The Clicking Beneath Devil's Burn

The satnav lost its GPS signal twenty minutes before we reached the camping spot, leaving Elliot to navigate from memory and a rain-softened Ordnance Survey map whose folds had begun to split. I watched him tighten his grip on the steering wheel each time the battered four-wheel-drive pickup struck another pothole in the single-track forestry road, which by then scarcely qualified as a road at all.

'Are you sure this is right?' I asked, peering through the windscreen at trees that seemed to press closer with every mile.

'Trust me.' Elliot changed down as we climbed another steep gradient. 'I researched this place for weeks. No crowds, no motorhome sites. Just us and the countryside.'

In the back seat, Bracken whined and pressed his nose against the window. Alfie and Tess had given up looking outside an hour earlier. They lay sprawled across each other in that boneless way dogs managed once they had accepted their fate. The pickup lurched through another rut, and I grabbed the door handle.

'When you said remote, I thought you meant fewer people. Not that we'd be driving to the edge of the earth.'

Elliot shot me a look that mixed excitement with something else I could not quite identify.

'Looking for a new flat has worn us both out. We need this, Hannah.'

He was not wrong. Three months of viewing overpriced Glasgow tenements with paper-thin walls, suspicious stains and landlords who described mould as 'character' had left us both stretched thin. Even so, as the trees thickened and the road narrowed, I wondered whether we had swung too far in the opposite direction.

The pitch appeared without warning: a small clearing beside Devil's Burn, where the water rushed over black rocks with enough force to drown the pickup's engine. Elliot parked beside an old stone fire circle, near a weathered Forestry and Land Scotland picnic bench. I climbed out and stretched legs that had gone numb during the drive.

'This is it?'

The words came out sharper than I intended.

'Look at this place.' Elliot spread his arms and grinned. 'When was the last time you heard water that clean?'

Bracken bounded out the moment I opened his door, nose to the ground and tail rigid. He trotted to the tree line and back, circling the clearing as though mapping the territory.

Alfie and Tess followed more cautiously, staying close to my legs. The burn was beautiful, I had to admit. The water was clear enough for me to see smooth stones on the bottom, and roughly forty metres downstream there was a deep pool where the current slowed. Mountains rose on all sides, their upper slopes disappearing into late-afternoon cloud. There were no pylons, no road noise and no neighbours arguing through shared walls.

'All right,' I said. 'It's gorgeous. But we really are in the middle of nowhere.'

Elliot pulled the tent from the pickup bed. 'That's the point. No distractions, no stress. Just us.'

I checked my mobile out of habit. There was no reception, not even a single bar. The screen felt useless in my hand, like holding a dead thing.

'What if there's an emergency?'

'There won't be.' Elliot shook out the tent fabric. 'But I brought the satellite handset, remember? For actual emergencies only.'

Bracken had wandered to the burn's edge, where he stood perfectly still and stared across the water. His ears were pricked forward, his body as tense as if he had spotted prey. I followed his gaze but saw nothing except trees and rocks on the far bank.

'Bracken, come.'

He ignored me, which was not like him.

'Bracken.'

At my sharper tone he turned and trotted back, although he kept looking over his shoulder at whatever had caught his attention.

We set up camp about ten metres from the burn, close enough to hear the water but far enough back to avoid the worst of any sudden rise. It was a rough permitted wild-camping pitch, within an area where responsible short stays were allowed, and the existing stone circle showed where previous campers had made their fires. Elliot worked with the efficiency of someone who had done it many times before, pegging the corners and adjusting the guy lines while I unpacked the sleeping bags.

The routine felt good, purposeful in a way that flat-hunting never had.

'I'm taking the dogs swimming,' I announced when we had finished. 'They need to work off some of that journey.'

'Good idea. I'll gather some dead wood.'

The pool downstream was perfect, deep enough for the dogs to swim but with a gentle slope where they could enter gradually. Alfie and Tess splashed through the shallows, snapping at droplets and chasing each other in circles. Bracken, however, kept swimming towards the middle and then paddling back with urgent whines.

'What's wrong, boy?'

I stood knee-deep in the burn, the Highland water so cold that my legs ached.

'What can you see?'

Bracken barked once, sharp and clear, facing the opposite bank. Then he swam out again, farther this time, until only his head showed above the surface. His bark echoed from the mountainsides and returned to us in layers.

'Bracken, that's enough,' I called. 'Come back here.'

He finally obeyed, but spent the rest of our swim pacing the bank and occasionally giving low warning woofs at something I could not identify. Alfie and Tess seemed untroubled, far more interested in the stick I threw for them, but Bracken's restlessness made me cut the swim short.

By the time we returned, Elliot had gathered enough fallen wood to last several days. He had also unpacked our camping chairs and the lockable wildlife-proof food chests, transforming the clearing into something that looked almost civilised.

'Everything all right?' he asked, looking up from the kindling. 'You're back quickly.'

'Bracken's acting strangely. He keeps barking at the far side of the burn.'

Elliot glanced towards the water. 'Probably smells deer. Or a fox, perhaps. New territory, new scents.'

It made sense. But Bracken was trained. He did not usually bark at wildlife unless I gave him permission.

Still, I did not want to sound paranoid on our first evening.

We cooked pork sausages over the fire as the sun sank behind the mountains, colouring the sky in shades of orange and pink that Glasgow never managed. Elliot pointed out constellations as they appeared: Ursa Major, Cassiopeia and others I had forgotten since secondary-school science lessons.

The fire crackled and popped, carrying sparks towards stars that seemed close enough to touch.

'This was a good idea,' I admitted, leaning back in my chair. 'I'd forgotten how quiet the world could be.'

'Told you.'

Elliot prodded the fire with a stick, sending up another shower of sparks.

'Five nights here. Nothing to do except breathe.'

Five nights. We had arrived on the first afternoon, which meant four more nights after this one. The number settled strangely in my mind, heavier than it should have been.

In Glasgow, four days passed almost without notice. Here, with no timetable except sunrise and sunset, four days felt like a very long time.

Bracken lay between our chairs, but his ears kept swivelling towards sounds I could not hear. Every few minutes he lifted his head and stared into the darkness beyond the reach of the fire. Alfie and Tess had already claimed places near the tent and lay curled together in a furry heap.

'Do you really think this place is safe?' I asked before I could stop myself.

Elliot looked at me across the flames. 'Safe from what?'

'I don't know. Loose livestock. Wild animals. Getting lost. What if the pickup won't start?'

'Deer and foxes will avoid us. The food's in chests designed to keep out pine martens, and I've got the map and compass if the GPS signal disappears. The pickup's in good condition.' He reached across and squeezed my hand. 'Stop worrying. That's the point of being here.'

He was right, of course. I was allowing city anxiety to follow me into the glen, searching for problems that did not exist. The fire was warm, the stars were brilliant and we had everything we needed.

I forced myself to relax and enjoy the peace we had driven three hours to find.

When we finally crawled into the tent at about 23:00, Bracken followed us inside instead of sleeping near the entrance as he usually did on camping trips. He curled between me and the tent wall, close enough for me to feel his breathing. Tess wedged herself against my other side, her small body warm and solid, while Alfie settled near our feet.

I was drifting towards sleep when Bracken made a sound that was not quite a growl and not quite a whine.

Through the tent fabric I saw Elliot switch on his torch. Its beam swept across the clearing in slow arcs.

'What is it?' I whispered.

'Nothing. I thought I heard something.'

The beam travelled across the trees, paused and moved on. Bracken's breathing had grown faster and shallower. I stroked his head and felt the fur standing along his neck.

'Probably just a deer,' Elliot whispered, and switched off the torch.

Bracken made the sound again, a low rumble that vibrated through his chest. I checked my watch.

23:47.

The burn rushed past the pitch, constant and unchanging. Beneath that white noise, however, I thought I heard something else. Footsteps, perhaps, or branches snapping.

I lay awake and watched the minutes advance.

00:15. 00:33. 01:02.

Bracken would settle for a few minutes and then stiffen again, breathing quickly and listening. Each time he stirred, I found myself holding my breath, straining to hear whatever had caught his attention.

The privacy that had seemed romantic hours earlier now felt different. Heavier. We were completely cut off.

