Monster (18 page)

‘Clarice, could you let Brody out for me, please?’ I asked her and she took his collar, without argument. I turned to Regan.

‘I mean it, Nash,’ she said. ‘If we can’t find the phones, I’ll go out there. I’ll go and get help. I’m not afraid of it. I’m not afraid of anything.’

‘You haven’t seen it, though, Regan. It’s huge. It’s real.’

‘I lost both my grandmothers last year. Cancer,’ she said. ‘One after the other. There’s nothing worse than losing someone you love. That’s the worst monster in the world.’

I didn’t know what to say. ‘Regan …’

‘I’m not afraid of the Beast. Not like Maggie is. Come with me,’ she said.

I followed her up the corridor towards the Reference Library, her second home.

‘Regan, I really need to get some sleep. I think you should too.’

‘No, wait,’ she said, as animated as someone who’d just
had fourteen hours’ sleep. She located
Myths and Legends of Small Town England
from the History shelves and carried it to the central reading table, opening it at a page folded down. ‘Look at this article. It’s from an old history of Bathory and the surrounding villages and fields. There is an old law of the school, laid down in 1858, that “whosoever captures the Beast shall inherit Bathory Manor and its environs”. What do you think about that?’

I sighed. ‘I think it’s nonsense. Look, I don’t know what that thing is out there, Regan, but I know it’s not hundreds of years old. That’s impossible.’

‘Yes, but who’s to say there isn’t more than one?’ she said, her eyes wild with excitement. ‘The latest in a long line of beasts roaming these parts? When the old Duke and Duchess lived here, they kept big cats in the Birdcage. They called it that so their visitors would be more shocked when they brought out the Beasts. They kept all sorts of things. Lions and tigers—’

‘And bears?’ I smiled.

‘Yes!’ she exclaimed. ‘Bears and jaguars and panthers. Loads of them. But they kept escaping because the Duke didn’t reinforce the Birdcage well enough. It’s more than likely that a jaglion, or several of them, exists in these parts. That they kept inbreeding, and—’

‘Yeah, okay, maybe it is that. Or a wildcat or something,’ I said. She turned the page and revealed a picture that froze my blood. A black beast. With orange eyes. Pointed ears. Glaring at me. ‘That’s … a jaglion, is it?’

Regan nodded. ‘That’s what I think the Beast is. I’ve done a lot of reading on it. I’ve found a lot of things in those woods—that spine I showed you, animal skulls, bones. It’s killed people, Nash. It could kill us. Imagine, if I killed the
Beast, I’d save the school. I’d become a hero. My father might even allow me home more than once a year.’

I reached down and closed the book on the table. A puff of dust flew out from its pages. ‘We’ll talk more about it in the morning. Come on, we need to get some sleep.’

‘I’ll sleep when I’m dead,’ she said, leaving the book on the table. She threw me the briefest look on her way out of the room, the same look she’d given me when we’d gone to look at the spine in the woods. Her eyes were as dead as a shark’s.

‘F
ather Christmas doesn’t even exist,’ I told him.

‘He does. Where do you think all the presents come from?’

‘Mum and Dad.’

‘No, they come from Santa.’

‘Why is Mum’s handwriting on them then? Why do some of them say “To Seb love from Mummy and Daddy” and some say “To Nash love from Mummy and Daddy”?’

‘Yeah,
those
ones come from Mum and Dad, but the rest of them come from Santa.’

‘Are you sure?’

‘Yeah. I’m your big brother. I’m always sure.’

Some people had gone to town with Christmas lights that year, for charity. We’d taken a walk down our road, in
our pyjamas, coats and boots, to walk the dog and see the houses all lit up. We put the coins our mum had given us in the charity buckets and watched illuminated reindeer and dancing snowmen and little Father Christmases climbing up ladders. The issue of the real Father Christmas’s existence had been niggling me all day and I couldn’t get a straight answer out of Mum or Dad. I knew Seb would always tell me the truth, though. He explained everything to me. Why things happened. What things meant. And that day I wanted to believe he was telling me the truth.

‘Can we sneak out when Mum and Dad are in bed, and eat the mince pie and milk?’

‘Don’t we always?’

‘Can we have pancakes in the morning?’

‘Yep.’

‘Seb?’

‘Yeah?’

‘Are you sure Father Christmas is really real?’

‘Yes, Natasha, I’m sure.’
He always called me Natasha when I was nagging.

‘Seb?’

‘What?’

‘Can we always do this on Christmas Eve?’

