Page 54

SOLSTICE

I CAN HEAR DORSET FM blaring out downstairs.

“It’s going to be a real scorcher today, folks! Hottest midsummer in half a century. What are you doing with yours? Phone in and tell me—”

It was so hot last night, too. I spent hours lying on top of my sheets, sweating, thinking about everything that happened in the woods.

The Birds are real. They killed Ivor. What if they’d caught us? I think of finding the old guy in his study. The look on his pale dead face. I get it now, Mum, I do—why you told me never to go in the woods after dark. What if they come for me now?

I’m trying to work out if I should tell my folks about Ivor. It would really upset Mum. Besides, it’s not going to bring him back, is it? And what if Dad did something stupid like head into the woods and try to confront them about it?

I scroll through my phone to distract myself from all the images I keep seeing over and over like they’re playing on a reel in my head: the masked figures... the bull’s head.

Delilah’s posted a new video to TikTok, talking to camera and swishing her new red hair.

“Big night tonight guys,” she says. “Not sure how much I’ll be able to share but I. Am. Excited! It is going to be FIRE.” A wink and a big pantomime kiss to the camera. And then Nathan appears over her shoulder. “Oh yeahhhh! It’s gonna be lit!” He gives a long, manic cackle. He is such an arse. But when I watch it for the second and third time I think I see something in his eyes. Something dangerous. I wonder if I should tell Michelle? Warn her? But what would I say? I have no idea if it’s all just bluff and besides, I don’t want to connect myself with Tate in any way.

My alarm goes off for the third time and I drag myself out of bed. No one’s about downstairs, even though the radio’s still on, chattering away. I shovel down some Shreddies in the kitchen then go to the understairs cupboard to have a hunt around for Mum’s sewing kit. I’m on another split shift: breakfast washing-up in the kitchens this morning, few hours’ break in the middle, then later today we’ll all have to change into our costumes for the solstice celebration. Mine’s too small, so on my break I’m going to let it out at the shoulders. I’m pretty good at stuff like that, which pleases Mum. “I taught you well! I always wanted to bring up boys who would never expect a woman to mend their clothes or wash their dishes.” Maybe I took it a bit literally, becoming an actual dishwasher.

The cupboard is full of cleaning products, plus a couple of bottles of creosote and big heavy bags of industrial salt for the winter. Even stuff of my brother’s: a rugby ball he had signed by the Exeter rugby team, a couple of his old jackets.

The sewing kit’s not on any of the shelves: I guess it could have fallen down behind the boiler. I stretch and reach down into the space, feeling cobwebs wrapping themselves around my fingers. Then I touch something that definitely isn’t Mum’s sewing kit. Something hard and shaped into a blunt point. I snatch my hand back quickly. The shape and texture of it felt like bone.

I kind of know, at this point, that this thing is probably something I’m not meant to find. It’s like a darker version of the feeling I got when I was a kid finding the small stash of birthday presents hidden in the airing cupboard upstairs and knowing I shouldn’t look at the boxes, but unable to resist peeking. And I know I’m going to look now.

I hoist myself farther over the boiler, reach down and grab hold of the thing, which seems to be wrapped inside something soft. When I pull it up I see the material is a heavy dark fabric. I’m fumbling around with it when the thing inside thunks onto the floor. For a moment I just stand and stare at it. I think I know what it is. But it can’t be...

I take a deep breath and pick it up with hands that have gone all shaky.

A black mask. Nothing like the sort you’d get off Amazon or from a party shop. There’s a beak and it’s long and curved and sharp and pretty realistic, with nostrils carefully molded into it. It looks so old: an antique thing from a time when everything was made by hand. I turn it over. It ties at the back with two thick black ribbons.

I know that mask. I just can’t understand what it’s doing here.

I look down at the big heap of black material on the floor. I’d been so focused on the mask I hadn’t noticed the feathers sewn onto it. Hundreds and hundreds of them. I give it a poke with a toe. It falls open and I see the long black cloak, with its hood. A pair of black leather gloves.

It all looks very different here in the cupboard under the bright naked lightbulb, without a body or a face inside any of it. It still has a kind of dark power, though.

My mind’s racing. It all fits. Dad coming in late the night before. How weird and guilty he was about Ivor yesterday. I couldn’t work it out. Now I understand why: he knew exactly what had happened to the bull.

The Birds aren’t just a story kids scare each other with. They’re real. They’re up to something. And my dad is one of them.

I think for a moment. That was some messed-up stuff last night, in the woods. I don’t want my dad having anything to do with it. I think of that night with the locked garage, the tractor... I have to protect him, even if it’s from himself.

I snatch up the whole lot and run the bundle out to my bike, stuff it deep down into the pannier on the back. If I hide them here, he won’t be able to use them. Yeah, I suppose he might miss them. Wonder what’s happened to them. Well, let him.