Squealing, Dylan erupted into action. She thrashed towards the shore, eyes shut, her gait clumsy because with each step she had to lift her trainer clear, shaking her ankle to get rid of anything that clung on. She mustn't look, and like the empty train carriage where this had all started, her mind filled in the blanks. She imagined things halfway between an eel and a crab with seizing claws, or a huge mouth, like a monkfish, filled with razor-sharp teeth. Nauseated and panicked, she ran on, not stopping until she heard the dry crunch of pebbles beneath her feet.

The terror of that realisation almost undid her again. Her eyes fluttered open only to see wraiths swirling round her head like a swarm of flies. She shut them again at once, but she could still feel the icy chill of the lake rippling up to her knees. Was it her imagination, or was something sliding round her ankle, coiling like a snake about to tighten? Horrified, she yanked her left foot up and out of the water, but whatever it was just moved smoothly over to her other leg. This time there was no doubt about it: there was something there.

Out of ideas, Dylan's face screwed up in anguish and a teardrop escaped from between her tightly clenched eyelids, plummeting down and exploding on her hand. Her mouth turned down, lips trembling, and her shoulders shook as she started crying. She was stuck. Trapped. Was this how far other souls had made it?

But still afraid to open her eyes, she was totally lost. There was a path up the hill, she knew, but that was in her wasteland. Not necessarily here. And even if it was, how the hell was she supposed to find it if she couldn't open her eyes?

Overwhelmed and exhausted, she dropped to the ground, propping herself up on all fours, and scrabbled at the stones with her fingers. Dry land, she told herself. Dry land. You're safe.

She stayed there for ten minutes, ten precious minutes of daylight, before a thought occurred to her. Perhaps she could see… just so long as she didn't look. If she could keep her head down, stare at nothing but the ground, at all costs resist the temptation to fix her eyes on the things that were screaming for her attention. If she could do that…

Breathing in cautious gasps, she tentatively opened her eyes. Focusing on nothing but looking straight down, on not really looking, she waited. It took only three seconds. A wraith ducked low to the ground, skimming the pebbles, and flew straight for her face. Dylan blinked -- an automatic reaction -- but managed not to turn her gaze to the movement, to stay focused on the ground. At the last second the wraith veered off, snarling venomously in her ear as it passed, making the wind stir a loose tendril of her hair.

It was a better idea than staying here and waiting for the night to claim her. The dark, the cold, the screaming; that, she knew, she wouldn't survive.

"Yes!" Dylan hissed.

But one wraith was easy. Realising she'd now opened her eyes, the rest of the hovering demons tried the same approach, dive-bombing her one after another. The air was a confusing swirl of black, making it hard to see, but Dylan ignored then, getting clumsily to her feet. She had to hold her hands out for balance, disorientated by the rush of movement, and goosebumps erupted on both of her arms as the air vibrated around her.

Turning her head slowly left and right, she hunted out the path. It should be near the boatshed, but although the boat had been there, she couldn't see the dilapidated little hut that housed it. No shed meant no path, but did she really need it? She knew she had to go up; that should be enough. Would have to be, because the afternoon was bleeding away with frightening speed.

Eyes down, she concentrated on the slick black pebbles, then, as she moved further from the shore, the burgundy dirt ground. Tufts of plants grew up the hillside, but not the heather and long grasses she'd become used to. These were purple and black, leaves tapering to thin spikes, stems armed with jagged thorns. They smelled too, wafting up the pungent aroma of rot and decay when her jeans brushed past. Now that she was moving away from the lake, the heat attacked with renewed fervour. Her clothes dried and stiffened, stained black from the water, then they began to stick to her as sweat leeched through her skin. The top of her head was burning under the glare of the sun.

It was miserable. She couldn't breathe, she was exhausted and every few seconds the wraiths dived for her again, trying to catch her out. She didn't dare lift her head to see how far she had to go, but her legs were aching, her back sore from being bent over. Scared and in pain and spent, Dylan screwed up her face and started to cry. The wraiths cackled, as if they could sense how close she was to giving up, to succumbing, but she couldn't seem to pull herself together. The tears blurred her vision, and her route up the hill became erratic.

