First published in Great Britain by HarperCollins Children’s Books in 2020

Published in this ebook edition in 2020

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Text copyright © Ross Welford 2020

Cover design copyright © HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd 2020

Cover illustration copyright © Tom Clohosy Cole

Ross Welford asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of the work.

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

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Source ISBN: 9780008333782

Ebook Edition © January 2020 ISBN: 9780008333799

Version: 2019-12-24

Contents

Cover

Title Page

Copyright

Part One

Chapter One: Hellyann

Chapter Two: Ethan

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Four Days Earlier

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Chapter Twelve

Chapter Thirteen

Chapter Fourteen

Part Two: Hellyann’s Story

Chapter Fifteen: Hellyann

Chapter Sixteen

Chapter Seventeen

Chapter Eighteen

Chapter Nineteen

Chapter Twenty

Chapter Twenty-one

Chapter Twenty-two

Chapter Twenty-three

Chapter Twenty-four

Chapter Twenty-five

Chapter Twenty-six

Chapter Twenty-seven

Chapter Twenty-eight

Part Three

Chapter Twenty-nine: Ethan

Chapter Thirty

Chapter Thirty-one

Chapter Thirty-two

Chapter Thirty-three

Chapter Thirty-four

Chapter Thirty-five

Chapter Thirty-six

Chapter Thirty-seven

Chapter Thirty-eight

Chapter Thirty-nine

Chapter Forty

Chapter Forty-one

Chapter Forty-two

Chapter Forty-three

Chapter Forty-four

Chapter Forty-five

Chapter Forty-six

Chapter Forty-seven

Chapter Forty-eight

Chapter Forty-nine

Chapter Fifty

Chapter Fifty-one

Chapter Fifty-two

Chapter Fifty-three: Hellyann

Chapter Fifty-four: Ethan

Chapter Fifty-five

Chapter Fifty-six

Part Four

Chapter Fifty-seven

Chapter Fifty-eight

Chapter Fifty-nine

Chapter Sixty: Hellyann

Chapter Sixty-one: Ethan

Chapter Sixty-two

Chapter Sixty-three

Chapter Sixty-four

Chapter Sixty-five

Chapter Sixty-six

Chapter Sixty-seven

Chapter Sixty-eight

Chapter Sixty-nine

Chapter Seventy

Chapter Seventy-one

Chapter Seventy-two

Chapter Seventy-three

Chapter Seventy-four

Chapter Seventy-five

Chapter Seventy-six

Chapter Seventy-seven

Chapter Seventy-eight

Chapter Seventy-nine

Acknowledgements

Keep Reading …

Books by Ross Welford

About the Publisher

SEARCH CONTINUES FOR MISSING TWELVE-YEAR-OLD

KIELDER, NORTHUMBERLAND

27 DECEMBER

Northumbria Police are seeking the public’s help to find a twelve-year-old girl missing from Kielder Village, Northumberland, since Christmas Eve.

Tamara ‘Tammy’ Tait was last seen leaving her home near the Stargazer public house on a bicycle at around 6pm on 24 December.

She is described as white, around 160 cm tall, of medium build, with blonde hair and brown eyes. She was last seen wearing blue jeans and a red North Face branded puffer jacket.

Volunteer teams and police have spent two days searching the forests and moors surrounding the remote village near the border between England and Scotland.

Anyone who may have seen Tamara or has any information in relation to her current whereabouts is urged to contact the police.

If you have information for the police, contact Policelink on 13 14 11 or call CrimeStoppers on 1800 333 000.

I read the sign again, glowing in front of me:

Type of organism: human female

Origin: Earth

Age: about twelve years

This brand-new exhibit will be introduced to the wider Earth Zone exhibition when emotional stability has been achieved

I looked at the bedraggled creature, and I wanted to reach through the unseen barrier and hold its hand. (This was neither allowed nor possible: the barrier would have repelled me with a painful shock.)

Its hair …

All right. I must stop saying ‘it’. The sign says it is a female, and so it should be ‘her’ …

Her hair fell in tight twists. I should have liked to see it when it was clean. Her pale and hairless skin was dotted with darker spots (‘freckles’, they are called in her language). Her clothes were similar to those worn by the other humans in Earth Zone. She had trousers of a coarse-looking fabric and a thick-looking padded item of a lighter shade on top, while her feet were clad in big shoes fastened with looped cord.

Her face was dirty and streaked with tears, and her eyes shone wet and bloodshot. She had been weeping (this is normal – humans do it a lot), although the atomic-level mechanical medication that had been given to her had closed down a lot of her primary cognitive functions—

(Wait. Is this too complicated? Philip suggests I should write: ‘Her brain had been made slow by the drugs she had been given.’ And that is, I suppose, close enough. I shall let you decide.)

Despite this, there was a spark of life in her eyes. Perhaps the dosage was imperfectly calculated, or she had an ability to resist some of the medication.

Anyhow, she looked at me and I was struck by how very expressive human faces are.

She put her hand to her chest and for a brief moment I thought she was making the sign of the Hearters, but – obviously – she was not.

She looked at me intensely and said, ‘Ta-mee.’

Just that: those two syllables.

She did it again: ‘Ta-mee.’

I glanced over both of my shoulders, but nobody was watching as I held up my PG and recorded this bit. Communicating with the exhibits is not exactly prohibited, but nor is it encouraged.

Is that her name? I wondered.

I repeated the syllables she had said, although the sounds were hard for me to duplicate.

‘Ta-mee,’ I said.

She nodded her head and made a weird face, as though she wanted to laugh and cry at the same time, which I did not understand – and still do not, not fully. Human beings are strange.

I imitated her gesture, and said my name.

The human female tried to repeat it. It sounded nothing at all like my name. She tried again and got a little closer. I practised the sounds a couple of times, and then tried saying my name in a way she might be able to repeat.

‘Helly-ann,’ I said, and a slow smile formed on her mouth.

She blinked hard and said it back to me. I found myself smiling at her.

Then her smile faded and she said two more syllables. ‘Ee-fan.’

A voice came from a speaker next to the sign: ‘Your time is up. Move along. There is a queue of people behind you waiting to see the new exhibit. Do not take more than your allotted time. Next.’

The human watched me go, then she retreated to the back of her enclosure and sat on the ground as two new spectators filed forward.

Ta-mee, I said to myself as I passed the Assistant Advisor who stood at the edge of the exhibit room.

‘That is your third time here, I believe,’ the AA said. ‘And communicating with the exhibits as well? I have my eye on you.’

Except he did not say it aloud. He did not need to – he just looked at me hard and it was enough.

That is how it is done here. Everybody obeys the rules. Nobody gets out of line.

All the way back to my pod-home, I struggled to keep a straight face, when really I wanted to crumple up and cry. That, however, would immediately single me out as being different, for people here do not cry – or laugh, for that matter.

Instead I repeated her name in my head, over and over: Ta-mee. Ta-mee. Ta-mee.

I played back the recording on my PG of the bit when she said her name and something else.

What is Ee-fan? I wondered. That is what she said: Ee-fan.

Perhaps, one day, I will find out.

Because I will be returning Tammy to Earth.

It will be dangerous. If I fail I will be put to sleep for the rest of my life.

And if I succeed? Well, I will probably have to do it again, with another exhibit.

Such is the curse of having feelings.

My twin sister Tammy has been missing for four days now, so when the doorbell goes, I assume it’s the police, or another journalist.

‘I’ll get it,’ I say to Mam and Dad.

Gran is asleep in her tracksuit on the big chair by the Christmas tree, her head back and her mouth open. The lights on the tree haven’t been switched on for days.

I open the door and Ignatius Fox-Templeton – Iggy for short and for slightly less weird – stands there wearing a thick coat, a flat cap and shorts (despite the snow). He’s holding a fishing rod in one hand and Suzy, his pet chicken, under his other arm. A large bag is slung over his back and his rusty old bike lies next to him on the ground.

For a moment we just stand there, staring at each other. It’s not like we’re best friends or anything. We had this sort of awkward encounter when Tammy first went missing on Christmas Eve. (I nearly broke his mum’s fingers with the piano lid, but she was OK about it.)

‘I, erm … I just thought … I was wondering, you know, if … erm …’ Iggy’s not normally like this, but he’s not normally normal anyway, and besides, nothing’s normal at the moment.

‘Who is it?’ calls Mam from inside, wearily.

‘Don’t worry, Mam. Doesn’t matter!’ I call back.

Mam has been getting worse in the last day or two. None of us has been sleeping well, but I’ve begun to think that Mam has not been sleeping at all. She’s got these blue-grey patches under her eyes, like smudged make-up. Meanwhile, Dad has been trying to keep busy at the pub and coordinating search efforts, but he is running out of things to do. Everyone wants to help us, which means the only thing left for us to do is to sit around and worry more, and cry. Sandra, the police Family Liaison Officer who has been here a lot, says that it is ‘to be expected’.

I turn back to Iggy on the doorstep.

‘What do you want?’ I say, and it comes out blunter than I intended.

‘Do you … erm, do you want to go fishing?’ he almost whispers. His eyes blink rapidly behind his thick glasses.

In case you don’t quite get just how odd I find this, you have to know that for the last few days the only world I have known has been one of worry and tears; and police officers being brisk; and journalists with cameras and notebooks wanting interviews; and people from the village bringing food even though the pub has a massive kitchen (we now have two shepherd’s pies and a huge pavlova); and Sandra, Dad and Mam trying to manage all of this with Gran; and Aunty Annikka and Uncle Jan flying in yesterday from Finland because … well, I don’t really know why. To ‘comfort’ us, I suppose.

