Cadbury gave his short trill of greeting and cautiously picked his way up into Callum’s lap.
‘So,’ said Callum, scratching him behind the ears. ‘Do cats see ghosts? Is that why you’re bouncing off the walls the whole time?’
Cadbury wedged himself under Callum’s arm, kneading and purring, as if he was trying to smooth away his worries.
‘But it wasn’t a ghost that followed me tonight,’ Callum told the cat softly. ‘Not a normal one. It was something new.’
Then an equally unpleasant thought twisted in Callum’s mind. What if it wasn’t something new? What if his ability to see these unnatural things was growing stronger?
What if the presence he felt tonight had always been there, and he simply hadn’t noticed it before?
Chapter 3
Callum ran.
At first he ran for the pleasure of it, as he sometimes did around the track at school, but after a while he realised he didn’t know where he was. He didn’t want to stop and look; in fact, he was afraid of stopping, afraid of what he might see or meet if he even slowed down.
So he kept on running.
The pavement beneath his feet was slick and slippery, lit only by moonlight. But it wasn’t raining, and Callum didn’t dare look down to see what made it wet. Where was he?
Nothing was familiar. The buildings he ran past were old and decaying, their windows hollow black cavities or nailed over with rotting boards. He came to a crossroads and turned blindly. Any street was better than this one. But after ten metres he knew he’d gone the wrong way, and had to turn and backtrack. He didn’t know where he was, but he knew which way he had to go.
He was looking for something.
Callum ran without tiring. His rugby boots struck rhythmically against the paving slabs, and hollow echoes bounced off the black and ruined walls. Nothing around him changed: same empty, nameless streets; same faint moonlight; same hard pavement underfoot. But deep within him, Callum felt a needling sense of urgency, pushing him forwards and making him more and more nervous with every step. He was wasting time; he had to move faster.
Callum forced himself to stand still. He wasn’t at all out of breath but he needed to think. Maybe his Luck was guiding him, though he couldn’t remember it ever driving him so hard before.
He began to run again. Suddenly now he was barefoot, and could feel the wet concrete against his skin, faintly sticky to the touch. It was horrible, but he had to keep going. Now the only sound was the soft slap of his feet as he ran.
There was a light over the streets ahead, the glow of motorway lamps, and Callum ran towards the bright line with relief. Now he was running alongside a canal beneath a motorway embankment. The light from the motorway was so far above him he couldn’t see it reflected in the water. Something terrible had happened here in these shadows; Callum could feel it – hear it, like an echo. Dread filled him and he thought about trying to double back, but his internal navigation system wouldn’t let him.
He could hear rain falling in the black canal, spitting and hissing as it hit the water’s surface, but he stayed strangely dry. The path was empty, except for a pile of rubbish. Whatever had happened here was over. It wasn’t what he was looking for. Callum ran on past the shapeless tangle of shopping trolleys and mattresses.
Suddenly he was running through utter blackness, as though he’d entered a tunnel. It was like running with his eyes shut, but he didn’t hit anything. Once he glanced up, and there were stars overhead, then he was plunged back into the darkness. Callum rubbed his eyes until red spots flashed against his eyelids.
A shriek of pure terror split the night. The noise drove into Callum’s head like an iron spike. Although his heart pounded with fear, his feet and legs reacted automatically, turning towards the sound. That was the way he had to go.
But now he was in a different city. Somehow he had travelled hundreds of miles, running in the starlit dark, but there was no time to stop and wonder how. Cars lined the streets. Terraced houses flashed past on either side, charmless but ordinary.
Then the voice cried out again:
‘Help me!’
‘Where are you?’ Callum yelled. ‘I’m coming!’
When the next scream came, it was one of mindless agony.
Abruptly, Callum turned a corner into a narrow alley. The high brick walls of urban back gardens rose steeply on either side of him, still echoing with the terrible scream. All the gates were shut and locked. The windows of the houses beyond were dark. The pavement was lined with cracks. Grey, patchy grass straggled through the gaps.
This was the place. Callum knew it the moment his bare feet touched the cool, tacky concrete. But now everything was still and quiet; not even the echo remaining.
Desolation swept over him. He was too late.
Halfway down the alley, he found what he was looking for. Slumped against the wall, hands out and open like a beggar, was a dead boy, no older than Callum. Blood smeared his cheeks, black in the moonlight. He stared blankly across the alley from empty sockets.
His eyes had been torn out.
Callum stared at the dead boy’s ruined features, fighting the urge to be sick. He felt guilt slither into the hollow pit of his stomach. He should have been faster. He might have been able to prevent this.
‘What happened to you?’ Callum whispered. ‘Why were you calling me?’
The boy’s ravaged face offered no answer, his sightless gaze fixed on the opposite wall of the alley.
Callum turned. There were words scrawled across the bricks. The letters glistened against the rough surface, and Callum did not need to look any closer to know that they were written in blood.
IT IS COMING
That was all. Three words, ten letters.
IT IS COMING
As if in confirmation, a long, deep howl echoed through the night, terrifyingly close and horribly familiar. Callum spun round, pressing his back to the wall next to the savaged body as the howl reached a crescendo -
And then he was sitting up in bed, wide awake and tangled in his sheets.
The hairs at the back of his neck were standing on end and he was panting like he really had been running for the past hour. The soles of his feet were ice-cold, as if they still felt the wet concrete of the street in his dream beneath them.
He didn’t feel as though he’d woken from a nightmare, didn’t feel any relief from his sense of failure. He knew he was awake now, but his horror and disgust were as real as they had been in the dream.
So was the wailing howl echoing in the darkness.
Callum dug his fingers into his mattress, fighting the rising panic. Was the creature still outside? Had its call woken him up – or had it triggered the dream?
The spine-chilling cry faded to a low murmur and Callum forced himself to lie still, listening for it again. Long moments passed. The wind moaned as it rattled the window frame, but it was just wind, not the voice of some baying demon. At the bottom of the bed, Cadbury raised his head and gave him a quizzical look.
‘Just a nightmare, Cad.’
But it wasn’t just a nightmare. Callum wanted to believe it was his mind playing tricks, but he knew better. Forcing his frozen feet out of bed, he slipped over to the window. He didn’t turn on the light – the only glowing window in the row of empty cottages would attract too much attention – just pressed his face against the leaded panes.
Held in place by the pressure of Callum’s touch, the window stopped rattling, but the branches of the rowan tree growing by the side of the cottage still tapped at the glass. Callum held his breath to keep the panes from misting up and stared out into the windy night.
There was no sign of the animal shadow that had followed him home, but Callum knew now, with certainty, that it was still there. He could almost sense its closeness; it could be at the old mill, or at the bottom of the hill where Marlock Road joined the main road to Stockport, or, more likely, lurking in the cover of the woods.