The Vines at Bleaklow

I had been staring at the same page for twenty minutes. Module Three of the revised FCA-compliant claims-handling guidance. Fifteen pages of flowcharts and bullet points explaining how to process claims I had been processing for six years. The coffee beside my elbow had gone cold.

My kitchen table was covered in printouts, all sent by my team leader on Thursday with a note saying, 'Please review before Monday.' Corporate language for mandatory. It was early on Saturday, about 07:30. I turned the page.

Module Four covered protocols for photographic evidence. I already knew all of it. I had completed training on exactly the same subject eight months earlier. They had changed the header format and added a new approval tick box.

My phone lay face down beside the stack. I had not checked it for an hour. Did not need to. I knew that if I picked it up, I would start scrolling, then it would be 08:30, then 09:00, then midday, and I would still be sitting there in my boxers and a Kinder Scout T-shirt, getting nothing done and feeling worse about it.

The window above the sink showed Sheffield in January, grey and overcast. Cold, but not cold enough for snow. Just cold enough to make going outside feel like work. In the shared back lane, a neighbour's recycling box had overturned. It had been lying there since Thursday.

I looked back at the guidance. Module Five was entitled Maintaining Appropriate Boundaries in Client Communication.

That did it. I stood and picked up my phone.

There was a message from Callum Price, sent the previous night and forgotten until then. It said, 'Still good for tomorrow?' followed by a thumbs-up emoji. Callum loved emojis.

Used them constantly. I was fairly sure he thought they made him seem approachable.

I typed, 'Yeah. What time?' even though we had already discussed it earlier in the week. He replied in less than a minute.

'05:00. Your place.'

I sent back a thumbs-up. It felt odd. Not my style, but quicker than typing 'Sounds good.'

Then I went to find my rucksack.

I was awake at 04:15, which meant I had not really slept. I had drifted in and out with the thought of my phone alarm waiting at the back of my mind. Everything had been laid out the night before. Base layer, pullover fleece, soft-shell jacket, wool socks. My boots stood beside the door next to my rucksack, their laces already loosened.

I made instant coffee. The bad kind. Drank it while checking my kit one more time.

Ordnance Survey Explorer map, compass, head torch with fresh batteries, plus a spare set in a resealable plastic bag. First-aid kit, water bottles, oat-and-treacle energy bars that tasted faintly of cardboard. Firelighter, survival blanket, whistle.

I also had an old marine distress-flare pistol from my uncle's sailing kit. It was probably expired. I did not know whether distress flares technically expired or merely became unreliable, but I packed it anyway, right at the bottom beside the bolt croppers. The pistol held one flare, with a single spare wrapped separately.

The bolt croppers were excessive. Callum had told me so the last time. We were doing navigation exercises, not breaking into anything. But Forestry England sometimes locked access gates without warning, and I did not fancy driving all that way only to turn round.

They were compact 350 mm croppers, small enough to fit diagonally inside the rucksack. They weighed roughly 2 kg. I checked my phone. 04:53.

I brushed my teeth, put on deodorant, pulled on my jacket and shouldered the rucksack before going downstairs.

Callum arrived at 04:58 in his ageing double-cab Land Rover Defender. I heard it before I saw it. The thing leaked oil and its exhaust was failing, a problem he had been promising to sort for months.

I locked the door and went down. The small car park behind my building was still dark. One of the street lamps was mostly broken, flickering yellow every few seconds. Callum left the Defender running.

I could see him drinking from a travel mug in the cab. I opened the passenger door.

'Hey up.'

He was already wearing his high-visibility vest, bright yellow with reflective strips. He wore it everywhere when we were doing mountain-rescue work. Said it was good practice. I thought it made him look like a lollipop man.

I threw my rucksack onto the back seat beside his and climbed in.

The heater was going full blast. It smelt of coffee and something greasy. There was a paper wrapper on the floor.

'You eaten?' he asked.

'Not yet.'

'There's a sausage-and-egg bap in the bag. Brown sauce. Should still be warm.'

I looked down. A grease-spotted paper bag sat by my feet. I took out the bap. It was warm.

'Thanks.'

'No problem.'

He selected reverse and backed out.

'Knew you wouldn't eat before we left. That's you.'

He was not wrong.

We took the roads out of Sheffield and joined the A57 towards the Snake Pass. There was little traffic at that hour. A few lorries, and someone in a hatchback travelling far too fast. Callum drove one-handed, his travel mug in the other, talking me through the route.

'So, I'm thinking we park near Blackshaw Moor and do the loop anticlockwise. Keeps the ascent gradual. We can practise resection on the fell, then run a few bearings coming back down.'

'Sounds good.'

'Should be easy. Weather's meant to hold until the afternoon.'

I glanced at him. 'Thought snow was coming.'

'Yeah, later. We'll be out before then.' He took a drink. 'Moira says the Snake is clear all the way to Glossop.'

Moira Singh worked in the mountain-rescue control room. She and Callum spoke a lot. I thought he fancied her. He had never admitted it, but he mentioned her constantly.

'She working today?' I asked.

'Weekend shift.' He grinned slightly. 'Why? You planning to call in a fake emergency so I can talk to her?'

'No.'

'Didn't think so.'

He changed lanes to pass a timber lorry.

'Anyway, I told her we'd be out of mobile range most of the day, in case anything came up.'

'You think something will?'

'Nah. January's quiet. Everyone's too cold to get lost.'

I finished the bap and stuffed the wrapper back into the bag. The sky was beginning to brighten, grey fading to pale blue around the edges.

'You check your rucksack?' he asked.

'Yeah.'

'Flares? Croppers?'

I looked at him. 'How did you know?'

'Because you bring them every time.' He laughed. 'Mate, we're doing a training walk. You don't need a breaching kit.'

'It's two things. About 2 kg.'

'Still.'

He shook his head, grinning.

'I'm just saying, you overpack.'

'And you underpack.'

'I pack smart.'

'You forgot your map last time.'

'I had my phone.'

'Your phone died.'

'Because I forgot my power bank. That's different.'

I did not argue. This was more or less our routine. Callum moved quickly and forgot things. I moved slowly and carried everything.

Usually it worked.

He switched on the radio. A local programme was playing folk music and older country songs. He turned it down low.

'So, what's the plan afterwards?' he asked.

'After the walk?'

'Yeah. Thought we could get coffee in Glossop. There's an independent place on High Street West that does good breakfast sandwiches. You been?'

'Don't think so.'