All because, four days ago, Tammy vanished off the face of the earth. Nothing has been right since.

So when Iggy turns up wanting to go fishing, my first thought is: Are you mad? Then it dawns on me.

‘Is this Sandra’s idea?’ I ask, holding the front door half closed to keep the cold out.

Iggy doesn’t seem to mind. He gives his characteristic confident nod. Iggy knows Sandra already: he’s had several reasons for a police Family Liaison Officer to call at his house.

‘Yes. She thought you might want to get out of the house for a bit. You know, change of scene, and all that malarkey. Think of something else.’

Malarkey. It’s a very Iggy sort of word. He doesn’t have much of a local accent, though he’s not exactly posh either. It’s like he can’t quite decide how his voice should be and uses odd words to fill the gaps.

He goes on: ‘And so, here I am!’ He holds up his fishing rod. ‘Well,’ he adds, nodding to Suzy. ‘Here we are.’

I’m really not sure about Iggy. Dad doesn’t like him at all, ever since – soon after we arrived in the village – Dad caught him stealing a box of crisps from the pub’s outhouse. His mum said the outhouse should have been locked, so Dad’s not keen on his mum either. She keeps bees. She’s divorced from Iggy’s dad, I think.

Still, I have to admit: what Iggy is doing is quite kind, even if it wasn’t his idea. I don’t even like fishing. Suzy, Iggy’s chicken, stretches out her neck for a scratch, and I oblige, burying my fingers deep in her warm throat-feathers. To be honest, I have my doubts about Suzy too. I mean, who has a pet chicken?

Then, as I tickle Suzy, I think: What’s the worst that could happen?

So I put my head round the living-room door. Dad has gone into the kitchen on his phone and Mam is just staring blankly at the television, which is switched off. Gran snores a bit. The room’s far too hot and the remnants of the fire in the wood burner glow white-orange.

‘I’m just going out for a bit, Mam,’ I say. ‘You know – fresh air, an’ that.’

She nods but I’m not sure she completely heard me. All that’s in her mind is Tammy.

Tammy, my twin sister, who has disappeared off the face of the earth.

The tape is still there – POLICE LINE DO NOT CROSS – strung across the path where Tammy left her bike, but the police have searched the narrow lakeshore and the path a few times and there’s nobody there now. I haven’t been back since Christmas Eve, when it all happened, and I feel a tightening in my chest as we approach.

‘Are you all right with this?’ asks Iggy. ‘I’m sorry – I didn’t think about, you know … the lake and whatnot …’

‘Thanks. I’m OK.’ There is another approach to the waterside but it’s quite a bit further away.

We leave our bikes at the top of the path and go down the steep path through the woods, and all the while I’m thinking: This is where Tammy came …

We emerge on to the little shoreline. Iggy has been babbling on about a huge pike that lives near the Bakethin Weir, where the reservoir narrows into a sort of overflow lake.

‘When the weather’s really cold, pike often come to slightly shallower water … Using a laser lure is sure to attract him … this line has an eighty-pound breaking strain …’

It might as well be a foreign language to me, but I go along with it because it’s good to be able to think of something other than Tammy just for a while.

It’s mid-afternoon. Already the sky is darkening and the vast stillness of Kielder Water – a deep lilac colour in the near twilight – stretches out in front of us. I gasp at the sight and say, ‘Wow!’ very quietly.

Iggy comes up and stands next to me, staring out across the reservoir.

‘D’you reckon she’s still alive, Tait?’

Oof! His directness kind of throws me, and I feel the pricklings of annoyance until I realise he’s just asking what everybody else wants to ask. Everybody else tiptoes around the subject, very often scared to say anything in case they say the wrong thing.

I sigh. No one has asked me this before, so I even surprise myself with how certain I am. ‘Yup,’ I say. ‘I feel it. Here.’ I touch my chest near my heart. ‘It’s a twin thing.’

Iggy pouts and nods slowly as if he understands, but I don’t think you can unless you’re a twin.

‘Shh,’ I say. ‘Listen.’

I’m hoping that I might hear the whining noise from the night that Tammy disappeared. But the only sounds are tiny waves rippling on to the shore every few seconds and the rhythmic bump, bump of a bright orange fibreglass canoe hitting the long wooden jetty that sticks out over the water. The old planks of the jetty creak under our weight and Iggy unpacks his tackle bag.

The last time I stood on this jetty, I think, was with Tammy, playing our throwing-stones game. It’s basically: who can throw a stone furthest into the lake? But we’ve got rules, like size of stone, best-of-five and so on. Maddeningly, she nearly always wins. She’s good at throwing. Iggy is chuntering on …

‘Here we go. Two eight-strand braided fishing lines, one hundred metres, each with a steel wire trace … Four ten-centimetre shark hooks … one short rod and my good old pike reel, plus a Johnson Laser Lure.’

Iggy – who has a school record that you’d call ‘inconsistent’ – would get an A-star in fishing-tackle speak. From his bag he extracts something that he unwraps from its plastic and holds in front of me. I nearly gag at the smell.

‘What the …?’

‘It’s chicken. It was in the bin behind your pub.’ He adds quickly, ‘And if it’s in a bin it’s not stealing, is it?’

He had explained the plan on the way here, but now – kneeling on the jetty screwing his four-part rod together – he goes over it again.

‘So, this chicken breast is the bait. We paddle out about thirty metres and drop the chicken over the side attached to the buoy.’ He points to a red buoy the size of a football in the bottom of the canoe. ‘That should stop it sinking. It’s attached to the line and my rod. We paddle back, letting out the line, and just wait. Pikey comes along and sniffs the lovely meat …’

Iggy acts this out, his eyes narrowing as he twitches his nose left and right.

‘He just can’t resist it! Bam! Down go his jaws and he’s hooked. We see the buoy bobbing and start reeling him in to the jetty, where you are ready with your phone to get the pictures. Then we release him and we cycle back to fame and fortune, or at the very least, our pictures in The Hexham Courant!’

I keep telling myself that everything will be fine, even as we throw all of the gear into the canoe and I step into the rocking vessel, with the freezing water in the bottom seeping into my trainers. Suzy follows us and I could swear she looks at me funny. She takes one sniff of the rotten chicken and moves as far away as she can, right up to the far end of the canoe.

I hadn’t mentioned anything to Mam about going out on the water, because I hadn’t known till Iggy said so. My conscience is clear. But still …

‘Iggy?’ I say. ‘Do we … erm, do we have life jackets?’ I feel daft saying it, and even dafter when I see the look of disdain on Iggy’s face. ‘Doesn’t matter,’ I say. ‘I can swim.’

We unhook the wobbling canoe from the jetty and start paddling out towards the middle of the lake, saying nothing.

Perhaps it’s the motion of the canoe, but I begin to feel a bit queasy. The chicken (the dead one) isn’t helping. The putrid smell is on my hands from where I tossed it over the side attached to the red buoy.

I lean over and dip my hands in the icy water to wash them, then jerk back with a yelp, rocking the canoe.

‘Hey! Watch it!’ protests Iggy.

Did I imagine it?

I did imagine it. I look again: it’s just a log, submerged below the surface. There’s a branch coming off it that sort of looks like an arm, and in my head the whole thing became a floating body and I thought it was Tammy, and it wasn’t. It was just a log, and my mind playing tricks on me.

‘Shall we go back now?’ I say, trying to keep the tension out of my voice.

We paddle back, letting out the thick line as we go.

And so we wait on the jetty. And wait. I look up at the sky, which is much darker now, and I think I should be going back.

My phone’s clock tells me that we have been here for more than an hour, and frankly, I am bored, cold and still a bit shaken by the log-that-was-just-a-log.

And then the buoy moves.

‘Did you see …’

‘Yup.’

We scramble to our feet and stare out over the lake to where the buoy is once again still, with tiny ripples expanding from it.

‘What do you think?’ I say, but Iggy just takes off his cap and runs his fingers thoughtfully through his messed-up red hair, looking at the water.

We stay like that for several minutes then he says, ‘I think we need to check’ and he starts to reel in the line. ‘Perhaps the bait’s been taken, or fallen off. Dammit.’ The line is jammed. ‘Might have got caught on weeds, or a log.’

The more he tugs, the tighter it gets. ‘Come on,’ he moans, getting into the canoe. ‘We’ll have to free it.’

‘We?’ I murmur, but I get in anyway.

Iggy whistles to Suzy, just like you would to a dog, and she hops in obediently after us. Iggy pulls his cap down purposefully, pushes his glasses up his nose, and we begin to paddle back out towards the bobbing buoy.

Before we reach it, the massive splash comes.

It’s huge – like a car has been dropped into the water from a great height over on the other side of the reservoir.

Obviously, it isn’t a car. But – equally obviously – I don’t think it’s an invisible spaceship either, because I’m not completely mad.

But that is what it turns out to be.

After that splash about two hundred metres away, comes another one a few seconds later, slightly smaller but still enormous, and closer to our canoe. In the light of the rising moon, the water droplets glisten as they cascade back down. Seconds after, there is a third splash, then a fourth, all getting closer to us in a straight line, as though a massive, unseen stone is being skimmed across the surface. By the time the fifth splash comes, only about six metres from the boat, the resulting waves have started to tip our little canoe violently from side to side.

