The Monsters of Rookhaven, стр. 28

‘Give it a minute.’ He led her towards a tree against which Jem was already leaning.

Jem was gasping too and looking up at the sky. ‘What just happened?’ she asked.

Odd shrugged as if it were nothing. ‘We left the house.’

‘Where is it?’ asked Mirabelle, looking around her in an attempt to get her bearings.

Odd licked the tip of his finger and held it up in the air and frowned. ‘About half a mile back that way,’ he said, pointing behind him.

‘Odd, you let us travel with you,’ said Mirabelle, looking shocked.

Odd looked at the ground. ‘Well, you needed help.’

Mirabelle touched his arm. ‘But you never let anyone travel with you. “No one goes with Odd,” that’s what you always say.’

Odd lifted his head and smiled awkwardly.

‘Tom? What’s happened to Tom?’ Jem wailed.

‘I think Piglet took him,’ said Mirabelle. ‘But we’ll find him. I promise.’

Mirabelle tried to smile encouragingly, but the look of fear on Jem’s face only made her own fear greater. She tried to tamp the feeling down.

‘Come on,’ Odd said. ‘I think Piglet’s gone that way.’

Mirabelle and Jem followed him into the dark. They walked for some time back in the direction of the house. Odd reasoned that Piglet could only have gone so far. Odd had deliberately (he hoped) jumped ahead of him and quite some distance beyond the Glamour. He led them to a small road bordered by fields on one side and forest on the other. The earth beneath their feet was hard. The night was cold, and Jem was rubbing her upper arms vigorously even though she had her cardigan on. Odd gallantly took off his jacket and gave it to her. Jem nodded her thanks and they continued on their way.

Mirabelle listened hard, but she couldn’t detect a sound.

Then Odd stopped suddenly and bent down to inspect something at his feet.

They huddled around him. Mirabelle tried not to show how frightened she was, for Jem’s sake, when Jem spotted the dark liquid patch on the ground.

‘It’s nothing,’ she said.

‘It’s blood,’ said Odd.

Mirabelle could have punched him.

Jem grabbed her. ‘He can’t . . . It isn’t . . .’

Mirabelle shushed her and shook her head. ‘It isn’t.’

‘It definitely isn’t,’ said Odd, sucking blood from the tip of a finger. He narrowed his eyes and looked at the field, and that’s when they saw the clumped, fretful shadows lowing anxiously to each other by the trees at the far side of the field. As Odd moved towards the field, the shadows dispersed and scattered, their hooves rumbling in the dark, their panicked lowing getting louder.

‘Cows,’ Odd said.

He came upon the ruin of a gate, a splintered, shattered tumble of planks, and then all their heads whipped round as they heard what sounded like a scream on the road up ahead.

Jem was gone before Mirabelle knew what was happening. She pounded up the rough path after her, shouting her name, but Jem wasn’t listening. Mirabelle turned back to look for Odd, but he’d vanished.

There was another strangled howl. Mirabelle heard Jem shout Tom’s name, and then Jem plunged into the trees.

Mirabelle was close on her heels and followed her into the forest. She slapped low-hanging branches and bushes aside and finally broke into a clearing.

The first thing she saw was Odd and Jem by a tree. Tom was propped against it. His shirt was covered in something dark and sticky.

‘It’s blood!’ Jem wailed.

The panic Mirabelle felt was all-consuming, but it was just for an instant because Odd said:

‘It’s all right – it’s not his blood.’

And then Tom’s eyes flickered open and he gave a weak smile.

Jem embraced him tightly, and he patted her on the back with a floppy hand.

‘Jem,’ he gasped. His face twitched and his eyes were wide and manic. He started to paw his sister’s arms, as if he couldn’t quite believe she was there. He tapped the side of his head. ‘He was in here. He saw everything.’

Mirabelle heard Jem’s gasp as Tom squeezed her arms too tightly. Tom was panting and babbling. Sweat was pouring down his face.

‘There was Mum and Dad and me and you. And he looked at us and watched it all. And he, he . . .’ Tom looked frantically about as if he’d lost something, rocking from side to side, his hands on Jem’s arms. He looked up at her, his eyes bulging. ‘He sees everything!’ he wailed. Then his face crumpled, and he burst into tears.

‘Who? Who sees everything?’ Jem cried with a mixture of joy and terror.

Tom looked over her shoulder, but really it was the grunting snuffling from behind that caught their attention.

And it was the rending, splintering sound that made them all turn.

For the first time in her life, Mirabelle laid her eyes upon Piglet.

And what a sight he was.

He was bent over the corpse of a cow, its shattered ribs jabbing upwards into the night, steam rising from its entrails as it rocked back and forth while Piglet buried his snout inside its innards and ripped and tore and rent and chewed and swallowed.

Piglet was as large as an elephant, and then somehow as small as a dog. Then he expanded again, hulking over his prey, blotting out the stars. Looking at him was like trying to catch sight of the colours of a butterfly’s wings in flight. Piglet seemed to change and run like paint in water, even as she looked upon him and came to a decision as to what he really looked like. One moment he was all eyes, dozens, perhaps hundreds, all blinking, all yellow, then he was all fangs, a gaping maw filled with scythe-like teeth, huge and impossibly sharp. He was claws and nails, ripping and tearing, his head horned and spiked, a ruffle of feathers round his neck. He was gold then scarlet, his body shimmering like the fan tail of a peacock. He sniffed and moaned with pleasure as he ate, and it