by Cliff McNish
There it was, ahead of him: the small set of steps.
Elliott lunged forward.
Only to find Cullayn jauntily trotting beside him.
‘Amazingly, you did go the right way,’ Cullayn said. ‘That poor broken leg must hurt. Let me give you a hand.’
He lifted Elliott roughly by the scruff of the neck, hauling him into the narrow dark passageway.
‘See this?’ Cullayn said, opening a concealed door in the wall. ‘It hid me when they came to string me up. Came for a hanging they did, and got diddly-squat.’ Cullayn showed Elliott the absence of rope-marks on his neck. ‘By the way, you failed, boy. Time’s up. You’re mine now, your life’s forfeit, and you’ll watch your father die before Ben sees me despatch you on the hunting ground.’
The wall opened fully. Cullayn threw Elliott inside and jumped in after him, drawing the door shut.
26
THE DARK PASSAGE
Inside, Elliott saw several things at once. He saw Ben kneeling on the stone floor. He saw Dad lying on his side, barely conscious. And he saw Janey. She sat stiffly against a wall, looking as if she was about to have a heart attack – or was holding one at bay only by force of will.
From Ben’s inconsolable expression, Elliott could tell that whatever influence Cullayn had once had on him was relinquished. Of course it was. Cullayn didn’t need that version of Ben any longer. He wanted him as frightened as everyone else.
Elliott limped across. It was hard to believe how much blood from Dad’s head was pooled on the floor. After making him as comfortable as he could, Elliott hunkered down next to Ben and whispered in his ear, ‘Are you all right?’
Ben nodded tightly, containing his fear. ‘Look what’s behind you.’
Elliott turned. Inevitably a large portrait of Cullayn dominated the view. Even in this most secret of rooms Cullayn hadn’t been able to resist decorating the walls with images of himself. This particular portrait, however, was unique. It showed the owner in smiling close-up but, behind him, the hunting ground was victimless. No one was on the slope. Considering that, Elliott wondered why he found the portrait so disturbing.
Then he understood. It was the very emptiness of the slope.
‘It’s waiting for us,’ Ben said, having had more time to take in the significance of the painting. ‘We’re next.’
‘My favourite bit of artwork,’ Cullayn remarked, noticing Elliott’s stare. ‘Has a certain vigour, wouldn’t you say?’
The owner had discarded his starry outline, and now stood before them in straightforward hunting leathers. He glanced briefly at Dad. ‘Your father can’t last much longer, boys,’ he grunted. ‘I doubt this is the fate he envisaged for himself. When he strode so manfully into my East Wing I bet he saw himself as a soldier guarding both his sons from everything wicked. As for the hag’ – Cullayn jerked a thumb at Janey – ‘her nightmare was always that she’d be the one to help me broaden my hunt. And now she’s done just that, hasn’t she? I could never have fetched you both in here half so neatly without her.’
Janey looked pitiful – breathing raggedly, head lowered. Cullayn bent down to her, pretended to caress her face, then slapped it. She offered no reaction.
Strewn across the floor were the remains of three dead bodies. One was the owner. Cullayn’s ghost had rearranged his own desiccated skeleton in a perky pose: arms folded, head on one side, his dead eye sockets gazing wistfully up at his own painted hunting ground.
The other two skeletons were the remains of Theo and Eve. Their clothes, including Eve’s red dress, still clung to their collapsed bodies. Theo’s arms were around Eve’s shoulders, still holding onto her after all these years.
‘Touching, isn’t it?’ Cullayn said tonelessly. Now that the hunt was temporarily suspended, he looked bored. ‘Oh, why wait?’ he muttered to Elliott. ‘I was toying with letting you and Janey have a break, so you’d give me a longer fight, but what do you say? Ready for the hunting ground?’
‘Don’t make the others go to the knight’s room,’ Janey said, coming to life. ‘Don’t make them have to watch.’
Cullayn laughed – obviously happy that Janey had helped him make up his mind – and without bothering to answer her he plucked Dad and Ben effortlessly up from the floor, one in each hand. ‘No rest for you either, my dear,’ he said to Janey. ‘C’mon.’
