Mo Hayder - Pig Island

I steadied the beam as intently as a marksman and forced myself to stare, keeping up the monotone counting, sixty-one, sixty-two, sixty-three, trying to keep calm. I could smell him, I realized shakily, and it was much worse than the smell of the pigs because it was rawer. It was the smell of the sawdust in a butcher's shop, chill and coppery. And then it hit me what the sound was. Not water at all. Slowly, slowly, I raised the torch to the door.

The chapel was full of human flesh. Things caught in the shaky torch beam, things shivering, hanging from the walls and the light fittings. It was blood, not water, dripping on to the stone floor. I stood like a toy soldier, torch pushed out in front of me like it was a bayonet, frozen solid, my eyes taking it all in, heartbeat going bam bam bam bam in my temples. There was something on the back of one of the pews that looked like a face, torn off and dropped like one of those Salvador Dali clocks. I'd never known skin behaved like that — that a whole face can be peeled off like rubber. That face still jumps out at me in my sleep. Even today.

You let things like this into your head and you either start building walls to contain them or you lose it big-time. It's that simple. As I was standing there, all of a sudden all these fucking tears just dribbled out of me. I wiped my eyes with my sleeve and waited for a few moments, studying the torch in my hands, eking out a few minutes pretending to myself that I was smoothing out the rubber casing on the handle. I hadn't cried in years, and it was weird, this feeling, because of how gentle it was: not violent or choking. More like there was a water-table in me that had got a bit full and was rising up behind my eyes. I clicked off the torch and stood in the dark, swallowing hard, still counting to myself, trying to keep it all together. I stopped when I got to two hundred and twenty and saw how pointless everything was. I turned and limped back to the refectory. Fuck knows why I went there — maybe because Blake was there. Maybe Blake dead was better than nobody at all.

'Don't know what to do for you, old mate,' I said, standing there in the dark, staring at his silent body. Suddenly I wasn't scared any more. I'd got past it. I knew I was going to die. 'I'm sorry.' Then, because I thought I was going to cry again, I went into the kitchen and wrenched out the cutlery drawer, with its knives and a heavy rolling-pin. I took the bolt-cutters into the corner and dragged a few things round me — a table, a steel pedal bin — a kind of barrier, and sat down to wait.

Didn't really know what I was waiting for. Morning to come? No. Not morning. I was beyond that. I was waiting to die.

It was a bit after midnight when I heard something. I'd been watching the stars moving through the window when it happened, listening to the waves on the shore for four hours and wondering about all the faiths and beliefs and lives I'd laughed at over the years.

There it was: a click or a shuffle from the refectory to my right. I sat bolt upright, my trance broken. The knife almost slithered from my fingers but I caught it, my hands sweating, hurriedly grabbed the bolt-cutters, moved aside the pedal bin and went silently to the door, my heart thudding. Careful not to make a sound I rested my ear against the door. I imagined Blake, sitting upright in the chair, his eyes wide, hands on the table. I imagined a beast next to him, rising up tall in the refectory, almost to the ceiling, pawing the ground. A sweat broke out all over my body. Another noise, slightly muffled, the kind of noise you'd expect if someone was sliding a chair back. OK, OK, I told myself. It's nothing. It's all going to be straightforward. Blake was dead. The noise was probably just a pig. Probably just a pig.

Except… you closed… the fucking door… .

I shook my head, like something was clinging to my hair, took a breath and stepped out into the cafeteria, the bolt-cutters raised above my head. 'Come and fucking get it, Malachi,' I yelled, teeth bared. 'Come and fucking have it!'

I stopped. The sliding door stood slightly open, and beyond it the sweep of grass was grey in the starlight. Blake was exactly where he'd been, motionless in the dark, but now something tall and stooped was bending over him, its back to me. It was wearing an old and filthy man's coat and heavy boots, and dragging from under the coat, as it straightened from Blake's bloodied remains, was the tail. There was just time for a thought to flash at me, It's feeding, I've interrupted its meal, then it was gone, bounding away to the door, slipping away into the night.

I stood, paralysed, my mouth drooping. I was there for almost a minute, my hands above my head, not breathing or moving or blinking, only staring at the point in the darkness where it had disappeared. It wasn't Malachi. It wasn't Malachi in a strap-on tail. It was too tall and sinewy. My chest was about to burst. I let out all my breath at once, swung the cutters down and bolted after the beast.

At the top of the slope above the community I stopped and scanned the forest ahead. I had a good idea this chase was leading me back to the gorge. Even before I saw the dull shape moving away from me down the path, going rapidly through the trees and heading to the ledge, I knew I was going to end the night back at the mine. If I'd had any sense at all I'd've turned the other way and locked myself into the refectory. Lexie or the boat-owner would've raised the alarm eventually. But something was in me. Lex would've called it dumbness. I went forward.

I dropped myself over a boulder, down where the path snaked a few feet below, scattering gravel. I paused just long enough to get my balance, then I was off along the path, the bolt-cutters bumping along beside me. The thing was fast — it knew its way: I was getting glimpses of it ahead, moving unhesitatingly along paths through the trees, flowing kind of, like a ghost. I bolted noisily after it, branches breaking underfoot, up the path. I was covering ground fast — past the gargoyle, and suddenly, so suddenly it was like a flash of the moon, I burst out into the gorge, coming to a juddering halt on the ledge.

I stood there, panting hard, scanning the ledge, thinking I'd lost it. Then I saw it — a movement: a dull patch below me, a moving part of the rock that was slightly paler than the rest heading away into the gorge.

'You fucker!' I bellowed, looping the bolt-cutters round my neck so the jaws were hard against my throat, the handles sticking out over my shoulders like bony wings. I wasn't wasting time going across to the streambed: I was going straight down here. I turned my back to the drop and fell to my knees, throwing my feet out backwards into the darkness, over the Up. I paused for a second, my eyes screwed up, thinking about the drop below, feeling the fuck-awful thrill of adrenaline weaken my fingers. Just do it…

And I was off, dropping into the darkness, at best half crawling like a spider, at worst bumping and sliding for what seemed like miles, my T-shirt rucking up to my chest, the rocks and gorse tearing into my thighs and stomach. I was ripped to pieces, pouring blood by the time I hit the bottom, but I didn't stop. I was up, running into the gorge with that indistinct shape ahead of me, dodging the drums, my feet springing off the chemical skin. My heart wanted to burst out of my chest, my throat was raw flesh and my tongue was huge in my mouth. But I'd drop dead right here and now before I left the chase. On and on I went, my moon-shadow running along beside me companionably.

It was a lifetime before I got to the other side and threw myself at the slope, going at it like a lizard, legs and arms pumping up and down like pistons, using the sore inside of my calves to get traction, losing my grip every few feet and sliding back, grabbing on to gorse and heather to get purchase. At the top I allowed myself exactly one minute to rest — lying on my back, panting and sweating, counting the sixty seconds with metronomic severity. I was running with blood but my head was clear, my thinking tight as a drum. Fifty-eight, fifty-nine, sixty — and I was up, dragging my feet a bit as I started, still bent over low with my arms hanging, but picking up speed until I was upright. Through the open gate. And there again, that wisp-like flash of something among the dark trees ahead. Proof that I was on it — still going. The air and the trees rushed past my face. I pumped my arms, 'FUCKING MOVE!' I screamed at my legs. 'Keep. Fucking. Going.'