Mo Hayder - Pig Island

'OK,' he said, panting hard. 'OK. I'll take you. But this path ends at the gorge, and that's where we stop.'

'The gorge?'

'Yes. It's impassable, totally impassable — especially with a storm coming.' Almost on cue the moon went behind a cloud, dropping us into darkness. 'See?' he said, switching on the torch and shining it on his own face, so he looked like a Hallowe'en pumpkin. 'I told you. There's a storm coming.'

'What can we see from the gorge?'

He shot his eyes up to the sky to where the tendrils of cloud were splitting like mercury, running away in fragments across the moon. 'If this moon holds,' he said, shadows flitting across his face, 'you'll see everything. Everything you need to see.'

I continued on to the gate while Blake went back to the cottage for the keys. When he came trotting back he was dressed in jeans and a turtleneck, a pair of binoculars slung round his neck. You could tell he was still pissed off with me. He unlocked the gates without a word and for a while we walked in moody silence, through the gates and up the path, cresting the cliff in the darkness, the only sound our footsteps and the wind stirring the branches around us. Clouds flitted across the moon, sending huge animal-sized shadows scuttling out of the trees, across the path under our feet, and disappearing back into the woods. Blake switched on his torch, and after about ten minutes so did I, occasionally turning the beam and shining it into the trees when the wind shook a branch or snapped a twig.

The further we went, the more anxious Blake got. He walked with his neck very stiff, his eyes scanning the woods at either side, occasionally looking over his shoulder, like he was checking nothing was making its way up the path behind us.

'Hey,' I said, when we'd been walking for more than half an hour. My voice sounded very loud. 'Are you nervous?'

'No,' he said, in a whisper, not looking at me, keeping his eyes on the woods. 'No. Why would I be?'

'Because of what's on the video.'

He glanced at me. 'That video is all a big misunderstanding.'

'A misunderstanding? I've seen it. There's some weird fucking creature on it, walking through these fucking forests. What kind of misunderstanding is that?'

At first he didn't answer. We kept walking and I was about to ask him again when he stopped, switched off his torch and looked up at me. 'Listen,' he whispered, standing very close. I could smell something bitter on his breath — like his fear was coming out as ketones. 'Let's get this straight. It was Malachi on the video.'

'Malachi?'

He held a finger up to quieten me. 'Yes. Malachi himself. Doing — I don't know, but doing something that means nothing to us, but everything to him.'

'What? In some fucking pantomime-cow costume with a-?'

'The idea-' he interrupted, casting glances up and down the path. 'The idea that you can — can conjure Beelzebub, or Pan or Satan, is garbage. You know that and so do I. It was Malachi in the video.'

'Except not everyone agrees with you. Do they?'

'Please,' he hissed. 'Keep your voice down.'

'Why are the Garricks so scared?' I whispered. 'Susan's crapping herself, thinking I'm going to start something, tempt something. Now, Blake, you might think it's Malachi on the video — but they don't. They think he's brought Satan to Cuagach, don't they?' I raised the torch briefly and shone it off into the tree-trunks, the beam distorting and making strange shapes and shadows. 'They think-'

'Sssssh!'

'They think there's something unhuman out there.'

'It was a big decision inviting you on to the island,' Blake put a hand on my torch and pulled the beam gently away from the trees. 'Some people are very superstitious — Benjamin and Susan and some others. They think that the less said about what is happening on Cuagach the better — that to talk about it to anyone outside could be… provocative.'

'Yeah. I got that bit.'

'Believe me, Joe.' He pushed his face close to mine. 'Believe me, there have been times today when I have questioned ever getting you involved. Now,' he switched on his torch again and aimed it down the path, 'let's get this over with.'

He began walking again, a bit faster now, like he wanted to put distance between himself and the words 'Beelzebub', 'Pan', 'Satan', like they'd hang there in the branches behind us — proof he'd uttered them.

I went after him down the silvery path, and had caught up and was about to speak again when I registered something pale and small sitting in the centre of the path ahead.

'What the -' I came to a halt and quickly swung the torch beam on it. It was small and hunched, stood about two feet high and wasn't moving. It had a shape like a very small human with its back to us. 'What the fuck, Blake?' I murmured, approaching carefully. I walked past it, turned and shone the beam into its face. 'A gargoyle?'

'Yes,' he muttered impatiently. 'They're supposed to-'

'I know what they're supposed to do. They're supposed to ward off the…' I let the sentence trail off and turned to look along the path ahead. It continued for a few yards, then was swallowed by the trees. Somewhere beyond it lay the gorge and Dove's house.

'I see,' I said, turning back to the gargoyle. It had weird glass eyes, like the voodoo dolls in Louisiana. 'It's blocking the path. The Garricks put it there. It's to stop the devil coming along this path, isn't it?'

'Leave it,' Blake whispered. 'We need to keep going. We're nearly there.'

He started off again, leaving me standing staring at the gargoyle, picturing Susan or Benjamin coming up here, positioning it to face the south, blocking the path. Christ, I thought, shooting a look into the dark trees, Dove had done a cracking job of convincing someone in the community the devil was real. Good enough to get them so scared they'd turned their church into a fortress in case they ever had to take shelter there.

I clicked off the torch and headed off after Blake, imagining the gargoyle's eyes watching my retreating back. The path descended for a while, the land on either side of it rising steadily, until I was walking in a narrow ravine. Then the path ahead opened dramatically to show the sky and the moon, swollen and drenching everything in its icy light, Blake standing in front of it, waiting for me. I came down the last few steps and stopped next to him, staring at Cuagach spread out below us.

'Jeee-sus,' I breathed. 'Jesus.'

We were standing on a long ledge about twenty foot from the top of an escarpment. The land dropped straight from our vantage-point about a hundred feet to what had the look of a very wide, dry riverbed studded with boulders as big as houses. About a third of a mile away it rose up again, marked by a distant line of trees. The gorge between the two slopes was as barren as a desert, unmarked by any shrub or tree, as otherworldly and lonely as a distant planet. Scattered among the boulders were odd brown shapes, reflecting an occasional glitter as clouds scudded across the moon. It took ages for me to understand what I was looking at.

'Barrels? Drums?' I said. 'Is that what they are?'

'This land was a chemical dump before we came here.'

I shot a few photos, then looked left and right along the ledge we stood on — at the ghostly squatting forms. 'More gargoyles.' They were planted at intervals of ten feet, all facing bravely across the gorge, their glass eyes glittering expectantly. Behind the ledge we stood on, the upper part of the escarpment formed a wall, and along its length ten-foot-tall letters had been sprayed in red paint that had dripped.

Get thee behind me, Satan. Get thee behind me, Satan. Get thee behind me, Satan.