The Hunting Ground (19 page)

‘To hunt.’

‘Exactly. The everlasting hunt. The power to leave Glebe House and roam the world. And Ben’s going to help the owner achieve his goal. We haven’t got long before Cullayn shoves him onto the hunting ground.’

‘What about Dad?’

‘Amusement value only, but to Cullayn that means a lot. Come on,’ Janey said tetchily. ‘We can’t wait here. We need to reach in by the backdoor while Cullayn’s still cooing over his new acquisitions.’

‘The backdoor?’

‘I haven’t got time to explain everything, Elliott.’ Without waiting for further questions, Janey turned around and began walking at a fair clip down the staircase. Elliott hesitated, then raced after her, catching up once she was outside the East Wing.

‘Look inside the darkness,’ Janey said curtly. ‘Face it.’

Elliott hesitated. Inside the entrance a few chinks of daylight suffused the otherwise murky entrance corridor.

‘Afraid?’ she challenged him.

‘Yes,’ he admitted.

‘Good. Fear gives you an edge, but too much leaves you cringing and useless. I allowed you two journeys inside to get over that.’

‘What about you?’ Elliott challenged her back. ‘Your
tricks didn’t work last time against Cullayn, did they?’

‘I know others now.’

Elliott flinched as without warning Janey thrust her hand into the air of the East Wing’s open entrance. A dizzying sensation followed, the air seeming to stretch as if the focus of the universe had momentarily flexed. Then Janey curled one of her arthritic hands, and with the singular intent of a bird of prey dragged her open fingers brutally backward.

Her blue eyes narrowed as something
caught
.

Then she yanked hard, seeking a fuller hold with two more fingers.

‘The entrance is already open,’ Elliott pointed out.

‘My way inside, not his.’

Janey tugged harder, gripping the air, determined. Moments later Elliott felt rather than heard something
detach
, and next he knew Janey had hold of his hand, and her entire outline was flaring with apricot-hued light as strand by strand she hauled her once-dark hair through the divide, and Elliott with it. Elliott screamed, every cord in his neck taut with pressure as Janey heaved her old body and his younger one into the East Wing.

‘Hurry,’ she ordered, when he resisted her tug. ‘I can’t keep this open forever! It’s only a trick to enter without him seeing. A reshaping of air. Come on!’

Elliott wavered – then let her drag him inside.

He fell forward onto the burgundy carpet. Close up,
it smelled of mould and dry rot. He stood up fast, prepared to defend himself. The entrance corridor was the same dark length it had always been.

‘Too gloomy for you?’ Janey inquired. ‘I agree. Cullayn’s had his way for far too long. Let’s change things.’ She raised the index finger of her right hand and suddenly the entire corridor was bathed in bluish light. ‘That’s better,’ she said. ‘A parlour trick only, but useful. You can let go of my hand now, by the way.’

Elliott did so.

Pasted to the wall on their left was a portrait. It showed Janey being chased into the hunting ground by Cullayn. It was not an oil painting but a new sketch, quick and crude.

‘I see Cullayn’s asked Eve to pen me a greeting card,’ Janey said tartly. ‘How nice. It means he knows I’m coming but, since he’s not here to greet me himself, not quite when.’

She smiled. Elliott couldn’t believe she could react with such calm equanimity to the picture, and, though he still didn’t trust her, it did give him more confidence. She casually knocked the sketch to the floor and kicked it away. ‘Oops.’

The next sketch on the same wall stopped Elliott dead. It was one of
him
being chased up the slope – chased by a triumvirate: Eve, Cullayn and Ben.

‘Just another little gift to scare us,’ Janey said evenly.
‘Don’t look at the pictures or do, Elliott, whatever.’ She shrugged dismissively. ‘Cullayn likes to gather you in with his artwork. He always overestimated his talent in that regard in my view, and Eve’s hardly improved under his tutelage.’

‘Is that where his power is?’ Elliott asked, amazed at her flippancy. ‘In the portraits?’

‘Partly.’ Janey allowed herself a tinkle of dark laughter. ’It’s only paint, though. Always was. Daubs. Smudges. But invested with the owner’s will, sufficient to guide an unwitting eye. Enough, if you look for long enough, to show you what he wants. To snare Ben.’

