Dark Tides (17 page)

You might not have planned in exhaustive detail this year, but that doesn’t mean you’re not prepared. Chance is a seductive force, and it’s true that you appreciate its power and appeal more than most people, but you’d have been an idiot not to plant a GPS on the minibus.

You can see the signal now, registering as a small red beacon on the map you’ve called up on your smartphone. There’s also a pleasing sound effect that bings like sonar. They’ve parked a short distance away – less than half a mile by foot – and you’re delighted to see that Callum has chosen such an isolated location.

True, the museum village is popular today, and the school bus that’s parked close by worries you a little, but you can hike around the back of the absurdly twee cottages and cut across some fields, avoiding the kids and their teachers and the narrow, winding track that leads up the hill.

Even the weather is co-operating with you. There won’t be many walkers around and the rain means you can put on your black cagoule with the hood that conceals your face. Your equipment is stashed in a small backpack, and to the average onlooker, you could be an ordinary rambler out to walk the coast path with a bag containing a map and a drinking flask and a neatly packed lunch.

But you’re not ordinary. You never have been. And there’s no space for a map or a flask or any lunch in your rucksack – not with all the gear you have stuffed inside.

This wasn’t my first trip to the Chasms, though I hadn’t been here in years. It wasn’t the type of place to visit on a whim. The sign was right. It was treacherous.

Imagine a chunk of headland shaped like a wedge of Swiss cheese. Imagine that one side of the wedge ends in a sheer cliff almost two hundred feet high. Imagine the holes in the cheese are actually concealed fissures that extend way down into the headland. Now imagine that the pathways between these hidden crevices are crooked and uneven, tangled with long grasses and gorse. Add in a stiff coastal breeze that’s numbing your hands and face. Allow for a cloying drizzle that might turn to full rain at any moment. And lastly, factor in the idea that you and the friends who’ve accompanied you to this nightmare terrain are planning to go rock climbing.

Crazy, right?

I thought so. But it was about to get a lot worse.

‘Most people who climb here trek down a gulley to come around the side of the cliff and climb up from there.’

Callum was pointing a short distance away from where we were standing. He’d led us between the chasms right to the very edge of the cliff. There was a shelf of ruptured, uneven slate beneath us. The slate was wet and sloped down at an acute angle. There was no fence and no safety railing. I caught a glimpse of what lay beneath. There was nothing except sea birds, at least for the first hundred or so feet. The drop was immediate, terminating in a steep grassy slope loaded with boulders and scree that descended towards a sliver of beach and crashing surf. Just off shore, frenzied tides smashed against the teetering, isolated stack of the Sugarloaf Rock. The flaking outcrop was alive with a mass of screeching birds.

‘OK.’

‘But we’re not going to do that.’

Callum stepped over to Rachel and turned her to face the sea. He hoisted the rucksack off her back and tossed it on to the ground alongside his own.

‘Why not?’ I asked.

He twirled his hand in the air, motioning for me to swivel.

‘Couple of reasons.’ He heaved my rucksack upwards and I felt my shoulders go light. ‘First of all, the cliff is exposed to the wind down there, and the rock’ll be so wet that it’ll be tricky to climb. Especially for beginners.’

He opened my rucksack and tossed me a white plastic helmet with a lamp fitted to the front and a battery pack on the rear.

‘And second of all?’

‘Second of all, I think walking down is kind of dull.’

‘Then what exactly are you suggesting?’ The wind was tugging rogue strands of Rachel’s hair from her head warmer, whipping them round her temples.

Callum removed another helmet for Rachel. A blue one this time, also with a lamp and a battery pack. I had a bad feeling about the lamps.

‘I thought we’d abseil down.’

‘Down where?’

Callum inclined his head towards a slash in the rock just behind where I was standing. It was narrow. It was black. It looked bottomless.

‘You have got to be kidding.’

‘Put this on.’ He handed me a harness. ‘You can go first, if you like.’

I didn’t like. Not one bit. The damp and the wind and the height were beginning to get to me. Five swift paces and I’d fall. There’d be no stopping me and no coming back from it. And the weird part was, as I pictured myself striding towards the drop, I could almost imagine it really happening. There was a twitchy energy in my legs. A renegade urge in my mind.

