Something Wicked This Way Comes Read online

  He kissed the words out of me quickly, then growled, “But you won’t.”

  “Won’t I?”

  “No. Because if you do….” He paused deliberately, pulling back just enough that I was staring straight into his eyes. “If you do, I’ve won.”

  I could have argued, could have pretended there was no contest of wills here. Instead I closed my eyes and said, “Oh, you fucker.”

  He chuckled. “Not today, beautiful.”

  That added an extra shiver of pleasure to the frustration burning in my gut. “You’d better be able to keep those promises you’re making, arsehole.”

  “Oh, I am.”

  I leaned in and kissed him hard before climbing off the sofa. If I kept touching him, I’d lose the tenuous hold I had on my willpower. Satisfying as it would be to watch him try to keep his promise while I writhed on his lap, I suspected that he was stubborn enough to keep his hands to himself anyway and competitive enough to give me grief over it for years.

  I was in the kitchen, getting us both a cold beer out of the fridge, before the implications of that hit.

  Years? This was a summer fling. There weren’t going to be years.

  The realisation shocked me so much I just stood there with the fridge door wide open.

  “Leon?” Niall sounded worried.

  “Yeah, sorry. Miles away.”

  His laugh was dirty and self-satisfied. I shook my head, pushing aside the things I didn’t want to think about (something I had plenty of practice at).

  As I turned back into the lounge, I had a clear view out of the window towards the road. It was still light—the sun only just starting to sink below the hills to the south, and I had a clear view of the golden evening light. There was no mistaking what I saw.

  On the far side of the lane, glaring in the window at me, was the old man I had seen twice before. This time, by daylight, I could see how filthy he was—dirt in the creases of his face and his clothes matted and stained. Even the cap over his head was grimy, but this time I could see the colour of it for the first time—a dull dark red.

  Maybe I should have pitied him and his obvious state of misery, but all I could feel was revulsion as he glared at me in loathing. For a moment, I froze, as I might have done when faced with an angry dog.

  Then a flash of rage burned through me. How dare he do all this—scaring the Elliot kids, spying on me and Niall? I started for the door, determined to confront him.

  “Leon?”

  I ignored Niall, strode to the front door, and threw it open.

  He was gone. He must have seen me coming through the window and ducked away.

  “What’s going on?” Niall was struggling out of his seat when I glanced back into the sitting room.

  I closed the front door and went to wave him back to his seat. I had an idea now, one that suddenly explained a lot of the mysteries of Vainguard. No matter how malevolent he might look, the old man was undeniably real. If he was homeless, or even just a dementia patient with a tendency to wander, it would explain a lot. Here was the scent Dimwit had caught in the barn the first day, as well as the sense of someone else in Vainguard. If he had been creeping in and out somehow, that accounted for the chapel door being open so often. Perhaps he had known Martyn Armstrong or simply taken advantage of his failing health to filch a key. His loathing of me was nothing more than resentment of an intruder into what he saw as his turf.

  “Maybe,” Niall said slowly after I explained my thinking, “but vagrancy like that isn’t a problem out here. I’m not saying people don’t get evicted or lose their homes from time to time, but those who do either get picked up by the system or head into town where there are shelters. And I don’t know of any old folk round here who would wander like that.”

  “Would you know?” I asked.

  “I know most families round here, and it would be gossiped about if someone was in that state. Now, it could be someone who has come out here from elsewhere, but people would be talking. Someone like that, clearly not a tourist—well, someone would have run him off their land or tried to get him help by now. That old idea of tramps meandering round the countryside—you don’t get that these days. Rural homelessness plays out differently. No one’s sleeping in ditches, but some folks are under a different roof every night.”

  “Hidden homelessness.” Now I stopped to think, I did know about this. “What if the roof he’s found is Vainguard?”

  “I’d have seen him,” Niall protested, but I could see he was thinking about it. He sighed and stood up. “Did you see any signs of occupation when you went around?”

