by Sara Crowe
He felt her gaze on him all the way to the end of the street.
EIGHTEEN
In the end, it was Callie who found him. As he headed back towards the town centre, she must have hurried along the back lanes to catch up with him and suddenly there she was, walking out of an alley of broken stone and fireweed.
‘I saw you,’ he said. ‘At the upstairs window.’
She walked beside him with her head bent, looking at the ground.
‘Have you been living there?’ he said. ‘All this time? On your own?’
‘I don’t exactly live there. It’s too risky. I go there to get food and change my clothes. Sometimes I spend the night there. I sneak in round the back after dark so Mrs Hopkinson won’t see me. I don’t turn on the lights or make any noise and I keep away from the windows.’
‘Is that the nosy neighbour? She thought you were staying with relatives in Thornditch.’
‘That’s what Mark told her.’
‘Why?’
She shot him a strange look, half annoyed and half pitying. ‘Because we’re alone. There isn’t anyone to look after us, not now Grandpa’s in hospital. Mark’s OK, he’s sixteen, but I’m only fourteen and they’d take me into care if they knew.’
‘Right,’ he said. Face hot with embarrassment. ‘I think I’ve dropped you in it. I think your neighbour knows that I’m from Thornditch and she’s figured out that you can’t be living there as well, otherwise I’d have known about it. I’m sorry.’
Callie chewed her lip. ‘It’s OK,’ she said at last. ‘She’d probably have found out anyway, sooner or later. It’s better this way than if she’d just seen me sneaking in one night and called the police or social services. At least now I know to steer clear. Why did you come to the house anyway?’
‘I was looking for you. I thought you might know more about what Mark’s up to.’
‘He’s still camping in that wood, as far as I know.’
‘Yeah, I saw him there yesterday but that’s not what I mean.’
‘What, then?’
He looked away. He didn’t want to tell her about his encounter with Mark and the hound boys, Mark wearing the dead stag’s head and a cloak of dead birds. Not yet. Maybe never. ‘I don’t know,’ he said. ‘He’s acting really weird. I don’t understand anything he says any more.’
Callie laughed. ‘And you think I do?’
They walked along in silence for a while, back on the high street now, voices and clatter and colour and movement, the air stale with exhaust fumes.
‘Where do you sleep when you don’t go to your grandpa’s house?’ said Ash.
She shrugged. ‘Out in the mountains, here and there.’
‘Don’t you have friends you could stay with?’
‘Yeah, a few. But if I stay with them, there’ll be questions, and next thing there’ll be social workers involved and I could end up anywhere, miles away. So I avoid my friends. It’s easier that way.’
‘Suppose they see you around? Like now, walking down the street?’
She gave a strange little smile. ‘When your mum’s dead and your dad’s hanged himself and your brother’s gone feral, your friends suddenly stop making much effort to be around you.’
‘Aren’t you afraid, alone out in the mountains at night?’
‘I’ve lived in the mountains all my life. Of course I’m not afraid of them.’
‘Maybe you should be,’ he said darkly. ‘There’s things out there.’
‘What things?’
Your lunatic brother, he thought. Ghosts, Bone Jack … The words hung in his mind, unspoken.
‘What things?’ said Callie again.
Before he could answer, footsteps closed in behind them, then Ash felt a heavy arm across his shoulders. A freckled, sunburned face glossed with sweat pushing towards his. Grinning, breath that smelled of burger and ketchup. Chris Brooker. Liam Tunney just a pace or two behind him.
Ash shoved Brooker away.
Brooker flung up his hands in mock surrender. ‘Whoa there, soldier boy! I’m just being friendly. I heard about your dad. Heard they had to send him home because he’d gone nuts.’ Still grinning, his eyes hard.
‘What do you want?’ said Ash. Backing away.
‘Just wanted to see how you are, like I said. Soldier boy, stag boy. How’s that carving on your chest? Healing up nicely?’
Ash took another step back, and another. He glanced across at Callie. She was staring at Chris Brooker as if she wanted to punch him.
‘Earth and stone,’ hissed Brooker, ‘fire and ash, blood and bone.’