I dropped to my knees, flesh striking stone, my back to the drop and the taunting birds. I looked towards the former cafe, hunkered down at the base of the soggy field, beyond the crooked, overlapping clefts in the rock. I fitted the helmet on my head and straightened out the harness. I fed one leg through, then the other. I hauled the harness up and tightened it off.

Callum glanced over his shoulder as he dragged ropes and a collection of metal carabiners from his rucksack.

‘Is that comfortable?’

I nodded. Swallowed hard.

‘Feels secure?’

I nodded again.

‘That’s terrific. Just one small word of advice.’

‘OK.’

‘You might want to put it on the right way round.’

You find the minibus on a patch of stony ground just in front of an old farm shed. There’s nobody inside. No sign of anybody close. You pocket your phone and hurry across the mud and aggregate, dropping to your knees and reaching under the chassis to retrieve the GPS transmitter you attached in front of the rear axle.

You slip the transmitter into one of the zipped pockets on your cargo trousers, then rest your gloved fist against the exterior of the van – just below the colourful sign that reads
MANX OUTDOOR EXPERIENCES: GO WILD!
– and you consider the rear left tyre for a long moment, asking yourself if you should take the hunting knife from your backpack and slice through the rubber. You like the knife. It sits very snugly in your hand, the blade is viciously serrated, and you’re intrigued to see what it would do to the tyre. But on balance you decide it’s an unnecessary indulgence. If you need to keep them here for any reason, it would be much less destructive and far more sensible to release all the air from the tyre valve. Not that you need to do that yet, anyway. Not with the way things are shaping up.

You back off, pulling the thick Gore-tex glove from your right hand, and you walk around the front of the minibus and place your palm against the engine cover. It’s still warm, which doesn’t surprise you, but you’re gratified by how professional the move makes you feel.

There’s a wooden stile just in front of you and a sloping path beyond that. You know exactly where the path leads. You’ve been here before. You climb up on the stile with the wind in your face and the rain splattering your cagoule and as you look down towards the old cafe you feel your heartbeat spike and you can’t help but smile.

Twenty minutes later, Rachel and I were sitting next to one another on the hard slate, our backs to the sea, knees hugged to our chests. My coat was too thin and it had ridden up when I’d put on my harness, exposing the skin at the base of my spine to the drenching gusts. I leaned into Rachel and rested my cheek on her shoulder, snorting at the filthy commentary she was providing as we watched Callum secure his own equipment.

Once he was kitted up with a selection of colourful metal gadgets hanging from various loops attached to his harness, we watched him feed a long red rope through his hands, checking for any weaknesses or tears. He did the same thing with a green rope. Then he looped a third, much shorter, white rope around the base of the large boulder where he’d dumped our rucksacks.

‘This is our anchor point.’ He kicked at the boulder. It was a huge, dark thing, half sunken into the ground and surrounded by ferns and long grass. He took both ends of the rope and pulled them taut against the boulder, tying them in a figure eight. ‘And this is our anchor rope.’

‘You don’t need to teach us.’ Rachel’s lips were blue, her body trembling. ‘We won’t be doing this again.’

‘You’ll be addicted before you know it.’

‘Trust us,’ I told him. ‘That’s not going to happen.’

Callum smiled to himself, meanwhile attaching the red and green ropes to the figure-eight knot before tossing them into the chasm. He turned to face us, one foot planted in front of the other, his jacket and trousers fluttering in the breeze.

‘So who wants to go first?’

‘How about you do it? Then you can climb back up and tell us what we’re missing.’

‘Oh, come on. You’ll love it. It’s a rush.’

Rachel nudged me with her hip. ‘You go.’

‘Why me?’

She batted her eyelids. ‘Because you’re the brave one.’

‘Since when?’

‘Since always.’ She pouted and gave me her best doe-eyed look. We both knew exactly why she wanted me to leave her alone with Callum. ‘Please? For me?’

I sighed and pushed myself to my feet, shaking my arms to flush some of the nervous energy from my system. Callum had given us fingerless gloves to put on and when I spread my hands, it felt like the neoprene was compressing my knuckles.

