Chapter 34 Miles
Miles
Miles follows Jessie into the bird hide, a shaft of artificial light from her phone guiding the way through the dark.
It was her idea to come here, for some privacy.
She stops, just a few feet into the hide, and pans the light around, illuminating each wall in turn, then every inch of the floor, followed by the ceiling.
The wooden boards moan under her feet as she creeps over to the window.
She presses the light to the glass, peers out and then returns to Miles with a puckish grin.
‘It’s just us,’ she says, taking his hand and pulling him close. ‘Alone, at last.’
‘Were you expecting a late rush of birdwatchers?’
Jessie laughs. ‘You never know what you’ll—’ A sound emanating from the forest has caused her to stop. Her eyes go wide. ‘Do you hear that?’
Miles hears it – a call from deep in the trees. It’s anxious, almost desperate in tone.
She lowers her voice. ‘I grew up in the country; there are a ton of owls where I’m from, but I’ve never heard that one before.’
‘Why are you whispering?’
Jessie giggles. ‘I don’t know.’ Her chilly hands slide up inside his T-shirt and come to rest on his lower back. She leans in and nuzzles at his neck. The timid first drops of new rain tap against the metal roof. Her hair smells faintly of lavender.
‘You’re cold,’ Miles says.
‘Maybe I just need warming up.’
She kisses him on the mouth, her tongue doing a slow dance with his, and her hands travel southward, into his jeans.
Miles gasps at her touch and closes his eyes, leaning into the physicality of the moment.
His hands have found a way inside her coat, have located her soft, bare skin, and his fingers trace gently up her back, blood pulsing urgently around his body.
Suddenly their mouths break apart.
An explosion of thunder shakes the air so fiercely it seems to rock the hide.
They stare at each other, Jessie’s mouth having fallen open.
The thunder has a long tail, rumbling on for a good few seconds.
Her mouth relaxes into a smile. They turn to look out of the windows.
Waiting for it. And then lightning forks flashlight the forest so that for a moment they can see far into the trees, strobes of ultraviolet briefly summoning the woods to life.
As suddenly as they were illuminated, they are plunged back into darkness.
‘Where were we?’ Miles whispers. He takes Jessie by the waist and steers her a few feet to his right, so her back presses gently against the rear wall.
He kisses her neck, and feels her warm, ragged breath against his ear.
More thunder rumbles, this time not so violently loud.
Miles ignores it, his hands tracing the curve of her hips and lingering when they reach her chest. The lightning flares again, but Miles doesn’t open his eyes, just witnesses it as a bright pulse behind his eyelids.
A shocking sound storms his ears.
Jessie screams. A bad scream. High and hacking and harsh, like it’s coming deep out of the darkest ditch of her throat. Her body has gone tense in his arms, her shoulders are raised.
Miles recoils. ‘What’s the matter?’
‘There’s someone out there,’ she says, the words tumbling out on top of each other.
‘What do you mean?’
She leans into him, and her hand trembles in his. ‘I mean, there’s a man outside, out the window.’
‘It’s all right,’ Miles says, although he doesn’t quite believe it.
His skin has turned cold. The mood in this flimsy, remote structure has undergone an abrupt change.
What felt playful and exciting is suddenly dreadful.
The sounds of the storm, which seemed romantically dramatic twenty seconds earlier, are now menacing and unwanted.
He can barely see further than a couple of yards in front of him. They’re penned in by the dark.
Jessie activates the torch app and directs it in front of her, creating a spot of light on the middle window. She points a shaky finger. ‘Right there.’
Miles takes her phone out of her hand, presses the device against the glass. ‘There’s no one out there.’
‘There was, I swear.’
‘You’re sure?’
‘I want to go back,’ Jessie says, a tremor in her voice.
‘Okay.’
Miles’s heart thumps as he leads her by the hand towards the exit, shining the torch in front of him.
It’s a strange fear that’s gripped him. Like the intense, irrational terror of a child convinced something lurks under their bed.
He stares into the forest. In the hazy ring of light cast by the torch are shaking leaves and swaying branches, but beyond, the only colour is black.
Is someone out there? Who the hell are they?
And what do they want? This is not over.
Miles pauses in the doorway and pans the beam across the trees. There’s no one in sight. Maybe Jessie imagined it? That’s the most likely explanation, but right now that thought brings no comfort. He leads Jessie through the doorway, down the steps and on to the damp path.
‘Watch your step,’ Miles says. ‘It’s slippery.’
They walk the path as briskly as they can without losing purchase on the ground.
More lightning electrifies the air, and Jessie squeezes his hand. ‘What if he’s following us?’
