Skinned

THE

SHADOWING

SKINNED

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Cover

Title Page

Copyright

Dedication

Prologue

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Chapter Twelve

Chapter Thirteen

Chapter Fourteen

Chapter Fifteen

Chapter Sixteen

Chapter Seventeen

Chapter Eighteen

Chapter Nineteen

Chapter Twenty

Chapter Twenty-One

Chapter Twenty-Two

Chapter Twenty-Three

Chapter Twenty-Four

Chapter Twenty-Five

Chapter Twenty-Six

Chapter Twenty-Seven

Chapter Twenty-Eight

Chapter Twenty-Nine

Chapter Thirty

Chapter Thirty-One

Chapter Thirty-Two

Chapter Thirty-Three

Chapter Thirty-Four

Epilogue

With special thanks to Elizabeth Wein

There aren't any trees in the little circular cul-de-sac where the boy lives, but there is a tall, wooden telephone pole, sprouting a wire into each house in the street. Every night before bed, the boy checks to see if there are any birds perched on the wire that ties the pole to his own house. Sometimes on winter nights there are stars framed between them. Tonight there is a full moon. The boy leans his elbows on the windowsill and stares, imagining flying off in a spaceship.

Then, suddenly, the night twists.

It is the oddest thing the boy has ever seen. The
view from his window warps for a moment, as though reflected in a wobbly mirror at a funfair. The air between the cable and the ground seems to break and reform, the way still water ripples and then settles when you touch it.

The boy rubs his eyes. He shakes his head before he looks again to see if the ripple is still there.

It isn't. Instead, there is a woman standing on the pavement.

In the pale light of the full moon, the woman's skin is faintly blue, as though she has been nearly frozen to death. Around her shoulders is a tattered shawl, too full of holes to protect against the winter air. Her ragged leather skirt doesn't look very warm either.

Where did she come from?

The boy at the window is fascinated. He can't look away.

*

Black Annis lifts her head, swivels her eyes first one way and then the other. Above her stands a wooden mast with
thick, black ropes stretching out to the strange houses around it. Beneath her feet, the ground is as hard as rock.

The world has changed.

When she last crossed over and walked this land, it was field and forest. Now all that is gone. No trees anywhere – only this bare wooden pole. Gone, too, the entrance to the cave Black Annis scratched from the sandstone of Dane's Hill with her own nails. Gone, the oak that grew at its mouth, where she hung out the flayed skins of her victims to dry so that later she might sew them for her skirts.

And what is that smell – thick and acrid? It surrounds her, dulling the cold, fresh scent of night and the aroma of warm, living things. All changed, all gone – nothing remains of what Black Annis knew in this world. It is buried beneath this grey layer of grit and tar, and row upon row of smoky human dwellings. For a moment, in the cavity where her shrivelled, inhuman heart beats, Black Annis knows something like despair.

Then her eyes follow one of the black ropes overhead. It stretches from the top of the tall, wooden pole to the bottom of a window. And in the window, moonlight shining on his white face, there is a child.

Black Annis smiles. Her pointed teeth do not gleam; they are black with age and the bloodstains of her countless victims. But they are still strong, still primed for their purpose. She looks up at the human child – surely meant to be in bed and asleep at this time of night.

Some things never change.

*

The boy watches as the cold woman turns her head, looking up at the telephone pole, and finally looking at him. Straight at him. Her eyes seem alight, glinting brightly. Her lips pull back over teeth that make a dark stain in the middle of her pale, bluish face.

It is a smile. She sees him.

Now he notices something else. Her arms seem too long for her body, and her fingers – no one can have fingers that long! Unless . . . Were they her
fingernails
?

The boy snaps out of his trance, all fascination instantly turned to fear. He backs away from the window.

*

Black Annis walks towards the house. Inside the gate, separating the building from the hard grey ground beyond, there is a tiny patch of grass and earth. The soil here has not changed. The sandy loam is soft and familiar. It is good to feel the earth beneath her feet again.

Black Annis reaches the house and looks up. It is bigger than the human dwelling places she remembers. The windows are higher.

But her nails are as sharp as ever they were. She is good at climbing.

*

Cowering away from the window, the boy can see nothing. But he can hear an odd noise outside – a scratching beneath the window, growing steadily louder. The boy doesn't want to look, but he has to know what it is.

He forces himself back to the window. He grips the sill and peers out across the street. The strange woman is gone.

But the noise is still growing louder. The boy looks
down at the window ledge outside the house. Long, sharp claws are hooked into the wood. As the boy watches, the dark claws flex and grip. Behind them rise long, pale arms, blue in the night's half-light. The arms haul up the rest of the grotesque body. Black teeth and silver eyes rise into view, filling the window.

*

Black Annis is face to face with her victim. Her grin widens. The human child dashes across the room, throws himself into his bed and dives under the covers. Black Annis can see the heap of human helplessness trembling beneath the flimsy cloth and down.

The boy's terror is delicious.

*

Under his duvet, the boy hides, his nerves a snarled tangle of despair and hope. Surely he is safe here. The blue woman can't see him any more, and the window is shut tight –

Click
.

The sound is soft and sudden. A cold draught of night air reaches under the covers and stings the boy's trembling ankles. The window is open.

The child waits, his heart pounding with fear, as he listens to the quiet, slow footfalls padding across his bedroom floor. Then they stop, and the boy holds his breath, waiting . . . Perhaps she's gone? Perhaps it was all his imagination, perhaps –

There is no more warning. The covers are ripped from his body in one lightning sweep. It is too late for him to scream for help.

He screams anyway.

Evening had well and truly settled in Nether Marlock, and Callum stared out of his bedroom window at the night sky. He knew he should be concentrating on his English homework, but these days it didn't take much to distract him. He could hear Gran downstairs cleaning their small cottage vigorously. At least she'd found something to occupy her mind, he thought. Sighing, Callum rubbed his eyes. He cracked open his bedroom window a little to get some fresh air, and then looked back down at his textbook.

A moment later, he heard a noise. At first he thought it was a branch of the rowan tree that grew next to the
ramshackle alms cottage, scratching at the top of the window. But when he looked up, Callum saw bones not branches. Fluttering at the glass was a bird, the size of a crow, but not like any he had ever seen.

It was a skeleton.

The bird's bony wings rattled and battered insistently against the window pane. Callum held his breath. He had always been able to see ghosts – they were such an ordinary part of his life that when he'd been younger he had sometimes confused them with the living. There was no confusing this thing, though – whether it was a ghost or not, it was certainly no ordinary bird. And it was obviously determined to get his attention.