‘All OK?’

‘Not even close.’

He attached an abseil device on the red rope to a carabiner on the front of my harness and explained how the gear worked.

‘This is called a prusik,’ he added, coiling a thin piece of rope around the red rope and securing the other end to a leg loop on my harness. ‘If you let go of your brake rope for any reason, it stops your descent. Downside is it can make your progress a bit slower. You happy with that?’

‘Safety first.’

‘Great.’ He slapped me on the arm. ‘And don’t worry about falling. These ropes could hold the weight of an elephant.’

‘Charming.’

‘Good to go.’ He rapped a knuckle on the top of my helmet, then guided me backwards to the vertical opening in the cliff. ‘OK. Lean back a little.’

I felt the red rope pull taut, tugging on my harness, bunching my jeans around my backside.

‘See? Nice and secure. Now try the brake rope. Get used to how it feels when it slips through the abseil device.’

I let the rope skim through in tiny increments, then locked it off and jerked my chin towards a spot just behind him.

‘What’s with the drawings?’

There were a bunch of faded chalk doodles on the face of the anchor boulder. I could see a yellow flower, a blue stick man, a white pentagram, and a crude drawing of a figure riding a horse that looked like the sort of cave painting an archaeologist might uncover.

‘Climbers get bored. They’ll do anything to kill time while they wait for a nervous beginner.’

‘Is that right?’

‘Afraid so.’

‘What if I told you I’d been climbing before? When I was in police training.’

‘Then I’d tell you to stop stalling and get on with it. Shuffle your heels out over the ledge.’

I took a series of tiny steps back towards the opening to the chasm. A smell like wet clay wafted up. Moisture trickled from the grasses, ferns and moss that were clinging to the top. The blackened rock had an oily sheen. Some thirty feet down, a bulge extended inwards from one side of the crevice.

I snatched my head around. The wind was scouring my face. The sleeves of my coat flapped wildly.

‘Looking good, babe,’ Rachel called.

‘Ease your weight back,’ Callum instructed. ‘Keep your feet planted shoulder-width apart and pivot from your ankles.’

I gripped the brake rope and eased my weight back over the abyss. The world tilted before me. Pretty soon, I’d gone beyond my natural balancing point. Without the rope, I’d plummet.

‘Quick question. Once I get down into this thing, I am going to be able to climb back out, right?’

‘Absolutely. Rachel will follow you and I’ll come after her. Then I’ll show you both how to do a rope ascent. Maybe teach you some bridging moves.’

‘Don’t forget me, will you?’

‘We never could,’ Rachel yelled. ‘Love you too much.’

I jerked the prusik knot down a little way and fed some rope through the abseil device.

‘Just walk down the rock face with your feet. Small steps.’

I scraped the toes of my right boot down the slippy rock face, keeping clear of the green rope off to my side. I paused, then dragged my left foot down.

‘Great. Now feed the rope through a bit more and take a bigger step.’

‘How big?’

‘Big as you like. Only, I wouldn’t try to get to the bottom in one move.’

I made progress. First, I lost sight of Callum’s shins. Then his thighs. Soon all I could see was his bearded face under his hat, his sunken cheeks and hollow eyes, peering over the edge.

The sulphurous odour was much stronger now. Clumps of moss loosened under the tread of my boots, dropping into the murkiness below.

‘You’re doing great but you can move a little faster. Watch your shoulders. It gets tighter.’

No kidding. My elbows scraped jagged rock. I readjusted myself and let the red rope spool freely through my fingers. I tightened my grip to slow my descent. Slid the prusik down. Repeated the process.

‘Perfect. Two more like that, then watch for the bulge.’

I was way ahead of him. The bulge in the rock face was coming up fast. I lowered myself to it and paused with one toe resting on the edge and my other foot flat against the sheer rock on the opposite side. A gauzy mist surrounded me, evaporating from the drenched stone.

‘What now?’

‘Slide down through the gap. It’ll open up again.’

‘Are you messing with me?’

