More than once, I, for one, thought I saw something black darting across the edge of a shadow. My heart pounded and my throat dried up and I kept touching Prince’s neck with my fingers to make sure he was there. I knew the others were thinking and seeing, or thinking they were seeing, the same things, for all of a sudden we began to talk out loud to give ourselves courage.

  After a minute or two we recalled another story, the one about a man who was walking along the road one night. He heard footsteps behind him and when he looked around he saw, coming after him, a pair of black shoes with nobody in them – nobody he could see, that is – so he ran and ran but the shoes kept running after him, and it wasn’t until he turned in through his own gate that they disappeared. We knew it was the devil again, following the man because he had been so bad, probably drinking and playing cards, like the man who saw the pig.

  When we thought of the black shoes we stopped talking out loud and paused and listened, for we thought we heard a footstep behind us. But if there was anything, it stopped too. It was the same every time we walked on and stopped. So we started off faster than ever again, and soon we were walking so fast we were nearly running. Then the moon came out and lit up the road, and we could see there wasn’t a thing on it except ourselves and the dog, so we slowed down.

  A minute later the moon slid back behind the clouds, leaving the shadows deeper and darker than before, and soon we were thinking all sorts of weird things again. This time it wasn’t about the black pig or the devil’s shoes. It was about hearses and coffins, for it was on nights like this that the IRA gun-runners would have brought their hearses out. My father always told me about them whenever he got to talking about the Troubles we used to have here in the North. He said the gun-runners would wait for a real dark night, and then they would set off with their hearses along the back roads. However, the police would be lying behind the hedges, waiting to stop the first hearse that came along, and when they did they would open the coffin to see if there really was a body in it, or, as they suspected, guns.

  As we talked about it now, we could imagine it all, right down to the black top hats and the shining silver handles on the coffins. We could hear noises too. Nothing we could put our finger on, but they were there … first behind one hedge, then another. Ahead a bit, then behind. They fitted just what we were thinking, and before we knew it, we were looking around again, expecting every minute to see figures flitting past or a gleaming black hearse gliding down the road behind us. It was so dark now we couldn’t see as much as a coffin’s length behind us. Yet we knew a hearse could go like the wind and just as quietly, and might be bearing down on us without us knowing it.

  I took a good grip of Prince’s collar and we skimmed along again for all we were worth and didn’t slow down until we saw the lights of Juno’s caravans up ahead. We felt a lot safer then.

  We expected to hear Juno strumming on his guitar and maybe singing his favourite song, the one about the bridle hanging on the wall, but not so, and we soon found out why. He wasn’t there. Rosie, his mother, was giving out for all she was worth. I couldn’t repeat all she was saying, for her language was choice to say the least, but she was giving out about that good-for-nothing Juno going off and not bringing back as much as a bite to eat for his poor half-starved children. Probably drinking with that ‘eejit’ Shouting Sam again, she had no doubt, and knowing Juno as we did we felt she was more than likely right. When the dogs started barking we thought she was going to come out to see if there was any sign of him, so we slipped past as quickly as we could.

  Shortly after that, the clouds broke up a bit and the moon came out for long spells and lit up the country-side, and we weren’t as scared as when we had set out. Soon Big Hughie’s place was behind us, and we found the gate leading into the fields that border on the Cotton Bog. The gate was partly open and we knew Big Hughie had taken the bull in for the night.

  Wariff Hill looked darker and more sinister than ever now, but there was no turning back, and in we went. We kept well to the top of the fields so that we wouldn’t stumble into the flax dams or the bog or the swamps, and felt our way cautiously along the hedges until we were at the foot of the field leading up to the hill. We scanned the fairy fort from the cover of the hedge. There was no light or movement on it as far as we could see, and on we pressed. Soon we were at the stone wall on the edge of the hazels. It looked terribly dark in below them, and I was glad I had brought my torch. Holding on to Prince and to each other, we started into the bushes.

