Black Cairn Point

by Claire McFall

  ‘Emma?’ Had she fallen with me? I looked to my left, where she should be, but I could see almost nothing. The night seemed thicker, like a black fog. The wind was roaring in my ears and the two combined robbed my senses. ‘Emma!’ I felt out in front of myself, hunting for her.

  Two hands grabbed me, fingers interlocking with mine. Emma’s touch was cold, but it flooded me with warmth. I pulled myself over towards her, so close we were almost cheek to cheek, her frightened face emerging from the darkness. It was ghostly pale.

  ‘Where is it?’ I shouted. I should have deafened her, but my words only just reached her.

  She shook her head. Her eyes were darting over my shoulder, though I doubted she could see much. I know I couldn’t.

  My breath was slowly coming back to me, lungs expanding gratefully. I sucked the air in, practically hyperventilating.

  ‘We need to get back to Dougie,’ I yelled.

  What was happening where he was, less than a hundred metres away? For some reason it felt as though Emma and I were trapped in a bubble, caught in a vicious storm that existed only where we were.

  Emma nodded at me, stood up. Still with her fingers hooked into mine, she pulled me to my feet.

  ‘I can’t see it,’ she shrieked in my ear. ‘I can’t see anything.’

  The wind picked up even more. It was tugging and pushing at us, pinning us in place. My hair was in wild disarray around my face and I had to snatch each breath before it was plucked away. I turned in the direction I thought our campsite lay, looking for the firelight, totally disoriented.

  ‘That way?’ I asked, pointing with a finger. It was hard just to hold my arm away from my body.

  I saw Emma lift her shoulders up in a shrug. Then she let go of me. Reached up. Grabbed her shoulders. Opened her mouth, lips moving to form a question, eyebrows furrowed in confusion.

  Then she was moving. Up. Away from me. Up.

  I realised what was happening at the exact moment she did. I reached for her as she reached for me. I screamed as she screamed. Our fingers fumbled against each other, scrabbling for a grip. I felt my skin tear as Emma’s nails hooked into my knuckles, dug in. They wrenched deep, bloody gouges as they were torn away.

  ‘No!’ I threw myself forward, grabbed handfuls of her cardigan, her jeans. Still she continued to slide away from me. In a last desperate bid to hold on, I jammed her foot under my arm, clung to her leg. She was lifted higher and higher until my own feet were struggling to feel the sand beneath them. I held tighter as I was hoisted into the air, but Emma was writhing frantically and it was almost impossible to cling on.

  Then something warm and wet sprayed my face. Startled, I jerked my head back, loosened my grasp just for a heartbeat. Emma’s kicking foot slipped through my grip and I was falling again. Crashing back to earth as she soared unnaturally into the sky.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

  I don’t know how far I fell, but I hit the ground with a dull thump. The impact drove the air from my lungs for the second time in just five minutes and for several moments I could do nothing but lie there, stunned. My face was pressed into the sand and tiny grains clung to my eyelashes, my lips. I didn’t notice.

  Emma. Still breathless, I forced myself to my feet. Then I spun on the spot, hunting for her. I knew, though: she was gone.

  The wind was back to a gentle breeze; the darkness had receded. Dougie’s fire was easily visible just half the beach away; the clouds churned above me, steely grey. Emma was nowhere to be seen.

  ‘Emma!’ I called her name over and over again, but I was talking to empty air.

  ‘Heather? Heather, what’s going on?’

  Dougie. I saw his silhouette framed by the fire. I watched as he took one, two, three steps. Away from the flames, into the dark.

  No! I took off, running. I didn’t want him to leave the safety of the campfire. He paused, catching the movement of me hurtling towards him.

  ‘Dougie!’ I didn’t even try to stop myself, but crashed into him. He staggered then steadied both of us, his hands automatically coming up to grip my arms. ‘Dougie, it’s real!’

  ‘What?’ He gazed down at me, forehead furrowed in confusion. ‘What’s real? Heather, where’s Emma?’

  ‘Didn’t you see it? Didn’t you feel the wind?’

  He ignored my questions but shook me gently. Dropping his face lower to mine, he looked deep into my eyes.

  ‘Heather, where is Emma?’

  I choked out a sob. ‘She’s gone!’

