Hexed in Hawes: Chapter One

The day wasn’t meant to start like this.

No day was meant to start like this.

Although, Adams had to admit as she leaned out of her gate and stared down the path toward the woods, it was a less unlikely start than she might’ve imagined just a couple of years back, and a whole lot less unlikely than she’d have chosen, given the chance.

Somewhere a night bird screeched, and something pale flitted through the trees, and her breath caught, her hands tightening on the baton and her rubber duck-shaped brass keyring. To the left, fields washed up to the houses on the edge of town, while on her right the last of those houses gave way to farmland. The streetlights were distant, the paths were empty, and the moon cast a thin, pale glow over the fading night. No cars rumbled in the distance, no insomniac looked out of a window to see her daring the night. She could’ve been the last person in an empty world.

She bloody well wasn’t, though. There was someone in those woods. And they’d been in her house.

Detective Inspector Adams stepped out into the silence of the long pre-dawn, her pale blue pyjama bottoms near luminous in the dark, and whistled again for Dandy.

There was still no sign of him, and the shadows seemed a little deeper for it.

Not that it was going to stop her.

#

She’d woken with her heart already going too fast, breath tight in her chest and a light sweat clinging to her shoulders despite the open window. She resisted the urge to roll straight to her feet, holding herself in place with one hand clutching the bottom sheet. She couldn’t recall what she’d been dreaming of – monsters over rivers or under cities, stalking automatons or swift-footed wolves, faeries or goblins or sodding toothy hamsters. Or possibly geese. Geese were always an issue.

She checked her watch. Two a.m. A thoroughly useless time. Too early to get up, but already so late it almost guaranteed she wasn’t getting any more decent sleep. She rolled over, automatically making room for Dandy, who, despite her being fully aware dogs on beds – even invisible dogs – were generally frowned upon, always slept on about eighty per cent of hers. She stretched, frowned, then reached out with one hand, followed by a foot.

“Dandy?” She sat up, scanning the dim bedroom. The glow of the one light on the road outside seeped through her gauzy curtains, barely bright enough to sketch the room in indeterminate lines and shapes, but Adams could see enough to tell it was empty. No LED-red eyes glowing in the darkness, or shaggy, Labrador-sized form blotting the carpet. Not that she’d ever seen him sleep on the carpet when there was furniture not designed for him available, but Dandy was as variable in his habits as he was in his size.

She started to reach for the bedside light, then stopped. The whole night felt off, uneasy and strange, like lightning glimpsed on the horizon, silent and full of threat. She reached for the bedside drawer instead, easing it open and dipping her hand inside. Her collapsible baton was there, instantly reassuring, and next to it a keyring holding her car keys, a mini multi-tool, and, more importantly, a small rubber duckie worked in brass. Technically the duck was a torch, but she didn’t squeeze its wings to activate the LED bulb, just closed her hand over it carefully.

Only once she had both the baton and the duck securely in hand did she sit up. She didn’t take her time, didn’t try to be sneaky about it, simply rolled straight off the bed and put her back to the wall, eyes on the bedroom door. No movement on the small landing beyond, and she could see a window of moonlight lying across the rented house’s worn carpet, thrown from the bathroom.

Still no Dandy.

She crossed the room and stepped softly out onto the landing, then checked the bathroom and the tiny second bedroom, which still contained half a dozen boxes she hadn’t quite got around to unpacking. Nothing to explain her unease, other than the persistent lack of an invisible dog. She wondered vaguely if he’d suddenly become invisible to her as well as everyone else, but she was fairly certain he’d have tripped her over by now if that was the case.

Movement, and her breath caught in her throat, her hand tightening on the baton.

No, not movement exactly. A shifting, an unfamiliarity in the old house’s air. The feeling of her space containing someone else, the awareness she wasn’t alone. She tried to peer downstairs without leaning too far into the stairwell itself, but it was impossible. All she could see was the last tread, and the light coming through the glass in the front door. No shadows painted in it, no dirty footprints on the rug, but someone was here, or had been. The hairs on her neck and the twist of her belly were sure of it.

The stairs were as old as the rest of the terraced house, but she’d been here long enough to know their quirks and creaks. She took her time, bare feet silent on the carpet, and once she arrived on the tiny patch of entrance hall below, she went straight to the door and checked it. Locked. Not that it necessarily meant anything around here. Dandy didn’t need a door, locked or unlocked. He simply passed through dimensions by his own mysterious methods, just like cats did.