‘What’s happening?’ I wail.

Then the spray soaks us and we both cower in the bottom of the rocking boat. I feel, rather than see, something pass overhead very close to us, causing Suzy to squawk with alarm.

‘What is it?’ I shout.

Iggy makes no attempt to answer.

I raise my head to see the sixth splash on the other side of the canoe. The seventh is much smaller. Whatever is causing it is becoming less forceful. There’s an eighth splash, then a swoosh of water that washes over the jetty then … just nothing. Nothing but the darkening sky, the purple lake, the black-green of the surrounding forest …

… And silence, broken only by the slapping of rippling waves on the side of the canoe.

Eventually, Iggy straightens up and says ‘Good Lord! Did you see that?’, but I don’t know what we saw so I just end up moving my mouth without making any sound.

There’s nothing to see now, anyway: whatever caused the splashes must have sunk, but only about ten metres from the shore, where the water is shallower and fairly clear. Together, we paddle towards the spot: perhaps, despite the gathering darkness of the afternoon, we’ll be able to shine a light into the water and see something?

As we get closer, I hear a humming noise, and we stop, allowing the canoe to drift as I turn my head to hear better.

‘Listen,’ I hiss. ‘That’s it! The noise I heard on the night that Tammy disappeared.’

There it is again. A low hommmmm like a bee trapped behind a window, but almost inaudible.

Staring again in the direction of the sound, the surface of the water appears disturbed, and sort of indented, as though a huge glass plate is resting on the lake near the jetty, but it’s hard to make out in the half moonlight.

Then, as we drift closer to the shape in the water, the nose of the canoe bumps into something. Probably another floating log, I think, but when I look there’s nothing. Nor is there a rock. I take hold of the paddle again and stroke it through the water, but we are stopped again with a bump, by some kind of object we can’t see. From the sound the canoe makes, it’s as if this object is in front of us, sticking out of the water, but that’s impossible because we can’t see anything but air.

‘What is that? What’s stopping us, Tait? What are we hitting?’

When the canoe bumps into nothing for the third time, I decide to change the route and paddle around the triangle of smooth water. I stop before the canoe reaches the shore, then I turn back to look.

‘Pass me the spinner, Tait,’ says Iggy.

He takes the large fishing lure from me carefully, avoiding the vicious hooks, and pushes a tiny button on it, activating the laser light that is supposed to attract fish. He points it in front of us, towards whatever it is that we’re not seeing.

‘Oh my word. Would you look at that?’

I’m looking. The green beam of light heads straight out across the lake, takes a sharp left turn, then curves around to go straight again. Iggy moves the light and it does the same – deflected by something we cannot see.

I find a pebble on the floor of the canoe and toss it towards where Iggy is pointing the light. There’s a dull ping and it bounces back towards me, landing in the water with a plop.

It is exactly as though it had hit a pane of glass, only there’s no glass there. I throw another pebble and it does the same. Opening Iggy’s fishing tackle bag, I take out a big lead weight and throw that, hard. Same result.

We’re both freaked out by now. Then the humming lowers in tone, the water before us seems to churn up slightly, and the shape on the water heads towards our canoe.

‘Move! It’s coming for us!’ yells Iggy.

We both reach down for the same paddle, causing the canoe to lurch sharply to one side. In one smooth movement, Iggy and I are tipped into the dark water and we don’t even have time to shout out.

The cold doesn’t hit me immediately, but as I plunge beneath the surface I suck in half a lungful of water, and come up spluttering and weighed down by my heavy jacket and sweater. I’m just able to keep my face above the surface and that’s when I gasp at the freezing cold.

Between gasps, I call out, ‘Ig … Iggy!’ I think about us not wearing life jackets, and I’m consumed with fear.

A ball of red hair bobs up next to me, followed by Iggy’s terrified face.

‘Ah … ah … I’m here.’ He grabs on to me. ‘We go … gotta go. That thing’s ge … ge … getting closer.’ He can hardly speak with the cold. He starts to swim for the shore, then stops. ‘Wh … where’s Suzy?’ As he says the name, there’s a thumping from inside the upturned canoe.

‘Suzy!’ cries an anguished Iggy, and before I can say anything, he’s bobbed under the surface.

Seconds go by while I feel my clothes getting heavier and I am properly scared.

‘Iggy!’ I shout, and I turn a circle in the water. ‘Iiiiiggyyyy!’

I’m ready to scream again, when there comes a splash from beside the canoe. Iggy’s head reappears and next to it are the sodden red feathers of Suzy, who looks very startled.

I have ended up closer to the jetty than Iggy, and I’m finding it easier to swim than he is because he’s carrying Suzy. I heave myself up the slippery iron ladder, weighed down by my soaking clothes. I look back and that is when I notice the strange, half-visible shape on the surface of the water moving and getting closer to Iggy.

Iggy is only about fifteen metres away and I can see the look of sheer terror on his face as he realises what’s going on.

‘Swim, Iggy. Swim! D-don’t look back. Just swim!’

But he does look back and I think he’s frozen in terror for a second. Holding Suzy’s head up, he starts thrashing with his other arm and kicking with his legs.

‘Come on, Iggy! Come on – you can make it!’

Ten metres. Five. I can hear the humming noise now as whatever is making it cuts across the surface, getting closer with every stroke Iggy makes. I stretch out my hand.

‘You can make it – come on!’

Then he screams and, with a gurgle, lets go of Suzy and disappears below the black surface of the water.

Iggy reappears above the surface a few seconds later, making terrified noises. ‘It … it … got … got …’ He seems to struggle with something below the surface as if his legs are tangled.

Amazingly, his glasses have stayed on. He manages to get hold of Suzy and, one-armed, flaps the last two metres to the jetty, where I haul him up by his arm.

‘My … m-my le-leg,’ he moans. ‘It go … got me.’

Iggy left his bike light on the jetty. I grab it, shine it on his leg and recoil in horror.

‘Is … is it ba-bad?’ he says.

I nod. A huge, treble-barbed hook has embedded itself into his calf and has ripped out a long portion of flesh as he struggled. Somehow his leg got entwined in our fishing line and as he swam it hooked him as securely as any fish. Blood, mixed with the water draining from us, forms a red channel trickling back into the water. He reaches his hand down and moans again when he feels the warm blood.

‘Ca-call my mum,’ he croaks.

‘Sure, Iggy. Hang on. You’re going to be fine.’

I fumble in my soaking jeans pocket for my phone.

It’s not THAT bad, I keep telling myself. He’s not going to bleed to death right here on this jetty.

I jab the start button on my phone.

Smartphones and water are not a good mix. I try again. And again.

‘Where’s yours?’ I ask Iggy, whose breathing has become shallow, little pants.

‘My mu … mum’s confiscated it.’

That I can believe.

In desperation, I get to my feet and shout, ‘Help! Help!’ while Iggy pants and moans, lying on his back on the jetty.

‘No … no one’s going to hear you,’ pants Iggy at my feet, then he groans in pain again.

‘I’m going to run up to the road,’ I say. ‘There might be a car I can stop. Wait here.’

What am I even thinking? There are hardly ever any cars on that road, just forestry trucks now and then. Am I panicking? I am halfway up the steep path to the road when I realise that leaving an injured person, soaking wet and freezing cold, on a jetty in the dark is just stupid.

For a few seconds I actually hop from one foot to another, trying to work out what to do, until eventually I turn and scramble back down the path towards the beach. I can see Iggy lying where I left him, and then I stop and let out a small yelp.

Someone has just appeared on the jetty before me.

I know that sounds crazy, but it’s just like a magic trick or a special effect. One minute there’s only Iggy lying there. The next, this … this figure is there as well. It can’t have come from anywhere. I mean, there’s no other approach to the jetty than the route I took, and I didn’t pass anyone.

It is quite dark, though …

I am standing on the shore-end of the jetty when I hear the person speak. He or she hasn’t heard me approaching, is facing Iggy, and I don’t think Iggy has noticed me coming back either: he’s got other things on his mind, what with freezing and bleeding half to death. The person makes a weird snuffling, squeaking noise, followed by words.

‘I heard you. I will help.’

Iggy, who’s been facing the other way, propped up on his arm, spins round and then scuttles back in shock, slipping in his own blood.

I hurry to Iggy, passing close to the person on the jetty, who seems to be wearing a shaggy fur coat, but that’s all I notice at first: I’m more interested in getting to Iggy.

‘You OK?’ I say. ‘Sorry I left you. This person can help. That’s good, eh?’ I’m gabbling a bit and I don’t really understand the look of terror on Iggy’s face as he squints past me through his smudged, wet glasses at the figure who is still standing there.

Iggy can’t speak: ‘Tai … Tait. What … what …?’

His gaze is fixed on the person behind me and so I turn to look as well. What I see shocks me so much that I too stagger and slip, falling hard on my backside. I continue to scramble backwards to the end of the jetty, unable to take my eyes away from what I see, and – at the same time – desperate to put as much distance between me and it as possible.

Iggy cranes his neck around, but is unable to move as fast as me and so lies there, panting with terror.

This thing has a head, with a shining mass of long, silvery hair and, below it, a face. A human face. Well, human-ish: it is face-shaped, except hairy, with widely spaced pale eyes and a huge nose, twitching like a hamster’s.

I’m so scared that I think if I’d been a bit younger I’d have wet myself, but I don’t, thankfully.

