Devil's Rock (4 page)

‘Yes, I promise. I promise.’

‘Good. But don’t forget you have promised.’

She looked towards
Morveren
and then sank down into the water.

‘Hold on to the rock. They’ll come for you now,’ she ordered.

Before he could say anything else, she was gone.

Too exhausted to wonder who had saved him, or how she had known he was in the cave, Zaki lay on the rock, too exhausted to move, half in the water, half out. Gradually he became aware of voices shouting his name, shouting instructions, telling him to ‘Stay where you are!’ – not to move – his father’s voice – and Michael’s. An outboard engine revved and whined then his father and brother in the inflatable were beside him.

‘Are you hurt?’ his father asked, the anxiety tight in his voice. Getting no reply he turned to Michael.

‘We’ll have to get him into the dinghy, then we can take a look at him. But be careful, we don’t know what’s happened to him.’

His father climbed out on to the rock as Michael held the inflatable steady.

‘Can you sit up?’

‘Think so,’ Zaki mumbled.

‘Anything hurting?’

‘Shoulder.’

Gently, his father and brother helped him to slide over the rubber side of the inflatable and down on to the floor. His father followed him. Then, kneeling beside him, he tried to ease open his sodden fleece to examine his shoulder.

‘How did you get on to that rock? Did you fall? What were you doing?’

Zaki shook his head. It was all too confusing.

His father’s fingers became clumsy with the effort of being gentle and, dropping his hands into his lap, he looked searchingly into Zaki’s face.

‘Zaki?’

Zaki closed his eyes.

‘Zaki! Where the HELL have you been?!’

His father’s sudden anger together with the relief of being alive and the exhaustion overwhelmed Zaki. His body shook and tears began to stream down his face. No words could possibly get out.

‘Dad,’ Michael leant forward from his place by the outboard. ‘Dad, let’s get him back to
Morveren
.’

‘Yeah,’ nodded his father. ‘OK.’

g

Chapter 4

Zaki now lay in Grandad’s bunk padded around with cushions. Its narrowness and his present immobility brought to his mind the image of a body in a coffin and underlined the narrowness of his recent escape.

Having got him back aboard, Zaki’s father had helped him into dry clothing and examined his shoulder. It was already turning interesting shades of red, blue and yellow with swelling over the collarbone which made his father think that, if it wasn’t broken, it was most likely cracked.

Of course there were more questions about where he’d been. ‘Why were you gone so long?’ his father wanted to know. ‘How did you hurt your shoulder?’

At first, Zaki’s own genuine confusion prevented him from saying much, but his father persisted. ‘We’ve been searching for you for hours. I’ve had Michael up and down the river a dozen times in the dinghy, then you turn up on that rock! Didn’t you realise we’d be worried?’

Zaki desperately wanted to talk about what had happened; to share his adventure; to ask his father for advice. But his promise to the girl made him hold back. Hadn’t she saved his life – dragged him out of the cave just as he was about to drown? Didn’t he owe her something? Maybe she was in some sort of trouble, some sort of danger, and he could make it worse for her by betraying her. Did she need help? Then, the ghastly thought hit him – had she killed the child in the cave?

After a moment of horrified contemplation, Zaki pushed this possibility from his mind – no she couldn’t have! Could she? The body had been there too long. And if she had, why would she save him, knowing he had discovered her secret? No – it must be more complicated than that. But where did she go? Where was she now?

Zaki decided that, for the moment at least, he would not say anything about the cave. It was obvious from his father’s questions that he knew nothing of its existence; that the tide had already hidden the cave entrance by the time the search for him began. Instead, he invented a plausible explanation for his long absence. He said that he had set off at low tide up the river, along the bed of the estuary, that he hadn’t noticed the time and been cut off by the incoming tide. He had then been forced to return through the woods; scrambled down on to the rock ledge, where he had slipped when trying to hail them and fallen onto the boulder, injuring his shoulder and bruising his shin.

He pictured this fabricated journey as he spoke and became half convinced that this really was what had happened. The real events were so much more bizarre; like a nightmare – a secret passage, a skeleton, the strange images that filled his head in the dark cave, three or more hours that were lost and couldn’t be account for, near-drowning and the mysterious girl who had rescued him and then vanished. If he did tell anyone the real story, would they believe him? He doubted it very much. He wished he still had the bracelet – a solid object to prove that it had all happened, something to hang on to. But the bracelet was gone with the girl and he didn’t suppose he’d see either of them again.

