Read Online The Risk of Darkness by Susan Hill - Free Book Online Page A

hard into his face. The sky was livid, lightning forking across it, though still a way off. He calculated that they had some time before the storm posed any threat and bythen he intended them to be back up the path and into the cars.
    He slithered, caught his breath and tried to grab an outcrop of rock, but the stones slipped out of his hand and rumbled down the cliff, gaining speed. Ahead of him, the man was like a monkey, agile, sure-footed, clambering and scrabbling down. Below them, far below, a narrow ribbon of dark sand, strewn with rocks. Ahead of that, the sea, roaring up, swollen and gathering height. Simon looked back. He had come further than he’d realised. The figures peering down at him from the clifftop seemed miles away. But heights had never bothered him and he was sure-footed now, though the rain was washing debris down the path behind him, and his hand slipped on the rock as he tried to gain a hold. The lower part of the cliff was the hardest to negotiate—the rocks here were jagged, full of crevices and slippery with lime green seaweed. Several times he almost fell and once, in saving himself, gashed his palm on a piece of outcrop. Then they were down and he was in pursuit, the flat sand sucking at his feet. The man was trying to run but they were both slowed now. The wind was full in their faces and the storm was being swept inshore; the lightning streaked down the sky followed within seconds by thunder. But it was not the storm which troubled Simon. It was the tide which was gathering speed and boiling in fast towards them.
    They were in a small curved bay, separated from the others by long breakwaters of rocks that stretched out into the sea like the narrowing tails of prehistoricmonsters; as he raced and leapt his way along the narrow belt of sand, the bones of the tails were being submerged one by one.
    Ahead of him, the man leapt on to a high rock and clambered towards the cliff.
    Simon was close now.
    Then he saw the cave mouth, a toothless maw in the base of the cliff and guarded by a Cerberus of rocks. Seconds later, he was on to them. The cave smelled of long-dead fish and salt water.
    For a moment, he wondered if it might be the entrance to some place of safety out of the tide, set deep in the cliff, but as he bent to get inside, he saw that it did not go far back and that the rock above was so low he would scarcely be able to stand upright. There was no light. He had no torch. Behind, the sea was roaring at one with the thunder.
    “Get out of here, you idiot, come back out, the tide’s going to pour in at any minute.”
    Nothing. Then a voice that shocked him into complete stillness.
    “God. Oh God, it’s the wrong cave. You’ve got to get out. You’re blocking me. Move.”
    The voice rose to a hysterical pitch.
    “Get out!” the woman screamed.
    Serrailler began to back away slowly, holding on to the rocks, the sides of the cave … As he emerged into the greenish light of the storm, he saw that there was one way of escape, a ledge perhaps a dozen feet up against the cliff face, just reachable in three or four carefully placed strides. The tide was swirling a yard away.
    “Come out and climb after me … can you do that?” He looked round. The woman was coming out of the cave. Short dark hair. A dark jacket. Black jeans. White, horrified face. Dark sunken eyes.
    Forget who it is, concentrate, focus.
    “Come on … take one step at a time, do everything I do. Do as you’re told, right?”
    “OK … Jesus, help …”
    “We can get up there. Don’t panic. Take a deep breath. Right, I’m going up. Follow me exactly.”
    His own voice sounded confident, he thought, authoritative. She would believe he knew exactly what he was doing. He reached for the first handhold in the cliff, grasped it and swung himself up, scrabbling carefully with his feet to find a firm base.
    Below him, he heard the woman’s fast, whimpering breaths.
    “It’s fine. Wait. Now the next.”
    It took a