Ash grabbed Callie’s wrist. ‘Run,’ he said. ‘Just run!’
So they ran, dodging along the crowded pavement, between shoppers who swung wide-eyed faces at them like startled cattle.
Behind them, laughter, fast footfalls, angry passers-by yelling.
‘This way,’ said Callie. Pulled him with her across a courtyard then into a crowded cafe and out through open glass doors to a terraced garden. An old man staring at them, cup of tea stalled midway to his lips. Two women, a baby squalling in a pram. Ash twisted his body around the pram, muttered, ‘Sorry, sorry.’ Past a tortoiseshell cat curled up in the sunshine and out through a rickety green door onto a narrow back lane that smelled of rotting cabbage. He followed Callie along a snicket between two garages to another lane and then another where they stopped to catch their breath, crouching among tall weeds beside a stone wall. The cuts on Ash’s chest felt tight and hot and sore under the dressings. He looked down at his chest, half expecting to see blood seeping through his T-shirt, but there was nothing.
‘That sweaty boy,’ said Callie. ‘What did he say? That stuff about earth and blood or whatever it was?’
‘Earth and stone, fire and ash, blood and bone.’
‘What does that mean? Why did it make you run?’
‘I don’t know,’ said Ash. ‘I’ve heard it before though. I heard Mark say it yesterday.’
‘What exactly went on that made you come and find me?’
‘Mark …’ He paused, wondering how much to tell her. ‘He left a note for me, telling me to meet him. I didn’t go but he found me out in the mountains and I followed him back to his camp in the woods. All the hound boys were waiting for me there. Mark must have set it up, I suppose. Then he came out dressed as the stag god.’
She shot him a sideways look. ‘Dressed as the what?’
He didn’t answer right away.
‘Tell me,’ she said. ‘I can’t take any more of people not telling me things. My dad was like that before he killed himself. Now Mark. I’ve had enough of it. I know Mark is into some strange stuff so I don’t care if you tell me something weird or bad. I’m ready for that. Just tell me.’
Dark memories played through Ash’s mind. Knife and blood, the severed stag’s head, the stink of rotting meat. He didn’t want to tell her about those things. They were too bleak, too horrifying.
But she had a right to know. So he started to talk and the words tumbled out, jumbled and urgent, a chaotic stream of consciousness. He told her all of it, not just the stuff about Mark but about Dad as well. She didn’t stop him, just crouched by the wall, listening, frowning. He described the weird Stag Chase he’d seen up on the Leap and the shadows that raced along behind him afterwards. He told her about Mark’s threats to kill him if he ran as the stag boy, about the raggedy man in the mountains whom Mark had called Bone Jack, and about the wolf-dog, and about Mark as the stag god, and even about the stag’s head that he’d carved on Ash’s chest. He told her about Dad freaking out and the black feather and the bloody handprint on the window and the sheep skull, Mark trying to push Dad over the edge into madness, trying to scare Ash into pulling out of the Stag Chase.
He told her everything and then he waited.
NINETEEN
Callie was quiet for a long while, staring ahead at nothing. His heart sank.
‘Callie—’
‘Shut up,’ she said. ‘I’
m thinking. It’s a lot to process.’
So he shut up, tilted his head back and watched a gull cut silvery arcs against the pale sky. Nerves fluttered in his stomach.
‘I know where he got some of this stuff from,’ she said at last. ‘Grandpa and Dad used to tell us stories about Bone Jack and the Stag Chase. I used to think they were just folk tales and ghost stories, a bit like fairy tales only rougher and scarier. But I’ve seen things too, out in the mountains. Those hound boys you said you saw in the woods with Mark, were they boys from school?'
‘The ones in the woods yesterday were just local boys, I’m sure of it. The weird hound boys look different, almost solid but not quite, like mirages or something. I saw them that day up on Stag’s Leap, just before I saw you.’
She nodded, solemn. ‘I saw them too.’
‘You told me you didn’t. I knew you were lying.’
‘I was angry with you.’
‘And now you’re not?’
‘A bit. Not so much.’