Straight into the front room, with its rarely used TV and comfily sagging sofa, the curtains still open over the big window that looked over the street. She kept close to the wall as she slipped across to it, peering out from the cover of the room’s shadows. Across the road, the houses were chunky semi-detached numbers with small front gardens that held patches of lawn and bins and flowerpots and shrubbery, but there was no movement in any of them. The houses themselves were dark, the street still, no unfamiliar cars or suspiciously late-night pedestrians to be seen. It looked perfectly civilised and peaceful, any quiet Yorkshire neighbourhood slumbering its way toward the early summer dawn. The back of her neck was still chilled under her head wrap, though, and her arms prickled with the tension of the hairs standing to attention. Something was definitely off, and maybe it was just Dandy being missing, but she didn’t think so.

The kitchen was at the back of the house, and opened directly off the front room. It was a compact, tidy space equipped with a tiny table holding two chairs, the worktop clear and the whole place still smelling warmly of coffee and last night’s cheese on toast dinner. It was as empty as the rest of the house, nowhere to hide anyone bigger than a stray cat (and while Dandy was no fan, and cats were more of an issue than Adams had previously imagined, a cat wouldn’t have chased him out). Whoever had been here was gone.

Adams whistled, then called, “Dandy?”

No response, not that she’d expected one, and that uneasy feeling in her stomach tightened into something hard and ugly. Someone had been here. She could feel it, like fingerprints smudged on a glass, shadows of a stranger. So where was the bloody dog? Had they done something to him? Surely he’d have woken her otherwise.

“Dammit,” she whispered to the night, and pulled on her trainers from the rack by the back door before snapping the baton out to full length, the noise hard and angry in the empty house.

She didn’t open the door straight away, taking a moment to examine her little back garden through the window over the sink. Unsurprisingly, it was empty, and even the low light couldn’t disguise the fact it was in need of some care, her half-hearted attempts at a handful of flowerpots mostly reduced to scraggly, half-dead things. The flagstones that formed a small patio area below the concrete step to the door needed a good pressure washing, too, but the light was kinder to that. Tall wooden panelling divided her garden from her neighbours’, and at the bottom a gate led out to a dirt path, and beyond that the fields, racing to meet the countryside that encircled the town. It was darker on this side of the house, away from the streetlight, the stars pinholes to brighter planes, and the fell that rose in the distance was a deeper shadow in the night, blank and near featureless under a thin moon.

Adams stepped out onto the worn mat at the back door and shivered, considering going back inside for a hoody and a sports bra. Dandy’s absence and the sense she’d felt something when she was upstairs made things feel urgent, though. If something – someone – was out here, she was already playing catch-up.

She pulled the door closed and locked it, just in case anyone got past her, gaze shifting warily over the night. She checked both neighbours’ gardens, pulling herself up to peer over the fences, but they were as empty as her own, other than a startled rabbit who froze among some carefully caged lettuces.

“You’re not going to be popular, mate,” she murmured, and dropped back down, turning to the gate.

Out on the path, she looked each way uncertainly. Left led back toward town, while right led to a small woodland and more fields, farmland and greenery reasserting itself. Both directions looked equally empty, although the shadows were deep and there were plenty of hiding places – even assuming her intruder was human-sized, and that, she’d discovered, was a large assumption. She sighed. Somewhere cattle lowed, and a motorbike growled on a distant road, but otherwise all was stillness, expectant or watchful, or both.

The last time she’d been out here in the middle of the night it had been winter, everything ice and frozen earth, and she’d had a very unpleasant tussle with small, unseen assailants. She didn’t fancy a repeat, especially not without Dandy. Nor did she want to meet any other non-humans, now she thought about it. The more Folk she encountered, the less she fancied running into them on a dark night. Although she had to be fair. There were plenty of humans she wouldn’t want to meet either. But she could arrest them, at least.

She whistled again, the sound high and carrying in the crisp air. It might be summer, but the Dales only gave so much credence to the season. She waited a moment, then whistled again. Still nothing.

And maybe it was nothing. She no more understood what Dandy did with his time than she understood his curious relationship with the laws of physics as she knew them. He could be off on his own Dandy jollies, with no idea she was even looking for him. He was, in actual fact, quite probably fine and dandy.

Adams sighed even more deeply. She was evidently spending too much time around DI Colin Collins. If she wasn’t careful she’d be collecting cheese and cooing over trains.