The story he told appeared to satisfy his father, who decided that Zaki’s shoulder needed to be seen by a doctor as soon as possible and this meant getting out of the Orme straight away, while there was still enough tide to cross the bar and clear the outer reef. So Zaki was tucked into Grandad’s bunk, where he would be in no danger of rolling out when
Morveren
was under way.

It was a relief to be left alone. He listened to his father and Michael up on deck making preparations for departure: the inflatable being packed away; the sailing dinghy being hoisted aboard; their footsteps crossing and recrossing above him. Then the diesel starting, thudding loudly in the engine compartment next to his bunk, and the rattle of the anchor chain.

The plan had been to spend two nights in the estuary before heading home to
Morveren
’s mooring off East Portlemouth. Normally, Zaki would have wheedled and begged, ‘Couldn’t we stay another night?’ – ‘Do we have to go home so soon?’ Today, he was glad to be going. It was as though a close friend had turned against him. He had looked forward to this trip all holiday and it had gone so terribly wrong. Of course, if Michael had done stuff with him . . . If Michael . . . But Michael was no fun any more. And Mum . . . Something twisted very tight in his stomach. He didn’t want to think about any of it. He would do what he always did at home when he wanted to take his mind off things; he would close his eyes and count the number of objects he could remember in
Morveren
’s cabin. He knew this cabin so intimately that he had often been able to recall and place over two hundred items including brass hinges and visible screw heads. So that he couldn’t accuse himself of cheating, he wouldn’t count anything that could be seen from Grandad’s bunk.

Zaki was mentally enumerating the contents of the chart table when
Morveren
passed through the outer reef and reached open water. He felt the change in the boat’s motion as she met a gentle swell. There were footsteps on deck followed shortly by the chatter of the rope winch and the crack and flap of the mainsail as it was run up the mast. The rigging creaked as sheets were tightened and also when
Morveren
leant over as her sails caught the wind. The engine fell silent and Zaki could hear the wash and slap of water against the hull.
Morveren
settled into a steady, easy motion, like a long-distance runner settling into her stride. Zaki had just remembered to count the spare sparkplug in the chart table when he drifted off to sleep.

g

Emptiness. An immense, blue void, bright and clear as the sky on a crisp, cloudless winter’s day. Nothing, until the appearance of a tiny speck, like a full stop in infinity. The speck gets larger and larger – soon it is the size of a house, a mountain, a planet hurtling towards him. It is black, so black that it drinks up all the light – soon he will be crushed. Then it blinks open – an eye. He plunges through it. He is underwater – a flick of his tail and he can shoot forward – he is at home here, in his element. Movement behind him seizes his attention – instinctively he thrashes with his whole body. He is the prey, the other is the hunter, razor-sharp teeth open to swallow him; he swims up, up, striving for the surface that floats above him, striving for safety, flinging himself from water into air as teeth snap shut. Suddenly he is free, airborne, looking down. Each beat of his outstretched wings lifts him higher – a tilt of the tail and he slips sideways, riding the wind. High above him the hawk hangs on air, haloed by the sun, then drops, talons reaching, beak outstretched, sharp as an arrow. The chase is on again and when the hawk strikes he tumbles, falling through treetops, past whipping branches into the shelter of the undergrowth. He cowers among the gorse – he is a hare – his long ears twitch and turn to catch each sound. His nose picks up the scent of fox. He is up and running, weaving, dodging, doubling back, leaping over heather. The fox is on his heels, matching turn for turn, twist for twist, leap for leap, flying behind him like a flag connected by an invisible thread. Nowhere to hide – this is certain death! Teeth knife into his shoulder – he snatches breath to scream!

‘Zaki . . . Zaki!’

Zaki opened his eyes.

‘Bad dream?’

Zaki struggled out of the nightmare to find he was drenched in sweat. He looked up at his father, who had come halfway down the companionway, into the cabin.

‘Try to sit up and drink some water.’

Stepping down into the cabin, his father helped him to sit up in the bunk and handed him a plastic bottle of drinking water.

Zaki could tell from the boat’s motion that they were still at sea.

‘Where are we?’ he asked, after taking a swig from the bottle.

‘We’re off Bolt Head. Not far to go now,’ replied his father. ‘We’ve had a nice reach up the coast. You missed a good sail.’

‘Can I come up on deck?’ asked Zaki.

‘How’s the shoulder?’

‘It hurts, but I need some air.’ Zaki grimaced as he slid out of the bunk.

‘We’d better put that arm in a sling,’ said his father, ‘keep the weight off the shoulder.’

