Bone Jack (13 page)

He went to the window, looked out.

Below on the lawn stood a silent pack of masked hound boys. Their heads were tilted upwards. From behind their masks, they watched him.

He stepped back. Crouched down, below the level of the windowsill, crept forward again, peered out around the edge of the curtain.

The hound boys were gone. There was just moonlit grass, the black trees beyond it. Nothing to suggest they’d ever been there.

Shivering, he got back into bed. He thought about Callie, out there alone in the night. He thought about Mark, clay-painted, wearing the stag’s head, cloaked in bloodied rook skins. He thought about Dad.

Fear burned through him like a fever. The bedsheets stuck to his sweat-slick skin.

Night crowded in, hot and heavy, pressing down on him. He hardly knew if his eyes were open or closed. The darkness around his bed filled with footsteps, whispers, a rain of leaves falling slowly and silently. Ghosts calling to him and he had to follow, he had to, but he couldn’t move. ‘Come with us,’ they said. ‘Come with us.’ His body was a dead weight, his chest so tight he could barely draw breath. With a huge effort, he sat up.

Nothing under him except empty darkness, and he was falling. He clawed at empty air, his throat filled with screams.

He hit the rocks hard. Felt his flesh bruise and tear, his bones shatter, the hot rain of his own blood. A hiss of air escaped his lips.

He heard Bone Jack’s voice again. ‘Go home,’ it said. ‘Stay home.’

His eyes snapped open.

Daylight. He was lying on his back in his bed, his arms flung out wide, the sheet twisted around his legs.

And leaves in his hair. He sat upright, frantically brushing them away.

A knock at the door, then it opened and Mum came in. ‘Ash?’ she said. ‘Is everything all right?’

He fumbled with the bedsheet, pulling it up to his chin so she wouldn’t see the dressings covering the cuts on his chest.

‘Yeah, everything’s fine,’ he said.

His voice thin and scratchy. His skin still so hot. Bits of dead leaf scattered on the bed, on the floor.

‘You were yelling,’ said Mum. ‘And I thought I heard someone else’s voice in here with you.’

Ash glanced around the room. Just in case. Mum had heard something, someone. But what? And how? He must have cried out in imitation of Bone Jack’s voice, playing Bone Jack’s part in his own nightmare. Or else, somehow, Bone Jack had really been here, in the room and in his dreams at the same time. ‘There’s no one here,’ he said. ‘It must have been the radio alarm.’

‘The radio alarm,’ she said. ‘Right. But I definitely heard you yell out. Did you have a nightmare or something?’

‘Uh, yeah, I suppose I must have.’

‘Want to talk about it?’

He shrugged. ‘I can’t really remember it. I dreamed I was falling.’

‘I get those dreams too sometimes.’ She crossed the room and opened the curtains wide. Sunlight poured in. She didn’t seem to notice the dead leaves on the floor. ‘Lots of people do. It’s something to do with going to sleep too quickly and your mind and your body getting out of sync. It feels like you’re falling, then you jerk awake again.’

‘Sounds right.’

She sat on the edge of his bed and pressed her cool hand to his forehead. ‘You’ve got a bit of a temperature,’ she said.

‘It’s nothing. I’m OK. It’s just hot in here.’

‘You’ve had a lot to deal with lately, what with all your training and Dad coming home and then seeing Mark again.’

‘Yeah,’ said Ash. ‘I suppose so.’

‘You should take it easy now until the race. You need plenty of sleep and good food. Mum’s orders. No more of these punishing training runs. You’re supposed to wind down your training before a big race anyway, so a couple of days of rest won’t hurt.’

He looked at her. Her angular, almost beautiful face. The delicate shadows under her eyes. She looked tired and sad.

‘Mum,’ he said. ‘The other night. Dad went out, really late. I followed him.’

‘He went out?’ Worry creasing her forehead. ‘What night was this?’

‘The night before he took me out fishing and had a meltdown on Tolley Carn.’

‘Why didn’t you tell me this before?’

‘I don’t know. Because you were already so worried, I suppose.’

‘You don’t need to protect me, Ash. In fact, I’d rather you didn’t try. I need to know what’s going on, no matter what it is. Where did he go? What did he do?’

‘He went to Stag’s Leap first, then the Cullen farm. He just stood there, at the gate, staring at the house. Then he saw me. I think he knew I was there all along actually but he didn’t let on. We walked home together. He seemed OK, just a bit down, that’s all.’

