Demon Storm Read online

  Ben looked down at his feet. This wasn’t going well, but he didn’t know what to do or say. It had all seemed so simple when he set off. All he had to do was find Mr Magill and ask him about the man in the suit, or if he knew yet what had happened to Sam. But now he didn’t dare say a word.

  He felt Mr Magill’s reassuring hand on his shoulder. ‘You can wait here. Take a seat for a minute, because I need to make a couple of calls.’

  Ben slumped down into one of the armchairs, while Mr Magill stepped out into the corridor. Ben could hear him talking on his mobile phone. He couldn’t catch the whole conversation – just enough to know he was in trouble and he was going back to the home.

  His mind drifted off. Where was Sam? How could he ever find out about the man in the suit now? He had to ask – when Mr Magill came back, he’d ask him about the man in the suit. He’d demand to know who the man was and what he knew about Sam and the people who’d taken her away.

  Suddenly, something was different. Maybe it was the tone of Mr Magill’s voice. But Ben could tell he was talking to someone else now – not the police or Mr Logan at the home.

  ‘Yes, just turned up here …’ Mr Magill was saying. ‘No sign of the girl, and the boy’s showing no sort of ability …’ He lowered his voice further and Ben couldn’t hear any more.

  What should he do now? What would Sam do? What would she say? Ben tried to pretend she was there with him in the room.

  ‘He’s talking to the man in the suit,’ Ben whispered, imagining he was talking to Sam.

  He imagined he could hear her reply. ‘You need to get hold of his phone.’

  ‘Why do I need his phone?’

  ‘Ben?’

  He leapt to his feet in surprise. ‘Mr Magill.’

  ‘I thought I heard you talking to someone.’

  There was a chill breeze against Ben’s neck and he realised that the office window was open. He could hear the sound of traffic from outside.

  ‘Just thinking out loud, sir. And I was thinking …’

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘I was thinking that I’ve been very stupid,’ he lied. ‘It was just … You know.’

  ‘We all have stupid moments.’ Mr Magill smiled. ‘Whatever’s wrong, Ben, we can get it sorted out. All right?’

  Ben nodded. ‘All right. I’d like to call Mr Logan at the home. To say sorry.’

  ‘I think that’s a very good and sensible idea.’

  ‘Thank you.’ Ben held out his hand, hoping that Mr Magill wouldn’t just tell him to use the office phone on the desk.

  But, perhaps instinctively, Mr Magill handed Ben his mobile. And Ben could see in the man’s eyes that he regretted it immediately.

  Ben took the phone and turned quickly away, as if embarrassed.

  Mr Magill seemed to understand this and said, ‘I’ll give you a minute. It’ll be fine.’ Then he patted Ben gently on the shoulder, smiled reassuringly and left the room.

  The phone was quite complicated. It had a menu of small icons – many of which Ben didn’t understand. But he managed to find the call register and the list of calls made.

  The last was simply: ‘Knight’.

  ‘Check in the contacts list or address book or whatever it has,’ Sam would have suggested. ‘See if there’s an address.’

  There was: Knight – Gibbet Manor, Hangman’s Lane, Dartmoor.

  Ben closed the phone and put it down on the desk. It would be useful to keep it, but that was stealing. And mobile phones could be tracked, couldn’t they?

  The wedge from the door was lying on the floor. Ben pushed it under the door and kicked it into place, jamming the door shut. Then he climbed out of the open window.

  He didn’t know how long he had before Mr Magill realised he’d gone. But he did know where he was heading now. For the first time since Sam had disappeared, Ben felt he was in control.

  8

  OF COURSE, IT WASN’T QUITE THAT SIMPLE. BEN had a name and an address. But he had no idea where Hangman’s Lane was and Dartmoor was a big place. He didn’t like to think about what would happen if this man, Knight, knew nothing about Sam. But he knew that Knight had been worried about her – so surely he’d help Ben find Sam, even if he knew nothing … At last he was doing something. He was making progress. He’d find her again no matter what it took, or how long he had to search.

