“Jimbo!” shouted Becky. “Hang on!” I looked up. She was shifting herself slowly down the giant nose towards me with the holdall looped over her shoulder.
“There’s a crack,” I said, and at that moment one of my hands slipped free and I screamed.
The toe of Becky’s boot found the crack. She took the holdall off her shoulder and lowered it down to me. “Grab this!” I grabbed it. “Now pull.”
She pulled. I pulled. The handle stretched horribly. I swung my right leg. Once. Twice. Three times. Finally, I got it over the lip of the rock. I heaved again and pulled. She heaved again and I got my other foot over the lip and lay flat against the slope, panting.
“Crikey, Jimbo,” she said. “Don’t do that to me again. Ever.”
We waited until we’d got our breath back, then started shuffling sideways, with our toes in the crack. We rounded the curve of the rock and were able to grab a gnarly root and swing ourselves onto the safety of the damp earth.
“Holy hotdogs, Batman,” said Becky. “That was a close call.”
I put my hand to my face and realized that my nose was bleeding where I’d used it as a brake-pad.
“Well,” she said, “you don’t get this kind of excitement at school, do you?”
Coruisk caught us by surprise. The path led down to sea-level, where we found our way blocked by a little channel leading to the shore. We turned and followed the channel inland. We crossed over a rocky hump and the loch loomed into view, several billion gallons of cold dark water stretching away in front of us.
“Coruisk,” said Becky, standing on the rocky hump like someone who had just climbed Everest. “We did it, kiddo.”
Around the loch on every side the Cuillin Hills rose into the night. The central strip of water shone blue in the moonlight, but the distant banks vanished in the soot-black shadows of the peaks. High above us plumes of mist were forming on the very tips of the mountains and trailing off into the star-filled sky.
The sea had seemed big, stretching out to the dark horizon. But the size of the silhouetted mountains made the loch seem even bigger. The silence was complete. There were waves on the sea. And the sound of water lapping against rock. The water here was as smooth and motionless as mercury. This was not a place where human beings were meant to be after dark.
“So,” said Becky, “what do we do for our next trick?”
I thought about Charlie. “I don’t know.” I could feel tears pricking at the corners of my eyes. We’d spent two days getting to this place. We’d risked our lives at least twice. I didn’t know what I was expecting to find when we got here. But I expected to find something at least. And this was the emptiest place I’d seen in my entire life.
“Chin up,” said Becky. “Let’s fix ourselves some dinner.”
We trudged along the edge of the channel, crossed over using a series of stepping stones and looked for a good camping spot. En route we found the ruins of an old cottage that for a few seconds looked as if it might offer some kind of clue as to why Coruisk was so important. But it was just a ruin. Four crumbling walls, a doorway, two window holes, a mud floor. We climbed up to a flat area of grass, neatly protected from prying eyes and the growing wind by a large oval boulder.
Becky erected the tent behind the big stone. I got out some plasters and antiseptic wipes and Savlon and did first aid on my heel and my nose. Once we were snuggled into our sleeping bags we broke out the bread and cheese.
Well fed and footsore, we lay on our backs looking up at the stars through the open tent flap. Becky jammed her iPod earphones in and listened to some Evil Corpse. Or Gangrenous Limb. Or Dead Puppy. Or whatever else she’d downloaded recently.
I tried to remember the names of the constellations. The Bear. The Plough. Orion. Finally, I zipped up the tent, pulled the sleeping bag round my neck and closed my eyes.
“Uh-uh-uh-uh,” moaned Becky tunelessly. Then she stopped. She took one of the earpieces out of her ear, shook it, stuck it back in and tore it out again. I could hear a strange bubbling noise coming out of the tiny white speaker. “It’s broken,” she snapped. “Again.”
“Your watch,” I gasped. “Look at your watch.” She looked at her watch. The face had lit up and the hand was spinning backwards. “Ouch,” she yelped, ripping it off her wrist. “It’s hot.” Somewhere inside the holdall, the torch was turning on and off. Two seconds later the whole tent was bathed in a brilliant blue light.
12
Taking the tube
This was why the old man had chuckled. They were out there. He didn’t have to get rid of us. His friends would do that. At Coruisk. Miles from anywhere. And there would be no one to save us.
I looked at Becky. She was white. And she was shaking. Or I was. It was hard to tell. It was the middle of the night. But under the canvas it looked like lunch time. In Greece. In summer.
“Becky,” I said, “I’m going outside.” I had to see what was going on. I had to know who, or what, was out there and what it was planning to do to us. And if there was an opportunity to run, I wanted to run.
“Wait for me.” Becky reached into her pocket, pulled out a large penknife, opened the blade and crouched beside me, next to the zip.
I opened the tent. The unearthly blue light poured through the slit and we had to shield our eyes.
We stuck our heads out and looked up.
“Flipping heck!” muttered Becky.
There was a vast column of blue light, thick as a tube train, going straight upwards into the night sky. I wormed my way out of the tent and crouched in the shadow of the boulder. Becky crouched behind me. Together, we stood up slowly and peered over.
Even from thirty metres away we could feel the heat. The base of the column was rising out of the ruined cottage we’d passed earlier, making the crumbling stones shine so brightly they looked radioactive. Above the ruin, waves of brightness whisked upwards at high speed away from the ground. I took hold of Becky’s arm for some small comfort.
Suddenly, there was an ear-splitting boom! like no boom! I’d ever heard. It made my head wobble. It made my stomach wobble. It made my toes wobble. The light went off. The boom! echoed back off the faraway mountains and slowly died away to silence. All we could hear was the blood thumping in our ears.
When my heart slowed down a bit I turned to Becky. “Well, I guess this has to be the place.”
“Look,” whispered Becky, pinching my arm. “Down there.”
I followed her eyes to the narrow channel connecting the loch to the sea. A silhouetted man was walking over the rocky ground towards the ruin. Behind him a little boat was moored in the channel, with a second silhouetted man on board.
The first man reached the ruin, turned, waved to the man in the boat and stepped inside. We heard the cough of an outboard motor being started up and the boat pulled away from the shore. There was a short fizzing noise and once again the column of brilliant blue light shot up out of the ruin into the sky.
“Oh my God!” said Becky.
The man had walked into the ruin. He had to be toast now. I was dreaming. I had to be dreaming.
The light shone. The waves of brightness whisked upwards. The boom! boomed. My toes wobbled. The light went off. The boom! echoed round the valley. And silence returned.
I gagged a bit. “We just saw someone being killed, right?”
“Eeuw!” said Becky. “That was not good.”
“We have to go down there,” I said.