27

Donald listened in silence as I told him a childhood story that had been stored, wrapped and unopened until now. I described the chase and then the wonder of breaching the dam and then how the whole world seemed to turn against us.

'That was the start of it,' I said.

'And what happened next?'

'We stayed in the gang hut a while and then we followed the stream again. We were made to follow the stream.'

I was about to go on when I suddenly recalled what Kitty Macbeth had told me down at the point. It seemed like a long time ago, but I remembered her walls.

A wall of water, wall of stone, a wall of wood and a wall of bone.

I got to my feet.

'That's it. It's the stream. This is Strowan's well and it's gone dry like before. The stream is one of the walls. We have to get the water flowing again. The stream keeps the thing inside Ardmhor.'

Donald looked at me as if maybe I'd gone crazy, but he said nothing. He just raised his eyebrows and waited for me to go on.

'I know it's hard to understand, but it's important. The last time Arden had a bad summer was when the stream was blocked and they did the first dig down at the rock. At least two of the barriers were gone, the walls that were put in place to stop it, the Cu Saeng, from getting out. That's what Kitty means, and I know now she was right. The last time, we burst the dam and the stream filled again.'

'And then what did you do?'

'I don't know. We got caught in a landslide and we were all hurt. Me, Colin and Barbara. It'll come back to me, I'm sure.'

We have to get the stream flowing,' Colin said, in a clear voice. 'If we don't, we can't do anything.'

Paddy was holding his hand and staring up at his face. Colin looked straight at me, and already I saw he had changed. It was as if, all of a sudden, he'd gone from child to man, missing out all the bits in between. His eyes flashed bright. I still wasn't certain what had happened, and I didn't have time to find out. In any case, there was no doubt in my mind that he was right.

'Will you help us, Donald?'

'Help you do what?'

'Somewhere up there,', I said, pointing north, 'the stream's blocked. We have to get it to flow again down to Ardmhor.'

'You really believe that's going to help?'

'I do. It will help. At least I think it will.'

Donald sat and mulled it over for a minute, then he smiled.

'I suppose it can't do any harm,' he said. 'The whole place has turned into a horror film overnight. I still think the best idea is to get the hell out of here and keep on walking. I've been in some hairy places in my time, but I have to tell you, laddie, this is beginning to give me the shivers. The good Lord seems to have abandoned Arden.'

He hauled to his feet, using the gun-butt for leverage. Short and stocky he looked like the veteran fighting man I knew him to be.

'Right, let's be having you. We'll find out what's blocking your stream and we'll see what we can do about it. I have to say, that if it makes a blind bit of difference, I'll eat my rifle.'

He slung the gun over his shoulder and stepped out along the track. Colin gave me a wide smile that for a moment cleared all the worry from his face, and we followed the major.

It took us little more that half an hour to get past the place where we'd found the first dam, but there was no blockage there and the stream was barely a trickle. A quarter of a mile beyond that, we found what we were looking for when we reached the by-pass road. On the hardcore stone ramp they'd built up to take the four lanes, a concrete pipe jutted out into the cleft where the stream should have flowed. When we scaled the slope and crossed the flat, we discovered what had happened. The big digger, bent and buckled, had been hauled up. But down below, a mound of rock and rubble was piled against the bank where the pipe should have let the water drain under the road. Beyond the rocks, a back up of water formed a narrow lake.

'Another dam,' Colin said. 'I knew it.'

'How are we going to clear it?' I asked. Donald pointed along the road to where another backhoe sat on its tracks.

'The way they intend to,' he said.

He climbed up into the cab.

'I've driven most things,' he said. 'I reckon I can handle this .'

We stood back and watched him fiddle with the controls and the machine chugged into life in a cloud of blue exhaust. We crossed to the far side and Donald wheeled the digger around and trundled it to the lip. The bucket arm swung the wrong way, but he corrected and brought it back, making a few practice moves. Then he reached the scoop down and it came up with a big scoop of rock and dirt. He dumped the rubble on the middle of the new surface. He wasn't going for neatness points.

The major took less than half an hour to scrape up enough to clear a way to the pipe, and then the scoop began to come up dripping water. Donald dug it down into the cavity, hitting the base hard, and sending tremors under our feet. The vibrations must have dislodged the blockage inside the pipe.

Colin ran to the far side and looked over. There was another rumble under us and then a wad of mud and rock shot out. It wasn't quite as magnificent as that day when we breached the dam, but Strowan's Well was flowing again.

