The Beast of Seabourne (41 page)

Soph said, “886191.”

“Right,” Ruff went on. “So, 88 marks the square running from east to west, and the 6 after it means it's just over halfway along. The 19 gives the Northing square, and 1 means it's just a bit north of the lower edge of that square.”

Oz was staring at him.

“You can't even get past the first level of
Road to Oblivion
unless you know how to map-read,” Ruff explained with a shrug.

Soph's silver eyes lit up. “I calculate that one of these grid references is two and a half miles northeast from here.” She turned, and a beam of light shot out from her eyes across the moor.

“The footprints go more or less that way,” Oz said, looking down.

Ellie nodded. “So, what are we waiting for?”

As Oz made to move away, he felt Ruff's hand on his arm. Oz turned and saw that his friend's face bore a pale mixture of dread and discomfort. Although he'd had the itchiest feet all of a minute ago, suddenly he didn't seem that eager. “Do we really have to go into some graveyard? I mean they're usually full of dead people,” he hissed, trying not to let Soph hear.

“Don't tell me,” Ellie said. “In
Burial Ground 5, Revenge of the Neanderthal Zombies
, there are these three kids on a mountain and…”

Ruff sent her a reproachful glance. “Maybe it's sacred,” he argued.

“And maybe if we stay here any longer, my nose will drop off,” Ellie said, sniffing.

“She's right; we have to move,” Oz said. “We'll freeze if we stay here any longer.”

They set off with a reluctant Ruff at the rear. After ten minutes, Oz could feel his body warming up under his jacket as he hurried to keep up with Soph. Their path took them down into a shallow gap and up a rise, where another expanse of flat moor lay ahead of them. They followed the footprints across the undulating terrain, and after a while Oz realised they were on a broad path of sorts, set above the surrounding landscape, that stretched ahead of them into another descent.

“Is this some sort of road we're on?” Oz asked Soph, who was drifting along ahead of them as a gleaming red beacon, matching their pace exactly.

“Limestone was quarried here many years ago, and there are many abandoned kilns. The lime was transported on trams. We are walking along one such tramway,” Soph explained.

“Couldn't they make them flat?” Ruff gasped from behind them as the tramway rose again towards yet another ridge.

“At least we're not freezing anymore,” Oz said, tugging at the scarf he'd tied around his neck to let in some cool air. He waited for Ruff to come back with another whinge but almost collided with Ellie, who had suddenly stopped in her tracks.

“Look,” she whispered and pointed towards a low cairn to one side of the tramway just a few yards away. “That looks like… Oh, sugar!”

Oz followed her pointing finger. Another wave of moonlight had suddenly washed over them and bathed their surroundings in platinum.

“A body,” breathed Ruff from over Oz's shoulder.

“Come on,” Oz said, and started running.

Their feet crunched across the frozen grass and up a steep slope to where the figure lay in a heap.

“It's Skelton,” Oz said as they got near enough to make out the colouring and detail of his coat and hat.

It was indeed their science teacher. He lay face down on the snowy ground, and in the light provided by Soph, Oz knelt and saw a nasty gash on the right side of his temple.

“Is he okay?' Ruff asked anxiously.

“Looks like he's been knocked out,” Oz said.

Quickly, Ellie knelt next to him. She slipped off her gloves and felt for a pulse at Skelton's neck.

“Yeah,” Ellie said. “His pulse is a bit slow, and he's icy cold.”

Oz got up and examined the cairn. Something dark glistened on a stone. “Look, there's blood here. I reckon he must have fallen and hit his head.”

“But where's the Beast?” Ruff scanned the moorland wildly for any sign of movement.

Oz shook his head as he, too, looked about him. “Dunno. Looks like it got away.”

“Look,” Ellie said. “The footsteps go off down the valley.”

The others followed her gaze and saw the dark prints veering off the tramway path, down into a shadowy col.

“I'm not going down there,” Ruff said, taking a step back.

Oz nodded. He had to agree with Ruff. Suddenly, everything seemed very complicated.

“Soph, which way is the reference point again?”

“It is a mile northeast.” A thin beam of light shot out from Soph's eyes again. Its direction, however, was at right angles to the footsteps leading off downhill. “I am picking up faint alloy readings in that direction also.”

