Bone Jack (12 page)

‘Anyway, it’s worth a try,’ she said.

‘Yeah, I guess.’

He smiled and she frowned back at him. ‘Why are you smiling?’

He shrugged. ‘I don’t know. Because I told you everything, I suppose. Because you believed me, straight away, no questions.’

She sighed. ‘Come on, let’s go.’

They went through the back lanes, in case Brooker and Tunney were still prowling the high street.

‘You and Mark always used to mess around on your bikes,’ said Callie. ‘Bombing downhill and bashing yourselves up mostly. You never used to go running, but now it seems like it’s all you do.’

Ash laughed. ‘Yeah, running pretty much is all I do lately.’

‘It’s important to you, isn’t it? The Stag Chase.’

‘Yeah, it is. My dad was the stag boy once. Now it’s me.’

‘Keeping the tradition going then.’

‘I suppose, but it’s not just that.’ He hesitated, suddenly unsure of himself. ‘When I’m running, it’s like … like the Earth turns under my feet and I’m at the centre of everything, holding everything together. And I have this idea that I can hold Dad together too. I don’t know how. It’s just a feeling. More than a feeling. Like an instinct or something. That if I run in the Stag Chase and I win then Dad will be OK.’ He laughed. ‘Sounds crazy, doesn’t it?’

‘A bit. But maybe it’s not.’ She stopped. ‘We’re here.’

TWENTY

Coldbrook Public Library: a big, square building made of pale stone. Ash gazed up at it as he followed Callie towards the door. Maybe she was right and they’d find what they wanted to know, bits and pieces in dusty, long-forgotten books, obscure local histories, old documents, things that were nowhere to be found on the internet.

Inside, the library was cool, airy and quiet. The librarian, a dark-haired man in his thirties, smiled at them as they passed the checkout desk. There was a woman browsing the gardening section, another flicking through a book with a creepy clown’s face on the cover, an old man reading a newspaper at a table. Ash and Callie wandered past shelves of crime novels, romance, science fiction, horror.

‘Where do we start looking?’ said Ash.

‘The local history section, I suppose,’ said Callie.

‘Where’s that?’

Callie looked around helplessly. ‘I don’t know. I’ll ask.’

She went off, came back with the dark-haired man.

‘This is the librarian,’ said Callie. ‘He’s going to show us where to start.’

‘This way,’ the librarian said. He led them through a labyrinth of shelving units and partitions into a large sunlit room. ‘Anything in particular that you’re looking for?’

‘A history of the Stag Chase,’ said Callie.

‘We’ve got one or two, I think,’ he said. ‘And quite a few books on local folklore and traditions that will probably have a chapter or two about it.’

‘Thanks,’ said Ash.

The librarian smiled at him. ‘Folklore is a special interest of mine. Are you researching a holiday project for school?’

‘No,’ said Callie. She glanced at Ash. ‘He’s the stag boy this year. We just wanted to know more about it all. The history and traditions of the Stag Chase, that sort of thing.’

Ash reddened.

‘So you’re the stag boy!’ said the librarian. ‘Great! I love the Stag Chase. I go every year to watch. You must have been training hard.’

‘Yeah,’ said Ash. ‘I have.’

‘It’s a bit like running a marathon, I suppose.’

‘Sort of, but it’s not as far and no one is timing you so you can take a break or walk some of it instead of running, if you want to. But the hound boys are chasing you too so you have to be either very fast or very stealthy.’

‘Well, good luck with it. You’ll find a few useful books in the section over by the window. I’ll leave you to it. Come and find me if you need any more help.’

‘We will,’ said Callie. ‘Thanks.’

The section wasn’t very big, just a couple of shelves with books on everything from haunted houses to a history of the Coldbrook Morris Men. They pulled out the books with the most promising titles. Eight books, all slim, dog-eared, old.

Ash eyed them. ‘We don’t have to read them all, do we?’

Callie laughed. ‘No. Just skim through and read any bits that look useful.’

They sat down at a table. Ash picked up a book and started flicking through it. Ghost stories, strange bits of history, witches turned to stone, legends of giants who lived in caves in the mountains and kicked around boulders as if they were footballs.

‘This looks like the best one,’ said Callie. ‘
A History of the Thornditch Stag Chase
by Sybil Ingham. There has to be something useful in this.’

It was more like a pamphlet than a book: thin, with a battered green cloth cover, published in 1910. Callie opened it and turned pages. ‘Most of it’s about the nineteenth century,’ she said. ‘There’s just a short section at the front about the origins and early history.’

