I didn’t know the answer. Did murder only apply to humans? Was Trog human? Lisa said she didn’t talk, just grunted. Too difficult a question for me.
We crossed the ledge. It went right behind the waterfall. Stevie nearly fell in when a bird flew out through the spray.
‘There’s nothing there,’ I told the others when we got back to the cave.
‘I suppose we saw there was nothing when you and I climbed up to the top of the muffin hill,’ said Mary and Jenna gave her a very dark look.
‘That’s right,’ I went on quickly, ‘the trees stop, then it’s just humpy grass for miles; more forest in the distance and then miles away the mountains you can see from here.’
‘So where’s Zach going?’ asked Jack who was still trying to make straight arrows by chipping away at some wood with a piece of flint.
‘He said the mountains,’ Zoe chipped in.
‘But I can’t see why.’ I’d no idea what might have been in Zach’s mind, apart from nasty craziness. ‘And I don’t see any point in following him.’
‘Maybe Zach will come back.’ Sam sounded worried.
‘Maybe he will, but I didn’t see any sign of him.’ I turned to Zoe. ‘You’re not making this up? It’s not just some plot of his and he comes up here tonight to set fire to us?’
Zoe burst into tears and through her sobbing seemed to be saying no. I didn’t think she was a good enough liar to make this up, so I believed her. Jenna seemed to as well and she was better at working people out than me.
‘Shouldn’t we follow him? Just in case,’ Jack suggested and I knew that meant his leg was fine now.
‘Could do, but why? I don’t really feel I want to see much more of him,’ I said. ‘We just have to hope that if they find something they let us know.’
‘Unlikely,’ Jenna said.
‘Maybe Zach wouldn’t, but one of the others might.’ I didn’t quite know why I was so reluctant to cross the river. Maybe it was because the space over there looked so huge. I was a city boy. I’d found the moor walk bad enough, but all that empty grassland was scary.
No one else was prepared to lead us across the river. I seemed to have taken over, although I felt it was Jenna who made the real decisions. She didn’t seem keen on chasing after Zach either.
‘If there aren’t any more Trogs here, then where did she come from?’ asked Stevie.
‘Perhaps she got left behind as Lisa suggested,’ I said. ‘Maybe she couldn’t keep up because of Zog.’
‘Do you think this has something to do with what that teacher was on about?’ said Jack.
‘Don’t know, but Trog and Zog aren’t male so she wasn’t talking about them.’ I was a bit touchy talking about the teacher. I felt as though she was something to do with me, although I had no idea why.
In the end we gave up talking about it. We didn’t follow Zach and we carried on trying to survive.
Surviving was easier without the threat of death from Zach. Jack and Mary led the drive to make things, find things, invent things.
Sam and Ivy took over the chuckern hunting. One day Jack persuaded us to try to catch a deer across the river. All of us had been over the other side. It wasn’t just me who found that difficult – although Mary reckoned I had agoraphobia and that’s why I didn’t like it. Jenna said that was stupid but the two of them had never got on since my night away with Mary.
And Jenna and I seemed to be spending more time together. She was doing the organisation, keeping stocks of food, making sure we had enough wood, asking me what I was going to do each day.
On the deer hunt day we were over the river with me trying to cure my not-agoraphobia. Jack had made a rope from creepers and a noose at the end. He’d been watching what the deer ate and collected a pile of tasty looking leaves. He put them in a pile over the noose and stood back.
‘The deer bends down to eat the food, you pull quickly and the noose goes over its neck. Then you two run up and stun it with your club,’ Jack said.
It sounded good although I didn’t think it would work. It did, although the first deer was so large that it broke the creeper and ran off. Several more attempts failed until eventually a smaller animal took the bait. Ivy got to the animal first and I was really impressed when she felled the beast with one huge blow. If Zach did come back I wanted Ivy on my side. I was even more astonished when Sam whipped out a piece of flint and slit the animal’s throat. There was blood everywhere. Sam looked pleased but I’m sure someone passed out. We carried the deer back. Sam and Ivy chopped it up and we had several days of roast venison before the thing went bad.
