MARK MORRIS BECAME A full-time writer in 1988 on the Enterprise Allowance Scheme, and a year later saw the release of his first novel, Toady. He has since published a further sixteen novels, among which are Stitch, The Immaculate, The Secret of Anatomy, Fiddleback, The Deluge and four books in the popular Doctor Who series.
His short stories, novellas, articles and reviews have appeared in a wide variety of anthologies and magazines, and he edited Cinema Macabre, a book of fifty horror movie essays by genre luminaries, for which he won the 2007 British Fantasy Award.
His most recent work includes a novella entitled It Sustains for Earthling Publications, a Torchwood novel entitled Bay of the Dead, several Doctor Who audios for Big Finish Productions, a follow-up volume to Cinema Macabre entitled Cinema Futura, and a new short story collection, Long Shadows, Nightmare Light.
“Porthellion Quay, which features in this story, is a real place – only the name is different,” says Morris. “My family and I spent a lovely, sunny day there one summer a few years ago during a Cornish holiday.
“I love Cornwall not only because it’s breathtakingly beautiful, but also because it is wild and rugged and desolate, and because past echoes and ancient legends seem to seep out of the very rock. It’s a landscape which lends itself perfectly to the kinds of ghost stories I love, of which it seems there are far too few these days – stories which are not cosy and comforting and familiar, but which are dark and insidious, and evoke a crawling sense of dread.”
WHEN THE CHILD SCREAMED, Tess Morton felt guilty for having to repress the urge to snap at it. She was aware that it wasn’t Matthew Bellings who should be punished, but his tormentors, and yet the boy’s cry of pain or distress was so whiny that it grated on her nerves.
The reason she felt little compassion for the child was because she knew it took almost nothing to provoke a wail of complaint from him. Matthew would cry out whenever someone barged into him in the school corridor; whenever a football was kicked towards him in the playground; whenever a classmate flicked a paper pellet at him, or snatched a text book out of his hand, or pushed in front of him in the lunch queue. Indeed, the merest slight would cause Matthew’s red-cheeked, strangely wizened face to crumple, his mouth to twist open and that familiar, toe-curling bleat to emerge.
Tess liked children; she truly did. Unlike many of her more world-weary colleagues, she was still young enough, and optimistic enough, to regard teaching as a noble and worthwhile profession. She looked back on her own school days fondly, and regarded many of her former teachers with great affection. And as such she liked the idea of feeding and enthusing young minds, of equipping her pupils for the trials of life that would inevitably lie ahead.
All of which made her feel doubly bad for the way she felt about Matthew. He wasn’t a naughty boy. He wasn’t disruptive or snide or cruel. He was just . . . unlikeable.
Physically, he was stick-thin and uncoordinated. When he ran his limbs resembled a collection of slender twigs loosely bound together. He had no real friends, and as far as Tess could tell had made no particular efforts to acquire any. Breaks and lunchtimes he could most commonly be found in the library, cowering behind an open book, as if hiding from pursuers. He was the sort of child whose parents – of whom Tess had only ever met his nervous, bird-like mother – did him no favours whatsoever. Whereas the other boys carried rucksacks or sports bags, Matthew had been provided with a satchel of gleaming, conker-brown leather. Additionally, his shoes were too shiny, his trousers too short, and his old-fashioned crew cut gave him the look of a child actor in a wartime drama series.
For a while Tess had taken pity on the boy. She had put herself out, spent extra time with him, in an effort to prise him from his shell. Matthew, however, had remained not only unresponsive, but so sulky and ungrateful that in the end she had given up. She still felt a bit ashamed of abandoning the cause, but she consoled herself with the thought that at least she wasn’t as downright hostile towards Matthew as some of her colleagues. The other teacher on this year eight field trip, for instance, Yvonne Harrison, who most of the kids loved for her friendliness and good humour, frequently referred to Matthew Bellings as “that snivelling little shit”.
