The Challenge

by Tom Hoyle

  ‘My darling, I have no reason to want to put flowers here.’ She chuckled and shook her head slightly.

  ‘But they’re new. They’re the ones that grow round here in the fields,’ I said.

  ‘Yes, fresh every single day. My daaaaahling, I see them brought in while you’re all asleep.’ It was hard to tell whether she was back in the real world or about to claim that they appeared paranormally or she did it while possessed by a spirit being.

  ‘So how do they get here, then?’ I asked, cynicism leaking into my voice.

  There was now a hard edge to Mrs Winter’s words: ‘They’re brought in by that Mr Haconby.’ But her bitterness disappeared as quickly as it came, and she cooed: ‘But I would do the same, my darling, if I were in his dreadful position.’

  ‘I must get going,’ I said, staring ahead. Lake Hintersea, creature-like, lapped the shoreline ahead of me; I imagined Will’s body, gently rocked by the waves. My brain was in a haze. ‘I didn’t know that.’

  ‘It’s difficult to know everything,’ she said. ‘Even if you want to.’

  I shook myself to my senses and glanced around at Lakeside House, glimpsing a figure in the central turret section at the very top, the Lantern Room that could be seen from miles around. The low November sun glinted off binoculars. I drew my breath in – Mrs Winter must have noticed – but the shape slipped back and I could only see grey-tinged glass.

  Mrs Winter smiled. Her teeth were greyish-brown, as if she had drunk too much tea. ‘Trust me, darling,’ she said. ‘Follow William’s footprints towards the distant sound, and there you will find the truth.’ She had spoken in riddles before; now she seemed possessed.

  ‘Thank you, Mrs Winter,’ I said, the newsletter dropping to the ground between us. ‘I really must be on my way . . .’

  ‘That Easter went quickly,’ she said, louder, as I walked away.

  ‘Thank you, Mrs Winter!’ I was striding away.

  ‘The autumn leaves remind me of his hair,’ she croaked.

  I let the church gate swing shut behind me. ‘Mad, stupid old cow,’ I said to myself. But then I saw Mike Haconby’s house: I said the words aloud: ‘I hope for your sake that you had nothing to do with it . . .’

  Mike Haconby’s van was back. As I passed, Bullseye barked frantically.

  I lay on my bed and closed my eyes. 13:23 by the bedside clock. Bullseye was still barking. Why has this come back at the time it should be going away? I concentrated on breathing in through my nose and out through my mouth, just as they had taught me when I couldn’t sleep in the weeks after Will’s death.

  Slowly, I drifted into an uneven doze that was always in danger of tipping into waking. The dream came.

  Will circled the road on his bike. The lane was thick with light brown autumn leaves.

  Bark-bark-bark.

  There was a man in a black cloak, carrying a scythe, his face as smooth as a pebble – completely featureless. His features came together like a jigsaw. It was Mike Haconby’s face, but wrong, as if some of the sections had been forced into the wrong place.

  No – it was a mask . . . There was someone underneath . . . He was tugging at his chin, about to peel it off.

  Bark-bark-bark.

  I looked at the book in my hand.

  No: the face. Look at the face!

  Bark-bark-bark.

  I opened the book.

  It’s moving. Oh my God. It’s not paper. It’s alive! It’s barking. There’s something secret and important inside.

  Bark-bark-bark.

  I screamed as I awoke.

  13:41. I sat on the side of the bed, rubbed my eyes, and heard the creaking floorboards and light steps that warned of my gran slowly climbing the stairs.

  ‘Benny – I heard a shout. Are you OK?’ she asked.

  ‘Hold on, I’m not . . . ready. I’m just, er, getting stuff on,’ I said.

  ‘You do worry me sometimes,’ she croaked.

  On autopilot, I pulled down Will’s Box and the back of his Rough Book caught my eye. There was a picture of a dog with a target, a bit like the RAF symbol, drawn on its side. An arrow was sticking into the middle of the target and some inky blood-like droplets below.

  Bark-bark-bark.

  I had never thought about it before. Bullseye.

  I flicked through but couldn’t see any other dog-like creatures. A sheep, a dragon, a poorly drawn tortoise – but no dog.

  ‘Are you going to come downstairs to get something to eat?’ asked my gran.

