The Hunting Ground Read online

  ‘Say no!’ Ben demanded. ‘Go on, Elliott! Hurry! Say no! Write it down!’

  Elliott scanned the room for a pen or pencil, couldn’t find one. He was still deciding what to say when the visitor, clearing its throat, said something of its own.

  A IS FOR ALICE

  ‘A is for Alice, who fell down the stairs …’ It was a voice at last, but not the kind Elliott would have expected. It sounded like a girl, but not quite. It was gruff at the edges. And there was something truly terrifying about that when you could not see the face.

  ‘ … B is for Bobby, all dead in his chair. C is for Craig, who couldn’t stay warm …’

  The words flowed eerily, a sing-songy voice that could easily have been either a girl’s or a boy’s. Or even a man’s, Elliott realised. Yes. It could have been a man strangulating his throat to make himself sound younger.

  ‘D is for David, under the lawn. E is for Eddie, dragged and bound. F is Felicity, who never was found …’

  Fear sliced through Elliott. He couldn’t decide: was this a man contorting his voice to sound like a girl, or a girl imitating a man by pitching her voice lower? But why would a girl do something as weird as that? The longer Elliott listened the more he sensed that they might not be dealing with a child at all. More likely something that only sounded like a child. Something that wanted them to think it was a little girl.

  ‘A is for Alice, who fell down the stairs …’

  Elliott recognised that name as the nine-year-old ghost-girl in Theo’s diary, but the other names were new. Had the owner been responsible for more deaths than the four mentioned in the diary? The rhymes ran sequentially through the alphabet, and Elliott steadied himself to listen.

  ‘… G is for Guy, crushed under a horse. H is for Henry, broken of course. J is for Jane, now ageless and white, and also for Jack, at the end of his fight …’

  ‘Where’s Dad?’ Ben whispered. ‘It’s him singing, isn’t it? It must be.’

  ‘Shush,’ Elliott murmured. ‘You know it’s not Dad.’

  ‘… and also for John, once quiet and tall. And L is for Leo, who gave his all. M is for …’

  Elliott didn’t wait to find out who ‘M’ was. He ran towards the door and kicked it open.

  A ghost stood outside.

  It was Eve. Although her skin was utterly grey, it was definitely her. Definitely the girl from the diary sketch. But what had happened to her? She looked wild. Her matted hair was plastered in a tangled blonde mess over her cheeks, her teeth clenched in a vast fury. Stamping the ground, she shook a tiny enraged fist at them.

  Her doll, Katerina, lay next to her on the hallway floor. Eve picked Katerina up by her feet and swung her solid plastic head at Elliott, swoop swoop, like a battering ram.

  Elliott barely knew what he was saying, he was so frightened. ‘It’s … it’s OK …’ he stuttered.

  Eve stared not at Elliott, but at Ben. There was a child’s curiosity contained in that stare, but it was violent too, floating in its own raw well of meaning. Yet it was unquestionably a little girl they were looking at. It was certainly Eve and, though her red dress was filthy, it was still a little girl’s dress, nothing worse. And when she dropped her angry pose and suddenly whispered a heartfelt Help me, help me, please, before abruptly twisting around and running off, Elliott found himself following her to see where she went.

  Eve was fast. Her feet, spilling dust, hardly touched the floorboards. With that pitiable help me ringing in his ears, Elliott guessed where she was heading and ran towards the East Wing. He got there just in time to see Katerina being carted through the entrance.

  ‘It’s OK!’ Elliott called out. ‘Eve, we’re not going to hurt you. Don’t go. Please …’

  Before he thought about what he was doing, he’d leapt inside the East Wing. He only stopped running down its corridors when Eve did.

  ‘It’s OK,’ he said, catching his breath. ‘We’ll … we’ll help you.’

  Eve had come to a halt and was now crouched against the far end of a corridor. Her back was to Elliott. Pressing her cheek hard against the wall, she whispered, ‘S is for Sandra, burning bright, T for Tobias, a swish of the scythe. And also for Tanya, who writhed and writhed …’

  Listening, Elliott realised that while it had taken Eve only one single second to run the whole length of the corridor upstairs, she’d let him keep up on the way to the East Wing. She obviously wanted him to follow her inside.

