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1

Ralph Maxwell is shopping with his mother when the weather changes. The morning had begun with a hesitant blue sky but by lunchtime the clouds had swum in to hang over Black Hare Valley like a petulant threat.

The rain does not bother his young mother, Charlotte, a widow since his father died when he was three years old. Neither of them own a decent raincoat but Charlotte never falters, in fact, she seems to barely notice the rain as it patters down, at first just wetting their hair and faces as they roll their bikes from shop to shop. Between the post office and the chemist, the rain hardens and by the time Charlotte emerges with her prescription, Ralph is soaked through to his t-shirt and shivering. They’re not done yet though.

There’s bacon and eggs to buy from the butchers, bread and crusty cob rolls from the bakery and apples, carrots and potatoes from the grocers. Charlotte, farmhand and stable girl at Hill Fort Farm, is frugal with money and plans their menus on a daily basis. Together they bike around town almost every day, collecting items from her carefully planned list.

Ralph thinks they’re done now. He hopes they are done now. She promised him fish and chips at the end of their route and his stomach is growling in anticipation. He’s also got his whole afternoon mapped out. Charlotte will be up on the farm after lunch, having been offered some extra hours by Mayor Sumner yesterday. Of course, she’d said yes. Charlotte’s life goal is to get them out of the caravan and into one of the small cottages on School or Fort Lane.

Ralph gets it, but not in a big way. The caravan is plenty big enough for the two of them. It’s warm and cosy and it’s the only home he’s ever known. But Charlotte is a grafter, everyone says it. She won’t give up and he supposes he ought to feel proud of her. For some reason, he mostly just feels guilty for existing.

She had him by accident at eighteen. He knows he played no part in it other than accidentally being conceived, but he can’t quite shift the guilt, especially when people tell him (as they often do) how hard his mother works to provide for him, how she works her fingers to the bone to keep a roof over his head or how young she is to be doing it all alone.

It’s also not his fault his father died when he was only three, but still, he feels the guilt about that too. A boating accident is how it’s been explained to him; a freak accident on the lake while he and his mother were still sleeping in the caravan. He sometimes wants to ask his mother more, but she rarely mentions Frankie Maxwell, making Ralph feel he ought not to bring it up. Besides, she’s got her plate full, they all say. A real survivor.

Ralph does his bit. He’s thirteen now and never says no if Mayor Sumner asks him to pick apples or clean up horse manure. When he’s old enough he will get a job and give his mum all of the money so she doesn’t have to work so much.

In the meantime, it’s a cold rainy Wednesday; May Day, no less and Ralph has fish and chips and a solitary afternoon investigation on his mind. His mum comes out of the grocers and shoves a five pound note into his wet hand.

‘I’ve forgotten something,’ she says. ‘We need that cereal you like and I need coffee and conditioner. I forgot to put them on my list. You get your lunch and head home.’ She turns her bike around.

‘What about you?’

‘I’ll grab something later. Be good. Meet me at the park for the May Day thing?’

Ralph stares at her. ‘In this weather! Do I have to?’

Charlotte rolls her eyes but gives in. ‘Okay, I’ll tell Margaret you have a cold. See you later.’

And she’s gone, swinging her soaked denim-clad leg over the saddle and powering back up the high street. Ralph watches her go, blinking as rain water drips from his hair into his eyes. He sees what they see in her: that grit and determination; her hunched shoulders and set expression. Nothing gets in her way and she never complains. An absolute star, Mayor Sumner calls her, an absolute angel.

Ralph sighs and pushes his way into the fish and chip shop. They suddenly don’t seem so inviting. He doesn’t like eating alone. He orders a bag of chips and runs his mind through options for company.

There’s Daryl, who lives two caravans down. He enjoys exploring the woods and the hills and he sort of looks up to Ralph, which is nice. Daryl will go along with any of his suggestions, but Daryl is only nine years old and it’s kind of embarrassing to be seen with him. There’s Franny who lives next door to Daryl. She’s twelve but she’s such a whiner. There’s always something wrong with her. A headache or a stomach ache or a bad case of head lice.