  There was a mystery to be solved, and The Twins would help me to crack it. They always knew what to do.

  I pushed Will’s Box back into its place at the top the wardrobe.

  Attachment

  NOVEMBER 2011

  AT THE MOUNTAINTOP

  The Twins had never been to my house. To be honest, I was a bit embarrassed. My bedroom was tiny compared to The Twins’ five-star hotel-style suites.

  The Twins influenced me in a way that even Will hadn’t: the way I spoke, my clothes (T-shirts at every opportunity), my desire to laugh at jokes and compliment people on what they achieved. ‘Those boys make you much nicer’ – even my gran said that, and she was suspicious of ‘the youth of today’. I also had lots of new friends, all of them fairly normal people. Ethan and Anna sent me texts and I checked Facebook several times a day.

  One remaining problem was that Darren Foss was still unpleasant to me every now and again, mainly by barging into me and saying, ‘Watch yourself, Ben,’ or, ‘I didn’t see you there’ – that sort of crap. Blake had worse treatment.

  It was on the first Sunday afternoon in November, a week after I found Will’s second note, that I received a text:

  When you gonna show

  us around compton j&s

  I almost sent one back straight away, but waited about fifteen minutes, just to appear busy:

  How bout half 2

  They replied immediately:

  Ok c u

  During an anxious week I had looked for the right opportunity to tell them about the letters from Will. Now was my chance.

  I was outside on my bike, circling around just as Will did before he was taken, thinking about why he decided to cycle to the churchyard, when I saw The Twins and one other person cycle round the corner by Lakeside House. It didn’t occur to me that they would bring someone else, and I certainly wasn’t expecting Darren Foss. His unexpected arrival made my heart sink.

  ‘Hi, Ben,’ Sam said, skidding to a halt next to me. ‘I hope you don’t mind that we brought Darren. We thought it might make things cool after the party. And we’re in the same Physics class. But if it’s a problem . . .’

  ‘Hi, Darren,’ I said, looking down at the road.

  ‘How’s it hanging?’ Darren sniffed, and cracked his knuckles. ‘I’m sorry about the other night, if I actually did something wrong, which I probably didn’t.’

  ‘Yeah, OK,’ I said. ‘I’m sorry too.’

  It wasn’t simply that Darren was there – though, believe me, his presence made me feel depressed – it was that I would have to share The Twins, and there’s no way I could mention the letters from Will.

  ‘Right! Come with me,’ said Jack. He rode a few yards and then stopped outside the church – it was opposite there that the signpost promising Ward’s Fell pointed across a field.

  As always, my eyes were drawn to the graveyard. I was taken back to police cars and the uncontrollable crying of Will’s parents. I never saw the body but had dreamed of him lying in Lake Hintersea waves underneath white CSI tents.

  ‘Is that where the boy was killed?’ asked Darren, feet planted either side of his bike. ‘Let’s have a look.’

  ‘I’m not sure if that’s where he was killed,’ I muttered, unmoving. ‘But that’s where his body was found.’ It was one of the mysteries of the case. There was no sign of a struggle in the graveyard – his bike had been neatly propped against a gravestone, taken away for analysis and never returned; as obvious to me as
a tooth plucked from a mouth, the missing gravestone showed exactly where Will’s bike had been left. At the far end of the churchyard, it was possible to see Lake Hintersea and the spot where Will was found.

  ‘You go in. I’m happy here.’ I shrugged.

  The words in the notes from Will started going around in my head and I wondered if Darren was secretly having a good laugh.

  ‘In that case, we don’t want to go in either,’ said Jack.

  ‘I’m staying here with Ben,’ said Sam.

  ‘There’s no need for any more detective work,’ said Darren. ‘We all know who did it. Just no one is prepared to do anything about it. And you two agree with me. You said so.’ He was looking to The Twins for support.

  Sam started. ‘It’s what everyone thinks, Ben. My dad even heard that it’s not the first time Mike Haconby has been involved with missing kids, but they had to keep it quiet for fear of wrecking the case.’

  ‘Do you really believe that, guys?’ I said, addressing The Twins and forgetting about Darren. ‘That’s just rumour; it’s just the sort of thing people say to make mud stick.’ I remembered my gran using the same words. I’m not sure if I still believed them.

