The Star in the Cut

Tuesday, 21 July 2026, began the way most Tuesdays did. I reached the Forestry and Land Scotland depot near Kirroughtree at about seven, unlocked the back door and switched on the lights in the break room. Coffee first, then the radio check, then whatever paperwork Graham Sutherland had left on my desk the night before.

I had been doing the job for six years. Six years of path-maintenance reports, permit breaches and the occasional lost hillwalker who had wandered too far from the waymarked trails. Galloway Forest Park spread around us in every direction: remote lochs, regimented plantations, granite hills and open moorland that most people saw only from a lay-by or a visitor-centre window.

That suited me. The fewer people who looked closely, the better.

I poured coffee into the chipped mug I had used since my first season. Black, no sugar. Then I sat at my desk and brought up the week's programme.

Campsite inspections along the Clatteringshaws circuit. A quick check on the Loch Trool trail to see whether the bridge damage from the previous month's flooding had worsened. Routine work. Easy work.

That was the plan, anyway.

Imogen Shaw arrived at about quarter past eight. I heard her boots on the gravel before she knocked: three sharp raps, followed by the door opening before I could answer.

"Morning," she said.

I looked up. Her hair was in the same untidy plait she always wore, her field jacket was zipped halfway, and a notebook was already tucked under one arm. She was twenty-one, a geology student from the University of Glasgow, and she was spending the summer with us on placement, either to improve her CV or to meet some fieldwork requirement. I had not asked which.

Graham had assigned her to me two days earlier, with about fifteen minutes' notice and a reminder to keep things educational.

"Morning," I said.

She dropped her rucksack beside the spare chair and took out a reusable bottle covered in stickers from British national parks and geological field trips.

"So, what's on the list today?"

I turned the monitor towards her.

"Clatteringshaws. We'll drive the access track, inspect the first six sites and make sure nobody has pitched where they shouldn't."

"Sounds good."

She leant closer and narrowed her eyes at the screen. Then she tapped the edge of the desk.

"Question. Yesterday, when we were reviewing the maps, I noticed several paths marked as closed on the official forest map. But when I checked the GPS data, some of them still showed recent foot traffic. Within the last fortnight, in some cases."

I kept my face neutral.

"Which ones?"

She opened her notebook and found the relevant page.

"The Black Water of Dee trail beyond the fourth mile, the upper section of Dungeon Burn, and the whole area north of the Loch Grannoch north access."

"Probably contractors," I said. "Wildlife-control workers or authorised survey teams. They can have access when a path is closed to the public."

"Right. That makes sense."

She wrote something down.

"But I also saw fresh boot prints going straight through the barrier at the Black Water of Dee access point."

I took a drink of coffee. It was already going lukewarm.

"People ignore signs. It happens all the time."

"Do you usually follow that up?"

"If it's a safety closure. If it's only seasonal, it depends whether we have the time."

She nodded, but I could see she was still turning it over. That was the thing about students. They noticed patterns. They asked questions. And they did not always know when to let something go.

"You're going to see plenty that doesn't line up perfectly," I said. "Out-of-date maps, missing signs, paths that should have been maintained and haven't been. Forestry and Land Scotland has more ground than people to cover it. Sometimes things slip through."

"Understood."

She wrote that down as well. I thought it might occupy her for a while.

We spent the next hour checking our equipment: first-aid kit, spare radio batteries, personal alarms, tick-removal kit, emergency bivvy bags and the clipboard holding the site-inspection forms. Imogen asked another dozen questions, most of them sensible. I gave her the standard answers.

Keep your voice calm. Do not approach wildlife. If you see something that does not make sense, record it and deal with it later.

That last rule mattered. So did two others I had picked up after incidents I had never managed to explain: do not stare between the trees when you think something has moved, and keep walking until you reach open ground.

I presented them as habits for avoiding panic and disorientation. That was easier than explaining where they had come from.

I had learnt years ago that the safest way to handle strange observations was to acknowledge them, file them away and never mention them again unless somebody asked directly. Most people forgot. Most people moved on.

At about half past nine, Graham arrived. I heard his vehicle enter the car park and the engine tick as it cooled. He came through the front door, his boots heavy on the lino.

"Callum."

"Morning."

He nodded towards Imogen.

"How's the placement going?"

"Good," she said. "I'm learning a lot."

"That's what we like to hear."

He turned to me and rested one shoulder against the door frame. Graham was fifty-two, solidly built, with sandy-grey hair and the sort of face that revealed little unless he intended it to. He had been my area manager for four years. We got on well enough, provided I kept things simple.

"Clatteringshaws today?" he asked.

"That's the plan."

"Good. Keep it straightforward. We've a lot of visitors passing through this week, and I don't want surprises."

He said it casually, but I knew what he meant. Visitors came to Galloway for red deer, dark skies, lochs and spring bluebells. They did not come for mysteries, and public bodies did not win support by making people nervous.

"Understood," I said.

Graham looked at Imogen.

"You're here for the whole summer?"

"Through the middle of August."

"Callum will keep you busy. He knows these paths better than anyone."

He tapped the door frame twice, like a little punctuation mark.

"Right. I'll be in Dumfries for most of the day if you need me. Radio's on."

He left as he had come. A moment later, his engine started and gravel crunched beneath his tyres as he pulled away towards the A75.

Imogen looked at me.

"Does he always check in like that?"

"More or less."

I stood and lifted my jacket from the back of the chair.

"Let's move. I want to reach the first site before the day gets any warmer."

We loaded the white Forestry and Land Scotland Land Rover Defender. It had the organisation's markings on the doors and about 160,000 miles on the clock. Imogen climbed into the passenger seat and fastened her belt. I started the engine, gave it a moment, then turned on to the road towards Newton Stewart.

We passed a couple of cafes, a supermarket and shops selling tartan gifts, walking maps and landscape postcards. The Kirroughtree visitor facilities and a local woodland attraction drew families into the area, but most did not stay long.

The roads narrowed as the last buildings fell behind us. Imogen already had her notebook open. Her handwriting was small and exact.

"What are you recording?" I asked.

"Observations. Path conditions, weather, that sort of thing."

