Hunted

by Adam Slater

  “Well, thank goodness you’re home safe and the rain hasn’t come on yet. Listen to the wind rising out there. I was starting to worry! Train’s late again, I suppose.” Gran pointed to the grate. “Supper’s not ready, I’m afraid. I’m doing jacket potatoes in the fire and they take forever. Why don’t you have a bath? The water’s hot. I put it on an hour ago. I thought you’d need it after your match. Go on and fill the tub and I’ll fix you some Bovril to keep you going till the spuds are done.”

  Callum smiled weakly. “Thanks, Gran.”

  He stood up again, relieved that he was no longer shaking. He took off his coat and hung it on the narrow row of coat hooks by the door, and he left his boots on the mat beneath. Gran’s cottage might be tiny, and the furniture old and battered, but she ran a tight ship. As long as everything is in its right place, there’s plenty of room, she liked to say.

  While Gran set the kettle on the gas ring in the lean-to kitchen, Callum moved into the bathroom and began to fill the bath. Much as Gran’s fussing annoyed him sometimes, he loved this little house. One small sitting room, a miniature kitchen and a bathroom tacked on the back, two even tinier rooms upstairs: that was all there was to it. It was like a cocoon, small and safe. Callum had always loved it, even before it became his home. He wondered why he felt that way. Maybe it was because he knew his dad had grown up here too.

  Callum ran the water scalding hot. Waiting for the tub to fill, he studied his face in the mirror for a moment, trying to see if there was anything in his own features that made him different from anyone else. But no, he looked pretty average: the broad cheekbones that Gran insisted were “dashing good looks,” smeared with mud from the match, and his tangled brown hair too long and standing up at the back as usual. His face was a little anxious around the eyes, with a crease of worry between the eyebrows—but it was just a face. A normal face. Nothing to give away the fact that he was a freak who saw ghosts around every corner.

  Gran tapped on the door. “Like some hot chocolate?” she called.

  “I don’t mind, Gran,” Callum sighed.

  What would she think if she caught him staring at himself in the mirror? That he was admiring himself, probably.

  Undressing quickly, Callum lowered himself into the tub and tried to pull himself together. The last thing he wanted was for Gran to start digging for the real reason he’d been scared. He never talked to her about his strange abilities. Gran might be eccentric and old-fashioned, but she didn’t have a superstitious bone in her body and Callum didn’t want her to think there was anything wrong with him. All the things that made him different—his Luck, the ghosts—these things weren’t new to Callum. When he’d been very small, he sometimes hadn’t been able to tell the ghosts apart from the living. In the first horrible weeks after his mum’s accident, Callum had tried to console himself with his strange ability. At least I’ll see her again, he had thought. Even if she won’t be able to talk to me or hold me, at least I’ll see her.

  But he never did. He only ever saw the ghosts of strangers. And what’s the use of that? Callum thought as he ran more close-to-boiling water into the bath. What’s the point of being able to see ghosts if I can’t see the ones I care about?

  “Callum?” His grandmother rapped at the door again. “Your Bovril’s waiting in your room. Don’t let it get cold! Hurry up now; I put the heater on for you, and you know I don’t like to leave it when no one’s there.”

  With another sigh Callum washed quickly and drained the tub.

  Up in his room, he dressed again. He had the bigger of the two small bedrooms. The one that had been his dad’s, for the same reason it was now his: he had more stuff than Gran. The room was crammed with football and rugby boots, cricket bats and tennis racquets, a guitar and music stand, and a large portable CD player that had belonged to his mother. On the floor was a growing pile of books. Gran joked that she and Callum went in for competitive book collecting.

  Well trained by Gran, Callum kept his things in good order, and by the standards of the other kids at school he didn’t have much—there was no desk, no computer, no TV, no game console.

  No ghosts either. No ghosts ever in his room. No ghosts in the whole cottage. For the first time, Callum wondered why.

