The hallway is long, with maybe a dozen doors on either side of it. Above us the rafters are open in places, exposing shards of blackening sky. More rain is on its way, by the looks of things. My feet tread in something mushy and I look down to see we’re walking on water-logged and rotting carpet, threadbare in places. Beneath, I can see the wooden floorboards are black, and they creak as we walk; an alarm system to thwart our hopes of a surprise attack.
My nerves are frayed, my legs are shaking so hard I can barely stand up, and I feel like I might faint at any moment, but I keep following Liam, sheltering behind his back, terrified that at any moment someone might leap out at us.
Liam opens the first door we reach, and I draw a breath of surprise at the sight of the forest right in front of us. We’re in the nursery that we saw from outside. The exterior wall is completely missing. The rocking horse sits forlornly at the edge of what looks like a cliff, staring out over the grounds. We’re eye-level with the branches. I glance around; the fire must have burned through the floor above, and the attic, too, but oddly enough, the nursery itself is almost untouched. Besides the rocking horse, there’s a chair and a small bed in the corner of the room, complete with the decomposing remains of a mattress.
Liam touches my sleeve and we leave the nursery and keep walking down the hallway, our footsteps silenced by the disintegrating carpet which stinks of fusty mildew. I breathe through my mouth as we keep going, checking every room we pass for signs of occupancy, my fraught nerves ratcheting up with every door handle that Liam tries, until I think I might have to turn tail and run. We find nothing, until we reach the final door.
Liam throws it open and freezes on the threshold. I peer past him and spot a makeshift campsite in the corner of the room; there’s a sleeping bag, a stove, pots and pans and other items, but no occupant in sight. Someone is staying here! But who? And why?
Liam steps into the room, crossing quickly to the sleeping bag. He kneels down and places his hand on the bag and then on the pan sitting over the little camp stove. ‘It’s still warm,’ he says.
He must have been here not long ago. We either only just missed him or – I spin around in fright – he’s still here, somewhere in the castle.
Panicked, I turn back to Liam. ‘We should go, before he comes back.’
Liam ignores me. He’s already rummaging through a backpack, upending the contents onto the bed. Dirty socks and underpants tumble out, as well as a couple of T-shirts and a checked shirt. I step forwards, forgetting my panic for a moment. I pick up the shirt and check the label. It’s a man’s medium size. I notice the boxer shorts too.
Liam opens up a washbag. It holds a cracked mirror, a man’s razor, shaving foam, a toothbrush, toothpaste and a small first aid kit. I heave in a breath that doesn’t quite fill my lungs, my head spinning. Who is this man and what’s he doing here?
Liam searches through the clothes, maybe looking for an ID, and I glance over my shoulder again at the door. He could come back any moment and we have no idea what he might do if he finds us here.
My attention is drawn to the map of the island that Liam has pulled out of the man’s bag and tossed on the bed. Maybe he is a treasure hunter after all. I glance around at the camp. It looks temporary: there’s a cardboard box filled with a dozen Pot Noodles and some granola bars. A large gallon bottle of water sits by the fireplace. There’s a pile of rubbish in the corner of the room – empty noodle pots and sweet wrappers, a crushed plastic bottle and several crushed cans of beer. It looks like maybe a week’s worth of supplies in total.
Liam digs into the inside pocket of the man’s backpack and pulls out a pocket radio. Tossing the bag and the radio aside, he pats down the sleeping bag and triumphantly delves inside to pull out a canvas bag that’s been stuffed into it. Rummaging through that, he discovers an empty binocular case. Has he been spying on us from afar? When I felt like I was being spied on the other day in the graveyard, was it him?
‘Please, can we go now?’ I ask as Liam keeps searching through the man’s belongings. I’m bouncing from foot to foot and glancing towards the door. What if he comes back and finds us rooting through his things like thieves?
Liam isn’t going to be hurried, though. He keeps searching as though he’s going to find something to tell us this man’s motive for stalking us.
I start to walk back towards the door, but my gaze is snagged by something in the pile of rubbish. Among the wrappers and packets I’ve noticed a box. I walk over to it.
