Chapter Eighteen
At last Holly heard the unmistakeable sounds of Ailsa in the farmyard, clattering a bucket and scolding a sheepdog.
“Ailsa!” she called; but her voice was swallowed up in the dusty spaces of the loft.
She had to warn Ailsa, in case the sabre-tooth was still around. So she did what she had worked out earlier, first shoving three straw bales over the edge of the platform. They landed with soft thuds. Clive did not even stir in his sleep.
Next Holly lowered herself feet first over the edge of the platform until she was dangling by her arms, and then only by her hands; and then she had no choice but to drop. If a whole pride of big cats had been lurking below, she wouldn’t have been able to pull herself back up.
She dropped onto a bale and promptly fell off it, rolled over and sat up. No cats were lurking. And her ankles were only slightly jarred. She ran out of the open door and over to the farmyard, calling, “Ailsa! Ailsa!”
“Good morning to you! Are you wanting your bacon butties?” said the farmer kindly. “I wasn’t planning on doing them for a bit.”
“No! Ailsa, there’s danger, you’ve got to watch out! There was a big cat early this morning, it came into the barn–” Holly kept glancing around apprehensively as she poured out the night’s events, which Ailsa made her go back and repeat in several places. She seemed calmer than Holly had expected.
“You don’t believe me, do you?” Holly said at last.
“I’m old enough to believe anything, hen,” said Ailsa gravely. “But whatever’s been here, it’s not here now. My dogs would have told me.”
Holly wasn’t so sure. The dogs had stayed quiet all night: maybe because the sabre-tooth’s smell was utterly alien to them, or maybe out of sheer terror. If she was a sheepdog she would have run away to hide.
“Ailsa, we have to warn people!” she urged, her voice trembling as she thought of Nan and her family.
“Let’s get the pair of you inside,” said Ailsa. They went into the barn together and put the ladder up for Clive, who climbed sleepily down it. He picked up the camera, which Holly had forgotten, from the corner of the barn.
He tried to switch it on and pulled a disappointed face. “Not working,” he said regretfully, handing it to Holly. “The case has split. Sorry.”
“But you got some pictures of the big cat on my phone,” she reminded him.
“Did you? Can I see?” asked Ailsa sharply.
“Not at the moment. The battery’s dead. I haven’t brought my charger.”
“Well, never mind, hen,” said Ailsa. She led them over to the farmhouse. Once they were inside its snug, cluttered kitchen, she made Clive tell her the events all over again, more slowly.
“A sabre-tooth?” she said, her eyebrows disappearing under her grey hair.
“Honestly,” said Clive.
“All right, hen.” Ailsa put them in charge of the frying pan while she went out into the hall, saying she would ring the police.
Holly crept to the kitchen door to overhear. She knew she oughtn’t to, but this was important. She needed to know what Ailsa would say. Ailsa did ring the police, although not 999.
“Hallo there, Paddy,” said Ailsa’s voice. Paddy was the local policeman. “I’ve got a strange story to tell you.”
And tell it she did, quite fairly, though suggesting that there might be a big cat like a puma on the loose rather than a sabre-tooth. That was probably wise, thought Holly.
“After all this business with the wolves,” said Ailsa to the phone, “nothing would surprise me. And the lass is too frightened to be making it all up. What? Well, the wildlife park would say that, wouldn’t they? But something’s out there.”
There was a pause, before she went on. “No, I didn’t see it myself. No, I didn’t hear anything in the night. No, Paddy, I’m afraid I haven’t seen any signs, though I haven’t looked round the place thoroughly as yet. But I thought you ought to – yes, of course. I know you will. Thank you, Paddy.”
As she put the phone down, Holly darted back into the sizzle and smoke of the kitchen, where Clive was burning the bacon.
“They’ll send somebody up here to have a look around in a little while,” Ailsa said when she came back in. “It’s a wee bit early yet. The police don’t keep farmers’ hours.” Her eyes twinkled.
“But what about warning people?” cried Holly.
“They’ll do that,” Ailsa said. “I’ll ring your parents in a bit. And what I will do after breakfast is take you back home in the Landrover.”
“Ailsa? Can we – can we go somewhere else first? Can we go to Jarvis Turnpike’s? I – I think we ought to let them know,” she stuttered as Ailsa looked surprised. “I think the sabre-tooth may have come from near there, like the wolves. It might go back. We need to warn them – there’s the baby, after all! And there’s something there I want to look at. It might be important.”
“What sort of something?” said Clive.
“It’s in his house.”
“Very well, hen,” was all Ailsa’s comment.
After the bacon butties – of which Clive ate four – they went back to the barn to fetch their gear. Holly had a good look around for footprints, droppings, anything to show in evidence.
Apart from the overturned tub, there was nothing. No prints. No tufts of sandy fur conveniently caught on anything. No evidence at all.
As she hauled her sleeping bag into the Landrover, she gazed round with a frown. The mist had almost gone. Sheep grazed peacefully on the slopes. Everything seemed tranquil as Ailsa came out of the house.
“I’ve just rung your Dad, hen, and told him I’ll drop you down there in a bit. I warned him there might be a big cat around, but I didn’t quite tell him your full story. Thought I’d leave that for you. No point worrying him too much, eh?”
“No,” said Holly. “Ailsa, what happened to the lame sheep in that field?”
“What?” Ailsa turned and scanned the field. She went to the gate, then went through it and tramped around for a while. She stood still for a moment, looking at the gorse bushes and the trees up on the hillside.
Then she tramped back to Holly. “Well now,” she said. “Well, let’s get you going.”
