Bone Jack Read online

  He looked around. Looked up.

  A stag carcass hung from a branch above, swinging in the breeze. Its head was gone, hacked off. Maggots bulged and gleamed in the blackened gore at its neck.

  Ash covered his nose and mouth with one hand, tried not to breathe. His stomach heaved.

  There was a movement in the bushes beyond the carcass. A flash of white and red. Laughter.

  ‘Ash,’ called a voice. As soft as the breeze through the leaves. ‘Over here!’

  ‘Mark,’ said Ash. Heart thumping. ‘Stop messing around.’

  More laughter.

  ‘Over here,’ said the voice. Louder this time. Closer, somewhere to the side now.

  Ash turned.

  A figure came through the trees. Sackcloth mask, scabby with dried clay. Ragged mouth, eyeholes that seemed to have nothing but shadows behind them.

  Not tall enough to be Mark.

  Now more hound boys approached behind the first. Ash turned but they were all around him, coming from all sides, closing in. No way out. Mark had lured him into a trap.

  The hound boys came closer. Their dry, clay-crusted skin pressed against him. The scent of blood came from them, hot and metallic. Their whispering voices were as scratchy as the wind in dead grass, and as senseless. He couldn’t tell if they were flesh and blood or the ghosts he’d seen up on the Leap nearly a week and a half ago.

  They wrenched the rucksack from his shoulders.

  That felt real enough.

  ‘Hey, that’s mine,’ he said. He grabbed at it, missed. ‘Give it here!’

  Boys from school, he told himself. That was all. Boys tormenting him because he was the stag boy, because Mark had put them up to it. They’d rough him up a bit, try to scare him, and that would be that.

  Still, his heart raced with fear.

  The hound boys laughed behind their masks. They passed the rucksack back through their ranks and closed in tighter.

  One of them scooped up a handful of ash from the cold remains of the campfire. He threw it in Ash’s face, rubbed it into his skin and hair. Ash coughed and choked, eyes streaming.

  The weight of their bodies bore him forward. They hauled him over a fallen tree poxy with black fungus, across ground ankle deep with ivy, past clumps of bracken and green licks of hart’s tongue.

  Smoke from a small fire drifted under the leaf canopy. The hounds stopped, gazed into its bright heart. One of them tossed a handful of something into the flames. Smell of burning leaves. Ash’s eyes, nose, throat filled with bitter smoke.

  They seized him, pushed him down onto the ground. Held down his arms and legs so he couldn’t move.

  ‘Be still,’ hissed one. ‘Be still for the stag god.’

  Then the god came.

  At first he was a silhouette, a shadow. The afternoon sunlight slanted through the trees behind him, hazy beams, dust motes drifting and sparkling. The god was taller than any of the hound boys. A cloak of black feathers swung about him. Instead of a man’s head, a stag’s head sat upon his shoulders, crowned with spreading antlers.

  The hounds drew back to let him through.

  Ash stared up into two dull, dead eyes. The stag’s nose and half-open mouth tarry with congealed blood.

  The stag god crouched over him. Stench of blood, rotten meat, death.

  And the cloak. It was made of bird skins, feathered and bloody, eyeless heads still attached. Steely beaks.

  Rooks, like the dead rooks Ash had seen hanging from a branch the last time he’d come here.

  The god took a thin, vicious knife from under his cloak. The hand that held it was caked with cracked clay, the colour of rust or dried blood. Black dirt under his fingernails.

  ‘Earth and stone,’ whispered the god, ‘fire and ash, blood and bone.’

  ‘Mark,’ said Ash. His voice shaking. ‘I know it’s you. I know your voice.’

  ‘Me, and not me. Be still. It will hurt less if you’re still.’

  Ash tensed, tried to wrench away from the hounds pressing down on him. But there were too many of them, too strong, too heavy. ‘What will hurt less?’ He couldn’t catch his breath. Maybe Mark wasn’t going to wait for the Stag Chase. Maybe this was it, the kill, the blood sacrifice that he had threatened. ‘Killing me won’t bring back your dad,’ he said. His voice thin and shaky.

  ‘Hush. Be still.’

