The Hunting Ground (5 page)

But the sketch itself is almost worse. I couldn’t work out what it was of at first. Nor could Dad. Mum took less time than us, and when she figured it out she was really upset and tried to dismiss it. Here’s why: the picture shows a man and woman lying dead underwater. And though Eve denies it, the drowned man and woman look suspiciously like Mum and
Dad. ‘It’s only a drawing,’ Eve said when asked about it. ‘But why did you do it?’ Mum demanded. ‘Why?’ No answer.

Later, when I went up to see Eve in her room, I found her gazing at one of the portraits of the owner again. I hadn’t realised before just how many portraits of him there are in the house. Whenever you look up there he is, smiling away with his big ugly teeth. Even when you’re between rooms, he’ll be grinning away at you from some hall or ceiling. It’s impossible to get away from his gaze. I’ve watched Eve following the portraits from floor to floor, room to room. She always ends up outside the East Wing, looking inside.

But here’s the weirdest thing – Mum’s fascinated by the portraits as well. Being an artist herself, she’s worked out all sorts of things about them, too. The biggest surprise to me is that – get this – the owner did all the portraits
himself
. The painting style is consistent with a single artist, apparently. And it couldn’t have been someone else who painted them, she says, because if anyone had been commissioned to do so many boringly similar paintings there’d be signs of careless or rushed work.

‘There’s no evidence of that in any of the portraits,’ Mum said. ‘Every brush stroke is lingered over. The
owner obviously couldn’t wait to show us everything he’d killed and how good he felt about it.’

Elliott stopped reading and gazed around him. So did Ben.

They were not alone. The owner stared back at them from a portrait on the nearest wall. He was also staring at them from a portrait on the farthest wall and from a miniature canvas over the dressing table. In this smaller portrait the owner had just killed a big freshwater pike fish. Its body was suspended from a steel hook jammed into its gills.

Elliott reached up to the portrait.

‘What are you doing?’ Ben said, stopping his arm.

‘I’m taking it down.’

‘Why?’

‘Because I’m sick of seeing it. All right with you?’

Ben licked his lips uneasily and Elliott yanked on the wooden frame. The effort to prise it off brought his face close to another portrait.

The dead animal depicted in this one was a grey wolf. The picture was done in heavy spatula strokes,
and this time the owner looked especially happy, especially pleased with his kill. His left hand was under the wolf’s pelt, a single arm holding up its full deadweight.
He was strong
, Elliott realised, and for a moment he forgot what he’d been doing with the picture of the pike. He was in the process of placing it back on its mount again when he caught himself. Then, glancing at Ben, he stashed the portrait under an assortment of magazines.

Ben writhed uncomfortably, but said nothing.

Elliott went back to the diary.

25th October. Eve tore down the makeshift barrier leading into the East Wing today. Dad put it straight back up again and really told her off this time, but I’m not sure Eve was even listening.

Later, Mum found a whole new set of drawings. Eve’s been busy. The drawings were all stuffed under her bed and
every single one
is a copy of the owner’s portraits. When I mentioned it to Janey later she said matter-of-factly, ‘They warned me this might happen. There hasn’t been a child in the house for a long time.’

I stared at her. ‘
They
warned you? What are you talking about?’

She glanced at me warily, as if she wasn’t sure I was ready to hear what she had to say. Then she
led me towards the graveyard in the north corner of the estate.

No one reading this diary is going to believe me, but this is exactly what happened next. Janey stood beside a broken headstone. She was looking at me with a weird smile on her face. Then she turned her head. From the way she did it I knew someone was close by, except … there was only empty space. Then, offering another sideways smile (but not to me), Janey nodded (again not to me), walked straight across and stroked my cheek.

I jumped back. I’d have pulled away completely, but Janey kept smiling at me, and her hand was delicate and warm as well, which was weird, because her fingers were gritty from touching the cold gravestone. Anyway, when I held her wrist to make her stop, she did. But as soon as I let her go again her fingers returned to my face, or wanted to. I found out later that someone else was guiding her hand. That was the only way she – it was a girl – was able to feel me. She had to do it via Janey.

