Janie Fogg had the feeling that there was something out there. A kind of intuition that sent a tingling feeling up and down her spine and made her constantly glance out of the grimy latticed windows towards the dark fir woods that lined the horizon.
Another half-hour and it would be dark. That wouldn't help, because if there was anything lurking outside, whatever or whoever it was would be able to creep right up to this tumbledown cottage. She shuddered, felt the urge to flee now whilst it was still light, whilst there was time. Before . . .
She closed her eyes, hoping that when she opened them again she would find herself back in the modern characterless semi-detached house that looked across on dozens of identical dwellings. The Perrycroft Estate, mundane—but safe. It didn't happen that way, though. Oh God, the desolation, the fear was still here. And as if to increase her uneasiness the dusk was turning the distant mountains into a grey unfriendly land mass that seemed to hem her in.
Janie carried on drying the dishes. A cup and saucer rattled in her trembling hand as she carried it from the table. She was forced to look out of the window again, searching the rough grass fields that led up to the forest, endeavouring to spot the object of her mounting terror. But there was nothing, just a few sheep and a smaller creature that could have been either a hare or a rabbit by the furthermost hedgerow.
All this was sheer madness, coming to a place like this at this time of the year. In summer it would not have been so bad; she might even have enjoyed it for a week. But it was November and the desolate landscape was shrouded in low cloud for most of the time, a perpetual atmosphere of damp and cold. Hodre was a typical dilapidated Welsh country cottage, the kind of place unscrupulous owners could charge a hundred pounds a week for in the holiday season simply because escapist urban dwellers thought they were 'getting away from it all'. That was fine when the sun shone and bees worked diligently gathering pollen amongst the masses of wild flowers; now the flowers and the bees were gone and she faced stark reality.
At thirty-six life had settled to a nice even pattern for Janie: a husband who went out to work at eight in the morning and came home at six, a mortgage within their means because they hadn't tried to keep up with the Jones's and moved to a detached house. A car on HP and a few pounds left over for a ride out at the weekends. Now that Gavin was at school Janie could have got a job, but it would have spoiled it all because she would not have had time to do her household chores as meticulously as she liked. Life wasn't boring because this was the kind of existence she had dreamed of for years, conventionally perfect in every aspect.
And then Peter had gone and ruined it all by writing that damned book, working on it two or three evenings a week for over a year. She had actually encouraged him at the time because it kept him in the house instead of out in his garage workshop until eleven o'clock at night. But she would never in her wildest fantasies have thought that it would have been the springboard for all this. Thousands of people wrote books that were never published. Only exceptionally lucky ones received royalties. And certainly only a meagre handful made it really big on a first book.
It was an experience that left Janie dazed and still waking up each morning in the beginning thinking that maybe she had dreamed it all. Who in their right minds would pay an advance of fifteen thousand pounds for a few hundred typewritten pages of a novel when they did not even know whether or not it would sell? Janie didn't know the details of this apparent madness but there had been talk of some kind of auction—publishers trying to outbid one another for Peter's book.
Peter should have been satisfied once he'd banked his cheque, a nest egg which would allow them to live comfortably for many years without worrying about recessions and inflation and all that sort of gloom which came out of the TV screen at nine o'clock every night. But he wasn't satisfied; it had changed him almost overnight, in her opinion anyway. He was greedy, he wanted to do it all over again: another book and another fifteen grand. That was why they had moved to Hodre for a year. A year! She'd go mad. The nearest village was three miles away, and their closest neighbours, the Ruskins at the big Hill farm on the other side of the forest, weren't exactly the friendliest people you could meet. They seemed resentful that the Foggs had moved in. Driving by in their Land Rover or tractor, father and sons glared down at the small stone cottage. Peter said it was because they desperately wanted Hodre and its meagre three or four acres to complete their monopoly of an upland sheep empire, but Clive Blackstone, Hodre's owner who lived somewhere much more civilised down on the south coast, was rich enough and stubborn enough to resist tempting offers. So in a way having the Ruskins as neighbours was worse than having no neighbours at all.
