Bone Jack (14 page)

‘Callie—’ Mark took a step towards her but she backed away.

‘I can’t listen to you any more,’ she said. ‘I can’t listen to all this talk about Dad, about killing people. Stop it. You have to stop it.’

She retreated further away from them.

‘Callie,’ said Ash, ‘it’s OK. Please don’t …’

But she wouldn’t even look at him. Instead she turned, ran off up the path.

Ash started to follow her but Mark stopped him. ‘Let her go. She doesn’t get it.’

‘Doesn’t get what?’ said Ash. ‘That you think if you paint yourself with clay and kill rooks and murder the stag boy then that’s going to bring your dad back? No one comes back from the dead. No one. Even if you really do kill me or some other stag boy, it won’t bring your dad back.’

‘You’re wrong,’ said Mark. His voice was quiet and deadly serious. ‘You can bring people back. There’s a way. Blood for blood, life for life.’

‘What way?’

Mark glanced towards Bone Jack’s bothy in the valley below. ‘Him,’ he said. ‘Bone Jack. The guardian of the boundary between life and death. Get past him and you can get past death itself.’

‘So what’s the big plan?’ said Ash. ‘You’re going to sacrifice the stag boy and Bone Jack’s going to let you bring your father back from the dead? That’s insane.’

Mark’s eyes glittered. ‘You don’t even know who Bone Jack is, what he is.’

‘He’s just a man,’ said Ash, even though he didn’t believe it. ‘He’s just a weird man, a hermit who lives in the mountains.’

‘He’s a shaman. He moves between the land of the living and the land of the dead. He’s thousands of years old and he shapeshifts. He’s a man, he’s a bird, a thousand birds.’

‘He’s just a man,’ said Ash again.

‘He’s much more than that,’ said Mark. ‘You know it as well as I do. He’s much more than a man, but when he shapeshifts, when he breaks apart into rooks, then I can get at him. I kill his rooks, a few here, a few there. Every time I do it, he gets weaker. When I take the rooks and make them mine, I take his strength. And when I’ve taken enough of it, I’ll be able to do what he can do. I’ll go into Annwn, into the realm of the dead, and I’ll bring back my dad.’

‘So that’s why you’re really out here? Waiting for Bone Jack to shapeshift so you can kill some more rooks, take his power and travel to the land of the dead? Do you know how crazy that sounds?’

‘I don’t care how it sounds.’

‘How do you kill the rooks anyway?’

‘Catapult,’ said Mark. ‘Remember how we used to practise hitting empty tin cans? I was good at it. I’m even better now.’

‘Mark,’ said Ash, ‘you’re ill. You should come home with me. Please, come home with me.’

‘I’m not ill,’ said Mark. ‘I’m not going anywhere. You know I’m not crazy. You know what I’m saying is true.’

Ash looked away from him, looked beyond the standing stone. There was something else out there, further along the path, a familiar shape silhouetted against the sky.

He went towards it.

The stag’s head, the one Mark had worn as a headdress when he’d dressed up as the stag god. Stuck on a pole. Its eyes gone, eaten away. Its coat dull, matted with dried blood. Flies droning around it.

Ash turned away from it and walked back towards Mark. Mark smiled weirdly, eyes flint-hard. Ash watched him smirk and swagger, pleased with the shock on Ash’s face.

‘I’m going to run in the Stag Chase,’ said Ash, suddenly cold with fury. ‘I’m going to run for my dad. I’m going to run all your ghosts into the ground. You can’t stop me.’

He kept walking, left Mark behind. He climbed up Corbie Tor. He looked down across the valley to where Bone Jack’s bothy stood among the thorn trees.

On the ridge beyond, dark birds gathered like a storm cloud. They flowed and eddied in the warm air, flapped apart, drew together again, closer now, denser, wings touching, melting into each other until the flock became a shadow, an outline. The silhouette of a man in a long coat, a wide-brimmed hat.

Ash glanced down to where Mark had been standing but Mark was nowhere to be seen. Run off to find Callie, Ash thought.

He was alone except for Bone Jack, the wild man, the shapeshifter, dark against the skyline. Ash watched him stride away until he couldn’t see him any more.

Then, without knowing quite why he did it, he ran downhill towards Bone Jack’s bothy.

TWENTY-THREE

Ash stood outside the bothy. He didn’t have a plan, didn’t know what to do, what he was looking for. Something, anything, that might give him an edge.

