'Didn't you hear it? You must have!'

'Hear what?' He struggled up on to an elbow.

'That scream. Something out there's screaming. Listen.'

Together they listened, but heard only the distant hooting of an owl. So peaceful. And so menacing.

Anticipating another scream, Janie clung frantically to the man at her side. It came as an anti-climax, so different this time, harsh like the dog's barking had been earlier; but not so ear-shattering, not so hellish, as the one which had awoken her. It died slowly away and somewhere there was an answering bark.

'Foxes!' Suddenly Peter burst out laughing, a peal of enforced mirth and relief. 'My God, that's what those screams were that people reckon they hear up on Hodre after dark, the screech of vixens! I read somewhere that vulpine mating begins any time from mid-November onwards. You'd think country folk would know that.'

'No!' Janie gave an indignant hiss. 'That's not what I heard, Peter. The first scream was nothing like that at all! It was the most unearthly sound I've ever heard!'

Damn it, her nerves were getting the better of her, he thought. Of course it was foxes; Janie, like the villagers, was letting herself be scared. He had to reassure her right now before she became hysterical.

'I tell you it's foxes. Listen again for a moment.'

Silence. Peter thought he could hear Janie's heart pounding; maybe it was his own. He prayed that the vixen would screech again. It did, a few seconds later—a wild, hideous scream that shattered the stillness and made the prowling male of the species bark again. Both animals were somewhere in the big forest.

There, what did I tell you? That was a fox, all right.'

'That was. 'Janie's voice quavered. 'But the other wasn't. I tell you, Peter, it was the most unearthly, awful sound I've ever heard in my life.'

He clicked his tongue in annoyance. Women! Once they got a stupid notion into their heads there was no way of changing their minds. 'Have it your own way, but I'm getting back to sleep because I've a lot of work to catch up on tomorrow. As far as I'm concerned it was mating foxes up in the forest and I don't want to hear any more about it.'

'But it wasn't up in the forest, not the sound I heard, anyway,' she almost screamed. 'Peter, it came from that stone circled

'For Christ's sake! This is sheer nonsense. You're forcing yourself to believe what that pair of bumpkins in the pub were ranting on about. No wonder Gavin's scared. You're frightening him to death. Now, I'm getting to sleep. You please yourself.'

Janie went over to the window, and stared out forcing her confused brain to register details; the sloping grassland ethereal and silvery, the bare hedges. In the distance the mass of pine trees seeming to glower threateningly. She tried not to turn her head, but in the end was compelled to, mentally flinching from the stunted pines only a couple of hundred yards away—so eerie, so majestic, so vibrant that she could almost feel their power. Wide-eyed, frightened, she was held there at the window as though they were hypnotising her, warning her.

Finally they let her go and she shuffled barefooted and trembling back to bed and lowered herself down alongside Peter. He was already asleep, she could tell by his regular breathing. The fool, he had scorned the final warning, scoffed at it. And there might not be another . . .

For the rest of the night she lay there just staring up at the ceiling, watching the latticed square of moonlight pale until finally it was replaced by the cold grey light of a mountain winter dawn. That scream—she could still hear it like a catchy tune that persistently sticks in the brain. She heard it again and again, a long-drawn-out cry of agony, the embodiment of every fear known to man or beast, the ultimate in terror.

Her train of thought led back to wild beasts, ferocious creatures that had escaped from captivity to return to the only way of life they knew: stalking their prey with a ruthless patience, pouncing out of the darkness and ripping it to shreds with huge sharp claws. Nature's law, the law of the jungle.

And Hodre was now that jungle.

Malcolm Hughes had been headmaster of Woodside school for the past twenty-five years. He had lived in the village from an early age, and he had studied there himself before progressing to university. A number of postings had followed but in the end the trail had led back to Woodside because that was his ambition. At fifty-five they would let him see his retirement there and even afterwards, he told himself, his presence would be indispensable, for truly no outsider could fully understand the people of this place.

Well-built and balding, the schoolmaster had a reputation for being bad-tempered and a law unto himself. Miss Haverill, who taught the infant class, lived in fear and trembling of the headmaster but, Malcolm decided, that was the way it should be. Had not assistant teachers in his own schooldays feared the headmaster? Of course they had. There was one word to sum it all up—discipline! And discipline stemmed from the top of the tree, found its way right down to the roots and ensured a strong and healthy growth throughout. That was the trouble with society today: no discipline. The blame for recent city rioting and looting lay with parents and school teachers, principally the latter. A schoolmaster did not simply discipline his pupils, he disciplined the parents as well.

Malcolm Hughes took his time lighting his large rustic pipe as he weighed up this young man who had deemed to presume upon his valuable time first thing on a Monday morning. Outsiders could cause problems because they had not had the Woodside upbringing and looked for psychological reasons behind their children's inability to conform to what this small society demanded. They did not accept what you told them; they came up with ideas of their own which were all nonsense anyway. This fellow sitting before him was a writer; well, he'd written a book, put it that way. Mass market fiction, a sacrilege to the English language, laced with bad grammar and even worse language. It was all a con-trick, damaging to the tradition of English literature. A semi-hippy, he had not even bothered to put a suit on to consult his son's headmaster. Certainly discipline was lacking here. Hughes sighed audibly.

'My son is afraid of being bullied,' Peter Fogg said, moving his head slightly in an attempt to dodge a drifting cloud of scented tobacco smoke.

'But he hasn't actually been bullied.' Hughes knitted his bushy eyebrows into a stern countenance, which in his younger days he had practised in front of a mirror. 'Young boys are prone to many fears, their imaginations are fertile and often play-ground quarrels are magnified out of all proportion.'

'He's frightened of the Wilson boys.' Peter watched the other closely for a reaction, and saw the grey eyes beneath the brows narrow slightly.

'Oh, the Wilsons . . . ' The schoolmaster drew heavily on his pipe and took his time expelling the smoke. They can be a bit over rumbustuous at times but there's no harm in the lads. I've had to stamp down on them on the odd occasion in the past, mind you.'

Their elder brothers tried to run Gavin down on their motorbikes.' Peter sensed Hughes erecting barricades, a kind of stonewall psychological defence. They could have killed him. I sent them packing but the younger ones are threatening to beat Gavin up today, because his parents aren't Welsh!'

That's nonsense.'

'Precisely. That's why I'm here now.'

'I assure you Mr—er—um—Fogg, that no such thing could take place on the premises of this school. I would not allow anything more than an exuberant friendly brawl on the playground, I promise you.'

Then how is it,' Peter spoke slowly, his words seeming to cut a path through the thick haze of pipe smoke which enshrouded the big man on the other side of the desk, 'that these two young hooligans blacked Kevin Arnold's eye and got him down on the ground and kicked hell out of him?'