The Hunting Ground

by Cliff McNish

  The owner was always the central figure in the portraits. He was a tall, broad-shouldered man with a tight, red-curled beard, small close-set eyes and fleshy lips. The teeth protruding from those lips were large and exceptionally white. Maybe the owner had asked the artist to touch up their whiteness to improve his looks, but Elliott didn’t think so. Otherwise, surely he’d also have asked for the goofyness the oversized teeth gave him to be smoothed out as well. The owner’s expression in the paintings was always enigmatic, too. It was as if even after all this time dead he still held the advantage, knew something you did not.

  But the portraits weren’t the only ominous aspect of Glebe House. The estate had its own graveyard as well, hunkering in cold stone next to a church at the northern edge of the grounds. Locals from the village a mile or so away had used it for centuries to bury their dead.

  And then there was the mysterious East Wing.

  What had happened to Ben inside there? He’d find out tomorrow.

  Stretching out his arms, Elliott checked the time: nearly two a.m. No wonder he was so tired. Giving the third-floor corridor a last quick once-over, he returned to his room, slid back under the bed covers and tucked the musty blankets around his shoulders.

  Then he listened. Glebe House was settling down for the night, its timbers and ironwork contracting with the cold. Elliott smiled as he heard the ancient mattress on his bed groan under his weight. Gradually, to that familiar, unfrightening sound, he drifted off to sleep. But just before he did so he realised that he could hear a distant noise again. It was like a voice whispering incessantly. But the sound was faint, and Elliott dozed off with its puzzle still trickling across his mind.

  *

  Once Elliott was fully asleep, the grey-faced visitor made its way back inside his bedroom. It flashed rapidly through his doorway this time. The hours were beginning to speed up for it again.

  Elliott lay on his back with his mouth open. In the moonlight his tongue glistened like a wet shining disk. Keeping to the shadows, the visitor watched that tongue closely. It opened its own smaller mouth, imitating his expression.

  Then it retreated again. Fetching the baby-sized object up from the floor, the visitor kissed it once, twice, before dragging it away back down the staircase. And as it departed, it sang a little ditty:

  Five minutes to midnight,

  Five minutes to treason,

  Here comes the truth without the reason.

  No time left for fathers & children,

  Here comes the ogre,

  Into his season.

  THE OLD WOMAN

  Next morning over breakfast Elliott noticed that Ben was back to his usual cocky, confident self. There was none of the subdued irritability of last night. His hazel-green eyes twinkled when Dad mentioned the doll’s house.

  ‘Did you play with all the dolls inside, then?’ he asked Elliott.

  ‘I gave each of them a good hour,’ Elliott replied. ‘I knew they’d get grumpy otherwise.’

  Ben leaned forward. ‘I bet you loved it.’

  ‘Don’t worry,’ Elliott said. ‘I left them all out for you. You can sneak up there when we’re not around.’

  Dad reached for the milk. ‘’Course,’ he said airily to Elliott, ‘I still remember you playing with my old train set when you were Ben’s age.’

  ‘I was nine when I stopped playing with that, actually,’ Elliott pointed out, which made Dad and Ben both roar with laughter.

  Towards the end of breakfast, Elliott gazed out through the kitchen’s double-bay windows at the western gardens. A huge area of tiered lawns, collapsed walls and dried-up ornamental fountains met his eye.

  ‘You’ve really got your work cut out this time,’ he said to Dad.

  ‘You’re not kidding,’ Dad groaned. ‘The garden features alone will take another week. I’ve even been asked to hose down the gnomes.’

  ‘The gnomes?’

  ‘Trust me, they’re out there. The grass is so long the little fellas are hiding.’

  Ben looked up from his plate. ‘Dad?’ he said hesitantly. ‘When you got given this job, were you told anything about the house?’

  Both Dad and Elliott turned in curiosity towards Ben. He normally didn’t care about the history of a property.

  ‘Why do you ask?’ Dad said.

  ‘No reason. It’s just … the portraits.’ Ben stared self-consciously around him. ‘They’re weird, aren’t they? But sort of interesting as well. Do you know anything about him? The man in the pictures, I mean?’

