Donneray

We do not know whether the Sun will rise

Overjoyed and zealous and catching up and feeding the furlongs with their bicycles raging over the charred black cheap and rutted tar of the island roads, melting. Thrum thrum rolls the sound of their eager pursuit, whilst young Tom, befuddled and wauling, catapults his near on breathless lungs through clouds of midges and flies. His own cheap and gaudy bike scrap metal at the hands and designer trainers of the local boys, several hundred feet behind him now. He scrambles mud and big coarse grass up, and up, and up the hill that dominates the left of the road. Twigs jamming in his nose as he runs, the sycamores and rhododendrons yielding but not graciously as he sob crawls the few final feet and breaks out on top into the neat lawns and driveways of the terrace above. Those below are making no attempt to climb the way he has just come and he can walk the back way back home. Smell the bonfire and sap from the pines as he skirts the sloping golf course’s eighteenth fairway, takes the rocky path to the forestry track and hits his heavy heels with every chafing peg legged stride hard upon the red and dusty rotten rock that lines it all the way to nearly home.

Pursued at nine, a very fast runner. Not from round these parts but destined to be from nowhere. Can name all the trees. Can name all the plants in the wild earth, eat the wild sorrel and aspidistra-esque wild garlic, pick the yellow raspberries from their secret canes in the tangled brush and grub the pig nuts like water chestnuts from the turf beneath the miniscule white flowers they grow. Learn to love the wild winds and rain rain rain. Withstand the harshness of the Winters and enjoy the views from the tops of trees. This island would be a part of him, even if he was not to be embraced as part of it. He would know its backways and watercourses, hills, dells and donkeys all. He would escape in solitude and carve a niche for none but he.

Tom sat at dinner, prodding the shell of the freezer shop pie and occasionally even sampling a bite for fear that the sad fat face of the woman in front of him would contort and snarl and snap. All he seemed to be eating these days was ketchup. Pools of ketchup with which to swallow the burnt McCain’s oven chips, freezer shop pies and frozen mixed vegetables. Lovingly he patted the nose of the dog who snuffled interestedly by his knee, winked secretly at the other dog on the floor by the gas heater. The fat woman announced, “I have to go!”, and was gone. The contents of the plate flushed away down the toilet pan –after three attempts. He fed the dogs and called the cat in for his dinner as an apple was consumed along with a cut piece of cheddar.

The rain outside was like pins and needles, the midges, like a cloud of candy floss, pressing against his cheeks and brow. Running in his father’s Wellingtons he jumped the fence and disappeared into the woods. Haunted at this hour, yet never too dark for him, he kept on going up the mossy valley, always wary of using the trees for support. Anything up to three inches round would likely be rotting as it grew and could crumble under your hand. Once, with his brother, they had nearly died when a fully grown birch, ten or twelve inches in diameter across its trunk, toppled right over simply because they had trodden upon the wrong root system. The sharp valley was like a sponge for the local hills, even thought he burn at the bottom was never more than five feet wide. Mud was everywhere.

He reached his destination. A wall of hanging greenery and slimy tendrils lie twigs for hair. He hoiked it to the side and picked up the trowel he kept nearby. Though silted to the roof, within the body of the VolksWagen Beetle was just beginning to reveal itself. The front two thirds at least. He had to be careful – he did not want corpses just lurching out at him like that wreck scene in Jaws. He had to be methodical. It would not be right to start excavating the interior until he was satisfied with the outer shell, pallid pink painted. Though that could be an undercoat he allowed. An inner rictus of fear had gripped him whenever he approached the old banger. Mischievous curiosity and lugubriosity at first, but that had descended into a dark need to know, to find out what lay within.

Suddenly Tom became aware of a new presence beside him. An intense feeling that something with eyes was there next to him. Turning nothing but his head he saw, on his left, only three feet away a shape the size of a man standing, observing Tom. It was not a man, not even a human. The thing that observed him was naked to the core, taut and evenly muscled, perspiring and tense. And wrong. Just wrong. Like one of the Roswell ‘aliens’ Tom had seen in documentaries only possessing sinews that jutted, vine like, from the flesh. With skin the colour of the mud in this valley. With a shattered nose like rotting bark and a smell like the foetid pools of stagnation in the lips and ridges of the slope behind.