‘Found something,’ Liam says.
I turn back around. Liam’s flourishing a folded-up piece of newspaper. The paper is yellowed with age, and the ink is smudged from damp. He unfolds it and I come over to see what it is.
‘MURDER AT THE CASTLE!’ screams the headline. There’s a fuzzy black and white photograph of the charred ruins of the castle, alongside another image of Nancy and Elliot. I scan the article, feeling my breathing hitch.
Nancy McKay, 39, and her son, Elliot, 9, were found brutally slain last night at their home on the Isle of Shura. The police found the bodies burned almost beyond recognition after a fire engulfed their ancestral home.
The coroner is yet to release his report, but police are treating the deaths as homicides. A source revealed that the mother and son had both sustained knife injuries.
Andrew McKay, 45, husband of Nancy and father of Elliot, has been declared missing, but whether he also perished in the fire is unclear. It is not yet known if Andrew McKay is a suspect, but it has been reported that he was in significant financial trouble, with the bank threatening to repossess the property. The McKay family have lived on Shura for almost six hundred years and the family are well known in the area. Andrew McKay’s mother, Mary, inherited her late father’s seat, and donated much of the estate to Catholic charities when she died. The police are asking for any witnesses, or those who may have knowledge of the crime, to come forward.
I draw in a breath. ‘Oh my god,’ I say. ‘He killed them. Then he set fire to the castle to cover it up.’
Liam nods. ‘Looks like it.’
‘It’s him,’ I say, looking around at the campsite. ‘He’s been hiding here ever since.’ Though as I say it, I wonder how he manages, living out here year in and year out. How would he survive the winters? And looking around at his things, it’s clear this is a temporary campsite. But maybe he heads back to the mainland for supplies.
I remember then what I’d seen in the pile of rubbish over by the door and I run over to it.
‘Liam,’ I say in a hoarse voice when I find the item that caught my attention a moment ago.
‘What?’ he asks, distracted by his own search through the rest of the man’s belongings.
‘You should come here and see this.’
He comes over and I show him what I’m looking at. It’s a box of ammunition. Shotgun shells.
Chapter Seventeen
Liam kicks the ammunition box with the toe of his boot. It’s empty. I notice now that there are also a dozen empty shells among the pile of rubbish. Liam hesitates for half a second and then he takes my hand.
‘Let’s go,’ he says, pulling me back into the corridor. I don’t need telling twice. We practically run down the hallway and are about to open the door that leads into the servants’ stairwell when we hear footsteps coming up it, and skid to a halt.
Liam yanks me sideways into one of the rooms: an old bathroom; and we hide behind the door, pressed up against each other, holding our breath. Liam digs into his pocket and pulls out his switchblade, but I grip his wrist. A knife is no match for a gun.
We hear the squeak of hinges and then the creaking of floorboards as the footsteps head our way. I feel the hard and frantic scrabble of the panic in my belly clawing up my throat and forcing its way into my mouth. Liam must sense it too, as he clamps his hand over my mouth to stop a scream escaping. The footsteps keep coming closer, a banging noise accompanying them, as though he’s knocking his knuckles against the wall as he w
alks.
The sound of the soft tread stops suddenly, and my scream gathers behind Liam’s hand, trying to squeeze past his fingers. My heart feels like it’s going to explode out of my chest. It’s a miracle the man can’t hear it. It’s as loud as a jackhammer drilling into concrete, at least to my ears.
I stare up at Liam, whose attention is fixed on the door. He looks like a cornered animal, coiled and ready to spring, his free hand white-knuckled on the knife. We hear another footstep, this one closer. Liam’s iron grip on me tightens. I worry he might throw caution to the wind and leap out to confront the man, but then, just as the tension feels like it might snap, the footsteps continue on.