  ‘Not really,’ Dad said, rubbing his stubbled chin. ‘But you only have to look at the paintings to know there was something wrong with him. All those animals he was so proud of killing. Plus, well, I’ve never come across anything like the East Wing before.’

  ‘It’s not a standard build, is it?’ Elliott said.

  ‘No,’ Dad answered. ‘It’s a bespoke job. A truly nasty bit of construction. Now that it’s been conveniently opened up’ – Dad didn’t avoid looking at Ben – ‘I’ve had a chance to check around in there. It’s a labyrinth. Deliberately underlit and confusing throughout. Literally hundreds of criss-crossing corridors that all lead back on themselves.’

  Ben stared down at the table and, glancing at him, Elliott thought, You really did get lost in there, didn’t you.

  ‘From the outside the East Wing looks innocent enough,’ Dad said. ‘Inside’s another story. It’s full of nearly identical rooms. One half is all bedrooms, the other half all bathrooms. And the longer corridors look as if they run in a straight line, but don’t. They bring you in a circle, only so gradually that you can’t tell. I used a compass to navigate, and I still nearly got lost inside there.’ Dad chewed his lip. ‘I did a bit of research on it before we got here, actually. The East Wing wasn’t part of the original property. The seventeenth century owner who appears in all the portraits constructed it about ten years after he built the rest of the estate. He also seems to have had a raw love of the hunt. The East Wing’s full of his vicious portraits.’

  Ben kept his face lowered, but he was listening closely to Dad.

  ‘I didn’t know there were portraits in the East Wing as well,’ Elliott said.

  ‘More if anything.’ Dad pulled a sour face. ‘And it’s not only birds and animals he’s hunting in there, either. I’m not sure what fantasies he was entertaining when he had the paintings done, but they’re not canvases you or I would hang on a wall. If you ask me, that whole part of the house should have been bulldozed into the hillside centuries ago. Pulled down and sent up in smoke.’

  Elliott blinked in surprise. He’d never heard Dad react so strongly against a property. The owners, occasionally, but never the buildings themselves.

  ‘It was an odd commission, actually,’ Dad admitted. ‘The whole estate’s been lying idle, boarded up for a couple of generations.’

  ‘They just left it like this?’ Elliott asked.

  ‘Reading between the lines there was some kind of tragedy here,’ Dad said. ‘Whatever happened, the latest owners didn’t want anything more to do with the house afterwards. Even now they just want to sell it as fast as possible, get it off their hands. It’s such a waste. There are genuine antiques all over this estate that have just been left to rot. I suppose the current owners have their reasons for abandoning it this way but, well, anyhow, it’s half a century since it was last used as a home.’ He stared thoughtfully out over the gardens. ‘Something happened here. I just don’t know what.’

  ‘Could have been illness in the house, I suppose,’ Elliott suggested.

  ‘Or somebody died,’ Ben murmured.

  Dad and Elliott both turned towards him.

  ‘What makes you say that?’ Dad asked.

  Ben shrugged. ‘Dunno. But it’s possible, isn’t it?’

  *

  After breakfast, Elliott decided that he’d been patient enough. It was time to take Ben for a walk in their giant new garden and find out what had happened last night.

/>   ‘Come on. Shoes. Now,’ he said, from the door of Ben’s bedroom.

  ‘I’m not going out,’ Ben announced. ‘No chance.’

  ‘No chance, eh?’

  A bit of mindless pestering later, Elliott had Ben reaching for his trainers.

  ‘All right, but I’m not talking about it,’ Ben growled, ‘and I’m not going out for long.’

  ‘Ten minutes.’

  ‘Ten minutes max.’

  They walked side by side through the vast oak front doors of the house and out into vivid morning sunshine. Elliott was guiding Ben southwards, towards the open pit where the lake used to be, when he spotted the woman.

  She looked to be around sixty-five years old. Slim, with white, shoulder-length hair, she was on the other side of the perimeter fence, heading away from them, but Elliott felt a flutter in his stomach when he saw her dress. It was covered in flowers. Not printed flowers, but real ones. Dozens were pinned to the dress’s pleats and folds: daisies, peonies, chrysanthemums, roses. Some were fresh. Others, more disturbingly, were withered, their petals dried or fallen out altogether. The woman’s face was in profile, so he couldn’t properly see what she looked like at first. But then she turned to gaze at them.