“The ring?” Ellie asked.

“I would need to be closer to know for certain.”

“What about Skelton?” Oz said.

Ellie thought and then said, “We can't carry him back to camp, and we can't take him with us. I reckon we should wrap him up and come back for him once we've been to fetch the ring.”

Oz nodded. Cold was Skelton's worst enemy. But Ellie was already taking out a survival blanket from her backpack. It was a light, thin, metal-foil-coated sheet designed to reduce heat loss and wind chill. Ellie quickly unfolded it and, with Ruff and Oz's help, managed to get it underneath Skelton. They did the same thing with Oz's. When they'd finished, their fingers were numb.

“Okay, let's go,” Oz said, slipping his hands into his gloves and giving Skelton one last glance. He looked almost cosy lying there wrapped in two blankets on the snow.

They set off once more, following Soph's lead. She had dimmed again into a red shadow. With the moon now firmly behind a new blanket of cloud, Oz had reverted to his greenish night vision. The wind came from the north in icy gusts, making the skin on their faces raw and their lips numb. Oz's world remained green and grey, a landscape criss-crossed by sheep tracks and dotted with tumbledown stone huts and craggy outcrops. Up here on the high moor, way above the roads and the sheep farms, was an alien landscape where few people ever ventured.

Even as they made headway into the last mile, the sky was changing. A thin line of magenta was just becoming visible on the eastern horizon, the first sign of the approaching dawn. Yet it took them almost half an hour to reach their destination, largely because the last three hundred metres was a steep ascent across an escarpment. At one point, Ellie stopped and grabbed Oz's arm.

“Listen,” she said.

“What is it?” Ruff said.

“Thought I heard something. Rocks falling behind us, high up?”

But when Oz listened, all he could hear was the moaning wind.

“Sheep, maybe?” Ruff asked hopefully.

“Sheep don't clamber over the tops of rocks,” Ellie said. Ruff sent her a dread-laden glare.

In the east, the magenta line was turning into a washed-out blue. Gradually, the grey and unformed landscape took shape as light leached slowly back into the world.

“How much farther, Soph?” Oz asked.

“One hundred metres up this slope,” Soph said.

“So, that'll take us to McClelland's beauty spot, but what about the ring?” Ellie asked.

“I have very strong readings in this vicinity, Ellie.”

“Really? You mean it's here?” Ellie was suddenly animated.

A track took them diagonally across the southern face of the slope, featureless except for some stunted trees and craggy outcrops. Halfway across, Oz stopped, surveying his surroundings.

“Is there an exact place we need to be aiming for?”

Soph answered. “Forty metres up from this point, towards the rocks above. Readings indicate that the source is sixty-two point three metres from here.”

Oz looked up. They were going to have to climb and scramble up the last few yards. It was steep and precarious underfoot, studded with loose rocks that had tumbled from the cliff face above. There was nothing to see except a small bent tree growing out from a small depression. “Let's aim for that,” he said, pointing upwards.

They said nothing for the remainder of the climb. All thoughts of the cold were now gone as they clambered up, and for the first time Oz felt sweat trickling down his neck onto his chest. Finally, they reached the windblown tree. It was no more than four feet high, but at least it provided something to hold on to on that precipitous incline. Ruff was the last to arrive. He grabbed onto a branch and sucked in air. Above them, the sky was turning to tarnished silver.

“Okay. So, what now?” Ruff gasped.

“Soph,” Oz asked, “what do your readings say?”

“I have a very strong signal twenty yards from this very point, directly north.”

“Which is which way?”

A compass floated in the air between them. The arrow pointed in, towards the belly of the mountain they were on.

Ellie groaned. “Does that mean we have to go up over the top?”

Oz looked up. They were at the point at which the grass gave way to loose stones and scree and where the cliff face became almost sheer. If they were going to go any higher, they would need to find handholds on the rock.

“No, Ellie,” Soph said. “The reading shows no higher elevation. If anything, it is a few metres lower.”

“Lower than where we're standing?” Ruff said. “So have we missed it?”

“No, Ruff.”

