fiction

Black Hare Valley: Chapter Eighteen “The Committee”

~ ChanAtkins ~ 2 Comments
Black Hare Cottage – image is mine

© 2025 Chantelle Atkins. All rights reserved. This work may not be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods, without the prior written permission of the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical reviews and certain other noncommercial uses permitted by copyright law.

NO AI TRAINING: Without in any way limiting the author’s [and publisher’s] exclusive rights under copyright, any use of this publication to “train” generative artificial intelligence (AI) technologies to generate text is expressly prohibited. The author reserves all rights to license uses of this work for generative AI training and development of machine learning language models.

1

Willow, Jaime and Ralph trail dejectedly through the double doors, past the milling children enjoying their break. Edward Bishop leads the way, striding briskly in his slightly too snug brown suit. His faded loafers slap against the bleached floor and he glances back occasionally to be sure they are following.

When they reach his office he opens the door and holds it; nodding at them to go in, they are forced to duck under his sweat-stained armpit, one by one. Neville Hewlett comes in last, closes the door softly and leans against it. He wears light grey trousers and a dark green polo shirt. Casual and friendly, he attempts to offer their nervous faces a reassuring smile.

Good cop, bad cop, Edward thinks, irritably, how cliched. 

‘Sit,’ he commands and they obey, Willow Harrison pulling out a plastic chair first and plopping down with her arms folded defensively. Ralph gestures for Jaime to take the other available seat and goes red in the face as he lifts a third chair from a small stack by the door, then positions it next to Jaime’s.

Once all three are seated, Edward Bishop walks purposefully around his desk, keeping his narrowed eyes on them the whole time. He can smell their fear and he likes it. He licks his lips very slowly, savouring the taste, taking his time to fully coat the thicker lower lip with a trail of saliva before he runs his tongue around his teeth and swallows.

He yanks back his own chair and sits on the edge of it. The fast then slow movements are in part deliberate – he can see their fear intensifying with every gasp and widening of eyes – and part instinct. He enjoys the thrill and speed of the chase yet likes to study and savour his victims in their final moments.

Edward Bishop reaches across the desk, his elbows clicking as he clasps his hands together. ‘I’m only going to ask you this once and I expect the truth,’ he says to them in a somewhat monotone voice. He hopes to suggest that he does not doubt they will be instantly honest. He hopes to make it easy for them to crumble.

Their three faces stare back expectantly. Jaime, the new girl, looks suitably terrified. She’s only been here a week but seems to have landed herself right in the thick of things. Her mother and step-father are concerned about her choice of friends so far and Edward thinks they are right to be. Ralph Maxwell has never been on his radar before now but he has always disliked the haughty Harrison girl, probably for the same reasons he disliked Paddy Finnis. Something arrogant about the pair of them, he’s always thought, something restless and unsatisfied, something in their eyes that suggests they think they are better than all this. And of course, he remembers their parents at their age…

The Harrison girl is intelligent but uses it for sarcasm. She’s never shown a desire to fit in or follow the rules and she’s never seemed to fully appreciate their unique little town. Out of the three of them, she is the one he senses anger from. Resentment even, frustration, certainly. She is afraid, but less so.

Edward knows that Catherine and Mark are worried that Jaime has become secretive too. Locking her door and acting differently. She’s up to something. He can feel it. The guilt is written all over her face.

And the Maxwell boy looks like he is close to pissing himself and he should be. This town has always been good to him and his young mother. A teen mum, widowed young, too pretty for her own good. But the town has looked after her well, picked her up, pushed her on to better things.

Ralph Maxwell is therefore an ungrateful little swine.

And that brings Edward Bishop to the missing piece. The errant shit, Jesse Archer. The one they all seem so fascinated by. One minute, these kids suspect him of no-good, just like the rest of the town, and the next they’re sheltering him. Why? What changed?

‘You’ve been told by Sergeant Mayfield and your own parents that Jesse Archer is wanted for resisting arrest and breaking and entering.’ Edward stares at them in pure disdain. He wants them to think he is onto them. He wants them to think the game is up. ‘Do any of you know where he is right now?’

Ralph and Jaime shake their heads instantly but he can see the flicker of uncertainty in Willow’s eyes. She wants to fire a question back at him but she remains silent then finally shakes her head too.

He sighs. ‘Aiding and abetting a criminal is also a criminal offence. If it is found that you are lying, you may also be arrested and charged. Now, we know that for some reason the three of you have been hanging around with Archer as well. That seems odd to me.’ He leans forward. ‘Jesse Archer is a renowned bully, thief, vandal and thug. You were not friends with him before. What changed?’

He scrutinises their faces one by one. Again, Ralph and Jaime look wild with fright and uncertainty, like they could crack at any moment, but Willow is struggling with something else. Every now and then her top lip almost lifts in a snarl of disgust. She is straight-backed and stiff, her knees locked together, and her arms still folded. She is angry. Edward tilts his head. He wonders how far he can go with her.

‘Willow?’ Neville speaks for the first time. ‘You and Paddy were close friends. This must be a very hard time for you.’

‘Yes,’ agrees Edward. ‘And that makes it even harder for me to understand why you’d befriend a miscreant like Archer.’

She swallows. ‘Paddy liked him,’ Her voice is small but firm. ‘I didn’t, but Paddy has always been a good judge of character and now he’s missing, I thought, I felt, like I should give Jesse a chance.’

‘Oh?’ Edward raises his eyebrows at her. ‘Is that so?’

‘Yes,’ she nods. ‘And you know what, Mr Bishop? Paddy was right.’

Edward cannot quite comprehend the audacity of her. He gives her a cold look while Neville looks on anxiously.

‘Well, Miss Harrison, that’s really very interesting. And leads me to question if you’re such a fan of Jesse Archer, maybe there’s a chance you know something about him breaking into Sergeant Mayfield’s house? Or maybe you were even part of it?’

‘I don’t know anything about that,’ she says, staring right back at him.

‘And I suppose you don’t know where he is either?’ He smiles.

She smiles back. ‘It’s a very small town. There can’t be that many places for him to hide.’

‘No. Quite right. And when he is found, he’ll be made a ward of court and taken into foster care. He’s really only delaying the inevitable by hiding away.’ Edward releases a dramatic sigh and bows his head for a moment, hoping to convey his utmost disappointment in them all. When he glances back up, he catches Neville’s eyes. He has moved forward a bit and is twisting his chubby hands together in front of him.

‘Mr Bishop, I understand this has been a difficult week for everyone,’ Hewlett says, his tone sickly sweet. ‘In particular you, Willow, being such close friends with Paddy.’

‘Yeah, and it’s like everyone has just forgotten him already,’ she blurts out then, arms still crossed as she side-eyes Neville.

‘Sorry?’ he replies.

‘I beg your pardon?’ asks Edward.

She clears her throat. ‘Paddy. It’s only been a week but already no one talks about him. They’re not even searching for him anymore. Everyone has just given up.’

Edward shakes his head. ‘That’s not true.’

‘It is,’ Willow insists. ‘There are no searches. Nothing. When the posters get ragged and fall down, no one replaces them.’

Edward does not know what to say – because of course, she is right – and suddenly more than anything he wants to get all three of them out of his office. He looks at Neville for help. Neville places a hand on the back of Willow’s chair and she automatically flinches away from it. Edward feels tired. He wants them gone. He wants time to move on from all this. Because he knows that given enough time, everyone will indeed move on and the town will indeed forget. The town is covered in a sweet haze and only rough spikes like Willow Harrison and Jesse Archer are a risk to that.

Edward misses the sweet haze and hopes they return to it soon. He rubs one eye and gestures to the door.

‘Mr Hewlett, I think we’re going around in circles here.’

‘Yes,’ Neville agrees. ‘What we also wanted to talk about was extra support and guidance for you. Starting right now, in fact. Willow?’

She frowns at him, lips pressed together.

He reaches out and opens the door. ‘We can start with you. Do you want to come to my office? Jaime and Ralph I’ll send for you after.’

‘What about my next class?’ Willow gets up from the chair.

He smiles a charming smile. ‘It’s all arranged. Come along.’

She looks helplessly at her friends before following Mr Hewlett out of the office.

‘Go on,’ Edward says to the other two. ‘Off you go to class and remember, aiding and abetting is a crime too. I want you to think about that very seriously indeed.’

When they are all gone, Edward Bishop flexes his arms and legs and arches his back. He smiles slowly as the stresses of teaching seep away and the potential adventure and freedom his new position offers stretch out enticingly.

2

Neville Hewlett ushers Willow Harrison into his hot, stuffy office and closes the door. She sits down stiffly, animosity leeching into the atmosphere and he wipes his sweaty hands down his trousers and sighs to himself. This won’t be easy because it never is.

He slides behind his desk and finds it hard to look at her because when he does he feels the heavy knowledge settle on him; they don’t take him seriously and they never will.

‘So, Willow,’ he says with a gushing smile meant to relax her. ‘Please be assured that nobody has forgotten Paddy and no one has given up searching for him. He is still a member of our community and this school and a valued member. An important one.’

She eyes him coldly and does not respond. He shifts in his chair and longs for this to be over. Eventually it will be. Time moves on. People forget. It all comes full circle again. It will be all right again, soon. He closes his eyes briefly and pictures the face of his secret date. They will meet in the shadows tonight when his girlfriend Tahlia is working her shift at The Hare and Hound.

‘Whatever.’ Willow says and when his eyes snap open she shrugs at him and flicks back her hair. ‘Can I go now please?’

‘Willow, I’m trying to help you. We’re all trying to help.’ He sits back in his chair, palms upturned in frustration.

‘All right then,’ she says. ‘Can you be honest with me, Mr Hewlett?’

‘Of course, Willow, you can ask me anything.’

She stares at him for a long moment. He wants to look away. Her eyes are large and dark and angry and he fears what is going to come out of her mouth. He suddenly hates his job and feels a sick envy for Mayor Sumner up on her high Hill Fort Farm.

‘What happened to Jesse’s head when Sergeant Mayfield tried to arrest him?’

It’s the very last thing Neville expected her to say. His eyes widen as his mind panics and scrambles for an answer or a way out. He wishes he was back in Bishop’s office. He’s like Mayfield, he thinks, ruthless and confident. But Neville isn’t.

He blinks rapidly and feels hot itchy sweat oozing between his buttocks and the plastic chair under them.

‘What? I don’t- ’ He stumbles over his words as Willow looks on in triumph. He hates her then. Hates her for being so angry and sullen and quick; hates her for still harping on about Paddy bloody Finnis. Mayfield is right about one thing: it should have been Jesse Archer. Then none of this would be happening…

‘You were there, right?’ Her sharp tone cuts right through him. She sounds like an adult. Angry, stern, unimpressed.

‘No, I certainly was not there,’ he laughs. ‘What an absurd suggestion, Willow! Whatever gave you that idea?’

‘Jesse said you were there. He’s got a big head injury from Mayfield’s baton so it’s no wonder he legged it. That’s why he’s hiding, Mr Hewlett, because Sergeant Mayfield is a corrupt bully.’

She stops suddenly, though he is sure she wants to go on. But she shuts her mouth and looks around the room anxiously as if a chill has crawled over her.

‘Willow, you really can’t go around making accusations like that. I was not there at all and Jesse Archer is a renowned liar. He’s obviously had quite an effect on you, young lady, which really is a shame! And now you better tell me when and where you saw him! You have just sat there and lied to our faces!’

A siren suddenly blares – making them both jump. Neville glances at the window, then back at her.

‘Sounds like a fire engine.’

She frowns and looks anxiously at the door while the siren moves off into town. Neville nods at her.

‘Go on, I think we’ll leave it there. I’m going to do you one favour and one favour only, Miss Harrison. I’m going to forget what you just said about seeing Jesse Archer and in return, you’re going to stay away from him! Do you understand?’

He waits until she has given him an angry nod, then gets up opens the door for her. Outside in the corridor a crowd of children have gathered at the main doors and a loud cacophony of excited chatter can be heard going back and forth between them.

‘It’s a fire, Mr Hewlett!’ a girl yells out.

‘Well, it’s not here is it, so get back to class,’ he replies, glancing at Willow.

‘It’s in town! Something’s on fire! I can see smoke!’

Several children have pasted themselves dramatically to the glass windows.

‘Come on, back to class all of you! It’s nothing for us to worry about.’

But they don’t listen. A boy suddenly pushes through from outside, wide-eyed and breathless.

‘It’s Black Hare Cottage!’ he yells at them all. ‘It’s on fire!’

Willow gapes in horror and shoots a dark and unforgiving look at Neville Hewlett. He rolls his eyes in despair, turns and goes back into the office.

3

Vicar Greg Roberts is clipping the neat box hedge that surrounds the front garden of Ivy Cottage, when the fire engines roar by. He has, of course, been clipping with the scent of smoke on the air for some time. He makes his way to the gate and leans on the wooden post, shears held against his leg while he witnesses the commotion unfold.

The smoke is now wafting up the High Street from Hare Lane. His wife, Meridith, calls from the front door. ‘Darling, what is it?’

Greg looks over his shoulder at his thin, pale wife. Meredith has shoulder length brown hair and a plain, forgettable face. Despite their undeniable oddness, Greg has always been grateful that his twin daughters, Lillith and Abigail, inherited his vivid red hair. It sets them apart, he thinks, makes them memorable.

Meredith, a mousy woman in cream trousers and a brown blouse, is holding out a bag of rubbish. He places the clippers on the grass then strides up the path to take it from her.

‘Something’s on fire,’ he tells her. ‘Further down.’

‘Oh my goodness,’ she says in a flat voice before retreating back inside.

Greg strolls back to the gate and slips outside to lower the rubbish into the bin. He can’t quite see the curve of the high street, so he calls out to the house, ‘I think I’ll just take a quick look!’

Greg walks away and out of sight. He walks around the copse and once Hare Lane comes into view, he can see what is on fire. It is Black Hare Cottage. He stands, hands on hips, and watches. The fire crew are in attendance and he can see Aaron Mayfield and a few PC’s stringing up tape to keep the public back, but Greg can see it is all in vain.

The thatch is ablaze. The house is made of rotten, crumbling wood. One of the town’s most ancient buildings does not stand a chance.

A crowd has gathered and through the bobbing heads and shrugging shoulders, Greg thinks he catches a glimpse of Bob Rowan. It’s a brief, but fascinating sighting. Bob Rowan is even more of a recluse than Iris Cotton. Greg can’t help wondering if it was the flames that drew him down from his farm, or something else.

It was definitely him though, thinks Greg, a little excitedly. He would recognise that sleek black hair and thin moustache anywhere. He scans the crowd shrewdly but if it was Bob Rowan, he is gone now.

‘Look! Look at that!’ someone in the crowd yells out.

Greg looks where they are pointing and sees a swift white creature darting away from the burning house. It seems to be leaping right out of the flames and appears remarkably unscathed as it zig-zags at speed through the crowd of people before vanishing into the dark depths of the copse beside Saint Marks.

‘Did you see that?’ an old-timer looks up at Greg with a gaping mouth and yellowed teeth. She is leaning over her walking stick and shaking her head.

‘I did indeed!’ he replies warmly. ‘A white hare! What a sight!’