  The knife descended tip first. Ash felt its cold bite as it broke the skin just below his collarbone. He flinched, bit back a cry. The hounds whooped and hollered and bayed. Then the cold became a white-hot thread of pain that moved this way and that across his chest.

  The stag’s dead eyes watched without seeing. Ash gazed back through a haze of pain and smoke and blood and terror. A cloud of flies buzzed around the rotting head. Then the knife lifted, vanished back under the cloak of bird skins. Mark straightened and stood. He raised his head and bellowed. Then he turned his back on Ash, walked away through the hound boys, vanished back into the gloom.

  Ash sucked in air. A knot of darkness unravelled inside him. The world around him spun away, dimmed and disappeared.

  When he opened his eyes again, he was alone.

  He sat up. Pain clawed across his chest. Wincing, he got to his feet. His stomach heaved. Bile flooded his mouth. He gagged and spat.

  The wood was silent except for the shrill staccato jabber of a startled blackbird.

  The fishing rods and the rucksack were on the ground where the hounds had dropped them. He rummaged in the rucksack, found the water bottle, rinsed his mouth, spat, then drank deeply.

  A tiny sound, the pop of a twig cracking underfoot.

  He looked up.

  In the darkness among the trees a shard of sunlight lit up a face. Someone watching him. Then the breeze scattered leaf shadows and the sunlight and the face were gone.

  But not before he’d recognised the watcher.

  The wild man who’d taken the wolf-dog.

  Bone Jack.

  SIXTEEN

  Ash stood among the trees at the bottom of the drive. He stared up at the house. Most likely Mum was in the back garden but he couldn’t count on it. He couldn’t let her see him, not pale with ash, his shirt slashed open and his chest all cut up and a mess of blood. She’d freak.

  Hidden in the undergrowth, he waited. He watched the house until he was certain Mum wasn’t inside and Dad was holed up in his room. Then he loped up the drive to the front door and let himself in.

  Silence.

  No one around.

  Upstairs, he locked the bathroom door behind him. He stood in front of the mirror. Dried blood crusted his chest.

  His face was ghostly with the ash the hound boy had thrown at him.

  He soaked a facecloth in cold water and squeezed it out over the wounds on his chest, wiped away blood, rinsed the cloth, wiped away more blood.

  He looked in the mirror again. Now most of the blood was gone, a pattern was visible: a crude stag’s head cut into his flesh, just like the one he’d seen daubed on the stag boy’s chest that day on the Leap.

  Ash drew a sharp breath. He ran his fingertips over the cuts. The wounds were tender and shallow, not much more than scratches really. They’d hurt for a few days then they’d heal, probably not even leave a scar.

  Even so, terror hammered in his chest.

  He took slow breaths, forced himself to calm down. There had to be an explanation for it all. The stag god wasn’t any sort of god. It was just Mark, wearing a grotesque headdress made of the dead stag’s head and a cloak made from bloodied bird skins. Horrific and crazy, but still Mark. And the hound boys were just ordinary boys behind their masks, doing what Mark told them. Somehow Mark had made himself their leader. Because he was cleverer, quicker, stronger, wilder, more charismatic than they were. Because he was mad and his madness made him powerful.

  Just boys. It was all just boys. Nothing supernatural. They were playing mind games, trying to intimidate him. The hounds always intimidated the stag boy before the race
, he reminded himself. It was expected.

  Everything was OK.

  But it didn’t feel OK. It felt dark, dangerous. There was death all around it. The stag’s head, all those rooks. Mark must have caught them somehow, maybe netted them or shot them down with a catapult. And then he’d killed them, skinned them, made them into that cloak. It was sick, wrong.

  Ash wished he could talk to Dad about it all, ask him if he knew what all this stuff meant, ask him what he should do. But Dad was lost in his own nightmares. He couldn’t handle Ash’s terrors as well.

  Ash’s head ached with it all.

  He showered, washed away the last traces of blood and the bitter smell of smoke that clung to his skin and hair. He found the first-aid box that Mum kept in the bathroom cupboard. He smeared antiseptic cream over the wounds and taped dressings over the top. Then he wrapped himself in a huge towel and crept upstairs to his bedroom on the top floor. Still no sign of Mum and Dad anywhere. He stuffed the bloodied T-shirt and facecloth into a corner at the back of the wardrobe, dressed himself in clean clothes.