  If Wariff Hill is quiet in the daytime, it’s quieter at night. Now and then we stopped and listened. There wasn’t a single thing stirring. Our throats were dry and our eyes were like saucers as we tried to see through the wall of darkness beyond the yellow rim of torchlight.

  Up and up we went, stumbling, stepping on each other’s heels and toes, holding on, looking ahead, looking back, looking up and looking all around. At long last we saw the moonlight at the end of the tunnel of hazels. I switched off my torch and cautiously we crept forward the last few feet.

  At the edge of the bushes we paused and scanned the fairy fort. Nothing moved. I licked my lips and still holding on to Prince, ventured out. The others followed, each holding on to the one in front. It was cold, but the sweat was breaking out on my brow. I looked at the moon; its face was leering down at us in a fearsome fashion.

  Suddenly Prince gave a growl, and I could feel the hair rising on the back of his neck. The others felt me stiffen and we stopped in our tracks. Then we heard it, a long low groan that struck fear into our hearts. Where had it come from? What way could we run? For a moment we stood rooted to the spot. Terrifying thoughts flashed through my mind. I looked up at the fairy fort, half expecting to see the phantom rising up before us. There was nothing. The bull, I thought. I glanced around. Nothing. Then we heard it again. This time we didn’t wait to decide which way to run. We just ran.

  We had hardly gone a few wild steps when we tripped and fell headlong. The groaning seemed right beneath us now, and our cries of fear added to the terror and confusion. Fortunately, as I picked myself up, I found my fingers slipping over something vaguely familiar, and as we raced for the hazels I realised what it was.

  ‘Wait, wait!’ I cried. ‘That’s Juno back there. It’s Juno!’

  I turned and picked my way back through the bracken with the aid of the torch and, sure enough, there was Juno lying on his back below a clump of ferns. Prince was licking his face, which we could see by the light of the torch was bruised and bleeding. He was only half conscious and couldn’t talk. Gently we lifted him, Doubter and Curly taking his legs, Cowlick and myself his arms, and with Totey leading the way with the torch, we set out to carry him back to his campsite.

  We hadn’t realised anyone could be so heavy. Juno was a dead weight and it was a nightmare carrying him down through the hazels and across the fields. After numerous trips, stumbles, and stops to rest, we finally reached the road. There we had another long rest before picking him up again and staggering the remaining half mile.

  Rosie nearly threw a fit when she saw the state Juno was in, and so did his wife, but then, realising he wasn’t drunk, they immediately started expressing the greatest concern for him and bathed his cuts and bruises with a tenderness we never dreamed they possessed. As a result, he had sufficiently recovered before we left to tell us what had happened, though not until he had thanked us ten times over.

  ‘B’dad, Tapser alanna,’ he said, feeling the bruises on his puffed face, ‘’twas a good thing you recognised the feel of the badges on my belt. A good thing and no mistake.’

  ‘Exposure you might have died from, Juno, exposure,’ agreed his mother. ‘And your poor face all cuts and bruises. What in the name of all that’s holy happened? Sure I’ve never known you to take a fall like that, and you stone-cold sober.’

  ‘A fall?’ said Juno indignantly. ‘A fall, was it?’

  ‘You mean it wasn’t a fall?’ I asked him.

  ‘Faith and it wasn’t.’ He groaned and lay back on the patchwork bedclothes while his mother and his wife took turns at holding a wet cloth to his forehead. We looked at each other and waited to hear.

  ‘Yerra,’ he said, ‘I went up to the hill just before dark to check a few snares, and I was peeping down in through the briars at the first rabbit hole when two fellas stepped up behind me, caught me by the arms and spun me around …’

  ‘And then what?’ asked Cowlick.

  ‘Then,’ he went on, ‘this ignorant big culchie with the broken nose – a third one, mark you – stepped up and before I could say a word he starts beating the head off me.’

  ‘Saints preserve us,’ cried his mother, ‘and what did he go and do a thing like that for?’

