Hunted by Adam Slater Page B

book’s heavy black cover. He and Melissa sat side by side and stared at the strange pages.
    It was some sort of compendium of legendary creatures, made up of handwritten and pasted-in entries, like a scrapbook. Some of the collection was obviously hundreds of years old. The most ancient entries weren’t even on paper, but on thick parchment or thin skin, sewn on to pages of stiff linen cloth. Generations of collectors must have contributed to it.
    â€œThis beats your Dictionary of the Supernatural ,” Callum breathed.
    â€œIs there an index? How do we look something up?” Melissa asked.
    â€œI don’t think you can,” Callum said. “See—it isn’t organized at all. The oldest entries are at the beginning. We’ll just have to go through it and see what we find.”
    Neither Callum nor Melissa could make sense of the early entries, which were easily four hundred years old. The writing was faded and spiky, in Old English—some of it in Latin. There were drawings, too, of monstrous creatures emerging from tombstones and tree stumps, or rising out of chimneys and wells. One picture showed a thin, hairy creature, like a werewolf, with its stomach cut open. Three dead babies lay inside it. Melissa turned the heavy page over quickly.
    Callum stared at the strange collection, astonished. Where in the world had Gran got this, and why did she keep it? Some of the pictures made him want to be sick. The book was like something from another world—a world which Callum had assumed his down-to-earth, no-nonsense grandmother neither knew nor cared about.
    As they turned the pages, the entries became easier to read. Some of the sewn-in pictures were printed broadsheets; some were torn from other books; some were handmade sketches. One, of a strange, brown, leafy creature, was embroidered directly onto the linen page with thin, shining threads.
    â€œWow, that looks like hair ,” Melissa said, and peered at the page up close. After a moment she announced triumphantly, “It is hair. The whole picture’s made of human hair .”
    â€œUgh,” Callum said, startled but impressed by her boldness. “Don’t touch it. You don’t know where it’s been.”
    Even Melissa did not recognize the forgotten names of some of the strange beings in this old, haphazard catalogue. The Great Horned Woman of Gaughall, Peg Powler and Jenny Greenteeth, the Duergar, Jack-in-Irons, the Mostyn Dragon—page after page of ghosts and demons and spirits, some malignant, some benign.
    â€œThere might be something more recent towards the back,” Callum said. “Skip forwards a bit.”
    Melissa turned over a sheaf of stiff linen and the scrapbook fell open to a page full of faded brown photographs on thin glass plates with metal backing. There were six on each side of the page, each photo showing nothing but a haunting woodland scene of bare, tangled trees.
    Each picture was simply labeled “Marlock Wood,” in neat, Victorian script, the ink faded brown as the photographs. Callum turned the page. Another dozen slides of the same view were stuck on the yellowed linen.
    Melissa shivered.
    â€œThese are spookier than the monsters,” she said. “The same picture again and again with nothing in it. It’s like someone was trying …”
    â€œâ€¦ to take a picture of something that doesn’t turn up on the film,” Callum finished. “Yeah. I wonder …”
    He turned another page, and this time there were twelve pictures all lined up neatly and labeled “Nether Marlock churchyard.”
    This time it was Callum’s turn to shiver.
    â€œNothing in these either,” said Melissa. “Unless you count empty graves.”
    Callum shook his head. “It’s the photos that are empty, not the graves.”
    He turned the next page. He could tell by the weight of the linen that there were no more photos. This time there