The Beast

by Barry Hutchison

  ‘Barney!’ We could still hear the driver shouting. ‘Barney, where are you?’

  A shape, impossible to make out clearly, moved through the gloom up ahead of us. Ameena ducked low and we froze, waiting for whoever it was to pass.

  ‘Come on,’ she urged when the coast was clear. We continued through the maze of parked coaches, keeping low. When we finally reached the last bus, Ameena poked her head out and looked around. The fence we usually entered and left the depot through was only fifteen metres ahead, but to get to it we had to cross an empty stretch of car park. If anyone was nearby, they couldn’t fail to spot us.

  ‘It’s safe,’ Ameena whispered. ‘Let’s go.’

  We scurried, doubled over, towards the fence, eyes searching the darkness for any sign of movement. The driver was no longer calling for help. I guessed that meant Barney – whoever he was – had turned up.

  Without the shouting, and with no traffic on the road beyond the fence, there was only the soft sound of our feet on the tarmac to disturb the eerie silence.

  But no. That wasn’t quite true. There was another sound too. A rapid clicking, far away, but getting closer. Ameena heard it at the same time I did. She straightened up, mid-run, and looked behind us. Even in the dark, I saw her face go pale.

  I glanced back in the direction of the clicking. Dave the driver stood over by one of the coaches, watching us. He was talking into a mobile phone, probably calling the police, but that, right now, wasn’t the problem.

  The problem was about halfway between him and us. The problem was a large brown-and-black dog. And the problem was racing across the depot, its paws clicking against the road with every bound.

  ‘Get ’em, Barney!’ Dave cried, taking the phone away from his ear for just a moment.

  Ameena and I doubled our speed as Barney the Rottweiler opened his jaws and let rip with a frenzy of angry barking.

  ‘Hurry!’ Ameena cried, before realising I was already in the process of overtaking her. We hit the fence mid-sprint, slamming into the chain-link metal and making the whole thing shake. Down at our feet, the hole was only big enough to take one of us at a time. Behind us, Barney’s barking rose to fever pitch.

  Ameena glanced upwards at the fence, which stood about three metres high. She flexed her fingers, reached up as high as she could, and began to climb.

  ‘Go under, I’ll go over,’ she said. ‘Move!’

  The clicking and the barking were almost on me as I dropped to my knees and pushed at the broken chain-link. It folded outwards, then snagged on the grass verge on the other side.

  ‘Get him, Barn!’

  ‘Move!’ Ameena cried. ‘Move, move, move!’

  I shoved harder and the bottom of the fence pinged free. The ground froze my belly as I dropped down and wriggled my way through. I barely noticed it, or the scratching of the metal fence down the whole length of my back.

  The teeth, though, I did notice. They were hard to miss. They bit into my jeans, just above my ankle. I felt the dog’s hot breath against my skin, heard it growl deep down at the back of its throat.

  ‘Good boy, Barney!’ the driver called over. ‘Good boy. Keep a hold of him, now.’

  Ameena dropped on to the grass just a few centimetres from my head. I tried to kick the dog away, but my legs were pinned between the fence and the ground. I felt Ameena’s hands around my own as, just a few streets away, a siren began to scream.

  ‘Cops,’ Ameena groaned. She pulled hard on my arms, almost popping them from their sockets. ‘Come on!’

  ‘I’m trying!’ I told her. I twisted and the dog lost his grip. Ameena managed to drag me forwards a few more centimetres before those jaws were at my leg again. I hissed in pain as the teeth scraped against my ankle bone. An all-too-familiar tingle buzzed through my head.

  ‘N-no!’ I gasped, but I was too late to stop it. Fuelled by my fear, my abilities took control. I heard Barney yelp as an invisible wind sent him bouncing backwards across the tarmac.

  Ameena pulled harder, dragging me through the fence and up on to the strip of grass that ran alongside the pavement.

  ‘Don’t want to use your powers, eh?’ she asked, breathing heavily.

  ‘Didn’t do it on purpose,’ I wheezed, checking the back of my leg for damage but finding no real harm done.

