The Luck Uglies

“Shady, no!” Rye yelled, with no effect.

Quinn followed her from the workshop, shoeless, with Lottie hanging upside down from his arms, still fast asleep.

“Quinn, stay here. I have to go after him,” Rye said.

“No way,” Quinn said, shaking his head. “You’re not going to leave me here alone with her again.”

“Please, Quinn,” Rye said and didn’t wait for an answer.

Rye ran back into the night. She stood in the middle of Mud Puddle Lane, calling for Shady in a whisper at first, then more loudly. With his black fur, he’d be invisible in the shadows. Rye thought about what she would do if she was a cat let outside for the first time. Cats were cautious, so she would probably take her time and look around. After that, well, she’d probably try to catch a bird. The hens?

Rye rushed round the side of the O’Chanters’ cottage towards the yard. She didn’t see anything at first, but she could hear the hens rustling in their coop. The goat was bleating in its pen. Everything seemed restless on the Black Moon. Then, low in the grass, by the side of her house, she saw a strange, pale-blue glow.

She squinted in the dark. Could it be a wirry? It was very still. She crept closer. As she approached, she saw that the blue glow was attached to two glistening eyes. They were yellow. It was Shady. He was crouched low on his belly staring out at the yard and beyond. Maybe she was right, he was getting ready to explore the henhouse. The blue glow came from the collar round his neck. The runestones had taken on an otherworldly light.

Rye pulled at the collar of her cloak and craned her head to look down at the choker round her own neck. It had the same strange pale glow. She had never noticed that before. It certainly didn’t glow when she was asleep in bed. Had it been doing that all night?

She tiptoed carefully, whispering compliments and sweet words as she approached Shady. She was just about to pick him up when he darted into the yard, faster than she had ever seen him move. All she saw was his blue collar speeding past the henhouse. She ran to follow, but the collar kept going, over the wattle fence of their yard. Rye’s words were no longer complimentary or sweet.

She hurdled the fence and watched the collar now well ahead of her. Shady was heading up the path along Troller’s Hill. Once he got to the top he would have two options. To the right was Miser’s End Cemetery – a forgotten old graveyard that everyone said was haunted. Rye hoped he would go that way. Her heart sank as she saw the blue glow stop at the top of the hill. Shady chose to go left, and headed down towards the bogs.

The bogs were not pleasant under the best of circumstances, and Rye tried to avoid them even during the day. They were damp and full of moss, hip-deep in places. It was easy to get stuck if you weren’t careful. Snakes and blood-sucking insects made it their home, and if the beasts didn’t bite you the plants would. Carnivorous bog plants trapped and ate things with their leafy mouths – frogs, birds. Folly said her brothers found one so big it nearly ate one of their hunting dogs. Rye didn’t quite believe that. Of course, that wasn’t the worst thing Folly said someone saw in the bogs.

Chasing after Shady, Rye didn’t have time to think of any of those things. She knew if she lost sight of the glowing collar he would be gone forever. He still had a healthy lead and pulled further away as she splashed through the dark, knee-deep water. The salt fog was rising, making the light difficult to follow. She was shivering, her clothes soaked from the spray of her footsteps. She pushed herself as hard as she could, but her feet stuck in the layers of moss and muck until she could barely move. The blue light faded away.

Rye stopped and threw her arms to her sides in frustration. Running was pointless. Her stomach churned as if she might be sick again. The night had left her head dizzy and disorientated. She listened. Frogs. The hum of a thousand insects, even this late in the season. Somewhere in the distance she heard a splash.

“Shady!” she called in despair, as loudly as she could.

The bog went silent. The frogs – even the insects – stopped humming. Rye felt a shiver run up her spine. Then it went up the back of her neck. It was a centipede. Yuck. She swatted it off.

Then she saw something. A faint glimmer on the ground in the distance. She couldn’t tell if it was blue, but it was most certainly a light. Rye pushed through the muck as best she could. As she approached she realised the light was coming from a mound of earth, dry ground sitting up out of the wetness of the bog. Carefully, she crept up to the clearing. It was a small, smouldering fire, made with loose twigs and logs and encircled with stones. Over the fire, some sort of animal cooked on a crude spit.

Rye had a horrible thought, but quickly determined that it wasn’t a cat. Maybe a big hairless rat or weasel. It looked even less appetising than the sea lion. Someone must have been hungry, as there were already large bite marks in its haunches.

The fire appeared to be recently abandoned. Rye looked around for any clues as to who might have made it. There wasn’t much of a camp, but in the dim light she could see a small leather pouch no larger than her fist lying next to the fire. It was tied shut with a horsehair rope. She crept forward and carefully picked it up. She untied the cord and peeked inside. The three items there were quite unusual. Rye was inspecting them so closely that she didn’t notice the long, nasty-looking club on the ground beside it. The one with the bent iron nails jutting out in all directions.

There was another splash. Rye peered into the darkness. Five or six metres from the camp, two eyes flickered at water level. Something was bent over, using its hand like a cup and drinking from the bog. One of the eyes, independent from the other, suddenly looked over in Rye’s direction. The second one followed, and they both rose up from the water as it straightened at the waist. Even stooped over, the eyes came to rest at the height of a fully grown man. As it stood, Rye knew immediately that this was no man. She was about to run, but was too late.

The creature covered the ground between them in three strides. It had leathery grey skin and large ears, with a pointed nose turned up at the end like a pig’s. Its chest was covered in thick hair and, although tall, it was bony. Rye could see its ribs between its shallow breaths. Under its distended jaw, a long orange beard was plaited like rope and tied at the end with a child’s shoelace. The top of its head was knotty and elongated like a pine cone, with a tuft of coarse hair that matched its beard and would have reminded Rye of a carrot if she had been in any mood for silly thoughts. The miserable beast had metal fish hooks through each ear and another through its nose and, at the corner of one furrowed eyebrow, a small red puncture seeped and oozed. Round its neck was the most horrible necklace Rye had ever seen. Strung on a brass chain were three pairs of what looked like human feet.

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