'They're decent, and they're open until about two on Saturdays.' He glanced across. 'Unless you need to get back.'

I thought of the training modules spread over my kitchen table.

'No. I'm good.'

'Nice.'

We drove for a while without speaking.

The road curved out towards the moors, with bare trees and fields on either side, then gritstone walls, scattered houses and a closed village petrol station. Callum's phone rested in the cup holder between us. It lit once with a notification, but he ignored it. The sky continued to brighten.

'You brought the Explorer map?' he asked.

'Yeah.'

'Good. Mine's in the glovebox, but I think it's the old edition.'

I leaned forwards and opened it. There was an Ordnance Survey map folded along all the wrong lines, about fifteen napkins and a tyre-pressure gauge.

'Outdated,' I said.

'Thought so.'

I closed the glovebox and looked through the windscreen. We were climbing now.

The road narrowed. Snow lay along the verges, pushed back into dirty ridges by a council gritter. Callum slowed a little. Not much.

He drove the way he walked. Confident. Possibly too confident.

His phone buzzed again. This time he picked it up, glanced at the screen and frowned.

'Huh.'

'What?'

'Text alert. Derbyshire police control.'

I sat straighter. 'What's it say?'

He squinted at it. We were passing through a hollow and the signal indicator flickered.

'It's loading. Hang on.'

The road curved. His phone buzzed again, longer this time.

The message appeared. Callum read it aloud.

'Satellite-beacon activation received. Coordinates approximately 53.47 north, 1.87 west. Blackshaw Fell area. Repeat 406 MHz emergency-beacon transmission detected. Available mountain-rescue volunteers respond.'

He looked at me.

I looked back.

'That's where we're going,' I said.

'Yeah,' Callum said. 'It is.'

His phone lit up for the third time in perhaps forty seconds. He lifted it from the cup holder and swiped. I watched his expression as he read, the blue glow washing the colour from his face in the early light.

His jaw tightened.

'Moira,' he said.

'What did she say?'

He turned the screen towards me. I had to squint as the Defender bounced over a rough stretch. The text was brief and direct, the way Moira always wrote.

'Satellite-beacon activation received. Coordinates approximately 53.47 north, 1.87 west. Blackshaw Fell area. Repeat transmission detected. Available mountain-rescue volunteers respond.'

I read it twice. The coordinates lodged in my head, and I pictured the map I had been studying all week. Approximately 53.47 north, 1.87 west. Right on top of our destination.

Perhaps half a mile from where we had planned to park.

'That's our spot,' I said.

'Yeah.'

Callum set the phone down and put both hands on the wheel.

He did not slow. If anything, he leant forwards as though that might get us there faster.

'Someone's activated an emergency beacon,' I said, stating the obvious because I needed to hear it spoken. 'And then what?'

'No cancellation or update. The beacon keeps transmitting.' He glanced at me. 'Could mean whoever set it off can't respond.'

My stomach tightened. That cold, practical weight that drops into you when a situation stops being theoretical.

'Police will coordinate a response,' I said. 'Forestry England will have people in the area.'

'Moira's circulated it to everyone. The Forestry England district office is probably sending someone as well.'

'So we let them handle it.'

Callum did not answer at once.

He took the next bend faster than I liked, and the tyres gave a brief hiss against the wet tarmac. The road was narrowing, bare branches reaching over it from both sides.

'We're already here,' he said.

I knew that tone.

It was Callum's decision-made voice. The one he used when he had already committed himself and was merely waiting for me to catch up.

'We're not here yet,' I said. 'We're in a Defender on the A57, heading for a training walk.'

'A training walk at the exact coordinates where someone's just called for help.' He tapped the dark phone screen. 'We've got rucksacks. We've got kit. We're ten minutes away.'

'Callum.'

'What?'

I did not know how to say it without sounding as though I was backing out. Perhaps I was. But this felt different from our usual call-outs. Those came through proper channels, with Moira coordinating, Derbyshire police controlling the response, teams being deployed and everyone knowing who was where.

'This needs to go through the police and Forestry England,' I said. 'They know the site. They've got the resources.'

'Sure. And while everyone mobilises and drives up from the valley, whoever's out there is sitting in the snow becoming hypothermic.' He looked at me for longer this time. 'You know how quickly things go bad in January.'

I did know. Two winters earlier, we had recovered a day walker who had slipped on ice and broken his ankle. He had lain there for six hours before we found him. He survived, but lost three toes.

'We don't have communications,' I said. 'We'll lose mobile signal once we're up there.'

'Moira knows we're out here. I told her this morning.'

'You told her we'd be out of range on a training circuit. Now you're talking about responding to a beacon.'

Callum's voice remained calm, but his hands were tight around the steering wheel.

'Look, I'm not saying we charge in like idiots. We walk to the coordinates. Check the situation. Assess it. If it's bad, we stabilise whoever's there and call it in when we get back into signal. If it's nothing, we carry on with the day.'

The logic was sound. That was the problem. It left me in a corner where any objection sounded like I was putting procedure ahead of somebody who might genuinely need help.

I looked out of the window. In the previous ten minutes, the sky had changed from pale blue to flat grey. Snow was forecast for the afternoon, but the boundary between morning and afternoon was never as precise as people liked to imagine.

'Fine,' I said. 'But we stick to protocol. Assess and assist. We don't start an unsupported search.'

'That's all I'm saying.'

He was already slowing, scanning the right-hand side of the road. I saw the turning before he did. A narrow forestry access road, barely wide enough for two vehicles, with a weathered wooden sign partly buried in ploughed snow.

'Blackshaw Moor. Forestry access. 3 km.'

Callum turned in without indicating. Not that there was anyone behind us. We had not passed another vehicle in fifteen minutes.

The surface deteriorated at once. Packed snow was rutted by old tyre tracks, and branches hung low enough to scrape along the Defender's roof. Its suspension complained over every hollow, and the instant coffee began to feel like a mistake.

I checked my watch. 07:43.

The sun should have been higher, but the cloud made everything dim and flat. Then I heard tiny taps against the windscreen.

'Snow,' Callum said.

At first there were only a few flakes, loose and drifting, the sort that did not settle. Within perhaps thirty seconds they had thickened. Not a storm, not yet, but steady enough for Callum to switch on the wipers.

They dragged across the glass with a squeal that set my teeth on edge.

The trees pressed closer, mostly bare trunks mixed with dense plantation growth, all the underbrush buried in white. Visibility dropped quickly, from twenty metres to fifteen. The world contracted to the tunnel of track ahead and the white static filling everything beyond it.