‘They used to say they were witches really,’ the old woman goes on and Greg responds with an appropriately amused chuckle. ‘They’d turn into hares to escape being burned at the stake!’

‘Oh yes, I’ve heard that one,’ smiles Greg. ‘But there is actually a good explanation for it. They used to burn the corn and wheat fields after the harvest and the hares would wait until the last moment to spring out and run past the people to safety – so to them it looked like the hares were running through the fire.’

He gives the old woman a crinkle-eyed smile and she waves her hand at him in a rather disgruntled manner before wandering off. Greg feels someone arrive at his shoulder and glances down to see Sylvia Gordon.

She is small and neat – pocket-sized, he jokes when they are alone – with blonde curls she keeps above neck level. She wears glasses – in a sexy librarian style, he thinks – and orderly, old-fashioned clothes.

‘Well, well,’ she remarks, her eyes fixed on the flaming cottage. ‘Has anyone seen Iris, do you know? Is she safe?’

Greg shrugs as he eyes her curiously. He has lost interest in the cottage. ‘Shouldn’t you be at school?’

She checks her watch and taps the clock face with a neat polished nail. ‘No, I’ve not got another class until after lunch today. I was running a few errands when I heard all the fuss.’ She sidles a little closer and tugs his sleeve. ‘There is a meeting tonight, Greg. I was asked to pass that on.’

‘Oh? At the pub?’

‘No, no.’ She shakes her baby blonde curls at him and he feels a little dizzy. ‘At Margaret’s.’

‘Everyone?’

She makes a face. ‘I’m not sure. Eugenie told me and I was to tell you.’ She looks back at the flames and nods. ‘Guess we’ll find out later. I’m quite looking forward to it. There’s been a lot going on lately.’ Sylvia’s arms reach out in front of her. She clasps her hands together and stretches like a runner. ‘I need a debrief.’

‘Hmm. What time are we required?’

‘Eight.’

‘All right then. I’ll meet you there.’

She looks up, winks then turns and strides away. Greg watches her go then turns back to the warmth of the blaze. The thatch is gone – a black smouldering mess is all that remains. The fire is mostly out but the burnt smell is heavy in the air around them. The crowd start to drift away, muttering. The air is filled with softly floating debris – little remnants of grey or black drifting in the breeze. Iris Cotton’s life, he thinks.

4

The High Street is busier than normal and Eugenie Spires is stood in front of the double doors with her hands planted on her hips to observe. Eugenie is one of life’s great observers. There is not much that gets past her.

She doesn’t consider herself nosy – just watchful. She doesn’t do it on purpose after all; it’s just her nature, the way some people are shy, or nervous, or arrogant. Eugenie is observant. It’s who she is. She can’t help it and she doesn’t consider herself a gossip either. Much of what she picks up she keeps to herself. Gossips pass information on for the sake of it, for attention, whereas Eugenie does not need or desire attention from anyone.

Today she watches smoke drifting up the street with the dispersing crowd and even with the doors shut, the smell of burning straw seeps in. Her nose twitches and she backs off with a haughty sigh. The smell of anything burning is unpleasant: thatch, fields, toast, flesh. She shudders and scurries back into her library.

The children’s area is busy. It’s Rhyme Time for the local toddlers and a group of mothers are sat on the colourful beanbags while Nathan Cotton reads a series of nursery rhymes and the tots respond by clapping hands and smashing plastic instruments together. The noise goes straight through her but Eugenie tolerates it because she’s always had a firm understanding of what this town needs.

She is a great believer in sacrifice and Rhyme Time is a good example. She’s not especially fond of small children but she can tolerate fifty minutes of noise and sticky fingers for the good of the town. Mums and tots need things to do, places to go where they can make friends and Eugenie believes that a love of libraries instilled in young babies can produce life-long readers. What a library needs most is readers and what a town needs most is longevity.

She pauses to watch the young Cotton boy, wondering if she ought to tell him his grandmother’s house is on fire. Or is she his great-grandmother? Eugenie is not sure. Years blend together here. Generations merge and get confused.

She decides not to tell him. She will play dumb. Soon enough, someone will come bundling in excitedly to spill the news and he will find out then. She goes behind the desk and wonders what he will do. Run out probably – try to find his mother and Iris. Will Iris stay at theirs? Of course, the town will come together for Iris. No doubt, they will discuss it at the meeting tonight. What they can do, what support they can offer. Everything will be gone, Eugenie muses. Nothing will survive the flames.

And after the flames comes rebirth; growth, which is why they used to torch the fields after harvest.

‘Hickory dickory dock!’ Nathan sings with his usual red-faced nervousness. He is kneeling in tight blue jeans in front of the mums and tots – the sleeves of his slim fitting red top rolled up to his elbows. ‘Tick tock! Tick, tock!’ he waggles a finger at them. Some of the babies copy, standing up and waving pudgy hands back at him.

Eugenie supposes he does it for fun – can it really be fun? He seems to like the mothers, always making small-talk with them and asking who did their hair or where they got their shoes from. The mums like him too. He’s non-threatening, she supposes. He tells her he enjoys it. That it’s important to give back. That Black Hare Valley has a wonderful community spirit and she agrees. It really does.

Nathan is a good boy. She knows he will be upset about Black Hare Cottage but these things happen. Life will go on. It always does. He will go to work at the chemist tomorrow and he’ll be back for more Rhyme Time next Monday and in between work and home and the library, she supposes he will continue to meet Neville Hewlett in dark, secretive places until one day, inevitably, they get caught.

Eugenie sighs to herself, shaking her head. People are their own worst enemies, she thinks. Secrets everywhere. Secret lives. It makes them soft and vulnerable, easy to manipulate into place.

She thinks about her new neighbours on School Lane. Ralph Maxwell and his delightfully fresh-faced mother, Charlotte. He wasn’t a child she paid much attention to before, but now? Things are different since the Finnis boy vanished – things are not quite right. Eugenie is pleased they are neighbours so that she can do what she does best.

5

Sergeant Mayfield is drawn by the sound of smashing glass and is relieved and smug when he discovers the cause. Dominic Robeson’s large shaved head is the first thing he sees as he approaches the blackened, still smoking husk of Black Hare Cottage just as dusk is falling.

The smell of burnt thatch is thick in the air and he coughs to clear his throat, the sound alerting Dominic to his presence. The big dumb kid stops stomping on window panes and faces him, frozen like a hare caught in the glare of a lamp. For a moment, Aaron considers himself the hound, released and already racing towards its prey. He feels his feet leaving the burnt ground and leaping, flying, ears pressed flat against his long skull, his lean athletic body smashing into the prey and knocking him flat.

‘Don’t stop on my accord!’ Aaron calls out, swinging his baton as he strides towards Dominic. ‘That looks like a lot of fun!’

Dominic lowers the hammer he is holding then opens his fingers, letting it hit the earth with a soft thump. Just then, Aarron hears a crunching from within the remains of the house and a voice calls out, ‘I’ve found a shit load of money!’ They both look on as Steven emerges brashly from the sooty brickwork, clutching handfuls of old jewellery.

He stops when he sees Aaron and his mouth falls open. Steven’s stringy and lean, his eyes smarter and colder than Dominic’s who is a mercifully obedient pet to this thug.

Aaron sniffs the air and wrinkles his nose as if the air offends him. ‘Got you,’ he says cheerily, winking at Steven.

Aaron can see the boy is considering running. He’ll leave his friend behind in a heartbeat because he can run faster. He won’t look back. Aaron swings the baton and steps towards him, holding up a warning finger.

‘Don’t you even think about it. I’ll set you on fire and say you burned when the house did. No one will know any different.’ He glances coldly at Dominic. ‘You too. Don’t move a muscle. Keep your dumb mouths shut and listen. Then I’ll let you go.’

He waits, looking between them, giving them a second to consider their options. The Robeson boy’s shoulders slump miserably and his head lowers. Steven runs a tongue around the inside of his mouth and then stuffs the jewellery into the pockets of his jeans. He glares at Aaron, waiting.

‘I was looking for someone to do me a favour,’ says Aaron. He nods. ‘And you two idiots helped me before, so you can help me again. I won’t have to arrest you for criminal damage and theft if you listen carefully and then do exactly what I tell you, all right?’

The boys edge closer together, both nodding. Aaron continues. ‘Jesse Archer is hiding in the Finnis treehouse, the one you fetched the book from.’ He pauses, registering the interest on Steven’s face. ‘I want you to go there now and lure him out. I want him in the alley between the bookshop and the hardware, you understand?’

‘How do we lure him out?’ Dominic asks dubiously.

‘That’s for you to figure out,’ snaps Aaron. ‘Just get him to that alley any way you can then turn around and leave. We’ll be square then. Agreed?’

The boys look at each other again, Dominic shrugs helplessly while Steven makes the decision for both of them. He nods.

‘Sure, Sergeant Mayfield. Not a problem.’

Thanks for reading!

Please feel free to leave a comment letting me know what you thought of this latest chapter.

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 Nineteen “The Meeting”

Black Hare Valley: Chapter Seventeen “The Beast”

~ ChanAtkins ~ 2 Comments
image is mine

© 2025 Chantelle Atkins. All rights reserved. This work may not be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods, without the prior written permission of the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical reviews and certain other noncommercial uses permitted by copyright law.

NO AI TRAINING: Without in any way limiting the author’s [and publisher’s] exclusive rights under copyright, any use of this publication to “train” generative artificial intelligence (AI) technologies to generate text is expressly prohibited. The author reserves all rights to license uses of this work for generative AI training and development of machine learning language models.

1

The beast pins the boy down even though he knows he cannot have him. The long, drawn-out howl is one of frustration and rage. The prey caught and squirming under his heavy paws, ensnared by his filthy claws, writhes and twists to get free. The beast’s yellow eyes watch the dark head whipping from side to side, the desperate outstretched arms, the fingers digging into the grass and earth. It can smell blood and inhales fear with relish.

The muscles in its back and shoulders strain and stretch and it’s too late because he is already half in the garden. It could drag him back, sink razor sharp claws into his flesh and scrape him back across the rugged earth. It could tear at his skin, flay him raw, bones exposed and then it could feast and suck on the flesh of his neck and head, warm blood flowing and drenching its fur.

But the beast knows it cannot.

It roars again – half-human, half-not – a shrill and agonising bellow of fury and resentment and then it backs up quickly, releasing the prey, panting sullenly as the feelings of loss wash over it. The prey wastes no time scrambling away and is quickly lost in the shadows of the garden.

2

Of course, Jaime can see why her step-father loves Black Hare Valley so much. She watches him at closing time, laughing and joking as the stragglers make their way out of the door. There are always a chosen few he allows to finish drinks and even start new ones once the doors have been locked. His close friends, sometimes neighbours, sometimes committee members and the old-timers in their long coats and flat caps.

As she scoops up the last of her apple crumble, Jaime looks up to see Mark approaching. Unlike earlier, he is all smiles now, throwing a bar cloth over one shoulder and wiping his hands down his shirt.

‘All right there, love?’ He stops at her table then glances with a fond grin at the two older men still drinking at the bar.

Jaime eyes them too. Their conversation seems to have gone up a notch in volume and one of them is now standing, whisky glass in hand.

‘I’m fine,’ Jaime tells him. ‘Thanks. That was great.’

‘Good.’ He sweeps up the bowl. ‘Your mum went for a lie down. Your little brother or sister is kicking the hell out of her.’

‘Oh, okay. I won’t disturb her. I’ve got some homework to do anyway.’

‘All right.’ He flashes her a toothy smile. ‘So, you’ve settled in okay then, love? I can’t believe it’s been a whole week already. It sort of feels like forever.’ He laughs, then adds quietly. ‘In a good way, I mean.’

Jaime forces a smile. She feels the same but for very different reasons. ‘I know what you mean and yeah, I’ve settled in really well, thanks.’

‘It’s a great town, right?’ he asks, nodding at her. ‘It’s a fantastic place to grow up.’

She beams. ‘You must have loved it as a kid.’

‘Oh yeah! I was outside all the time, me. Exploring, playing, making dens. Getting into mischief!’

‘Oh, really?’ grins Jaime, eyeing the two men at the bar. They are shouting now and both appear wobbly on their feet. ‘I can’t imagine that. What sort of mischief?’

Mark glances at the men. ‘Oh, you know. Bit of poaching, bit of scrumping apples. Don’t tell old man Rowan though, eh? He’d have my hide even now.’

Jaime giggles appreciatively. ‘I won’t, I haven’t met him yet.’

‘No, he’s very old now, reclusive too. Likes his own company too much, that one. He’s all self-sufficient up there on his farm so he doesn’t appear down here much.’

One of the men has shoved the other one. He goes down slowly and quietly, his flat cap falling off as he tries and fails to keep his drink upright.

Mark intervenes quickly, snatching at the arm of the offender and wrestling him quickly to the doors. With one arm wrapped around the wriggling man, Mark uses the other to unlock the door and throw him out onto the street. He looks back at Jaime with a wink and a grin, and lights up a cigarette.

‘Great place to live,’ he says again and she nods back unsurely.

As the man on the floor begins to snore, Jaime makes her excuses and goes up to her room.

3

Jesse sits up in the darkness, holding on to pain. He has crawled under the blankets and huddles there, shivering, refusing to cry. Though hot tears squeeze free and coat his cheeks, he doesn’t think they count because he didn’t give in to them. In his hands, he clutches the photo of his mother, and says the name of his missing aunt over and over in his head. Carol-Anne, Carol-Anne, Carol-Anne.

He’ll give the photo to Jaime. He’ll ask her to investigate Carol-Anne’s disappearance. He’ll tell them about his parents and his aunt being friends with Willow’s mother and a boy called Frankie. He curls up tight and squeezes his eyes shut against the sharp and throbbing pain in his back. He’ll ask her if there are any more going further back. And when he sees them again he’ll show them the marks on his back and Ralph will finally have the evidence for his mysterious beast.

4

Jaime leaves early for school.

‘I need to go to the library,’ she tells her mum before giving her a quick kiss on the cheek. ‘The school one, I mean.’

‘So studious.’ Her mother ruffles her hair affectionately. ‘Oh, and before I forget, I’ll cook dinner early and leave it in the oven because I’ve got one of those committee meetings tonight.’ She meets Jaime’s eye and winks. ‘An urgent one, apparently.’

Jaime lingers in the doorway, trying to hide her fear and intrigue. ‘Urgent? What could be so urgent?’

Her mother rolls her eyes slightly. ‘Nothing, probably. Just kids being silly, I think, anti-social behaviour, that kind of thing.’

‘Oh. Okay. Well, I better-’

Mark pops his head around the door. ‘Make sure you tell an adult if you see that Archer boy!’

Jaime nods sombrely. ‘I will.’

Outside, the morning is crisp – a blue cloudless sky promises warmth but for now a chilly breeze coats her bare legs as she pads down the garden, out of the gate and towards High Street. She hopes that no one is watching her as she turns left instead of right and steals slowly along the street in the direction of Black Hare Cottage.

Jaime is tired. Her head aches from all the reading and her body is tired from the tossing and turning that kept her awake long after switching off her light.

She keeps thinking about the names that go back generations. Rowan, Spires, Sumner, Mayfield. She glances to the left at the impossibly tall and green hills covered in trees behind which lurks the mysterious Rowan farm. Another mystery she thinks, Iris Cotton.