  The wind whistled sharply under the loose tiles above his window, reminding him of the howl of the creature in the dark. He shivered. What had it been? He could think of one way to find out, but he would have to be careful.

  “Callum? Supper’s ready!” Gran called up the stairs.

  Callum dutifully switched off the electric heater and went back downstairs, pulling the drop-leaf table away from the wall behind him. The room was so small that, opened out, the table blocked the narrow stairway.

  “Better?” Gran asked kindly, fishing the charred potatoes out of the grate as Callum laid the table.

  “Yeah.” He gave her a little smile.

  “You should keep a flashlight in your bag this time of year.”

  “Probably,” Callum replied. She was right about that. He wouldn’t be caught out again.

  Gran continued to fuss over him as they ate, giving him the two biggest potatoes and most of the baked beans to go on top of them, but Callum didn’t mind. After the horror of the woods, it felt okay to be looked after for a while. Gran seemed to relax too, laughing as she recounted the latest gossip from the town.

  Finally, after they had both finished eating, Callum plucked up the courage to ask the question he’d been brooding on all evening.

  “Gran, do any of your books mention ghosts in Marlock Wood?”

  Gran raised a surprised eyebrow.

  “Ghosts? I thought you didn’t read about anything but music and sport.”

  “Well, it’s for a school project,” Callum improvised, trying to throw her off the scent. “On, um, local history.”

  “I haven’t got anything like that. There’s a book of old photos of Stockport,” Gran replied, shaking her head as she glanced around at the shelves that lined the room, sagging under the weight of the hundreds of books they held. “But I’m not sure where.”

  “Never mind,” Callum said with false brightness. “I’ll try the library.”

  Lying in bed that night, listening to the rising wind rattling the old window in its frame, Callum tried again to make sense of what had happened earlier. Something was different, that much was certain. Something had changed in the spirit world around him, but what it was and what it meant for him, Callum couldn’t tell.

  He shifted restlessly. Gran had gone to bed half an hour ago and the cottage was silent, but he still couldn’t get to sleep. His brain kept playing tricks on him, telling him there was something moving in the darkest corner of the room. Creeping towards the bed.

  Callum froze. He wasn’t imagining it. Something was slinking slowly across the tattered old carpet, low and secretive, keeping to the shadows but getting closer and closer …

  Without warning, a dark shape sprang from the floor and landed on Callum’s chest. Sharp claws pierced his skin and a pair of eyes flashed in the moonlight. Heart pounding, Callum scrambled into a sitting position, sending the creature flying. It tumbled down to the foot of the bed with an outraged yowl.

  Callum let out an explosive breath of relief. It was only Cadbury, Gran’s kamikaze black-and-white tomcat.

  “Cad!” he laughed. “You made me jump out of my skin!”

  Cadbury gave his short trill of greeting and cautiously picked his way up into Callum’s lap.

  “So,” said Callum, scratching him behind the ears. “Do cats see ghosts? Is that why you’re bouncing off the walls the whole time?”

  Cadbury wedged himself under Callum’s arm, kneading and purring as if he was trying to smooth away his worries.

  “But it wasn’t a ghost that followed me tonight,” Callum told the cat softly. “Not a normal one. It was something new.”

  Then an equally unpleasant thought twisted in Callum’s mind. What if it wasn’t something n
ew? What if his ability to see these unnatural things was growing stronger? What if the presence he felt tonight had always been there, and he simply hadn’t noticed it before?

  Chapter Three

  Callum ran.

  At first he ran for the pleasure of it, as he sometimes did around the track at school, but after a while he realized he didn’t know where he was. He didn’t want to stop and look; in fact, he was afraid of stopping, afraid of what he might see or meet if he even slowed down.

  So he kept on running.

  The pavement beneath his feet was slick and slippery, lit only by moonlight. But it wasn’t raining, and Callum didn’t dare look down to see what made it wet. Where was he?