‘Stop running away. Let me finish,’ Janey said, when I backed off.

‘What the hell are you doing?’ I shouted.

She grinned and looked behind her. ‘Just because they’re dead doesn’t mean they’re not interested,’ Janey said. ‘Theo, I’d like to introduce you to Nell
Smith. She’s sixteen going on three-hundred and twenty. An admirer from afar. She counts four freckles on your forehead. She says there are too many to count on the rest of your face, but that if you stay still for a minute she’ll try.’

I backed off fast. Seconds later, what looked like a stiff breeze came out of nowhere, and this time something seemed to invisibly clutch at Janey’s legs. I hadn’t really believed or understood the Nell stuff, hadn’t taken in that it was a ghost Janey was so offhandedly talking about, but I didn’t have time to think about it before Janey murmured, ‘Here comes Leo. He’s only small. A winter death. Watch out for the snow
.’

I looked up, almost expecting white flakes, but Janey was joking about that part.

She sat down on the grass. As she tucked her knees under her, I saw a little depression form in her dress as something dived onto her lap. ‘He’s five,’ she mouthed at me. ‘He’s still scared. All the time.’

Another ghost came after Leo. Someone taller this time, obviously older. Janey leaned back, allowing whoever it was to take her weight. She said something friendly under her breath. ‘A farmer’s boy,’ she whispered to me. ‘He died with his boots on. Hunted.’

He turned out to be a seventeen-year-old called Sam Cosgrove. Janey upped and went on a circular walk with him around the graveyard, and from the natural way she chatted to him I realised it was the sort of thing they did all the time. I was shocked, and really scared too, and Janey must have realised that, because she left me alone for a while. But the ghosts didn’t leave her alone. They even followed her from the graveyard when we left, only stopping when we got near Glebe House.

Janey dropped virtually to the ground at one point to pick someone up from the grass. Soft words and smiles followed – plenty of smiles. I later found out that this ghost was a nine-year-old girl named Alice Everson.

‘What … what did you say to her?’ I asked afterwards.

Janey shrugged. ‘I said I loved her.’ I must have looked confused. ‘Haven’t you ever told someone you love them?’ she asked me. ‘Something simple and truthful like that, if that’s what they needed to hear?’

When I just stared at her like a dummy, Janey sighed. ‘The ghosts only have each other, Theo. It’s not quite enough. Hardly anyone living has my gift, and most of those who do are too afraid to use it. Or they stop using it because’ – she gestured
meaningfully towards her own house – ‘it frightens people.’

7th November. Since then I’ve watched Janey a lot. I’ve seen that wherever she goes she’s always reacting to the ghosts. There are four of them, all children – Sam, Nell, Leo and Alice – and they almost never leave her alone. Invited or not, they’re always crowding her, demanding her time. They tug her fingers, lift her hair. I stayed near her for over an hour that first day, saying nothing, while she gave something to each of the children, touched and touching.

‘It’s …’ Janey tried to explain what it was like having them around. ‘It’s like we’re solid,’ she said, poking my chest, ‘while they are
not
.’ She laughed. ‘They’re all movement, I mean. Like eels. All spirit. It’s hard for them to stay still, even for a little while. They’re meant to be on their way somewhere else. They’re always fighting the journey there. They’re all in motion from holding the journey back.’

She made a gesture, and a ripple like a dancing wave flowed through her. Then she touched her left hand to her temple and closed the fingertips of her other hand with a small quiet
snap
. I realised after hours of studying her that it was a kind of special language I was seeing, something she only shared
with the ghosts. Later, I dazedly followed Janey to an area where wild daisies were growing under a hawthorn bush. Fitting one into a buttonhole of her dress, she said, ‘This was Alice’s favourite flower when she was alive.’

