A Different Kingdom(25)

'—Some dog or other, big one too.'

'Need to have a look at the sheep.'

'—Woke the whole bloody house up.'

'—Scared Rachel half to death.' And the three of them laughed there in the light and dark of the lanternlit yard. Sean turned and waved at Michael's window, his black hair tumbled down over his forehead.

'Did you get it?' Michael squeaked.

'It got away,' Mullan said, tapping the shotgun. 'But I frightened the living shit out of it, that's for sure. It was just a stray, Mike. Go back to bed.'

He did, but he locked the skull in the bottom of his wardrobe first, listening to the men pottering in the yard, checking on the horses. He hoped none of them would venture far from the farm before dawn. It was Michael's monster, but if they could see it then perhaps it could ... Perhaps it was real for them, after all. A werewolf wandering the fields. He dosed his window tightly and drew his curtains against the blue night, longing for sunrise.

IT WAS NO use, of course, him trying to tell his grandparents that it had not been a dog in the yard that night. He made an attempt, but found that halfway through his description of the creature he had seen—clearer than any of them, too— his grandfather began smiling indulgently whilst exasperation glittered over his grandmother's face, and so he ground to an ignominious and stumbling halt. He left, hearing his grandmother from outside: 'That boy's imagination... spends too much time alone... needs someone his own age.'



He spent the day at school, thinking of wolves, of the Horseman he had seen twice, of Rose ... of the girl in the wood who had shown him the way home.

The year continued to turn at its usual rate despite the weird events that shaped it. His astronomical growth rate slowed a little. He began to fill out, became less of a scarecrow. His grandfather looked at him appraisingly one evening as his wife was fitting some of Sean's old clothes on him, and told him with a twinkle in his eye that wherever he was going, he was going in a hurry.

For a while the happenings that Michael had come to think of as belonging to the Other Place became less frequent, and his life drifted back towards normality. Occasionally, though, he would see a dark figure at the edge of the woods in. the evenings, sometimes mounted, sometimes afoot. He never dared approach, and so could not be sure who it was. And he would feel watched, sometimes, when in the woods alone, as though there was a face to be seen behind him if he could only spin around quickly enough. He gradually grew accustomed to the idea that he was seldom truly alone when near the river or in the trees, or near the bridge. Sometimes he wondered if it were Rose's ghost that was haunting him, but he thought the sensation too strong for that. And he did not believe her ghost would snap twigs or giggle as it watched him, as this presence did. He thought again of the willowy, dark girl who had saved him from the wolves.

An. armistice of sorts was wordlessly signed between himself and Aunt Rachel. Rose's name was never mentioned again in the house. It was as though she had never existed. Her room was cleared out, her things boxed away in the attic, her clothes given to the St Vincent de Paul. She became a taboo subject. The closet skeleton.

SUMMER CAME AGAIN, and through some shenanigan or other Pat managed to wangle a massive, glinting horsebox for a day, a monstrosity of a thing which awed the entire family and came complete with a greasy, fag-smoking, flat-capped driver called Aloysius, or Ally to his friends. And we are all friends here, he assured them with a nod and a wink and a leer at Rachel which made her glare at him and heft a Thermos flask thoughtfully. The family piled on board along with Felix, Pluto—the other carthorse, thick-limbed and amiable—and, the chestnut mare, which had been nominally christened Trigger but was mostly called Fancy. Then they were off for the coast, to the long sands for a picnic and a damned good gallop as Pat said, until his wife nudged him for swearing in front of the child.

They rattled along like a lost component from some circus, the old Bedford as noisy as a rocket and leaving about as much smoke behind. Felix and Pluto clamped and stomped and blew down their noses nervously, but Fancy seemed to take it in her stride. She put her nose to one of the side slats and sucked the rushing air in through flared nostrils.

In Rasharkin they picked up a foursome of cousins or great-uncles and aunts or something. Michael was not sure. He did know that he was forced to leave his seat in the tack compartment of the vehicle and take up a cramped position in the space at Felix's broad rear to make room for them all, the great dinnerplate hooves clumping and shifting in front of him.

The rear ramp was lowered and the wooden gates hauled open half an hour later. He found himself joined by a brace of children his own age (and half his size, which was usual these days), and surmised that they had picked up another gaggle of distant relatives at their last stop. It never failed to amaze him when he saw people he had never seen before (or hadn't for years, which was much the same thing at his age) greet his grandparents with grins and smiles, hugs and claps on the back, and find that they were brothers or sisters. That they had grown up in the very place he called his home, moved away long years in the past and separated themselves by insuperable distances of forty miles or more.