Hunted (15 page)

T
HERE AREN'T ANY TREES IN THE LITTLE CIRCULAR CUL-DE-SAC
where the boy lives, but there is a tall wooden telephone pole, sprouting a wire into each house in the street. Every night before bed, the boy checks to see if there are any birds roosting on the wire that ties the pole to his own house. Sometimes on winter nights there are stars between the cables. Tonight there is a full moon. The boy leans his elbows on the windowsill and stares, imagining flying off in a spaceship.

Then, suddenly, the night twists.

It is the weirdest thing the boy has ever seen. The view from his window warps for a moment, as though it's reflected in a wobbly mirror from a funfair. For a second, the air between the cable and the ground seems to break and reform, the way still water ripples when you touch it.

The boy rubs his eyes. He shakes his head before he looks again to see if the ripple is still there.

It isn't. Instead, there is a woman standing on the pavement.

Before the air rippled, before the boy rubbed his eyes, no one had been there. Now there is a strange woman. Above the mysterious figure, caught between the stretching cables, the full moon hangs in the sky. In its pale light, the woman's skin is faintly blue, as though she has been nearly frozen to death. Around her shoulders is a tattered shawl, too full of holes to protect against the winter air. Her ragged leather skirt doesn't look very warm either.

Where did she come from? An empty street, a ripple in the air, and now this ice-blue woman.

The boy at the window is fascinated. He can't look away.

Black Annis lifts her head, searching one way and then the other. Above her stands a wooden mast with thick black ropes stretching out to the strange houses around it. Beneath her feet, the ground is as hard as rock and as smooth as eggshell.

The world has changed.

When last she walked this land, it was field and forest. Now all that is gone. Tree and hedgerow gone. No trees anywhere%—only this bare wooden pole. Gone too is the place where Black Annis lived, the cave she scratched from the sandstone of Dane's Hill with her own nails. Gone, the oak that grew at its mouth, where she hung out the flayed skins of her victims to dry so that later she might sew them for her skirts.

What is that smell—thick and acrid? It surrounds her, dulling the cold, fresh scent of night and the aroma of warm, living things. All changed, all gone—nothing remains of Black Annis's world. It is buried beneath this gray layer of grit and tar, and row upon row of smoky human dwellings. For a moment, in the cavity where her shriveled, inhuman heart beats, Black Annis knows something like despair.

Then her eyes follow one of the black ropes overhead. It stretches from the top of the tall wooden pole to the bottom of a window. And in the window, moonlight shining on his white face, there is a child.

Black Annis smiles. Her pointed teeth do not gleam in the moonlight; they are black with age and the bloodstains of her countless victims. Her teeth are as strong and sharp as her nails. She looks up at the human child—surely meant to be in bed and asleep at this time of night.

Some things don't change.

The boy watches as the cold woman turns her head, looking up at the telephone pole, and finally looking at him. Straight at him. Her eyes seem alight, shining silver in the moonlight. Her lips pull back over teeth that make a dark stain in the middle of her pale, bluish face.

It is a smile. She sees him.

Now he notices something else. Her arms seem too long for her body, and her fingers—no one can have fingers that long! Unless … Can they be her
fingernails
?

The boy snaps out of his trance, all fascination instantly turned to fear. He backs away from the window.

Black Annis walks towards the house. Inside the gate, separating the house from the hard gray ground beyond, there is a tiny patch of grass and earth. The soil here is something else that has not changed. The sandy loam is soft and familiar. It is good to feel the earth beneath her feet again.

Black Annis reaches the house and looks up. It is bigger than the human dwelling places she remembers. The windows are higher.

But her nails are as sharp as they ever were. She is good at climbing.

Cowering away from the window, the boy can see nothing. But he can hear an odd noise outside—a scratching beneath the window, growing steadily louder. The boy doesn't want to look, but he has to know what it is.

He forces himself back to the window. He grips the sill and peers out across the street. The strange woman is gone.

But the noise is still growing louder. The boy looks down at the window ledge outside the house. Long, iron claws are hooked into the wood. As the boy watches, the dark claws flex and grip. Behind them rise long, pale arms, blue in the moonlight. The arms haul up the rest of the weird body. Black teeth and silver eyes rise into view, filling the window.

Black Annis is face to face with her victim. Her grin widens. The human child throws himself into his bed and dives under the covers. Black Annis can see the heap of human helplessness trembling beneath the flimsy cloth and down.

The boy's terror is delicious.

Under his duvet, the boy hides, his nerves a snarled tangle of despair and hope. Surely he is safe here. The blue woman can't see him any more, and the window is shut tight—

Click

The sound is soft and sudden. A cold draught of night air reaches under the covers and caresses the boy's trembling ankles. The window is open.

The child waits, his heart pounding with terror, as he listens to the quiet, slow footfalls padding across his bedroom floor.

There is no more warning. The covers are ripped from his body in one lightning sweep. It is too late for him to scream for help.

He screams anyway.