  Elliott was drawn straight to her eyes. Even from this distance he could see that they were strikingly twilight-blue.

  For several seconds the woman held each of the boys in an unsettlingly sharp regard. Then she acknowledged them with a curt nod of her bird-thin neck, smelled one of the fresher roses near her collar and stepped smartly on towards the graveyard at the edge of the estate.

  ‘Who was that?’ Elliott wondered, once she’d gone.

  Ben shrugged. ‘Must be one of the crazy locals,’ he said, crossing his eyes.

  They walked further into the grounds. To their left, the jutting East Wing spread across the lawns like an unsightly growth. It was by far the largest structure on the estate – a vast, hexagonal-shaped building three times the area of the main house. Elliott didn’t like it. To him its irregular blank walls looked as if they had been erected with maximum ugliness in mind.

  Ben didn’t once look towards the building. Instead he headed steadfastly away from it, listlessly kicking sods of grass.

  ‘So what happened, then?’ Elliott asked at last. ‘Look, if you need me to keep it secret from Dad, I will. You know that. Just tell me what went on in there.’

  ‘You promise you won’t say anything to Dad?’

  ‘I promise.’

  Elliott waited expectantly, but Ben fell silent again. No, it was more than silence. He looked upset, couldn’t get his words out. Elliott had never seen Ben look so vulnerable before, and instinctively he stood a little closer to him. What was going on? If he was in trouble, Ben was normally willing to talk to Elliott even if he didn’t talk to anyone else. Not this time.

  Elliott tried to lighten the mood with a few jokes, but it made no difference. Ben was wound up tight. And there was a strange touch of hurt in his eyes as well. Seeing it disturbed Elliott even more than the bursts of irritation he sensed simmering in Ben just under the surface. What on earth had happened to him in the East Wing’s corridors?

  ‘You’re acting a bit freaky, you know,’ Elliott said.

  ‘Nah, I’m all right,’ Ben said. ‘Just tired, that’s all. Didn’t sleep much.’ He stopped and gazed back the way they’d come. ‘But I hate this house, don’t you?’

  Elliott didn’t have any strong feelings about the property yet, but he played along, nodding agreement.

  They were standing by the drained lake now. It was enormous, covering a full quarter of the estate. Twenty feet below their feet wet mud caked the bottom.

  ‘I wonder why it’s empty?’ Ben said – the first sign of curiosity he’d shown since entering the garden.

  ‘The lake’s empty, and no one around for miles,’ Elliott muttered.

  ‘No one around for miles and nowhere to go,’ Ben echoed. ‘So what are we going to do?’

  They both yelled together, ‘Jack all!’

  It was a standard joke between them whenever they came to a new house.

  Ben gingerly felt his bruise. ‘You can stop following me round, you know, Elliott,’ he said. ‘I’m OK.’

  ‘If you say so,’ Elliott answered, seeing that Ben looked anything but OK. ‘But if it’s that interesting in the East Wing, I want to know what’s inside.’

  Ben firmly shook his head. ‘You don’t want to go in there, Elliott.’

  ‘No? Why’s that, then?’

  Ben stared at his shins. He wouldn’t meet Elliott’s eye. ‘Look,’ he murmured, taking an uncertain breath. ‘I don’t want to talk about it. I don’t even know why I went into the East Wing last night, OK? I know it was stupid. I woke up and I was looking at one of the portraits. Next I knew I was downstairs outside the East Wing. I’m not even sure how I got in there.’

  Elliott gave Ben space to say more. He didn’t.

  ‘Actually … I think I heard the same noise as you last night,’ Ben admitted, changing the subject. ‘Before I went to sleep, I mean. Scrishing – is that what you called it?’

  Elliott nodded. ‘Yeah. What do you reckon it was? We can usually figure these things out.’

  Ben scratched his chin. ‘A rat, maybe?’

  ‘Pretty big rat.’

  ‘Something else then. Could have been a lot of things, I suppose.’

  ‘Yeah, it could have been. But we’re alone in the house, aren’t we? Or supposed to be. What does that tell you?’

  Ben shrugged.