But the danger of bad jokes was hardly the important thing right now. What was, was the fact it wasn’t just a missing Dandy or a nightmare that had her out here in the pre-dawn chill. Her skin was still crawling, the hair standing to attention like she was a cat with its hackles showing. Even when she’d been a regular copper, blissfully ignorant of things like invisible dogs and mystery ducks and hidden dimensions, she’d known this feeling, and never disregarded it. It had seen her safe when logic would’ve left her felled in a London backstreet.

She tapped her baton lightly against her leg, the duck held loosely in her other hand, and waited. Sometimes that was the best tactic. If one waited long enough, something would show itself. Although she felt more like she was the one showing herself, exposed on the open path despite the low light, and when a cat leaped to the fence of the house next door she started, lifting her baton automatically as she turned. The cat hissed, baring its teeth, and she frowned.

“Where did you come from? You don’t live here.” There were cats on the street, of course – bloody things were everywhere – and she’d found herself cataloguing them the way she did humans, a reflexive listing of presence and characteristics. Skinny one-eyed tabby two doors down. Alarmingly large ginger tom across the road, with a belly that brushed the grass when he walked. An assortment of half a dozen (at least) variously coloured cats living with a cranky older woman at the end of the street, who yelled at them all indiscriminately, mostly to accuse them of stealing her dinner, her sherry, and her socks. Two sleek black cats living diagonally opposite Adams, with a couple who pretty clearly couldn’t tell them apart.

So yes, plenty of cats. She was aware of their scrutiny, even though she didn’t acknowledge them. That was risky, according to the one cat she did speak to. It’d draw attention to her, and apparently that could bring undefined but severe consequences. She felt having an invisible dog probably drew enough attention, but she wasn’t about to start talking to the neighbourhood cats anyway. She didn’t need that on her reputation. It was bad enough being from Down South. Also, cats were so bloody annoying, even when they didn’t talk.

But there wasn’t anyone else around to ask, so she said, “Seen anyone unusual out?”

The cat – a lean brown tabby-ish thing with distinctive, cheetah-like markings, who gave off a distinctly feminine air – lifted her lip slightly, showing a tooth, but didn’t answer. She remained balanced on the top of the fence, moonlight reflected in her eyes, and they stared at each other.

“Helpful sort, aren’t you?” Adams asked.

The cat narrowed her eyes, and seemed to be on the verge of saying something, then movement down the path, toward the woods, caught both their attention. For a moment Adams thought it must be Dandy, but the shape was wrong, the dimensions uneasy. It was four-legged, or seemed to be, but it was hard to be sure in the distance and the dark. All she could make out was a pale form fading in and out on the edges of the trees, too heavy to be a deer, too slight to be a cow, and too tall to be either, unless her sense of proportion was way off. Which didn’t seem impossible – the thing was ill-defined and unsettling, and she couldn’t say why. Just some old instinct sitting up and screaming at the unknown, perhaps.

Then it turned toward them and her breath caught. The goosebumps on her arms violently recruited more on her neck and back, and she drew toward the fence, for whatever scrap of cover it might offer. She could feel the thing’s regard, ancient and alien, and her hand tightened on the duck, not enough to turn the light on, but enough to feel the comforting bite of its wings. Her heart was so loud in her ears it drowned out the night, and she swallowed hard, shouting down the part of her mind that seemed to have decided flight was the best option. She was a copper. If there were any instincts calling the shots around here it was going to be fight.

She, the cat, and the thing in the woods stared at each other, and another figure appeared next to the creature. This one had a more human shape, tall and slim, and while Adams couldn’t see their face, she was as aware of their regard as she was of the beast’s. They raised their hands, and for one confused moment she thought they were waving for her attention, then the cat hissed by her head, and she realised she was looking at some unknown, creepy-spooky Folk of a kind she’d never encountered before, and they were quite likely about to hurl some sort of curse at her.

“Bollocks,” she hissed, and dived for the nearest gate, trying to fumble it open as the night thrummed with sudden heat and power, that imagined, distantly glimpsed lightning feeling like it was gathering overhead.

“Get off!” the cat squawked as the fence wobbled with Adams’ attack on the gate. “Get your own spot!”