Turning now, Tess saw that Jason Hayes, his back to her, was hopping from foot to foot, waving his arm in the air. Her immediate thought was that Jason had snatched something of Matthew’s and was taunting him, holding whatever-it-was out of reach. Then she saw Jason lunge forward, lowering his arm in a thrusting motion, which made Matthew squeal again. Some of the other children, especially the girls, squealed too, though there was laughter in their voices.
“Eew, you are so gross!” one of the girls (Tess thought it might be Francesca Parks) shrieked delightedly.
Muttering at the child behind her to halt, Tess strode towards the knot of pupils at the back of the queue. “What is going on here?”
Jason Hayes looked over his shoulder guiltily, and then flicked his arm, tossing away whatever he’d been holding. Because of the other kids milling around, Tess couldn’t tell what it was, though she got the impression of something black and ragged sailing over the edge of the metal walkway and disappearing into the scrubby bushes below.
“Nothing, miss,” Jason said innocently, turning to face her.
“Nothing,” Tess repeated. “Do you honestly think I’m stupid, Jason?”
Jason was a sporty, thick-set boy with spiky hair. Often cheeky and excitable, but essentially a good kid.
“No, miss. No way.”
“I’m very glad to hear it. So perhaps you’d like to tell me what you were doing to Matthew?”
Tess still couldn’t see the smaller boy. It was as if the other children were purposely shielding him from view.
“Nothing, miss,” Jason said again, and then added quickly, “I was just showing him something.”
Tess sighed inwardly. She knew that to get to the heart of the onion you had to patiently peel away the layers one by one. “I see. And what were you showing him?”
“Just something I found, miss.”
Tess stared at him silently for a moment, and then very deliberately said, “Do you want to go on the Mine Railway, Jason?”
“Yes, miss.”
“Because it’s no skin off my nose to take you back to the coach. For all I care, you can sit there for the rest of the afternoon, writing an essay on how important it is to be a positive representative of the school. Would you like that?”
“No, miss.”
Francesca Parks, a precocious thirteen-year-old with a pierced navel, shrilled, “You can’t do that, miss.”
“Can’t I, Francesca?” Tess said coolly. “And why’s that?”
“You can’t leave Jace on his own. It’s against the law.”
“He wouldn’t be on his own,” Tess said. “Mr Jakes would be there.”
Mr Jakes was the school coach driver. He was a scrawny man in his early sixties who always stank of cigarettes. He had a collapsed cavern of a mouth and bad teeth.
Francesca’s eyes, still bearing the trace of the eyeliner she applied every afternoon the instant she stepped out of the school gates, widened. “You can’t leave him with that old perv.”
Tess stared at her unblinkingly. “I beg your pardon?”
Francesca’s eyelids flickered and she bowed her head. “Sorry, miss,” she mumbled.
“I don’t want to hear another word from you, Francesca. Not one. Do you understand me?”
Francesca’s head jerked in a single, sullen nod.
Tess paused just long enough to allow her words to sink in and then she focused on Jason again. “Now, Jason,” she said, “I want you to tell me exactly what you were tormenting Matthew with, and I want the truth. This is your one and only chance to explain. Don’t blow it.”
Jason braced himself. “It was a bird, miss.”
“A bird?”
He nodded. “I found a bird on the path back there, miss. A dead one. It was a bit manky.”
Tess could guess what had happened. Jason had picked up the bird, waved it in Matthew’s general direction, and Matthew, as ever, had overreacted. It wasn’t much more than boyish high jinks, but Matthew’s response – and the fact that Jason must have known from experience exactly how his classmate would respond – meant that she couldn’t be seen to condone his behaviour.
Curtly she said, “What did I tell you before getting on the coach today, Jason?”
“You told us we were representing the school and we had to be on our best behaviour, miss,” he replied dutifully.
“Correct,” said Tess. “And would you say you’ve adhered to those stipulations?”
“No, miss.”
“No,” she confirmed. “You’ve let us all down, haven’t you?”
“Yes, miss. Sorry, miss.”