  Eve stayed entirely still. ‘E is for Elliott, all alone, all alone … ‘

  ‘It’s OK …’ Elliott said hollowly, his voice fading away in fear. Suddenly the last thing he wanted was for Eve to turn around. ‘I … we won’t hurt you.’

  Eve let out a quiet, lonely moan. Then she turned to face him.

  The fighter’s stance was gone. Replacing it was a sly smile. The smile played on Eve’s lips and, widening it, she gave Elliott a performer’s curtsey, as if she was about to show him something spectacular.

  ‘Don’t,’ Elliott said, fearing what she was going to do.

  ‘It’s OK,’ she said, calmly reversing their roles – a child deciding to comfort him.

  But she wasn’t really comforting him, Elliott decided. She was just reassuring him to keep him there, to make sure he watched.

  Eve opened out her hands, like a magician showing him she had nothing concealed. And then, bringing her arms down, finger-curves winding across her dress, as if unravelling it, her whole body dissolved into the wall, leaving only a trail of dark, dust-smeared light. Inside that residue of light she left her two eyes a moment. They blinked: once, twice. Then they, too, pressed forward, following the rest of her body into the wall.

  Katerina clattered to the floor, left behind.

  Elliott was too afraid to move for a moment. Then he shakily walked across the floor and prodded Katerina. Solid plastic. Heavy. Real. He picked her up. She smelled of stale carpet and ingrained dirt, and her plastic face was pitted and scratched from years of being dragged over countless surfaces.

  Dropping her, Elliott twisted around. It was only when he looked back over his shoulder up the corridor that he realised he couldn’t remember the turnings that had brought him this far into the East Wing.

  THE EAST WING

  A nondescript and almost perfectly straight corridor stretched ahead of Elliott. Though his heart was still thumping, nothing about the corridor looked menacing and he decided to treat it that way. He didn’t panic. He knew he hadn’t gone far inside the East Wing. How hard could it be to find the exit?

  The corridor he was in lacked true windows, but sunshine filtered through narrow angular slits in the high ceiling. What Elliott did not know was that the original owner had built just enough illumination into the East Wing to keep its guests on the move.

  His first few entangling steps led him to a branching four-way intersection. From the crossing paths he saw that he could go straight ahead, left or right. Or back, of course. He could always go back. But which way was correct? The corridors radiating from the intersection were all the same height and width. The walls were indistinguishably white-grey.

  Keeping a guarded look out for Eve, Elliott breathed in the dry musty air. So easy to get lost here, he realised.

  A crack of sunlight lit up an oil painting on the nearest wall. It was one of the owner’s self-portraits, and Elliott leaned forward to take a closer look.

  The painting showed a hunting scene. No surprise there, given the portraits he’d seen elsewhere in the house. But this portrait wasn’t like the scenes in the main property. Those all showed dead birds, hogs, deer or other animals. What Elliott was looking at now was a picture of the owner hunting a girl. Not chasing her. Hunting her.

  The girl looked to be around sixteen years old, and Elliott could tell from her frightened expression that this was no game. In the portrait, the owner’s face – beard freshly combed and oiled – shone with anticipation.

  With his pulse racing, Elliott stood in front of the po
rtrait for over a minute. Then he spotted another difference between this portrait and those elsewhere. Outside the East Wing the owner was always standing stiff and at attention with his weapons and kills beside him. Here the paintwork was freer. The owner’s red hair flowed in the picture, the enjoyment obvious in his upturned eyes. This was clearly a hunt he’d savoured. His scissored legs were striding up a steep muddy slope fringed by trees, and the girl did not look as if she would escape.

  Blinking uneasily, Elliott examined another painting in the same corridor.

  Again there was the slope. Again the trees. Again a person being chased. This time, however, it was a woman. In another painting the owner was running after a pair of men. Two strong men they were, and they’d been roped together, as if to make it harder for them to fight or to get away. In another canvas, bizarrely, the owner was hunting himself. That was the only painting where the hunter and the hunted both looked amused.