Cullayn led the way from the secret room down a series of twisting corridors, watching Janey’s cheeks puff crimson. ‘You were wrong about why Eve likes the knight’s room, by the way,’ he told her conversationally. ‘It’s not because she wants to be rescued. She likes that room because it’s the gateway to the hunting ground. There’s a lovely view, a fine perspective of the slope and trees. She can’t wait to get started, can you, Evey?’
Eve did not answer, but Elliott could see the eagerness in her eyes.
Cullayn hurried them ever faster along the corridors. They finally reached the knight’s room. Eve dutifully closed the door behind them.
All this time Elliott had been searching for a way to distract Cullayn, give Ben at least a chance to get out. But he hadn’t been able to think of anything, and once they were inside the knight’s room what little chance there might have been seemed gone.
Rubbing his hands in anticipation, Cullayn sauntered across to the window overlooking the slope. He peered out.
Eve paid no attention to anyone once she entered the room. She was more interested in the knight. She kept staring devotedly at it, tilting her head curiously. Only Elliott was watching as she suddenly pulled back. Eve frowned. Twitching her shoulders, she gazed at the scene afresh, as if puzzled by a difference she was not expecting.
It was only then that Elliott caught Janey’s glance – a knowing glint in her old eye. A sly look that said stay quiet, and made him turn back to the knight.
‘The best place to hide a book is in a library,’ Janey murmured so only he could hear. ‘The best place to hide from the hunter is in his lair.’ Elliott stared at her blankly. ‘In the visible angle,’ Janey whispered. ‘In plain sight, in view.’ She gave a definite nod of acknowledgment towards the tapestry. Then she unobtrusively pulled her thin legs from under her so that she could rise when she had to, and cracked the joints in her fingers.
Elliott saw that she’d kept something in reserve after all.
‘I knew Cullayn wouldn’t kill me in the East Wing,’ she whispered. ‘I knew he’d dally, want to play first before he put me on his slope. How could he resist? I needed to watch him fight – the hunter in action. As a teenage girl I’d seen evidence of that, but memory’s unreliable, and anyway he was bound to have added a few new wrinkles to his technique. I had to delay until I saw what he could do. And now I’ve seen exactly what that is.’
She gave Elliott a guarded smile. ‘You were right about Theo,’ she murmured. ‘I knew he’d stay close to Eve if he could, watch over her. But where was he? It took me a long time to work out why Eve kept coming to the knight’s room. It has nothing to do with the view over the hunting ground. She doesn’t even know herself what draws her. But Theo kept himself in the one place Cullayn wouldn’t think to look. Cullayn would never think to look for a ghost that stayed still.’
Eve kept blinking at the knight. She ran her fingers over its brow. She picked at the helmet, prodded the armour. Then she let out a sudden cough of sheer surprise – and stepped back.
At the same time a shocked Ben peered up at the knight and Janey abruptly stood up. Flexing her wrists, she began a concentrated slow-breathing.
Cullayn turned back from the window – surprised but not yet alarmed.
From partially-shut eyes, Dad managed to glance up. He felt a static electrical charge building up fast in the room. It puckered his skin. As he blearily searched for the source of it, wondering if it was a new threat to his sons, the life-sized knight began to move.
A stitch – a simple dash of cotton – stretched.
Slowly it expanded, and out of the intricate nee
dlework, caked in threads of cotton, a pattern surfaced – a shape. It was hidden for a moment in the embroidery making up the knight’s stark outline.
Then Eve screamed when she saw who it was.
Cullayn ran towards Eve, but it was Theo’s ghost – detaching himself, flinging the fibres of cotton from his ghost form – who reached her sooner.
The first thing Theo did was to gaze fearlessly at Cullayn to hold him back. The second was to bring Eve into his arms and kiss her on the cheek so that she knew he was real.
As she gasped in astonishment, Theo turned quickly to Janey.
‘I knew you’d come,’ he murmured.
‘I’m very late,’ she apologised. ‘But you know I had to wait for Eve. Until enough of Cullayn’s power was inside her.’
‘I know,’ Theo said, smiling. ‘Are you ready?’
‘Yes.’
Janey curled her fingers – a supple rotation of the tips – and abruptly the air tightened around her. She peered over her brows at Cullayn and with her gnarled fingers swept a shape around him that was rectangular.
Cullayn, who in that moment had been a blur of speed lunging towards Theo to smash him, found his hand … held.
