Voices in the Harris Adit

I arrived on the Isle of Rum on 3 June, just as the first rush of the season was easing and the island was settling into the quieter stretch before the summer crowds. The CalMac ferry from Mallaig took roughly an hour and a half, though the timetable and the state of the sea could alter that considerably. I spent most of the crossing on deck, watching the mainland dissolve into nothing.

Just water, then more water. It felt about right.

The NatureScot reserve base at Kinloch stood near the head of Loch Scresort, a cluster of low, practical buildings in muted colours. It was utilitarian and isolated. Exactly what I needed.

The staff cabin they gave me was roughly nineteen square metres. It had a bunk, a desk, a hotplate and one window looking towards the trees. I unpacked my holdall in less than ten minutes. I had not brought much.

A couple of changes of clothes, my clinical registration and continuing-professional-development folder, and a paperback I had already read twice. That was it.

The assignment was straightforward. I was an HCPC-registered paramedic, contracted from May to September to provide remote first response. I dealt with whatever came through the door or was radioed in from the paths. I had done similar seasonal postings in the Cairngorms and Northumberland National Park, but I had asked for Rum specifically.

Remote. Surrounded by water. No easy way off.

Glasgow felt far enough away that I thought I might sleep through the night again.

The work remained routine in a way I liked. Blisters, mostly. So many blisters.

Walkers bought new boots the week before setting out and then decided a 65-kilometre circuit linking Kinloch, Dibidil, Harris, Guirdil and Kilmory sounded reasonable. I cleaned and dressed the damage, handed out hydrocolloid blister dressings and gave practical advice about socks and lacing that they probably would not follow.

There were swollen ankles from people stepping badly off roots, dehydration severe enough to crack lips and make hands tremble, and the occasional panic attack that looked like chest pain until I talked the casualty through controlled breathing and checked their observations.

It kept me busy enough to occupy my mind. Busy enough that I did not think about Ewan every single hour, only most of them.

I met Alistair Grant on my second day.

He managed the NatureScot operation at Kinloch, and he ran it like a military exercise. Everything had a checklist. Every supply had a form. Every decision had a procedure attached to it.

He was about forty-five, solidly built, with sandy hair cut close and grey eyes that did not blink often. He wore his reserve uniform as if it had been stitched onto him. A GPS unit was clipped to his vest, and his radio was always within reach.

The man probably slept in grid references.

"You're the paramedic," he said when I reported to his office.

It was not a question.

"That's me."

He slid a thick folder across the desk.

"Procedures. Read it tonight. We follow them here. No exceptions."

I opened it. Bold section headings, alphabetically labelled subsections and colour-coded dividers.

"Understood."

"Equipment inventory is on Tuesdays and Fridays. You log every item. Anything expiring within thirty days is flagged." He tapped the folder. "Page forty-seven. Radio checks are at 07:00 and 19:00. If you miss one, I notice."

I nodded. He did not appear to want conversation, only compliance.

"Your trauma kit stays packed and accessible at all times. You go nowhere without it."

Then he looked at me. Properly looked.

"We're about fifteen miles from the mainland, but evacuation still depends on sea conditions or helicopter availability. Until Police Scotland, HM Coastguard, mountain rescue or the Scottish Ambulance Service can get resources here, you're it. Understand?"

"Understood."

He dismissed me with a nod. I carried the folder back to my cabin and read the whole thing that night, partly because I had nothing else to do and partly because Alistair Grant seemed like the sort of supervisor who would test me on the section headings.

I was right. Three days later, while I was restocking gauze, he asked me about the hypothermia procedure and quoted the page number after I answered.

He treated me like equipment. Something that could be signed out, used for a particular function and returned to its designated place.

He never asked about my background. He never asked why I had requested Rum. He never asked for anything that was not in the folder.

Honestly, that did not bother me much. I had not come to make friends.

Rowan Fraser was different.

I first met her at the path junction near Coire Dubh, perhaps a week after I arrived. I had walked out to assess a man who had radioed in about an allergic reaction. It turned out to be midge bites and anxiety. Rowan was coming down from the higher ground with a field notebook and a rucksack that looked as if it weighed eighteen kilograms.

"You're the new paramedic," she said. She did not sound unfriendly. She was simply stating a fact.

"Callum."

"Rowan. Wildlife surveys."

She adjusted one of her rucksack straps and watched me.

"How long have you been on the island?"

"A week and a half."

"Right."

She glanced past me towards Loch Scresort.

"There's a storm coming in tonight. The front should reach the Sea of the Hebrides around 22:00. Do you know the lower route back?"

I hesitated. "I came over the higher path."

"Don't take it back if the wind picks up. It's exposed. You'll be knocked about."

She unfolded her map and traced a line with one finger.

"Follow the sheltered Kinloch Glen path. It's longer, but you'll have more cover."

"All right. Thanks."

She folded the map and gave me another assessing look. It felt like a test.

"The marine forecast said twenty knots, gusting thirty. Did you check before setting out?"

"I checked."

"And you came anyway."

"The man reported an allergic reaction. I couldn't wait for the weather."

Something shifted in her expression. It was not quite approval. More as though she were filing the information away.

"Fair enough."

After that, she kept crossing my path. Not deliberately, I did not think. Rum was not a large island, and we both spent a great deal of time outside. But whenever we met, she offered some small challenge.

What bearing would take me from Kinloch towards the Hallival shoulder? Which burn drained towards Dibidil Bay? How quickly could cold sea and mountain exposure become life-threatening in the present conditions?

I assumed she expected me to get something wrong. Or perhaps she simply did not trust new people. It was difficult to tell.

I did not mind. It gave me something to do besides think.

By late August, the island had thinned out. There were fewer boats at the landing-stage and fewer voices on the paths. The weather began to turn as well.

Cooler mornings. Earlier sunsets.

Then the fog came.

It arrived shortly after midnight on 27 August and settled over Kinloch. It was thicker than anything I had seen. It did not burn away with the morning sun or lift when the wind changed.

It lay over everything, dense, wet and unnaturally still. It flattened sound and erased the shoreline. Walking from my cabin to the medical room, I could not see the building until I was within three metres of it.

The fog made everything soft and wrong. Voices did not carry properly. Distances felt distorted. I could hear water moving in Loch Scresort, but I could not see it.

There was only a wall of grey pressing in from every side.

Alistair did not like it. I could tell from the way he checked the forecasts every hour and repeatedly altered the duty rotas. Visibility was below fifteen metres, no scheduled boats were running and even the nearest path markers were difficult to see.

He recalled everyone to Kinloch and put us on standby.

We remained that way for two days. Then the charter launch returned.

It was the Loch Scresort, a locally operated boat used to carry walkers and supplies around the island when conditions allowed. I heard its engine first, a low mechanical grinding somewhere inside the fog. Then its shape emerged and nosed towards the landing-stage.

The skipper, Calum MacRae, looked tense. He tied up quickly and came straight to the reserve office.

