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81 lines
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<h2>28</h2>
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<p><em>August 4. 9am</em></p>
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<p>White hot fire seared across Danny Gillan's back.</p>
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<p>The excruciating pain was like a splash of molten metal, an incandescent surge of agony. He was slammed by a giant hand against the steep shale slope only yards from the top and freedom. His face drove in against the soft surface with stunning force before he could even scream.</p>
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<p>He had just been reaching for the next handhold when all the world turned to flame.</p>
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<p>Somewhere in the distance, a clap of dreadful thunder shook the valley in a cannonade of shattering sound, following on the searing pain that ripped across Danny's shoulders and on his spine. His nose drove into the gravel, burst like a tomato with a wet sound, but he was soaring so high on the surge of the other unbelievable hurt that he felt nothing of that.</p>
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<p>His whole body jerked even as his hands tried to dig into the surface. The noise went on and on and on, rolling up and down the valley, reverberating from the chasm walls and Danny was surrounded by nose and pain, completely encased in it for what seemed like an eternity.</p>
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<p>He was burning. He was on fire.</p>
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<p><em>Oh God don't let me...</em></p>
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<p>It had all happened in the blink of an eye. The man had turned, raising the gun. Corky had been screaming something unintelligible but utterly clear in its meaning. He had been bawling at Danny to move, to climb, to get up and over. And the gun was swinging up wards and the hot, sour panic had erupted and the shudder of anticipation had shaken him from the bottom of his spine to the top of his head. He'd scrambled desperately for that top ridge, feet sending out avalanches of shale, fingers clawing at the incline, knowing the black barrels were swinging up on him.</p>
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<p>The pain had hit before the sound had swallowed him and he had been batted against the slope by an enormous force and he was on<em> fire</em>.</p>
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<p>That first instant seemed to stretch on and on, trapping him inside a vast and implacable bubble of pain. His vision went black and he knew he was dead. Dead and gone. There was just the pain and the noise and he was burning. Dead and judged.</p>
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<p>The fire consumed him. He was being burned away, cauterised, scorched, scalded. All down his back a molten river was eating into him, corroding the skin and muscle. Inside the bubble of time and pain, he was catapulted back ten years, crawling on that slick linoleum and the boiling liquid which hate into his hands and the tender surface of his knees while on his back the skin was peeling and bubbling like tar. Around him, through the thunder, he could hear again his sister's scream mingling with his own and his limbs jerked.</p>
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<p>He was dead and this was the bad fire. This was the burning. He was searing and shrivelling, skin warped and contorting. The noise went on and on and on and somebody was screaming and it wasn't his sister Agnes who was making the noise. It was John Corcoran, somewhere far below screeching like a banshee while Danny was burning up.</p>
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<p>And he was falling.</p>
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<p>The pain did not diminish, but the strange, timeless bubble that had encapsulated him suddenly burst and he was not dead at all. Fire raced across his back, huge gouts of it, but he was not dead. He coughed and gravel and blood spat out. His hands were clawing away, working on their own, trying to get a grip, but he was falling. He felt himself peel away from the slope while his hands clawed at the air and the thick taste of metal was clogged in the back of his throat. He dropped, almost in slow motion, to the gravelly surface, ploughed a boy-wide furrow, tumbling head over heels. He landed on his feet, twisted, came down on his shoulder, still somersaulting as he dropped from the high ridge.</p>
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<p>All the time, despite the dizzy spinning of the world the enormous burning consumed him and noise went on and on. His shoulder hit a spur of mudstone and he flipped on and out into the air, arms wheeling, legs kicking. There was sky and then green, grey of the slope and then blue sky again. Everything whirled as he spun out into the air. No sound escaped him. There was no time. His hands were still trying to grab at the shale slant way above him. He fell the way the stones had fallen, bouncing, tumbling and then out into the air and he realised that the pain would end.</p>
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<p>He was falling to the rocks below and it would all end here and there would be no more fear.</p>
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<p>Corky was screaming his name and he wanted to close the pain off for a moment to tell him not to worry, but there was no time for anything at all. The ground leapt up at him, the canyon walls whipping by in flickering striations if grey and white, like candy stripes. He fell.</p>
