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ONE

Nathan clambered over the moss-covered rocks. He was angry. His parents could try and ground him if they wanted; it wouldn’t work. It hadn’t worked! He was out. He was free and off to explore the woods. So what if he had broken his sister’s phone! She deserved it! She was on the thing too much anyway, even Dad said so. She was always recording herself doing those stupid dances and pulling those faces that made her look like a beaver’s anus.

Nathan pushed a branch away from his face. His unkempt hair already had small bits of twig and leaf in it. He loved being outside. It was the one place where things just seemed so easy for him. He knew he wasn’t particularly sporty or smart like his sister, but he knew how to build a fire. He knew how to build a shelter. Spending a night out in the woods would be easy. That would give Mum and Dad something to think about: a night worrying about where he was and what their lives would be like without him.

Although Nathan felt like he had been walking for a long time, he was not really sure how far he’d gone. He had never ventured this way before. Even though he didn’t live far from the stretch of woods he was traipsing through, he had always been driven to a set route before. The Cubs always had their preferred camping destinations, and Dad always liked a hike with some sort of hill in it. He considered it a pointless ramble if he hadn’t exhausted himself climbing something.

Nathan took his bag off his back and sat down on a fallen tree trunk. It must have come down during the gale last month. He rummaged through the bag until he found what he was looking for, a Mars bar. Bear Grylls might have been his idol, but he was not quite ready to look under rocks for worms and insects to eat.

It was greying overhead as the sun began to think about going down for the night. Nathan knew he’d have to find somewhere to build a shelter soon. That was fine. He knew what he was doing. He’d borrowed his dad’s penknife to cut branches with and had been sensible enough to bring a sleeping bag.

Nathan stood up again and crammed the empty Mars wrapper into his pocket before setting off again. He hadn’t gone far when he came across exactly what he was hoping to find – or at least close enough to claim that it was exact. A tree with overgrown lower branches which now hung so low with the weight of them the tips almost touched the floor. Nathan could work with it, easily.

Taking out his dad’s penknife, Nathan set to work chopping at a nearby branch with the intention of building himself some sort of canopy over the natural frame the other branches provided. At first, he tried to hack at the branch, but it didn’t achieve much; a few scratches in the bark. Not what he’d expected. Realising that that wasn’t going to work, he tried to saw at the thing. That proved equally ineffective. Maybe the stupid knife was blunt? It was not as if the branch he had chosen was that thick, yet all he had managed was to gouge a small divot where the tree’s white flesh showed through. Nathan decided to try and snap the branch instead. It proved irritatingly flexible.

Nathan let the branch go and sighed. He looked around to see if there was a branch that looked more accessible. As he was so intent on making a shelter, he didn’t take much notice of the quiet that was beginning to descend on the area. The birdsong that accompanied most evenings was lessening.

Deciding that, as it was summer, a shelter was less important than a fire, Nathan set about collecting bits of kindling. Fire was always the most important key to survival; everyone knew that. The shelter was just a distraction really. Besides, Nathan knew he could get a fire going effortlessly enough. He was alwaysmaking them at home, ever since he had learnt how to at Cubs and then discovered his dad’s old flint. It seemed to always get him into trouble even though he had them under control every single time. It was not as if he was irresponsible – he was not some sort of fire-starting maniac. He was simply honing his skills.

Nathan was arranging some larger sticks to form a box over his kindling when he heard a branch snap in the distance. The sound echoed through the trees. He froze. He listened.

Nothing. He couldn’t hear anything. It was probably just an old branch that had finally given up on life. Even so, Nathan felt his heart beating a little faster. He pulled his dad’s penknife a little closer and made sure the blade was out before continuing to crisscross the sticks over one another.

There was another snap. Quieter this time, but closer as if something had been deadened slightly against the dirt. Nathan listened again, his heart starting to pump into his throat. His hand found its way over the handle of the knife and lifted it slightly as he listened. This time, he was sure he could hear something there. He was sure that he could hear breathing in the distance. Then again, the blood pumping around his ears and the thumping of his heart made him less sure that he was hearing correctly.

His eyes were transfixed on the direction he thought the sound was coming from. It was definitely the direction the branch snapping had come from. He wanted to run but he couldn’t. He dared not move. It was likely just a fox or possibly a deer. There was not exactly much wildlife in Scotland to be scared of. Nathan knew this. His head knew this. His brain knew this. However, his imagination seemed oblivious. So was the rest of his body.