'This is coming in quickly,' I said.

'We're nearly there.'

I did not ask how he knew. There were no distance markers and the snow was erasing every sense of progress, but Callum drove as though he was certain, leaning forwards with his face close to the windscreen.

The crack was so loud that I thought something in the engine had exploded.

A massive, wet snap, then a dark shape falling fast through the white. I had half a second to register branches, bark and the thick trunk of a tree before it struck the bonnet with a crunch that drove the whole Defender down on its suspension.

Callum slammed on the brakes.

We skidded perhaps two feet and stopped hard. The windscreen held, but a spiderweb of cracks spread across the passenger side where the trunk had landed.

For a moment, neither of us moved.

The tree lay across the whole bonnet, slanting from my side towards Callum's front wing. It was not enormous, perhaps thirty centimetres across, but it was enough. The bonnet had folded inwards, and I could hear liquid dripping beneath it. Coolant, perhaps. Or oil.

'You all right?' Callum asked. His voice was tight.

'Yeah. You?'

'Yeah.'

I tried my door. It opened about eight centimetres before striking branches. I shoved harder, but the tree had fallen with half its limbs attached and they were wedged against the frame.

'I'm blocked.'

Callum tried his door. Same problem. The angle of the trunk had pinned both front doors.

'Back seats,' he said.

We twisted round. The Defender had rear doors, but our rucksacks were in the way. I grabbed mine and hauled it forwards to clear some room. Callum did the same. His caught on a headrest, and I had to wrench it free while he squeezed between the seats.

On his side, the trunk bowed over the wing, leaving perhaps forty-five centimetres between the tree and the rear door frame. Callum went first. He forced the door open and slid out on his stomach, dragging his rucksack after him. I heard him grunt, then he was outside, standing in snow halfway up his shins.

'Come on,' he said.

I pushed my rucksack through and followed. The gap was narrower than it looked, and bark scraped along my jacket. My shoulders barely fitted.

For a second I thought I was stuck, trapped between the tree and the Defender. Then Callum caught my arm and pulled, and I squeezed through into the snow.

I stood. My boots sank nearly eight inches.

Snow was still falling, thicker now, and the cold struck my face all at once. The Defender sat at an angle, its front end crushed beneath the trunk. Steam rose from somewhere under the twisted bonnet. The track behind us was already disappearing under fresh snow.

Ahead, it vanished into white static and dark trees.

No mobile signal. No other vehicles. Nobody knew exactly where we were. Moira only knew we were somewhere around Blackshaw Moor and would be out of range, which covered a great deal of ground.

Callum looked at me. His face was pale and his breath clouded in front of him.

'Well,' he said. 'Shit.'

I put on my rucksack and tightened the straps. My hands were trembling slightly. Not from cold yet. Adrenaline working its way through me.

The weather had been manageable ten minutes earlier. Now we were on foot in heavy snow, our Defender pinned beneath a tree, with someone nearby who had already activated an emergency beacon.

Things had escalated quickly.

Callum gripped the trunk with both hands and tried to roll it towards the passenger side. His boots slipped. The tree did not move.

'Help me shift it.'

I dropped my rucksack and moved around to the other side. The tree was heavier than it looked, probably still green beneath the bark. I planted my gloves against the trunk and pulled while Callum pushed. The bark felt rough and cold even through the gloves.

We both leant into it.

Nothing.

The trunk had landed at an angle and punched the bonnet down around the engine block. Crumpled metal wrapped partway around the wood.

'It's wedged,' I said.

Callum kept pushing. His face reddened and his breath burst out in white clouds.

The tree moved perhaps an inch, then settled back into the crushed bonnet with a grinding noise that hurt my teeth.

'God's sake.'

Callum released it and stepped back. He wiped his gloves against his high-visibility vest.

Steam still rose from beneath the bonnet, but there was less of it now. The dripping had slowed. I studied the trunk again. It was not moving without a winch or a saw, and far more time than we had.

Snow was already settling on the bark.

Callum unclipped something from his belt. A black, heavy-looking portable radio with a short antenna and a mountain-rescue label peeling from the casing. I had forgotten he carried it.

When he turned the volume control, static burst out loudly enough to make me flinch. A dim amber charge indicator glowed on the set.

'Control, this is Price. Do you copy?'

Only static.

He adjusted the squelch and tried again.

'Moira, this is Callum Price on Rescue Portable Two. Do you copy?'

More static. A faint warble that might have been a voice, or only interference. Then nothing.

Callum turned through three or four channels. Each gave the same flat hiss. He held the radio above his head and pressed the transmit switch again.

'Anyone on this frequency? Rescue Portable Two requesting relay to Derbyshire police control.'

Nothing.

He lowered the radio and clipped it back onto his belt. The amber light still glowed, but the set could not reach beyond the site.

His jaw tightened.

That was when the isolation truly settled over me. No mobile reception, no radio contact, no passing traffic. The Defender disabled and snow falling harder, already covering the tyre tracks behind us.

Callum had told Moira we would be out of range all day. She would not expect to hear from us. Police and mountain rescue would respond to the beacon eventually, and Forestry England might send someone from the district office, but none of them knew we were here or that our vehicle had been struck.

We had simply disappeared.

I pulled my jacket tighter. My hands were cold.

Callum looked at the Defender, then up the track where it vanished among the trees and snow.

'We should walk towards the beacon coordinates,' he said. 'Meet whoever's coming in from Glossop.'

I stared at him. 'We don't know how far away they are.'

'Closer than they will be if we sit here.'

He adjusted his rucksack straps.

'The track behind us is blocked anyway. The tree came down just after that last bend. We'd be walking this direction either way.'

He was not wrong. The way back was filling with snow. Even if we tried to walk out, it would take hours in this weather. And, if I remembered the map correctly, the beacon coordinates were less than a mile away.

But leaving the Defender felt wrong. Every survival guide says to remain with your vehicle. Stay put. Make yourself visible. Wait for help.

'Snow's going to keep piling up,' Callum said. 'If we stay here, we're sitting in it until somebody notices we're missing. Tomorrow at the earliest.'

I looked at the Defender again. Snow had begun banking around the tyres. The cracked windscreen was turning white. In another hour, nobody would know it was there unless they walked straight into it.

Staying felt like waiting to be buried.

'All right,' I said.