The bone strings in the doorway rattled in the breeze. Beyond them was deep shadow. Just like last time, except now the filthy windows were blank and there was no blurry face staring through at him.

He listened. All he heard was the slow slide of his own breathing, the whisper of the breeze among the thorn trees, bird chatter.

No sign of Bone Jack.

He pushed through the bone strings into hot dusty gloom. Sweat prickled on his skin. He stopped just inside, waited for his eyes to adjust to the dark. Taut threads of sunlight cut through the grime on the windows. The tiny skulls on the bone strings threw weird shadows against the back wall.

Now he could make out shapes in the gloom. A small table with two chairs. A woodstove with a stack of firewood next to it. A pile of blankets and furs at one end of the room.

It seemed more like a den than a home.

Something moved, fluttered and flapped. A tiny bird, a wren or something. It shot past him, out through the bone curtain.

He went further inside. A fox skull on a shelf, an old army knife, five stones set out side by side on the table. He picked one up, felt its weight and balance. Leaf-shaped, shiny, cool against his skin. A flint arrowhead.

Next to the arrowheads was a book. It was small, bound with old soft leather. He opened it. The thin pages were so fragile that he imagined even the gentlest touch of his fingertips might tear them. Something written on them, a poem, handwritten in inky lettering.

‘You again, lad,’ said a voice behind him.

Ash spun round, still clutching the book. Fear shook through him.

Bone Jack in the doorway, silhouetted against the bright sunlight outside. ‘What is it this time? Another sick wolf? Thieving? Snooping?’

Ash shot a panicky glance across at the nearest window, briefly wondered if it would break if he hurled himself against it.

‘I saw you over yon with the girl and the painted boy,’ said Bone Jack. ‘The crazy boy who’s been killing my rooks.’

‘He’s killing them to take your power. You could stop him. You should stop him.’

‘I can’t stop him. Things has to play out as they will for the living. It’s not for me to interfere.’

His eyes sharp and cold and pale as ice.

‘Are you human?’ said Ash. The words rushing out, taking him by surprise. ‘Or something else? A spirit or a myth thing, like Taliesin or the Green Man?’

‘They’re just names,’ said Bone Jack. ‘Names and stories.’

‘OK,’ said Ash. Fear twisted inside him. Suddenly he wanted to get out of the bothy but Bone Jack was between him and the doorway. He took a deep breath to steady his nerves. ‘I came here to find some answers, that’s all. There are ghosts in the mountains. I’ve seen them. There was that wolf. And Mark’s saying he’s going to kill the stag boy and bring his dad back from the dead and somehow it all seems to have something to do with you.’

As he spoke, he took a step towards the door. Legs heavy as wood, sweating so much his shirt was sticking to his back.

Bone Jack stayed where he was, blocking the only way out.

‘It ain’t about me,’ said Bone Jack. ‘It’s about the dying land and the old ways.’

‘That’s what Mark said. The old ways. Life for life. The stag boy’s life in exchange for his dad’s.’

‘The dead stay dead,’ said Bone Jack. ‘Only ghosts come back.’

‘Like those hound boys?’

‘Aye.’

‘Why have they come back?’

‘They’re here every year, every Stag Chase. Most years there’s nowt much to them. But now the land’s sick and its darkest dreams are rising from it like mist. The sicker the land is, the stronger they get.’

‘What do they want?’

‘Blood and death is what. It’s all they know. How to hunt, how to kill.’

‘Why don’t you stop them?’

‘They ain’t strong enough yet.’

‘I don’t know what that means.’

No response. Bone Jack’s face was hidden in the shadow under the brim of his hat and suddenly Ash couldn’t catch his breath. The gloom pressed in around him, thick with ancient dust, and all he could think about was getting outside, into fresh air and sunlight and limitless space.

‘I’ll go now,’ he said. His voice was a croak. He took a small step towards the door, then another. ‘I’m sorry I disturbed you.’

He kept his gaze low, kept moving, slow tiny paces.

And Bone Jack stepped aside to let him out.

Ash kept walking until he was halfway across the clearing. Then he stopped, his fear fading in the sunlight. He looked back at Bone Jack.

‘I don’t know what to do,’ said Ash. ‘What should I do?’

‘Hold to your own, lad.’

‘What does that mean?’

But Bone Jack had already turned away, retreated into the gloom behind the bone strings.