‘Did you see where they went after they ran past me?’
She shook her head. ‘They vanished, like you said. They just sort of dissolved into nothing. Like mist does when the sun gets hot.’
‘Ghosts.’ Such a little word, a word that sounded almost like a whisper, but saying it out loud and seriously to another person somehow changed everything.
‘Maybe.’
‘I don’t even believe in ghosts,’ said Ash. ‘Not really. I keep thinking there must be a rational explanation for everything, even if I don’t know what it is. Like the bird that flew into me. That could happen, right? A bird could accidentally fly into someone.’
‘I suppose so.’
‘But it happened to my dad when he was the stag boy. A black bird – a crow or a rook or something – flew into him as well. He saw something up on the Leap too. Shadowy figures, he said. And they got into his head somehow, made him want to jump from the Leap. Your dad saved him. Did you know that?’
‘No,’ she said softly. ‘I didn’t know that.’
‘Then there’s the Stag Chase we saw,’ said Ash. ‘And the lightning-fast raggedy man, Bone Jack. No one moves that fast. It’s not possible. I looked him up online and Bone Jack is a mythic figure, from ancient times, so how can he possibly be real and living in the mountains right now? It’s impossible. But I can’t explain all of it away, no matter how hard I try. Things happen that I know can’t happen in the real world but they keep happening right in front of me anyway. And Mark’s in the middle of everything somehow. It always comes back to Mark or the Stag Chase or Bone Jack.’
‘What did Mark say about it all?’
Ash shrugged. ‘Just what I already told you. He’s mad at me. That’s fine. I let him down and he’s still angry. I get that. But then the next minute he’ll be like the old Mark again, like he’s still my best mate. Then he’ll come out with all this crazy stuff, about Bone Jack and the old ways and sacrifices to the land, telling me not to run in the Stag Chase because this year the stag boy is going to be killed. Killed by him. And I think some of the things he’s done, freaking out my dad and then the stag-god stuff in the woods, all that’s just to scare me so I won’t run.’
‘Do you think he means it? About killing the stag boy?’
‘I don’t know. He’s so crazy right now that anything is possible.’
Callie fell silent again.
‘I’m sorry,’ said Ash.
‘Maybe you should do what he says and pull out of the Stag Chase.’
‘I’ve thought about it. But I can’t.’
‘Can’t, or won’t?’
He smiled. ‘Is there a difference?’
‘Yeah, there is.’
‘If I pull out, I’ll have wasted all that training. I’ll be running away from trouble again, like I did when your dad died and I ran out on Mark. If I’d stuck around, he might not have got so crazy. He might have been OK.’
‘This might not be the best time to get a guilt complex.’
‘Maybe it is. Maybe it’s exactly the best time.’
‘I think Mark’s got what your dad’s got,’ said Callie. ‘Post-traumatic stress. Only Mark got it after he found our dad hanging in the barn.’
‘It was Mark who found him?’
‘Yes.’
‘I didn’t know that. He never told me. Why didn’t he tell me?’
‘He couldn’t talk about it. Never has talked about it. I only know because I was there and he came running into the house, yelling that I had to get up, phone for an ambulance. I wanted to go into the barn, see for myself, but he wouldn’t let me. He kept hold of me and he wouldn’t let me go. He protected me.’
‘I didn’t know he’d found him.’
He waited for her to get angry again, to tell him not knowing everything was his own fault for running out on Mark. But instead she just stood up and said, ‘Come on.’
‘Where to?’
‘The library,’ she said. She smiled. ‘Have you ever been to a library?’
He gave her a withering look. ‘Yes. But not for a long time. Why are we going there?’
‘Because maybe we can find out more,’ she said. ‘It’s all ancient, isn’t it? It’s all about history. Bone Jack, the ghost hound boys, the wolf-dog you found … it’s all got something to do with the Stag Chase. I don’t know how it all fits together but there must be some connection. So we need to find out more about the Stag Chase, then maybe we’ll understand what’s going on.’
‘I suppose so,’ said Ash, uneasy.
‘Anyway, it’s worth a try,’ she said.
