The Beast. Barry Hutchison

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      The moment my fingers touched hers, though, she grabbed my hand and squeezed it tight, clinging to it as if it was the only thing anchoring her to life. I didn’t pull away, just held on to her and let her hold on to me. I wanted to ask her what had happened and where Nan was, but I knew I’d get no answer.

      Instead I said the only thing I could think of. A lie. ‘It’s OK. You’re going to be OK.’

      I watched a single tear form in her open eye. It trickled sideways, meandering across her temple and over her ear. By the time it dripped on to the carpet, her hand no longer gripped on to mine. I carefully rested it back on her stomach, closed over her eye, and stood up.

      ‘Someone else dead,’ I said, after a long silence, ‘because of me.’

      I hated the matter-of-fact tone of my voice. Hated the fact I wasn’t shaking or crying or screaming about the woman’s death. The cold fact of it was, I’d seen worse.

      ‘You don’t know that, kiddo.’

      But we both knew I was right.

      It was happening again. Someone – or something – had come looking for me, and another innocent person had found themselves caught in the crossfire.

      I took hold of the table leg again, tightening my grip until my knuckles shone white. I set my jaw, clenching my teeth together. Someone else dead. Because of me.

      The stairs passed in a haze. I was at the top before I realised I’d moved. The lights were on up here, all four doors open. I looked in my bedroom, in my wardrobe, under my bed. Nothing there, so I moved on, no longer interested in a trip down Memory Lane. I needed to find Nan and I wanted to find whoever had killed the policewoman. Nothing else mattered.

      Nan’s old room, empty. Bathroom, empty. No damage to either and no blood stains on the walls. I turned to the last door and that’s when I did hesitate, taking a second to compose myself before stepping inside Mum’s bedroom.

      Her bed was unmade. It must’ve been that way since the morning she’d sent me to stay with Marion. The morning she’d been attacked by the Crowmaster, beaten so badly she was still in a coma. And all because of me.

      Her dressing gown lay across the duvet. She’d worn it when she’d talked to me about going away – an all-night conversation in which I’d done nothing but whinge and complain. If she didn’t pull through, that would be the last proper talk we ever had. I pushed the thought from my mind. She’d pull through. She had to.

      ‘Any sign?’

      I turned to find Ameena in the upstairs hallway, knife held ready. ‘Nothing,’ I said, and she lowered the blade to her side. ‘No one’s here.’

      ‘Great,’ she said, sighing. ‘What now?’

      ‘We go outside,’ I said. ‘We look for her. We find her. We’ve got to find her.’

      Ameena’s hand was on my shoulder. ‘We will. She’ll be OK.’

      OK. Like the policewoman was OK.

      ‘But we’d better wrap up,’ Ameena continued. ‘Or we’ll freeze in that snow.’

      ‘We’ll grab coats from the cupboard downstairs,’ I said, turning from Mum’s room and striding along the landing. ‘There should be one about your—’

      THUD.

      The sound came from the living room. It was a single low knock; the sound of something heavy hitting something solid.

      Ameena had the knife raised in an instant, the other hand on my chest, holding me behind her. But I was beyond that now. For too long I’d relied on Ameena to protect me, when really it should’ve been the other way round.

      I pushed her hand aside, more forcefully than I meant to, and crossed to the stairs. I may have been desperate to find Nan, but I wasn’t stupid, and didn’t rush straight down to the living room. After creeping down a couple of the stairs, I squatted down and looked through the gaps in the wooden banister.

      Nothing moved in the room below. I tiptoed further down, feeling Ameena close behind me.

      I should’ve been watching out for trouble, but as I reached the bottom of the stairs my eyes were fixed on only one spot. A patch of carpet, stained with blood. A patch that should’ve been covered by the policewoman’s body.

      ‘Where’d she go?’ I muttered, finally looking around. The living room appeared to be exactly as we’d left it, minus one fresh corpse.

      ‘Maybe she got better,’ Ameena suggested.

      ‘What, better than “dead”?’

      ‘Well, you can’t exactly get much worse.’

      I stepped further into the room, ready to swing with the table leg. ‘Someone took her,’ I said. ‘Someone came in and took her.’

      There was silence in the living room then, broken finally by Ameena asking the question that was bothering us both.

      ‘Why would someone do that?’

      ‘I don’t know.’

      ‘And who would do it?’

      ‘Whoever killed her,’ I said.

      ‘Nah. They’d have just taken her at the time, surely?’

      I dug my fingernails into my palms. ‘Not if they were already carrying somebody else.’

      It took a moment for what I was saying to sink in, then: ‘Oh.’

      Nan. Had whoever took the policewoman’s body already taken Nan? Just the idea of it made my heart race and my legs spring into action. I ran through to the ruined kitchen and hurled myself through the back door, out into the swirling snowstorm.

      ‘Nan!’ I shouted, but the falling flakes seemed to absorb most of the sound. I staggered along the path and out through the open back gate, wading knee-deep through snow that was now only faintly tinged with pink. ‘Nan, where are you?’

      ‘Kyle, come back!’ Ameena’s shout was a whisper in the distance. I blundered on, along the back of my row of houses, shouting for Nan the whole way.

      The cold gripped my legs up to the knees as I forced my way on. My hands were raised in front of me, shielding my eyes from the driving snow. My village gets its fair share of snow in the winter, but this was like nothing I’d ever seen before. It was too severe, too sudden to be natural. Something had to be causing it. Great. Another thing for me to worry about. Always one more thing.

      I emerged from behind the houses into the street. The snow covered the few cars here like a thick white fur. Normally I’d be able to see my front garden, but the blizzard made it impossible to see more than a few metres in any direction.

      The houses around me were in darkness, but the streetlights were on. For all the difference they made. It might have been early morning, but barely a glimmer of sunlight was making it through the snowstorm. I stood in the pool of light cast by one of СКАЧАТЬ