It is definitely like a human. It’s got two legs and two arms for a start. Apart from the long head hair, the rest of its body is covered in a light, greyish, downy fur that seems to be standing up. From its back curls a long tail that moves like a cat’s. So, both like a human, and not at all like a human.

It stares at me with its large eyes for a bit and then casts its gaze about the forest, raising its nose to sniff the air. Then it turns back to us and takes a step nearer. Iggy and I both cower but it stops and carries on staring and sniffing. Then it shakes all over: a massive shiver that ripples its fur. Its top lip draws back, revealing long, sharp, yellow teeth.

I hear a whimpering sound. I don’t realise at first that it is me.

Iggy speaks first. ‘Who-who are you? What do you want? P-please don’t hurt me.’

The person-creature steps forward, and we creep backwards till we’re right at the end of the jetty and there’s nowhere else for us to go except into the water again. Even Suzy has backed away, after shaking as much water as she could from her feathers.

The creature leans forward till its head is only about a metre away. It takes a deep sniff then makes the same grunting and whining noise with its mouth and nose as before. That is immediately followed by: ‘You are alreatty hurt.’

The thing has a voice that is a strange combination of throaty and high-pitched. It pronounces the ‘r’ in words like are and hurt like Scottish Sheila in the village, and each word is precise, as though the language has been recently learned. It holds out a thin, hairy finger and points at Iggy’s bleeding leg.

Iggy can’t speak for fear.

‘To you want me to help?’ comes the voice again, after another brief snuffling and squeaking.

I can smell its breath: it’s like a dog’s – sort of sour and a bit fishy. Now and then it licks its lips with a long grey tongue.

Help? I’m not so sure. I’m thinking that I could scramble to my feet, and push this thing into the water, then run up the path for the bikes … Only Iggy is in no shape to run. I’d be leaving him here at the mercy of this … thing. He wouldn’t do that to me, I don’t think.

Iggy nods.

We both flinch when the creature raises both of its hands and brings forward a bag that was hooked on to its back, like a little backpack.

Racing through my head is this: This is what happened to Tammy. This thing is going to take us. It’s not a monster: it’s a person. It’s a weirdo dressed up in an outfit, and he’s going to bring out a knife or a gun or …

I stare closely. If this is a costume, where are the joins? Is there a zip somewhere? That’s a fake nose, surely? I’ve seen shows on TV where make-up artists create things like that. Prosthetic something or other. But why would anyone wander around Kielder Water in the dark like that unless they had bad intentions? Halloween maybe, but that was nearly two months ago.

Then, from the backpack, the creature brings out a stick: thickish, like a broom handle, smooth, dark, and about 30 centimetres long. It holds it in its fist and studies it for a moment while we tremble with cold and total fear. I feel Iggy’s hand grip mine and I grip back. If I’m going to die, I don’t want to go alone.

‘This may work, it may not,’ says the person-in-a-costume (I am convinced by now). ‘Your cellular structure iss almost itentical. Put your leck out.’

Iggy shrinks back and draws his leg in.

‘This will not hurt.’ The creature pauses. ‘Do it!’

Slowly, like a turtle coming out of its shell, Iggy extends his bloody leg. He’s whimpering with fear.

The throaty snuffle comes again, followed by the word ‘Light!’

It’s looking at me.

I reach for the torch. In addition to the long, open gash in Iggy’s leg, there is the hook still deeply embedded in his flesh. The blood is pouring out and on to the jetty.

The creature advances further, the rod in its hands, and moves it over the wounds. Then, as we watch, the blood seems to dry, and scab over. The huge fish hook with the lure attached is pushed out by the hardening flesh and falls on to the decking of the jetty. The scabs turn browner, then black, all in the space of about thirty seconds. The creature replaces the stick in its backpack; then, with a long finger, gently flicks at the scabs, which drop off, revealing fresh, pink skin underneath.

It stands up straight and I look at its feet. They are bare and hairy and definitely not fake ones slipped over shoes. He – she? – is smallish, but not tiny: not as tall as me. It isn’t hunched over and creepy like Gollum in The Lord of the Rings – not at all. And, though it is stark naked, it doesn’t seem at all embarrassed by the fact.

Without taking his eyes off the creature, Iggy says to me, ‘It’s a girl.’

‘How do you know?’

Iggy tuts. ‘Look, Tait. No, erm … boy’s bits.’

I hadn’t noticed, but he’s right. I feel oddly embarrassed, staring at it – her – like that. I feel myself blushing.

When she stands up, the still, cold air gives a waft of her smell. Blocked drains? Sour milk? Earwax? It’s all of those things blended together to make a rich, foul odour that is not just her breath: it is her.

‘Jeez, Iggy. She flippin’ stinks!’ I whisper.

Iggy has taken his cap off and is holding it to his nose.

‘Thought it was you at first,’ he says, his voice muffled.

Slowly, Iggy and I get to our feet and the three of us stand there in a little triangle, saying nothing – just, you know, being utterly astonished. Iggy flexes his newly cured leg.

Eventually, he jams his cap back on and pats his chest twice. ‘Me, Iggy,’ he says, and the creature blinks hard.

I could swear she’s thinking, Why is he talking like a halfwit?

All the same, taking my cue from Iggy, I point at myself and say, ‘Me, Ethan.’

I can’t precisely say how I know this, because it’s not like she gasps or blinks or anything, but I can tell she’s surprised. ‘Ee-fan?’ she says.

‘Yes.’

She lifts her chin then lowers it. The action is sort of like a nod, but done backwards. Then she says something that sounds like ‘Helly-ann’ and pats her own chest.

Iggy looks across at me, a triumphant smirk on his face. ‘See? That’s her name. Hellyann!’

But then we hear the shouts, and the dogs, and see the flashlights through the trees in the distance, coming down the path from the main road.

The look of pure terror that crosses the creature’s strange, furry face changes everything, I think.

‘Say nothing,’ she says in her squeaky snuffle.

‘What?’ says Iggy.

‘I say: say nothing. Say you haf not seen me. Lie. You people are good at that.’

‘Wait,’ I say. ‘Who are you? And why should we lie?’

The dog noise is getting nearer, and a huge German Shepherd bursts out of the undergrowth, bounding along the pebble beach towards us.

I hear: ‘What is it, Sheba? What have you found?’

And the creature who says her name is Hellyann fixes me with her intense, pale gaze.

‘Because if you don’t, you’ll neffer see your sister again.’

My sister. Tammy.

Iggy was right. His fishing trip idea worked: for the past hour or so I had hardly thought about her.

But now, on a freezing evening as I stand dripping on to the wooden deck, it all comes flooding back into my head in a wave of sorrow as I remember why I am here.

‘I hate you!’

It is the last thing I said to Tammy. It bounces around in my head and it is the opposite of the truth.

My twin sister. My ‘other half’, Mam used to say, and she was right.

Tamara ‘Tammy’ Tait. Cool name, I think, mainly because of the alliteration. Tammy Tait. And since she went missing, seldom has an hour has passed when I haven’t thought about those three syllables.

An hour? Try five minutes. Try five seconds. It’s exhausting.

Then there will be times when I realise that I haven’t thought of Tammy for a few minutes, and that’s almost worse, so I force myself to replay her in my head, to listen to her again. The way she says ‘Oh, E-thaaaan!’ when she is annoyed with me for something (which is quite often); or how she farted in the bath once when we were little and laughed so hard that she banged her head on the tap, which made her laugh even more even though her head was bleeding.

Then I’ll end up thinking of the last few months, when we moved to Kielder, and started secondary school. We are now in different classes. She has friends who I don’t even know (and at least one who doesn’t even like me. It’s OK, Nadia Kowalski, the feeling’s mutual).

Then thinking of all that makes me sad again, which – weirdly – makes me feel better because it sort of makes up for forgetting to think about her all the time.

And when I am sad, I remember the last words I said to her: I hate you.

I haven’t told Mam that. It would upset her, and Mam and Dad are upset enough. The fact is, Tammy and I said we hated each other far more than we ever said we loved each other.

Which is not hard, because we never said we loved each other. Why would we? It would be like telling yourself.

Still, I wish I hate you hadn’t been the last thing I’d said to her.

It was Christmas Eve, and snow had fallen on the top moor. I think everyone was hoping that a big snowfall would cover the village and make it look like the front of a Christmas card, but it didn’t and, to be honest, it’s not that sort of village anyway.

Kielder is sort of spread out, with a mixture of old and new houses, and no typical ‘village street’ – you know, a baker, a butcher, and a sweet shop like you get in stories. Because of the forest and the lake and the observatory, there are loads of visitors in the summer, but most things shut down in the winter, like the tearooms, and the maze, and Mad Mick’s Mental Rentals, which hires out bikes. Tammy had taken to calling the village Boring-ville. She once said, ‘I don’t belong here. I’m a city person’, as if sleepy Tynemouth – where we used to live – was New York.

There is a pub, though, run by my mam and dad. The Stargazer is set back from the main road, with a swinging pub sign at the end of a short driveway, and a huge Christmas tree outside, and coloured lights in the windows and candles everywhere, because Mam is half-Danish and they’re obsessed with candles.

I can remember almost every detail of that evening, even though I wish I couldn’t. I have gone over it all with the police officers, with Mam, with Dad, with Gran, with reporters and most of all with myself: in my head, again and again and again.

So here goes, ‘one more time from the top’ – as Miss Swann, our music teacher, says.

