The Stolen Child (8 page)

Rachael
woke with a start.  Eyelids flickered
open
as she remembered where she was.  Justin was sitting bolt upright,
his body forming
a black silhouette against the light from the street.  
At first
she couldn't tell what might have woken him.  Then, through the faint sounds of the city, she heard something much closer to.  It was the soft crescendo of a falling length of chain.  He crept to the nearby window frame
and s
he followed, leaning over his shoulder to get a look.  She saw the clustered silhouettes of a group of men entering the site.  One of them had a pair of bolt-cutters in his hand.
 

“
It's those guys from before,
”
she whispered.  “How'd they find us here?”
 

“I don't know.  Wait,”
Justin said.
 

Down below, one of the men at the back of the group addressed the others
in a voice like pouring gravel.  He spoke with the calm assurance of someone used to giving orders
.  

“Search in pairs.  Signal and detain.”

The speaker was a short, broadly built man with a squat and ugly shape crouched at his heels, sniffing the air.  Something about him seemed familiar.  Then the light caught his face, and she recognised the ragged scar that ran across his bare scalp, and the shape of the mangy dog at his heels.  To either side of him she could make out two figures in long coats of gleaming red and gold.  They were dark skinned, with wavy black hair and sharp features.  The older of them had a thick beard, but there was little else to tell them apart.  The rest of the group were comprised of tough looking men in jackets and jeans.
 

At the scarred man's command, the four toughs broke away, moving slowly through the site, sweeping the light of their torches through the empty rooms.  
It wouldn't be long before they reached the upper floors, and only a little longer before their hiding place was discovered.

A snarling sound caught her attention.  She stole another glance at the dog on the leash, and a chill ran through her.  
What she saw
wasn't a dog at all.  The leader of the strange group had a
n old
man collared and leashed
at his side, dressed in tattered rags
.  There was foam on his lips, and his hair was a mane of tangles.

Pulling back from the window frame, Rachael closed her eyes, and tried to shake off the image in her mind.  It couldn't have been real.  She was sure of that.
 

She felt a hand on her shoulder.  Opening her eyes, she Justin's expression, calm and focused.
 

“We
've gotta get outta here
,”
s
he whispered,
though she hadn't the slightest idea how
.  
The scarred man and the tall brothers in their long coats were still waiting at the gate.
  The only other way through the fence was at the back of the site, where they had slipped in.  That meant going down the ladder, and through the men searching below.

“I'll jump the one nearest the ladder,”
J
ustin whispered.  “You run while he's distracted.”

She saw a coldness in his eyes, like the edge of a knife.
 

“Justin, wait...”

She grabbed his shoulder, as he began to move.

“What?”
h
e hissed.

“I don't know, just... Wait,
OK?
”

She looked around again, hoping for any other way.  Then her eyes settled on the back wall of the building, where a garbage chute had been hooked up to
the
scaffold
s
.

She nodded, and Justin followed her gaze.

“OK,”
h
e mouthed.

The second floor was mostly a patchwork, pieces of finished flooring connected by planks that bridged the openings.  One long plank was all that connected them to the back wall, where the garbage chute began.

Justin gestured for her to go first.  While he sat back in the shadows, watching the
torch-lights
flicker below, she crept out onto the plank.  
She felt it
rock
ing
slightly under her weight.  She crawled, inch by inch along the length of the beam, as the men on the floor below swept through the building.  She could hear them talking, calling out areas cleared in hushed tones.

She was about halfway across when she
saw
the movement at the front of the building.  The man with the voice like gravel, and the
ragged mutt
that snuffled at his heels.  He strode into the
building
like he owned it, casting his gaze about imperiously.  
S
he forced herself to breath
e
and contin
ued
shuffling along the wooden board, one inch at a time.  She was almost there.  She could have reached out and touched the lip of the half-finished concrete floor when she heard a howl, somewhere between the cry of an animal and a wail of deep anguish.  
The sound seemed to move through her body like an electric shock
, and she very nearly slipped off the beam.  It rattled beneath her,
rocking perilously
back and forth.  As the movement subsided she
glanced
down, and
once again she saw
not a mangy hound but a ragged man with
wild and frantic
eyes
, too much white showing as he stared into her with an awful hunger.

The man with the
scar
looked up and gestured, one hand pointing, almost lazily, as all eyes turned to her.

“Run!” Justin yelled
,
and she scrambled onto the hard floor.  Rolling to her feet she glanced back to see him dashing across the narrow beam, as the men below
made
for
the ladders.  
Justin grabbed her hand and t
ogether they ran towards the chute.

“
Just like a water slide,”
s
he told herself.

The plastic tubing thundered like a drum as she slid down.  Metal ribs scratched at her hands and face, everything flashing past in a few seconds until she
tumbled
head
first into a jagged mound of rubble.  Dazed
and
battered, she barely had time to crawl clear as Justin came crashing down after her.

T
hey sprinted across the open ground,
torchlight
lapping at their heels.  She glanced back as Justin searched for the gap in the fence, to see
the four
men closing in.  Over the shouting she heard a single barked command.

“
Take them!
”

“Quickly,” Justin hissed, standing with one leg through the gap in the fencing.  She followed him through, her heart in her throat.

As soon as they were through, Justin set off at a dead sprint.  She followed him into the dark streets.  As they ran she heard a wretched howl that seemed to split the air and made her insides writhe with
fear
.

