He wasn’t alone.
While they were waiting in the driveway outside, to everyone’s disbelief Noah had appeared on the steps dressed in a floor-length fur-trimmed cloak.
‘It’s from my cosplay,’ explained Noah, squinting against the brightness of the snow. ‘Warder of Ringhorn.’
‘What?’ said Harold, baffled.
‘I don’t have anything else suitable to wear in the cold,’ he complained, pulling the cloak tightly around him. ‘The brochure didn’t say we were staying in the Arctic.’
Even outside in the fresh air, Midge could smell the mothballs.
‘And you just happened to have that packed in your suitcase?’ asked Rona, her eyes wide.
Noah flushed. ‘My mum must have put it in by accident. She doesn’t really get the whole LARP thing.’
Midge thought Harold was going to explode.
‘A larp?!’ His breath came out in a cloud of frost.
‘Live Action Role Play.’ Noah rolled his eyes. ‘LARP.’
An unfortunate acronym, which in Midge’s opinion sounded more like an unsavoury bodily function.
‘You mean there’s more of you?!’ Harold shook his head. ‘I’ve heard it all now.’
The walk to the engine house proved just as treacherous as Midge had expected, and as they moved further from the hall,she had the uncomfortable sensation of shrinking into the landscape. Although the blizzard had stopped overnight, the top layer of powder had frozen, leaving an icy barrier that was lethal to scramble over. Midge, in particular, struggled with her knee, and by the time they had climbed over the keep-out signs and fencing around the derelict building, she was numb to her bones and the bracing tang of the air was aggravating her asthma.
Behind the engine house were several other buildings, the largest of which housed the entrance to the main shaft. The engine house itself was built from mottled granite bricks and timber, and wherever the wood had been exposed to the elements, it had rotted away, leaving gaping holes in the structure. The doorway was boarded up.
‘There is no way we can go in there,’ said Harold, gloomily staring in through the window. In the middle of the floor was the mouth of a vertical shaft, only two metres by two metres, with a partially eroded winching mechanism above it. ‘It’s too dangerous.’
‘Looks like we’re not the only ones who tried exploring here.’ Noah pointed to a fence post where a lone ragged pink skiing glove was caught in the barbed wire. ‘Is that one of yours, Rona?’
She pulled a face. ‘Don’t ever mention me and Gore-Tex in the same breath, Noah.’
‘Must have been some hikers.’
Suddenly overwhelmed with melancholy, Midge stared at the glove despondently waving in the breeze. Lone shoes and gloves in the outdoors always made her unbearably sad. When the others had moved on, she prised free the material from the wire and put it safely inside her handbag.
To Midge’s surprise, a low crackling sound started behind her, followed up by a persistent clicking that varied in volume and intensity as it filled the air.
‘What the hell is that?’ said Harold, shielding his eyes.
‘It’s me,’ said Noah, stepping into view from around the side of the building. He was holding a black cone-shaped box which appeared to be the source of the clacking. The contraption had a coloured meter on the top which swung backwards and forwards as he paced the shaft’s perimeter with it, moving his arm in a sweeping motion.
‘He’s checking for EMF,’ said Rona, excitedly grabbing hold of Midge’s arm. ‘Can you feel anything?’ she asked.
Noah stared down at the meter, which was now refusing to move from the red display. ‘Nothing.’ He shook his head, sighing in disappointment. ‘Just ambient interference.’
‘Oh, come on!’ urged Rona, giving him a quick hug. ‘We were meant to be finding a distress flare, not ghosts.’
‘But we can’t get into the engine house,’ pointed out Noah.
‘Hang on a minute.’ Harold, who had been squinting into the distance, further up the gorge, suddenly spoke up. ‘I reckon that’s one of the old adits over there.’
The others stared at him blankly. All that surrounded them were endless expanses of snow, with slopes and hills that stretched off into the far distance. But then, Midge suddenly spotted a black smudge at the bottom of the closest ridge.
‘What’s an adit?’ asked Rona, her eyes shining.
