“I can’t believe I’m back here.”
Dylan stood knee-deep in thick grass verge and stared down at the black gaping maw of the tunnel. Police tape fluttered in the wind and the mouth had been roughly covered by a large sheet of metal with the sign: NO ENTRY: POLICE INVESTIGATION.
They must have just finished clearing the crash site when the murders had taken place. It occurred to Dylan that perhaps it was only when they had taken away the lanterns and construction lights that a wraith had dared to creep through.
It was mid-afternoon. The bus driver had looked at them as if they were mad when they’d asked him to drop them off at the side of the road in the middle of nowhere, but, by Tristan’s estimation, it was the closest spot to the tunnel that public transport would reach.
From there, they’d had to slog three miles down single-lane country roads and through fields. This had almost done Dylan in – despite the speed at which her leg was healing. The going was rough and uneven on crutches, a test even for her good leg.
She was still a little upset with Tristan. He should have told her what he’d discovered, when he discovered it. But now that they were here, their spat didn’t seem quite so important. Tristan must have thought so too, because he inched over and started rubbing at the tension that had suddenly formed between her shoulders, understanding how difficult it was for her to come back to this spot. The place that had killed her.
For that alone, she forgave him.
What would it be like down there? Her memories of being pulled out of the train were hazy at best. All she remembered was darkness, flashing lights. And pain. The tunnel was silent now, empty. Well, except for a doorway to the wasteland.
Dylan swallowed, her throat tight. Would she be able to see the hole they’d made through from the wasteland? A small, irrational part of her was terrified that she might not see it, that she might fall in.
Well, they’d soon find out.
“You don’t have to go down there,” Tristan reminded her, breaking into her thoughts. “In fact, I’d rather you didn’t.”
“I’m going, Tristan.”
“It’s treacherous,” Tristan argued. “You could snap your leg again. It’s not exactly crutch-friendly.”
“Fine then, I’ll leave them here.” Dylan shifted both crutches from under her arm and balanced them against the barbed wire fence she’d torn her jeans getting over. Apparently it was as sharp in real life as it had been in the wasteland, though at least she hadn’t cut her hands this time.
“You know that isn’t what I meant.” Tristan marched over and picked her crutches up, went to hand them to her and then thought better of it. Hanging both supports over one shoulder, he threw his free arm around her back and grabbed hold of her jeans at her opposite hip. “Lean on me,” he ordered. “If you’re determined to go, I’ll help you.”
It was said with extremely bad grace, but Dylan decided a meek “Thank you” was the smart response.
Once they were down on the train tracks, the going was easier, though Dylan’s crutches sank into the thick layer of stones that formed a bed for the sleepers. At the entrance to the tunnel itself, she paused. Tristan had moved the NO ENTRY sign and was ripping off the police tape which had been stretched across the opening, but that wasn’t why Dylan stopped. Now she was here, she wasn’t entirely sure she could go back into the tunnel’s inky depth. Memories crowded in from last time, before she realised she was dead. Waking utterly alone, deafened by the silence. The tumble of seats, strewn all over the place. Those suspiciously soft, spongy objects, the slickness she’d slid across, then smeared on her jeans. Clawing her way out of the chaos then stumbling down the long, lonely length of the tunnel.
“Tristan,” she whispered.
He looked up from where he was rolling the blue and white tape into a sticky ball. He read the emotions on her face and his lips pressed into a thin line.
“Stay here,” he begged.
Perversely, that was the spur Dylan needed to free herself of her paralysis. “No. Let’s go.”
She left one crutch leaning against the wall beside Tristan’s wad of tape, keeping the other on her bad side. Tristan used a torch app on her phone to illuminate the way forward. It was a cold light, making the grey stone of the walls seem like the bowels of some medieval dungeon, but it was better than nothing.
Though the crashed train carriages had been removed, there was still a lot of debris littering the ground. Further up the tunnel, the crash had dislodged some heavy wooden sleepers and twisted up the metal train lines. In shifting flickers from Tristan’s makeshift torch, hampered by her stupid crutch, Dylan had to edge along gingerly.
“Wait up, Tristan!” Dylan called. “I can’t— Gah! My stupid leg!”
Tristan stopped, turning to flash the phone in her direction to better light the way, but Dylan still felt the need to hurry. She didn’t see the hunk of broken metal in front of her, but she felt it when it skittered out from underneath her feet.
Falling, Dylan braced against the wall with her free hand. Her nails dug in valiantly, but she toppled forward, scraping her hand down the brickwork and landing in a tangled heap.
“Dylan!” Tristan was at her side in an instant, lifting her up to a sitting position and collecting her crutch. “Are you OK?”
“Yeah.” She grimaced, lifted her palms up. In the pale torchlight, they were bloody and raw.
“Let me take you back,” Tristan pleaded.
“No.” Dylan shook her head. She wasn’t leaving until this was done. “We’re almost there now. Help me up.”