They piled into the rusty Landrover. Ailsa rattled and banged up to the top of the hill and into the yard of Turnpike Farm.
“Nothing strange here,” she said, looking across the moor as she climbed out of the car.
“How do you know?” said Holly.
“Those rooks would be making a fuss if there was a big cat around.”
Holly hoped she was right. When Jarvis Turnpike came out to meet them, she listened to Ailsa tell the tale about the possible puma once again. Although Jarvis wore his usual scowl, he was not as curt to her as he had been on their first meeting, and he listened to Ailsa with a serious face.
Clive opened his mouth, and Holly, guessing he was about to correct “puma” to “sabre-tooth,” glared at him so sternly that he shut it again. If they started talking about a sabre-tooth, nobody would believe them.
Even Clive didn’t understand what this big cat really was: he thought it was just a scientific experiment, rather than an escapee from the deep past. Nobody else would understand.
Nobody except Doofus. He knew. Suddenly, Holly desperately wanted Doofus’s black, silent presence. She wanted to put her arms around his shoulders, to feel his comforting strength; although Doofus would not want her arms around him.
“So best keep a sharp lookout,” said Ailsa to Jarvis, finishing her warning.
“Don’t worry. I won’t be going anywhere today without my shotgun,” he replied. “And Lexie won’t be going out at all.”
“Can I say hallo to Lexie, and the baby?” Holly asked.
Jarvis led them inside. The baby was having breakfast, quite a lot of which was in its hair. It waved its spoon imperiously.
“Hallo baby, hallo Lexie,” Holly said. “Please could I borrow that rock with a hole that??
?s on your windowsill? I’ll bring it back.”
She could not have told them why it seemed important, although she thought they were bound to ask what she wanted it for. But Jarvis shrugged, and Lexie just said, “Sure,” without paying much attention, because the baby was trying to push a rusk in its ear.
So Holly picked up the stone and slid it into the front pocket of her jeans, where it just fitted.
“What’s that stone got to do with anything?” said Clive, back in Ailsa’s Landrover.
Holly got it out again. “Look through it,” she told him.
He looked. “I don’t see anything,” he said. “Oh, wow. That is really weird.” He raised his head with a bemused expression, and then bent it to peer through the stone again. “Now I can see Ailsa! That’s freaky.”
“What is?”
“Not seeing anything. I mean, literally, nothing, the first time I looked through it: only blackness. But the second time it’s just what you’d expect.” Clive turned the stone in his hands. “Just the windscreen, and Ailsa driving.”
“What’s that you’re saying about my driving?” said Ailsa over her shoulder. She couldn’t hear them properly. “I’ll not come in when I drop you off. I need to be back home before that nice young policeman comes to pay a visit.”
She pulled up outside Holly’s house and they unloaded their gear. There was no Doofus standing guard. Matt was the only one at home.
“Dad’s gone to work,” he said, helping to carry their things inside as Ailsa drove away. “Mum’s taken Nan out for a walk, or rather for a wheel around, seeing as it’s so nice. She said she’d take her early, before it gets too hot.”
“What? Didn’t Dad tell her about the big cat being on the loose?”
Matt scratched his head and grinned. “So what was all that about? Dad said you’d heard strange noises in the night and got scared. Ailsa said you thought it was a big cat. He reckoned you’d heard a farm cat in the dark. Is that why you rang up and left a message to tell us you were okay?”
“A farm cat? It was a big cat,” said Holly.
“It was a sabre-tooth,” said Clive with relish.
“What?” said Matt in his turn, incredulous. “Clive, are you having me on?”
“He’s not joking,” Holly said. She spun round frantically to look for Doofus. “Doofus, where’s Doofus?”
“Mum took him with her. A sabre-tooth? As in sabre-tooth tigers from the stone age?”
“Technically it’s not a tiger,” Clive informed him.
“It wasn’t stripey,” Holly said. “Where did Mum go, Matt?”
“A sabre-tooth whatever. Really? What was it like?”
“Brilliant,” said Clive, and “Horrible,” said Holly, both at the same time. “Matt?” she persisted. “Where did Mum go?”
“Down to Miller’s Clough, to see the waterfall.”
“Right. Come on, Clive,” she said decisively. “We’re going after them. Get your bike, it’s faster.” She ran out of the door with the stone weighing down her pocket, and grabbed Matt’s bike from behind the garage.
“Hey!” said Matt, following her. “That’s mine!”
“Not any more. It doesn’t fit you. Borrow Mum’s.”
But Matt hung back. “You’re cycling down to Miller’s Clough, to warn Mum about a sabre-tooth tiger on the loose,” he said carefully.
“Yes!” she cried. “Why don’t you believe me? You heard about the wolves – this is all part of the same thing!”
“Oh, I believe you,” Matt replied. “That’s the trouble.”
“The cat won’t come into the village,” Clive declared. “I don’t think so, anyway. Not unless it’s really hungry. And there are sheep all over the place, so it doesn’t need to hunt people. In fact, it’s probably asleep right now. Lions spend three quarters of their time asleep.”
“Somehow I don’t find that very reassuring,” said Matt. “It’s the other quarter of the time I’m worried about. Hang on, I’m going to ring Mum.” He pulled out his mobile and swiped it.
A phone rang in the hall, inside a handbag.
“Ah,” said Matt. “Good old Mum. Always take your phone, she says. What a fine example.”
“I’m going to find her,” Holly said. “Come if you like. I don’t care.” She seemed to hear a plaintive howl that echoed round her head, bone-chilling as a midnight ghost. She swung the bike across the drive and set off fast to Miller’s Clough.