The noise got closer yet stayed out of sight. His brain told him that any animal that came into the small clearing was likely to run as soon as it saw him. Even so, his hands shook slightly.

Plucking up what little courage he could muster, Nathan let out a short sharp bark. He intended to scare away whatever was coming. It would easily send a deer skittering away or cause a fox to turn in another direction.

His shout reverberated slightly through the quiet of the trees in the still summer air. Nathan listened. The sound of distant movement had stopped. Maybe the animal was considering whether it had heard correctly. Nathan let out another bark. This time slightly longer. This was his territory and animals could stay away for the night, thank you very much.

The unmistakable sound of feet, paws, hooves or whatever it was started again. Only, they weren’t moving away. And they sounded like they were moving quicker.

Discovering that the initial paralysing surge of adrenaline had decreased slightly, Nathan sprang to his feet and ran. Somewhere in the back of his head, there was still a rationale that there was nothing in the wilds of Scotland that could harm him. The rest of his head didn’t care for the fact. He leapt over branches. He slalomed trees. He dared not look back.

He didn’t need to look back; his ears were telling him all he needed to know. Heavy feet pounded behind him. They were accompanied by guttural breathing. Nathan started to sob as he ran. He had never run so fast for so long. He had never known that he could do so. And then he stumbled as something heavy hammered his feet from under him. He felt the air forced from his lungs as a heavy weight pushed down upon his small and insignificant body. And then he knew nothing.

TWO

Steph Patel licked the end of her thumb as she continued to read through the articles she’d collated. There was a one-day-old cut on the end of her it caused by a tuna can lid. The wound had closed but was irritatingly placed.

This was the fifth article she had found on the subject, and it was enough to pique her interest. Like much of the material she researched, it was put together by a small-town paper, local to the area. They were always like that; large papers wouldn’t have touched the subjects with a twelve-foot barge pole.

Steph squinted as she read. She was tired. She’d been at it for a couple of hours. This would be the last one and then she would decide what to do in the morning.

The article spoke about an eight-year-old boy in Scotland. He’d been out exploring but never came back. A search party was sent out, and they were fortunate enough to find him. Unfortunately, what they found was not in one piece. The boy had been ripped apart by something. A local ‘wildlife expert’ had exclaimed how the wounds and lacerations to the boy’s body were not from any creature native to that part of the world. Police had written off murder as there were bite marks all over the body with no use of a weapon evident. The family of the boy were devastated, of course. Et cetera, et cetera.

The idea of a monster causing such harm was clearly thought of as preposterous, but people rarely seemed to consider an animal that had been released somewhere it shouldn’t. This always baffled Steph. Moreover, people didn’t fully understand the damage wild animals could inflict, so they struggled to get their heads around incidents when they occurred. Steph understood well enough. She’d seen things. The worst was seeing a fully grown gorilla tearing a man’s arm off.

Steph’s business covered the sensational as opposed to the easily explained (although she would try to rationalise the sensational), but that was more due to what people wanted rather than her own opinion. To her it was just as interesting to find an unlikely but perfectly reasonable and digestible explanation for something rather than something so out of the ordinary that it would shatter people’s belief in what was real. Steph had never actually found something so extraordinary. She had alluded to the possibility of it as that was her job. She was good at her job. It was why she was going places with a six-part documentary series in the pipeline. Certainly, that was what her agent would have her believe.

Steph ran her index finger along her teeth. It was probably a large cat of some sort. The type that had been kept as a pet by some criminal or other that had either escaped or been released when the owner was bored of it. Pablo Escobar had inadvertently been the creator of a hippo population in South America. They’d had a big impact on their surroundings. However, even less dangerous creatures could have an effect.

Some genius had introduced an American grey squirrel into a London park. The result was that the red squirrel had been pushed almost completely out of England just a hundred years later.

Steph shut her laptop and yawned. Was there enough there to justify paying for a flight to Scotland? There was an article in it for sure, but was there a book? She would have to do a lot of digging when she was out there and pad things out with all sorts of interviews. It could be tricky to make it stretch. Then again, she had an audience; her last book’s sales said as much. Besides, she could always knock something up on the Loch Ness monster if needs be. That was a subject where all the work had basically been done for her but seemed – for whatever reason – to still spark people’s interest.