Mum gave a small, sad smile. ‘It’s not so strange,’ she said. ‘Not if you think about it. Tom and him, they went back a long way. They were close friends when they were boys. Like you and Mark.’

‘Yeah, that’s what Dad said.’

‘He misses Tom more than he lets on. Did he tell you that Tom once saved his life?’

‘Yes. He said something happened on the Leap when he was the stag boy, and Tom pulled him back from the edge.’

‘It won’t always be like this, you know,’ Mum said. ‘Things will get better, I promise.’

‘Yeah,’ he said, turning away from her. ‘But when, Mum?’

She stood up, went to the door. ‘I still think you’ve got a touch of fever,’ she said. ‘Try to get some more sleep, then rest for today. No more running until the Stag Chase. Promise me?’

‘OK,’ he said. Closing his eyes, already drifting towards sleep again, Mum’s voice mingling with half-formed dreams.

TWENTY-TWO

He heard the door click shut as Mum went out. Heat wrapped around him like a warm, wet blanket. Even with the curtains drawn, with his eyes closed, there was an aching brightness. He tossed and turned and couldn’t get comfortable.

A tinny crackle of music from the radio downstairs. A dog barking in the distance.

A rook flying straight at the window, beak the colour of iron, claws hooked out.

He sat bolt upright.

No rook at the window now. Nothing but pale sky.

He got dressed, carefully rolling his T-shirt down over his bandaged chest. Then he went downstairs to the kitchen. The house was quiet and felt empty, though he knew Dad was almost certainly upstairs, shut in his darkened room as usual.

Sometimes it felt as if his dad was slowly ceasing to exist, his presence fading a little more every day.

Ash glanced at the wall clock. Two o’clock in the afternoon.

By now, Callie had probably found Mark, talked to him. Ash thought about going to Mark’s camp again to look for them, but he knew instinctively that it was a bad idea. Callie had told him to keep away and she’d be furious if he barged in. When she was ready, she’d tell him all about it. He just had to trust her and wait.

He remembered the book they’d looked at in the library, the reference to a standing stone with a stag’s head carved into it, and to somewhere called Corbie Tor. Landscape features he’d never heard of before, never knowingly seen.

He made himself a sandwich and went back up to his bedroom, eating as he searched online for Corbie Tor. It didn’t take long to find it, in an article on an antiquarian maps website. An ‘obsolete archaic place name’, the article said. At least that explained why he’d never heard of it before. He clicked on a link and an image of an old map opened up. It was clumsily drawn, a crude sketch of the mountainous region northwest of Thornditch. But it was accurate enough for him to work out where Corbie Tor was.

He’d been there before, without knowing its name. The rocky outcrop he’d climbed when he’d found the wolf-dog, above the valley where Bone Jack lived.

He could go there again this afternoon, look around, see if he could find the standing stone. It probably wasn’t important, probably didn’t mean anything or have any sort of significance, but it was another piece of the jigsaw puzzle. And there was a chance he’d see Bone Jack again out there too. The thought made him edgy but he didn’t care any more. The Stag Chase was the day after tomorrow and he wanted to find out whatever he could before he ran.

He pulled on his trainers. He’d promised Mum he wouldn’t run today and he was still tired so he took his bike. The bike was faster anyway, a mean-looking hardtail he’d bought two summers ago after saving up for a whole year. He rode on the lanes and the main walking trails, then along the old drovers’ paths. He stopped. This was where he’d found the wolf-dog, he was sure of it. Nothing there now, no sign that the wolf-dog had ever existed. But that didn’t matter. He remembered the spot well enough. That dip in the path. That steep bank. Corbie Tor itself.

And in the valley below, the thorn trees and stony ground where Bone Jack’s bothy was.

He left the bike at the side of the path and climbed up onto the higher ground above it.

Ahead stood a lone figure, silhouetted against the sky.

Callie.

He frowned slightly, wondering what she was doing out here, where Mark was.

She started heading north and he followed. The air so still that every sound he made seemed huge. The crackle of the dry heather underfoot, the rasp of his breath.

Callie reached Corbie Tor and vanished around the other side of it.

Ash followed.

Now he heard voices. Callie’s voice and then Mark’s. Ash stopped and listened. He couldn’t make out their words but he heard a gentleness in Mark’s voice, a kindness that Ash had almost forgotten he was capable of.

