Spiders

by Tom Hoyle

  ‘Ladies first,’ said Adam, pointing his torch beam at the narrow gap and brandishing his plank like a swordfighter.

  ‘Coward,’ replied Abbie.

  The second that Abbie’s feet disappeared through the gap, Adam followed.

  The opening was jagged both above and below: clothes, and then skin, were scraped and torn. Adam followed close behind Abbie. All they could do was wriggle along, teeth-like stones digging into them both above and below. The only good thing was that it was wide despite being low. It was as they reached its very tightest point – where the clearance was barely more than nine inches – that Adam saw their route lit by a bobbing torch approaching from behind.

  ‘Hurry up,’ he urged through gritted teeth.

  ‘It’s a bit higher here,’ Abbie said. A bit higher meant fifteen inches.

  Adam felt something tugging on his lower leg. He kicked out violently, perhaps hitting rock, perhaps hitting the man. Whichever, as the passage opened slightly and they moved faster, Adam could hear his pursuer struggling to squeeze his fully grown adult form through the gap.

  Adam then heard Abbie screech and shout something, but couldn’t make out what. A few seconds later, he too emerged and found himself in a much larger cave. Abbie at reached the bottom of a forty-five-degree slide of scree about three or four times her height. She was shining her torch into a deep pool of clear water that blocked their exit.

  Adam twisted himself around so that he scrambled down the rocks on his feet, looking at the pool as he descended. ‘He’s not far behind,’ he gabbled. ‘It looks deep. Wait a second.’

  Without a pause, adrenalin coursing through him, he advanced two paces from the bottom of the rock pile, stuck his hands out ahead of him – took a deep breath – and dived into the icy water.

  The pool was certainly deep, and Adam could see immediately that it was long as well, extending far beyond the rock at the end of the cave. I’ll do ten strokes out , he thought, I’ll have to see if it leads anywhere , but without any idea what he was heading into or how far he’d be able to hold his breath. The cold bit into him. He counted his strokes, forcing himself on.

  After ten it was clear that the channel was narrowing rather than widening, and Adam’s lungs were almost bursting. Then he thought he could see the surface.

  Push on.

  Five more strokes.

  Push on.

  Two more – lungs hurting.

  I won’t be able to get back.

  Kick. Heave.

  And Adam’s head burst above water. He didn’t have to shine his torch far to see his surroundings. An almost circular and vertical shaft stretched far above him, probably scalable with ropes and crampons, but not by two soaking-wet teenagers.

  He’d got his breath back and was about to return to where he had left Abbie, when her head bobbed up, blinking and shaking water off her hair. They both had to tread water.

  ‘I was about to come back. How did you know I’d found somewhere?’ Adam asked.

  ‘You didn’t come back.’ Her voice echoed up the shaft.

  ‘I could have drowned.’

  ‘Yeah. I did wonder about that.’

  They knew they couldn’t stay where they were.

  ‘You swim like an eel,’ Abbie said. ‘Get down there again and see if the tunnel continues on the other side.’

  An eel? Adam thought that was probably a compliment.

  He ducked back under. But this time it was far more complicated. There were more rocks – it was confusing, more enclosed, and harder to see, though the torch was so far living up to its waterproof claim. Eventually he had to push himself backwards and return to Abbie unsuccessful.

  ‘Wait here,’ he gasped. ‘I just needed air. I’ll be quick.’ He was gone again.

  Adam went left this time at each junction: left, left, left, and then, far ahead, down a long tunnel that went slightly uphill and narrowed, he could see the surface of the water.

  Rising for a quick intake of air, he could see a much larger cavern, with rocks to climb on to. But when he tried to return, he realized that the rocks and channels all looked the same: he had to concentrate on going right, right, right as the distressing and tight breathless feeling in his chest grew.

  Once more he gasped as he surfaced next to Abbie.

  ‘I’ve found another cavern. Trust me,’ he said.

  Abbie looked him in the eye. ‘I don’t do trust.’

  Their head torches filled the small cavern with sparkling light. ‘You could stay here.’

  He sank under and Abbie followed. But as Adam glanced behind he could see another torch approaching from the first underwater channel.