As the gravel finally gave way to the rocky floor that marked the beginning of the top of the hill, Dylan's foot kicked a stone that refused to move, and she tripped. Throwing her arms out in front of her, she gasped, focusing her gaze to see the ground come rushing towards her.

Her hands took the brunt of her fall. Then her chest hit the path, snapping her head up. She found herself eye to eye with a wraith. There was just time to see its tiny, puckered face curl into a leer, before it dived at her and she was cold all over, as if she'd been submerged in the icy lake.

"No!" she choked. "No, no, no!"

Once she'd seen one, it seemed impossible to avoid looking at the rest, and they attacked en masse, pulling and tugging, penetrating down into her bones. With Dylan on the ground, the wraiths had already won half the battle. She felt herself sinking, sliding downwards as if the hard, compacted dirt was quicksand.

Her legs burned, her lungs ached, and the claws of countless wraiths hooked deep into her sweat-saturated T-shirt and hair. Staring at the top of the hill, she fought against their hold. The wraiths howled and snarled, buzzing round her head like angry bees. But Dylan kept going. She reached the top and down, she knew, would be much, much easier.

She hadn't come this far to die now. Again, Tristan's face danced in front of her eyes, the vivid blue of his stare a perfect remedy to this bloody hell. It was like a gulp of fresh air, galvanising Dylan. With monumental effort, she got her feet beneath her and exploded upwards, throwing off the wraiths clinging to her hands, her hair. Then she ran.

Suddenly, the safe house appeared. It was there, just in front of her. The incline levelled out, made it easier to control her speed. She was so close; she was going to make it. The wraiths knew it too. They doubled their efforts, soaring so close to her face she felt the wisps of their wings sting at her cheeks, wrapping around her legs to try and trip her again. Too little, too late. Dylan had the safe house to gaze upon and nothing the wraiths could do would tear her eyes away.

In fact, it was too easy. Too fast -- far too fast. Her feet couldn't keep up as gravity pulled her down the sheer slope. Unlike the wraiths, this was a battle she couldn't win -- and didn't want to. Instead, she let herself free fall, careering forward, concentrating on nothing more than moving her legs as quickly as possible, on staying upright. If she fell over here, she'd had it. Toppling, flailing, she wouldn't be able to think about where her eyes were focusing.

Dylan flung herself round the corner of the building and burst through the door. She knew she didn't need to, but she slammed it behind her. Calm descended at once. She stood in the middle of the single room, hauling oxygen into her screaming lungs, shaking all over.

Dylan rubbed her bare arms. It was more than just the cold that was making her tremble. Shadows swirled on the ground as the wraiths circled at the window. She tried to ignore them, but it wasn't easy. The sound of their wailing cut right to the centre of her brain, and with nothing else but silence in the tiny stone house, there was little to distract her ears.

She felt as exhausted, as she had after her last crossing of the lake. For a while she burned, heated from within by the panic and adrenaline that was acid in her veins, but in the dim light of the cottage, the air cooled quickly. Soon she was shaking with the chill.

She dropped down onto one of the chairs and lifted her legs to rest her feet on the seat, resting her chin on her knees, hugging herself for warmth. It wasn't enough, though, and soon her teeth were chattering. Dylan heaved herself up and moved stiffly over to the hearth. There were no matches to get a fire going like there had been in the last safe house, but she remembered how she'd done it the last time, and how the oars had appeared in the boat. Using wood from a little basket to the side, she built a lopsided triangle and stared hard at the centre of it.

"I made it," she whispered. "I made it."

Nothing happened. Dylan shut her eyes, and thought her pathetic plea again, holding her breath and crossing her fingers. There was a snap, swiftly followed by a spitting sound. When she opened her eyes again, there were flames.