‘Relax. This is the hardest part. After that, go straight down. You’ll see a ledge at the bottom, just above the water.’

‘Water?’

‘Trust me, Cooper. You’ll understand when you get down there.’

‘When is Rachel coming?’

Rachel’s head appeared over the opening, blonde hair swinging in the breeze.

‘Callum’s going to come with me. I’m too scared to do it by myself.’

Sure she was.

‘Is that safe?’

‘Perfectly safe,’ Callum called. ‘But you have to go first. We need both ropes.’

‘Will I be able to see you from the bottom?’

‘Yes. But hurry up. We’ll run out of time.’

I wasn’t sure what time had to do with it. There were hours yet until darkness would set in. Maybe Callum was afraid that we’d get too cold or tired to climb back up. More likely he was just getting frustrated.

I twisted around the bulge, the red rope creaking as I lowered myself, scraping my shins and knees, grabbing for the swollen rock with my arms. Dumb move. I’d let go of my brake and I shunted down until the prusik jerked me to a sudden halt.

I was dangling freely now, the bulge too big and too slimy to grip hold of. Moisture soaked through the thighs of my jeans. I allowed my arms to slide round the swell of the rock, lifting my chin clear, the back of my helmet smacking into striated stone. My gloved hands were up above me, fingers spread, the rocky bulge curving away. I released my feeble grip and grabbed for the rope once more.

I found myself suspended above a narrow chamber, deep in the very heart of the cliff. Everything was dark and still and hushed. I reached up and switched on my helmet torch. The beam spliced the dimness, glaring back off the slimy rock. I craned my neck and discovered that I could still see Callum and Rachel watching me. I let go of a gasp of relief that echoed tinnily, then allowed the brake rope to stream through my fingers, descending at a steady rate into the murky depths.

It was only as I neared the base of the chasm, perhaps thirty feet away, that I became aware of the background noise that had been growing steadily in volume. It was a reedy, thrumming moan, like a stiff wire humming in a breeze, accompanied by a sloshing noise.

I held firm to the brake rope, the harness biting into my groin.

And that’s when I finally saw the water and the bones.

There was a pool of seawater in a circular crevice at the base of the chasm. The foamy suds were swelling up, then sinking down. I couldn’t see where the water was coming from but there had to be a submerged opening of some kind. I already knew the headland was porous and there was no reason why some of the cracks in the rock couldn’t be horizontal as well as vertical. This had to be why Callum had mentioned the time. The only place for the water to go was up. We hadn’t reached peak tide yet. And how much higher would the water go then, I wondered?

At least as high as the ledge I could spy, which was perhaps only a foot above the water. The ledge was easily big enough for ten or more people to stand on. It was puddled with water and covered in algae and kelp and the loose coils of the ends of both ropes.

On a much smaller, higher ledge on the opposite side of the chasm were the bleached skeletal remains of a sheep. I could see leg bones and ribs and a pale, skinless skull. A dark band on the rock wall suggested the water had never got within a couple of feet.

The bones were lit by a shard of pale light that was coming in through a thin, diagonal splinter in the cliff wall. A blast of wind tore through it.

I remembered a story from my history class at secondary school. It was something about an army of marauding Vikings being lured to the Chasms in a dense fog by a group of Manx warriors. Unaware of the perilous holes in the headland, the Vikings had fallen to their deaths. Legend had it that the howling breeze you could sometimes hear rushing up through the Chasms was the haunted screams of the doomed invaders.

Soothing thought, Claire.

I lowered myself the rest of the way until my toes scrabbled around on the slimy ledge, my body twirling helplessly on the rope for a long moment before I finally touched ground. I fed some more rope through the abseil device and stumbled back from the pool of water, staring across at the sheep bones.

The sheep’s skull was pointed towards me, its fractured jaw bared in a cheerless rictus, its nostrils splayed, its eye sockets fixing me in a sightless gaze.

I loosened the prusik, unscrewed my carabiner with clumsy fingers and snatched the rope free. I yanked on it hard. Yanked it again until I felt two strong tugs back.

Good.

I wanted Callum down here as soon as possible. I needed to tell him exactly what I thought of his crazy adventure.