“I appreciate the apology,” Tess said, “but it’s not me you should be apologising to.”
“No, miss.”
Raising her voice, Tess said, “Step forward please, Matthew.”
The gaggle of Jason’s classmates, who had been hovering in the background, now half-turned, shuffling aside to create an aisle. Revealed at the end of the aisle, crouching against the chain-link fence which enclosed the metal walkway leading to the mine entrance, was Matthew Bellings.
Tess immediately saw that Matthew was trembling and that he had something dark on one cheek. She wondered whether the incident had been more serious than she had thought. Surely Jason hadn’t punched Matthew, knocked him down, bruised his face? Despite the antipathy that the other children felt towards the boy, she couldn’t believe that any of them would actually resort to violence. As Matthew shakily straightened up, Tess saw one of the girls – Charlotte McDonald – silently hold something out to him. Something small and white. A tissue. And immediately Tess realised what was really on Matthew’s face.
It wasn’t a bruise. It was blood.
It wasn’t his own blood, though; she was sure of that. His face wasn’t cut or swollen, and the blood was too thin and brownish to be fresh. As Tess looked at Matthew staring at the tissue but not taking it, her brain made another connection.
It wasn’t human blood. It was the bird’s blood. Jason must have swung the dead and rotting creature – whether intentionally or not – right into Matthew’s face. The thought of it made her feel a little sick.
However, the fact that Matthew was doing nothing to help himself, that instead of taking the proffered tissue and cleaning himself up he was simply cowering against the fence, elicited in Tess a wave not only of revulsion, but of an almost contemptuous irritation towards the boy. Marching forward, she snatched the tissue from Charlotte’s hand and brusquely applied it to Matthew’s cheek. Matthew was so surprised that he half-twisted away, releasing another of his plaintive squeals.
“Oh, for God’s sake,” Tess muttered, “don’t be a baby.”
Instantly she knew she’d overstepped the mark, shown too much of her true feelings. She was aware of shrewd eyes on her, could almost hear the identical thoughts forming in half-a-dozen thirteen-year-old heads: Miss doesn’t like him either.
“Jason,” she snapped, trying to make amends, “didn’t you have something to say?”
“Er . . . yeah. Sorry, Matthew,” Jason said, but there was a smugness in his voice that left Tess in no doubt that the damage had already been done. Despite his behaviour, Jason knew he was still the popular choice, even with his teacher, and that could only mean more trouble for Matthew further down the line.
“Everything okay?”
Tess turned briskly and straightened up. Her friend and head of department, Yvonne, older and more experienced by five years, was standing behind her. Yvonne had returned from collecting their pre-booked group ticket from the kiosk at the foot of the walkway.
“Just a little incident with a dead bird,” Tess said. “All sorted now.”
She glanced at Matthew, who stared resentfully back at her. The boy still had a faint brown stain on his red cheek. If she had been his mother she would have spat on the tissue and rubbed it until it was gone.
“I don’t want to know,” Yvonne said jovially. She was a large, rosy-faced woman with a mass of red hair. Raising her voice, she looked up and down the queue and called, “Right you lot, nice, straight line. No pushing or shoving. Who’s looking forward to a terrifying plunge into the centre of the earth?”
Most of the kids cheered and raised their hands. A few of the girls looked gleefully terrified.
“Excellent!” Yvonne said. “Come on then.”
For the next few minutes, Tess and Yvonne busied themselves handing out yellow hard hats and getting the children settled into the wooden seats of the open-sided train which would transport them underground. Aside from the bird incident, it had been a good day. Even the weather had held up, though the clouds were gathering now and a few spots of rain were beginning to patter on the plastic canopy of the walkway overhead.
They were at Porthellion Quay, a tin mining museum and visitor centre surrounded on three sides by towering Cornish cliffs. The museum was a sprawling affair, set in two hundred acres of hilly countryside, and consisting of a long-abandoned (though beautifully preserved) mining village, and a small quayside and docks beside the fast-flowing River Tam. The children had been given a tour of the village and assay office, had had a lesson in the Victorian school (after first dressing up in period costume, much to their embarrassment and hilarity), had made rope on the ‘rope walk’, and had enjoyed a picnic lunch down by the quayside. Now it was the highlight of the trip – a journey on a rickety narrow-gauge railway into the tin mine itself.
