Skull in the Wood (18 page)

I took it and thanked her. ‘Let's go, then,' I said to Gabe.

He scratched his chin. ‘I'll put you on the right way,' he said. ‘But I can't help you with this. You're going to need to do it on your own. You set it off. Only you can fight it.' He glanced at Alba, who gave the slightest of nods.

My heart lurched. I'd always thought Gabe was crazy, and here he was, sending me out on the moor on my own in thickening fog. Mum would have a heart attack if she knew. But maybe he was right. Kitty was in hospital because in that awful dream I'd
only cared about saving my own skin. Perhaps I could make up for it now.

‘She'll have gone to Old Scratch Wood,' I said. ‘I think she's taking the skull back there.'

Gabe and Alba exchanged a look I couldn't decipher.

‘That's bad,' said Gabe. ‘There's more evil in that wood than the girl can handle. Let's hope she didn't get there before the fog came down. You should be able to reach her still.'

‘I'm not sure if I can remember the way,' I said nervously.

‘Jez'll show you,' said Gabe. ‘She'll lead you to her. I'll come with you as far as Thieves' Tor. But then it's up to you.'

Alba touched his arm. ‘You'd better tell the boy,' she said. For the first time I noticed how beautiful her voice was – low and musical and compelling.

‘Tell me what?' I said.

Gabe looked at the ground. ‘All right,' he said finally. ‘But we'd better get off.'

I turned towards the road. The fog had arrived in earnest, and I couldn't see as far as the fence. The bits of old machinery that graced their yard had disappeared in a world of grey.

‘And you, Matt,' said Alba, ‘make sure you leave the anger behind. Bad blood is what it feeds on. It's time to let it go.'

I stared at her, confused. Gabe said nothing. Suddenly I felt ashamed. I'd been so bound up in my own misery that no one else had mattered. I'd upset my mum really badly. I'd never given a thought to Tilda losing her own mum. And now my selfishness might have killed Kitty.

There had to be a way to change things. I wanted more than anything to make them right again.

Gabe put a lead on Jez and handed me a stick from beside the door.

‘Good luck, now,' said Alba. ‘I'll pray for you and for the little girl.'

We turned back down the road till we'd almost reached the farm track again. Then Gabe cut off up a bridle path on the other side. I was pretty sure it was the way I'd gone with Tilda before, but the fog was so thick now I couldn't see any of the landmarks. We trudged in silence up to Thieves' Tor, Jez running between us.

From the top of the tor the fog looked even worse. How was I going to find my way in this? I hoped Jez
knew her stuff. Without her I really would be lost.

Gabe stopped and faced me. ‘Perhaps Alba's right,' he said. His voice rang out in the swirling mist. ‘You need to know this. Because it's your mother and Tilda's who set everything off the last time the animals went bad.'

For a minute I couldn't speak. Gabe must have seen my face, but he carried on.

‘You see, Rose and Caroline were always fighting,' he said. ‘Young Rose was the apple of your grandmother's eye when she was little. Your grandmother spoilt her rotten, and Caroline got left out, didn't she? I was older, but I knew Caroline back then, and it was hard for her. She always thought she was second best.'

Now I wanted to hear everything. ‘I knew they didn't get on,' I said. ‘I just didn't know why. No wonder Mum wanted to get away. So what happened?'

‘I'm coming to that, boy. It all started when Rose found an injured bird on the moor. A curlew.'

I held my breath.

‘Caroline said she should just leave it, but young Rose insisted on taking it home and trying to care for it. I told her it wasn't the kind of bird you keep on a farm, and would bring bad luck, but she wasn't having
any of it. And of course it didn't thrive – a wild thing like that, cooped up in a box. In the end, Caroline asked me to put it out of its misery. So I did what I would for a magpie or a crow, didn't I? I wrung its neck.'

I winced. The fog pressed in on me and its cold crept down my spine.

‘Only young Rose went mad when she found out,' Gabe continued. ‘She kept its body till the maggots came, and in the end she had nothing but a skull. She loved that skull – she kept it with her all the time, like it was a toy. And she changed. From being just a bossy, spoilt little thing, she turned proper evil. I wondered then if something more than just mischief had got into her. It was like she was possessed.'

The photograph pressed in on my brain, Mum with her arm round Rose, looking desperately unhappy.

‘That was when the birds started turning, and the animals after. Till your mum decided to do something about it.'

‘Mum took the skull, didn't she?' I said.

‘Exactly. Caroline was that worried. Somehow she got the thing away from Rose. And she asked me to go with her to Old Scratch Wood to get rid of it.'

‘But why?' I said. ‘Why there?'

‘Everyone round here knows that the devil kennels his beasts in Old Scratch Wood. And curlews are illomened birds. They're dark creatures, his creatures. It felt right to take a thing that was causing so much bad to the heart of evil there. It wouldn't be the first time.'

Suddenly my head filled with the crazed creatures of my dream and I could hear the high shrill note that spurred them on, faster and faster. Now I remembered. It had come from the devil's hunting horn – the hollow skull of a curlew.

‘We buried it there,' Gabe went on, ‘and we were proper scared, though we didn't see anything to hurt us. I said the Lord's Prayer all the way through, mind. But after that, we reckoned we'd broken the spell of it. Young Rose blamed your mother for the skull being gone, but she didn't know where to look for it. And gradually she came back to normal – though I don't think she was ever good friends with Caroline afterwards.'

‘So nothing happened?' I said. Maybe it was all an old wives' tale after all.