"You don't have to write down everything."

"I know, but it helps me remember." She glanced at me. "Is that all right?"

"Of course. Just don't expect every day to be interesting."

She smiled faintly.

"I'll try to manage my expectations."

We drove in silence for a while, following the A75 and then the adjoining rural roads outside Newton Stewart. Forestry closed around us: Sitka spruce, Scots pine, birch and larch rising along the slopes. The open window brought in the smell of resin and damp soil.

Radio traffic came in brief bursts. Another ranger reported from the Black Water of Dee district. Static followed, then nothing.

I was running through the inspections in my head and reckoning we would finish by early afternoon when I saw a vehicle pulled on to the verge about a quarter of a mile ahead. It was a marked Police Scotland response car.

I slowed.

The car stood at an angle beneath a large Sitka spruce, without lights or any visible activity around it.

Imogen noticed it too.

"Is that normal?"

"Rural patrols come through here."

I stopped behind it and put the Defender in neutral.

"Wait here."

I got out, leaving my door open, and walked along the response car. It was empty. The driver's door was unlocked and the keys remained in the ignition, although the engine was off.

That bothered me.

I was about to return to the Defender when boots sounded on the gravel behind me.

"Callum."

I turned.

PC Ailsa Kerr was coming down the slope between the trees at a quick pace. She was twenty-nine, about one metre seventy, with dark-brown hair pulled back tightly and a face that wasted no time on pleasantries. I had worked with her several times over the years: lost hillwalkers, campsite disturbances, an incident outside a public toilet block and one serious quad-bike rollover that had ended with an air-ambulance evacuation.

"Ailsa."

She looked past me at the Defender and Imogen in the passenger seat, then back at me.

"I need to speak to you alone."

"About what?"

"Not here." She gestured towards the trees. "Come on."

I glanced at Imogen. She watched us through the windscreen, curious but not alarmed. I raised one finger to indicate a minute, then followed Ailsa uphill.

We stopped about ten metres inside the plantation, far enough away that Imogen could not hear.

Ailsa drew a small evidence bag from her jacket and held it up. Inside was a pewter-coloured disc about five centimetres across, marked with symbols I did not recognise. Light slipped through the branches and caught it for an instant.

"Where did that come from?" I asked.

"I'll tell you in a moment. First I need to know whether you can keep your mouth shut."

"That depends on what we're discussing."

"Burnt bones. Children's trainers fused together at the soles. And this."

She tapped the bag.

"Found yesterday evening near Forestry track 17. No identification, no witnesses and nothing that makes sense as part of an ordinary incident."

I said nothing.

"I'm not logging all of it formally yet," she continued. "Not until I know what I'm dealing with. I need somebody who knows the area and won't ring his manager the second things become strange."

It was not normal procedure. It was not defensible procedure either, and she knew it. Ailsa was usually meticulous. If she was withholding evidence even temporarily, fear had driven her past her own judgement.

"Why me?"

Her jaw was tight, her gaze steady.

"You've worked out here for six years and you're still stuck on a low pay band without a promotion. That suggests you're either incompetent or unusually good at keeping your head down." She tilted her head. "I don't think you're incompetent."

That was the moment when I should have returned to the Defender, called Graham and let someone else deal with it.

I did not.

"Show me."

Ailsa kept the bag concealed until we were screened from Imogen by the trees. Then she raised it again.

"A regular hillwalker found the site yesterday morning," she said. "About a mile and a half from the Black Water of Dee access. He rang it in at eleven. I reached it roughly an hour later."

The clear plastic bag had a zip seal across the top. Inside, the disc was smooth-edged and dull silver in colour. A six-rayed star had been stamped into its face with clean, precise lines. At the centre was a perfectly circular aperture, as though it had been drilled by machine.

"What else was there?"

Ailsa's jaw tightened further.

"A shallow pit, about a metre across, full of burnt bones. Animal bones, I think. Red deer, fox, perhaps rabbit. It's difficult to tell once they're that badly charred. But that wasn't what stayed with me."

She looked at the bag.

"Three children's trainers, melted together at the soles. The rubber had fused. They were sitting at the edge of the pit."

I remained silent.

"No identification," she said. "No witnesses. Only the bones, the shoes and this."

She held the bag out. I took it.

As soon as my fingers touched the plastic, something felt wrong.

Cold came first. We stood in shade beneath the spruces and the morning was not yet particularly warm, but this was not ordinary coolness. It penetrated the bag and entered my skin.

Then there was the texture. The disc was sealed inside the plastic, so I could not have felt its surface, yet when my thumb moved across the bag it seemed slick and oily. Not wet. Simply wrong. It made me want to wipe my hand on my trousers even though nothing could have touched it.

I turned the bag over. The reverse of the disc was blank: no writing, engraving or tool marks, only smooth pewter-coloured metal.

"Have you had it tested?"

"Not yet. That's the problem. Once I enter it properly, it goes through the duty inspector, forensics and possibly the Major Investigation Team. I don't know what it is."

I returned it. My fingers were still cold.

"You have possible remains and physical evidence. Those channels exist for a reason."

Ailsa slipped the bag back into her jacket.

"The hillwalker said the pit wasn't there the day before."

That stopped me.

"He's a regular," she continued. "Walks that route three or four times a week. He passed the exact spot on Sunday, 19 July. There was nothing there. He went through again on Monday morning and found a pit, bones, trainers and the disc placed on top like a marker."

"He could have missed it on Sunday."

"Perhaps." She did not sound convinced. "But he said the soil looked newly dug. When I arrived, it was still loose."

I looked back towards the Defender. Imogen was visible through a side window, notebook open, perhaps recording the model of the police car or the angle of sunlight through the branches. That was how she worked.

"You want me to walk you in before anyone else arrives?"

"Yes."

"How long have we got?"

"I told control I'd call when I was ready to update the incident. That might buy us two hours. Three if we're lucky."

"And no photographs?"

"Not yet."

That troubled me. I understood the impulse, but the more tightly she tried to control the situation, the more wrong it felt.

"All right," I said. "Let's go."

We returned to the Defender. Imogen looked up as I opened the driver's door. She had been writing, but closed her notebook when Ailsa climbed into the back seat.

