Tilda didn’t look up. Her eyes had gone glazed and distant, and her hands scrabbled away at the earth. In a sort of trance she reached inside her rucksack for the box and took out the skull.
There was a whirring overhead. I peered up to a dwindling fragment of sky. Way off in the air I could see a V shape. A skein of geese, their shapes just coming into focus.
Tilda stopped. She stared at the ground, holding the skull, like a zombie in some rubbish movie.
‘Go on,’ I hissed. ‘Drop it in.’
Tilda’s lips twisted into a snarl that totally shocked me. Suddenly she looked terrifying.
I made a swift decision. I grabbed at the skull and prised her fingers away from it. Tilda gripped harder, and all of a sudden the paper-thin cranium caved in with a sharp crack and broke away in fragments.
We both gazed down at it in horror. The curved beak was still in Tilda’s hand attached to the jagged remains of the head. The skull’s beauty was gone – it just looked evil now.
There was no time to think. I made a grab for the beak and threw it into the hole. Then I caught hold of one of Tilda’s hands and dragged her to her feet.
‘Come on,’ I shouted. ‘We’re getting out of here.’
Tilda seemed to sway. Her pupils widened and she came to.
‘You’re right,’ she said in a tiny voice. ‘I’ve got to let it go.’
I tugged her arm. Way up in the sky the whistling had started. ‘Come on,’ I yelled. ‘Tilda!’
She jerked to attention. ‘Wait,’ she said. She shook off my hand and dropped down on her knees. I hoped to God she wouldn’t touch the skull again. Every nerve in my body was telling me to run, but somehow I made myself stay.
Tilda picked up a handful of earth and flung it on to the remains. Then another, and another, until at last the vile thing was gone.
‘It’s all yours,’ she yelled in a shaky voice. ‘So leave us alone.’ She scrambled to her feet.
Perhaps it would be enough.
Then we were legging it through the clearing and along the path and through the crowding twisted trees, back towards the daylight.
28
Tilda
I kept up with Matt, but only just. I truly thought my chest was going to explode. Jez lunged ahead, picking out a route I’d never taken before. There was no path – just piles of boulders everywhere, and great lumps of moss and ledges dripping with ferns and branches so low we both had to run in a kind of crouch, and even then we kept having to swerve to avoid them. If we didn’t stop soon, I was going to be sick.
At last light filtered in through the trees. We were at the edge of the wood. Now all I could hear was the sound of the stream and my rasping breath. We’d made it. And I’d managed to let go of the skull, even though I’d so desperately wanted to keep hold of it. I didn’t know what had happened to me at the standing stone, but that thing was finally back where it belonged. It couldn’t touch me any more. I felt giddy with relief.
As if reading my thoughts, Matt turned to me.
‘We’ve done it!’ he said. ‘It’s over.’ He looked jubilant. ‘Look. The fog’s completely gone. We’ve got out. We’re going to be all right.’
‘Do you think so?’ I was still shaking. I couldn’t quite believe it yet.
‘Yes. I really do. What matters is that we’ve got rid of the skull. That’s what was making all those things happen. But it’s over now – it must be. Gabe told me—’ He stopped suddenly.
‘What? What did he tell you?’
Matt hesitated.
‘He said that both our mums had something to do with the curlew skull when they were young.’
I knew it. I just knew it. What had Gabe said?
Matt rubbed his face. ‘I’ll tell you all about it, but not now,’ he said. ‘We’ve got to get back before dark.’
He called to Jez and started rapidly down the hill out of the wood.
I didn’t have the energy to push for more details. I was unbelievably tired, tireder than the tiredest thing on earth. It felt as though a year of lie-ins wouldn’t be enough. I’d have been happy to curl up on the open moor and go to sleep there and then if Matt would have let me.
Then I remembered Kitty. Only the thought of her could spur me on now. If we got back safely, would there be good news about her? She had to get well. I couldn’t bear to think about the alternative. I hurried to catch up, and my breath came in little short gasps.
‘Do you feel any different?’ Matt said as I came level with him.
‘How do you mean?’
