He ran from his house on Brookfield Road all the way past the school, past the corner store that was always closed on Sundays, and up towards the fire station, where they kept the single engine that had never, in Austin’s memory, been used for any fire-based emergencies. The volunteer fire fighters brought it out every once in a while and parked it at the top of Beacon Way, the only pedestrian street in Desolation Hill, and they held pancake breakfasts for fund-raising and such, but they’d never had to put out any actual fires – at least not to Austin’s knowledge.

Once the picture of the smiling Dalmatian on the fire-station door came into view, Austin veered left, taking the narrow alley behind the church. His feet splashed in puddles. His sneakers, brand new for his twelfth birthday, got wet and dirty and he didn’t care.

With his breath coming in huge, whooping gulps and a stitch in his side sliding in like a serrated knife, Austin burst from the alley on to the sidewalk on Main Street and turned right, dodging an old lady and sprinting for the square. A beat-up old van trundled by. Up ahead he could hear laughter. A lot of laughter.

Three of them – Cole Blancard, Marco Mabb and Jamie Hillock. Mabb was the biggest and Hillock had the nastiest laugh, but Cole Blancard was the worst. Cole dealt out his punishments with a seriousness that set him apart from the others. Where their faces would twist with sadistic amusement, his would go strangely blank, like he was an impartial observer to whatever degrading activity he was spearheading. His eyes frightened Austin most of all, though. They were dull eyes. Intelligent, in their way, but dull. Cole had a shark’s eyes.

Austin waited for a car to pass, then ran across the street, on to the square. They heard him coming, and turned. Hillock laughed and punched Mabb in the arm and Mabb laughed and returned the favour. Cole didn’t laugh. He only smiled, his tongue caught between his teeth. He had a large handful of paper slips.

Austin staggered to a halt. He didn’t dare get any closer. He’d run all this way to stop them, even though he knew there was nothing he could do once he got here.

The ballot box was old and wooden. It had a slot an inch wide. Cole Blancard turned away from Austin and stuffed all those paper slips through that slot, and Austin felt a new and unfamiliar terror rising within him. Panic scratched at his thoughts with sharp fingers and squeezed his heart with cold hands. Mabb and Hillock took fistfuls of paper slips from their pockets, gave them over, and Cole jammed them in, too.