Colin yelled and Paddy jumped up and down as the bore forced its way down the dry gully . Behind us, the big engine stuttered to a stop and Donald climbed out onto the caterpillar tracks.

'Success?'

I raised a thumb and he grinned.

'That's that, then. You've got your stream back and I hope it does what you say, though I've my doubts. I think now that we're here, we should just follow this road along to Kirkland. It's a fair hike, but we could be there in an hour or so.'

'No!' Colin butted in. 'We have to go back.'

'What now?' Donald demanded. 'We've just come from down there. It's a madhouse.'

'But we have to go back. We have to do it right this time.' Colin's face was a picture of fear and doubt, but the overlying expression was resigned determination.

'There's murder and mayhem down there, son You'll be risking your life.'

'But it's not finished yet. We have to finish now.'

Donald turned to me, exasperated. 'Can you not talk some sense into him?'

'I would if I could. But he is talking sense. We have to go back.'

'That's just plain stupidity,' he retorted. 'Can't you see that?'

'I know how it seems, but if we don't go down and face it, it'll never go away. It will always come back. This is our only chance.'

Donald threw his hands up. I knew that if he thought he could order us to about turn and quick march along the road to Kirkland, he'd have done just that.

'You've got more guts than sense, the pair of you,' he said, through his teeth. 'But what about the wee girl?'

'I have to go too,' Paddy piped up. My heart sank.

'Now that's just not on, at all,' Donald said. His voice was rising now. 'That's plain stupid and criminal too. You can't take a child back to that,' he said, pointing down the slope to where Arden showed its rooftops and the little steeple.

'You don't understand, Donald. It has to be now. Will you help us?'

'You are serious, I take it?'

I nodded, scanning his face. He was angry and he was worried. He turned his back and folded his arms, feet planted and the gun across his shoulders. A soldier.

'Will you help us again? Please?'

He breathed out and didn't move for a minute or so, then he slowly turned.

'I don't have much choice, do I? I still think you're wrong, but I can see you're determined. Somebody has to look after the wee one.'

'Thanks,' I said, very sincerely.

'Don't thank me. Just hope to god that when we get down there we can stay out of trouble. I hope you know what you're doing, for I surely don't.'

'I'll just have to play it by ear,' I confessed, 'because I can't remember what I'm supposed to do. Kitty said we stopped it last time, and I believe her. Maybe I can do it again. It's as simple as that. If there was any other way, I'd be right on the road alongside you, but I can only go on what I believe.'

Donald stood and chewed that over, then he lifted his eyes up from the track-scarred road.

'All right. I'll come with you. You believe this, and I know Arden's gone bad for sure. I don't know what to believe, but you and the lad here seem the only ones with half a clue.'

He snorted a laugh. 'Not that I'd call your crazy story much of a clue, mind you. But if you can bring some normality back to this place, then I'm with you.'

I was about to reply, when Paddy shouted out. Her voice pierced the dull roar of the water below.

'Look Nick. Over there.' She was pointing south, down towards the estuary and Ardmhor Rock. We looked down and saw a swirl of mist, thick and grey, rolling out from the trees at the base of the rock, while above it, the already grey sky was beginning to darken into a thunderhead.

'Ever had that feeling of déja;-vu?' I asked Donald.

'All the time,' he said. 'I'm an island man.'

'That's what happened the last time.'

'It's like a volcano. I've never seen the like.'

'I have, and it's not good. We have to move and fast. It's going to get bad.'

'You mean that's what happened the last time?'

'That was just the start of it.'

Above the black rock, cloud rolled thick, sparking with static electricity, piling up into the sky.

'So what now?'

'Shelter. And quick. Remember the last time Colin?' he nodded, eyes fixed on the rising cloud and the spreading mist that was reaching out over the flat farmland towards Arden.

'It's going to happen again. We need to get into the trees again. And you know where we have to go, don't you?'

'Yes,' he said. His face was pale.

'Okay. Let's go.'

I took Paddy's hand and started downhill. We ran as fast as we could. The woods were barely a quarter of a mile away when the wind struck, a shrieking gust that almost swept Paddy off her feet. The rising cloud blotted out the sky and the gale lashed us with pine-needles and twigs that it plucked from the branches. Donald pointed into the valley where Strowan's Well was now in spate.

'Down there. Out of the wind.'

'Wait until the lightning,' I thought, but still I reached to pull Colin's arm and tug him down with us.