“Everybody wearing their hard hats?” asked the driver, a grizzled, wiry man dressed in blue overalls and an old miner’s helmet with a lamp on the front.
Tess glanced at Francesca. She was the only one who had protested about the headgear, but even she was now perched sullenly in her seat, the strap tightly fastened beneath her chin.
“All ready, Mr Hardacre!” shouted Yvonne, looking around and raising her eyebrows in gleeful anticipation.
“Let’s be off then,” Mr Hardacre called.
He gave an unnecessary double-blast on the whistle, which made several of the children jump, and then, to a smattering of cheers, the train chugged jerkily forward.
Tess settled back, enjoying the rattling motion and the feel of wind on her face. She knew that the train cut leisurely through half a mile of woodland before plunging downhill into the mine itself, and she half-closed her eyes, relishing the sensation of light flickering across her vision as it forced its way through the gaps in the passing trees and bushes.
Raising his voice above the noise of the train, Mr Hardacre began to deliver what was obviously a well-rehearsed spiel, providing them with various facts about mining and the mine itself. Tess listened as he told them how arsenic was a by-product of tin smelting, and how one of the often lethal jobs given to women and children was scraping the condensed arsenic off the walls of the calciners, which drew toxic fumes up from the smelting houses.
She phased out when he started to quote facts and figures relating to ore production and the length and depth of the mine’s various shafts, and only knew that the mine entrance was coming up when several of the children sitting near the front of the train began to whoop. Opening her eyes, Tess saw the glinting thread of track, like a long zip, disappearing into the centre of an approaching black arch. Dazzled by the flickering sunlight, the arch seemed to her to be not quite there; it was like an absence of reality into which they were being inexorably drawn, its edges fuzzy, its heart of darkness utterly impenetrable.
She blinked fully awake just in time to be swallowed by blackness. A palpable ripple of fearful excitement ran through the group at the sudden claustrophobic chill emanating from the rocky walls, and at the way the light from Mr Hardacre’s lamp slithered and fractured across the tunnel’s myriad planes and surfaces. Tess swallowed to ease the sudden pressure in her head, but even after the silent pop in her eardrums the previously guttural rumble of the train’s engine sounded thick and muffled. She imagined the thick, dusty air clogging her throat and had to make a conscious effort not to cough. After a couple of minutes of travelling downhill, Mr Hardacre eased back on the brake and brought the train to a grinding halt.
He gestured towards a tableau on their left. Illuminated by the light of a number of ersatz Davy lamps, fuelled not by oil but by electricity, was a family of mannequins. There was a father, a mother, a boy and a girl, all dressed in the drab clothes of a typical mid-nineteenth century mining family. The father’s shiny, chipped face was streaked with black paint, evidently intended to represent subterranean grime. Like Mr Hardacre, he wore a mining helmet and was resting a pickaxe on his shoulder.
“They’re well creepy,” Tess heard one of the girls whisper. She glanced in the direction of the voice and placed a finger to her lips, though she couldn’t disagree.
The wide, painted eyes of the family seemed to stare blankly at the newly arrived group. The little girl was missing a chunk of plaster from the centre of her face, which gave the impression that some hideous skin disease had eaten away her nose and part of her mouth.
Mr Hardacre told them about life underground, about how the father would toil away for ten or twelve hours at a time in stifling conditions, while the children would sit waiting, often in pitch darkness, looking after his food and matches and whatever else he might bring down the mine with him. Meanwhile the women – if they weren’t scraping arsenic off the walls of the calciners – would be at home, cleaning and washing and cooking the Cornish pasties that their husbands ate every day.
“Any questions?” Mr Hardacre asked finally.
