Stalking Tender Prey Read online

  There was a star in the afternoon sky.

  The traveller raised his head, and a flash of light burned against his eyes. Perhaps it was the reflection from a far window of a cottage on the hillside, or a car door being opened, or a discarded glass bottle among the ferns. It if was none of these things, it could only be a true sign, a burst of energy, giving him a signal. A way to the gate! The thought formed half-acknowledged in his mind. It meant nothing, yet everything, like remembering a line from a poem, learned long ago. Abandon the earth, take back the stars! Your kingdom awaits!

  Whose voice was it that sang in his brain? When had he learned these words? They kindled excitement within him, yet there was a cost. Fear flapped there too, in darkness. He could almost smell its carrion breath, the stink of its wet feathers. Fear and ecstasy. It must be a flashback to some forgotten drug experience. He smiled, comforted.

  The train began to slow down. There was a squeal of brakes, and a tunnel of trees engulfed the carriages, hiding the land beyond. Without thinking, the traveller was on his feet, pulling down the old canvas bag from the overhead storage area, which contained all the artefacts of his life. The station, hardly more than a siding, came into view as he moved towards the door, nodding once at the girl-child, ignoring the reprimanding stare of her mother.

  This was the place.

  The station was small, air warm and ripe against his skin. He was the only person to get off the train here. The moment his feet touched the concrete of the platform, he scanned the sky for omens, but high trees eclipsed his view, their branches flounced with autumn’s gold and crimson.

  As he surrendered his ticket, he received a sour up-and-down glance from a gaunt, inbred looking individual skulking in the inspector’s booth beside the station gateway. The traveller did not bother to smile or speak. As he sauntered out into the empty street beyond, adjusting his backpack for comfort, a familiar sense of unreality stole across his senses. These are cardboard buildings, cardboard props for a second-rate drama. It was not really a town, more a village, and a forgotten one at that. The sense of history was faint, although he was aware that people had lived in this place for many centuries. It had never witnessed any events of importance, he was sure, being no more than a receptacle for a few mundane souls who sped from womb to grave with less purpose than animals, or perhaps, he thought charitably, the same purpose as animals. The place looked empty, but he knew that, had he walked in the other direction, he would have come across the heart of it: the lone, under-stocked supermarket, the row of pubs, a small cinema showing films considerably out of date. This conviction was not the result of some psychometric skill, but merely a familiarity with towns of this type. You had to look hard for the romance in this country. Abroad, little towns seemed to possess a bustling other-life, like insects below the grass. There were often mysteries to uncover, mysteries that could be cherished like gems unexpectedly discovered in a rock that had seemed uniformly grey. Here, the social structure demanded a different kind of behaviour — upright, polite, mannered — but that usually meant the mysteries, when they were coaxed from hiding, were all the more delightful and perverse. He sniffed the air. Something had called to him from the train.

  A flash of light beckoned from down the deserted street, like a hand extended round the corners of the buildings, gesturing ‘Come, come.’ He sensed it as a gift from the future, a trail to follow.

  Walking towards the signal, where the sun hung high in the sky, the traveller was a solitary figure in an uncluttered scene. He felt as if this was the ending of something, not the beginning. He could walk away out of existence. Yet his boots made a solid, satisfactory sound against the road and his flesh felt real and comfortable about his bones. He was a good performer.

  The road led out of the town straight into the landscape of hills and heath. The traveller felt his spirits lift, and tested the air for exciting perfumes. There might be a solitary stone manor squatting in the furze, where deranged family members feuded with sanity. There might be a cottage where a lovesick desertee mulled over the painful intricacies of their past. There might be a farm, with buxom daughters and leery sons, where a traveller might weave a little mischief for a while. The countryside seemed the proper setting for such scenarios. If he walked, he was sure to stumble across the thing he had come here to find. The richness and variety of the human race enchanted him; he was not repelled by weaknesses or failings and was tolerant of most behaviour, even the least endearing. Difficult people interested him far more than those whose conversations and ideas inspired the spirit, or whose physical beauty constricted breath in the throat. He sought out the unusual, observing behaviour with cool, yet committed interest. He loved them all.

  He had been travelling for many years, and had lost count of the exact figure. He had visited most countries where it was easy to gain access, and several where it wasn’t. He wore a wide-brimmed hat that shadowed his eyes, shutting out the history of the world, if not his own history, to the casual observer. Sometimes he would play the role of enigmatic stranger, dark and impenetrable; at other times, he would be the world’s fool, the travelling jester, and at these times, he might play an instrument or tell stories. Some countries reacted more favourably to this persona than others. In England, he observed the code of reticence and became the withdrawn one, the stranger on a train. Few people sat next to him on his travels, but those that did, he generally liked to communicate with. Now, at least for a while, he wanted to feel the bones of the planet beneath his feet.