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<p>The belly flop into the deep pool knocked all the breath from him. The force of the flat impact was like hitting a wall. His nose took another blow and both his knees drove right into the sediment at the bottom of the pool..</p>
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<p>Danny was so stunned he did not even know he'd landed in the water. Everything went black and for a wonderful moment all pain was snuffed out for the second time he believed he was dead but now he simply welcomed the cessation of hurt.</p>
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<p><em>And he fell for forty days and forty nights.</em> His father's voice came to him from a long distance. <em>Forty days and forty nights without stopping, cast out to the exterior darkness.</em></p>
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<p>He'd been falling, burning up in the fire and he'd hit and it had been easy. He'd hit and the pain had gone and he floated in the dark, slowly turning. Paulie Degman's face floated beside him.</p>
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<p>"<em>All right, Dan</em>?"</p>
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<p>He tried to answer but he couldn't say anything because he had no mouth. Paulie opened his own mouth and a bubble, silvered and wavering, rolled up to the far surface.</p>
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<p>"<em>Are you in a state of grace, Danny boy</em>?" Paulie wanted to know, all white and bloodless and twisting in the current. His voice sounded like the noise water made when it tumbled down under the heather runnels, cold and hollow. There was a buzzing behind the words and Danny knew it was the flies, sent by Be-elzebub, the Lord of the Flies, one of those who had fallen forty days and forty nights with the searing incandescence of Lucifer falling with them.</p>
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<p><em>And there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth, </em>Paulie was saying, in Danny's father's voice and the buzzing got louder he did not want the flies to come and lay their eggs in him when he was dead and he did not want his hair and nails to grow, the way Mole Hopkirk's nails and hair had grown in that room at the back of Cairn house.</p>
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<p><em>Danny!</em></p>
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<p>Paulie was calling to him, calling him down into the mud. The pain was starting up again in his back and there was a new pain in his face and the taste of blood in his mouth and that was funny because except for the fire, you weren't supposed to feel pain at all when you were dead.</p>
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<p><em>Danny! </em>The voice called him and he tried to turn away form it and the buzzing had changed into a hissing sound, like millions of bubbles bursting on a shingle beach, then a muffled roar that sounded just like water cascading and his hand was snagged on something. He couldn't do anything about it. He tried to breathe and an awful cold flooded his throat and he suddenly choked. In that instant his consciousness surged back to him and his slack muscles instantly galvanised. Somebody was pulling him by the arm while the pain still rippled and burned across his back, now heating back up again after a brief cool respite.</p>
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<p><em>Danny! </em>Not dead Paulie, but John Corcoran. Corky was bawling his name at the top of his voice, dragging him up from where Paulie's face was wavering into the dark.</p>
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<hr />
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<p>The gun had roared. A sudden punch of sound that slammed into Corky's head. He was only feet away, reaching for the barrels that were raised up towards the far wall. Everything had suddenly gone mad. The butt had taken Doug on the side of the head, a swift and vicious jab and he had stumbled away, got up then drifted sideways before falling down to the ground, and Tom was over with Billy who was writhing and choking and the man was raising the gun. Corky had watched amazed as the first cartridge had gone flickering through the air to land with a quick plop in the pool, amazed at Doug's sudden comprehension and his dash to get them away from the crazy man. He had almost made it. Danny, high up on the side where the slope got steeper before the fringe of couch grass at the edge of the moor, he had almost made it. He only had yards to go.</p>
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<p>But then Doug was down and out and Billy was rolling on the ground and the barrels went up and Corky tried to get them down again. He was diving, hands outstretched, bawling at Danny to get a move on, to get up and over the top and out of the way and then the gun had roared and a noise like thunder hit him so hard he heard only the first explosion followed by a repeated clapping sound and a high pitched ringing inside his head. Even in the brightening morning he saw the flash of fire at the end of the muzzle and then sudden belch of smoke just a shade darker than the fading mist. His head had swung upwards and Danny's arms had suddenly shot out just as a hundred small eruptions of gravel for two yards on either side of him where the spread of lead peppered the steep slope. Danny seemed to shove himself forward right onto the shale face with both arms out on either side as if he'd been kicked hard right between his shoulderblades. The hands were scrabbling at the face, trying to catch a grip as he slid for thirty feet down the steep shale, then he simply peeled away and began to tumble backwards. It all happened in the space of a split second.</p>