‘Yeah, I guess.’
He smiled and she frowned back at him. ‘Why are you smiling?’
He shrugged. ‘I don’t know. Because I told you everything, I suppose. Because you believed me, straight away, no questions.’
She sighed. ‘Come on, let’s go.’
They went through the back lanes, in case Brooker and Tunney were still prowling the high street.
‘You and Mark always used to mess around on your bikes,’ said Callie. ‘Bombing downhill and bashing yourselves up mostly. You never used to go running, but now it seems like it’s all you do.’
Ash laughed. ‘Yeah, running pretty much is all I do lately.’
‘It’s important to you, isn’t it? The Stag Chase.’
‘Yeah, it is. My dad was the stag boy once. Now it’s me.’
‘Keeping the tradition going then.’
‘I suppose, but it’s not just that.’ He hesitated, suddenly unsure of himself. ‘When I’m running, it’s like … like the Earth turns under my feet and I’m at the centre of everything, holding everything together. And I have this idea that I can hold Dad together too. I don’t know how. It’s just a feeling. More than a feeling. Like an instinct or something. That if I run in the Stag Chase and I win then Dad will be OK.’ He laughed. ‘Sounds crazy, doesn’t it?’
‘A bit. But maybe it’s not.’ She stopped. ‘We’re here.’
TWENTY
Coldbrook Public Library: a big, square building made of pale stone. Ash gazed up at it as he followed Callie towards the door. Maybe she was right and they’d find what they wanted to know, bits and pieces in dusty, long-forgotten books, obscure local histories, old documents, things that were nowhere to be found on the internet.
Inside, the library was cool, airy and quiet. The librarian, a dark-haired man in his thirties, smiled at them as they passed the checkout desk. There was a woman browsing the gardening section, another flicking through a book with a creepy clown’s face on the cover, an old man reading a newspaper at a table. Ash and Callie wandered past shelves of crime novels, romance, science fiction, horror.
‘Where do we start looking?’ said Ash.
‘The local history section, I suppose,’ said Callie.
‘Where’s that?’
Callie looked around helplessly. ‘I don’t know. I’ll ask.’
She went off, came back with the dark-haired man.
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‘This is the librarian,’ said Callie. ‘He’s going to show us where to start.’
‘This way,’ the librarian said. He led them through a labyrinth of shelving units and partitions into a large sunlit room. ‘Anything in particular that you’re looking for?’
‘A history of the Stag Chase,’ said Callie.
‘We’ve got one or two, I think,’ he said. ‘And quite a few books on local folklore and traditions that will probably have a chapter or two about it.’
‘Thanks,’ said Ash.
The librarian smiled at him. ‘Folklore is a special interest of mine. Are you researching a holiday project for school?’
‘No,’ said Callie. She glanced at Ash. ‘He’s the stag boy this year. We just wanted to know more about it all. The history and traditions of the Stag Chase, that sort of thing.’
Ash reddened.
‘So you’re the stag boy!’ said the librarian. ‘Great! I love the Stag Chase. I go every year to watch. You must have been training hard.’
‘Yeah,’ said Ash. ‘I have.’
‘It’s a bit like running a marathon, I suppose.’
‘Sort of, but it’s not as far and no one is timing you so you can take a break or walk some of it instead of running, if you want to. But the hound boys are chasing you too so you have to be either very fast or very stealthy.’
‘Well, good luck with it. You’ll find a few useful books in the section over by the window. I’ll leave you to it. Come and find me if you need any more help.’
‘We will,’ said Callie. ‘Thanks.’
The section wasn’t very big, just a couple of shelves with books on everything from haunted houses to a history of the Coldbrook Morris Men. They pulled out the books with the most promising titles. Eight books, all slim, dog-eared, old.
Ash eyed them. ‘We don’t have to read them all, do we?’
Callie laughed. ‘No. Just skim through and read any bits that look useful.’
They sat down at a table. Ash picked up a book and started flicking through it. Ghost stories, strange bits of history, witches turned to stone, legends of giants who lived in caves in the mountains and kicked around boulders as if they were footballs.
