Adam Slater - Hunted

He shook his hands in panic, but already the burning pins-and-needles sensation was spreading through his fingertips as though he’d shoved them in a patch of nettles. It was the strongest warning of a premonition that he’d ever had, and the most painful. Then another vision hit him like a block of falling masonry.

It was the Fetch. For one second, he saw the demon in its true form, a stick figure with no skin and no shadow. Then the vision flickered and he saw it in its present shape – his own body. Even though he had never seen himself walking, he could tell that in its disguise the Fetch was his identical twin. It strode through the tangled trees of Marlock Wood with its shoulders hunched, as Callum always did when he walked along the old road, avoiding looking up from his feet for fear of seeing the ghosts that haunted the lane.

This is what I look like.

The furtive, youthful figure cast a faint shadow in the bright moonlight, and Callum realised with a sudden jolt that the moonlight he saw in his head, shining down on the figure of the Fetch as it paced through Marlock Wood, was the same moonlight that shone through the roofless ruin of the church. The same moonlight that bathed him now.

Now. It was happening now. The Fetch was on the road through the woods. And it was heading downhill. Not towards the church, not towards Callum, but towards another destination altogether.

It was heading for the row of ruined alms cottages.

In Callum’s mind, he saw the figure stop outside the low brick wall and leap over the wooden gate, just as Callum himself had done so many times that week.

The light was on over the porch. The curtains were open. Gran was inside, waiting for Callum to come home. The Fetch walked up the path to the door of the cottage, wearing Callum’s own embarrassed smile of apology, and with a hand identical to his own, lifted the brass knocker.

Gran sat wearily in her favourite chair in the nook under the stairs, from which she could see a long way up the road. Cadbury was prowling restlessly, but when she got up to let him out, the cat hissed and backed away from the door. She stood staring up the empty road for a minute before she shut the door again, biting her lip. After a moment, she locked it.

‘Where is he?’ Gran muttered. Cadbury stopped his prowling and sat down on his haunches to look at her. ‘What do I do, Cadbury? It’s not safe for him to be out there alone. But if I go off to try and find him and he comes back . . .’

Gran wrung her hands together in indecision. ‘What do I do?’ she repeated.

Cadbury jumped up to sit on top of the bulky old cassette player. It immediately began to play one of Gran’s favourite big-band tunes.

‘Thanks,’ Gran sighed. ‘I guess you’re right. I’ve small hope of finding him, and no hope of protecting him outside these walls. We’ll just have to wait it out and hope for the best. But he’s so angry. And that’s my fault; my fault for deceiving him. No wonder he was confused and upset.’

She felt old and tired, but she couldn’t sit down again. She’d made herself a cup of tea earlier, but it had gone stone cold and she hadn’t touched it.

‘Come on, Cadbury,’ she said. ‘Let’s switch on every light in the house. Let’s make this place into a beacon.’

She had been in two minds about turning on the lights – she could see the road better with the lights in the sitting room off – but she needed something practical to do. She knew that Callum looked for the light when he made his way back through the wood, and she wanted him to feel welcome.

Walking upstairs, she switched on the overhead lights in both bedrooms, the bedside lamps, and the landing light. With the upstairs windows of the cottage ablaze, Gran came back down and turned on all the other lights.

The boy had been gone for over an hour now. Where? It was unlikely Callum had gone to meet anyone he knew from school, unless it was the girl, Melissa. Despite her initial reaction when she’d found the girl nosing through the books, Gran had had to change her opinion of Melissa that afternoon. She had stood at the door, insistently rapping the brass knocker with the urgency of a fire alarm and calling wildly. Gran had been in the back garden, trying to figure out why the row of cabbages by the wall had gone black and mouldy overnight. She hadn’t heard the phone when Callum had been given his one call. But there had been no way to miss Melissa’s shouting. It carried over the roof of the little cottage.

Mrs Scott! Mrs Scott! Callum’s in trouble!

Why, Melissa had even been ahead of the police ! They had met the patrol car coming down the road through Marlock Wood as they were walking back up to town together. A right bright spark, the sergeant had called her.

So maybe Callum had gone to see Melissa. That would make sense. The Old Stationmaster’s Cottage, that was where Callum had said she lived. A pleasant enough place, the yellow bricks in good repair, and nice flowers in the window boxes.

But the yellow-brick house wasn’t safe – it wasn’t protected by a web of charms, and its ordinary walls would be no protection against the invasion of a monster from the Netherworld that even she didn’t recognise.

‘Oh, why doesn’t he come home!’ Gran exclaimed, going to the window again.

She pressed her face against the cold glass and cupped her hands around her eyes, trying to see beyond the reflection of light and firelight from the room behind her. The moon was out and high now – it was a beautiful clear evening. Gran couldn’t see anyone on the road. She sighed and went into the kitchen to put the kettle on. Callum might want a hot drink when he came back. And she could do with a fresh cup of tea.

The kettle had just reached the boil when Gran heard the sound of the brass knocker, Callum’s signature firm drumming.

Thank God!

She was at the door in three strides, in less than a second.

‘Callum!’ she cried out. ‘Thank goodness, I’ve been so worried!’

Gran lifted the latch effortlessly – she couldn’t figure out why Callum always had to fight such a battle with the old thing – and threw open the door.

The boy stood just off the doorstep, his untidy hair in his eyes. He looked hangdog and embarrassed, as though he was feeling a little ashamed of himself. He’d either taken a step backwards waiting for her to open the door, or he’d had to lean across the porch to knock.

Cadbury let out a hiss, and backed away from the door with a tail the size of a chimney brush, then fled upstairs. The radio, too, gave a howl of static and went silent.

‘Good grief, but that cat’s wound up this evening! Callum, I’m so relieved you’ve come back.’

Gran pushed the door wide open and stepped aside so that Callum could come past her. But he just stood there, silently, on the other side of the doorstep looking at her with shy, beseeching eyes.

‘I’m so sorry you had to find out the way you did, I really am, Callum. I’ve been going out of my mind myself all evening!’

Callum shrugged, and gave that characteristic shake of his head to get the hair out of his eyes, just as Peter had always done at that age. She felt such a surge of love for him that for a moment she couldn’t speak. Then she found her voice again.

‘Well, come in, for goodness sake! Don’t stand out there in the shadows! Come in!’

Callum smiled. At her invitation, he stepped across her threshold, came into the house and closed the door behind him.

Callum leaped over the back of Doom as if he was vaulting a stone wall. The cold air surrounding the great Grim’s body clawed at his legs like wind off a frozen canal, and then he was out in the open.