I picked up my rucksack and pulled it on. The straps dug into my shoulders. Callum was already moving, stepping around the front of the Defender and heading uphill along the access track.

I followed.

The snow was thick now. Not large, wet flakes, but small dry ones that clung to everything. They gathered across my shoulders and on top of my rucksack. I felt them land against my face like cold pinpricks.

We walked close to the verge, where the snow was slightly shallower beneath the trees. Callum stayed a few feet ahead. His yellow high-visibility vest made him easy to follow even through the falling white.

I watched the ground for roots and stones hidden beneath the snow.

That was when I saw the bootprints.

They left the track about twenty metres ahead, cutting into the trees on the left. Fresh prints. The snow inside them was only about a centimetre deep, while several centimetres had settled over the surrounding ground.

Someone had passed that way recently. Within the previous hour, I thought.

'Callum.'

He stopped and turned.

I pointed. 'Tracks.'

He came back and crouched beside the prints. Large, deeply treaded soles. Walking boots, probably size tens or elevens. The stride was long, and the impressions were deep, as though whoever had made them was moving quickly or carrying weight.

'Hiker,' Callum said.

He stood and looked into the trees where the trail led.

'Has to be connected to the beacon.'

The prints went directly into the woodland without hesitation. Whoever had made them seemed to know where they were going.

We followed.

The trees closed around us as soon as we left the track. Bare trunks crowded above undergrowth buried in snow. The prints wound between the trees, skirted a fallen log and passed beneath a low branch. I pushed through a tangle of dead vines that caught at my jacket.

Then I saw the fence.

Chain link, roughly 3 metres high, running left and right through the trees for as far as I could see in the snowfall. Its top was lined with barbed wire angled outwards. Dead vines smothered parts of it, and years of weather had made sections sag. Rust ran down the mesh in long orange streaks.

The bootprints stopped at the fence.

Callum approached and gripped the chain link with both hands. It rattled.

'Forestry England site,' he said.

A sign had been wired to the fence about three metres to our right. It was weathered white with faded red lettering and half-hidden behind dead vines. I pulled them aside.

'RESTRICTED OPERATIONAL SITE. NO UNAUTHORISED ACCESS.'

'Probably an old research compound,' Callum said. 'Weather monitoring, forestry trials, wildlife surveys. They set places like this up years ago, then abandoned half of them when the funding disappeared.'

That made sense. The fence did not.

It did not run in a straight line. It curved. Through the snow I could see it bending away on both sides, following the slope as if it encircled Blackshaw Fell.

Most Forestry England barriers I had seen simply crossed an access road or track, enough to stop vehicles. This looked designed to surround the entire site. To keep people out, or something in.

I pushed the thought away. It was stupid.

Callum followed the fence line, tracking the bootprints. They ran alongside it for about ten metres, then stopped at a gate.

The gate was made from the same rusted chain link, about three metres wide and mounted between steel posts sunk into concrete. A heavy chain looped through the latch, secured by a padlock nearly the size of my fist. Both were old, corroded and thick with grime.

The bootprints ended directly in front of it. There were none leading away.

'Went over,' Callum said.

He pointed upwards. The barbed wire above one side of the gate had been bent down. A scrap of dark cloth hung from a barb and fluttered in the wind.

'Looking for shelter,' he said. 'Makes sense. If there's a building inside, it's better than sitting out here.'

I studied the fence again. The wire angled outwards, away from the compound. That meant it was meant to prevent people climbing in, not prevent anything climbing out.

'We going in?' Callum asked.

I did not answer immediately.

The fence felt wrong. The entire place felt wrong. But the tracks had led us there, and whoever had made them had apparently gone over. If they were injured or hypothermic, they might not be capable of getting back out.

I removed my rucksack and opened the main compartment. The bolt croppers were at the bottom, exactly where I had packed them. Compact, with red rubber grips and jaws intended for light chain.

I passed them to Callum.

He took them and looked at me.

'Told you these were overkill.'

'Yeah.'

He placed the jaws around the chain just above the padlock, where the links appeared thinnest. His gloves made it difficult to spread the handles fully, so he pulled them off with his teeth and dropped them into the snow.

He squeezed. His knuckles turned white. The jaws bit into the chain with a grinding sound that set my teeth on edge.

The chain held.

Callum repositioned the jaws, found a better angle and squeezed again. His shoulders tensed. I heard him grunt with the effort.

The link snapped.

The sound was sharp and flat in the cold air. The severed ends sprang apart and the padlock dropped into the snow with a soft thud. The chain slid through the latch and fell in a loose coil at Callum's feet.

He returned the croppers and I pushed them into my rucksack. My hands were trembling slightly. From the cold, probably.

Callum put his gloves back on and took hold of the gate with both hands.

He pulled.

The gate swung inwards. Smoothly. No resistance.

The hinges did not even creak. It opened as though somebody had oiled them the day before, each half swinging wide until it met the stop with a soft metallic tap.

That was wrong.

The fence was decades old and rusted through in places. The chain and padlock had been corroded and caked in grime. Yet the gate moved as though it was used and maintained.

Callum did not seem to notice. He was coiling the cut chain while the bootprints reappeared beyond him in the shallower snow beneath the trees.

I stood for a moment, looking at the open gate, at the effortless inward swing and the fence curving away into the woods on either side.

Then I went through first.

The bootprints continued on the other side, pressed into snow that looked cleaner there. Thicker as well. I took three steps and my boot slipped sideways. Not far, but enough to make me catch myself against the gatepost.

The ground felt wrong.

I looked down. Snow covered most of it, but my boot had scraped through to moss. A great deal of moss. It formed a thick, slick mat over the entire clearing.

Not patchy, the way moss normally grows. This was one unbroken layer, dark green and almost black in places. It was wet. Moisture beaded across its surface even though the temperature was well below freezing.

Callum came through behind me.

'You all right?'

'Yeah. Watch your footing.'

He planted a boot and slipped exactly as I had. He caught hold of the fence.

'Hell.'

I crouched and brushed snow aside with my glove. The moss continued as far as I could clear. When I pulled at an edge, it lifted in a flexible, tough sheet.

I expected soil beneath it.

Instead, I found runners.

Dozens of vine-like strands lay beneath the moss in straight lines, crossing one another at perfect right angles. They were too orderly. Vines did not grow that way. They twisted, looped and followed whatever route offered least resistance. These looked more like buried cables than plants.

Each was as thick as my thumb, smooth and dark brown with a faint sheen. I touched one. It was cold and rigid. Not frozen exactly, but firm in a way that felt wrong for anything organic.