For a long moment there was silence, and then Simon Lawson tentatively raised a hand.
“Is the mine haunted?”
The shadows occupying the wrinkles in Mr Hardacre’s face deepened as he frowned. “Haunted?”
“Yes . . . I mean . . . well, people must have died down here. Accidents and that. So I just wondered whether there were any, like, stories or legends or anything . . .”
Tess glanced at the boy, but in the gloom he was nothing but a hunched shadow.
“Ghosts, eh?” Mr Hardacre said, and this time he smiled, the shadows flocking to his widening mouth. “Well, I don’t know about that, but have you come across the story of the fallen boy on your travels today?”
There was a general shaking of heads.
“There’s a bench with a plaque on it outside the sweet shop,” Mr Hardacre said. “It’s dedicated to Michael Rowan, who died at the age of thirteen on March 16, 1865. Did anyone see that?”
A few hands went up, though Tess herself had not noticed the plaque.
“Well, there’s a strange little story associated with him,” Mr Hardcastle said. “Not a ghost story exactly, but still . . . sad. And a bit creepy.
“The mine, as I told you earlier, was founded in 1832. However there’s a secondary shaft, which we’ll see in a few minutes, which was created in 1865. The reason for this was that after thirty years of mining, the seams on this level were all but exhausted. It was decided, therefore, to mine deeper – and so the secondary shaft was created, in the hope that further seams would be discovered on a lower level.
“One of the most prominent miners at that time – he was a sort of manager, answerable directly to the mine owner – was a man called William Rowan. By all accounts, Rowan was not popular. He was a bear of a man, and something of a bully, and he had a son, Michael, who was apparently much the same.
“One of the victims of Michael’s bullying was a young lad called Luke Pellant. The story goes that Michael chased Luke into the mine one night and that in the darkness Michael ended up losing his way and falling down the secondary shaft. It was just a big hole in the ground at that point, and back in those days there were no safety barriers or anything like that. Anyway, when Luke told everyone what had happened, a rescue operation was mounted, but of course it was too late – the lad had fallen eighty feet or so onto solid rock and was pretty much smashed to pieces.
“Although Luke claimed that Michael had fallen, Michael’s father, William Rowan, didn’t believe him. He accused Luke of pushing his son down the shaft, of murdering him, and he swore he’d see the boy brought to trial and punished. The general view, however, was that Michael’s death had been nothing but the result of a terrible accident, and one that he had brought on himself. When nothing came of Rowan’s campaign to see Luke brought to justice, Rowan was furious.
“A few weeks later, Luke disappeared, and it seems that although Rowan was initially suspected of having had something to do with it, Rowan himself put it about that the boy had fled out of guilt or shame for what he had done. In any event, nothing ever came of the incident – until about twenty years ago, when they were excavating the ground down by the quayside to lay the foundations for the information centre. During the excavation some bones were found – an almost entire skeleton, in fact – which tests revealed were about a hundred and fifty years old, and were those of a boy somewhere between the ages of ten and fifteen.” Mr Hardacre shrugged. “It’s never been proven, but the general consensus is that William Rowan abducted and killed Luke Pellant and buried his remains down by the river. Of course, the Rowan family, who are still quite prominent in the area, refuse to accept it, and had the bench erected as a sort of . . . well, a sort of statement of defiance, I suppose.”
“Are there any members of the Pellant family still about?” Tess asked.
Mr Hardacre shook his head. “Not that I know of. Not in these parts anyway.”
“So the bad kid gets remembered and the good one gets forgotten,” one of the girls piped up. “That is so not fair.”
Mr Hardacre shrugged. “I don’t think it makes much difference after all this time. Although if it’s any consolation, Michael Rowan, despite the commemorative bench, is not regarded fondly around these parts. The locals call him the ‘fallen boy’, not only because he fell down the shaft, but also because, in their eyes, he – and his father – had fallen from grace.”
“So does Michael Rowan’s ghost haunt the mine then?” Simon Lawson asked.
Mr Hardacre smiled. “Not that I know of. Shall we carry on?”