He looked at it in surprise, the way it disobeyed. Then he stared with renewed respect at Janey and smiled to disarm her, but the smile had none of his characteristic poise, and they all saw that. Cullayn tried using his other hand. Janey mirrored his movement with her own. Cullayn kicked out at Theo. Janey raised an ankle, stopping him.
‘Eve,’ Theo said softly. She’d stepped back from him, an arm’s length of astonishment. Theo held both his hands out to her.
She hesitated – looked between him and Cullayn.
Taking strength from that hesitation, Cullayn began contorting his body. He flung himself about – different combinations – attempting to find a way out of Janey’s hold. Finally, by jerking a hand, knee and elbow simultaneously, she failed to stop one of Cullayn’s booted feet and it connected.
But not with Theo. Ben and Elliott had stepped in front of him to take the blow. Knocked backwards, the brothers were hurled across the floor.
Cullayn grunted in anger, but his limbs were freer now. ‘So, you’re not quite the perfect puppeteer after all,’ he said to Janey.
He twisted his body and Janey – a study in concentration – almost matched him. But not quite. ‘Hurry,’ she whispered to Theo. ‘I can’t hold him like this for long. Do something.’
‘Not me,’ Theo said.
He turned to Eve. She blinked back at him, confused.
‘Eve,’ Cullayn growled, his whole body in motion. ‘Kill Janey.’
Elliott threw himself across the floor to defend Janey as best he could, and Ben joined him.
Eve stared at Cullayn, clearly wanting to obey the master of Glebe House. But Theo’s eyes held her, too. Wavering, she comfort-snatched Katerina up from the floor, pressed the doll to her cheek.
‘You left me!’ she shrieked at Theo. ‘You left me!’
Cullayn continued to writhe to free himself from Janey’s restraints.
‘I never left you,’ Theo explained, tears in his eyes. ‘I was always here. I had to wait. I couldn’t ever let him see me. But I was here, watching over you. And now it’s time to go.’
‘No!’ Eve said. Events, choices she had to make, were moving too fast for her. She clutched herself through her dress, and in that terrible moment of indecision Elliott knew that Cullayn had truly lodged the hope of the everlasting hunt in her heart, and everything hung in the balance.
‘Eve!’ Cullayn’s voice was rich and warm. With a great shriek he part-broke from Janey’s control, lunging at Theo.
Janey made a triangle of three fingers and clicked them hard together, stopping Cullayn in mid-lunge. Making a fist of her hand, she blocked, pushed and bent back his arm. At the same time Theo formed a circle with his hands and squeezed it towards Cullayn, hemming him in.
Snarling, unable to make his blow count, Cullayn studied Janey intently, observing how her control techniques worked. As he gradually did so, Elliott saw that Cullayn was the stronger of the two. In fact, he was stronger than any combination of her and Theo. And suddenly Cullayn must have sensed that, too, because he changed tactics. Using one jutting fist after another he punched the air, thrusting out, hitting nothing except emptiness, but weakening Janey.
Eve watched – horrified, mesmerised. Her wide-eyed expression was lodged somewhere between awe and disbelief, but there was also soul-searching there. For a moment she looked at Ben, and it was simply a young girl looking at the child closest to her own age for advice about what she should do. Ben stared resolutely back at her, and stood closer to Elliott.
Outside the window three ghosts hovered. They were so near to Cullayn that Elliott could see their outlines.
‘Smash the window!’ Janey yelled desperately at him. ‘Let them in!’
‘No!’ roared Cullayn. He raised a fist to flatten Elliott. Then he gazed down in curiosity as that fist was held again. Not this time by a barrier erected by Janey, however. It was Eve who held it. She possessed so much of Cullayn’s power, and now she gave him an arch look that he knew as his own.
‘I watched you with her,’ Theo said to Cullayn with cold deliberation. ‘I watched everything. You taught her well.’
‘Eve, please …’ It was an astonishing moment. Cullayn pleading. Eve held his fist and he pleaded and, because she was still partly his creature, his weakness was enough to end any doubt in her mind, and she gripped him tighter than ever and looked fiercely at Elliott.
‘Do it!’ she told him.
Elliott dragged his injured knee across the room. Using an elbow, helped by Ben, he smashed the window.
