The River That Ran Backwards

I left Glasgow around noon on Friday with my dark green Subaru estate packed tight and its petrol tank full. I took the A82 north, then the A887 and the A831 towards Cannich and Glen Affric. The journey took about three and a half hours. I could have made better time without the forestry lorries near Fort Augustus, but I wasn't in a hurry.

The trip had been Nadia's idea. She wanted one last camping weekend before she moved to London. She had secured a consultancy job there, though I could never remember her exact title.

Her tenancy began on 1 February, which left us late January. It wasn't ideal camping weather, but rain was hardly unusual in the western Highlands. I reckoned we could manage it.

I didn't mind the drive. Beyond Drumnadrochit, the trees grew thicker, that dense Highland woodland which could turn the daylight green even at midday. The Subaru handled the bends easily. I kept the heating low and my mobile plugged in, playing a playlist I had made at college and never updated.

Nadia texted when I was twenty minutes away.

Almost there. Gareth's driving like a gran.

I sent back a thumbs-up.

The campsite entrance had green Forestry and Land Scotland signage, an unattended timber reception shelter and an honesty-payment box filled with paper envelopes. I pulled in beside the site map. A couple of other cars stood in the little car park, but nobody was nearby. I got out and stretched.

Cold air. The smell of wet woodland. Moss over everything.

The map showed loops of tent pitches, a toilet block and the road continuing for roughly a mile and a half to Affric Lodge. I had visited once before, perhaps five years earlier. It hadn't changed.

Nadia's car arrived about ten minutes later. It was a silver Skoda Octavia, with Gareth at the wheel. Nadia climbed out of the passenger side as if she had been waiting for permission to move. Her black hair was tied back, and she wore a green jacket I recognised from previous trips.

"Callum," she said.

It wasn't a question, merely an acknowledgement.

"Hello."

Gareth emerged more slowly. He was tall and solidly built, and always moved with the controlled posture of someone demonstrating correct form. He was a physiotherapist, and it showed. Every movement was deliberate.

"Good drive?" he asked.

"Fine. Yours?"

"Scenic."

Nadia rolled her eyes.

"He wouldn't go over fifty-five."

"The limit was fifty," Gareth said.

He wasn't defensive, merely factual. I liked Gareth well enough, but we had little in common. He was protective of Nadia in the manner of an older brother and relentlessly practical. He always had the right equipment and the right answer. I respected that, although it could become tiring.

"Jamie texted," Nadia said. "He's close."

Jamie Pritchard. I hadn't seen him for perhaps a year. We had shared a flat while attending a further education college for two terms, before I moved on. He was easy company and never took anything seriously, which could be either refreshing or exhausting, depending on the day.

"Is he bringing gear?" Gareth asked.

Nadia shrugged. "He said he had stuff."

That probably meant he didn't.

We waited another fifteen minutes. I leant against my estate while Nadia checked her mobile. Gareth studied the information board as if it might reveal something useful.

Jamie's battered old Ford Ranger pickup arrived shortly after 14:00. It had a dent in the rear bumper. He parked at an angle and jumped out grinning.

"This is it, then?" he said. "The middle of nowhere."

"That's the idea," I said.

He came over and clapped me on the shoulder.

"Callum, mate, how long has it been?"

"A while."

"Too long."

Jamie looked much the same: hoodie, jeans and stubble he probably imagined looked intentional. He carried a blue cool box in one hand.

"Is that all you brought?" Gareth asked.

"There's a sleeping bag in the back," Jamie said. "I'm sorted."

Gareth's expression didn't alter, but I could tell he was filing the information away. Nadia smiled faintly. She had probably expected nothing else.

"Let's find a pitch," I said.

We drove slowly around the loop. Most of the pitches were empty. January was hardly peak season. We chose one near the middle, with level ground for the tents, a fire ring, a weathered picnic table and trees pressing close on three sides. We could hear the River Affric from there, not loudly, but constantly.

I reversed the Subaru into place and switched off the engine. The others parked nearby.

We began unloading. I had a two-person tent, a sleeping bag rated to minus 7 degrees Celsius, a camping stove, food in a secure canister, extra layers, a head torch, a first-aid kit and the usual odds and ends. Gareth had a similar arrangement, along with spare rope and a tarpaulin. Nadia travelled light but intelligently, with compact gear and nothing wasted. Jamie had his cool box, a thin-looking sleeping bag and a rucksack containing perhaps two days' worth of clothes.

"Do you need a tent?" Gareth asked him.

"I thought I'd kip in somebody else's."

Gareth looked at me.

"He can use mine," I said. "It's a two-person tent."

"Cheers, mate," Jamie said.

We set up in the late-afternoon light. The ground was damp but not waterlogged. I pitched my tent and fitted the flysheet in about twenty minutes. Gareth took longer because he was exact about every peg and guy line. Nadia had hers up quickly. Jamie helped by standing around making remarks.

"Do you need that many pegs? What's the tarp for?"

That sort of thing.

Once the tents were ready, we collected firewood from the stack beside the reception shelter. It cost four pounds per net. Gareth bought three and I bought one. We carried them back and stacked them beside the fire ring.

By the time we finished, the light was turning grey. It wasn't quite sunset, but it was close. The temperature fell rapidly once the sun slipped behind the trees.

"Spa pools?" Nadia asked.

"Yes," I said. "That's still the plan, isn't it?"

"Definitely."

We squeezed into Gareth's Skoda because it was the cleanest vehicle. Affric Lodge stood about a mile and a half along the road. I remembered it as a small, isolated place with a main lodge, several cabins, a restaurant and heated outdoor spa pools built into the hillside.

There was a visitor charge, but it was worth paying. At reception, an older woman in glasses took our money and handed us wristbands.

"The pools close at 21:00," she said.

"Understood," Gareth replied.

The changing rooms were basic: concrete floors, wooden benches and metal lockers. I stripped, pulled on my swimming shorts and put my clothes away. The air smelt of chlorine and warm mineral water.

Steam rose from the pools outside. There were three of them at different temperatures, with the hottest at the top of the slope and the coolest at the bottom. We started in the middle.

The heat settled into my shoulders without being so fierce that I couldn't remain in it. I sank to my neck and closed my eyes for a moment.

"This is brilliant," Jamie said.

He was already floating on his back. Nadia sat on the ledge with her legs in the water.

"Worth the drive."

Gareth nodded. He didn't say much, but he looked relaxed, which was rare for him.

We stayed until our skin wrinkled, moving between the pools and talking about nothing important. Nadia mentioned London a couple of times but didn't linger on it. Jamie told a story about his warehouse job. I only half listened.

It was completely dark when we left. We walked back to the Skoda loose-limbed and warm, with that post-soak feeling that made everything seem slightly unreal. The cold air was pleasant after the heat.

On the drive back, Jamie turned up a classic-rock programme on the local radio. Nadia sang along with a verse or two. Gareth drove as carefully as before.

The campsite was silent. There was nobody at the neighbouring pitches, only us. We built a fire with crumpled newspaper and kindling. I wasn't particularly good at fires, but Gareth had it roaring within ten minutes.