In her pocket she holds a notebook with all the words she has translated so far. She has another copy at home and she hopes to finish the rest of the translation later today.

Her hand goes to her pocket now, fingering the edges of the notebook. She feels nervous but determined. With every passing day she feels like they’re getting closer to finding Paddy. Jaime can’t yet let herself believe in boys becoming hares or monsters stalking the town at night, but she can believe in human monsters, in ancient traditions, superstitions and secrets. Those she can feel almost everywhere.

Slowly and cautiously, she wanders through the woods until a house comes into sight. She walks as confidently as she can around to the front door. There is no sign of anyone, so she approaches the door and knocks loudly. The door is thick and crooked, pale blue paint flaking alongside the wood – even as she knocks, bits of wood break free and drift to land on the doorstep. She imagines just one hard kick would send it flying open.

There are cobwebs in the windows and the thatch has seen better days. She thinks about Agnes Salter, and wonders what her cottage looked like. Who rebuilt it, and who lived in it after her terrible death? When there is no reply, Jaime turns and sits on the step. She has time. She will wait.

5

Ralph also leaves home early that morning. The caravan is in disarray and his mother has been given three days off to move them into the new house. Try as he might, Ralph can’t seem to get excited about it. He feels guilty for forcing smiles as his mother fills cardboard boxes and tapes them up before labelling them, knowing how long she has waited and planned and hoped for this.

Ralph tells her he has to meet Jaime early at the school library and leaves her to the excitement of packing up their old life. Outside, the air is crisp and still. The town is only slightly awake – shops are opening, signs are being hauled out onto streets. The smell of summer is in the air. The fresh new leaves are unfurling rapidly, turning the town green once again. Ralph hops on his bike and cycles to Black Hare Lane.

He feels sneaky going in the back way but he doesn’t know what to say to Paddy’s father when he sees him. He doesn’t have any words.

He wonders if he should give Jesse a warning as he props his bike up and crosses the grass to the rope ladder. He could be asleep, or on guard. Ralph doesn’t want to scare him.

‘It’s Ralph,’ he announces softly, then, clearing his throat, he hauls up his school bag and lets it land on the treehouse floor. He peers up and sees Jesse huddled on the far side, blankets wrapped tightly around him. ‘Hi, I bought you breakfast,’ he says then stops.

Jesse’s face is pale and smeared in mud. He looks jittery and sleep deprived, like he is existing on his last raw nerve. Ralph climbs the rest of the way up.

‘What happened?’

Jesse doesn’t answer at first. His teeth are chattering and his hands are shaking under the blankets. Ralph unzips his school bag and takes out the spare cheese and ham roll he made when his mum was in the shower. It’s wrapped in foil. He passes it over.

‘Are you okay?’

Jesse takes the roll. ‘I went to see my dad.’ He sighs then, blinking hard and exhaling slowly. He appears to be trying to get control of himself.

‘Last night? You left the treehouse? What happened?’

‘Got there okay,’ Jesse reports, nodding, his eyes fixed on the floor. ‘My dad was out of it but I kept asking about my mum. You know, what Jaime said about her being missing too?’

‘Yeah,’ breathes Ralph, trying to take it all in. ‘I suppose she is.’

‘Well, not just her as it turns out.’ Jesse’s voice is soft and low and his eyes finally shift to meet Ralph’s. ‘Her younger sister went missing when they were our age. Carol-Anne. She was fourteen. I’d never heard of her before last night, but she existed, Ralph, and then she vanished like Paddy and was never seen or heard of again.’

Ralph stares at him, frowning, blinking, trying to absorb the new information, until finally he shakes himself and holds out his hands. ‘But I’ve never heard anyone mention it… You’d think, with Paddy? Why didn’t your dad tell you before?’

‘He’s always drunk,’ Jesse shrugs. ‘He won’t talk about my mum, not ever. I got something though. A photo of her.’ He digs under the blanket with one hand, brings out the photo and passes it to Ralph. ‘Can you give it to Jaime? The clues should all be together, right? For the investigation?’

‘Yeah, yeah of course.’ Ralph examines the photo for a moment and then puts it carefully into his bag, sliding it between the pages of a text book. ‘I’m meeting them at break. I’ll tell them everything you just said and we’ll look into it. Her and Carol-Anne, I mean.’

‘He mentioned a group of kids he used to hang out with,’ Jesse goes on, pulling a piece of bread from the roll and popping it into his mouth. He chews and swallows. ‘My dad and my mum, her sister, Carol-Anne and a Lizzie and a Frankie. I asked if Lizzie was Willow’s mum and he said yeah. I’m not sure about a Frankie though.’

Ralph stares at him, his mouth falling slowly open. It can’t be, surely? He watches Jesse’s forehead crease with a frown. He watches him sit up straighter. Ralph closes his mouth and shakes his head. It can’t be.

‘What is it, Ralph?’

‘Nothing. Nothing.’ He shakes his head.

‘Come on, spit it out! Do you know anyone called Frankie? We’re gonna have to ask Willow’s mum about Carol-Anne, we might be able to ask this Frankie too.’

‘Well, you can’t if it’s who I think it is. No.’ Ralph shakes his head again. ‘It can’t be. There must have been loads of guys called Frank in this town over the years.’

Jesse leans closer. ‘Ralph, this is no time to dick around. Who do you know called Frankie?’

Ralph laughs nervously and shrugs his shoulders. ‘My dad was called Frank. Everyone called him Frankie. But we can’t ask him anything. Obviously.’

Jesse whistles through his teeth. ‘Shit. I never knew we were all connected already. You think that’s a coincidence or what?’

‘Yeah,’ Ralph smiles nervously. ‘Must be. Jaime is new and she’s not related to Mark Aster anyway, is she? And your dad didn’t mention Mr Finnis, right?’

‘True, but we’ll have to ask him anyway. Him and Willow’s mum. Make sure you tell the others as soon as you see them, okay?’

Ralph nods but he can tell there is more. It’s not just the missing aunt he didn’t know about or the possible connection between some of their parents. Jesse looks shocked to the core. He looks grey and sick. His expression is tortured and Ralph can almost hear his mind whirring with indecision.

‘What is it, Jesse?’ he asks him, gently. ‘What else? You’re covered in mud. Did something happen?’

Jesse lets the blanket fall. He picks at the foil on the roll then puts it down and leans suddenly toward Ralph.

‘Your monster, Ralph,’ he hisses through his teeth. He turns sideways and hitches up his clothes. Ralph gasps instantly and falls back on his knees, his hand over his mouth.

There are two sets of deep scratches on Jesse’s back; dried blood turning black around the edges – more than scratches, thinks Ralph, gouges.

Jesse’s breath hitches in his chest. ‘Your monster is real, Ralph. It got me.’

6

‘Have you seen the camera anywhere, Willow?’

Willow looks up from her cereal, mid-chew. Her mother is downstairs opening up and her father is walking briskly from room to room. He’s wearing a silk dressing gown and his long hair is plaited neatly down his back. His John Lennon style glasses are resting on the top of his head. Under the dressing gown Willow sees he is wearing his black jeans, the ones with the holes in the knees. While her mother has always been a gentle, ethereal hippy type, who likes to paint in her spare time, Willow’s father, Justin, has a harder edge. He likes punk bands from the 80s and Willow would describe his style as confused at best.

He wears a lot of black but likes to add textures to the darkness. Corduroy, silk, wool. He is tall, dark and thin just like her.

‘I borrowed it,’ she says and he reappears quickly. ‘Sorry. It’s in the pocket of my other coat.’

‘The cloak?’

‘Yeah sorry, it’s at Jaime’s.’ She pushes her bowl away and gets up from the small table. It gives a view of the High Street below and she pauses for a second, wondering if a flash of white caught her eye. She turns that way and peers out. Feeling her dad’s curious eyes on her, she adds, ‘I’ll go and get it now.’

‘It’s a bit early.’

‘That’s okay. I’m ready.’ She can’t see anything unusual out there so she goes to the bathroom to brush her teeth.

‘Well, have a good day,’ her father calls out from the kitchen where he has wandered in response to the whistling kettle.

Willow stares at her face in the mirror and sighs. She loves her parents – they have always been sort of cool and laidback, not authoritative or overbearing like some. They don’t take anything too seriously – putting just enough effort into the shop to keep things ticking over. It crosses her mind now though; how much can she trust them? What would they do if she told them that Jesse Archer was hiding in Paddy’s treehouse? What would they do if they knew she helped him break into a policeman’s house?

She tries to picture their faces to imagine what would register there. Shock maybe. Shame? Disappointment? But then she thinks about Mr Finnis helping Jesse and she feels tempted. But not now. She shakes herself and leaves.

Outside the shop, Willow pauses to button up her duffel coat and that’s when she sees it again. The flash of white, only it is more than just a flash now. It’s a streak of pure white zig-zagging down the middle of the street.

There are not many people about but everybody stops to stare. The post van slows to a stop and Willow sees the driver lean out of the window to catch a glimpse of the rare and beautiful beast racing through the town.

Willow follows it as fast as she can but she knows she has no hope of ever getting close to it. No one does. Like lightning, she thinks, mouth open as the pure white hare sprints down the high street. A collie dog on its lead outside the pub strains to catch it but has to settle for high-pitched barking instead. Another car screeches to a halt to avoid hitting it.

Willow loses sight of it and stops for breath outside the Hare and Hound. One of the old men who frequent the place on a daily basis, is leaning on the wall there, a scruffy whippet type dog peering out from between his legs, its sharp brown eyes focused on the spot where the hare vanished from sight; the copse next to Saint Marks church.

‘That’s something you don’t see every day,’ he says to Willow with a toothless grin. ‘Never seen a white one in all my years! Do you know what they say it means to have a hare run through your town?’

Willow looks at him and shakes her head. ‘No, what?’

‘Well, they used to say if a hare was seen running through a village it meant a house was going to catch fire soon.’ He nods with some certainty and a degree of wonder in his old eyes.

‘They’re amazing,’ Willow says and the man nods again.

‘That they are.’

7

Jaime checks her watch again. She decides to give it another five minutes and then she’ll go. She doesn’t want to be late for school. The last thing she needs is her mum and Mark getting worried about her. Her mind travels back to yesterday and she feels the same lonely twinge of unease.

The look in Mark’s eye when he questioned her had been so different to the one she was used to. Then at closing time, he had been himself again, full of light and laughter and love for his pub, his town, his place in the world.

Jaime stares at Iris Cotton’s front garden and at the lake glistening beyond and tries to work out how she feels about the town now. It is beautiful – no one can deny that. She feels a constant pull to explore it, to know it, maybe even to be accepted by it and that’s why it bothers her so much – the way Mark looked at her as if she was an outsider, not to be trusted.

Jaime has always hated being in trouble. It makes her feel sick even now, sat on the doorstep of a reclusive old lady who lives in a house rebuilt where a supposed witch used to live.

She feels the pull – something like love and longing, because she wants to belong. She wants to be a part of it. It’s beauty is breathtaking, every inch of it, she thinks, from the woods and the fields, to the farms and the dramatic rolling hills, to the streams and the rivers and lakes. There is something for everyone here, she thinks, and the thought makes her long wistfully for long summers here with her new friends, playing out from dawn until dusk, camping, building dens, climbing trees, making memories like the ones Mark speaks of. An idyllic place to grow up, she muses, staring at the shimmering lake.

Something moves suddenly across the open gate and Jaime sits up with a jerk.

A creature, pure white, walks into the space as if it is about to plod casually up the path, then stops. It fixes huge other-worldly eyes on her – they are red, tinged with pink, sat on either side of a narrow bony head and they have a permanently startled look which gives the creature an air of madness.

‘A hare…’ she whispers.

The white hare is frozen. Four feet on the ground, its back straight, with an impossibly big gap between its belly and the ground, it looks like a tripod, all legs. She wouldn’t be surprised to see a fifth or a sixth emerge. It appears almost deer-like, ready to spring, white tail flashing as it bounds away – only the lengthy ears swivelling on the top of its head and the dramatic round curve of each back thigh suggest its lupine nature.

Jaime does not move. The hare’s nose is twitching – less of a nose, she thinks, more like huge slits at the end of a long muzzle. There is such power and strength in the coiled stillness of its athletic body. Jaime barely breathes.

The hare’s ears twitch and rotate. It’s eyes are fixed solely on Jaime. She breathes out slowly. She thinks it is the most strange and beautiful thing she has ever seen.

Suddenly, it breaks the spell. It jumps to the right then moves slowly in a delicate yet somehow ungainly manner around the side of the house. Jaime is just as fascinated with its movements as with its stillness. It barely hops; it seems to move more like a deer, flicking out each paw as the morning dew soaks the fur.

Jaime gets up. She walks around the side of the house cautiously, unsure what to expect. The garden is large and green and leafy – an oasis of calm, well-tended as much as it is wild. She cannot see the hare.

‘Where’d you go?’ Jaime walks softly onto the grass, turning her head from side to side. She stares carefully at the hedges and shrubs but can see no sign of the hare.

‘Can I help you?’

Jaime releases a sharp scream and spins around. An elderly woman with a halo of powder puff white hair is standing in the back doorway. She is small and stooped with a slightly hunched back. Her frame is wiry but she does not appear fragile as she uses an old-fashioned wooden broom to sweep dust from the back step.

Jaime stares in horror and intrigue, her heart thudding wildly under her uniform. ‘I’m sorry,’ she croaks, a hand fluttering to her chest. ‘I knocked on the door but no one answered.’

‘Little hard of hearing,’ the woman replies, tapping two fingers against the side of her head. She carries on sweeping but she keeps her sharp blue eyes on Jaime. She is wearing a pale blue dress that falls below her knees. It is dotted with tiny white flowers. A scruffy beige cardigan with chunky brown buttons is over the top and a crocheted shawl of emerald green is gathered about her shoulders. On her feet are fur-lined boots.

‘I’m so sorry,’ Jaime says again, stepping a little closer. ‘Are you Iris Cotton?’

‘Yes,’ she replies in a tone that suggests a hint of caution and impatience. ‘That would be me.’

‘I’m sorry,’ Jaime apologies for a third time. She attempts a smile and smooths her hair behind her burning ears. ‘I didn’t mean to disturb you. I just needed to ask you something.’ She gives a nervous chuckle. ‘This is probably going to sound really strange.’

Iris Cotton leans the broom against the outside wall. She puts a hand into the deep pocket of her cardigan and brings out a small metal tin.

‘You’re the new girl,’ she says opening the tin.

Jaime risks another step forward. ‘Yes, hi, I’m Jaime. It’s nice to meet you.’ She glances around. ‘I love your house and garden.’

‘Old like me.’ Iris stares at her for a moment the looks back down at her tin, plucking out a neat hand-rolled cigarette. She closes the tin and drops it back into the pocket then fishes a lighter from the other side. ‘Your mum joined the committee,’ she says and lights up.

Jaime nods. ‘Yes, she did. I think she just wants to make friends.’

‘Oh,’ smiles Iris, something cold and teasing dancing in her bright eyes. ‘They’re a friendly bunch, all right. What did you say you wanted?’