There was no mobile reception, no neighbouring camp and no help nearby if anything went wrong. Muirloch was forty minutes away along narrow Highland roads with blind bends, steep verges, sparse barriers and too few passing places. They would be treacherous in darkness.

I rolled over and checked my watch again.

01:47.

Only four more nights, I reminded myself. Four more nights and we would be back in our rented Glasgow flat, surrounded by familiar sounds and reliable mobile masts.

Bracken shifted against my side. I could feel him listening to something I could not hear.

Four more nights felt like a very long time.

I woke to the smell of coffee and the sound of Elliot moving outside. The tent fabric glowed pale orange in the early light, and my watch showed 06:23. Bracken was already gone from beside me, which meant Elliot had let him out when he got up.

I unzipped the flap and crawled outside, my joints stiff from sleeping on the ground. Elliot stood beside the camping stove with binoculars raised, staring across the burn as if watching a film.

'Morning,' I said, stretching my back. 'Anything interesting?'

He handed me the binoculars without looking away.

'There's someone on that ridge. They've been standing there since I got up.'

I followed his pointing finger towards a tree-covered slope about 180 metres away. Through the binoculars I scanned the tree line until I found the figure.

It stood amongst the pines, perfectly motionless and facing our direction. The distance made details impossible, but its outline was unmistakably human.

'How long has it been there?'

I lowered the binoculars and tried to see the figure with my naked eyes, but it was too far away.

'At least ten minutes. Maybe longer.' Elliot poured coffee into two metal mugs. 'Just standing there. Hasn't moved at all.'

I raised the binoculars again and adjusted the focus.

The ridge was empty.

I swept left and right, checking every trunk and every patch of shadow.

'It's gone.'

Elliot took the binoculars and looked for himself.

'That's odd. It was right there.'

'Perhaps another camper. Someone checking the pitch before setting up nearby.'

'Perhaps.'

He did not sound convinced. He kept the binoculars around his neck while we ate instant porridge that tasted like cardboard but filled our stomachs.

Bracken had moved to the edge of the clearing. He stood with his nose directed towards the woods and his tail rigid. Every few seconds he took one step forwards and then stopped, as if he had struck an invisible barrier.

'What's got into him?' Elliot asked.

'I don't know. He's been strange since we arrived.'

I called him over, but he ignored me.

'Bracken, come.'

He turned his head towards me without moving his feet. His ears were pricked, focused upon something I could neither see nor hear.

After breakfast, Elliot began organising our equipment while I took Bracken along the bank. Or tried to. He kept pulling towards the forest, the hair standing along his spine. Whenever I corrected him, he planted his feet and resisted.

'What is wrong with you?'

I tugged the lead.

'We're going this way.'

Bracken whined and looked at the trees, then at me, then back at the trees. His entire body was tense, as though he were fighting every instinct to bolt into the woods.

'Fine. We'll go back.'

Even at camp he would not settle. He paced the perimeter of the clearing, stopping to stare into apparently random parts of the forest. Elliot was securing our food in the wildlife-proof chests, methodically testing every latch.

'Do you think we should pack up?' I asked.

'And go home early?'

Elliot paused with a bag of fruit-and-nut mix in his hands.

'Because of one person on a ridge? They're probably miles away by now.'

'It isn't only that. Bracken's behaving strangely, and this place feels...'

'Feels what?'

I could not finish because I did not know how to explain it. The isolation that had seemed peaceful the previous afternoon now felt oppressive, as though the mountains were pressing down upon us. Saying it aloud would have made me sound paranoid.

'Nothing. You're right. It was probably another walker.'

Elliot nodded and returned to the food chest.

'Besides, we drove three hours to get here. I'm not letting one peculiar encounter ruin the trip.'

That afternoon, Elliot crawled into the tent for a nap while I sat beside the stone fire circle with a book. Bracken had finally settled at my feet, although his ears still swivelled towards every sound. Apart from the burn and the occasional bird call, the forest was quiet.

I was turning a page when movement caught the edge of my vision. Something had shifted to the left, where the trees came closest to the clearing.

I looked up but saw only pine trunks and shadow.

Bracken's head snapped towards the same place. A low growl rolled through his chest.

'What is it, boy?'

I stood and walked towards the trees, stopping roughly six metres from the forest edge. The spaces between the trunks appeared darker than they should have done, but I could see nothing moving.

'Hello?' I called. 'Is anyone there?'

There was no reply, only wind moving through branches and Bracken continuing to growl behind me.

I had begun to turn back when I saw it: a flash of pale colour slipping behind a thick pine perhaps forty-five metres into the woods. It was certainly not a deer or any other animal. The movement had been too quick and too deliberate.

'Hey!' I shouted. 'I can see you.'

Still no response.

Bracken was on his feet now, hackles raised, staring at the precise tree behind which the pale shape had vanished.

I hurried to the tent and shook Elliot's shoulder through the fabric.

'Elliot, wake up.'

He emerged looking groggy and annoyed.

'What's wrong?'

'Someone's in the woods. I saw them duck behind a tree.'

That woke him completely.

'Where?'

I pointed towards the pine. Elliot raised the binoculars and studied the area for a full minute.

'I can't see anyone.'

'They're hiding, but they're there.'

He lowered the binoculars and looked at me.

'Are you sure it wasn't a shadow? The light playing tricks?'

'I know what I saw.'

He remained silent for a moment. Then he went to the pickup and unlocked the secured gun slip in which he transported his legally held deer-stalking rifle under his firearms certificate. I had seen him clean the rifle at home, but never prepare it outside a range or stalking ground.

'What are you doing?'

'Being careful.'

He removed the rifle only now, after the watcher in the forest, and kept its muzzle safely towards the ground. From a separate locked case he took a limited supply of ammunition, loaded the magazine and put one spare ammunition wallet into his jacket.

'If someone's watching us, I want them to understand that we're not helpless.'

I had never watched him load it before. His movements were practised and controlled, and the metallic sound of the bolt closing made my stomach contract.

'Maybe we should leave,' I said. 'Pack up and find somewhere else.'

Elliot slung the rifle securely over his shoulder.

'We're not being intimidated into running because somebody might be hiding in the trees. Responsible short-term camping is allowed here under Scotland's access rules. We have as much right to be here as anyone.'

But his hand remained close to the rifle, and his eyes kept searching the tree line.

Bracken pressed against my legs, still growling at shadows I could not see. The sun was beginning to sink behind the mountains, and our peaceful break had started to feel like something else entirely.

I jolted awake to Bracken's bark cutting through the darkness like a blade.

It was not his ordinary warning bark. This was pure aggression, the sound he made when something threatened his pack.

My watch glowed beside me.

02:47. The beginning of our third day.

'Elliot.'

I shook his shoulder, but he was already moving, reaching for the torch clipped to the tent wall.

Through the orange fabric, a white light drifted between the trees about ten metres away. It was not the yellowish beam of a torch or the blue glow of a mobile screen. This was pure white, bright enough to cast shadows through the tent walls. It travelled at a steady height, as though floating.

'What the hell?' Elliot whispered.

The light was accompanied by a sound I had never heard before. Rapid clicking, like a metal spoon tapping against a tin, only faster, mechanical and precise.

Bracken's barking became frantic. I seized his collar to prevent him charging through the flap. Elliot reached for the rifle and began to unzip the tent.

'Don't.' I pulled him back. 'Just watch.'

The light travelled in a perfect circle around the pitch, always maintaining the same distance and height. The clicking grew louder when it passed closest to us.

It was not random noise. It came in patterns: short bursts, longer sequences, silence, then repetition. It reminded me of Morse code, but it was denser and far more complex.

Alfie and Tess crawled against my legs, their small bodies trembling. Bracken strained against my grip, every muscle rigid, his bark becoming hoarse with the effort.

The light completed one circuit and then another. On its third pass, it stopped directly opposite the tent, perhaps eight metres away.

The clicking intensified. The patterns became faster and began overlapping until the sound hurt my ears.

Bracken fell silent.

That frightened me more than his barking had.

Then the light shot up the mountainside. It moved faster than any person could run and faster than any vehicle could have climbed that slope. The clicking receded with it, echoing from the rocks until the forest became quiet once more.