We sat around it on the benches and two folding chairs Gareth had brought. Jamie opened his cool box and handed out cans of lager. I took one. Nadia did too. Gareth drank water.

We talked and laughed. Jamie told another story. Nadia asked about my work, and I gave her the short version. There was nothing exciting to report. I was still doing path maintenance for Forestry and Land Scotland, as I had been the previous year.

The fire gradually burnt lower. I added two more logs.

The warmth was welcome, but beyond the firelight the darkness was dense. There was no moon, only trees and the sound of the river.

It was close to midnight when I heard the scream.

A woman's scream. High, sharp and wrong. It came from the direction of the river and sounded close, perhaps a hundred metres away.

I shot to my feet. My chair scraped backwards.

"What was that?" Nadia asked.

"You heard it?"

"Yes."

Gareth was already standing. Jamie looked bewildered.

"Heard what?"

"Somebody screamed," I said.

I snatched my head torch from the picnic table and switched it on. Its beam cut through the darkness but did not reach far. I pulled out my mobile. There was no signal at all.

"We should check," I said.

Gareth nodded. Nadia stood as well, her face taut. Jamie remained seated.

"Check what? I didn't hear anything."

"A scream," Nadia said. "From the river."

"Are you sure?"

I had already taken three steps towards the trees when Gareth stopped me.

"Callum, wait."

I turned. His posture had changed, his arms loose at his sides. He had adopted the calm manner he used when he was about to explain why somebody was overreacting.

"We should investigate," I said. "Someone might need help."

Gareth shook his head once.

"That was an animal."

"It sounded human."

"Foxes and deer can make sounds people mistake for human voices, especially at night." He glanced towards the trees, then back at me. "Sound behaves strangely in a glen. It carries and echoes."

I didn't believe him. The scream had been sharp and unmistakable. It had cut through the air in a way that felt specific, unlike any animal call I had heard.

"I know what I heard."

"I'm not saying you didn't hear something," Gareth replied, still patient. "I'm saying it probably wasn't what you think it was."

Nadia edged closer to the fire, her arms folded and her jacket pulled tight.

"Even if it was a person, what are we meant to do? Wander through the forest in the dark?"

"We could try."

"And then what?"

She raised her eyebrows at me.

"Trip over roots? Get lost? We have no mobile signal and no light beyond what we're carrying."

I wanted to argue, but she had a point. The woodland beyond the campsite loop was dense, with thick undergrowth, fallen timber and uneven ground. My head torch would give me perhaps six metres of clear visibility. If somebody was injured, blundering about blindly would not help them.

Still, the scream sat wrongly in my chest.

"We could drive to the lodge," I said. "Find a telephone and call someone."

Gareth breathed out slowly, almost but not quite sighing.

"Callum, I understand that you're worried, but think it through. We drive up there, disturb the staff and tell them we heard one scream that we can't locate and know nothing else about. What do you expect them to do?"

I didn't answer.

"They'll tell us what I just did. Animals can sound human. It happens." He rubbed the back of his neck. "If we hear it again, or find something concrete in the morning, that's different. At present, there is nothing useful we can act upon."

I hated how reasonable that sounded.

Jamie was still by the fire, lager in hand, watching us with a half-amused expression.

"You're both certain you heard something?"

"Yes," I said.

Nadia hesitated, then nodded. "I heard it."

"Right." Jamie shrugged. "I didn't, and I was sitting here."

He tipped his can towards Gareth.

"I'm with him. Probably some strange animal noise."

Nadia unfolded her arms and looked at me for a moment before turning towards her tent.

"I'm going to bed. There is nothing useful we can do tonight."

Gareth nodded. "Good idea."

Then he glanced at me.

"Get some sleep, Callum. If there's anything to investigate in the morning, we'll investigate it."

I remained there with the head torch still shining between the trees. My mobile was useless. The lodge was a mile and a half away, and I didn't have Gareth's keys. Even if I walked, I would be doing exactly what Nadia had warned against, stumbling through darkness for no clear purpose.

Jamie finished his lager, stood and stretched.

"I'm done as well."

He walked to my tent, unzipped it without asking and crawled inside. Ten seconds later, I heard his sleeping bag rustle.

Gareth kicked earth over part of the fire, then put on one final log.

"Leave it low. It'll go out by itself."

He went to his tent and zipped it closed.

I sat on the bench again. The fire crackled softly, throwing shadows over the picnic table and the trees beyond. I fastened my head torch around my wrist and, every few minutes, aimed it towards the place from which the scream had come.

Nothing moved. There was no sound except the river and the occasional snap from the fire.

I don't know how long I stayed there. Perhaps an hour, perhaps two. My mobile showed that it was after 01:00 when I finally gave up and entered the tent.

Jamie was asleep, snoring gently and occupying more than his half of the space. I squeezed into my sleeping bag and lay awake, listening.

The scream did not return.

Grey, damp morning light filtered through the tent fabric at about 06:30. Birds called everywhere outside. Jamie remained asleep, so I opened the zip as quietly as possible and climbed out.

The campsite looked ordinary. The fire ring contained ash and half-burnt wood. The picnic table stood where we had left it. Gareth's Skoda was parked at the edge of the gravel. Nadia's tent was closed, as was Gareth's.

I walked to the boundary of the pitch and looked towards the River Affric. The brush concealed it, but I could hear its steady, low rush. I considered going down to look.

Gareth's voice from the previous night remained in my head, though, and I had no idea what I expected to find.

I turned back towards the tents. That was when I saw the first loop.

It hung from a branch at eye level, a small circle of birch bark perhaps fifteen centimetres across, fastened with green fishing line. It was rough and handmade, nothing like an object from a shop.

I stepped nearer. The bark was fresh and retained its raw scent.

Then I looked to my left and saw another.

It was the same size, tied with the same green line and suspended from a different branch about three metres away. Then I noticed a third.

I walked slowly around the perimeter, counting. There were eight in total. They were unevenly spaced but formed a rough ring around our pitch. Every loop hung at eye level. Every one was bound with green fishing line.

My stomach tightened.

A zip opened behind me. Gareth emerged from his tent, stretched and looked around. When he noticed me at the edge of the pitch, he came over.

"Morning."

I pointed to the nearest loop.

"Do you see that?"

He frowned, moved closer and lifted a hand as though to touch it, then stopped.

"Odd."

"There are more. They go all the way round."

Gareth walked the perimeter with me. He said nothing until we had completed the circle. Then he stood with his hands on his hips, staring at one of the loops.

"Strange," he said. "They might have been here yesterday and we didn't notice."

I shook my head. "I would have seen them. I was all over this pitch while we were setting up."

Gareth neither argued nor agreed. He merely kept looking.

Jamie's voice came from behind us.

"What are you two doing?"

He stood outside my tent in tracksuit bottoms and a hoodie, squinting in the weak light.

"Come and see this," I said.

He wandered over, saw the loop and shrugged.

"All right?"

"There are eight of them around the pitch."

Jamie glanced at another, then back at me.

"So?"

"They weren't here yesterday."

"Perhaps they were. Or some child has been messing about. People leave rubbish at campsites all the time."

