by Stuart Boyd
***
Stella had never been more grateful for it being Christmas. Everyone at school was so excited about the upcoming break and the upcoming presents that she was hardly teased at all. Tom tried to speak with her at lunchtime, but Stella fled before he got close enough to say anything. The festive cheer hadn’t thawed Helix’s sulk after school, though. Stella hoped that they would patch things up before Christmas; she missed their companionship, especially now that she felt more lonely than ever at school.
Even though it was only early evening, the dusk trailed quickly into darkness and the chill lay on Stella, causing her to shiver. She felt more than saw that someone was following her. ‘Tom again,’ she thought. ‘Why doesn’t he just leave me alone?’ She took a sharp turn through the closest alleyway that she could dash into.
She glimpsed a flicker of a shadow, a sliver of movement that told her she was still being followed. Although she realised she was moving further away from her house, she darted from the main street through a narrow cobbled lane that led to a set of garages. Stella twisted around the corner and peered behind her, expecting to see Tom creeping in the shadows. Someone was following her, but it wasn’t Tom.
The alleyway was poorly lit. A single streetlight shed its neon glare on Stella’s pursuer. A shadow stretched along the narrow beam of light: a spindly silhouette of a stick figure, crooked and pointed. The stranger in flesh was hardly different from his shadow. He was wearing old-fashioned clothes that Stella had only seen in films: a long coat with tails and a tall top hat. His face was almost completely hidden by a scarf wrapped around a long jaw. He wore dark glasses, even though the sun had completely set. Stella could see that if he stood up straight, the man would be very, very tall.
He moved forward in jerky movements, as if his legs wouldn’t bend properly. Thin arms snaked forward, and very long fingers twitched at the air, as if feeling their way in the dark. As he neared Stella, the stranger’s head slowly swayed from side to side and his hands reached towards her. Stella could hear a sniffing sound, but it seemed to be coming from his long, squirming fingers. The man’s head slowly turned to face where Stella was hiding, and then the figure stopped still, as if stunned. His fingers stopped moving, and even one of his legs was suspended, mid-stride, off the ground. Stella froze as well, not even daring to breathe.
The scarf that wrapped around the figure’s head started to slip down, revealing a mouth bared to a snarl of pointed teeth. The creature gave a hiss that jolted Stella into action. She spun around and started to sprint up the cobbled driveway. Helix was running beside her and had started to bark wildly. A streak of white fur soon overtook her and disappeared into the shadows.
“Helix! Come back,” Stella shrieked.
Urging her legs onward, she knew that the drive led to a gateway into the fields. She clung to the desperate hope that if she could just make it into the open, she could shake off her pursuer. As she left the cobbles behind, it became muddy and uneven under her feet. The path narrowed, and on either side brambles whipped at her legs. Stella could see just in front of her the rusty gate that led out from the alley into the fields. She dared a swift glance behind her, but lost her footing and tripped. The fall knocked the breath out of her body, and she couldn’t even cry out as the creature loomed over her.
The creature’s fingers reached down to her face, like a kind of skeletal spider. She felt the brush of air against her cheek and heard a sniffing sound. Where there should have been fingertips with fingernails, there were only nostril-like holes, and these were groping towards her neck. Stella tried to twist away from them, but hit her head on the gate. She jerked away from the creature’s touch and struck its leering face with her fist, shattering its glasses. Behind the smashed lenses, there were no eyes, only dark pits. The creature’s hands pounced towards Stella’s neck, threatening to strangle her. Instead, it grabbed hold of the necklace that Doctor Dodds had given her.
As soon as its hands touched the seven-pointed star, there was a flash of light. The creature gave an ear-splitting howl and let go of the necklace as if it had been burnt. Stella struggled to her feet, but kept slipping on the ground. The creature, wary of the pendant, reached out for her arm this time. Its grip squeezed painfully, but loosened as the sound of barking distracted it. Stella wrenched herself away from the creature’s grip and crawled back towards the gate.
Helix bounded over the fence in one leap and stood between Stella and her attacker. The dog snarled and snapped at its hands as they reached out for her again.
“Stella!” a voice boomed out of the night.
Stella looked up and saw Doctor Dodds, in his huge overcoat and hat, running over the fields. He was brandishing his umbrella as if it were a club.
“Get away, Greddylick! She is under my protection,” Dodds bellowed.
The creature swivelled around to face Dodds. “Dodds!” it snarled in a clicking voice, like bones clattering together. “There is no protection from me.”
It leapt into the air straight at Dodds, who lifted his umbrella to fend off the attack. The top of the umbrella flared open and flew straight up into the night sky. Stella’s first thought was that the umbrella had broken, but it unfolded in midair into a bat-like animal with leathery wings.
The umbrella-bat had a fierce head that looked similar to a cat’s, and its wings were tipped with shining claws. The bat caught the creature’s spindly frame in mid-air before it could reach Doctor Dodds. A terrible screech echoed over the fields as the monster recoiled away from the bat’s claws. Straightening itself to its full height, the creature launched itself upwards and flew over the treetops, with the umbrella bat swooping after it.
“Are you all right?” Dodds asked Stella, helping her up off the ground, his empty umbrella rod still clutched in his hand.
“Who…what was that man?” she asked hoarsely, rubbing her neck where the pendant’s chain had dragged against it.
“That was no man,” Dodds replied. “That was a Greddylick!”
***