  ‘Gone? What do you mean, gone? Heather, you’re not making any sense!’

  He shook me again, getting agitated. Rather than calming me, his actions just accelerated the tears forming in my eyes. I started to cry, gasping and mumbling. My hands were clawing at his chest, pathetically seeking comfort. I wanted him to hug me, but instead he pulled away. I knew what he wanted: an explanation. But I couldn’t speak.

  I tried anyway, blubbering incoherently, my words a mush.

  ‘Emma’s gone, she’s gone. The thing … the thing she talked about, it’s real. I saw it. It came down and it … it … grabbed her. I tried to stop it, but it was too strong.’

  Dougie just stared at me, open-mouthed.

  I looked across the beach, now quiet and still. I could just make out the pinprick beam of light from the abandoned torch, where our collection of logs lay discarded. The menacing atmosphere was gone. The panic, the urgency, the horror. It was just a beach. An ordinary beach.

  I turned back to Dougie.

  ‘Didn’t you see it?’ I asked again, a little more composed now. Having the light from the fire, having Dougie beside me, the whole thing almost seemed impossible again. But I’d seen it. I’d felt it. And Emma was gone.

  ‘I didn’t see anything,’ Dougie said, his face troubled. ‘I watched you guys walk over, then I saw you coming back really fast. Then it all went dark and I figured the torch had run out of battery. I waited and waited, but you didn’t come. Then I heard you screaming.’

  ‘What about the wind?’ I pressed.

  ‘What wind?’

  The air was now still but for little breezes that barely lifted the tresses from my shoulders.

  ‘The gale that was blowing about three minutes ago?’ I insisted.

  The beach was small. How could that have happened just a hundred metres away and Dougie not have felt it?

  ‘Heather, there wasn’t a gale,’ Dougie assured me. ‘Where’s Emma?’

  I’d already told him. Twice I’d told him.

  ‘She’s gone. It took her,’ I said. ‘Dougie, this thing appeared out of thin air and snatched her. Just like she said happened to Darren. It’s the truth!’ I shouted the last words, seeing the disbelief written all over his face.

  ‘Okay,’ he said, putting his hands up in surrender. ‘Okay.’

  But he still wasn’t convinced. He was probably just worried that I’d start screaming and crying again. Aggravated, I spun away from him and started pacing round the fire. I ran my hands through my hair, feeling the wild tangles conjured up by the swirling winds. Though I thought I would be past caring about my appearance, I suddenly felt embarrassed. Flashing Dougie a glance, I pulled a bobble out of my pocket and swept my hair up into a messy knot. Then I resumed pacing.

  What were we going to do? The beach wasn’t safe. That thing could come back at any time. How much protection would a dying fire offer against a creature that was able to conjure winds, pluck up a person, then vanish into thin air?

  But leaving … leaving meant going out into the dark.

  Every inch of me screamed against that option. Out there, out there was unknown, hidden. We’d be totally blind, even more so now that I’d lost the torch. I tried to imagine it: feeling our way to the car park, fumbling up the hill, wandering aimlessly in the dark. Waiting for rescue. Waiting for dawn. Waiting for attack. I shuddered.

  We were going to have to stick it out.

  I turned back to Dougie. He was standing, arms folded, watch
ing me. The expression on his face was hard to read. It took a moment for me to realise that that was because the light was fading. The fire was dwindling fast. I looked to the left where we’d stacked our reserves. Nothing.

  ‘I’m sorry about the wood,’ I said, my voice husky. ‘I had it. I had it in my hands, but then –’

  ‘Forget about the wood,’ Dougie said quickly.

  ‘But the fire …’ I gestured to the pathetic remains of our blaze.

  Dougie looked towards the spot of light where the torch lay. ‘Where did you drop it?’ he asked. ‘Is that it?’

  ‘You can’t go out and get it,’ I said, skipping a step and answering the question I knew was coming next. ‘You can’t. We’ve got to stay here, by the campfire.’

  While the flames remained …

  Dougie fidgeted on the spot, his gaze still drawn by the pinprick of light rather than our smouldering embers, a murky mixture of red and black.

  ‘It’s not safe out there,’ I said. ‘Dougie!’ I waited till he looked at me. ‘It’s not safe.’

  Now that there were just two of us there was no way we were splitting up. And I wasn’t going back out there.