‘Oh, well, it’s a weird question and you’ll probably think I’m weird for asking it.’ Jaime edges a little closer. Iris leans against the door frame and smokes silently, watching her. ‘It’s just, well, you might know that a boy went missing a week ago. Paddy Finnis.’ She looks at Iris in hope and the old woman nods back. ‘I only met him once,’ she goes on. ‘But he was so nice to me… Anyway, sorry, I’m getting side-tracked. The thing is, it turns out that he found this really old strange book in his shop and nobody knows how it got there, but-’

‘I put it there.’

‘Wh? What?’ Jaime freezes, mouth open. She can’t believe what she is hearing and the relief of one piece of the mystery at last falling into place is staggering. She had expected denial, confusion, even anger.

‘I put it there,’ Iris Cotton repeats, an arm slung around her small middle as the other holds the cigarette close to her wrinkled lips. She stares at Jaime for a long moment and then makes as if to go back inside.

‘Wait!’ Jaime calls out. ‘Why did you?’

She looks back with a shrug and a smile. ‘Didn’t need it anymore.’ She moves inside the door.

‘But why? What was in it?’

Iris Cotton does not answer. She puts one hand on the door and pulls. Her eyes stare past Jaime and when she turns to follow her gaze, she sees a large bird of prey has landed noiselessly on a low branch of a nearby apple tree. Jaime feels cold. She doesn’t know what type of bird it is – only that it is huge and its piercing yellow eyes are trained directly on her.

She sees long yellow talons curled around the branch and looks back at Iris. The old woman peers through the gap in the door.

‘Off you go now,’ she rasps with the faintest of smiles. ‘See you again.’

The door closes with a soft thud. Jaime inhales sharply and starts to walk stiffly and briskly towards the front garden. She does not look back at the bird.

8

The morning passes in a daze. Willow floats silently through classes she does not remember, barely present, only sharply and helplessly aware of the cold shifting inside of her. Of the realisation of a new, altered reality making itself at home.

At break she goes to the bike shed and finds Jaime stiff and weak. She shakes her head at Willow while biting the insides of her mouth. ‘Let’s wait for Ralph.’

Ralph appears next, breathless, wide-eyed and checking over his shoulder twice before finally focusing his gaze on the girls. They wait, lips pressed together.

‘I saw Jesse this morning,’ pants Ralph, his tone low. ‘He went out last night to see his dad and two things happened, guys, two crazy things!’ With their attention fixed on him, Ralph pauses to dig the photograph out of his bag. He holds up a picture of a dark-haired teenage girl smiling shyly at the camera. Ralph points. ‘That’s Jesse’s mum at our age. Her little sister went missing, guys, just like Paddy.’

Willow and Jaime lean back at the same time and stare at each other then back at Ralph.

Jaime snatches the photo. ‘Who was she? Who?’

‘Her name was Carol-Anne,’ he says. ‘She was fourteen, just like Paddy. No one ever saw her again and no one talks of it. Guys, Jesse didn’t even know his mum had a sister! But last night his dad told him, said it drove her mad.’

‘Shit, shit.’ Jaime presses a hand over her mouth.

‘And,’ Ralph goes on, his gaze shifting to Willow. ‘His dad said they all used to hang out together. His parents and his aunt Carol-Anne, plus a girl called Lizzie and a boy called Frankie.’

Willow gapes at him for a second. ‘What, my mum? Hey, wasn’t your dad called Frank?’

Ralph’s head bobs up and down on his neck. ‘We need to find out for sure. You’re gonna have to ask your mum, Willow. See what you can find out about Carol-Anne and what happened back then, and I’ll ask my mum about my dad.’

‘Shit…’ breathes Jaime, pressing her hands to her forehead briefly. ‘This gets weirder and weirder. I mean, why the hell wouldn’t any of them mention this before? Have they got some sort of collective amnesia?’

‘No idea, but I’ll ask my mum after school. What was the other thing? You said two crazy things, Ralph.’ Willow dreads asking but she knows they don’t have much time. They have to sort through what they have.

‘He got back to Paddy’s,’ whispers Ralph, ‘and something attacked him, something knocked him down, half in the garden. It scratched up his back really bad, he showed me!’ Ralph shakes his head at them. Willow can see a shininess to his eyes that suggests he is close to tears. ‘It’s bad. It’s really bad, guys, like all bloody and gross. It was a creature. I’m thinking maybe the one whose footprints I found.’

They look at each other and nod, then huddle closer together. The raucous background noise of the school at break-time has faded to near silence – it’s just a background heartbeat – while they’re cocooned and buried in horror.

‘I went to see Iris Cotton,’ Jaime bursts out before Willow can ask Ralph if Jesse is okay, if he needs anything. ‘This morning, but at first she wasn’t home, and then a white hare appeared again, right in front of me!’

‘I saw one too!’ exclaims Willow. ‘It ran down the high street this morning in a hurry.’

Jaime nods. ‘Must be the same one. And I saw it before, and so did Jesse. It ran around the back so I followed and then it was gone, but Iris was there at the back door, just sweeping.’

Ralph nibbles a knuckle. ‘Jesus,’ he murmurs behind it.

‘There’s more,’ warns Jaime. ‘I asked her about the book and she just admitted it. She just said it was her who left it in the shop because she didn’t need it. That’s all she would say and then she shut the door on me because this huge bloody bird of prey was glaring at us from a tree.’ She shudders and hugs herself. ‘It creeped me out. The whole thing creeped me out.’

‘I can’t believe it was her,’ sighs Willow. She looks at Jaime. ‘Any luck with the translations? She must have left it for a reason.’

‘They’re a bit like verses,’ says Jaime. ‘Like poems.’ She pauses, biting her lip. ‘Or spells.’ She tugs a small notebook out of her pocket and flips it open. ‘This word comes up a lot. Praesidium. It means protection, or shelter, or fortress. Oh, and circulus, which obviously means circle. These words were on a page together but I couldn’t translate it all. It’s just the first bit from your photos, Willow.’ She reads on. ‘Then we’ve got absanditum, which translates to hidden or secret? Tutum, absanditum, circlulus. Tutum means safe.’

‘So, something about a circle?’ frowns Ralph. ‘A secret circle? A safe circle maybe?’

Willow’s eyes light up and she clutches his arm. ‘We all said we felt safe in the treehouse! If Mayfield is putting up wanted signs for Jesse, why hasn’t he looked at the treehouse for him? And if a creature attacked Jesse last night, was he saved because he was already half in the garden?’ Willow looks between them, mesmerised by the thought.

‘Maybe,’ replies Jaime but she looks reluctant.

‘Listen,’ says Willow. ‘Casting circles of protection goes back hundreds of years. We’ve got loads of books about it in the gift shop, stuff to do with white witches and paganism, that kind of thing.’

Jaime nods with a bit more certainty. ‘I’ll need to look at those.’

‘I used to be really into it,’ Willow explains. ‘Witchcraft and stuff. It was just silly though, just a phase. I didn’t really believe in any of it but I remember that stuff about circles. They used to believe you could contain energy in them, create a sacred space even.’

‘A safe space?’ asks Ralph. ‘A protected space?’

‘Exactly.’ She nods at him. ‘Maybe… maybe, Paddy translated lots of the book, enough to know he had to make a safe place for himself.’

‘And that explains why Mayfield had to get Steven and Dominic to get the book from the treehouse!’ gasps Ralph.

Jaime shrugs miserably and Willow tosses her hair back. ‘He probably just blackmailed them to get it for him, just like he’d been blackmailing Jesse to spy on people.’

‘You really think he cast a spell around the treehouse?’ Jaime is frowning and looks deeply uncomfortable with the idea. She glances back at her notes then checks her watch. Her hands are shaking and it is obvious that the strange encounter with Iris Cotton has really shaken her. ‘There were more words that came up a lot, almost on every page,’ she says. ‘Versipellis.’ Jaime lowers the notebook and presses two fingers to her forehead as if in pain.

‘What does it mean?’ asks Ralph.

‘It pretty much means shapeshifter,’ Jaime says with a sigh and Willow can see how much she does not want any of this to be true. ‘There are other more obvious words too. Transformatio, mutation, metamorphosis, which leads me to believe guys, that some of it at least, are ancient spells about shape shifting. I just…’ She stuffs the notebook away rather irritably, pockets her hands and glares away angrily, shaking her head. ‘I just don’t know. After everything that happened, it makes an awful kind of sense but I don’t want to believe it. I can’t believe it. I have to believe there is a logical explanation for all of it.’

‘Just like Scully,’ Ralph sighs softly, gazing at her.

Jaime just hangs her head as Willow nods thoughtfully. ‘Logical. There could be. But if so, that’s just as awful, Jaime, if not worse. Logical is that kids go missing in this town and no one knows why and no one really talks about them or remembers them. Logical is a psychotic policeman who spies on people, blackmails teenagers and physically assaults them, maybe even kidnaps them.’ She gulps and looks down at her feet. ‘Maybe even worse.’

Ralph looks anxiously between them. ‘Yeah, I think I prefer shape shifters.’ He attempts a weak smile but it dies on his face and they all fall silent.

Willow scratches her nose, tosses her hair and exhales. ‘It is crazy. But I mean, what Jesse said about this creature, what he said about the black hare too. Shit guys, what if it is Paddy? What if the white one is Iris Cotton?’ She can’t help grinning. ‘My mind is fucking blown! We need to talk to her again.’

‘I still can’t believe how easily she admitted to leaving the book there,’ nods Jaime. ‘We’re figuring things out, guys. She left the book, Paddy found it, probably translated it, and for some reason, Mayfield had it stolen it back. All of it is connected to Paddy being missing.’ She breathes out slowly. ‘I’m scared shitless guys but I think we have to keep digging.’

‘We need a plan,’ prompts Ralph. ‘What next?’

Willow nods. ‘Ralph and I grill our mothers about Carol-Anne then we all see Jesse after school and talk it out. We keep working on the translations and then maybe visit Iris again.’

Jaime licks her lips nervously. ‘Okay. Plan. Iris.’ She visibly shudders, before pulling the camera from her bag and passing it to Willow. ‘You better take this back now, oh, and my mum’s going to another meeting tonight. An urgent one apparently. Something to do with anti-social behaviour.’

Willow and Ralph look at each other. ‘Jesse,’ they say at the same time.

Suddenly, a shadow falls over them. They tense, then straighten up, turning and looking into the narrow-eyed stern faces of Mr Bishop and Mr Hewlett.

Shit, Willow thinks, her stomach dropping, oh shit…

‘What’s this then?’ Mr Bishop demands, as usual no politeness, no warmth. He’s always been terrifying, thinks Willow, shuffling to face him. ‘A mother’s meeting?’ His tone is sharp and snappy. He doesn’t wait for a reply or an explanation. He just gestures to them impatiently. ‘Come on, get out from behind there. Follow me. All of you.’

Thanks for reading!

Please feel free to leave a comment letting me know what you thought of this latest chapter.

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 Eighteen “The Committee”

Black Hare Valley: Chapter Sixteen “Wanted”

~ ChanAtkins ~ 2 Comments
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© 2025 Chantelle Atkins. All rights reserved. This work may not be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods, without the prior written permission of the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical reviews and certain other noncommercial uses permitted by copyright law.

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It’s Ralph who suggests a game of Monopoly. Some of the pieces and money are missing but Jaime sets it up anyway, using the cuff of her sleeve to wipe away the dust as she spreads out the square board. For a while, she’s ahead – the first to collect a street, the first to start buying property. But Jesse is the one who catches her up – stealthily building up his own portfolio, plus cash reserves, until he is sheepishly stripping her of money when she consistently lands on his fully developed Park Lane. She groans in pain as she hands over her money and concedes to selling him two hotels.

It’s Willow who checks the time and declares she better get back for lunch. Mr Finnis appears just then, looking bright-eyed as he passes up a tray of food for Jesse. Roast chicken, potatoes, Yorkshire pudding and carrots. Jesse’s eyes grow wide with hunger.

‘Mr Finnis,’ Jaime says quickly, a bright smile filling her round face. ‘You don’t happen to have any Latin translation books for sale do you?’ Her smile stretches further when she registers the curiosity in his eyes. ‘It’s for a school project.’

‘I don’t have any for sale, but I do have one you can borrow.’

Jaime clasps her hands together. ‘Oh thank you! If you’re sure you don’t mind?’

‘Not at all. One minute.’

He ducks back down the ladder and is only gone for a few minutes before returning, pulling a small book out of his back pocket and handing it to Jaime.

‘Thank you so much!’

‘I want it back, mind!’ He smiles.

Ralph helps Jaime carefully push the Monopoly board to one side.

‘We’ll finish it tomorrow after school,’ she nods with certainty and they all nod back.

Mr Finnis winks then climbs back down and Ralph pauses to marvel at the change in the man. He seems somehow hopeful again and Ralph can’t deny he feels the same. Despite the danger, the missing boy and crooked, inhuman policeman, Ralph feels safer and braver than ever before and he knows it’s because he’s been spending time with the others. He feels somehow full up inside, drowsy with something he can’t pin down. As they climb down one by one, he sees Willow go back and turn Jesse’s head gently to one side. She parts his hair, leans closer then she lets him go and joins Ralph, climbing down.

He dares to wonder if he has found the best friends he will ever have.

They pause on Black Hare Lane outside the bookshop. They are all still smiling, still feeling something different, something better than before. Ralph hates to destroy it but his face falls when he sees the poster pasted to the nearest lamppost. He reaches out and touches Jesse’s black and white face.

JESSE ARCHER: WANTED!

‘Look guys,’ he says in a hoarse whisper. Jaime and Willow gather around him. ‘It says he’s wanted for escaping police custody.’

‘Jesus,’ Willow snaps angrily. ‘That’s ridiculous. They might as well put a reward on it too.’

Ralph’s gaze shifts to the poster beside it.

PADDY FINNIS: MISSING!

‘Makes it look like he’s guilty…’ Ralph gulps.

Willow rolls her eyes and turns away. ‘This goddamn town. There’s something wrong with it.’

Jaime reaches for her, touching her arm. ‘Do you really believe what Jesse said? About Mayfield? And about the hare?’

‘I don’t know what to believe.’ Willow shrugs wearily. ‘I just know we have to do something.’

Ralph nods. ‘I’ve got to go and meet my mum at the new house. Do we try and talk at school tomorrow or what?’

Jaime packs her bag, now containing the Latin translation book Mr Finnis lent them. ‘Yes, and I’ll get started on this tonight. See what I can do.’

‘Meet behind the bike sheds,’ sighs Willow as she strides away. ‘I’ll see you then.’

‘Good luck at the new house.’ Jaime turns to Ralph with a smile.

He grins. ‘Thanks, Jaime.’

‘How do you feel about it? Moving house?’

He grimaces. ‘Mayor Sumner being our landlady? She was already. She owns the caravan site too. Most of the land on that side of the valley actually.’

‘Oh.’ Jaime frowns. ‘What about the other side? My side?’

‘A mix, but most of it is owned by Bob Rowan, I think.’

‘Bob Rowan?’ Jaime taps her head. ‘The man with the Holloway on his land?’

‘Yeah, he’s a recluse, but like, a real one,’ Ralph tells her. ‘He never comes into town. My mum always said to stay away from his property because he hates children.’

‘Hmm,’ says Jaime, ‘and yet Mayor Sumner seems to like them. You know, helping your mum out, trying to take care of Jesse. Weird.’