That’s when Jack came up with the idea of smoking meat. We’d caught another deer. Jack lit a fire in one of the smaller caves and closed off the entrance. He hung the meat over the fire and put a pile of green bushes on the flames. After a lot of choking he seemed to think it had worked. It didn’t taste too good but it lasted longer.
Mary used the deer skins to make things. She was drying them out in the sun then washing them in the river, bashing them with stones. She had us all at it. Then we had something to repair our clothes and shoes. She made needles from the deer bones.
‘How do they know all this stuff?’ I said to Jenna one night when we were sitting outside the cave watching the sunset. Somehow I seemed to be holding her hand at the time.
‘I think it’s called school,’ she said and with the sunset so beautiful her words seemed to end with a kiss. We were both a bit embarrassed but it seemed right.
‘So you don’t fancy Mary?’ she said afterwards.
‘Course not.’ And I think she believed me, I think I believed me.
The pottery making got better. Instead of burning chuckerns over the fire we made stews. Ivy found lots of herbs. I wondered if they were safe. But when Lisa wasn’t looking we tried the stew out on Zog first. She survived, so we ate it. Lisa would have gone wild if she knew we were using Zog for that. She was heavily over-protective of the new baby.
The younger ones weren’t too brave about going over the river. No one had any idea whether there were dangerous animals around. We hadn’t seen any mammoths nearby. Stevie thought he saw a snake, although I think it was a stick, but eventually they went off together and came back with armfuls of something that looked like wheat or barley, anyway that’s what Ivy thought it was. We didn’t have to wait to try it out on Zog. She leapt at it. Ivy pounded the stuff up and, having baked it on one of Jack’s plates, she made genuine biscuits.
On another night sitting with Jenna she said, ‘It’s Ok here, isn’t it?’
I muttered something.
‘I mean now Zach’s gone there’s no arguments. It’s better than home.’
‘It’s the only home I actually have,’ I replied.
‘Maybe that’s why Miss Tregarthur brought you here.’
‘Could be.’ I had wondered about that. ‘But do you think we’re stuck here forever?’
Jenna shrugged. ‘Do you think we should go after Zach? It’s been a load of Ivy’s scratches since they left.’ Jenna referred to the passing of time marked by Ivy on the cave wall.
‘No idea,’ I said. ‘I still think if there’s any way back it’s got to involve this cave and the tunnel. I can’t see any point in going anywhere else.’
‘So the agoraphobia is still bad.’ She laughed at me. Then we went back into the cave. We ended up playing some truth or dare game that Jenna organised. While that went on, Jack and Mary were making more pottery bowls, Matt doing something with deer antlers, and Lisa playing with Zog. Then a gust of wind whipped up the ashes from the fire and through the dusty haze a figure appeared. Ryan stumbled through the cave entrance and fell to the ground.
Ryan’s Story
-9-
I stared at the quivering body lying on the cave floor in the flickeri
ng shadows of the fire. Blood streaks ran from a massive black scab on Ryan’s forehead. Swelling had closed his left eye. The few remains of his clothes hung in shreds. Deep scratches covered his arms and legs, his ribs stuck out like twigs from his thin body. He gasped as he tried to speak, but his words made no sense.
Jenna was the first to help him, giving him sips of water. He calmed down as she held him. Ryan slipped into a shallow sleep. From time to time he twitched and screamed. He said nothing sensible until the following day.
‘It went alright at first,’ Ryan’s voice became a little stronger. ‘We walked for miles on the first day across the plain, then into the forest. Under the trees, the bushes were covered in thorns and we started to get cut and scratched. Some of the cuts burnt as though they were poisoned. Demelza was a real pain and wanted to go back, but Z ... Zach wouldn’t let anyone go.’ Ryan seemed to find it hard to use Zach’s name.
‘Didn’t Demelza want to go?’ I said.
