With a sob he shrugged off his backpack and tried to pull himself upright, but the pain was too much. He collapsed back onto the springy, moist ground and started to cry; fat, wet tears pushing out from his tightly closed eyelids. Tears of pain, frustration and utter hopelessness. For the first time in many years he found himself praying to a God he hoped still had Kulsay on the radar.
There was movement in the bracken beside him. He opened his eyes, seeing the white, flaccid skin of the hand that was holding back the undergrowth, exposing him. He looked from the hand to the white, dead eyes staring impassively down at him, and started to scream. And kept on screaming until the hand reached into his mouth and ripped out his tongue.
In the cellar, Eddie Farrant listened. The noise of the helicopter was increasing, becoming more like a roar of thunder, and the noise brought him with relief back to reality. He didn’t want to think about Jo Madley; her disappearance and horrific reappearance. He didn’t want to think about what had happened to Andrew, Sheila and Casey. To relive those memories would only bring him closer to the madness that was lurking in the shadows of his mind. He didn’t want to think about what might have happened to Bennett after he’d left them all in the bar.
Instead he burrowed still deeper into the sacks so that anyone — or anything — that entered the cellar would not find him.
And then something grabbed hold of his leg.
He cried out and threw off the sacks. A pale-skinned hand was jutting out from the floor and long bony fingers curled themselves around his ankle. He watched with disbelief as his foot was dragged into the hard earth floor of the cellar.
‘Get off me!’ he yelled, but as the words left his lips another hand burst from the floor and grabbed his other leg. He started to struggle, twisting his body, trying to pull his legs away, but they had already sunk into the floor to his knees.
‘Oh Christ!’ he whispered as another hand emerged and caught hold of his arm and more fingers wrapped themselves around his throat. Kicking and screaming he was being pulled into the ground. His breath was forced from his lungs as the earth closed around him. It hurts, he thought numbly. Jesus Christ it hurts!
Within seconds the only evidence of Eddie Farrant ever being in the cellar were a few urine-sodden sacks and an empty Mars wrapper.
The cold hit John Harrison like a physical blow as he jumped from the doors of the helicopter to the ground. The north wind cut through his thick denim jacket like an ice spear, making him shiver and turn up his collar. He thought for a moment about the group and the conditions they must have suffered. Soft office types whose ideas of hardship were defined by the coffee machine packing up or the failure to find a parking space. He imagined them thrust into this pitiless, almost alien world and having to give up the comforts and order of their daily existence. It was small wonder they’d got themselves into trouble.
From the ground the Manse looked even more impressive, and even more forbidding. The granite walls were pitted and eroded by years of buffeting by salt-laden winds and the windows, whilst freshly painted and in a good state of repair, looked like nothing more than black, sightless eyes, staring out unseeing over the wind-scorched shrubs and inadequate grasses that comprised the garden.
Still no one had come to greet him and the feeling of abandonment that hung over the place like a wet cloth unsettled him. He tried the handle of an oak door set into the granite wall.
Locked.
He swore softly. He looked through one of the windows at what was obviously the dining room, a long refectory table, set for a meal with white china and bone-handled cutlery on a pristine white tablecloth. But there was no sign of any diners.
He made his way around to the front of the house. Had he bothered to look back at the helicopter he would have seen the wheels slowly sinking, inch by inch into the solid earth. By the time he reached the polished oak front door of the Manse, only an inch of rubber was visible above the surface. Minutes later the tires disappeared completely from view and the body of the machine started to be eaten by the ground.
The front door was wide open. Harrison hesitated before entering. ‘Hello! Is anyone there?’ He waited just outside the door for a response, but the house was silent. He reached into his jacket and pulled out a Browning automatic, comforted by the weight of the gun in his hand. Then he took a tentative step inside, listening carefully, alert to any sign of danger. Still the feeling persisted that this was a bad place to be. His instincts were screaming at him to get back to the helicopter and get the hell off the island. But he’d been paid to do a job and he’d do that job to the best of his ability.
He checked the downstairs rooms quickly. All empty. No signs of life; a long smear of dried blood on the floor in the doorway of the dining room confirming his belief that there was something seriously wrong here.
He pulled his cell phone from his pocket and checked the screen. No network. Damn! He was on his own. As he moved to the bottom of the stairs he thought he heard something. He froze. There it was again, coming from one of the upper floors. A soft whimpering sound. A child crying? But there were no children on the island. He knew that much from the dossier given to him by the KDC. ‘Hello!’ he called again. ‘Is there anyone up there?’ The whimpering stopped for a moment, as if in response, then started again, slightly louder, slightly more desperate.
He took a breath and started to climb the stairs, the gun stuck out in front of him like a talisman. As he climbed he heard the whimpering grow louder, until he reached the landing on the first floor, when it stopped completely.
‘Where are you?’ he called. ‘I’m here to help.’
‘Thank God. I thought you’d never get here.’ A female voice, quiet and alone.
Harrison spun round at the sound of the voice. Two paces away stood a young woman. Dark haired, pretty, dressed in sweatpants and tee shirt. ‘Are you going to shoot me?’ she said, staring at the gun pointing at her face. Harrison looked from her to the barrel of the Browning, and slowly lowered it; but not completely. His instincts were yelling at him again. There was something about her that didn’t hang right, but he couldn’t tell yet what it was.
‘I thought the place was empty,’ he said.
‘It is…apart from me.’ She smiled.
‘And you are?’
‘All alone,’ she said dreamily.
‘No. Your name. What’s your name?’
‘Casey,’ she said. ‘Casey Faraday.’
‘Ah.’ He remembered her from the dossier. She was one of the Waincraft group. Casey Faraday. Twenty-nine. Married. Degree in computing from Loughborough University. ‘What happened to the others?’ he said.
‘They left me here. They went to get help.’ She was speaking as if her voice was a recording being played back at slightly the wrong speed.
‘Help? From where? I’ve just flown over the island. There’s nothing here…apart from a few sheep, and I doubt they’d be much good for anything.’
She smiled at him. ‘Why are you here?’ she said.
‘I told you. I’m here to help. A rescue mission. The KDC sent me to airlift you off the island.’
She continued to smile but there was vacancy in her eyes. Nothing behind the smile; nothing much of anything at all. ‘What happened here, Casey?’ he said.
She turned and walked away from him. ‘Bad things,’ she said. ‘Very bad things.’
He started to follow her. ‘Care to tell me about it?’