Bone Jack by Sara Crowe Page B

above him for a while, then the bird flew off. Just a regular bird. Nothing sinister, nothing mysterious.
    Mark was still there on the high ground, still watching him when he came to the narrow valley on the southern side of Tolley Carn. Mark raised his arm again and pointed in the direction of his woodland camp. Then he dropped down below the skyline, out of sight.
    Ash walked through knee-high grass as dry as tinder. Butterflies flopped in the windless air. A pair of buzzards circled lazily high above him. He reached the lane and followed it around the foot of Carrog Ridge to the Monks Bridge and beyond. Then he took the route Callie had shown him to the woods where Mark was camped.
    He stepped from the hot glare of sunlight into cool shadow.
    The bone faces watched him with their sightless eyes.
    Around them, the woods were gloomy and silent. No sign of Mark anywhere, except for the sheep skulls.
    Somewhere above the leaf canopy, a buzzard mewed.
    The campfire in the clearing was a patch of cold white ash and a few charred sticks. Around it, the tall grass and nettles were broken and crushed as if a dozen or more people had trampled through.
    There was something else. A trace of wood smoke in the air. The iron stink of blood.
    He looked down.
    Rusty flecks spattered on grass and fern. A small pool of blood on the ground, blackish red and glossy. He crouched, touched the tip of his forefinger to its surface.
    It was still tacky.
    Whether it was animal or human blood, he couldn’t tell. Either seemed possible.
    He remembered the venison Mark had cooked on the fire. Maybe that’s all it was, blood spilled from another gutted deer.
    He crossed the clearing.
    A breeze stirred the leaves.
    Now he could smell more than just blood and wood smoke. A sickly sweet, rotten stench filled the air. Flies and wasps stormed under the trees. He swatted them away.
    He looked around. Looked up.
    A stag carcass hung from a branch above, swinging in the breeze. Its head was gone, hacked off. Maggots bulged and gleamed in the blackened gore at its neck.
    Ash covered his nose and mouth with one hand, tried not to breathe. His stomach heaved.
    There was a movement in the bushes beyond the carcass. A flash of white and red. Laughter.
    ‘Ash,’ called a voice. As soft as the breeze through the leaves. ‘Over here!’
    ‘Mark,’ said Ash. Heart thumping. ‘Stop messing around.’
    More laughter.
    ‘Over here,’ said the voice. Louder this time. Closer, somewhere to the side now.
    Ash turned.
    A figure came through the trees. Sackcloth mask, scabby with dried clay. Ragged mouth, eyeholes that seemed to have nothing but shadows behind them.
    Not tall enough to be Mark.
    Now more hound boys approached behind the first. Ash turned but they were all around him, coming from all sides, closing in. No way out. Mark had lured him into a trap.
    The hound boys came closer. Their dry, clay-crusted skin pressed against him. The scent of blood came from them, hot and metallic. Their whispering voices were as scratchy as the wind in dead grass, and as senseless. He couldn’t tell if they were flesh and blood or the ghosts he’d seen up on the Leap nearly a week and a half ago.
    They wrenched the rucksack from his shoulders.
    That felt real enough.
    ‘Hey, that’s mine,’ he said. He grabbed at it, missed. ‘Give it here!’
    Boys from school, he told himself. That was all. Boys tormenting him because he was the stag boy, because Mark had put them up to it. They’d rough him up a bit, try to scare him, and that would be that.
    Still, his heart raced with fear.
    The hound boys laughed behind their masks. They passed the rucksack back through their ranks and closed in tighter.
    One of them scooped up a handful of ash from the cold remains of the campfire. He threw it in Ash’s face, rubbed it into his skin and hair. Ash coughed and choked, eyes streaming.
    The weight of their bodies bore him forward. They hauled him over a fallen tree poxy with black