‘Better than nothing,’ said Ash. ‘What does it say?’

She took her time, read it through carefully. Then she pushed the book across the table towards him. ‘Read it yourself.’

He read.

The earliest known record of the Stag Chase is a reference to boys running in ‘Thorn-ditch’s Wyld Hunt’ in a 13th-century poem. However, some archaeologists suggest that the stag’s head carved on a standing stone near Corbie Tor locates the race’s origins in the Dark Ages or earlier. According to oral tradition, the Stag Chase was once a form of human sacrifice in which the stag boy, if caught, was killed by the hounds as a blood offering to the gods. If true, this practice was abandoned or outlawed during the Middle Ages, though local lore has it that occasional blood sacrifices were still made for some centuries after.

‘Right,’ said Ash. ‘The human-sacrifice stuff is more or less the same as Mark told me, that night you took me to see him in the woods. What about that bit that mentions a standing stone with the stag’s head carved on it? I’ve never even heard of it. Have you? Near Corbie Tor, the book says. I haven’t heard of that either.’

‘I’m not sure,’ she said. ‘I think it may be somewhere northwest. I bet Mark would know.’

‘Is there anything about Bone Jack?’

‘I don’t know. I only read that section you just read, on the origins of the Stag Chase. It doesn’t mention him there.’

He turned more pages, skim-reading. Most of the book was about the Stag Chase in the nineteenth century, as Callie had said, and most of that consisted of dull lists of the names of stag boys and notable hounds. But there were pictures too, pen-and-ink drawings of mountain scenes, a twisted hawthorn tree, a hare poised at the edge of a field.

His breath caught in his throat.

Bone Jack
.

The floppy wide-brimmed hat, the eyes at once intense and faraway. The gaunt face.

There was no mistaking him.

‘That’s him,’ said Ash. ‘That’s the man I met in the mountains, the one who was at Mark’s camp. But this book is old, really old.’

‘Yeah, published in 1910.’

‘Over a hundred years ago. But I saw Bone Jack yesterday, in the woods, and he looked exactly like he does in this picture.’

Callie drew a long breath. ‘This is all so mad,’ she said.

‘Yeah, I know. But I really did see him. I’ve seen him three times. Twice hanging around the woods where Mark’s camp is and once when I found the wolf-dog, like I told you. That picture is of him. It’s exactly him.’

‘Does it say anything about him?’

‘A bit. It says the picture is of a hermit who lived wild in the mountains.’ He looked up from the book. ‘I looked up Bone Jack online. There wasn’t much about him, just a bit in an online encyclopedia that said he was a local version of some other mythic figures, wild men who lived in forests with birds and beasts. He’s a bit like them. He lives wild. He has the rooks, and that wolf-dog.’

‘Was it a wolf or a dog?’

‘I don’t know. Bone Jack said it was a wolf but I’ve never seen one in the flesh and it was in such a state anyway, starving and plastered with dried mud. It could have been, I suppose.’

‘So where did it come from? There aren’t any wild wolves in Britain any more, so if it was a wolf, it must have escaped from somewhere.’

‘Yeah, I asked him about that too.’

‘What did he say?’

‘He didn’t really tell me. He just seemed to think it shouldn’t have been there at all.’

‘OK,’ said Callie. ‘So let’s say there really was a wolf in the mountains, even though wild British wolves died out hundreds of years ago. And there are ghost hound boys out there too. And there’s Bone Jack, whom you saw yesterday looking exactly the same as he does in a picture in a book published over a hundred years ago. The wolf and the ghosts and Bone Jack are all ancient, from another time. They shouldn’t be here. They should be dead and gone. So why are they here? Why now?’

‘I don’t know. But it’s not just now. I told you, my dad saw things twenty years ago when he was the stag boy.’

‘OK. But it doesn’t happen every year, does it? Sometimes people tell stories about seeing ghosts up on the mountains, like the stories my dad and grandpa used to tell to me and Mark. But this isn’t stories. This is real. So why now?’

‘I don’t know. It could be something to do with Mark. Maybe he’s summoned them.’

‘I don’t think so. He’s crazy but he hasn’t got magic powers or anything. He’s just my brother. But maybe it’s not about powers. Maybe it’s about the land and its history.’