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<p>There was no sound but the strange internal crackling inside his head and the reverberating thump that could have been his heartbeat or his mind's echo of the devastating blast. He was trying to shout Danny's name, over and over, but he could not hear his own voice. He moved past the man, head up, oblivious to the danger.</p>
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<p>Danny fell away from the high side of the spur, flipping right over in a complete somersault. He landed twenty feet down, on his feet but now facing outwards, much like a ski-jumper. His momentum drove a wide furrow in the soft gritty marl, sending up a bow wave of powdery rock and then he tumbled over again, arms pinwheeling, face just a white blur. His shoulder glanced off the ledge twenty feet up and then he was falling straight down. Corky froze. His friend was coming down, twisting in the air, heading straight for the quartz rocks at the head of the pool where the four feathers still stood. Despite the silence, he knew there would be a deafening, deadly thud then Danny hit and then nothing, no cry, no moan. Nothing.</p>
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<p>Danny missed the rocks by scant inches and hit the water with a smack that sent up a wide, curving splash.</p>
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<p>He disappeared under the foaming surface, right in at the deep basin where Billy had jumped in on the first day to clean the mud from his jeans. Corky's legs got him to the edge. The wave of Danny's entry had splashed right up onto the stones on either side and sent a little roller curving up over the shingle at the shallow end. Danny's tee-shirt was a red blur down in the depths, his hands pale fish. For a second Corky though the dye was coming out of the shirt in a thin cloud, the way the red grime had come washing off Billy. He reached the edge, jumped in across the shingle, up to his knees, kept moving, up to his waist. The basin sloped away and he was under the water, bawling Danny's name, now hearing the words, but as if they were far off. He ducked down, got a hand to one of Danny's and started hauling him up to the surface. The hand was slack and lifeless. Under the water Danny's head turned round and in the blur Corky could see the red smoke billowing out from the front of his face and knew it was blood.</p>
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<p>Had he been shot in the head?</p>
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<p><em>Oh my god Danny oh my god</em></p>
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<p>For an instant he panicked, thinking that Danny's head must have hit the rocks, must have caved in on the sharp quartz edges, or maybe the shot had blasted through from front to back. He felt his heart buck wildly and very quickly, out of control. Everything seemed to shrivel in the pit of his belly. He pulled, got a foot to the shallows and a hand to one of the edging rocks, dragged his lifeless friend upwards, away from the dark at the bottom of the pool while the blood trailed out and faded in the moving current. He made it to the near side, knowing it didn't matter which side, got Danny's head out of the water. For a long count Danny was completely still. Blood was pouring quite freely from mouth and nostrils as he hung, slumped over the stones close to the shallows, and then, by a miracle, his shoulders hitched violently. A gout of water came sneezing out, coloured by blood and snot. He coughed, tried to turn, raise himself up, much as Doug had tried to do, managed to get to his knees.</p>
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<p>He raised his hand towards Corky, his streaming eyes wide open and blind, mouth gaping. He gasped, coughed, gasped again and then he let out the most pitiful whimper of pain Corky had ever heard. Danny started to fall forward and Corky waded back behind him to get a hand round his shoulder and help him up. But as soon as he touched his back, high up close to the neck, Danny squealed like an animal and sank to his knees. The blood, what was left of it, drained out of his face and he looked as if he would faint. Corky ducked, managed to get his own shoulder under Danny's belly, grabbed him behind the knees and with a monstrous effort, got to his own feet, carrying his friend on his shoulder. He waded backwards out of the pool, gasping now for a breath of his own, oblivious of the man who stood there watching the whole thing, motionless and silent.</p>
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<p>The noise was still reverberating in Corky's ears. Water sloshed in his boots. Over by the ring of stones Billy was sitting, legs spread, hands at his throat, coughing uncontrollably. Tom was now tending to Doug, gently raising his head up. Doug was grinning or grimacing, his big front teeth pressed against his bottom lip. His hands were shaking like fluttering birds trying to take flight..</p>
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<p>Corky put Danny down, gently as he could despite the weight, in the lee of the slope at the cleft where he'd crawled through on his failed escape attempt. Danny's eyes were dazed, focused far off, not quite aware of what was happening. Corky was amazed that he was still alive.</p>
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<p>"The heron," Danny mumbled dreamily. "I saw the heron."</p>
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<p>"Very good Dan," Corky said. He sat him down. Twin trickles of blood were running down from each nostril and dropping onto the tee-short, making hardly a stain against the deep red of the fabric. Danny sat back but as soon as his shoulder touched the soft moss he yelled aloud and twisted violently to the side.</p>