  ‘I don’t want to talk about it here,’ said Sam, looking along the road to where Mike Haconby lived. He lowered his voice. ‘Our dad said that it’s true.’

  ‘I don’t know why you’re protecting the weirdo who killed someone who was supposed to be your friend,’ sneered Darren.

  I thought about grabbing my bike and riding off, leaving them all behind – even The Twins.

  But suddenly Jack’s hand was on my elbow as if he was transmitting good energy. His eyes were sad and understanding. ‘Come on, let’s go up there,’ he said.

  Sam was already pointing. ‘Yeah! Is it right there’s a cave?’ His finger reached out towards Ward’s Fell, the 2,790-foot-high ‘mountain’, the twenty-third highest in England, behind Compton Village. ‘The Challenge is to walk to the top in a straight line.’

  The Twins controlled my mood, as they always did. I liked the use of the word ‘Challenge’ and had begun to use it myself. ‘Yeah, good Challenge,’ I said.

  Darren’s voice was lifeless and slightly sarcastic: ‘Yeah. OK. It looks really scary. I might wet my pants.’

  It was just about possible to go straight up Ward’s Fell in a straight line, over stone walls, through a band of trees that hid rocky crags, then scrambling over grass and stones too steep for sheep, but despite living in Compton Village all of my life, I had only gone up that way once. The signposted path was much easier, but circled round the mountain and took ages. And Sam was right: near the top of the mountain there used to be a small slate mine, rather like a cave. I remembered Will sitting in the entrance when we walked up there.

  We cycled down the path that headed across the fields, then left our bikes in undergrowth behind a couple of trees.

  Jack’s leg seemed to have returned to normal, though sometimes, perhaps, I saw him twitch a little. It certainly didn’t slow him as we strode through ferns and nettles, and scrambled over walls and under barbed-wire fences.

  The Twins were mad on cars and we chatted about Top Gear.

  ‘It’s important to know what your limits are,’ said Sam.

  ‘And there’s only one way to find that out,’ said Jack.

  ‘You only know things have gone too far when they go too far,’ Sam said. He then lunged forward and bundled Jack to the ground, playfully slapping the area on Jack’s leg that had been injured.

  ‘Come on, guys,’ I said. ‘You don’t want to hurt him.’

  ‘Don’t worry, mate,’ said Jack. ‘We know when to stop.’

  After we moved on, Darren talked about sex – the weird stuff that boys say when they don’t know what they’re going on about. He created a sort of punchline: ‘I bet that’s the sort of thing Ben enjoys.’

  It wasn’t quite like the bullying before, and for a time we all laughed, then it began to annoy me. Darren would say something perverted and simply add, ‘I bet that’s the sort of thing Ben enjoys.’ I gazed down at the lake in the distance and breathed deeply. The afternoon was going wrong, just as I feared. At least Blake wasn’t with us.

  Without warning, both Twins stopped and turned to Darren. ‘You’re forgetting our deal,’ said Jack.

  ‘Say wha’, bro?’ said Darren, arms outstretched.

  No one was laughing now.

  Darren stood still, weighing something up, while The Twins and I walked on. Then he shouted after us, ‘’Kay. Whatever you say, dudes.’

  We were now a few paces ahead and Sam pulled me right next to him and whispered in my ear: ‘Don’t worry, Ben, we know who you’re really interested in, and we’ll get you and Caroline together.’

  I chuckled.

  ‘Don’t get pissed off by Darren,’ whispered Jack from the other side. ‘You trust us, don’t you? It’s you, Sam, and me. We all enjoy a Challenge. We’re never outdone. Shame I didn’t bring any Ex-Lax!’

  After another hundred yards, we reached the entrance to the mine. ‘Mine’ is a big word for what was really just a dip in the hillside that someone had used as an excuse to dig out slate, making a few tunnels in the process.

  We all had mobile phones with basic torch apps, but The Twins suddenly produced two Ledlenser torches from their rucksacks.

  How did they know that we would end up here? It was as if they saw the road ahead before anyone else.

  Someone had put in a metal door to try to keep people out of the tunnels beyond, but the chain was lying on the floor next to a rusty and broken padlock. The door had been bent and buckled slightly over the years and made a creaking sound as Jack pulled it back a few inches.