  “No,” I admitted. “But I didn’t check every room, and some of them were cluttered enough someone could have been camped out in a corner without me noticing.”

  “I don’t know,” Niall said.

  “What else would explain him? There must be some sort of hotline to report people who need help. Someone must be looking for him.”

  Niall’s continued silence wasn’t reassuring. At last he said, “You’re sure you saw him? A dirty old man in a red cap?”

  “Yes. What’s wrong with you?”

  All the laughter and flirtation had drained from his face, leaving him looking as grim as he had on our first meeting. “That’s the man I swerved to avoid.”

  It took me a moment to put it together. Then I realised he was talking about the night Katie died.

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  “HE DIDN’T come to help. I haven’t seen him since.” He added, voice lower, “I thought I’d imagined him.”

  “What are you saying?” Unease was crawling up my spine.

  “I don’t know!” he snapped. “I don’t bloody know. But if he had been here ever since, I would know. Which means either he came back or—”

  “Or what?” I demanded when he broke off.

  He didn’t reply immediately but lifted his head to meet my gaze full on. “Or something wicked this way comes.”

  I stared at him, shaking my head. “No. That’s… no.”

  “You read what I did, right? Something happened in that chapel back in 1944. Something that blew the glass out of the windows but wasn’t a bomb. Whatever it was, children have been dying and disappearing here ever since. It might well sound crazy, but that doesn’t mean it’s wrong.”

  No. Absolutely not. My parents hadn’t died because of some half-baked bit of folklore. I stepped back from him. “Look, I’m going to check Vainguard. See if anyone’s there. I can’t—I don’t believe in this stuff.”

  “You’re going up there? This late?”

  “It’s not dark yet. If there is someone squatting, it would be unconscionable to leave them there without help. You don’t have to come.”

  “Yeah, right,” he muttered and stomped off towards the side porch. When I caught up with him, he was pulling his shoes on, wincing a little.

  “I’m just going to check the outside locks,” I said. “You’re hurt. Sit down.”

  He snorted and dug through the shelves until he pulled out a big metal torch. He slapped it twice against his hand, nodded to himself, and turned to face me.

  I gave him a look I usually reserve for my year 9s.

  “Better safe than sorry,” he said.

  “Going to scare the ghosts by shining a light in their eyes?” I demanded, heading outside.

  He followed me. “I don’t think he’s a ghost.”

  “You didn’t think there was a serial killer either.”

  “No. I think he’s something old. Something evil.”

  I rolled my eyes at him. He shrugged, and we made our way up the drive at a slow pace. It was quiet.

  It should have been peaceful, but when a rabbit bounded across our path, I jumped so hard that Niall put his hand out to steady me. He said, “Where’s the Holy Hand Grenade of Antioch when you need it?”

  “Oh shut up,” I retorted, and we continued up the drive in a far more amicable silence.

  Vainguard cast a long shadow this late, and
I shivered as we stepped into it. The front door was still secure, as was the back. The whole place seemed exactly as I’d left it at lunchtime.

  “Can we go now?” Niall growled.

  “Bungalow and barn,” I reminded him.

  The bungalow was still locked up tight. I turned to face the barn, saying as cheerfully as I could, “Well, if anyone—or anything—is lurking, they’ll be in here.”

  “You’re the reason horror movies keep reusing that tired old cliché,” Niall grumbled.

  “Oh please. I teach media studies too. It’s not a cliché. It’s a narrative convention. And reality isn’t like the movies.”

  Despite the grumbling, he followed me, lifting the torch to illuminate inside the barn. There was no sign of anyone there, but I was determined to check properly. If everything that was freaking me out about the place was down to simple human agency, I damn well wanted to know.

  We were almost at the back of the barn when the torch flickered. In the same moment, there was a sound, so soft and indistinct it could have been anything from a mouse in the attic to a human whisper.