"We've got a problem," he said.

Alistair met him at the door.

"What problem?"

"Two walkers. Bethan Price and Owen Hughes. They were booked for collection at Harris Bay at 09:00. They weren't there."

"They missed an earlier check-in?"

"Yes. They were due to make a voluntary check-in from Guirdil bothy yesterday. Nothing."

He handed Alistair a clipboard.

"Their route card says they were doing the Rum circuit. Six days, starting and finishing at Kinloch. They should have reached Guirdil on day five."

Alistair studied the paperwork, his jaw tightening.

"Did you search Harris Bay?"

"Twice. Called on the radio and sounded the horn. Nothing."

Rowan had come up behind me. I did not hear her approach until she spoke.

"Conditions have been poor since 26 August. They might have sheltered somewhere."

"They might," Calum said. "Or they're injured."

Alistair already had his radio in his hand.

"I'll notify Highland control. They can coordinate Police Scotland, HM Coastguard, ambulance resources and mountain rescue. We'll start a local search now."

"In this?" Rowan gestured towards the fog pressed against the windows.

"They've missed a check-in by more than twenty-four hours," Alistair said. "The lone-working and missing-person procedures require an immediate response."

He looked at me.

"Reid, collect your trauma kit. Full load. You're coming."

My stomach dropped slightly.

Not from fear. It was the switch turning in my head, the one that made everything sharp and clear.

Two people overdue. Possible injury. Possible exposure. Fog so thick that I could barely see my own boots.

I did not argue.

"Understood."

I jogged back to the medical room. My kit was already packed. It always was.

Trauma shears, pressure dressings, chest seals, tourniquets, airway kit, cannulation kit, foil blankets, pelvic and limb splints. I performed a rapid visual inventory, fastened the bag and settled it high on my shoulders. I added my head torch, waterproof and spare radio, then checked the battery.

Fully charged.

When I returned, Alistair had spread a map across the table. Rowan was leaning over it.

"Their route card starts at the Kinloch trailhead," Alistair said. "Dibidil bothy on day two, Harris Bay camp on day three, Guirdil bothy on day four, Kilmory Bay on day five, then back to Kinloch. Their last confirmed sighting was after Harris. They never made the Guirdil check-in."

"So they're somewhere between Harris and Guirdil," Rowan said. "Unless they left the route."

Alistair traced the established circuit with one finger.

"Visibility has been close to zero. It would be easy to miss a turn."

"Or someone was injured," I said. "A bad ankle, exhaustion, anything that slowed them down. They might have tried to cut towards the coast to find help."

They both looked at me.

Rowan's mouth tightened.

"Leaving the path in this fog could kill them."

"People panic," I said.

Alistair clipped his GPS to his vest.

"We'll search the established circuit first. We stay together until the conditions improve or Highland control gets more teams onto the island. Rowan knows the ground and the likely deviations, so she's coming with us."

He handed her a radio.

"Channel four. Updates every fifteen minutes. We move quickly, but we follow mountain-rescue procedure. If we lose visual contact, we stop and report it. No heroics. Understood?"

"Understood," I said.

Rowan nodded.

Alistair raised his radio to confirm our departure with Fiona MacLeod at the reserve office. Static washed through the transmission. He had to repeat himself twice, and even then I could not tell whether she had received all of it.

His jaw tightened. He keyed the microphone again and got another surge of white noise, fading in and out as though someone were playing with the squelch.

"Terrain," he said, flatly. "The ridges interfere with the signal."

I did not argue. I had worked enough remote postings to know that radios behaved unpredictably in glens and around certain rock formations.

This felt different, though. The static had a rhythm, almost a pulse.

I shook off the thought and clipped my own radio to my belt. It was probably nothing. Probably exactly what Alistair said.

We left as one party. Alistair set an aggressive pace, determined to cover ground before the light began to fade. Rowan followed close behind, her notebooks stuffed into the side pocket of her loaded rucksack, her expression fixed in the way that meant she had made a decision and would not be diverted from it.

She did not trust Alistair's judgement, but it was not because she thought he would abandon the search. If anything, he was pushing too hard. She distrusted his refusal to interpret anything that did not fit his procedures.

I adjusted the trauma kit higher on my shoulders and kept pace. If we found Bethan and Owen injured, the plan was rapid assessment and stabilisation, then a supported walk-out or stretcher evacuation depending on their condition.

Standard remote response, except the radio kept breaking into static.

The fog swallowed us before we had gone beyond the Kinloch trailhead. It was cold and wet, so dense I could taste it.

We did not talk. We simply walked, and the island vanished behind us.

At fifteen metres, the reserve buildings became grey shapes. At thirty, they disappeared completely. The path narrowed as we pressed inland, with birch and spruce closing around us and thick undergrowth below.

Everything dripped after two days beneath fog that had never lifted.

That was when the place began to feel wrong.

At first, I could not identify why. The path looked sound. There were no washouts and no fallen trees blocking our way. But the woodland itself felt wrong. The air was too still.

There was no wind and no movement in the branches. Only the fog pressing close and the noise of our boots on wet earth.

I had been walking in woodland since childhood and had spent hundreds of hours on paths around Scotland and northern England. You acquired a sense of how a living place ought to feel. Birds shifting in the canopy. Small animals in the undergrowth. Insects close to your ears. Ordinary woodland had a background hum.

This had none.

The fog was not moving properly either. It should have drifted or thinned where the trees opened. Instead, it remained dense and uniform, almost as if it were waiting.

I forced that thought aside. Fog was fog. It did not wait for anything.

The feeling remained.

Alistair checked his GPS every few minutes and adjusted our direction without slowing. Rowan stayed close, breathing steadily. I watched the path for any indication that Bethan and Owen had passed that way.

A footprint. A scuffed stone. A dropped wrapper or a strip of torn fabric.

There was nothing.

Then I saw the gulls.

They stood in the undergrowth about six metres from the path. Four of them, perhaps five. They were simply standing among the wet plants as though dense woodland were a normal place for gulls to gather.

It was not.

They belonged near the shore and the landing-stage, where they could scavenge. There was nothing for them here. No food. No reason to remain.

Every one of them faced the same direction.

Not towards us. Not towards the path.

They stared into the trees with the blank, unblinking concentration birds sometimes had, as if they were watching something I could not see.

I slowed.

"Alistair."

"Keep moving," he said without turning.

"There are gulls in the undergrowth."

"So?"

"They shouldn't be here."

He stopped and turned. He looked where I was pointing. The gulls did not move or react to us.

"Birds do strange things in fog," he said. "It disrupts their navigation. Let's go."

He started walking again.

I remained where I was for another moment. The gulls still had not moved. They did not even turn their heads. They only watched the trees.

Rowan touched my shoulder.

"Come on."

I followed.

After another half-mile, the path began to climb. It was not steep, but I felt the incline in my calves and shifted the trauma kit to distribute its weight.