Miles stops, and shines the torch behind them, then all around. ‘There’s no one following us.’ He walks on. ‘Are you absolutely sure you saw someone?’
‘Yes!’ There’s a contained urgency to her voice. ‘You don’t believe me?’
‘I believe you.’
The clearing is close; Miles can see the dying bonfire’s red glow through a slash in the trees. Miles does another three-sixty with the torchlight. Maybe it’s the harsh LED lighting, but Jessie’s face is ashen and full of fear.
‘Did you see his face?’ Miles asks.
‘No. He had a hood up. His face was in shadow.’
They reach the clearing, and Miles puts an arm around Jessie’s shoulders as they hurry across the car park towards the campfire.
Faith must’ve seen the worried look on Jessie’s face because she gets up and runs over. ‘What’s wrong?’
As she comforts Jessie, Miles tries to process what’s happened.
Instinctively, this feels bad. They’ve only been here a few hours, and already another nightmare seems to be unfolding.
He takes deep breaths. Okay, calm down and stop jumping to conclusions.
There will be a rational explanation for this – and it won’t be anywhere near as dire as his imagination is telling him.
Miles’s mind is feverishly alert and processing thoughts much more rapidly than normal.
Perhaps one of their group went for a walk in front of the hide.
Maybe what Jessie saw was nothing more than a trick of the light.
Or even more likely, a trick of the mind.
It would be understandable; they’ve entered a strange, remote place, and, with the weather, the whole atmosphere is unsettling.
Maybe any dark shadow could take on the appearance of a figure, for a second or two, at least.
On the other hand, she seems utterly convinced about what she saw.
The fear in her eyes appeared genuine. With Jessie firmly in the arms of Faith, Miles surveys the scene.
Out here in the forest, they’re seemingly isolated; the only people for miles around are those with whom he’s travelling.
And if someone really did try to sneak up on them just then, it was almost certainly someone from their own group.
Miles checks exactly who is still sat around the fire – and, more importantly, who is not: Reubyn and Elis.
Miles walks over to where George and Polly are side by side, confused looks on their faces. ‘Did either of you go over to the bird hide, just then?’
They look at him blankly and shake their heads. He immediately feels guilty about making the observation – it’s his oldest friend and his sister, for heaven’s sake.
Miles walks off towards the bus, and Jessie gives him a small smile as he passes. She knows he’ll get to the bottom of this.
Miles opens the door and finds Elis and Reubyn standing in the kitchen, each holding a beer.
‘Hey, man,’ Elis says.
Miles raises a hand in acknowledgement, then goes to the fridge and grabs a bottle. ‘This might sound weird.’ He picks up the bottle opener and his beer hisses as he levers off the cap. ‘Did either of you go over to the bird hide tonight? After dinner.’
‘Nope,’ Reubyn says.
Elis shakes his head. ‘Me neither.’
Miles takes a sip and looks at Elis. ‘When you left the campfire earlier, where did you go?’
Elis narrows his eyes at him. ‘I came in here.’ He shakes his head. ‘Is that all right? What’s this about?’
‘It doesn’t matter.’
Miles slumps down in the living area. He stares out of the window, at the fire, and he can hear faint whispers from the kitchen. Miles takes a long slug, trying to figure it out.
Could an outsider have come here? Could Alex Burnfield have followed, without them noticing? It seems impossible – there’s no way someone could’ve tracked them along those rural roads without being seen. Or could they?
Could someone be tracking one of their phones?
That too seems impossible – they all lost reception ages ago and no one has even a bar of signal.
But what if someone fitted some kind of device to the bus?
You see it all the time on films and TV shows; they stick a gadget to the underside of a vehicle and monitor where it goes using GPS.
Do people do that in real life? It’s too dark now to check.
He’ll do it in the morning. In the meantime, he rules it out as a possibility on the basis that it’s extremely far-fetched.
The fact he’s even considered it is probably a symptom of increasing paranoia.
Could it have been one of the locals? The kids they passed earlier?
They stared in amazement at the bus; perhaps one of them was intrigued enough to try to get a closer look.
Or a birdwatcher? The exotic birds Reubyn is interested in are nocturnal, so maybe a nature lover turned up at night hoping to spot one.
Yes, that seems likely. The more Miles thinks about it, the more plausible it becomes.
He racks his brain for another theory. But he can’t think of anything.
Miles tries to consider it rationally, calling upon the problem-solving techniques he learned at school: logical inference, abductive reasoning, Occam’s razor.
The simplest conclusion is usually correct.
So, who or what did Jessie see at the bird hide?
The longer he thinks about it, the more certain he becomes.
Either Jessie was mistaken, or they simply had an awkward encounter with a late-night birdwatcher. The alternative doesn’t bear thinking about.