  Niall bit off a word and swung his torch up towards the hayloft.

  Nothing there, but the barn felt suddenly cold, as if we had slipped from a July evening to a January night.

  “Did you hear that?” Niall demanded.

  “Not clearly,” I said and laid a cautious hand on his arm. “Come away. There’s no one here.”

  We backed out of the barn and headed down the drive as fast as our legs would carry us. The sun was finally setting, making the tops of the hills glow like fire. Niall didn’t say anything to me.

  But I had heard the word he had bitten off in the barn.

  He had said, “Katie?”

  THE NEXT week passed quietly. I ignored Vainguard, playing tourist around Carlisle and Kielder Water. I sent postcards to my family, phoned Kasia, then, rather guiltily, Felix—the former to gossip and the latter to apologise for hanging up on him. It was a difficult conversation, one that left me feeling a little less certain of him than I ever had. I wasn’t the only one who had been blindsided by all this, and it left me wondering what else he didn’t know. I wasn’t used to him being fallible, and I didn’t like it at all.

  I spent an afternoon at the lawyers in Carlisle dealing with paperwork, followed by dinner with Rob Ademola and his family. I spent a cheery evening with him, his wife, and their kids. Niall and I spent a few more very pleasant evenings together, carefully avoiding the topic of ghosts and dead children. He was keeping to his promise, and I spent far too much time in a hazy simmer of denied lust. Slowly, I became accustomed to the line of the hills on the skyline, until I could walk along the road without panic clamping down on me.

  The next Thursday afternoon, I was contacted by a police detective who worked for one of the blandly named enquiries into historic child abuse. We arranged to meet at Vainguard on Friday afternoon.

  The temperatures had started to rise again, and the day already felt sultry when I arrived at Vainguard. Today there had been no hint of anything untoward in the atmosphere, and I was beginning to think I had imagined it all—some combination of end-of-term stress and the toll of being here. There had certainly been no more sign of the man in the red cap.

  When DS Trenton showed up, I did everything Becky’s could expect of me, showing him the building and sharing information. He didn’t seem impressed, but he took the album with a curt nod. I was free to continue clearing the furniture and rubbish, but he asked me to put aside any documents I might find.

  After he left, I stood on the cobbles, not sure what to do next. I should have turned around, gone back into Vainguard, and continued work. That was why Becky’s was paying my hotel bill, after all.

  But it was the summer holidays, I hated the place, and a little thrill of rebellion was stirring in my breast. Well, I hadn’t skived off since Felix offered me a fresh start. I was probably overdue.

  Guilt warred with relief as I strode back down the drive. It was a nice day—not as sticky as the previous week, but bright and sunny with a gusty breeze to blow away the humidity that had lingered at the start of the day. It made me a little wild and reckless, less like the responsible adult I had become and more like the defiant child I had once been. I thought of those other boys who had retained enough defiance of their own to come up with a plan to overpower their keepers and escape into the night. Where had they been planning to go in the middle of a war with none of them old enough to enlist?

  Maybe they’d been past caring.

  I didn’t want to build my school here, where I would never be able to escape those ghosts—the metaphorical ones, not the literal ones Niall had hinted at. I’d given Felix’s dream my best shot, but it wasn’t going to be realised here. It was time to focus on getting Vainguard into a state where it could be sold once the police investigation was over. The only thing I’d regret about giving up on the place would be not having Niall living by my gate.

  Thinking of him, I slowed as I approached the lodge. The back windows were open, and I relaxed even more. He was here, and I was drawn to find him like a moth to a flame—daft, when I’d seen so much of him already that week.

  I found him in the workshop. He was bent over something small and intricate, the forge purring behind him. I could barely see his face behind the thick goggles. Instead, my eyes were drawn to the glowing metal he was beating into shape, the tap of the small hammer quick and confident. Not wanting to distract him, I leaned back against the wall and watched as the scrap of brass took shape—horn, rearing neck, the curve of the metal swinging round to end in a flying tail.

