When I am sure, I lay her head back onto the ground, and get up slowly, my limbs stiff with cold. Another boom of thunder makes me flinch; the lightning that follows fast on its heels throws the towering Beinn Uais into stark relief against the white sky.

The fear burns inside me like poison. It revives the need to run away, across pasture and bog and road until I’m anywhere but here. Instead, I return to the ATV, make myself drive as slowly as I can back towards the road. When I reach the blackhouse, I make myself keep driving eastwards, finally coming to a stop alongside Loch Tana. Standing inside Beinn Uais’s vast shadow does nothing to alleviate the hackles on my neck, the shudders chasing up and down my spine. But I keep going. Across the Coffin Road and then into the darker V between the mountains. Gleann nam Bòcan, the Valley of Ghosts.

My boots sink into the saturated peat; my torch creates as much gloom as light as I head deeper inside that narrow valley. I see the spot just as I become certain that I’m never going to: a deep, old fissure filled with spongy green moss at the base of the mountain’s eastern flank. I drop back onto my knees again, start digging down into the mud with my hands.

I find the first quicker than I’m expecting to, and as I pull it free the relief is almost nauseating. The crow is covered in mud, but I can tell that its skin is too soft, too pliable. It hasn’t been long enough yet, weeks rather than months, but needs must. I excavate three – one for each of us – and leave the rest. The last is in the worst shape. One wing is very brittle, broken in at least three different places. My aim isn’t as good as it once was.

I run back to the ATV, drop the birds into a plastic bag that I wrap around one handlebar. When I press the start button, the engine catches once, twice, and then dies. On the second attempt nothing happens at all. Another scream of lightning turns the blood on my jacket and skin to black, and in the return to darkness, fear climbs back onto my shoulders, wraps its arms around my chest. My torchlight shakes over mud and rock and bog. I can see the distant gold lights of Blàr Mòr, the further away lights of the blackhouse. I can feel the bòcain in the darkness. I can smell them: wet rope and net; the pungent brine of their breath.

No. Ghosts are just unfinished business. Unspoken truths. They don’t need to follow you, because they are you. I turn off my torch. Look into the darkness of the west. This morning, when the storm was only black clouds on the horizon, there was someone up on the ridge behind the cemetery. I saw them on Tòrr Dìseart. I saw them, and just like those clouds, I forced myself to see no threat in them. Watching me. Watching my flock. They’re always near now. Watching. Waiting. Never near enough to recognise. Sometimes not even near enough to see; only a shiver down my spine or a prickle on my skin. There is threat in everything. In everyone. No matter what Mary believes. No matter what I’ve promised her.