He yawned.

"It's only bark and string."

"Fishing line."

"Whatever."

He turned towards the picnic table.

"I'm making coffee. Does anybody want one?"

Gareth followed him.

I remained beside the loops. Nadia's tent opened and she stepped out with her hair tied in the same ponytail as the day before and her jacket zipped to her chin.

She noticed me by the trees and approached.

"What's wrong?"

I pointed. She examined the loop. Her expression remained unchanged, but her shoulders tightened.

She moved past me and followed the perimeter, stopping at each loop. She never touched them. She simply looked.

After seeing all eight, she returned to my side. Her gaze moved methodically across the tree line.

"Do you think somebody came here last night?" I asked quietly.

She didn't answer at once.

"I don't know."

"Jamie thinks they're rubbish."

"Jamie thinks everything is rubbish."

Her voice was flat. She went to the next loop, inspected it closely, then looked beyond it into the woodland as though counting or measuring something.

I followed her gaze. There was nothing obvious, only trees, undergrowth and morning shadows. Yet the way she studied the angles and distances tightened my chest again.

She walked the entire perimeter a second time, more slowly. She examined every gap between the trees and every possible route away from the pitch. At the edge nearest the road, she stared along the empty campsite loop for several seconds before turning towards the river.

When she came back, her face was calm. Too calm.

"What is it?" I asked.

"Nothing."

She looked directly at me.

"I'm just noticing things."

"What sort of things?"

She hesitated.

"Where somebody might approach from, if they wanted to. And where we could go if we needed to leave quickly."

That made the tightness worse.

I looked again at the loops. They no longer seemed random. They looked deliberately placed.

Jamie sat at the picnic table fiddling with a camping stove. Gareth was taking food from his canister. It was all perfectly ordinary morning activity, yet the pitch no longer felt ordinary.

It felt as if we had wandered into something which was already under way. As if the campsite wasn't empty because it was winter, but because other people knew better.

I kept following Nadia's gaze, watching the gaps she watched and listening for movement that never came.

I couldn't rid myself of the thought that the loops were not rubbish.

They were markers.

The toilet block stood about two hundred metres away, down a gravel path which curved between Scots pines and crossed a clearing of packed earth. We walked there at approximately 07:30 because Gareth said that, if we intended to drive anywhere, we should probably use the facilities before breakfast.

Nobody wanted to argue about hygiene with a physiotherapist.

The building was standard Forestry and Land Scotland construction: brown-painted concrete blocks, a pitched metal roof and two doors marked with faded symbols. Inside, it smelt of disinfectant, mildew and something sour beneath both. The toilets were the waterless campsite kind. I finished quickly and washed my hands at an outside tap with water cold enough to make them ache.

Jamie came out after me. He didn't wash his hands, merely wiped them on his jeans. Nadia was already waiting when we regrouped outside. Gareth took his turn last.

We started back along the gravel path. The morning was still grey, not quite misty but saturated with that Highland damp which made it impossible to tell whether it had rained during the night or whether the air had simply become half water. Tiny beads of moisture covered my sleeves.

That was when I saw the boy.

He stood in the middle of the path, perhaps ten metres ahead, watching us approach.

I slowed. Nadia noticed him and placed a hand on my arm. Gareth continued for another two paces before realising what we had seen and stopping.

The boy didn't move. He looked about eleven, perhaps younger. It was difficult to tell.

He was small and narrow-shouldered, dressed as though somebody had chosen clothes from a charity donation bag without checking their size. Black wellington boots reached halfway up his shins. An oversized, faded orange waterproof coat hung past his knees, its sleeves covering part of his hands.

The coat looked old. Not worn to pieces, but as though it had been stored in a shed for a decade. His light brown hair had been cut unevenly, perhaps at home with kitchen scissors by someone indifferent to straight edges.

He simply watched us.

Gareth cleared his throat and stepped forward.

"Hello there."

The boy didn't respond.

Gareth tried again, his voice steady and gentle.

"Are you all right? Are your parents nearby?"

The boy blinked slowly. Then he tilted his head.

"My mother's downriver."

His voice was quiet and flat, entirely without emotion.

Gareth nodded, clearly trying to remain calm and non-threatening.

"All right. And your father?"

The boy looked beyond us, towards the ridge above the campsite.

"My father's up the mountain."

He said it as casually as somebody might say his father had gone to the shops.

I glanced at Nadia. She stared at him with her jaw clenched.

Gareth tried once more.

"Are you out here on your own?"

The boy looked back at him but did not answer.

Instead, he said, "The scream last night was a warning."

My stomach dropped.

Behind me, Jamie made a sound halfway between a laugh and a cough.

"What?"

The boy ignored him. He reached slowly into his coat pocket and withdrew a tangled handful of objects.

They were birch-bark loops like the eight around our pitch, rough little circles tied with green fishing line. There might have been a dozen in his palm.

"You can have one," he said. "Five pounds."

Nobody moved.

He looked straight at me.

"They help."

I had no answer. My mind was struggling with too many things at once: a child alone in the forest, parents supposedly scattered across the landscape, the scream, the loops around our pitch and now these charms being sold as casually as bracelets at a village fete.

Gareth edged closer, his hands visible at his sides.

"What's your name?"

"Alfie Mercer."

"Alfie, where are you staying? Are you camping here?"

Alfie did not reply. He merely held out the loops.

Nadia moved beside me. Her hand remained on my arm, and her grip tightened. She was no longer looking at Alfie. She was searching the trees to our left and right as though she expected someone to emerge.

That was why I reached for my wallet.

It wasn't because I wanted a charm or believed it could do anything. It was because Nadia thought we were being watched, the boy was blocking the path and I wanted the encounter to end.

I took out a five-pound note and stepped forwards. Alfie accepted it without expression, folded it once and tucked it into his coat pocket.

Then he separated one loop from the tangle and offered it to me.

I took it. The birch bark was rough and smelt freshly cut. Four knots had been tied at even intervals around the green fishing line.

"Keep it with you," Alfie said.

"All right."

He looked at the others. Nobody moved. Jamie regarded him as though he were part of an elaborate practical joke.

Alfie returned the remaining loops to his pocket. Then he stepped off the path, entered the undergrowth and walked between the trees without looking back.

Just like that, he was gone.

We stood there for perhaps ten seconds. I could hear the river, an unfamiliar bird and my own breathing.

"What the hell was that?" Jamie said.

Gareth continued staring at the place where Alfie had vanished.

"We should find his parents."

Nadia shook her head.

"We should leave."

"He's a child alone in the woods."

"He didn't seem lost," I said.

I wasn't certain why I said it, but it was true. Alfie hadn't seemed frightened, confused or lonely. He had seemed purposeful.

Gareth turned to me.

"Do you honestly believe his mother is downriver and his father is up a mountain?"

I shrugged.

"I don't know."

"We should report it."

"Yes," Nadia said. "We should. Let's go."

She set off towards the campsite at a brisk pace. I followed. Gareth hesitated before coming after us. Jamie muttered something I couldn't hear.

