‘Yes,’ Wee Renee said. ‘Sue and Tony.’ Sue squawked.
‘Why us, again,’ Tony commented.
’Shall we call it a night?’ Ernie said. ‘And I want no-one out there on his or her own. Everyone goes out, and everyone gets a lift back, it’s pretty close. The cars can go up the path in procession too. And I know a lot of you don’t live far, so make sure you get into the house quickly,’ Ernie said.
‘Should we say 7 o’clock tomorrow for those that want to attend. I’ll bring some stuff up to show you too. I could do with as many of you as I can. I need your brainpower,’ Wee Renee said.
Suzanne and Tommy were trying to watch the television. Even though it was something that they liked to watch, their minds kept drifting to what fun they had had tonight.
They couldn’t believe the number of places that the beast had been. The only good thing was that it hadn’t been into their house. Tommy was trying to fathom it out. He was glad they had Wee Renee on the case. Maybe she could work it out, but he couldn’t yet.
There seemed to be no rhyme and reason to it unless it was all something to do with Bob over the road. Luckily for Bob, not all the evidence was connected to him. Wee Renee already knew the canal wasn’t and would question him about the Coffee Shop and the red car. If he had no connection to them either, then perhaps the canal was the fluke, just a monster’s midnight stroll.
It was certainly a complicated mystery to solve. Tommy felt like something was staring him in the face. If he could just grasp it, everything would just fit together like a jigsaw.
There seemed to be a lot of noise on the TV, and it was distracting his thinking. He picked up the remote and turned it down a couple of notches. Suzanne wasn’t bothered, she was miles away thinking the same thoughts as Tommy. When he turned the sound down. It didn’t get any quieter. It was outside.
The Band were putting their instruments away quickly in a concerned silence. Everyone gathered in the hallway until they were all ready to go, not one person went outside. A few of them weren’t aware that the beast had recently been right outside the door of The Grange. Only Alan had seen it, and he had been lucky to have Tilly with him, and the car close to the door. If a single person went out alone, they stood the chance of getting grabbed.
Gary opened the door, the whole of Friarmere Band surged outside. All the cars that were outside got filled with people, and Ernie locked the front door, getting in with Gary.
One by one the cars moved off, each occupant looking left and right on the dirt path. They eyes were everywhere, the fields, the bushes, around any corner. Ann, who hadn’t seen it previously, and thought it might be like a chimpanzee, was even looking above her in the trees.
Alan glanced back at where it had been the other night in his rear-view mirror, but it was just black bricks now.
Most people lived not that far away. Jackie had taken Wee Renee in her car, along with her sister and Hazel was with them too. She lived very near Pat. They were right behind Sue and Tony’s car, who had Bob and Adam in the back.
They both pulled onto Wellmeadow Lane and started to travel down the road. As soon as they turned the corner, they could see Suzanne and Tommy standing in the middle of the road looking at the house opposite them. Sue and Tony’s house.
20. Fun at Sue’s House
All the people in the two cars that had just pulled onto Wellmeadow Lane wondered what the hell was going on. Tony pulled up before his house, and Jackie pulled up opposite Tony, which was a couple of houses past Wee Renee’s. Tommy and Suzanne were just about to move up Tony’s drive when they noticed who had just arrived and waited for them.
They all quickly got out of their cars and joined Tommy and Suzanne.
’I was just on my way over there when your car came,’ Tommy said. ‘We just heard smashing glass and have come out to see where it’s coming from.’ Tommy looked towards Tony’s house, scanning the windows with his eyes. ‘I think they’ve broken in. Someone’s broken in the back of your house.’
Sue looked down at Suzanne and Tommy’s feet, then up. They both had their slippers on and wore worried expressions.
Tony, Bob, Adam, Pat and Wee Renee walked round to the back of the house. Willow and Bramble were on the wall looking at them all with large scared eyes. On the top of the kitchen extension, adding to the noise was Basil. Who seemed to very loudly, be yelling his disgust at the house. It was an unholy sound. Bob put his hands over his ears.
