SOMETHING STRANGE IN THE NEIGHBOURHOOD

Jim Swale rose that Monday morning with the healthy, bone-deep feeling that it was going to be an unremarkable day for him. Ordinary. Dull. Just the usual routine day at work. Nothing unusual. No alarms and no surprises, please – at 46, who wants them anyway?

As he shaved and washed himself in the bathroom on the top floor of his distinctly average inter-war semi in a small Yorkshire town, he could hear the familiar sound of the rest of his family banging around in the kitchen underneath as they squabbled their way through eating another breakfast.

Jim's wife, Alice, was stirring a panful of porridge, whilst the 17-year old Rosalind, who was on adiet, crunched virtuously at her Special K and ignored Alice's pointed remarks about why she needed another diet when she was hardly overweight. And wasn't Special K just full of sugar anyway?

Meanwhile, Tom, the unplanned 6-year old, whinged about being refused treacle in his porridge. Sliced bananas, apparently, just weren't good enough. Some little bugger at school had probably claimed their family ate porridge with gold flakes on top, thought Jim. He suppressed a sense of irritation at his nearest and dearest that was becoming all too familiar of late, wiped his face with a towel, and decided that he'd better show his face down there before Alice started shouting that his breakfast was ready. Going into the bedroom, he pulled on a hastily-selected T-shirt and jeans, and headed downstairs.

"Morning, all," he announced, cheerfully.

"Morning," mumbled everyone else. Well, except Tom, who was still pouting silently over not getting treacle.

"Ugh, you miserable lot!" He imitated their greeting in the flattest-sounding voice he could manage – "Morning!" – but no-one could be bothered to take the bait, even Rosie, who could generally be relied on to find most of what her Dad said or did incredibly embarrassing, and tell him. Shrugging, Jim sat down and started to eat the bowl of porridge Alice had set out for him.

"Jim, are you going to be free to pick up Tom from school this afternoon?" asked Alice, as she started on her own bowl. "I've got a meeting at work, I can't get away early enough."

"Oh, yeah, I'm sure I can get Mike to mind the shop for an hour. He seems a bit less gormless than most of the assistants I've had before. I can probably leave him on his own without him accidentally setting the place on fire or something."

"I've told you before, he seems a nice lad. And you're far too much of a perfectionist with your staff."

"Well, so would you be if it was all your money at stake! I've got a business to run! Anyway, what's this crucial meeting all about?"

"Don't give me that, "I've got a business to run!" line! It's a delicatessen, Jim, not Goldman Sachs!"

"The best one in Ilkley!" he cut in.

"…and the meeting's about my manager loving the sound of his own voice, just like all of the meetings I ever have to go to."

Jim thought that Rosie seemed uncharacteristically quiet. Whilst the Swale table was not exactly renowned for high-class badinage, she normally made more of an effort than this, even in the morning.

He swallowed another spoonful of porridge. "Penny for your thoughts, love."

For a moment, Rosie said nothing. Then:

"You know, Dad, I've been thinking – maybe I should learn how to cook properly. You know, have Mum teach me."

Jim and Alice glanced at each other, baffled.

"Eh? Where's this coming from all of a sudden?" said Jim. Rosie had, until now, shown no interest in cuisine beyond occasionally watching "The Great British Bake Off". Her main impact in the kitchen was driving Alice nuts by leaving her used teabags in the sink.

"Is this more to do with that diet you're on?" asked Alice. "Look, Rosie, we talked about this a few months ago – you need a healthy balanced diet and I am not letting you go vegan while you're living under my roof…"

"It's nothing to do with that. God, Mum!" said Alice. She blushed furiously and stared down into her bowl, her straight dark hair almost covering her eyes. "It's just…something I want to do."

Jim tried to play the peacemaker. "Well, you are supposed to be going to university next year. You'll have to look after yourself then, so I guess it'll be useful. Although if you wanted to learn about cooking I dunno why you wouldn't help out in the shop last summer…"

"Making potato salad and slicing up overpriced ham isn't "learning about cooking"! Besides, it was different then…"

There was a brief pause. "Rosie," said Jim, "is this something to do with Harry Ingleston?"