Tristan sighed, but he grasped Dylan below the elbow and hauled her to her feet. “Will you let me carry you, at least?”
“No, you might need both arms free.”
Tristan stilled at her words. “Dylan,” he said carefully, “If I thought there were wraiths in here, I wouldn’t let you anywhere near the place. End of story.”
Dylan opened her mouth to argue – who the hell was he to let her anywhere? – but before she could get the words out he held up her crutch. “You ready?”
As ready as she’d ever be. Dylan nodded and Tristan proceeded back down the tunnel, slower this time, making sure Dylan could keep up with his long-legged strides.
It was obvious when they came to the exact spot, the place where her life had ended. For one, the area was cordoned off by yet more police tape and there were chalk markings on the wall and across the ground, along with what looked like dark pools of dried blood, and a heavy, raw smell. Worse, though – from Dylan’s perspective – she felt it.
A coldness in her chest, a weakness in her limbs – like the life was being sucked out of her again. Or like her soul was trying to leave her body. She stepped back, suddenly afraid of exactly that.
“Here,” Tristan said unnecessarily. “This is where we came through.”
“And where those men died,” Dylan agreed.
“Come here,” he said, hunkering down to inspect something on the ground. “Look at this.”
Dylan took one step forward, then had to stop. She had that feeling again, deep in her chest. Like her heart was made of iron and there was a powerful magnet pointed right at her. Pulling, dragging.
Panicking, she shuffled quickly backwards and almost fell over again.
“Dylan?”
“Don’t you feel it?”
“Feel what?”
“That pull. God, it’s like something’s trying to tear out of me.”
“Like your soul?” Tristan’s eyes widened in terror. “Back! Back, Dylan!” Not waiting for her to move under her own limping steam, he leaned down and gripped her round the waist, lifting her off her feet and hustling her backwards.
Heart still pounding, like it was fighting to stay in the protective cage of her ribs, Dylan didn’t feel like arguing with him. She expected him to drop her after several feet, but he kept going, the crutch squashed between them uncomfortably, his arms a steel band around her middle.
“Tristan, put me down,” she said.
He ignored her. “Should never have brought you here. Don’t know what the hell I was thinking.”
“Tristan,” she tried again to get his attention. “It’s fine. I don’t feel it any more, you can put me down.”
“When we’re out.”
“Tristan, please, this is really uncomf—” she cut off the rest of her complaint, eyes focussing on something in the dark. “Tristan!”
“No, Dylan!”
She started struggling in earnest, eyes still fixed over Tristan’s shoulder. “Put me down! Put me down, now! Seriously, Tristan, you have to! It’s—”
A wraith. It was a wraith, swooping and swirling down the tunnel like it was tasting the air, its looping pattern circling closer and closer in their direction. Dylan was astonished that it wasn’t making a beeline straight for them, but it seemed confused. Disoriented.
“Tristan!”
“I know, Dylan,” he ground out. “I can feel it.”
Tristan hustled Dylan over to the tunnel wall and dumped her down, forcing her body into the corner between the wall and the pebbled floor. Then he spun round and stood guard over her, tense and ready.
“Wait!” Dylan squealed, struggling to stand up.
“Stay down,” he ordered.
“No, Tristan. Wait!” She tugged hard on his sleeve, then realised how stupid that was – he needed both hands free. Instead she thwacked him frantically on the thigh. “This isn’t the wasteland! You’re real now, a person. If that thing gets you, you’ll die!”
“Shhh!” He pushed her hand away, his attention on the wraith.
The light streaming in from the tunnel entrance, just ten or fifteen metres away now, made the creature harder to see. It clung to the shadows, advancing then retreating.
“What’s it doing?”
“It doesn’t understand where it is,” Tristan murmured. “They’re stupid, wraiths. They hunt as a pack, can’t think for themselves.”
“A pack!” Dylan exclaimed. “We should run, Tristan!”
Never mind that she couldn’t. She’d manage. And if her leg broke again, well, it healed fast the last time. Better in plaster than dead.
“Shhh!” Tristan hissed again, turning for an instant to glare at her. “It’s only one. Don’t. Move.”
“Tristan!”
“Maybe it’ll ignore us. It keeps being drawn back to the blood stains at the back, then catching something else out here. It can’t decide. We might be able to just slowly—”
“Tristan?”
Tristan stopped speaking at the same time Dylan softly called his name. He turned round and stared at the hands that Dylan had lifted. The same thought had crossed their minds at the exact same time.
Dylan’s bloodied palms.
“You,” he whispered hoarsely. “It smells your blood.”
“What wins out,” Dylan asked, trying to tamp down on her panic, “Old blood or fresh?”
It might’ve been her imagination, but it seemed as if the wraith caught her question, locked on to it. And decided.