Ash ran on through the trees and up the slope back towards Corbie Tor. Halfway, he stopped.

He was still holding the book he’d picked up in the bothy.

He sat on a slab of rock and stared at it. There was a faint trace of lettering on the cover, so faded that he could barely make out the words. He angled the book into the sunlight, squinted at it, spoke its title out loud:
The Battle of the Trees
.

He’d come across that title before. Where? He trawled his memory. Then it came back to him. He’d seen it when he’d looked up Bone Jack online and learned about his connection to those other mysterious wild men of the mountains. Taliesin, he thought.
The Battle of the Trees
was a poem written by Taliesin.

The breeze gusted, hot and dry.

He opened the book and started to read.

I have been in a multitude of shapes,

Before I assumed a consistent form.

I have been a sword, narrow, variegated,

I will believe when it is apparent.

I have been a tear in the air
,

I have been the dullest of stars.

I have been a word among letters
,

I have been a book in the origin.

I have been the light of lanterns
,

A year and a half.

A poem about shapeshifting.

The breeze blew harder, lashed tears from his eyes and tore at the tissue-thin pages. Ash slammed the book shut and shielded it from the wind with his body. But it broke into pieces in his hands. Shreds of paper danced like flakes of ash across the mountainside. Nothing left in his hands except a few limp scraps of old leather.

Gone. Just the echo of the poem in his mind.

I have been in a multitude of shapes …

Birdman. Shapeshifter.

Bone Jack.

The wind dropped. He stood up.

In his mind, he heard Bone Jack’s voice again.
Hold to your own, lad
.

‘What did you mean?’ Ash said, out loud.

Perhaps Bone Jack had meant that he should make his own choices and stand by them. Or that he should take care of his own – of Mum and Dad – and leave the rest alone. But maybe Mark and Callie were his own too.

Every answer only seemed to lead to more questions. And maybe none of it mattered anyway. Maybe the only thing that mattered was the one thing he could do: run.

Only tomorrow to get through and then it would be Sunday, the day of the Stag Chase. Until then, he’d sleep, chill out, play computer games, load up on carbs, keep his head down. Then on Sunday he’d run. Everything was simple when he ran, just muscle and bone, rhythm and focus and the lie of the land. Nothing and no one would catch him. He’d outrun them all. Mark, the hound boys, the ghosts. He’d leave them all trailing in his wake. He’d run his race his own way, and Dad would be waiting for him at the finish line. It would be all right. He just had to run and everything would be all right.

A movement below in the valley caught his eye. Rooks, flapping up from the thorn trees.

The air thrummed with their wing beats. They scattered across the land, night-black rags tossed on the wind, and he watched them until they were gone.

TWENTY-FOUR

That night, Ash slept deeply, dreamlessly. When he woke, the house was quiet. These days, it was nearly always quiet. Almost two weeks since Dad came home, and the silence and tension almost seemed ordinary now. Mum either in the garden or out somewhere. Dad curled up in the dark in his room. A new normal they’d all somehow fallen into, learned to live with.

He glanced at his alarm clock. Just gone eight thirty. Saturday morning.

The Stag Chase tomorrow.

Excitement and fear burned through him. He rolled out of bed, got dressed, went downstairs. He stopped on the landing and knocked softly on the door to Dad’s room. No response, but he switched on the light and went in anyway.

The bed was empty and unmade. Sheets trailing to the floor. The rucksack slumped against the wall, still spilling clothes. The air sour with sweat and dread.

Dad was next to the window, squatting on his heels with his back to the wall. He was twitchy. He kept sniffing as if he had a cold. Rubbed his hand over his face again and again. In the hard white light, he looked grey and ill.

‘What’s wrong, Dad? What are you doing down there? Dad? Are you OK?’

No reply.

Ash picked his way through all the junk to where Dad was. He pulled back the curtains and opened the window. Fresh air, sunlight, and a rush of birdsong.

‘Shut the window!’ hissed Dad. ‘Shut the curtains.’

Ash stared at him. ‘Come on, Dad. Get up. Please get up, Dad.’

‘Shut the window,’ said Dad again. ‘Shut the curtains.’

Silently Ash did as he said. He switched off the light, closed the door behind him. He trembled and felt sick. As if the world had tilted and everything had rearranged itself in ways he couldn’t understand. Something gone wrong, gone askew, throwing everything out of kilter. He had to put it right but he didn’t even know what it was, never mind how to fix it.