Janie's lips tightened. Peter was selfish as well as greedy. He had uprooted both herself and Gavin, heedless of the fact that their nine-year-old son had just settled into the big middle school. Now Gavin had to pick up the threads all over again, and try and hold his own in an out-of-the-way village school where in all probability they used outdated teaching methods.
Janie sighed her relief audibly and almost forgave her husband for everything as she spied the blue Saab estate car winding its way down the narrow lane between the low pleached hedges. Her fears seemed to lessen with the realisation that Peter had returned from collecting Gavin from school in the village. But it would be like this every day: a regular period of loneliness and terror. She tried to tell herself that she would get used to it but she knew she wouldn't.
The Saab's headlights were on. Dusk had deepened considerably during the last ten minutes or so whilst she had been looking out of the window. Even with Peter back, night still held a thousand terrors for Janie; things she couldn't explain, couldn't talk to Peter about.
Away to the left, only three hundred yards from the cottage and just visible from the small lead-framed windows, a rough circle of twisted and stunted pines were silhouetted against the deep grey of a darkening western sky, set on an elevated hillock so that they would be visible from almost any angle in this barren rocky hill country. Janie shivered; that place was something else that unnerved her, making her want to lock the doors and windows before it got properly dark. An ancient druid stone circle lay beneath those warped pines. So the locals said, anyway, and you could take most of what they said with a pinch of salt, Janie sneered to herself. The villagers didn't like having strangers in their midst, so the story could have been invented for the sole purpose of discouraging outsiders. But there was no getting away from the fact that there was a rough circle of large stones up there and the place was also listed on the large scale ordnance survey map of the district.
Peter had shown a considerable interest in the circle and had even taken Gavin up there (all part of the boy's education, he had said), and the boy had been fascinated by a huge flat stone which Peter claimed had to be the sacrificial stone. Ugh, it was horrible, best forgotten. There were enough killings in the twentieth century without digging up gory reminders from a bygone age, Janie had insisted. History always seemed to be about bloodshed and maybe that was why life was so cheap nowadays. Nobody was safe anywhere. That feeling of uneasiness came back. There was something dangerous about Hodre.
'Hi.' Peter was standing inside the small hallway, seemingly oblivious of the draught from the door, which hadn't latched properly. Short and stocky, his features had a squareness about them, a ruggedness that Janie had once described as a bulldog-look. But now his appearance was spoiled by the long sandy hair that curled around the collar of his open-necked shirt and the worn and faded jeans. She wore jeans, too, but had always prided herself in being immaculate, even out here. Not a strand of her long golden hair was out of place, (its natural colour was dark brown but Peter had a preference for blondes), and the matching denim jacket showed no traces of the household chores she had done throughout the day. She had put on make-up because she felt undressed without it. That was the difference between the two of them, the formal and the informal, a blend of oppo-sites that had somehow worked out. Until now.
'Where's Gavin?' She tried to peer past him through the open door. It was almost dark now and she could only just make out the outline of the rickety front gate.
'He's probably gone up to the granary to look for the cat/ Peter replied. 'This place'll give him a good chance to get used to animals, something that's been lacking in his life before. The most you could hope for at Perrycroft was a hamster and a goldfish. Dogs and cats had a high mortality rate.'
'Well, he ought to come inside. It's almost dark.' She couldn't keep the edge of nervousness out of her tone. She wanted to push past her husband, rush outside and shout for Gavin to come in quickly. With an effort she controlled herself. 'Go and call him, please, Peter.'
'In a minute.' He paused, looked down at the floor as though he had something to say which was best said in the boy's absence.'Janie, there's something he's not happy about. Something at school. I don't know what it is, but he'd probably tell you whereas he'd clam up if I asked him.'
'Oh!' Janie stiffened. 'What makes you think that?'
'The way he was in the car coming home; didn't say a word, just sat staring out of the window. You know how kids get fears, little things that they keep to themselves and blow up out of all proportion. It's probably nothing much but we'd better sort it out. There's no rush, though, there's a whole-weekend in front of us before school starts again.'
'It was wrong to disturb his schooling.' A reprimand. 'He was getting on OK. Now he's got to start all over again.'