Ralph pays for his food and thinks no. Not today. Shaking his head, Ralph heads home. It’s too late now to rally any troops. He’ll do this alone. As he crosses over High Street and cuts across the fields behind Saint Marks, he regrets not having a decent side-kick. Life would be so much easier and a hell of a lot more fun if he had someone in tow, someone on the same wave length as him. A Scully to his Mulder.

Ralph smiles. His obsession with the X-Files started two years ago when the show first aired on BBC2. To start with, his mother had enjoyed the show far more than him. She’d practically been drooling over FBI Agent Fox Mulder while Ralph had struggled to keep up with the storylines.

But now it is his obsession alone. He likes to think of himself as rebellious and obsessive like Mulder, and while investigating strange phenomena Ralph often talks out loud to an imaginary partner, one who tries to reel his outlandish theories in.

What Ralph really needs is a sidekick. A Scully. Tracking monsters is not a job for a lone man. It gets lonely. Ralph leaves his bike outside the caravan and lets himself inside. He drips all over the floor whilst carefully transferring the shopping and his chips inside. Then he strips off his coat and drapes it over the airer beside the fire. He crouches there to eat his chips and considers his next move while the photograph of his father watches over him from the shelf above.

2

The plaster of Paris he begged from Miss Crow in the art department would surely be dry by now? It had been drying overnight and the rain won’t affect it if it had already set…

He might as well fetch it now, bring it home, catalogue it in his records and add it to the collection. Then? Maybe he will head to the bookshop. Mr Finnis promised he would hold a book on tracking animals for him until he could afford to pay for it. He won’t quite have the money yet but he’s sure Mr Finnis won’t mind letting him look at the book to take some notes. After all, he and his mum are very loyal customers.

Decision made, Ralph slips his wet coat back on, borrows a plastic Tupperware container from the kitchen, leaves a note for his mum and goes back out into the rain. He doesn’t bother with his bike now; where he’s going the land is too rough and it’ll just pick up a puncture.

The sky is a deep grey. Rain falls hard, plastering his hair to his skull. Ralph trudges quickly through wet grass, skirting around the back of the caravan park towards the bottom of Hill Lane. There is no one about. In weather like this, the townsfolk usually scurry home and hunker down. Ralph hears thunder rolling suggestively on the other side of the hills and presses on.

He passes the play-park, where the rain drums noisily against the metal slide and roundabout, and the swings whip back and forth in a sudden, violent squall of rain and wind. It’s like that in the valley, he thinks, grimacing. Sometimes the wind just races through from one side to the other. Sometimes it seems to turn around and race right back. Sometimes it seems to come out of nowhere.

He crosses the bridge over the river and pauses to glance down at the water. Like the weather, it changes fast here. He was wading in this water just yesterday, having scrambled down the bank further back, behind the caravan park, certain he had spotted some strange tracks on the opposite side. If he tried that now, he’d get swept away. The river water looks black in the fading light. It rolls and tumbles at a terrifying speed. Ralph gulps and hurries over the bridge, then walks as fast as he can up Hill Lane. In the end, the tracks had been otter tracks, but he is sure the ones in the woods are something far, far bigger.

He can’t shake the uneasy feeling that the river is watching him back. He passes Lovers Lane and starts the steep incline beyond it. Hill Lane narrows to one track. One either side are ancient gravestones, all unmarked. Many have crumbled to mere piles of mossy stones. Some are cracked down the middle but holding on.

There’s a stillness in the air here. The rain falls, but does so almost soundlessly. Suddenly, Ralph is aware of the sound of his own breathing, his squelching footsteps, maybe even his own heartbeat. Underfoot, the land throbs with a pulse of its own.

As the graves end, Hill Lane continues on up and up towards Hill Fort Farm, where Mayor Margaret Sumner lives with her disabled sister, Hilda. Ralph goes the other way, climbing the hill towards Black Woods. Even in the poor light, under the heavy blanket of rapidly darkening clouds, Ralph can see the maze, surrounded by the black, watchful trees. A scattering of broken graves poke out of the grassy earth like old bones. Ralph passes through them carefully, and skirts around the edge.