Elliot sat frozen, the rifle across his knees, staring at the place where the light had vanished.

'A drone,' he said at last, though his voice shook. 'It has to be a drone. Forestry survey, wildlife monitoring, some sort of surveillance equipment.'

'At three in the morning? Moving like that?'

'They use all kinds of technology now.'

I wanted to believe him, but the clicking troubled me.

'That sound had patterns. It was like something trying to communicate.'

Elliot looked at me in the dim light from his torch.

'Communicate with whom?'

I had no answer that would not have sounded insane. Yet the repetitions had been too deliberate and too structured to be accidental mechanical noise. Something had been speaking, even if I could not understand its language.

We did not sleep again. Elliot kept the rifle ready while I held Bracken, who trembled against my side until dawn. Every gust moving through the trees made us tense. Every ordinary woodland sound now seemed wrong, as though we were listening for something that did not belong.

When the first grey light seeped through the fabric, I crawled outside and searched the ground where the white light had stopped.

There was nothing. No footprints, tyre marks or disturbed needles. If someone had walked amongst those trees carrying equipment, they had left no trace.

'Find anything?'

Elliot emerged with the rifle still in his hands.

'Nothing. It's as though no one was ever there.'

He walked the perimeter, examining the ground with the concentration he usually reserved for debugging code. I checked the dogs' food and water, trying to restore some semblance of routine, when Elliot called from beside the pickup.

'Hannah, come and look at this.'

One of the wildlife-proof food chests stood exactly where we had left it, but its locks were open. They had not been broken or forced. The catches simply hung loose, as though someone had understood precisely how the mechanism worked.

Elliot lifted the lid, and I looked inside.

Half our food had disappeared. Every piece of meat was gone: the pork sausages, sliced ham and dried venison. The bread, apples, instant porridge and fruit-and-nut mix remained untouched and arranged exactly as we had packed them.

'Foxes and pine martens aren't meant to be able to open these,' Elliot said, lifting one of the metal catches. 'That's the whole purpose of the locks.'

'And a wild animal would have made a mess. This is too selective.'

He closed the chest and tested both catches repeatedly.

'Someone came into camp while we were asleep. They took our food, but only the meat.'

The thought of someone moving around the pitch while we slept, close enough to touch the tent, made my skin crawl. Yet the alternative, that the light and the stolen food were connected, seemed impossible.

'We should pack up,' I said. 'We should go home today.'

Elliot looked towards the trees where the light had vanished.

'Because someone stole some sausages?'

'Because everything about this place feels wrong. Bracken has been agitated since we arrived. There was that figure on the ridge, then the person in the woods, and now this.' I gestured at the open chest. 'Something isn't right.'

Elliot remained silent for a long time, weighing the rifle in his hands. At last he nodded.

'All right. We'll leave today.'

Even as he agreed, he kept studying the tree line, trying to solve a puzzle that did not fit any logical framework he understood.

The clicking echoed in my memory. It had been too complex to be random and too purposeful to ignore. Something had tried to communicate during the night, and it knew we were there.

We began sorting what could be packed immediately and what would have to wait until the tent came down. The camping stove failed while Elliot tried to boil water, sputtering twice before dying completely. The butane canister was nearly empty, and the pickup's fuel gauge was lower than either of us liked for the journey back.

We agreed to drive into Muirloch for petrol, a replacement canister, food for the road and, if possible, information about the glen. Then we would return only long enough to collect Bracken, Alfie and Tess, strike the tent and load the essential equipment before leaving for Glasgow. There was no question now of spending another night at Devil's Burn.

The dogs stayed at camp because the pickup's rear space was needed for fuel and supplies, and because we expected the trip to be brief. Bracken resisted when I led him into the tent with Alfie and Tess, but the enclosed sleeping area was safer than leaving them loose. We gave them water, secured the mesh panels for ventilation and left the satellite handset with the emergency kit.

'I hate leaving them,' I said.

'Forty minutes there, forty back, and ten in the shop,' Elliot replied. 'Then we take everything and go.'

The journey to Muirloch followed roads that twisted through the glen in a confusion of blind bends, sudden gradients and narrow passing places. Elliot kept both hands firm on the wheel whenever the verge fell steeply away. There were occasional barriers at the worst corners, but elsewhere only white centre lines, crumbling edges and a great deal of trust separated us from the slopes below.

Muirloch was the sort of place that appeared to exist because someone had built a petrol station at a crossroads decades earlier and other businesses had gathered around it. A village shop stood beside the pumps and an old-fashioned cafe that looked as though it had not changed since the miners' strike. A handful of houses climbed the surrounding slopes, their gardens crowded with wood piles, battered sheds and old vehicles silvered by rain.

We filled the pickup first. The bell above the shop door jangled when we entered, and a woman behind the till looked up from a magazine. She was perhaps fifty, with grey hair tied back and weathered hands that suggested years of real work.

'Can I help you?'

'We need a few supplies,' I said, taking a basket. 'We're camping up by Devil's Burn.'

Her expression changed. It was not dramatic, but I saw the friendly shop-assistant smile replaced by something guarded.

'Devil's Burn, is it? How long have you been up there?'

'This is our third day. We were meant to stay five nights, but we're leaving today.'

I picked up a packet of pork sausages, trying to sound casual.

'Beautiful area. Very private.'

'Private is one word for it.'

The woman's name badge read MOIRA. She came out from behind the till.

'Do you mind telling me exactly where you've pitched?'

Elliot had moved towards the camping supplies in search of a butane canister, but I could tell he was listening.

'Beside the burn, about three miles along the forestry road from where it leaves the A-road.'

Moira's face became utterly still.

'Devil's Burn proper? At the bend where the water forms a pool?'

'That's right. You know it?'

'I know it.'

She followed me as I moved along the aisle, lowering her voice.

'Locals don't camp there. They haven't for years.'

I stopped pretending to shop and faced her.

'Why not?'

Moira glanced towards Elliot and then back at me.

'Have you had any trouble? Seen or heard anything unusual?'

The question hung between us. I could have lied and kept our fears to myself, or I could trust this stranger who plainly knew something about the pitch.

'Someone has been watching us,' I said. 'And last night something took food from one of our wildlife-proof chests. It opened the locks as though it knew how they worked.'

Moira nodded, as if I had confirmed something she already suspected.

'Eighteen months ago, during an autumn walking trip, three people vanished from that area. The local mountain rescue team searched with Police Scotland. They recovered one man three days later, walking beside the A-road, but he wasn't right.'

'What do you mean, not right?'

'Dehydrated, exposed, talking nonsense about pale figures in the woods. He said they made clicking sounds like insects, only much louder.'

Moira picked up a tin of beans from my basket and then put it back on the shelf.

'Callum Fraser was his name. A good man. He knew those hills better than almost anyone. He was the only member of that three-person party they ever found. Afterwards he kept returning to the glen and insisting there was something living in the forest that shouldn't exist.'

Elliot had moved closer, pretending to examine fishing tackle.

'What happened to him?' he asked.

'His family had him detained for psychiatric treatment. Stratharden psychiatric unit, near Perth. They said he'd suffered a breakdown because he couldn't stop talking about monsters.' Moira's gaze hardened. 'But I knew Callum Fraser for twenty years. He wasn't a man who invented stories.'

She lowered her voice further.

'He sometimes telephones the shop. Always asks whether anyone else has reported strange things around Devil's Burn.'

My skin felt cold despite the shop's warmth.

'Have they?'

'Not many people camp there now. Word travels in a place like Muirloch. But yes, every so often somebody mentions lights amongst the trees or sounds they can't explain. Most have the sense to pack up and leave.'

I thought of the mechanical precision of the clicks and the pale light circling our tent.

'Did Callum describe the sound exactly?'

'Like metal striking metal, very fast. He said it came from different directions at once, as though whatever made it was coordinating with others.'

Moira studied my face.

'You heard it, didn't you?'

Elliot stepped beside me.

'Last night, a bright white light circled our camp while something made that clicking sound. It went on for about twenty minutes, then shot straight up the mountainside.'

'Jesus.'

Moira shook her head.

'You need to collect your dogs and leave now. Don't spend another night there.'