The fog remained thick. There were no breaks and no patches of clear air. Only solid grey in every direction.

That was when I found the boot print.

It was clear and recent, pressed into soft mud at the edge of the path where water had gathered. A walking boot with a good tread, perhaps a UK size nine or ten.

I stopped and crouched beside it.

"Alistair."

He came back, with Rowan immediately behind him.

"Boot print," I said. "Fresh."

Alistair nodded.

"Good. It means they passed this way."

"Look beyond it."

The mud held a clean impression for less than a metre. Then the print became a long drag mark running uphill towards the trees.

Not downhill, as it might if someone had slipped or lost their footing. Uphill.

It was unnaturally straight. There was no sway or deviation, as though someone had been pulled along a measured line.

I stood. My chest felt tight.

"That isn't right."

Alistair bent closer to examine it.

"Wet stone beneath the mud. Poor footing. They slipped and recovered."

"Uphill?"

"It happens."

"Not like that. Look at the angle. It's too clean. Too controlled."

Alistair straightened.

"We cannot analyse every mark in the ground. It shows that someone was here and continued moving. That's what matters."

He set off again, faster than before, establishing a pace that left little room to stop.

I looked at Rowan. She was still studying the drag mark. Her expression revealed nothing, but her jaw was tight.

"Rowan?"

She did not answer immediately. She kept looking at the mark, then rose and searched the trees on both sides of the path. Her movements were slow and methodical, as if she were checking for something in particular.

"We should keep moving," she said at last.

Her voice had changed. It was quieter.

We caught Alistair and resumed our positions, but Rowan no longer moved in the same way. She kept slowing to scan the ground, her attention jumping to details I had missed.

A broken branch. A scrape on a tree trunk. A patch of disturbed leaves.

She said nothing, but it showed in every movement. She had begun to recognise a pattern I could not yet see.

That frightened me more than the drag mark, the gulls or the still fog, because Rowan did not frighten easily.

We reached the abandoned camp at about 14:00. Alistair knew the grid reference before any of us saw it. For the previous half-mile, he had been checking his GPS every ninety seconds.

The fog had not lifted. It remained dense, flat and wrong.

The tent was the first thing I noticed. It stood fully pitched in a small clearing six metres from the path, every peg in place and the flysheet tensioned correctly. It had not collapsed, been half-packed or torn. Its entrance faced east.

It was a dark red two-person tunnel tent, the sort Bethan and Owen might have bought from Cotswold Outdoor in Fort William before travelling to Mallaig.

Alistair stopped at the edge of the clearing and scanned from left to right. Rowan passed him without waiting and went directly to the old fire site. I adjusted my trauma kit and followed.

A compact canister stove sat on a flat stone beside the blackened ring. I crouched and touched the metal.

Cold. Completely cold.

I unscrewed the fuel canister and shook it. There was still weight in it, perhaps half full. They had not run out of fuel. They had simply stopped using it.

Rowan stood near the tent with her hands on her hips, looking at something on the ground. I moved closer.

It was a satellite communicator, lying face down in the dirt less than a metre from the fire ring.

I picked it up and turned it over. The screen had been punched inward, not cracked by a fall. A starburst fracture spread from a single point at its centre. The casing had split as well, exposing crushed components beneath.

It was dead. Even specialist data recovery would have been doubtful.

"They had a satellite communicator," I said.

Alistair turned.

"Then it failed."

"It didn't fail. Someone smashed it."

"One of them could have done it in frustration."

Perhaps. Walkers became frightened and angry when expensive equipment failed them. It made a certain practical sense.

The placement troubled me. Someone smashing a communicator in frustration would probably throw it. This one lay as though it had been carefully put down after the blow.

I slipped it into my waterproof pocket and continued searching.

The food dry bag was missing. That was immediately obvious because experienced walkers would keep it sealed and suspended inside a bothy, or from a suitable branch when camping. Rats, mice and opportunistic gulls could ruin an unsecured supply overnight.

Bethan and Owen's route card described them as experienced. They had planned a six-day circuit. They would have known how to store food.

There was no bag, cord, torn packaging or discarded wrapper. Nothing.

I opened the tent and looked beneath the flysheet. The interior was neat.

Two sleeping bags lay flat and parallel. A stuff sack of spare clothing had been placed in one corner. A head torch hung from an internal loop.

There was no rubbish and no loose kit. It looked arranged rather than lived in, too orderly for two people several days into a long walk.

Then I noticed the whistle, or rather its absence.

A lanyard was attached to the internal loop beside the head torch. Only the lanyard remained, braided cord ending in a plastic clip. It was the sort used to keep an emergency whistle immediately accessible.

The whistle itself had been removed. I could not tell whether it had been unclipped or cut away.

I backed out and stood. My knees cracked.

"The whistle's missing."

Rowan looked at me.

"Are you certain they had one?"

"The lanyard is still there."

Alistair came closer, glanced under the flysheet without touching anything, then checked his radio.

"They could have dropped it on the route, or used it and lost it."

"Used it for what?"

"Signalling," he said. "That is what it is for."

He was right. But if they had used it to signal and then lost it, they had been calling for help. No one had heard or no one had come.

They would have kept trying. Kept blowing. Kept moving.

Yet the tent remained pitched. Their sleeping bags were inside, and the stove was still on its stone.

I turned back towards the fire ring and saw the plastic.

Small fragments lay under the flysheet near the rear corner, where the fabric met the ground. There were six or eight pieces, all chewed.

I knelt and picked one up between thumb and forefinger. It was part of an AA battery casing, torn and punctured by what appeared to be small teeth. I found another piece with the same marks.

There was moisture on the edges. It might have been saliva or simply condensation from the fog.

Then I found the radio.

It was a yellow, weather-resistant PMR446 handheld, wedged beneath the tent floor about twenty centimetres from the corner. Most of it was hidden, with only the aerial protruding at an angle.

I pulled it free. The battery compartment was open and empty. Its plastic cover hung from one hinge. More bite marks scored the inside, deeper than those on the battery fragments. Something had worked at it with determination.

For a moment, that gave me an odd sense of calm. Animal damage was familiar. It was a problem I understood.

Rats and mice chewed outdoor equipment, especially anything carrying salt from hands or sweat. A pine marten might tear at unfamiliar plastic as well. Batteries contained chemicals that might have attracted something.

It made practical sense. It did not require another explanation.

I exhaled and felt my shoulders lower slightly.

"I've found their radio. The batteries are gone. It looks as if something chewed them."

Rowan came over and took it from me. She turned it slowly, examining the damage without comment, then handed it back.

"A rat, perhaps," she said. "Or a pine marten."

"Perhaps."

Alistair was already heading towards the path.

"It explains why they couldn't call for help. They've left the route to find other walkers or reach a staffed building."

I stood and clipped the powerless radio to my belt beside my own, which was still switched on and receiving.

