Adam Slater - Hunted

Gran leaned forwards in her chair. ‘So what happened?’

Something in Callum snapped. He just couldn’t keep up the pretence, the secrecy of his thirteen years, any longer. He didn’t think he should keep it secret now. The world of ghosts and monsters was affecting his world – not just him, not just chime children, but everyone. Every boy and girl at Callum’s school who had witnessed Ed’s defiled body lying on the pavement in a pool of blood. Callum couldn’t bear the burden of being the only one who knew what had really happened.

‘Gran, I think I know who did it. I mean, what did it. It wasn’t human.’

Gran sat very quietly. She didn’t protest. She seemed to be listening, so Callum went on.

‘Last night there was . . . there was a thing in the back garden. Like a person, but without a face. I don’t know what it was. It came down the garden path and stood at the glass doors and looked at me. And then . . .’ Callum paused. Unbelievably, Gran was still listening. Her expression was serious but impossible to read. She didn’t interrupt. ‘Then it grew a face. And the face was mine. The thing looked just like me.’

‘Oh, Callum,’ said Gran softly. Her voice was full of dismay, but there was no surprise in it, and her expression was understanding.

‘I don’t know what the thing was, Gran, but it . . . it wasn’t a ghost -’ Callum broke off again.

‘A ghost?’ Gran prompted quietly.

‘I can see ghosts too,’ Callum admitted. ‘I’ve always been able to, Gran. They’re real. And they’re everywhere.’

‘Can you see them here?’ Gran asked seriously. ‘Can you see them in this house?’

‘No, I can’t,’ Callum replied. ‘But then you already know that, don’t you?’

Gran sighed. ‘Yes, Callum,’ she said softly.

‘But you never said anything!’

‘People don’t like to talk about ghosts, do they?’ she answered, her voice edged with something like sadness. ‘But if you don’t see them here, then what was the thing in the garden?’

‘That’s what scares me. I don’t know what it was. It was something else. A monster. It borrowed my face, and now it’s out there pretending to be me, killing people.’

Gran sighed again but said nothing.

‘You believe me!’ Callum gasped.

‘Yes, I do.’

‘Why, Gran? You’re not superstitious! You don’t even go to church! So why do you believe me?’

‘Callum,’ Gran said, her voice still quiet and even. ‘We need to talk. There’s a lot you don’t know that I suppose I have to tell you. Things about me, and about yourself. And -’

She paused, then added reluctantly, ‘And about your father.’

‘Your father was a chime child,’ Gran said. ‘Do you know what a chime child is?’

‘Someone born beneath a full moon between midnight on Friday and cockcrow on Saturday,’ replied Callum. ‘Born with the ability to see ghosts.’

Gran nodded. ‘You’re a chime child too,’ she said. ‘I’m not – not really. I was born at the cusp of the chime hours, after sunrise, so my powers were limited.’

‘You have powers?’ Callum cried incredulously. ‘You can see ghosts too?’

‘No.’ Gran shook her head. ‘The powers of even the strongest chime children fade at eighteen. I’ve had to work at what I can do. I’ve learned some tricks, mostly charms and wards – I suppose you’d call it magic.’ She coughed nervously. ‘I’m surprised you haven’t noticed. I’ve grown a bit careless with the radio.’

‘You’re always telling it to shut up, and it does! You told me it was the frequency cutting out!’ Callum stared, wide-eyed. ‘Gran, you hypocrite!’ he said angrily. ‘You called Melissa a witch, just because of the clothes she wears, and then you turn around and have a chat with your enchanted radio?’

‘Yes, well, I was impatient with Melissa,’ Gran admitted, her tone defensive. ‘But I don’t want witches here, or potential witches. Almost everything I do is designed to cut down on free-floating magic, to keep it out, to make things normal. You don’t like it, do you, seeing ghosts? I’ve done this for you, Callum. I -’

Gran stood up suddenly. She sounded less sure of herself now.

‘Thirteen years ago, your father disappeared. Peter was my son, my only child. I tell people he “just walked out” because that’s what people say when a man abandons his young wife. But the truth is a bit more dramatic than that. The truth is, he vanished.’

Callum listened in silence. There was nothing he could say.

‘It’s still an open file with the police,’ Gran continued. ‘He could have killed himself, he could have been kidnapped by drug smugglers or something. I suppose he could have run away to Morocco with some new girlfriend. No one knows what happened to him.’

‘What about his friends?’ Callum asked. ‘Didn’t they know anything?’

‘He didn’t have many friends,’ Gran said. ‘Peter wasn’t an easy person to get to know. When he first started going out with your mum, she and I used to have a good laugh about it behind his back. “Has he asked you to marry him yet?” I’d say, and she’d smile mysteriously and answer, “He’s thinking about it. Still waters run deep.” Even as a child he kept himself to himself. He was independent, unsentimental. A bit like you in some ways.’

‘Like you,’ Callum replied.

Gran smiled shortly. ‘Yes, I suppose so. When Peter disappeared, your mother and I were both miserable, and it drew us together. Neither of us had any family nearby. Helen moved in here with me for some while – she knew she wouldn’t get any sympathy from her parents in Cornwall, who’d told her a million times that her relationship with Peter would never work. She and I waited together, both of us hoping and hoping for a lead. Nothing turned up. And then she realised she was pregnant.’

‘With me,’ Callum breathed. ‘But Dad didn’t know?’

Gran shook her head.

Callum was silent. He felt as though some part of him had been cut off.

My dad never even knew about me.

He could tell it pained Gran, too.

‘Callum, I’m sorry. There are a lot of reasons I haven’t told you any of this. That’s one of them.’

‘Just get it over with,’ Callum said. ‘Or isn’t there any more? He disappeared, the police couldn’t find him, and I was born a few months later?’

Gran nodded. ‘That’s pretty much what happened. That’s all your mother knew about it. But I had other ideas.’

She began to pace. The sitting room seemed suddenly too small to contain her.

‘I thought all along that there was another possibility besides all the guesses the police were making. Your father was like you – he saw ghosts and monsters. Even after he grew out of his chime powers, he used to travel the country, looking for demons, hoping to fight them.’ Gran shook her head. ‘I think, in the end, one of them might have killed him. I knew you were a chime child too, and I couldn’t bear the idea that I might lose you like that as well. So I began to weave a web of protection around you -’

‘Of magic?’ Callum interrupted.

Gran nodded. ‘It was easy, at first, because Helen stayed with me for two years and you were always under my eye. So I started with the house. The rowan tree was already growing by the door and I had the garden wall reinforced with iron rails.’

Melissa’s voice echoed in Callum’s memory.

Iron keeps away the fairies . . . Rowan works against witches . . .

‘I filled the flower beds with sympathetic herbs, planted holly beneath the windows. I wove folk remedies into a charmed barrier around the cottage. I got better at it as I went along. I liked doing it, you know; there’s a certain artistry, a satisfying creativity, to making any kind of orderly pattern. I’m quite proud of it, really.’