It’s not much of a maze these days. No one can get lost in it. There are no hedges or fences to pen you in, just small worn slopes that used to be hills. Sometimes kids from the town use it to race their BMX bikes, skidding and bunny-hopping from one side to the other, churning up the mud and the grass.

Ralph avoids it now though, head bowed, not wanting to look but not knowing why. He sees the line of trees beyond the maze and is momentarily stunned by the darkness. It’s only two o’clock. Yet the fir trees are so dense, so tall, so close together, they almost form a solid impenetrable wall.

In the spaces between the trunks, all Ralph can see are shadows. His plaster-of-Paris is in there somewhere. He hopes he can remember the route. Straight through past the ring of mushrooms, into the trees, alongside the fallen one follow a straight line until he reaches a slope that eases downwards, a muddy patch of earth, another older, rotten fallen tree and there it should be.

Yet when he gets there its gone.

He looks around wildly, cursing under his breath. He is sure this is where he sat and carefully poured the white liquid until it filled every part of the footprint in the mud. The footprint of a beast far bigger than any dog he knows of. There had been other footprints too but this one had been the clearest. He’d asked Miss Crow for the plaster-of-Paris the next day, calling at her home on Taylor Close. She’d been happy to help him out – always keen to encourage an art or science project.

It should be here, he thinks, I left it here. It should be waiting for him, a solid, perfect mould of the strange footprint. Oh damn, thinks Ralph, I should have come earlier… I should have come first thing.

There’s a simple explanation but it’s a disappointing one. Someone else came along and found it. He places his hands on his hips, throws back his head and growls in pure frustration. He can’t add it to the collection now. He can’t show it off at school tomorrow. He can’t solve the mystery, or not yet anyway.

He doesn’t linger. The Black Woods are as eerily silent as the old graves and the neglected maze. Time stops here; it lingers and floats. You feel like you could easily get pulled in. Absorbed somehow. Unwittingly sucked into the earth under a heap of broken gravestones if you stayed still for too long.

3

Ralph hurries on until he reaches the bridge to the Quigley Dairy Farm. Then he follows the fence back down to the river. It’s hammering it down now. The rain pounds into him, driving his head ever lower until he finds the foot bridge on Maze Lane and crosses over.

Thunder booms over the valley. Ralph jumps, swears and laughs at himself. Mulder and Scully wouldn’t be afraid of thunder, he thinks, or dark woods, weird mazes or old graves. They wouldn’t quit either; they’d go back again and again until they cracked it.

Ralph plods through a vast wet field that rolls around the back of the Town Hall, fire station and police station. He trots out onto Station Road, shivering now and longing for the warmth of home. He turns left onto Black Hare Road and quickens his pace until he reaches The Magic Of Books. Ralph pushes his way inside then stands on the mat, arms outstretched as rivers of rainwater fall from him to the floor.

‘Oh, Ralph!’ Mr Finnis hurries over to him in concern. ‘Goodness, look at you!’

‘I think there’s a storm coming,’ he tells him apologetically. ‘I’m sorry about the floor.’

‘Oh, don’t you worry, come over here and give me that coat, it’s soaked through! I can lend you a raincoat to get home in, you’ll catch your death like that.’

Ralph lets Mr Finnis pull him over to the narrow corridor that leads down to the conservatory.

‘Where’s everyone else?’ he asks, wondering why the shop is so quiet.

‘Oh, they’re in the treehouse!’

‘What? Who is?’ Ralph is confused. Mr Finnis takes his coat and drapes it over a large old radiator. He throws him a towel and he starts to rub at his hair.

‘Paddy and the others. Go on through. Unless you wanted something?’

Ralph knows and likes Paddy but he’s in the year above him at school and they’ve never hung out…

‘I meant the customers,’ Ralph shrugs at Mr Finnis.

‘Oh, they all rushed home at the first crack of thunder. Just the kids are still here. Are you going to join them? Oh hey, I was just about to take this flask of hot chocolate out to them. You can take it for me. Here, swap.’