‘Yeah,’ Ralph agrees, his mouth dry. ‘It is weird. Hey, I better go.’

‘Me too,’ she says brightly, tapping her bag again. ‘Lots to keep me busy!’

Ralph sighs uneasily as he turns and heads the other way. He crosses over Black Hare Road and automatically feels more vulnerable, like the hairs are being gently and teasingly lifted from his neck. He swallows and walks faster. He’s sure it’s nothing, just paranoia after hearing Jesse, but he quickens his pace anyway, breaking into a smile of relief when he sees his mother waiting on the doorstep of the cottage on School Lane, dressed in cargo shorts and an old t-shirt.

Her bike is propped against the brick wall and she’s brushing the doorstep with a long-handled broom. Her long brown hair is tied in a low pony-tail and it dangled over one shoulder as she swipes the broom back and forth. As Ralph approaches, she looks up and gives him a huge but weary smile. She might be tired as she so often is, but her eyes are sparkling and she pops the broom inside and jumps and down as he draws near.

‘I was starting to give up on you!’

‘Sorry I’m late.’

She clutches his shoulder, still jumping. ‘Oh Ralphie, it’s so exciting!’

‘Please don’t call me that,’ he groans.

She steers him towards the front door. ‘Come and see! I’ve been super busy but there’s loads to do.’

He leans his bike next to hers and follows her up the front path. The front garden is tiny, surrounded by a red brick wall and with small evergreen shrubs taking up most of the space. They enter a narrow hallway and coming down the stairs directly in front of them is Mayor Margaret Sumner.

Ralph’s next breath catches in his throat and time seems to slow down. She’s careful and neat and considered in her appearance and in her movements. She wears dark blue jeans tucked into brown leather riding boots. Her scarf today depicts a series of golden hares racing across an emerald green landscape.

‘Ralph! How lovely to see you! I was just leaving.’

‘Hi Mayor Sumner.’ He nods and smiles what he hopes is not a nervous smile. ‘How are you?’

Pleased with his good manners, Charlotte pulls him in for a side hug and uses one hand to ruffle his thick curls.

‘I was just about to show him around.’

The mayor’s eyes crinkle up along with her gracious smile. She sidles neatly past them and stops in the doorway.

‘I am very well indeed, Ralph, thank you for asking.’ She tips him a wink then gestures to the stairs behind him. ‘Now you go on and enjoy yourselves. I’ll let you both get on.’

Ralph watches her go, his stomach queasy. His mother sees the mayor out, thanking her again, then closes the door and drags Ralph into the lounge that sits on the right side of the entrance hallway. She’s gesturing to the furniture: an old green sofa, a faded brown rug over a blue carpet, and she’s telling him what colours she wants to paint which rooms, but all he can think about is Mayor Sumner calling Jesse’s name as he tried in vain to escape the town.

His mother clasps his hand and pulls him into the small kitchen at the back of the house. ‘Can you believe we have this much space, Ralphie? Just you and me!’

‘It’s amazing,’ he says, nodding enthusiastically but inside he feels anything but. The kitchen is decorated in old-fashioned cream and green wallpaper – a patten of teacups and teapots repeated over and over. He steps out of the back door and peers up the garden. It’s long and narrow like Paddy’s, but he knows his mum will make the best of it like she does with everything.

‘Check out the garden!’ she enthuses behind him. ‘You’ve never had a garden before!’

He nods and wonders if that’s what she does at work too – makes the best of it. Or does she really like working there? Does she really like the mayor? Does she trust her? Again, Ralph considers sitting his mother down, telling her everything that has happened but something stops him, something tells him he can’t. Fear, paranoia maybe… and something else. It would sound so silly, so absurd. What evidence did they have for any of it?

2

When Jaime returns home she runs right into a tense argument between her mother and step-father. They are in the pub kitchen, coffee mugs in hand, while the gentle hustle and bustle of Sunday afternoon orders commences on the other side. She can hear Mr Hewlett’s girlfriend, Tahlia, laughing as she works.

‘Everything okay?’ she asks cautiously, swiping a green apple from the fruit bowl on the side and making her way towards the stairs. She is desperate to start translating the words in the photos.

Her mother looks anxious, her brow is furrowed and her lips are tight. She shoots a look at Mark and then comes to Jaime, sliding an arm around her shoulders.

‘Everything is fine, honey. Where have you been?’

‘Just out,’ she shrugs. ‘With Willow and Ralph.’

‘What about Jesse Archer?’ Mark asks, his tone hard, a muscle twitching in his cheek. ‘Have you seen him too?’

‘No.’ Jaime shakes her head and looks at her mother, if only to avoid the intense look in Mark’s eyes. ‘Why? What’s wrong?’

Her mother smiles but it’s shaky and thin. ‘Nothing, sweetheart, it’s just Sergeant Mayfield was here earlier and he’s looking for Jesse Archer. I think he’s in a spot of trouble.’

‘Resisted arrest after breaking in to the policeman’s house, then escaped custody,’ Mark corrects her with a quick roll of his eyes and a sneering tone to his voice. ‘That boy is just like the rest of the family. They’ve always been trouble. I used to be friends with his old man when I was a kid. Soon worked out that was a waste of time. Bloody criminals, the lot of them! Mayfield said he saw you and the others on Taylor Drive where they live. Is that true?’

‘Mark.’ Catherine is staring at him, her head slightly tilted, her tone soothing.

‘We were just in the area,’ Jaime shrugs, hating how fast she can feel her cheeks turning red. She can’t bear the sharp, accusing look in Mark’s eyes. He’s never looked at her that way before. She feels like she is being interrogated or suspected. He’s staring at her as if she is a stranger. ‘Just passing by,’ she adds. ‘The sergeant said he was looking for Jesse but we hadn’t seen him. Honest.’

‘That’s okay, darling.’ Her mother turns her gently towards the hallway and the stairs beyond. ‘Go on up now. I expect you’ve got homework to do.’

‘Yes. Okay.’

‘Jaime.’ Mark’s voice is hard. She looks back at him. His eyes narrow. ‘People have seen you with him. You and the others, so please don’t lie to us.’

‘I’m not.’

‘If you see that boy again, if you know where he is, you must tell us, all right? No messing about. This is serious.’

‘She knows,’ Catherine says with her back to him. ‘Go on now, love. Go on up.’

Jaime hurries breathlessly up the stairs away from Mark’s accusing glare. She closes then locks her bedroom door behind her and sits on the bed, close to tears.

She doesn’t like to be in trouble – hates to think that she has let anyone down or disappointed anyone. She feels personally attacked by the angry accusation in Mark’s eyes. The distrust wounds her deeply. And she feels scared. It feels like the whole town is out to get Jesse and if he is telling the truth about last night, that means he is in serious danger.

Jaime can’t quite process it. It’s not reality yet: boys turning into hares, men turning into monsters, voices in the mist… It’s all just theory, a mystery to be unravelled. Her logical mind believes the answers must be out there somewhere.

She comes back to Iris Cotton.

And the name of the townsfolk, the ones who go back generations. She comes back to the book and the words. She breathes in then out, controlling herself. She will tackle it methodically like a real journalist would. Words first. Then ancestors, the town’s history in an organised timeline. Then, Iris Cotton.

3

When night falls, Jesse sits on the edge of the platform in Paddy’s borrowed clothes with his belly still full of roast dinner. There is a chill in the air and a low mist has crawled across the garden below.

He sits and listens to a tawny owl hooting. Then, a sudden beating of heavy wings. He sits, restless and on edge, like a caged bird and he wonders why Mayfield has not come for him. Why he has stalked around town, listening and demanding, but hasn’t come here. It doesn’t make sense. Nothing does. He sits and drums his legs back and forth and stares out at the darkness and wonders what will happen if he enters it again.

4

Willow diverts to Taylor Drive on her way home but she doesn’t have to go inside again, as Billy and Wyatt Archer are outside the building, fiddling with a dirt bike. Wyatt is leaning on the wall, smoking a joint. The sweet smoke circles in the air above his head as he watches Willow approach through hooded, suspicious eyes.

Billy drops a wrench to the ground with a clatter and strides quickly towards her. ‘You seen him?’

‘Yes,’ she says quietly, her eyes darting around. ‘He’s in Paddy’s treehouse, in the garden behind the bookshop. He’s okay.’

Billly exhales, tilting his face briefly to the sky with his hands on his hips. ‘You sure?’

‘Few injuries,’ she shrugs with regret. ‘But he’ll be okay. Mr Finnis knows he’s there and he’s feeding him. He won’t tell anyone.’

‘Mayfield and Sumner want to take him into care,’ Billy leans in and whispers to her. ‘We can’t let them do that.’

She shakes her head firmly. ‘We won’t. I promise.’

He straightens up, eyeing her warily. ‘Good.’ He looks back at Wyatt.

Willow starts to turn away, but something stops her. She feels tight in her chest, anxiety thrumming through her. She can’t take back telling Billy where Jesse is hiding but how does she know they can trust him? She doesn’t know what to say, or how to put it.

He’s frowning down at her, as if irritated. ‘Something else?’

She examines his face carefully. ‘I don’t know. Just, Mayfield… He’s…’ She glances away, struggling with how to explain it. ‘He’s…’

‘Not right in the head?’ Billy demands, hands on hips. ‘Creepy as fuck?’

She looks down, smiling. ‘Yeah.’ She looks back at him. ‘Billy, we think he might have done something to Paddy.’ She swallows and waits while he thinks this over. He rubs two fingers across his unshaved chin.

‘Nothing would surprise me. That’s why you’ve got to make sure he doesn’t find Jesse.’

‘I know. But…’ She trails off again, wincing as she eyes him in hope. ‘It’s just, if we need any help…?’ She shrugs at him.

Billy looks her briefly up and down, a half-smile pulling at his lips, before he winks and turns away. ‘Just let me know.’

He walks back to Wyatt without another word. Willow breathes out in relief and heads for home.

5

A few more hours have passed and Jesse still feels restless. He appreciates the safety of the treehouse. He doesn’t understand it, but he’s grateful for it. But he also knows he will eventually go crazy if he stays here too long.

He can’t stop thinking about Paddy – where he is, what happened to him, what’s in the book. And he can’t stop thinking about Jaime’s words: ‘doesn’t that mean she’s missing too?’

To his horror and shame, Jesse has never thought about it that way before. He frowns at the garden below and tries to work out why. Perhaps it was because she left a note saying she was leaving? Or because she was obviously unstable even before that? Because she was mentally ill? Because he’s felt betrayed and furious with her ever since? He finds himself looking back on his childhood, which is something he actively tries not to do, but now that he allows it, he sees his mother and all he can remember is how nervous she always was.

How she used to chew her nails until they were bloody, how she used to twist her hair around her fingers and sometimes pull it out strand by strand. How she struggled to do even the most basic and mundane things, like going shopping or cooking meals. He looks back and sees her as a ghost. She was there, but not really.

And now it tortures him; Jaime’s words. Doesn’t that mean she’s missing too? And what about him? If they had taken him last night, what then? Would he be missing himself?

Before he can talk himself out of it, Jesse swings down to the ground. He’s wearing Paddy’s grey jogging bottoms that are too short in the leg for him and a black cable knit jumper that’s too small. On top he wears a dark grey duffel coat which must belong to Mr Finnis. He flips up the hood and breathes slowly. Nothing happens.

He thinks about the black hare. The utter beauty of it – zipping through the mist, staying close enough to lead him to safety. Would it do it again? Would it help him again if he needed it? He swallows nervously, his throat tight and dry as he walks stiffy to the gate.

He knows it’s crazy. Dangerous. But he can’t just sit here and do nothing while Paddy is still missing. He can’t just leave it all to the other three. He can’t be that useless. And he’s never been very good at sitting still. Jesse takes a deep breath that sends shivers all over his body. He opens the gate and creeps out.

Darkness.

He gulps, reminded of the night before – the solid black of the town without power. He looks down and sure enough a silvery mist hovers just above the ground.

‘Hope you’re still around, buddy,’ he whispers then dives down the alley between the two shops.

He pauses at the other end – then spots the WANTED sign under Paddy’s MISSING poster. Holy shit, he thinks with a gasp – they’ve made it look like I did it…

He runs along Black Hare Road, hood up, head down. He passes a few people but no one stops him. He turns onto Fort Lane and picks up speed. There is no one about, though he expects to see a few still mingling on High Street as the shops start to close. At the end of Fort Lane, Jesse pauses again, gazing up and down the wide road for any sign of a prowling patrol car.

He makes his move, scurrying briskly across the street and heading down Taylor Close. He sees two more WANTED signs and almost laughs out loud at them. It’s so ridiculous, he thinks, it’s crazy. Why doesn’t anyone question it? Why have they all given up so easily on Paddy?

He grits his teeth and moves quickly onto Taylor Drive. It’s anger that drives him now. Anger and recklessness, feelings he is familiar with, feelings he can live with. He hurries up to his block of flats then pauses when he sees two figures descending the last steps inside. He dashes around the side of the building and waits. Moments later, he hears raucous laughter and peers out to watch Dominic and Steven walking away, passing a drink between them. Up to no good, he thinks, with a wry smile. He wonders if they’ll run into Mayfield and whether, if asked, they would hunt him down too.

Satisfied they’re far enough away not to see him, he rounds the corner, wrenches open the bottom doors and starts quickly up the stairs.

Jesse’s instincts are telling him to be careful, to be wary. That Sergeant Mayfield could be behind any corner, could even be inside his flat, waiting for him. But his angry reckless side, the part of him that has been encouraged the most, fights back and wins. It pushes him forward towards his front door and seconds later he is standing on the other side of it, leaning back, breathing fast, weak with relief.

There’s a stupefied grunt from the lounge and Jesse can smell that his father is home. He breathes in, then out, closes his eyes briefly to steady himself and then forces himself to move. Jesse never knows which version of his father he will encounter. More often than not it is the absent version. He feels like most of the last five years have been shaped by an ever-growing motherless and fatherless hole. She left a hole so big and dark that his father toppled in and has barely been seen since.

But Jesse knows it’s not all her fault. His father was always a drinker and a moody bastard. It’s just that his wife going crazy and running off have given him the excuse to be even worse.

Tonight he finds the truly sozzled version of Nick Archer and it is somewhat of a relief; the sozzled version is usually weaker and slower and can sometimes be quite amusing. But he can also be unpredictable, his moods switching in an instant from raucous and lively to sombre and self-pitying, to pure fury.

He’s lying on the sofa – the one he’s moulded to – in ripped and muddied blue jeans and grubby white socks. He’s wearing a white vest and an unbuttoned red and black shirt. He’s got his favourite belt on, the one with the sheriff’s badge, the one he used to pretend was a gun holster when they were little kids and still thought playing cowboys with their boozy dad was fun.

Around the room are framed stills from his favourite movies, all westerns of course. The Good The Bad and The Ugly, Pat Garret and Billy The Kid, A Fistful of Dollars. Clint Eastwood and John Wayne. Manly, swaggering heroes, gunslingers, spitting and shooting. Jesse sighs at them, thinking that half of Nick’s trouble is he has never truly grown up. Never worked honestly, never paid a bill on time, never cooked a decent meal, never kept a promise. He’s a man-child, petulant and pitiful, expecting everything but not prepared to do anything to get it.