'That's what we're doing,' I said. 'We only came here for petrol, food for the journey and a new stove canister. Our dogs and tent are still at the pitch.'

'Then go back, take what you cannot abandon and get out as quickly as you can.' Her tone had become urgent. 'Those three walkers who vanished left a camp that looked as though it had been torn apart. There were no bodies. Only blood and other things.'

'What other things?'

Moira hesitated. Then she returned to the counter and drew a buff folder from beneath the till.

'I kept copies of the incident reports. Unofficial copies. I have a local contact who was involved with Police Scotland.'

She opened the folder and showed us photographs.

The camp looked as if a storm had struck it. The tent had been shredded, equipment scattered and a food chest crushed almost flat.

What turned my stomach were the marks in the earth around it.

They resembled handprints, but they were wrong. The fingers were too long and each appeared to contain too many joints.

'These photographs were never released publicly,' Moira said. 'There was concern about frightening visitors and harming local businesses. But I've seen them, and I've heard Callum Fraser tell the same story often enough to know he wasn't making it up.'

Elliot stared at the photographs, his face drained of colour.

'Those prints aren't human.'

'No,' Moira said. 'They aren't.'

She closed the folder.

'Whatever lives up there, it isn't natural, and it guards that glen.'

I thought of Bracken's relentless vigilance and the way he had tried to draw me away from the woods.

'Our eldest dog has been behaving as if he can sense something we can't.'

'Animals know,' Moira said. 'They always know first.'

She rang up the butane canister and the food we had chosen, moving quickly and efficiently.

'Don't cook anything strong-smelling when you return. Don't linger. And if darkness catches you, don't leave the pitch on foot for any reason.'

The rational part of my mind wanted to dismiss her warnings as local superstition, but the photographs were real. The missing walkers were real. Callum's description of the clicking matched what we had heard exactly.

As we approached the door, Moira spoke again.

'If you see lights in the trees, don't investigate them. Don't call out. Keep together, and leave the moment the road is safe enough.'

The return journey felt much longer than forty minutes.

Elliot missed the forestry-road turning, and we drove for another twenty minutes before noticing that the satnav showed us in blank forest, with no marked road beneath the position icon.

'How did we miss it?' I asked.

Elliot pulled into a passing place and studied the screen.

'We've driven this road twice. I was watching for the sign.'

'Perhaps we're farther along than we thought.'

I checked my mobile, but there was still no reception.

'Let's go back to the last junction.'

Elliot turned the pickup around. As he did, I saw movement amongst the trees.

Something white was keeping pace with us, although the pickup was travelling at nearly thirty miles an hour.

'Elliot.' I pointed towards the forest. 'Look.'

He followed my gaze and braked.

'What the hell is that?'

The thing moved in violent, jerking increments, like a film with missing frames. One moment it stood behind a tree. The next, it had covered six metres without appearing to pass through the space between.

It was tall, perhaps seven feet, and bone-white, although the distance made detail impossible.

'Drive,' I said. 'Just drive.'

Elliot accelerated. The figure kept pace without effort, moving parallel to the road and appearing and disappearing between the trunks while maintaining the same distance from us.

Then it vanished.

It was simply gone between one tree and the next.

'Did you see-'

'There.'

I pointed ahead.

It stood in the centre of the road, perhaps forty-five metres in front of us.

Elliot struck the brakes. The pickup skidded on loose grit and stopped only six metres away.

Through the windscreen, I saw the creature clearly for the first time.

It was about seven feet tall, its bone-white skin stretched tightly over a skeletal frame. Its arms hung beyond its knees, far too long for its body, and ended in hands whose fingers contained too many joints. Where its eyes should have been were black sockets, deep and empty.

It tilted its head and studied us. The movement was anatomically impossible, as though its neck could rotate farther than any human neck.

'Back up,' I whispered. 'Back up now.'

Elliot shoved the pickup into reverse.

The creature began walking towards us. It did not run, yet it covered the ground impossibly quickly in those broken, frame-skipping movements.

'Go! Go!'

Elliot accelerated hard in reverse, tyres scattering grit across the road. In the side mirror I watched the thing reach the place where we had stopped and turn to follow.

We gathered speed and began to put distance between ourselves and it.

Five minutes later we found the turning, marked by the same weathered wooden sign we had somehow passed before. Elliot took the forestry road too quickly, hammering through potholes and bouncing across ruts, but neither of us complained.

We had to return. Bracken, Alfie and Tess were still there, along with the tent, satellite handset, emergency kit and equipment we could not safely abandon. Yet the camp no longer represented anything familiar or secure.

By the time we entered the clearing, the light had already begun to fail. I looked at our tent, the stone fire circle and the neatly organised equipment and understood how exposed we were, and how far we were from help.

Bracken barked from inside the tent as soon as he heard the pickup. I ran to release the dogs. He came out first and immediately began pacing the perimeter with his nose to the ground and his hackles raised. Alfie and Tess crowded against my shins.

They had sensed it too. They knew what the thing on the road meant.

Elliot remained in the driver's seat for several seconds after switching off the engine, his hands locked around the steering wheel.

'We're leaving,' he said at last. 'We take the dogs and essentials and go.'

'Right now,' I said.

He checked his watch.

'It's 16:30 already. We lost far more time than we realised.'

The late Highland light was deteriorating beneath thick cloud, and a grey mist had begun to collect amongst the trees. The forestry road had been difficult in daylight. Now, after our unexplained detour, neither of us trusted our bearings. The white figure might still be waiting along the only route out.

'Better than staying here with those things,' I said.

'The road has blind bends, steep verges and almost no barriers. We were disorientated in full daylight. If we rush onto it in poor visibility, we could put the pickup down a slope before we get clear of the glen.'

Elliot opened his door, keeping the rifle slung safely against his body.

'We load everything essential now. If the mist lifts before dark, we leave. If it doesn't, we stay together and move at the first usable light.'

I wanted to argue, especially after Moira's warning, but the road was genuinely dangerous. We had already become lost once, and that had been before the cloud closed in. If those creatures followed us onto the single-track road, we could be trapped inside the pickup with nowhere to turn.

Bracken pressed himself against my legs, his entire body trembling. This was not the excited energy he usually showed after a drive. It was pure fear. He would not move more than half a metre from me, and every few seconds he whined and looked towards the forest.

'At least help me get everything ready,' I said. 'If the visibility improves, I want us loaded and gone in minutes.'

Elliot nodded and began folding the camping chairs while I forced the sleeping bags into their sacks. We worked in intense silence, both of us flinching at every sound from the trees. Ordinary woodland noises - birds settling, branches shifting and wind moving through pine needles - had become warnings.

The sun dropped behind the mountains faster than I expected, and shadows stretched across the clearing like reaching fingers. Elliot had taken his legally held deer-stalking rifle from its secured gun slip only after the watcher appeared. Now it rested against the weathered Forestry and Land Scotland picnic bench, loaded with its limited magazine and within easy reach. The rest of the ammunition remained in a separate locked case, apart from one spare wallet he had put in his jacket pocket. Every few minutes, he stopped what he was doing and scanned the tree line.

'I'm building the fire bigger tonight,' he announced, gathering twice as much wood as usual. 'We'll keep it burning all night.'

I did not argue. We were using the old stone fire circle already provided at the permitted pitch, and the flames would give us light. Perhaps they would also keep whatever was out there at a distance.

Elliot stacked the logs as if he were building a fortress, arranging them so the fire would burn for hours without constant tending. We placed our camping chairs with the flames behind us and faced the darkness.

Bracken curled up between us, but his ears never stopped swivelling towards sounds I could not hear. His constant whimpering was getting on my nerves, though I could hardly blame him. Whatever he sensed out there had frightened him more badly than anything I had ever seen.

Then I heard it again.

The clicking.

It began softly, only a few rapid taps, like someone drumming their fingers against metal. Within minutes, it had multiplied. Different rhythms came from different directions, overlapping and answering one another like some sort of conversation.

'You hear that?' I whispered.

Elliot nodded, his hand moving towards the rifle. It was the same sound as the previous night, but far more complex. The patterns had structure, with repetitions that suggested meaning.