When we reached the pitch, Gareth said we should drive to the ranger office. Nobody objected.

We didn't pack or eat breakfast. We climbed into Gareth's Skoda, with Nadia in the front and Jamie and me in the back, then drove towards the campsite entrance.

The Forestry and Land Scotland office stood close to the entrance, a short drive beyond the reception shelter. I had noticed it when I arrived but paid little attention. It was a small timber building with a single vehicle outside: a white Forestry and Land Scotland pickup with green markings.

We parked beside it and went in. Low cloud hid the ridge, and the air remained cold and damp.

The office consisted of one room containing a desk, a filing cabinet, a wall map and a noticeboard covered in advice about deer, fires and responsible access.

A countryside ranger stood behind the desk, sorting paperwork. He looked up.

"Morning."

He was in his mid-forties, stocky, with close-cropped sandy hair greying at the temples. He wore Forestry and Land Scotland workwear, an identification badge and a radio clipped to his belt. His badge read MARTIN VALE.

"Morning," Gareth said. "We need to report something."

Martin Vale put down his pen.

"What's happened?"

Gareth glanced at me, so I stepped forwards.

"We're staying at the woodland campsite. At about midnight, we heard a scream from the direction of the river. It sounded human, like a woman."

Vale's expression didn't change.

"Did you hear it more than once?"

"No, only once. It lasted perhaps two seconds. It was sharp and high-pitched."

Vale nodded and clicked his pen twice.

"Probably a fox."

"It didn't sound like an animal."

"Foxes can sound remarkably human," he said, patient but firm. "Particularly at night, when a call carries through the trees. Deer make some alarming noises as well. People mistake them for screams all the time."

Nadia spoke from behind me.

"We also found loops of fresh birch bark around our pitch this morning. Eight of them, tied with green fishing line. We didn't put them there."

Vale stopped clicking his pen.

"Loops?"

"They form a ring around the whole pitch," I said.

He put down the pen.

"They were probably left by previous campers. People perform ceremonies, leave offerings, tie things up for luck or protection. It happens."

"They weren't there when we arrived."

"Are you certain?"

His steady look made me feel like a tourist incapable of distinguishing a deer print from a boot mark.

"Fairly certain. I would have seen them while pitching the tents."

"You might have missed them. Or somebody from another pitch could have wandered through."

"There was a boy as well," Gareth said.

Vale's attention shifted to him.

"A boy?"

"On the path to the toilet block this morning. He was alone and said his name was Alfie Mercer. He claimed his mother was downriver and his father was up the mountain. He was selling birch-bark charms."

Vale frowned and pulled a clipboard from beside the desk. He leafed through several pages.

"No missing children have been reported in the area, and there are no Mercers on the overnight registrations this weekend."

"He was definitely there," I said.

"He could be visiting for the day, staying at Affric Lodge or from a local family who know the glen. Did he appear distressed?"

I thought of Alfie's empty voice, his slow blink and the ease with which he had disappeared among the trees.

"No."

"Then he's probably fine. If you see him again and he appears lost or injured, report it."

Gareth opened his mouth to object, but Vale was already turning away.

"I bought one of his charms," I said.

Vale looked back at me. "May I see it?"

I took the loop from my jacket pocket and placed it on the desk.

His expression changed as soon as he saw it. The movement was slight but unmistakable: his jaw tightened, and something flickered across his face before he smoothed it away.

He did not touch the charm at first.

"Where have you been keeping it?"

"In my pocket. I only bought it about twenty minutes ago."

"You've been carrying it since then?"

"Yes."

His eyes remained fixed on the loop and its four evenly spaced knots.

"Where exactly did you meet the boy?"

"On the path to the toilet block," Gareth said. "Roughly halfway along."

Vale nodded slowly. At last, he picked up the charm, though reluctantly. He turned it over twice and rubbed the birch bark between his fingers.

"Harmless," he said. "A souvenir."

His hands were steady.

"He made these?"

"He had a pocketful," I said. "He claimed they help."

"Help with what?"

"He didn't say."

Vale set the loop on the desk and leant back, making his chair creak.

"People sell things like this all the time. Trinkets and lucky charms. Visitors buy them."

Nadia shifted beside me.

"He wasn't selling them to visitors. He was standing in the middle of a campsite path at half past seven in the morning."

Vale shrugged.

"He may be staying at the lodge with his family. Some parents allow their children more freedom than others. He may simply be trying to earn a few pounds."

"He said his mother was downriver," Gareth repeated. "And his father was up the mountain."

"Then it sounds as though he knew where they were."

Vale opened a drawer, took out a small notepad and wrote something we couldn't see.

"I'll check Affric Lodge and ask whether a family matching his description is staying there. I'll make enquiries. In all likelihood, you'll see him again before I do. If you do, tell him to remain with his parents."

Gareth nodded. I didn't.

"And the scream?" Nadia asked. Her voice was tight. "You're saying that was an animal, the boy is fine and the loops mean nothing?"

Vale met her gaze.

"I'm saying there is no evidence of an emergency. You heard a sound consistent with local wildlife. You met a child who was not in distress. You found bark tied with fishing line. None of those things requires an emergency response."

"What if somebody is hurt out there?" I asked.

"If someone were missing or injured, we would generally have a report, an abandoned vehicle, or somebody failing to return when expected. We have none of that. We have four campers who probably heard a fox."

"Only three of us heard it," Jamie said from beside the noticeboard.

Vale rose, signalling that the conversation was over.

"You are welcome to stay and enjoy the glen. Secure your food properly, stay on marked paths and report anything concrete. I'll check the lodge as promised."

He picked up the charm and held it out to me.

"Here. Don't lose your souvenir."

I took it and pushed it back into my pocket.

Vale looked directly at me.

"And stop feeding the fear. If you hear something strange at night, remember that you're in a forest. Forests are full of strange noises. Most of them mean nothing."

I wanted to ask why his face had changed when he saw the charm. I wanted to know why eight of them had appeared around our pitch if they were merely trinkets.

But Gareth was already heading for the door. Nadia followed him, and Jamie was halfway outside.

I lingered for a moment. Vale was watching me. His gaze dropped to the pocket containing the charm, then returned to my face.

"Have a good day," he said.

I left.

We climbed back into the Skoda. Nobody spoke until Gareth began driving towards the campsite.

"Well, that was useless," Nadia said.

Gareth shook his head. "He's going to check the lodge. That's something."

"He didn't care," I said.

"He wrote it down."

"He wrote something down."

I rested my head against the window. The glass was cold.

"Did you see his face when I showed him the charm?"

Jamie turned towards me in the back seat.

"What about it?"

"It changed. Only for a moment."

"Changed how?"

I didn't know how to explain it.

"As if he recognised it."

Jamie snorted. "Or he thought we were mad and couldn't be bothered dealing with us."

"Maybe," I said. But I didn't think so.

Back at the campsite, Gareth suggested we do something normal. Those were his exact words: "Let's do something normal."

Nadia agreed at once. She was already taking the walking map from the information board and spreading it across the picnic table.

"Plodda Falls. We can drive to the nearby trailhead, and the walk from there is short. Easy path."