Jesse is embarrassed to be related to him and winces in disgust when his father raises on one elbow to see who has come home. His expression darkness.

‘Oh, it’s you! Where the hell have you been?’ He’s struggling to sit up now, using both elbows, digging them into the cushions behind for leverage.

Jesse thinks he may as well be honest because the chances are his dad won’t remember any of this next time he wakes up. Besides, he is here to talk, he is here for answers, and he mustn’t lose sight of that.

‘In trouble,’ he says, lowering the hood as he comes closer. ‘Broke into Mayfield’s house and got arrested. I got away but now he’s looking for me, so I’m hiding out.’

Nick Archer absorbs the information slowly, his face scrunched up in concentration as he tries and fails to follow it.

‘What?’ he mutters, finally sitting up. ‘What you saying? What you on about? Trouble?’

‘Yeah, big trouble,’ nods Jesse. ‘I need to talk to you about Mum.’

‘Mum? Mum?’ Nick Archer stands up, wobbly on his feet. He lurches forward and plants his hands on the coffee table to steady himself. ‘Mum?’ he yells now. ‘What the fuck you talking about? What you fucking been doing?’

‘I told you.’

Nick turns to face him, rubbing his hands across his mucky vest. His eyes are bloodshot. His dark hair is lank and greasy and thinning on top. ‘What?’

‘I just told you. I’m in trouble, Dad and I need to talk to you.’

Now his father grips the back of the sofa and uses it to walk his way around. He’s shaking his head and muttering under his breath and Jesse knows the main thing on his mind is another drink.

Jesse moves away instinctively, just in case. ‘Dad? I need to talk about Mum.’ The trouble is he doesn’t know what he needs to ask.

‘What the bloodyhell you wanna talk bout that crazy bitch for?’

‘Was she crazy?’ Jesse asks. ‘Was she, Dad? How do you know that? What kind of things did she say?’ He moves around to the front of the sofa just as his dad makes his way to the back. ‘Why did everyone think she was crazy, Dad?’

‘Why you asking?’ Nick Archer barks at him, spittle splattering his vest. ‘What you wanna know for? She’s gone. She’s long fucking gone, that’s all you need to know. Why you trying to make trouble eh? You bloody boys, always in trouble!’

Jesse sighs. This is going nowhere. ‘Maybe because you are,’ he says darkly. ‘Have you looked at yourself lately? We never stood a chance and you know it.’

Nick lets go of the sofa, staring at his son with nothing but confusion. ‘What? What you sayin’ to me?’

‘You heard me! Who the hell are you to have a go at us? Eh? Look at you! Always drunk, always in jail, never there when we need you!’

‘You come ‘ere!’ Nick lunges for him and misses. He nearly falls over but grabs the back of the sofa just in time. ‘Little shit!’

Jesse moves again, but knows there is little chance of his dad catching up with him. ‘Maybe you drove her crazy,’ he taunts, looking him up and down in disgust. ‘The state of you! Why would she stay? Why would anyone stay with you?’

Nick burps then lunges again, growling, but Jesse side-steps him and he staggers against the sofa instead.

‘I tried to leave too,’ says Jesse, pacing again as his father shakes his head and turns groggily to find him. ‘I tried to leave last night but it didn’t matter which way I went, Dad, I couldn’t get out of his goddamn shithole town! It wouldn’t let me leave!’

Nick’s eyes flick open in interest and for a moment he side-eyes his son, frowning. Then he comes forward again, still dark-faced and reaching and muttering but he’s slower now, stumbling and staggering into the coffee table. He knocks it over and tumbles with it, swearing in pain.

‘This goddamn town,’ Jesse goes on, staring at his father. ‘It won’t let me leave, and it did something to Paddy, Dad. He’s gone. And Mum too. How did she get out, Dad? Do you even know for sure that she did? Why isn’t she on a missing poster, like Paddy?’

Jesse approaches the fallen man who sits slumped against the wall on the other side of the coffee table, looking around himself in bewilderment as if he can’t understand how he got there. His chest is heaving, his face is paler now, as if close to vomiting. He reeks of whiskey – cheap beer and cigarettes and stale sweat. His smells are permanently entrenched in the walls.

Jesse stands over him. ‘Dad, I need to know. Just help me with something for once in your life, please. Did she ever contact you again after she left? A phone call? A letter? Anything?’

Nick Archer appears confused and distressed but he shakes his head from side to side at his son, who is taller than him these days.

‘Nothing,’ he snaps, looking away. ‘Who the hell are you, talkin to me like this…’

Jesse feels like he has him cornered. Weak. He squats in front of him. ‘Dad, I just need to know because it might be connected to Paddy, don’t you see?’

His dad won’t meet his eye, as his face suddenly crumples with confusion. He rests his head back on the wall. Jesse risks touching his arm.

‘Dad, can you tell me about Mum. Anything, please? I need to know. I’m in real trouble, Dad.’

Nick turns his gaze to the side. His hands rest in his lap. ‘Wha’ you wanna know? I met her in school…’ he mumbles, slurring his words.

It’s not much, but it is something. Jesse leans closer. ‘Yeah? Did you?’

His father shifts a bit more and rests his cheek on the wall. His arms move, reaching around to hug himself. ‘I don’t feel well…’

‘Dad, tell me. You met at school? How old were you?’ Jesse looks around wildly, desperate to keep him talking. He gets up and runs over to the dusty TV cabinet, where he kneels and wrenches open the bottom drawer. He’s sure there used to be a thick photo album in here amongst the old western films, and spent batteries and broken remotes. He finds it buried under junk and yanks it out, blowing the dust from the surface. He hasn’t seen it in years but he remembers looking through it not long after his mum left. He takes it over to his father and crouches next to him, flipping through it. ‘How old?’ he asks again.

His father yawns. ‘Fourteen, or fifteen…’

‘My age? Wow, I never knew. Look, here she is!’ He’s nervous about showing photos to his father but he needs to get him talking somehow. He rubs dust from the first plastic sleeve. It’s an old sepia toned photo of his mum as a teenager. She looks small and nervous but pretty, with long dark hair and shy eyes. Nick Archer’s lower lip juts out as he gazes at it but he says nothing.

‘About this age then?’ Jesse prompts, tuning the page. ‘This is you and her together. How old?’

‘I dunno,’ Nick groans, running one trembling hand through his short dark hair. ‘Sixteen maybe. She was happy when I met her.’

‘Yeah? Was she? She liked school? Her family?’ Jesse doesn’t know anything about her family, only that they moved to the valley before she was born then moved away again before she married his father.

‘Didn’t get on with her folks,’ Nick frowns, his hand stealing slowly toward the album. He lays it, still shaking, on the photo sleeve. ‘They were too strict. But she loved her sister!’

‘Sister?’ This is news to Jesse. He has never heard of a sister before, an aunt. Intrigued, heart racing, he leans closer. Their heads meet above the old photos hidden behind the dusty smeared plastic sheets. It’s the closest Jesse has been to his father in a long time. His stomach tightens and contracts.

Nick Archer frowns, his eyes sharpen as his gaze focuses on the photo of himself and his wife.

‘Angie,’ Jesse whispers, speaking her usually unspeakable name. ‘Angie had a sister? What was her name?’

‘Carol-Anne.’ His voice is soft, wondering, confused.

‘Younger?’

His father nods unsurely. ‘Few years. We all used to hang about together…’

Their hearts beat against the photo album. Panic trickles between Jesse’s shoulder blades. He knows he doesn’t have long before the spell breaks.

‘Did you? Who else?’

Nick runs a hand through his hair and grips it. ‘Me, Ange and Carol-Anne, Lizzie and Frankie.’

‘Lizzie?’ Jesse is certain he has heard that name before. ‘The only Lizzie I know is Willow’s mum.’

Nick gives a slight nod. ‘Yeah, her. We all hung about, til it happened, and then… We couldn’t after that. Nothing was the same.’

‘After what happened? What happened to Carol-Anne, Dad? Where is she?’

Nick’s frown deepens, his face stretching and crumpling and stretching again as he tries to sieve through old memories dulled by years of drink.

‘Went missing,’ he splutters suddenly, his tone more certain, his voice a little louder.

Jesse feels his eyes widen, his pupils dilate, his scalp tighten. He feels like he is on the edge of something – something deep and dark and never-ending and any second now he is going to topple in.

‘Like that other kid,’ his father says, a reedy whine now to his voice. ‘She went missing. Fourteen years old, Jess. No one ever found her again.’

Jesse sits back on his knees then moves back again, onto his backside, his legs in front. He pulls up his knees and hugs them. His father is still holding onto the album.

‘Like Paddy…’ he whispers.

‘Drove your mum crazy…’ Nick sits up a little now. He pulls up one knee and leans over it, his head heavy. ‘She was never the same after that. Couldn’t live with it. Said it was our fault. We’d made it happen.’

‘What? Why?’ Jesse looks him in the eye. ‘What did she mean? Why did she say that?’

His father’s head snaps up and their eyes meet. ‘She was crazy, that’s all you need to know. You remember what she was like, son, eh? All fairy circles and curses and witchcraft. She never grew out of it.’

‘I remember, but what did she think happened to Carol-Anne?’

A cold look passes over Nick’s face. He slams the album shut and scowls. ‘What’re you playin’ at messin’ around with all this? Raking shit up? You trying to wind me up, or what? Make yourself useful and get your dad a drink.’

Jesse holds up his hands. ‘No, Dad, not yet. Can you tell me anything else? About Carol-Anne?’

‘I don’t wanna talk about Carol-Anne.’ Nick pushes away from the wall. He’s on his knees, his eyes narrow and cold. ‘That’s what drove your mother nuts, that’s why she ran away from us. That’s all there is to say. Why the hell would I ever wanna talk about Carol-Anne?’

‘Because it might be important! Because I didn’t know about her! Because no one ever talks about it! Why doesn’t anyone know a kid went missing like this before?’

Nick’s nostrils are flaring now – in out, in out. He throws the album across the room and leans closer to his son.

‘I don’t know what you’re going on about and I don’t bloody care. All I know is I got three useless sons and none of them got taken. Why is that, eh?’ He tilts his head slowly to one side, then reaches out a shaking hand, that settles on Jesse’s coat and pats methodically at his pounding chest. Then suddenly the fingers close tightly around the material and he drags Jesse closer. ‘Why?’ he asks again. ‘Why a nice good boy like Finnis? Eh, Jesse? Why not you? I always thought it would be you.’

Jesse pulls away from his grasp and shuffles backwards. It’s time to go. ‘Never mind. I gotta go, Dad. I’ll see you soon.’

‘No, no, no, no, you say right there, Jess, you’re not going anywhere!’ His dad is shaking his head, his eyes lit up no in sneering hunger. ‘I heard you’re wanted now, is that right? Like a real life outlaw, eh Jesse? Jesse James, eh? That what you think?’ His dad laughs and it’s a cruel, cold sound.

Jesse gets to his feet as his dad uses the wall behind to get up. Nick leans there, eyes narrow, lips snarling.

‘Go on then go, if you’re going.’ He waves a hand at Jesse. ‘You know where the door is. I need a drink.’ Nick shrugs violently as if shaking off a bad dream, then he stumbles around the sofa and stamps into the kitchen with a loud belch.

Jesse watches him go – relieved, horrified, hurt – he doesn’t have time for any of it. He’s got some new information, he’s got news, he’s got something that might help. He feels a surge of pride, of hope. He didn’t just sit around the treehouse moping and being useless. He didn’t just let the others run around doing the hard work.

Jesse finds the album out in the hallway. With his dad in the kitchen, Jesse slips out the photos of his mum as a teenager, dumps the album on the floor and leaves.

Invigorated, Jesse tears through the town; through the darkness, back towards the treehouse on Black Hare Lane. He feels afraid and exposed but he also feels brave and fast. He runs with the unique belief of the young, that nothing bad can ever happen and he will live forever.

He doesn’t feel watched until he’s running up the alley between the two shops and then it comes out of nowhere. A thick heavy crawling feeling that hungry eyes are suddenly upon him, but he doesn’t know where. Behind, in front, above, below. In the air all around him. But he can feel it all right. His hairs stand on end like the air around him is electrified.

He tries to breathe but the air won’t come. He tries to run but his legs won’t work. The darkness wraps around him like a cloak, swirling, tightening and stealing the air.

Jesse makes it to the gate but then something impossibly big and heavy knocks into him from behind, emerging suddenly from a deep pocket of darkness where he did not see it lurking.

It rakes sharp claws deep into his back and Jesse throws back his head and howls at the skies.

Thanks for reading!

Please feel free to leave a comment letting me know what you thought of this latest chapter.

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 Seventeen “The Beast”

Black Hare Valley: Chapter Fifteen “Hideout”

~ ChanAtkins ~ 2 Comments
image is mine

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When there is no sign of Jesse Archer by sunrise, Aaron Mayfield shines his torch into Billy Archer’s cell and rattles the keys in the lock. The eldest Archer, who looks like an older version of Jesse and a male version of their missing mother, rises from the bench, yawning widely.

Mayfield swings the door open and waits, watching him in a guarded, measured way. Billy approaches cautiously, rubbing at his bare arms as he keeps his eyes on Mayfield. Mayfield steps back to allow him out, then he lifts his baton and wedges the rounded end under Billy’s chin, forcing his head back. The older Archer remains calm and still, licks his lips once and waits.

Mayfield smiles slowly. ‘I can’t find Jesse,’ he says with his head tilted.

Billy keeps his eyes on Mayfield. ‘Good.’

The policeman’s lip rises in a sneer. ‘I arrested him last night. Caught him in my house and I think he caused the power cut. They’re just fixing it now.’

‘If you arrested him, how can you not know where he is?’

‘The mayor intervened,’ Mayfield tells him, eyebrows raised. ‘Wants to foster him, see, and get him away from bad influences.’ He looks Billy up and down slowly. ‘She decided to uncuff him and he legged it. Now it seems like we have two missing boys.’

‘And at least one is your fault.’

Mayfield lowers the baton but pushes it into his chest. ‘I’ll find him, but if you happen to come across him first, you bring him to me, you hear?’

Billy winks at him. ‘Of course, Sergeant. Whatever you say.’

Mayfield’s smile grows a little wider. ‘She wants to give him a second chance,’ he goes on. ‘Sees something in him, maybe. Not me though. I see the same outcome I’m looking at right now. Criminal scumbag who contributes nothing to this town. But sharp…’ His forehead creases with a thoughtful frown as he presses the baton harder. ‘I’ll give you that, Archer. You and Jesse – like your mum, eh? While Wyatt is a slow and lumbering useless beast just like your father tuned into, isn’t that right?’

‘Whatever you say.’ Billy smiles right back at him.

He waits, their eyes loaded, then finally Mayfield lowers the baton and jerks his head to the corridor behind him. ‘Get out of my sight, Archer.’

Billy exhales, ducks his head and leaves.

2

When Jesse wakes up with a shaft of sunlight warming his face, he opens his eyes then wishes he hadn’t. His head contracts in pain, his scalp tightening as the head wound picks up a steady throb. He wraps the blanket around himself and then realises that someone knows he is here…

There is a pile of items placed on the edge next to the rope ladder. He lifts his aching head, blinking his eyes into focus. A flask, a bottle of water, a box of cheese flavoured crackers, half a packet of chocolate Digestives, a banana and an apple. He’s frozen in fear just staring at them. His first thought is, the hare?