  ‘That’s what I’d like to know,’ said Juno angrily. ‘I wouldn’t mind, but there I was, not able to lift a hand to defend myself, and him twice as big. Oh, if only I could have got my hands on him, just once.’

  ‘What happened after that?’ asked Doubter.

  ‘That’s the last I remember. They must have beaten me unconscious. The next thing I knew I was here, thanks to you lads.’

  ‘But why should anyone want to beat you up?’ asked Curly.

  ‘And him not interfering with anybody,’ asserted his wife.

  Except, of course, that he was snaring rabbits, I thought, but that was no reason why anyone should beat him up.

  Juno shook his head, wincing with the pain. ‘I don’t know … I just don’t know.’

  ‘I know,’ piped up Totey. We all looked at him.

  ‘Well, they must have wanted to rob you, Juno! Look … why else would they turn your pockets inside-

  out?’

  ‘Begorra, you’re right,’ said Juno, sitting up and holding out the lining of his pockets. ‘Now isn’t that the strangest thing?’

  Indeed it was, as we all agreed on our way home. Why should anyone want to rob Juno? Everyone knows he has nothing worth stealing, and certainly not money.

  8. LOST IN THE NIGHT

  Next day we went up to the plantation in the hope that Old Daddy Armstrong might have had another visit from Felicity. We were in luck. She had dropped by the day before and he had some very interesting news for us. He said that when he told her about the missing bracelet being in the photograph taken after her fall in the plantation, she got as flustered as a clocking hen. She apologised for the trouble she had put us to, said she must have made a mistake about when she lost it, and explained that with things the way they were at the castle she didn’t know whether she was coming or going.

  ‘What did she mean by that?’ I asked him.

  ‘Well,’ he said, ‘it seems there’s something a mite strange going on over there. For one thing, the place is in a jitter over weird noises that are being heard in the castle in the dead of night. The staff are scared stiff. According to Felicity they’re convinced that the knocking and rattling they’re hearing can be nothing but the ghost of the running dead man, and they’re all for packing up and leaving. Then there’s her father.’

  ‘What about her father?’ asked Cowlick.

  ‘It appears from what she tells me that the Major’s gone a bit peculiar,’ and the old man tapped his head to emphasise the point. ‘She’s worried about him. Says he’s acting very strange these days, muttering to himself, locking himself in his room for hours on end, and wandering through the trees as if he’s gone out of his head.’

  We looked at each other knowingly.

  ‘And that’s not all,’ said Old Daddy Armstrong. ‘Some nights ago young Mr Rochford-King heard something in the library – apparently they haven’t been able to pinpoint the other noises – so he rushed down. The library, she says, is directly below his bedroom. Major Boucher, it seems, had heard it too and was there before him. They found that somebody had been at one of those valuable paintings I was telling you about. Felicity’s father was straightening it up when Mr Rochford-King arrived, because it was hanging sideways as if somebody had tried to take it down.

  ‘A nearby window was open too, and Felicity thinks a gang of crooks maybe read about the paintings in the newspaper article I showed you, and were trying to steal them. The police were called, and now they’re wiring every inch of the estate wall so that nobody can get in without setting off the alarm.’

  We thanked him and left. We were buzzing with excitement after what he had told us. We felt a bit guilty about not telling him of our own experiences, but we felt we couldn’t, at least not yet – not until we had a better idea of what was going on. We also knew that if what we had discovered got back to the castle, or if it got around to the wrong ears, we might never get the chance to find out what it was all about. Just what the goings-on at Wariff Hill had to do with the goings-on at the castle we couldn’t imagine, but we were convinced that all these strange happenings were part of the same thing. The problem was we couldn’t get into the castle now because of the new burglar alarm. That left only one course open to us. We would have to make another visit to Wariff Hill, and we decided to go that night.

  As the day wore on, the weather closed in in a most unexpected way. The sky clouded over and it got very warm; not pleasantly warm but uncomfortably warm and close, and there wasn’t a breath of wind. My father said it looked as if a storm was brewing, and he wouldn’t be surprised if it was a thunderstorm, judging by the heat. My father can read the weather as well as he can read a rabbit burrow, and I just hoped the storm would hold off long enough for us to get to Wariff Hill and back.

