Adam Slater - Hunted

‘Just tell Gran!’

The strong arms that held him began to lift him into the van. Inside its dark interior, Callum was shoved down on the single hard bench, a policeman on either side of him. Someone pulled a barred gate across the opening with a clang.

Callum heard Melissa’s anxious voice calling out one more desperate message to him:

‘I’ll go and get her now!’

Then the van doors slammed shut.

The police cell was clinically clean and bare. Callum sat on the narrow mattress with his head in his hands, still dazed, and growing increasingly frightened.

He had not been charged with anything. The term they had used when they locked him up was ‘detention before charge’. The Custody Sergeant had been very clear as he explained it. While they decided if there was sufficient evidence to charge him, Callum would be held in custody. If a charge was made, it would be for murder – for the grisly, cold-blooded murder of Ed Bolton.

Callum could scarcely believe that the events of the past few hours had actually happened. His arrest had gone strictly by the book. He had been taken into Marlock Police Station, photographed, fingerprinted, breathalysed and made to give a urine sample, too – Baz’s description of Callum’s behaviour had made him sound so thoroughly insane that there was suspicion he might be high on some kind of mind-altering drug. They had taken his clothes for forensic testing, leaving him a pair of white overalls that were at least three sizes too big for him. And he was bombarded with questions – did he have any existing medical conditions? Did he want to speak to a solicitor? Callum couldn’t imagine that the ability to see ghosts counted as an existing medical condition, and he didn’t think it would be a good idea to mention it. He had been allowed one phone call and had tried to ring Gran. She hadn’t answered.

So Callum waited. He sat with his head sunk in his hands. It was all unbelievable. He couldn’t think straight. Couldn’t get the events of the day ordered in his mind. His brain dragged him relentlessly back to the scene of Ed’s murder – to that first terrible moment of discovery, when he had seen his eyeless body . . .

A memory of something Jacob had said popped into Callum’s unwilling head.

Surely you have seen it – boys and girls like you, killed.

Chime children, with their eyes torn out.

Could Ed have been a chime child? Now that he thought about it, there was no reason there shouldn’t be other chime children in Marlock – Callum wasn’t necessarily the only child in the town born between midnight on Friday and cockcrow on Saturday on the night of a full moon. The thought had never occurred to him. No one else could see ghosts, could they? Or maybe, like Callum, they just didn’t admit it. Jacob had said that Callum was like other chime children, but stronger. Maybe someone like Ed only saw ghosts now and then, and was able to explain it away to himself. Or didn’t care. Or hadn’t developed the ability before . . .

Before he was killed. Killed horribly, just because of when he was born.

It was Friday now, but only early evening – not yet midnight. Callum wondered feverishly if something would change within him during the chime hours. Would his powers be sharpened, his ability to see ghosts heightened? He tried to remember if there was any pattern to his visions, but he couldn’t concentrate on anything further back than the beginning of the week.

And what good would it do if his powers did increase after midnight? Another chime child had been killed and Callum hadn’t been able to do anything to stop it. Instead, he was being blamed for it. Why had Baz insisted Callum was the murderer?

Then Callum’s dazed mind came sharply into focus.

What an idiot!

It was the creature with his face.

That was what was killing the chime children. Not the sinister Jacob, nor his hell hound. The monster had come for Callum in the night, but it had fled when it heard Doom’s howling. Thwarted at the cottage, it had come to find him at school. Ed’s friend Craig had mistaken the creature for Callum in the cafeteria. After school, Ed must have come looking for him, and got more than he bargained for.

BEWARE THE DARK REFLECTION

Jacob had said it was a warning, but Callum hadn’t believed him. He’d been so busy running from the monster that it hadn’t occurred to him it might harm someone else. And now, how could he possibly escape a murder charge if the killer was wearing his own face . . .?

Footsteps broke the silence, echoing down the bare corridor outside the cells. Then voices – one deep and authoritative, the other shrill and demanding. Callum raised his head suddenly in wild relief.

Gran.

The harsh echoes made it difficult to make out what she was saying, but she was talking to the Custody Sergeant. It sounded like the policeman was getting a right earful.

With a clank, the cell door opened, and there she was.

‘Callum!’

Then she was running to him, and crushing him to her tightly in one of her rare hugs. It had never felt so good.

‘You’re free, Callum,’ she said firmly. ‘No more worries.’

Callum jerked back.

‘What?’

‘That girlfriend of yours is a right bright spark,’ the Custody Sergeant said approvingly. ‘She was absolutely spot on about the CCTV. You’re a very lucky lad. Every step you took since you left school this afternoon is on camera, and you were clearly nowhere near the scene of the crime.’

Callum let out a huge sigh of relief to hear the policeman sounding so convinced and sympathetic.

‘It’s true that the allegations against you were very serious,’ the officer continued, ‘but quite apart from the only eyewitness being unreliably hysterical, even without the camera footage there’s not a shred of evidence against you. This was a violent crime. It would have left your hands and clothes covered in -’

The Custody Sergeant coughed, clearing his throat at the unpleasant thought of what Callum would have been covered in had he really ripped Ed’s eyes out of his skull and eaten them.

‘Well, as I said, there’s no evidence,’ the policeman finished. ‘I don’t know what did happen, but you obviously had nothing to do with it.’

‘What do I do now?’ Callum asked faintly.

‘Go home with your gran, eat your tea and have a lie-in tomorrow,’ the Custody Sergeant said kindly. ‘You can leave this case to Greater Manchester’s Finest now. It’s nothing to do with you any more – though of course you may be called on as a witness.’

‘Come on, Callum,’ Gran said.

They let him change back into his uniform and gave him back his anorak and rucksack. Then Gran and Callum walked home in silence. It had been dark for some time, and Callum was glad to have Gran’s no-nonsense company on the road through Marlock Wood. None of the usual ghosts were hovering there, and the light over the front door of Gran’s cottage shone cheeringly through the leafless trees. Callum stood shivering on the path while Gran let them in. They both sat down in their usual armchairs in front of the fire, without even taking off their coats.

‘Well, good grief!’ Gran exclaimed finally. ‘All right now, Callum. I’ve heard out the police and I’ve heard out your friend Melissa Roper. Let’s hear your side of this awful story.’

‘Oh, Gran -’ Callum started. He broke off and tried again. ‘Was the actual murder caught on CCTV too?’

‘No. The camera only gets the car park. It caught you and Melissa running past after you heard the screaming.’

Callum didn’t know whether he was relieved or disappointed. He didn’t really think the supernatural creature that was after him was any more likely to be caught on film than a ghost was. Yet Baz had seen it. So had Craig, in the dinner hall. Sure, they’d seen the monster when it was in Callum’s form, but they’d seen something. It was a being that could reveal itself to anyone, not just chime children. Not like a ghost . . .