  Adam swam left, left, left, and saw Abbie still behind him. All of the tunnels were completely filled with water – no chance of a breath. The final long stretch towards the surface was very narrow, and towards the end there was a protruding rock which left a small gap that could only be passed with hands ahead or tight to body. Adam had slipped through without difficulty, but Abbie, slightly larger and less of a natural in the water, couldn’t pass as easily.

  Adam looked ahead at what he was sure was the surface – and back to Abbie’s wide-eyed panic. She was shaking her head, lips tight, eyes desperate.

  Adam was also running out of oxygen fast, his lungs screaming for a breath that would only bring in water.

  He went back to Abbie and reached out his hands. Behind her, he could see a torch beam wiggling closer.

  She made a huge effort to stretch her arms through . . .

  Their hands met.

  Adam pulled her through.

  Then they wildly clawed up to the surface.

  Both coughed and heaved as they emerged into yet another cave and crawled out of the water on to damp stones.

  ‘He’s catching us up,’ spluttered Adam.

  Abbie picked up a rock. ‘If he makes it through and his head comes out of this water, I’m going to smash it in.’

  Adam directed his torch beam round their latest stopping point. It was a large and beautiful cave, easily large enough to stand up in; stalactites hung down like organ pipes and damp rocks welled up like bubbling lava.

  At exactly the same time, Adam and Abbie noticed different things.

  Adam held up a small plastic strip from the back of a plaster, which he’d picked off the rock by his foot. ‘Someone has been here before. There must be a way out . . .’

  Abbie wasn’t listening. She was looking at an arm rising towards them through the water. As Adam fell silent and watched, she grimaced, took aim and lifted her rock to shoulder height.

  CHAPTER 29

  THE CHIMNEY (SATURDAY 20TH DECEMBER 2014)

  The man was dead. His arm floated loosely ahead of him as if in surrender. He bobbed face down in the water for thirty seconds or more while Adam and Abbie stared. He must have had trouble getting through the same gap that had nearly beaten Abbie.

  Strangely, they were both more unsettled by the arrival of a dead body than they would have been by a living opponent. It made them realize just what a deadly gamble with drowning their escape had been.

  Abbie nudged the man’s body with her foot and he slowly rolled over. ‘I knew him back at the castle – one of Bolleskine’s favourites.’ For a short while they saw his open mouth and eyes glassily looking upward, then he was face down again.

  ‘It’s better this way,’ said Adam. ‘Otherwise we would have had to hurt him.’

  ‘Yeah.’ Abbie turned to Adam. ‘Let’s get out of here. If we can.’

  ‘We can talk over there.’ Adam didn’t mention wanting to get away from the body. He clambered over rocks to the other side of the cavern, pointing his torch at the intricate natural designs around him as he did so. Abbie followed.

  Both of them then focused their torches on the tiny strip that Adam had found. It certainly did look like the thin plastic layer that is taken off the back of a plaster. In any case, it was man-made. ‘There must be a way out. This is proof that
someone else has been in here,’ said Adam.

  Abbie stood up and shone her torch around the cave. ‘There’s something up there,’ she said, her beam resting on a mouth-like opening at the top of a pile of boulders.

  Shivering, they explored. They found themselves in a tunnel that went horizontally for about fifteen feet, then doubled back at a tight angle into a long forty-five-degree shaft rising up between two slightly different types of rock.

  When it started to rise, Abbie looked for a handhold.

  ‘It’ll be like climbing up a chimney,’ Adam said, peering above him.

  ‘More like crawling up a huge arse,’ said Abbie grimly. ‘It smells disgusting.’

  It was difficult to climb: sometimes smooth and slippery, sometimes jagged, but Adam found himself remembering what it’s possible to do when there’s absolutely no other choice. Abbie swore at the rocks and occasionally at Adam, but she never stopped climbing. She was as tough as any boy Adam knew.

  He had never dealt with anyone quite like her before. Megan was Adam’s measure for all girls – other girls were just a percentage as good as she was. Abbie didn’t seem to be on the same scale at all. She was one-hundred-per-cent Abbie.

