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She shouldered her rucksack again and climbed over the fence.

The cave entrance loomed in front of her, and she felt a prickle of fear after what had happened before.

It’s just a cave, she tried to tell herself. There’s nothing inside except more rocks.

She pulled out her phone. There was still no reception, but at least she could use the torch function. As she stepped nervously over the threshold, however, she realised it didn’t show very far inside at all, little more than a couple of steps in front of her.

In her rucksack, she felt Larry shifting, the big toad giving her no comfort whatsoever.

There was clearly no one here. The cave was silent and empty.

Then, from somewhere inside, she heard a low moaning.

Kelly turned and fled, not stopping until she’d reached the fence. She paused, catching her breath, trying to reason with herself that it had been a trick of the echoes inside the cave, not the voice of William Medhurt, who had gone in with his sheep all those years ago and never come back out.

Then, as she remembered the details she’d been told about the legend, she let out a gasp of surprise.

She saw it.

Of course, no mention in the legend had ever been made of the mayor himself. The only sounds that had ever been heard in the cave was that of the lost sheep.

There had to be someone trapped inside.

Kelly ran back through the undergrowth and into the cave.

‘Hello!’ she cried. ‘Is anyone there? Can you hear me?’

This time she distinctly heard a muffled voice trying to call for help.

‘I’m coming!’ she cried. ‘Keep speaking!’

The moan came again, louder this time, closer.

Kelly knew she was near.

It was definitely the voice of a man, not a sheep.

She flashed her phone’s torch beam from side to side.

Then, in the beam of light, she saw a pile of bones, in the centre of which rested a skull.

She let out a gasp and dropped her phone, the light cutting off as she heard a crunch as the screen cracked.

She turned to flee, the entrance to the cave little more than a distant circle of light.

But at that moment, a voice said, ‘I’m over here.’

‘Edward?’

‘Yeah,’ came the weak reply.

Kelly fumbled through the darkness, following the sound.

Then, up ahead, she sensed movement, and in the faintest glimmer of light from the entrance she saw the shape of a man lying on the ground.

‘Edward?’

‘They jumped me,’ he moaned.