‘Well . . . you’ve been acting sort of weird about the skull. I wondered if getting rid of it had made you . . . well . . . feel better?’
He was right. I didn’t have to think about the skull any more. The further I got away from it, the lighter I felt. I glanced sideways at Matt. He was walking a bit taller, a bit straighter, kind of purposeful-looking. Perhaps I’d not been seeing him properly before.
I didn’t know if that was the skull’s influence, or something deeper inside me, like a long grief that was at last beginning to fade. Whatever it was, all the bitterness that had been eating away at me had vanished, leaving me just really, really exhausted. I wanted an end to all the fighting and sniping and hating. Suddenly I was embarrassed at the way I’d behaved since Matt had arrived. It had been truly awful. I wondered if there was more to it than I’d realised. Was it possible that I’d been jealous of Matt still having his mother when I’d lost mine? Whatever it was, I needed to get over it.
And maybe, when we got back and everything was all right, Matt and I could have a go at being friends.
If we ever got home, that was. My bones seemed to have turned into lead. The fog had disappeared without a trace, but the sky was clouding over fast, making it seem dark even though dusk was a fair way off. It was cold now and the wind was whipping round in big gusts that made you take a step or two backwards if they hit you full on. It felt like a storm was brewing. But at least I had Matt and Jez this time. It made all the difference in the world.
I’d blanked out those awful hours beside the wall on my own in the horrible grey fog, but it was all coming back to me now. Those terrifying creatures I’d heard – had they just been inside my head? They’d disappeared when Matt and Jez arrived, so I supposed they must have been.
Did that mean that everything Gabe had warned us about was a load of old rubbish, too? The skull, the omens, the gabbleratchet – everything? I was beginning to wonder. I mean, all that stuff with the crow on the roof was pure mumbo-jumbo. Maybe a bit too much of that had rubbed off on Alba as well.
Yes, we’d definitely done way too much listening to stupid stories. And now we’d spooked ourselves silly over the skull in Old Scratch Wood. What a pair of idiots.
I touched Matt’s arm.
‘Do you think Kitty’s going to be all right?’ I said.
‘I was just thinking about that,’ he said. ‘I really hope so.’
‘Maybe it was just a virus and she’s sitting up in bed now stuffing herself with chocolate.’
He smiled. ‘Maybe. So get a move on and let’s get out of this and find out.’
Matt had a point. The wind was getting wilder and wilder. Jez pulled on her lead and whined as if to warn me to hurry up. Normally I’d let her run free, but I didn’t want to risk her running off today of all days, and I was so tired that I was quite happy for her to drag me along behind her. At least the going was much faster than it had been in the fog. We’d already reached the dry stone wall and turned towards the tor. It wouldn’t be long now.
‘So what exactly was Gabe saying about Mum and Aunty Rose?’ I asked Matt.
He carried on walking for a few steps and I wondered if he’d heard. Then he turned and faced me.
‘He said your mum had a curlew – a live one, only it was hurt. But it died – Gabe . . . killed it. My mum asked him to. And she buried it in Old Scratch Wood.’
I gasped. How was that possible? Then I thought of t
he velvet the skull had been lying on – the material of Aunty Caroline’s dress – and knew it had to be true.
Matt related the story Gabe had told him. I listened, but it didn’t make much sense to me.
‘So Gabe and Aunty Caroline went back to Old Scratch Wood and hid the skull?’ I said. ‘And Mum just forgot about it? I don’t get it. How come I found it again, then? I think Gabe’s making up all the gabbleratchet stuff just to scare us.’
Matt said nothing. And suddenly I knew there was more.
‘Tell me,’ I said. And so, in fits and starts, he told me.
I couldn’t believe what he was saying. That phone call I’d overheard when Aunty Caroline was fighting with Mum. She’d told Mum where the skull was hidden. Sent her running to Old Scratch Wood. Signed her death warrant.
The wind buffeted my ears, but I scarcely felt it any more.
‘You mean your mum was responsible for the accident?’ I said. I was trembling with anger.
Matt shook his head, but his voice faltered.