  As they climbed, Abbie prepared Adam for the likelihood that they were not going to be able to do anything to prevent Bolleskine’s hideous plan. She knew the full outline and some details of it and spoke while climbing. ‘I’m certain that people at the castle are going to commit suicide,’ she said, heaving herself up. ‘A mass event.’ She paused. ‘Some of them won’t even need persuading. They believe they’re going to be transported to another planet, and you lot in capsules were their oh-so-talented super-leaders.’

  Adam laughed bitterly. He wished for the thousandth time that he was a normal kid.

  ‘Yes. What a bunch of loons.’ She looked down at Adam, her feet against one rock, her back wedged against another. ‘What was your special talent?’

  Adam raised his eyebrows. ‘Now that ’d be telling,’ he said. He was getting to like Abbie.

  She rolled her eyes. ‘Whatever! Listen – that drug is going to be spread through Edinburgh and London. We need to think about how to stop it.’ She stopped climbing again. ‘Adam . . .’ It was the first time she had actually used his name. ‘There’s another reason why I need your help. Of all people, my stupid dad is the one who’s going to be putting that stuff into Edinburgh’s water; he’s gone mad with grief after my mum died earlier this year and I can’t get through to him to convince him what he’s doing is wrong. But I have to stop him. I can’t lose him as well as Mum.’

  Adam only said, ‘No.’ But sympathy was etched on his face.

  ‘And we’re finished.’ She had stepped out on to a ledge and was looking in dismay at a smooth section about eight feet high at the bottom of a tall, nearly vertical, funnel. It was like being inside an old-fashioned factory chimney.

  ‘Wait!’ said Adam. ‘Turn off your torch.’ High above them there was the faintest hint of daylight. ‘And feel.’ There was a very slight breeze.

  ‘Great. We’re still dead.’ Abbie looked at the walls above. After the smooth section, they were uneven but almost sheer, stretching up and up, dangerously high. ‘Unless we could somehow get to there –’ she directed her torch’s beam to the start of the rougher section – ‘then there, and there –’ rough ledges higher up were lit – ‘and to there.’ At the very top there seemed to be an exit, where light was seeping in.

  ‘Let’s go,’ they both said at the same time.

  The problem was that although either one of them could be heaved up past the smooth section to the point where it would be possible to climb from, but the other would be left behind. But Adam had a plan.

  First Abbie climbed up on Adam’s shoulders, her dripping wet jumper dangling from her ankle, double-knotted. ‘Stand still,’ she shouted as she wobbled, moving one foot and then the other on to a narrow shelf high above Adam, wedging them tight into the crevice.

  Adam tugged on her jumper.

  ‘Hold on,’ shouted Abbie. ‘You’ll drag me down, numbskull.’ She tried different handholds and angled herself firmly behind an overhang. ‘Now try.’

  She held tight and Adam scrabbled up the makeshift jumper-rope. The fabric stretched, the seams widened, and then, cotton strand by cotton strand, began to rip.

  Adam climbed on regardless . . .

  He managed to get his left hand on Abbie’s foot and his right in a fissure, then swung his legs up – just, just, by the narrowest of tiny margins, getting his knee on to the same small ledge that Abbie was standing on. ‘Help!’ he croaked.

  Abbie found a good crack in the rock to hold on to with her left hand, then reached down and started pulling Adam up by his top. His foot went on to the small ledge and somehow he scrambled up, partly by using Abbie’s legs and then the top of her trousers, all done through ugly determination rather than precision art.

  ‘Phew,’ he said as he collapsed against the rock. ‘Sorry to use you as a rope.’

  ‘Worst excuse I’ve ever known for getting your hands on a girl,’ Abbie said dismissively.

  Adam tried to ignore her comment. But the combination of athleticism, damp hair and wet, clingy clothes made her suddenly seem very attractive. A jangle of guilt followed as he thought of Megan. ‘Now we mustn’t look down,’ he said.

  On a school trip, in a harness, they would have been wary of tackling such a climb, but a sort of autopilot took over. The ascent was helped by the fact that, higher up, the funnel was narrower, and closer to square than round. This meant they could use two sides. And having two of them, working as one unit, was essential when it came to tackling the trickiest sections.