It was five minutes past six in the evening. Mam had gone over to the pub, where there were going to be carols. Dad was going to dress up and Tammy and I were going to follow later, first going round to the old folks in the village to drop off a Christmas present from Mam and Dad. There was Scottish Sheila, Tommy Natrass and the Bell sisters. They all got a bottle of vodka with a label saying, Happy Christmas from Adam and Mel at the Stargazer.

My job had been to wrap the presents.

Tammy came downstairs with the oblong boxes wrapped in red paper and ribbon in a carrier bag. That’s when we had our row. It started with Tammy holding one of the presents up and saying ‘Nice job!’ sarcastically.

‘I did my best,’ I said.

The paper was scrunched up, the sticky tape all over the place, and the ribbons badly tied. When she held it up, one of the labels fell off. Wrapping presents is hard.

‘“I did my best, Tammy,”’ she mimicked in a baby voice. ‘You always say that! But you never do, do you? You do what looks like your best. You do what people will think is your best. You do just enough so that when you say, “But I did my best”, people will believe you and go: “Aw, poor Ethan – he did his best.” But you know what, Ethan? I know what your best is. I’m your twin, remember? I’m the other half of you. How could I not know? And you haven’t done your best – nothing like it, so don’t lie.’ She waved one of the badly wrapped gifts as evidence, and another label flew off.

‘Where’s your costume?’ I said, to change the subject. We had agreed: we would dress up as elves for the evening. It would be fun.

Tammy rolled her eyes and tutted.

‘You’re so childish, Ethan.’ When she said that, I looked down at my costume from last year’s school parade: striped tights, green buckled jacket and the pointy hat I was holding. I hate it when Tammy says stuff like that: it’s as if being ten minutes older than me gives her some sort of age advantage.

‘But we agreed!’ I said, trying (and failing) not to sound as though I was whining.

Tammy was in her usual clothes: jeans, trainers, thick fleecey top. She’s not big on fashion, is our Tam. She was pulling on her new red puffer jacket, an early Christmas present from Gran, who was staying with us.

‘Well, we can disagree. There. Just done it! I disagree to dress up and prance around Boring-ville like some six-year-old. As for you – go ahead. You look great.’

‘Well, I’m not going to be the only one. I’m going to get changed,’ I snarled, and began to stomp up the stairs.

‘See you at Scottish Sheila’s. I’m going.’

‘You’re not going to wait for me?’

‘No. We’re late as it is. Bye.’ She opened the front door and stepped out into the cold, and that’s when I yelled it.

‘I hate you!’

(I sometimes hope that she didn’t hear me, but she must have done. I yelled it loudly, and she hadn’t even shut the front door.)

Five minutes later, I had taken off the stupid elf costume and had calmed down. Maybe she was right anyway, I thought. I compromised, and put on a sweater with a flashing red reindeer nose instead. (I wasn’t going to give in completely, you understand?) I pulled the front door closed behind me and set off on my bike to catch her up.

Shortly afterwards, I saw Tammy’s bike lying in the ditch at the side of the road, its front and rear lights shining white and red, illuminating the frosty verge, and no sign of Tammy.

I haven’t seen her since.

When people find out that Tammy and I are twins, they sometimes go, ‘Ooh, are you psychic?’, which is so daft that we developed this routine. I would go, ‘Yes, of course we are. Tammy: what number am I thinking of?’ And whatever number Tammy said, I would then say, ‘Dead right! Wow!’

Well, we thought it was funny, anyway. It actually fooled Tammy’s new friend Nadia, but she’ll believe anything.

So no: we’re not psychic. But that evening, when I saw Tammy’s bike at the side of the road with its lights still on, I knew something was wrong. I felt a lurch in my stomach, and I stopped my bike next to hers. A cold feeling spread from my neck and down my back exactly as though someone had dropped ice inside my collar.

‘Tammy!’ I shouted, not so loud to begin with, as, although I knew, I couldn’t be certain something was wrong, if that makes sense. ‘Tam?’

The moon was still low and obscured by thick cloud, and when the sky is like that, Kielder is darker than you can possibly imagine, the only light coming from our bicycle lights.

‘TAMMY!’ I yelled, and cocked my head to hear, but there was nothing. The wind was so light that it made no sound at all as it passed through the bare trees.

Tammy’s bike had stopped near to an overgrown path that leads down to the reservoir and the little jetty where Tammy and I play the throwing-stones-as-far-as-we-can game. I grabbed the light from the front of my bike and started down the path.

It makes no sense, I told myself. Why on earth would she go down here?

‘Tammy! Tam!’ I kept calling.

The path is quite steep down to the lakeshore, and I kept stumbling in the dark until I got to the little beach of shingle and rocks. I stared out over the inky blackness of Kielder Water, and that’s when I heard the noise: a low drone, getting higher in pitch.

OOOOOOMMMMMMMM ooooooooommmmmmmm.

The noise was sort of like an aeroplane, but definitely not an aeroplane. It was sort of like a motorboat, but definitely not a motorboat either; and there was nothing to see. Here, right next to the water, the sky appeared a little clearer and the cloudy moon gave off a little bit of grey light. I narrowed my eyes and stared out over the lake, where a column of mist had appeared, stretching high into the sky, hanging for a few seconds before it dispersed on the breeze.

There was a smell too. A bad smell: very faint, like bad body odour and blocked drains, but that was soon taken by the air as well.

Perhaps she had come down to the lake to do some stone-throwing practice? Was that why she always beat me, because she practised in secret? I knew that was a daft idea, but I think I had already started to panic.

My heart was pounding with fear as I scrambled back up the path to where Tammy’s bike still lay with its lights on.

I yelled her name again, desperately hoping she would come out of the woods that line the road. She would say, ‘Eth-aaaan, for heaven’s sake, what are you shouting for? I just went into the woods for a pee’ or something like that.

But she didn’t, and I knew I had to get help. I took out my phone but there was no signal. There hardly ever is around here. Step out of the village and you might as well be in 1990.

I climbed back on my bike and started to pedal as fast as I could to Scottish Sheila’s house, shouting ‘Tammy!’ all the way until I was nearly hoarse.

If the events leading up to my discovery of Tammy’s bicycle are clear in my mind, then what came next is all a bit of a blur.

As I pedalled along the pot-holed forestry road towards the village, I kept thinking of reasons for Tammy’s bike to be abandoned.

She had left it there and decided to walk. Not likely. In fact, so unlikely as to be impossible.

She had accepted a lift in someone’s car. Again, not likely. Why would she? And besides – who from? Hardly anyone comes along that road, and why would they offer her a lift, and why would she leave her bike? And … the whole thing was silly.

By the time I crossed the bridge over the burn, I was convinced something horrible had happened to Tammy.

The south side of the village is pretty much a single street of old terraced farm cottages. I pulled up next to Scottish Sheila’s house and allowed my bike to clatter to the ground as I leapt off and hammered on the old lady’s door.

‘All right, all right!’ came a voice from inside.

I had started talking almost before the door was open.

‘Is Tammy here?’ I jabbered. ‘She was supposed to come here – have you seen her?’

‘Hello, young fella,’ said Sheila with a smile, as though she hadn’t heard me.

‘Well, have you?’ I barked, and she looked taken aback.

‘Have I wha …’

‘Have you seen Tammy?’ I shouted. I was panicking and my manners were shot.

‘Well, no. No’ today. I thought—’

‘Bye!’ I said and ran back to my bike. I turned it around and cycled as fast as I could back to our end of the village.

The Stargazer was lit up, and there were lights on the big tree outside that I had helped to put up last week with Tammy. As I cycled up the driveway, I could hear singing already. The carols had started early, and I saw through the window that Cora Fox-Templeton, Iggy’s mum, was accompanying them on the pub’s jangly old piano. Iggy was standing next to her and Suzy was sitting on top of the piano like she was about to lay an egg. The singing came through the windows:

‘Hark the herald angels sing, Glory to the newborn king!’

I jumped off my bike and burst through the doors into the entrance lobby and went straight into the bar, where the noise and the heat and the music hit me.

‘Peace on Earth and mercy mild, God and sinners reconciled …’

A cheer went up over by the bar and Dad called out, ‘Right, you lot! Who’s for a Goblet of Fire?’ It’s one of his barman’s stunts which I’ve seen loads of times: a tray of cocktails is lined up then they all burst into flames as he sets fire to the alcohol. I love watching it normally.

Mam had picked up the tray, and I pushed my way through the groups of people till I got to her.

‘Mam! Mam!’

She turned to me crossly, shaking her head as she carried on singing.

‘Mam! You’ve got to listen!’

‘Watch out! I’m holding a fire hazard here!’ she said. ‘Right – who wants one? Not now, Ethan!’

‘Yes, now!’ I shouted.

People had noticed, and one or two nudged one another and stopped singing. I had no choice. I grabbed the lid of the piano and slammed it down on the keys while Iggy’s mum yelped and pulled her hands out just in time. There was a loud bang as the lid shut, a rattling of Cora’s bangles, and Suzy ruffled her feathers in disapproval. A few seconds later, the singing wound down.

‘Ethan! What on earth …’ began Mam, pushing her way towards me, but I wasn’t listening.

Instead I turned to everyone in the bar and said, ‘Tammy’s gone missing! Her bike’s by the side of the road but I can’t find her anywhere.’

A murmur went around the bar. Someone at the back who hadn’t heard me said, ‘Oi! What’s happened to the music?’ and someone else said, ‘Shhh!’