He went closer, saw them walk out from the shadow of Corbie Tor and onto the lower path. Mark half naked, clay daubed, his hair sticking up in stiff spikes. He looked like some wild warrior from the ancient past, and Callie, with the mountain breeze tugging at her hair, seemed no less wild than her brother.

There was a closeness about them Ash had never really noticed before. He saw it now, in the way they moved with the same loose, easy strides, and the way word and gesture shifted between them, subtle and somehow secretive.

Suddenly he felt like an intruder. Callie had told him to stay away, to let her talk to Mark alone. He should go.

He turned to leave, started walking back towards where he’d left the bike. Then he stopped, annoyed with himself. He was part of this madness too, caught up in everything just like they were. He had every right to be there with them. There were things he needed to know, questions he just couldn’t let go.

So he called out to them and Mark glanced back and the spell broke.

They waited for him to catch up, watched him blunder towards them through the bracken.

Callie glared at him. ‘I told you not to come.’

‘I wasn’t looking for you or Mark,’ said Ash. ‘I thought you’d be at his camp in the woods, not out here.’

‘So why did you come here?’

‘I was looking for the places we read about in that book. I was curious. It’s not important though. If you want me to go away, I’ll go.’

She scowled at him. ‘You might as well stay, now you’re here.’

They walked on in silence, following Mark.

The sun bright in Ash’s eyes. The salt taste of sweat on his cracked lips. Midges danced about him. He swatted them away and tried to catch Callie’s attention again but she avoided looking at him. He understood. She was here for Mark, not for him.

They stopped.

Gorse, bracken, heather. A high thread of skylark song.

‘What now?’ said Ash.

Mark pointed towards a spike of rock Ash had never seen before, jutting from a bed of heather. It was maybe three metres tall, solitary, bleak. The standing stone mentioned in the book he and Callie had looked at in the library. It had to be.

‘Is that what you came to find?’ said Mark.

Ash nodded. ‘The standing stone, yeah.’

They went up to it.

At first all Ash could see was pitted, weather-worn stone, scabbed with lichen. Then he ran his fingertips over the sun-warmed surface and from the rough contours a shape started to emerge.

Antlers. A stag’s head. And not just a head. He could make out a torso and limbs as well. A figure that was half man, half stag. It felt wild and powerful.

Mark laughed. ‘Do you know what it is?’

‘Of course I know what it is,’ said Ash. ‘It’s a stag boy.’

‘Well done. Why do you think it’s here, on this stone?’

‘I don’t know. It’s ancient. Some sort of marker, maybe a religious thing. Something to do with the Stag Chase. I don’t know.’

‘It’s where they used to sacrifice the stag boys, in the early days. They’d drag them here, cut their throats and their blood would run down the stone into the earth. Later on, when the holy men came and preached against human sacrifice, they stopped bringing the stag boys here. They chased them off the Leap instead, or threw them off. Far from the priests’ prying eyes. That’s where the Leap gets its name from. Stag’s Leap, the stag boy’s leap.’

‘How do you know all that?’

‘I just know,’ said Mark.

Ash looked at Callie. She didn’t look angry any more, just tired, defeated somehow, her face drawn and her eyes bright with tears.

‘The old days are gone,’ said Ash. ‘No one is sacrificed these days. It’s just a race now.’

‘Most of the time it’s just a race,’ said Mark. ‘Not this year though. You know. You’ve seen things. You know.’

‘I don’t know what I’ve seen, not really. All I know is that a few things have happened that I can’t explain and there are a lot of old legends and ghost stories about dark stuff from the past.’

‘Dark stuff from the past,’ said Mark. ‘That’s right. That’s why you’ve got to pull out of the Stag Chase. I’m serious, Ash. Pretend you’ve torn a muscle or something. They can find another stag boy. There’s still time.’

‘This again.’ Ash blinked the sunlight from his eyes. ‘What do you want, Mark? Why are you doing all this?’

‘I told you. I want my dad back. I want everything to go back to the way it was.’

‘What about Callie? What about what she wants?’

‘I know what’s best for my own sister.’

Callie lifted her head. Her face was pale, her grey eyes dark and fierce. She glared at Mark. ‘This isn’t best for me,’ she said. ‘All this – it’s crazy. No one’s going to be killed. Nothing’s going to bring Dad back. He’s gone. This is it, this is all we’ve got. The three of us, and Grandpa. And Grandpa’s ill. We should be with him, we should be helping him. Not standing around out here in the middle of nowhere, talking about killing stag boys.’