Harry Ingleston was a blond, green-eyed boy in the same year as Rosie at school. He always seemed to be hanging around chatting when Jim arrived to pick her up, got a fair few mentions in conversation, and whilst they weren't dating as yet, Jim was more or less waiting for the day. To be honest, although Harry seemed nice enough, Jim thought he seemed a bit soft. Too nice, really. However, Rosie seemed sufficiently interested for Harry to be the explanation for any sudden changes in behaviour.

"No! Well, actually, yes, sort of, but no!" said Rosie, defensively. "Look, if you must know, I have lunch with Harry and a few other people at school and…I just thought I'd make some nice snacks for them!"

Alice and Jim glanced at each other again. "It really must be love," said Alice. "OK, Rosie, if Harry wants snacks I'll help you make some for him. Not too many, though – I'm not running a full-service café for every boy you like."

"Especially not those red-headed twins off the council estate," muttered Jim.

Rosie's dark eyes flared up. "Dad! What is your problem with Yuri and Ulric!"

"Well, firstly, they're called Yuri and Ulric. Good God, who gives their kids names like that? More to the point, they're off the estate. The kids down there are trouble. Those two got suspended from school for fighting last term. Also, I've seen their Mum and Dad pick them up, and neither of those two is ginger. I reckon the milkman's to blame."

"Ugh, Dad! You're such a bigot sometimes! Yuri and Ulric are decent guys, they just get bullied a lot by…by hair fascists like you. They didn't even really start that fight, they were just defending themselves."

"Daddy," piped up Tom, before Jim could respond, "why is the milkman to blame for Yuri and Ulric's hair?"

It was the cue to bring breakfast to a hasty end.

Jim drove through Ilkley town centre on his way to Golden Route, his delicatessen. Although it was autumn and not quite light yet, the roads were already starting to fill up with commuters heading off towards work in Leeds or Bradford, whilst groups of kids could be seen standing by bus stops, waiting for their daily ride to school. The great dark bulk of Ilkley Moor hung over everything, standing out against the brightening sky. As he drove past All Saints Church, Jim noticed that the cherry tree in the churchyard was laden with blossom. It looked like a pale pyramid glowing faintly in the half-light.

Weird, he thought. Isn't it the wrong time of year for that? Jim had never been much of a gardener, but he was pretty sure that trees blossomed in spring, not autumn. However, his mind was on stock, pricing and how many jars of pickled onions he was likely to sell that week, so the thought didn't stick in his head long.

When he got to the shop, Mike was already there and had opened up for early customers. For all he had dismissed him in front of the family, Jim had a lot of time for Mike. He would never normally have trusted someone barely out of their teens with the keys (or, in truth, anything else) but Mike, somehow, just seemed to inspire trust. He came across as reliable, honest, a nice lad, as Alice had said.

"Morning, Mr Swale," said Mike, cheerfully. "Do you want a cup of tea? I've got the kettle on?"

"Thanks, Mike – milk and two sugars, please."

Mind you, thought Jim, that haircut was pretty odd. I mean, long pink hair with white highlights – the kid looked like a refugee from the late 70s. He had no idea how much money and effort it took to keep your hair that colour, but assumed it was a bit more than the occasional use of Just For Men. Still, he was helpful around the shop, so who cared?

"I reckon we're going to have a busy day today," said Mike.

"Better get that tea down us, then," said Jim.

"So, what do you think of the snacks, Harry?" asked Rosie.

It was a few days later, and Alice had helped her prepare the lunch that the little group of friends was tucking into as they sat on the low wall behind South Road Community Academy (Motto: "Courtesy, Cooperation and Compliance"). Rosie had done canapes – thai chicken skewers, mini jacket potatoes, cranberry meatballs and, to finish off, mini chocolate brownies.

Harry, who was in the middle of chewing a canape, swallowed it, looked up from the book he was reading and stuck up his thumb. "They're great, Rosie. Like, proper party food. It's so cool that you've gone to all this trouble for us. You should definitely stick with this cooking thing."

