Then the scratching came again – small and trapped, like a hatching lizard – and her heart beat into her mouth.
Inch by inch, she forced herself to kneel beside the hearth, touch the flagstone base and listen, every sinew tensed for flight. She crouched until her knees hurt, listening to the wind snag on the chimney and her heart thump on her bones.
She hoped it was a bird up there – but some buried instinct howled that it was not.
‘I’ll get the pole,’ Maguire said, startled by her voice in the silence. She tried not to think of the thing in the chimney, only of the hooked pole she’d used to fish out the seagull’s maggoty corpse.
She stood, fists clenched.
The grate exploded with soot and she fell back, knocking her head against the bookcase and smashing a vase. She spluttered to her knees and peered through the cloud towards the settling pile of coal dust.
There were no wings, no spread feathers, no sharp little feet. The soot had fallen in a lump, gathered round something. But it was not a bird.
She ground the grit between her teeth, then gripped the pot’s handle and blew on the dark powder.
A dark, furry lump, no more than a foot long, lay on the stone, little arms and legs spread at odd angles.
‘What in God’s name?’ whispered Maguire.
She lifted it free, knocking the dust into the grate.
A soiled, wet doll stared out from under the grime. Its face was twisted by fire, its hair burned away. She brushed off more dust, found the puckered, broken smile, and the half-shut, gleaming green eyes.
Sadie. Her childhood doll.
Her sacrifice.
A thin, translucent skin covered Sadie’s soot-black body, stretched tight and threaded by dark, spider-leg veins.
‘What the hell is –’
Sadie’s eyes fluttered as her head – the lashes burned away, the scalp scorched bare and black – rolled towards Maguire.
She dropped the doll and tried to cry out, but her breath would not come and her voice would not work.
Sadie righted herself, wobbled on her little legs – then came at her.
Maguire screamed.
The crows settled on the windowsill as she kicked and fought, tasting the salt of Sadie’s skin as the little hands – sharpened by fire and tasting of rot – forced themselves between her teeth.
Maguire’s vision blurred. Her head filled with a sluggish heat through which the crows’ glass-tapping beaks fell like rain, and she closed her eyes, the muscles loosening on her bones …
And, just as her life ebbed away, the doll was ripped from her face in an explosion of light, oxygen filled her chest like liquid fire – and darkness took her.
21
Cats
It had been dark when the cats came to the box. Now, in the darkness before dawn, they prowled around it with tail-flicks and swivelling ears, pawing at the dropped toys, the green pearls of their eyes lit by speckles of moonlight. Every one of their little bodies whined with tension, like a scream held on the edge of release, and the hungry sound of their throats hummed like an engine buried in the dirt.
Above them, three crows watched.
When the first cat darted forward the others leaped yowling in pursuit. A hundred tongues found the rot on the box’s stone, and they greened their lips and chins in a busyness of slicking spit.
When the first cat found the runner’s blood it gave a strangled cry that drew the others’ claws and teeth – and a few fell into the box.
Blood speckling their eager faces, they leaped and wailed as the roots curled in, closing the lid, the sliver of sunlight vanishing with a thud, trapping them inside with the trickle of crimson that had drawn them there.
The cats outside licked the stone, and the crows’ bright eyes watched from the trees.
22
Morning
Sep woke before his alarm, had a scalding shower and burst a spot on his chin. Which was all totally normal. Except that it wasn’t.
Yesterday he’d woken up with his world in order: his mum was well, his exams were over, his boarding school application was nearly complete. No obstacles. Everything he’d worked for.
And now what?
His mum was getting sick again.
He was bunking off school with the others.
And his teddy bear was trying to kill him.
He dressed slowly, sniffing his Vader T-shirt as he pulled it on, clipping his Walkman on to his belt and dropping the headphones around his neck.
The house was blinking sleepily, tidy and still in dawn’s soft glow. His mum was in bed, and had yet to wake up. Sep looked at the windows and imagined Barnaby at the glass, his eyes glowing like green coals.