As the fire grew, the chill gradually dissipated. Slowly, the shivers racking Dylan dissolved. She wrinkled her nose as she caught the putrid stench of the lake water rising from her clothes as the fabric warmed in the heat of the fire. She felt filthy, and she could only imagine how she looked. Glancing around, she saw the big Belfast sink, the dresser. This was the safe house where she'd managed to wash her clothes before. She'd used all the soap, she knew, but even if she could just rinse them out she'd feel better. Cleaner. And this time there would be no Tristan to see her clothed in the hodge-podge, too-big outfit he'd found stuffed into one of the drawers.

"Please?" she asked in a small voice. "Please, I need this."

"Thank you," she whispered automatically. It was uncomfortable kneeling on the cold stone floor, but she didn't move. Though the fire showed no signs of going out, it was small and gave out little heat. She had to hold her fingers just above the tiny leaping flames to feel their delicious warmth. The light, too, held her there as the shadows thickened outside. She wished there were candles to light.

She smiled to herself, remembering how embarrassed she'd been, wandering around half-clothed, her underwear slung over one of the chairs in full view.

Without Tristan's stories, it seemed to take a lot longer to fill the sink, and without the slither of soap she wasn't sure how much difference she actually made to the foul black stains coating her clothes. Still, she pounded the dirt from them as best she could and hung them on the chair backs. She put on the massive clothes from the dresser, then, ignoring the bed where she'd snuggled up tight to Tristan's warmth, she curled herself up on a scrap of faded carpet beside the fire. There was no point lying down anyway. Here, alone, with the endless howling of the wraiths outside, she was never going to sleep.

The night dragged by. Dylan tried not to think, but let the flames lull her into a stupor, the way Tristan told her he did during the early days of the crossing when the souls still slept. It wasn't easy -- every noise made her jump, her head craning round to peer through the windows into the inky black -- but the time passed slowly until a blood-red dawn roused her. She groaned as she rolled off the rug and stood up. She'd stiffened up overnight and her muscles were screaming in pain. Awkwardly, trying to move as little as possible, she shimmied out of her borrowed outfit and eased back into her torn, half-rigid clothes. They still looked horribly grubby, but they smelled a little better, she thought, lifting the hem of her T-shirt up to her nose and sniffing cautiously. She fussed for a while over the lie of her jeans, trying to reinstate her turn-ups, to stop the sulphurous mud soaking into them quite so quickly. Then she played with her hair, trying to fasten it up into a neat bun.

She gripped the chair in front of her, seized suddenly by an overwhelming sense of panic, and squeezed her eyes shut against tears. It was no use crying; she'd put herself in this position. Go forward or go back. That was the choice. The boat was still there, now nicely beached against the shore. She could row across the lake, take refuge in the final safe house and be back across the line tomorrow.

What she was really doing, she knew, was procrastinating. It was beyond time to step back outside, and she was wasting valuable daylight. But today was going to be hard. She'd crossed the lake, yes, but now she had to try and navigate her way across the wasteland to find the next safe house. As she saw the wasteland now, without Tristan, it was almost featureless and totally alien with its red sandstone and blackened shrubs. And she had to journey without looking at any of the other souls, their guiding orbs, or the wraiths that cloistered round them. Oh, and somehow do all this whilst looking for her own orb that may or may not look like Tristan.

Impossible. Totally impossible.

Dylan took one deep breath, held it, and forced herself to exhale slowly. Swallowing hard, she pushed the fear and the uncertainty away. She imagined Tristan's face when he saw her, saw that she'd come back for him. She imagined the feel of his arms around her as he hugged her close to his chest. The smell of him. Holding that image firmly in her mind, she marched across the narrow room and threw open the door. She was doing this.

