Natasha's voice withdrew from Tom's mind, and again that sense of loneliness washed over him. His head had started to ache from the impact. Blood ran cool down his neck and between his shoulder blades. As he stood with the gun in his hands, dizziness assailed him once more and he staggered back to the rock for support.
The gun was surprisingly heavy and cool, so cold that it felt slick to the touch. Tom weighed the weapon, resting it in his splayed hand and moving it slightly to get the feel of it. He could see very little, and he thought that keeping hold of it in the dark would be dangerous. He'd likely shoot himself in the foot. He had no idea about safety catches, how to hold or fire it, so he swung back, threw the gun and held his breath until he heard a dull thump somewhere out on the Plain. With any luck it would have buried itself in the muck. He thought that the chance of this man—whoever he was—finding it upon waking was very remote.
The possibility suddenly hit him that this may well be Nathan King lying before him. Tom knelt and rested his hand lightly on the back of the man's head. It came away sticky with blood, and there was slight movement as the man breathed and twitched in unconsciousness. He moved down and felt beneath the torso. This man was heavily built and felt fit, not fat like King.
Whoever it was, he could wake at any moment.
Tom knew what he had to do. He felt his way to where Natasha and her chains had fallen after knocking out the man—She won't be there, she never was there, it's all in my messed-up mind!—and there she was, hard and alien beneath his fingertips. How could there be anything alive about her? But such questions, Tom knew, avoided the obvious facts about the last couple of hours. The mad part of him snickered at his denial, and the old Tom, who had come here ten hours earlier searching for a simple truth about his lost son, was suddenly someone from history. It was months ago that he had left his wife, come out here and found the impossibilities that had driven him mad.
There's no corpse wrapped in chains, he thought, gathering the metal loops onto Natasha's chest and stomach and lifting her, and if even if there were, she wouldn't be talking to me in my head, a ten-year-dead girl talking in my fucking head! As he started back in the direction of the grave and perimeter fence he waited for that tingling feeling in his mind, the one that would warn him that the dead girl was about to speak again. But for now there was only silence. Carrying his madness in his arms, Tom walked across the dark moor.
He knew when he was nearing the pit. He could smell the stench of the grave.
The weight in Tom's arms was becoming unbearable, but he knew that if he set the girl and chains down now, he may never make it to the car. He would lie here all night, cold, damp from dew, and he may well die of exposure, adding his own fresh corpse to the body count this Plain had already notched over the years. Either that or Mister Wolf would regain consciousness, find him lying here and throttle him. So he walked on, willing his legs to move another step, drawing cool breath into his burning lungs, doing his best to ignore the pain in his arms. The muscles in his shoulders ached. If only he could get rid of the chains! Then I could carry her forever.
He passed the open grave, and the bodies spread out across the heather and grass. Whatever Natasha was thinking this close to her dead family, she kept to herself. Tom was glad. Her voice was that of a young child, and yet it was so totally wrong that he relished this silent time. Perhaps later she would speak again and he could begin asking questions. But for now he had only one aim in mind: make it back to the cottage. There he would hide the body in the room below the kitchen and try to comfort Jo, come up with a story, a lie. He had lied to his wife before and he had not liked it then. But sometimes lies are uttered in the most benevolent of voices. To protect. To insulate loved ones from insane truth. Some lies are created for love.
He walked in a straight line when he could, hoping to reach the fence and then eventually the crawl space beneath. He stumbled, either on rocks or the twisted stems of ferns or old heathers, and a couple of times he fell, dropping Natasha and landing on his face on the damp ground. Each impact hurt the back of his head more than anything else, and he gingerly explored the wound there, wondering whether he'd done worse damage than he had at first thought. It felt tender and soft, but if he winced against the pain he could press hard enough to feel the skull. There was no give to it, and that at least was a good sign. But he also knew that he had lost a lot of blood; he could feel it cold across his back and shoulders.
At least the blood could aid his lie to Jo. A story was already forming in his mind.
He walked more slowly after the second tumble, partly through fear of falling again, but mostly from sheer exhaustion. He had excavated a mass grave, fled across a moor with a corpse wrapped in chains, attacked a man trying to kill him, and now he was making his way back through the dark to potential safety. Maybe this would be a standard night's training for a young soldier, but not for someone in their fifties, someone who had let fitness take a second ranking in his life, below food and drink and frequent bouts of self-indulgent misery. Events carried him on, even though he knew this was madness. Perhaps, he thought, he had never even left home.
He saw the fence from some distance away, glinting in the moonlight. Stars glimmered more powerfully than he ever saw back home. Here there was no light pollution to distort and lessen the stars' impact, no stain of humanity on the skies, and ten thousand sources of ancient light were hazed across the heavens. Grateful though he was, Tom felt even more lost in time than ever.
He turned left and began to follow the fence toward the wood. He was not sure how far he had come, but even if he had neared the fence where Mister Wolf had climbed over, the wood would only be a few hundred yards farther on. He could make that distance. He had to. His arms were growing numb now, and his shoulders sang with pins and needles, circulation rebelling against the strain being put on his muscles. His legs were aching as well, and with every step his knees were becoming more rubbery, less certain of their soundness. If his legs buckled beneath him now it would be over, he would fall and not be able to get up again until he'd had a rest. And however long that lasted, it would be too long.
That feeling in his mind again, the sense of another consciousness, and Natasha said, Keep going.
"I'm not sure I can," he said.
You can, Daddy. Just think of me … think … aim your thoughts down …
Tom looked at the shadow in his arms, but soon realised she did not mean that at all. The contact in his mind lulled him, whispered words that he did not understand but which had a calming quality all their own. If it was a lullaby, it spoke of little that he knew. If it was something else—a spell? a hex?—then he was glad for it to work. The pain in his muscles grew distant without lessening, and the growing agony in his knees became more remote than his toes, so far away that it could not belong to him. He looked in and down, and Natasha's presence was palpable.
Tom walked on. He kept the fence-topped bank to his right, moving away from it only where there were clumps of trees or heavy shrubbery barring the way. It may have been minutes or an hour later when he came to the small wood. He plunged straight in, unafraid of the dark—not while she's here with me, in me, guiding me and comforting me—but cautious with his footing. He could so easily slip on a rock or step into a small hole, and snap would go his leg or pop would go his knee. Natasha's calming thoughts could do little to prevent his bones from breaking.
When he came to the crawl space beneath the fence he became dizzy, swaying on his feet, skin suddenly cold with fresh sweat. He knelt and lay the bundle of bones and chains on the ground, then fell onto his hands and knees, retching, but bringing up nothing but bile. He realised that he had not eaten or drunk anything for hours. He was dehydrated, hungry, and terrified.