‘Mark said something like that,’ said Ash. ‘Something about the land being sick with foot-and-mouth and drought, no sheep in the mountains any more, everything withering and dying. He said that’s why the old ways are coming back. The sicker the land is, the stronger its ghosts get, or something.’

‘It makes sense, I suppose,’ she said. ‘Weird crazy ghost-story sense anyway.’

‘Ghost sense,’ said Ash. He smiled at her. ‘So what do we do now?’

‘That’s it for today, I suppose. Tomorrow I’m going to find Mark. Whatever he’s got himself into, I have to get him out of it.’

‘I’ll come with you.’

She shook her head. ‘No. I have to find him on my own.’

‘Why? I’m caught up in all of this, too. I want to know what’s going on.’

‘I know, but he’s still angry with you. He might talk to me about it, but he won’t do it if you’re there.’

Ash scowled but deep down he knew she was right. Mark would put on an act if he was there, make threats, swagger around like he did the night Callie had taken Ash to his camp. ‘OK,’ he said at last. ‘You go. I’ll stay away. But promise me you’ll tell me exactly what he says.’

‘I will. I promise.’

They put the books back on the shelves and stopped to thank the librarian on their way out. ‘Did you find what you wanted?’ he said.

Ash nodded. ‘Yeah, we found out a few things.’

‘Good. I expect I’ll see you on Sunday at the Stag Chase then. I hope you have a good race, leave the hounds in the dust.’

‘Thanks,’ said Ash. ‘I’ll do my best.’

They left the library, walked back to the high street.

Callie stopped. ‘I’ll head off now. I’ll look for Mark in the morning.’

‘Where will you stay tonight? You could come back to ours, only—’

‘Yeah, your dad. I know. I couldn’t stay with you anyway. There’d be too many questions.’

‘Where, then?’

‘I haven’t decided yet. Not back to Grandpa’s house. It’s too risky now Mrs Hopkinson suspects something. Maybe back to the farm.’

‘Your farm?’

She looked away, wouldn’t meet his gaze.

‘The farm’s all boarded up,’ he said.

‘There’s a way in round the back,’ she said. ‘It’s OK, seriously. It was our home.’

‘Yeah, I know, but …’ He felt cold and sick inside at the thought of her spending nights there, alone in that silent house in the vast mountain darkness, only metres away from where her dad hanged himself. ‘It’s creepy.’

‘I know it’s weird,’ she said. ‘But everything’s so weird anyway that it doesn’t matter.’

‘Callie …’ he said. He was about to say that he’d come with her, stay with her so she wouldn’t be alone, but she was already backing away from him. Another step, then another, then she turned and was lost in the throng of shoppers.

Ash stood for a few long moments, watching the crowd where she’d disappeared. Then he headed back to the bus stop.

TWENTY-ONE

Midnight. Two more days until the Stag Chase. Ash tossed and turned in his bed, half awake, half dreaming. He dreamed the stag boy was in his bedroom. Clay-daubed skin like cracked stone, charcoal making hollows of his eyes, the dark gash of his mouth. ‘Earth and stone,’ the stag boy said. Singsong, his voice soft as a breeze, as cold as death’s breath. ‘Fire and ash, blood and bone.’

Behind the stag boy, shadows gathered. They loomed above him, folded over him like a black wave. A tide of pitiless dark. The boy sank away into it as if he was drowning.

‘Wait for me!’ said Ash. But his mouth wouldn’t open. The words jammed in his throat. He flung off the bedsheet and stumbled across the room to where the stag boy had been. Followed him into the deep darkness. Then he was pushing through leaf and twig. Underfoot there wasn’t carpet any more; instead he walked barefoot on the dry leaf litter of a woodland floor.

No sign of the stag boy. Nothing except the dark shapes of trees, a star-scattered sky, moonlight.

He emerged from among the trees onto a stretch of scrubby, stony land. He stopped and stared. He’d been here before. The shallow, shrunken stream. The thorn trees. Bone Jack’s bothy.

The windows were dark. He went closer. A chill wind rattled the bone strings in the doorway. Beyond them, someone or something moved in the gloom.

The face at the window. Pale, blurred.

The quick beat of his own heart, his blood singing in his ears.

He went closer.

No one there.

A movement nearby. Wing beats, then soft footsteps.

Bone Jack stood in front of him. ‘You shouldn’t be here, lad. Go home.’

Then all of it was gone, blacked out in a blink.

He was standing in his own bedroom, facing the wall.

The cry of an owl in the trees.