Then Dad, who was dressed as a toy soldier, came from behind the bar and held his hands up. ‘All right, all right,’ he said calmly. ‘What’s going on? Ethan?’

And so I told him again what had happened, and how I’d called for Tammy and how her bike lights were still on, and how Scottish Sheila hadn’t seen her. It was all spilling out of me so fast that twice Dad had to say, ‘Steady on, son. Slow down.’

Then I looked at Mam, and as our eyes met, I had never seen a person look so fearful. The colour had drained from her face: she was a ghostly grey.

Two minutes later, the bar was emptying as people ran to the car park and got in their cars.

‘You take the forestry trail, Jack!’

‘I’ll go up the north road – come with me, Jen.’

‘Did she have a phone with her?’

‘Has anyone called the police?’

‘Meet back here in half an hour, yeah?’

‘Have you got my number? Call me if you find her!’

… and so on. It seemed as though the whole village leapt into action, with cars going in different directions.

Dad seemed to be coordinating things, or at least trying to, but it was all pretty hectic. I was sort of caught in the middle of it without having anything to do. Gran was pulling on her running shoes and a head torch: she said she would run her regular forest path that a car couldn’t go up. And through the chaos I looked across the bar to see Iggy sitting on the piano stool, his eyebrows practically knitted together with worry, his hands twisting his cap in front of him. His mum, Cora, stood next to him, looking forlorn in a red-and-white Santa hat.

‘Mel,’ said Dad to Mam, ‘why don’t you stay at home?’

‘No!’ protested Mam. ‘I’m coming to look for my daughter!’

Dad looked at me next. ‘You OK to stay, Ethan? In case she comes back here?’ He glanced over at Cora Fox-Templeton and they exchanged a look that somehow left Cora in charge as the ‘responsible adult’.

She nodded and the bell on her hat jingled.

‘Keep your phones on. Don’t leave the pub,’ said Dad, pulling on a coat over his soldier outfit. ‘We’ll let you know when we have found her.’

When. I liked that.

And so it was that Iggy, his mum, his chicken and I went into the pub lounge to wait for Tammy while the search got under way.

There was an uncomfortable silence. It’s not as if I knew either of them all that well.

Eventually, Iggy said, ‘They found my father.’

I looked at him quizzically.

‘He went missing when I was little. He was found two weeks later, living rough in London. So, you know …’

‘Is … is he OK?’ I said.

His mum was looking out of the window, not seeming to listen.

Iggy nodded. ‘Yes. He’s got another family now. But he’s coming to see me after Christmas, isn’t he, Cora?’

Cora turned to him. ‘He said he’d try, Iggy. It’s a long way, and you know what he’s like.’

Iggy looked downcast, and I was embarrassed, so I took out my phone and tried to call Tammy for the umpteenth time.

‘Hi, this is Tammy. I’m not here so please leave me a message!’

The worst thoughts were going through my head. She’s been kidnapped. She’s been killed …

But I still could not think of who would do that, or how.

So I told them both the story again. I left out no details this time. I told them about going down the path, and hearing a humming noise and seeing a column of mist …

They listened, and nodded thoughtfully. Then my phone went and I saw that it was Mam calling. I tried to tell myself not to hope for good news. But just as I had imagined Tammy would come out of the woods fastening her jeans, I could not help wishing it would be Mam saying, ‘We’ve found her’.

Instead it was: ‘No news. We’re coming back. The police are coming and will want to speak to you, Ethan.’

I was looking at Iggy – when he heard the word ‘police’, he kind of flinched. I knew already it was bad. But that was when I was certain.

Iggy Fox-Templeton. He’s about to be a big part of this story. I ended up getting much closer to him than I ever thought I would – or even should.

He is ‘the kid who set fire to the school’. Except I was there and he didn’t. It’s just that ‘the kid who set fire to a litter bin’ doesn’t sound as good.

According to Mam and Dad, he is ‘a bad influence’, because of that thing with him stealing crisps from the pub storage shed. Dad told his mum, who didn’t seem very concerned. Dad didn’t do anything more about it because we were new to the village and he says a new pub landlord can’t go around making enemies. ‘And he calls his mum Cora, for heaven’s sake,’ said Dad with a sneer. ‘Mad old hippy would be closer’ – and Mam tutted at him and told him not to be so mean.

I’ve only been at the school since September, but Iggy has either truanted or been suspended from school so many times already that he’s pretty much never there.

And most recently he set fire to the bin in the east playground.

It wasn’t serious. No one was hurt, although I suppose they could have been, and he’d have got away with it if Nadia Kowalski hadn’t split on him. He had already made an enemy of her, though, so she was out for revenge.

It all started in a physics lesson with Mr Springham. He was going on about the refraction of light. Or reflection. Or both – I can’t remember. All I do remember is that Iggy had moved himself to the front and was watching, fascinated, as Mr Springham used a glass flask of water to bend a beam of light into a single point. He even wrote something in his notebook, which I had never seen him do before.

The next day he was sitting behind me on the school taxi-bus.

Tammy was in the seat in front of me, next to Nadia Kowalski. There’s about six other regulars on the bus and I don’t actually know them much: they’re in different years and they were either chatting to one another or playing music or on their phones.

‘Greetings, Tait,’ Iggy said, leaning over my seat. This was in October, a few months after we had moved to Kielder and I kind of knew him a bit. Apart from Tammy, he’s the only other kid near my age in the village. He’s older than me and Tam by a year or so, but is still in Year Seven because he’s missed so much school.

‘Wanna see my Death Ray?’ he whispered, casting a sidelong glance at Tammy and Nadia.

Without waiting for me to answer (I was going to say ‘yes’ anyway – I mean, who wouldn’t want to see a Death Ray, whatever it might turn out to be?), he shuffled past me to sit next to the window.

‘Promise you won’t say anything?’ he said.

I shrugged. ‘Yeah,’ I said without thinking.

Then he took off his glasses and said, ‘Wait till we stop.’

It was really warm that day: more like August than October. The sun was shining in a cloudless sky. A few minutes later, the taxi-bus stopped at the end of a farm lane, and we knew we’d be waiting because the girl who lives there is nearly always a minute or two late. The driver turned off the engine and everything was still. Iggy fumbled in his bag and brought out a small, round glass flask exactly like the one Mr Springham had used in his ‘bending light’ demo.

‘Hey, is that …?’ I began.

‘Shh. I’ve just borrowed it. Watch.’

He held the flask against the bus window, then took his glasses off with his other hand, moving them to and fro near the bottle.

The sun shone through the bottle and the thick lenses of his specs, and formed a sort of long triangle of light on the back of the seat in front of us, with a brighter circle at the top of the triangle. As Iggy angled his glasses into the light, the circle became a sharp point of brightness, which he controlled by moving his glasses about. Slowly, he moved the point of light until it cleared the seat back and rested on the neck of Nadia Kowalski.

‘It’s physics,’ whispered Iggy, like he was suddenly an expert. ‘The lens of my specs concentrates the sun’s light into a central point which will become very hot. Watch.’

We didn’t have to wait long. Only a few seconds later, Nadia squealed ‘Oww!’ and her hand shot up to her neck. She looked left at Tammy, and then back at us.

Iggy had put his glasses back on and was drinking water from the flask.

‘Did you … did you just …?’

Iggy and I looked at each other, and then back at Nadia, our faces composed in expressions of wide-eyed innocence.

‘What?’ we said together, and she turned back.

On her neck I could make out a tiny burn-mark from Iggy’s ‘Death Ray’. Also from her neck, I could tell she was blushing furiously because everyone had turned around to look when she squealed, including a boy called Damian from Year Nine who everybody knows Nadia is crazy about.

With a cruel smirk, Iggy got ready for another go, slipping off his glasses and holding them up, but at that moment, the bus’s engine started again. The vibration of the bus made it impossible to hold the point of the Death Ray steady.

But he wasn’t going to give up. Twenty minutes later, we had arrived at the school gates. The engine went off, and everybody stood up.

‘Wait!’ shouted Maureen, the driver, who always refused to open the doors until she’d completed some form she had to fill in on a clipboard.

Iggy seized his moment, whipped off his specs, and focused the Death Ray on the back of Nadia’s knee.

She wasn’t moving and the point of light was sharp and bright. She was actually talking to Damian Whatsisname and flicking her hair when, suddenly, she shrieked loudly.

‘Aaaaaaow!!’ The stack of books in her hands fell to the floor, and everyone stared as she bent down to rub her leg.

As she bent, she headbutted Damian in the chest, knocking him into the kids behind him and causing Maureen to shout, ‘Watch it, you’s lot!’

I managed to keep a straight face, but Iggy couldn’t. He was spluttering with laughter.

Eventually, we filed off the bus, and heard Damian saying to his mates, ‘What a weirdo she is!’ easily loud enough for Nadia to hear.

Tammy sidled up to me. ‘That was mean of you,’ she said, but I think she was trying not to smile.

‘Not me,’ I said. ‘It was Iggy’s Death Ray.’

Tammy shook her head and tutted. ‘She’ll get him back. Just you wait.’

He didn’t have to wait long.

At break, Iggy hangs out with some older boys, although I don’t think they like him much because I heard them mocking his accent once when he wasn’t there. Anyway, after lunch I was walking through the east playground and there was a group – mainly boys, some girls – gathered in the top corner. I recognised one or two of them as being Iggy’s so-called friends.