One sequence to our left would finish, then another to our right would begin, as though the speakers were taking turns. Through the trees, I caught glimpses of light. These were not the single bright source we had seen early that morning, but several lights moving independently.

I counted five.

They circled our camp at different distances. Some stayed close to the ground. Others moved higher, as though travelling through the branches.

'Elliot.' My voice came out as a croak. 'The lights.'

He followed my gaze and became completely still.

The five lights moved with purpose, maintaining their spacing as they circled us. The clicking grew louder and more urgent, as if the things carrying them were discussing what to do about us.

The satellite handset began to ring.

We both jumped as though we had been electrocuted. The handset lay on the picnic bench, its shrill tone cutting through the forest sounds and the clicking. It was the pre-arranged incoming call through its satellite number, the only reliable way Imogen could reach us while there was no mobile reception in the glen.

Elliot reached for it, but I caught his arm.

'Don't answer.'

'It might be important.'

The clicking stopped.

There was complete silence apart from the insistent ringing and the crackle of the fire. Beyond the trees, the five lights had stopped moving as well, as though whatever was out there had begun to listen.

Elliot picked up the handset.

'Hello?'

'Elliot, thank God.' Imogen Price's voice came through clearly, bright and normal and utterly out of place. 'I've been trying to call for hours. How's the camping trip going?'

Elliot looked at me, then towards the motionless lights in the forest.

'It's fine. Good. Really good.'

'Brilliant. I'm so excited to join you tomorrow. I've got all my gear packed, and the forecast looks perfect for walking. What time should I set off?'

I took the handset from Elliot.

'Imogen, don't come.'

'Hannah, what do you mean, don't come? We've been planning this for weeks.'

'There's been a change of plan. We're leaving as soon as we can. Family emergency.'

'Oh no. Is everyone all right? Do you need me to do anything?'

The genuine concern in her voice made lying harder, but I could not explain what was really happening. She would think we had lost our minds.

'Everyone's fine. It's just something that came up suddenly. We'll reschedule when things calm down.'

'Are you sure? I could still drive up tonight and help you pack, or do whatever you need.'

'No.' The word came out more sharply than I intended. 'I mean, no. We've got it handled. Just stay at home.'

'All right.' There was a pause. 'Hannah, you sound really stressed. Are you sure everything's all right?'

'Everything's fine. I have to go now. We'll ring you when we get home.'

I ended the call before she could ask anything else.

The moment the handset fell silent, the clicking began again.

Now every sound came from the same direction, as though whatever had been spread around us was gathering in one place. The lights converged as well, five distinct white sources moving through the trees and assembling roughly 20 metres from our camp.

In the firelight, I saw shapes passing between the trunks.

Tall shapes.

Wrong shapes.

'Elliot.'

I barely breathed his name.

Three figures stepped from behind the trees and stopped at the edge of the fire's glow. They stood perfectly still, watching us with black hollows where their eyes should have been. Their bone-white skin seemed to absorb the firelight rather than reflect it, and their arms hung below their knees like broken things.

Bracken pressed harder against my legs, his whimpering settling into a constant low sound of terror.

The creature in the centre stepped forwards. Its mouth opened wider than any human mouth could, revealing a dark cavity lined with what looked like metallic teeth. Rapid, complex clicking poured out of it.

It was definitely communication, but the sound did not come from its throat. It seemed to originate much deeper inside, as though it possessed organs we did not.

Elliot raised the rifle. All three creatures tilted their heads at the same impossible angle, watching the weapon with curiosity rather than fear.

'Don't move,' Elliot whispered. 'Don't run.'

The creatures scattered anyway, moving with that jerky, frame-skipping speed that hurt to watch. One second they were standing together. The next, they had vanished into the darkness.

I heard them moving through the branches above us, wood creaking beneath their weight as they repositioned themselves. I snatched the pickup keys from the picnic bench.

'We need to get to the pickup.'

'We'd never make it. There's too much open ground.'

Elliot was right. About 10 metres of clearing separated us from the vehicle, and those things moved faster than anything human. They would be on us before we reached halfway.

The clicking began again, directly overhead. I looked up and saw pale shapes shifting amongst the pine branches against the dark sky.

They were above us, looking down at the fire and at us.

Bracken tried to bolt towards the pickup, and it took all my strength to hold him. Fear was overwhelming his training. I did not blame him. Every instinct in me was screaming that we should run, even though I knew Elliot was right about the distance.

'What do they want?' I whispered.

Elliot kept the rifle aimed into the branches.

'I don't know, but they're not leaving.'

The creatures in the trees began clicking in unison, a rapid rhythm that built towards something, almost as if they were counting down. I tightened my grip on Bracken's collar and prepared for whatever came next.

At 00:15, the clicking stopped.

The silence struck me like a physical weight. For nearly an hour, those rapid metallic conversations had surrounded our camp. Now there was nothing except the crackle of the fire and Bracken's ragged breathing against my legs.

'Why did they stop?' I whispered.

Elliot swept his torch in slow arcs around the pitch. The beam barely penetrated the darkness beyond the trees.

'I don't know.'

Bracken strained against my grip, every muscle coiled tight. He wanted to run, but not towards the pickup. He wanted to plunge into the forest. His training had disappeared, replaced by something primal and desperate.

Behind our tent, I heard breathing.

It came in a slow, measured, human rhythm, but there was something wrong about it. It sounded deliberate, as though the creature had to remember each breath rather than taking it automatically.

I turned towards the sound, and Elliot's torch followed. The orange tent fabric glowed in its beam. Against it, we saw the shadow of something pressed to the outside, something tall enough for its head to reach the tent's peak.

Then it moved a hand against the fabric, and I saw the outline clearly.

Five fingers, each with too many joints, bending in places where human fingers could not. The hand traced the tent wall as though reading Braille, learning the shape of our shelter.

Elliot raised the rifle.

'Get away from there.'

The hand became still. A moment later it withdrew, but I could hear movement all around us now: footsteps that did not quite sound like feet and branches breaking beneath weight that shifted in unnatural ways.

Elliot fired a warning shot into the air.

The crack echoed from the mountainsides and returned in waves. The response was immediate.

Rapid clicking erupted from every direction at once, so many overlapping patterns that the noise hurt my ears. There were not merely three or five sources now, but dozens. They had been watching in silence, and the shot had triggered some kind of alarm.

Bracken tore free of my grip and bolted towards the pickup.

'Bracken! No!'

Alfie and Tess, who had been huddled beside the tent, saw him run and followed. All three dogs sprinted across the clearing, their tags jingling in the darkness.

I started after them, but Elliot seized my arm.

'Don't.'

Two pale shapes dropped from the trees directly in front of the dogs. They did not climb or jump. They simply fell, as though they had been hanging there in readiness.

Alfie and Tess yelped as twisted hands closed around them. Elliot's torch found the creatures, each hunched over one of the smaller dogs.

The nearest looked up at us. Its mouth opened wider than any human mouth could, exposing rows of needle-sharp teeth which caught the torchlight with a metallic gleam. The clicking quickened into an almost rhythmic sound, horribly like laughter.

Elliot fired at the creature holding Tess.

The round struck its shoulder, and black liquid sprayed across the ground. The creature emitted a high, piercing shriek like metal scraping over glass, but it did not release her. Instead, it swept Tess up in one arm as the second creature seized Alfie.

Both dogs were crying, their high whimpers filled with pain and terror.

Bracken had reached the pickup and was hurling himself against the driver's door, clawing at the metal. The creatures retreated towards the forest, carrying Alfie and Tess as though they weighed nothing.

I could hear our dogs crying in the darkness, the sounds becoming fainter with every second.

'We have to help them.'

I lunged towards the trees, but Elliot caught me around the waist.

'You can't. There are too many.'

Bracken's barking had become frantic. He knew what was happening to his packmates, and it was driving him wild. I heard him throwing his body against the pickup, desperate to get inside and escape.

Tess's cries stopped first.

Then Alfie fell silent.

The forest quietened until only Bracken's barking and the fire remained. Then the clicking resumed, closer now, perhaps three metres beyond the reach of the flames.

Elliot pulled me back towards the fire, the rifle ready, but his hands were shaking.

'They're gone,' he said so quietly that I almost could not hear him. 'Alfie and Tess are gone.'

