Welcome to Tait

Connor laughed first. He laughed at how completely and effectively he had been tricked. He laughed at his own stupidity.

And then he started to scream.

It had been his idea, or at least he thought it had been. Maybe the others were adept at manipulating newcomers into crawling into the old tunnels up on the hills just so they could pull this very prank on them. Cut through the rock in the 19th Century to divert the course of a small burn, the tunnels took over from rough drainage ditches and eventually passed meltwater and rain into the River Easgan and then into the sea down in the bay. At the tail end of summer they were virtually dry and inviting to small boys, but the stench of a century of stagnant water lingered.

The tunnel narrowed immediately and ended after just a few feet in a heavy iron gate mostly blocked with grass and muck, which was now bookended by an identical gate at the entrance that Connor’s new schoolfriends had swung shut behind him and quickly jimmied into place with a rough metal rod. Unable to turn around, his bum was jammed high into the roof of the tunnel and grated on uneven sandstone. He tried to wriggle and crouch to relieve the pain but that meant putting his face in the greenish slime at the bottom. He kneeled there, prone and ridiculous, wondering what to do. He screamed again.

Obviously the boys were in no hurry to come back. Perhaps this was some sort of initiation.

Connor’s family had moved to Tait - a tiny, remote fishing community on the north coast of Scotland - just a few months ago and he had only recently started to make some friends with the local boys. If this was what he had to put up with to gain the respect of his new peers then he supposed it wasn’t so bad. Connor wriggled and shouted and waited.

A distant rumble of thunder broke the silence of the hilltops, and the first raindrops of a summer storm disturbed bumblebees on the heather. Down at the seafront, four small boys hid from sudden, torrential rain inside the only bus shelter in Tait. They giggled in fits and starts at the prank they’d pulled on the stupid new boy in their class. Rainwater cascaded down the windows of the shelter and dripped through gaps in the roof.

High on the moor Connor O’Riordan screamed and screamed and screamed, kicking and thrashing and flailing and dying as filthy brown water relentlessly filled his tiny stone grave.