booksnew/source/darkvalley-source/017.txt

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<h2>17</h2>
<p><em>August 1.  Night:</em></p>

<p>"What was that?"</p>
<p>The pine branches crackled in the fire. The flickering red flames  tinged  their faces rosy and sent long shadows dancing on the steep side of the gully. The striations of white rock, alternating in thin bands with the dark shale, reflected a pink glow.</p>
<p>"I heard something," Doug said, turning towards the trees. They had dragged  heavy stones up from the stream to use as benches and  Billy had hauled a thick log, its weight ploughing a furrow in the grass, as his own chair. He sat astride it, digging the rusty blade of his knife into the wood.</p>
<p>"Stop that," he snorted at Doug. "You've been doing that all day." He turned to Danny. "He's just trying to scare us."</p>
<p>"I saw somebody," Doug protested.  "Honest."</p>
<p>"I saw something too," Tom chipped in. "When we were collecting firewood. Swear to god. It was a man, at least I <em>think </em> it was a man. I saw his face, but when I looked again, it wasn't there."</p>
<p>"It was a sheep, dopey-features. No kidding, you're a real  bunch of scaredy-cats. If there were other guys up here, they'd have lit a fire.  They wouldn't be sitting around in the dark, would they? They'd be barging into everything."</p>
<p>"It's probably the farmer from Blackwood," Corky said. "He'll be checking up on us, to make sure we're not killing the sheep."</p>
<p>"Not yet," Billy said. He grinned and his strong teeth glinted in the light. "But the night's still young. We could have lamb chops for dinner tomorrow if the snares don't work." Billy and Corky had used some of the thin fencing wire to set a couple of rabbit snares out close to the bracken and so far nothng had ventured into them despite the plentiful evidence of rabbits here.</p>
<p>"You can go hunting sheep for all I care," Doug said.  "I'm staying here." He looked over his shoulder at the gloom downstream close to the bend where the forest began again, thick and blackly shadowed. A light breeze stirred the topmost branches and made the leaves whisper. Overhead the moon was just a few of days away from being full, lending its own silvered light to the wet stones of the stream, but despite its brightness, beyond the range of the fire's glow, it was still very dark.</p>
<p>Something whirred in from the stream side, swooped towards the flames and then out again. Billy jerked back from the motion, throwing his hand up to ward the creature away. Doug laughed scornfully, pointing at Billy.</p>
<p>"Who's the scaredy cat now?"</p>
<p>"What the <em>hell</em> was that?"</p>
<p>"A bat," Corky said, though he and Danny had seen it was only a large moth attracted to the light. "Probably a vampire. They get tangled up in your hair and get you in the neck with big pointy teeth.  Kill you stone dead, no kidding. They find you in the morning and all the blood's sucked out of you. You're just an empty bag of bones."</p>
<p>Billy looked over the fire at him, disbelief etched on his face.</p>
<p>"Instead of just a big bag of wind," Doug snorted and Tom giggled.</p>
<p>"Like the <em>Racine</em> rats," Corky Corky went on, ignoring the interruption. He turned his head to the side so Billy couldn't see him and he winked conspiratorially  at Doug.</p>
<p>"The what?"</p>
<p>"The Racine rats," Corky said. "They're much bigger than the titchy ones you get in farms and old houses. I mean, they're pretty huge.  My Uncle Mick told me this, and he would know. He's a great poacher.  They live beside canals and rivers and and they burrow under the banks. They come out at night for food, and they'll eat anything or..." he lowered his voice to a whisper: "Any<em> body</em>."</p>
<p>The others leaned forward. Tom looked over his shoulder at the darkness beyond the firelight.</p>
<p>"Next time you walk beside the canal, stamp your feet. Or along by the river at the levee path beside the Oxbow Road. You stamp your feet <em>hard.</em> That's the way to find out if the Racine rats have burrowed under. You get a hollow sound that's really creepy. It goes <em>doom-doom-DOOM.</em>"</p>
<p>Corky paused for effect,  his eyes theatrically wide and catching the light of the fire. Billy sat forward, hooked by the imge.</p>
<p>"And you know that the rats are there, bigger than anything in the Pied Piper. Big as cocker spaniels, waiting in the dark. Omniverous. That means they eat meat and blood <em>and </em>bones as well. They swim out under the water and wait on the bank for people passing by at night or early in the morning. They don't just have rats teeth for gnawing things. They've got sharp pointed ones like vampire bats for ripping your skin and flesh and big ones for crunching bones. You hear stories of people who disappeared near canals and the police always say they must have drowned."</p>
