The Skull (10 page)

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Henry walked close behind his mother through the woods. She was usually so quiet and small, but now she seemed huge, purposeful. It was all Henry could do to keep up as he dodged through the ferns, stepping in the deep footprints she left in the mud.

She stopped suddenly, frozen, facing straight ahead. Henry looked up at her, wondering what she was looking at. He could see nothing in the trees ahead. She seemed to be listening, then she sniffed the air, turned and strode away into the forest. Henry followed, running after her. He felt the mud oozing between his toes, and the ferns scratching at his legs. It didn't feel cold.

It was a dark night but he could see well enough, and the trees were alive with noise. He caught up with his mother again as she stopped at the edge of a clearing. He ducked under her huge tail and stepped up beside her.

Breathing as quietly as he could, he looked out between the tree trunks. On the other side of the clearing, four camptosaurs were feeding. The two smallest were hunched over on all fours, grazing on ferns. The other two, the adults, were leaning back and
stretching up to grab the tips of branches in their beaklike mouths, grinding them slowly from side to side.

The male stopped feeding and turned. He swung his elegant head from left to right, searching the edge of the clearing as if he knew he was being watched. His forelimbs rose in a defensive pose, hanging forward like a boxer's, but in place of gloves, he had long, spiked thumbs ready to stab any attacker. The creature sniffed, listened for a moment, then turned back to grab another mouthful of leaves.

Henry looked at his mother, but she did not move. She simply turned her heavy, scaly head towards him, and then back to the clearing. The moonlight glinted on her teeth. This was to be his first hunt.

He shifted his weight from one foot to the other, and jerked his head back to focus on the camptosaur group. The adults were too large, and he could not hope to bring them down, but the youngsters were about his size, and with their heads deep in the ferns at ground level they were less alert to danger.

He took a cautious step forward, poking his head into the clearing. Instantly, the big male swung around to face him. Both adults began to bay wildly and swing their thumb spikes threateningly, and the two youngsters ran and cowered behind them.

With the element of surprise gone, a more experienced hunter would have known to give up any hope of a kill. But Henry was not an experienced hunter. He launched himself into the clearing, snapping his jaws, then ducked as a thumb spike hooked over his head and had to leap to the side to avoid the male's massive tail.

Realising the danger he was in, Henry tried to turn and run back to the safety of the woods. But the two giants stepped forward to block his way, cornering him in an area of the clearing where the thick tree trunks made escape impossible. He backed up and opened his mouth as threateningly as he could, but on their back legs, the adults were twice his height and five times his weight. The male reared up and twisted his body, ready to bring down his spiked thumbs in a crushing blow.

There was a deafening bellow as his mother broke cover behind the two camptosaurs. Immediately, they lumbered around to face the new attacker standing between them and their young. On the other side of the clearing, the two youngsters leapt back in surprise and fled into the woods.

The camptosaur adults squared up to Henry's mother. Although she could easily bring down either
of them alone, together they formed a fearsome wall of muscle and bone, four spiked thumbs swinging dangerously and unpredictably in front of them.

Behind them, Henry kept his distance from the swinging tails, watching his mother between the giants' flanks. He saw her snap her jaws at one, then the other, then draw back, studying their movements for a sign of weakness, or a gap between the flailing limbs.

He watched her rear up and take a step forwards, jabbing with her own front claw. As the male swung his body to fend off the blow she flung out the razor-sharp talons of her other arm, carving a deep gash into his shoulder. The male recoiled, while the female camptosaur brought her own claw up, slicing through the air a whisker away from his mother's soft throat.

Henry scanned the perimeter of the clearing for a spot where the trees were thinner, and edged sideways. The camptosaurs didn't seem to notice. The male was fighting one-handed now, but had turned slightly, so that his great tail was ready to swing. Henry's mother eyed it warily. One blow could knock her over or break her leg. She followed its movement, waiting for the right moment to attack, mouth wide open, ready to strike.