  Ben didn’t want to spend his money on another taxi. Even though it was a long walk back into the centre of Bristol, it was still early – the school run had barely ended and the streets were busy with cars taking people to work. By the time he found a shopping centre with a bookshop it was almost eleven o’clock.

  The bookshop was one that had a coffee area. Ben bought himself a Coke from a bored, spotty young man who barely glanced at him, then found a good-sized table. He’d already bought a notebook and a pencil, but he didn’t want to have to buy the road atlas or detailed Ordnance Survey map he’d found.

  His first task was to find Hangman’s Lane and this took longer than he had expected. It wasn’t in the index of the road atlas and there was no place name in the address – it could be any small stretch of road on Dartmoor. He unfolded the OS map and began to work across it, searching for Hangman’s Lane.

  Eventually, he found it. A winding, narrow white line that ended at a cluster of dark buildings. Could that be Gibbet Manor? The road atlas was no help – it showed the whole area as empty ‘National Park’. But Ben made a rough sketch in his notebook of where the major towns were in relation to Hangman’s Lane.

  The nearest place was Princetown, which didn’t seem to be on a railway. It looked like the nearest train station must be in Plymouth. Would there be a bus from there? A rough measurement told him that it was fifteen miles from Plymouth to Princetown. Then another seven or eight to get to Hangman’s Lane.

  A lady was clearing away the used coffee cups and plates. She took Ben’s empty Coke glass and wiped round his map and notebook.

  ‘Shouldn’t you be in school?’

  Ben hadn’t thought of that. ‘Er – we have a day off today,’ he said. It sounded lame even to him.

  But the woman just nodded. ‘More days off than days on. Had my two at home last week. Training day. This some homework?’

  ‘Sort of.’

  ‘At least they give you something to do.’ She turned her head sideways to look at the OS map. ‘Dartmoor. Where the prison is. Hound of the Baskervilles country.’

  ‘Sherlock Holmes?’ Ben hadn’t read the book, but he knew of the story. ‘Are you sure?’

  The woman nodded. ‘I work in a bookshop. Well, in a coffee shop in a bookshop. But if you go to Dartmoor, you watch out for the hound.’ She winked, laughed and bustled off.

  *

  The train was expensive and Ben didn’t have enough money. He found out the prices from an automated ticket machine at Temple Meads station. Checking the timetables gave him an idea of the route the train took to Plymouth and he played around with the machine until he found he could afford to get as far as Exeter St David’s and still have a little emergency cash.

  It actually wasn’t far from there to Plymouth. Maybe no one would check his ticket. But if they did, he’d pretend he’d fallen asleep and missed his stop.

  There was a train at 12.44 and the man in the ticket office told him it would take about an hour to get to Exeter. Ben already knew that from the timetable – just as he knew it would arrive in Plymouth about another hour after that.

  But what would he do when he arrived at Plymouth? There would be maybe a couple of hours before it got dark and he had almost no money to get to Princetown …

  Ironically, Ben really did sleep through Exeter. But no one came to check tickets. At Plymouth he avoided the automatic barriers and followed a woman with a child in a buggy. He helped her get the buggy down from the train to the platform and kept close as they went through a gate opened by a man in uniform.

  The woman fumbled for her tickets and Ben handed his across at the same tim
e, making sure it was under the woman’s. The man at the gate glanced at the top ticket and waved them through together.

  ‘I don’t suppose you know how I can get to Princetown?’ Ben asked the woman.

  It was a long shot, but maybe that was where she was going and she’d give him a lift. But it wasn’t.

  ‘I think there’s a bus,’ she said. ‘You’ll have to ask.’

  *

  The bus cost Ben the last of his money. If he wanted to return to Plymouth he’d have to find some more money from somewhere. Or walk. He was going to have to walk across the moors from Princetown to Hangman’s Lane anyway.

  After about ten minutes, the bus turned off the main road on to a narrower, winding lane. He was warm and safe as he sat staring out of the window, but the grey-green moorland was forbidding and windswept. Dark clouds were rolling in across a grey sky.

  Princetown seemed grey as well, in the dying light. A pale moon struggled through the edges of dark clouds, barely illuminating the lane that Ben took out of town. It wasn’t quite five o’clock yet, but it was black as midnight.