The clicking grew louder and more insistent. Whatever those things were, they had not finished with us.

By 00:33, the sound had been building for nearly 20 minutes, swelling from whispers into a metallic symphony that seemed to fill every tree. Elliot gripped the rifle so tightly that his knuckles had turned white, and Bracken, having crept back when the creatures withdrew, pressed against my legs as though he wanted to crawl inside my skin.

'We can't stay here,' I said, watching pale shapes pass between the trees beyond the fire. 'They're getting closer.'

Elliot swept the torch over the tree line.

'Ten metres to the pickup. They move too fast.'

But sitting beside the fire was not working either. Every few minutes, another figure stepped out of the darkness, stood at the boundary of the light, then melted into the shadows again.

They were studying us. Learning us.

I took the pickup keys from the bench and pushed them into my pocket. Our emergency bag sat beside the tent. It contained water, the first-aid kit, Elliot's backup charger and the Sterling notes we kept for emergencies. We would need it if we escaped.

'Cover me,' I said, slinging the bag over my shoulder.

'Hannah, no.'

'We're going to die if we stay here.' I looked at him across the fire. 'They're not leaving, and there are more of them now than there were an hour ago.'

Elliot knew I was right. I saw it in his face and in the way his gaze kept moving towards the pickup. He was calculating distance and odds, just as I was.

Bracken whined and pressed harder against my legs. He could sense what was coming.

'On three,' Elliot said, raising the rifle. 'Stay behind me. Run straight for the driver's side.'

I nodded, my heart hammering against my ribs.

The pickup looked impossibly far away beyond the firelight.

'One.'

Something moved amongst the trees to our left, a flash of bone-white skin ducking behind a thick pine.

'Two.'

Elliot released the rifle's safety. Bracken's ears flattened against his head, his whole body coiled like a spring.

'Three.'

I ran.

The first few steps felt like moving through water, my legs heavy with adrenaline and fear. Then years of hillwalking took over. I found my rhythm and sprinted across the clearing.

Elliot fired behind me. The rifle's crack rebounded from the mountainsides. Something in the forest screamed, a metal-on-glass shriek that made my teeth ache.

Bracken bounded beside me, his paws silent over the pine needles.

Five metres from the pickup. Three.

Movement flashed at the edge of my vision. Something white dropped from the trees with that jerking, frame-skipping speed which hurt my eyes.

Elliot fired again. I heard a wet impact, followed by the same terrible metallic scream less than two metres from the pickup.

I fumbled for the keys. My hands shook so badly that I nearly dropped them. Behind me, Elliot shouted something I could not distinguish over my own breathing.

The key entered the lock just as something slammed into the pickup's side, rocking it on its springs.

I tore the door open. Bracken leapt inside and scrambled across the front bench seat. I dived in after him as Elliot reached the passenger side. He threw himself through the door and slammed it shut.

Something struck the passenger window at once. Cracks spread across the glass in a spider's web, though it did not collapse.

Through the windscreen, I saw one of the creatures pressed against the bonnet, its face inches from mine. Up close, it was worse than I had imagined. The black sockets where its eyes should have been seemed to continue for ever. Its mouth hung open, showing ranks of needle-sharp metallic teeth.

Its breath misted the glass while it studied me, head tilted, as though memorising my face.

'Drive.' Elliot wedged the rifle between his knees and seized my shoulder. 'Drive now.'

I turned the key.

The engine turned once, then again, before catching. I selected drive and pressed the accelerator.

Nothing happened.

The wheels spun, flinging soil and pine needles, but the pickup would not move. In the side mirror, I saw why.

Two creatures had gripped the rear bumper. Their unnatural strength held us in place against the engine's roar.

'They're holding us.' My voice came out too high.

Elliot lowered the already cracked passenger window as far as he dared and fired towards the creatures behind us. The muzzle flash illuminated their bone-white faces for a fraction of a second before they scattered.

'Reverse!' he shouted. 'Floor it in reverse.'

I slammed the pickup into reverse and pressed the accelerator down.

We shot backwards. Something crunched beneath a tyre. One of the creatures released that metal-on-glass scream, and its grip broke.

The moment we were free, I shifted into drive and tore along the rough forestry road.

Our headlights swept through the forest, revealing more pale figures emerging from between the trees. They reached for us as we passed. Jointed fingers scraped the paint and scored long claw marks into the bodywork.

Something landed on the bonnet with a metallic thud.

Through the windscreen, I saw a creature clinging to the metal. Its fingers punched through the bonnet as though it were paper. One black eye socket fixed upon me through the glass, and its mouth opened in an impossible grin.

'Tree.' Elliot pointed towards a thick pine growing close to the road. 'Scrape it off.'

I hauled the wheel to the right. The pickup's passenger side ground against the trunk, buckling metal and stripping paint. The creature held on for a moment, its fingers tearing the bonnet further, but the impact wrenched it loose.

It tumbled into the darkness behind us. I could still hear it screaming above the engine.

The single-track forestry road seemed endless. Potholes and deep ruts pitched the pickup from side to side. Bracken wedged himself against the back of the seat, whimpering at every impact. Elliot kept the rifle ready and watched the mirrors, conscious that only the rounds in his magazine and the one spare ammunition wallet remained.

When we finally reached the narrow Highland road, I was approaching 60 mph and still accelerating. The headlights swept across the white centre line as we entered the first blind bend, and I forced myself to slow. The steep verges, scattered passing places and occasional barriers made the road dangerous enough without panic driving us over an edge or into an oncoming vehicle.

'Are they following?'

I checked the rear-view mirror and saw only darkness. Elliot twisted round to look through the rear window.

'I can see lights. Perhaps a mile back.'

I pressed harder on the accelerator.

The pickup's engine whined as we climbed towards the ridge leading out of the glen. Behind us, the lights Elliot had seen gained ground, moving faster than any vehicle could have done on those winding roads.

'How are they keeping up?' I took another bend too quickly, the tyres squealing against the tarmac.

'I don't know.' Elliot's voice was taut. 'Just drive. Get us out of here.'

The lights remained behind us for nearly a mile. They were close enough to see in the mirrors, and they were not the yellow-white beams of vehicle headlights. They shone with the same pure white illumination that had encircled our camp.

They moved in formation, perfectly spaced, never dropping back despite our speed.

Then we crested the ridge and began descending the other side. The lights slowed. One by one, they stopped following and vanished into the darkness behind us.

Bracken crawled into my lap, trembling so violently that I felt it through the steering wheel. I kept one hand on his head as I drove, his rapid heartbeat beating against my palm.

We did not speak for the next 20 minutes. What was there to say? That we had escaped something which should not exist? That whatever those things were, they had hunted us and killed Alfie and Tess?

At 01:02, we reached the A-road. Elliot finally broke the silence.

'We can't tell anyone about this.'

I knew why he said it. Who would believe us? We would sound like Callum Fraser, raving about monsters in the woods. But I also knew we could not pretend it had never happened.

'They killed Alfie and Tess,' I said quietly.

Elliot nodded, staring at the dark forest sliding past the damaged passenger window. 'I know.'

Bracken whimpered and pressed closer to me. He knew as well. He had lost his packmates to something unnatural, something wrong.

And somehow, I did not think it was over. The lights might have stopped following, but I felt certain the creatures would remember our faces and our scent.

The fluorescent tubes in the old-fashioned cafe buzzed like angry insects, casting a harsh white light that made Elliot look grey around the edges. The place seemed not to have changed since the miners' strike.

We had been driving for three hours without speaking. Bracken's constant whimpering from the pickup had filled the silence between us.

'Coffee?'

The waitress appeared beside our booth with a pot in her hand, as if she had materialised from nowhere.

Elliot nodded without looking up from his hands. I wanted to tell her that we were fine and needed nothing, but my throat felt raw and the words would not come properly.

The coffee tasted like burnt water. Still, it was warm and ordinary and human. I wrapped my hands around the mug and tried to imagine that we were merely exhausted travellers stopping for food, rather than people fleeing from something that should not exist.

Elliot kept glancing towards the windows and the car park beyond. Our battered four-wheel-drive pickup stood beneath the security lights. The passenger side had been scraped raw against the tree, the window was crazed with cracks, the bonnet was punctured and claw marks scored the paintwork.