'That's rubbish.' Peter could feel the friction building up between them again; it never used to be like this. 'He'll be better out here. There's more time, less pupils, and things aren't rushed through like they are in big schools. It's what he needs.'
'Maybe and maybe not.' She was edging nearer the door, trying not to make her fears obvious. She didn't want Gavin playing outside after dark. Til talk to him tonight when it's bedtime. But first—'
A movement in the darkness outside had her tensing, almost crying out; a shape that could have been anything materialising out of the encroaching gloom, wraith-like, featureless. The scream was forming in Janie's throat. Just in time she recognised the features of her own son, the familiar pallid freckled face, the tousled red hair. Thank God!
'You're to come inside straightaway, Gavin.' She sounded almost on the verge of hysteria. 'I don't like you outside after dark.'
The boy's questing gaze by-passed her and focused on his father; a look that said, 'What the hell's got into Mum?'
'You'd better stay indoors now, Gav,' Peter spoke slowly. He knew he had to cool this situation before it blew up into a major family row. 'Tomorrow's Saturday. You'll have all weekend to play outside.'
Silence; an atmosphere that all three of them felt; that words were being held back deliberately.
'I can't find Snowy, Dad. He's nowhere around but I can hear something running about in the rafters of the granary. If I had a torch . . .'
'Probably rats.' Peter regretted the words the moment he had spoken them. Oh Jesus Christ, Janie was terrified of most small creatures. It was a miracle she hadn't heard those mice last night.
'Rats!' Her expression, her posture, were rigid with revulsion. 'Peter, you don't mean to say that we've got rats in the place!'
There's always the odd rat and mouse to be found in old property.' Play it right down. 'Maybe one that was just sheltering for the night. Gavin might have been mistaken, but if he wasn't then Snowy's probably taking care of it.'
Janie pushed the door shut; the latch jumped and it swung back open. Almost flinging herself at it she slammed it back with a vibrating crash and struggled to shoot the rusting bolt home. Oh please God, let me shut the night out!
'Tea's almost ready.' With a supreme effort she managed to speak calmly, hoping that the other two couldn't hear the way her heart was thumping. At least they were all safe inside and nobody was going out again tonight.
In a way it was claustrophobic security.
Janie had expected to find Gavin already in bed when she went up to his small low-ceilinged room at half-past nine. The place had a musty smeli about it and large areas of plaster had crumbled off the walls. She wrinkled her nose as she opened the door, and stared in astonishment at what she saw.
Gavin was sitting on the edge of his bed, still fully dressed, just looking blankly at the wall.If he had been playing with his war games or reading it wouldn't have been so bad. But he wasn't. He saw her but there was no greeting on his freckled face, no smile. Just an expression that could only be interpreted as—fear.
Janie caught her breath and felt her heartbeat speeding up again. 'What's the matter?' She moved forward, seated herself on the bed beside the boy and slipped an arm around him. Suddenly she wanted to burst into a torrent of tears but she knew that for his sake she had to hold them back.
'Snowy's missing.' His voice was husky but somehow unconvincing. Everybody was trying to cover up by lying.
'He's probably off hunting rats and mice.' She shuddered at the thought. 'But there's something else worrying you, isn't there, Gav?'
Silence, except for a stifled sob. They'd both end up crying at this rate.
'Come on, you can tell Mummy.' She'd been 'Mum' for the last two years but now he didn't seem as grown-up as she'd thought, a little boy who needed to confide in his mother. They had to go back a few years if they were to get anywhere.
'It's—it's the—Wilsons.' He choked the name out.
'And who are the Wilsons?'
'Big boys at school. They're going to beat me up on Monday.' Gavin was beginning to cry; a couple of tears escaped and rolled down either cheek. They'd've done me over after school today in the playground, only Dad came early.'
This is ridiculous/ She felt her anger mounting towards the unknown village louts. 'Now don't worry about them. I doubt very much whether it's any more than schoolboy threats. They'll have forgotten all about it by Monday. And, anyway, they wouldn't dare.'
'They would!' Almost a shout. 'They blacked Kevin Arnold's eye on Wednesday and they got him down and kicked him at playtime on Thursday.'
'And what did Mr Hughes say to that?'