Just Before I Died: The gripping new psychological thriller from the bestselling author of The Ice Twins

My resolve is snapped, by a crackle of frosted twigs, a human footfall.

‘Mummy!’

Lyla bolts. She wrenches from my grasp and goes sprinting down the frosty path, out of the woods, towards the distant car. She is a faster runner than me, she runs so much on the moor. But I must not let her out of my sight. I hear the dogs barking wildly as they scatter into the woods, not pursuing us: pursuing someone or something else. Or they are being pursued in turn.

‘Felix!’ I shout. ‘Randal! Come on!’

Lyla is racing away, a dim little figure, getting dimmer in the dusk. Trees and brambles snag at me, lacerate my hands and neck as I stumble on cold, mossy rocks. I urge myself on; it is so dark, I can barely see, but I can hear my daughter. I fall, cracking a knee on an icy tree stump. Ah. Ah ah ah! I shout at the sudden sparkling pain, and look ahead. Lyla has stopped, on the path, by a little wooden footpath sign.

She turns in the gloom, and shrieks, ‘Mummy, he’s coming! He’s coming after you! Right behind you!’

‘Lyla—’

‘Don’t look back, Mummy, get up get up!’

I can hear crashing noises behind me, something big emerging from the cold heart of Hobajob’s Wood; the dogs, or someone else?

Someone I know.

Pushing myself to my feet, I start running, again. But Hobajob’s Wood wants to lock us inside. Dead branches block the path, ice patches crack as I trample my way, breathing chilly fog. I have reached the ancient stone wall, toothed with new icicles. Climbing over, I jump down, the crashing behind me as loud as ever – but I am too scared to look back.

There. The car. A welcome grey shape in the deathly twilight. I see Lyla is already inside, her face pressed to the rear window, her eyes wide with fear.

The cold car door handle stings my hand, I yank it open and fall into the seat and twist the key into the ignition, but Lyla shouts at me, ‘Wait, Mummy, the dogs, where did they go?’

‘They ran off, but they’ll find their way back. We have to go.’

‘No! He’ll kill them.’

She is right, she is wrong, she is screaming, I open the door again, to the frigid dark air, and see – what? Who? Something? – and there is Felix, crashing over a fence, leaping it in one go, three foot high. He tears towards us, leaps across me into the car, wet and cold and doggy and yowling. He jumps on to Lyla, clearly terrified.

Forcing Felix away from her face, Lyla cries, ‘Where’s Randal, we can’t go without him!’

I can hear something. Getting nearer.

‘We can’t wait any longer!’

‘Over there!’

I stare, helpless, into the dark pillars of the trees and the crouched shapes of bushes. It is now too dark to see anything for sure. It is as if I am drowning again in the black waters of Burrator. Even as it formed, the ammil is beginning to melt. Drip, drip, drip. The black ice dwindles.

‘Hide, Mummy. Duck down so he can’t see!’

It feels ludicrous. Surely he will see us. He’ll have heard us slamming the car’s doors. But I don’t know what else to do.

Lyla is nearly crying. ‘Duck down low, Felix, Mummy, please hide.’

I do as she says; cower low in my seat. Maybe he will run past. Maybe he has got Randal. Maybe he’s been watching all along, for weeks.

The seconds pass. Felix whimpers. Lyla shushes him, fiercely.

Seconds become minutes. He is here, he will open the door.

My fingers and lips are numb from the cold. I try to keep my breathing as quiet as possible. And I wait.

Nothing happens. The silence endures. From crashing and panic to total immobility and total calm. The cold is the only noise, like a steely ringing in my ears.

My limbs ache from this cramped position. I need to stretch. We’ve been here ten minutes. Nothing has happened. Was there ever anything? I begin to doubt. The brush, I definitely saw the brush, and the dead birds, and the tissues – but was that tampon, stained with blood, really mine? Was any of it really mine? There’s no sure way to tell.

Maybe we just panicked. Overreacted. People dump litter all the time in Dartmoor. Adam loathes them. Says he will set the dogs on them if he ever finds them, let the lurchers tear the yobs apart, limb from screaming limb. See how they like their lungs and kidneys being scattered across the tors.

Even as I think this, I hear a friendly, recognizable growling, outside the car.

Kicking open the door, I see Randal, his tongue lolling, smoking cold breath in the dimmity. He jumps casually into the car, and on to the back seat, to be fussed by Lyla, and nuzzled by Felix. He does not seem frightened. He does not act like a dog that was chasing, or being chased. It’s Randal. Our dog. Behaving normally.

Lyla’s face is blank now, the terror gone.

‘Let’s go,’ I say.

She nods, and shuts her eyes.

I work it through; and I work it out. It really was a simple panic. We panicked. It’s what people do in woods. In the dark, as the cold and the night kicks in. They panic: they see the Great God Pan. The fabled monster. But the monster is always your imagination, conjuring terror out of rowans and frost and little dead birds. And it was an average plastic hairbrush, iced with frost. Could have been anyone’s.

I turn the key and the lights illuminate our drive home. Shadows of trees line the route as we unbend the narrow road and reach Huckerby. We open the door to a warm kitchen, I turn all the lights on and make a pot of tea. Neither of us speaks. The dogs are fed. Lyla is subdued, can’t even look me in the eye. It is as if she feels guilty, or is still scared. She sits at the kitchen table, nibbling a biscuit, drinking a glass of milk. I feel a need for one of Andy’s hag stones, to hang on the lintel of the door. To keep the witches out, the evil influences of Dartmoor that creep their way along the thorny hedgerows, trying to find a way into your home.

At a beam of car lights, Lyla looks up. I hear the familiar sound of an engine, which is turned off.

Adam has returned.

He opens the door, brushing snowflakes from the shoulders of his fleece. As he shuts the door behind him his expression says it all as he looks at us.

We have mud on our hands and faces. I have scratches on my neck from the twigs and brambles.

‘Jesus. What happened to you two?’

I don’t know quite what to say. ‘Well, there was this load of crap in Hobajob’s, rubbish and tissues – anyway, we got a bit scared, and probably it was a joke, or coincidence, but it was frightening—’

Without warning, Lyla bursts into tears. She waves a hand at me, angrily. ‘I don’t know, I’m sorry, Mum, I thought I heard him, saw him, I thought he was coming to take you away again.’

Adam steps toward Lyla, but she turns and shakes her head and says,

‘Sorry, Daddy. Sorry. I want to go to sleep.’

And with that, she leaps to her feet, and runs up the stairs.

The dogs, as always, rise and follow, cantering noisily up the wooden steps to join her in her bedroom. We hear her bedroom door slamming shut.

Adam looks as if he wants to go after; I raise a hand. ‘Wait, please – let her be, for now. She’s frightened because, you see, there really was a scare. There wasn’t any man, but there were these dead birds—’