Adams ignored her, scrabbling one hand through a round gap in the wooden panel and trying to find the latch. The hair on her arms was making an active attempt to detach itself as static gathered around them, and the cat hissed again, directing it at the woods rather than Adams. She glanced over her shoulder, and the figure seemed closer, or larger, still indistinct, both hands raised and held out to their sides, and that pale, glimmering form still lurking behind them, some vast and ghostly stag perhaps, horned and fragmented and impossible. Her chest was tight with the fright of it, the sheer impossibility of what she was seeing, and static snapped at her fingertips, making her jerk back from the gate. The whole night was alive with creeping electricity, sparks arching and dancing on the fence and among the trees, and Adams gave up on trying to escape, raising the duck instead and aiming it at the advancing figure.

“Detective Inspector Adams, North Yorkshire Police,” she announced, her voice firm and clear. “Stop right there.”

“Genius,” the cat said. “You really think that’s going to work?”

“I don’t see you doing anything,” she snapped back.

“That’s because I’m smart enough to know you can’t arrest the Old Folk, Detective Inspector Adams,” the cat said, her voice smooth and authoritative. “You’re out of your depth.”

“Oh? So I should just sit on a fence and be snotty about it?”

“If you know what’s good for you,” the cat said, and they stared at each other until a snap of particularly vicious static spat from the fence to the cat’s nose, and she yowled, jerking backward and almost falling off.

“Good for you, was it?” Adams asked, then her attention was pulled back to the approaching creature, which had swept forward in a wash of pressure, setting her eardrums popping and her skin crackling. She tried to step forward, to speak up again, but found herself frozen in place, mired in fright and dismay while the looming, pale beast from the woods swelled over the shoulder of the oncoming figure – the Old Folk, whatever that was when it was at home – and the night grew darker and deeper, the human world more distant, and as much as she tried to tighten her hand on the duck, to use its light, she couldn’t seem to manage it.

And she might’ve stood there until the Old Folk plucked her from the earth, helpless and unresisting, except movement surged in the field, and she, the cat, and the two creatures swung toward it, Adams suddenly able to move as the suffocating grip on her slipped. A great, hairy beast bounded through the short-cropped grass, dreadlocks flying and red eyes glowing, looking like a black sheep gone huge and feral and a little grey.

“Old Ones’ sake,” the cat muttered, and vanished into the garden.

Adams ignored her, clamping her hand down on the duck and sending a pale, somewhat uncertain beam of light down the path. “Hold it right there,” she ordered the intruders. Or tried to – in the moment her attention had been captured by the oncoming Dandy, both the pale stag-like form and the upright one had vanished. She frowned, peering toward the woods, but there was no sign of them. They were just gone. There was only Dandy, flying toward her with his LED-red eyes alight in the dark.

He hurdled the drystone wall at the edge of the field effortlessly and slid to a stop so close she had to step back to avoid him trampling over her feet. He was bigger than usual, and she put a hand on his head, examining him.

“What’s happening?”

He just panted up at her, tail wagging gently, and she pointed at the woods.

“What was that? Was it to do with the cat?”

His mouth snapped shut, tail drooping as he looked over his shoulder at the woods, then up at the fence, nose twitching.

“No—” she started, but he was already leaping for the top of the wooden wall. He barely tapped it with his paws as he went over, setting it wobbling again, then vanished into the garden to the accompaniment of snapping bamboo stakes and tumbling pots.

“Dandy!” She pulled herself up on the fence so she could peer over the top. “Get out of there!”

He looked up at her, then crashed through a few more tomato plants on his way to the other side of the garden, where he leaped over the next fence and disappeared again, presumably in pursuit of the unknown cat.

“More worried about the forest monsters,” she hissed after him, but he didn’t reappear. She dropped back to the path and scanned the field and the path to the woods. The landscape looked empty and innocuous, and she shivered as the cool air made itself felt. That sense of a lowering storm had dissipated entirely, and somewhere a normal, non-dandy dog barked. Further off, a truck changed gears, the sound muted and commonplace, a landmark in a world tilting at the edges.

She could almost believe she’d imagined the whole thing.

Not quite, though.

But whatever it had been – whatever they had been – it was gone, and she wasn’t poking into the woods looking for footprints in the dark. The night might feel more familiar now, but everything could change once she was under the cover of the trees. She turned away from them and went back to her own gate, letting herself in and already vaguely calculating if it was worth trying to sleep before she had to get up again.

She was halfway to the door when Dandy came plunging over the fence, took a stand between her and the house, and started barking, a flat, hard, warning sound. She stopped short, staring at him.

“What?”

He just kept barking, and she looked from him to her house, that creeping dread back in her belly.

She had an idea she wasn’t getting any more sleep tonight.