Mr Finnis presses the flask into his hand, takes the empty Tupperware container and waves him away. Ralph feels a heady mixture of panic and curiosity. Of course, he wants to go to the treehouse, who wouldn’t? He’s heard Paddy and his witchy friend, Willow, talking about it and he’s always been jealous of anyone who has a treehouse. Plus, what did Mr Finnis mean when he said ‘kids’? Paddy and Willow for sure – they’ve been best friends for years, everyone knows that – but he made it sound like there was a whole bunch out there.

He looks back at Mr Finnis because, although excited, Ralph also wants to slow this all down: wants to ask for names, ages and personalities before he ventures out there alone. He wants to take his time and prepare himself. Paddy seems a decent kind of kid but Willow Harrison has always intimidated him. He’s always envied their friendship too; always felt the lack of a best friend as if a bad reflection on him and his personality. Ralph is friendly and gets on with everyone, but he has never had a best friend and it bothers him.

You can’t just rush into these thing unprepared, he wants to tell Paddy’s dad. ‘Uh, do you have any new DVD’s in?’ he asks.

He looks back at him with a shrug. ‘I think so. I’ll have a rummage for you in a minute. And I’ve still got that book aside for you!’

‘Awesome, thanks!’ He searches for something else to ask, something to tell him maybe, some way to postpone venturing out to a treehouse full of unknown children but it’s too late, he’s gone and he can already hear him talking to a customer.

Great. Doesn’t Mr Finnis realise these are not his friends? Why do adults always assume kids all know each other and can just easily get along? I mean, Christ, he thinks, there are some nasty, shitty kids in Black Hare Valley – there are at least five Ralph can think of who he’d not want to be on the same street as, let alone stuck in a treehouse with during a storm. Why does Mr Finnis just assume that whoever is in the treehouse will welcome him?

Fair enough, his son probably will, but everyone knows Willow Harrison can be a real bitch. He supposes at least he can be sure that the awful thuggish trio of Steven, Dominic and Jesse won’t be out there. They’ve been bullying Paddy Finnis for years. No way would Mr Finnis call any of them friends…

4

He’s outside now. He’s in the rain again. He’s wrapped in a towel, holding a flask of hot chocolate. He can’t escape. He has to do this. Okay, what would Mulder and Scully do? Roll on in as cool as fuck and act like they have every right to be there. Okay then. You can do this, Ralph.

He climbs the ladder, clutching the swollen wet rope as it swings in the wind, flask tucked under one arm. He hears shouting, maybe, or laughing? He decides to just roll with it. Fake it until he makes it.

Ralph pops up in the middle of something, holding out the flask and announcing his arrival with the first thing that pops in his head, ‘What’s up, bitches?’

Silence follows. It consumes him. His eyes slowly scan the four faces staring back at him. Paddy. Willow. A new girl? And Jesse Archer… No fucking way. And why the hell did he call them bitches?

‘Oh hey, come on up, Ralph.’ Paddy fills the silence, grabbing the flask and shifting closer to Willow to make room for him.

‘Jesus, there’s no more room,’ Willow grumbles, folding up her long, thin legs.

Ralph hesitates because of Jesse Archer. He doesn’t understand what the boy is doing here. He throws things at people. He doles out wedgies and wet willies in the ear. He steals, lies and cheats. He breaks things just for fun. He once chased Ralph all the way home then threw a barrage of tin cans and glass bottles at the caravan.

Ralph is frozen in fear and confusion until Paddy grabs his arm and hauls him all the way up. ‘Come on, you’re getting wet.’

‘Your dad sent me,’ Ralph says, not tearing his eyes away from Jesse. ‘I don’t know why, sorry. I didn’t mean to gate-crash.’

‘Don’t worry,’ snaps Willow, narrowing her eyes at Jesse as she viciously twirls a damp strand of hair around a long, thin index finger. ‘It’s not a party.’

‘More like an interrogation,’ Jesse mumbles.

‘Or an investigation,’ the new girl says, smiling excitedly.

Ralph meets her eye and smiles back. She’s round and chubby but he thinks she’s pretty too. She smiles at him as if trying to put him at ease and he smiles back, a thank you.

‘An investigation?’ he asks, thinking of his footprint collection. ‘I’m good at those.’

‘I’m Jaime, by the way.’ She thrusts a confident hand at him. ‘I just moved here yesterday.’