  A unicorn bracelet to make a little girl’s heart leap.

  Eventually he doused it and set it aside to cool. He stepped away from the forge, pushing his goggles back, and finally noticed me.

  And he smiled, bright and genuine.

  I smiled back, happiness rising through me. Damn, but I liked this man.

  “Finished with the police?” he asked.

  “Yeah. Back to work in there tomorrow.”

  “Not today?” He grinned. “Skiving, sir?”

  I shrugged, a little abashed. “It’s Friday.”

  “So it is.” He looked at the forge a little wistfully. “I’ve got a bit more to do here.”

  “No worries. I just came down to….” I trailed off, unsure why I was here. It had just seemed the obvious place to go.

  He smiled at me again. “I’ll be done in half an hour. There’s beer—or Coke—in the fridge if you fancy sitting in the shade and starting your weekend early.”

  “Sounds good. Want something?”

  “Bottle of water wouldn’t go amiss.”

  I headed in for the fridge, comfortable in this space now. It was only when I started back that I spotted the brightly coloured cards discarded on the table.

  Back out into the bright summer afternoon, I said, “Is it your birthday?”

  He shrugged one-shouldered, taking the bottle of water I offered. “Comes around every year.”

  “Well, happy birthday, then.” I would have said more, but I was distracted by his twisting off the cap of the bottle and tilting his head back to pour the water straight down his throat. It spilled over, sliding down his chin to drip along the line of his throat, and I blamed the heat of the forge for the way I went suddenly flushed and weak-kneed.

  Niall dumped the last of the water over his head and turned to me. He must have seen the expression on my face because he shot me a long, slow smirk. I’d got to know that smirk quite well over the last few days, and it always promised teasing for me later.

  Trying to cover up my reaction, I asked, “Got any plans?”

  “Lunch with my mum tomorrow. She’s driving up from London, and I’ll drive down and meet her halfway. There’s a nice pub off the M6 just north of Stafford.”

  “Long drive just for lunch.”

  “Can’t get the woman out of London. She pines for Starbucks after a night—
won’t even believe me when I point out we’ve got one of them in Carlisle too.”

  “And God forbid you venture into the urban wasteland.”

  He’d brought out a new steel bar and was beating it flat. “They be wicked, them thar cities.”

  “Dens of iniquity,” I said, folding my hands over my heart and sending him a sorrowful look. “An honest young blacksmith could be lured into terrible depravity. Sins of the flesh.”

  “Is that so? Tell me more.”

  I laughed and leaned back against the wall, cracking open my own drink. “But then you would be forewarned, and I’d never lure you into my wicked clutches.”

  He laughed and bent over his work again, the tap of his hammer preventing further conversation. I watched contentedly, and an idea began to form. When he set the next piece aside to cool, I asked, “No plans for tonight?”

  He winked at me. “I wouldn’t quite say that, so long as you’re still willing.”

  “Very much so,” I said, trying to keep it as casual as I could, “but I was about to offer to buy you dinner.”

  He looked genuinely surprised, but his smile was warm and unguarded. He said, a little gruffly, “That’d be good.”

  I leaned back against the cool stones of the shaded wall and went back to watching him, the strength of his arms and shoulders, the easy skill in his hands, the calm concentration on his face as he worked the hot metal into something beautiful.

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  NOT LONG afterwards we drove north, through Newcastleton and deeper into Scotland. I had no idea where we were, but Niall drove with the easy confidence of someone who knew the roads like the back of his hand. The green hills opened up around us, still bare and lonely but somehow brighter than the border itself. Maybe it was the absence of the ridge lines that haunted my nightmares, or simply the increasing distance between us and those hills, but for once I felt little of my usual instinctive unease about the landscape. Here, with the heather flowing across the moors in pink and purple sweeps that were only broken by the stone rings of sheepfolds, it was simply lovely—very remote but lovely.