"Change of plan," I said. "We're going to the Black Water of Dee access first. PC Kerr needs advice on a site."

Imogen did not ask what sort. She nodded and fastened her seat belt.

I started the engine and pulled back on to the road. The drive to Forestry track 17 took about twenty minutes. We passed the turning for the Clatteringshaws circuit, then Dungeon Burn viewpoint, before joining a narrow stretch of road that twisted through Sitka spruce so dense I could not see ten metres between the trunks.

Ailsa said little. She kept one hand near her jacket pocket, where the outline of the evidence bag showed through the fabric. Imogen was quiet too, but she watched everything.

Her gaze moved between road signs, distance markers and the closure barriers we passed. Her notebook was open on her lap again. Every few minutes, she added another line in her small, exact handwriting.

She was building a record: closures, times and inconsistencies. The more I thought about it, the more I realised that bringing her might have been a mistake. If this grew into something larger, Imogen would remember every detail.

I turned on to Forestry track 17. Gravel cracked beneath the tyres. The route narrowed between plantation trees, with no other vehicles and no hillwalkers in sight, only dirt, trunks and occasional bars of sunlight across the track.

Ailsa shifted in the rear seat. The evidence bag moved inside her pocket.

I heard it.

I should not have been able to hear a five-centimetre piece of metal scrape against plastic through a layer of fabric and over the rattle of the Defender, but I did. The sound was faint and sharp, like fingernails moving across glass. It did not stop when Ailsa settled. It continued sliding, as though the disc were seeking its own balance.

I glanced into the mirror. Its circular edge pressed visibly against her jacket. Ailsa caught me looking but said nothing.

I kept driving.

The track deteriorated after the first mile. Potholes and loose stone gave way to corrugated sections that rattled the Defender's suspension. Imogen braced one hand against the door. Her notebook remained open, and she continued writing even when a deep rut knocked my mug from the centre console.

"How much farther?" I asked.

"Half a mile. There's a small parking area near the start of the path."

I nodded.

The bag slid again as I turned. I heard the same thin scraping and felt that cold, oily sensation creep over the back of my neck.

Imogen noticed as well. Her eyes shifted towards Ailsa's pocket. She did not comment, but she wrote something down.

I wanted to tell her to stop and put the notebook away. I did not, because that would have confirmed that something was worth concealing.

The parking area appeared on the left, a dirt clearing with room for perhaps three vehicles. It was empty.

I stopped the Defender and switched off the engine. For a moment, none of us moved.

Then Ailsa opened her door.

"Stay close," she said. "And don't touch anything unless I say so."

I got out and Imogen followed. The air smelled of spruce resin and wet earth. There was no wind, only an unnatural stillness and the faint sound of the Black Water of Dee somewhere beyond the trees.

Ailsa started towards the path. I followed, with Imogen a few paces behind and her notebook still in hand. The disc had fallen quiet, but I kept thinking about the way it had shifted within the bag, continuing after the vehicle stopped turning.

By the time we reached the access marker, I no longer thought we were approaching an untidy crime scene. We were approaching something that moved.

The sign had faded until half its wording had vanished. I could still read BLACK WATER OF DEE and a warning about seasonal closure. The rest was bleached beyond recognition.

Ailsa stopped beyond it and looked along the dirt path as it disappeared through alder and willow. Imogen remained a few steps behind, her notebook open.

Then I heard footsteps approaching from the opposite direction. Heavy boots on gravel, with a rhythm I recognised.

Euan Brodie emerged from behind a stand of young birch about thirty metres up the path. He looked much as he always did: faded cap pulled low, orange high-visibility tabard with reflective strips over a checked work shirt that might have been the same one he had worn for three days, and mud-stained trousers marked with something darker. A rucksack hung from one shoulder, and heavy gloves were tucked into his belt. His weathered face had been tightened and creased by too many years outdoors.

Euan stopped when he saw me. His expression altered only at the mouth.

"Callum."

"Euan."

Ailsa glanced between us. Imogen stayed silent, plainly aware that this was not a friendly reunion.

Euan and I had history. Two years earlier, I had reported an unlawful snare he had set too close to a waymarked path. He claimed it was authorised contractor work. I checked with Graham and confirmed that his council wildlife-management contract, which covered fox monitoring and invasive mink control, did not include that zone. The case cost Euan a two-hundred-and-fifty-pound penalty and several days of paid contract work while the council reviewed his agreement.

He had not forgiven me.

"Didn't know Forestry and Land Scotland was inspecting out here today," he said.

His voice was flat, but there was an edge beneath it.

"We're checking a site. PC Kerr asked for advice."

His gaze moved to Ailsa and returned to me.

"Advice. Right."

He did not ask what kind. That bothered me.

Most people would have asked. Instead, he adjusted his rucksack and took a compact digital trail-camera viewer from a pocket of his tabard. He turned it over, then looked back at me.

"I've got something odd on one of my cameras. Thought I'd show you while you're here."

I did not want to deal with Euan's version of odd. I wanted to reach the pit, see what had frightened Ailsa and decide whether I could walk away. But Euan was already working through the images, and Ailsa stepped closer.

"Caught this two nights ago," he said.

He held the viewer out. I took it.

The screen displayed a grainy night image washed pale by infrared light. Trees filled the background and a small clearing lay in front. In its centre stood a figure roughly two metres tall. It wore what looked like an orange contractor's high-visibility tabard, its reflective strips blazing white against the dark.

Its arms were wrong.

They extended well beyond where its knees should have been, and they bent in too many places. There were elbows, but another set of joints appeared halfway down the forearms. The angles did not belong to a human body.

I studied the image, trying to decide whether the camera had distorted a person or caught an awkward arrangement of branches and shadow.

"What the hell is that?" Ailsa asked quietly.

"I don't know," Euan said. "I checked the camera yesterday morning. There was nothing else on the card. Only that frame."

I handed the viewer back.

"It could be somebody dressed up, or a distortion from the lens."

Euan shook his head.

"I've used trail cameras for fifteen years. I've never seen a lens do that."