  ‘You so could have made us that cake,’ she muttered. She looked along the street, to where we could hear the police car drawing ever closer. ‘You know,’ she said, zipping up her jacket and marching quickly away from the approaching siren, ‘maybe heading for your place isn’t such a bad idea after all.’

  I’d expected the journey home to be a long, difficult one with lots of walking and hitch-hiking involved. It turned out I was wrong.

  Ameena had produced some more money she’d just “found” lying around, and we’d taken the bus most of the way. It was the same bus company whose depot we’d only just escaped from that morning. Fortunately, it wasn’t the same driver. This one barely gave us a second glance when we got on at the station, even though we must’ve looked a right state.

  We dozed most of the way, the shuddering and shaking of the seats beneath us rocking our exhausted bodies to sleep within minutes of the engine starting.

  It was the driver who woke us up, nudging us to let us know we’d reached our stop. I sat upright and looked out of the window, blinking away the sleep and trying to figure out where we were. It didn’t look familiar, and I was about to let the driver know this wasn’t our stop when I remembered we’d decided to get off at the next town over, rather than at my village itself. If the police were still looking for us – and they would be – stepping off the bus right outside my house probably wouldn’t be a very wise move.

  And so, we’d hopped off the coach and taken the long way round to my village, walking through woodland and long grass, keeping as far away from the road as possible. It was slow going, and – thanks to my frequent need to rest – took us almost as long as the bus journey.

  Which is why it was getting dark again by the time we reached our destination. Not home. Not quite. Not yet. We made instead for the old abandoned house just across from mine. The house where my childhood imaginary friend, Mr Mumbles, had almost killed me. Twice.

  The Keller House.

  It was the same height as all the other houses on the street, but it seemed impossibly tall, like a tower or castle stretching up into the cloudy night sky. I stood on the pavement, looking in. There was the garden Mumbles had chased me across. There was the pool house, where I’d almost drowned. And up there, the roof, where both Ameena and I had almost died of cold.

  ‘You OK?’ Ameena’s voice came at me from nowhere, snapping me back to the present.

  ‘Fine,’ I said, trying to smile but forgetting how. I clambered over the fence. We were round the back of the house, well out of sight, but I still felt too exposed. ‘Come on, someone will see us here.’

  The grass crunched beneath our feet, brittle with frost. The last time I’d been in this garden it had been slick with mud. I’d struggled to keep my footing as I ran from Mr Mumbles. Even now, I had an overwhelming urge to look behind me. I half-expected to see him there, striding slowly across the lawn, his eyes glaring hatred at me.

  He wasn’t there, of course. He was in the Darkest Corners, the hell-like alternate dimension where all imaginary friends go after they’re cast aside. And besides, he wasn’t after me any more. He’d saved my life when I’d been trapped in the Darkest Corners. He’d promised to look after I.C., the little kid I’d met over there. He’d changed. In some weird way, I suppose we were... no, not friends. Allies, maybe. Or no longer enemies, at least.

  But none of that made the Keller House seem less frightening. I’d been terrified of it long before Mr Mumbles had come back, and I was still terrified of it now. But it was empty and it had a roof and it was close to home. Much as I hated to admit it, it was the perfect place to hide while we kept an eye on my house.

  The front do
or was boarded shut, and had been for as long as I could remember. But the nails were rusty and the wood was weak and it only took two or three sharp tugs from Ameena to create us an opening.

  ‘Ladies first,’ she said, gesturing for me to go inside.

  ‘No, after you,’ I replied, and I really hoped she wouldn’t argue.

  ‘Chicken,’ she smirked. I took hold of the wooden board and pulled it back as she squeezed inside. ‘Whoa, it stinks,’ she coughed. ‘Looks OK, though. Come on through.’

  Ameena braced her hands against the wood from the inside. I released my grip, screwed my courage up to a ball in the centre of my stomach, and inched my way into the house.

  The smell raced to meet me as I crawled inside. It was the smell of the attic in my house – damp and stale – but ten times worse. I zipped the top of my jacket over my mouth and nose and straightened up. My hands felt sticky or wet – I couldn’t really tell which – from crawling on the carpet. I wiped them on my thighs, suddenly revolted at the thought of what I might have been touching.

