Robert Young - Gatecrasher

Campbell’s eyes snapped open as his instincts kicked in and told him something was wrong. The fire in the grate was still fading away and the room was quiet but for the sounds of the storm outside. He looked around, saw that Sarah’s eyes were closed, saw the soft orange light of the fireplace and the glint of the glasses and bottle. The dream had set him on edge.

The figure moving up the stairs flashed again through his mind and he snapped his head round in that direction to see the black shape of a man at the top of the staircase. The top half of his body was obscured by the ceiling, but his lower half was visible and his right hand gripped an enormous knife, its curved edge serrated.

Campbell sprang up and gripped Sarah’s arm without looking and he bolted for the door.

Thursday. 11.45pm.

She followed him without question and she matched his pace because she was fit and because her whole body was alive with the alertness that fear and shock give. They didn’t go for the road or the car and somehow, as he pulled her in the other direction toward the field away from the lane and toward the coast, she knew he was right. They would never have time enough for opening the car doors, for climbing in, starting up, pulling away.

That afternoon, as the light left the day, Campbell had stared through the windows of the cottage and could see the coastline not two hundred yards away. Sarah had told him that they were some hundred feet up and that the cliffs to the sea below were steep and sheer. But in places there were gaps where the gradient was more forgiving and you could climb down, and that further along there were even steps cut into the rock and mud leading down to small inlets and intimate little coves and beaches. Campbell had intended to walk there after she had left him but had got no further than the chair at the table where she found him on her return.

She didn’t look back as she ran. Keeping up with Campbell was enough of a task as it was. His eyes were focused dead ahead of him, checking the ground and trying to read the surroundings in the dark.

The pain in his bare feet was sharp and Campbell felt the cold rain slashing against him as he sprinted and the wind came at him and he knew that Sarah must have felt worse even than he did. Her soft feet and the flimsy clothes she wore, the thin cloth of her top, its short sleeves and scoop neck. But to stand and fight whoever that had been in the cottage, whatever grave threat he brought to them, would have put her in yet more danger.

His mind was clearing by the second now; the sleep and the drink suddenly vanished as he ran through this icy night. The path he had seen earlier was not too far in the distance. He thought maybe they would find one of those coves or beaches to slip down into or perhaps it would lead them to another house or cottage or even a town.

Looking behind him he noticed how much faster they were moving than he realised and how much ground they had already put between themselves and their pursuer. But he knew he couldn’t keep moving like this much longer and he knew that Sarah probably couldn’t either at this pace but whoever was chasing might be able to go all night. No, they would have to use the darkness to their advantage and they would have to find a place to hide and wait it out in the cold and wind and wet and hope that he didn’t find them.

They hit the cliff path sooner than he expected. It was not paved but a rough worn path of gravel and soil and the loose stones cut his feet but he tried not to slow down and he didn’t let Sarah’s hand go as he moved and kept her with him.

‘I can’t see a thing,’ she hissed as they stumbled over the uneven ground but he shushed her sharply and she fell silent again. Here where bushes and trees narrowed the pathway into a corridor in places they would need to stay as silent and invisible as possible in order to drop quickly into a hiding place, unseen.

A stand of trees and thick undergrowth rose up on top of the slope in front. Campbell took them up over the lip of the hill and then, when he thought that they had dropped out of sight on the other side, ducked hard left into the trees. They waded through the leaves and brambles away from the path and pressed close behind the trunk of a large tree, pulling Sarah close to him.

The sound of the rain hitting the trees and the ground around them sounded like it was raining ball bearings. Sarah pulled herself closer in to Campbell and he felt for the first time how cold she was. He turned to her in the darkness, her hair dark and dripping, her clothes sodden and clinging to her taut shivering flesh. She looked back at him and there was fear in her eyes but there was trust too.

Campbell could see over the lip of the hill and back the way they had come and could make out the bouncing black shape of somebody following along the path. Next to him she had begun to shiver and her teeth were chattering and her breathing becoming more audible as her body shook.

Sitting listening to her he knew that when he came past them she might give them away and he knew he had a decision to make.

Standing, he made it.

‘Stay here and be quiet,’ he told her.

‘Daniel…’ she protested but in the darkness his eyes answered her and she crouched lower against the tree trunk. Campbell moved off the way they had come.

The darkness out here, away from the city and the lights of his home, was thicker, colder somehow. Blacker.

Above him he knew that the stars were bright and clear over the fat heavy cloud and he wished that he could stand staring up at them all night, just drinking in the tranquil silence. The freezing rain and harsh wind chased away such thoughts now as thunder cracked through the night again and he crouched low in the bushes watching the black shape of his pursuer dashing up the path.

Campbell pressed himself low to the ground to stay out of sight, not willing to trust the wind and the rain and the night to hide him. He had no plan. He had no thoughts to attack this man or confront him but Sarah’s breathing and her shivering would have brought the man right to them and they could not keep running like this. Here above the beaches and coves below and the fields around them he knew that there were no other houses nearby that they could get to for help. He had seen no lights in the darkness as they had crested the hill, only more empty miles of the same dark pathway and the white sea smashing the base of the cliffs below.

He could hear the footsteps of the other man now as he came and he could see him moving up the slope toward where Campbell hid. Did he move now? Did he wait until he passed and then jump him? Take his chances fighting the man?

Campbell was scared. He hadn’t been in a real fight since he was at school and the minor scuffles and scrapes that he had got into over the years had all amounted to little more than shoving and raised voices. He had played rugby for a couple of years after University which was often pretty rough though never particularly dirty or genuinely violent but he had turned an ankle badly and not finished the season or rejoined the team the following year. That was about it other than the beating he had taken from Slater and Gresham the night before, which as fights went, was pretty one sided.

The man was almost at the top of the slope now and Campbell could hear his breathing and as he tensed and this thoughts raced, the man slowed almost to a stop and began peering into some undergrowth to his left. Campbell, ahead and to the man’s right watched with interest. Had he seen them go for cover or was he just guessing? No matter, it had bought him a few moments to think.

Carefully feeling around the floor he closed his hand over a rock the size of his fist and then hurled it along the path toward the undergrowth, a few feet along from where the man was standing.