‘Yeah, ‘course we can.’

‘Even when you’re married and have a wife?’

‘Yeah.’

‘Are you sure?’

‘I’m your big brother, of course I’m sure.’

Seb said that all the time, about everything. I never really believed him, though, until that night. Because as we were walking home, I heard a noise.

A magical noise.

Looking back now, aged sixteen, I realise it could have been someone’s TV, or someone with a party hat on, walking back from the pub, but I swear it wasn’t. I was only eight years old at the time, but I know what I heard.

I heard jingle bells. Crossing the sky. Just for about ten seconds, maybe fifteen.

That was Santa. That was Christmas. That was truth—me and Seb, in our pyjamas and coats, walking home to spend Christmas with our family, me happy and safe in the knowledge that whatever my brother told me was the absolute truth. I never doubted Seb again.

Until I’d got that phone call. It was all I could think about as I constantly entered and left sleep. I don’t know what time it was when I heard the noise.

We all heard it this time.

I sat up, bolt upright in my bed, and heard it again, loud and clear, right outside the window.

A growl.

‘What the hell,’ said Maggie, flinging back her covers and running to the window to rip the curtains apart. Tabby and Clarice got out of bed too.

But not Regan. Regan stayed asleep.

We all stood at the window, bed-headed and bleary-eyed, frightened and confused. Tabby was cuddling Babbitt and shaking, and I stroked her back.

‘Nash, we’ve got to get out of here,’ said Maggie. ‘That thing is stalking the building every night.’

‘I know, I know,’ I said. My brain was fogging up thickly. I couldn’t think what to do.

‘Is there any remote chance there’s a gun in the school?’ said Clarice, getting her dressing gown and Ugg boots on.

‘Yeah,’ said Maggie. ‘We’re taking GCSE Automatic Weapons next year, didn’t you know?’

‘You know what I mean. Anything we could use to kill it, or frighten it off, even?’

‘No,’ said Maggie. ‘This is a girls’ school. In England. We’re not even allowed dressing gown cords.’

‘We’re in the middle of farming country. Surely there’s a shotgun or two on the premises?’

‘Well, if there are, I wouldn’t know where to find them,’ I said, going to the wardrobe to fetch my dressing gown.

‘What are you doing, Nash?’

I didn’t really know what I was doing. I just had to do something. ‘Going to look,’ I said, shoving my feet into my boots.

‘No, don’t go out there,’ said Clarice. ‘You’re insane!’

‘No, I’m not,’ I replied, walking to Regan’s bed and tugging back the duvet to reveal three pillows, end to end, along the middle of her bed. ‘But I know who is.’

We stood at the front door—me, Maggie and Clarice. Dianna must have heard us as pretty soon we heard the unlocking of a door up the main stairs and down she came, blearing-eyed and dressing-gowned, from the Saul-Hudsons’ apartment.

‘What is it?’ she whispered.

‘We don’t know,’ said Clarice. ‘We’re just going to see.’

Tabby waited on the bottom step of the main staircase, Brody by her side.

‘On three, I’m going to open the door, okay?’ I told them, hands clutching the Chubb lock and the doorknob below it. ‘Don’t make any sudden movements or noises.’

Maggie stood behind me, brandishing a carving knife
she’d got from the kitchen and bouncing on the balls of her feet.

‘What if it’s not Regan? What if Regan’s in the loo or something?’ said Clarice, her torch beam shaking in her gloved grip. ‘What if it’s …’ She looked directly at Dianna.

Dianna looked at me, then at Maggie, then back at Clarice. ‘It’s not Leon, okay? He’s asleep upstairs. He’s in no fit state to walk, let alone prowl the grounds. Anyway, he knows he’s not allowed out of the bedroom.’

‘Yeah, well, I ain’t taking any chances,’ said Maggie, adjusting her grip on the carving knife and bouncing on the balls of her feet, her dressing gown flapping open to reveal her Snoopy pyjamas. She bit on the flat edge of the knife blade between her lips while she double-knotted it. ‘Go on, Nash. Open it.’

I turned the Chubb and twisted the doorknob. All at once, a huge breath of freezing cold air and snow blew into the Hall. Tabby clutched Brody’s neck as the four of us stepped out into the dark night.

There on the doorstep was a large black lump.

Clarice screamed. Dianna ran back inside. Maggie bashed into me in her haste to see what it was. I shone my torch down onto it.

A dead sheep.

‘I’m going to be sick,’ Clarice said behind her hand, following Dianna indoors.