"Plenty of meat," said Ulric, approvingly. "I mean, if they were bigger there'd be more meat on them, of course…" He quickly spotted the flash of pain in Rosie's eyes, and hastily added, "…but, you know, they're still really nice."

"Well, they certainly aren't terrible," said Yuri. Unless sufficiently angry, he was not really a guy who did "emotional responses".

"Thanks, guys!" said Rosie. Shame about Yuri, she thought, but he was how he was. "What's your book about, Harry?"

"This? Oh, I got it out of the school library. 'Ghosts of Old Yorkshire.' It's mental, full of all these stories about all the ghosts and monsters that people claim to have met around here. Especially up on the moors. Back in history, people claimed to have seen all kinds of things up there – goblins, fairies, mysterious lights hanging over bogs, you name it."

Yuri pulled a face. "Oh, come on, Harry, that's just a load of superstitious nonsense. They'd probably all had a skinful at the local tavern and then imagined things walking back home in the dark."

"You think so?" said Harry. "I'm not so sure, myself."

"You should check out Sceptical Steve's videos on YouTube," went on Yuri. "He thinks…"

"Hey, you lot – have you got food there?" broke in a voice from behind them. The group turned around to see a rake-thin kid with pale hair stroll up from the other side of the wall.

"Sam?" said Ulric. "Ha, might have guessed you'd be around where there's food available."

"Thanks for the invitation, Ricky!" replied Sam, even though there hadn't been one, and stuck his hand into Rosie's lunch box to pull out a handful of the canapes. Ignoring the disapproving looks of the others, he began to munch away at them. "Not bad. But not as good as battered cod from Charlie's Place."

"Really?" said Ulric. "Is that where you've just been? So how come you haven't got fish and chips with you?"

"Oh, I dunno, perhaps because it's against the rules to go out of school for lunch and everyone at Charlie's Place knows that," said Yuri. "He didn't get served! Well, either that or he just didn't want to spend money when he could scrounge something for free. You're so full of shit, Sam."

Sam shrugged. "Hey, I may not have fish and chips, but then I don't have ginger pubes either. Unlike you two."

Without a word, Ulric and Yuri stood up together and clenched their fists in anger. Harry hastily raised his hands and stepped in between them and Sam before things got out of hand.

"Come on, guys, don't ruin Rosie's treat. Anyway, break's nearly over and we've got to get back. "

There was an instant of tension before Ulric and Yuri shrugged and backed off. "We're letting that go for Rosie's sake," said Ulric. "But I'm warning you, Sam, next time you get lippy with me or my brother, my boot's going to end up in your balls!"

Sam shrugged again. "Yeah, whatever. Any time, any place, as far as I'm concerned." He wandered off, continuing to nibble at the snacks he had taken. The others stared after him.

"Just what the hell is wrong with that guy?" said Yuri.

"His mouth," said Ulric.

"I just don't understand it, Ricky," said Harry. "And I'm sure he didn't used to be that bad. He was a normal guy, with a sense of humour. Even his insults are lame nowadays."

"I feel sorry for him, to be honest," said Rosie. "I'm sure it's mostly just front. I dunno why he thinks he needs to show it, though. Anyway, there's the bell – we'd better go inside."

It was now winter in West Yorkshire, cold and damp. The Christmas lights had gone up in the town centre and it was already getting dark when Alice came to collect Tom from his primary school. As she drove past the church, she was surprised to notice a cherry tree was blooming in the grounds. Global warming really was getting ridiculous, she thought.

Tom ran out of the school doorway into her arms, brandishing various bits of paper.

"Hello, Mum!"

"Oof! Careful, sweetie! Hello, there – what have you been up to today! More drawings?"

Smiling, Tom, held up a piece of paper with two garishly-coloured figures drawn on it in crayon. "It's Harry and Rosie, Mum," he said, smiling. "I'll let them have it as a present."

"That's…that's great, love," replied Alice, forcing a smile for her son's sake. Perhaps it wasn't that weird that Tom should choose to draw his sister and her (sort-of) boyfriend, since they'd been on a few dates now and Harry had been around at the house. But his normal choice of subject was dinosaurs or jet fighter planes, and he didn't give his drawings to people as gifts.