  With a sinking feeling in his gut as he gazed at the landscape in all the paintings, Elliott realised, It’s a hunting ground.

  Dotting the length of the East Wing’s corridors, between the paintings, were doors. There were always four doors to a corridor, and all the doors were composed of plain wood with the same brass handles. Elliott picked a door at random in the hope of finding an exit. The brass handle felt smooth and surprisingly warm as he twisted it. The door opened invitingly.

  Inside, he discovered a fully-furnished bedroom. The next room along the corridor was also a bedroom, decorated the same way. The third and fourth rooms were almost identical to the first.

  Elliott walked dazedly between them, finding barely any variations.

  At the back end of each room there was always another door, which led into a further corridor. And that corridor in turn always led to more doors that were all alike and ever willing to open to Elliott’s hand.

  Nothing was closed off to him. Everything opened. Everything allowed you in.

  With a shiver of fear pooling in his stomach, Elliott instinctively yelled ‘Dad!’ as loudly as he could. His voice did not travel far. The East Wing’s absorbent carpets and thickly-papered walls hushed everything. No one on the outside could hear you in this place.

  In the next corridor he found a note on the floor. It was in Eve’s handwriting.

  Five minutes to midnight,

  Mark the time.

  Let the hunt begin

  With a little rhyme.

  Elliott quickly twisted around, thinking she might be behind him. The corridor was empty, but suddenly Elliott wondered if he could outrun Eve if he had to. No, he decided. He’d seen how fast she was. Eve knew the layout of the corridors as well, the shortcuts. She’s not just a little girl, he realised. No one could live inside here for fifty years and stay a little girl.

  Had she deliberately led him in here so he would get lost? Once that thought lodged in his mind, Elliott couldn’t shake it.

  Arriving at another four-way intersection, he glanced up to see the most frightening portrait so far. It showed a boy of about five or six years old. He was wearing a bright blue cape, and his little legs were running as hard as they could up the slope of the hunting ground. Below him, the owner was not yet following. Instead, he was busy attaching heavy objects to each of his thighs. Elliott squinted, trying to work out what the objects were. Finally he realised that they were weights.

  The owner was manacling big chunks of stone and metal to his legs.

  Why was he doing that? Dread cut through Elliott as an answer came to him: To make it harder. This was a small child. The owner was adding the weights to make the chase more even.

  The possibility that he might be anywhere near the spirit of a person who would do something as horrifying at that made Elliott stop in his tracks.

  Rather than blunder on, he formulated a new plan. The portraits. Why not use them to navigate? Each was different. If he memorised those at the start of corridors he could avoid entering the same corridor twice. By elimination he was bound in the end to find the one that led out of the East Wing.

  And now the first real game began, because it felt so possible. Elliott set about it diligently, memorising portrait subjects at the intersections. A hunted woman. Another woman with a mask over her face. A man running, the owner attacking him with a scythe. Another similarly dressed man, but the scythe this time in the owner’s other hand.

  It seemed easy at first. Surely he could do this. But there were so many intersections and pictures, and the contrasts between them were often so subtle, that only someone able to memorise perfectly could succeed. The owner had tested this during his lifetime. He’d let dozens of people loose like spiders inside the East Wing and seen who crawled out. If they managed it he found out how, and made corrections until almost no one could.

  The first sign that Elliott was beginning to panic came when he started calling out Eve’s name. He’d never have done so at the beginning. He was too afraid of her then. But at some point he’d crossed a threshold where he was more frightened of being stuck alone inside the East Wing than of anything a ghost girl, no matter how sinister, could do to him.

  ‘Hello? Eve? I’ve read Theo’s diary … My name’s Elliott …’

  He made another turn, right this time. Then, because he had to try something different, he pushed open more doors. None were locked. All led to the same repetition of bedrooms. Surely Ben and Dad had to be looking for him by now, Elliott thought. Then he remembered that Ben hadn’t seen him enter the East Wing.

  He stopped for a moment, aware that he was shaking. You’re OK, he told himself, knowing it wasn’t true.

