Jess lay crumpled on the far side of the shaft, eyes glassy, mouth agape, red froth on her lips. Her chest was bloody and shattered, and now all Ellie could hear was her breathing – a tortured, wheezing noise.

“Oh fuck.” Charlotte was crying. “Oh fuck, no.”

“Shit. Jess. Jess.” Ellie moved to the girl’s side, wiping blood from her face with her sleeve. She should prop her up – help her breathe if her lungs were injured – but what else might be damaged, and made worse if the girl were moved?

She heard movement overhead a second before Charlotte yelled a warning, and threw herself sideways. The shotgun roared a second later; the bone-heap’s surface erupted in a hail of splinters. Above her, Liz Harper worked the slide of her gun, screaming “Fucking die.” Ellie fumbled for the Ithaca, but it was the tunnel all over again: she was too slow, too off-guard.

A dazzle of red light erupted in the pit, then streaked upwards with a whoosh. Liz screeched and dropped the shotgun, clawing at the air. Fire and smoke spewed out of her left eye; her face was a red-glowing, screaming mask. Then she dropped over the edge of the pit and landed with a crash among the scattered bones.

Jess slumped backwards; the flare pistol still locked in one small hand. Ellie was afraid she’d died, till she saw that fresh blood was still bubbling on the girl’s lips. Charlotte crawled to her side.

“Charlotte, give me a hand,” Madeleine said. Ellie heard a clink and clatter of bones.

“What?” Charlotte turned towards the vicar. “Help us!”

“We can’t stay here,” Madeleine said. “Got to get out and fast.”

“What?”

“This isn’t the bottom of the shaft,” said Madeleine. She was pulling skeins of cobweb from the wall, revealing the mouth of another tunnel. “It’s a blockage. Too many people fell down here over the years. Something got wedged and the rest piled up on top. This shaft goes a lot further down.”

Ellie was afraid to ask how she knew, just as she was now afraid to look down at the bones and earth she was crouched on, in case doing so broke whatever spell held them in place. Madeleine passed her torch to Charlotte, who shunted it into the tunnel mouth to light her way. “Come on,” the vicar said. “Before –” She left the sentence unfinished.

“Jess,” said Charlotte.

Ellie hesitated. A hard and ruthless part of her wanted to say nothing could be done, that the girl was already dead or good as, that they had neither time nor strength to carry someone in such a state. But if the bone floor gave way, Jess would fall down into the depths and be lost there forever. And she deserved better than that. “Get her up,” said Ellie.