I didn't want to go walking. I wanted to sit there, watch the tree line and work out what the loops meant. But Gareth was nodding, Jamie was digging through his cool box for snacks, and Nadia was looking at me with an expression that said, "Please, just go along with it."

So I went along with it.

We locked the food in the storage canisters, left everything else and drove Gareth's silver Skoda Octavia to the trailhead car park. Two other cars were there. That made me feel better. Other people nearby.

The path was broad and well maintained at first, winding through Scots pine, birch and dark stands of spruce. Everything smelt of wet bark, moss and peat. We passed a family with two children, perhaps six or seven, wearing bright pink and blue waterproofs. Their mum smiled at us. Gareth smiled back.

Farther on, the surfaced path gave way to packed earth and gravel. It remained wide and easy. Nadia walked ahead with her mobile out, photographing ferns, exposed roots and beads of water caught on the heather. Jamie walked beside Gareth, talking about some podcast.

I stayed a few steps behind them, my hands in my pockets and my fingers brushing the birch-bark charm.

We heard the falls before we saw them, a low roar that grew as we approached. Then the path curved and opened on to the viewing platform, its wooden boards fixed above the gorge and railings running along the exposed sides. Plodda Falls plunged in a white column over dark rock, crashing into the pool below before the water narrowed and rushed away through the trees.

Mist hung in the air. My face grew damp merely standing there.

Nadia handed her mobile to Gareth and posed beside the railing. Gareth took three photographs. Then Nadia took his mobile and photographed him. After that she waved Jamie and me over and made all four of us squeeze together while she held her own phone at arm's length.

"Smile," she said.

I tried. I think the result looked strange.

We ate lunch on wet rocks near the water below the falls. Nadia had packed chicken-and-cheddar sandwiches on wholemeal bread in food bags. Jamie had crisps. Gareth had satsumas. I ate half my sandwich and couldn't finish the rest.

The roar of the falls was constant, loud enough that none of us spoke much. I sat with my back against a boulder and watched the water pour over the edge, strike the pool and churn into foam. I watched it gather itself into the river and vanish round the bend.

That was when I noticed it.

The sound wasn't right. Or rather, it was right. It sounded exactly as a waterfall should, but beneath the roar and the impact there was something else.

Another current. A second layer of sound travelling in the wrong direction. Not upstream, exactly, but not downstream either.

Sideways, perhaps. Diagonally.

I tilted my head and listened harder. It was there, faint but steady. A hum, a pull, something for which I had no word.

"You all right?"

I looked up. Gareth stood over me with a strip of satsuma peel in one hand and his eyebrows raised.

"Yeah," I said. "Fine."

"You look a bit out of it."

I glanced back at the water. The other sound was still there, still wrong, but I couldn't explain it without sounding deranged.

"Just tired. Didn't sleep much."

Gareth nodded. He understood that.

"We'll take it easy this afternoon. Maybe have a kip before dinner."

"Sure."

He crossed to the rubbish bag Nadia had brought and dropped the peel inside. I remained where I was, listening and trying to decide whether the sound was real or something I had invented.

Perhaps it was the spa pools, or the Scotch Jamie had passed round the previous night. Perhaps it was simply that I had barely slept.

Probably nothing.

I said nothing.

We returned to the campsite a little after 14:00, parked the Skoda in the same place, walked on to our pitch and stopped.

Everything was wrong.

The two folding chairs Gareth had put out the day before had been moved. They now stood side by side, perfectly aligned, both facing the firepit. They weren't crooked or casually placed. Their position was precise.

The cool box stood in the exact centre of the clearing, as though someone had measured the distance from every side. On top of it, resting on a neatly cut square of birch bark, lay a dead pine marten.

It had not been torn apart. There was no blood. It lay intact on its side with its legs tucked in, its eyes half open and its fur slick, dark and wet.

"What the hell?" Jamie said.

Nadia made a small sound in her throat and backed away two steps.

Gareth advanced slowly. He stopped a few metres from the cool box and stared at the pine marten.

"That wasn't here."

"No," I said. "We were only gone a few hours."

Gareth surveyed the pitch, looking from the chairs to the cool box and then to the animal.

"Someone came in here and did this."

"Or something," Nadia said.

Her voice was tight.

Gareth shook his head. "Something didn't line up the chairs."

I walked the perimeter. All eight birch-bark loops remained where we had found them, hanging at eye level and apparently undisturbed. Our tents were still zipped shut. I checked mine; nothing inside seemed to have been touched. Gareth's was the same, and so was Nadia's.

Only the chairs, the cool box and the pine marten had changed.

Jamie scuffed his boot over the gravel. "Maybe it's a prank."

"A prank?" Nadia repeated flatly.

"Yeah. Someone saw us leave and decided to mess with us."

"Who?"

"I don't know. Other campers. Locals. That boy."

Gareth turned towards him. "You think a child moved our chairs and brought us a dead pine marten?"

Jamie shrugged. "I don't know what I think. I'm only saying it's possible."

I approached the cool box and crouched beside it. The square of birch bark was about thirty centimetres across, its four edges cut cleanly. The pine marten smelt of river water and something else, something sour.

"We should go," I said.

Gareth nodded. "Yeah."

"Go where?" Jamie asked.

"Anywhere," Nadia said. "Literally anywhere but here."

Gareth went to his tent and opened it. "We pack up, leave before dark, drive to Drumnadrochit and find somewhere to stay. We can work out the rest in the morning."

"Seriously?" Jamie turned in a circle with his arms spread. "We're leaving because of this?"

"Yes."

"It's a dead animal. A bird of prey might have dropped it. It might have washed out of the river. It might have been here all along and we didn't notice it."

"The chairs weren't like that," I said. "The cool box wasn't there. Someone moved them."

"All right, someone moved them. So what?" Jamie's voice rose. "We're packing up and running because someone played a joke?"

Gareth straightened with his sleeping bag in his hands. "This isn't a joke."

"How do you know?"

"Because it's deliberate. It's staged. And I'm not staying to discover what happens next."

Jamie laughed, but there was no amusement in it.

"You're the one who said the scream was an animal. You're the one who said the loops might already have been there. Now you want to leave?"

"Yes."

"Why? Because now you're frightened?"

Gareth's jaw tightened. He dropped the sleeping bag and took three steps towards Jamie.

"I'm not frightened. I'm being sensible. There is a difference."

"We've been here one night. We drove three and a half hours. We paid for the pitch."

"I don't care."

"I'm tired," Jamie said. "I'm exhausted. I don't want to pack, drive off, find somewhere else and unpack again. I want to sit down, eat dinner and sleep."

"Then stay," Gareth said. "I'm leaving."

Nadia looked at me. I looked at the pine marten.

Jamie shook his head and rubbed both hands over his face. "This is insane. You're all losing it over nothing. We don't even know there's a threat. We haven't any proof."

"What proof do you need?" I asked.

He didn't answer.

Nadia folded her arms and looked at Gareth. "The ranger should deal with it."

I said nothing. I stood with my hands in my pockets, still touching the birch-bark charm.