Imogen moved closer to see. Euan angled the screen towards her briefly, then put the device back in his pocket.

"Where was the camera?" Ailsa asked.

"About a quarter of a mile north."

He pointed up the path, beyond a curve where the plantation thickened.

"I've got a cage trap there. Mink control, and a fox-monitoring camera. The council wants updated numbers before winter."

Ailsa nodded without seeming surprised. That bothered me too.

"I'm going up now," Euan said.

He looked at me.

"Want to come? Make sure I don't breach any more regulations."

There it was, the old bitterness intact.

"We have our own work."

"I'm sure you do."

He settled the rucksack on his shoulder and walked past, boots grinding over gravel. After several paces, he stopped and looked back.

"Watch yourselves near the water. Something's wrong out here."

He did not wait for an answer. He continued until the trees swallowed him.

Ailsa watched him go, one hand close to the pocket holding the disc.

"Friend of yours?"

"Not really."

Imogen wrote in her notebook, probably recording the time, Euan's name and the fact that we had encountered him. There was no stopping that now.

"Let's keep moving," Ailsa said.

We followed the path towards the Black Water of Dee. It narrowed between alder, willow and low growth that scraped against my trousers. The air smelt of damp soil and spruce resin, thick enough to taste. There was still no wind, only the distant rush of water.

The pit lay behind a stand of willows about twenty metres from the bank. I saw it before Ailsa pointed.

It was a shallow depression roughly a metre wide, filled with ash and blackened bones. They had been arranged in a spiral, beginning at the outer edge and curling towards the centre. Some were small, perhaps rabbit. Others were large enough to have come from red deer, with charred lines running their length.

At the spiral's centre lay two children's trainers, small enough for a child of six or seven. Their rubber soles had melted into one mass so completely that I could not tell where one ended and the other began. The fabric uppers were gone, burnt away or dissolved, leaving black rubber and a few metal eyelets.

The smell reached me next: old charring mixed with wet silt and a sharp chemical taint like burnt plastic.

I stopped at the edge and looked down. Imogen circled to the left, staying more than a metre back. At first she did not write. She only stared.

Ailsa crouched at the rim and took a torch from her belt. Its beam travelled across the bones, then the fused trainers, then back again.

"This is how you found it?" I asked.

"Yes. Spiral and all. I didn't touch anything."

I believed her. Ailsa was careful, normally careful enough never to conceal a scene like this in the first place.

"The bones have been arranged," Imogen said softly. Her notebook was open again. "It was deliberate. Somebody placed them like that."

"Yes," I said.

Ailsa stood and moved back.

"Walk the perimeter. Tell me what you see."

I went clockwise around the pit, examining the ground, the willows and the trees beyond. The soil surrounding it was loose and newly turned. I saw no clear footprints, although the surface had been disturbed too badly to retain them. There were no drag marks and no obvious impressions from a spade or other tool. Only earth and ash.

Imogen stopped beside a mature alder about three metres from the pit. She crouched and leant close to the trunk.

"There are holes here."

I joined her. Ailsa followed.

Seven precise circular holes had been drilled through the bark, each about six millimetres across. Six formed the rays of a star around a seventh central point. Their spacing was exact. Imogen put her pen beside them for scale, measured the gaps and made a quick diagram in her notebook.

I touched the lip of one aperture. The exposed wood was clean and perfectly round. It had been drilled rather than cut, and whoever had done it had followed a plan.

The central hole was slightly larger than the other six.

"What's it for?" Imogen asked.

"I don't know."

Ailsa stared at the pattern, her jaw rigid.

"This wasn't here yesterday."

I looked up.

"You're certain?"

"I walked around the entire scene. I would have seen it."

Imogen compared the holes once more, then added their measurements to the page.

Ailsa turned towards the pit.

"There's something else."

I followed her gaze to the fused trainers.

"When I first arrived yesterday, there were three," she said. "There are only two now."

I stared at the melted mass and tried to count eyelets, seams or fragments of sole, anything that could verify what she remembered. The remains were too distorted. I could not prove whether there had been two trainers or three.

"You're sure?"

"Yes. Three."

Imogen stopped writing. Her face had gone pale.

Ailsa's fingers pressed against the outline of the evidence bag in her pocket. She did not take it out. She seemed merely to be checking that it had not vanished as well.

I surveyed the undergrowth. Willow, alder, young birch and walls of spruce offered more than enough cover for somebody to hide.

Ailsa watched the trees too. Her free hand had moved to the sidearm at her hip. She was temporarily attached to an authorised-firearms rural operation that week, which explained why she carried one at all. It did not make the sight of it reassuring.

"Somebody has been here," I said.

"Yes."

Then Euan shouted.

The sound came from farther up the path, sharp and sudden. It cut off without an echo.

I was running before I had time to think, boots striking hard earth as I charged back towards the access point.

I heard the scream before I saw him.

It was not the cry of somebody who had fallen or been startled. It was raw terror, high and wrong.

I rounded the bend and found Euan face down in the grass about five metres from the path. His arms were stretched ahead, fingers clawing trenches in the soil. His whole body slid backwards as though something beyond the brush had caught his ankle and was dragging him.

He was not kicking. He was not fighting. He was simply being pulled.

One of his steel-toe wellingtons had been left behind. It lay upright in the grass, its opening stretched where his foot had slipped cleanly out. The rubber was not torn.

A narrow streak of thick violet-black fluid marked the ground behind him. It was not blood. It caught the broken sunlight like oil but did not spread or soak into the earth. It remained in a bead-edged line perhaps five centimetres wide, following the path of his body.

Ailsa had already drawn her sidearm. She passed me at a run and fired three times into the brush where the force seemed to originate.

The reports were hard and flat. Their echoes died among the trees too quickly.

Soil jumped. Leaves scattered. A branch snapped and fell.

Nothing else moved.

Whatever held Euan released him. He stopped sliding and went limp for half a second. Then he scrambled on to his hands and knees, gasping, his face smeared with earth and grass stuck to one cheek. He did not look behind him. He crawled forwards until he managed to get his feet under him, then stood swaying on one boot and one socked foot.

Ailsa kept her weapon trained on the undergrowth. Her hands were steady.