They carried on running for a long time, until her lungs burned so hard that she felt she would collapse.  At last they made their way up to a rooftop high above the streets.  She lay on her back, gulping like
a beached fish
, feeling every part of her body burning and freezing at the same time.

As her head began to clear
she looked up to see Justin leaning against a vent, looking nearly as
worn down
as she felt.  Slowly, aching in every joint, she pulled herself to her feet.  They would need a new place to bed down for the night.  The thought of putting her head down anywhere seemed almost impossible.  Her body was buzzing with nervous energy, she was freezing cold and she hurt all over.

She still hadn't the slightest idea what had just happened.  In Justin's expression she saw only a hardness, as if he was still ready for a fight.

“Justin,”
s
he began, softly,
but the words
wouldn't come to her.  It was all too confused, too impossible.

“It's OK.  I think we lost them.  I hope,”
h
e said.  His expression remained unreadable.  In a way, she was glad of that.  At least one of them seemed to be in control of themselves.

“What just...  No.  This is too crazy.  
Those weren't just a load of gangers.  They sounded like they was army or something, and there was those two weird looking blokes in the red coats and all...
 
And that... That dog he had with him.
  What the hell?”

Justin gave her a curious look.
 

“
You didn't really see a dog, did you?”
 

Rachael felt the hairs rising all down the back of her neck.
 

“
How... How'd you know that?”
 

“
It wasn't a dog.  It was
a
hollow man,” Justin said,
turning away
.

“A what?”

The words barely had time to leave her mouth.  
H
e pressed a finger to his lips and hissed a “Shhh.”

In the sudden stillness the sound of voices in the street below sent a chill down her spine.  Justin
glanced
over the edge of the rooftop
and gestured for her to do the same.  She moved to the
parapet
and peered over.  There were men moving through the street,
their outlines familiar
.  At the back of the group
she could already make out the shape of long coats flashing
red
under the street-lamps.  Caught momentarily in
a
pool of light, she saw the wild eyes and tangled hair of the leashed man.  He was sniffing the air like a bloodhound.  
Then h
is eyes fixed on hers and he let out a howl.  She shot back from the edge, but it was already too late.  She heard the voices in the street below and she knew they had seen her.

She could see the fear in Justin's eyes, though he tried his best to hide it.  Her mind raced, hoping for any idea that might see them to safety, but only one thought came to her, repeating over and over.

“Run.”

Numb hands fumbled
on slick
black slates.  Plastic drainpipes rattled as she scrambled hand over hand.  Loose tiles slipped under errant steps, cascading down onto empty pavements.  
Tires screeched and horns blared
as she bolted across streets and intersections.  Justin was with her, but he slipped in and out of her sight.  She told h
er
self that he could keep up, that he could look after himself.  It was better than admitting that
at that moment she just didn't
care.  The only thing that mattered was getting away from th
at
wild-haired man,
away from those animal eyes
.

She ran as fast and as hard as she dared, but the icy air tore at her lungs and the harder she ran, the more often she had to pause to draw breath, muscles screaming their protests.  Every time
they
stopped, it was barely a few minutes before she caught sight of familiar silhouettes moving purposefully in her direction.  
The harder she pushed herself, the weaker her legs grew.
  On the rooftops tiredness was deadly.  A misplaced footstep, a poor grip on a handhold and the pavement was the last thing she would see.

Still
they
ran, staying low now, keeping to the streets, cutting across walls and fences where
they
could.  She was approaching a T-junction when Justin tackled her
out of nowhere
, strong hands gripping her arms as
he
slammed
her
into a wall.

“
The hell
?”
s
he gasped, barely able to squeeze the words out, she was so short of breath.

“Hold still,”
h
e said in a voice like a whip-crack.  There was a
metallic clicking sound as the knife appeared in his hand
,
the blade
gleaming in the dim light.

She froze, pressing herself back into the wall as he held the
knife
up.  Breathing shallow and fast, she looked at his face, watching his eyes for some sign of his intention.  Everything about hi
m
was focused and sharp.  The knife hovered at the very lowest edge of her field of vision.  She saw him press the point of the blade to his own thumb, blood well
ing
up around the tip as it sank into
the
skin.  She couldn't help but shrink back as he moved his bleeding thumb towards her face, and with a snarl of frustration he grabbed her by the chin.

“Hold still,”
h
e repeated,
his voice a low hiss
.

She felt his thumb press against her forehead, moving slowly and deliberately across the skin,
tracing some kind of pattern.  Moving his hands away at last, he closed the blade and tucked it back into his pocket.  She let out the breath she had been holding.
 

She could feel the anger flaring inside of her as the shock subsided.  She was about to push him away when she
heard the sound of footsteps from the street up ahead.  
Justin shifted forward, forcing her back into the shadows.  
They were pressed up close to the wall of a building, in the darkness between two street-lamps.  His body
was
tight
against hers,
their faces touching
as she watched the far end of the street out of the corner of her eye.

The
scarred man stepped out into the intersection, his 'hound' sniffing the air in front of them
.  
The tall brothers in the long coats were with him, and she saw the rest of his men spread out behind, searching the street.  
The
n the thing on the leash
paused, one hand raking at his tangled hair as he looked about frantically.  He seemed lost.  She heard grumbled curses, and then a loud thump as a boot caught the
wild haired
man in
his
side, rolling him over with the force of the kick.  He yelped in pain, more like a dog than a man, and sprang to his feet again in th
e
same hunched crouch.