’I have never heard him make that noise before,’ Bob said.
’That cat is caterwauling,’ Pat said. The loud wailing from Basil would occasionally stop so that he could hiss. His back arched, his fur was on end. His face looked angry and malicious
He stood on the kitchen extension above the window that was broken, staring down, waiting for the intruder to reappear. A massive hole was now in the glass of the window. Tony definitely thought it was burglars. Wee Renee had a feeling in the bottom of her stomach that it was something else.
Tony went to get in the back but then realised that he didn’t have his back-door key. The key was still in the lock, and they had locked the door from the inside.
‘I’ll have to go around to the front,’ Tony said plainly.
Everybody would have to go all the way around to the front to get in. They hurried to the front door and could still hear crashing and banging upstairs. It seemed to be coming from the back bedroom that Bob and Adam shared. Tony fumbled around trying to get the key out of his pocket, and soon they were inside. They flung the door open, not particularly stealthily.
The whole lot of them including Sue, Hazel and Jackie, who had previously waited at the front, started to thunder up the stairs. Whoever had gone up to burgle them had knocked all the pictures askew up the stairs. The only light they had came from the landing window. The curtains seemed to have been pulled with some force and were coming off the tracks. Suddenly there was the sound of an almighty crash and glass tinkling.
’They’ve smashed out of our window,’ Adam shouted. He knew what that sound was like.
The gang burst into Bob and Adam’s room. Everything was everywhere. What was most apparent was the massive hole in the window.
‘This is upstairs, they must be dead!’ Jackie shouted, running across the room to look out of the window. She expected to see a couple of burly man lying face down, blood and brains cascading out of them below. Two smashed coconut heads, but she didn’t.
As the others joined her, they all saw a silhouette rise close to the window, from where it had been crouching. The all saw the creature jumping off the kitchen extension, with Basil firmly attached to its back, making the most awful noise. Basil was wailing, the monster was making a deep, resonant groaning cry. It seemed to come from the depths of the massive beast, like rumbling thunder.
The rescue group were stunned to silence as they watched the creature run to the back of the property’s garden, push to the side of the fence and escape through into the other gardens at the back. It knew how to get out of this place.
’Basil!’ Sue shouted, wringing her hands immediately. Tears flowed down Sue’s face.
Wee Renee turned around and surveyed the boys’ room. There was stuff everywhere, but not large stuff. The two beds were untouched, but it had gone through the contents of the boy’s bedside tables. Everything had been thrown off the shelves and bookshelf, and Bob's drawers had been upended and gone through, which meant that there were broken set-squares, rubber bands, football cards, half packets of chewing gum and tons and tons of all detritus like that, all over the carpet.
’It hasn’t found what it was looking for, and it was looking for something tiny, not the skin, that’s for sure,’ Wee Renee said.
Sue still watched the back fence, her fists pressed to her mouth. She saw a movement in the trees and ecstatically saw Basil’s two little white paws and ginger head come through the Leylandii. He proudly walked through the garden towards the back of the house.
’Oh Basil,�
� Sue said and ran down to greet her hero.
’Have you got anywhere else where there is small stuff. Have you got like a special tin, where you hide small stuff? It looks like it is after something inside, something else if that makes any sense,’ Wee Renee asked. Bob thought for a moment.
‘No, I can’t think of anywhere else that I hide anything or where I keep small stuff, only the shelves, my drawers and my bedside table,’ Bob answered, his brain trying to find a new place frantically. He opened his wardrobe, but there were just folded clothes in that.
’What about you Adam?’ Wee Renee asked.
’No, I haven’t got any small bits and bobs here or anywhere else,’ Adam replied.
’It was after something small. The other day the Wee Faerie said you were the key to it finding something else,’ Wee Renee said.
’What?’ Tony said. ‘Why haven’t you told us, Wee Renee?’
’This is all fresh information, Tony. I’m sorry I was going to tell you everything tomorrow night at the meeting. I didn’t think this would happen on the same day,’ Wee Renee said honestly.