‘Ralph,’ he replies, shaking her hand. ‘Nice to meet you.’

‘Thanks, you too!’

There’s an impatient growl from Willow while Paddy unscrews the cap of the flask. ‘Jesse was about to answer a very important question,’ she says, glaring at him.

‘What question?’ asks Ralph, suddenly nervous again as Jesse’s eyes fall on him.

‘Well,’ breathes Jaime. ‘I saw him getting arrested by a policeman earlier. Handcuffed, and everything!’

‘Sergeant Mayfield,’ adds Paddy, eyebrows raised.

‘Because he caught him in the act of trying to blow up the school!’ Jaime relays breathlessly.

‘She followed me,’ grumbles Jesse. ‘Like some kind of stalker.’

Jaime ignores him. ‘I took photos and everything,’ she says proudly. ‘I want to be a journalist when I grow up. You might as well start practicing young, right?’

‘I totally agree,’ Ralph grins. He’s really starting to like this girl. There is a warm and exuberant vibe about her. She’s like a big friendly hug. He starts to imagine her as a female investigator. A sidekick. A Scully. Suddenly, Ralph really wants to tell them all about the giant footprint he tried to record… He opens his mouth to start but Willow jumps in first.

Her voice is firm and hard, commanding you to listen. A deep serious voice that seems a little out of place on such a wispy frame. She glares.

‘Never mind all that, Nancy Drew. We were talking about Jesse.’ She spits out his name as if it offends her and makes her mouth taste bad. Jaime has instantly shut up, zipping her lips together and leaning forward with the others to stare intently at Jesse Archer. Ralph does the same.

‘Nothing,’ Jesse says, answering a question Ralph was not there to hear. ‘I told you, nothing.’

Ralph thinks the boy seems different. He’s not the sneering, hard-eyed boy who stuck his foot out and sent Ralph sprawling with his dinner tray in the school canteen. He seems somehow smaller here, thinner. He’s as wet as the rest of them but looks somehow drowned; his face grey and drawn, purple shadows standing out under each eye. He looks younger even though he is older than all of them.

‘Don’t buy it.’ Willow shakes her head. ‘You don’t get off with a slapped wrist and a warning for trying to blow up the school.’

‘He’ll tell my dad,’ shrugs Jesse.

‘He won’t care,’ Willow states. ‘He’s a criminal.’

Jaime gasps and Ralph holds his breath but Jesse’s expression does not change. If anything, he looks even smaller.

‘He didn’t get any evidence. So, it was just for trespassing.’ He looks at Willow, a little light returning to his eyes. ‘That’s all. Just a warning for trespass.’

There is silence while everyone mulls it over. Ralph looks to Willow, but she’s quiet – her eyes fixed on Jesse’s. He looks away. Down. Then up. Above her head. Her eyes narrow.

‘Then you’re a liar.’

‘What?’

‘You lied to Paddy. You weren’t trying to avenge what Bishop did. You came here to bully him like always.’

‘No, I was gonna burn it down. I was!’

‘None of this matters!’ Paddy says finally, passing the warm flask to Jesse, who takes it with a look of genuine surprise on his face, then hugs it to his wet chest. ‘Nothing happened. School is still there. We’ll all be back there tomorrow. But maybe now, we can all be friends?’

Ralph thinks this is the best thing he’s ever heard. He grins and Jaime quickly fist-bumps him. Willow groans.

Jesse passes the flask back to Paddy and gets up suddenly, wobbling slightly on weak legs above them.

‘Going home,’ he mutters and steps over their wet legs.

No one stops him. Paddy reaches out but his hand grasps at thin air. Jesse climbs down and is gone.

‘He’s hiding something,’ Willow claims.

Jaime squeezes Ralph’s knee. ‘I say we find out what it is!’

Thanks for reading!

Please feel free to leave a comment letting me know what you thought of this latest chapter. What do you think is going on between Sergeant Mayfield and Jesse Archer?

NOTE: Please remember this is NOT the finished version of Black Hare Valley Book 1. This book has not been to my editor yet or even my beta readers. There will be typos, grammatical mistakes, and sentences that need rewriting.

COMING NEXT THURSDAY: Chapter Six: “School Days”