The Hunted (5 page)

When they went back outside, Ella saw that there was something tangled in the wires on the other side of the farm gate. Some large animal. The wires must be connected to a bell, as a warning. She could hear it ringing, off in the bushes. As they walked closer, though, she saw that it wasn’t an animal, it was a grown-up, a mother. And she was still alive. Struggling feebly. Ringing the bell.
Ting-a-ling-a-ling.

They climbed over the gate, ducked under the high wire and Scarface went to inspect his prey.

Ella held back. Shaking slightly.

The mother was quite a large woman and most of her hair was missing, apart from a few long, trailing, greasy strands. She was wearing what looked like a filthy nightie and had bare legs and feet. Her skin looked all white with purple blotches and lumpy yellow growths.

She was hanging off a long pole with spikes fixed all along it, some of which were stuck in her back.

The wire must be a
tripwire
.

Sam used to have one he’d got from the Science Museum. It made an alarm go off if you trod on it. He sometimes used to put it in the bedroom doorway.

This tripwire was different. It obviously made this long,
bendy pole fly out from the bushes. Ella remembered arriving here the other night. Stepping over the wire, not knowing what would happen if she touched it …

She imagined that pole springing out, whacking into her, those spikes going into her skin, her body.

The mother was impaled on it. She was wriggling, trying to get free, not understanding what was holding her there. Blood was dripping into a pool beneath her. Her mouth and eyes were twisting and going narrow then wide, like she was trying to make faces, chewing the air, bending her neck. Scarface sighed through his nose, took a knife from his belt and lifted her chin.

Ella turned away as he put the blade to her throat.

Why was it always like this? You had something nice like the chickens then something horrid like this trapped mother. Nice then horrid. Nice then horrid. And always the horrid thing was a hundred times worse than the nice thing.

Ella sat on a tree stump and waited for Scarface to finish what he was doing. Finally she heard the thud of the mother’s body hitting the ground and the sound of her being dragged away. Ella couldn’t help turning back to watch. Scarface had the mother by the ankles and was pulling her along through the field next to the road. Ella followed them at a distance.

There was a harsh croak from above and she looked up to see a whole flock of crows circling above them, black marks against the grey sky.

Scarface got to the middle of the overgrown field and stopped, let go of the mother’s puffy legs. Ella stopped too, not wanting to go any closer. She could see a clump of white sticks. Scarface left the mother there, rubbed his
hands together, wiped them on his combat trousers and then came back over to Ella.

He waved to her to come with him and went over to a tall tree growing high above the other trees and bushes that surrounded the farm. He showed her some wooden boards that had been nailed to the trunk, making a sort of ladder, and she saw that there was a platform up in the branches, like a tree house. He started to climb and she went up after him, trying not to slip on the steps that were wet and slippery from the rain. It was drier at the top as there was a canvas sheet tied to the branches above the platform to make a roof.

Ella noticed that there were other platforms in the trees, half hidden among the branches and leaves, with ropes joining them. Scarface sat on the edge of the platform and Ella joined him, dangling her legs over the edge, trying not to look straight down. The platform was much higher than it had looked from the ground and you could see for miles. The area they were in was mostly fields and woods, but not far away were other buildings, and here and there she could see the grey streak of a road.

She felt safe up there in the treetops and began to sing. ‘Ella and Face-Ache sitting in a tree, K-I-S-S-I-N-G.’ She stopped and turned to Scarface, who was staring at her with his one good eye.

‘No offence,’ she went on, ‘but that’s you …
Face-Ache
… Because you’ve got that face on you. I bet it hurts. And, I don’t mean to be rude, but … you’re very ugly. And we’re not kissing. That’s just the words of the song. And I’m sorry if you don’t like the song, but really you’re just an ugly old sicko, so why should I bother what you think? I expect you can’t understand anything I’m saying.
You’re just like the other grown-ups. Dumb. Dumb old Dumbo Face-Ache.’

Scarface turned away.

Ella could see the mother’s body in the middle of the field and realized that what she had thought were white sticks were actually bones. Scarface must have dragged lots of dead bodies there and left them to rot away. She had to admit he did seem to be a good hunter. She could see the crows landing around the body, pecking at it.

And then, in the woods on the far side of the field, she saw something else moving. Moments later it came charging out into the field, then another, then more and more. She could see now that they were dogs. Of all shapes and sizes. There must have been at least thirty of them, too many for Ella to count. They raced to the boneyard, snapping and yelping at each other, and sending the crows swirling up into the sky in a noisy, messy spiral.

The dogs fell on the mother’s body, and Ella and Scarface sat up there in the tree, side by side, their feet dangling over the edge, watching the dogs, and the great black crows darting down to pick up scraps. And Ella couldn’t tell if this was a good thing or a bad thing.

The next thing she saw was definitely a bad thing.