"Are you hit?" she asked.

Euan shook his head. His mouth opened, but at first no sound emerged.

Then he said, "The river."

His voice broke.

"The river's full of hands."

Ailsa did not lower the pistol.

"What hands?"

"Hands," he repeated.

He was looking beyond us towards the water.

"In the water. I saw them reaching up."

I looked towards the Black Water of Dee. It was about twenty metres away through the willows, brown and slow after recent rain. I saw nothing in it.

Ailsa holstered her sidearm and pulled the radio from her belt. She pressed the transmit key twice, then spoke in the clipped, professional tone she used at incidents.

"Control, this is Kerr. Ambulance required at Black Water of Dee access, Forestry track 17, approximately one mile beyond the start of the path. One injured person, possible trauma."

The transmission cut off.

There was no static and no silence. Only clicking: slow, deliberate pulses, each exactly 1.8 seconds after the last.

Ailsa released the key. The clicking stopped.

She tried again.

"Control, do you receive?"

The clicks returned in the same rhythm.

She lowered the radio and stared at it.

Imogen spoke behind me, her voice quiet but steady.

"That matches."

I turned.

Her notebook was open to the page containing her drawing of the seven holes in the alder: six rays and a centre point.

"The intervals," she said. "The clicks are 1.8 seconds apart. It's the same spacing pattern as the holes when you plot distance against sequence."

Something tightened in my chest. It was not panic yet, but recognition: the sensation of separate pieces locking together and revealing that they had always belonged to the same picture.

The disc. The bones. The missing trainer. The seven holes. The radio clicks.

They were one thing.

Ailsa still held the radio. Her other hand pressed against the evidence bag through her jacket.

Euan breathed heavily against a tree. His sock was saturated with violet-black fluid. Thick drops fell to the soil, beaded on the surface and refused to soak in.

I moved without thinking. I crossed to him, caught his arm and hauled him upright.

"We're leaving."

Euan tried to pull away.

"My wellington."

"Leave it."

Ailsa clipped the radio back on her belt and moved to take Euan's other side, but I already had his arm across my shoulders. I forced him to step forwards. He stumbled, recovered and leant heavily against me.

Imogen closed her notebook and pushed it into her jacket pocket. She asked no questions. She simply followed.

I started towards the access point, supporting Euan and scanning the undergrowth as we went. An old field rule rose automatically, one I had repeated to summer staff and volunteers after incidents I had never described in full.

"Don't stare into the trees when something moves," I said aloud.

I had not intended to say it. The words simply came.

Imogen glanced at me but did not answer. Ailsa kept one hand on the grip of her holstered sidearm. Her gaze passed left, right and back to the path.

Euan's breathing was ragged. He kept twisting to look over his shoulder.

"Don't," I said.

He faced forwards.

I kept us moving because stopping felt like giving whatever watched from the plantation time to arrange us. Time to continue what it had begun when it took Euan. Time to finish whatever connected the pit, the bones and the disc.

The path extended ahead through close willow and alder. The sound of the river remained low and constant, but I could no longer tell whether I heard only water or something moving beneath it.

I did not look back. I kept everyone walking.

Halfway to the access point, the air changed.

It became hot.

There was no gradual rise, no ordinary warmth building through an unusually fine Scottish summer day. The temperature simply switched, as if someone had opened an oven door directly in front of my face.

The heat was like engine exhaust, thick and wrong in the middle of a forest where the shade ought to have kept everything cool. I kept Euan moving. His weight dragged at my shoulder, and his breathing still had not settled. The sock on his right foot was soaked with violet-black fluid, leaving dark prints on the soil every other step. The stuff beaded on the surface instead of soaking in.

Then the sound of the river cut out.

It did not fade. It dropped away as if someone had turned a volume dial to nothing, leaving only the muffled suggestion of water beneath a blanket. The Black Water of Dee was perhaps twenty metres through the willows to our left, and I had heard it steadily since we began walking. Now it was gone, replaced by dead air and the scuff of our boots.

Ailsa stopped. Her hand remained close to the sidearm she was carrying as part of the temporary authorised-firearms operation, and she tilted her head to listen. I said nothing. I did not need to.

Imogen moved closer behind me. I felt her there without looking.

That was when I saw the orange tabard.

It moved between the trunks, perhaps twelve metres uphill to our right. It was the sort of high-visibility clothing worn by forestry contractors, its reflective strips flashing through the Sitka spruce. There was no body attached. At least, none that I could see. The tabard floated at chest height, weaving through the trees without the rise and fall of someone crossing rough ground.

It travelled uphill, too smoothly and too quickly, as though carried on a rail.

I watched it while forcing Euan onwards. One of my old field rules took over, a habit learnt during six years of finding tracks that belonged to no animal I knew and hearing noises that never matched their supposed source.

Do not stop moving when something is watching you. Do not stare into the trees. Do not give it time to close the distance.

The tabard slid behind a broad Scots pine and did not emerge on the other side.

Ailsa had seen it as well. Her jaw tightened, and she widened her stance, shifting her weight forwards. Euan made a small sound between a gasp and a whimper. I tightened my hold on his arm and told him to keep walking.

Behind me came the rustle of fabric and the pull of a zip.

I glanced back. Imogen had taken the evidence bag from Ailsa's jacket. I did not know when she had managed it. Perhaps while Ailsa was watching the trees, or as we started moving. It did not matter. She had it now.

She held the bag before her face, turning it until the pewter-coloured disc caught the filtered light. In her other hand she held her notebook open, with her pen tucked behind one ear. She was comparing the six-rayed star on the disc with something on the page: her sketch of the seven drilled holes in the mature alder, six around a central point.

The clicking stopped.

I had not realised it was still continuing until it vanished. Ailsa's radio had been giving that slow, deliberate click every 1.8 seconds since we left the pit, quiet enough to merge with the background. Now there was nothing.

No river. No clicks. No birds. No wind.

Imogen lowered the bag and looked at me. Her face was pale, but her eyes remained sharp.

"It matches."

I did not ask what matched. I already knew.

Ailsa turned and saw the bag in Imogen's hand. For half a second I expected her to snatch it back. Instead, she stared at it.