“I don't understand,” Ruff said. “I do,” Oz said, and there was something in his voice that made the others look at him. “She means it's twenty yards inside the mountain, don't you, Soph?”

“That is correct, Oz.”

“What?” Ruff said.

“Think about it,” Oz said. “McClelland brought us to this point. He was into burial sites. Maybe there's a cave or something. Come on. Let's have a look.”

It was Ellie who found it.

“Up here,” she cried excitedly from a point five yards up from the tree's lowest branch.

Ruff and Oz joined her and they all stared into a dark space, little more than a jagged vertical slit about five feet high. It nestled behind a large outcrop, which kept it constantly in shadow, well-hidden from any casual glance. It was the foothold the tree had grown out of and into which its roots extended. Oz knew instantly that it was the right place, from the way his voice echoed into its depths.

“How the hell did McClelland find this?” Ruff asked in an awestruck voice.

“Dunno, but I'll bet that this is where Soph's reading is coming from,” Oz muttered.

He took the first tentative step in, the way instantly lit by Soph. The floor was rubble-strewn and wet as they wound first left and then right along a narrow but negotiable passage. Where they put their hands on the walls for support, their fingers came away damp and slimy. After ten yards, Oz could feel the air change about him. The way widened, and suddenly, they were standing on a shallow platform. Below them, the floor had been shaped into steps descending to a wider lower level, while above, the walls suddenly funnelled out to reveal a slit of milky dawn light filtering through a canopy of green bracken and overhanging branches.

“Blimey,” Oz said.

“Buzzard,” Ruff breathed.

“What is this place?” Ellie whispered.

“Reminds me a bit of being in a church,” Ruff said in awe.

Silently, Oz nodded in agreement. He took the steps down. They were narrow but firm. Above them, the light was strengthening, but at the bottom of the chasm it remained as dark and dank as the deepest dungeon. Behind him, he could hear Ruff's nasal breathing, sheltered as they now were from the wind, their echoing footsteps the only other noise. It was an eerie place, and it was easy to believe that this might be somewhere people had come to worship their gods. Oz wasn't scared, but there was something about the place that made the hair on his neck quiver like a guitar string. Not looking at where he was walking, he half-stumbled and came up with a start, feeling Ellie grumble at his clumsiness as she bumped into him from behind.

“What is it?” Ellie asked, recovering quickly.

“Don't know. Tripped over a branch, I think?”

“Stop messing about, you two,” Ruff hissed. “I vote we find the ring and get out of here pronto.”

“The reading is coming from this chamber,” Soph said. “But I am also picking up high concentrations of calcium.”

“Calcium. Good for teeth and bones, right?” Ruff said.

Oz knew that when Ruff was worried, he talked. It seemed to help him cope.

Soph led them onward but halted abruptly. “On the eastern side, there is another drop down to a lower level, approximately six metres below us. Be careful.” Oz shone his torch over and saw the floor slope away sharply.

“Thanks, Soph,” he said.

“Why have I got such a bad feeling about this?' Ruff asked in a chattering whisper.

No one answered. Soph led them forward another twenty feet, and Oz saw the walls begin to rise again in front of them, but at the very end was a denser shadow, where the chamber extended beyond Soph's light.

“Wonder what's in there,” Ellie said and stepped forward to shine her torch in. She let out a stifled scream.

“What is it?” moaned Ruff from behind Oz.

“Soph?” Oz asked.

The avatar moved in front of Ellie to bathe the furthest recesses in silver light. What was revealed made Oz's skin crawl. Lining the walls, in a pile at least five feet high and many yards long, was a carefully arranged mass of human bones.

“Is this some sort of cannibal cave?” warbled Ruff. “It is an ossuary, Ruff,” Soph said. “A way of carefully commemorating the dead. It is a common practise in many cultures.”

Oz swung around and shone his torch on to the floor they'd just crossed. There, where he'd stumbled, lay a large human femur. He shivered involuntarily at the memory before turning back to study the ossuary. It was obvious that it had been there a long time, because the water dripping incessantly from the roof had begun to coat the skulls and bones with limestone, such that the top layer was covered by a kind of gritty icing. It looked like the rock was reclaiming the dead, converting them all back to the stone from which they had come.