A Different Kingdom(23)

The teeth fascinated him. Longer than Demon's had been, thicker at the base. The skull was huge, heavy, frightening. The fire had burned it black. He wiped ash and hide from it, staring in wonder. A werewolf's skull. Would he be believed now? Maybe they would put it in a museum like they had the sword his grandfather had found. He could be in the paper.

But the idea faded away as he stared at it. He had a notion that it was still alive, and it would take little imagination to see it snap, the eye sockets light up like candles. He had a sudden urge to bury it again.

But no. That was what he had come for. Evidence. Something real out of everything he had seen. He was not leaving it behind.

There was a long, distant howl, way off in the sombre depths of the trees.

He stood up at once. Wolves.

The skull hung heavy from his fingers. Was there a distant swishing of feet in the wood? A pattering, an irregular rhythm? He tensed.

The first wolf came into view two hundred yards away through the wood. It looked horribly black against the trunks of the trees, like a burnt corpse. Instants later there were six more flickering in its wake.

Michael turned and ran.

He was no more than sixty yards from the river, though it was invisible through the trees. He doubted if they would follow him as far as the walls of the farm.

No distance. No distance at all.

He heard a clatter and yowling behind him and dared a look. They had reached the fire scar and were snuffling among the bones.

His feet flew over the fallen leaves, brambles and low branches rasping at his face, plucking his sleeve. Where was the river?

No good. He must have come in a circle or something. He paused, gasping. There was no sound for a second except the confused snarling behind him.

There was no sound of the river.

An edge of true panic entered his mind. He knew this wood in and out, winter and summer. It was impossible that he should be lost, impossible that the river should be unheard, for it was full and fast at this time of year, the noise of its rush carrying to every corner of the wood.

A horse nickered behind him, and the wolves gave tongue like a pack of hounds. He whirled and saw something new towering through the trees. A man, black as pitch, on a black horse. His face was shrouded by a hood and he was swathed in what seemed to be ragged lengths of cloth. Even his hands were wrapped, like a leper's. He held a whip in one of them and was blurring through the tree boles at a trot, urging the wolves on.

It's the Devil, Michael thought. And he's going to catch me.

He ran again, following his nose and gulping frantic air into his lungs. The skull was a dead weight that ached his wrist but he refused to give it up.

He could see dark shapes out of the corner of his right eye, and behind came the solid thump of hoofbeats.

Tears flashed from his eyes and his back slimed with sweat. His heavy shoes weighed pounds and pounds.

He tripped, fell headlong and rolled. The skull swung in the air and came down to crack him on the head. His sight swam for a second, then he was up again, dizzy and staggering.

A black-mawed shape rushed up on him with a snarl. He swung the skull with all his might and heard it crack against the wolf's jaw, jarring his fingers. The animal's lip split under the impact and it yelped. He hit it again on the snout, then ran on. The whole wood seemed full of the cries of the hunting pack, the hoofbeats underlying them; and they were somehow more frightening; directed, implacable.

The wood was alien to him, strange and unknown, vaster than was possible in his own world. He had slipped into the Other Place. He was lost. Sobs threatened to rack his chest and steal his air.

Then he saw Rose, plain as day, standing before a clump of impenetrable hazel and bramble. She was beckoning, an urgency in her face. He almost laughed with relief.

'I knew you'd come,' he gargled, staggering towards her.

It was not Rose. He caught only a glimpse before she slipped into the darkness of the thicket, still beckoning to him, but he was sure it was not her. This girl was taller, darker-eyed, slimmer, and she wore a white shift that left her arms and neck bare.

He crashed into the hazel and pushed his way through, the skull snagging on twigs.

'Wait!'

Behind him the wolves howled in anger and disappointment.

He cackled madly, the breath like an ebbing tide of hot sand in his throat, scraping and scalding his lungs...

'Where are you?'

...And tumbled down a steep incline, rolling, the skull banging loose from his tired hand. To splash with a shock of cold water in the river. His head went under and he thrashed around, fought it above the surface. It was deep, icy cold. He began to hyperventilate, screamed aloud, beat for the shore—and stopped. The skull was under the water somewhere.

He dived. Swimming was something he had taught himself since Rose had disappeared. His fingers fumbled in mud, up-turning stones, one fastening on the wriggling flash of a fish. Then the hardness of the skull.