That was when mine hissed.

It was not ordinary static. It was sharper and louder, cutting through the muffled silence of the fog so violently that I flinched.

I seized the radio and turned the volume down, but the hiss continued. Then it broke.

A voice came through.

"Callum."

I stopped moving. I stopped breathing. I simply stood with the radio in my hand.

The voice was strained and tight, as if the speaker were trying to talk through pain, fear or both.

It sounded exactly like Ewan.

My brother, alive in Glasgow, hundreds of miles away.

"Callum, I need..."

Static swallowed the rest.

I raised the volume and pressed the transmit key.

"Say again. Who is this?"

More static. Then the voice returned, clearer.

"It's bad. I'm hurt. You need to come closer."

My chest constricted.

The reflex I always felt when someone said they were injured took hold immediately. It sounded survivable. Not critical. Not dying. Only hurt and in need of help.

But it was Ewan's voice.

Alistair was beside me.

"Give me that."

He took the radio before I could object and keyed the microphone twice.

"This is Grant. Identify yourself and give your location."

Static.

Then the voice returned, but it did not answer him. It simply continued.

"Callum. Closer. Just a little closer."

"Location," Alistair said. His voice was flat and hard. "Now."

There was no reply, only a hiss with the low, rhythmic pulse I had heard earlier.

Alistair lowered the radio and looked at me.

"Interference. It happens here. Signals reflect from the ridges, and you can receive fragments from old transmissions or crossed channels from the mainland."

He handed it back.

"Do not answer it again. We're searching for Bethan Price and Owen Hughes. Nothing else."

I accepted the radio, but I did not clip it back onto my belt. I held it and waited.

Alistair began walking towards the far side of the clearing, where the path continued. Rowan followed him.

I remained near the tent.

The radio hissed again.

"Callum."

The voice was quieter now, as though farther away or coming through a weaker signal.

"I can't... I can't move it. You have to help me."

The compulsion became stronger. It was the instinct that made me good at my work and occasionally made me reckless.

Someone was injured. Someone could not move.

That meant spinal precautions, immobilisation, a possible fracture or dislocation. Survivable if I reached them quickly enough.

But it was Ewan's voice, and Ewan was in Glasgow. He did not even know I was on Rum. I had not told him. I had not phoned or messaged him since May.

I looked down at the radio.

"Where are you?"

Static followed, then a sound that might have been breathing.

The voice returned with a different cadence. It still sounded like Ewan, but something about it was wrong.

"Close. Just off the path. Thirty metres, perhaps. I can see..."

The transmission cut out. When it returned, Ewan's voice had gone.

A young woman spoke instead. She sounded frightened.

"Please. Please, we need help."

It might have been Bethan. I had never heard her voice, but I knew at once that it was meant to be her.

Alistair turned.

"Reid. We're moving."

I did not move. The radio continued to hiss.

There was another sound beneath the static now. Not the rhythmic pulse. Something wet, like a person breathing through fluid.

"Callum."

Ewan's voice again.

"Thirty metres. Just come closer."

My feet moved before I had decided to move them.

I stepped off the path and entered the trees on the west side of the clearing. The fog was denser there. I could see less than three metres ahead.

The trauma kit struck my back with every step.

"Reid," Alistair called behind me, louder now. "Stop."

I did not.

The radio kept hissing, and I kept walking towards it. That made no sense because the radio was in my hand and the sound came from its speaker, yet I felt the voice ahead of me, somewhere among the trees.

"Closer," it said in Ewan's strained voice. "I can't hold on much longer."

I pushed through low scrub, birch saplings and wet ferns that soaked my trousers. The ground sloped down and I had to shorten my steps to avoid slipping.

Behind me, Rowan said something to Alistair. I could not make out the words. Then boots crushed wet leaves. Someone was following.

The voice changed again.

"Help us. We're here. We can see you."

It was no longer Ewan. This was a man's voice I did not recognise, deeper and perhaps older.

I stopped.

Fog pressed around me. The clearing and the path had disappeared. There were only trees, grey air and the wet sound of my breathing.

The radio went silent.

I stood with it in my hand and waited. My heart hammered hard against my ribs.

Then the voice came back once more, quiet and almost whispering.

"Closer, Callum. Just a little closer."

I continued walking.

The fog thickened further. I would not have thought that possible after two days of it lying over Kinloch like a wet blanket, but I had been wrong. It closed around us until I could barely distinguish Alistair's rucksack about five metres ahead, only a dark shape moving through grey.

His boots made soft, wet sounds against the ground. Nothing else did.

I kept my eyes on that shape and tried not to think about the voice on my radio.

Ewan's voice.

Except it was not Ewan. Ewan was in Glasgow and had no reason to be on Rum, no means of knowing where I was.

Alistair had called it interference. Signals reflecting strangely from ridges and water. It was a logical answer.

The radio said my name again.

"Callum."

Quieter this time.

I did not respond. Alistair had ordered me not to.

He had brought me back towards the path, taken the radio and clipped it to his own vest beside his. I tried to ignore the pull in my chest that wanted to seize it, key the microphone and ask what sort of injury it was, where the casualty lay and how severe the damage might be.

Rowan was behind me. I could hear her rucksack shifting and her breathing, steady and controlled. She had said nothing since we left the camp.

Neither had Alistair.

We walked in silence. The path angled uphill again and I adjusted the trauma kit across my shoulders. My calves were already tight from the earlier climb.

The fog did not thin. It remained dense and uniform, untouched by wind.

That was when I began noticing details that did not fit.

The first was a branch broken at chest height. Its end was too clean. It had not snapped under wind or weight. It had been cut. The exposed wood was pale and fresh.

I slowed to examine it. Alistair continued, forcing me to jog several steps to catch him.

Then I saw the stones.

Five of them formed a precise line through the moss about three metres to the left of the path. Each was roughly the size of a fist, with about half a metre between them. The line ran at a right angle to the established route and pointed into the trees.

I stopped.

"Alistair."

He turned.

"What?"

I pointed.

"Those stones."

He looked. Rowan moved beside me and followed my gesture.

The arrangement was too deliberate to be natural. They were not a random scatter left by erosion. Someone had placed them there recently.

"A route marker," Alistair said.

"For what route?"

"Off-path navigation. Walkers sometimes mark where they've been."

I stepped closer. The moss surrounding each stone was wrong. It had been cut in clean lines, as though someone had sliced it with a knife and peeled it back before laying the stone on exposed soil.

The cut edges remained wet and green.

"This is fresh," I said. "Today, perhaps."

Rowan crouched beside the nearest stone. She touched the cut moss with two fingers and immediately drew her hand away.

"It could have been Bethan and Owen."

"Why would they leave the path?" I asked.

"Because they were lost," Alistair said. "Disoriented by the fog. They may have marked their route so they could retrace it."

That sounded reasonable, except the stones pointed away from the path, not along the direction of travel.