Then the voice came from downstream, beyond the willows, where the water ought to have been running but made no sound.

It sounded like the Police Scotland control-room operator who had spoken over Ailsa's radio before the clicking began. The pitch and cadence were the same, but the words were stretched and slowed, as though someone had pulled the recording apart and inserted empty space between every syllable.

"Bring the star back to the cut."

The words hung in the dead air, each taking too long to end.

Ailsa's hand went to her jacket pocket and found it empty. Her gaze snapped towards Imogen. She crossed the distance in two steps, took the evidence bag without a word and pushed it deep into her pocket. The outline of the disc pressed against the fabric.

She looked at me. Her face had not merely gone pale with shock. It looked drained, as though every trace of colour and warmth had been drawn out through her skin.

I had seen Ailsa deal with a quad-bike rollover in which a man's arm had been trapped beneath the frame and his thighbone showed through his torn trousers while Scotland's Charity Air Ambulance was on its way. I had seen her talk down a man holding a knife outside a public toilet block at two in the morning after a campsite disturbance. She did not frighten easily.

Now she looked as though she understood something I did not, and that it was worse than anything we had already seen.

She turned and walked quickly, just short of running. I hauled Euan forwards and matched her pace. Imogen remained close behind me, her notebook returned to her jacket, breathing hard but keeping up.

The voice did not speak again. The air remained hot. The river remained silent.

We kept moving.

The access point came into view about five minutes later: a sun-bleached sign, a rough car park and our two vehicles standing where we had left them.

Except something was wrong with them.

I stopped at the edge of the clearing and stared. Every tyre was flat.

All four on the white Forestry and Land Scotland Land Rover Defender. All four on Ailsa's marked Police Scotland response vehicle. They had not been punctured. They had been sliced.

I let Euan lean against a tree, then crouched beside the Defender's rear offside tyre. A clean cut ran along the sidewall, a single precise line about ten centimetres long. There were no ragged edges and no tearing. It looked as though someone had drawn a razor or an exceptionally sharp knife through the rubber in one smooth movement.

The next tyre was the same. So were the others.

Ailsa inspected the response car and returned, shaking her head.

"Same."

I stood and scanned the tree line. There was no one visible and no movement. The air had cooled towards the normal temperature beneath the trees, but the river still made no sound.

Euan had gone silent.

He stood where I had left him, one hand against the trunk, staring into the plantation beyond the access sign. He was not looking about. His gaze was fixed on one point among the trees. His mouth hung slightly open and his breathing had become shallow. His face was slack, but his eyes remained locked upon whatever he could see.

I followed his line of sight and saw only trunks, undergrowth and shadow.

"Euan."

He did not answer.

I stepped closer and said his name again. Still nothing. Ailsa moved beside me, her hand returning to her sidearm, though she did not draw it.

Imogen spoke from behind us, quietly but clearly.

"I saw one of those before."

I turned. She was looking at the shape of the disc through Ailsa's pocket.

"Near Fort William last summer. I was doing field mapping with my university fieldwork lecturer, and we stopped at a petrol station. There was a man filling his pickup, and he had one hanging from the rear-view mirror. Same size. Same star."

She paused, glanced at Euan, then looked back at me.

"I asked him about it. He said it was for dead stars and clean cuts. Then he got into his vehicle and left."

Ailsa pressed her fingers against the disc through the fabric.

"Did he say anything else?"

Imogen shook her head.

"Only that. Dead stars and clean cuts. I thought it was something to do with astronomy. I wrote it down because it sounded odd, but I didn't follow it up."

I looked back at the tyres. Clean cuts. Then I looked at Euan, still staring into the trees as if he recognised something there.

The pieces did not make a picture I could understand, but they fitted closely enough to tell me this was deliberate. The bones, the fused children's trainers, the holes in the alder and the sliced tyres had all been prepared. They were all connected.

I made the decision.

"We need to get back to Newton Stewart now."

Ailsa nodded. She pulled out her radio, pressed the transmit button and said, "Any unit, this is PC Kerr. We need urgent assistance at the Black Water of Dee access, forestry track 17. Multiple disabled vehicles and possible hostile activity. Requesting immediate evacuation."

The radio clicked once, then filled with static.

A man's voice came through.

"Received, Ailsa. I'm ten minutes away."

It was Sergeant Ross Calder. His voice was normal, with no stretching or distortion.

Ailsa released the button and stared at the radio, then at me. I had not known Ross was in the area. He was an armed-response officer familiar with rural searches, often called to incidents around Glentrool and the more remote forestry boundaries. We had worked together during a search-and-rescue operation the previous winter. He was disciplined and dependable, the sort of man who arrived when he said he would.

Ten minutes still felt like a long time.

His Police Scotland armed-response Land Rover appeared at the far end of forestry track 17 eight minutes later. It was a newer vehicle, with roof lights and a secured firearms compartment. He pulled into the clearing, parked and got out.

Ross was tall, solidly built, with close-cropped black hair and a clean-shaven face. He wore armed-response equipment and carried his sidearm on his belt. He looked at the tyres, then at us, and finally at Euan, who was still propped against the tree.

"What happened?"

Ailsa gave him the short account. A regular hillwalker had reported remains. We had come to inspect the site. Something had attacked Euan in the trees, and every tyre had been cut while we were away from the vehicles.

Ross listened without interrupting. When she finished, he nodded once.

"Get in. We'll deal with these vehicles later."

I helped Euan towards the Land Rover. His legs were working again, but he still did not speak. Ross opened the rear cargo area and lowered him onto the second rear row, where he could lie across the seats with his injured foot supported. His steel-toe wellington was still missing, and the violet-black residue had dried into a dark crust over his sock.

Imogen and I took the rear passenger seats. Ailsa sat in the front passenger seat, and Ross got behind the wheel.

Before he moved, Ailsa drew out the evidence bag.

The temperature inside the vehicle surged.

It was not merely hot. It was as though the heater had been turned to its highest setting and aimed directly at us. Ailsa gasped and dropped the bag onto the rubber floor mat. A smooth-edged hole opened in the plastic as it scorched through, and the disc slipped out between her boots.