Liam drops his hand from my mouth, and I gasp in oxygen. After a moment he eases the door open a crack and we peek out, just in time to catch a glimpse of the man as he walks down the hall. Is it Andrew McKay? It’s hard to tell as we can’t see his face. He’s dressed all in black, with a long waterproof jacket and a hood pulled up, but my gaze is caught by something else. He’s carrying a shotgun in his right hand and dangling a dead rabbit by its ears in his left, rhythmically knocking it against the wall as he walks. He turns and vanishes inside the room where his campsite is set up and it’s only then that I remember we left all the man’s things scattered and upended on his bed in our haste to get out of there. He’ll know we’ve been here. He may even guess we’re still in the castle.
‘Move!’ Liam says, obviously having the exact same thought. ‘Come on!’ he shouts at the precise moment we hear an angry yell – a man’s voice – swearing blue murder. He must have discovered the mess we made of his things.
Liam pulls me out of the room, and we sprint hand in hand down the hallway. We barrel into the stairway, Liam ahead of me. I trip down a few steps in my panic, but Liam is in front of me, so I fall against his back. My legs are jelly, barely functioning as I careen to the bottom of the stairs and into the narrow servants’ passage on the ground floor. We plough along in the pitch black. Liam’s either lost the torch or doesn’t want to waste time trying to find it, so we have to keep our hands out in front of us, ricocheting blindly off the walls, trying to find our way back into the study; but how far is it? And which turn should we take?
What if he’s behind us in the passageway? I turn to look over my shoulder but there’s nothing but yawning darkness. Liam stops and pulls out his phone and turns the light towards the wall. A clattering noise echoes along the passage behind us and I let out a whimper.
Light floods into the passage suddenly as Liam finds the opening, pushes on the door and it flies open. We stumble out into the study and sprint for the great hall, but as we enter it, making for the stairs that will take us down into the kitchen, I hear a noise and look up. The man is standing on the balcony above us and he’s lifting the shotgun to his shoulder, ready to take aim.
I scream and leap into the stairwell behind Liam. We scramble like rats on a sinking ship, desperately heading for the cellar and the way out, but halfway there I catch sight of something that makes me skid to a stop, my legs too frozen by fear to keep moving.
Liam turns around; ‘What are you doing?’ he yells at me. ‘Come on!’
He beckons but I’m completely paralysed. I can’t even breathe. He backtracks to me, taking me by the wrist, ready to wrench me along with him, but he stops in his tracks too when he sees what it is that I’m staring at.
‘Oh my god,’ he hisses under his breath.
We’re outside the room with the hooks hanging from the ceiling. It was empty when we passed by it not fifteen minutes ago. But now red strips of fresh meat are hanging from the hooks and blood drips to the stone floor. The stench of torn flesh and faecal matter fills my nostrils and makes me gag. I catch a glimpse of a long, serrated knife, resting on the side.
‘Come on!’ Liam says again, dragging me out of my trance and pulling me away.
We stumble through the cellar and burst out into the daylight, then we run towards the forest, fully expecting to hear a gunshot blast ring out behind us. He must be watching us now from one of the upper windows. I can feel his gaze lasering me from behind as I run, my lungs burning with the effort.
When we break into the woodland and are hidden by the trees, so we can pause finally for breath, the panic spins like a whirlwind inside me. I lean against a tree trunk, my whole body shaking from adrenaline, the world tipping and sliding beneath my feet. What just happened? I can’t quite comprehend it. And what was that in the room hanging from those hooks?
Liam wipes a trembling hand across his sweaty brow and bends at the waist, his hands on his knees, trying to catch his breath.
‘What was that?’ I whisper, the horror of what we just saw indelibly imprinted on my brain. ‘In the room? What was it?’
Liam shakes his head. ‘A rabbit.’ His voice sounds weak and unconvincing. Was it a rabbit? It didn’t look like a rabbit, but I could barely take any of it in, I was so overwhelmed by the blood and gore.
A branch snaps just then a few feet away from us, the crack of it echoing like a bullet, and we both startle, heads flying up at the sound like prey hearing a predator approaching.
‘Let’s go,’ Liam says, taking my hand, and we tear off again, running as fast as we can, darting between trees, stumbling over hidden roots and thrashing through bracken, until up ahead we see the cottage in its clearing on the edge of the loch.