If you were lost and leaving markers, you marked the way you had come so that you could reverse it. You did not make an arrow towards untracked woodland.

I said so.

Alistair checked his GPS.

"We cannot pursue every improvised marker. They may have put these here yesterday and then changed direction."

"Or they're still following the line," Rowan said.

The radio on Alistair's vest hissed.

Then Ewan's voice came through again.

"Callum, I need... I can't move it. You have to help."

My chest tightened.

It sounded like someone pinned beneath a weight. A crush injury, perhaps, involving a leg or torso. Time mattered. Compartment syndrome could develop. Tissue could die. The casualty could go into shock.

My hand moved towards the radio.

Alistair caught my wrist.

"No."

"Someone's hurt."

"It is interference."

"It's giving injury details."

"Fragments," he said.

He repositioned the radio on his vest, out of my reach.

"You do not answer. That is an order."

I stared at him. He stared back, grey eyes hard and jaw set. I knew he would not return the set to me.

Rowan rose.

"The stones are fresh. We should follow them."

"We stay on the established route," Alistair said.

"The route hasn't shown any sign of Bethan or Owen since that boot print."

"Then they stayed on the circuit, and we continue towards Guirdil."

Rowan's expression remained still, but her shoulders shifted. She looked at me.

"What do you think?"

I studied the stones and the trees towards which they pointed. The fog was equally thick there. Visibility ended after six metres.

"I think someone placed them for a reason."

Alistair turned north and resumed walking.

"We're not deviating."

Rowan did not move. Neither did I.

The voice came from the radio on Alistair's vest, muffled because the speaker faced his body, but I could still hear it.

Callum, closer. Just a little closer.

It sounded like Ewan. Exactly like Ewan. The same pitch, the same slight rasp he got when he was tired or under strain.

I had not heard his voice in four months, not since I left Glasgow.

Alistair stopped walking. He turned round.

"Move," he said.

Rowan looked at the stones again, then at me. She adjusted her rucksack and started walking, not along the path towards the next point on the Rum circuit, but west, following the line of stones into the trees.

"Fraser," Alistair said.

She did not stop.

I followed her. Alistair swore under his breath. Then I heard his boots behind us.

The stones continued through the trees, one every half metre or so. Whoever had placed them knew what they were doing. The spacing was consistent and the line was straight.

We followed them for perhaps fifty metres. The trees grew denser and the undergrowth thicker. I had to push branches aside. The trauma kit caught on a low limb and I yanked it free.

Then the stones stopped.

Rowan crouched beside the last one and searched the ground ahead for another marker. There was nothing. Only moss, roots and fog.

"We've lost the line," Alistair said behind us. "We're going back."

I looked up and saw it.

A low opening in the hillside, about ten metres ahead. A dark mouth in the rock and earth, perhaps a metre and a quarter high and a metre and a half wide. Old grey timber supports framed the entrance.

An abandoned prospecting adit.

The voice came again, clearer now.

Callum, I'm inside. I can't... please.

It came from the adit.

Rowan heard it too. She stood slowly, staring at the opening.

"We should wait," she said. "Bring more staff. Proper equipment."

I was already walking towards it.

"Reid," Alistair said.

I did not stop. The pleading in the voice was urgent and close, as if Ewan were just beyond the next bend, just out of sight. If I moved quickly enough, I could still reach him in time.

That was the thing about being a paramedic. You heard someone say they were hurt and needed help, and you went. You did not think about it. You went.

I reached the entrance and pulled my head torch from my pocket. I switched it on. The beam cut through the darkness and revealed a tunnel sloping into the hillside. The supports dated from the Victorian prospecting works above Harris. Their timber was dark with age and moisture.

The air smelt of metal and cold water.

I ducked beneath the entrance and stepped inside.

Behind me, Rowan said, "Wait."

I kept moving.

The passage was narrow, perhaps a metre wide. The ceiling was low enough to make me stoop. My head torch showed more supports at intervals of roughly two metres, with cross-braces overhead and dark rock on either side.

There were scratches in the timbers.

I stopped and aimed my light at the nearest upright. Four long, parallel grooves ran across the wood at chest height, then angled down towards the floor. Each was several millimetres deep. The timber inside them was pale and splintered.

I moved the beam to the next support.

The same four scratches. Deep and deliberate. As though something with hooked hands had dragged a weight through the passage.

My stomach went cold.

Callum.

The voice came from farther inside.

I can't... I can't feel my legs. Please.

Possible spinal trauma. Bad. You did not move a casualty with a suspected spinal injury without adequate support, equipment and enough people to stabilise them.

I kept going.

The tunnel curved left and descended more steeply. My boots slipped on wet stone and I caught myself against the wall. The rock beneath my palm was slick and cold.

Alistair's voice came from behind me.

"Reid. Stop."

I did not stop.

My head torch caught something ahead. A shape on the ground. Dark fabric.

A rucksack.

I moved faster, half sliding down the slope. I reached it and crouched. It was an ordinary walking rucksack, perhaps forty litres, blue with black straps.

I pulled it towards me and checked the outside. There was no name or identification. The zips stood open and the main compartment was empty.

Completely empty.

No food. No clothing. No kit. Just an empty rucksack left in the middle of an adit.

Beside it lay strips of biodegradable orange survey tape, the kind issued to the NatureScot path-maintenance party. It had not been tied to anything. It had been shredded into long pieces and scattered across the tunnel floor.

I picked one up. The material was tough. It would not tear that cleanly without a blade, shears or teeth.

There were perhaps fifteen or twenty strips, all torn from the same roll.

I recognised it. Three weeks earlier, I had helped issue identical rolls to volunteers working along the Rum circuit. The orange made the markers easy to spot if anyone became separated or disorientated in thick vegetation. Each volunteer had been told to tie the tape high and clearly visible.

Someone had tried to leave a trail. They had tied bright markers so they could find their way back, or so that somebody else could find them.

Then someone, or something, had made certain the trail failed.

Every strip had been pulled down, shredded and scattered in the dark where no one would see it.

My hands were shaking. I dropped the tape.

Behind me, Alistair said, "We're leaving. Now."

I could not move. I stared at the orange strips on the wet stone and imagined somebody tying them in the darkness, hands trembling, convinced that those scraps would save them.

They had not.

The passage widened ahead, though not by much. There was perhaps another thirty centimetres of headroom and twice the width. My light found rough walls wet with condensation and a support leaning at a sharp angle, rot showing through its grain.

The slope levelled into what might once have been a working chamber. I swept the beam across it. Left wall. Right wall. A far corner where the roof descended again.

Then I saw the boots.

Brown leather walking boots with black rubber soles, caked in fresh mud. The kind of mud collected after two days of fog and rain.

I raised the beam. Dark green work trousers. A belt fitted with a radio clip, but no radio. A grey work shirt with a name patch on the chest.

I knew what it would say before the light reached it.

Kerr.

Hamish Kerr.