The lightning was even worse than that first time. The storm overhead sent down bolts of fury into the narrow ravine, sending cascades of shale sliding into the fast water. Hard light flickered in a stroboscopic firestorm that seared the air all around us. We didn't stop, not for the thunder or the lightning, nor the rain nor the hail that followed.

We made it, almost exhausted, to the trees, but the fury didn't abate. Instead the wind rose to a scream that rattled the tall first against each other and brought great branches crashing down all round as we dodged between the trunks.

I jostled Paddy along. The trees groaned and creaked and one of the giants gave way and came toppling down. Even as I ran, I felt a fury rising inside me that this so-called Cu Saeng, this alleged ravener that had invaded and pervaded Arden, should be trying to destroy my town and us along with it.

Having said that, I was also scared for us all. And I was running blind. The doors in my memory hadn't opened wide enough to tell me what I should do next. Like having a memory you just can't quite grasp. I knew the knowledge was in me, and not been knocked out in the concussion of rocks back then. I just couldn't get at it.

There wasn't much left of the gang-hut when we got to the big rock. The years had rotted the logs, but there was enough of a hollow for us all to squeeze inside and shelter from the worst. Donald spent ten minutes gathering thick boughs which he expertly fitted up as a roof and a wall,

'What now,' he asked.

'Ardmhor,' I said.

He nodded. 'I think I believe you now. I've never seen anything like that before. But I'll tell you one thing. If there's something down there that can cause all this, then I don't give tuppence for our chances.'

I was forced to smile at this. 'Me neither, but I have to give it a try.'

'What's your plan then?'

'I don't know yet. I'm trying to remember. We did something before.'

'Scared?'

'Shitting myself,' I whispered back, so Paddy wouldn't hear. 'But we can beat this bastard. I'm going to try to send him back to where he belongs.'

'And you'll not be writing this up in your newspaper either,' he said.

'But I'll watch you eat that gun. That's for sure,' I said, and he chuckled softly in the gloom.

It was late afternoon when we moved out of the bivouac and followed the stream down to the main road. Overhead, the wind howled and the lightning flickered and cracked.

Donald was for going up onto the road and across to the Milligs side. But while I had a lot of faith in his gun and his ability to use it, I didn't want to be caught by surprise by Billy Ruine of any of his team. We went through the old tunnel under the road, down into a long dark tube that didn't offer much in the way of light at the end of it.

Colin's breathing started to catch when we entered the dark. He stopped.

'What's up?'

'There was something..'

'Where?'

'Here. The time before. Something bad.'

I couldn't recall that. 'What was it?'

'I can't remember. It tried to get us.'

A memory tried to surface. Dark shapes twisted in the tunnel and an eerie scratching noise grew louder. But I wasn't hearing anything. It was all in my mind.

I waded to take the lead, keeping Paddy behind me.

And up through the darkness came a memory of Colin and Barbara and I wading through the nightmare that the thing sprung on us. Ghosts of the past came swirling back and turned their eyes towards me.

I was in the lead, with my spear in my hand that I'd taken from the gang-hut. Colin was behind Barbara with his ash bow and his quiver of arrows as we stepped out of the half light and into the shadows under the road.

Summer 1991.

There should have been an arch of grey at the far end, on the other side of the road, but the tunnel was pitch black.

'We should go over the road,' Colin said and his voice echoed off the damp walls. I stopped to peer ahead, but I could see nothing at all.

Then the hairs on my neck started prickling as a vibration came up the tunnel.

'What was that?' I asked. The tunnel echoed back: That...that...that.

The faint noise came back louder.

'I heard it,' Barbara said. 'There's something here.'

The sound became a low moan that gained in strength, rising in pitch as it did to a wail, like a hurt animal and then a screech that crackled in our ears before it broke off into an eerie silence.

'I think we should go back,' Colin said.

I took two steps backwards and turned to face the mouth of the tunnel. I froze and my mouth went as dry as a bone.

There was no light there either. I heard the others gasp at the same time, and suddenly I wanted them both right next to me. I took a step forward until I could touch them.

'Oh Jeez, Nick,' Colin whispered. 'We're stuck.'

'Where's the....?'

I didn't get a chance to complete the question. Behind me in the depths came a gurgling roar, as if something with a vast mouth had opened it and vented its hunger. A spell like the slaughterhouse dump came blasting up the tunnel, thick enough to make me need to retch. Barbara screamed. I was too scared to scream.

'Oh jeeez,' Colin moaned. 'I want out of here.'

The roar broke off like a snap that sounded like two great jaws shutting, and there was a snuffling sound and then, oh, worst of all, came the sucking, splashing sound that something big and horrible would make as it came up that tunnel towards us.