  Something had gone awry in Cresterfield. He had begun dreaming of the closed gateway again, and the dreams had urged him to act. It was like trying to find his way through a cluttered room in the dark, where objects were hard and sharp, positioned to bruise his uncertain limbs. What was this obsession with gateways? He still could not understand it, and his waking mind shrank from examining the image. All he could do was obey the instinct when it seized him, use the old magic as a battering ram to force the gate, to blow it apart. He was aware that the gate was not a physical object, but a psychic portal within himself. What lay beyond he did not know, and sometimes feared it might be death or madness. Still, to ignore the compulsion when it came was unthinkable, worse than the most intense sexual need. He had to spend himself in ritual, direct energy towards the obstruction in his mind. So far, satisfaction had eluded him. His performances quietened the urge, sometimes for months at a time, but never sated it. Desperation had driven him to greater excesses in Cresterfield, and he had left incriminating evidence behind him. This was not the first time it had happened, but this country was small, and it was more difficult to pass unnoticed. He’d wondered, at first, whether he would be pursued, and was alert for it, but he was adept at covering his tracks, and had sensed no invisible eyes upon him, or other, less familiar, organs of sight. Here, in this timeless wilderness, he would vanish into the landscape. He would walk the moors and see what the future exposed to him, or exposed him to. There was always the hope that this time someone or something would happen to him that might change his life, liberate him, reveal to him the answers to the puzzles of his existence.

  It was a moist country, rich with the fecund smells of earth. Hills swelled towards the horizon, punctuated by the moving pale dots that were sheep. The sky was a high, bleached blue, and once out of the town, a waspish wind scoured the land. The traveller walked in an appreciative daze. He saw some people with dogs striding through the heather: he heard the pixie call of excited children. The polished hides of parked cars burned in the distance, winking glares where they caught the sun. These things did not call to him. He was aware of the timeless ambience of this land. Perhaps the things he saw and heard were simply ghosts, or echoes, of high summer that would fade into the approaching cold. When his steps faltered, he had come to a crossroads. The light, the flash in the sky he’d seen from the train, had been his guide, both physically and mentally. He knew it would continue to be. Something was waiting to be discovered.

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; Chapter One

  Friday 16th October: Little Moor

  Lily Winter stood at the top of the hill, looking down across the grounds of the deserted manor house in the valley below. She often paused here in her walks, for she liked to stare at the choked garden, with its still, stagnant lake, and the dark, forbidding towers of the house itself. She had always been nervous of exploring the place in person, even though she and her twin brother, Owen, had a fascination for abandoned old houses. Long Eden. Its name alone conjured stories. Lily had concocted many languid romances in her mind as she’d sat upon the hill, gazing down. Long Eden had been empty since before her birth. The people who’d once lived there, with their imagined laughter, tragedies, riches and fantastical parties had all left the area, no doubt to avoid death duties and expense. Lily sometimes wondered what the true story was.

  A chill breeze, smelling of smoke, of autumn, moulded her long skirt around her goose-pimpled legs. She felt cold, but enjoyed the experience of it, the promise of another season, something new, yet familiar.

  The distant, mournful blare of a train’s horn broke Lily’s reverie, brought her back into the afternoon. October. The month of brown and red and yellow; the smoke month. Today was the sixteenth day. She would count the others, each with its own unique flavour, until the end.

  Two red setters bounded over the crest of the hill and gambolled, barking, towards her, their owner following behind.

  ‘Amber! Lester!’ Lily called and hunkered down, extending her arms. The animals threw themselves against her, ecstatic with pleasure at this unexpected meeting.

  ‘Dogs! Dogs!’ A middle-aged woman came striding behind her charges. She was dressed in yellow jodhpurs and polished black riding boots, a thick, quilted jacket hanging open to reveal a startling white jumper, which covered a bosom resplendent with gold chains.

  Lily stood up, her hands upon the dogs’ heads, their tails beating against her bare legs. ‘Hello, Mrs Eager. How are you today?’

  The woman smiled up at her. Lily was considerably taller than her. ‘Fine. But, you must be freezing.’ She pantomimed a shiver. ‘No coat or tights! What are you thinking of, child?’

  ‘It’s all right. I don’t feel the cold.’

  ‘Ah, youth!’ sighed the woman.

