Haunted Shadows 1: Sickness Behind Young Eyes Read Online Free PDF Page A

Foster
dad and I stood well back, and we knew the fire couldn’t reach us. I enjoyed
the warm tickles on my face and felt the glow spread across my cheeks.
     
    “I’m from Manchester,” I said.
     
    “Manchester?”  The way he pronounced
it made it seem like a foreign city, somewhere in Eastern Europe.
     
    “What’s your name?”
     
    “Alec,” he said.
     
    “Can I ask you something, Alec?”
     
    He picked up another pile and threw
it into the fire. His stock was diminishing, and soon the fire would run out of
fuel.
     
    “Aye, go on then.”
     
    I mentally rehearsed what to say, so
as not to come off insensitive about such a touchy subject.
     
    “Have there been many new plots here
over the last few years?” I asked.
     
    “Plots?”
     
    “Graves, I mean.”
     
    “No, lass, not many. And I’d know.
‘Cos I’d be the one to dig them.”
     
    I could tell from the tightness of
his shirt that his arms were used to a lot of physical labour, so I had no
doubt that it would be him.
     
    “Have there been any at all?”
     
    “Aye.”
     
    He reached into a big pocket in the
middle of his overalls and pulled out a pouch of rolling tobacco. It looked
nearly empty.
     
    “You could use a new pouch” I said,
hoping to find a bribe point.
     
    “Got plenty at home.”
     
    He wasn’t giving much up. I didn’t
know if it was through social ineptness, or because he just didn’t want to tell
me anything. Maybe it was because I was an outsider, someone not from the
village. Someone from a big place called Manchester that he’d probably never
been to but he’d heard about. And was suspicious about.
     
    “Alec.”
     
    “Aye.”
     
    I decided to get straight to the
point with him.
     
    “Have any little girls in the village
died over the last ten years?”
     
    He looked shocked.
     
    ”No lass,” he said.

 
    7
     
    It was completely light outside now,
but it wasn’t what you’d call a nice day. The sky was a milky colour,
completely covered in clouds that seemed to hang so low that they touched the
peaks of the hills that enclosed the village. There was a little bit of life in
the streets now; a milkman drove a small milk float door to door, two women
stood chatting outside the post office, no doubt waiting for it to open. A man
walked down the cobbled streets with a florescent satchel on his back. At first
I thought he was the postman, but I realised that he was posting newspapers
through letterboxes rather than mail, so he was an adult paperboy. A connection
fired in my brain.
     
    “You don’t see many kids round here,”
I said.
     
    Jeremiah walked with the collar of
his coat pulled up passed his mouth, so I couldn’t see his lips move when he
spoke.
     
    “A place like this, no kid will stay
around for long. They probably hit eighteen and leave for the city. Glasgow’s
only a two hour drive.”
     
    I’d been to Glasgow once to visit a
friend who used to be in my class. Not my favourite city by any means, but at
least it had the amenities of modern life; internet, supermarkets, bars, cinemas.
Here you got none of that, it was like living thirty years in the past. Strange
that a city could be only a two hour drive away but seem like it was a
lifetime.
     
    “But there are no kids under eighteen
either.”
     
    “Schools in.” said Jeremiah. He
pointed over to a building on the east side of town. Black railings stood on
top of a small wall that stretched around the perimeter. I could see an adult
stood at the gate saying hello to a group of children as they trudged into the
school.
     
    “Take it you didn’t find it,” I said.
     
    “Nothing on my side.”
     
    “Me neither.”
     
    “I know.”
     
    You’re dying to know , I thought. He had surely seen me
talking to Alec the caretaker, and he was desperate to know what he said. But
he didn’t want to ask me. He didn’t want it to seem like I was actually of some
use to him here rather than some annoying girl who was