"We should go back to the office," Nadia continued. "Tell him what happened. Show him this."

Gareth nodded slowly. He was staring at the dead animal, his jaw still set.

"Yeah. All right."

Jamie kicked the ground beside the firepit. "He'll only tell us it's nothing again."

"Maybe," Gareth said. "But we're telling him anyway."

Nadia was already heading towards the Skoda. Gareth followed. I watched them, thinking I ought to go too, but Gareth stopped and turned back.

"Callum, stay here with Jamie. Start taking down some of the gear. We'll be back in fifteen minutes."

I opened my mouth to object, then closed it. It made sense, I supposed. Someone ought to remain with the pitch. Besides, I didn't want to see Martin Vale again. I didn't want to listen to him dismiss us when both of us knew he had recognised the charm.

"All right," I said.

Nadia climbed into the passenger seat and Gareth got behind the wheel. The engine started, and the Skoda reversed off the pitch with gravel crunching beneath its tyres. Then it disappeared, leaving Jamie and me with the dead pine marten between us.

Jamie looked at me.

"What gear are we taking down, then?"

I shrugged. "I don't know. Put things together, I suppose. Make it easier to pack."

"Right."

He went to my tent and dragged out the sleeping bag he had used, letting it trail over the dirt. He threw it into the back of his Ford Ranger without rolling it. That was all his equipment apart from the cool box, which still had the pine marten on top of it.

I began emptying my tent. Sleeping bag first, then my rucksack, followed by the camping stove and fuel canister. I arranged everything in a line on the picnic table. All the while I kept glancing towards the cool box.

The pine marten had not moved, obviously, but the way it lay there, with its legs tucked in and eyes half open, was too careful. Someone had arranged it.

Jamie stood by the firepit with his hands in the pocket of his hoodie.

"You really think someone did this deliberately?"

"Yes."

"Why, though?"

I didn't answer. I had no answer.

It was the neatness that kept working beneath my skin. The chairs aligned perfectly. The cool box centred. The clean-cut square of birch bark deliberately laid beneath the animal. Even the eight loops still hung exactly where they had been that morning, as if whoever had entered the pitch had known not to disturb them.

I took my water bottle from the tent and placed it on the table. Then I walked the perimeter once more, slowly checking every loop.

All eight remained in place. Green fishing line and fresh birch bark.

Jamie watched me. "What are you doing?"

"Looking."

"At what?"

"Making sure nothing else has changed."

He had nothing to say to that.

I completed the circuit and returned to the picnic table. My hands were trembling slightly, so I shoved them back into my pockets.

"They're taking a while," Jamie said.

I checked my mobile. There was still no signal, but the time read 14:23. They had left perhaps eight minutes earlier.

"It's only been a few minutes."

"Yeah."

We stood in silence. The surrounding trees were quiet. There were no birds.

I realised I had not heard any birds since our return from the falls.

Jamie sat in one of the moved chairs, then sprang up as if remembering that someone else had touched it. Instead, he went to the picnic table and leant against it.

"This is stupid," he said.

"What is?"

"All of it. We're panicking over nothing."

I looked at the pine marten. "That isn't nothing."

"It's a dead animal, Callum. Animals die."

"On a cool box? On a square of bark?"

He had no answer.

An engine sounded from the road. I turned as Gareth's Skoda came round the bend and pulled on to the pitch.

Nadia got out first, her face taut. Gareth climbed out and slammed his door.

"Well?" Jamie asked.

"The office is locked," Gareth said. "Lights off. Nobody there."

I stared at him. "What?"

"Locked," Nadia repeated. She walked towards her tent, then stopped and turned back. "And the noticeboard outside, the one with all the leaflets and maps, has been stripped. Completely bare. It looks as though someone tore everything down."

My stomach dropped.

"Vale was there barely an hour ago."

"I know." Gareth rubbed both hands over his face. "I knocked until my knuckles hurt. Nobody answered."

Jamie frowned. "Maybe he went out on patrol."

"Maybe," Gareth said, though he did not sound convinced.

Nadia wrapped her arms around herself. "We saw a pickup. White, with green Forestry and Land Scotland markings. It drove past on the main track while we were outside the office. It didn't slow down or stop. It just carried on."

"Did you wave?" I asked.

"Yes. Gareth ran towards the road. It didn't even brake."

Gareth nodded. "It was as if whoever was inside didn't want to be seen."

No one spoke for several seconds. The silence felt heavy.

Then a drop of water struck my hand. Another landed on my head.

I looked up. The sky had darkened, the clouds hanging low and grey. Rain began to fall in thin sheets, light at first, then rapidly heavier. It was bitterly cold and soaked through the shoulders of my jacket within seconds.

"Brilliant," Jamie muttered.

"Get in the cars," Gareth said. "We're leaving now."

We moved quickly. I snatched my sleeping bag from the table and shoved it into the boot of my dark green Subaru estate. Jamie collected his belongings. Nadia pulled her tent pegs without bothering to clean them. Gareth was already beside the Skoda with his keys out.

He slid behind the wheel and turned the key.

The engine laboured sluggishly, as though the battery were failing, then stopped. Gareth tried again. This time there was only a clicking sound, repeated over and over.

"Come on," he muttered, turning the key once more.

Click, click, click, click.

I went to the driver's window. Gareth lowered it, allowing rain to blow inside.

"The battery's dead," he said.

"How?" Nadia asked from the passenger side. "It was working ten minutes ago."

"I don't know." Gareth struck the steering wheel with his palm. "I don't know."

Jamie came up behind me. "Try again."

Gareth did. The same useless clicking answered him.

My chest tightened. I stepped away, rain streaming down my face, and looked from my Subaru to Jamie's battered Ford Ranger.

"We can try mine," I said.

Gareth got out. I unlocked the Subaru, climbed in and turned the key.

Click, click, click, click.

"Jesus."

Jamie ran to his pickup and tried its ignition. I heard the clicking from where I sat. He climbed out again, his face pale.

"What the hell?"

Three vehicles. Three dead batteries, all at once.

Nadia stood in the rain with her arms clamped around herself. "Someone did this."

Nobody argued.

"We walk," Jamie said. "It's a mile and a half to Affric Lodge. We can manage that."

I looked towards the road. It was exposed and open, with nowhere to hide, and the rain was falling harder by the moment.

"I don't know," I said.

"What do you mean, you don't know?" Jamie's voice rose again. "We can't stay here."

"I mean..." I stopped and tried to think. "The tree cover feels safer."

Gareth looked at me, then at the road and finally towards the trees.

"He's right."

"You're both mad," Jamie said.

"We wait for the worst of the rain to pass," Gareth replied. "Keep the fire going and stay together. When it clears, we move."

Nadia nodded. She looked exhausted.

Jamie flung up his hands. "Fine. Whatever."

We dragged the equipment we had taken out beneath the tarpaulin Gareth had tied between two trees. Rain hammered against it, loud and unceasing. Gareth rebuilt the fire with the driest logs from beneath the cover. After several attempts with newspaper and a lighter, he coaxed it into life. Smoke rose in a narrow column before the rain flattened it.

