Bone Jack (18 page)

Ash peered into the driving rain. Movement in its depths, blurry shadows advancing. A dozen or more of them, their movements erratic and unnatural. They leaped and twisted, flitted this way and that with a speed and lightness that no flesh-and-blood boy possessed.

The hairs on the back of his neck prickled. ‘What do they want?’

‘They want the stag boy. You. They want blood and death.’

‘Why though? Why me? What for?’

Mark smiled at him, cold and strange. ‘It’s nothing personal. They’re hounds and you’re the stag boy. They hunt and kill. It’s just what they do. It’s all they know.’

‘So what are they? The ghosts of medieval psychopaths or something?’

Mark shook his head. ‘Like I told you before, in the old days if the hounds caught the stag boy, they’d kill him. A blood offering to the land. Centuries of blood and death and terror, the old ways written into the land, like memories. People tried to forget them, but they won’t be forgotten.’

‘How do you know all this?’

‘Because a few folk refused to forget. They passed it on, father to son, mother to daughter, down the generations. My grandpa told it to my dad and my dad told it to me. That’s how I know. The past doesn’t go away, Ash Tyler, no matter how much people want it to. It’s still all around us. It has an afterlife of its own.’

Ash shivered, still watching the dim shapes of the wraith hound boys moving through the rain.

Mark came closer. Head down, skip, skip, from foot to foot. ‘Out here, if you take something then you have to give something back,’ he said. ‘It’s the way of things. Once upon a time, people knew that. That’s what the stag boy is supposed to be, a sacrifice to the land in times of hardship. Well, it’s a time of hardship now, isn’t it? The sheep all slaughtered, the land diseased, my dad dead and other hill farmers going bankrupt, getting kicked off their land. Sometimes we have to go back to the old ways to put things right. Blood for blood, life for life.’ He stopped skipping, lifted his head. Eyes bright and fierce behind the mask. ‘The stag boy’s life in exchange for my dad’s.’

The wraiths came closer through the murk. Baying, yelping, howling.

Ash started to back away. ‘Your dad’s dead,’ he said. ‘Nothing’s going to bring him back.’

‘Look around you,’ said Mark. ‘All those hound boys are dead. But they’ve come back.’

‘No,’ said Ash. ‘They haven’t come back, not really. They’re wraiths, ghosts. They’re not alive like me and you. Is that what you want? Your dad like one of those howling crazy things out there?’

‘Earth and stone needs blood and bone, Ash Tyler. It always has and it always will. It takes life so that it can give life. Life for life. I didn’t want it to be you. I told you to pull out of the race. I tried to save you.’

‘Then what? You’d sacrifice some other kid instead of me? You’ve lost it, Mark. You’re crazy. Stark staring mad. What the hell happened to you?’

Mark took a step towards him. ‘This is what happened. I came out here into the mountains. I thought about my dad. I couldn’t stop thinking about him. I walked and walked. I didn’t eat for days. I didn’t sleep. I walked and I searched and in the end the ghosts came to me from their dead place, hound boys from the ancient days. They were weak then, whispering voices and a breath of mist. But they got stronger every day. They whispered things to me. They told me to kill the birds.’

‘The birds?’

Mark nodded. ‘Bone Jack’s rooks. Kill the birds and take Bone Jack’s power. Now he’s the weak one, too weak to stop the dead getting through. Bone Jack can’t stop the hound boys. He can’t stop me bringing back my dad.’

Ash remembered the wolf. That must have come through too, somehow. That was why Bone Jack had come for it.
Back where it belongs
, he had said. Back to Annwn, the Otherworld. But the wolf hadn’t been a wraith. It had felt real, solid. He’d run his fingers through its fur, searching for a collar. He’d felt its ribs, felt its hot breath on his skin as he’d dribbled water into its mouth.

Maybe it was different with animals, or it had been dead a shorter time. Or maybe the hound boys weren’t as wraithlike as they looked.

He switched his attention back to Mark. ‘If Bone Jack can’t stop you bringing back your dad, why don’t you just go and get him? Why are you out here? Why do you need to kill me?’

Mark shook his head at him. His eyes were wild, dangerous. ‘It’s how it has to be,’ he said. ‘Life for life.’

‘I don’t care about your crazy stuff any more,’ said Ash. ‘I ran this race for my dad. That’s it. Now you’ve caught me so it’s over. Got it? It’s over. I’m going home.’

