The Hunting Ground Read Free

was the paintings. The main house was filled with oil portraits of its first owner. The man had placed literally hundreds of portraits of himself in every room, corridor, alcove and stairwell of the property.
    In each portrait the owner was dressed in leather outdoor clothing – hunting attire – and stood with a weapon in his hand. Sometimes the weapon was a gun. Other times a sword. The owner had obviously favoured knives, but occasionally his weapon of choice was something more exotic, like a musket, crossbow or lance. And in all the portraits, lying at his feet, was the animal he had just killed. A fallow deer, its throat coated in blood. A hairy-sided boar. Doves. Gutted fish. White-feathered owls. Other birds, too, their lifeless feathers always spread wide by the owner’s own hand.
    There were even cats and dogs. Elliott had paused for a long time to look at the owner’s expression when he saw those. There was almost a smile there. It was as if on that particular day he’d run out of wild things on the estate to kill, so rather than wait had simply chosen one of his loyal hunting hounds or even a pet to terrorise.
    The owner was always the central figure in the portraits. He was a tall, broad-shouldered man with a tight, red-curled beard, small close-set eyes and fleshylips. The teeth protruding from those lips were large and exceptionally white. Maybe the owner had asked the artist to touch up their whiteness to improve his looks, but Elliott didn’t think so. Otherwise, surely he’d also have asked for the goofyness the oversized teeth gave him to be smoothed out as well. The owner’s expression in the paintings was always enigmatic, too. It was as if even after all this time dead he still held the advantage, knew something you did not.
    But the portraits weren’t the only ominous aspect of Glebe House. The estate had its own graveyard as well, hunkering in cold stone next to a church at the northern edge of the grounds. Locals from the village a mile or so away had used it for centuries to bury their dead.
    And then there was the mysterious East Wing.
    What had happened to Ben inside there? He’d find out tomorrow.
    Stretching out his arms, Elliott checked the time: nearly two a.m. No wonder he was so tired. Giving the third-floor corridor a last quick once-over, he returned to his room, slid back under the bed covers and tucked the musty blankets around his shoulders.
    Then he listened. Glebe House was settling down for the night, its timbers and ironwork contracting with the cold. Elliott smiled as he heard the ancient mattress on his bed groan under his weight. Gradually, to that familiar, unfrightening sound, he drifted off to sleep.But just before he did so he realised that he could hear a distant noise again. It was like a voice whispering incessantly. But the sound was faint, and Elliott dozed off with its puzzle still trickling across his mind.
    *
     
    Once Elliott was fully asleep, the grey-faced visitor made its way back inside his bedroom. It flashed rapidly through his doorway this time. The hours were beginning to speed up for it again.
    Elliott lay on his back with his mouth open. In the moonlight his tongue glistened like a wet shining disk. Keeping to the shadows, the visitor watched that tongue closely. It opened its own smaller mouth, imitating his expression.
    Then it retreated again. Fetching the baby-sized object up from the floor, the visitor kissed it once, twice, before dragging it away back down the staircase. And as it departed, it sang a little ditty:
     
Five minutes to midnight,
Five minutes to treason,
Here comes the truth without the reason.
No time left for fathers & children,
Here comes the ogre,
Into his season.
     

THE OLD WOMAN
     
    Next morning over breakfast Elliott noticed that Ben was back to his usual cocky, confident self. There was none of the subdued irritability of last night. His hazel-green eyes twinkled when Dad mentioned the doll’s house.
    ‘Did you play