Devil's Valley Read Online Free PDF Page A

stepped on a loose stone, staggered in panic, let go of the rucksack to regain-my balance, and just made it. The bag went tumbling down the fucking precipice until it was finally stopped, fifty or sixty metres down, by a grotesquely distorted wagon-tree. Shit. This was all I needed.
    Splinters
    I cautiously picked my way down after the rucksack, managed to get hold of it and struggled back to the ledge. There I squatted down for a while to catch my breath, feverishly undoing the bloody thing to check the contents. Prickhead stood watching in fucking fascination as I rummaged. Thank God the tape-recorder was packed deep inside, wrapped in clothing; at a glance it seemed okay, but I would have to examine it more carefully later. But the camera was fucked. The broken lens came tinkling from the bag as I undid it. All I could do in a kind of impotent rage was to throw the useless thing into the void that gaped below, as the phrase goes.
    Still shaken, I turned to the precious cardboard box in the side-bag. From outside it still seemed all right. Then my heart sputtered as I saw a moist stain spreading through the cardboard. With clumsy fingers I tore the box open, prepared for the worst. My fucking bottle of fucking White Horse down the drain. Everything in the box in which I’d so lovingly cradled it was soggy, and riddled with sharp splinters. Inevitably I cut a bloody finger in the process. Under the gnome’s beady eyes I sucked my finger, then began to remove the splinters one by one from the soggy mess in the box. The way an army doctor might pick shrapnel from a wound, except I’m not sure the doctor would so lovingly suck each piece of shrapnel clean. Even the grainy substance of the contents of the box didn’t put me off. Although what was left after I’d cleared away the worst looked pretty unappetising. I grimly replaced the box in the bag.
    It was some time before I scrambled up again to resume our journey. Just in time, it seemed, as Prickhead had started working away so furiously at his groin that his eyes were beginning to get a glassy stare. Worked up into a proper lather of another kind, I stumbled on after him, following the latest pebble from his catapult.
    Until, at bloody last, we crossed a rockfall to the bottom of the valley where a dried-up riverbed ran along a line of withered trees. Old wisps of beard-moss and lianas studded with ferocious thorns hung scraggily from the highest branches. One of the largest trees, an ancient wild fig, had been split from top to bottom, scorched by lightning in some forgotten time. It must have been the mother of all bolts. Presumably the whole valley bed became one churning flood after a bad storm, but right now it was as bleached as bone. The trees were still alive, but only just; their roots must reach half-way down to bloody China.
    We followed the dry riverbed, Prickhead waddling on his weird bow-legs, the catapult now draped across a sloping shoulder. It still seemed improbable for him to move with so much ease.
    And then, just as I was beginning to think I’d run right out of steam, we came through a last thicket of trees and saw the valley opening up ahead, with signs of fields, and vineyards, orchards, all bleached by drought, but still bearing the unmistakable imprint of civilisation. There were houses too, few and far between, some of them in a parlous state but all of them apparently inhabited. Four, five, six, followed by a hulking whitewashed church, much larger than one would expect in such a wild place, with a square, squat tower. For a moment I couldn’t make out anything more, as the valley swerved to the left.
    When I turned back, Prickhead had disappeared. In a sudden panic I looked round: would I ever, if I had to, find my way out again?
    Rucksack
    Right now the fucking rucksack required more urgent attention. I lowered it on a large flat rock in the middle of the dry riverbed and removed the tape recorder from its womb of odds and ends of