'We should eat something,' he said at last.

Neither of us had eaten since the previous morning, but the thought made my stomach turn. I ordered toast, hoping something plain might stay down.

The lavatory felt like a sanctuary. It had four solid walls, a lock on the door and fluorescent lighting that held the shadows away.

I splashed cold water over my face, took out my mobile phone and rang Imogen.

'Hannah, how was the rest of your trip? Did you sort out that emergency?'

'Don't go to Devil's Burn.' The words came out harder than I intended. 'Promise me you won't go there.'

'What? Why would I go there? You said you were leaving because of a family problem.'

I closed my eyes and tried to invent something believable.

'There was an incident. Someone got hurt. The area isn't safe.'

'Oh my God. Are you all right? Was it loose livestock, or a deer, or some sort of wild animal?'

'Something like that. Just promise me you'll never camp there.'

'All right. I promise. You're frightening me, though. Are you certain you're all right?'

'I'm fine. We're fine. I have to go.'

I ended the call before she could ask anything more and stared into the mirror. My reflection looked hollow, as though someone had scooped out everything behind my eyes.

There were scratches on my neck. Three thin lines, almost like claw marks. I did not remember receiving them.

When I returned to the table, Elliot was staring at his untouched eggs as though they might begin moving.

'We need to report this,' he said.

'Report what? That monsters attacked us?'

'People are missing. Those walkers Moira mentioned. If there's something dangerous in those woods-'

'They'll think we're mad, just as they thought Callum Fraser was.' I pushed my toast around the plate. 'Do you want to end up in the Stratharden psychiatric unit near Perth, telling doctors about pale creatures with metallic teeth?'

Elliot remained quiet for a long time.

'So we do nothing? Let other people walk into that glen?'

'What choice do we have?'

He did not answer, but I could see him working through the problem as he worked through code, searching for a logical solution to something that defied logic.

The remainder of the journey to Glasgow took another hour.

Bracken had stopped whimpering, but he lay in the back of the pickup like a broken thing, staring at nothing. Every few minutes, he gave a faint whine that cut through me.

We reached our rented tenement flat on Day 4, scarcely a day after the first light had appeared by the camp. The building looked exactly as it had when we left, but climbing the familiar stairs felt like entering somebody else's life.

The close smelled of cooking and cleaning products instead of pine, smoke and mountain air. Those ordinary smells should have comforted me. Instead, they felt alien.

Inside the flat, I went straight to the bathroom and turned the shower as hot as I could bear. I scrubbed until my skin was red and raw. I washed my hair three times, but I could not feel clean.

Whenever I closed my eyes, I saw the bottomless black sockets. I heard metallic clicking that sounded almost like laughter.

When I emerged, Elliot sat on the sofa with his laptop, typing furiously. Bracken lay in his bed by the window, but his head was raised and his ears were alert, as though he were listening for something.

'What are you doing?'

'Research.' Elliot did not look away from the screen. 'Missing-person reports from that area. Geological surveys. Anything that might explain what we saw.'

I put on clean clothes and sat beside him.

The screen showed a map of the mountains around Devil's Burn, marked with red dots. There were too many.

'Fourteen people over twelve years,' Elliot said. 'All in roughly the same area. Some were found. Others weren't. The ones who came back were like Callum Fraser - dehydrated, incoherent and talking about things in the woods.'

'And the ones who weren't found?'

'Gone. The local mountain rescue team and Police Scotland found torn campsites and blood, but no bodies.'

I thought of Alfie and Tess, of how swiftly those things had carried them away and how abruptly their cries had stopped.

'We should have tried harder to save them.'

Elliot closed the laptop and looked at me.

'There was nothing we could have done. You saw how fast those things moved.'

Knowing that did not lessen the guilt. Bracken had lost his packmates, and we had run. It had been the only sensible choice, perhaps the only possible one, but it still felt like abandonment.

I reached into the pocket of my outer jacket for my mobile and touched something wet. When I withdrew my hand, my fingers were stained black.

It was the same dark liquid that had sprayed from the creature Elliot shot.

'Elliot.' I held up my hand. 'This was on my jacket.'

He stared at the stain.

'It must have hit you when I shot that thing. Its blood.'

The liquid did not smell like blood. It smelt of metal and something else, something organic and wrong.

I went to the kitchen sink and scrubbed my hands until the skin was raw, but the odour remained.

'I'm burning this jacket.'

Elliot did not object.

We sealed the contaminated jacket in a metal bin and carried it into the tenement's enclosed shared yard. Panic overrode any thought of rules or neighbours. We lit the old brazier and fed the jacket into the flames piece by piece.

The fabric burnt wrongly, too quickly, producing smoke that made my eyes water. Once it was gone, I felt a little better, but not clean.

Not truly.

Bracken would not eat his dinner. I set his bowl down, and he stared at it as though he had forgotten what food was. When I tried to coax him, he turned away and pressed his face against the wall.

'He's grieving,' I told Elliot. 'Dogs form pack bonds. Losing Alfie and Tess is like losing family.'

Elliot nodded, but he watched Bracken with the same worried expression he had worn since we left the glen, as though waiting for something else to go wrong.

That night, I lay in bed and listened to Elliot breathing beside me, but sleep would not come.

Every time I began to drift, I heard clicking inside the walls: rapid metallic conversations that might have been the tenement settling, or might have been something else.

I got up to check on Bracken. He was awake in his bed, staring at the window with his ears pricked forwards. When he saw me, he whined softly, then looked back at the glass as though trying to tell me something.

'What is it, boy?'

I drew the curtain aside and looked into the enclosed yard and the lane beyond. Everything was empty apart from our damaged pickup and a few other vehicles beneath the security lights.

Nothing moved. Nothing seemed wrong.

But Bracken continued staring, his whole body taut.

I was about to return to bed when I saw the marks in the brickwork outside our window.

Three parallel lines had been scored deeply into the masonry. They were too high for a person to reach without a ladder and too precise to be accidental damage.

I released the curtain and backed away from the window.

Bracken whined again, and this time I understood what he had been trying to tell me.

They knew where we lived.

Two weeks passed before I could sleep through the night.

Elliot fitted a British Standard mortice deadlock to the front door and reinforced the windows with sash jammers. He installed a monitored alarm system with cameras and motion sensors, then spent hours programming it as though he were building a fortress rather than protecting a tenement flat.

We never spoke directly about what had happened, but I caught him checking the windows after dark. I saw him inspect the locked gun cabinet and verify that the rifle and ammunition were secured separately, while keeping the keys close at night.

He researched missing-person cases until his eyes turned red. He printed maps and unofficial Police Scotland incident-report copies obtained through a local contact, then hid them in a folder he thought I knew nothing about.

I looked up Callum Fraser online and found articles about his breakdown and interviews with relatives who insisted he had been perfectly ordinary before the autumn walking trip eighteen months earlier. He had been the sole recovered member of a three-person party. There was a photograph of him from before, smiling and healthy, holding a fish beside a mountain loch.

He looked like Elliot. Like me. Like someone who had never hurt anybody or invented stories for attention.

The clicking returned in my dreams. Not every night, but often enough that I began drinking coffee after dinner, anything to remain awake a little longer.

Elliot noticed but said nothing. He had his own ways of avoiding sleep.

Bracken still would not eat properly. The vet could find nothing physically wrong, but I knew what troubled him. He was waiting for Alfie and Tess to come home, listening for their tags in the close and their paws on the stairs.

Some nights, I found him gazing at their empty beds and whimpering so quietly that I could barely hear.

'He's depressed,' I told Elliot one morning as Bracken ignored his breakfast again. 'Dogs can suffer from post-traumatic stress just as people can.'

Elliot looked up from his laptop, where he had been reading another missing-person report.

'Perhaps we should find him a companion. Another dog.'

I knew it would not help. Bracken did not want a new packmate. He wanted Alfie and Tess, the dogs we had failed to protect.

The factors had painted over the scratches in the outside wall, but I knew they remained beneath the fresh paint. Sometimes I caught Bracken staring at that place, ears forwards, as though listening to something I could not hear.

