An extract from Chapter Two of The Lights at Beacon Hill:
The path led them deeper into the woods. It was getting properly dark now, David realised. He paused, staring into the quiet, indistinct gloom, and shivered slightly. He decided that he should probably be heading back.
“C-Come on, b-boy,” he said quietly, giving the lead a little tug, but Bunzer gave no response.
Puzzled, David shone his torch down at the dog. Bunzer was standing immobile, ears pricked, staring fixedly into the woods. The hackles along his back had risen, standing up in little black tufts. David waved his torch beam in the direction the dog was staring. There was nothing there – what had Bunzer seen? Had he heard something?
Standing in the darkness alone, with his normally easy-going dog refusing to move a muscle, began to play on David’s nerves. He gave Bunzer’s lead a harder tug.
“W-What is it, b-boy? Come on!”
Bunzer looked round and gave David a beseeching look with his large, sad eyes, then he whined once and pelted off into the trees. Caught by surprise, David was pulled forward with a cry. Falling to his knees, he felt the lead slip from his grasp. Before he even knew what he was doing, he had scrambled up and was chasing the dog blindly through the forest, calling out his name repeatedly.
“Bunzer! B-Bunzer! Come b-back!”
Brambles and ivy bit at David’s ankles as he ran, but he barely noticed: he was too busy trying to keep Bunzer’s hindquarters in sight, to avoid losing him completely.
In this way, David ran downhill for some time, but then his left foot caught in the arch of a raised tree root. He tripped painfully over it and fell forwards into the leaf mould on the ground; the torch went flying and landed with a ‘whump’ in the undergrowth ahead of him.
Groaning, David picked himself up off the ground. He brushed the fallen leaves off his shirt and coat and retrieved the torch from within a bramble patch ahead of him. He shone it around, trying to find his dog.
“B-Bunzer?” he whispered into the darkness. There was no sign of the dog anywhere.
David called the dog’s name a few more times, still to no avail. After a while, he placed two fingers in his mouth and whistled once, loudly. The sound of his special whistle would normally bring Bunzer running, but there was only silence.
I’ve lost him, David thought miserably, with a horrible sinking feeling in his heart. What am I going to tell Mum and Dad?
He was about to turn back when, from somewhere to his right, there came a single, strangled yelp.
“Bunzer!” he cried out. He ran on down the hill, forgetting the pain in his ankle, torch beam bobbing in the darkness as he went. Before long, he found the dog: Bunzer’s trailing lead had caught on the branches of a fallen tree, and he was straining at it, trying to pull away, a string of froth dangling from his jowls in the effort.
“Bunzer! It’s okay! C-Calm down!” David gasped. He put his arms around the dog to stop him tugging at the lead. Bunzer slowed the movement of his scrabbling paws, and David felt the wild thumping of the dog’s heartbeat begin to subside.
Once Bunzer had calmed down, David began to disentangle the lead from the fallen tree. He was thinking hard. What could have made his dog go so crazy?
He looked at Bunzer. The dog was staring straight ahead once more, ears perked up. David followed Bunzer’s gaze. This time, he thought he saw something… was that a chink of light between the trees ahead?
“Stay,” he told the dog. Bunzer looked him mournfully in the eye, but made no attempt to leave.
David set off slowly through the woods in the direction he thought the light had come from. As he drew closer, he saw that there was indeed a light: a blue, slightly pulsating light coming from a large clearing ahead. It rose and fell in a way that was quite unnatural, casting strange shadows among the foliage.
What is this…?
Right then, some rational part of David wanted to go back. Bunzer had freaked out when he sensed whatever it was that lay ahead. Maybe this was something a normal ten-year-old boy wasn’t meant to see. But curiosity had got the better of him and he carried on regardless, torch held out in front of him…
You can find out what David and Bunzer have stumbled upon in The Lights at Beacon Hill, available now in paperback and on Amazon Kindle.
All text copyright © 2024 Michael Wilberforce. All rights reserved.
Michael Wilberforce - Author 