He backed away further. Now the ghost hound boys tore from the gloom, spun and lunged and soared. One of them hurtled past him. He felt the boy’s cold airy touch against his skin, breathed in the ancient stink of the grave.

He flinched, shuddered. ‘Call them off, Mark,’ he said. ‘Get them off me!’

Mark shook his head. ‘I can’t. I don’t tell them what to do, and it’s not over just because you want it to be.’

The hounds drew back into the rain, regrouped. Endlessly moving, shifting, advancing again, circling, crowding around Ash. They were in front of him, to his side, behind him. One moment they just seemed like boys in masks, boys like him. The next they were wraiths, rags of mist veiling scorched bone, lipless grins, empty eye sockets.

Ash hurled himself in the only direction left open to him. Scrambled over scree, slipping on wet black stone as shiny as plastic. Across springy turf that squelched underfoot, on to rain-slick rock.

He glanced back. Mark was standing where he’d left him, hands on hips, watching him. As if he knew it wasn’t worth chasing, knew Ash couldn’t get away.

Ash ran harder, faster.

Again the hound boys advanced through the rain. Still spinning and leaping but moving forward slowly, as if it didn’t really matter that he’d bolted. As if they, like Mark, already knew that he couldn’t get away.

Rain swept over the ridge. The wind screamed. And through it came Mark, and the wind’s scream was his scream, and so too was the beating of Ash’s heart and the pounding of his blood, all one squalling primal shriek.

Mark flew at him. Smashed into him, seized him, beat him down onto rock and pooling rainwater. Ash threw out wild panicky punches. He twisted free, rolled over, scrambled away on all fours. He got to his feet, winded and gasping for breath. But Mark wasn’t done yet. He cannoned into Ash again, a low tackle that sent Ash reeling backwards.

Ash hollered at him through the wind and rain.

Mark came at him a third time. Again the impact shunted Ash backwards. Then he realised. That was what Mark wanted, to push him back and back until he fell off the edge, like the other stag boy must have fallen, flailing down onto the splintered rocks below.

Ash veered away from the edge. He stood gasping in the rain, head down, facing Mark. ‘You can’t do this,’ he said. ‘Your dad wouldn’t want you to do this.’

‘You don’t know what my dad would want.’

‘I do,’ said Ash. ‘I know. Those things, those wraiths, came after my dad when he was the stag boy twenty years ago. They got into his head and because of them he ended up on the Leap and about to jump off. I don’t know how but they made him want to jump. But your dad saw my dad standing there, right at the edge, and he pulled him back. He saved my dad’s life.’

‘Liar!’ screamed Mark. He came at Ash again. But this time Ash sidestepped, flung his arms around Mark, clung to him. They lurched and wrestled, a weird dance in the howling chaos of the storm. ‘You know it’s true,’ said Ash. The words came out like sobs. ‘You know. You won’t kill me. You’re not a killer.’

And then it stopped. Mark stopped. Let go of Ash. He stood there in the weltering storm, his chest heaving, his eyes bright with tears.

But the hound boys came again, hurtling with the storm wind. Smashing into Mark, into Ash.

Ash staggered. Off balance, the world tilting, the wind battering about him. He felt Mark’s hand close about his wrist, felt Mark brace and strain and take his weight to haul him back from the edge. But there was nothing beneath his feet any more. He plunged through the wild air, and Mark was still holding on, falling with him.

Then came the hard slam onto rock, a quake of pain, the taste of blood in his mouth, and bottomless dark.

THIRTY

He opened his eyes and stared straight up. Sky churning with dark clouds. Rain spiking his face like nails.

For a few moments he had no idea where he was.

Then he remembered falling.

He shifted his weight. Pain knifed in his shoulder. More pain in both elbows, his right hip, his head, his ribs. Gritting his teeth, he hauled himself up into a sitting position. He ran his fingers through his hair. The stag mask must have come off in the fall, torn away by the wind. His hand came away bloody.

But he was alive. Being dead couldn’t hurt this much.

A sob shook through him. He felt it, heard it, but it seemed to have nothing to do with him. A reaction of his body. His mind hadn’t caught up yet.

Mark was lying nearby. He was on his side with one arm twisted unnaturally beneath him. Eyes closed. His mouth slightly open. A trickle of blood, diluted by rainwater, ran down his forehead and dripped from the bridge of his nose.

He wasn’t moving.

He looked dead.

Ash stared at him for a long time.