He started the train up again and they went deeper, the engine creaking and grinding as they chugged downhill. The tunnel became narrower, the walls more jagged and uneven, and Tess had to suppress a wave of claustrophobia when she looked up at the black ceiling and got the impression that it was crushing down on them, closing them in.
She was relieved several minutes later when the tunnel abruptly widened and they found themselves in a natural arena-like cavern, the walls and ceiling sloping away on all sides, giving a sudden disorientating sense of space. Once again, Mr Hardacre eased back on the brake and the engine groaned to a halt.
“Right,” he said, “who fancies a bit of mining?”
This time the response was not quite as enthusiastic. Tess and Yvonne ushered the children out of the train and ordered them to follow Mr Hardacre, who led them across to what looked like a huge, squared-off well, surrounded by a metre-high wall. The shaft of the ‘well’, a raft-sized square of impenetrable blackness, had been overlaid with a sheet of thick but rusty wire mesh.
“This is the secondary shaft I was telling you about,” he said.
“The one that the boy fell down?” one of the girls asked.
“That’s right. This shaft has been unused since the mine closed a hundred years ago. Even before then it was prone to floods and cave-ins.”
“Are there any plans to open the shaft up again?” asked Yvonne.
Hardacre shook his head. “It would cost too much money. And there’s nothing to see down there that you can’t see up here.” He raised a finger. “Now, remember I told you that children often used to sit down here for hours in the darkness, waiting for their fathers to finish work? Well, when I said darkness, I meant darkness. I was talking about the kind we don’t usually experience in this modern age. The kind where you literally can’t see your hand in front of your face. How many of you want to know what that kind of darkness is like?”
Tess glanced around. Most of the hands were going up, though some of the children looked nervous.
“All right then,” Mr Hardacre said. “But when the lights go off, I want you all to stand absolutely still. We don’t want any accidents. Okay?”
There was a murmur of assent.
Mr Hardacre crossed to a chunky plastic box on the wall, which had once been white but was now grimed and smeared with black fingerprints. The box had a single switch in its centre, and thick black wires snaked out of the top of it, leading to the ceiling of the tunnel, along the length of which, Tess noticed, were a series of dimly illuminated light bulbs. Mr Hardacre switched off the lamp on his miner’s helmet and then looked around at the group and smiled, evidently relishing the moment.
“Ready?” he said, and before anyone could answer he pressed his finger down on the switch.
There was a loud click, like a bone snapping, and the world vanished. Around her, Tess heard a brief, shrill chorus of alarmed squeals, which then seemed to abruptly cut off, leaving a silence and a darkness that felt skin-tight, constrictive. For a few seconds Tess was convinced that she could no longer move; she felt her throat closing up, her chest tightening. She couldn’t shake the notion that she was all at once utterly alone. With an effort she raised her hand in front of her face, but she couldn’t see it, she couldn’t see anything.
She didn’t realise she was holding her breath, waiting for something to happen, until she heard a scuffle of movement to her left. Then, for the third time in twenty minutes, Matthew Bellings cried out, his familiar, teeth-grating mewl of protest echoing jaggedly in the confined space. Immediately the light clicked back on and the world was restored. Blinking, somewhat dazed, Tess looked around her.
The children were standing in little groups, all except for Matthew. He was standing alone, in their midst but isolated. Tess focused on him, and her heart gave a sudden lurch. Matthew’s face was scored with streaks of blackness. It was as if the darkness had not allowed him fully to return, as if it had eaten part of him away.
But of course that was nonsense. The black streaks were not darkness; they were simply dirt. Clearly someone had stepped up behind Matthew when the lights were out and had smeared begrimed hands across his cheeks. The question was—
“Who did this?” Yvonne snapped, stepping forward.
Tess’s colleague was quivering with rage, pointing at Matthew but sweeping her burning gaze around the rest of the class. The children stared back at her silently or looked down at the floor.
“What did Mr Hardacre tell you?” she continued. And when again she was met with silence, she shouted, “Well?”