I heard Iggy’s voice say, ‘Ladies and gentlemen: behold the mighty power of the Death Ray!’

There was a long pause.

I heard someone say, ‘Come on, get on with it.’

Then someone else said, ‘Hey, look!’

There was a cheer, followed by a plume of smoke rising into the air, and then everybody started to run away from it. I saw Iggy putting his glasses back on and I knew what had happened. The contents of the wire-mesh litter bin were fully ablaze; heaven knows what was in it for it to go up so fast, but the hot weather must have made everything tinder-dry.

As the crowd dispersed, though, I saw the flames flickering up to a wooden noticeboard with flaking paint and that had started to catch fire as well. I thought it best to make myself scarce and had sort of melted back into the crowd as Mr Springham strode at top speed towards the litter bin, holding a fire extinguisher.

‘WHO DID THAT? WHOEVER IS RESPONSIBLE WILL HAVE HELL TO PAY!’

Nadia got her revenge by telling everyone about Iggy’s Death Ray, and how he had used it to set fire to the litter bin. It soon reached the ears of the teachers. It earned him another suspension from school, plus detentions and letters home for everyone who had watched and encouraged him. Of course, they were all furious about this and I don’t think it did Iggy’s already fragile popularity any good at all.

And Iggy? I didn’t see him much after that, even though we live in the same village. I mean, we’d never exactly been besties anyway but Mam and Dad were hardly going to encourage me to hang out with him now, were they?

Then shortly before Christmas, Tammy and I saw Iggy down by the jetty, and he had brought a chicken with him. Like, a live one.

Tammy had declared that it was the annual final of Stones in the Lake. (Best of five games, loser buys the winner a muffin from the school tuck-shop.) It was two games each, and it was all down to my last throw. I drew my arm back, determined to win this one, and as I threw with all my strength I heard the shout, ‘SUZY!’ and it put me right off. I knew before my stone hit the water that I had lost and I swung round angrily to see who had shouted. Tammy was giggling like mad.

‘Who was …’ I began, and then I saw Iggy emerge from the path, followed by a small, ginger-coloured chicken. He was putting the chicken down then walking away and the chicken was staying put, just like a dog. Then he called, ‘Suzy, come!’ And the chicken got up and hopped over to him!

Tammy said, ‘Awwww!’ like it was a cute kitten. Iggy saw us watching and came over. I was still cross about losing at Stones in the Lake, and I tutted quietly.

‘Chickens,’ he said. ‘Cleverer than you’d think, you know? Suzy: sit!’

The chicken stopped and crouched down. Tammy gasped and gave a little clap.

‘Where did you get him?’ I said, warily.

‘Her,’ Iggy corrected. ‘My dad says I should have something to look after. You know, to make me “responsible”. He said he looked after chickens when he was in rehab.’ He added air quotes with his fingers and seemed completely unembarrassed about his dad. ‘As if! Anyway, I rescued her from old Tommy Natrass who didn’t want her cos she only lays teeny-tiny eggs. Don’t you, Suzy?’

Suzy looked up at the mention of her name, just like a dog does. Tammy and I both laughed, and Tammy squeezed my arm and said, ‘Oh, that’s so cuuute!’ in a squeaky voice, and then hummed her favourite song ‘The Chicken Hop’ all the way home. That evening, Mam had made chicken pie for tea. Tam said she wasn’t hungry.

So, that’s Iggy and Suzy. The next time I saw them was when I nearly broke his mum’s fingers with the piano lid.

It was two hours after I had burst into the Stargazer with the news of Tammy’s disappearance. By now, lots of people were milling around and talking to each other or on their phones. Others, who had gone out in their cars to search the roads that head north to Scotland, or south to Hexham and every other direction, were coming back, shaking their heads sadly. Mam hugged me so hard and got me to tell her what I had seen yet again.

Shortly afterwards, a police car pulled up on the driveway and two officers got out. I had already heard that the little police station in Bellingham, twenty miles away, had closed down for the Christmas break.

I heard Dad talking to them in the entrance as they came through to the bar.

‘Yes, sir – we’ve driven up from Hexham.’

‘Only two of you?’ said Dad. He was still in his toy soldier outfit, but nobody mentioned it.

‘It’s Christmas Eve, sir. Our staff are stretched, to be honest. But we’ve pulled in a highway patrol to help – they’ll be here soon. First thing is to establish what sort of a case we have here.’

And so began the interviews that were to continue, on and off, for days. People were coming in and out, and Dad tried to manage it all. There were calls of ‘Any news?’, and the sound of people’s mobile phones pinging and ringing.

Iggy and his mum had left with wishes of good luck, after Cora had sat with her eyes closed for a minute and meditated for ‘positive energy’ – which was nice of her, I guess, if a bit embarrassing.

I sat with Gran in the pub lounge with the fire going as she took shaky sips of tea. I told the police officers everything and they wrote it down in their notebooks.

Then I got to the bit about the noise by the water …

‘Wait, Ethan,’ said the woman officer who I had decided was quite nice. ‘Tell me again: why did you go down to the water?’

I shrugged. ‘I just followed the path. I just … wondered. I was worried, scared for Tammy. And there was the noise.’

I tried to imitate the noise for them, but I couldn’t really duplicate it. The two officers looked at each other, then wrote in their notebooks.

‘Speedboat?’ said the male officer to his colleague.

She thought for a moment till I said, ‘It definitely wasn’t a speedboat.’

‘A drone, then?’

I suppose it could have been a drone, I said, thinking who would be flying a drone in the dark?

‘All right. Thank you, Ethan,’ said the woman officer, standing up. She addressed her colleague. ‘Kareem, we’ll take the car and secure the path and the little beach with tape. That’s a potential crime scene.’ She spoke into her radio. ‘Mike Two Lima Bravo, any sign of that Traffic Patrol unit for the potential Miss-Per in Kielder?’

‘With you in estimated ten, sergeant,’ came the radio reply.

Dad went out with another man in his car to search down by the maze. The maze is shut in the winter, but you could easily get in if you wanted to, though I had no idea why Tammy would want to do that.

Next to me on the pub’s worn sofa, Mam gripped my hand so hard that it hurt, but I said nothing.

The police sergeant said, ‘Mrs Tait, I’d like to take Ethan back to the path where Tammy’s bike was found. Do you have someone here with you?’

‘I’ll stay with her,’ said Gran. ‘More tea, Mel?’ she asked. ‘Or would you prefer something a little stronger?’

Mam nodded.

Outside, I got into the police car. A few minutes later, and we were bumping along the road that I had cycled along earlier. A group of people were standing by the overgrown entrance to the path, and the sergeant got out of the car and walked towards them.

‘Thank you, everybody. Kindly move away. We are securing this area for evidence. Please do not touch anything.’

‘Too late for that, sarge,’ said the policeman. He pointed to a man with a short white beard and a green camouflage jacket who was holding on to Tammy’s bike.

‘Please put that down, sir. We may need to collect fingerprints or other evidence.’

The man put it down roughly and it clattered on the ground.

I wanted to say, ‘Hey, be careful’, but people were already firing questions at the sergeant.

‘Any news, officer?’

‘Are there more police arriving?’

‘Will there be a search of the area?’

The sergeant tried her best to ignore them politely, and the two officers led me down the dark path, each of them holding a torch to light the way. But before we made it down to the little beach, a loud and angry snarling sound made us stop in our tracks. Then we heard the rustling undergrowth, and footsteps running towards us, and another bark.

‘Sheba! Sheba!’ came an angry voice from ahead of us, but it was too late and the dog stopped in front of us, growling.

I shrank back behind the policeman, but he was shrinking back as well.

The sergeant stood her ground and shouted into the darkness, ‘Call your dog off! This is the police!’

From the shadows a man appeared: the same man who had been holding Tammy’s bicycle, yelling, ‘Sheba! Come! Sheba! Sheba! She-baaa! Come!’

Eventually, the dog stopped growling and turned and joined the man. We all seemed to breathe out at the same time.

‘Sorry about that,’ said the man. ‘She’s a bit—’

The sergeant interrupted him. ‘Will you put that dog on a lead, please, sir?’ she said sharply. When the man hesitated, she added, ‘Now, please.’

It was a big German Shepherd, with a scar on its face and a patchy tail, and it sat while the man attached a length of string around its collar. I knew the man, sort of. Geoff something-or-other. He’s the security guard at the observatory on the top moor. He comes into the pub sometimes with another man who is his son.

‘Any news about the lass?’ said Geoff. ‘We came down here to look for ’er.’

We had emerged on to the little beach, where Geoff’s son was standing smoking a cigarette. I was still keeping a wary eye on the dog, who was pulling on her string lead.

‘No, sir,’ said the younger officer. ‘And this is now a secure area. We’ll have to ask you to leave and not to touch anything.’ He took out his notepad. ‘May I ask your names, please?’

The man who had been smoking threw his cigarette butt into the water, where it landed with a little hiss. He exhaled a plume of smoke and said, ‘Why do you need our names?’

The sergeant looked at him quizzically. ‘Just routine, sir. Is there a problem?’

Geoff shot his son a glance and said, ‘No problem at all, officer. We’re happy to help. My name is Geoffrey Mackay. G-E-O-F-F-R-E-Y. Stop it, Sheba! This is also Geoffrey Mackay, Junior …’

He carried on giving his details and I moved away a few metres along the shore towards a rickety wooden jetty that extended a few metres over the water. That’s when I saw it, lying upside down on the black shingle, half submerged by the water.