After they had got back home, and Jim had come in from work, she mentioned this to him. "Oh, that's nothing," he said. "The other day, when you had your evening out and I was making tea, Tom offered to set the table. Like, offered to. I didn't even ask him or anything."

There was a moment of silence. "Jim, I think something odd is going on with our kids. I can't quite put my finger on it, but I know it's not right."

Jim shrugged. He was sitting at the kitchen table, tapping away at a spreadsheet on his laptop with the delicatessen's accounts on it. "I dunno, Alice – maybe we're just over-analysing things. I mean, what are we going to do about it? Take Tom to the GP and say he's getting unusually helpful around the house and showing interest in the lives of the people around him? He'll think we're nuts. There are parents who would kill to have that as the biggest problem with their kids."

"I don't know," said Alice. "But I do know that what's going on with them right now isn't normal. And perhaps it might help just a bit if you'd divert a bit of attention from your precious business to your family!"

"That's rubbish! I was cooking their meal and babysitting for them only a few days ago!"

"And that's the first time in how long? When you're not at the shop, you're thinking about it. I can tell. I talk to you and it's like the lights are on, but no-one's home."

"That shop is the future for this family! Come on, Alice, you hate your job. I used to as well, only I did something about it. Don't take it out on me because you didn't."

Alice threw up her hands. "OK, Jim, of course, it's not really to do with our kids, it's all to do with what a hero you are for selling fancy bloody sausages. Silly me, how could I forget? Honestly, I don't know why I even bother, sometimes!"

She stalked out of the room. Jim sighed, and turned back to his spreadsheet. He knew he hadn't heard the last of this.

The group at the Academy continued to enjoy Rosie's regular contributions to lunch into spring. As time went on though, Yuri and Ulric couldn't help but notice some tension developing between Harry and Rosie. They wouldn't chat as much as they used to, even though they were supposed to be going out officially now. Sometimes they didn't even sit next to each other. As they sat on the grass by the wall one day, the brothers speculated about what might be going on. There didn't seem to be any obvious reason for it. Sure, Sam was continuing to be a dick, but that was really no surprise.

"It's women, you know," said Yuri. "They're just funny like that, you know. Emotional. Can't live with them, can't live without them, all that sort of stuff."

Ulric grinned. "For someone with no girlfriend, you certainly know a lot about women. Maybe you should write a self-help guide for lonely guys about how to impress girls."

"Oh, shut your face. Have you got a better explanation?"

Whether Ulric did or not will have to remain a mystery for the ages, because before he could open his mouth to answer Rosie suddenly appeared, running. Her eyes were reddened and her face was stained with tears. The brothers looked up, startled. Everyone around was staring too.

"What's going on, Rosie?" asked Yuri.

"It's…it's Harry and me," said Rosie. Her voice struggled to come out clearly. "We've…we've split up, guys!"

"Really?" said Ulric. "No way!" The pair of them got to their feet and instinctively each put a comforting hand on their friend's shoulder. Rosie grabbed each arm and began sobbing loudly. They guided her over to the wall, sat her down, and after a couple of minutes of crying, inarticulate noises and Ulric and Yuri mumbling the best soothing remarks for a moment of emotional trauma that two teenage boys could think of on the spot, she finally calmed down a bit.

"It's just mad," said Ulric, "why would Harry do something like that? You've not been dating long, and…"

"Oh, no," said Rosie. "You've got it the wrong way round, Ricky. Harry didn't dump me – I dumped him!"

"You what?" said Yuri. "Well, if you dumped him then how come you're the one who's getting upset? I mean, isn't this what you wanted? That's so illogical…Ow!" Ulric had punched him in the ribs.

"Damn it, Yuri," hissed Ulric.

Rosie looked puzzled. "I…I don't exactly know why. I just know, somehow, that I had to do it."

Now it was Ulric's turn to play Mr Spock. "What…How does that even work? You didn't want to dump him, but you had to do it? That makes no sense!"

Rosie looked straight into his eyes, her own burning bright with conviction. "I did it because it was the right time. Because I needed to end it with Harry so I could be free for someone else…for you, Ulric!"