They’d landed on a ledge. To his right was a five-metre wall of rock. To his left was a sheer drop. Far below, splinters of black granite stabbed up through a sea of gloomy rain-mist.

Ash rolled his injured shoulder, stretched his arm upwards and then out. A spasm of pain but it was bearable. He checked the rest of his body: bruises, cuts, scrapes. Nothing broken, nothing dislocated.

He felt for the stag’s head pendant, as if it was a talisman. But it was gone from around his neck, lost to the storm and the darkness.

He crawled towards Mark. He tugged Mark’s hand. It felt cold and limp, wet with rain. ‘Mark,’ he said. ‘Wake up, Mark. Come on, wake up.’

Not a flicker.

He pressed two fingers to Mark’s throat to see if he had a pulse. At first he couldn’t feel anything except Mark’s chilled skin against his own. Then he felt a throb of life, faint but unmistakable.

‘Come on, Mark. Wake up. Please.’

Mark groaned, coughed, spat blood and rainwater. He rolled onto his back and screamed.

‘Don’t move,’ said Ash. ‘You’re injured. I think your arm is broken. Maybe more.’

Mark’s breath came in quick dry gasps. ‘What happened?’ he said. His voice was a whisper.

‘The hound boys slammed into us. I was too close to the edge. You tried to hold on to me but we both fell. We landed on this ledge. We were lucky.’

‘Lucky, yeah,’ said Mark. Turned his face away.

Ash shook in great slow shudders. Yet his thoughts were cold and clear, bright as ice.

He waited it out.

When the shudders stopped, he took off the backpack. He emptied its contents between his outstretched legs. Found the whistle and blew it. The wind ripped away the thin sound. Even if anyone was out searching for them yet, they’d never hear the whistle in this storm.

Useless.

He slid the empty backpack under Mark’s head as a pillow. Mark moaned, his eyes shut.

Ash sat with his back to the rock face. He drew up his knees, hugged himself into a tight ball. Rain beat on his skull, slid down his back, pooled underneath him. He stared into the murky distance. He was an ant, an atom. There was nothing he could do about anything any more. The storm would rage. Night would come. If they survived until the morning, perhaps the search-and-rescue team would find them.

Perhaps.

Or Mark would die.

Ash couldn’t let that happen. No way.

He couldn’t go down the rock face, not without ropes and proper equipment. The drop was too far, sheer and hazardous. But maybe he could climb back up to the top, fetch help.

He stood up. He walked the length of the ledge, feeling for handholds and footholds in the rock face. All he found were cracks too narrow to slide his fingers into, nubbins so smooth and slick with rain that his feet slithered off them straightaway.

An angle of rock sticking out, about half a metre above his head. He jumped for it, reaching up with his good arm, fingers scraping the rock face a hand’s breadth below it. He jumped again, and again, sobbing with the effort. But there wasn’t enough strength left in him and he knew that even if he managed to reach it, he was too weak to pull himself up.

It was impossible.

He sank back down, defeated. He watched the endless fall of rain, drops shattering in diamond bursts on the rock in front of him. He watched dark clouds as tall as mountains heave and collide and tear apart. The brief brilliant burn of distant lightning. He slept a little, woke with a start, slept again, woke.

It was getting dark now.

Someone was watching him.

He lifted his head.

A boy, sitting at the furthest end of the ledge. An impossible stag boy with his hair in spikes, his face and body streaked with white and black clay.

Ash laughed out loud at the craziness of it. A hallucination or another dream, that was all. He struggled to keep his eyes open but his eyelids felt too heavy, the pull of sleep too strong.

When he woke again, the stag boy was still there. His clay-painted face gleamed. Rain rolled down his cheeks like tears. His charcoal-shadowed eyes were deep, dark and serious.

‘Why are you here?’ said Ash. ‘What do you want?’

The stag boy was silent, watching him.

‘I’ve seen you before,’ said Ash. ‘Up on the top, a couple of weeks ago, running from the hound boys.’

The stag boy watched.

‘You’re dead,’ said Ash. ‘You’re centuries dead.’

The wind snatched away his words. But, as if the stag boy had heard enough, he stood up. Still holding Ash’s gaze. Then, slowly and deliberately, he turned to face the rock wall. He went closer to it. Then he reached up, hooked his fingers into a tiny fissure and started to climb.

‘Come down,’ said Ash weakly. ‘It’s too dangerous. It’s impossible. Come back.’