some distance away.
‘I don’t think any of us could have done anything differently,’ Elliot said. ‘We all make mistakes. We have regrets, and sometimes we do things we think are right, but time makes fools of us all. Our intentions are good, our outcomes bad.’
Harri nodded. She seemed to have had more than her share of bad outcomes, but Sabih’s death was by far the worst.
‘It’s this way,’ Elliot said.
He walked past the spot where Sabih had been found, and moved into a narrow gully. Harri followed, treading carefully to avoid slipping on wet rocks. They went through a four-foot gash that looked as though it had been etched in the rock by ice many thousands of years ago. The walls of the slabs on either side were sheer and tall, and Harri started to feel claustrophobic as they went on. The cut appeared to come to a dead end, but there was a dogleg turn that went off to the west. Elliot started down it and Harri took a deep breath and followed.
‘Where are we going?’
‘To the rock of despair,’ he replied, as though that explained everything.
The gorge they were in was perhaps two feet wide, and the ground sloped down, sinking lower and lower, so the tops of the cliffs loomed higher and higher above them. The gorge narrowed and they had to turn sideways to squeeze through.
‘What happens if we get stuck?’ Harri asked as they edged on.
‘I guess we stay here until we lose weight,’ Elliot replied with a dark smile.
Another seemingly dead end, but this time Harri spied a tiny opening at the bottom of the rock face. Elliot dropped to his belly and crawled inside.
‘Come on,’ he said. His voice echoed out of the opening as his feet vanished into what looked like a stone mouth.
Harri’s heart pounded and her palms grew moist as she dropped onto her front. She clasped the cube in her left hand and used her elbows to drag herself into the small aperture.
‘How did he find this place?’ she asked as she moved into darkness. She wanted to hear another voice to know she wasn’t alone.
‘I think it’s something of a local secret,’ Elliot replied from some unseen place. ‘My dad brought me here ages ago. When I was little.’
Harri tried not to think of the millions of tons of rock suspended above her, or the ease with which she could be entombed and never found, and instead focused on following the sound of Elliot’s dragging feet. She moved into complete darkness and for a moment couldn’t see even the faintest outlines of form or shape, but the void didn’t last long and soon she was rewarded with dim light. She crawled into Elliot’s shoes.
‘Are you OK?’ she asked, fearing he was stuck.
‘Yes. Just give me a second,’ he replied.
He hauled himself out, and light suddenly illuminated the tiny tunnel. He leaned into the mouth and said, ‘This is it. We’re here.’
He helped Harri pull herself out of the opening. They were at the bottom of a well. It was a rough circle, perhaps twenty feet in diameter, cut into a solid rock cliff whose top was some two hundred feet above them. The walls were slick with run-off from an unseen stream, and they were so deep there was nothing but lichen on the surfaces. The only notable thing in the well was a nine-foot diameter boulder that was pressed against the north wall.
‘This place is called Lud’s Church. Puritans used to come here to worship in secret to avoid persecution. Legend says the authorities dropped this boulder from the top of the well to block the entrance to Pilgrims Cave, so they called it the Rock of Despair because it prevented them from being near their god,’ Elliot said. ‘Give me the cube.’
Harri hesitated, before handing it over.
Elliot looked at it reverently.
‘Now we see whether my dreams were real. Whether the promise can be kept.’
Elliot threw the cube at the boulder, and the sudden movement made Harri flinch. It struck the huge rock and shattered, and shards of crystal glinted as they flew everywhere. The glass ball broke next, smashing into a multitude of tiny pieces. The stars inside scattered over the rock, but rather than simply glitter on the craggy surface, the most marvellous thing happened.
The stars unfolded to create tiny hexagons of energy, and the hexes multiplied, spreading across the surface of the rock to form a mesh of shining geometric shapes. When the mesh was complete and the rock was encased, there was a flash of energy and the rock and shimmering hexagons vanished to reveal a large cave mouth.
Harri looked at Elliot in astonishment. If he shared her disbelief, he didn’t show it. Instead, he seemed at peace. Were the stars some kind of caustic or corrosive substance? Was that how Ben and David had disposed of Beth’s body?
Harri was startled when Elliot grabbed her arm and pulled her forward into the yawning cave mouth.
‘Come on,’ he said. ‘We don’t have long.’
She allowed herself to be led into the darkness.
‘Move,’ he urged, pulling her further inside.
Harri couldn’t understand why he was so concerned, but then to her dismay there was a thunderous crack and a great tremor, as though reality was being rent asunder, and the huge boulder materialized, covering the cave mouth and plunging them into total darkness.