'What is it?' Callum asked from above me.

'Vines, I think.'

I lowered the moss into place and stood.

'They're under everything.'

He looked at the ground, then around at the surrounding trees.

'Could be part of an old Forestry England project. Erosion control or something.'

It did not explain the precise grid, or the wet moss, but I had no better answer, so I nodded.

We carried on.

The bootprints ran straight across the clearing towards another line of trees about forty metres away. I watched the ground for hidden roots or stones, but mostly I thought about the runners and the way they appeared to have been laid out.

Deliberate.

I told myself it was some kind of research installation. An old soil-stabilisation trial from when the compound was active. That was plausible.

Except for the moss. Uniform coverage like that needed serious maintenance, and according to Callum the place had probably been abandoned for years.

The trees ahead were less dense than those outside the fence. Mostly conifers, tall and straight, with branches beginning high on their trunks. The snow was thinner beneath them.

We entered their shade and I could see more clearly. The bootprints turned left, following what might once have been a path.

We followed them.

That was when I saw the tower.

It stood about a hundred metres ahead, rising above the tree line. An old fire-watch tower. I had read that Blackshaw Fell once had one while researching our training route.

This had to be it.

Four legs of dark steel supported a glazed cabin approximately 18 metres above the ground. The metal might once have been painted, or it might simply have rusted almost black. From that distance I could not tell. Flights of stairs climbed the frame in a series of switchbacks.

At its base, parked on a cleared patch of ground, was a Forestry England quad bike.

Callum saw it when I did. He quickened his pace.

I remained a few steps behind, scanning the site. Nobody was visible.

The quad bike was green, an older model crusted with mud and snow. Its engine was off. I could tell from ten feet away. No steam, no exhaust. Only a cold machine standing in the snow.

Callum reached it first and walked around the front, checking it over.

'Keys are in.'

I came alongside him. He was right. The key remained in the ignition, turned to the off position.

About an inch of snow covered the seat. Not much, but enough to show that it had been standing there since before the snowfall began. Possibly longer.

'Forestry officer must be up top,' Callum said.

He looked towards the tower, shading his eyes despite the flat grey light. I looked as well. I could see nobody in the cabin. The windows were dark.

Callum headed for the stairs. I stayed beside the quad bike.

Something about it bothered me. Not the keys by themselves. Forestry workers might leave keys in vehicles at a remote operational site. It was not as though anybody was likely to steal a quad from the middle of a fenced compound.

But the whole thing felt wrong. Snow on the seat. The quad parked slightly crooked, as though somebody had stopped abruptly, climbed off and not bothered to straighten it.

The rear storage box stood unlatched, its lid open by an inch or two. I lifted it the rest of the way. Inside were a coil of rope, a toolbox, a first-aid kit and a half-full plastic water bottle. Standard equipment.

Nothing obviously missing, but it felt abandoned. Not as though someone had parked and climbed the tower. More as though they had walked away in the middle of a job and never returned.

'Callum!'

He was at the foot of the stairs, one hand on the railing.

'Come on.'

I closed the storage box and followed him.

The steps were made from open steel grating, the sort you could see straight through. I did not like heights, but I could manage them provided I did not look down. I kept my eyes on Callum's boots and climbed.

Each step clanged beneath our weight, the sound carrying through the unnatural stillness. Snow fell harder, catching in my eyelashes and melting against my face. I wiped it away with the back of my glove.

Halfway up, I caught the handrail to steady myself.

My glove slipped.

I tightened my grip and felt the rail move beneath my hand.

Not the whole structure, just the surface. I stopped and looked at it. The rail was coated in something, a green film, slick and slightly tacky. I'd assumed it was moss or algae, the sort of growth you get on outdoor metal after years of damp.

But when I gripped it, the coating flexed. It moved beneath my glove, stretching and compressing. It felt organic, like damp skin stretched over wire. I let go.

Callum was still climbing. He hadn't noticed. I looked at my glove. The palm was stained dark green.

I wiped it on my jacket and carried on, keeping my hands off the rail. The cab was small, perhaps two and a half metres square, with windows on all four sides and a pitched roof. The door faced the top of the stairs. Callum reached it first and tried the handle.

It opened about eight centimetres, then stuck. He pulled harder. It didn't budge.

'Swollen,' he said.

Wood does that. The door was metal, but I didn't correct him. He braced one foot against the frame and pulled with both hands. The door scraped open another few inches, enough to get a shoulder through.

He turned sideways and pushed. I heard something crack, probably the latch, and the door swung wide. Callum stepped inside. I followed.

The cab smelt of mildew and something else. Something faintly sweet and rotten, like wet leaves left in a bag. There was a camp bed against the far wall, neatly made, with a wool blanket folded at the foot. A small desk stood beneath the north-facing window, with a desktop radio on it, the sort with a handset and coiled lead.

A waterproof jacket hung from a hook beside the door. It was bright yellow, with reflective strips and a Forestry England badge on the shoulder. The name badge read CLARKE in black letters. No one was there.

Callum crossed to the radio and picked up the handset. He pressed the transmit button. Nothing. He checked the power lead.

It was connected to a battery pack beneath the desk. The charge indicator showed a faint amber glow, dim enough to miss at first, but it had power. I looked around. There was a shelf of tinned food, a camping stove, a lantern and a pair of binoculars on the windowsill.

Everything was organised, intentional. Someone had been living there, or at least staying there regularly. But the dust on the desk was thick. I ran my finger through it and left a clean line.

The logbook lay at the corner of the desk beneath a mug stained with dried coffee. I picked it up. Standard Forestry England issue, spiral-bound, with a green cover. I opened it to the last page containing any writing.

The entries were dated. The most recent were from four days earlier, 11 January. The handwriting was neat and small, all capitals. The page was signed at the bottom: E. Clarke.

I read the first entry.

11 January, 06:00. Vines climbed overnight. Measured 1.2 metres of growth on east fence section between yesterday evening and this morning. Growth rate not consistent with seasonal norms or any species known in the area.

I kept reading.

11 January, 12:00. Animal noise ceased at approximately 11:45. Total silence for eighteen minutes. Resumed at 12:03 with normal birdsong. No visual confirmation of cause.

11 January, 15:30. Satellite distress activation. Messenger activated inside desk drawer. Unit was powered off and battery removed as of 08:00 this morning. Drawer was closed. No evidence of external interference. Device transmitting standard 406 MHz emergency-beacon signal. Manually deactivated and stored in Faraday bag.

