CHAPTER FIVE

Signs

THE SUN HAD finally woken up, and poured over Ralph and Roger as they crouched on the ledge in the late morning. The cross stood on a flat platform of grass between steeper inclines, and was hidden from view on the ground by a patch of dense vegetation. From his singular spot on the cliff Ralph could see it clearly: the wood was new and unblunted by rot.

Roger sat up painfully and followed the victor's gaze. Ralph shifted his attention back to the boy. 'Someone else is on the island,' he obvioused. 'None of us have been up here.' He remembered the figure on the mountain. It couldn't have been Roger. A chill went up his spine. 'We're not alone.'

Still shaken by his fall, the deputy rubbed his neck and limbs as fresh grazes glistened with burgeoning blood. 'Where did you get Jack's knife?' he croaked.

Ralph was forming a plan. 'Stole it,' he said absently. He bit his lower lip and stared at the incongruous T, then suddenly resolved he issued his instructions: 'Go back to Castle Rock. Take my belt. Tell Percival and Johnny to go to the beach.'

Inwardly Roger believed that Jack expected his victory – that he would not miss an opportunity to obliterate their common enemy – yet he was unaware that the Chief had given the advantage to the other boy. Ralph hoped the captain would not react with surprise when his deputy returned "victorious".

Acquiescent, Roger nodded stiffly. Relieved, Ralph untied his belt.

Five minutes later the killer had disappeared into the forest, and the boy with fair hair stood alone with his spear. The grassy platform could be reached by leaving the ridge and clambering over a steeper section of the cliff, so Ralph set off with the aim of investigation. The cross had seemed like a mirage in the surreal morning light…

He sweated intensely as he climbed over alternating patches of grey and green. To reach the platform he had to jump several feet from the incline; unhindered by doubt he leapt hastily from a cornering rock and landed with a thump on the grass. At once he was obscured by the bordering plants, and could see almost nothing of the forest below. Feeling a pang of disturbance at the thought of treading on someone's grave, the boy approached the cross and knelt down three feet away on its diagonal. The wood was neatly cut and nailed together. An engraved inscription read:

ALIS GRAVE NIL

The boy identified Latin brevity but did not understand the words. He looked around. The platform was about six feet squared, with the cliff advancing on every side. Ralph deduced that whoever had made the cross was familiar with the island, or else had a map of it. This natural lawn was like a private garden. Unexpectedly his eyes were drawn to a small white blot in a corner of the square. Couldn't be a flower… With a tingle in his chest Ralph realised it was a cigarette end. Now the mystery was qualified: an adult had been here very recently.

Intrigued and slightly thrilled, he stood again and climbed back to the path with some difficulty. His plan was nebulous and instinctual: a stakeout higher on the hill. Somehow he would have to find a way up the cliff in order to gain a clearer viewpoint of the rest of the island. Visiting the mountain could be more dangerous, considering the unknown figure he had glimpsed.

Ralph was thankful for the vegetation that sprouted with regularity on the cliff; he could use the grass and shrubs as handholds during the steeper areas. By the time he half crawled onto the summit, noon had arrived and the day had become unforgivingly hot. The boy was suddenly desperate with thirst and surveyed the new geography. The raised area was a nucleus of the whole island: bean-shaped and topped with trees. It was as if a section of the forest had been pushed up out of the ground.

Ralph walked into the wood and searched for water, but there was none to be found. Dejected, but still buoyed by curiosity about the cross and the cigarette, he drove his spear into the earth and sat down against a trunk. Insects flew and crawled by: ignorant, sophisticated automatons.

He remembered the two victims of the island with a heavy heart. Was the cross for one or both of them? No: their bodies had been pulled out to sea, and the hunters were the only ones who knew of their demise. Ralph shivered and felt trickles of paranoia. He had never been so alone, yet he sensed an impending invading threat. Out of exhaustion and necessity he curled up and went to sleep.

JACK STOOD ON Castle Rock and watched a solitary figure snake through the edge of the forest to the connecting arm. He had relieved the other guard of his duty and was keen to witness the victor's return himself. Roger appeared on the isthmus and looked up at the Chief, and Jack's heart froze as his deputy raised the severed belt in one hand and shook his spear triumphantly in the other. Froth stroked the neck of rock as Roger walked back to his lair. Ralph was dead, and Jack was stuck with the killer.