I had treated him the previous Tuesday for a cut to his hand sustained while he repaired the hydroelectric intake pump. A quiet man. He had not complained. He had held still while I cleaned and dressed the wound, thanked me once and left.

He sat against the far wall with his legs stretched in front of him and his arms resting at his sides. His palms faced upwards.

Someone had arranged him like that. Posed him.

I stopped.

His face was wrong. Not decomposition. Not animal damage. Arranged wrong.

His head had been tilted back at an angle that would have hurt if he had done it himself. His eyes were open, staring at the ceiling with the same blank focus I had seen in the gulls on the path. Fixed on nothing. Seeing nothing.

But it was his mouth that made my stomach drop.

His lips had split, not from cold or dehydration, but from being forced too far apart. The corners were torn back into the softer tissue. His mouth had been packed with wet leaves, small stones and earth, crammed in so tightly that his cheeks bulged and his jaw sat out of place, as if its joints had been forced beyond their limit.

I could not move.

Rowan spoke behind me, her voice low and sharp.

"Is that Hamish Kerr?"

"Yes," I said.

My voice sounded flat. Clinical. The voice I used when something was very bad and I needed to remain functional.

"Maintenance. I treated him last week."

Alistair pushed past me, his boots scraping the stone. He stopped less than a metre from the body and stared.

"Jesus Christ," he said.

Rowan moved beside me. She said nothing for several seconds.

Then she said, "There are old stories about these workings."

I looked at her.

She was staring at Hamish, but her face had tightened in a way that was not simply shock. It was recognition, the expression of someone watching a half-believed warning become real.

"Stories recorded from the island workers in the nineteenth century," she continued. Her voice remained quiet and controlled, but she spoke faster than usual. "Not a real tradition. Just a mining legend they told among themselves. They called the thing in the tunnels the Borrower Below."

Alistair did not turn.

"Rowan."

"It stole voices," she said. "That was the story. It collected the sounds people made and used them to call others underground. Once you followed it, you could not leave because it took your voice as well. It removed everything you might use to find the way out or summon help."

"Rowan, stop."

"The workers said it kept people. Not alive and not dead. It simply kept them so it could-"

"Enough."

Alistair's voice was hard and final. He turned to face us.

"We are not standing in an unstable adit inventing folklore because we've found a body."

"That isn't just a body," Rowan said. "Look at his mouth."

"I am looking."

"Someone did that to him."

"I know."

"Who?"

Her voice rose slightly. It was still controlled, but the edge showed through.

"Who would do that, and why?"

Alistair pulled the radio from his vest and pressed the transmit key.

"Highland control, this is Grant. We have a situation. I need-"

Static filled the speaker, thick and pulsing. There was no voice beneath it.

He tried again. The same thing happened.

He clipped the radio back to his vest and took out his GPS receiver. He checked the screen, frowned and shook the unit once.

The display remained blank.

"The batteries are full," he said, more to himself than to us. "I checked it twenty minutes ago."

I was still looking at Hamish's hands. They were clean. There was no earth beneath his nails, no defensive injury, no scrapes or cuts suggesting that he had fought or clawed at the ground or tried to escape whoever had done this.

He had simply sat down.

Or someone had sat him down, then packed his mouth until it split.

Alistair stepped towards the body.

"I'm checking for signs of life."

That broke my paralysis.

"Don't."

"He might still be-"

"He isn't."

I did not know how I knew. I simply did.

"And you shouldn't touch him."

"I'm not leaving a man without confirming death."

I caught his sleeve.

"Alistair, don't. Something is wrong here. More wrong than-"

He pulled his arm free hard enough to make me stumble.

"Let go, Reid."

His expression was the same one he had worn whenever he told me to follow procedure, respect the lone-working rules, stop interpreting evidence and do the job as written.

Then he moved towards Hamish.

The ground dropped beneath him.

It did not collapse or shift. It simply dropped. Alistair fell onto a ledge I had not seen, perhaps a metre below the chamber floor. His boots struck stone with a crack that echoed wrongly.

Too long. Too deep.

Then the adit exhaled.

That was the only way I could describe it. A long, slow breath pushed through the passage behind us, flowing past like air forced through a pipe. It was cold and damp and carried a smell I could not identify, though some part of me recognised it.

The smell of something sealed away for too long.

Alistair's head torch went out. It did not flicker or fade. One moment it was burning, and the next it was dead.

Mine still worked. I aimed it at him.

He stood on the ledge, half turned, reaching for his torch. His hand stopped halfway to his head.

He was looking beyond me, at the wall behind my back.

I turned.

My light caught movement.

Not quick movement. Slow and deliberate.

Something tall. Too tall for the space. It should have been stooped or folded beneath the low roof, but it was not. It moved along the wall in a way that made no sense, bending around the rock, its joints flexing in directions that joints did not go.

I could not see it clearly. Its edges would not hold. Whenever the beam fell directly upon them, they slid away and folded into shadow, then reappeared a metre to one side.

But I saw enough.

Long limbs. Thin. Pale.

Fingers that did not end where fingers should.

It moved towards Hamish.

No. Not towards him.

Around him.

It folded over his body without touching it, surrounding him, hovering so close that, had he been breathing, he would have felt it.

Rowan spoke behind me, barely above a whisper.

"Callum, step back."

I did not move. I could not. My legs had locked.

The thing bent lower.

One of its two long arms reached down, and for a moment I saw the hand clearly. Four fingers and no thumb. Each finger had too many joints.

It touched Hamish's face with extraordinary gentleness.

Then it turned its head towards me.

I saw no eyes. I did not know whether it had any, but I felt it looking at me.

Rowan seized my shoulder and dragged me backwards.

"Move."

I stumbled and caught myself. She was already pulling something from her rucksack, a compact dry-powder fire extinguisher she carried for survey work around old structures. She pulled the safety pin, aimed the nozzle and squeezed the lever.

A white cloud burst into the space between us and the wall.

The thing did not move.

The powder hung in the air. It did not disperse. It did not settle.

Then the cold flow I had felt before reversed.

It was not wind or breath. It was simply air moving incorrectly, driving the powder back towards us.

Straight into our faces.

I inhaled before I could shut my mouth.

My throat seized. My eyes closed. Tears flooded down my face and I could neither see nor draw a proper breath. I could do nothing but cough and choke.

I swung my trauma bag blindly in front of me as hard as I could.

It struck something.

Not solid. Not soft. Something between the two.

Cold. Slick.

Then fingers brushed my cheek. Light and careful, the way you might touch a casualty's face to see whether they were conscious.

Or to check their mouth.

I screamed, but no sound emerged. My throat was locked by the powder.

Rowan caught the back of my jacket and hauled me away. I could not see or orientate myself. She was shouting something, but I could not hear it above the ringing in my ears and the sound of my own choking.

My boots hit the incline and I fell hard on my side, the trauma bag slamming into my ribs. Rowan did not release me. She dragged me up the passage, half carrying and half pulling until I found my feet well enough to move.

