Flesh and Blood by Simon Cheshire Read Free Book Online Page A

fully fifteen metres away, but I had an impression of age, of foldsand lines, pale sunken cheeks.
    I was transfixed, because it was staring at me. Directly at me, with mad eyes that seemed to ask who I was, why I was there. For long seconds, the face stared into mine.
    And then it grinned. Toothy and insane. It nodded at me, in greeting.
    My nerve snapped. I ran.
    I slammed the front door behind me, shaking with fright and gasping for breath. I kicked off my shoes, wrenched off my coat and ran back upstairs.
    Mum and Dad were still asleep. Not even the bump of the door or the thudding of my feet on the stairs had disturbed them.
    I retreated to my room, pulling the covers over me and shutting my eyes so tightly it made them sting. I tried to blank my mind and think of something nice, or think of anything but the dog, and the figure, and the face.
    I tried to piece it all together, but my nerves were too jangled for rational analysis. How had the dog got hurt? Why had the figure grabbed it like that? Whose face had that been?
    I thought back to what Mr Gifford next door hadsaid about the Greenhills. The face was too old to be Emma’s mother, it certainly wasn’t Emma herself, and it was definitely no kind of mask. It had moved, it was alive, I was sure of that. There was someone living there Mr Gifford hadn’t mentioned, that was all. Simple as that. Some elderly relative.
    Who had seen me. The figure in the garden hadn’t, but the face upstairs had.
    And who was the figure? Too tall for Emma. One of her parents?
    What about the scream that started it all?
    I lay in bed, trying to calm down. I struggled to rid myself of the slithering fear that something was coming up the stairs to get me. I couldn’t make sense of it all. At that moment, I didn’t want to.
    Looking back, I guess even then I could have walked away. Ignored it, put it down to a mixture of misinterpretation and an overactive imagination fuelled by all the fiction I’d read and watched. I could have told myself it was none of my business, nothing to do with me, somebody else’s problem. People say that to themselves every day, don’t they? Turn a blind eye… Hide things away, even from themselves… The elephant in the room.
    How I ever slept, I’ll never know. I must have blanked out a couple of hours later from complete exhaustion. The next thing I remember was waking up with daylight on my face.
    I wriggled over to squint at the clock. It was twenty past eight – I must have slept right through the alarm. If I didn’t hurry, I’d be late for school.
    Jumping up, I checked the view from my window. Bierce Priory looked exactly the same as usual, silent and glowering. A large silver people carrier, a Renault, was sitting on the drive. There was no sign of movement in the house, no faces at any windows. Complete normality.
    I hurried into my bathroom. Ten minutes later, I clattered downstairs.
    Mum hadn’t left for work yet. She was standing in the hall, talking to a tall woman who was wearing an elegantly cut business suit. The woman had a refined, carefully made-up face, with high cheekbones and a smart black bob.
    “Oh, here he is,” chirped Mum, “running late. Come and say hello, Sam.”
    My face must have betrayed a certain wariness. The woman stepped forward and held out her handto shake. It felt cold and soft, like a recently killed fish. I’d guessed who she was before she said a word.
    “Hello, Sam, I’m Doctor Greenhill,” she said in a voice like warm chocolate. “My daughter Emma mentioned she’d met you.”
    “Yes,” I said feebly. Did she know I’d been seen last night? Did she know I knew about the dog?
    “I was just saying to your mother,” she continued, “I’m so sorry we couldn’t come over and introduce ourselves yesterday. My husband had a function to attend last night. It’s so nice to have new neighbours.”
    “Doctor Greenhill says she’ll take us on as patients at her surgery,” chirruped Mum. “Isn’t