  Ben hummed to keep himself company. It was so dark that a couple of times he almost walked off the narrow road and into the ditch beside it. Only the change of texture under his feet saved him from a muddy fall.

  He walked for well over an hour before he found the turning to Hangman’s Lane. The moon emerged for the briefest of moments to shine across the faded finger-signpost. Ben thought this was the first piece of luck he’d had since he got to Plymouth – he could easily have missed the turning and walked on into the middle of nowhere. How far along Hangman’s Lane was Gibbet Manor? He hoped it would be only a hundred metres, but he feared it would be more …

  Almost as soon as he had turned on to the single-track lane, he felt he was being followed. He stopped and turned round, but there was no one there. Just shadows. Then the first spots of rain started to fall.

  Ben walked on. He didn’t feel like humming any more. The cold wind was pulling at his coat and eating into his fingers and his ears. Rain splashed on his face. And he was still sure there was someone there. He spun round sharply.

  Again, just the shadows. The silhouette of the hedge beside the lane. Ben stared hard at the darkest area, as if he could banish the darkness by concentrating hard enough. Was there something – something moving? The hedge rustling in the wind?

  He set off again, but his every footstep seemed to be followed by the faintest echo. As if someone – or something – was taking care to match him step for step.

  Suddenly, the whole lane was lit by an explosive flash. A silent blast of light, so bright it dazzled Ben. He shrieked in surprise and sudden fear – his cries drowned out by the percussive clap of thunder that lagged a few seconds behind the lightning.

  He was drenched in seconds. Running from whatever was behind him. Sprinting towards whatever lay ahead.

  Another flash – and Ben was sure that there was something keeping pace with him. A glimpse, a hint, a suggestion of a shape scuttling up the lane. The skidding click of claws on the slippery surface …

  ‘Who are you?’ he yelled into the returning darkness. ‘What do you want?’

  The sky turned white with another huge flash. Ahead of Ben, standing in the middle of the lane, just at the point where it turned and sloped away down the hill, a figure was standing. He saw her as clear as day for the flickering instants of the lightning.

  ‘Sam!’

  He ran full pelt, rain streaming into his eyes. At the point where she’d been standing, he slowed, looking all round. Waiting for the next flash of inevitable lightning.

  But when it came, there was no one in sight.

  Confused and cold and frightened, Ben walked slowly onwards, down the shallow incline and into the deepening shadows. There was no sign of Sam, and he knew he must have imagined her, must have thought he’d heard her voice.

  The rain was no longer as heavy. The lightning was weakening. The moon had managed to break through and there was enough light now for Ben to see the house ahead of him. Black against the dark grey clouds and picked out by the lightning, it was just a shape with no detail or character. A cutout.

  Huge iron gates barred the lane thirty metres ahead of Ben. They hung from stone posts set in a high wall. The lane went on past the gates, continuing up an incline so that the house was visible above the curling ironwork. In the centre of each gate was an ornate scaffold – upright, crossbar and noose, like from a child’s game of Hangman.

  Ben stood for a moment staring up at the gates and the house beyond. It had to be Gibbet Manor.

  Before starting up the lane again, he looked round. It was just an instinct. He hadn’t heard or seen anything. But one glance behind was enough. Something was hurtling towards him – bounding down the lane. The air was filled with the sound of the creature’s growls. For a moment, Ben couldn’t move.

  ‘Hound of the Baskervilles country,’ the woman in the bookshop had said.

  Without knowing it, Ben had started to run. He was racing towards the gates, desperate to keep ahead of the hellhound coming after him. But he knew, absolutely knew, that the gates would be locked even before he reached them.

  The iron was cold and wet under his hands. He could feel rust flaking off as he heaved and pushed. To no effect. A thick metal chain was looped through the gates, binding them together and holding them shut. An enormous padlock hung on the other side, out of Ben’s reach.

  He turned. The darkness seemed to have gathered itself into a living thing – a black shape that leapt at Ben. Black paws lashed out at him. Oily, rancid breath clawed at his nostrils. He thrust his arms out to protect himself and felt the matted warm pelt of the shadows.

