Adam Slater - Hunted

The Hunter will be waiting. It looks forward to toying with this prey when it is finally caught. An end to this game of cat and mouse.

It is still hungry.

Gran was on her knees, scrubbing at the spilled hot chocolate with a floor cloth and a steaming bucket of soapy water. As Callum came in she leaned back on her heels and said sarcastically, ‘How good of you to join me!’

For once Callum had no doubt that he held the moral high ground. He stood with his hands on his hips and did not offer to help.

‘Gran, you were completely unfair to Melissa. You didn’t even listen to what she was doing here, you just told her to get out! Is that how you expect me to treat your visitors?’

‘Callum, this is my house,’ Gran retorted angrily. ‘I won’t have strange teenagers moving my furniture around and making free with my kitchen. I simply won’t have it, Callum. You ask first.’

‘You weren’t here and I didn’t know she was coming.’

‘All the more reason not to let her in.’

Gran was being completely irrational.

‘Gran, Melissa goes to my school. I see her every day. She’s in my class. She’s not a stranger!’

Gran took a deep breath, obviously trying to control her temper.

‘How much do you actually know about this girl?’ she challenged. ‘Do you know where she lives?’

‘The yellow-brick house next to the station,’ Callum answered triumphantly.

‘Do you know who she lives with? Are her parents still together? Has she got any brothers or sisters?’

‘She’s got cousins who live in the new housing estate up the hill.’

‘I asked about her, not her cousins.’

Callum ground his teeth with frustration. ‘Gran, look, I don’t know those things about her. She doesn’t know those things about me, either, except what I told her this afternoon. Those aren’t things that matter about a person. The things that matter, you’d like. Melissa’s clever. She does well in school, and the teachers like her. She reads all the time, she loves books. And she’s -’

Callum remembered how Melissa had nearly put her hand in the fire. He wasn’t sure he could call her honest or loyal, but he knew that she was brave and trusting. And something, his Luck maybe, told him that she was genuine. She really did want to help him.

But he’d hesitated too long over the right word. Gran interrupted sharply.

‘The best thing you could do for a friend like that is try to straighten her out. What was she wearing? All that alternative fashion nonsense, crystals hanging around her neck, those silly tattoos! All she needs is a few paper charms pinned to her skirt. I’ll bet she calls herself a Wiccan. What’s she trying to be, some kind of witch? You watch out, Callum -’

Callum was so angry he didn’t wait to hear the rest of Gran’s tirade. Shoving the drop-leaf table out of the way, he grabbed his homework and stormed upstairs.

*

The impact of his dramatic departure was somewhat lessened when Callum had to come back down to make tea. He’d forgotten it was his turn, and he knew that even after a row, Gran would be expecting him to stick to the routine. If he didn’t, there would be no supper at all.

He clattered around in the kitchen, making as much noise as possible. Then they ate a silent meal together. There had never been such a frosty atmosphere between them. If the cottage was too small to keep secrets in, it was even more cramped when you were sharing it with an enemy.

After tea, Callum marched back upstairs and spent the evening in his room. Sitting alone in the cold for a couple of hours made him realise how pleasant it really was sharing the fireside with Gran on a windy November evening.

At last, Gran went to bed too. There was no shifting of furniture tonight; maybe she suspected Callum might still be awake and didn’t want to risk giving away the location of her hidden occult library. Despite her reaction to Melissa, Callum didn’t think Gran suspected he might have discovered it.

The books . . . As he turned the thought of them over and over in his mind, Callum was only half aware of Gran getting ready for bed next door. The books held answers, he was sure of it. Answers she seemed determined to keep from him. The idea of all that knowledge sitting downstairs, just waiting to be discovered, was torture. What he had said to Melissa was true – he couldn’t risk moving any of the books out of the cottage. But that didn’t mean he couldn’t take another look at them. If he was careful . . .

His mind made up, Callum counted to two thousand after Gran’s light went out before he dared to move. Cadbury sighed in displeasure at another midnight disturbance, then got up and stretched. For a moment, Callum was afraid the cat was going to come downstairs with him and get in his way. Shutting him in the bedroom wasn’t an option, as Cadbury was bound to yowl for the door to be opened. But instead of following Callum to the door, the cat leaped across to his post on the windowsill and stared out into the darkness. Then he gave a low, rumbling growl of warning.

‘What’s going on out there?’ Callum whispered. ‘You’re making me nervous, Cad.’

The growl was a sound Callum rarely heard from Cadbury. The cat did lunatic acrobatics sometimes, and Callum was permanently at war with him over the number of dead birds left on the patio, but Cadbury had an easygoing and friendly nature. The strange growling was totally out of character. Callum shivered.

‘Just keep it down and don’t wake Gran,’ he told Cadbury as he slipped through the door on to the tiny landing. It was pitch dark. He tiptoed to the top of the stairs and slowly made his way down, every floorboard in every step creaking as he went. Again Callum had forgotten to put on socks or slippers, and again his feet were freezing. His hands too.

Is it just the cold? he wondered. Or is something bad about to happen?

He gave himself a test by dragging one finger hard along a rough timber beam in the stair wall. A sharp pain stabbed underneath his skin. Callum gasped and bit his lip; he’d picked up a splinter on the old wood.

But at least he could feel his fingertips. No visions tonight, then.

Callum made it to the bottom of the stairs without waking Gran, and for a moment stood still, breathing slowly while his heart pounded. He’d have to pull himself together if he wanted to find the old scrapbook again.

There was a faint red glow coming from the grate, just enough to see by. When he’d managed to get his breathing back to normal, Callum quietly lifted one of the straight-backed chairs and carried it to the window. He knew where to look now; he wouldn’t have to move too many books before he found the one he wanted. Maybe he could manage to sneak the ancient scrapbook into his rucksack, get it to school and make copies of the picture of Jacob. Or maybe he could just take the picture with him and leave the book in its usual place. That would be safer.

Callum paused, just in case he’d disturbed Gran’s sleep when he was creeping downstairs, or she’d stirred while he was moving the chair. These days Callum knew all too well what it was like to lie awake in the dark, straining to hear something out of the ordinary.

The night was silent. Almost too quiet. There was no wind, and no sound from outside. Even the owls seemed to have lost their voices, and Callum felt the hair at the back of his neck rise. It was like the feeling he’d had in his dream, when he had come to the path beside the canal – a sensation of dread, the sure knowledge of the presence of evil. Only, at the canal he had known that the evil was in the past, over and done with. This was entirely more urgent. There was evil here now. It was beyond the cottage walls, but it was close – too close. In the garden perhaps, waiting and lurking, a thing old and full of malevolence.