We ran.

I did not remember the bend. I did not remember the supports, the wet stone or the angle of the floor.

I remembered only the entrance.

A grey square in the fog. Light. Air.

We reached it together and kept going, crashing through undergrowth and rebounding from tree trunks. Rowan's hand stayed locked around my wrist. She did not stop until we were at least fifteen metres from the adit, perhaps farther, gasping in the fog with no idea which direction we had taken.

I bent forwards with my hands on my knees, trying to breathe through the powder coating my throat. Rowan did the same. Her face was red and streaming. She coughed hard and spat into the earth.

"Alistair," I managed.

My voice came out ruined, little more than a rasp.

She shook her head. She could not speak yet.

I looked back towards where the adit should have been. There was nothing but thick white fog and silence.

Somewhere inside it, that thing remained underground with Alistair and Hamish.

Probably with Bethan and Owen as well.

Then I heard Alistair behind us.

It was not his radio. It was his actual voice, sharp and clear through the fog.

"Reid. Fraser. Stop moving and regroup."

The cadence was right. The same flat command he used when he expected immediate compliance.

I slowed without thinking. That was what you did when your manager used that voice during an emergency.

Rowan struck me from the side, hard enough to send my boots sliding over the wet leaves. I stumbled forwards with my hands out.

"Don't," she said.

Her voice was still damaged by the powder. It sounded like gravel dragged across metal.

She gripped my jacket and forced my head round, pointing with her other hand at something on the ground five metres ahead.

Alistair's GPS receiver.

The black unit he had checked obsessively throughout the search lay face-up in the middle of the path. Its casing had been prised apart. The battery compartment was empty and the screen shattered.

The thing looked gutted.

I stared at it.

Behind us, Alistair's voice called again.

"We need to consolidate our position. Answer me."

The voice came from the wrong direction, not from anywhere near the GPS but from back towards the adit.

I looked at the broken receiver, then towards the voice.

The evidence did not fit. Alistair had held that GPS twenty minutes earlier. He would never have dropped it, and he certainly would not have continued without it.

Rowan's fist remained clenched in my jacket.

"We go," she rasped. "Now."

I nodded.

We moved away from the voice and the adit. My throat felt as though I had swallowed broken glass. My eyes streamed so badly that I had to wipe them on my sleeve every few seconds.

We found the path. At least, I thought we did. The ground levelled, the undergrowth thinned and a clear track ran from east to west.

I turned east, towards Kinloch and Loch Scresort. Rowan followed without argument.

We walked for perhaps ten minutes. My lungs began to work more normally. The effects of the dry powder eased enough for me to breathe without choking on every inhalation.

Then I saw the survey tape.

Biodegradable orange strips tied to branches at chest height, one every six metres. They resembled the temporary markers NatureScot teams used to guide walkers round erosion or path works.

Each strip had been shredded rather than cut cleanly. Narrow ribbons hung limply in the fog.

Each had been folded into the shape of an arrow.

Every arrow pointed left, away from the path and back into the island's interior.

I stopped. Rowan stopped beside me.

"Did you put these here?" she asked.

"No. But I recognise the knot."

A clove hitch with a half hitch to secure it. That was how I tied survey tape when helping with path work because it was quick and did not slip. I had done it a hundred times.

Alistair used a reef knot. Rowan did not carry out path maintenance.

Something had copied my habit.

I examined the next marker. The same knot. The same shredded arrow pointing left into the trees.

"We aren't following them," Rowan said.

"No."

I turned right, away from the arrows. Rowan followed.

Half a minute later, we found another group of markers. The same shredded orange strips. The same knots. The same arrows, now directing us back the way we had come.

We turned round and walked in the opposite direction.

More arrows waited for us.

They were steering us through a slow loop that bent back towards the adit.

Rowan took out her radio and pressed the transmit key.

"Kinloch base, this is Fraser. Do you copy?"

Thick, pulsing static answered her.

She tried again.

"Any station on this channel, we are two NatureScot personnel west of Kinloch requesting immediate assistance. Over."

More static.

Then it broke.

A woman's voice came through, calm and professional.

"Fraser, this is Highland control. Go ahead."

I took the radio from Rowan and transmitted.

"This is Callum Reid, HCPC paramedic attached to the Rum reserve. We have one confirmed fatality, two missing walkers and an unsafe prospecting adit above Harris. Reserve manager Alistair Grant is also unaccounted for. We require extraction and additional resources."

There was a pause. Then the woman answered. I remembered her name from earlier radio checks. Fiona MacLeod.

"Received, Reid. Fog is preventing helicopter operations. Police Scotland, HM Coastguard and Scottish Ambulance Service resources are coordinating through Highland control. A mainland vessel cannot cross from Mallaig until visibility and sea conditions permit. Can you return to the Kinloch landing-stage?"

"Affirmative. We're attempting to navigate back now."

"Understood. Stand by for-"

Static swallowed her voice.

When it cleared, Alistair was speaking.

His voice was calm and steady. There was no strain in it.

"Control, this is Grant. The walkers have been located and are uninjured. Reid and Fraser are experiencing disorientation following dry-powder exposure. Disregard the previous report."

I stared at the radio.

Fiona came back.

"Grant, confirm the status of Bethan Price and Owen Hughes."

"Both uninjured and returning to Kinloch. Reid and Fraser require medical assessment for inhalation and eye exposure. We'll have everyone at the landing-stage within the hour."

"Received. Standing by."

The channel fell silent.

Rowan took the radio from my hand. She said nothing. Neither did I.

Something was controlling what reached Highland control and what reached anyone capable of helping us.

I clipped my own radio back to my belt.

"We move as quickly as we can," I said. "Straight east."

Rowan nodded.

We ran.

Kinloch emerged from the fog like a photograph developing. The landing-stage first, then the harbour buildings, then the reserve office and visitor centre with its dark windows.

Rowan went straight to the harbour emergency locker. She wrenched open the door and pulled out the two-shot marine distress-flare launcher stored inside. She opened it, checked both chambers, snapped it shut and handed it to me.

I took it.

The weight felt solid. It was a decision I could make. Something I could control.

We stood at the edge of the landing-stage and looked across Loch Scresort.

Fog lay over the water so heavily that I could not see beyond six metres. There were no visible waves and almost no sound, only grey air and silence. Rowan's breathing remained rough, though steadier than mine.

"The mainland boat isn't coming," she said.

"Fiona said it couldn't cross yet."

"Then nothing is coming."

I did not argue.

Footsteps sounded behind us, slow and wet. Boot soles squelched against the boards.

I turned.

Alistair walked towards us from the path.

His uniform was soaked through. Water dripped from his sleeves and trouser legs, leaving a line of wet prints. His hat was gone and his hair lay plastered to his skull.

He stopped five metres away.

