Phantom: One Last Chance by Belinda Rapley Read Free Book Online Page A

mist at the bare tree trunks ahead. The wood looked empty.
    “Come on – time to head back,” Rosie said, thinking of the hot chocolate and her mum’s mince pies sitting in a tin in the hay barn. They turned their ponies away, taking the path back to Blackberry Farm.
    “Charlie, do you mind if we have a bit of a trot?” Alice asked, looking down at Charlie on her bike a bit guiltily.
    “No, course not,” Charlie said, wishing for the umpteenth time that she was still on Pirate, or at least on a Phantom that she could control. “See you back there.”
    Charlie smiled as the others set off, with Scout powering away at the front, Wish behind him, neatly arching her caramel neck, and Dancer trundling along at the back. As the hoofbeats and the calls of the girls faded, everything fell silent. Charlie heard a twig snap, and then another, echoing through the trees. She turned round,peering into the wood, but it was difficult to pinpoint where the noise had come from. She froze, holding her breath. Everything was eerily still.
    “Must have been a deer or something,” she whispered to herself, instinctively reaching out her hand to pat her bike as if it were Pirate. Her heart started to pound. She turned back and pushed off. With one glance over her shoulder, she began to pedal furiously to catch up with the others.

    When Charlie reached the yard, it was pandemonium.
    “The hair’s broken!” Mia called out as Charlie squeakily braked by the gate.
    “And Hettie’s loose!” Alice added, trying to shepherd the runaway sheep with one hand and hang onto Scout’s reins with the other as her pony ducked in the opposite direction. Rosie was tryingto help Alice, but Dancer seemed to have decided that sheep were on her list of things to be scared of, her eyes goggling wildly as she planted herself near her stable and refused to budge another inch.
    Rosie passed Dancer’s reins to Alice, then helped Charlie to usher a reluctant Hettie out of the yard and back into her field.
    “There are black mane hairs wrapped round my mane comb,” Mia said, holding Wish’s reins at the buckle end as she ducked into the tack room.
    Charlie doubled back to the turnout paddock, unsure what she’d find. But after discovering Pirate’s mane had been combed the day before, she suspected that the black hairs would be linked to her pony again. He was standing in the far corner, his head over the post-and-rail fencing and looking out into the woods.
    “Pirate!” she called. At first her little bay didn’t respond, then when she called again he slowly turned and looked towards her. She climbed the gate, starting to panic in case anything hadhappened to him. She jogged over the rutted ground until she reached him, her cheeks puffing great white breaths. Pirate whickered softly to her. She glanced over him: he looked exactly the same as usual – except for his mane. It had been neatened so that it was hanging much more smartly than was normal. And there, in a small pile by the side of the fence, was a bundle of black hair.
    Charlie stepped up to the fencing and peered over, but there was nothing to see except the bushes and tree trunks beyond. She strained to listen, but everything was silent, except for a few birds tweeting and the occasional rustle and flap of a pigeon in the trees above. Then she noticed that the leaf-strewn area just the other side of the fencing was the only bit that didn’t have white frost over it, and the leaves had been flattened as if someone had sat there, watching. She frowned, then with one last sweeping glance out into the woods she turned to head back to the gate.
    “Come on, Pirate,” she said quietly, clickingher tongue. Pirate followed her across the field and she put him back into his box as the others emerged from the tack room.
    “We’re heading to the hay barn,” Alice told her. “Rosie’s just getting the hot chocolates.”
    Charlie nodded, and they climbed the ladder and huddled together in the