I whirled in the dark, holding my out spear in front of me. Something made me take a step forward. My pulse pounded in my temples, but I took another step. At the end of the rowan staff, I had lashed on the polished stone point, the way I had seen it in my dream. Even in the dark, I could sense the gleam of it, hard and sharp.

The mind-freezing roar came again, filling the whole tunnel with the rancid blast and then I realised we were not in total darkness any more.

Up ahead there was a dim glimmer of greenish light that slowly resolved into two wide spaced pale circles.

Eyes. Monster eyes. This was it, coming to get us and tear us to pieces and there was no way out. I thought of my mother and father and my granddad in that brief moment when I knew it was all over for me, a boy in wet jeans in a dirty stream in the middle of the worst nightmare.

Something inside me just snapped.

I remember letting out a screech that seemed so come up from my baseball boots and out of my mouth and the whole world seemed to flip. Before I knew what I was doing, I was running towards those pale eyes and the mouth that must be between them. I skittered down the stream, holding the spear like a bayonet, while behind me Barbara was screaming and Colin bawling at me to come back.

I aimed the stone point at the darkness between those eyes.

Everything was in slow motion, as if I was running through treacle, and every atom of my being waited for the snap and crunch that I was certain would come, when suddenly my feet came out of the morass and I tumbled out into the light at the end of the tunnel;.

Right out into the daylight on the Milligs side of the main road.

And there was no monster. Nothing but the brown water of the stream.

Behind me Barbara cried out and I turned to look back. There was a lighter shadow that seemed to be far back from the stone rim, moving slowly.

Then, as if she too was in slow motion, Barbara came through the darkness, with Colin right behind her.

She jerked back in the light and fell on her backside in the water, eyes blinking.

She just sat and stared, bemused, as the muddy water slicked around her. Then she burst into tears, launched herself to her feet and threw herself at me.

'Oh Nicky!' She yelled it right in my ear, as I stumbled back under the impact and almost ended up sitting in the stream 'I thought you were... Oh, I thought...'

'Hey, I'm all right. There was nothing there.' I gestured around. 'Look, there's no monster.'

I looked back into the tunnel, and the stark blackness was still there. No light entered and none came out.

'Let's get away from here. This place gives me the creeps.'

'Me too,' Colin said, with feeling.

'Where to?' Babs asked and Colin said anywhere but back up that tunnel.

'We can head down and cut behind the huts and along to the farm,' Barbara said.

'Not Henson's farm,' Colin said quickly. 'Not after what happened to old man Henson.'

'What was that?' she asked.

'I told you. He got his hands cut off. That's just one of the crazy things I was telling you about. I'm not going near there.'

Colin started to suggest something else, when I heard a noise behind us. I thought the thing in the tunnel was coming out, but I was wrong. Up on the parapet of the bridge, a line of faces were looking over.

Charlie Ballantine, Frazer Beaton and the other big boys were lined up there.

Big Charlie, who was three years older than us, started laughing, and a couple of the others, really old guys, maybe sixteen or more, from the far end of Milligs, joined in. There was something about the way they laughed that sent shivers though me.

We stood in the middle of the stream, staring up in alarm.

One of the big guys picked up a stone and heaved it at us. It whizzed past Barbara's head and crashed into the brambles on the bank.

Another prised a stone off the wall and used both hands to hurl it down. It was too heavy to reach us, though it hit the water with a splash that drenched us. We cowered back.

'They've all gone loony,' Colin muttered.

He was right. Up there, they were laughing gleefully. One of them shouted down: 'What the fuck are you doing, standing in the water? Come up here and take what's coming to you.'

'Aye, right,' Colin shouted back.

'Just get up here. I'm not going wait all day.'

'No chance,' Colin whispered. 'We have to get out of here.'

'Yes,' Barbara agreed.

'It'll be worse if we have to come down,' the guy yelled.

'Stick it up your arse, pig face.' Colin could be poetic when he chose.

The big guy's mouth dropped open. Suddenly I wished Colin had buttoned it.

'You'll be sorry you ever opened your mouth. You better get up here or I'll cave your fuckin' head in.'

As he said it, he picked up a thick stick.

'Do it Scobie,' one of the others bawled. 'Go and splatter the cunt's brains out.'

Colin thumped me on the shoulder.

'Let's move, Nicky. Run like all hell.'

The three of us turned and ran, as he said, like all hell, splashing through the shallows.

Behind us came the raucous sounds of pursuit.