We sat close together, Nadia on one side of me, Gareth on the other and Jamie across the flames. Nobody said much. The rain continued and the daylight began to fail.

I checked my mobile. It was 15:47, but beneath the heavy sky it looked closer to six in the evening.

The fire cracked. I put on another log and sparks leapt upwards.

Dusk thickened with unnatural speed. The trees became black shapes. Firelight formed a circle perhaps three metres across. Beyond it there was nothing.

I heard something.

Not loud. A single, soft footstep. Deliberate.

I looked up.

Alfie Mercer stood where the firelight thinned into darkness. Rain streamed from his oversized faded orange waterproof coat. His black wellington boots were coated with mud halfway up his shins, but he did not appear cold, wet or troubled.

I rose so quickly that the bench scraped over the gravel.

Nadia seized my wrist. "Callum."

"I see him."

Gareth stood slowly, holding his hands open in the same non-threatening manner he had used on the path.

"Alfie, are you all right?"

Alfie tilted his head. The same slow blink. The same blank expression. He looked at me, not at Gareth.

"The charm only works if it stays with you."

Without thinking, I took the birch-bark loop from my pocket. The bark was damp from rain seeping through my jacket. I held it up.

"This?"

"The one you bought," Alfie said. "It has to stay with the person who paid for it. If you give it away, it stops working."

Jamie made a sound that might have been a laugh or a cough. "Working how?"

Alfie did not look at him. His eyes remained fixed on me.

"The ranger isn't truly the ranger."

Gareth moved a step closer. "What do you mean? Martin Vale?"

"Don't answer if you hear the river pull," Alfie said, still watching me. "It will sound like someone you know, but it won't be them."

Nadia's grip tightened around my wrist.

"Alfie, where are your parents?"

He did not answer. He simply turned and walked away into the rain. He moved neither quickly nor slowly, but with the steady pace of someone who had nowhere urgent to be and all the time in the world to reach it.

His faded orange coat vanished between the trees. I could not hear his footsteps above the rain.

Nobody spoke for perhaps ten seconds. Then Gareth dropped heavily on to the bench and buried his face in his hands.

I turned the charm over in my palm. The green fishing line caught the firelight. I examined it more closely than before.

The knots were not random. Four of them were spaced evenly around the loop, like a tally. Like someone counting.

I remembered Martin Vale's expression when I had shown it to him. That flicker of recognition. The way his jaw had tightened for half a second before his face became smooth again.

He had recognised it. I was certain now.

Then, barely an hour later, his office had been locked and dark, its noticeboard stripped bare.

"We should follow him," Nadia said.

I looked up. She was already standing, staring at the place where Alfie had disappeared.

"Follow him where?" Jamie asked. "He's gone."

"He came from somewhere," Nadia said. "Perhaps his parents are nearby. Perhaps he's staying at the lodge. Wherever he came from might be safer than here."

Gareth lifted his head. "In the dark? In this rain?"

"We have head torches."

She was already crossing to the picnic table where I had left mine. She picked it up, pulled the strap over her head and switched it on. Its beam spread across the clearing.

I took my head torch as well. I didn't consider it. I simply did it.

Gareth stood. "This is a bad idea."

"Staying here is worse," Nadia said.

Jamie looked from one of us to another. "You're serious."

"I'm serious." Nadia looked at me. "Callum?"

I nodded, returned the charm to my pocket and switched on my head torch.

Gareth sighed. He picked up his own torch and an old hatchet from the equipment beneath the tarpaulin. The blade was blunt and intended for splitting kindling, but he carried it as though it might matter.

Jamie remained beside the fire for several seconds. Then he swore under his breath and took his head torch too.

We entered the trees.

The rain seemed to draw everything tighter. Branches sagged lower, roots rose higher and every step felt uncertain. The beam of my torch bounced with my movements, making the forest jerk and shift around me.

Nadia walked ahead, Gareth kept to my left and Jamie followed behind. I could neither see nor hear Alfie. There was only the rain, our boots striking wet earth and the crack of branches when one of us misplaced a foot.

Then I heard it again.

That layered current. The sound travelling sideways beneath the ordinary noise of the river.

It was louder now, closer, almost as though it existed in the air around us rather than coming from the water.

I stopped. Nadia turned.

"What?"

"Can you hear that?"

She listened, then shook her head. "Only the river."

I heard more than the river. Something moved beneath its sound, pulling in the wrong direction.

Then I saw the lights.

Cold green pinpricks, small and steady, blinked between the trunks about thirty metres away. I counted four, then six, then more. They multiplied without coming closer, shifting left and right as though circling us.

"Do you see those?" I asked.

Gareth followed my gaze and squinted. "I can't see anything."

"Green lights. There, between the trees."

Nadia moved nearer to me. "I see them."

Jamie swung his head torch round. "Where?"

The green points vanished and then appeared again, farther to the right. There were perhaps a dozen now. They made no sound. No footsteps, no breaking branches, only that silent movement.

"We need to keep going," Gareth said.

We quickened our pace. The lights followed. I kept my head torch aimed ahead but watched the points at the edge of my vision. They maintained the same distance, matching our progress, herding us perhaps.

The thought clenched my stomach.

The trees opened at a fork. Two narrow, overgrown tracks diverged ahead. Alfie had vanished. There was no orange coat and no indication of which way he had gone.

"Which way?" Nadia asked.

I didn't know.

I drew the charm from my pocket. It felt warm. Not hot, merely warmer than it should have been after lying inside my cold, sodden jacket.

"Callum," Gareth said. "We have to choose."

My eyes slipped half closed. I had not intended it. It simply happened.

And I saw something.

A thin, unnatural shape folded in a way that did not agree with the space it occupied. It stood at the left fork, not blocking the path but hovering beside its entrance. It had no colour. It was only absence, a gap where something ought to have been and wasn't.

I opened my eyes fully and the shape disappeared.

"Right," I said. "We go right."

"Are you sure?" Jamie asked.

"No."

I set off down the right-hand track anyway. The charm remained warm in my fist. As I walked, I repeatedly lowered my eyelids and looked back. The shape did not follow. It stayed beside the left fork, waiting.

The charm was not protection, exactly. It made me notice what I wanted to deny. It allowed me to see the things my mind tried to smooth away and ignore.

I did not like that at all.

The green lights drew closer. They were no longer merely keeping pace. They pressed in on three sides, funnelling us towards the sound of water.

The river was close now, loud and fast, swollen by rain.

"They're pushing us towards it," I said.

Gareth tightened his hold on the hatchet. "I know."

The ground sloped steeply downwards. Thick roots crossed our route and mud slid beneath our boots. The beam of my head torch found the river ahead, black and churning.

Gareth's foot slipped.

He struck one knee hard and began sliding towards the bank. I lunged, caught his wrist in both hands and dug in my heels as his weight dragged me forwards.

"I've got you," I said.

Something cold rushed near us.

I felt it more than I saw it, a presence sweeping in from the left. The pressure changed. My ears popped. A smell struck me: river water, rot and something I could not name.

Jamie recoiled violently. His elbow hit my shoulder and my grip on Gareth loosened.