‘She did – she said it would be a laugh.’ Ryan looked up. ‘But when it stopped being a laugh, she started whining.’
‘Zach made her stay?’ I didn’t understand why Zach would have put up with Demelza whining.
‘He’d been weird since he killed that Trog-thing. I think he’d started to go crazy even then ...’ Ryan stopped as though frightened by his own words.
‘Then what?’ Jack asked impatiently and Ryan went on.
‘We heard a lot of strange animal noises and saw herds of deer. One deer had been killed by something – we saw its half-eaten body. Then after we’d been bashing through the bushes for ages it seemed to get easier and I guess we’d started following some sort of trail. We just followed it without thinking how it had been made. Anyway, the trail led us towards the mountains you can see from here.’ Ryan gave a vague wave of his arm.
‘It started to get dark so we made a sort of camp. Nothing happened that night, but we heard terrible noises nearby. We didn’t sleep much. Zach spent most of the night walking up and down swinging his club.’ Ryan let out a small gasp. He sat up, took some more water and tried to move, but his face twisted with pain and he fell back. We had to wait, while he recovered enough strength to continue.
‘The next day we decided, or Zach decided, we should climb the nearest mountain so we could see further. The only way up meant following a stream. At least we had water but it was hard, steep and slow. We were only, maybe, half way up by the end of the day. Zach found a cave. A damp cave that smelt really awful. We lit a fire.’ Ryan turned to Jack. ‘I’d had taken back my lighter.’
Jack nodded. ‘I wasn’t sure when you’d taken it.’
‘Haven’t got it anymore,’ Ryan said and put his hands on the remains of his trousers as though searching.
We waited.
Ryan went on, ‘We ate berries and cooked some animal that Zach had killed earlier, it tasted disgusting and Demelza kept on about everything. Zach didn’t seem to know what to do with her. I suppose it had been like that even before we left, but every time Demelza wanted something it had to be done.’
‘Like what?’ I asked and Jenna gave me an exasperated look.
‘Like if she wanted water, we’d have to run and get her some. If she wanted to sit down, we had to find her something to sit on. If she got hungry, Zach made me run off into the forest to find more berries.’
‘He’d got it really bad for her then!’ Jenna said.
‘Like slaves?’ Stevie asked in a hushed whisper.
Ryan didn’t seem to hear Stevie, or took no notice and carried on, ‘Demelza started arguing, something stupid about who should sleep where, as if it mattered. The cave stank. All around there were bones and bits of dead animal. The bits made the smell. Anyway I couldn’t see why Demelza needed to argue about where to sleep. Should have kept quiet, but I told her to shut up.’
Ryan stopped again, looked around as though he almost expected to see Zach again, and his voice trembled. ‘Zach went berserk, screaming and yelling. Then he hit me with his club, over and over again. I might have passed out, but if I did he kicked me when I came round. I thought he’d kill me. I think someone said something to him and he stopped kicking and screamed at me to go, picked me up and threw me out of the cave. I begged him to let me stay. I had nowhere to go and I couldn’t see anything in the dark.’ Ryan gave a sob. ‘But he just shouted louder and I guess the others were too scared, or maybe they didn’t care.’
Ryan looked around again. No one moved in the cave and no one said anything so Ryan carried on, ‘I crawled out of sight. I could still hear Zach shouting. He said he should have killed me like he killed that Trog thing, so I crawled a bit further. Blood ran down my face and I hurt all over, I wanted to get away. It didn’t feel safe on that mountain. There were strange scuffling noises and I kept getting a strong smell, a scary smell, if there’s such a thing.’
Ryan paused for another drink. Stevie moved to the back of the group.
‘There was no light and I was nearly done for. I bumped into a tree and decided that climbing it would be the best thing I could do. I couldn’t get far up. It rained. I wedged myself in a fork in the tree, hung on to the branches and hoped. I dozed off a bit, but I worried about falling. Hours went by, the night cleared and the moon shone. It was quiet, very quiet, no sound of anything. It felt as though everything was waiting.’