He felt, unexpectedly, alone. After years of living with only his thoughts yesterday had shaken something inside him, and he found himself fishing Arkle’s phone number from his jeans.
He dialled it in, waited for the clicks to finish – then dropped the phone in its cradle and went into the kitchen. It was too early: Arkle would be in bed, or stuffing himself with cereal in front of the TV, and it would be hard to explain an early-morning call to Mrs Hooper.
Through the window he saw long, furry ears peeking out from behind a shrub, and he threw the fox a piece of bread out of the window. Then he made himself breakfast – a bowl of Ghostbusters cereal and some juice – and hid another slice of bread in his school bag.
There was a hologram on the cereal box. He tilted it back and forth as he ate, catching the spindly ghost in loops of yellow, blue and red, his stomach churning as he thought about detention with Daniels. By the time his mum came downstairs he’d finished his juice, and the cereal’s milk was syrupy and warm.
‘Morning,’ said his mum, peering as though her face was an ill-fitting mask. ‘I didn’t hear you getting up.’
‘I was awake early.’
‘Eating rubbish, I see.’
Sep pushed a cereal puff around with his spoon and watched it fall apart. ‘Are you feeling OK?’
His mum flicked the kettle on, then turned and gave him a bleary smile.
‘Yes,’ she said deliberately, like she hadn’t heard him properly and was guessing an answer.
‘All right. I’m going to school.’
‘So early? What’s going on?’
‘Nothing, I just can’t be late again.’
His mum gulped from a glass of water.
‘Maguire?’ she said.
‘Pardon?’
‘I asked if it was Mrs Maguire again.’
Sep nodded.
‘She was there when I was at school, and she was the same then,’ said his mum.
Her police radio crackled. He tried to listen beyond the static, straining his deaf ear to find the dreadful noise that had come with Barnaby.
But there was nothing. His tooth didn’t hurt either. ‘You eating today?’ he said, following the pattern of the tablecloth.
She held up a pack of biscuits.
‘I’ll have a few of these. It’s just tummy trouble, I promise.’
Sep nodded, then pushed his bowl away. The morning sun had hit the cereal box at the perfect angle, and the ghost hologram on the side was screaming its rainbow at him.
‘Where did Barnaby come from?’ he said.
She looked up, a ginger snap gripped in her teeth.
‘Your teddy? You got him when you were born.’
‘From who?’
She bit off a chunk of biscuit and chewed it slowly, looking at his face. Sep kept his eyes on the ghost.
‘I can’t remember. Why are you asking?’ she said eventually.
‘I just … haven’t seen him for a while. And I wondered.’
She took another bite of the biscuit and clicked off her walkie-talkie.
‘Barnaby was your favourite toy. He went everywhere with you – until you gave him to me for company in the hospital. You put him away when I brought him home. Haven’t seen him since.’ She gave Sep a kind of frowny smile. ‘
I was always kind of grateful for that – he reminded me of being ill. Then I felt guilty.’
‘Why?’
‘It was your favourite toy. And I felt bad for you. It felt mean to be glad he was gone.’
‘It’s fine,’ said Sep.
‘I wonder where that teddy is,’ his mum said, crossing to the sink to top up her water. ‘Might be worth some money – practically an antique now.’
‘He could be anywhere,’ said Sep, looking outside and feeling a coil of tension in his guts.
‘Do you want a lift today? I’m off this morning, I don’t mind.’
‘No, it’s OK, I’ve got loads of time.’
She pulled up his chin, so they were face to face.
‘You don’t have to worry, really. I’m not … but there is something I wanted to talk to –’
But Sep was staring past her, at the big black birds scrabbling in the treetops of the garden.
He leaped to his feet.
‘Mum, I need to go.’
‘What’s wrong?’ she said, turning to follow his eyes, puzzled and afraid.
‘Nothing! It’s fine. I just need to get there early. I –’
‘Sep, wait! Sit down a minute, we should talk. I’m sorry, just –’
But Sep was already at the door, swinging it behind him, the hinges’ creak drowning her words.