  He still looked unconvinced, shoulders half-turned away from me, one foot forward like he was considering making a run for it.

  ‘Do you think I’m making it up?’ I asked quietly. That got his attention.

  ‘No,’ he said at once. ‘No, but … Heather, if there is something out there, how do you know it’s afraid of the fire?’

  I didn’t. Yet somehow I sensed it. It felt safer here, anyway. At least we’d be able to see it coming.

  ‘Please don’t leave me,’ I whispered. ‘Please.’

  I sat down in one of the chairs, making it clear I wasn’t going anywhere, and looked at him pleadingly. He made an agonised face, gazed once more out to the torch, winking now, as if it was calling him. Then he looked back at me. I kept my face calm, biting down on my lower lip to stop it trembling, blinking to stop any more tears cascading down my cheeks. Begging with my eyes.

  ‘Heather …’

  ‘We’ll burn our clothes,’ I said. ‘Our sleeping bags, whatever. Even the tents –’ I certainly wasn’t going camping ever again. ‘Just … just stay here.’

  Dougie took a step towards me, his face torn. He glanced over his shoulder and the torchlight sputtered a few times, flashing like an SOS. Then it died. The beach was inky blackness, the pile of logs hidden. It was no longer a sixty-second mission. Not in the cloaking dark. Would that turn the odds in my favour?

  Dougie sighed and I held my breath. I watched him limp over to the campfire, hold his hands over the last of the flames. The light was so low his face was almost obscured by the night, hands glowing red.

  ‘We can’t burn the sleeping bags,’ he said quietly. ‘They’re made of fire-retardant stuff.’

  He smiled ruefully when I grinned at him, momentarily victorious.

  ‘Clothes,’ he said. ‘We’ll start with clothes.’

  It felt wrong to throw the others’ stuff onto the dimly glowing, charred remains of wood, but we did it anyway, promising to replace it all. I even joked that we’d have to check Emma’s labels before we burned them, make sure she didn’t bill us for anything designer. Pretending they were fine, pretending they were coming back, made it easier.

  The fire was so low we had to use lighter fluid to get enough life back in the flames for the clothing to catch. Once lit it burned quickly. Dougie had to keep hitting it with spurts of clear liquid just to keep the flames going. I didn’t know how much was left in the can, but it sloshed ominously every time he tilted it to the fire.

  ‘You want to know something funny?’ he asked, briefly illuminated as the lighter fluid sparked another flare.

  ‘What?’ I asked, smiling slightly in response to the tight, embarrassed smirk etched across his jaw. I couldn’t imagine anything that could be funny right now.

  ‘I was hoping this birthday trip –’ I coughed out a laugh and he stopped. ‘What?’

  ‘I’d almost forgotten it was your birthday,’ I said. ‘I got you a present.’

  He smiled. ‘Was it a good one?’

  ‘It was a book,’ I said. ‘One of the course books, about fossils.’ I chuckled blackly. ‘I guess we could burn it, it’s in my bag.’

  ‘Don’t burn it,’ he said softly. There was a moment of quiet. I looked at the smoky flames, then up at Dougie. He was gazing at me oddly.

  ‘What were you hoping?’ I asked to cover the awkwardness I felt.

  To my surprise he blushed.

  ‘I was hoping, maybe, under the influence of the stars or the fire –’ he huffed a laugh – ‘or the booze or whatever, I was hoping maybe you and me …’ He tailed off.

  I stared at him, astonished.

  ‘Or maybe not,’ he muttered, embarrassed.

  I tried to rearrange my features but they were frozen into whatever ugly mask had caused Dougie to take completely the wrong reading of my reaction.

  ‘Pity about the supernatural creature from hell then,’ I made my vocal cords work, though I didn’t quite manage the light, jokey tone that I was after. ‘That would have been nice.’

  More than nice. Much more.

  He flicked his eyes back to mine, smiled at me. I smiled back, wondering if I would go to hell for the glimmer of happiness that was trying to thaw the ice gripping my chest.

  ‘Give me your hand.’ Dougie held out his right hand, palm up, and when I placed mine in it he hauled us both out of our seats. We wobbled a little on the uneven sand and I wasn’t sure if it was Dougie’s balance that was off, or mine. It didn’t matter, his hands were lightly gripping my waist and suddenly that was all I could focus on.

