Call of the Undertow Read Online Free PDF

came to the dark corridor of silhouetted trees higher up, a thick dark carpet of celandine leaves cushioned her footfall.
    She knew the way by keeping the gurgle of the burn to her right, the dark rise towards the road and bridge ahead. She came under the arch of some of the largest, oldest trees, gnarled and
thick-trunked, with limbs elbowing into the sky. When a noise startled her, she thought of the roe deer she’d seen here before. But this rustle was louder and closer than a deer would come.
It carried behind it a murmur, as if from a stifled voice.
    A shock of sound above. A shrill cry. She dropped into a crouch. Then something large and dark swung an arc above her. A flutter of air brushed close to her head, and then the thing swung back
to her other side. There was a thud in the undergrowth, and then footsteps drumming, tumbling away down towards the burn, an orange buoy left swinging from a rope above her.
    She wheeled around, scuffling her hands in dead leaves and moss, clutching at her heart. Leaping up, she strode after the trail of sound which resolved in her mind into children’s feet,
fading as muffled snorts of laughter grew louder with distance. She stopped at the edge of the bank and peered into a pool of darkness in which one moving thing was just apparent, scampering across
a fallen log over the burn and merging with the foliage beyond. She couldn’t tell if it was solitary or following others. But she was pretty sure it was human and small.
    ‘Little sods,’ she threw half-heartedly after them.
    The giggling trail hushed.
    She turned back towards the cottage, humiliation simmering in her, and shoved at the orange buoy, sent it back into its now benign arc across the path. She had to duck to avoid it hitting her on
its return.
    She sometimes imagined a café at the Dunnet end of the beach serving slabs of wholesome cake and huge mugs of tea that you warmed your hands around. In Cornwall there
would have been one. But despite the plunge of cliffs, the seals, seabirds and beaches here, Cornwall’s characteristic holiday-ness was missing. There were no ice-cream stands, car parks
shiny with sun-scorched metal, or clamouring children and dogs. Of course it was out of season but there was more to it than that. She could see that the infrastructure itself was absent. There was
just an occasional caravan park or hotel with its signs blown off. Her only port of call was the Sandpiper Centre.
    She and Graham stood at the big window, each with a pair of binoculars trained on a sparkling group of white gannets circling on wide black-tipped wings above the waves.
    ‘How was your school visit?’ Graham asked.
    ‘Fine,’ she said. ‘I think.’
    ‘I told you they were rascals.’
    ‘Did you? Well, they were alright in the classroom, but...’ The shriek in the woods she’d been trying to shake off since was still trailing her.
    ‘Being cheeky to you on the street, eh?’
    ‘No, not exactly.’ She told him then about the snowman intruder who’d welcomed her to the area.
    He roared with laughter. When she didn’t join in, he said, ‘That’s kids!’
    ‘They’re not mocking me then?’
    ‘Just being bairns.’
    So she didn’t mention the latest incident. Just kids using the woods as their playground. ‘You’re right.’ She managed a small laugh at her own fears and consciously tried
to drop her stiff shoulders, looking out at the horizon; letting it steady her.
    The land here barely undulated, lay in stripes and lines in such dark contrast to what was above. The sky was what you looked at. White clouds galloped across wind-driven days; a purple mask
formed above the sea at the end of a sunny one; occasional still days cast a milky haze. She looked up more than she ever did in Oxford where there were just snatches of sky between buildings. The
anti-windfarm campaigners in Caithness didn’t complain about the land being taken away, but about the stealing of ‘our skies’.
    ‘Watch