There was a grown-up standing in the next field. A live one. It looked like a mother, but it was hard to tell from this far away. It was very still, like a scarecrow, its arms straight out. Ella nudged Scarface and pointed. He squinted at it, then slipped the pack off his back and dug around inside it until he found a pair of binoculars. Ella had stopped being surprised at the way he didn’t behave like other grown-ups. She’d accepted him for what he was. Weird. He put the binoculars to his eyes and adjusted the focus, gently turning the wheel with his knobbly, bent fingers. He made a deep humming sound in his throat, almost like an animal growling. Like a dog.

The dogs had seen the scarecrow as well now and were acting all confused, whimpering, their ears going flat, hair up on their backs, crouching low to the ground and dropping their tummies. They started to move away from the mother they’d been eating, going in a pack towards the live grown-up. As they got closer, they seemed even more scared, holding back, running in yippy circles. Every now and then one would get braver than his friends, dart forward, daring himself to go up closer. He’d sniff the scarecrow, nip at its legs, then run back with his tail between his legs. Then another would try. Like little kids
daring each other. In the end they all got near enough and started to circle the scarecrow, yelping, howling, running in and snapping at it, but never getting right up close. Eventually they ran off together in a pack, barking their heads off, back into the woods.

Scarface started down the ladder, Ella followed, and soon they were pushing through the long grass towards the scarecrow. When they got there, it was like they were copying the dogs. Neither she nor Scarface wanted to go any nearer. Scarface was holding both of his knives in his hands, the blades pointing down towards the ground.

Ella looked and saw that it was a father with long, stringy hair and man boobs. The skin had rotted away from the bottom half of his face, showing the bones and the teeth of his lower jaw. There were so many boils and swellings on the top half of his face they’d blocked his eyes up. He must be blind. Maybe that was why he was standing like that.

He didn’t look very dangerous to Ella, just ugly and horrible and old. Smelly. But what did she know?

‘Go on then, Face-Ache,’ she said. ‘What are you waiting for?’

At last Scarface moved in closer. Went right up to the father and sniffed him, circling him just as the dogs had done. Finally he looked at Ella and mimed covering his eyes. Ella got the message and turned round. Behind her she heard a slicing sound,
slish
…

When she turned back, the father was gone, fallen over and hidden in the long grass, and Scarface was kneeling down doing something to him.

Afterwards Scarface showed Ella a sort of trail where the grass had been flattened by something walking along,
probably the scarecrow. They followed it until they came to an area where the grass was trampled all over the place, with paths coming off it in every direction it seemed.

Scarface picked one trail and set off, moving fast along the edge of the woods. Ella couldn’t always see what Scarface was following and he sometimes stopped and went back and took a different path. He was sniffing like a dog, always listening hard, peering around with his one good eye.

They kept going like that for what felt like ages and soon Ella was tired and bored and fed up. She started grumbling at Scarface, but he just ignored her. He was a dog with a scent and nothing was going to stop him.

Ella stared at the Nike bag on Scarface’s back. Something was dripping from it. She looked closer and saw little grey things wriggling, like tiny slugs or worms. She was going to say something, that Scarface had maggots in his bag, but didn’t. It was
his
problem. If he wasn’t going to speak to her she really didn’t need to speak to him. Grumpy old grown-up.

After a time – maybe an hour Ella thought, but she couldn’t be sure, her aching legs thought they’d walked a hundred miles – they came to a big broken-down wire fence. A tree had fallen on it and squashed it half to the ground. Scarface inspected the wire where it was torn and snaggly. He found a scrap of clothing stuck on it. He sniffed it, nodded to himself and climbed over the flattened bit of fence, holding on to the tree trunk for balance. Ella followed, picking her way and trying not to fall over. There were more trees on the other side, and then a wooden fence that was broken in a couple of places. When they went through it, Ella found that they were in some
sort of park with paths winding among jungly trees and bushes. There were benches and bins, odd-shaped things she didn’t quite understand, funny-looking statues, giant toadstools …

Then she stopped suddenly and tugged at Scarface’s jacket, pointing up. There was a man in a tree. She instantly saw that it wasn’t a real man, it was a plastic model, and she felt embarrassed. Thought Scarface would laugh at her, tease her, silly little girl, but then she remembered that he never laughed. Grumpy old man. Ugly, grumpy old man. Face-Ache.

The man in the tree looked old-fashioned, from the time of knights, and he was carrying a horn. And then Ella saw a tree with the words
the Enchanted Forest
written on it. The more she looked around, the madder this place was. There was a castle just showing above the bushes. Up ahead a walkway through the trees with a sign saying
The Rat Trap
, and a shield with a wolf’s head on it. Memories were coming back to her. She’d been here before, she was sure of it, but she was confused; she hadn’t been expecting any of this and everything was all overgrown and broken.

Scarface set off towards the castle, and when they got there Ella saw that it seemed to be made of giant plastic bricks.

She finally realized where they were.

‘This is Legoland!’