And then, Mayfield?

But just then a head appears behind the food and a concerned bespectacled face is staring back at him. Jesse breathes out slowly. Mr Finnis. His thin black hair is uncombed and sticking up at the back. He hasn’t shaved in a few days and there are dark circles under his eyes.

Paddy’s father comes up a few steps higher on the ladder, then perches on the platform with his legs dangling.

‘I came by earlier,’ he says with a sad smile. ‘It was weird actually. Something woke me in the night and I don’t know what, but I couldn’t go back to sleep. Then around three-ish, I had the urge to check out here, just in case.’ He shakes his head a little. ‘I don’t know. I don’t sleep well since Paddy disappeared. Anyway, imagine my surprise when I found you up here. Dead to the world, you were.’ He looks at Jesse with a wince. ‘And obviously in trouble.’

Jesse pulls his knees up and hugs them to his chest. Every movement is a reminder of the running, falling, stumbling and hurting of the night before. His gashed knee burns and throbs, his head aches horribly and his shoulder feels bruised and sore. Every muscle in his body aches from the endless running. He gives a small nod in response to Mr Finnis’s enquiring gaze.

He nods in understanding. ‘You’ve been hurt. Been in a fight maybe. Your father?’

He shakes his head quickly. ‘No.’

‘Brothers then?’

‘No.’

‘Other kids?’

‘No.’

He sees Mr Finnis frowning at him before he asks, ‘Something you can’t tell me?’

Jesse nods.

‘Okay, okay.’ Mr Finnis takes something from his pocket and passes it to Jesse. It’s a packet of painkillers. ‘You look like you need them. You can stay here as long as you like, Jesse. You’re safe here. I won’t say anything to anyone.’

Relief floods him and tears invade his eyes. ‘Thank you.’

Mr Finnis looks at the pile of food with a sigh. ‘I’ll bring some more later. And more blankets. You’re welcome to come inside at any time. You can use Paddy’s room, if you like. I know he won’t mind.’ He meets Jesse’s eye and receives another nod. Mr Finnis pats the wooden floor affectionately. ‘But you’re safe here. I am sure of that.’

He looks up then as a series of lights flash on in the flat and in the shops further on.

‘Oh, look at that. Power’s back on.’ He looks back at Jesse. ‘It’s only been a week, you know, but it feels so much longer.’ He drifts off for a moment, his hand still on the platform, trembling slightly as his eyes glaze over. ‘And I can’t sleep. I find it hard to do anything because every time I do anything, I feel guilty, like I should be looking for him. And I feel like I let him down. And his mother.’ His voice has dropped to a whisper. ‘She asked me to take care of him, she trusted me to.’ He smiles sadly. ‘But he was just in bed, you know? He wasn’t out on a motorbike or in an alley doing drugs. He was just in bed.’ Mr Finnis places his hand in his lap and breathes out. ‘I think there is still hope though, don’t you? I’m going to put new posters up today. See if it might jog people’s memories. I keep circling the town. Round and round I go looking for any sign of him.’

‘There’s still hope,’ Jesse speaks up and when Mr Finnis looks at him he almost wishes he could take it back; there is such grasping, helpless desperation in the poor man’s eyes. Jesse can feel how much he wants it to be true, something concrete to hang onto. Jesse looks down. ‘I just mean, this might sound weird, but I think I can feel him… When I was in trouble last night, Mr Finnis, I felt like…’ He stops, wipes his eyes and shrugs with a self-conscious smile.

‘I do know what you mean,’ Mr Finnis whispers back. ‘Like me feeling the urge to come out here and check?’

‘Yeah, maybe.’

Mr Finnis looks a little happier. He lowers himself carefully over the edge. ‘I won’t tell anyone,’ he says again.

Jesse leans forward. ‘Willow, Jaime and Ralph?’

‘I can tell them?’

‘Yes.’ Jesse nods. ‘You can tell them.’

3

Ralph arrives first, pushing his bike because he has agreed to meet his mother at the new house at twelve now that it has been cleared out for her. She set off already to meet the mayor there at ten. Ralph props his bike against a broken wall and crouches, picking a stem of dark green grass to shred while he waits for the others.

For some reason, he expected Jesse to be here already, maybe smoking one of those funny cigarettes again, or drinking whisky. Ralph smiles a little wistfully at the thought. He feels a little embarrassed of the way he sees Jesse Archer, but he can’t help it. He’s two years older, taller, better looking, smart, brave and as tough as nails. Sure, he used to be a bit of a bully to kids like Ralph but now that Ralph has had a few glimpses of Jesse’s home life, he can understand why.

He crouches in the long grass, staring down the rolling hills at Black Hare Valley. He can see all the little houses and the roads look like black snakes coiled around them. He thinks of hanging out with Paddy a week ago and his chest suddenly feels tight. And then he thinks about what they did. He feels a nervous fizzing excitement in his belly like butterflies, as he recalls his part in it all.

He remembers the thick bark of the bough between his clenched thighs and the heaviness of the chainsaw as he reached for the branch above. He pictures the sudden solid blackness crushing the town and swallows nervously.

The power is back on. His mother said she didn’t know what had caused it and she hadn’t seemed that interested either. She was far too focused on the new house, on new starts and possibilities. Ralph is happy for her; he knows how much it means to her, but he can’t help feeling guarded. The new house does not offer the same safe feeling to him. He supposes how he feels about the mayor’s cottage depends very much on the book and what is in it, and how much Mayor Sumner might know about Sergeant Mayfield and the missing Paddy Finnis.

Ralph breathes out in relief when he spots Jaime and Willow climbing the hill below him. Willow is wearing her long black cloak again, which he thinks makes her look like a superhero and Jaime looks sensible and determined in blue jeans, walking boots and a raincoat. She has her backpack on and Ralph wonders what new information she will be able to add to her notes now.

They meet him with tight hugs and gasps of relief and Ralph is momentarily shocked into a flustered silence. He wasn’t expecting hugs but he supposes they have been through something quite life-changing together. For a moment they are linked in a circle, arms and shoulders touching, grinning, and it feels good.

Then Jaime scans the area, wiping her hair from her face. ‘Where’s Jesse?’

Ralph shrugs. ‘Not here yet.’

They swap an uneasy look. ‘Do we do this without him or what?’ asks Willow.

Ralph squirms, restlessly. ‘I’ve just got to see the pictures though! I’ve just got to!’

‘Okay,’ nods Willow, looking around one last time before motioning for them all to sit.

She sits between them and they face the town in a line. It’s a clear sunny day but the air is cold and thin. Ralph tugs his denim jacket tighter around himself and wishes that he had worn jeans and not shorts.

Willow seems both sad and nervous as she takes out the photos she took last night.

‘Was it definitely the same book?’ asks Jaime.

Willow nods at her. ‘I’d say so. Everything about it was the same. The only trouble is, none of it makes any sense. Look.’ She holds out the photos and the other two crane their necks over them as she slowly flicks through.

Ralph can see a lot of drawings and designs and patterns, none of which mean anything to him and there are words too, but he can’t make anything out.

Jaime is peering closer. ‘Could that be Latin?’

‘I think so,’ says Willow. ‘But how can we check? We can’t exactly ask anyone, can we?’

Jaime sits back, chewing her lip and frowning. ‘We’ll have to try the library and the school one too, see if we can find something to translate it.’

The others nod and Ralph wracks his brain to try and think of anyone he knows who might have a knowledge of Latin.

Jaime looks at them, still with that intense frown on her face. He’s come to recognise it as he feels hopeful whenever he sees it.

‘We’ll try,’ she says with certainty, ‘but we’ll need to write out little bits onto other paper, Willow, in case we lose the photos or they get damaged.’

‘I’ve started already.’ She digs into her pocket and pulls out a small notebook. ‘Here. That’s what I’ve copied so far.’

‘Brilliant!’ Jaime takes it, smiling. ‘And what we also need to figure out is how the hell that book got there.’ She eyes them both seriously. ‘Because whoever put it there must know something too.’

‘Maybe they wanted Paddy to find it?’ wonders Ralph. ‘But who?’

Jaime and Willow lock eyes. ‘Iris Cotton,’ they sat at the same time, then nod.

‘Why?’ asks Ralph. ‘Because Mayfield wanted Jesse to spy on her? And where the hell is he anyway?’

Willow gazes away in concern. ‘I don’t know…’

‘Iris Cotton is a recluse of sorts,’ says Jaime. ‘And yes, Mayfield also had a camera planted there just like he did at the bookshop, so that connects her to Paddy in one way. What do we do? Try and talk to her?’

No one answers. But Willow looks nervous. She suddenly grips Ralph’s arm and Jaime’s knee.

‘What?’ gasps Ralph. ‘What is it?’

‘I’m worried about Jesse.’

‘Why? He’s okay, isn’t he?’

‘I don’t know, I mean, yes, he should be, but I don’t know! I don’t know for sure. I gave him the book and he told me to run. Mayfield was in the station with his brother, so he was close.’

Now Ralph gets it. And he suddenly wonders why the hell they are all still sat there like idiots. He jumps up first.

‘You didn’t actually see him get out? You didn’t wait?’

Willow jumps up too. ‘He told me to go! He made me!’

‘Come on,’ Jaime is on her feet, shoving Willow’s notebook into her bag. ‘We better go and check on him.’

‘Shit…’ Willow moans.

‘Come on!’ yells Ralph, snatching up his bike. He feels impatient suddenly, breathless and frustrated. He can’t help thinking, why the hell didn’t Willow wait for Jesse?

4

Together, the three of them run back to town. It’s much faster than going up, but it’s dangerous too. The hills are steep in places and remnants of the ruins like to surprise with chalky white chunks poking up from the earth to trip you.

Jaime runs as fast as she can which is far slower than the other two. Willow is out in front, tearing down the hill, veering left towards the woods where Ralph caused the power cut. Ralph is just behind her, bumping along on his bike. Jaime feels her knees jarring with every pounding step and fears the momentum of the incline will send her head over heels at any second. She imagines the absurdity of her rolling down the hill and landing in an ungainly heap at the bottom. Then she tortures herself further by picturing Jesse stood over her and she blushes violently.

She pushes the embarrassing image away and does her best to keep up. They run through the small dense words and tear out onto Taylor Drive. Jaime has to slow down – she can barely breathe and she plods heroically after Ralph and Willow who are moving with dignified purpose towards Jesse’s block of flats.

It’s Jaime who notices the other figure first – tall, slim, in a ripped shirt and scruffy jeans, walking fast in the same direction. Jesse’s brother, she remembers, the one Mayfield arrested last night. She waves at Willow and Ralph to get their attention, then slows to let Billy catch them up.

He doesn’t pay much attention at first – she supposes they’ve never been introduced. He probably has no clue what the four of them have been up to since Paddy went missing, but regardless, she smiles nervously and waves at him.

Billy frowns back, then, noticing Ralph and Willow, he seems to connect the dots in his head.

‘Hey,’ he says roughly. ‘You lot seen Jesse?’

‘No, we were supposed to meet him but he didn’t show up,’ Jaime replies and the four of them fall into step together and continue towards the flats.

‘Do you know where he is?’ Willow asks Billy.

He shakes his head and shoves open the bottom door. ‘Nope, but I’m hoping he’s in here.’

They follow Billy up the steps and towards the flat at the end of one corridor. It’s narrow, dark and covered in graffiti. Billy unlocks the door and strides in, yelling, ‘Jesse? Jess!’

There is no reply. Jaime, Ralph and Willow hover in the small hallway, unsure what to do, while Billy checks each room. The other brother, Wyatt, is evidently asleep in their room as they all hear a yelp and a groan, followed by Billy demanding, ‘Jesse here? You seen him?’ Then yelling impatiently, ‘Wyatt!’

‘No,’ the other boy replies groggily. ‘He’s not here. Haven’t seen him.’

Billy comes back, hands in hair. He stalks over to the sofa, a nasty yellow thing covered in stains. From the hall, Jaime can’t see the figure Billy is shaking but she assumes from the smell and the farts that it is not Jesse.

‘Dad! Dad, you seen Jesse? Has Jesse been home?’

When there is no intelligible reply, Billy gives up and walks away in disgust. He stands in front of them and Jaime feels herself blushing again. He really is handsome, she thinks helplessly, an older, rougher version of Jesse.

‘Okay, you guys better talk. I need to find Jesse. Now.’

‘Us too,’ croaks Willow nervously. ‘He didn’t show up as planned at the ruins.’

Billy eyes them sternly. ‘You guys messed with Mayfield, didn’t you?’ When none of them answer, he steps closer, his head low, his dark angry eyes burning into theirs. ‘I’m not kidding around here. I know you’ve done something. Jesse asked me to pull that stunt in the pub last night. Now, you better tell me what the hell that was about! The power cut! Was that it? What the fuck did you kids do?’

‘It’s complicated…’ Jaime offers, grimacing.

Ralph nods. ‘It’s to do with Paddy.’

Billy straightens up. ‘Yeah?’ They all nod. He narrows his eyes. ‘Listen, I’ve just spent the night in a cell and when Mayfield let me out he said he was looking for Jesse. He said he arrested him last night but the mayor uncuffed him and he got away…’ He eyes them again, watching as their faces pale and their eyes widen. He scratches at his chin. ‘Mayfield wants him bad, you understand? And you swear you guys don’t know where he is?’

They shake their heads. ‘But we’ll find him!’ insists Willow.

‘We’ll warn him!’ adds Jaime.

Billy stares at them all a moment longer. Jaime can tell he wants to ask more but suddenly there is a violent retching sound from behind and a heavy thud as the figure rolls from the sofa. Billy rolls his eyes in despair.

‘Fucks sake! Go then,’ he snaps at them. ‘Find him and keep him safe. Whatever you do, don’t let that psycho catch up with him!’

‘We won’t!’ they cry in unison, before turning and scurrying back out of the flat.

5

Outside the flats, Willow opens her mouth to breathe again and bumps straight into someone’s hard chest. She hears two stifled yelps behind her and knows it must be Mayfield. In dread, she lifts her eyes, her gaze going up and up as if the man goes on forever. He does seem impossibly tall and broad and horribly real on such a dazzling sun-soaked day. He has reared up like an ugly building, she thinks, like a statue, immovable, made of stone.

He is in uniform, one hand resting on the top of his baton. He is wearing sunglasses and lifts his other hand, pushing them up on the top of thick white hair. His blue eyes are sharp and cold. He does not look happy.

‘Well now,’ he says, his voice a sudden boom, a clap of thunder in the still air. They all flinch. ‘Fancy meeting you here.’ His gaze travels slowly over each of them. They are silent, waiting. ‘I’m looking for Jesse Archer. He absconded from custody last night. Have you seen him?’

They shake their heads quickly. His eyes narrow. He licks his lips slowly. ‘You better not be lying to me.’

Willow shakes her head a second time, firmer. She takes a breath. ‘We’re not. We’re looking for him too.’

‘Well then,’ he smiles, leaning closer. ‘If you find him, you know what to do, don’t you?’

Willow swallows and nods.