’Sue will go bloody mad,’ Tony said.
’Wait a minute,’ Pat said. ‘If the message has been said that Bob is the key, maybe it means he has the key.’
’The key?’ Wee Renee said. ‘How can it be that he has the key to the skin?’
’Do they have to swap Bob’s skin for the animal’s skin?’ Tony asked. ‘I don’t understand. Do you mean they’re going to try skinning him?’
’No wait, Tony, you don’t get what I’m saying,’ Pat said. ‘If the Faerie said that he was the key, maybe it meant he has the key. He does have a key, doesn’t he?’
Everyone turned to Bob. All the people that had been in Moorston, in the haunted house, knew that Bob had got a key. A key, that was found in an amputated hand under the haunted house, covered in maggots. No-one wanted to take the key out of the severed hand, but Bob did. So, he was the one that got to keep it.
’Where is the key?’ Wee Renee asked.
Bob had a shocked expression on his face, then lifted up a piece of string that was around his neck. There was the key attached to the end of it.
’No wonder it couldn’t find what it was looking for,’ Wee Renee said.
’You lot have an awful lot to tell me,’ Hazel said, shaking her head.
’Has this key always been with you?’ Wee Renee asked.
’No,’ Bob said, quite shocked. ‘Sometimes I wear it, sometimes I don’t. When I don’t, it’s just on my bedside table.’
’Do you wear it at School?’ Wee Renee said.
’Yes and no. No, because of PE days. Yes, otherwise. I had PE that day. I didn’t have it on,’ Bob said.
’So, it might not have been after the key when it was watching you at School?’ Wee Renee asked.
’Right I think we know a lot more than we did. We should be able to piece this together if we use all our brains,’ Ernie said. Tony took the key out of Bob’s hand.
‘Could someone else look after this tonight please?’ We haven’t exactly got a secure house,’ Tony said.
’I knew I should have had this key from the very beginning,’ Pat said. She took it off Tony, sniffed it, put it around her neck on the string like Bob had, and dropped it down her cleavage. ‘As safe as houses that is.’
Jackie thought that her sister had put them both in danger and hoped that the monster wouldn’t find out where it was until this mystery was solved.
The beast sadly and angrily walked back to its lair on the Moors. It had smelled the key in that place so many times, and the one time that it tried to get in when no humans were about, it couldn’t find it.
It didn’t know where it was, if it could have had more time, maybe it could have found it. Perhaps, it wasn’t there, and the small one had taken it out for safekeeping. It knew the small one did that sometimes.
In the end, it had to cut short its thorough search. By the sound of all the noise coming towards it, there would be a lot of people ready to attack it or kill it. There were a few pieces of glass stuck inside its body, but that would not really harm the beast. It was far too strong.
Worse was that thing that stuck to its head. It hated those things. Nasty little things. Noisy and sharp. Eye scratching and often hidden. It wondered why humans liked them. All up the back of its head now was sore. The beast was large and powerful, but it wasn’t as agile as it could be so it couldn’t reach to get Basil off its back.
It looked down, blood dripped from several places. It pulled out all of the glass shards and dropped them onto the floor. There were eight. Maybe it should rest tonight. No more wandering around trying to find the match. It did not have the energy to do what it must, it still didn’t have the other items, and without rest, it wondered whether it would have the strength to fight its own battles. It howled a mournful bellow into the night.
Matt’s nightmare was worse tonight. In it, he felt more real, but also more feral … subhuman. His mind seemed to be not his own. Matt ran across the Moors, another beast at the side of him. He knew this beast was the same as him, but he didn’t turn to look at it, he wished he could have. These dreams seemed to be a journey he had no control of. A passenger inside another’s body. It was comforting to know he wasn’t the only one of his kind.
He lifted his nostrils up, in the air rushed, cooling him very nicely during the heat of the run. Strangely, it didn’t feel like his nose anymore, and it didn’t feel like his feet. He felt far heavier and taller. The blood taste was omnipresent as before.