  Lily didn’t like being called a child. She was a woman, nearly twenty years old. Barbara Eager was a pleasant sort, but a relative newcomer to Little Moor. She had brought her values with her, ways that had settled uneasily over the community, although she was not disliked. She and her husband ran the big hotel, The White House, which was popular with walking tourists in summer, and used at weekends by the locals as a pub. During the week, everyone tended to favour The Black Dog, which was run by a surly, one-eyed tyrant and his mean-spirited wife, both of whom were over-familiar and acid with their clientele according to their moods. Owen had told Lily he had once walked past The Black Dog in the small hours of the morning and had heard the landlord and his wife having sex; her wild moans had drifted from the open window. Lily was unsure whether this could be true. Owen was prone to fantasising. Mr and Mrs Eager, on the other hand, would have a comfortable, mannered relationship. She would utter no moan of passion or otherwise, but perhaps a polite cough. Lily couldn’t help smiling at this thought.

  Barbara was oblivious, as she was of most things subtle in Little Moor. She smiled back. ‘Well, it’s a lovely day, and the smells are divine! What are you up to, Lily?’ There was a note in her voice, which she could never contain, that revealed her slight disapproval of the fact that neither Lily nor Owen worked for a living. She often tried to interrogate them about where their income came from, which Lily and Owen both side-stepped with dexterity. There was no secret, but it amused them to frustrate the woman. Their mother had left them with an adequate income. Once a month, Owen and Lily drove into the nearest town, Patterham, and withdrew the interest on the account, which was more than enough for their needs. Owen had buried some of it in the walled garden to their house. Just in case.

  ‘I’m just walking,’ Lily said. ‘Thinking.’ Sometimes, she offered to do jobs for Barbara, to make the woman feel better, but today was not one of her most altruistic days.

  ‘You must do a lot of thinking,’ Barbara said, somewhat sharply.

  Lily shrugged, and then said abruptly, ‘I’m going to write a book.’

  ‘Oh, how splendid!’ Barbara’s face bloomed with delighted relief. ‘You know, you ought to come to my little writing circle some time. Get some feedback. It’d be good for you.’

  ‘Thanks,’ Lily said. ‘I might.’ She had no intention of ever doing so. Barbara’s group comprised several middle-aged women and men, all well-heeled, who had retired to the moors from affluent occupations. Lily suspected that most of them were entirely talentless. The thought of writing something had only just come to her. She had no idea whether she’d be able to do it or not. It might be a boring thing to do, in the event.

  ‘So, what are you writing about?’ Barbara asked, and then grinned roguishly, ‘or haven’t you reached the stage where you want to talk about it yet?’

  ‘Well, I have a few ideas...’ Lily screwed up her face. ‘It’s quite difficult.’

  ‘Oh, I know!’ Barbara’s hand shot out to grab Lily’s arm in a moment of artistic understanding. ‘You know me and my little scribblings... It’s such agony sometimes, like trying to dig your way out of a buried cave with your bare hands!’

  ‘Is it?’ Lily didn’t fancy getting involved in anything that sounded so painful.

  ‘Oh yes! Sometimes the muse sits on my shoulder, but most often not. I have a devil of a job tempting her back!’ She laughed with inappropriate loudness.

  ‘Mmm, well I don’t think I’ve even met my muse yet.’

  ‘Oh, don’t worry, you will!’

  Barbara summoned her dogs, who had lost interest in Lily and were now investigating cow pats a few feet away. ‘Are you walking back down the hill, dear?’

  ‘If you like.’ Lily put her hands into her skirt pockets and strolled along beside the woman. She noticed Barbara casting condemning glances at her down-at-heel work-boots, which were in fact a pair of Owen’s, and also at her chest, where because of the cold, it was obvious she was not wearing a bra. Lily could almost feel Barbara’s itching desire to take her in hand, dress her up, give her a purpose in life. She had yet to meet the Eager daughter, Audrey, who was away at university studying law. Lily knew she’d dislike her intensely. Audrey had never come to Little Moor during the holidays, as she always went abroad, travelling with friends. Barbara was always talking about this paragon of intelligence, wit and beauty, and didn’t seem to take offence that her daughter hadn’t even bothered to come and see The White House. Her parents had lived there for nearly a year now.

  ‘We’re having a barbecue on Halloween,’ Barbara said. ‘Few fireworks and sausages. Sort of combination with Guy Fawkes’ night. Will you and Owen come?’

  ‘Halloween’s on Saturday this year,’ Lily answered. ‘We always come to The White House on Saturdays.’