Three weeks after we returned home, I began checking missing-person websites myself, searching for patterns. I looked for walkers who had vanished along the route we had taken towards Glasgow, and for campers missing from forestry and country-park campsites between Devil's Burn and the city.

I found nothing.

Not yet.

Still, I kept looking, because some part of me knew this was not finished. Those things had seen our faces and learnt our scent. They had taken Alfie and Tess, but we had escaped.

In my worst moments, that felt less like mercy than a choice. I feared they might have decided we were more useful alive than dead, though I had no evidence and no idea why.

The call came three months after the camping trip, at 02:47 on a Tuesday. It jolted me from the sort of deep sleep I had only recently learnt to trust again.

Elliot answered before I was fully awake, his voice thick with confusion.

'Hello?'

I rolled over and checked the caller display. The number was withheld, and the sight of it made my stomach tighten.

'This is Moira Campbell from the village shop in Muirloch.' Her voice carried clearly through the phone, taut with what might have been fear. 'I need to speak to Hannah Mercer.'

Elliot handed me the mobile. His face was already alert in the way that meant trouble. I sat upright, suddenly wide awake.

'This is Hannah.'

'I'm sorry to ring so late, but I didn't know who else to contact. You remember Callum Fraser, the man I told you about?'

My mouth went dry.

'The walker who went missing.'

'He was the only one of his party they ever recovered. They detained him at Stratharden for psychiatric treatment afterwards, but he escaped three days ago. He came straight back towards Devil's Burn.'

Moira's voice trembled.

'The mountain rescue team found him yesterday morning, working with Police Scotland. He was near the burn, but he's not well. He was covered in that black substance again and could barely speak.'

Elliot leaned closer, trying to hear both sides, so I put the call on speaker.

'Before he stopped talking completely, he gave me a message,' Moira continued. 'He said it was for the couple with the dogs who got away. That's you, isn't it?'

I looked at Elliot and saw my own dread in his face.

'What did he say?'

'Those things you encountered aren't from the woods. They live underground in the abandoned nineteenth-century copper workings beneath the glen. Callum found their nest eighteen months ago. He went down into the workings somehow. He said there were hundreds of them in the dark.'

The room seemed to turn cold. I pulled the duvet round my shoulders, but it did not help.

'He said they marked him during that first encounter. That's why he kept returning. Why he couldn't stay away. They always knew where he was and could track him however far he ran. Stratharden couldn't keep him because something was calling him back.'

'Why are you telling us this?' Elliot asked.

Moira was silent for a moment.

'Because Callum said they've been following your scent trail. Three families have disappeared from campsites along the route you drove towards Glasgow that night. The pattern is moving closer to the city. Closer to you.'

My hands began to shake. I tightened my grip on the mobile and tried to keep my voice steady.

'Which families?'

'The MacLeod family disappeared roughly 65 kilometres along the route from Devil's Burn. Their pitch was found torn apart, just like the walking party eighteen months ago. Then the Pritchard family vanished from another site about 30 kilometres farther towards Glasgow.'

Moira paused.

'Last week, the Zielinski family disappeared from a country-park campsite less than 100 kilometres from your flat.'

Elliot was already out of bed and moving towards his laptop.

'The same pattern,' Moira said. 'Destroyed pitches, blood, but no bodies. People camping nearby reported strange lights amongst the trees and clicking that continued for hours.'

She drew a shaky breath.

'Callum said they're hunting you. Following your trail home.'

I thought of the scratches outside our window and of Bracken's behaviour: more alert, more anxious, as though he were waiting for something terrible to arrive.

'How long do we have?'

'I don't know. Callum seemed to think they were close. Very close.'

Elliot had opened his laptop, and his fingers flew over the keyboard.

'I'm finding reports about those missing families now.'

'There's something else,' Moira said. 'Callum mentioned the copper workings specifically. He said that was where they came from, when the glen was excavated in the nineteenth century. The miners disturbed something that should have remained buried.'

'How do we stop them?'

'I don't think you can. Callum tried for eighteen months. Perhaps you can run far enough and fast enough. Find somewhere they cannot follow.'

Elliot looked up from the screen.

'The reports match what she's saying. Three families, all along our route towards Glasgow. All within the last month.'

A sound from the sitting room made both of us freeze.

Bracken's low growl, the one he made only when something was seriously wrong.

'I have to go,' I whispered to Moira.

'Be careful. And if you see Callum again, don't trust him completely. Whatever those things did to him below the glen changed him. He's trying to help, but he isn't entirely himself any more.'

I ended the call and followed Elliot into the sitting room.

Bracken stood at the window with his hackles raised, staring through the blinds with an intensity that made my skin crawl.

Elliot took the deer-stalking rifle from the secured cabinet while I crept towards the window. Through a gap in the blinds, I could see the tenement's enclosed shared yard washed in the yellow glow of the security lights. Wheelie bins, familiar shadows, nothing out of place.

Then I saw it.

A figure stood beside the metal bin where we had burnt my contaminated jacket, perhaps 45 metres from our building. It was tall and perfectly still, like a statue someone had placed in the yard. Even at that distance, I could see the unnatural length of its arms and the way its head tilted at an impossible angle.

'Elliot.'

I barely breathed his name. He moved beside me with the rifle ready and looked through the blinds.

'Jesus Christ.'

The thing remained there for perhaps thirty seconds, motionless apart from its tilted head, which slowly turned in our direction as if it were listening. Searching.

Then it was gone. It did not walk or run away. One moment it was there and the next it had vanished, as though it had never existed.

Bracken's growling deepened. He pawed at the window as if desperate to get outside and chase whatever had been watching us.

'Pack the emergency bags,' Elliot said. His voice was steady despite the fear in his eyes. 'We leave in ten minutes.'

I was already moving towards the bedroom, grabbing the bags we had prepared weeks earlier. Clothes, the sterling notes from our emergency fund, documents and everything else we would need to disappear for a while. Elliot opened the separate locked ammunition case and filled the spare wallet while I packed Bracken's food and lead into another bag.

'Where are we going?'

'Your parents' place. Near Canterbury. Nearly five hundred miles away.'

He secured the ammunition separately from the rifle.

'It should buy us some time to work out what to do.'

But even as he said it, I heard the doubt in his voice. Callum Fraser had run as well, and they had found him anyway. They had marked him somehow, made it impossible for him to escape.

I was fastening the last bag when I heard it.

Faint, but unmistakable.

The clicking that had haunted my dreams for three months.

This time it was not coming from outside. It seemed to be inside the walls themselves.

Rapid metallic exchanges echoed through the structure of the tenement. Elliot heard them too. His face drained of colour as he settled the secured gun slip over his shoulder and took the locked ammunition case in his free hand.

'They're here.'

Bracken's barking became frantic. I clipped on his lead with shaking hands. The clicking grew louder and more complex, coming from several directions at once, as if they were coordinating and planning something.

We reached the pickup in under five minutes. We threw the bags into the back while Bracken paced anxiously in the cab. Elliot secured the rifle and ammunition for transport, started the engine and pulled away from the tenement on dipped headlights. He avoided the main route until we were clear of the building, taking quiet side streets through the sleeping city.

As we reached the end of the road, I looked back at our tenement and saw them.

Three pale figures stood on the roof, perfectly motionless, watching us drive away. One raised an elongated arm in a gesture that might have been a wave or a promise.

Elliot drove through the night while I watched the mirrors, searching for pure white lights moving too quickly and shapes that did not belong on empty roads.

Bracken curled up between us, whining softly, as though he knew we were running from something that could not be outrun.

The clicking had stopped, but I could still hear it in my memory: patient, persistent, drawing closer with every passing day. Callum Fraser had tried to warn people, and the knowledge had helped drive him into Stratharden psychiatric unit. Now we carried the same burden, the same terrible truth that no one would believe.

Somewhere behind us, in the abandoned nineteenth-century copper workings beneath the glen around Devil's Burn, hundreds of pale figures were stirring. They were following a scent trail that led straight to us, no matter how far we ran.

Yet as Glasgow receded behind us, another thought took hold. Perhaps every mile of our escape was only extending that trail, carrying it towards new places and new people.

And I had the sinking feeling that our continued flight might be serving some purpose of theirs that I could not begin to understand.