‘And you,’ Elliott noted, thinking of the diary.

‘Indeed. My eyes were ever drawn to his goofy teeth.’

Janey punched a hole directly through the sketch of Elliott, inviting him to do the same. He did.

‘Feel better?’

Elliott nodded.

‘Good.’ Janey began moving smoothly down the now well-lit corridor. She never slackened her pace or speeded up or altered her path by even one degree, confident in where her stride was taking her. From time to time she casually ripped portraits from their mounts and dumped them on the carpet.

‘Why do you keep doing that?’ Elliott asked.

‘Because he won’t like it. So we should keep doing it, eh? Stop skulking behind me, Elliott. That’s what
Cullayn likes, bringing everyone to their knees.’

‘But if we mess with the portraits won’t he know we’re here?’

‘The portraits don’t report to him, Elliott,’ Janey said, amused. ‘Those in the house are positioned to ensnare his victims. Inside here, they merely serve to terrorise. We’ll be long gone before he finds out what we’ve done to his precious little babies.’

Janey sped up. The shadows of the East Wing retreated at the rise of her finger. In no time at all they passed three intersection points.

‘Ben ran a little too fast into this,’ Janey muttered, patting a wall. ‘I apologise for that. An accident. Only a bump on the head, however. Better than Cullayn getting hold of him.’

‘Why didn’t Cullayn just grab Ben the first time he came in?’

‘And end the fun just like that?’ Janey snapped her fingers. ‘Surely you’ve learned by now that Cullayn likes to extend his pleasure. Especially since he’s had such lean pickings recently. Poor man. No fresh guts to spill on his hunting ground. Plus there’s the small matter that this time he wanted to blood Eve on the hunt. She’s his little protégée. He wants her in on the act. He’s been preparing her for this moment for a very long time. Is she ready to kill in cold blood? Even Cullayn’s not sure. We’d better hope she is not.’

Janey’s dark eyes twinkled. Elliott had no idea what to make of her carefree sarcasm. It was the perfect antidote to the brooding atmosphere of the East Wing, but was it real or only to dispel her own fear?

‘Fifty years ago you tried to stop Cullayn and failed,’ he said. ‘You were confident that time as well.’

‘I had a lot of sincerely earnest passion then, didn’t I?’ she admitted. ‘Spent hours and hours chatting away to ghost kids, winsomely dallying around graves. That idiot girl’s gone. I had my gift, but not one clue what to do with it.’

‘Do you now?’

‘Oh yes. Keep up, Elliott,’ she said amiably, ‘and watch out for an attack from the side corridors. We’re getting close to the heart of the East Wing. I doubt Cullayn will let us get there without a surprise or two.’

‘He’s listening, isn’t he?’ Elliott said. ‘He’s listening right now.’

Janey appraised Elliott a moment. ‘Indeed. Cullayn’s ever a curious, scenting presence, especially here in his filthy digs. A mind tuning in, as it were. He will not know exactly where we are, but he’ll be catching snatches of our conversation. So we must be careful what we offer him, mustn’t we?’ She gave Elliott a quiet, measured look. ‘If he senses any weakness, he’ll not hesitate to exploit it. Remember the way he had you screaming like
a little boy in here? He loves that sound. He’d like to hear it again.’

A chill crept through Elliott. ‘You saw that? You were here when it happened? You let him do that to me?’

Janey folded her arms. ‘Surely you realise I did more than that? I had to help him scare you as much as I could. Cullayn was watching, wouldn’t have accepted anything less. Anyway, whatever use you are here now is only because I let him panic you then.’

When she saw Elliott staring furiously at her, Janey shook her head.

‘You used us as bait,’ Elliott said, outraged.

‘Of course,’ she grunted. ‘How else to encourage the hunter back to the field of play? The diary was useful. A joy, actually. Bless Theo for writing it. So handy. All those emotions close to the heart. I only had to divide it into tasty morsels and open the East Wing so that Ben went in. I knew he’d be curious. Cullayn’s portraits had already led him in there, but the diary was just a little extra push to keep him thinking about it. Eve found Ben first, actually, fey flit little thing that she is. But I knew she’d skip off to tell Daddy all about him.’