Ulric's jaw dropped. "What the ever-living fuck are you talking about!"

Then Rosie burst into tears again.

"I think Rosie's upset and confused from the break-up," said Dr Matthews to Jim, as they stood together in the hall of the Swales' house, where a cork board had yet more of the drawings of Rosie and her friends that Tom had been doing pinned to it. The doctor had just come down from talking to her. "I've given her some sleeping pills, and hopefully she'll make more sense when she's had a night's rest. If not, then it might be time to think about whether this is just a normal mood swing or something more serious."

"Thanks, John," said Jim. He didn't like imposing on his brother-in-law, but it had seemed urgent and he hadn't wanted to jump through all the hoops the GP required these days before you could get an appointment the same day. Fortunately, he'd been able to leave Mike in charge at Golden Route when Alice called to say that Rosie had been brought home in a confused state by Ulric and Yuri. The lad really was a god-send.

Jim opened the door for Dr Matthews, and turned once he had shut it to see the two red-haired boys standing across the hall facing. They'd been waiting in the living room ever since bringing Rosie back.

"Is Rosie going to be OK, Mr Swale?" asked Yuri.

"We…we hope so, Yuri. Look, lads, you'd better be on your way. She needs to rest, and your Mum and Dad will be wondering where you've got to."

Ulric and Yuri headed towards the door.

"Oh, and lads…" said Jim. They paused and turned back. "Thanks. I owe you one for this."

As the door shut, Jim turned around. Alice was standing across the hall facing him. Jesus, he thought, are they queueing up for this now?

"We need to talk, Jim," she said.

"No, we don't," he replied.

"We have to do something…"

He reached over to the row of hooks by the door, and took his jacket and hat from it. "I'm going for a walk on the Moor. I need to get my head together. We can talk about this later."

"Jim…"

"Bye, love."

When he got to the end of the garden path, he saw Ulric and Yuri off in the distance, walking away towards the estate. You couldn't miss those red heads.

Jim turned and went in the other direction, uphill, towards the Moor. His mind was swamped with half-formed thoughts and fears. Every so often, one would float to the surface and momentarily become the object of his attention, only to sink away from it just as quickly, drowned in the rush of other anxieties. What was going on with Rosie and Tom? What would happen to them next? What could he do about it?

As he reached the dry-stone wall where the Moor gate stood, an elderly man in a black trilby came through it from the other side and shut it behind him.

"Afternoon," said Jim, mechanically, as the man passed.

"Afternoon," said the man. Then, out of the blue, his voice took on a harsh, distorted quality, and he spat out – "Avoid the moor in those hours of darkness when the powers of evil are exalted!"

Jim's heart leapt in his chest. "S…sorry?" he stammered.

It was the man's turn to look surprised. "I said, "Nice weather for a walk, isn't it?""

"Oh. Yeah, of course," replied Jim, hurriedly opening the gate in his turn and starting on the tarmac path towards the top of the Moor. Christ, he had to pull himself together! Now he was starting to imagine things himself. What on earth was going on? Was it his turn now?

Even on an overcast spring weekday, Ilkley Moor was usually far from empty. There were usually walkers and ramblers of various kinds crossing it, but as Jim came to the end of the tarmac path and started following a well-worn track through heather and gorse-bushes, he realised that the Moor seemed very quiet, almost deserted. He could see one or two human figures, far away, Gore-Tex'd and woolly-hatted. Other than that, there was no-one. The emptiness was beginning to feel oppressive, and yet, somehow, he knew he couldn't turn back.

He glanced back briefly at the tangle of roofs sprawling out below him, with the River Wharfe gleaming beyond them. Then he followed the path as it bent sharply around a cluster of large granite boulders. The position of the rock formation, and low banks to either side, meant he couldn't see what was on the path in front of him as he came around the corner.

That was probably just as well, because standing right ahead of him, only a few feet away, was a gigantic black dog, as tall as a man at its shoulder, and broad in proportion. It had eyes the size of saucers, which glowed with an eerie pale light, and a set of fangs that would have given a tiger or bear pause for thought. Jim stopped in his tracks, paralysed with fear.

"Hello, Mr Swale," said the dog.