Outside the morning was cloudless and cool: the sky a flat blue above the trees, the sun’s glare behind the mountain. He closed his eyes and breathed out, letting his heart settle.
Then he opened his eyes and saw them.
Crows. Three of them – staring blindly at the house.
No, not at the house, he realized.
At him.
And now that he was outside he could hear the velvet rasp of feathers.
All with his deaf ear.
The noise made his bones grind together, as though his joints were packed with sand, and it swelled through his head into his rotten tooth. He bit down on the hot pain, clamped his headphones over his ears and clicked on the tape – Frankie, straight into the middle of ‘Two Tribes’ – cranked up the volume and turned his back on the birds.
The fox was sitting on the path, head cocked beneath its swivelling ears, its little face sharp and alert.
Sep went to his bag and held out the piece of bread.
The ears froze, and the fox shifted on its paws.
‘Come on,’ said Sep. ‘You always take whatever I give you. Come on, I’m in a hurry.’
He crouched down, his skateboard under his knee, holding the slice further in front of him.
The fox stepped forward, its muscles bunched so that its paws hardly touched the ground, ready to flee.
‘I am glad the others are back,’ Sep told it, surprising himself. ‘But I still have to leave. I have to. Living on the mainland’s all I’ve ever wanted.’
The fox took another step and waited, front paw held aloft, leaning from him in readiness of flight.
‘And this will work. Making new sacrifices – obeying the rules. That must be what the box wants. Maybe then Barnaby will leave me alone.’
The fox darted forward and took the bread from his hand – and for the second it was held between them, Sep felt the animal’s strength and the pungent heat of its fur.
He shot out a hand and brushed its chest, feeling its warmth with the tips of his fingers.
The fox broke for the trees as though stung, bread swinging in its mouth.
‘And maybe it’ll fix my mum,’ he said as its tail vanished.
He boarded all the way to school, his Walkman blaring unnoticed as his mind boiled. A steady, sea-smelling wind rattled the high leaves, filling the air with a rattlesnake hiss.
The tide was in, a tight seam against the grass, narrowing the island like a shrunken jumper.
He looked for the mainland, but could not see it.
23
Caught
The bell was still a few minutes away, and the playground was heaving with bare-armed kids. Sep wove through them, away from registration and towards the trees on the edge of the hockey pitch, squinting through the sun for the red spikes of Daniels’ hair.
Instead he saw Arkle flicking a hacky-sack between his feet. Lamb stood beside him – hockey stick strapped to her back like a warrior’s sword, headscarf tight on her wrist.
‘I thought you’d chicken out,’ she said, snapping a pink bubble at him. Her face was broader than yesterday, more angular. Even her eyes had changed – and there was something familiar about them. Sep tried not to stare.
‘And good morning to you too,’ he said. ‘Did you sleep well, Darren?’
‘Eventually,’ said Arkle, balancing the sack on his toe, ‘after one of my “special moments”.’
Sep and Lamb screwed up their faces, then met each other’s eyes.
‘Why would I chicken out?’ said Sep.
‘Come on,’ she said. ‘Playing hooky? Running around the woods? It’s not exactly your scene, is it?’
‘It used to be.’
She made a face.
‘Well, the running around the woods bit.’
Lamb cracked her knuckles.
‘I’m looking forward to this.’
‘You are?’ said Arkle. ‘Oh, me too. I mean, it’ll be so cool to be –’
‘Oh, yeah: once we sort this out I’ll never have to speak to you dweebs again, and it can’t come soon enough. And when I find out who it was that broke the rules, I’ll hurt them.’
Arkle stuck out a petted lip at her.
‘Don’t mind Lambert. She’s pissed off because her hair won’t sit properly.’
‘It’s backcombed, asshole,’ said Lamb, folding in another stick of gum.
‘You manage to sleep?’ Arkle asked, lighting a cigarette.
‘Kind of,’ said Sep, wiping sweat from his face. ‘I mean, I stayed awake for a bit, and my mum was –’
He bit off the sentence.