“He told us to stand still so there wouldn’t be any accidents, miss,” replied Julie Steele, whose dark fringe half-obscured her chubby face.
“Yes he did, Julie. So why did one of you decide to be an idiot and do the exact opposite?”
Again, silence. Angrily Yvonne said, “Right, well there’s only one way to resolve this. Everyone hold out your hands.”
There was a shuffling, a collective glancing around, and then hands appeared, palms up, for inspection. Tess looked from one pair to the next, her gaze skittering. As far as she could see, they were all white, unsullied.
But not all the children had complied with Yvonne’s instructions. At the back of the largest group, partly concealed by their classmates, were two crouching, whispering figures. They appeared to be facing each other, holding hands. And then Tess realised that they were not holding hands, but that one was cleaning the hands of the other.
“You two,” she shouted, pointing, striding across.
Two guilty heads snapped up. Beneath the yellow bulbs of their hard hats, Tess recognised the faces of Jason Hayes and Francesca Parks.
Yvonne had joined her now. With her curly red hair streaming from beneath her own hard hat, she looked faintly ridiculous, but no one was laughing.
“Come here!” she hissed, her furiously sibilant voice echoing around the cavern.
Jason and Francesca shuffled forward. Francesca was holding a begrimed Wet Wipe.
“Jason Hayes, show me your hands,” Yvonne ordered.
Jason hesitated, but the expression on his face was almost resigned. Slowly he turned over his hands, revealing his palms. Despite Francesca’s ministrations they were still mostly black.
And so, a split-second later, was everything else.
Just as they had a couple of minutes before, the lights in the tunnel suddenly went out. This time, caught unawares, the screams from some of the children were louder, edged with panic. There was shuffling movement and someone called out; from the sounds they made, either they or someone else appeared to stumble and fall. Yvonne’s furious voice rose above the melee:
“Everyone just stand still! Mr Hardacre, what’s going on?”
Tess heard the click-click, click-click of their guide testing the light switch.
“Must be a power cut,” he said. “Hang on a sec.”
There was a smaller click and suddenly a thin beam of white light cut through the blackness. It was the lamp on Mr Hardacre’s helmet. The beam bobbed and shivered, playing across the walls and the faces of the children as he moved his head.
“No need to panic,” he said. “We’ll just get back on the train. I’ll soon have us out of here.”
“Miss?” said a voice in the darkness.
Tess turned, but the children were little more than shadowy shapes.
“What is it?” she asked.
“Jason’s gone, miss,” the voice said, and now Tess recognised it as belonging to Francesca Parks. “He’s not here.”
“What do you mean – gone?” snapped Yvonne.
“I don’t know, miss,” said Francesca. “He was standing right next to me. But when the light came back on, he’d . . . disappeared.”
Yvonne huffed. “Oh, this is ridiculous. What is that little idiot playing at?”
“Matthew Bellings has gone too, miss,” one of the boys said.
Tess felt as though the situation was spiralling out of control. “What?” she said. “Are you sure?”
“Yes, miss. He was right there.” A shadowy shape raised an arm, pointing at the spot where Matthew had been standing a few seconds before.
“Matthew?” Tess called, looking around. “Jason?”
There was no response. Tess and Yvonne looked at each other. Tess saw a flicker of fear in her colleague’s eyes.
“Let’s get the other children on the train,” Yvonne said. “Count them to make sure we haven’t lost anyone else.”
They did it as quickly as the darkness would allow, while Mr Hardacre did a quick recce of the tunnels leading off from the central cavern, shining his helmet-mounted light down each one and calling the boys’ names.
Finally he returned, shaking his head. “I’ll put a call through to the main office,” he said. “Find out what—”
“Listen,” said Tess.
“What—” Yvonne began, but Tess held up a hand for silence.
“I heard something . . . There it is again!”
