Chapter 26 #2
With all of us searching, we clear the various outbuildings in minutes.
The footprints – fading fast with fresh snow as the onslaught continues – clearly point beyond the estate.
They are too big to be mine, but it’s hard to feel relieved when it means that Alex is out there somewhere in the storm.
Leo and Kimmy suggest searching the neat walled gardens whilst we expand our search farther afield.
Becca seems defeated – she really hoped we’d find Alex curled up in a horse stall or somewhere. Somehow, I knew we wouldn’t.
Becca, Jameson, Euan and I follow the fast-diminishing footprints out of the courtyard and towards the path through the forest that Jameson and I took yesterday.
Thankfully, the prints look like they were made by boots, not dress shoes.
Becca’s check of Alex’s room would suggest he was still wearing his tuxedo, but it makes me feel a bit better that he’s got proper footwear on.
Mind you, a tux won’t offer much protection from the cold. It’s possible he put on a jacket – there are so many spares in the boot room, even Becca can’t tell. I decide to stick to the belief that he did. There’s no way he’d survive all these hours in a thin dinner jacket.
He’s been gone for hours.
In a snowstorm. A red weather warning – danger to life.
Combined with drugs and alcohol in his bloodstream, it doesn’t look good.
We walk in silence, listening to our breath, the scuff of our footfalls through the forest and the wind rattling the treetops above.
I have a quick scout around but there’s no sign of my own footprints, so perhaps I didn’t go far last night.
The courtyard was a mess of prints from yesterday, so it was impossible to tell if I’d been out wandering around the gardens.
At least I didn’t venture off the estate. It’s terrifying that I can’t remember going out at all, but that’s some comfort.
We walk fast. My core heats up and my breath comes quickly.
No one speaks as we stride through the trees and step into a barren, white world beyond the forest. The sky is heaped with dense, white clouds, just a fine seam of sunlight cutting low on the horizon.
The fallen snow makes the vista epic and eerie – it sweeps and folds and buries every landmark that might otherwise shape the view.
We pause on the threshold of this hinterland, and consider our next steps.
‘He went that way.’ Euan points across the open moor.
He’s right; the footprints are ill-defined, but just visible. Snow falls steadily, but not so heavy now, the flakes fine and damp.
One set of prints, leading across the slope of the moor towards the river, the waterfall, the trail that leads across the hills—
No return tracks.
‘Where could he have been going?’ Becca frets. ‘It’s unimaginably stupid to head into those hills at night, in a blizzard …’
‘Perhaps he was trying to hike to the village,’ Jameson suggests.
‘Why?’ Becca’s tone is sharp, and fair enough – there’s no good reason for Alex to have gone out, let alone come up here. After what I was accused of last night, it would have made more sense if I had ventured out, trying to escape.
But I accepted that I was trapped here last night.
I haven’t quite accepted that I’m still trapped though – I’m holding out hope that I might get out of here today, if I can just find a way to contact Mitch.
Jameson shrugs. ‘I’ve no idea. Let’s just keep going.
’ He squints against the glare and leads the way across the snowy moorland.
It’s slow going, pushing through the weight of snow that snags on the heather and almost seems to drag us back with every step.
My legs feel like lead before I’ve gone twenty paces.
Beside me, Euan holds up his phone, frowning at the screen. ‘I’m trying to get a message to Leo, but it’s not sending. Maybe once we get up towards the waterfall—’
‘Oh God,’ Becca moans. ‘The waterfall … the ravine. Alex, what the fuck were you thinking?’ She shakes her head. ‘I’m going to kill him, when we find him.’
A chill, awkward silence ensues. ‘I didn’t mean …’ Becca grimaces, then puts her head down and picks up her pace, overtaking Euan to take the lead. ‘Let’s just get up there. Maybe he’s twisted an ankle or something and couldn’t walk, and had to hunker down and wait to be rescued.’