As soon as she stepped outside the protective confines of the cottage, the waiting wraiths began their cruel dance; circling and diving and trying to make her look at them. She ignored them, keeping her gaze fixed on the horizon, focusing on seeing but not looking. Like staring through the windscreen of a car whilst a million raindrops were splattering on the glass. It was hard, not allowing her eyes to focus, and it hurt her head, but it was easier than staring straight down all the time. A mixture of smoking grey and burgundy, the blood-red sun had yet to fully rise. Her glazed eyes swept across the peaks and valleys, trying to pick out something she recognised -- a path, a landmark, anything.

And be totally, utterly, eternally, alone.

Nothing. She was almost positive she had never been in this place before. Terror gripped her once again and she was very nearly undone, unsettled by a demon whistling perilously close to her ear, hissing menacingly at her. Though she flinched, she managed to fight the urge to turn towards it. Think, she told herself. There must be something.

But there wasn't. Nothing but the unfriendly jagged rocks and the bleeding ground. That, and the first wisps of souls floating towards her, way out in the distance.

A safe house. They must have spent the night at a safe house. And they all seemed to be drifting from the same direction. The only sensible thing to do, she reasoned, was to head for them and hope their trail would lead her to where she needed to be.

"Where are you coming from?" she wondered aloud.

Pleased that she had at last made a decision, Dylan strode forward purposefully. She tried not to think about the fact that she was leaving the only safe house whose location she was certain of. That only let the fear creep back in, and then it was harder to fight the wraiths.

She made herself glance at each one, however. She had to. Because any one of them might be being guided by her orb, her ferryman. None of the pulsing balls of light called to her, though, and as soul after soul after soul passed by, her hopes began to sink. She truly was looking for a needle in a haystack. If she made it all the way back to the train and she still hadn't found him, she didn't know what she was going to do.

Tristan. She might find Tristan today. That thought she repeated over and over again, a silent mantra. It gave her strength. Strength to plough her way forward when the ground tilted up in front of her, and strength to battle on when the sun reached its zenith, burning down mercilessly. Strength to ignore the darting shadows playing constantly in the corner of her eye.

When the sun was at its highest in the sky, raining down fire on her, she began to pass the first of the souls walking wearily in the other direction. They were hard to look at; many were wailing and weeping, and every flickering being that she saw, whose face was unlined or whose shadow rippled too short across the ground, was a soul lost too soon. A child, not ready to die. They made her think of the little cancer boy that Tristan had ferried, although she had to remind herself that that tragic soul had been lost to the greedy wraiths and might now be one of the wretched shadows.

It was a shock to Dylan when she came upon the safe house. She hadn't expected to be close yet, if, in fact, she was even going in the right direction. The sun was far from setting and was still searing its wrath into her brow. She was still scanning souls, but they were much less frequent now. Most were well on their way to their next refuge. The small stone cottage was almost hidden by the great shadows of two mountainous peaks that towered over it. If Dylan had been paying attention, she would have seen the deep basin beyond, and realised where she was. As Tristan had said, the valley was always there.

Instead, the building crept up on her. Dylan cried out with relief when she saw its crumbling walls, its cracked and rotten windows. It was as unappealing as it was welcoming, and she accelerated to a jerky run, despite her aching limbs, to close the final few metres. Spent, Dylan all but fell into the door and stumbled over to the bed. Resting her elbows on her knees, she propped her chin in her hands and stared around.

As glad as she was to have made it, she didn't like being back here. This was the safe house where she'd spent a day and two nights alone, waiting desperately for Tristan to come back. Just seeing the wrought-iron fireplace, the single chair that she'd sat on for a whole day, watching the true wasteland go by -- the first time she'd ever really seen it -- brought a flood of memories and emotions rushing back. Panic. Fear. Isolation.

No. She shook herself free of the despair that threatened to strangle her. It was different this time. She was different. She forced herself to her feet, then grabbed the chair and pulled it over towards the door. Swinging it open, she plonked herself down just inside the threshold, and stared outside, at the wraiths, at the blood-red valley.

In the morning, she was going to go out and search for Tristan. This time, she swore to herself, she would not be held captive by her fear. This time she was going to find him.