Zaki’s father improvised a sling out of an old scarf, a scarf that Zaki’s mother had left on board. The perfume from the sunscreen she used on holidays had penetrated its fibres and was released as his father arranged the soft, silky fabric around Zaki’s neck. He closed his eyes and, in that moment, it was his mother, not his father, who adjusted the sling, her familiar scent comforting and upsetting him all at the same time.

‘We won’t get a lifejacket over that, so don’t go falling overboard,’ said his father. ‘You go up, I’m going to start stowing everything we don’t want to take ashore.’

Zaki climbed up the steps and out into the cockpit. Michael, on the helm, gave him a cheery smile as he emerged.

‘Urgh! You look awful! You’ve gone all green.’

‘Thanks,’ said Zaki.

‘You’re not going to be sick, are you? Because if you are, do it downwind.’

His brother’s banter, together with the refreshing breeze, began to dispel the nausea he had felt in the confines of the cabin. He settled himself next to Michael, hanging on to the cockpit edge with his good hand. It was perfect sailing weather: a steady wind blowing out of a clear, blue sky; a gentle swell with white horses brightening the tops of the waves. ‘
Morveren
’s going like a train,’ said Zaki, borrowing one of his grandad’s favourite expressions.

Michael grinned. With the wind sweeping the mop of dark hair off his freckled face, he looked like the old Michael, Zaki’s best friend, the one he could talk to about anything.

‘I had the weirdest dream.’

‘Yeah? What was that?’ asked Michael.

‘I kept being chased by things. First I was a fish, with an otter after me, then I was a bird, then a rabbit, or something, and other things kept wanting to eat me.’

‘Who’d want to eat you, you smelly little toerag?’

‘Well, it was really weird. And there was this great big eye.’

‘You’ve been watching too many scary movies,’ said Michael. ‘Can you make yourself useful and have a look under the sail? Tell me if there are any boats downwind that I can’t see.’

Zaki scrambled down, taking a little more care than usual, his left side stiff and sore. There were a few open boats fishing for mackerel a fair distance off and a crab pot buoy just downwind.

‘Don’t change course until you pass the crab pot,’ called Zaki.

‘What crab pot?’ shouted Michael.

‘That one!’ Zaki called back, as the buoy bobbed past, only a few metres clear.

‘Thanks for the warning,’ said Michael. ‘Anything else you’re not gong to tell me about until it’s too late?’

‘No. All clear,’ said Zaki.

‘As you’re going to be next to useless pulling ropes, you’d better steer,’ said Michael, as Zaki clambered, one-armed, back up to the windward side. They swapped places, Zaki taking over the helm.

Rounding Bolt Head always seemed to be the slowest part of any journey
Morveren
made west of Salcombe. No matter how well they planned the passage, the tide was always against them.

Unlike the other great headlands of the West Country coast – Start Point, Prawl Point and the Lizard, which stab their jagged blades out into the Channel – Bolt Head appears to have been chopped off square and blunt by a mighty guillotine, leaving a precipice that runs for several miles like a massive granite curtain, torn in the middle by Soar Mill Cove, with its narrow beach in a deep cleft.

‘If you come up on to the wind now, we should make the entrance,’ called Michael.

Zaki brought
Morveren
round to point at the tip of the headland as Michael hauled on the main sheet and then winched in the jib.

Since the tide was approaching dead low, Zaki chose to play it safe and lined
Morveren
up with the red and white way marks that guide boats over the Salcombe bar and, as they passed the starboard Wolf Rock buoy, their father joined the boys on deck to get the sails down and furled away.

As is usual for a sunny day in the summer holidays, Salcombe Harbour was busy with day boats and dinghies, launches and tenders, and Zaki was kept on his toes keeping clear of the small craft races and giving way to ferries and fishing boats. The harbour master came by in his launch but, recognising
Morveren
as a local boat, he gave them a wave and motored off to assist a large family adrift in a small flat-bottomed boat with outboard motor problems.

No sooner were they moored than Grandad’s old blue launch nosed alongside. Jenna, Grandad’s black and white collie, gave two welcoming barks then scrambled from one end of the launch and back, wagging her tail, eager to greet everyone. Grandad tossed a mooring line to Michael. Zaki loved to watch the effortless way the old man moved around on a boat, never hurried, never losing his balance; ropes always falling exactly where he intended, judging boat speed and distance with unerring precision.

‘What you done to your arm, boy?’

‘Fell,’ said Zaki, a little shamefaced.

‘Wasn’t expecting you back for a day or two.’

‘Think we should get the doctor to take a look at him,’ said Zaki’s father.