Peter knew where the boy was even before he caught her up, knew without any doubt that that terrible screaming came from the stone circle1.
As they topped the brow they saw a small light coming from amidst the scarred and blackened firs, a tiny will-o'-the-wisp that moved back and forth. Peter knew what it was: the cheap foreign pencil torch that Gavin had won in the tombola at last summer's Perrycroft fete. Oh God, if only they could all go back to Perrycroft right now.
Peter reached Gavin first, grabbed the screaming boy and pulled him to him, Janie was talking incoherently. Her emotions were strained, rising to a crescendo, and could only end in hysteria if they weren't stopped.
'Shut upV Peter yelled, and shook them both. 'Shut up the pair of you!'
Sudden silence, except for Gavin's sobbing. And then Peter's torchbeam alighted on the cause of the boy's terror, a bloodied scene that made him want to drag them both away, to run heedlessly back downhill to the cottage, to push them inside and bar the doors and windows against whatever inhuman thing had done this awful deed!
It was the rabbit, scarcely recognisable as the pet which Janie had brought home on Monday. It was stretched out across the large flat stone which dominated the centre of the circle, its four limbs putted out of their sockets by the taut baler twine which had been wound round the rock several times before being secured by a clumsy knot. The creature was dead, of course; no way could it have survived the gashed throat and slit underside. Its fresh blood was still dripping steadily on to the layer of ashes beneath.
'We'd better go home.' Peter started to pull them away. Neither Janie nor Gavin resisted.
'Who—who could have done that? Janie muttered. 'It's abominable . . . senseless.'
Who? Peter would have given anything to know the answer to that one. In his mind he saw the Land Rover again: the silhouette in the smoky glow of the fire; Ruskin bulldozing his way past them on the sharp bend.
They reached the house. Peter pushed the other two indoors ahead of him, found himself shooting the bolt home as he followed them inside.
'Gavin and I are going back to my parents,' Janie blurted out. 'It's all arranged. We'll be near enough for him to go back to Perrycroft school.'
Peter sighed. He knew he couldn't change her mind. The rabbit's death was not the deciding factor; these plans had been made before then. It was just a kind of final push that would ensure that she did not change her mind, as though whoever was responsible had known she would leave in the end.
'All right,' he said. 'If that's the way you want it. But I'll be staying. I'm not running, not for anybody.1
'You must be mad.' She switched the kettle on.
'No.' He spoke slowly. Two reasons I'm staying—I've got a book to write. I've also got a score to settle.'
'With whom?' There was contempt in her voice. 'Do you think you're ever going to find out who they are?'
I'll do my best.' He turned to Gavin, who had seated himself by the Rayburn; a white-faced schoolboy who was struggling with grief and terror, bravely trying to shake off the sobs that shook his body. 'Gavin, how did you get home?'
' A lift.' The boy stared down at the floor, 'That farmer, the one who nearly crashed into us on the way to school. I didn't want to go, but Mr Hughes said I had to. I didn't like it. I don't like that man; he scares me.'
'Did he bring you straight home?'
'Yes,' Gavin nodded, 'but he kept talking all the time, trying to frighten me, I guess.'
'How?'
'He said'—Gavin swallowed—'that there used to be druids at the stone circle a long time ago, that although they were dead their ghosts still haunted the place. That—that they had set fire to the trees to keep folks like us from going up there.'
'What utter rubbish!' Peter's lips tightened.
'He gave me the creeps.' Gavin trembled violently. 'Kept looking at me with those weird eyes of his, like he could see right into me and knew what I was thinking. He said folks like us ought not to be living here because we're townies and didn't understand country ways, that maybe that was what was angering the druids' ghosts.'
'The bastard!' Peter hissed. 'How low can you get, working on a young boy to try and terrorise us? He's just out to scare us away so that maybe Clive Blackstone will sell Hodre to him. I'm bloody well going to have words with Mr Ruskin before very long!'
Gavin went up to his room. Maybe he couldn't hold those tears back any longer, Peter guessed. It would be years before the boy could get the sight of that mutilated rabbit out of his system. Now he would know just what had happened to Snowy; their efforts to spare him the gruesome details had failed miserably.
Janie whirled on Peter the moment they were alone, her voice an angry low hiss which she hoped would not carry upstairs. 'Damn you, if you hadn't gone off and got back too late to pick him up from school this would never have happened!'
He opened his mouth, then closed it again. Hell, what was the point in going into details, explanations? There was nothing to be gained by telling her about the hoax hospital call. She was leaving anyway. Perhaps it was best that way; at least he wouldn't be worrying the whole time about what fresh horrors his wife and son might be subjected to.