Henry saw his chance and broke for the edge of the clearing. The whip-like end of the female's tail caught him across the side of the head as he ducked underneath it, but he kept running and she didn't seem to notice. He heard a loud roar and a crash from behind him, but he didn't stop or turn. He simply dodged between the trees and kept running until the sounds of the fight disappeared into the background noise of buzzing and chirping insects.

Finally, he stopped. The trees were dark, but the smells were heavy and deep. Instinctively, his mind began to untangle them, separating one from another, sorting plant from animal, water from rock, building himself a picture of the jungle he could not see. He stood motionless, his tail rigid, balancing his body, his head low but alert. His claws clenched and unclenched slowly. Underneath the forest's smell was another scent. It drifted through the trees towards him.

It was the smell of prey.

He listened, trying to isolate his target among the forest's sounds and smells, tuning out the insects and rotting plants and the rustling of the leaves in the high branches. Suddenly, there it was – a low baleful moan, the unmistakable sound of distress. A young
camptosaur. It must be one of the youngsters that had fled into the forest. And now it was alone, lost and vulnerable. It was calling for its mother, but its mother would not be coming.

He ran silently towards the sound, his feet deftly picking their way between fallen branches. Soon he saw it through the trees. The young camptosaur was tired and slowing down, wailing out its long, low cries. He knew he would have to act fast or he would not be the only predator determined to make this kill. His heart surged and he felt his body fill with a strange fury.

Without pausing, he ran straight at the camptosaur and leapt. The claws of both arms sunk deep into its back and he brought down his open mouth hard on the back of the creature's fleshy neck. It was over in seconds. The camptosaur gave a strangled cry and dropped to the ground as though its legs had suddenly lost all their strength. He held on tightly until there was no movement left and his prey's heavy chest sank for the last time as its final breath rattled from its lungs.

He fed quickly and greedily, swallowing chunks of raw meat. The smell of the kill would soon attract scavengers and many would be larger than him. After
every mouthful, he raised his head to listen and sniff the air before sinking his head back into the carcass to tear off another chunk of flesh.

By the time the first light of the sun began to show through the trees, dappling the ground with orange streaks of light, he had eaten his fill. He left the dead camptosaur to be picked clean by ants, flying scavengers and the tiny feathered dinosaurs that roamed the forest floor. He crept into a thicket to rest, but his ears remained sharply tuned to the sounds of the jungle. Slowly, he became aware that below the humming and squawking of the Jurassic dawn chorus, something else was coming his way. Heavy feet were being placed one in front of the other with the practised care of a predator.

He shifted his position slightly and raised his head so that he could look out over the tops of the ferns without being seen. Between the trees he could see a large, dark shape: a great head, sharp claws and a long, solid tail. It moved slowly closer, the head swinging slowly left and right.

It was his mother. She was searching for him.

His first thought was to run to her side. He took a step, then paused. From deep within him, another instinct was rising. He had watched her hunt, and
shared her kills, but now that time had passed. Today he had killed. Now he was a predator too.

He watched from the ferns as her huge bulk moved past, her teeth still glistening with blood. Her sharp eyes scanned the forest but did not see him. Her tail swung slowly from side to side as she passed on into the darkness.

The sharp rays of the rising sun pierced through Henry's eyelids and into his dream, waking him suddenly. He felt cold. Cold and uncomfortable.

He opened his eyes. A vertical strip of sunlight framed solid blackness and he blinked, waiting for his eyes to adjust. Waiting to see the outline of the heavy curtains, the window. His bedroom.

His feet were freezing. He reached down to touch them and his hand recoiled. They were caked with mud.

A sick feeling grew in his stomach. His heart began to pound. He had walked in his sleep before, but he had never left the house. What had he done? Where had he been?

His hand dropped to the mattress of his bed. It was as hard as stone. No, it
was
stone. He sat upright. He was not in his bedroom.

