The Best Horror of the Year. Volume 4

“It’s gone now,” she said. Then hesitated, turned her head to him half an inch. “It is, right?”

Johnny Red’s lips pressed together. “Hard to tell. This could just be—” he paused with distaste “—a stronger claim. How long do we have?”

There were a lot of seeds in that pomegranate, nestled together like lovers, like houses perched on the edge of the highway to Hay River. It was past too late to find out how many he’d spit, how many he’d swallowed down. “I don’t know,” she said. “I guess we’ll find out.”

He didn’t answer. He didn’t answer for long enough that she turned her head another agonizing space, and saw him sitting in a chair beside her, elbows on his knees, head buried in his hands.

“The raven left,” he said muffled. “Maybe that means something.”

It means, she thought, we’re on our own now.

“How much medicine d’you have?” she asked.

He looked up. There were tears in his eyes: sheer frustration, pain. Relief. “Not enough,” he said. “Not half enough to make this safe.”

“We’ll be fine,” she said, faintly.

Johnny Red stood up, all six feet of him, and leaned over her slowly, bracing himself with a hand on the yielding mattress. The kiss he left on her mouth wasn’t hard — she was bandaged up too much for hard right now — but it didn’t brook no questions.

“You,” he said, “are bound to me three months, and next time you talk to me about the plan.”

She didn’t talk back to that.

Johnny Red went to the door, swung the hinges wide. She felt the cold air blow in, cold but not terrible bitter, and heard voices exchanged low, terse, cautious. One set of footsteps faded, and another stepped inside. Shut the door. Moved, soft and tremulous, along the faded carpet runner to the bedside.

The light was so much better now. It had to be past three. Spring coming, eventually.

“Hey,” Aidan said, standing two feet away, hands clasped in front of him like they were the only thing in the world to hold; eyes big and brown and human and terrified and whole.

“Hey,” she said. “You stayed.”

THE MORAINE Simon Bestwick

The mist hit us suddenly. One moment we had the peak in sight; the next, the white had swallowed up the crags and was rolling down towards us.

“Shit,” I said. “Head back down.”

For once, Diane didn’t argue.

Trouble was, it was a very steep climb. Maybe that was why we’d read nothing about this mountain in the guidebooks. Some locals in the hotel bar the night before had told us about it. They’d warned us about the steepness, but Diane liked the idea of a challenge. All well and good, but now it meant we had to descend very slowly; one slip and you’d go down the mountainside, arse over apex.

That was when I saw the faint desire-line that led off, almost at right angles to the main path, running sideways and gently downwards.

“There, look,” I said, pointing. “What do you reckon?”

Diane hesitated, glancing down the main path then up at the fast-falling mist. “Let’s try it.”

So we did.

“Look out,” I said. Diane was lagging a good four or five yards behind me. “Faster.”

“I’m going as fast as I bloody can, Steve.”

I didn’t rise to the bait, just turned and jogged on. The gentler slope meant we could run, but even so, we weren’t fast enough. Everything went suddenly white.

“Shit,” Diane said. I reached out for her hand — she was just a shadow in the wall of white vapour — and she took it and came closer. The mist was cold, wet and clinging, like damp cobwebs.

“What now?” Diane said. She kept her voice level, but I could tell it wasn’t easy for her. And I couldn’t blame her.

Don’t be fooled by Lakeland’s picture-postcard scenery; its high mountains and blue tarns, the boats on Lake Windermere, the gift shops and stone-built villages. You come here from the city to find the air’s fresher and cleaner, and when you look up at night you see hundreds, thousands more stars in the sky because there’s no light pollution. But by the same token, fall on a slope like this and there’ll be no-one around, and your mobile won’t get a signal. And if a mist like this one comes down and swallows you up and you don’t know which way to go — it doesn’t take that long, on a cold October day, for hypothermia to set in. These fells and dales claimed lives like ours each year.

I took a deep breath. “I think…”

“You OK?” she asked.

“I’m fine.” I was a little nettled she’d thought otherwise; she was the one who’d sounded in need of reassurance, but I wasn’t going to start bickering now. It occurred to me — at the back of my head, and I’d have denied it outright if anyone had suggested it to me — that this might be a blessing in disguise; if I could stay calm and lead us to safety, I could be a hero in her eyes. “We need to get to some lower ground.”

“Yes, I know,” she said, as if I’d pointed out the stupidly obvious. Well, perhaps I had. I was just trying to clarify the situation. Alright, I wanted to impress her, to look good. But I wanted to do the right thing as well. Honestly.