  Nothing was familiar. The buildings he ran past were old and decaying, their windows hollow black cavities or nailed over with rotting boards. He came to a crossroads and turned blindly. Any street was better than this one. But after ten yards he knew he’d gone the wrong way and had to turn and backtrack. He didn’t know where he was, but he knew which way he had to go.

  He was looking for something.

  Callum ran without tiring. His rugby boots struck rhythmically against the paving slabs, and hollow echoes bounced off the black and ruined walls. Nothing around him changed: same empty, nameless streets; same faint moonlight; same hard pavement underfoot. But deep within him, Callum felt a needling sense of urgency, pushing him forwards and making him more and more nervous with every step. He was wasting time. He had to move faster.

  Callum forced himself to stand still. He wasn’t at all out of breath but he needed to think. Maybe his Luck was guiding him, though he couldn’t remember it ever driving him so hard before.

  He began to run again. Suddenly he was barefoot and could feel the wet concrete against his skin, faintly sticky to the touch. It was horrible, but he had to keep going. Now the only sound was the soft slap of his feet as he ran.

  There was a light over the streets ahead, the glow of motorway lamps, and Callum ran towards the bright line with relief. Now he was running alongside a canal beneath a motorway embankment. The light from the motorway was so far above him he couldn’t see it reflected in the water. Something terrible had happened here in these shadows; Callum could feel it—hear it, like an echo. Dread filled him and he thought about trying to double back, but his internal navigation system wouldn’t let him.

  He could hear rain falling in the black canal, spitting and hissing as it hit the water’s surface, but he stayed strangely dry. The street was empty, except for a pile of rubbish. Whatever had happened here was over. It wasn’t what he was looking for. Callum ran on past the shapeless tangle of shopping trolleys and mattresses.

  Suddenly he was running through utter blackness, as though he’d entered a tunnel. It was like running with his eyes shut, but he didn’t hit anything. Once he glanced up, and there were stars overhead, then he was plunged back into the darkness. Callum rubbed his eyes until red spots flashed against his eyelids.

  A shriek of pure terror split the night. The noise drove into Callum’s head like an iron spike. Although his heart pounded with fear, his feet and legs reacted automatically, turning towards the sound. That was the way he had to go.

  But now he was in a different city. Somehow he had traveled hundreds of miles, running in the starlit dark, but there was no time to stop and wonder how. Cars lined the streets. Terraced houses flashed past on either side, charmless but ordinary.

  Then the voice cried out again:

  “Help me!”

  “Where are you?” Callum yelled. “I’m coming!”

  When the next scream came, it was one of mindless agony.

  Abruptly, Callum turned a corner into a narrow alley. The high brick walls of urban back gardens rose steeply on either side of him, still echoing with the terrible scream. All the gates were shut and locked. The windows of the houses beyond were dark. The pavement was lined with cracks. Patchy gray grass straggled through the gaps.

  This was the place. Callum knew it the moment his bare feet touched the cool, tacky concrete. But now everything was still and quiet; not even the echo remaining.

  Desolation swept him. He was too late.

  Halfway down the alley, he found what he was looking for. Slumped against the wall, hands out and open like a beggar, was a dead boy, no older than Callum. Blood smeared his cheeks, black in the moonlight. He stared blankly across the alley from empty sockets.

  His eyes had been torn out.

  Callum stared at the dead boy’s ruined features, fighting the urge to be sick. He felt guilt slither into the hollow pit of his stomach. He should have been faster. He might have been able to prevent this.

  “What happened to you?” Callum whispered. “Why were you calling me?”

  The boy’s ravaged face offered no answer, his sightless gaze fixed on the opposite wall of the alley.

  Callum turned. There were words scrawled across the bricks. The letters glistened against the rough surface, and Callum did not need to look any closer to know that they were written in blood.

  IT IS COMING

  That was all. Three words, ten letters.

  IT IS COMING

  As if in confirmation, a long, deep howl echoed through the night, terrifyingly close and horribly familiar. Callum spun around, pressing his back to the wall next to the savaged body as the howl reached a crescendo—

  And then he was sitting up in bed, wide awake and tangled in his sheets.