The final entry was at the bottom of the page, underlined twice.

11 January, 18:20. Fence is failing. Vines have compromised structural integrity at multiple points. Do not attempt entry without full protective equipment and backup. Perimeter no longer secure.

That was it. Nothing after that.

The next page was blank. I read the warning again. The fence is failing.

We had just cut through that fence.

We were inside.

Callum crossed back to the radio on the desk. He picked up the handset again and turned the volume all the way up. Static came through the speaker.

The same flat, dead sound as his portable radio on the access track. He pressed transmit and gave his call sign twice.

'Rescue Portable Two, Rescue Portable Two.'

Nothing came back. He released the button and the static continued.

'Battery's charged,' he said, tapping the pack beneath the desk with his boot.

The amber indicator glimmered weakly. The set had power. The signal simply wasn't getting beyond the site.

I tried to tell myself that made sense. We were on Bleaklow in a snowstorm, surrounded by moorland, plantations and gritstone country that swallowed mobile reception on a good day. Perhaps the tower had been built when different radio equipment was used there. Perhaps the set was too old, or tuned to the wrong frequency. I didn't know enough about radios to say.

Callum put down the handset and moved to the window. He leant forwards with both hands on the sill, looking through the glass.

Snow streamed past outside, thicker now. I could barely make out the trees below.

'There's a fire,' Callum said.

I stepped closer. 'Where?'

He pointed down and to the left, towards the tree line beyond the quad bike.

'Right there. See it?'

I leant beside him and followed his finger. At first I saw nothing except white and grey between the dark verticals of the trunks. Then I caught it. A small orange glow among the trees, perhaps fifty metres from the foot of the tower.

Definitely a fire. Coals or embers. Something burning.

'Someone's down there,' Callum said.

He turned and headed for the door before I could answer. His boots struck the metal stairs hard, clanging down two at a time. I caught my rucksack straps to stop them bouncing and followed. The stairs rattled beneath us.

I kept one hand close to the rail without touching it, remembering the slick green coating from the climb. Callum was already on the ground by the time I was halfway down. He didn't wait. He headed directly towards the tree line, following the direction he'd indicated from the window.

I reached the ground and jogged after him. My rucksack thumped against my back. The snow was deeper there, almost to mid-shin, and every step took effort. Callum's high-visibility vest made him easy to follow even as the trees closed around him.

The fire was exactly where he'd said. A ring of stones perhaps sixty centimetres across, with coals glowing orange and red at its centre. Real heat came off it. I felt it against my face from two metres away. The arrangement looked clean and professional.

The stones were all roughly the same size, laid in a perfect circle with gaps for airflow. Balanced directly above the coals across two stones was a satellite messenger. Its screen glowed bright green, displaying a single word in block capitals: SOS.

Something kicked inside my chest. Relief, perhaps, or hope. Someone had been there. Someone had called for help.

We had found the right place.

Callum stopped at the edge of the fire ring. I came up beside him and looked around. A rucksack leant against a tree trunk a metre to the left of the fire.

It was dark blue and modern, with its hip belt unfastened and hanging loose. The fabric was clean and completely dry. There was no snow on it at all, although snow was settling on everything else: the stones, the ground, my shoulders.

'Hello?' Callum called.

His voice carried through the trees, but no one answered. He tried again, louder.

'Forestry England! Is anybody here?'

Nothing. Only the wind and the hiss of snow through the branches.

I crouched beside the fire ring and studied the messenger. It was unbranded, the sort of satellite device that cost several hundred pounds and worked far beyond mobile coverage. The screen still displayed SOS, and a small icon in one corner blinked steadily. It appeared to be transmitting, but the buttons on its side were wrong.

I leant closer. The casing around them had warped and melted inwards, leaving smooth, rounded edges, as if someone had held a flame against it. Yet the screen was undamaged. The device was still working. It made no sense.

I shifted to see the coals more clearly. They glowed steadily and evenly, the sort of heat left by hardwood burning for an hour or more. Ash had gathered around the edges in soft grey drifts.

In the ash, curled near the centre, lay a strip of something that wasn't wood. I stared at it. At first my mind refused to understand what I was seeing. It was about eight centimetres long, dark brown on one side and pale on the other.

The pale side had fine, flattened hairs. The edges had curled in the heat.

Skin.

I stood too quickly. My stomach rolled. I backed away two steps and looked at Callum. He was already crouching on the opposite side of the fire, reaching for the messenger.

'We need to take this,' he said. 'Get it back into signal range and update the coordinates. Let control know we've found the site.'

'Don't touch it,' I said.

He paused with his fingers an inch from the device.

'What?'

'Just don't.'

But he had already decided. He reached out, closed his hand around the messenger and lifted it from the stones.

The vines came up fast.

They snapped out from beneath the stone ring, whipping through the gaps left for airflow. Thin and dark, perhaps the same ones I'd seen beneath the unfrozen moss at the gate. Two loops closed around Callum's wrist before he could pull away, then coiled smoothly up his forearm to the elbow.

Another vine came from his left and wrapped itself around his neck.

Callum made a sound that was half shout, half choke, and dropped the messenger. It struck the snow and its screen went dark. He seized the vine at his throat with his free hand and tried to wrench it away, but it didn't move.

His face was already turning red.

I tore off my rucksack and grabbed the compact bolt croppers from the side pocket where I'd shoved them after Callum used them at the gate. I didn't think. I simply moved.

I swung the croppers at the vine around his wrist, aiming for the middle of the coil. The vine slid aside. It moved before the jaws reached it, slipping along his arm as though it had seen the blades coming. The croppers snapped shut on empty air.

I tried again, this time for his neck. The same thing happened. The vine flowed upwards towards his jaw, and the blades missed.

Callum's eyes widened. He gagged and clawed at his throat. The vine tightened.

Something closed around my ankle.

It yanked.

My feet went from under me and I struck the snow flat on my back. The croppers flew from my hands and vanished into the white. The vine pulled again, dragging me towards the fire ring. I twisted and dug my fingers into the snow, trying to find something solid, but there was only moss and loose powder.

Above me, the branches began to move. They weren't swaying. They were bending deliberately. Birch and poplar limbs bowed inwards from every side, curling down towards the clearing like fingers closing into a fist. They crossed and interlocked, weaving together and blotting out the sky piece by piece, until all I could see above us was a tightening lattice of dark wood and white snow.