  By teatime the storm was still holding off, although a slight drizzle had started. We all went to bed early, as arranged, using the rain as an excuse so as not to arouse the suspicion of our folks. Then we slipped out before dark and cut across the fields. The grass was wet, but we had taken good care to wear our Wellingtons.

  We were just going down to the ruined farmhouse by the flax dams when we spotted Big Hughie and two other men walking a little way ahead of us. I shouted a greeting to him, and what a surprise I got! Obviously startled, the men turned around. The tall one wasn’t Big Hughie at all, but a man with a broken nose, and in that instant we realised they could be none other than the three scoundrels who had beaten up poor Juno. Before we could move another step, they clambered through the hedge at the side of the ruins, and when we got to the spot, Prince, who had rushed forward, was standing on top of the ditch barking after them as they disappeared into the gathering gloom.

  We were excited, if just a bit frightened, and after a brief halt to recover our composure, we decided to go on. First though, we searched around for a good heavy stick each. Armed with these, and the knowledge that with Prince by our side we could give a good account of ourselves against anything human, we set off again at a good pace so that we would reach the fairy fort before it was completely dark.

  Lighted windows twinkling in the castle away below were the only signs of life we could see from the top of Wariff Hill as we scanned the darkening countryside. We decided to make one quick search of the area around the fort before concealing ourselves among the hazels. As we split up, we agreed that if any of us found anything or ran into any trouble, we would give three blasts on our bourtree whistle. Nobody did, and after a minute or two we were slipping back, one by one, to a pre-arranged spot beneath the hazels on the edge of the clearing.

  Soon we were all there, except Cowlick. Anxiously we awaited his return. Prince shook the rain from his coat. The minutes ticked by. We gripped our sticks and strained our eyes to try and pierce the darkness. Still there was no sign of Cowlick. Unable to contain my anxiety another minute I switched on my torch, blew three times on my bourtree whistle and waited for the answering call. It never came.

  9. THE STORM BREAKS

  It’s difficult to describe the way we felt as we waited there beneath the dripping hazels, trying desperately to see through the darkness and the drizzle for any sign of Cowlick.

  If you’ve ever been poaching and waited in vain for a ferret to come out of a rabbit warren, you’ll know how we felt. There comes a moment when you know the ferret should be coming out, and isn’t. Then there comes another moment when you realise that no amount of coaxing is going to bring it out. You can’t see it but you know something has gone wrong, and you know you’ll be lucky if you ever see it again. There’s nothing you can do about it, except wait, and you know that if you do wait there’s the danger you’ll be caught.

  That’s the way it was with us up at the fairy fort. If we were scared before, we were in a right panic now. When the bleeps of the bourtree whistle had died away in the darkness, an awful silence fell, and even though it was wet we were so warm we were sweating, and we were trying so hard to see something that it wasn’t long before we were seeing all sorts of things. Somehow there seemed to be movements in the shadows, and after the way Cowlick had disappeared I knew it could only be one thing – fairies or leprechauns creeping through the darkness towards us – and I could imagine the phantom about to rise up out of the fairy fort to urge them on to claim us too.

  The others, I could feel, were full to choking with the same fearful thoughts, and in the end, I’m afraid, we turned and ran, and we didn’t stop until we reached the Cotton Bog Road. There we huddled behind the hedge and looked back. The hill was a scraggy shadow looming up into the warm, wet night, and we became more aware than ever of the oppressive heat and the eerie atmosphere all around us as we watched … for what we did not know. Nothing stirred to break the stillness, and we wondered what we should do.

  Some of the boys thought we should slip back down home and say nothing about Cowlick’s disappearance. I didn’t think so. I knew that if we were all at home in the morning and Cowlick wasn’t, questions would be asked. The cat would soon be out of the bag, and there would be such a hullabaloo we wouldn’t be allowed out of the house again.