'Maybe Ruskin wasn't so far from the truth in what he said to Gavin.' She poured two mugs of coffee, slopping them because her hand shook.
'Don't be ridiculous, I've never heard such poppycock in all my life. I don't think even Gavin believes it. He's just upset about what's happened to his rabbit.'
'You're not just insensitive, you're damned well bund!' Her eyes flashed angrily. 'You're so wrapped up in yourself that it takes me to notice things. That—that—what happened tonight, didn't you notice anything? You had your torch on it for long enough.'
'What the hell are you talking about? Whoever it was stole that rabbit from its hutch, tied it to the stone and—and gutted it.'
'I don't mean the rabbit. God that was bad enough'—there was a condescending note in her tone now—'I mean the stone it was lashed to.'
'What about the stone?' He stared at her blankly.
'Simply this.' Janie took a sip of coffee. 'That stone is the very same one that was there thousands of years ago, hauled up that slope in the days before mechanical pulleys by those vile priests for a specific purpose. It's a sacrificial stone and Gavin's rabbit was sacrificed on it!'
In a way it was a relief to be without Janie and Gavin, Peter decided. At least he did not have to worry for their safety.
He turned back into the cottage after the lanes had swallowed up the Mini, and told himself that his book was now a priority; he must just ignore everything and everybody else.
By mid-morning he was finding it difficult to settle down at his typewriter. That was strange because for the first time in his life he had all the peace and quiet for which he craved. No distractions. Yet it was hard going and he still had not solved the concluding paragraph to chapter one and was having no small amount of trouble coping with chapter two.
He found himself sitting there staring out of the window, his thoughts drifting away from the book. Truth is stranger than fiction—a hackneyed phrase down the years, but it was true. These happenings at Hodre were somehow making his own plot slight, a fantasy that was beyond belief because the reader would say it couldn't happen. Just what he'd say about the Hodre events: the product of an over-fertile imagination. Unless you happened to be there.
The cloud was definitely coming down again, an unfriendly opaqueness that had an air of permanency about it. Hodre, land of everlasting fog. It was depressing, and seemed worse now that he was alone. If Janie had just gone to her parents for the day and Gavin was at school, Peter probably wouldn't have even noticed it. Suddenly everything was different; a creeping loneliness seemed to eat into his soul, a feeling that bred despair and hopelessness. Maybe he should pack up and go too; at this rate he was getting nowhere with his book. No, that wasn't just why he was staying. As he had told Janie, he had a score to settle. Against whom? The Wilsons? Bostock and Peters? Ruskin? Whoever was responsible for these outrages, they'd pay for it. He'd get back at them in some way.
Subconsciously his hearing had picked up the distant drone of an engine. He didn't take any notice of it until it cut out and made him aware of the sudden silence again.
Peter got up from his desk. Another excuse to get away from his book for a few minutes; he was clutching at any legitimate means of procrastination. The vehicle had stopped a little way down the road. On a clear day he would have been able to see it from the garden gate. With the thickening fog he'd have to walk down the road for a hundred yards or so. He didn't have any reason to, it was none of his business. But he'd do it all the same.
He shrugged on his duffle coat and went outside. God, it was much colder than yesterday. Another drop of a few degrees and the fog would be freezing.
It was so silent that he felt like going back indoors in case he made a noise. He was a trespasser in this empty world, an intruder who slunk along furtively glancing back into the mist, ready to flee at any second. From what? Peter didn't know; that was the worst part. The fear of the unknown.
A raven was croaking somewhere. Peter found himself peering into the gloom trying to spot it. Maybe it was the same one that had fed on the mutilated flesh of the cat, perhaps even before the creature was dead.
Surely he must come upon the parked vehicle soon. The damned fog cloaked all sound. It could only be a few yards ahead, its occupants sitting there listening. Waiting. For what? He shivered.
Then without warning he came upon it. One second there was nothing but a wall of damp grey opaqueness in front of him, the next a square bulky thing parked up on the verge at an angle, almost threatening to topple over.
A Land Rover\ Peter caught his breath and took a step backwards, icy fingers seeming to caress his back. His mouth was suddenly dry, his eyes straining, attempting to see inside the vehicle. A brief feeling of relief when he saw that it was empty, just a bale of hay in the back. Then the uneasiness returned. Where were the occupants, what had they stopped for, and what were they doing, cloaked by the elements?
It was Ruskin's Land Rover all right, the one that had nearly piled into the Saab yesterday morning. What the hell was he doing here? He'd no business on Hodre ground, and that was surely where he was.