The Best Horror of the Year. Volume 4

So I pointed down the trail — the few feet of it we could see where it disappeared into the mist. “Best off keeping on. Keep our heads and go slowly.”

“Yes, I worked that bit out as well.” I recognised her tone of voice; it was the one she used to take cocky students down a peg. There’d been a time when I used to slip into her lectures, even though I knew nothing, then or now, about Geology; I just liked hearing her talk about her favoured subject. I couldn’t remember ever seeing her in any of my lectures — not that she was interested in Music. Maybe it had never been what I’d thought it was. Maybe it had never been for either of us.

Not an idea I liked, but one I’d kept coming back to far too often lately. As had Diane. Hence this trip, which was looking less and less like a good idea all the time. We’d spent our honeymoon here; I suppose we’d hoped to recapture something or other, but there’s no magic in places. Only people, and precious little of that; less and less the older you get.

And none of that was likely to get us safely out of here. “OK then,” I said. “Come on.”

Diane caught the back of my coat and pulled. I wheeled to face her and swayed, off-balance. Loose scree clattered down into the mist; the path had grown rockier underfoot. She caught my arm and steadied me. I yanked it free, thoroughly pissed off. “What?”

“Steve, we’re still walking.”

“I noticed. Well, actually, we’re not just now, since you just grabbed me.”

She folded her arms. “We’ve been walking nearly twenty minutes.” I could see she was trying to stop her teeth chattering. “And I don’t think we’re much closer to ground level. I think we might be a bit off course.”

I realised my teeth had started chattering too. It was hard to be sure, but I thought she might have a point; the path didn’t look like it was sloping down any longer. If it’d levelled off, we were still halfway up the damned mountain. “Shit.”

I felt panic threatening, like a small hungry animal gnawing away inside my stomach, threatening to tear its way up through my body if it let it. I wouldn’t. Couldn’t. Mustn’t. If we panicked we were stuffed.

At least we hadn’t come completely unprepared. We had Kendal Mint Cake and a thermos of hot tea in our backpacks, which helped, but they could only buy a little more time. We either got off this mountain soon, or we never would.

We tried our mobiles, but it was an exercise; there was no reception out here. They might as well have been bits of wood. I resisted the temptation to throw mine away.

“Should’ve stayed on the main path,” Diane said. “If we’d taken it slow we’d have been OK.”

I didn’t answer. She glanced at me and rolled her eyes.

“What?”

“Steve, I wasn’t having a go at you.”

“Fine.”

“Not everything has to be about that.”

“I said, fine.”

But she wouldn’t leave it. “All I said was that we should’ve stuck to the main path. I wasn’t saying this was all your fault.”

“Okay.”

“I wasn’t. If I’d seen that path I would’ve probably done the same thing. It looked like it’d get us down faster.”

“Right.”

“I’m just saying, looking back, we should’ve gone the other way.”

“Okay. Alright. You’ve made your point.” I stood up. A sheep bleated faintly. “Can we just leave it now?”

“Okay.” I saw her do the eye roll again, but pretended not to. “So now what? If we backtrack…”

“Think we can make it?”

“If we can get back to the main path, we should be able to find our way back from there.”

If we were very lucky, perhaps; our hotel was a good two miles from the foot of this particular peak, and chances were the mist would be at ground level too. Even off the mountain we’d be a long way from home and dry, but it seemed the best choice on offer. If only we’d taken it sooner; we might not have heard the dog bark.

But we did.

We both went still. Diane brushed her dark hair back from her eyes and looked past me into the mist. I looked too, but couldn’t see much. All I could see was the rocky path for a few feet ahead before it vanished into the whiteout.

The sheep bleated again. A few seconds later, the dog barked.

I looked at Diane. She looked back at me. A sheep on its own meant nothing — most likely lost and astray, like us. But a dog — a dog most likely had an owner.

“Hello?” I called into the mist. “Hello?”

“Anybody down there?” Diane called.

“Hello?” A voice called back.

“Thank god for that,” Diane whispered.

We started along the rattling path, into the mist. “Hello?” called the voice. “Hello?”

“Keep shouting,” I called back, and it occurred to me that we were the ones who sounded like rescuers. Maybe we’d found another fell-walker, caught out in the mists like us. I hoped not. What with the dog barking as well, I was pinning my hopes on a shepherd out here rounding up a lost sheep, preferably a generously-disposed one with a warm, nearby cottage complete with a fire and a kettle providing hot cups of tea.