It lay flat on the mat: a pewter-coloured circle five centimetres across, marked with a six-rayed star and a precise aperture at its centre.

Ross put the Land Rover into park and leaned across to inspect it.

"Don't touch it," Ailsa said.

He stopped with his fingers several centimetres from the metal.

Ailsa pulled an evidence glove from her jacket. She pinched the edge of the disc between her gloved fingers and lifted. For a moment it seemed fixed to the mat. Then it came free with a faint scraping sound, like a nail drawn across slate.

She placed it in the scorched remains of the bag, folded the intact plastic around it and held the bundle tightly in her lap.

Only then did Ross select reverse and begin to drive.

No one asked questions at first. Euan lay in the rear cargo row, staring at the roof lining with his hands folded over his stomach. Ailsa's breathing was shallow and too fast. Every few seconds she looked down at the bundle in her lap to make certain the disc remained there.

Imogen held her notebook without writing. Her knuckles were white around the spiral binding.

Ross drove steadily. That was his manner. Calm, practical, never forcing an explanation before someone was ready to give it. You told him what was needed, and he made it happen.

We were perhaps four hundred metres along forestry track 17 when he spoke.

"Let me see it."

Ailsa did not answer at once. Her gloved hand closed around the folded plastic.

"The disc," Ross said. "Let me see what we're dealing with."

Ailsa raised it carefully. The metal caught the dashboard light and returned a reflection that did not match the angle.

Ross glanced at it, then back at the track.

"What's it made of?"

"I don't know," Ailsa said.

Her voice was flat and exhausted.

At the next straight section, Ross stopped the Land Rover. He took the wrapped disc from her gloved hand and turned it over, studying the star, the central aperture and the blank reverse. He drew a folding knife from his equipment, opened it with his thumb and slipped the tip beneath the edge of the metal through a fold in the plastic.

He twisted.

The blade scraped. The noise was high and wrong, like nails dragged over slate.

The disc did not lift from the plastic. Instead, the material puckered inwards around it as though something on the other side were pulling.

Ross stopped, folded the knife and returned the bundle to Ailsa.

"That isn't normal."

Ailsa secured it in her jacket pocket and said nothing.

We drove on.

About two miles later, the engine died.

There was no splutter and no warning light. The engine simply fell silent while the Land Rover rolled on, its headlights still shining as the dashboard went dark.

Ross tried the ignition. Nothing. He shifted into neutral and allowed us to coast to a halt in the middle of the track.

"Battery?" I said.

"Shouldn't be."

Ross released the bonnet and reached for his door.

That was when I saw them.

Thin figures were rising from the ditch on the left-hand side of the track. There might have been four, perhaps more. It was difficult to count them because the headlights passed through their bodies strangely, as if they were only partly present.

They wore scraps of orange high-visibility material, tabards or reflective strips bound around narrow chests and shoulders. The strips flared in the light. Beneath them, the bodies were too thin, the arms too long and the joints hinged in places where no joints ought to be.

They moved like creatures learning how to walk.

One stepped forwards. Its knee buckled sideways and then snapped straight. Another dragged one foot, corrected itself, then dragged the foot again.

Ross saw them. He opened the secured firearms compartment, drew his carbine in one smooth movement and pushed his door open.

"Stay in the vehicle."

He stepped out and raised the weapon. The nearest figure continued towards him. Its head tilted too far to the left, and its arms swung loosely.

Ross fired three rounds into its torso.

The figure folded as its chest collapsed. It fell to one knee, then the other, then pitched forwards onto its hands.

It kept crawling.

Its fingers dug into the gravel as it dragged itself onwards, one hand over the other, its legs trailing behind. Thick violet-black fluid leaked from the holes in its chest and gathered in beads upon the track without soaking into the soil. It was the same substance that had coated Euan's foot.

Ross fired once more. The shot struck the figure's head. Its skull snapped backwards and the body dropped flat.

It did not move again.

The others continued to advance.

I did not think. I seized Imogen's arm, opened the rear door and pulled her out.

"Trees. Now."

She did not argue.

We ran, but not back towards the access point. The figures stood between us and the way we had come. I turned right into the trees, towards where the river ought to have been, because the undergrowth offered better cover than the open forestry track and I thought we might lose them among the spruce and willow.

Ross came after us, his boots striking the ground in a steady rhythm, the carbine held ready.

Ailsa did not follow.

I looked back. She stood alone beside the Land Rover with her hands hanging at her sides. Her jacket pocket was open. The scorched bag and the disc were gone.

Her head tilted slowly and unnaturally, as if something were adjusting its angle.

Then she spoke in the control-room operator's voice, slowed and stretched.

"Bring the star back to the cut."

Her mouth continued moving after the words had ended, her lips forming silent shapes.

"Ailsa!" I shouted.

She neither turned nor reacted. She stood with her head tilted and her hands loose.

I started back towards her, but Ross caught my shoulder.

"No. Keep moving."

Imogen was already ahead, crashing through the willows with her notebook still clutched in one hand. I followed her, and Ross stayed close.

Behind us, Ailsa repeated the phrase in the same stretched voice and the same measured rhythm.

We ran for perhaps two minutes. It might have been less. The trees were dense, the ground uneven, and all I could do was keep Imogen in sight.

Then the willows opened and we were back at the pit.

The same shallow depression lay before us. The same spiral of burnt bones and ash. At its centre were the two fused children's trainers we had seen before.

I stopped. Imogen halted beside me, struggling for breath. Ross came through the undergrowth and swept the clearing with his carbine raised.

"We've already left here," Imogen said. "We walked away."

"I know."

"But we're back."

"I know."

Her face was pale, but her gaze was still precise and alert.

"The terrain looped us," she said. "It forced us back."

I did not argue. I had no better explanation.

Imogen opened her notebook and turned rapidly through the pages until she found her sketch of the seven holes drilled into the alder.

"These form a map. The spacing follows the six rays on the disc, with the seventh hole at the centre. And the intervals match the clicks. One every 1.8 seconds."

Ross took out his radio and pressed the transmit button. Clicking burst from the speaker, faster than before and no longer evenly separated. The sounds overlapped one another.

