Hunted by Adam Slater Page B

character. Callum shivered.
    â€œJust keep it down and don’t wake Gran,” he told Cadbury as he slipped through the door on to the tiny landing. It was pitch dark. He tiptoed to the top of the stairs and slowly made his way down, every floorboard in every step creaking as he went. Again Callum had forgotten to put on socks or slippers, and again his feet were freezing. His hands too.
    Is it just the cold? he wondered. Or is something bad about to happen?
    He gave himself a test by dragging one finger hard along a rough timber beam in the stair wall. A sharp pain stabbed underneath his skin. Callum gasped and bit his lip; he’d picked up a splinter on the old wood.
    But at least he could feel his fingertips. No evil visions tonight, then.
    Callum made it to the bottom of the stairs without waking Gran, and for a moment stood still, breathing slowly while his heart pounded. He’d have to pull himself together if he wanted to find the old scrapbook again.
    There was a faint red glow coming from the grate, just enough to see by. When he’d managed to get his breathing back to normal, Callum quietly lifted one of the straight-backed chairs and carried it to the window. He knew where to look now; he wouldn’t have to move too many books before he found the one he wanted. Maybe he could manage to sneak the ancient scrapbook into his rucksack, get it to school, and make copies of the picture of Jacob. Or maybe he could just take the picture with him and leave the book in its usual place. That would be safer.
    Callum paused, just in case he’d disturbed Gran’s sleep when he was creeping downstairs, or she’d stirred while he was moving the chair. These days Callum knew all too well what it was like to lie awake in the dark, straining to hear something out of the ordinary.
    The night was silent. Almost too quiet. There was no wind, and no sound from outside. Even the owls seemed to have lost their voices, and Callum felt the hair at the back of his neck rise. It was like the feeling he’d had in his dream, when he had come to the path beside the canal—a sensation of dread, the sure knowledge of the presence of evil. Only, at the canal he had known that the evil was in the past, over and done with. This was entirely more urgent. There was evil here now . It was beyond the cottage walls, but it was close—too close. In the garden perhaps, waiting and lurking, a thing old and full of malevolence.
    Had Jacob come back? Callum had shut him out once, but he was sure the ghost-boy wasn’t going to give up. Could he be out there now, prowling with his demon hound? All of Callum’s body was prickling now with the sensation of danger, not just his fingertips. Was the danger all around the house? Callum closed his eyes and allowed the unfamiliar sense to guide him. No, it was worse at the back. He could feel it there, sense it as though it were calling him. It was in the back garden.
    Next to the doorway leading to the little kitchen, the wall of the sitting room had a set of full-length glass doors that opened on to the garden. Callum crossed over to them and quietly pulled open one of the curtains so he could look outside.
    The sky had cleared. The garden was awash in silver moonlight and blue shadows. Callum didn’t know what he expected to see. Anything out of the ordinary would have startled him, even a fox crossing the garden, but all seemed peaceful. Nothing stirred, but the tingling in Callum’s body was stronger than ever. He scanned the night again and his heart turned over with a thump of shock.
    Someone was standing at the far end of the garden.
    Callum could not make out any features, but he felt sure it wasn’t Jacob. It was not anyone or anything he had seen before. It was thin and spindle-shanked, a black stick figure silhouetted in the bright moonlight. It might have been a leafless tree, except that no tree had ever stood there before. Callum’s mouth