They all listened now. From somewhere ahead of them and to their left came a scraping, a shuffling, as if someone or something was emerging from a burrow, scrabbling towards the light. Mr Hardacre walked slowly forwards, placing his feet with care on the uneven ground, the beam of light from his helmet sweeping across the cavern walls.
Several of the children gasped as something suddenly tumbled out of one of the side tunnels. Tess saw white hands clawing at the ground, eyes flashing as a face turned towards them.
“Matthew!” she shouted and ran forward, ignoring Mr Hardacre’s warning about minding her footing.
Matthew was on his hands and knees, shivering with fear, his eyes wide and staring. His face was black with dirt. His mouth was hanging open, and as Tess approached him a string of drool fell from his lips and spattered on the ground.
She dropped to her knees, gathered him up in her arms. He flinched and then relaxed, clutching at her as though craving her warmth.
“Matthew,” she said softly. “What happened? Do you know where Jason is?”
Matthew looked up at her. He was clearly dazed, confused.
“He called me Michael,” he whispered.
“Who did?” asked Tess. “Jason, you mean?”
Matthew shook his head. “He called me Michael. He thought . . . he said . . .”
Suddenly his face crumpled and he began to sob.
As Tess hugged him tight, trying to comfort him, Hardacre slipped past her, into the tunnel. Yvonne, bringing up the rear, panting a little, crouched down beside her. Before Yvonne could say anything, Tess gently transferred Matthew into her colleague’s arms and muttered, “Look after him.”
She stood up shakily. She could still see the white light from Hardacre’s lamp shimmering across the walls of the side tunnel – and then he turned a corner and all at once they were plunged into blackness again.
Tess stepped forward, feeling her way into the tunnel. She moved sideways, crab-like, her hands sliding along the rocky walls, her feet probing ahead. With every step she couldn’t help but imagine a precipice in front of her, a gaping abyss. She told herself she was being foolish, but she couldn’t shake the idea from her mind.
Then she rounded a corner and suddenly saw thin slivers of ice-white light limning the jags and crevices of the tunnel ahead.
“Mr Hardacre, wait!” she called and hurried towards him.
She flinched as he turned towards her, the light from his lamp flashing across her vision, blinding her.
“What are you doing here?” he said almost angrily. “You should have stayed in the cavern with the children.”
“Yvonne’s with them,” Tess said. “Jason is one of my pupils. I couldn’t just wait around in the darkness, doing nothing.”
Hardacre made an exasperated sound, but he said, “Come on then. But be careful.”
They moved on down the tunnel, Hardacre leading the way, his lamplight sliding across the glossy walls. Down here the world was stark and primal. A world of rock and silence, of harsh white and deep black, nothing in between.
“How deep does this tunnel go?” Tess whispered.
Hardacre’s shoulders hunched in a shrug. “A mile maybe.”
“Will it—” Tess began, but then she stopped.
There was a figure crouching in the tunnel ahead.
It was on its haunches, bent forward, its back to them. It was naked, its forehead resting against the rocky wall. It reminded Tess of a child playing hide-and-seek, counting to a hundred before standing up and shouting, “Coming, ready or not.”
Hardacre had halted too. Tess stepped up beside him.
“Jason?” she said.
The figure didn’t respond. Tess slipped by Hardacre, moving towards it.
“Be careful, miss,” Hardacre said.
“It’s all right,” Tess replied, though her stomach was crawling with nerves. “There’s nothing to be frightened of.”
She was within arm’s reach of the figure now. She could see the nubs of its vertebrae, the white skin streaked blackly with grime.
“Jason,” she said again, and reached out to touch the figure’s shoulder. It was freezing cold.
Unbalanced by her touch, the figure rocked backwards. It tumbled over like a turtle on to its back, still in a crouching position, its hands crossed in front of its belly, its knees drawn up.
When she saw what had been done to Jason’s face, Tess screamed. She screamed and screamed, the sound echoing off the walls. Forever afterwards she would see the image in her mind. She would see black dirt spilling from the gaping cavern of Jason’s mouth and tumbling from his empty eye sockets like thick dark tears.