I kicked at the vine on my ankle until my boot tore free, then rolled onto my knees and scrabbled through the snow. My glove struck metal. I seized the lost bolt croppers and lurched upright.

My hands were shaking. Callum had both hands on the vine around his neck now, pulling at it, and his face had darkened beyond red. I went for the vine around his wrist first, positioned the jaws and squeezed.

The blades bit through.

The vine split with a wet snap and something sprayed out. It wasn't sap. It was too thin. A fine, warm mist struck my face and jacket, smelling of turned earth and something chemical I couldn't identify.

The severed length didn't simply fall. It whipped backwards, curled into itself and twisted in the air before dropping into the snow. The rooted end recoiled in the opposite direction and slid through a gap in the stone ring.

The movement was wrong. It wasn't like a cut rope or a snapped branch.

It moved like a snake when you step too close.

Callum dragged in a loud, ragged breath. His free hand was still clawing at the vine around his neck. I shifted the croppers, but more vines pushed through the snow near his boots, thin black tendrils threading towards his ankles.

'They're underneath,' Callum rasped.

His voice was hoarse and strangled.

'Underground. Everything.'

I looked down. The snow around us was shifting, and it wasn't the wind. Small hollows formed and filled, formed and filled, tracing lines outwards from the fire ring in every direction. I could see the vines travelling beneath the surface. They spread in straight segments and sharp angles, geometric runners hidden beneath the snow.

I dropped the croppers and dug through my rucksack, past the first-aid kit and survival blanket, until my hand closed around the old marine distress-flare pistol from my uncle's sailing kit. Its grip was cracked. I hadn't fired it in perhaps ten years.

It might not even work.

I drew it out, broke open the barrel and checked the chamber. One flare loaded. One spare in the side pocket of my rucksack. That was all.

Callum choked. The vine around his neck had tightened, and another had wrapped his other wrist. He was on his knees now, being pulled forwards towards the fire ring.

I stood, aimed the flare pistol upwards and away from him, and pulled the trigger.

The recoil was harder than I remembered. The flare shot out with a hiss, burning magnesium-white so brightly that it hurt my eyes even when I turned away. It arced above the fire ring, trailing red smoke, and landed in the snow three metres beyond Callum. It kept burning, spitting and crackling, throwing savage red-white light across the clearing.

The vines recoiled. Not completely, but enough. Those around Callum's wrists loosened, and the one at his throat slipped down an inch. He gasped, caught it with both hands and dragged it off. It came away slowly. He threw it into the snow.

I lunged forwards, gripped the shoulder straps of his high-visibility vest with both hands and pulled. Callum scrambled backwards on his knees while I dragged him away from the fire ring towards the tower. His boots furrowed two long tracks through the snow. The flare still burnt behind us, but its light was already beginning to fade.

The ground resisted. That is the only way I can describe it. My boots sank through the snow and deeper into the soil beneath than they should have. When I tried to step back, the earth wouldn't release them at once.

I had to pull hard. Each boot came free with a wet sucking sound, only to sink again. Sink, pull, sink.

The ground felt soft and loose beneath the snow, but it grabbed at us. It pulled backwards. Not mere resistance. An actual pull.

Callum found his feet and we moved faster, half running and half stumbling.

The flare sputtered and died behind us. The fire ring still glowed, but its orange light no longer reached us. The tower was six metres ahead. Five. Three.

We reached the base and I shoved Callum towards the stairs. He caught the rail and began to climb. I was directly behind him. My boot struck the first steel-grating step and I heard something scrape.

I looked down.

Vines were pushing up through the grating, thin strands rising from beneath and weaving through the gaps. One hooked Callum's boot at the ankle.

He jerked his leg, but it held. Another wrapped itself around the toe. He pulled harder and his boot remained pinned.

'Callum!'

I grabbed his belt and hauled him upwards and back. His boot slipped free and we both stumbled off the stairs onto the quad-bike pad. The concrete was cracked and stained, but solid. No moss covered it. No vines came through.

The Forestry England quad bike stood there with snow on its seat and the keys still in the ignition. I released Callum and ran to it. I climbed on, turned the key, checked the cut-off switch and pressed the starter.

Click.

One click, then nothing.

I tried again. The same click.

The battery was dead, the starter had failed, or something else had stopped it. I didn't know. The engine was cold. There was no smell of petrol and no sign it had run recently. The whole thing felt wrong in the same way as Clarke's tower cab. As though someone had walked away moments before and left everything precisely in place.

Callum remained on the concrete on his hands and knees, fighting for breath.

I looked beyond him and saw the vines coming.

They weren't threading slowly from the ground now. They surged over the edge of the pad in a dark, twisting wave. Some were as thin as string. Others were as thick as my thumb. Every one moved with the same smooth speed.

They reached Callum's boots and bound both within seconds, coiling up his calves.

He kicked, but they pulled him forwards, dragging him from the concrete towards the snow. I jumped off the quad bike, snatched up the bolt croppers where I had dropped them near the foot of the stairs and began cutting.

I severed two vines from his left boot and three from his right. More kept coming.

I cut through one around his knee and another reaching for his thigh. Each severed end sprayed the same warm mist and recoiled, but it made no difference. For every vine I cut, two more replaced it.

A thick one rose beneath his chest and lifted.

Callum made a sound between a grunt and a shout. His body tilted backwards at an angle that wasn't right. His shoulders remained on the ground, but his chest and stomach rose, hauled upwards by the vine encircling his ribs. I could see its pressure through his jacket, the fabric bunching and stretching.

I forced the jaws of the croppers around the vine and squeezed with all my strength.

The blades bit halfway through and stopped. I squeezed harder. The croppers jammed.

I pulled them back and saw a black thorn embedded in the vine, thick and sharp, wedged between the jaws.

It didn't look like wood. It looked like metal.

I tried to wrench the croppers free, but they wouldn't move.

Callum stared at me.

His eyes were wide and his mouth hung open. His expression was desperate in a way I had never seen before. Not panic. Something worse. Urgency. He was trying to tell me something, but no words came.

I abandoned the croppers, grabbed the flare pistol and dug the single spare flare from my rucksack. My hands shook so badly that it took three attempts to fit it into the chamber. I snapped the barrel closed, aimed at the mass of vines around Callum's chest and fired.

The flare struck them directly.

It punched into the tangle and continued burning, white and red, showering sparks. The vines recoiled at once, unravelling, and Callum dropped. He struck the concrete on his side and rolled, coughing.