Outside it was a warm, calm summer morning. Three figures came through that calm – ending it.
Sam was the first to blast past Elliott and Ben. He came so fast that he knocked both brothers aside and placed himself in front of Cullayn, raising his arms. Nell and Alice came next, taking up a determined position left and right of the owner, bracketing him.
Cullayn looked between them, wavering between fighting tactics. Leo was holding back, floating alone beyond the window. He was still too afraid to come inside. All those centuries ago too much had happened to him. Even Eve could see that, how torn he was. But at least he stood his ground outside, and when Cullayn bared his teeth at him, with a shiver Leo managed to whisper, ‘L is for Leo, who gave his all,’ hissing Cullayn’s own verse back to him at last.
Eve gasped when she heard that. She put one hand to her mouth, and when Cullayn tried to answer Leo back she tightened her other hand on the owner’s wrist until he squealed. That squeal brought movement. Suddenly the ghosts were all on the move. They came at Cullayn, they were all over him, Alice and Nell on his back, Theo pinning him down, Eve holding his arms still while Janey stood and wrenched the air around Cullayn’s spine, restricting his motion. And finally, bursting through the window with a yell, Leo joined them.
Cullayn’s limbs were restrained as one by one Eve and the ghost children clambered on top of him, and though he kept throwing them off they always came back, until eventually Cullayn was exhausted and Janey was able to relax her efforts and collapse on the floor.
At the same moment Theo bent down, and it was to kiss Eve.
She seemed surprised, and suddenly she sobbed, and to the sound of that Cullayn was dragged by the ghost children to the shattered window. There was something fresh and wonderful about the ghosts as they did so. Elliott, Ben and Dad could see them clearly now. It was not only Cullayn’s power but their own that illuminated them.
They hauled the owner of Glebe House across the knight’s room and out, out towards the slope. Elliott and Ben stumbled as best they could to the window as Cullayn was taken to the foot of the hunting ground. Janey managed to heave herself from the floor as well and, assisted by Ben, Elliott got Dad to his feet, holding him up so that they could all take in the view.
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nbsp; Cullayn was carried onto his slope. From the base of it he stared up at the distant woods. The ghost children encircled him. Visible in flashes, their own light colours competed against Cullayn’s darker flecks of orange and red. With the others gripping him tightly, Sam took Cullayn by the scruff of the neck. Holding him like a dog, he gazed back at Dad.
‘Say it,’ he spat. ‘Say it!’
Dad nodded, his measured gaze meeting Cullayn’s.
‘Run,’ he said.
Cullayn did not immediately do so. His still-calculating mind roved, assessing the children, not quite believing they would chase him. Then he looked at Eve.
They all did. And for a moment her cold eyes were utterly the owner’s again, and Cullayn understood: it didn’t matter if the other children did not start the hunt. If they were too scared to set the first foot on the slope to begin the chase, Eve would.
Never taking her eyes off Cullayn, she raised a single foot – and with a small jump, Cullayn scuttled off.
He looked over his shoulder as he ran. It was a new experience for the owner, to be looking backward instead of forward on that slope. A rise of about two hundred metres was in front of him, in ruts of mud and meadow-grass. The ghost children watched him race towards the trees as intensely as anything has ever watched anything, but they did not chase him.
Two thirds of the way to the wood Cullayn turned to see their lack of pursuit.
‘I knew you’d be too afraid to come after me,’ he crowed. ‘I knew—’
A wind struck his cheek, interrupting him. Cullayn swatted idly at it. ‘I told you—’ The wind struck him again, harder, knocking him off his feet.
Bewildered, intensely frightened, Cullayn tried to see who was there.
Nobody. No one. But not nothing. A living presence seethed against him. A hunter of Cullayn’s own creation had arrived.
Even from here Elliott could feel the lacerating aura of the hunting ground. The trees shivered, seemed to inhale a vast and unseen collective breath and, hearing it, the ghost children fled back to the knight’s room. Cullayn was still staggering sideways on the slope, trying to stay upright, when the hunting ground came for him. He’d kept it waiting, and though it was only trees and a patch of land when he was not on it, with his arrival it was his appetite it shared, and now it was impatient. Abandoning all restraint in the same way Cullayn himself had done so often, the land came for him.