He straightens up. ‘He’s in serious trouble. Don’t let him make it even worse.’ He pauses to stare at each of them in turn, before walking around them and towards the flats.

Willow reaches for Jaime’s shoulder, breathing hard. ‘Oh my fucking God…’

Jaime slips an arm around her waist. ‘Come on. We’ve got to go.’

They don’t say another word. Ralph gets on his bike and the two girls hurry along beside him.

6

Jesse wakes with a start, a violent twitch jerking his body awake, the remnants of a dark breathless chase still snaring his breath in his throat. He coughs to clear it, then inhales deeply as he sits and rests against the sturdy treehouse walls. He closes his eyes, breathing fast, sending oxygen through his body to calm it down. He has no idea what time it is. The sun is high in the sky, dappled light dazzling his eyes as he opens them to look up. He feels safe, despite the dream, cocooned.

Jesse stares around at his safe haven. He wonders why Mayfield has not come for him yet. He hopes Billy is okay, and the others. And suddenly, his head is full of questions he desperately wants the answers to. What was in the book? Have they met up yet? Have they figured anything out? Are they any closer to finding Paddy?

‘Paddy…’ he whispers to himself, to the treehouse. He can feel him here; it’s impossible not to. Paddy’s place, his hideout, his den. Jesse sees signs of him everywhere. The binoculars, the telescope, the bird spotting books, the books about stars and planets, the posters, the blankets, the sweet wrappers and the smell.

He smiles gently. The first time he climbed up here he felt something new. He felt welcomed and wanted and safe. He didn’t have to fight or steal, or lie or cheat. He didn’t have to act tough or try to impress anyone. He didn’t have to be an Archer, destined to fail, disappoint and intimidate. He could just be. Paddy let him, he remembers now, Paddy was the only one who just let him be.

Didn’t ask anything of him. Didn’t judge or expect. After everything, Paddy just let him be. And there had been this comforting, soothing silence between them. The silence of being, Jesse wonders now, of just existing.

It helps him now: the wooden planks nailed securely under him; the mismatched slats surrounding him which have been sawed and hammered lovingly into place. Jesse smiles as he imagines Paddy and Mr Finnis on their knees, nails in place, putting it together.

His smile fades. He fears for Paddy and for Mr Finnis. His stomach lurches hard and fast so he clutches at is uselessly as the frantic memories come hurtling back. The never-ending dark, the freezing mist with a mind of its own beating him back, containing him, confusing his sense of direction.

‘They don’t want me to leave…’ he says softly, to himself, to the treehouse, to Paddy.

A solemn sadness cloaks him, pulling his shoulders down. He curls protectively over his knees.

The voice… Who was it? At the time he hadn’t been sure; it just felt like a disembodied voice but now he wonders if it had sounded a bit like the mayor… That crisp, sharp, authoritative tone… the slight hint of amusement.

Jesse shudders and drags the blankets up to his chin. He doesn’t dare think of what would have happened if he had allowed them to get him into her car… But he also wonders, would it have led him to Paddy? Maybe he should have been braver. He gulps, grits his teeth. But he’d been so overtaken by fear. Mayfield – that roar. The footsteps in the wood, the breathing. Now he knows he didn’t imagine it before. Mayfield is not a man.

He hears a sound. Freezes.

The conservatory door has creaked open.

Jesse waits. A mop of soft black hair appears at the top of the rope. Mr Finnis. He smiles in relief and plants a pile of clean clothes on the floor.

‘You’re a lot taller,’ he says. ‘But they’ll do for now.’ Then he pulls up a carrier bag and plonks it next to the clothes. ‘Early lunch. Thought you could do with getting some strength back.’ Mr Finnis is smiling at him. His glasses have dipped down onto his nose. ‘It’s okay. You are safe here.’

Jesse smiles back. He believes him. ‘Thank you.’

‘No problem. And also,’ he grins and glances down. ‘You’ve got some visitors.’

Mr Finnis winks at him then climbs back down. Jesse waits, frowning, then gasps when Willow scrambles up the rope in less than a second, crosses the floor and envelopes him in a hug. Ralph and Jaime follow, cocooning him in warm arms, clasped hands, smiling faces. Jesse is still unable to process how to respond to the embrace. He can’t remember the last time he was hugged by anyone.

He feels their hearts, their breaths, their pulse. And he allows himself to relax into them. It’s Willow who pulls back first, smoothing her loose black hair behind her elfin ears. She looks sorry, hands resting on her skinny knees.

‘What happened, Jesse?’

Jaime and Ralph sit back. Jesse instantly misses the contact that had him frozen in shock. He wraps his arms around himself instead, reluctant to speak of the horrors of the night.

He shivers, then can’t stop. The blankets are not enough. He can still feel that murky, knowing mist circling his legs, holding him still.

‘Are you all right?’ whispers Jaime.

He nods at her. ‘Is Billy?’

‘Yes,’ they all say at the same time.

‘We just saw him,’ Willow clarifies. ‘He’s home. He wants you to hide from Mayfield.’ Willow’s voice drops lower. ‘He told us to keep you safe.’

Ralph nods solemnly. ‘And it worked, Jesse, the plan worked. We’ve got photos and there’s a strange language but we’re going to translate it all. So, you did it, Jesse.’

He nods in reply, a small smile fading in and out.

‘But what happened?’ Willow asks again. ‘Did they catch you? Mayfield said you escaped custody.’

Jesse stares at his knees, his heart racing. ‘Mayfield caught me. He knocked me out and when I woke up I was cuffed and Mr Hewlett was there. He was nice, he… he mopped up my head and he seemed annoyed at Mayfield. Then he called the mayor over and she was going to take me to hers.’

‘What?’ gasps Jaime, leaning closer.

He nods again. ‘They want me in their care, they said. A second chance, they kept going on about. But I got away, outside, I got away and I ran.’ He pauses, chewing at the inside of his mouth.

Jaime shifts even closer, slipping her arm gently around his shoulders. ‘Oh Jesse…’

Jesse swallows. ‘I ran and ran. But everywhere I ran I couldn’t get through. There was this thick mist and it tricked me and I ended up at the river and then on the other side. I just kept running. I even tried the Holloway, but it wouldn’t let me out, and I think, I think they were there…’

Ralph frowns, his face pale. ‘Who was there?’

‘Mayfield and… I don’t know, maybe the mayor too. Chasing me, and laughing at me and calling my name over and over. And I couldn’t see anything until…’ He stops again, suddenly strengthened by the image of the hare in his mind. He shuffles closes, his head up. ‘Then I saw a black shape moving in the mist. It was the only thing I could really see, so I started following it and it led me right here. Right across town, I mean, at one point I was up at the ruins, then in the Holloway, but it led me here. Right here.’

Jaime sits back, staring at Ralph and Willow, blinking in confusion. ‘Oh my God…’

Jesse licks his lips. ‘I swear… I know this sounds crazy, but I felt, I swear, I felt like it was Paddy. But it was a black hare. Once I was here I could see it, and it was a goddamn black hare…’

‘But…’ Jaime rubs at her face, frowning. ‘But how can…?’

‘It’s all connected,’ Willow interjects breathlessly. ‘Think about it! Mayfield spying on people. Someone planting the book in Paddy’s shop, like they wanted him to find it! And that book being so important he keeps it secret, then it vanishes the same time he does, but turns up in Mayfield’s house! And they’re all involved. The committee. All of them!’

‘Involved in what though?’ asks Ralph, miserably. ‘In taking kids?’

‘Something like that,’ Jesse tells him with certainty. ‘Paddy is gone because of them. They’re not human, guys. Mayfield roared when he caught me. He roared like an animal! Like nothing human, I swear to you!’ He looks between them, desperate for them to believe.

‘We just have to translate the book,’ Jaime says with a heavy sigh. She slaps her hands onto her knees and looks around at them. ‘That’s what we have to do next. It’s got to be the answer.’

‘But what about Jesse?’ asks Ralph. ‘They’re looking for him.’

Willow shakes her head, her expression troubled. ‘I think Mr Finnis was right. He is safe here. The hare… it led him here. Maybe it was Paddy, somehow, shit, I don’t know how! But Jesse is safe here, I’m sure of it. I can feel it. I don’t know why but I can.’

Jesse meets her eye and nods firmly. ‘Me too.’

‘We’ll keep quiet,’ says Ralph. ‘Keep you a secret here.’

‘Thanks,’ says Jesse. ‘Now, you need a plan for that book.’

7

‘I can’t believe it’s been a whole week.’ Willow sits on the edge of the platform, her legs dangling into the garden below. Like Jesse, she feels both sadness and relief in the treehouse. She feels protected; though she has no idea why, but she also feels achingly sad. ‘Just like this, we were all here together, do you realise that?’

‘It felt good,’ Ralph says without hesitation. ‘It felt right even though I didn’t really know any of you. Does that sound weird?’

Willow and Jesse shake their heads. ‘I felt the same,’ agrees Jaime. ‘And I still do – like we were meant to find each other or something. Like we’ve all just slotted together.’

‘It’s all so weird,’ Ralph goes on. ‘And somehow it feels longer, like we’ve known each other forever!’ He meets their eyes with a shy smile. ‘Anyone else?’

Willow glances at Jesse and sees a hesitant smile in his eyes as he gives a slight nod of his head. He’s so guarded, she thinks, even now, so unsure. Jaime is beaming though.

‘Oh, definitely,’ she agrees. ‘Even though we really don’t know each other at all.’

Willow swivels to face them, pulling her legs up and crossing them. ‘Let’s get to know each other then,’ she says, her eyes on Jesse. ‘Ask me anything. Then we’ll take turns.’

Jesse frowns, his forehead furrowed under his dark hair. Then he grips one wrist with his other hand and leans over his knees. ‘How did you and Paddy first meet? How did you become friends? Do you remember it?’

‘First day of school,’ she replies instantly. ‘Though according to our mother’s we did play a few times before that, at nursery and at the park. But I don’t remember that. I remember the first day of school clearly.’

Jesse gives another quick, unsure smile. ‘Cool.’

‘He sat next to me,’ Willow continues with a whimsical smile. She tucks her hair behind her ears and wraps her thin arms around her chest. ‘And he was so smart he could already read and write. I spilt milk on the table at break, and he passed me this folded up handkerchief to mop it up with, then he let me drink his milk.’ She laughs softly, her eyes down. ‘That’s Paddy for you. Always prepared.’

‘Sounds like he was a friendly guy even then,’ grins Ralph.

‘What are your worst and best childhood memories?’ Jaime jumps in then.

Willow blinks, holds a finger to her lips, thinking. ‘Um… okay. Best, got to be my eighth birthday when my parents finally gave up embarrassing me with whole-class parties, and agreed to let just me and Paddy have a birthday picnic by the river. Then he had a sleepover at ours – first time we’d been allowed that too – and we stayed up all night, stargazing.’ She smiles, then sighs. ‘Worst? Oh well, it’s got to be when I pissed myself in PE because the teacher was in a foul mood and refused to let me go to the toilet. Her fault, not mine!’ She giggles as the others stare. ‘I was nine! But I remember it like yesterday. I was mortified and got teased about it for years after. Ugh.’ Willow gives herself a shake then looks at Ralph. ‘Your turn, Ralph. First time you met Paddy, then best and worst childhood memories.’

Ralph glances at the ceiling, thinking. ‘Okay, well I remember Paddy at the park one day, the one near the caravan site. He was reading a book on a bench. I don’t know how old we were. I think I was six or seven. Anyway I was playing ball with some other kids and the ball hit his book right out of his hands. I ran over but he wasn’t cross. He just gave the ball back and said hi.’

‘He’s never been one for sports,’ says Willow, eyebrows raised. ‘Always has his head in a book.’ She looks up then, wide-eyed as she realises what she has said.

Ralph glances away and shrugs. ‘Best childhood memory. Probably getting a new bike when I was ten. I had beat up second hand ones before that but I’d been asking for a new one for years. That was cool. Worst?’ He rests his chin in his hand, biting at his lip while he searches for one. ‘I mean, it would be my dad dying but I was too little to remember it so I guess just the first time I remember my mum really crying at his grave, and missing him.’ He shrugs again, brushing it off. ‘Jaime?’

Jaime smooths back her hair and smiles a little shyly. ‘Well, I only met Paddy the once which seems so weird now because… well, everything. And my worst childhood memory was not being invited to my so-called best-friend’s twelfth birthday party because I apparently wasn’t cool enough for her anymore.’ She winces over a forced smile. ‘Yeah, I don’t miss my old home much. And the best? Finding out my mum was pregnant. I can’t wait to be a big sister!’

They all grin at her and Willow agrees that it is strange; Jaime is a stranger yet they seem to feel and operate like a tight-knit group. It’s unsettling as much as it is reassuring.

‘Your turn, Jesse,’ she says, looking at him. ‘Same questions.’

Jesse narrows his eyes as if mulling it over then replies, ‘First memory I have of Paddy is that fucking stupid science club presentation he did in Year 5. They made us all watch it and I don’t even remember what it was about but I was bored shitless.’ He chuckles softly and glances at Willow who reassures him with a smile. ‘Best childhood memory? Shit, I dunno, best I can come up with is just dumb shit like riding dirt bikes on the hills with my brothers or getting totally wasted on red wine one Christmas. I dunno.’ He waves a hand, dismissing them both. ‘Worst? Coming home to find that letter from my mum saying she’d had to go.’

Willow stares at him, something stirring in her memories. ‘She left a note? What did it say, Jesse?’

‘Hold on,’ says Jaime. ‘I didn’t know this. Your mum left town? When was this?’

‘When I was ten,’ Jesse grunts, rubbing at his chin with one hand.

‘Do you still see her?’

‘No,’ he laughs bitterly. ‘Never seen her since.’

‘Well, hang on, doesn’t that mean she’s missing too? Like Paddy?’ Jaime swallows and blushes and stares at them each in turn, anxious that she has missed something.

‘I dunno,’ Jesse mutters and Willow can sense him pulling away again, shutting down.

She reaches out suddenly, finds her hand on his arm. ‘Jesse, do you remember what the note said?’

‘No. Just something about the town being bad for her.’

Willow nods and pulls back her hand. She almost squeezes it, wants to rub it even, but all she could feel in return was tension. He’s stiff, his face like thunder. ‘I’m sorry,’ she says and he shrugs.

Jaime squirms, her expression pained. ‘I’m sorry guys, I don’t want to say the wrong thing or anything, but don’t you think this should be added to the investigation?’ When no one answers her, she looks at Jesse. ‘Jesse, do you mind?’

He shakes his hair from his eyes but does not meet her gaze. ‘Do what you like.’

They all look on as Jaime tugs a notebook from her bag. ‘I’m sorry,’ she says again, looking at them each in turn. ‘But it might be important, don’t you think? There might be more to it, I mean. That’s something I’ve been thinking about, you see, whether Paddy is the first person ever to go missing like this.’

To this, Jesse nods firmly and he finally meets her eyes. To Willow, he looks both angry and scared and his jaw shudders slightly when he opens his mouth to speak.

‘Me too,’ he says to Jaime. ‘Because I nearly went missing too last night.’

Thanks for reading!

Please feel free to leave a comment letting me know what you thought of this latest chapter.

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 Seventeen: “Wanted”