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<p>"He shot me, Corky," he managed to squeeze out. "Bloody shot me."</p>
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<p>Over by the side of the stream the man still stood motionless, watching them all curiously. After a while he turned and slowly walked back to the ridge where he'd been sitting and eased himself down again, in exactly the same spot, holding the gun the same way, across his knees. It was somehow animal, somehow mindless, the way he moved back to the same place, as if nothing much had happened. He hunched there, seemingly oblivious to them all now, waiting.</p>
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<p>The stillness of him was somehow even more scary.</p>
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<hr />
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<p><em>August 4. 10am.</em></p>
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<p>Danny was crying. Tears were steaming down his face and he twitched violently while Tom held his hand tightly. Billy watched with strange, glazed eyes, while Doug held his own head in his hands and sat quite still as if any movement would bring pain. This was true. The back of his head felt as if it was coming apart. There was no blood, but the thumping pain was almost enough to bring tears to his eyes and his neck ached abominably. The only thing he could do for the moment was sit still and keep his eyes closed until it faded. He'd felt sick for a while, but that had passed. The pain was lessening beat by beat, but still each beat was a pounder.</p>
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<p>Danny had lain for a long time, trying not to move, lying more on his front than on his side, head twisted to the right to keep his aching nose off the soft moss. It was tender and bloody but that was the least of his concerns. The pain was burning into his back, a sheet of relentless heat like a blowtorch flame on his skin. He imagined he could smell himself burning. Corky risked crossing from to the stream fill the can with water and give first him and then Doug a cool drink.</p>
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<p>"Shot me," Danny bleated again. His tee shirt was already drying in the sun. It was plastered to his back and Corky could see no bullet wounds and he wondered where the damage was.</p>
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<p>"I'll have to have a look," he said. "Where does it hurt." He was speaking in a muffled murmur again, not wishing to attract the attention of the gaunt man who sat like a crow beside the dead fire.</p>
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<p>"My back. Oh, <em>shit</em> Corky. It's really bloody sore."</p>
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<p>"Hold still and I'll have a look," Corky whispered, hushing him as best he could.</p>
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<p>Tom held Danny's hand, clasping his fingers with surprising strength. Corky started to raise the tee-shirt, peeling it away until he had exposed the middle of Danny's back. That's where the bruise started. There were a few puckered little dents in the fabric up between Danny's shoulderblades and three smaller holes. He eased the cloth upwards, and heard Tom's sharp intake of breath at the dreadful discoloration of the puffy skin which had swollen under the tight cloth. Further up he peeled it away, with Danny wincing and sobbing all the while. Finally, up high on the back, he had to pull gently but firmly where the weave formed the small pitted dents. It was only then that he realised what had happened.</p>
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<p>The birdshot, tiny lead pellets had slammed into Danny's sweat-laced shirt, hard enough to drive him against the face, but from far enough away not to kill him. The spread-out pattern had lost enough force and his damp shirt had acted as a buffer. Even so, some of the shot had driven the fabric right into the skin, causing those small dents in the swollen flesh. Corky had to ease each of the slugs out one by one, pulling gently but firmly, and as each of them came out of their embedding craters in the unbroken skin, Danny howled in agony and the tears ran freely down his face.</p>
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<p>"Easy Dan," Corky tried to say, but by this time, he was crying too and Tom's face was a picture of silent misery. Tears were trickling in the dust down his cheeks and dripping slowly from his chin. He held Danny's hand tight as he could, for both their sakes. When it was finished, Corky managed to ease the whole shirt off and he rolled it up to jam it under Danny's face as a pillow. They let him lie there until the sobbing stopped. The bruises on his back were violet and risen, like bursts of thunder on the white of his skin. Between the shoulderblades were three small dark spots which did not bleed. They looked like ink-marks. Corky realised that some of the little pellets had driven through the skin. There was nothing he could do about that.</p>
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<p>Tom filled the canteen again and brought it over, again braving the attention, but ignored by the man who sat still as stone, as if waiting for something to happen. He gently poured it on to Danny's back while Corky held his quivering wrists.</p>
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<p>The cold was at first a terrible explosion of pain, and Danny stiffened as if a bolt of high tension power had arced through him, but then it settled into a gentle, soothing coolness which helped take the burn out of his back. Tom kept it up, letting the cool stream water trickle over the hurt to help the swelling go down and after a while the heat began to fade a little.</p>
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