  Above them, Abbie could make out a sliver of grey sky. It made her wonder whether the drug was still strong enough for her to see a forest of spiders when she was outside. She paused, looking at something just above her head. ‘Adam,’ she said, ‘you know, I haven’t seen any spiders for a while. At least, not obvious ones.’

  ‘No,’ he mumbled, easing himself up past a jagged rock. ‘I haven’t seen any bats.’ He had to stop to avoid bumping into her foot.

  ‘Ah,’ she said, very gently poking something with her finger, ‘I have some bad news.’ She had spotted a large colony of about fifty hibernating bats less than an arm’s length above her. ‘You’re going to have to keep looking down.’

  ‘I’m used to seeing them,’ Adam said breezily. ‘They make my skin crawl, but rather an imaginary bat than a real one.’

  ‘Er . . .’ Abbie said.

  Adam glanced at her face, then took a sharp intake of breath when he saw what she was looking up at. ‘Bloody hell. They are real ones,’ he murmured. He looked down at his hands going one over the other on the rocks. He hummed something tuneless, trying to distract himself. But at the very end he couldn’t stop himself looking up.

  There was one bat slightly on its own away from the dangling mass. It was brown, furrier than Adam expected, and had long ears tucked gently under its wings. It hung, quiet and helpless, not like the ferocious flapping creatures of his nightmares.

  He shook himself and quickly moved past. ‘Nailed it.’

  The exit was a small mouth on a vast hillside. It was much colder outside than in the cave. The breeze disguised a rise in temperature that was thawing the snow rapidly. Fortunately, they were both drier by now, if still damp. Adam was only wearing shorts and a T-shirt. Both were covered in scratches and bruises, and every muscle ached.

  Abbie pointed to something far off to the right. ‘I think that’s the road that leads to the castle. I only went down it once. But that would mean the castle is behind that hill.’ She waved her hand at a patchily snow-covered expanse.

  ‘Let’s make for the main road and get help,’ said Adam.

  ‘We need to be quick,’ said Abbie, anxious now. ‘Bolleskine wants it all to happen tonight.’

  ‘How can you be so sure?’

  Abbie explained. ‘It’
s the new moon – when the moon doesn’t reflect light and things are at their darkest. He was always going on about the new moon being the important thing, not the full moon.’ She looked straight at Adam.

  ‘So we’ve got, say, eleven hours or something?’ he asked.

  Abbie nodded glumly. ‘Maths your strength, is it?’

  Adam sighed.

  CHAPTER 30

  MEGAN (SATURDAY 20TH DECEMBER 2014)

  Adam and Abbie hurried across the hillside. The snow was wet and heavy, little more than slush in places. Adam’s bare feet were mercifully numb, but they were both shivering. The sun, although low in the sky, glittered on the mountains across the valley.

  Abbie was right about the castle being behind the hill. After they headed across one empty field and climbed over a neglected stone wall, there was a view of the end of the loch. They stood and looked at it for a moment, worried that they were seeing something that was also visible from the castle.

  As they walked and jogged towards the main road as quickly and directly as possible, it became impossible not to be within sight of the track that approached the castle, though it was far below them. There was no shelter. ‘If the helicopter comes, we’re finished,’ said Abbie. But it didn’t.

  They saw three vehicles going to the castle, and two went the other way. Each time, they dived to the ground.

  Eventually they were faced with the choice of either going high over a mountain or risking the more direct and open route nearer the track, where only a very few trees and bushes bravely fought against the winter. ‘No one will be looking for us out here,’ said Adam. ‘If anything, they’ll be digging into those caves. I’m for the short cut.’

  ‘Yeah,’ said Abbie. ‘But we’ll have to fight if they find us. I mean a real fight again. OK?’

  Only one vehicle passed in the distance. It was while they were going down a slope into a barren valley. Adam and Abbie both hid behind a final cluster of thin trees and didn’t notice that it was a police Range Rover until it was too late. Despite their wild shouts and energetic waving, it drifted away from them at a steady speed and was gone. They both asked what if questions, all unresolved by the time they reached the end of the track.