"Bethan and Owen need help," he said. "They're at Kilmory campsite. We need to go now."

His voice was right. The same flat command.

But his mouth moved slightly out of time with the words, perhaps a quarter of a second late. His throat bulged incorrectly when he spoke. It was not the smooth motion of a larynx. Several separate lumps shifted beneath the skin and pressed outwards.

I raised the flare launcher and aimed at his chest.

"Stay there," I said.

Alistair tilted his head. The motion was too smooth. There was no human hesitation, only a mechanical turn.

"They're hurt," he said. "You're a paramedic. You have to help."

I fired.

The flare struck the centre of his chest. Burning red phosphorus punched through his shirt and ignited.

Its light showed what lay beneath.

Wet leaves had been packed beneath the skin where muscle should have been. Pebbles and small stones swelled his neck and shoulders.

His throat bulged again and I saw them move, rocks tumbling inside a sack.

His mouth opened.

Four voices emerged at once.

Bethan's voice.

"Please. I can't find the path."

Owen's voice.

"My ankle's broken. I need a splint."

Hamish's voice.

"I cut my hand. It won't stop bleeding."

Ewan's voice.

"Callum, I'm hurt. You have to come back."

The voices overlapped, each one pulling at the trained reflex that made me respond to injury and pain.

The fog moved wrongly. It did not drift. It drew inwards, as though Loch Scresort itself were inhaling behind the thing wearing Alistair.

Wet handprints covered the windows of the reserve office and visitor centre. Dozens of them, pressed against the glass from within. Palms and fingers smeared downwards.

I seized Rowan's jacket and dragged her towards the visitor-centre door. She did not resist.

We hit it together. I shoved it open and we fell inside. I slammed it behind us, threw the deadbolt and dragged a metal desk across the entrance.

The voices continued outside. All of them, calling at once.

Rowan was already moving. She ran down the rear corridor. A moment later, glass shattered.

I followed.

She had smashed the rear window with a fire extinguisher. It opened on to the path leading to the Kinloch emergency landing-stage.

We climbed through. Broken glass caught my jacket and tore it.

I did not care.

We ran for the landing-stage, perhaps fifty metres away. My boots struck sand, then concrete, then the metal grating of the floating pontoon.

The fog was solid. I could not see the loch or anything more than three metres away.

Then I heard an engine.

An outboard running hard and fast.

A boat broke through the fog. A white-hulled local workboat marked MUNRO MARINE.

Iain Munro stood at the wheel, his face set in concentration as he searched the water. His boat had already been sweeping Loch Scresort in the reduced visibility, close enough to Kinloch to operate when no vessel could safely make the crossing from Mallaig.

I raised the launcher and fired the second flare vertically.

The red star climbed into the fog and burned brightly enough to stain everything pink for three seconds.

Iain's head snapped towards us. He turned the wheel hard and the workboat swung through a tight arc, throwing spray. He reduced the throttle and brought it alongside the landing-stage.

"Get aboard," he shouted.

Rowan jumped first. I followed. My boots struck the deck and Iain opened the throttle before I had regained my balance.

The boat surged away.

The landing-stage vanished into the fog behind us.

I looked back.

At its end stood a shape in Alistair's posture, its hands hanging by its sides and its head tilted at a fractionally wrong angle.

It watched us.

Still. Patient.

The room at Belford Hospital in Fort William smelt of disinfectant and plastic.

Dr Priya Shah stood over me with saline irrigation and told me to keep still. The fluid struck my left eye and I flinched hard enough for her to catch my chin.

"Keep still," she said again.

I obeyed.

She irrigated both eyes thoroughly, then completed a respiratory assessment and checked my observations. When she was satisfied that my breathing had settled, she tilted my head back and examined the place where I had bitten through my lip, probably inside the adit.

I did not remember doing it.

She dabbed the wound with gauze, applied local anaesthetic and closed it with three small sutures. Her hands were steady and precise. She did not ask about what had happened.

Martin Sutherland, a senior NatureScot officer supporting the investigation, sat in the corner with a clipboard and pen. He had been there throughout, watching and taking notes.

When Dr Shah finished and stepped away, Martin rose and approached the bed.

"Mr Reid," he said. "I need your account of what happened."

I told him.

Hamish Kerr's body inside the adit. Bethan Price and Owen Hughes missing. Alistair Grant left behind underground. The fog. The loops. The copied voices. The thing at Kinloch.

He wrote it all down.

Then he read it back to me in different language.

Panic under adverse conditions. Disorientation caused by dry-powder inhalation and eye exposure. Stress-induced confusion. Alistair likely injured in a fall within the adit. Bethan and Owen likely lost in poor visibility. Hamish's death presumed accidental on the basis of later remote evidence and observations made during a controlled recovery assessment, which had been halted because the workings were unsafe.

I listened.

When he finished, he asked me to sign a statement. I signed it.

On 31 August, Police Scotland and NatureScot issued a joint preliminary statement.

A tragic incident. Severe weather. Search and recovery activity restricted by dangerous conditions in the abandoned workings.

Three people remained missing: Alistair Grant, Bethan Price and Owen Hughes.

One fatality was confirmed: Hamish Kerr.

Rowan resigned the following week.

The email was forwarded to me by NatureScot human resources. It offered no explanation, only that her resignation took effect immediately.

I rang her. She did not answer.

I sent messages. There was no response.

A week later, a message arrived from a number I did not recognise.

Don't contact me again.

That was all.

My equipment was returned in a sealed plastic crate. Someone had packed it. I never learnt who.

Everything was there. The trauma kit. My clinical registration and continuing-professional-development folder. My spare boots. Even the paperback I had never finished.

I left most of it in the crate.

I was home, back in Glasgow.

The flat I had rented before taking the Rum contract was available again, so I moved back into it. The same building. The same floor. The same view over the residents' car park.

One night, unable to sleep and needing something to occupy my hands, I opened the crate. I removed the contents one item at a time and arranged them on the floor.

Dressings. Shears. Airway kit. Spare radio batteries.

At the bottom, I found the yellow PMR446 handheld radio from Bethan and Owen's tent. The one whose AA battery casing had been chewed and left empty.

I picked it up and turned it over.

The batteries were still missing. The compartment was still empty.

I pressed the power button.

Nothing happened.

Of course nothing happened. It was a dead radio with no batteries.

I placed it on the table beside my bed.

Three nights later, I woke at 02:00 to the sound of static.

I sat up and looked at the radio.

The static came from its speaker. Soft, rhythmic and pulsing.

Then my own voice came through.

Calm and close, as if I were standing beside myself.

Callum, leave Kinloch on the Harris path. Keep west towards the old workings. Follow the stones when they turn off the path. Don't stop until you reach the adit. I'm waiting.

I stared at the radio.

It was still switched off.

No batteries. No power.

My voice continued speaking, giving me directions from Kinloch, along the Harris path and back to the abandoned adit.

I did not touch it.

I only listened.