  Everything hidden, everything as ordinary as he could make it.

  He lay on his bed. Sunlight played across the ceiling. His body felt empty, a shell. He floated above it, half asleep, far away from everything. Dad downstairs in his room, his head full of demons. Mum out in the garden, herself and yet not herself.

  Lies. Secrets. Blood and death. None of it made any sense. He didn’t know any more if the world had gone mad or if he had.

  He turned his head, gazed out of the window. Unblinking.

  He needed to find Callie. She was the only person he could think of who might understand any of this. The only person who might know what Mark was doing and might be able to make him stop.

  Tomorrow though.

  Callie could wait until tomorrow. The world could wait.

  He was weary to the bone. He closed his eyes and let sleep take him.

  SEVENTEEN

  Next morning he walked to the high street and caught the bus to Coldbrook. A couple of lads from his year at school were horsing around on seats at the back. Liam Tunney and Chris Brooker. They shot glances at him. They whispered and sniggered. ‘Dead man walking,’ said Brooker loudly. They both laughed.

  Ash stayed away from them. He sat near the front, among the pensioners on their way to Coldbrook’s shops and cafes. He felt the boys’ eyes on him, heard their voices and laughter but he didn’t look round. They’d be hound boys, he knew. Almost every local youth between the ages of fifteen and twenty would be a hound boy in the Stag Chase. So they’d probably been there yesterday too, in the wood with the other boys, their faces hidden behind masks, holding Ash down while Mark carved the stag’s head into Ash’s chest.

  He wondered how much else they knew. They could be in on everything, part of Mark’s plan to kill the stag boy and bring back his dad from the dead.

  He pushed the thought aside. He was just being paranoid. Brooker and Tunney were thugs, that was all. Mark wouldn’t trust them with anything important.

  Beyond the window, the trees lining the lane gave way to dry-stone walls and patchwork fields, then the rough open moors of the uplands. The bus crested a hill and now Coldbrook filled the valley below, a sprawl of tightly packed houses rising in tiers up the lower slopes of the mountains to either side.

  One of those houses belonged to Grandpa Cullen.

  Ash had been there once before, with Mark. But that was a long time ago and all he remembered was a few worn steps leading from the pavement to a green front door. A whitewashed terraced house. A curve of railing. A fiery orange geranium in a flowerpot.

  Where though? The only parts of town Ash knew well were the high street and the bus route to his school. But there were so many other streets, so many houses. They all looked alike.

  He got off the bus in the town centre. Liam Tunney and Chris Brooker got off too. They cackled like hyenas and elbowed each other as they passed him. He hung back, watched them head off along the high street until they disappeared into the crowd.

  Cars, shoppers, music blaring from a clothes shop, a streak of kids pelting past on BMX bikes. The rush of noise and movement made him giddy. He walked along the high street until it split into three at a roundabout. Then he walked back again, wandered down a cobbled side street that swung sharply to the left then ended abruptly at a high brick wall mottled and veined with faded blue graffiti.

  He retraced his steps to the high street, at a loss. He stopped at a corner, turned this way and then that, wondering what to do, where to go. Without the name of the road Grandpa Cullen lived on, he couldn’t even ask for directions or look at a map.

  ‘You look lost, lad,’ said a voice. Two elderly women, smiling kindly at him. They both looked old enough to have been at school with Grandpa Cullen.

  ‘I’m looking for my friend’s grandpa’s house,’ he said. ‘Only I can’t remember where it is.’

  ‘What’s his name?’ said one of the women. ‘We’ve lived here all our lives. We might know him.’

  ‘Cullen,’ said Ash. ‘Mr Cullen.’

  ‘George Cullen,’ said the woman, looking at the other. ‘He must mean George Cullen.’

  ‘Must do,’ agreed the second woman.

  ‘Pocket Lane, I think,’ said the first woman. ‘Is that right? Or is it Harper Lane?’

  ‘Pocket Lane,’ said the other. ‘Definitely Pocket Lane.’ They directed Ash towards the north side of town. Third row of houses beyond the church spire, or was it the fourth row. Somewhere around there anyway.

  ‘I can’t tell you what number house, mind,’ said the first woman. ‘You’ll have to ask someone else when you get there.’

