Creature of the Night

• Title
  
• By the Same Author
  
• Title Page
  
• Copyright Page
  
• Dedication
  
• Acknowledgements
  
• Chapter 1
  
• Chapter 2
  
• Chapter 3
  
• Chapter 4
  
• Chapter 5
  
• Chapter 6
  
• Chapter 7
  
• Chapter 8
  
• Chapter 9
  
• Chapter 10
  
• Chapter 11
  
• Chapter 12
  
• Chapter 13
  
• Chapter 14
  
• Chapter 15
  
• Chapter 16
  
• Chapter 17
  
• Chapter 18
  
• Chapter 19
  
• Chapter 20
  
• Chapter 21
  
• Chapter 22
  
• Chapter 23
  
• Chapter 24
  
• Chapter 25
  
• Chapter 26
  
• Chapter 27
  
• Chapter 28
  
• Chapter 29
  
• Chapter 30
  
• Chapter 31
  
• Chapter 32
  
• Chapter 33
  
• Chapter 34
  
• Chapter 35
  
• Chapter 36
  
• Chapter 37
  
• Chapter 38
  
• Chapter 39
  
• Chapter 40
  
• Chapter 41
  
• Chapter 42
  
• Chapter 43
  
• Chapter 44
  
• Chapter 45
  
• Chapter 46
  
• Chapter 47
  
• Chapter 48
  
• Chapter 49
  
• Chapter 50
  
• Chapter 51
  
• Chapter 52
  
• Chapter 53
  
• Chapter 54
  
• Chapter 55
  
• Epilogue
  

CREATURE
OF THE NIGHT

Also by Kate Thompson:

The Switchers Trilogy
Switchers
Midnight's Choice
Wild Blood

The Switchers Trilogy (3 in 1)

The Missing Link Trilogy
The Missing Link
Only Human
Origins

The Beguilers
(CBI Bisto Award 2002)

The Alchemist's Apprentice
(CBI Bisto Award 2003)

Annan Water
(CBI Bisto Award 2005)

The New Policeman
(Guardian Fiction Prize 2005, Whitbread
Children's Book Award 2005, Dublin Airport
Authority Children's Book Award 2005 and
CBI Bisto Award 2006)

The Fourth Horseman

The Last of the High Kings

Kate Thompson

This eBook is copyright material and must not be copied, reproduced, transferred, distributed, leased, licensed or publicly performed or used in any way except as specifically permitted in writing by the publishers, as allowed under the terms and conditions under which it was purchased or as strictly permitted by applicable copyright law. Any unauthorised distribution or use of this text may be a direct infringement of the author's and publisher's rights and those responsible may be liable in law accordingly.

ISBN 9781407043784

Version 1.0

www.randomhouse.co.uk

CREATURE OF THE NIGHT
A BODLEY HEAD BOOK
Hardback: 978 0 370 32929 1
Trade paperback: 978 0 370 32930 7

Published in Great Britain by The Bodley Head,
an imprint of Random House Children's Books
A Random House Group Company

This edition published 2008

1 3 5 7 9 10 8 6 4 2

Copyright © Kate Thompson, 2008
Cover design by
www.blacksheep-uk.com

The right of Kate Thompson to be identified as the
author of this work has been asserted in accordance with
the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

This electronic book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, resold, hired out, or otherwise circulated without the publisher's prior consent in any form other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition including this condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser

ISBN: 9781407043784

Version 1.0

Set in Sabon

RANDOM HOUSE CHILDREN'S BOOKS
61–63 Uxbridge Road, London W5 5SA

www.
kids
at
randomhouse
.co.uk

www.
rbooks
.co.uk

Addresses for companies within The Random House Group Limited
can be found at:
www.randomhouse.co.uk/offices.htm

THE RANDOM HOUSE GROUP Limited Reg. No. 954009

A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

Printed and bound in Great Britain by CPI Mackays, Chatham, ME5 8TD

For Knute Skinner, my first publisher.

Thanks to Mel, Jan, Lucy, Cillian and Dib
for reading the manuscript
and giving me useful advice.

I told my ma I wouldn't stay there. I told her when she
first came up with the idea and I told her again when
she tried to bribe me with the new Xbox. I said it to her
all the way down on the bus. Every time she opened her
mouth to talk to me I said it:

'I'm not staying down there. You can't make me.'

So after a while she stopped trying to talk to me and
she just talked to Dennis, showing him cows and sheep
and tractors out the window of the bus. He liked the
tractors but he didn't know what to make of the cows
and sheep. He stared at them like they were something
out of another world.

Which they were.

Our new landlord met us at the bus station in
Ennis. His name was PJ Dooley. When he seen how
much stuff we had with us he made a joke and said he
should have brought the trailer.

I said, 'Ha ha,' and my ma gave me a savage look.

'It's mostly theirs,' I said to him. 'I'm not staying.'

PJ Dooley looked at me and then at my ma, and
Dennis said, 'Can we go in the car?' and everyone
started piling in the suitcases and plastic bags and backpacks.
There wasn't much room left by the time me and
Dennis tried to squash into the back.

'Take him on your knee,' my ma said, but I didn't
want him on my knee and I shoved him over on top of a
big bag of duvets and pillows. He laughed and wriggled
himself comfortable and said: 'We going in the car!'

My ma didn't have a car. She said there was no need
for one where we lived because we could go everywhere
on the bus, so Dennis had hardly ever been in a car
before. I was in cars all the time, though. Most weekends
and some week nights as well, me and the lads would get
hold of one. Sometimes we robbed two and raced them
against each other out on the ring road or around the
estates. That was class. It was what I lived for, the cars,
and the Saturdays in the town centre, and what we
bought with the money we got.