  Barbara smiled uneasily. ‘So young to be such creatures of habit,’ she said. ‘But I’d planned for the ‘do’ to be on the Friday night, in any case.’

  They’d reached the bottom of the hill and Barbara was clambering over the stile. Woods bustled darkly away to their right, while the black stones of Long Eden to the left were now hidden from view. Lily paused and looked backwards before following Barbara into the lane.

  ‘What is it, dear?’ Barbara asked.

  Lily turned round and shrugged. ‘Nothing. It’s just the pull of the day, I think.’

  Barbara laughed. ‘My, how poetic! The pull of the day! What do you mean by it?’

  They had begun to walk along the lane that led back to the village. ‘I don’t know, really. Some moments are just significant, aren’t they?’ Lily had only just realised she’d experienced such a moment, and wasn’t quite sure when it had happened. Only the taste of it lingered in
her heart.

  ‘The sooner you start writing, the better!’ Barbara said. ‘I hope you’re not going to show us all up!’

  Lily smiled. ‘Not much chance of that, Mrs. Eager.’

  Low Mede was an old house rooted on the outskirts of Little Moor. It was three-storeyed, yet somehow appeared low slung and rambling, and comprised of warm red brick. This was the home of the Cranton family, like the Eagers, relative newcomers to the village. The house possessed an air of tranquillity, a mellow ambience suited to the autumn season. Within it, however, tensions stretched and reverberated like wires.

  Louis Cranton was out in the garden, staring down at the fading plants in a flower bed, worrying about his daughter, Verity. They had not had a row exactly, but in his eyes it had been an argument: without raised voices, without bitter words, an exchange of chilled silence. The subject had been a familiar one. Everything had been said countless times before. Verity had done nothing with herself since she’d left college, which seemed such a waste to Louis, and he could not help, on occasion, telling her so. He did not begrudge the money he’d invested in her future, but felt pained she herself seemed to care so little about it. Her degree in modern studies had been a first; she could have pursued many avenues to success. But, whenever he broached the subject, Verity quietly, chillingly, reminded him she was happy to care for him and her brother, Daniel. She did not trust her father to look after the pair of them. Although he found it uncomfortable to think about, Louis suspected something more than filial duty kept Verity in Little Moor. The village was a sanctuary, a time capsule, in which she could conceal herself. Why, and from what? She was an articulate and attractive girl. When she chose to, she could make friends easily, but the only people she spent time with, other than her family, were older women in the village. She seemed happy, but Louis was uneasy. Perhaps he was projecting his own desires onto the girl. The accident that had killed his wife, Janine, had also left him disabled. He could no longer court the world’s wonders, flit from country to country, sampling life’s most potent liquors. He’d had no formal education, and was a self-made man, so successfully self-made that the forced early retirement had not posed a financial threat to him. He wanted the best for his children. Verity, he felt, was brilliant, capable of achieving the very best, while Daniel, he had to admit, did not share his sister’s fine intellect. He should worry more about Daniel, surely, with his disappointingly mediocre grades at school and his youthful, lazy disposition. Also, Daniel had an over-active imagination. As a child, he’d always chatted to invisible ‘friends’, and been able to ‘see’ what people in other rooms, even houses, were doing. Janine had been more worried about it than Louis, because she’d been the one to confirm Daniel’s ‘predictions’ by talking with the people concerned. As he’d grown older, this tendency had dropped off, but he’d always been rather a solitary child. Now, he seemed withdrawn from normal teenagers, preferring the company of an unsavoury band of local acquaintances, all of whom looked as if they practised the Black Mass with their families on a regular basis, or had slithered out of some H P Lovecraft story about incestuous hill-billies. Louis had tried to get his son to bring friends home from school for the weekend — healthy, ordinary lads — but Daniel resisted this in an unrelentingly passive manner. Louis deplored Daniel’s choice in reading matter, the most tacky of popular occult novels — surely an unhealthy interest for a growing boy — and was positively unnerved by the posters which adorned the walls of Daniel’s rooms: demons, devils, peculiar animals. Perhaps it was just a phase. Louis himself had never experienced such a phase, but life had been very different back in the ‘Fifties. He wished Daniel could get a girlfriend. He was seventeen years old now, and a good-looking lad, if a little too slender. He didn’t do himself any favours by dressing so scruffily when he was at home, but perhaps the sort of girls Daniel might prefer would like that. At least, while he was still at the private grammar school Louis had sent him to, Daniel couldn’t grow his hair to an unacceptable length. The school was strict about things like that.