The barghest. Black Shuck. The hound that haunts the lonely places.
All thoughts of finding a path driven from her mind, Heather threw herself back down the small hill, careening forward with her arms held up to ward off the blow she was sure must be coming. Now, she was certain that several things were after her—creatures that ran on four legs, that could smell her fear—and they were on all sides, chasing her down. Drink from the river, she thought wildly, drink from the river and become a wolf.
The ground dropped away below her and before she could react Heather sprawled headlong into the wet and busy earth. All the air knocked out from her, she could do nothing but lay there for a long moment, the mud seeping into her jeans. She’d fallen partly into a bush, and the leaves were pricking her through her coat, as though she lay in broken glass. The noises had stopped, but as she picked herself up and looked around, the sense that she was being watched had increased tenfold. Eyes in the forest, watching.
“What do you want?” her voice wavered, untrustworthy. “Who are you?”
Silence. It was a deeper silence than that she had experienced before; no small animals moved through the undergrowth, no night birds called—even the wind seemed to have stopped. Something was listening. Much to her own surprise, she realized she was still holding her phone; when she’d fallen, some instinct had caused her to clasp it close to her chest. She held it up, activating the screen, and slowly turned the small oblong of light back and forth, all around her. The empty forest looked back at her, full of distrust and lies.
“I know you’re there,” she said. Anger, familiar and comforting, began to seep through her limbs. She was cold, wet, and frightened, she had been scratched all over and her right knee had taken a serious knock, and all because someone was playing silly buggers in the woods. “Say something, or piss off. All right?”
There was no reply, but in the corner of her eye Heather caught the slightest movement in the shadows. She spun the light toward it but whatever it had been was gone. However, it was possible now to see the path, and even beyond that, the clearing that led to their cottage.
She headed that way gladly, wincing as various cuts and bruises made themselves known. The cottage stood in its own cocoon of silence, soft lamplight glowing at the window. Heather was still some distance from it when she thought she saw the figure again—someone was standing at the back of the cottage, near one of the bedroom windows. She gasped in a breath, ready to shout, but in another heartbeat the shape was gone again, if it had ever been there in the first place.
Heather ran the rest of the way back to the cottage, crashing in through the door, half convinced she would find the shadowy figure in the kitchen, blood dripping from his hands, but instead she found it empty. The cups from that morning’s coffee were still on the table; the lamp she had left on was still casting it’s soft, yellowish light. Half convinced that this quiet scene of domestic contentment must be hiding something, she did a quick search through every room in the cottage: no notes, no feathers, no photographs. The windows and doors were locked. She poured herself a glass of wine in the kitchen, and fired off a series of messages to Nikki while she sipped at it. Hey where are you? Are you staying with Harry? Pls let me know!
She hesitated, then added: I think someone chased me in the woods tonight. When you get this message, pls give me a ring.
Heather put the glass of wine down and went to her own room. She shrugged her coat off, grimacing at the mud on her hands and face. Although it seemed incredibly likely that Nikki’s date with Harry had just lasted longer than they had predicted, the empty cottage had left her deeply unnerved. Did they even know who Harry was really? He was basically a stranger, and she had let her friend go off with him. Again, she thought of calling DI Parker, but when she glanced down at her phone, she saw that all her messages to Nikki had failed to go through. Still no phone signal.
“All right.” She pulled her jumper up over her head and threw it on the floor; there was mud on her hat, too. “I’ll have a shower and try again. No need to panic yet.”
Wincing from half a dozen new bruises, Heather went into the small en suite bathroom to have the hottest shower she could summon.
CHAPTER42
HEATHER WOKE IN the night with a start, her heart thumping. She had been sure she wouldn’t be able to sleep, so she had laid down on the bed after her shower, thinking only to rest her aching limbs for a moment. Yet, now she had the sense of having been ripped from a very deep sleep, a sleep populated with vivid dreams of the woods at night, and …
She heard it again. The sound of something heavy moving outside, the crunch of footsteps on fallen leaves. Not, she noted, the loud and casual stomping of someone—Harry, for example—making their way home, but the careful tread of someone who didn’t want to be heard.
In an instant she was up, pulling on the last of the clean clothes from her suitcase. Once she put on her boots, she headed out into the hallway toward the kitchen. She had no clear idea what time it was, or how long she’d been asleep, but the living room was empty, and