  ‘Are you there, Eve? I’m a friend. I won’t hurt you …’

  Elliott travelled on, and with every step the East Wing’s rich burgundy carpet welcomed his feet with cushioning silence.

  Several corridors later, another turn led him somewhere new.

  Elliott stopped, holding his breath.

  In front of him the floor descended. At the end of that descent was a small staircase. At the end of that staircase was a dark passageway.

  At first sight the dark passageway looked no different from the other gloomy corridors Elliott had already walked down. But somehow it was. He waited until the difference was clearer. There were two differences. One, the passageway had no slit-windows, making it much darker than elsewhere. Two – he wasn’t sure. There was another difference, but he couldn’t quite name it.

  Staring into the passageway’s depths, Elliott realised that he was trembling.

  ‘Eve?’

  The dark passageway was an impenetrable, unyielding black. It was depths upon depths of darkness. Was this where Eve had been leading him all along? Surely his own meandering footsteps had brought him here? But Elliott couldn’t be sure of that. All he knew was that nothing, absolutely nothing, would convince him to enter that passageway.

  Summoning all his reserves of strength, he turned around and, one dread-filled footstep at a time, walked away. Numerous choices of corridors and rooms later, with his skin now stippled by cold, prickling sweat, Elliott’s eyes snapped wide.

  He couldn’t believe it. Ahead of him the corridor descended. At the end of that descent was a small set of steps … leading to a dark passageway.

  The next moment Elliott was running headlong. He couldn’t stop himself. He was lost and running flat out. And abruptly it was as if it was not him running at all, but another child, a child being chased, a child from the past, a child who could not stop screaming.

  And then a band of dazzling light suddenly unfurled across the walls ahead of him.

  Like a drowning man, Elliott focused on it. Was it by luck, by chance, that he found his way out? Elliott didn’t care. All he knew was that the next turn led him towards the ragged hole in the East Wing entrance. He hauled himself through it, and with a yell of sheer relief staggered into beautiful bright sunshine.

  10

  THE HUNTING GROUND

  For several minutes Elliott c
rouched outside the East Wing’s entrance, simply getting his breath back, shaking uncontrollably.

  He couldn’t believe how frightened he was. He hadn’t been pursued while he was inside the East Wing, but at a subconscious level he knew that he’d been hunted. The jaunty smiles from the portraits kept flashing into his mind.

  When he finally got his shattered nerves back together, he heard a thin voice calling out, and realised it was his own. Moments later Dad and Ben were running towards the entrance.

  ‘We looked for you!’ Ben cried, rushing up to him. ‘We did! We searched everywhere …’

  Elliott nodded, too frazzled to manage anything else.

  Dad’s first reaction was anger. ‘Didn’t I tell you not to go in there?’ But as soon as he saw the state Elliott was in, his expression changed completely. He steadied his still-shaking shoulders. ‘What happened? You got lost in there, didn’t you?’

  Elliott fumblingly told him everything, and it must have come out more emotionally than he intended because at some point Dad briefly held him.

  Elliott shut his eyes for a few seconds, then looked at Dad again. ‘You don’t believe we saw a ghost, do you?’

  Dad kept his hands on his shoulders. ‘I know you saw something,’ he said cautiously. ‘I believe that.’

  ‘He hasn’t read the diary yet,’ Ben muttered. ‘We were too busy looking for you.’

  ‘Read it, Dad,’ Elliott told him and, marching him upstairs, he stuffed the pages into his hands. ‘Read the whole thing.’

  Dad did so. When he’d finished the last page his eyes, creased with concern, came to rest slowly on both boys.

  ‘All right,’ he said hesitantly. ‘I don’t know what’s going on here, but this’ – he raised the diary – ‘plus whatever you just saw in your room, and the East Wing…’ Dad wavered, gradually coming to a decision. ‘OK, here’s what’s going to happen. Until I understand what’s going on in this house, I’m getting the two of you out. I’ll have to temporarily seal the place up again. That’ll take a day or so. But then we’re gone, at least until I’m satisfied it’s safe.’