‘Nothing – until about three years ago. My Alba was friendly with Rose, see. And she told me about a fight Rose had on the phone with your mother. A big one, it was.'

The fields. That would have been what that was all about. Aunty Rose would have been furious about giving Mum the money for the fields they'd had to sell.

‘Caroline must have told Rose where we'd buried the skull. Maybe the two of them got back to squabbling over all those childhood things and Caroline just gave in. Maybe she told her in anger. But whatever it was, Rose went to look for it the next day, though Alba begged her not to. She went to Old Scratch Wood. Only she didn't come back, did she? She was run over on the moor, near the wood. They never found the car that did it. She died that very night.'

I stared at Gabe, speechless. How come Mum had never said anything about this? Was it all her fault, or just a really nasty coincidence? No wonder Mum hadn't wanted to go to Aunty Rose's funeral. She must have felt so desperately guilty.

‘What do you think it was?' I said. It came out as a whisper.

‘I reckon she saw the gabbleratchet – then paid the price.'

And now my cousin was out on the moor with the skull that had caused so much evil and no one to help her.

‘We're wasting time,' I said. ‘I've got to find Tilda.'

Gabe patted Jez, then looked at me and nodded. ‘You'll do,' he said.

He strode away, and Jez and I turned to face the moor.

It was like being drowned. The fog was in my eyes and up my nose and filling my lungs. Whenever I breathed in I inhaled millions of tiny droplets. I hated it.

‘Find Tilda,' I told Jez. ‘Find Tilda, there's a good girl.'

Jez surged forward, pulling on my arm, and I stumbled behind her through the grey pall. Every so often I stopped to shout Tilda's name a few times. It felt totally weird yelling out into the mist and the sound being sucked into nowhere.

I thought of Mum and Aunty Rose, and how sad it all was. And then I thought of Kitty. If it had ended like that for Aunty Rose, what hope did I have of changing anything? What could I do to stop the gabbleratchet? For the first time I could remember, I started to pray.

The next hour or so passed in a sort of dream. Jez led the way, her nose down to the ground, and I followed. Around us flowed the deadening white fog. I felt like I was walking on the moon. I called and
called, and the sound dispersed in the dense air. Nothing replied. I hoped Tilda hadn't made it into the wood.

At some point we turned a sharp right, and the footpath grew bumpier and muddier and harder to track. But we kept on going at the same pace, trudging on, calling and calling again.

And all the time, flickering on the back of my brain, the wild, crazed creatures of my dream. Out on the moor. Hunting.

25

Kitty

H
ot. So hot. Red tongues. Red eyes. Red. I can see them all up in the sky. Nice birdies. Nice doggies. Come down, all of you. Come to Kitty.

Gabble. Gabble. Gabble.

26

Tilda

I
followed the tiny needle on my compass, past caring about the bog. My boots were thick with mud. It was spattered all the way up my jeans, too, but it didn't matter now. I splashed and squelched through it like it wasn't there. It wasn't going to suck me down. No way. I'd messed up, big-time, but I wasn't going to end up like some pathetic tourist who didn't understand the moor. Kitty needed me.

I floundered through the reeds, grabbing tufts of them to steady myself. Once I fell, and my hands got as black and filthy as my legs. The grey fog moved with me. It was out to get me – mean, creepy, lung-invading. It wanted to take me over, to fill my mouth
and my nose, choke me. It wanted to break me. I wouldn't give it the satisfaction.

When I first felt the ground harden beneath my feet I thought that I was imagining it. It was true, though. Slowly the reeds disappeared, the livid green turning to damp brown. And at last there was dead bracken and a fiercely blooming gorse bush, a brilliant flash of yellow in the blanket of grey. I felt so grateful for that yellow. It made me feel safe, for now.

Soon I came across a track that might well be the path I'd gone off in the first place. I took a chance and crossed it, and in a few minutes I was at the wall, the lovely, solid, comforting dry stone wall. I crouched there like a sheep trying to get out of the rain.

The trouble was, I was getting colder and colder. People die of hypothermia on the moor, way more often than you'd think. You don't realise it at first, but you start having weird thoughts, then you can't talk properly, and soon you're babbling like a maniac and unless they get to you fast and warm you up, you're a goner. I hoped it wasn't happening to me.

But Kits was the one who mattered here. For her sake, I knew I had to get rid of the skull. I didn't want to do it here, though – it was all wrong. This wall had been put up by generations of farmers, decent people
who had nothing to do with the wild hunt or anything remotely spooky. It felt safe and friendly and good.

And I couldn't just go and drop the box in some dank old watery hole back out in the bog. It had to be buried properly, in Old Scratch Wood, where we found it. It had to be returned to its owner.

I eased the box out of my rucksack, trying not to get mud on it. It seemed to weigh a tonne. With shaky hands I took out the skull. It was heavy and dark and strangely hot, almost burning my fingers.

I found myself wondering if it might be able to summon other curlews – or other creatures. I laid it back in the box fast. The problem was, now that I'd seen it again, I didn't want to abandon it. It was almost as if it was part of me – I couldn't bear to lose it. I put the box in my pack and zipped it up tight.

But it kept on calling to me. I could barely remember now why I'd set out across the moor in the first place. All I could think of was the skull. Matt was the one who'd wanted to dump it, not me, I thought. But then he was the reason everything had gone wrong in the first place. Why should I listen to him when he couldn't care less about what happened to my family? There was no need to give it back after all – that wouldn't change anything for Kits. It was stupid to
hope. I might as well keep it. No one was going to have it. It was mine.