The Stalker
Run rabbit, run rabbit, run, run, run.
That’s the song that played in my head as I watched her run in terror for her life. There was a thrill in her trying to escape. It excited me that she was putting up a fight; that she wasn’t making it easy. But also, if I’m honest, a part of me wanted her to escape.
That’s always been my problem. I’m a man of two halves. I am constantly torn between conflicting emotions and desires: love and hate, joy and rage, forgiveness and revenge, wanting to be saved and accepting damnation.
It’s as if the boy in me who was once eclipsed by the devil still occasionally tries to reassert himself. I start to feel remorse for the crimes I’ve committed. I want to be forgiven. But then something else happens, I’m triggered, and the devil comes roaring back out.
So I watch her run, knowing she won’t get far.
Chapter Eighteen
Liam pulls the key out of his pocket as we race to the back door. He shoves it into the lock, and we fall inside as if the cottage is a burrow that will keep us safe from predators.
I stagger into the front room, panting and shaking. My vision blurs and something comes at me: a dark shape lunging from the corner of the room. I duck and let out a scream, but it’s only the crow. I bat her away as Liam comes tearing into the room, switchblade in hand, arm raised in battle.
The bird screeches, flying lopsided with only one wing, and careers into the wall before landing in the corner of the room, cawing in fright.
The panic that has been gathering like a whirlwind inside me finally bursts out in a howling sob. I collapse to the floor in a heap as Liam stands there, knife still clutched in his hand, pumped on adrenaline.
‘Fuck,’ he exhales. ‘Fuck,’ he says again, staring around the room.
I see through my tears that the bird has crapped everywhere; there are white streaks on the sofa, the fireplace, the coffee table and the rug.
‘How did it get out of the box?’ Liam yells.
Another sob rises in my chest. I fight it down. ‘I don’t know. I’m sorry.’ I see that the box has tipped over. She must have wanted to escape her confines: a feeling I can sympathise with.
‘Get it the hell out of here,’ Liam snaps impatiently.
I struggle to my knees.
‘They’ll make us pay for the damage,’ Liam mutters, waving his hand at the sofas, which are covered in white splotches. ‘These sofas are new. It’s going to cost a fortune.’
‘I’m sorry,’ I say, though worrying about the cost of damage seems pointless right now, given we’re facing the much big
ger issue of a man on the island with a gun.
I move towards the bird, which hops frantically away from me, and I grab the towel from the floor and throw it over its head. I gather it up in my arms, though it fights me, and look around hopelessly. I can’t take it outside and leave it. It won’t survive with a broken wing. ‘I’ll put her under the stairs,’ I say, reaching for the box.
Liam shakes his head. ‘No. Look at the mess it’s made. It can’t stay.’
‘But she’ll die if I let her go now,’ I argue weakly.
‘I can speed that up,’ he answers, still fuming.
I flinch in horror at the thought of him wringing the crow’s neck and I know he’d do it. He’s not a bleeding heart like me. He’s pragmatic. And maybe he’s right. Maybe I should just let the bird die, let nature take its course. If we hadn’t found her in the castle, she would be dead already, no doubt. And there’s no certainty that my splint will even do the job. The wing could heal messily; the bird might end up crippled and then it would be kinder to let her die. But still, the thought of Liam killing her is too much. I can’t let him.
‘Please,’ I beg. ‘I can’t take her outside. What if that man’s out there? Let me put her under the stairs. She’ll be out of the way there.’
Grudgingly, he agrees. ‘Fine. But I swear to god if it causes any more trouble, I’m going to wring its neck myself. I should have done that in the first place.’
I hurry the bird into the box and under the stairs, refilling the food and water saucers, noticing how much my hands are shaking as I do. My heart is still pumping as hard as it was when we were sprinting away from the castle. Liam is barricading the front and back doors with furniture. I try not to think about the man with the gun chasing us back here and I glance at the windows. Are we safe?
After I close the bird under the stairs I turn and find Liam in the kitchen unfurling a map of the island.
The Stalker Page 11