Ryan paused again, his voice a shaky whisper. ‘Then I smelt something at the bottom of my tree. I couldn’t see it, but I heard sniffing. I didn’t move. I couldn’t move. I held on as tight as I could.’
Ryan had grabbed Jenna’s arm as he spoke and held it tightly with his bony hand.
‘Whatever it was, it just sat there, sniffing. Once, I saw two eyes in the moonlight. Horrible big yellow eyes staring up at me. I must have shivered, the tree shook and I heard this thing scratching at the trunk, as though it was trying to climb up.’
‘Then I heard Zach’s voice. I thought I’d got quite a long way from the cave but I could hear him shouting. I wondered who he would attack next. It wasn’t only me that heard the noise. I could make out the shape of a huge thing as it slipped away from my tree. I knew what would happen, but I couldn’t do anything about it. I got out of the tree and even though it hurt, I ran and ran down the hill, smashing into more trees, banging into rocks and falling into the stream. As I ran, I started to hear the screams. That made me run faster. There were more screams. I could hear Demelza’s scream, much louder than the others.’ Ryan’s own voice almost screamed. He stopped, his breathing fast and shallow.
‘And?’ Jack couldn’t wait.
‘I must have gone quite a long way because I couldn’t hear the screams anymore. I climbed another tree and I think I passed out. I didn’t come round until the next day. I got out of the tree, but I hurt too much to go any further. I found a few berries and lay against the tree trunk hoping someone would find me. But of course there isn’t anyone. Is there?’ Ryan looked at me but I just shook my head.
‘The night came again. I felt worse, all hot and cold. I don’t know how long I was like that, it must have been days. My head kept hurting. When I slept I thought I could hear that sniffing thing coming for me. I thought I could hear Demelza’s screams.’ Ryan fell back.
I wondered what had made Demelza scream and worse, what might have made her stop screaming.
Ryan raised himself up on his elbows. ‘Then after two, or perhaps three days, I woke up surrounded by Trog-like people. I was too far gone to do anything. They poked me and grunted. I had a silly flash that I was in a film. I think I started laughing in a weird sort of way. Then they copied me and soon they all started this grunt laughing. I thought they were going to eat me, but one of them gave me a drink from some sort of skin bag, it burnt my throat and I don’t remember much after that. The next time I came round I guess I was in their camp. There were about te
n of them – eating, tearing meat from a dead deer. I think it was dead ... not absolutely certain ... maybe it was still moving a bit. They threw me a piece. I hadn’t eaten for days so I ate it. It was warm, but not from cooking.’
Ryan described how he stayed with them and slowly recovered. He watched them hunting. The Trogs chased deer over a cliff near their first camp and then killed them as they lay injured at the bottom. From time to time they gave him bits of food.
Then one day he woke alone.
‘They’d vanished. I almost wondered if I had imagined it all. I had no idea where I was, where they’d left me. They’d moved me when they moved their camp and that had happened several times. The trees were so thick that I couldn’t see the mountains. I had to guess which way to go. I did find a few berries, nothing else to eat, but there’s a lot of water out there – stream after stream. I think I went round in circles for days. At night I hid in any tree I could find. One night I fell out, that’s when I hit my head and it started to bleed again. One of the streams led me to our river so I got back. The last problem was getting through whatever you’d put over the ledge.’
‘We worried that if one Trog could get over, then others could come,’ said Jack.
‘In case they found out what we did to the last one,’ Jenna said looking at Lisa.
‘I thought about trying to swim across. I called out, but no one heard. Eventually I crawled through.’ Ryan finished and lay back on the cave floor. His wounds looked bad. I wondered if he would survive. Jenna and Mary tried to make him comfortable, not really possible in a dingy cave I thought.
I went over Ryan’s tale in my mind. In the half-taken, half-forced position as leader I knew that a decision had to be made and if I didn’t make it then it would hang over us forever.
Tregarthur's Promise Page 9