The creature raised its hand towards Tom… and he was off, running. Running for the second time that day. Running for more than dear life this time. Running not knowing what it was that scared him so and not for one second knowing if reaching home would be reaching safety. Would the creature follow him? Would it already be there, waiting for him back at the house? Would anyone ever see him alive again?

If he had needed to watch his step before as he made his way up the valley he certainly needed every ounce of his local topographical knowledge now. The dusk was truly upon him, pressing thickly on his eyes and reducing arboreal features to shadow menacing masses. Mud and panic and sticks jabbing him all over. A low hanging branch snapped its twig in his eye just as he reached the shed. Almost howling, but keeping it in lest the creature should be spurred on towards him, he scrambled over the fence and careered across the garden to the back door. Locking it behind him he yanked off the wellies and went round the kitchen, making sure that all three windows were locked. He tiptoed to the hall and there, in the dark, praying he was alone in the mighty detached house, he locked the front door, and then all the ground floor windows.

Relaxing just a little he screamed a few times at the top of his voice. Blood curdling, stomach churning screams of warning to anything that might be skirting the building looking to make an entry. Then, shouting out walking songs of his father’s as company, he bolted upstairs and locked all the windows there. With every light in the house soon on as well he ran into his room and crawled to the farthest corner from the door, wooden shutters battened over the locked window, curtains drawn, and stared at it for three hours.

What we cannot speak about we must pass over in silence

He was woken by shrieks and yells. A harpy mad beyond belief was screaming sundry curses without the oak firm door in the hall below. Stiffened, aching, Tom arose and stumbled down the creaking uncarpeted stairs, staying clear of the nasty grips with their tacks and bites, to let the harpy in. his explanation to the woman who stood, drenched, upon the step was that he had been afraid of the wind whistling through the jungle trees that surrounded the house. This pathetic story seemed to level out her woes and he retired once more above.

Alone, afraid, yet sure that two in the house was protection enough, Tom got off to sleep. It was not usual for him to go to sleep this side of the Witching Hour, however he had worn himself down with the fright and the endless pondering over the freakish sight that he had seen.

Crisp and windy came the morning. A Friday morning. Another week was almost over. Friday was the day that Father came back to the island. Once per week. Friday evening was when Tom got to cook the tea: spaghetti Bolognese and a bread ‘n’ butter pudding, something of an established ritual these days. It would be the closing scene of The Railway Children once again and he would be Jenny Agutter running along the concrete dock screaming, “Daddy! My Daddy!”. In his heart at least.

* * * * *
There had been a secret party planned for me for months before I went away. Mrs. Rubarzceck had masterminded the whole operation and I had not suspected a thing.

I remember the seasons of those days as clear as they were this morning. The fog thick as dry ice and how it was blown away by a wind so strong that Philip and I, in our Parka jackets, could lie into it at forty five degree angles, holding our coats over our heads like sails to catch us. The hard frost on the ground as we played British Bulldogs by the front gates. The snows so thick we made igloos in the top playground. The wet days when all the boys in the school would gather on the gravel football pitch to dig trenches and dams and create a Grand Union of waterways the length and breadth of the sodden pitch. I remember the dog we used to chase in the middle playground. I remember the day a kid fell off a tree trying to fetch a football and killed himself on the pavement below. I remember sitting like monkeys on a brick slope. I remember my friend, Jamie, showing his sister off proudly, pulling her through a broken railing on her first day in P1. my brother’s friend, Richard – Philip’s older brother – threatening me with violence because I had neglected to lay with Philip. The boys at the remand home next door who threw half bricks at us in huge gladiatorial combat across the wall. The dim wit bully who tried to hit me, so I shook his hand, said we were friends and then forever more reminded him that friends do not hit one another. All these glorious memories. All these glorious times.

The Singing Kettle children’s entertainers swallowing me up inside a tubular snake. The gym roof falling in. the school dinners which came in churns from a depot in the inner city and which always tasted more of the disinfectant they used to clean the churn with than of food. Black kids break dancing on tartan car rugs with Old Skool ghetto blasters. And the amazing toothed duck that was kept in a glass case just outside my P3 classroom in the main building, scary old moth eaten carcass it was. I used to believe it was the last dodo.