‘People can survive for days in the snow,’ I say. ‘You hear about it. People can make shelter if they’re trapped by avalanche—’
Becca bites back at me, twisting to glare over her shoulder. ‘You think he’s built himself a fucking snow cave or something? Come on, Eilish.’
‘He might have dug a hole in the snow,’ Jameson says reasonably. ‘It’s not such a stupid idea. And take it easy, Bex. We’re all worried …’
Becca stops, hands on her waist. Her sides heave as she sucks in air. ‘Yeah, I know. Sorry.’
The dread twists in my stomach, forming a heavy knot.
It doesn’t make it any easier to haul myself through these snowdrifts.
Jameson hangs back to plod at my side, and I think about yesterday, when we walked out to the loch.
How light-hearted we were, how fresh and hopeful.
Our reunion had yet to descend into disarray, and I still believed there might be something new waiting for us on the other side of this.
Now that that hope is gone, snuffed out. I’m confused, and if I allow myself to think too deeply about last night – scared. The search for Alex is a temporary reprieve from my dire thoughts – but it only just keeps them at bay.
I feel like I’m under siege, and my walls may not hold long …
I catch Jameson’s eye and see raw tenderness in his expression. I can’t bear to be pitied – especially by him. ‘Do you think Alex is okay?’ I say, quietly enough that Becca and Euan can’t hear.
‘I hope so,’ says Jameson gravely. ‘The alternative is … I can’t think about it, Eils. We need to stay positive.’
I nod. I’m trying.
We hear the rush of the waterfall before we reach it.
The land begins to undulate, deepening into crevices and folds, with rocky outcrops and uneven climbs.
When we reach the edge of the ravine, I go as close to the edge as I dare, my head spinning as I peer down, through a tangle of snow-clogged bushes and bracken, to the river. It’s swollen and dark.
The footprints are harder to follow here – we lose the trail several times, only to find it again, a smeared heel-print here, a deeper hollow there.
But as Euan points out, there’s nowhere to go but to follow the path up the side of the waterfall.
The sides of the ravine are too steep to cut across – and why would he climb down there anyway?
Why would he come up to the waterfall at all for that matter?
Unless he was trying to cross the hills to the village. A crazy notion, but with his blood filled with chemicals, and his mind with crazy notions of murder and mayhem, who knows what he was thinking?
Just this morning, I contemplated doing something similar – escaping Tarnmore on foot over these hills. But in daylight, wearing appropriate outdoor clothing.
And with good reason.
Alex wasn’t the one everyone turned on last night, accused of murder. The unpacking of everyone’s motives was preamble, leading up to the main event. The denouement.
Accusing me.
When we reach the falls, the noise of the thundering water is deafening.
The peaty river pours through a deep crevice in the hillside, the sides steep and scarred, and scattered with boulders.
The snow thickens again and the wind gusts, sending eddies of flakes into a waltz around me.
I’m almost hypnotised by the swirl, the beat of water.
I’m exhausted now, depleted. Distracted, I lose track of where I am, veer off the path.
I lose my footing and feel the ground give beneath my feet, realise what’s happening only when the land swoops away beneath me.
Jameson grabs my arm and hauls me back onto the path just in time, before I slip and slide my way down the ravine – no doubt breaking bones on the way.
Or worse.
I lean over my knees to catch my breath, shocked at the near miss. And that’s when I hear Jameson’s shout …
Not quite the drunken, adolescent timbre of Leo’s scream that night on West Sands …
But not far off.
He’s gripping the sturdy, silvery branch of a tree growing horizontally out of the steep bank, staring down into the river bed below. His eyes, when he turns back to us, are stark.
I hurry to his side, bumping against him and nearly sending both of us careening over the drop.
I grab at branches and his arm to anchor myself and follow Jameson’s gaze.
There, on a bed of rocks below the steepest part of the falls, where the rush and tumble of the river throws up a miasma of spray that mingles with the confetti of snowflakes, lies a body.
A dark suit, pale skin, a mop of brown hair jewelled with snow, limbs bent at awkward angles, and surrounding him a startling pool of crimson.
Alex.