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Thirty-Three

Come on, old man , John tells himself.

Keep going.

He rests his shoulder against the wooden post, then drives down with his feet, grits his teeth, and pushes as hard as he can. His shoes skitter in the dust a little, threatening to slip and only just holding.

Is the post shifting a little?

It’s hard to tell.

He keeps pushing, staring blankly down at his hands, shackled together at the wrist, and ignoring the pain coursing through his body, and he counts silently to five before finally allowing himself to step back and rest.

Deep breaths.

Shivering in the cold night air.

The wooden pen around him is small and square, three meters to a side by his estimate. The post stands in the very center. A metal plate has been screwed tightly into the side of it, and a short chain connects that to the shackles that bind his hands.

Come on , he tells himself.

He remembers little of the hours after being drugged at the Reach. There is the sensation of having been in an enclosed space, perhaps in the boot of a car, and a dim memory of hearing the horns at the ferry terminal. But the first moment he recalls with any clarity is when he woke up here, however many days ago that was now. He was alone. There was no sign of Aspinall, and when John shouted out the man’s name, his calls had gone unanswered, disappearing into the trees. Something about the quality of the silence told him that he was in the middle of nowhere.

Nobody was coming to help him.

The next thing he did was test the limits of his prison. If he could reach the fence, he reasoned, perhaps he could break off a switch of wood to use as a tool or a weapon. But the chain was too short. One by one, he attempted to pry apart the links, but that was no use either. They were much stronger than he was. Brute force was not going to help him here. He had then tried to use the little hand movement available to him to pull the post out of the ground. But once again, he had realized very quickly that wouldn’t work. The post had been driven in too deep.

Because Aspinall was good at building and fixing things, wasn’t he?

The man had spent years now traversing the island, carrying out repairs on the trails and at the beauty spots. The whole time, John had thought of him as being almost part of the landscape. Just a man you saw without seeing, talked to without really listening to. Aspinall was such a reliable part of ordinary, everyday life that it had never occurred to John to imagine he might be building something in a different place, intent on fixing something inside him instead.

For a time, he had succumbed to despair.

But also—shameful to admit—to fear. He was trapped and helpless, subject to whatever Aspinall’s whims might be when the man eventually returned. John had remembered the story Darren Field had told him.

He was so angry. He’s reds and blacks. He’s fucking screaming.

And while he found it hard to square that with the picture he had of Craig Aspinall in his head, he knew now that image had always been wrong. Whatever else Aspinall pretended to be, in his own mind he was James Palmer’s father.

He hated himself. And he hated the people who had failed to save his boy that day.

You are going to die here , John had told himself .

But then another idea had occurred to him.

Perhaps brute force was not out of the question after all.

Come on , he tells himself again now. And then he edges monotonously around to the opposite side of the post. He gathers his strength and leans into it from the opposite direction, pushing as hard as he can. A minute ago, he wasn’t sure, but this time he’s certain he feels it. The post moved. It’s tiny, imperceptible, barely there. But it is there. He has to believe that. The post just moved back to correct the minuscule effect he had by pushing from the other side.

He grits his teeth, determined to push the post ever so slightly past the point it was at before. Then he’ll gather his strength, trudge back around, and repeat the process. Over and over again.

Because that is what you do. You—

Keep going.

He stumbles as he circles back around the post. There’s a jolt, confusing him. It takes a second to realize that he’s carried on the wrong way this time and taken the chain to its limit.

Stupid. Worthless. Old man.

But that won’t do any good.

Deep breaths.

He turns and reverses his course. It’s just so hard now though. He keeps trying to gather his strength, but there’s so little of it left. For however long now, he has been chained up here, exposed to the elements, without food of any kind. Aspinall left him water, at least, but in a metal dog bowl on the ground, and for the first couple of days John was damned if he was going to lower himself to drinking from that. But eventually the thirst had become too painful, the weakness in his body too profound, and so finally he had succumbed. As he had knelt there in the dust, lapping from the bowl like an animal, he had imagined Aspinall watching from somewhere in the tree line. Laughing at his humiliation.

Perhaps even taking a photograph.

But if so, he hadn’t made himself known. Until tonight, in fact, John has been alone. Time has begun to lose meaning. During the hottest parts of the days, he has maneuvered around the post like the minute hand of a clock, trying to catch the thin sliver of shadow it offered. At night, he has lain shivering in the cold, feeling his sunburned skin shining in the dark.

And the rest of the time, he has pushed the post.

Back and forth. Over and over.

There was a period of time—yesterday?—when he had given up. He had put his efforts on hold in the midday sun, and then simply not started again when it cooled. It had felt so easy just to sit there instead. To stop . Because the post was implacable. You did your best, he had reasoned, but there came a point when the blows were too hard to pick yourself up from. A moment when you had to accept that you were beaten and there was no use going on.

He had closed his eyes.

No , a voice told him. Keep going.

Give a good account of yourself.

And he had opened his eyes again. It was strange, because the voice hadn’t sounded like the more familiar one he talked to himself with. It had seemed to come from somewhere away to one side, and it had been so clear that it was almost a surprise to see that he was still alone.

But he had picked himself up again. And he had—

Keep going.

He leans back into the post now, pushing as hard as he can, putting as much of the little strength that remains of his frail body into it. He senses movement again. A little more than last time? He crouches down, resting for a few seconds, then stands up and heads dutifully, robotically back around the post.

Leans into it.

And pushes.

Because there’s no time for him to rest now.

Aspinall returned a couple of hours earlier, and he was not alone when he did. John watched—his mind repeating no, no, no —as Aspinall dragged Sarah across the clearing toward one of the pens. He pulled desperately against the chain again, and attempted to shout her name, but his throat was too dry and he couldn’t make a sound.

A short while later, the silence in the clearing had been interrupted by a sudden humming noise, and then the darkness broken by a series of bright lights blooming into life across the compound. The rows of pens had been transformed into a cat’s cradle of wood and dirt and shadow.

And then Aspinall had left.

But he’ll be back soon. John is sure of that.

He tries to call out again now.

“Sarah. Can you hear me?”

His voice is raspy, barely. But it must carry a little, because a few seconds later he hears a muffled cry in response.

She is alive, at least.

“It’s going to be okay,” he tries his best to say. “I promise.”

Then he moves around to the other side of the post. He’s so weak now though. And angry with himself too. What he wouldn’t give to have that handful of lost hours from yesterday back now. They might turn out to have made all the difference, and that’s a horrible thought. That after being a failure all his life, he has carried on being one to the very end.

It’s another spur. He leans into the post. Plants his feet against the ground. Pushes as hard as he can.

Come on, old man , he tells himself.

Keep going.