That was why my ma wanted to move out of
Dublin. She told me it was only for the summer, to see
how we liked it, but I didn't believe her. We'd given up
the flat for one thing, and if we wanted to get one again
we'd be right back at the bottom of the housing list. So
I knew she had no intention of going back. She was
moving for good to get me away from my bad-influence
friends.

I thought that was her reason, anyway, and maybe
it was part of it. But she had another reason for getting
away from Dublin as well. I should have guessed it, I
suppose, but I didn't. If I had I'd have told her it
wouldn't work. Those people would be bound to find
her in the end, wherever she went.

There was an old Skoda parked in the drive in front of
the house.

'I'll be moving that,' PJ said. 'The last tenant left it
behind him when he went. I don't suppose it's worth
much.'

I nearly told him not to bother moving it because I
would move it for him, all the way to Dublin. I could see
it had no alarm in it, and I knew you could hot-wire
those old ones. Beetle would know how to do it. I
couldn't believe my luck. A ready-made escape sitting on
my doorstep. If I could get money for petrol I was sorted
already.

The house was a kind of cottage with an upstairs
tacked on. It looked OK from outside, if you like that
sort of thing. A big thick green hedge. Flowers in old
buckets. But the front door was swollen into its frame
from the damp and PJ had to put his hip against it to
open it. Inside it was more like a shed than a house. It
was no warmer than it was outside and the air was so
damp you could nearly drink it. There was a little porch
with mould growing on the walls and a bathroom opening
off one side of it, right opposite the front door. Then
two more doors opened off it, one into a sitting room
and the other into the kitchen. There was a big old range
in there, and stairs running straight up out of the
room, and the back door at the bottom of them.
Behind the chimney pipe the wall was covered in black
streaks.

PJ said, 'It's soot. These old houses. Nothing you
can do about it.'

Upstairs was much newer. There was a landing and
three bedrooms, all with wooden walls, painted the
colour of pus in a scab. The beds were old and
knackered, and there were chests with sticking drawers
and wobbly lockers and a dressing table with a swivel
mirror that stared up at the ceiling.

In the biggest bedroom my ma said to me: 'You
can have this one, Robert. We can set you up a desk in
here.'

'A desk?' I said. 'What would I want with a desk?'

'For your schoolbooks,' PJ said, all innocent. 'For
your homework and all. I'll find you a desk, leave it
to me.'

'Homework?' I said. 'You said we were only staying
for the summer.'

Behind his back my ma shook her fist at me.

'And anyway,' I said. 'I told you. I'm not staying.'

My ma made a vicious face. We followed PJ into the
middle-sized bedroom and she said: 'I'll have this one. I
like the view.'

The smallest one was just like a short corridor
with a sloping roof as one wall. My ma said to
Dennis: 'And this can be your bedroom. What do you
think of that?'

'No!' Dennis wailed and clung to my ma's leg.
'Don't want a bedroom. I want to go home!'

He was still bawling when we followed PJ back
downstairs, and my ma had to carry him and shout over
his head.

'It's fine, honest. It's gorgeous. We love it.'

PJ opened the cupboard under the stairs. It was
crammed full of boxes and bin bags.

He said, 'I hope you don't mind. There's some stuff
here belonging to the last fella.'

Dennis said, 'Don't want a bedroom!'

PJ said, 'Only I didn't know what to do with it. I
didn't like to throw it out. He might come back for it
some day, you never know.'

My ma looked alarmed.

'Oh, there's no need to worry,' PJ said. 'He's an
awful nice fella. A real gentleman. Lars, his name is.
Swedish. But he left a bit sudden, like . . .'

'Why?' my ma said.

PJ shrugged. 'No one knows. He just disappeared
one day.'

My ma looked even more alarmed, but PJ said:
'It's nothing to worry about. The police were here and
they had a look around, but there was nothing
suspicious. He took his passport and his driving licence
and all, so he must have had a plan. It was just a bit
sudden, that's all.'

'Did he owe you rent?' I said.

'He did,' PJ said, 'but not much. I wouldn't say that
had anything to do with it.'

'Well we do, too,' my ma said. 'I should give you
the deposit.'

She tried to put Dennis down but he turned up the
volume. Normally he wouldn't dare. My ma would
knock six kinds of shite out of him for that kind of
carry-on, but he knew she wouldn't do it in front of a
stranger. She had to pick him up again.

'No bother, no bother,' PJ said. 'Some other day will
do fine. You settle yourselves in now and get unpacked.'

He pointed out the window. There were two big
meadows on the side of the hill, and above them a
couple of houses and loads of sheds – a real farmyard
from the looks of it.

'That's my house there, the two-storey one. If you
need anything just call up. Anything at all.'

He gave me the keys. We'd all been following him
since we got off the bus and we followed him now, when
he went outside. At the door of his car he stopped and
turned back to us.

'I'll send Colman down to you some day,' he said to
me. 'He's about your age.' Then he looked at my ma and
said, 'You might get a visit from my mother as well. She
likes to know what's going on. She comes out with some
strange things sometimes, but don't mind her. She's
getting on.'

He got into the car and drove away. My ma waved
after him, then took Dennis's hand and waved it as well.
He had shut up now that his protection was gone.

'Can you believe that?' she said to me. 'No deposit,
no rent, nothing. We could do anything. We could rob
the place. We could set fire to it.'

'Don't be putting ideas in my head,' I said. But I was
as surprised as my ma, really. I don't think either of us
had ever been trusted by anyone before.