I thought I’d never really understand what was going on between Janey and the ghost children, but a few days later, November 5th, Guy Fawkes night, I decided to have a guess at what the ghosts were doing here. Dad had built a bonfire in the grounds, and I’d spent half the evening watching Janey’s head swaying near the flames.

‘The ghosts come for company, don’t they?’ I said hesitantly. ‘They left life too soon, before they were ready. And because you have this gift, they come here, you know, because, well, there’s no one else to talk to, and they’re lonely.’

Janey laughed so hard that she honked. ‘No, Theo,’ she said. ‘This isn’t a romance or some sort of game. I’m not their dearest friend or anything. The ghosts are gathered here for one reason only.’

‘What reason?’

‘Right now, they’re hassling me about you and Eve. It’s been a long time since any kids came inside Glebe House.’

Janey saw my bewilderment.

‘No, come on, tell me,’ I demanded. ‘What’s this got to do with me and Eve?’

Janey folded her arms. ‘Describe the ways children die, Theo.’

‘What?’ I was thrown by the question. ‘I don’t know. Mostly accidents, I suppose. Disease … Hunger. That sort of thing.’

‘Or they’re deliberately killed,’ Janey said. ‘Murdered. Of course, the four ghosts don’t talk about the way they died very often. It’s not something they like being reminded of. Only the original owner of Glebe House enjoys doing that, and he does so whenever he can. Whenever, that is, he gets close enough for the ghosts to hear his whisper.’

While I tried to take this in, Janey pointed at the perimeter walls.

‘I’d like to be able to walk across the Glebe estate without gathering ghosts around me all day long,’ she said grimly. ‘But that won’t happen until the hunter in the East Wing is stopped. The ghost children aren’t pining to be alive, Theo. They don’t wish to be with us at all. They should be elsewhere. The dead are meant to be dead. They’ve stayed behind on this spot because of what’s inside Glebe House. To stop the owner who killed them from
killing anyone else. Right now – to stop him from killing you and Eve.’

‘That’s it,’ Elliott said, laying the last sheet down.

‘What? The diary ends there?’ Ben groaned. ‘You’re kidding! There’re no more pages?’

‘I know. I can’t believe it, either,’ Elliott said, ‘but it’s all Dad could find.’ He re-read the last entries. ‘The original owner,’ he murmured. ‘Janey was telling Theo that he’s still here in the house.’

‘The same man who did the portraits?’

‘Mm.’

Ben kneaded his bruise. ‘Load of rubbish,’ he grunted. ‘This whole diary thing is made up. Has to be. Something Theo left behind as a laugh. Pretty clever, if you think about it.’

‘Yeah, maybe,’ Elliott said doubtfully, needing time to think.

‘It’s a story,’ Ben insisted. ‘It’s got to be. Anything else is just stupid.’ He stood up.

‘Where are you going?’ Elliott asked.

‘To the bathroom. If I’m not back in five minutes you might want to check, though.’

‘Check what?’

‘That I’m still in there,’ Ben said, grinning. ‘
Still alive
, I mean. Whoooooooooh!’

Ben laughed, but Elliott didn’t join in, and after his
brother walked off Elliott sat on the edge of his mattress, still reeling from the diary revelations. Had Theo really made the whole thing up? Was it just the fact that he’d seen the older version of Janey Roberts, Theo’s neighbour in the 1960s, that made the diary feel so real? Elliott wanted to believe that, but only because the alternative wasn’t something he wanted to believe at all. Because if Theo was telling the truth, fifty years ago his little sister Eve had repeatedly gone into the East Wing. She’d become so obsessed with the owner’s portraits that she’d gone as far as to smash her way inside. And now the same thing was happening to Ben. How likely a coincidence was that?

And something else was bothering Elliott. He didn’t like to admit it, but he’d been drawn to the owner’s portraits himself. He kept finding his gaze flicking up to them. In fact, knowing that the pike portrait was buried under all those magazines in his bedroom had been bothering him all the time he’d been reading the diary. He had a strong desire to return the painting to its proper place on the wall. The urge kept itching at him.