Janey’s tone left Elliott wanting to hit her.

‘I had to,’ she said. ‘Cullayn knows I’m still the only one who can stop him, so he planned to stay in this house until I was dead and gone to the other side. He’d never have come out in the open without an incentive.
I had to provide him with that, get him to trust me, get in his good books. This was the only way to do it. If Cullayn escapes from Glebe House, he’ll go on killing forever.’

‘How do you stop him?’

‘
Ghost ways
.’ When Elliott frowned, Janey flattened her palms together. ‘Look. See? No gap between my fingers, yes? And yet …’ She gradually opened her fingers again, creating a three-dimensional pocket between her hands ‘ … space where it was not. From nothing, something. The question is how to use it.’

Elliott stared dubiously at her.

‘The ghosts travel in the breaches of our world, Elliott,’ Janey told him, looking tired. ‘Interruptions between surfaces, openings, wherever those may be. Walls are not solid. Bricks have pores. Skilled ghosts, like Cullayn, like dear Sam, make their
own
breaches and use them. Sam’s had a whole lifetime with me to perfect my understanding.’ Janey steepled her fingers and brought her thumbs together below, creating a lozenge-shaped opening. ‘Try to get though the gap,’ she said. Elliott prodded his finger at it. Felt resistance in the invisible air where there should have been none. Pressed harder. Found his finger slipping sideways, deflected.

Janey smiled and reached for a door handle leading off the hall. ‘Let’s try this room, shall we?’

‘Wait,’ Elliott said. ‘Answer this first. You admit you used my family to get to Cullayn. But how were you going to stop him before he did something really bad to us?’

When Janey answered it was the first time he saw a chink in her confidence.

‘I had ways,’ she muttered.

‘No, you didn’t, did you?’ Elliott said, reading her expression accurately. ‘You didn’t expect it to be anything like this bad. Cullayn’s more powerful than you realised. You’ve overestimated yourself again. Look at Eve—’

‘Pffft, Eve.’ Janey waved her fingers. ‘A child. And it still took Cullayn half a century to turn her into what she is now. See how weak he is, Theo? On the evening of your arrival, Ben’s distant snoring was already of more interest to her than anything Cullayn could offer. She’s still a child at heart. Remember that. We’re depending on it.’

Janey gave Elliott a fierce warning glare –
shut up, say nothing more –
and then said loudly, ‘Such righteous anger in the boy, Cullayn. Do you hear his whine? Are you listening? The pair of us have made quite an adverse impression on him. He doesn’t understand yet that the only reason he is still alive is because you are enjoying the game. He thinks it’s all about right and wrong. He doesn’t seem to grasp that the only important question is whether he is just going to sit down and cry when you
start to chase him, or instead do whatever he must to keep his father and brother alive.’ She glared at Elliott. ‘Well, are you?’

‘
Are you
?’ Elliott shouted back.

‘I’m here for other reasons,’ Janey tutted brusquely. Then she yawned, looking sideways at him. ‘But honestly, Elliott, why on earth have I bothered to get you to join me in here? You’ll give in at the first hurdle, I can tell. You’re hardly even worth the price of admission. Are you really ready to risk everything for your father and Ben?’

Elliott hesitated, but only for a second.

‘Yes,’ he said.

Janey gave him an elaborate curtsey, executed with genuine grace.

‘
In that case, challenge is made and set
,’ she stated, raising her chin. Her voice was abruptly bell-loud and clear, the announcing of a summons. Then she stepped away from Elliott – as if offering room for someone else to enter the space between them.

‘It’s a fair fight, guv’nor,’ Janey said to Elliott, falling into slang. She laughed. ‘You came willingly enough, boy. I didn’t lead you in or promise a damn thing. Cullayn always prefers his guests to be willing. So, we’ll do it. We will
have it
.’ She looked to the corridor end and in a clipped tone cried, ‘Let the hunter and the hunted converge!’

Elliott felt his stomach clench. ‘You
are
working with Cullayn!’ he rasped.

He waited, open-mouthed. He knew something terrible was about to happen, and then it did happen.