Mrs. Rubarczeck had been sending me all round the place on errands ever since we came back after Christmas. Most often it would be up to Mrs. Millar at the very top of the tall, spindly P1 building across the playground. I would toddle over there and enter the very classroom where I had joined this school three years previously; the classroom where I had first sucked up sand through a blue straw from the sand pit; the class room where I had been allowed to bring in my toy rabbit for story afternoon when I was fresh out of hospital after having my tonsils removed. I would knock politely and be waved in, whereupon I would ask if Mrs. Millar needed help with anything? It now seems obvious that the two lovely ladies, Mrs. Rubarzceck and Mrs. Millar, were in cahoots together, probably cooked up their exciting dreams in the staff room over coffee, but at the time I simply took it as a sign of my increasing maturity in the world. Mrs. Millar would adopt an expression of both delight and surprise and have me organize the handing out of milk or some such to the P1’s. This, of course, was fantastic for me – the milk cartons had a selection of exotic animals printed on their side panels which I had taken to collecting. My favourite was the toucan, of which I had several. But I also had tortoises, elephants, rhinoceroses and crocodiles. I would usually come away bearing a new toucan for my collection – you could cut the panel off with a flap of the carton base so that your new animal could stand up on your bookshelf. The bell would then go and I would meet my friends in the playground.

And we were friends. Every single person in the class was friends with everybody else. Except for Sharron, who stole stuff. But even she had one special friend, a fat girl called Charlotte. I remember the shame we all felt as a group, led by Mrs. Rubarzceck, the day Sharron was led out by police for having stolen a basket of welcome soaps from a local hotel during the lunch hour.

Birthday parties were massive affairs, there being roughly thirty in our class. Everyone, bar Sharron and her corpulent friend, would go to everyone else’s party. There was one for Neil who was Pakistani, where we got given the most delicious sweets in all the world. And one for my friend Rebecca where we played a singing game about pigs – Rebecca saw my willy about a decade later. My brother and I, having birthdays two weeks apart, though he was the older, would always have a double party with up to fifty kids racing over and round our huge town house. I remember a magician there once, and lots of sausages, and my daddy borrowing a neighbour’s machine that could show twenty Tom and Jerry cartoons on the telly one after the other, and one time where the guests started throwing about all my toy animals as missiles and I got into a tearful rage and had everyone’s parents come and take them home early.

So, my final day at school I had been across to Mrs. Millar’s mid morning and she got a telephone call in the little cubby hole to the side of her classroom and she came and told me that, “that was Mrs. Rubarczeck calling”, to say could I come back across now. So back I went at about ten past twelve and walked into the class to find myself all alone. I was worried now in case I should be somewhere else, like outside taking bark rubbings, or upstairs on the fifth floor taking sugar lumps laced with the Polio vaccine, when, all of a sudden, OUT jumps everyone from all their little hidey holes. Mrs. Rubarzceck from under her desk. Stevie and Graham and Jamie and Joanna from the reading corner. Ginger haired Kirsten, whose bare chest I had seen and with whom I was in love, from the art cupboard under the sink. They all giggled “Surprise!” at me and told me how they would miss me when we moved away.

We had loads of games to play, and there were sandwiches, and crisps, and fairycakes with big purple Smarties on top. And they had all made a card for me and signed it. And a special wee card from Molly, who sat opposite me and who lived on the next street over from ours and who had at least five older brothers and sisters and who wore striped socks and who ate kiwi halves with a teaspoon at lunch; the girl who got me onto fresh lunches instead of the industrial disinfectant tasting school food.

All was given to me that day.

Bayeux

Shiftless came the back to school. October break was over and if the nights were cold, the mornings were colder. His parents never having seen the need for heating nor draught exclusion Tom was loathe to pull himself from beneath the duvet’s calm suppression to make the run for the shower that might be hot, but like as would be fairly not.