He and his friend stopped when they saw the deer. He had been following something using a primordial instinct. He didn’t know what he had been tracking but trusted that it would take him to what he needed.
The other beast moved away. He knew that when it was in position the other side of the deer, he was to run at it, which would send it into their arms. Matt seemed to know instinctively when it was in position. What his friend looked like, he still didn’t know as the deer, fog and darkness obscured his view.
He ran at the deer. Terrified, the deer bolted the right way and was trapped. Too caught up in the moment of the kill, so very excited, he fed instantly on the warm spouting sweet flesh. Still not noticing what had helped him catch the meat.
When he woke up at 3 am he was immediately sick on the other side of the bed. He knew that this was now an emergency. He would have to call the Doctors tomorrow and probably wait two weeks for an appointment, but this couldn’t carry on. This was affecting not just his sleep, it was beginning to change him physically. This was not normal. In the dream, neither was he.
What was he becoming mentally? A murderer? A cannibal? What did those alarm bells mean? What illness was this a sign of? His brain was trying to tell him something, he was sure.
That night Tony slept on Adams bed with his old Enfield revolver held to his chest. He had both of the boy quilts on him so wasn’t too cold, as most of the window was missing.
The two boys slept on Sue and Tony’s double bed. Sue slept on the sofa downstairs. Gary had had one piece of board that was big enough to cover the kitchen window until he could get someone to see to it properly so that was pretty safe. Besides that, Sue had piled a load of noisy stuff behind the board so that if the monster tried to get in again, it would fall over and therefore be an early alarm system.
They all felt that it wouldn’t be back tonight and happily, it wasn’t.
21. Map it Out
On Tuesday morning it was Wee Renee’s job to make sure that all of the faithful turned up tonight. She wondered whether she should involve Tommy and Suzanne, but she felt that they had had enough of this saga. Monster mystery busting wasn’t really their cup of tea.
Besides that, they were working when no-one else was - using Bella to find hidden places. Their involvement had been invaluable. Much more than anyone else had since all this trauma had begun. Who knew how many times she would have to call on them again? Unless absolute
ly necessary she thought that they should have a night off. If there was anything particularly relevant to them, she would tell them tomorrow.
She called Beryl to ask her if she would like to attend the meeting, and Beryl said yes. Wee Renee told her there was lots of information to impart. The beast had been sniffing around quite a few places on Friarmere High Street, which was where she lived after all, so it was in her interests to come anyway.
Wee Renee called Joe at the shop. He was excited and ready to get into this adventure and would also be in attendance.
When Our Doris answered the telephone, she said she wanted to make an afternoon and evening of it. She said that she had been quite bored recently. They both decided that she would drive over to Wee Renee early.
Our Doris knew of another Coffee Shop in Friarmere, where they let in dogs, and she said she would take Wee Renee out for her tea. As Wee Renee had to make a lot of preparations for tonight, probably eating wouldn’t have been a priority. Now that was taken care of. Haggis would have to come to the meeting, Our Doris advised her, as she didn’t like to leave him on his own for long. Mainly this was due to him doing dirty protests when she was any longer than a couple of hours, she admitted.
Wee Renee happily accepted all of this and looked forward to 3 o’clock when Our Doris said she would arrive.
Wee Renee had decided to ask Maurice for a favour. She called him up on the telephone and asked him honestly how often he saw his old friend Mark. She had to stress the word honestly. She thought that Maurice might not have admitted as to how many times he was still socialising with a hidden vampire.
Out of everyone, Wee Renee thought that she was one of the few people that Maurice would be honest with. The others being Ernie, Adam and Carl. She was granted this special trust, as effectively she had been the one to guarantee that Mark would not be staked.
’Listen, Maurice, I’m trying to gather in every bit of evidence from anywhere I can. Do you think that you could contact Mark and ask him if there have been any strange happenings or appearances on the blood farm? Let’s face it that place is as close to the Moors as The Grange. I can’t see that he won’t have noticed anything,’ Wee Renee said.
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