His eyes began to adjust to the light. One wall was stone, crumbling, dusted with ancient ash. The opposite wall was rock and earth. He was sitting on a rough stone floor, at the foot of a set of deep steps leading up to a solid stone doorway. But there was no door. Just a block of stone which had once sealed the entrance, but which was now leaning open, propped against a tree, leaving the hole through which he must have entered in his sleep.

This doorway was familiar to Henry. It was covered in moss. Strands of ivy hung on the outside like a curtain. The frame of the door was carved from long, thin solid blocks and decorated with carvings of strange creatures. Some were rough. Others were more intricate and detailed. It was as though many builders from different eras had been competing, carving over and around each other's work.

Henry knew this place well, at least the outside of it. It was the old tomb deep in the woods above the village. He and his school friends told stories about it. They had studied its odd patchwork of different types of stone and carvings, but it had always been sealed.
The stone in the doorway had rocked tantalisingly when they had pushed on it, but it had never tipped open. They had always been too frightened of what might lie inside to try any harder to break in.

But now the great stone was leaning outwards. And here was Henry. Inside.

There was something else, too.

Where the sun glanced across the wall of rock and earth, it cast long shadows, bringing every indentation and detail of the stone into sharp relief. Henry stared at it, unable to move.

The huge eye. The massive skull. The curved serrated teeth. It was hypnotic and terrible.

The tiny spiral of the fossilised shell had been enough to make him ask questions in his mind. It had cracked open a door and filled him with doubt. But this… This was too big. It left no room for doubt. What Henry felt now, surging under the fear and dread, was pure, confident certainty. And it changed everything.

His father was wrong, completely and utterly wrong. And the woman in the grey dress was right.

Henry climbed out of the tomb with his head spinning. Using all his strength, he tipped the stone
back into place. It wobbled and rocked as it always had. Perhaps it had only ever needed a push in the right direction to topple it out of position.

Henry reverently draped the ivy back over the entrance and set off home in his nightclothes.

It was only just dawn and luckily there was nobody else about. As he made his way down towards the vicarage, he could see no lights on in the house. The back door was ajar – obviously that was how he had left it during his sleepwalk. He ran out of the trees, across the empty cart-track and into the garden.

Good. All the curtains were still tightly shut. But he knew his father sometimes rose early to sit and work in the dining room on the other side of the house. If he was up, Henry knew he would be in deep trouble. He slipped in through the door and closed it as quietly as he could. The hinge creaked and the latch clicked loudly.

Henry held his breath and listened, but the house was silent. Eventually he dared to move again, tiptoeing across the kitchen and peering around the hall door. His eyes went immediately to the dining room. The door was open, but the room was in darkness. The curtains were still closed. That meant his father was not yet up. He breathed again.

There were two ways back up to his room: the main stairs, which would take him right past his parents' bedroom door; or the back stairs, which would take him closer to his own door, but which were old, loose and noisy.

Henry decided on the back stairs. He closed his eyes for a second and tried to remember which steps were the troublemakers. The first was fine, the second and third creaked if you trod on the left-hand side. He stepped cautiously upwards. The next three steps were good and solid, but then, on the seventh, there was a creak on the right followed by a creak on the left of the next step… or was it the other way around?

Gently, he lowered his foot onto the left of the seventh step. No sound. He put his full weight on it and suddenly the stair let out a loud groan. He jumped back and waited for the sound of a door opening.

There was a long silence.

Henry tried again, this time stepping on the other side, and crept upwards. The final two steps were both completely loose. He would have to jump. He grasped the carved wooden pineapple at the top of the banister and pulled hard on it as he leapt, clearing both steps and landing with a muffled thud at the top of the stairs. He smiled to himself in satisfaction, but
when he let go of the banister, it gave a loud crack as it shifted back into place.

Again, he waited, his eyes fixed on his parents' bedroom at the end of the hall. Just as he was about to move again, he heard the sound he had been dreading. The sound of bedsprings pinging, followed by a creak of floorboards. Then came footsteps padding across the room.