Sobbing for breath he ran to meet the bus, which had already been to the designated stop further back down the hill and now paused, idling just long enough for Tom to walk into the road and step aboard. Avoiding the less than interested eyes of all about he sat down at the front and stared at the mists on the fields as they climbed the hill.

His first class was French and he sat. the homework given back they were given a short t.v. programme to watch on the newly installed school satellite. Mazed to receive a mark of ‘A’ for once Tom sat back in his plastic chair and absorbed himself in the lives of rappers in le Senegal, all modern buildings and fruit to eat, extensive hair braidings and sand sand sand. He did not understand a word.

t.v. over, lights went up. Seonaid, sitting across from him, smiled briefly at Tom’s wacky brow waggle, her deep brown eyes locked on his for the quickest of moments. The high point of his day. He spent the rest of the class staring at the back of her perfect head, imagining touching her soft straight hair and telling her that he loved her. Now in fourth year it was only four years that he had waited to touch Seonaid’s soft straight hair and tell her how much he loved her. He, not sure what her response might be, thought it wise to wait a few years more. No sense in blowing his chances so soon.

They had spent a week in February almost constantly in one another’s company, in Bayeux, on the French trip. Tom had begun regularly shaving at Christmas time and could still, eight months since, recall his excitement shaving in the youth hostel bathroom, putting on his aftershave, slicking back his hair and donning a jazzy shirt for a walk with Seonaid down to the river.

Tapestry be damned, he thought, I remember far greater things in Bayeux. Whether it was the weather or the foreign clime, or just being together outwith their usual context that week they had been inseparable. Best of friends. They had talked of likes and dislikes. Joshed one another. He had bought her ice cream. She had shown him art that she adored in Taschen books in a French book shop. They had even held hands at one glorious point, walking along the path in the park on the way back to bed one evening.

But somehow Tom had managed to neutralize their ginourmous progress he had made with the girl he had loved since first setting eyes on her at the tender age of eleven yet barely said a word to until France at the age of Fifteen, still tender. And now, at the age of sixteen and three months he had no more intersubjectivity with her than a quick eye brow waggle thrice a week in French class. Damn.

The bell blared violently and he shuffled off in a daze to learn the topography of Death Valley in the coldest classroom the school had to offer. And, as he sat there lazily drawing Psalm 23 onto the inside cover of his Geography folder he began to hatch a cunning plan. Had not Seonaid and he got on like lovers – without the really good, sexy, stuff of course. But then again, lots of nice stuff had been included instead as compensation – when in France? Then why not take Seonaid back to France! He had loads of money saved over from three years of Summer jobs slaving in the restaurant kitchen, there being knock all to spend it on on an island, aged fifteen. He could even say that it was a spare ticket. Yes, perfect. He had been going to go on a trip to Boulogne Sur Mer with his uncle, who goes regularly to stock up on cigarettes, but his uncle had had to pull out because of a bout of emphysema and it was a shame to waste it.

Now, it could seem like a scam at this stage, if not handled extremely carefully indeed. He would have to think of a bona fide reason for asking Seonaid. One that trod the right side of ‘coming on too strong’. A damned shame that people had to pussy foot about like this rather than simply saying, “I love you, will you marry me and be with me forever?” she was not only gorgeous and lovely, she was also the best in the entire school, and that included the two years senior to her and the entire teaching staff, at French. Apparently, she spoke it at home. Bingo! Exams would be coming up at some point and Lord knows that, although he was good at written French, at speaking it he was as useless as he was at talking to girls. Well, almost. Would Seonaid jump at the chance of a free trip to go and speak her beloved language? With him? That last bit was the part he needed to hone his attention on and to clarify in his own head before he propositioned her.

Falling on the Breeze

Right royal bastard, in’t he? A man, sixty one if he’s a day, schmoozing on the bed with a stunning nineteen year old Yah. RA: Rich arsehole; yet stunner none the less. His long, wispy hair, leathery face offset by the glittering chiffon scarf over a denim shirt would be enough o give away his profession even if you weren’t able to see that grin. Hear that voice. But the voice, oh the voice seals it. Whether he has deliberately styled himself on the ‘I had to beat them to death with their own shoes’ breed of dope dealer or whether he was born a rusty voice Cockney there is no telling. But my point was, my point actually was that I was getting on particularly splendidly with young Lizzie there until this dirty old sod swans in and invites himself to every teen aged quim in the vicinity.