  ‘How about a Challenge?’ said Sam, peering into the darkness before switching on his torch.

  ‘What d’ya mean? Like a dare?’ asked Darren.

  Darren wasn’t in on the lingo. Great.

  ‘Yeah,’ Sam said. ‘We’ll go in and find the furthest wall . . .’

  ‘And leave our initials,’ Jack finished.

  ‘Wicked,’ I said. ‘Our names’d stay there for ever.’

  ‘There could be snakes in there, or monsters,’ Darren mocked. He grabbed me and shook me slightly.

  I wriggled free and went forward to look along Sam’s torch beam. Other people had certainly been there before: there were discoloured beer cans and faded, damp sweet wrappers. Someone, probably years ago, had left the remains of a small fire. ‘Let’s go,’ said Jack. With Sam in front of me and Jack behind, I felt safe.

  We wandered in, no sound apart from the echo of our shoes scuffing. The floor was peppered with stones and bits of slate, and the tunnel wasn’t straight, but The Twins’ torches produced more than enough light for all four of us.

  ‘See what it’s like with the torches off.’ It was my voice.

  At this point in the tunnel, about twenty yards in, there was still a pale light from the open entrance behind us, but when we tried the same thing about ten paces on, round a slight left-hand bend, it was completely black.

  The tunnel then veered ninety degrees left, and soon there were two forks – but we very quickly saw that the one on the right only went about five yards, so we came back: Sam, then me, then Jack, with Darren last.

  The other way went further, maybe another fifteen yards. ‘I hope this rock isn’t going to fall on us,’ said Darren.

  ‘Don’t be an idiot,’ said Jack. ‘It’s been here for a hundred years or whatever – it’s not going to decide to collapse right now.’

  Sam pressed his hand against the slate wall that ended the tunnel: ‘And that’s it. The end.’ It was as if the miners had just lost interest one afternoon and decided to leave it jagged and incomplete, with barely enough surface for us to scratch our names.

  As the torchlight wobbled around, I ran my hand over the floor of the tunnel, searching for something sharp enough to scratch my initials with. Eventually I found a shard of slate that ne
stled in my palm and could be pressed hard enough to leave a faint imprint on the stone. I scratched my initials: B.A.C. About eighteen inches away DARREN finished writing the six letters of his name. The Twins left no evidence that they had ever been there.

  I was about to ask why when there were two clicks, less than a second apart. In an instant, it was pitch black.

  ‘Wooooooo!’ It was Darren. He cupped his hands over his mouth and spoke in a creepy voice: ‘Ben – I am coming to get you!’

  ‘Put them back on, guys,’ I said.

  There wasn’t a sound. I slowly put my hands out and felt the clammy walls of the tunnel. Bizarrely, I then felt my own face and pulled my eyelids up to check that they were open. ‘Hey, guys!’ I was now shouting. ‘Stop messing around!’ I groped for my phone.

  Suddenly, I was grabbed and a hand smothered my mouth. For a split second, I thought it was Darren, but the arm across my chest, the hand on my shoulder, the chest tight against my back, then the hair tickling my ear . . . Instinctively, I knew it was one of The Twins. It was as dark with my eyes closed as with them open.

  ‘Yeah! Stop messing around!’ Darren’s voice boomed out of the darkness. ‘I can’t see a thing, you bastards.’ He swore, then yelped, and I could hear the sound of his head being rubbed – I suppose he had knocked against the side of the tunnel. Then Darren shouted again, perhaps two paces away, maybe closer: ‘Get off! What are you doing? You sicko!’ Swearing. ‘My phone! Give it back to me!’ More swearing. ‘Come back here! Now! You little shit!’

  I was spun around 180 degrees, but the Twin stayed behind me and whispered: ‘Walk, quickly. Trust me.’ For the first few strides I was braced for impact, teeth clenched, terrified I would be driven head first into stone, but then I relaxed slightly and blindly trusted my guide. We must have gone about fifteen paces when I was turned sharply right, held still for a moment, then marched off again. This time we went slightly slower and I felt my arm graze against the side once or twice, but then grey daylight grew into distant shafts of sunshine.

  ‘What the hell are you doing?’ I said, keeping the same pace and looking forward.