The loose label from the present I had wrapped. On it was written: Miss Sheila Osborne.

This next bit is super sad. I’m just saying that to warn you because there is almost nothing worse than reading about someone else’s agony.

Dad, Mam, Gran and I were in total terror about Tammy that night as Christmas Eve tipped over into Christmas Day and all of the usual celebrations stopped. I don’t think anybody slept much. By 2am more police had arrived from Hexham.

By the time it was light, which was about eight o’clock, a huge group of people had gathered in the car park of the Stargazer, and were being coordinated by a police inspector in uniform and a man from Northumberland National Park Mountain Rescue, who had turned up with twelve volunteers. They had all come out to help on a Christmas Day morning.

There was a Mountain Rescue Land Rover full of equipment. The two Geoffs were there as well, and Sheba was snarling at three well-behaved Mountain Rescue collies in high-vis jackets.

At one point, the permanent hubbub of the bar room died down completely and there was a silence, eventually broken by the pealing of the little village church’s solitary bell summoning people to celebrate Christmas morning. I thought about the vicar, Father Nick, looking out over the empty pews and wondering why nobody had turned up. (In fact, I saw him later. He had taken his vicar gear off and cancelled services in three other churches that he goes to just so he could join the search.)

The morning and the afternoon passed in a confused mash-up that combined periods of hope and activity. In the mid-morning we all spread out on the top moor and trudged through the snow with whistles and torches. Iggy joined us, and Gran in her winter running gear, and Cora; in fact, I think almost everyone in the village was involved in one way or another. They were kind: they didn’t intrude when Mam was crying, and told me, ‘Don’t worry, son, we’ll find her.’ The TV in the bar was turned off because virtually every channel was showing jolly Christmas stuff and nobody felt like it.

The weather up on the moors had worsened overnight. It had started to snow again, and everybody knew that that was not a good thing. If Tammy had somehow wandered off then she was not well equipped for a freezing night in the Northumbrian hills, even with her new puffer jacket.

That, however, was not the worst of our fears. There were worse options that nobody wanted to say out loud in case saying them out loud would somehow make them come true.

That afternoon, when we would normally be watching a funny film and eating sweets, I sat with Mam in the bar with its Christmas decorations and switched-off tree lights which suddenly looked like the saddest, most pointless things the world. We looked out of the pub window, which Tammy and I had sprayed with fake snow a couple of weeks earlier, and we watched as the people who run the sailing school on the other side of the reservoir pulled into the driveway with a small boat on a trailer with an outboard engine.

We knew what that meant. We knew it meant there was a possibility that Tammy had entered the water and not come out again. Drowned, in other words. Nobody needed to say anything, but when Mam collapsed in sobs, I did too, while Gran sat beside us and stared straight ahead, shaking her head sadly.

‘There’s shepherds’ huts up on the moors, you know,’ said Gran eventually. ‘They’re a bit further from where we searched. Perhaps Tammy …’

‘The Natrass boys have been up there already on their quad bikes,’ said Mam, flatly.

I thought the most likely thing – but I could hardly bear to imagine it – was that Tammy had been kidnapped. But why? I could not work it out, and I don’t think Mam could either.

Hours passed …

The Mountain Rescue teams returned …

The police continued to make enquiries and more police cars arrived, and a police Land Rover …

An ambulance turned up in case they found Tammy and she needed treatment …

Christmas Day stretched into a long evening. Dad came back with some of the people from Mountain Rescue and poured them all whiskies at the bar to warm them up. He had one himself, and then another, and another. When it got late, some people drifted back to their houses and their elderly relatives, and their ruined Christmas dinners, and their little children who had not been told what had happened so as not to spoil their day.

And that day sort of stumbled into the next day, and I found myself playing a part in a drama that I had seen enacted before on TV, only this time it was real.

The pub was turned into an HQ. There were Come Back, Tammy posters printed and put up everywhere from Carlisle to Newcastle. Ted from the B & B, whose brother was a printer in Hexham, got a load of T-shirts made, amazingly fast, with Tammy’s face on them, and people wore them over their thick fleeces when we held a vigil outside the church.

Tea lights spelled out TAMMY on the ground, and people brought flowers and cuddly toys. The older kids from the school taxi-bus started singing Tammy’s favourite Christmas song, an oldie by a singer called Felina who died years ago. It’s supposed to be a funny song that goes like this:

‘Do-do-do-do-do the Chicken Hop!

Da-da-da-da-dance like you can’t stop!

Do-do-do the Chicken Hop this Christmas!’

Father Nick joined in, but it sounded completely wrong, even without the silly actions that go with it. I couldn’t sing along with them because I was too sad to sing a happy song, so I just stood and watched, massively aware that everyone was looking at me but trying to look as though they weren’t.

Soon (soon? It felt like a decade), four agonising days had gone past, and Tammy was still missing.

And still I felt, deep inside me, so deep inside me that I couldn’t even know if the feeling was real, that Tammy was alive. Somewhere.

Then, four days into our ordeal, Iggy Fox-Templeton came to the door with his fishing rod, trying to be normal, and everything got even less normal, if that was even possible. For that was when we met Hellyann: the strange, smelly creature who said she knew where Tammy was, and that we had to tell no one.

I wasn’t at all sure what to do, and I’m not sure you would have been either.

All right, do you want the long story of how I came to Earth, or the short story?

I shall give you the short story. The long story you will have to pick up along the way. Assuming we get there – at present there are no guarantees.

Anyway, here is the short story.

I, Hellyann, am eleven years old, and from another planet to yours. (I know, I know: it will all become clearer later. This is the short version, remember?)

I live in a world where human beings like you (but not like me, for I am not a ‘human being’) are exhibited in zoos. I think this is wrong for so many reasons and I must do what I can to put it right.

And that is how I ended up crossing the universe with two boys and a chicken.

A Note on the Translation

I wrote my part of this story in my native language and it was translated into English by Philip.

I now know that Anthallan does not sound much like a human language. To you, it sounds more like a series of grunts and squeaks and sniffs. My Earth friend Ignatius Fox-Templeton (Iggy) told me I sound like ‘a pug being strangled’ and he and Ethan Tait did not stop laughing for forty-two seconds.

Where the exact word does not exist, Philip, a robot, has tried to choose the nearest equivalent word so as not to interrupt the flow of the story.

(By the way, he is not a metal robot that walks around with a face and flashing lights. He is more … Well, you will find out.)

We are like you in many, many ways. For a start, we look quite like you. Not exactly like you, but still rather similar.

I have two legs, two arms and a head, and I walk upright. I also have a tail, but that is not really important.

It is hard, however, not to focus on the ways we are different.

So let us get the basics out of the way, shall we?

I suppose the main thing is that we are much, much more intelligent than you are. I am sorry if that seems rude, but it is a fact, and facts are important. To us, you are about as intelligent as Iggy’s pet chicken. That is why most people think it is all right to keep you in a zoo.

My home – my planet – is so far away from you that if I were to write out the number of kilometres it would take the rest of this page. Starting with 950 and following it with zero after zero, like this:

950,000,000,000,000,000,000 …

… and so on to the end of the page and maybe beyond. Of course, writing it out implies that there is only distance between us, but we do not calculate it like that. We measure both distance and time (they are related, as your Albert Einstein pointed out more than a hundred years go), plus a quantum-dimensional shift that enables us to ‘travel faster than the speed of light’, although we do not, not really. It is a dimension thing that, so far, is beyond your understanding. To be honest, I am not completely certain I understand it myself, although I do not usually admit this.

Think of it like this: can you explain to me how your ‘televisions’ work? I thought not. Intra-universal Shift is like that to me. I am happy to accept that it works, and to use it, without knowing all of the details.

Our world is clean. We have access to limitless energy that does not pollute.

It is conflict-free. We fight no wars because we have everything we want, and the Advisor makes all the decisions on behalf of everyone.

It is disease-free – and has been even since before the Big Burn, the planet-wide fire that raged for decades and killed almost everything.

We are the only creatures that inhabit it: the last ‘animals’ were almost all successfully eradicated centuries ago and those that were not perished in the Big Burn. The functions that some lower creatures performed (such as digesting waste products or enabling crop growth) have since been carried out efficiently, safely and hygienically by synthetic robots.

Compared with you, we are short-lived (thirty years, as defined by the revolution of your Earth around your sun, is very old, and is the practical limit of our bodies).

At eleven years old, then, I have lived about a third of my life. I finished school at seven, and I live independently.

So, at eleven years old, I am really – as you would say – ‘grown up’.

It was as a ‘grown-up’, then, that I found myself coming to your planet. To a small settlement on an island called Britain.

This was a dangerous idea. Not because of the Intra-universal Shift (what I believe you call ‘space travel’). That is unremarkable although prohibited by the Advisor. No, it is the reason I was coming that was dangerous.

You see, I had what you would call a ‘mission’.

A highly risky mission to rescue a girl from a human zoo on my planet, a gazillion-illion miles from Earth (that is a number made up by Iggy) and take her home.

If I failed – that is, if I was caught – I would be put to sleep for most of the rest of my life. Not only that, but the human being, in her miserable enclosure, would die in misery, and her parents and brother would live in misery, and that was not something I was willing to let happen.

And it was all because I have a heart: a heart which gives me feelings.

All of which makes it a shame that I did fail to rescue the girl, and ended up travelling to Earth alone.

You see, my mission did not get off to a good start …

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