  9

  THEN SUDDENLY BEN WAS FALLING backwards. Strong arms dragged him through the narrow gap between the gates before slamming them shut again. The chain was pulled tight. Ben lay on his back, staring up at the gates from the other side now.

  Just a pair of wrought-iron gates, held shut by a chain and a padlock, dripping from the rain. With nothing and no one to be seen beyond them.

  ‘Are you all right, son?’

  Ben struggled quickly to his feet and turned to face whoever had opened the gates and pulled him through. A torch shone full in Ben’s face, dazzling him so that all he could see behind it was the vague shape of a man.

  ‘Fine, I think. Thank you. But what was that … that thing?’

  As the man lowered his torch, Ben could see now that he was short and stocky. His thinning grey hair was plastered across his scalp by the rain.

  ‘The gates are kept locked at night. Don’t want anything getting into the estate. Nothing that doesn’t have business here, anyhow. Do you have business here?’

  ‘I’ve come to see Mr Knight.’

  The man nodded. ‘That isn’t what I asked. But whether he sees you or not is up to him.’

  He reached out, and it took Ben a moment to realise he meant to shake hands.

  ‘Pendleton Jones,’ the man said. There was a trace of accent in his voice, a rural edge to it. ‘I look after the grounds. Like I said, things try to get in. The gates and the wall stop most of them. I lay traps for the others.’

  He turned and started up the drive towards the house.

  ‘Things?’ Ben hurried to catch up. ‘What sort of things?’

  ‘Things like the one that tried to get you. Some aren’t so vicious. Others are much more dangerous.’

  ‘But – what was it?’

  ‘What did you see? What did you think it was?’

  Ben wasn’t sure. ‘Shadows. I don’t know. But it felt …’ He shook his head.

  ‘Anyone could get that much of an impression of it. A manifestation like that, you don’t need the Sight to feel its breath on the back of your neck.’ The man paused and turned to look at Ben again, shining his torch up and down as if assessing him. ‘If that’s all you saw, then you’re nothing special.’

  ‘Oh, thanks,’ B
en muttered. He started walking again.

  The man made no move to follow, just standing where he was, watching. ‘Best not tell Mr Knight about it or he’ll know you’re nothing special too. In fact,’ he called after Ben, ‘best not to mention you’ve even spoken to me. Keep him guessing about how you got inside the gates. Good luck, son.’

  *

  Ben felt no sense of achievement as he approached the large building. Only dread. The house seemed to sprawl across the landscape, as if it had been thrust up out of the earth rather than built. The frontage was weathered and cracked, ivy spreading across it like veins. The pale moonlight cast sinister shadows and exaggerated the pallid stone surrounding the windows.

  There was a rusting metal rod hanging down beside the dark wooden door. It ended in a loop of a handle, which Ben pulled. Deep inside the house he heard a bell jangle in reply.

  He waited what seemed an age. Light was seeping round the edges of heavy curtains at the windows, so he guessed there was someone in. Eventually he heard the muffled sound of footsteps rapidly approaching the door. This was followed by the rasp of bolts drawing back and the thunk of a heavy lock, then finally the door swung inwards.

  The woman was holding a mobile phone. She glanced at the screen before putting it away in her jacket pocket. She was wearing a smart dark trouser suit and looked about the age Ben’s mother might have been. Her hair was icy blonde, cut short like a schoolboy’s and scraped back from her face and forehead.

  ‘Is it still raining?’ she asked. Her voice was gentle and calm.

  Ben shook his head. ‘I have to see –’

  ‘Mr Knight, yes,’ she interrupted. ‘You’d better come in. You’ll catch your death out there. Look at you.’

  ‘Thank you.’ Ben hurried inside, aware he was dripping on the wooden floor. But the woman seemed not to notice. ‘My name …’ he began.

  ‘… is Ben Foundling,’ the woman finished for him. ‘Of course it is. Come with me and let’s get you dry and find you some hot soup. Mr Knight is busy just now, but I’ll let him know that you’re here.’