  ‘I will,’ said Ash. ‘Thanks.’

  Pocket Lane. He recognised it as soon as he saw it, though it was narrower than he remembered and the houses were smaller and grubbier. Grandpa Cullen’s whitewashed house stood out among the dark grey stone and pebbledash. There were the steps up to it, the railing, the green door. The potted geranium was gone. The windows were dark.

  He rang the doorbell and waited.

  Nothing.

  He rang it a second time, then hammered the brass knocker for good measure. Still nothing. He leaned over the railing and peered through the living-room window. No one there, just a fireplace, a couple of heavy old armchairs, a coffee table with a folded newspaper and a stack of unopened letters on top of it, a TV set in the far corner. He drew back and knocked on the front door again.

  A neighbour came out from next door. A large middle-aged woman with honey-coloured hair, her rolled sleeves exposing powerful forearms. A cold, suspicious expression on her heavy face. ‘Can I help you?’ she said.

  ‘Is this where Grandpa Cullen lives?’ he said. ‘George Cullen?’

  Her eyes narrowed. ‘What do you want with Mr Cullen?’

  ‘It’s not him exactly. I’m looking for Callie, his granddaughter.’

  ‘What do you want with Callie then?’

  ‘It’s personal.’

  She stared at him, stone-faced.

  ‘I just want to ask her where her brother is,’ he said. ‘Mark. I know him from school. He was my best mate.’

  ‘Was?’

  ‘We fell out.’

  ‘Ah. And now you want to make up with him, do you?’ The woman’s expression softened a little. ‘They’re not here, love.’

  ‘It’s OK. I’ll wait.’

  ‘They’re not coming back. No one lives there now. George fell sick and went into hospital a month ago. He couldn’t look after himself, never mind take care of two children. Not that it was much of a surprise. His health’s not been good for years. I don’t suppose he’ll last much longer, bless him.’

  She paused. Then: ‘You know about his son, I suppose. The children’s father.’

  Ash nodded. ‘Yeah.’

  A clap of wings overhead. Ash flinched and glanced up. Just a pigeon, launching from the chimney stack. And a face at the upstairs window, C
allie’s face. She pressed a finger to her lips and drew back into the gloom inside.

  ‘Jumpy lad, aren’t you?’ said the woman.

  ‘The pigeon,’ he said vaguely. ‘It startled me, that’s all.’

  ‘Anyway,’ she said, ‘where was I?’

  ‘Mr Cullen’s health.’

  ‘Ah yes.’ She sighed theatrically. ‘That terrible business with his son. I think that was the last straw. Broke his heart, it did. Anyway, the children went off to stay with relatives in Thornditch, so I was told. I expect Mr Cullen’s house will be up for sale soon.’

  Thornditch. They didn’t have any relatives there. They didn’t have any relatives anywhere that Ash knew of, except for Grandpa Cullen. And now he knew that Callie was in the house anyway, hiding upstairs. Maybe she’d been secretly staying there all along.

  ‘OK,’ said Ash. ‘Thanks. Sorry for bothering you.’

  The woman smiled. ‘It’s no bother, love. If you ask around Thornditch, I’m sure you’ll find them soon enough. It’s only a little village. Someone will know.’

  ‘Right,’ said Ash. ‘I will. Thanks.’

  ‘What’s your name, love? So I can pass it on if I see anyone.’

  ‘Ash,’ he said. ‘Ash Tyler.’

  ‘Tyler? Stephen Tyler’s lad?’

  A hard edge in her voice now. She knew who his dad was. Ash should have kept his mouth shut.

  ‘Don’t you live in Thornditch?’ she said.

  ‘No,’ he said. Reddening at the lie. Forcing a smile, backing away. ‘Must be a different Tyler.’

  He walked away slowly, told himself it probably didn’t matter. The woman didn’t know anything much. Didn’t know Mark was living wild in the mountains. Didn’t even know that Callie was staying in Grandpa Cullen’s house.

  But she’d known he’d lied, he was certain of it, and now she’d realise that Mark and Callie couldn’t be in Thornditch. What if she started snooping?

  And he still needed to talk to Callie.

  He looked back. The neighbour was standing in the middle of the pavement, her arms folded, watching him go.