‘What’s up with your mum?’ said Lamb.
‘Nothing, she’s fine. She was just … working late.’
‘She getting sick again?’
‘No!’ said Sep quickly. ‘Here, have you noticed the crows?’
‘Yes!’ said Arkle. ‘What is that?’
‘There were three of them watching me last night – they were on my windowsill for hours. And they were outside my house this morning. They have to be connected, right?’
Lamb shrugged.
‘I’ve seen them too. Who cares?’
‘“Who cares?”’ said Arkle. ‘Have you not seen The Birds?’
‘Nope.’
‘Well, neither have I … I mean, it’s in black and white. But it’s a horror film about birds! Birds are mental.’
‘You worried about them?’ said Lamb, nodding at Sep.
‘Well, it’s weird. I mean, how come there’s always the same number? And how come we’re all seeing them?’ He paused for a moment, then added, ‘I think they’re what’s hurting my tooth.’
‘Your tooth?’ said Lamb, wrinkling her nose. ‘How does that work?’
‘I don’t know. I just know my toothache gets much worse when the birds are around.’
‘Maybe eat less sugar, dude,’ said Arkle.
‘And listen,’ Sep went on. ‘Last night I was dreaming about crows climbing inside this empty skin –’ he tried to say it was his mother’s skin, that the black eyes were hers, wide and flat with painkillers, but couldn’t find the words. ‘And when I woke up Barnaby was there. And so were you.’
Lamb went pale, then turned away and blew another bubble.
‘You’re not going all Hadley on us, are you?’ said Arkle, blowing a thin cloud of smoke above his head.
‘What do you mean?’
‘Spooky-dreamy-mumbo-jumbo. Wait, here she is! Let’s ask her: Princess Leia, can you interpret September’s freaky dream?’
‘What?’ said Hadley, lifting away enormous round headphones.
‘Sep joined you
r dream gang,’ said Arkle.
Hadley looked at Sep intently, and fanned her face in the heat. She was wearing another white glove, this one lacy and fingerless, on her left hand.
‘What was it?’ she said.
‘Crows pushing into an empty skin, like a person’s empty skin,’ he said, his face colouring.
‘Have you noticed the crows too?’ asked Arkle.
Hadley nodded.
‘This morning,’ she said, ‘there were three of them, outside my house.’
‘Right,’ said Sep. A shiver gripped his spine.
‘Right what?’ said Mack, joining the group.
‘Crows,’ said Hadley. ‘Have you seen them?’
‘Yeah, they’re big black birds. Why?’
‘We know what they are, numbnuts,’ said Lamb. ‘But there’s three in particular. They’re, like, following us.’
‘Oh. Then no.’
‘What’re you eating?’ said Arkle.
‘Muffin,’ Mack mumbled indistinctly.
Arkle shook his head.
‘You might look like a steak in a T–shirt, Golden Boy, but I want to be there when your metabolism slows down. It’ll happen in, like, a second – BAM! You’ll burst out like Jabba the Hutt. You can keep Hadley on a chain.’
‘Shut up!’ said Hadley.
Sep clenched his jaw.
‘Where’s your keeper?’ Arkle asked Mack, grinning.
‘What?’
‘Daniels.’
Mack’s face darkened.
‘He says he’s sick.’
‘Really?’ said Sep. He felt immediately lighter.
‘It’s your turn today,’ said Lamb, pointing at Mack. ‘Are you worried?’
Mack flashed her a perfect square smile.
‘Not so far. And we’re all together now – we can handle it.’
Lamb rolled her eyes. ‘OK – we’re all here, so let’s go. I’ve got a surprise for you dweebs.’
‘Hang on,’ said Sep.
‘Why?’ said Hadley. ‘We need to go – the bell’s gone; the teachers will start their late-coming rounds.’
‘Exactly! What’s the problem?’ snapped Lamb.
‘I forgot to bring a new sacrifice!’ said Sep, his stomach sinking. ‘I was so distracted this morning, I left the house without one. I’m going to have to go back home.’
The Sacrifice Box Page 10