I stumble away from the hash laden bedroom to find someone else’s booze from the pile in the kitchen. Bodies everywhere writhing and braying. The obligatory pair of floozies dancing in the lounge to a tune I only know because I used to live with Iain and he only listens to crap that no one else has ever heard of.

The best conversation I had all night was with a bloke with an afro and retro NHS glasses. He was asking advice on which existentialists were best for an amateur dabbler and I got into a long discussion with him about Susan Cooper’s nineteen sixties series of books, ‘The Dark is Rising Sequence’, which had just been reduced to Disney at the cinema. Not only did this young dweeb seem to have a genuine passion for a liberal education, he was also the only person I had ever met who had read my favourite books.

Walking home sober as the night buses came into service I reflected upon the experience. Last year I had already put a blanket ban on myself going to night clubs as I had always detested them, getting too drunk, ineffectually chatting up hotties and spending a fortune. And now it seemed I was too old for partying. I had been drinking fruit juice all evening. Again. Scared off anything female. Again. And had most fun when in serious ‘adult’ conversation. Balls. At the age of twenty four I had turned into me dad. What to do? What to do? If I was anyone else I should have gone back in there, grabbed a bottle of whisky, sang a song to get everyone’s attention and then taken those lithe young sprats to their first casino. But, since I am who I am, I went home and flicked through a dictionary for interesting words. I read this dictionary, Collins Pocket Dictionary, although nobody I have ever met had pockets big enough to accept this mighty rock, once. When I was about twelve. And it seemed at the time such a marvelous escape from the horrors of my world. Each entry had a tiny etymological entry for language of origin and so each word, in its way, could transport me across space and time to Saxon Endland, Viking Denmark, Maori New Zealand or Colonial Raj. I devoured my Tardis and soon it was more than a simple repository for rude words and spelling corrections, it was my friend, my teacher and my Bible. Far more useful to the soul than a Bible, a dictionary can inspire every story in your heart and every poem in your soul. A dictionary can shine a light on ignorance, extend an olive branch to foreign peoples, define Humanity. Or hu-person-ity if you happen to be of an ignorant breed who mistakes words for enemies at every turn.

I needed to do more for me, not pursue the ideals of others. I grabbed the dozing cat, my other constant pal, and elected to seek my answer in dreams.

I dreamt I was running. Running as hard as ever I could run. Running through forest on a cheap, broken pavement. Running from wolves howling behind me in the mid day sun. but in front of me, as I crested the hill and saw the wide glittering sea below, was a fleet of long ships moored. And on the beach a thousand Vikings, armour twinkling in the sunlight like diamonds in a stream. I knew somehow that wolves were less a threat to me than these soldiers of Fortune, so I did what any one would do when scared. I doubled my speed and ripped into the waiting army, tearing every limb and life free from its shackles, sinking boats and wiping my hands on their hair. The wolves, feart now to chase me, gorged their poky ribs on matted human gore and grew fat and lazy and I took them as my pets and clothed and housed them. And they, in their turn, took me to their woods and dressed me fine in green and bark and lay me down in the mosses to dream a Thousand years.

Do you remember when you longed for home? Do you remember when you were near cut off and new and alone for the first time and had no friends and no blanket nor warmth? Look at the soldier, she has felt that fear. Look at the grocer, he too has been that cold. The doctor, the teacher, the mugger, the preacher. Every man jack of them has that lost child inside of them. Remember that. Remember the angry horn beeper is yelling because he wants to matter. All the donkey driving peasant yokels of six hundred years ago have descended into people qualified to drive a ton of metal at seventy miles an hour. Remember the rapist has suffered far worse, and will suffer twice as much again. There is no evil there is only fear and longing. Remember every soul is born to perish in the crowd as lonely as a stone in the desert. And treat each one whether fish or dog or husband as a unique and precious gift, a connection with your fear and a soul mate.

Intersubjectivity

He called her. He had ACTUALLY called her. Knowing her number for the best part of five years he had often tried telephoning just to hear her voice. But he never had. She was sacred to him and he feared her as one might fear a Goddess should she ever reveal her true form to you.