A BREEZE BLEW gently through the wooded hilltop. Ralph felt the current breathe over his back and woke up, alert at once. Around him the trunks were white and spectral against the colourless dim of late afternoon. Soon the world would be cloaked again. The boy sat up, amazed he had survived for so long wearing only shorts, and sauntered back to the crest of the hill. From here he could see the wild slope, the semi-track, and the dip that led to the gravesite. He looked up at the mountain but nothing was moving. The spot where the early fires had been lit could be seen as a charred blemish on the flat peak. Still he got the sense that something was building – something inevitable, something exciting. And was the something aware of him as well?

Visceral sensations prodded Ralph's anatomy like pins, so he walked along the crest to dull them with new movements, as if rubbing a sore bruise. Then he heard a sound quite distinct from the close, distant scream of wildlife. It was a consistent metallic noise, like a slow drill or a heavy mechanical door. He froze by the edge of the wood, then dashed to the nearest tree to hide himself. The sound was coming from farther inside the treescape of the hill. It was such an unusual sound after so many weeks of nature that the boy was startled, paralysed. He listened enthralled as the grating noise continued – then it stopped abruptly.

The forest was frozen, pregnant, potentially hysterical.

Now Ralph heard footsteps: thunk thunk thunk on dry leaves. He peered around the edge of his slender tree and espied the dark, burly figure of a man walking away from him about twenty metres away. The boy saw that he was white like him – no indigenous tribesman, then – and wearing western clothes: boots, slacks and a heavy coat. The man's hair was red, like Jack's. The figure flickered behind trees then disappeared altogether.

Ralph remained statuesque for a good five minutes, then relaxed a little and decided to investigate further. Bravely, he pushed himself away from the trunk and slid over the leaves to where he had seen the man walking, then went in the direction from whence the figure had come. The man could not have walked for more than ten seconds before Ralph glimpsed him, so the boy soon stopped in a small clearing and looked around. Everything was as it should be: pure nature, if rendered farcical by the advent of the visitor. The trees still stood, the ground was even and yielded no clues. What was that metallic sound?

Echoing his spyment of the cigarette, Ralph noticed one incongruous aspect on the floor of the wood: a slight bunching of leaves in the centre of the clearing. Something had been casually obscured. The boy knelt down and gently brushed the leaves outwards, and there it was: a metal ring, attached to a copper-coloured circle in the ground. An underground tunnel? Where did it lead? Carefully Ralph tried to turn the wrought handle in both directions, but it would not budge. He pursed his lips and frowned. Another stakeout would be necessary.

He felt lonely again, on the quiet, secretive hill, and decided to walk down to the beach to find fruit and water. From there he could also choose between the mountain and the cliff as the best location for his second vigil. The higher one got the more mysterious everything became…

The boy scrambled down from the summit and began to run when he reached flatter ground. He sped into the forest and felt surges of delight at recognising his surroundings again: the beauty mark, the flowers, and finally the small stream that ran down to the pool on the beach. Ralph knelt and drank from the fresh, chuckling pura. It was sweet and delicious, like tasting tap water after biting into a lemon. He slurped devotedly for a minute, then lay on his back amongst the leafy debris, his body buzzing from the nourishment.

After a warning rumble from his stomach he got to his feet again and trotted towards the beach, on his way collating a handful of berries to eat in his coastal solitude. He still had Jack's knife, so when the beach was in sight he shinned up one of the bordering coconut trees and slashed at the tangle of brown string. Three olive ovals fell off and rolled onto the sand; Ralph jumped down and walked with them to the sandy pool with a rare feeling of entitlement. He sawed the top off a coconut then sat in the shining water up to his chest, drinking the sweet juice and gazing out at the opal ocean.

To his right lay tiers of distressing landmarks – the platform of ancient meetings; the recent remains of his shelter; the scar left by the plane during its landing, gradually being healed by the fringing undergrowth – and to the distant left lay the black spot that marked the memory of the hunters' fire. Keeping his head central, Ralph rested his eyes on the lagoon and its protecting reef in insouciant dissonance.

Presently he heard sounds from behind him, and turning around he saw the diminutive figures of Percival and Johnny traipsing through the forest towards the beach. So Roger had stayed true to his word… No doubt because he had managed to "kill" Ralph whilst tacitly following his Chief's orders not to murder. Ironically, the deputy had come out of the duel with the most satisfaction.