He lowered the radio and looked at me.

"That isn't control."

"No," I said. "It isn't."

Ailsa stepped out from the willows.

She moved stiffly, without focus. Her eyes did not track us but stared beyond us at something that was not there. In one bare hand, extended like an offering, she held the disc. The plastic evidence bag was gone.

Behind her came the thin figures. Three, perhaps four, sliding between the trees. Their reflective strips flared, and their limbs bent in the wrong places.

Ailsa's mouth moved.

"The star goes back to the cut."

I did not wait.

I crossed the clearing in four strides, caught her wrist and pulled the disc from her hand. It was cold, slick and oily. Touching it through the evidence bag had been bad enough. Against my bare skin it was worse.

My fingers went numb.

I turned and ran to the alder with the drilled holes. Imogen shouted something, but I did not hear it. I was already at the trunk, forcing the disc into the largest aperture at shoulder height.

It fitted perfectly, as though the hole had been made for it.

The alder did not crack. It split along a seam cut from within, a vertical line opening from the hole to the roots.

Cold air drew out of it. It was not wind but suction, tugging at my jacket and hair and pulling dead leaves across the ground.

Every thin figure jerked towards the opening at once. Their bodies snapped forwards, arms reaching, orange material flaring as they slid across the clearing faster than they had moved before.

Ross seized Ailsa's arm and dragged her away from the tree.

I looked around and saw Euan's missing steel-toe wellington lying in the grass where it had fallen during the first attack.

I snatched it up and rammed it into the seam.

The rubber wedged tight. The split tried to close, grinding against the wellington, but the reinforced toe held it apart.

The suction stopped.

The ground trembled once, a deep vibration that travelled through my boots and into my chest. The clicking on Ross's radio slowed and changed pitch.

It sounded like laughter: distant, faint and unmistakable.

Then the sound of the Black Water of Dee snapped back, loud and ordinary, rushing over stones twenty metres beyond the willows.

The thin figures were gone.

Ailsa collapsed. Ross caught her before she struck the ground. Imogen stood beside the pit with her notebook open, staring at the alder.

I watched the wellington jammed in the seam. Its surface was already darkening, absorbing something from inside the tree, but it held.

That was the end of it, at least for that day.

Perhaps an hour later, perhaps two, more officers from Police Scotland's Dumfries and Galloway division arrived, followed by forensic personnel and detectives from the Major Investigation Team in Dumfries. Ross must eventually have reached someone on a channel that worked.

Scottish Ambulance Service paramedics placed Euan on a stretcher. They said he was in shock and possibly hypothermic, despite the warm July weather. They covered him with a foil blanket, gave him oxygen and fitted a cannula. He lay there staring at nothing.

Ailsa sat on the back step of an ambulance with a blanket around her shoulders. She was not speaking. She tapped her fingers against her knee in repeated groups, keeping the same 1.8-second spacing.

Then she looked towards the pit and said, "There were three trainers. When we first arrived, there were three."

I looked at the two fused shapes in the ash and said nothing.

A detective from the Major Investigation Team asked me what had happened.

I told him we had attended a reported disturbance and found evidence of illegal activity, possibly an organised fly-tipping crew or people involved in wildlife trafficking. I said they had been wearing forestry contractors' tabards and using some form of radio interference. We had found ourselves caught in the middle of it. Our tyres had been slashed, and we had been forced to leave on foot.

He wrote that down. He asked about the bones, the children's trainers and the drilled holes.

I said the place resembled a ritual site, perhaps something staged to intimidate people. I did not know what it meant.

That was for his team to determine.

He asked about Ailsa.

I said she might have been exposed to a chemical substance and needed a medical assessment.

He asked about the alder.

I said I had not touched it and had not gone near it. Forensic services could process the scene however they thought best.

He studied me for a long time. Then he closed his notebook and told me to remain available.

I said I would.

Graham Sutherland came to the Forestry and Land Scotland depot near Kirroughtree the next morning, Wednesday, 22 July 2026. I was at my desk dealing with paperwork. Imogen was in the break room emptying her locker. Her placement had ended early, and she was returning to Glasgow that afternoon.

Graham did not sit. He stood in the doorway with his arms folded. At fifty-two, he had spent long enough managing rangers to recognise an explanation designed to protect its speaker.

"You took a student into a hazardous scene."

"PC Kerr asked for a site consultation. I didn't know it would escalate."

"You should have sent Imogen back to the depot as soon as you saw Police Scotland at the site."

"Probably."

"Probably?" His voice went flat. "She is twenty-one years old, Callum. She isn't trained for that. She wasn't covered for it, and you put her in the middle of whatever the hell happened out there."

I did not answer.

"You're suspended," Graham said. "A fortnight on full pay, pending an internal investigation. If the duty inspector or the Major Investigation Team wants to speak to you, you cooperate. Otherwise, you stay at home. Understood?"

"Understood."

He left.

Imogen emerged from the break room with her rucksack over one shoulder. She looked at me but did not speak. I thought that was the last I would hear from her.

On Friday, 24 July 2026, a brown C4 envelope arrived at my home. There was no return address. It had been postmarked in Dumfries.

Inside were copies of pages from Imogen's notebook.

They showed her sketch of the seven drilled holes, their measurements and spacing, and a traced outline of the six-rayed star. Lines connected each ray and the centre to the corresponding aperture. She had also included copied GPS traces from the seasonal closures and marked the recurring intervals.

At the bottom of the final page, in her small, precise handwriting, she had written:

"The pattern repeats. Check the Dungeon Burn closure and Loch Grannoch north access. Same spacing in the GPS traces I showed you. 1.8 seconds, six rays and a centre."

I stared at it for a long time.

Then I put the pages in a drawer and locked it.

I could not file them. I could not hand them over. If I did, someone would ask why I had allowed a student to document a potential crime scene, why I had not stopped her and why I had kept her there after the danger became obvious. They might also ask why I had lied about touching the alder and why I had helped Ailsa keep evidence off the formal log, even temporarily.

I had no good answer.

So I kept the pages: proof I could not use and evidence I could not submit.

That's me.