BooksBarbecue
Back Ask No Questions
Chapters (69)
  1. Cover
  2. Dedication
  3. Epigraph
  4. Prologue
  5. Chapter One
  6. Chapter Two
  7. Chapter Three
  8. Chapter Four
  9. Chapter Five
  10. Chapter Six
  11. Chapter Seven
  12. Chapter Eight
  13. Chapter Nine
  14. Chapter Ten
  15. Chapter Eleven
  16. Chapter Twelve
  17. Chapter Thirteen
  18. Chapter Fourteen
  19. Chapter Fifteen
  20. Chapter Sixteen
  21. Chapter Seventeen
  22. Chapter Eighteen
  23. Chapter Nineteen
  24. Chapter Twenty
  25. Chapter Twenty-One
  26. Chapter Twenty-Two
  27. Chapter Twenty-Three
  28. Chapter Twenty-Four
  29. Chapter Twenty-Five
  30. Chapter Twenty-Six
  31. Chapter Twenty-Seven
  32. Chapter Twenty-Eight
  33. Chapter Twenty-Nine
  34. Chapter Thirty
  35. Chapter Thirty-One
  36. Chapter Thirty-Two
  37. Chapter Thirty-Three
  38. Chapter Thirty-Four
  39. Chapter Thirty-Five
  40. Chapter Thirty-Six
  41. Chapter Thirty-Seven
  42. Chapter Thirty-Eight
  43. Chapter Thirty-Nine
  44. Chapter Forty
  45. Chapter Forty-One
  46. Chapter Forty-Two
  47. Chapter Forty-Three
  48. Chapter Forty-Four
  49. Chapter Forty-Five
  50. Chapter Forty-Six
  51. Chapter Forty-Seven
  52. Chapter Forty-Eight
  53. Chapter Forty-Nine
  54. Chapter Fifty
  55. Chapter Fifty-One
  56. Chapter Fifty-Two
  57. Chapter Fifty-Three
  58. Chapter Fifty-Four
  59. Chapter Fifty-Five
  60. Chapter Fifty-Six
  61. Epilogue
  62. Prologue
  63. Chapter One
  64. Acknowledgements
  65. Credits
  66. More from Claire Allan …
  67. About the Author
  68. Also by Claire Allan
  69. About the Publisher

‘Oh, Sacred Heart of Jesus, I place all my trust in you,’ I muttered over and over and over again until I was stumbling over the words and trying to shake the image of Kelly, dead – like actually dead – from my head.

What did dead people look like? I wondered.

Had she been scared?

Had she been alone?

Who was the bad man?

Or the bad woman?

At some stage during the long, dark night I heard voices on the street. Whispers. I couldn’t make out the words, but I guessed they could only be talking about one thing. One person. It was all everyone was talking about. It was all everyone was thinking about.

I wondered if I crept to the window, if I ducked my head through the curtains, would I be able to hear more? I slipped out from under my duvet, still grasping Daisy tightly, and tiptoed to the window. My breath was loud, heavy, misting against the cold glass. My heart thumping so fast I wondered was it possible for a ten-year-old to have an actual heart attack and die.

I almost, almost, didn’t look out of the window, but I steeled myself, took a deep breath and opened my eyes.

There was a man, dressed in black, a woollen hat pulled down over his forehead, a scarf, or jumper or something high on his neck. But I saw him, and he saw me.

He looked straight up at me, raised a gloved hand to gesture to me, to bid me to come to him, and I fell to my knees, then curled into a ball, squeezing my eyes as tightly as I could. Because monsters were real.

The bogeyman we had always been told was just make-believe stalked our streets.

Chapter One

Declan

Thursday, 3 November 1994

Declan and Niall Heaney had gone against their mother’s express wishes and had not come home straight after school. They had been on their best behaviour all day in their stuffy classroom and now all the energy they had managed to control for six long hours needed to be expended.

And they had a den to visit, one they went to every day. Little more than a hole in the large bushes and trees that ran along the side of the reservoir at the Creggan Country Park (or ‘the rezzie’ as they called it), it was the Heaney twins’ favourite place on earth.