Footprints
Exclusive Preview: Prologue
The paint palette shouldn’t have been there.
It lay on the cracked concrete floor of the old meat-works, half-hidden under a wind-rolled newspaper from three weeks ago; colours so bright they looked wrong against the grey dust and rust of the place.
Cassie Reilly was the first to see it. She was always first. First to climb the chain-link fence behind the McGivern place; first to dare the rest of them into the woods after dark; first to get grounded when the others got away clean. Her shoes squeaked faintly on the floor as she crouched to peel the newspaper back.
“Looks like something from school art class,” she said, her voice echoing in the cold air. “Except…”
“Except what?” Benny asked. He was picking his way across the floor, stepping around broken bottles and bent nails. He was careful, always careful, because Benny knew how fast things could go wrong. His mama had a bad back and couldn’t work anymore; if he came home with a nail through his foot, or worse, the hospital bill would be more than they had. It was hard enough keeping the debt-collectors from the door as it was.
Its surface was caked with dried paint and deep scratches. At one time they might have been letters. Cassie poked at one of the shallow wells with a small stick. The paint was thick but smooth, like cream; colours sharp enough to make her eyes water. “It’s wet.”
“That’s impossible,” said Jonah from the doorway. “It’s got to have been here for decades”
Jonah always hung back. Tall and pale, with a permanent expression like he’d just remembered something he’d forgotten to do, Jonah was the one who saw patterns in things; shapes in clouds, faces in water stains. He had a sketchbook full of them. He also had a father who was “away”, though nobody asked too many questions about that.
“It’s not just wet,” Cassie said. She stood, holding the end of the paint-covered stick up to the light that slanted in through the high broken windows. The yellow was the exact gold of a marigold in July. The blue the colour of the river after a storm, the deep part where the current could pull you under. Gently, she touched it with her finger. It felt cold. She wiped it back onto the stick, the blue pigment staining her skin.
A sound creaked in the shadows. The three of them froze.
“Wind,” Jonah muttered, though the air was still enough to make the dust hang in it like smoke.
Cassie slowly moved the palette back across the floor. “Bet you won’t touch it,” she said, grinning at Benny.
“You can be such a bearcat, sometimes,” he snapped back.
“Better than being a big girl’s blouse, you armpit!” retorted Cassie with a wry smile. She dipped her finger back into the paint, the tip slick and bright with red; red like something hot and fresh from a cut. Grinning, she held it out at Benny, who stepped back to avoid getting it on his clothes.
She laughed as she crouched, wiping it off on the floor beside him.
The laugh died as the red mark deepened then sharpened, expanding until it became the shape of a boot-print. Panicked, she scurried backwards, away from the paint. A second one appeared, just ahead of it. Then another, as if something unseen was walking away from them.
The three of them watched the trail stretch forward one slow step at a time, towards the far end of the slaughterhouse.
“Cassie,” Jonah said, his voice small; worried.
“Yeah?”
“These… aren’t our footprints.”
The steps reached the shadowed wall at the far end and then something there moved, peeling itself loose from the darkness...