The Dead Have No Shadows Read Online Free

landscape flanked on both sides by vicious looking spined crags that clung to the sides of the mountains.
    Like the valley floor the mountains and crags were devoid of any kind of vegetation.
    Being born and raised in a city, Mickey had never seen so much open space.  The parks of Derby seemed tiny in comparison to this.  Though having lived so close to vast areas of open countryside Mickey had never ventured far from the city.  He had no real concept of distance and couldn’t even begin to estimate how long it would take him to walk across the desert like valley floor.
    “Why do I have to make any kind of journey at all?” Mickey asked.
    “To get where you need to go,” Pester answered.
    Very funny, though Mickey.
    “It looks like it’ll take days to cover all that ground,” he protested, pointing down the valley.  “And what about at night?”  He assumed that normal day and night times still applied over here; wherever here was.
    “You’ll be fine,” was all Pester would say.  “Come on, we need to go.”
    “What if I say no?”
    Pester shrugged.  “Then you’ll end up a pile of bones by the side of the path – or worse.  Trust me, you really wouldn’t want that.”
    Seeing that Mickey didn’t believe him, Pester led the young traveller to the edge of the plateau.
    “Look down there,” he said.
    Mickey looked and saw parts of a skeleton spread over the hillside.
    “That’s what happens to those that don’t go on,” said Pester.  “She couldn’t handle that fact that she was dead.  Her soul is down there somewhere, trapped in one of her bones.  If you want the same thing to happen to you then stay here.  Otherwise, it’s time to go.”
    “Ok,” Mickey said, taken aback by Pester’s bluntness.  “Seeing how I don’t seem to have a choice in the matter, let’s get on with it.”
    “Oh but you do have a choice,” said Pester.  “You always have a choice.  You can stay here if you want to.”
    Without waiting for a reply from Mickey, Pester set off down the path from the plateau.
    Mickey looked around him, then down at the bones strewn across the hillside, then at Pester walking down the hill.
    “I don’t see that I do have any choice,” he muttered and set off after his odd eyedguide.
    Mickey struggled to match the pace that the other man set and soon started to lag behind.
    “Stop, I need to rest.”  Mickey leant forward with his hands on his knees, panting.  His face was bright red and his tee-shirt was soaked in sweat.
    “If I’m dead why am I so knackered?”
    “You’re not,” Pester called back.  “Knackered, I mean.  It’s all in your mind.  Because you’re a soft city boy you have no stamina.  Your mind thinks that you should be hot and tired.  So, your spiritual body reacts that way.”
    “So if I just decide that I’m not tired then I won’t be,” said Mickey.
    Pester laughed.  “It doesn’t work that way.”
    Typical, thought Mickey.  He’d already noticed that Pester could be cryptic and oblique with his answers.  He drew in a lungful of air.  Pester had already continued the descent to the valley floor.
    Mickey was used to walking on pavements.  He felt unsteady on this steep, dusty and uneven path.  His thighs and calves were tightening up as he tensed himself for each downward step.  He decided to let Pester have the gap that he’d opened up and concentrated, instead, on keeping his footing.  If Mickey was feeling the effects of his exertions then he would experience the pain of a sprained ankle just as much.  He guessed there were no NHS Walk-In centres on this side of whatever boundary he had crossed.
    The sun was low in the sky when Mickey finally reached the valley bottom.  The shadows thrown out by the mountains were flowing across the ground.  They would have completely hidden where Pester had set up camp if it wasn’t for the flames of the campfirethat the guide had lit.  Mickey started to trudge towards the