He dialed the numbers, asked politely for Seonaid and then waited. In the buzz of warm white noise he heard two sounds: the sound of his heart falling out his ears; the sound of her feet falling down the stairs. “Hi?”

“Hi. It’s Tom. Tom from… You know… erm… Tom?”

“So, this is Tom I’m speaking tae?”

“Aye. Aye, it’s Tom.”

“Hi Tom.”

“…Hi…”

“…Hello?”

“Oh, yeah, hallo. Erm… Sorry to call you but, ah, I’ve a proposition for you… It’s a bitty sudden but, I know, but I’ve a ticket I’ve got and I canny think of anyone better, erm, ah mean… Arh… Anyone whom it would suit more perfectly than you… Yourself…”

“Ticket? What ticket?”

“To France… As in, ‘get tae’”

“France?”

“Aye… I mean, NO! Not you! I didn’t mean you, y’know. I was just using the expression because becauseIdontknowwhyiwasusingtheexpression. But France, aye…”

“Tell me more!”

“Well, erm…”

And he had thrown away the grubby bit of paper upon which he had carefully written his script. He had had no need of it after all. And he had told her the whole horrible fallacitic liesome half truth. He had figured it to be only a half truth on the basis that he kind of wanted her to see through the entire sham, see he was desperately trying to keep one step ahead of her, and for her to come along in spite of all this. He wanted her to fall for him without ever actually showing his cards. And she fell for it. Hook, line, sinker and Ryan Air of it. Marriage and babies were but weeks away.

Fuck!! He had no fucking passport. She had said, “I do [want to come]” and he had no crudding passport. His one year junior passport ran out in September – a year after February’s school French trip had first been so properly organized. And so the telephone again, this time to the passport office in Glasgow. They reassured him he need not be so worried. Al he had to do was pick up a passport application form from the Post Office, fill in all the details, get it signed by a ‘person of Authority’, attach a photograph and send it off with his cheque. It was done by last bell on Monday. Seonaid came with him to the Post Office at lunch time and they talked excitedly about Boulogne. He had been there, once, for his tenth birthday. He told her how he had tried snails for the first time then, followed by biftec frites and a fresh fruit gateau. The snails gave him indigestion. All was going to be fine. He breathed out a sigh of relief and went home, stripped naked and went to celebrate in the woods with the gods.

Tom’s gods were forty in number by now. And as they stood there in the clearing around him he could feel their approval for his recent bravery. It shone from their skin like mirrored sunlight on a breastplate of silver. He had been doing this ceremony for so long now that he almost never recalled how nervous he was that first time, only days after he had met the first god by the Volkswagen that day many years ago now. When he was nine.

It had been on a Friday. Which was the name of his favourite band. He had expected that evening, as always in those days when his father was taking a weekly commute to the mainland, to be driven to the ferry terminal, which was about eight miles away from the house, to meet and greet his dad. This had never occurred. The winds had whipped up out of nowhere and from the crispest and clearest of mornings had descended into a night mare compilation of winds and rains. Clouds battering down from heaven like the flanks of a hippopotamus above you in a lake. Winds rolling past like screaming daemons. Rain hurtling onto the top and the sides of your head like on a theme park ride. The ferry had been newly installed just that Spring and had fancy new stabilizers so that, unlike the previous ones, it could churn out confidently into really quite major squalls. However water had somehow gotten into the radar electrics or something and the ferry had ploughed straight into the massive part constructed break water at the mouth of the harbour as it departed the mainland. Of the three hundred and fifty five people on board three hundred and thirty were saved. The others, trapped below decks or blown off the deck of the tilting ship as they made for the life boats, drowned. Tom’s dad amongst them. Divers to the wreck in the week following had found him trapped in a below decks toilet cubicle. Post mortem the coroner judged that he had suffered a massive heart attack, his lungs had not been full of water so at least Tom knew that he had not drowned down there, had been saved from some of the awfulness of what had transpired.