  The hairs on the back of his neck were standing on end and he was panting like he really had been running for the past hour. The soles of his feet were ice-cold, as if they still felt the wet concrete of the street in his dream beneath them.

  He didn’t feel as though he’d woken from a nightmare, didn’t feel any relief from his sense of failure. He knew he was awake now, but his horror and disgust were as real as they had been in the dream.

  So was the wailing howl echoing in the darkness.

  Callum dug his fingers into his mattress, fighting the rising panic. Was the creature still outside? Had its call woken him up—or had it triggered the dream?

  The spine-chilling cry faded to a low murmur, and Callum forced himself to lie still, listening for it again. Long moments passed. The wind moaned as it rattled the window frame, but it was just wind, not the voice of some baying demon. At the bottom of the bed, Cadbury raised his head and gave him a quizzical look.

  “Just a nightmare, Cad.”

  But it wasn’t just a nightmare. Callum wanted to believe it was his mind playing tricks, but he knew better. Forcing his frozen feet out of bed, he slipped over to the window. He didn’t turn on the light—the only glowing window in the row of empty cottages would attract too much attention—just pressed his face against the leaded panes.

  Held in place by the pressure of Callum’s touch, the window stopped rattling, but the branches of the rowan tree growing by the side of the cottage still tapped at the glass. Callum held his breath to keep the panes from misting up and stared out into the windy night.

  There was no sign of the animal shadow that had followed him home, but Callum knew now, with certainty, that it was still there. He could almost sense its closeness; it could be at the old mill, or at the bottom of the hill where Marlock Road joined the main road to Stockport, or, more likely, lurking in the cover of the woods.

  Shooing Cadbury out of the way, Callum wrapped his duvet around himself, up to the chin, then sat at the window staring out. Was there no place now he could feel safe, no place he could sleep soundly? The cottage had always been a haven for him. There weren’t any ghosts here, no need for Luck. It was the one place where Callum could feel normal—at least it had been until now.

  “What’s happening, Cad?” he whispered.

  His Luck sometimes warned him about danger, but it always operated by instinct. He’d never had a dream like this before. He’d never been given an actual message.

  IT IS COMING

  All through the night, Callum sat at th
e window, his mind racing, straining his ears for the sound of a howl.

  But he heard and saw nothing.

  Chapter Four

  The Hunter has left the boy behind; the one who tried to fight, even when his weak body was already dying. It was an exciting chase, briefly, but now the boy lies dead, and another victim awaits.

  The Hunter begins to lay its path. It cannot smell, but it does not need to. Its victims leave trails stronger than any scent. Their own power is their undoing, calling the Hunter to them.

  But something is different this time. The trail is confused. It flickers, coming and going too swiftly to follow. Something is hiding this one. Maybe this boy-child is even trying to hide himself.

  Ah …

  The Hunter cannot smile without borrowing a human face, but it feels the pleasure that goes with a smile. A challenge! It is time for the real chase to begin.

  It is still hungry.

  Chapter Five

  It didn’t seem possible that this was just another school day, as ordinary as any other. Same old steam on the cottage window-panes, same old open fire in the grate, same old Gran frying eggs on the gas ring. Callum cupped one hand around his mug of tea, slowly stirring sugar into it with the other, and listened to the bored tones of the radio announcer relaying the morning’s news.

  “The mutilated body of a teenage boy has been discovered in a residential area of South London. The boy’s identity has not been released, but the violent nature of the death tallies with a number of murders reported in recent weeks in Newcastle, Glasgow, Birmingham, and two undisclosed rural locations in Wales and the southwest….”

  Callum dropped the sugar spoon and slurped his tea, trying not to listen. Another hideous news story. Just what he needed after a night of dark dreams and insomnia.

  “Reports suggest that these apparent serial murders may be the result of a gang vendetta, although police say that copycat killings cannot be ruled out.”