Barry Hutchison - The Beast

‘Deaf,’ I agreed, trudging along behind her. ‘Yeah.’

I stopped walking.

‘Wait,’ I said.

‘What?’

I looked across at the other side of the street, where I could just make out the darkened outlines of six houses.

‘Why’ve we stopped?’ Ameena was asking. I didn’t answer.

The houses on this side of the street were in darkness too. Now that we were closer, I could make out the lights we’d left on in my house, but they were the only ones on in the entire block.

There were a few vehicles parked along the street – a couple of cars, the van of the window-cleaner who lived at number five – but nothing moved in any direction along the road.

‘Listen,’ I said.

A pause, then, ‘Listen to what?’

‘To nothing,’ I said.

Another pause, then, ‘Are you winding me up? What you on about?’

‘It’s quiet,’ I whispered. ‘There’s not a sound.’

She listened, properly this time, without speaking.

‘It’s early,’ she said, offering an explanation.

‘Not that early. People should be up and about.’ I nodded across the street. ‘They should at least have their lights on.’

Ameena looked at each house in turn, considering this. Then she scooped up some snow, squashed it into a ball shape, and launched it at the closest bedroom window.

Her aim was spot on. The snowball hit the glass with a loud thonk, and I had to resist the urge to run away and hide. We stood watching the window, waiting for a light to come on.

‘Try another one,’ she said, when it became clear the room was staying dark. ‘Try them all.’

We worked quickly, making snowballs, chucking them at windows. Most of mine found their target. All of Ameena’s found theirs. We hit over twenty windows. No one appeared at any of them.

‘Empty,’ I said, voicing what we’d both already guessed. ‘They’re all empty.’

‘Or maybe...’

I turned to Ameena. ‘Maybe what?’

‘Maybe the people inside just can’t come to the window.’

I looked to the closest house, shrouded in darkness like all the others. A shiver ran the length of my spine, nothing to do with the cold.

‘Only one way to find out,’ I said.

The gate squeaked as I pushed it open and slowly, quietly, we approached the front door.

t’s open.’ Ameena drew her breath in sharply through her teeth. ‘That doesn’t bode well.’

I gave the door a gentle push and it swung inwards, revealing a shadowy hallway. A brass number 9 was screwed on to the front of the door. Number 9 was Mrs Angelo’s house. I couldn’t tell you much about Mrs Angelo, other than that she was in her sixties, and always used to give out the best sweets at Halloween. Not much of a biography, really.

I tried to call Mrs Angelo’s name, but my throat had tightened so the sound that came out was little more than a whisper. I coughed and tried again. ‘Mrs Angelo? Are you there?’

Ameena pushed past me and strode into the hallway. ‘Helloooo?’ she shouted at the top of her voice. ‘Anyone home?’

‘What happened to stealth?’ I asked.

She shrugged. ‘Stealth got boring. Shut the door.’

I hesitated, unsure, but then quietly clicked the door closed. Ameena flicked a switch and the hallway was bathed in light. I realised for the first time that my hands were blue with cold. Jamming them under my armpits, I followed Ameena into the living room.

A tattered armchair and a saggy old couch sat empty in the room. The TV was off. An old grandfather clock tick-tocked solemnly in the corner.

‘Not in there,’ Ameena said, and we both backed out into the hall. I tried the kitchen next. The door was ajar, and swung open at a prod from my foot.

The room was empty, but the fridge door hung open, casting a pale yellow glow across the rest of the kitchen. A mug of tea stood on the worktop beside the fridge.

‘Cold,’ Ameena said, touching the side of the mug. ‘Guess she changed her mind about having a cuppa.’

‘Or something changed it for her.’

‘I wasn’t going to mention that,’ she said. ‘In case, you know... you wet yourself or something.’

‘Funny,’ I sighed. ‘Come on, she might be upstairs.’

Something crunched softly beneath Ameena’s foot. We both looked down to find a bag of sugar on the floor, its contents spilled across the lino. Our attention was instantly drawn to the shape that was clearly visible in the scattered granules. We studied it for a long, long time.

‘What the hell made that?’ Ameena asked, at last.

‘Dunno,’ I replied.

‘Well, if you are going to wet yourself, now might be the perfect time.’

I stared down at the shape in the sugar. A shape that could only be described as an enormous, three-toed footprint. ‘You know,’ I whispered, ‘I might just take you up on that.’

‘Should we search the rest of the house?’ Ameena asked. She didn’t take her eyes from the print. It was about forty centimetres in length, and the same again at its widest point, up near the three saucer-sized toeprints.

‘Probably,’ I said, though I doubt I sounded convinced.

‘Thought you’d say that.’ Ameena gave a grim nod, then swept the sugar aside with her foot. ‘Come on, then,’ she said. ‘Let’s get it over with.’

Mrs Angelo’s house was laid out differently to mine, even though they were on the same block. The stairs in my house led up from the living room, but in Mrs Angelo’s they started in the hall. Two steps, then a sharp left turn and more stairs leading to the upper floor.

The stairway was narrow, but neither of us felt like pushing ahead. Flicking on the light, we made our way up, shoulder to shoulder, side by side. Each step brought a groan of protest from the floorboard beneath us. If anything was up there, it would already know we were coming.

‘Anyone home?’ The sound of Ameena’s voice in the cramped space made me jump.

‘Sssssh!’ I hissed.

‘Why?’

‘Um, well, giant footprint,’ I whispered. ‘Remember?’

‘Um, well, narrow staircase,’ she said.

‘So?’

She gave a sigh, then spoke slowly, as if explaining to a child. ‘Big thing no fit up small stairs.’

I thought about this for a moment. The footprint we saw suggested an enormous creature. Rhino-sized, maybe bigger. A rhino couldn’t fit up these stairs in a million years. Not even with someone pushing it really hard from behind.

‘Anyway, we don’t even know if it was a footprint,’ she said.

‘Oh, it was,’ I nodded. ‘It was definitely a footprint.’

We were almost at the top of the stairs now and began to creep even more slowly. ‘How do you know?’

‘Because I don’t want it to be a footprint,’ I said. ‘Because the worst possible thing it could be is the scary big footprint of something that wants to kill us. And the worst possible things keep happening to me lately.’ I took a deep breath, stopping my rant before it became too loud. ‘I know it’s a footprint, because with my recent luck, it couldn’t be anything else.’

She shrugged. ‘Fair point. But it still couldn’t fit up the stairs.’

We stepped on to an upper landing awash with the smells of old lady. Talcum powder. Lavender. Something that could’ve been cabbage. As I breathed them in, my memories of Mrs Angelo became pin-sharp in my mind. I remembered my last meeting with her, chatting to her for a few seconds on Christmas Eve as I’d delivered her card.

Mum was always late writing Christmas cards, but even for her, 10 p.m. on Christmas Eve was cutting it fine. I’d planned to drop the card through the letterbox and move on, but Mrs Angelo had clocked me coming up the path and had come to the door to talk to me.