With a jolt of pleasure Ralph placed the empty coconut shell by the side of the pool and drenched out to meet the younger boys halfway. They greeted each other with warm smiles, glad of the empathy from common experience, and lighter of heart to be back on the smooth beach with the threat of the hunters receding.

The afternoon was almost over as Ralph sawed open the remaining coconuts, then watched with vicarious satisfaction as Percival and Johnny drank through parched lips. This paradise might prove to be temporary, but they would enjoy it while they could. Ralph sketched out the events of his day to the littluns, but omitted the figure on the hill, not wanting to plant the image of another Beast in their minds. Evening began to shroud the island, so the trio collected fern for makeshift beds, none of them having the energy to build another shelter.

Darkness fell quickly. The three boys lay in allayed malnutrition, and Ralph thought about the man on the hill, and whether or not he should have spoken to him. The figure's clandestine quality told him not, and the ambiguity was compounded by dreams. His father was faceless, had vanished, broken promises. Adulthood seemed cynical and theoretical. Suddenly Ralph felt as young as Percival and Johnny.

He slept for an hour or so before sifting back to consciousness. A glance at the littluns told him they were still exhaustedly asleep. The boy sat up and looked at the dark palms with uncertainty, and then, summoning stubborn courage, stood up silently and walked into the black forest, leaving the youngsters vulnerable to solitude. He had to visit the mountain. The lone shape on its summit had filled him with more curiosity than the man with red hair… assuming the latter had been underground all day and was therefore not the same person. Or were the two mounts connected by a tunnel?

Ralph quickened his pace and soon approached the mountain. It loomed above him, serious and disapproving, but he pushed on, climbing the colourless ridges that led to the crest. He had not visited the site of the early fires for what felt like months. Now he reached the last folds that lead to the summit, and stiffened, with memories of both the Beast and the figure mixing in his mind. The first monster had taken flight, swept across the sky and into the sea, but now like the Lord of the Flies it had an inheritor. One that most definitely lived and breathed… The boy passed the black patch and kept to the edge of the top level. A sudden wave of futility hit his heart, and he sat down thoughtlessly by a staggered bush. Yet again he felt utterly alone, and tried to combat the feeling by thinking of his two beachside allies, but to no avail. Friends were rarely as close as family anyway.

Currents of cold air exhaled over the mountain, rustling the charred bones in the fire. After half an hour Ralph began to anticipate a sleepless night free from adventure, but no sooner had the thought solidified in his brain than a human sound came to his ears. It was the treble crunch of boots on rocky earth. Ralph's senses sharpened immediately and he looked out from behind his hideout. The black shape had returned: a man was walking slowly and heavily towards the summit. Wildly, Ralph wondered if he would make smoke signals, and fantasised that Jack was in league with him, but his ideas were ludicrous and he made them dissipate. The man passed very close to where the boy crouched, and carried on over the summit, disappearing behind a sheet of rock. After a pause Ralph followed him. Up above the sky held its breath, impressed, perhaps amused. The entire expanse was brushed by silver clouds.

Ralph stopped and peered over the rocky edge. This was the side of the mountain where the children had caused a fire some months before; directly below him was a slope of grass and rock before the forest began. Gingerly, he clambered down and looked about him. The figure had vanished, and the boy wondered if there was another underground chamber here. He kept his eyes to the ground as he slowly approached the forest – then before he knew it a black ghost had leapt out of the dark and held him by the arms. Ralph shrieked and tried to wrestle free but the figure held him in a grip of iron.

Then it spoke, a gruff, deep voice: 'Go back to the others!'

Ralph looked up at the giant shape and trembled. The face was obscured by a brimmed hat and the moon was hiding behind clouds. The boy felt as if a shadow were holding him. He swallowed hard then stammered, 'Who are you?'

'That doesn't concern you,' rasped the man, 'however much you may think it does.' He pushed Ralph away roughly and the boy fell backwards to the cold, hard ground. The figure stepped forward to gave his final word. 'Return to the others. Stay with them. Don't mention this and don't come back here.'

And with that the figure turned and walked back into the forest, fearless and faceless. Ralph sat, shocked and terrified, and did not move for a minute. Then he scrambled to his feet and tore off over the mountain.