  Because I couldn’t see what was on the carpet. Nor, for that matter, could I see the carpet itself. Outside had been dark, but in the house, with the board back in place, the total absence of light left us blind.

  I tried to speak, but my throat had gone dry. It was no surprise, really. For years I’d lived in fear of the Keller House, and now here I was, standing inside it in complete blackness. What made it worse was that when I was young I wasn’t all that sure if monsters were real. Now I knew they were. And most of them wanted me dead.

  Something brushed against my back and I screamed – a high, shrill scream, with all the manliness of a three-year-old girl.

  ‘Easy kiddo,’ Ameena snorted. ‘Just me.’

  ‘Don’t do that!’ I gasped. ‘I could’ve... really hurt you.’

  ‘Yeah, in your dreams, maybe,’ she said. ‘Now follow me, I think I can see light.’

  ‘How am I supposed to follow you? I can’t see a thing.’

  I felt her grab and fumble at my sleeve, then her hand slipped into mine. Her palm felt warm against my cold skin as our fingers interlocked. ‘That better?’ she asked.

  I nodded, unable to speak again, but for different reasons. She couldn’t have seen my nod, but she took my silence as a “yes”.

  ‘Right, this way,’ she said, and I found myself dragged, unresisting, further into the room.

  At first, I still couldn’t see anything, but as she led me across the floor, I began to make out little dents in the darkness. The outline of an armchair. The edge of a low-hanging ceiling light. A corner of a picture on the wall. It was enough to give the impression that Mr Keller, the house’s former owner, had just gone out one morning and never returned. In fact, that’s exactly what he had done, but I’d assumed the house would have been cleared out at some point since then. I’d assumed wrong.

  Ameena stopped. Her warmth left my hand as she released her grip. Just ahead of us, a door creaked slowly open at her push, letting a dim orange glow seep through. A narrow staircase stood before us. The carpet that covered the stairs was tatty and threadbare. Floral-patterned wallpaper peeled in long sheets from the walls on either side.

  The upstairs landing was bathed in the same orange light as the stairs. It was faint and watery, only barely lifting the blanket of shadow, but it was better than the darkness we’d just left.

  ‘Someone left a lamp on, you think?’ Ameena asked. She chewed on the knuckle of one of the fingers on her left hand. I couldn’t remember ever seeing her so nervous.

  ‘You should know,’ I said. ‘Was there a light on when you stayed here?’

  She looked at me blankly for a moment, her eyebrows dipping into the beginning of a frown. It passed as quickly as it had come, and she gave a casual shrug. ‘Didn’t notice,’ she said. ‘But then I didn’t exactly hang around long.’

  That surprised me. As far as I’d known, Ameena had been sleeping rough in the Keller House for almost two weeks after our encounter with Mr Mumbles. I wanted to ask her where she’d gone instead, but there was no time for questions.

  With a final glance back at me, Ameena took hold of the old wooden banister, and crept cautiously up the stairs.

  ust swirled up from the carpet with every step we took. It danced in the air like a swarm of tiny agitated insects. I was sticking as close to Ameena as I could. For maybe the first time ever, she was taking her time, testing each step before putting her full weight on it, in case it should crumble beneath her.

  Upstairs the same threadbare carpet covered the floor and the same peeling wallpaper drooped from the walls. A bare bulb hung from the ceiling, thick with dust and cobwebs. The bulb wasn’t the source of the light, though. That seeped in through a door at the far end of the landing. It was one of four doors, and the only one standing open. Unfortunately, it wasn’t open far enough for us to see inside the room.

  The smell of damp was worse up here. It reached down my throat, making me gag. Ameena seemed unaffected as she crossed the landing, making for the half-open door.

  She stopped when she reached it, moved to push it the rest of the way open, then hesitated. For a long time, she didn’t look as if she was going to make any further movement.

  ‘Want me to go first?’ I asked, adding please say no, please say no, please say no in my head.

  ‘No.’

  ‘Thank God!’

  She shot me a scowl.

  ‘Sorry,’ I mumbled. ‘Didn’t mean to say that out loud.’