“Dylan? Dylan, get up!” Tristan moved forward a few inches so that Dylan could climb up his body like it was a ladder. “Go,” he said once she was up. “Get out of here.”
She wanted to tell him no, to forget it, that she wasn’t leaving him, but she was a handicap to him and she knew it. The stupid crutch, her pathetic leg. She wasn’t fighting fit, and even if she had been, she’d no experience fighting wraiths. Hating it, but knowing Tristan was right, she started to hobble away.
It was agony, leaving Tristan. But if she saw he was in trouble she’d lose the will to flee – and likely fall flat on her face again.
She fell anyway.
Her bad leg crumpled – this time with a hideous flare of pain – and she sank down, slamming onto her hip then clocking her head on a dislodged sleeper. She couldn’t breathe, she couldn’t move; not even to look at Tristan and the wraith. All she could do was lie there, trying to gather her scattered thoughts.
“Tristan!” She tried to scream it, but nothing came out. “Tristan!”
“Dylan, go!” He sounded breathless, afraid. That gave her the impetus to galvanise her stunned brain, marshal her battered body. She wriggled onto her side and heaved herself up. But what she saw made her heart stop.
Tristan was fighting the wraith – with nothing but his bare hands. He had one clenched in the ragged black wisps of the wraith’s body, and with his other he was trying to rip and tear at its face. The wraith was twisting this way and that within his grip, slashing teeth searching for purchase. Talons curved forward from beneath its body, hacking at Tristan’s arm and chest. The light blue jumper he wore was already torn and Dylan could see blood blooming down his sleeve.
The only consolation she had was that he’d obviously kept some of his abilities from his experience in the wasteland. He could grip them, unlike her when she was on the other side.
Suddenly the creature jerked backwards, freeing itself from Tristan’s iron grip. It plummeted again, but lunged to evade Tristan’s hand and dive right at Dylan! She had time to draw one startled gasp and lift a hand to protect her face.
Evil, venomous eyes fixed their sights on her…
And crashed to the ground just short of their target, Tristan’s broad hand crushing down on its skull. He held it there, though the thing thrashed and scrabbled frantically to get free. Adjusting his grip slightly, Tristan put his full weight onto the thing and there was a sharp crack. The wraith slumped down, unmoving. It didn’t so much as twitch when Tristan lifted his hand away.
“Shit!” Dylan found her voice at last.
She reached out to touch it – a black mass, edges blurred, shape still indefinable – but Tristan slapped her hand away.
“Don’t touch it!”
“It’s dead, isn’t it?”
“It was already dead,” he reminded her. “I don’t know what it is now. It was never meant to be here.” He snorted. “Like me.”
“It’s smoking,” Dylan pointed out.
The feathery, wispy outline of the wraith seemed to be evaporating into the air, in thin tendrils of acrid smoke. Grabbing a twig, Dylan poked at it, and it exploded in a ball of noxious black gas.
“Don’t breathe it in!” Tristan warned even as Dylan jerked herself out of range. She forced herself not to take a breath until the dark fumes had dissipated.
“God!” Dylan waved at the air, even though it was clear once more. “Did you know it was going to do that?”
“No.” Tristan shook his head, blinking rapidly. He looked at her, but didn’t seem able to focus. For the first time Dylan realised his eyes were glassy, his skin pale and waxy.
“Tristan?” She reached for him, just able to catch him as he slumped to an awkward sitting position. “Are you all right?”
Awkwardly, she got him to lie down, urging him over a bit so he wasn’t lying on the spot where the wraith had been. In the dim light, she could make out deep scratches that ran down his throat, with two on his chest where his jumper had been ripped open. His face, apart from its pallid complexion, seemed untouched. What concerned her was the growing red stain on his sleeve. Grabbing his jumper at the neckline, Dylan pulled at it until it split down the seam.
When she pushed the fabric free of Tristan’s shoulder, blood surged freely down his side and onto the ground. She blotted it with her own sleeve and caught a glimpse of mangled muscle and sinew beneath, and something off-white that looked suspiciously like bone.
“No,” she breathed. Not knowing what else to do, she put her sleeve-covered hand back over the wound and pushed down, hard.
You’re not in the wasteland any more, an insidious little voice whispered inside her head. You’re in the real world, and in the real world, people die.
Pressing down still, Dylan stared down at his pallid face, features slackened, and fought panic. Tristan was so still and lifeless beneath her, he could be dead. The thought made nausea rise up her throat. No, she couldn’t lose Tristan. Not now, not after everything that had happened. She just couldn’t.
“Tristan!” she sobbed. “Tristan! Please be all right. Please. I need you!”
Fumbling on the floor of the tunnel with her free hand, she found her smart phone still shining its torch. It was low on battery and there was no signal, but when she rang 999 anyway, it somehow managed to connect.
“Emergency. Which service do you require?”
“Ambulance,” Dylan blurted. “I need an ambulance!”