I reached for him, but the ground moved.

It didn't shift. It opened.

The snow and soil beneath Callum split along a clean line and drew apart. He slid towards the opening, scrabbling at the concrete. I grabbed for his high-visibility vest, but my fingers caught only fabric.

The ground pulled him down. Not quickly. Steadily.

He sank to his waist, then his chest, then his shoulders. His hand rose and I threw myself forwards and caught it. His fingers closed around mine. I planted my boots and leant backwards with everything I had.

The ground pulled harder.

Callum's hand slipped. His fingers slid through mine.

Then he was gone.

The gap closed. Snow settled smoothly across it, flat and unbroken, as if nothing had happened.

His high-visibility vest remained above ground, torn at the shoulder and lying on the snow. Beside it was his portable radio, the black one bearing the mountain-rescue sticker, half buried.

I stood there. I don't know for how long. My chest heaved and my legs shook, and I couldn't process what I had just seen.

Snow continued to fall. The fire ring still glowed behind me. The plantation was silent.

I bent and picked up Callum's radio.

It was cold and heavy in my hand. Its dim amber charge light still showed, but the speaker offered nothing except flat static. I clipped it to my belt, grabbed my rucksack and ran.

I didn't go back through the clearing or try to return to the locked gate and the disabled Defender on the forestry access track. I skirted the fence, following the slope downhill through the trees until I found a section where the chain-link mesh had rusted through at the bottom.

I forced the opening wider with both hands, the metal biting into my gloves, and wriggled through on my stomach. My rucksack caught, and I had to push it ahead of me. I got clear, stood and kept moving downhill, away from the Blackshaw Fell Forestry Compound.

The woods felt wrong.

I followed the falling ground, yet twice I looked up and realised I had curved back towards the tower. The trees were too uniform. The spaces between them were too even. I forced myself to choose a line and hold it, checking my compass every thirty seconds.

The needle spun. It refused to settle.

I put the compass away and kept descending, shoving through undergrowth and ducking beneath branches.

I reached the A57 Snake Pass road perhaps twenty minutes later. The two-lane carriageway was covered in snow but still passable. Moorland rose beyond it into the storm, the gritstone edges hidden behind drifting white. I stood on the verge and looked both ways.

Nothing.

I started walking west towards Glossop because it was the only direction I knew would lead me to people.

A council gritter came around the bend about ten minutes later, a large orange lorry with its snow blade down, pushing a ridge of snow towards the verge. It was travelling at roughly 30 mph. I stepped into the road and waved both arms over my head.

The gritter kept coming.

I waved harder and shouted, but the engine drowned out my voice. It passed me without slowing, the driver staring ahead through the windscreen, and vanished around the next bend.

I carried on walking.

My legs felt ready to collapse, but I wouldn't let myself stop. Every few minutes I pulled out my mobile and checked for reception. Nothing. Then one bar. Then two.

I dialled 999. The first call dropped before it connected. I tried again.

'Which service?'

'Police. And mountain rescue. Please.'

The operator transferred me. I told Derbyshire police control there had been an incident at Blackshaw Fell. Someone was missing. I gave the beacon location as approximately 53.47 north, 1.87 west and said I was on the A57, walking towards Glossop. Then the call dropped again.

I kept walking.

I reached Glossop shortly after noon and made my way to the police station. It was a low brick building, with marked Derbyshire Constabulary vehicles parked outside. I walked through the front door with snow still clinging to my jacket and rucksack.

The constable at the desk looked up. Her name badge read PC HANNAH WEBB. She was perhaps my age, with a calm, controlled expression.

I unclipped Callum's radio and placed it on the desk between us.

'My partner's gone,' I said. 'There's a fence and an old fire-watch tower at the Blackshaw Fell Forestry Compound. He went under. The vines took him.'

PC Webb looked at me, then at the radio. She picked it up, turned it over in her hand and pressed transmit.

Static came from the speaker, flat and dead. The amber indicator still glowed. She tried another channel. The same static.

She put the radio back on the desk.

'You said vines,' she said.

'Yes.'

'Where did they take him?'

'Into the ground.'

PC Webb nodded slowly.

She didn't tell me she believed me. She didn't tell me she didn't. Her expression remained controlled, procedural, as though she were deciding what needed to happen next.

She asked for my name and I gave it. She asked exactly where the incident had occurred, and I described the compound, the fire-watch tower, the abandoned Forestry England quad bike, the fresh bootprints and the roughly three-metre fence topped with outward-angled barbed wire. I told her about the locked gate and the chain we had cut with the bolt croppers.

She wrote everything down.

She asked whether I had coordinates. I gave her the location from the satellite-beacon alert again: approximately 53.47 north, 1.87 west.

She asked whether anyone else had witnessed what happened. I said no.

She asked what evidence I had. I pointed at Callum's radio.

She picked it up again and pressed transmit. Static answered.

'The set has power,' she said. 'But we're not getting a response on this channel.'

I had no answer for that.

PC Webb continued asking questions. I continued answering them.

I told her about the tower cab and the yellow Forestry England jacket with CLARKE on its badge. I told her about the logbook signed E. Clarke, the final entries dated 11 January and the warning that the perimeter was no longer secure. I told her about the satellite messenger balanced over the maintained fire, still transmitting SOS despite its melted controls. I told her about the dry, snow-free rucksack.

I told her about the unfrozen moss and the vines beneath it. About the geometric lines moving under the snow. About the first flare driving them back and the spare flare burning through the mass around Callum. About the jammed bolt croppers, the ground opening and Callum's fingers slipping through mine.

I told her his torn high-visibility vest was still lying above the place where he had disappeared.

PC Webb wrote it all down. She didn't interrupt.

When I finished, she set down her pen and looked at me for a long moment.

'Police control will coordinate a response with mountain rescue,' she said. 'The conditions on the Snake Pass and at Blackshaw Fell may delay access, but we'll send officers and a team to check the site.'

I nodded. There was nothing else to say.

I walked out carrying my rucksack and the rest of my gear. Callum's radio remained on PC Hannah Webb's desk, powered but producing nothing except static.

I had a name from a logbook, E. Clarke. I had seen a Forestry England jacket with the same name. I had given the police a pair of coordinates and left them a dead radio. Everything else was still on Blackshaw Fell: the tower, the beacon, the fire, Callum's torn vest and the ground that had swallowed him.

All I had brought back was a story about a disappearance that I couldn't make sound believable even to myself.