  With a shake of her head, Ameena put her palm against the door and gave it a nudge. It swung open a little, then caught on the carpet, forcing her to step closer and give it another shove. It opened with a low, ominous creak.

  The glow of a streetlight shone in through the bedroom window, and I remembered that none of the upstairs windows had ever been boarded up. I’d lain awake in bed countless times when I was younger, convinced I’d seen shadows moving within the bedrooms of the Keller House while I was closing my own curtains.

  And now, here I was, my own shadow moving across the mould-stained wallpaper, and through the window, across the garden – my house. My bedroom. My curtains. I stared into my darkened room, wishing I could transport myself back to one of those nights, lying in bed, Mum assuring me the Keller House was empty.

  I hoped she was right.

  ‘Hey, check it out!’ Ameena’s voice broke the spell and I turned from the window. She was sitting propped up on a single bed, her muddy boots leaving marks on the yellowing covers, her back resting against the padded headboard. ‘Bagsy the bed.’

  ‘You can have it,’ I said, queasy at the thought. ‘There could be anything crawling about in there. I’ll sleep on the floor.’

  ‘Oh, like that’s better?’

  I looked down and winced. The carpet was a mess of mould and mouse droppings. Mushrooms sprouted from the soggier patches, all of them different shapes and sizes, all of them probably deadly.

  A fat black insect with a shiny back scuttled past my foot. I watched it scurry across the carpet, through a clump of the mushrooms, and into a dark hole in the skirting board.

  ‘We should check out the other rooms,’ I said, fighting the urge to scratch my skin until it bled. ‘They might be less...’

  ‘Revolting?’

  I nodded. ‘Hopefully.’

  ‘Right then,’ Ameena said, swinging her legs off the bed and taking a kick at the closest mushroom crop. ‘Lead the way, kiddo.’

  Of the three remaining upstairs rooms, one was another equally filthy bedroom, one was a small box room with nothing in it, and the last was a bathroom so horrific we both agreed never to speak of it again.

  The box room was where we settled in the end. It was completely bare – exposed wooden floorboard, unpainted plasterboard walls – and, as a result, hadn’t decayed as badly as the other rooms. It also looked straight on to the side of my house, meaning we could see if anyone came or went through the front door or the
back. The perfect place for a stakeout.

  I stood at the window, looking across the gardens to my house. In the past twenty minutes I’d seen just one car pass along the street. I’d ducked as soon as I spotted the headlights, but the car didn’t slow down as it continued along the road and turned the corner at the far end.

  ‘Anything?’ Ameena asked from right behind me. I hadn’t even heard her approach.

  I shook my head. ‘No. Looks deserted.’

  ‘We expected that,’ she said, as tactfully as she could. ‘I’m sure she’s fine. Your mum. There’d have been something in the papers if she’d... if her condition had changed.’

  ‘I know,’ I replied, still not taking my eyes off the house. ‘I want to go over.’

  Without looking, I could guess at Ameena’s expression. ‘That’d just be stupid,’ she said. ‘You’d get caught.’

  ‘Who by?’ I asked, gesturing across to the house. To my home. ‘There’s no one there.’

  ‘They’re bound to be watching, though. Think about it.’

  ‘I won’t be long,’ I told her. ‘I just want to see it. Maybe get some clean clothes.’

  I stepped back from the window, still not looking at her. She caught me by the shoulder. I stopped, but didn’t turn. ‘Don’t do it,’ she said. ‘You can’t help anyone if you’re locked up.’

  ‘I’m not helping anyone now,’ I said, shrugging myself free. ‘I won’t be long. There’s no one coming.’

  Halfway to the door, I stopped, as a blue light lit up the room. It faded quickly, then brightened again. The pattern repeated, over and over, and I knew what was happening even before Ameena spoke.

  ‘Cops,’ she said, matter-of-factly.

  I crossed to the window. ‘Here?’

  ‘At yours.’

  Ameena stood to one side of the window frame, leaning out just a little to watch what was happening below. I took the opposite side and peeped out.

  A single police car stood outside my front garden, its blue light flashing, its headlamps blazing.

  ‘No one coming, eh?’ Ameena said. I didn’t meet her gaze.