‘She didn’t know what would happen. Maybe your mum made her tell – I don’t know. Anyway, it wasn’t Mum’s fault, what came afterwards. And the accident might just have been a coincidence.’
The wind was howling around us. It sounded almost like an animal. A pack of dogs or something.
‘You think so?’ I said. I was walking so fast I nearly tripped over Jez. ‘Then you’re a complete jerk.’ I rubbed the tears from my eyes. ‘Aunty Caroline might as well have run over Mum herself.’
Matt looked away. He didn’t try to argue, which was a good thing because I don’t know what I’d have said to him if he had. I marched on ahead of him, and every time he came near I sped up. Rage was giving me new strength. My mind seethed with images of Mum and the skull, Mum and Kitty, Mum being lowered into the cold hard ground.
The howling was louder. I could swear it was real. I glanced behind me, suddenly nervous. But it was nothing. Nothing but the wind. I started walking faster.
At last we reached the farm gate. Perhaps Dad really would be back by now, wondering where we were. Kitty might actually be waiting for us, looking out for us. Maybe, just maybe, everything was going to be all right. My whole skin tingled with hope as we reached the porch of the house. I leant over to put my key in the door. Then I froze.
‘Matt,’ I whispered. ‘Look.’
Above our heads, dangling from the porch roof by a string, was a strange object. We craned our necks upwards. It twirled slowly in the breeze, its empty eyes staring straight at us.
The skull.
Only it wasn’t a bird any more.
29
Matt
I pushed Tilda and Jez out of the porch, away from the thing that was hanging there.
‘Uncle Jack!’ I yelled. ‘Kitty!’
There was no sound. Uncle Jack’s car wasn’t there – he must still be at the hospital. I turned back to the porch again. The skull was dangling there, dark and vicious and unexplainable, swinging in the wind. I wanted to pull it down and stamp on it, destroy it for ever.
With an effort, I tore my eyes away. Tilda’s mouth had gone slack. Her red hair seemed very bright against her face.
‘But the skull was all smashed up,’ she said.
‘I know. And in the ground.’
‘It can’t be the same one.’
‘It isn’t,’ I said. ‘Look at it. It’s much bigger. And it doesn’t have a beak. It’s got teeth. Fangs. It’s more like a dog or something, I don’t know what. Somebody must be having a joke. A really terrible joke.’ I tried to smile, but I shouldn’t think it came out very well. My spine felt as if tarantulas were crawling up and down it.
Tilda nodded slowly. ‘I suppose so,’ she said. ‘It’s Hallowe’en after all. Maybe that’s it. But it still feels like our skull, all the same.’
I knew what she meant. Once again we both stared up. It was beginning to get dark. The wind grabbed Tilda’s hair and blew it across her face.
Neither of us wanted to go into the house with that thing hanging there.
‘Let’s put the chickens away,’ said Tilda. Her voice sounded shaky.
Together we went through to the back yard. The geese must have heard us, because they started hissing and honking, then came racing towards us from the little side yard, holding their necks out straight ahead of them. I tried not to look worried. Someone must have left the gate open. I hoped it wasn’t me.
Behind the tor, the moon was beginning to come up low on the horizon, huge and silver and entirely full. You could almost see it move.
Jez shifted and whined. Suddenly the geese flapped their wings in unison, ran forward and took off into the sky. We stared at them transfixed. I felt Tilda edge closer to me.
‘We clipped their wings,’ she whispered. ‘They never fly.’
I gazed after the geese, too shocked to say anything. From the direction of the tor came the long high quaver of a horn, then three blasts in quick succession. In the distance I could hear a kind of howling. Though the light was fading, I thought I could make out the black outlines of creatures streaming down from the tor towards the farm. What were they? They looked a bit like dogs. This was all too weird. I wondered if we should be running.
Tilda gazed at the creatures and let out a breath.
‘Wow,’ she said. ‘It’s the Hunt. How amazing. The hounds must have picked up a scent. We don’t normally see them over here.’ She hesitated. ‘But this is really late for them to be out. I thought they only hunted in the mornings.’
I was pulling at her hand, but she wriggled free.
