‘Morning, Benny Boy,’ Chloe said, approaching him from the trees. ‘Where’d you go to?’

The sudden sight of her startled him more than her absence. His legs felt weak.

‘Where did you go?’ he gasped, the panic venting out of him like a balloon deflating.

‘I was taking a pee over in the trees.’

She looked spent. Her eyes were at half rest and she carried herself as though still cold.

‘What happened to our tent?’ he asked.

‘I’m not taking that thing down in the rain,’ she replied, fixing her parka’s hood tight around her head. ‘I haven’t the energy. And there’s no chance I’m leaving an expensive piece of gear like that behind for the Tír Mallachts. I’d burn it if it weren’t pissing down.’

Ben just stared at her. You don’t even realise the fright you gave me.

‘So, where’d you go?’ she repeated.

He produced the sunglasses from his pocket and held them out to her.

‘I found these in the graveyard.’

She examined them in both hands, drawing them right up to her eyes as if searching for some clue he had overlooked. Ben watched those smooth lips pout in deep but inconclusive thought. Eventually, her head lifted, and that wicked smile was back where it belonged.

‘This,’ she said, holding the sunglasses up, ‘is huge.’

‘I know, right? It means that we’re not the first to come here.’

‘It means,’ she replied, handing them back, ‘that everyone has been lying to us. And you found them in the graveyard?’

‘Yeah,’ he said, ‘just on the ground, as if somebody dropped them by accident.’

‘There’s only one type of person who would hang out in a graveyard.’

‘And who’s that?’

‘Archaeologists,’ she replied with a wink. ‘I told you I wasn’t the first one.’

10

The rucksack was back on Ben’s shoulders. It was a part of him now, like the pain and the cold, and that second skin of mud that seemed to grow back whenever he wiped himself clean. Another blast of rain rendered him blind, like wet splinters against his face. The once crisp leaves were as mulch, all mixed into a gritty quicksand that never settled. The rainwater had soaked the earth overnight, fattening it to its brim. Now it flooded in unseen pools hidden beneath the tall grasses.

When they reached the treeline, Chloe grabbed the tripwire and wrenched it back and forth. Even amidst the wind and the rain, the bells’ toll was ear-splitting. A few of them fell like coconuts amidst the droplets; their rusty shells silenced on impact. She didn’t say anything. She didn’t even look back at Ben. It was an act of catharsis – a clamorous declaration to the world that they were leaving and they sure as hell wouldn’t be coming back.