They had waited, wrapped in blankets, in the shanty ferry terminal building waiting for news from the mainland. Frustrated at the impossibility of getting to the scene of the accident, of being on site, his mother had ranted and screamed and harried the poor pier staff until the island police man had her cautioned and threatened her with detainment in the police station cell. They had remained there until pretty much Sunday when the bodies were recovered. She had gone to the hospital on the mainland to identify the body and claim what little possessions he had, his wallet I presume, sodden and baggy. Tom was put with nearby neighbours. To wait on his own and to suffer in silence. He had snuck out at midnight, taking a circuitous back route to the valley where his monster lived. Figuring that if nothing made sense any more it made sense to make sure of his fantastic vision in the woods. It had been a sign. It had something to do with the storm, of that much, at least, he was sure. No storm that big had ever whipped up from nowhere before. None of the weather forecasters had predicted it. It was a freak storm and it had killed his father. If he was going to be totally alone on this island retreat he was going to make an effort to know the secrets that lurked, green, in the forest so near his house.

Coming the back way gave Tom the advantage over his adversary. If, as he suspected, they were waiting for him, then they would be expecting him to come from his house, and he was coming from a position a hundred and twenty degrees to the widdershin. It also provided some kind of luxury in the shoe department as he simply had to leap into a field from the cart track and then the Volkswagen was beneath him at the bottom of the short cliff that marked the boundary between the domesticated field and the wild damp wood. Presumably the little car’s last journey had taken it on a similar route, whether driven desperately or pushed practically. He took off his shoes at the field edge as he did not have any Wellingtons and his trainers would be needed later. Plus they were the one item of new clothing he had been bought in over a year. Heart beating like a helicopter’s engine, he was just about to slip over the precipice edge into the dark and warmth of the forest when the idea came to him that maybe he would not be so afraid of the eerie creature if he met it more on its own terms. Perhaps he had seen it in an anthropology documentary or something, but it made perfect sense to his imperfect mind. He stripped completely bare and jumped, almost heedless, into the wood.

There, at the foot of the slope, sat his beloved project. The car looked almost Classical in its ruination. The fresh, post storm moonlight shone fiercely on to the whole scene with such clarity that dust motes could be seen in the shafts of light coming through the trees. The burn sounded magnificent in its swollen fury, making enough sound for a river of much greater magnitude and, in truth, Tom was most scared, naked in this moonlight wood searching for the being who had startled him on Thursday, by the water. It took up most of the floor of the wee glen tonight and parts that should have been there for him to stand on, foot holds he needed were he to cross over in his usual manner were simply not available. Flooded beyond use in the charging eddies and currents. And yet he feared being stuck on this side. What was he to do if, when, his nightmare returned. It had come to him on this side before and he had run away over the burn towards home. Now he was stuck on this side and there was no way in Hell he could run back up the drop he had tonight entered the woods by. That drop would take a few minutes careful and considered scaling, it was mostly mud with a few tree roots to cling to. The only possible crossing was a fallen tree, its leaves at the side he was on. But it was not as clear cut and easy as all that. Although the tree trunk was a good two feet thick for its whole length, it looked slippy. And there was a branch jutting vertically at a little beyond half way across the turgid burn. Still, Tom had no better plans. Not that, were he able to consider his position properly from his ragged mind, he had any sort of plan at all. Why was he even here, naked in a wood searching for a terrifying monster two days after his father had been killed?

He clambered aboard the near end of the fallen behemoth, testing its strength under his weight and feeling for a grip on the bark, slimy and loose from the wet. He tried not to think of the myriad creatures that would be swarming in and under the skin of this tree as he looked fervently at the VolksWagen and at the woods around. It had been standing a little to his left as he was facing the car, and Tom could see vines and rocks where he might have imagined it. He was, after all this, starting to believe that maybe it had all been in his mind after all. It was preposterous to believe in woodland spirits, even at the age of nine when, as he knew already, he was still allowed to use his imagination. Even more preposterous to be sneaking out at night when he had just suffered the most tragic suffering of his short life to date. And why was he naked? He was beginning to think the whole episode was one best over and done with. It was not safe standing here on the fallen log above the swift flowing creek. There had been no creature. And it was probably time he ceased playing with his old wreckage and started planning for a more serious life in which school work and friends and football played a bigger part.