‘Look at them,’ she said. ‘They’re just foxhounds, Matt. There’s nothing to be scared of.’
I peered at the hounds racing towards us. A couple of them had reached the boundary of the farm and were running up and down outside the dry stone wall, then they scrambled up it and stood on the top, eyeing us. They looked strangely familiar.
‘Lightfoot!’ Tilda yelled. ‘Lawless!’
I didn’t know how she could tell at this distance, but I guessed she was right. My chest loosened a little.
‘They must have got out and met up with the Hunt somehow,’ Tilda said. ‘But they shouldn’t be hunting with the pack – they haven’t been trained properly yet. I can’t see any riders, though. Maybe the rest of the hounds escaped from the Hunt kennels and Lightfoot and Lawless joined up with them. I’d better phone the kennel man and tell him.’ She made a move towards the two hounds.
‘Don’t,’ I said, and grabbed her hand.
Tilda was right – it was the overgrown puppies. But something about their eyes had changed. They were sort of hard and blank, and they were staring straight at us. One of them – Lightfoot? Lawless? I didn’t know – bared his teeth and let out a long, low growl. Tilda took a step back. Behind the puppies were other hounds, bigger ones, leaping for the wall. They’d clear it easily.
We looked at each other. Then we turned and fled.
I snatched a glance behind us as we pounded away. Lightfoot and Lawless were already racing through the field towards the farmhouse. We were nearly in the front yard, but I knew the front door was still locked. We wouldn’t make it in time.
‘East Barn,’ I yelled.
The pack was in the vegetable garden now. The noise of their yipping and baying rose behind us, but we didn’t stop. I pelted round the corner into the front yard and dived into the barn. Tilda and Jez shot in behind me. The hounds were bearing down and the yard filled with their cries, a cacophony of screeching, yowling, yapping barks. My worst nightmare – but this time I wasn’t sleeping.
The gabbleratchet was here. It wasn’t a dream – there was no doubt about it. It was a hunt. And we were the quarry.
Just in time I slammed the door and wrenched down the wooden latch to secure it. The hounds flung themselves against it, testing it. It wouldn’t stand up to them for long.
30
Tilda
My mind was gibbering with shock. I
reached for Jez, who was trembling even more than I was. Matt was pacing up and down in the darkness of the barn. Gabe must have moved the cow and its calf back to the fields yesterday, but it still smelt pleasantly of hay and dung. Only now we were trapped.
Outside the demented barking was getting more and more frenzied, and the door groaned with the slam of bodies against it. Thump, it went. Thump.
I breathed out, expelling all the air right down to my stomach, then again and again. It worked – I didn’t feel quite so faint any more. But the hounds weren’t giving up.
Thump.
‘They definitely must have escaped from the Hunt kennels,’ I said. ‘I bet the kennel man will be round soon. He’ll take them home.’
Matt gave a choked laugh. He was standing below the little window at the back of the barn, and his face was lit up by the horrible sun-like moon.
‘You saw how the skull had changed, didn’t you?’ he said.
Suddenly I could see it in every detail as it twirled in the breeze. The broad head, the long flattish muzzle. The teeth. It had been the skull of a hound.
‘First geese, then hounds,’ I whispered.
‘We should have known,’ said Matt. ‘I knew the gabbleratchet was hellhounds. I just didn’t think they’d be real.’
The barn door shook and groaned. Through a thin crack I could see that the front yard was full of dark shapes, all legs and mouths and eyes and that hideous baying cry. I shut my eyes, but it just made the noise more frightening, so I forced them open again.
‘We’ve got to get out of here,’ said Matt. ‘That door’s going to give way soon.’
Thump.
He spun round. ‘That little window at the back,’ he said. ‘We might just be able to get through it.’
He grabbed a straw bale and dumped it under the window, then ran for another one. I shook myself and joined him in making a pile.
‘You go first,’ said Matt. ‘I’ll help you up.’
The idea of going outside terrified me. What if the hounds realised what we were up to? What if they got hold of our scent and found their way round to the back of the barn? But staying here wasn’t an option. The door sounded as if it was about to splinter.
Skull in the Wood Page 14