  ‘It’s obvious, isn’t it?’ Elliott folded his arms. ‘You heard the sounds as well. Something made them. Me and Dad went round with a torch checking every room last night and found them empty.’

  Ben grinned, realizing what Elliott was suggesting, and also realizing that Elliott didn’t believe it for a second.

  ‘It’s a ghost!’ Ben cried, sending crows scattering from a nearby tree.

  They both laughed aloud, and for a few seconds all the tension was broken.

  ‘Whoo-whoo!’ Ben said sarcastically. ‘Don’t wake them up. They’re probably all over the garden.’

  ‘Maybe,’ Elliott said, enjoying himself as well now. ‘Or is it just one person?’

  ‘A single ghost, you mean? Someone who died here? Yeah.’ Ben smiled. ‘Someone who died horribly. So now they’re out for revenge.’

  ‘Yep,’ Elliott agreed. ‘And the ghost’s going to be especially hacked off as well, because it’s had to wait all this time to get it.’

  ‘So you don’t think we’re gonna be OK?’

  ‘No chance.’

  ‘Not even if there are two of us against one ghost?’

  ‘But there won’t be two of us, will there?’ Elliott said with a grin.

  ‘Why’s that?’

  ‘Because I’m not sticking around to help you. As soon as I see a ghost I’m off.’

  ‘Thanks,’ Ben muttered. ‘Don’t expect me to save you when the ghost comes looking for you, then. C’mon,’ he yelled. ‘I’ll race you back to the house.’

  THE DIARY OF

  THEO STARK

  When they got back Ben headed straight upstairs while Elliott went to look for something to eat. He was concentrating so hard on finishing off a mustard-smeared ham sandwich as he left the kitchen that he clattered into Dad coming out of the hall.

  ‘Sorry,’ Dad chuckled, seeing Elliott jump. ‘This place is making us all a bit jittery, eh? I thought you might like to have a look at these.’ He held out some loose sheets of paper.

  Elliott took them from him. ‘What are they?’

  ‘A diary. The beginning of one, anyhow. I found it when I was clearing the library. Weird I didn’t find it earlier, actually, since I’ve been in there most of the morning. It was just lying on a chair for anyone to see. There are only six or seven pages, but if a tragedy did occur here a couple of generations ago, the diary date is about right. Which is curious, isn’t it?’

/>   Elliott looked at the top sheet. It was a title page, handwritten in blue faded ink. In bold, underlined letters the cover proclaimed:

  The Diary of Theo Stark

  The paper was lined, discoloured around the edges and dry to touch. It had clearly been waiting a long time to be discovered. Dad glanced at Elliott, obviously interested in what he thought.

  ‘Neat writing,’ Elliott said, knowing it was a stupid remark under the circumstances, but unable to think of anything else to say.

  ‘Schools taught people to write with formal correctness in those days,’ Dad told him. ‘It’s the diary of a teenage boy. I’ve only had a quick look at it, but it’s entertaining.’

  ‘Yeah?’

  Elliott turned to page one.

  Hello! I’m Theo, and this, dear friend, is the premier entry in my first ever diary – a vaguely exciting moment for me anyway.

  Don’t ask me why I’ve decided to start a diary. There’s just something about this weird house that makes it seem worth it. My little sister, Eve, says diaries are dumb, but she’s only seven and classifies everything not related to herself or her dolls as dumb, so we’ll ignore her view about everything.

  OK. Date and time check. It’s 9.42 a.m. on, let’s see, the 13th September 1962. OK, a few facts. I’m sixteen, brown hair, six feet tall, well, only three inches less than that, and—

  Hold on. Mum just looked over my shoulder and says I’m starting all wrong. She says you’re supposed to confess things in diaries. That’s what they’re for, she reckons. So, since she’s being so nosy, I think I’ll start off by confessing something on her behalf. Her hair caught fire yesterday. Interesting to watch, actually. She was bending over a candlelit table on Dad’s birthday, about to kiss him, when she got a bit too close to the flame. What I learned in that moment is that you absolutely cannot control how fast hair burns. Mum was all right, but Dad missed out on his kiss.

  Right, I’m starting to ramble already. Mum’s an artist and she says because I take after her that’s inevitable – the rambling, that is.