Maggie shone her torch all around to see if anyone was out there, if anyone was going to own up to the present they had left for us. But there was no one.

‘Okay, this is just weird now,’ she said, crunching out into the snow as her torch swept as far as the beam would allow. ‘There’s not even any footprints.’

‘It’s still snowing,’ I said, bending down to take a closer look at the sheep. It was a young one, not much more than a lamb. ‘Poor thing.’

‘There’s nothing out there,’ said Maggie, returning from the darkness to join me on the porch. ‘What’s going on, Nash? This is starting to freak me right out.’

The sheep’s head was red with blood. I gently poked at it, and it almost came away from the rest of its body. ‘It doesn’t look injured anywhere else,’ I said. ‘It’s got puncture wounds here and here on its neck. See?’

Just then, we both caught sight of another light coming up the drive. A single beam, shuddery and moving, like someone jogging with a torch in their hand. We didn’t take our eyes from it as it came ever closer. Then a figure emerged from the blackness, stopping dead in its tracks when it saw us on the porch.

Regan.

‘Why weren’t you in bed?’ Maggie, our resident Bad Cop, asked again, circling Regan like a shark as she sat at the end of the first table in the Refectory.

‘How long had you been outside? You must be freezing,’ said Good Cop Dianna, sitting on the edge of the table.

‘It’s you, isn’t it?’ said Clarice. ‘The Beast of Bathory?’

‘Hardly,’ said Regan, folding her arms.

‘Was it you the other night, and all?’ asked Maggie. ‘Making all those noises me and Nash heard outside the window?’

‘You heard noises?’ said Dianna.

‘Yeah. Scuffling noises. And weird throaty purrs, all round the school.’

Regan shrugged.

‘You need to start talking,’ I told her.

Regan smiled, which none of us could read. ‘I was trying to lure it,’ she said finally.

‘What do you mean, lure it?’ said Maggie.

‘Lure it in. I was going to lure it in and catch it. And kill it.’

‘Lure it into the school?’ shrieked Dianna.

Regan shrugged again. ‘If need be, yes. I could have handled it.’

Maggie laughed. ‘I’d like to see a seven-stone weakling like you up against a six hundred pound wildcat.
How
were you planning to kill it? Force your head down its throat until it choked?’

‘No,’ she said calmly. ‘I would have trapped it in the kitchen and killed it in there. With one of the javelins or a knife.’

Maggie looked at me. ‘Whose turn is it next to put all our lives in danger? Dianna’s had a go, now this freak. Do you wanna have a stab, Nash?’ Then she stopped short, like a thought had just occurred to her. ‘Hang on
—how
were you luring it in? Did you kill that sheep?’

‘No, of course I didn’t,’ she said, taking off her glasses to clean them on the hem of her nightshirt. ‘I told you outside, that’s nothing to do with me. I was at the back of the school and walked around to the top of the drive. The sheep wasn’t there when I went out.’

Silence.

‘So
how
were you luring it?’ Maggie asked again.

‘Meat,’ she replied.

‘What meat?’

‘Turkey mostly. And some stewing steak I found in the fridge. And half a joint of beef I found in the freezer a few days ago.’

‘
You
stole the turkeys?’ cried Maggie. ‘Just so you could go out and play Hello Kitty Wanna Bite Me every night? I got put in the Chiller for that!’

‘I didn’t mean for that to happen,’ said Regan, putting her glasses back on and clasping her hands in her lap. ‘Look, none of this actually matters anyway. It won’t come anywhere near me, with or without meat. You’re quite safe. I haven’t even seen it.’

I bent down to her level and looked at her. ‘Regan, who put the sheep on the doorstep?’

‘I don’t
know
,’ she shouted at me. ‘It’s nothing to do with me!’

‘Maybe it’s safe to go outside—if Regan’s been doing it every night?’ said Clarice. ‘Maybe tomorrow we could try to get somewhere. To get help?’

‘Maybe,’ said Dianna. ‘But what about the sheep?’

We all looked at Regan again. Her parting had gone frizzy from wearing a woolly hat and her plaits were coming unravelled. ‘The Beast must have left it there. I swear I didn’t.’

‘Why would it leave it on the doorstep?’ said Maggie.

‘Cats leave their kill on doorsteps for a reason. It’s trying to teach us.’

‘Teach us what?’ said Maggie, folding her arms but keeping her carving knife solidly gripped in one fist.

‘How to hunt,’ she replied.