"Don't..."

Gareth fell.

Not into the main river, exactly. He dropped into a dark seam I had failed to notice, a channel cutting sideways through the current.

The water moved wrongly. It flowed upriver, against the direction the rest of the River Affric was travelling.

Gareth vanished beneath the surface without a sound. The water closed over him too smoothly and too quickly, as if it had been waiting.

Nadia screamed.

It was the same scream. High, sharp and terrified. The scream we had heard from the campsite the previous night. The scream we had ignored.

I thrust the charm into her hand and closed her fingers around it.

"Keep it. Don't let go."

She stared at me, her eyes wide and wet.

I seized her arm and forced her sideways along the bank, away from the seam.

"Move. Now."

Jamie stumbled after us.

The green lights multiplied. Twenty, thirty, too many to count. They closed from every side but one, leaving a narrow gap filled with dense brush and fallen timber.

I half closed my eyes and saw the folded shape again. It was nearer now, moving towards us. But at the edge of the tangled undergrowth it hesitated, as though unable or unwilling to follow us through.

"There," I said, pointing.

"That isn't a path," Jamie said.

"I don't care."

I pulled Nadia into the brush. We crashed through it. Branches lashed my face and snagged my jacket. Nadia tripped over a fallen trunk and I dragged her upright. Jamie swore behind us.

We did not stop. We forced our way onwards, snapping branches and tearing through brambles, putting distance between ourselves and the layered sound.

Every few seconds I half closed my eyes and looked behind. The shape followed at first. Then it slowed. Finally it stopped at the boundary of the thick brush and came no farther.

We ran until the second current faded and the river sounded ordinary again, nothing but water flowing over stone. There was no sideways pull beneath it.

Then the trees opened and we stumbled into the car park at Affric Lodge. Gravel shifted beneath my boots. Floodlights shone from tall poles. Ahead stood the lodge itself, its windows glowing warm yellow.

We were soaked and unsteady, and Nadia was sobbing.

The lodge door opened. A woman wearing a fleece gilet and a name badge hurried outside. The badge read JEAN CALDER. She was the same woman who had checked us into the heated outdoor spa pools the previous evening.

"What happened?" she asked.

"Our friend," Nadia said. Her voice broke. "The river took him."

Jean did not waste time asking questions. She put an arm around Nadia and guided us inside.

The lobby was warm and bright, smelling of coffee and wood smoke. Jean sat us on a sofa near the fireplace, then took the landline from behind the reception desk.

"I'm calling 999," she said. "Stay here."

I heard her speaking with urgent precision, giving the lodge's location and requesting police, ambulance support and mountain rescue. She told someone else to notify Forestry and Land Scotland.

Jamie sat beside me. His hands were trembling.

"Gareth's gone."

I couldn't answer.

Nadia opened her fist and stared at the charm. The birch bark remained damp. The green fishing line still held four evenly spaced knots.

"Why did you give this to me?" she asked.

"Alfie said it only works for the person who bought it."

"Then why?"

"I don't know."

I truly didn't. I had not thought. I had only reacted.

Jean returned with blankets and passed them round.

"They're coming. Twenty minutes, perhaps less."

We waited. I could not have said for how long. Time felt wrong, both too slow and too fast.

Headlights swept across the windows, then more lights joined them. Vehicles entered the car park and doors slammed outside.

A uniformed Police Scotland constable came through the entrance first. He was tall, fit and clean-shaven, and his identification read PC ROSS KERR. Behind him came a woman in Forestry and Land Scotland field clothing, her hair tied in a ponytail and her gaze sharp. Her badge identified her as SENIOR COUNTRYSIDE RANGER MOIRA GRANT.

She looked nothing like Martin Vale.

PC Kerr crouched in front of us.

"I'm Police Constable Ross Kerr. This is Senior Countryside Ranger Moira Grant. We're here to help. Can you tell me what happened?"

I told him. I began with the scream the previous night, then described the eight birch-bark loops around our pitch, the dead pine marten, Martin Vale's locked and stripped office, the three dead vehicle batteries, Alfie's warnings, the green lights, Gareth's fall and the river dragging him beneath the surface.

I did not mention what the purchased charm had shown me. I said nothing about the folded absence or how half closing my eyes had allowed me to see it. That seemed too strange to speak aloud.

PC Kerr wrote down everything. He asked careful questions and remained calm and professional. Moira Grant spoke into her radio, calling for more search personnel and coordinating with the volunteer mountain rescue team.

"Show us where it happened," she said.

We returned with them, not through the forest but along the road. They carried powerful torches and radios, and more responders joined us than I could count. The rain had eased to a drizzle. My legs felt rubbery beneath me.

We reached the place where the rough track descended towards the River Affric. Searchlights swept the bank. Mountain rescue volunteers in waterproof gear entered the shallows on safety lines while Moira directed beams across assigned grid sections and relayed positions over her radio.

They found a broken root where Gareth had slipped.

They found nothing else.

The water held only current, stones and foam.

PC Kerr asked more questions. Nadia answered some; Jamie answered others. I stood watching the lights pass back and forth across the river.

The search continued for hours.

More personnel arrived, along with search dogs and water-rescue teams. Boats with spotlights worked the accessible stretches of the river. A Coastguard search-and-rescue helicopter was requested, but the weather made it impossible to launch into the glen.

Dawn came slowly, grey and cold. The rain stopped. As daylight grew, the searchlights weakened.

PC Kerr approached us.

"We're going to carry on searching, but I need to get the three of you somewhere safe, warm and dry. We'll have more questions later."

As we walked back to Affric Lodge, a recovery lorry entered the car park, its amber roof lights turning silently. It was a large vehicle dispatched from Drumnadrochit.

The driver climbed down. He was an older, heavy-set man with greying hair beneath a cap. Across the back of his jacket were the words MERCER VEHICLE RECOVERY.

"Douglas Mercer," he said, shaking PC Kerr's hand.

"We had a report of three dead batteries," Kerr told him.

Douglas nodded, collected his jumper leads and drove us back to the campsite in the recovery lorry.

Our pitch looked abandoned. The firepit was full of cold ash. The tents sagged beneath accumulated rainwater. The pine marten still lay stiffly on the cool box.

Douglas made no comment. He connected the leads to Gareth's Skoda and started it on the first attempt. Then he started my Subaru. Then Jamie's Ford Ranger.

"Alternators are healthy," Douglas said. "The batteries were simply drained. Couldn't tell you why."

I thought I knew why. I did not say it.

Douglas offered to escort us out. He said he had another call in the direction of Drumnadrochit anyway.

We packed quickly, throwing everything into the vehicles without sorting it. We left the pine marten where it was.

The recovery lorry led. I followed in my dark green Subaru estate with Nadia beside me. Jamie brought up the rear in his Ford Ranger.

We took the winding road out through Glen Affric as the sky turned pale. I watched the tree line. I couldn't help myself.

Just before the road curved away towards the A831, my headlights swept across the trees for the last time.

I saw one cold green light.

Only one, blinking where the beams did not quite reach.

Then the road bent, and the forest went dark behind us.