‘So something hot had been in there.’ His eyes brightened. He opened his mouth to say more, but at that exact moment the wind stopped. It didn’t die away; it stopped in mid-blow, like a gasp.

‘That’s exactly what happened last time,’ I whispered.

He grabbed my arm. ‘Quiet!’

We listened. Crows circled the rooftop, then flew off silently. It was so still, we could hear falling cypress needles click and flutter through the branches.

‘No hair,’ Sam breathed into my ear. I could tell his brain was whirling now or he’d have been too scared to make a noise. ‘That cat kept climbing on the box, you said. And now it’s got no hair. What if it was a normal cat and not a bald breed? What if all the electricity made the cat bald?’

I touched my hair, feeling suddenly horrible. ‘Can electricity do that?’

‘It might.’

9

Stampede in the Mist

Then something squealed. Something huge. The noise came from behind the house, way back in the garden, maybe even as far down as the barns. A loud bleat, then a wheezy rattle, like a sheep being strangled.

We looked at each other and quickly scrambled back to the path.

‘Woo!’ I said. ‘What sort of animal could even make that noise?’

‘Best not to interfere. Come on – let’s get out of here.’

He was right, but what if it was the super-fast creature? ‘No – whatever it is might be stuck. You know that, farm boy.’

‘Alfie, we can’t get caught here – we need to leave right now!’

‘Sorry – gotta find out,’ I said, and raced towards the bleating.

I thought he’d leg it home, but – unbelievably – Sam followed and we plunged through the gloomy wilderness, using hands as well as feet to stop the weeds snarling us up. Old farm machinery stuck up here and there like giant tragic sculptures. Things we couldn’t see made muffled scurrying noises, and for the first time, it felt like we were on our own somewhere strange and unpredictable, and perhaps this wasn’t such a great idea.

The squealing and bleating got louder and more frantic.

Sam was a couple of steps behind me. ‘Wait,’ he said, ‘is it coming towards us?’

I shook my head, totally baffled – the noise sounded like it was in front of us, behind us and even above – but then things got even more scrambled because something else was happening at the same time: MIST. It dropped down on us thickly, from nowhere, and we were already deep in an overgrown tangle. It took seconds for everything to disappear except our faces, which now looked like eerie deformed moons. Apart from that, we couldn’t see a thing so had to stop.

Sam stuffed his binoculars in his pocket and said, ‘No way.’