  ‘I shouldn’t have waited so long to do this,’ Dougie told me, and then, before I could form any sort of reply, he was kissing me. Mouth hot on mine, hands on my waist, sliding up my arms, cupping my jaw.

  Kissing me.

  His lips were soft, his tongue probing. Everywhere there was heat. The air around me seemed to shimmer with it.

  My brain was screaming at me that this was wrong. Our friends were missing. Something was lurking in the dark, something evil. But I needed to kiss Dougie like I needed to breathe.

  It was the stress. It was the tension. I needed something to release the pressure. We both did.

  Several long moments later, Dougie pulled back, his hands still soft on either side of my face, and said something. I saw his mouth move, but couldn’t hear the words.

  ‘What?’ I asked. Then realised he wouldn’t have heard me either. Not over the wind.

  The wind.

  ‘Dougie! It’s coming!’ I glanced down at the fire. It was low again, the flames not even climbing their way out of the shallow pit we’d built to hold them. ‘Quick, we’ve got to build the fire up!’

  Dougie was slow to react. He blinked, his expression cloudy, and I noticed his features were waxy, his eyes sunken. I hadn’t noticed, but it seemed the fever was beginning to grip him once more. Lack of sleep, lack of food, stress; it was taking over his body again.

  He let go of me, though, and weaving only slightly, bent to the pile of burnable objects we’d grabbed from the tent. There wasn’t much left, just a couple of pairs of rolled-up socks.

  ‘That’s it,’ he said, dropping them down into the fire. They didn’t catch at once. Mindful of the ever-growing breeze, I squeezed some of the lighter fluid in the heart of the fire. That worked a little. Looking up at Dougie, I could clearly see his face. The mouth I’d been kissing just a minute ago.

  I didn’t have time to linger on it, though, because behind Dougie something was descending through the sky faster than a swooping crow. A black mass, half-hidden by the camouflaging clouds. The creature. The stinging wind whipped at my eyes as they widened in terror. How fast was it moving? A hundred miles an hour? Two hundred? Faster than I could follow it.

  Much, much faster than we could move.

 
; Dougie’s mouth pursed as he read my face, but he didn’t have time to form the question on his lips. Before my eyes, large talons dug into his shoulders and hooked tight. I saw it in his face: pain, shock and fear.

  ‘No, no, no!’ I would not lose Dougie. I wrapped my arms around his neck, clinging fiercely. His hands clutched my waist, fingers digging painfully into my hips. Something was scratching and pulling at my face and hair but I twisted my head away, hiding in Dougie’s shoulder. I tightened my grip, grabbing handfuls of his t-shirt. I would not let go.

  I would not lose him like I had Emma.

  I felt the upward pressure as we were lifted. My feet kicked for the ground but found nothing. The only thing supporting me was air. That, and my grip on Dougie. My arms were so tight around his neck I knew I must be choking him.

  ‘Heather!’ he shouted, right in my ear.

  I couldn’t answer him. All of my concentration was focused on hanging on. I was so heavy; gravity seemed to be magnified by a million, calling me back to the ground. Every foot we lifted higher, it was harder and harder to keep my grip.

  But I would not let go.

  That thought flashed in my brain the exact second the wraith took a firm hold of my hair and hauled backwards with enough strength to snap my neck. I couldn’t help it. My brain, seeking to save my life, took control of my muscles and loosened my fingers one by one.

  I fell to the ground even as I fought the urge, reaching again for Dougie. Too late, my hands closed on empty air.

  I landed on my feet. The impact forced me to drop into a crouch, hands sinking into the sand. I looked up, poised like a cat, and saw Dougie’s flailing legs disappearing up. Up and away as the creature hauled him out towards the sea.

  No. No, no, no!

  What should I do? I searched around frantically. Every second, Dougie was being pulled further away. Leaving me here alone. My chest constricted with fear.

  ‘What do you want?’ I screamed at the sky.

  What could it want? What could it possibly want? Sacrifice? Our lives taken to slake its thirst? Offerings to an evil spirit?

  Offerings. That’s what I had. An offering. Cursing my own stupidity, I dug into my pockets. My hand was shaking so badly I struggled to grasp what I was after, but finally I pulled it out.