<p>"Like Paulie Degman," Doug said in a hushed voice, now drawn into Corky's tale despite the wink he'd been thrown. Danny shivered and drew in closer to the warmth of the fire. He didn';t want to think abot Paulie, not so far up and away from the street lights. The water brubled hollowly as it tumbled between the big white quartz rocks into the dark of the pool which caught shards of silver reflections on the ripples. Under the surface, it looked black. It could have gone down a million miles. In the dark of night, anything could be down there. Or any<em> body</em>.</p>
<p>"Yeah," Corky agreed. "Like poor Paulie." He was now whispering so softly they all had to lean close to hear above the flutter of the low flames. The firelight glinted on his face, wreathing it in shadows. "They say they've drowned, but that's because they don't want to scare people and make them panic. But they know those folk were caught by the Racine Rats and dragged under the water to the burrows and eaten, every scrap of them, even the bones. Even their shoes. That's why they're never found again. Not ever." He paused, and looked around, the light catching the lop-sided grin.</p>
<p>"So any time you walk by the canal and you hear that hollow noise, you better run as fast as you can, because that's what they're waiting for. Footsteps up above. Just waiting for a lone walker, waiting to drag him down. That's why you never get me along by the river on my own, not for love nor money. No way <em>ho-zay</em>."</p>
<p>Doug hunched earnestly over the fire, hanging on every word. He had caught Corky's wink, but the story snared him with a ring of truth. He'd walked by the canal a thousand times, and they went fishing down on the river when the bailiff wasn't around (at least in other summers, not this one) and it really was true. When you walked on the track, you heard that hollow pounding echo where the bank was undercut, as if there were secret caves just below your feet. Doug could imagine big sharp toothed furred things huddled under there, just listening and slavering</p>
<p>"Is that true?" Billy asked. Corky looked round at him, keeping his face straight. The fire flickered in his eyes.</p>
<p>"Would I lie to you Billy-O?"</p>
<hr />
<p>"<em>Would I lie to you Billy-O?</em>" Corky had asked again in the light of the day, after giving Billy a hard knuckle right on the edge of his shoulderblade. "Saved your life, didn't I? That was the biggest horsefly I ever saw. It would have eaten you alive, swear to God."</p>
<p>They'd taken a turn at the small waterfall where the stream narrowed for the drop into the pool. Billy had taken a handfull of heron's flight feathers and stuck them in crevices between the big pale quartz rocks and stood back admiringly.</p>
<p>"Four feather falls," he announced. "Remember that show? The magic guns that fired by themselves? Pure brilliant."</p>
<p>They all agreed. It was too warm to argue, and Billy could keep going all day if he was in the mood. They left the feathers there, sticking up like markers, grey and edged with a dark smoky blue.</p>
<p>They crosssed the water on the stones and up the far bank where a narrow sheep track angled up the slope. Far behind them, well off down the valley, a cock crowed, shrill and challenging, only slightly muffled by the summer's heat haze.</p>
<p>"That's the little red rooster," Doug said.</p>
<p>"Well it's slept in," Billy said.</p>
<p>Doug stuck his skinny elbows out and flapped them a couple of times, pecking his head forward on his thin neck. His red ears stuck out like wattles.</p>
<p>"I am the little red rooster," he drawled, bobbing forward, long, bony legs strutting. Tom laughed out loud. Danny stuck his elbows out, following the lead. Corky imitated him.</p>
<p>"Too <em>laaaate</em> to crow the day," Doug rasped and they all went filing up the track, laughing all the while, strutting like cockerels.</p>
<p>They were still laughing when they turned there to follow the smaller brook which fed into the Blackwood stream. This water came tumbling over ledges of hard limestone and through crevices of old smooth-worn basalt. Doug had stripped an ash sapling and was poking under rocks to try to scare trout into the open.  Tom and Danny took the lead along the sheep trail and only fifty yards  up the narrow gully they came to the natural barrier set at right angles to the flow. They all stopped.</p>
<p>"Where's the waterfall?" Billy wanted to know.</p>
<p>The expected cataract, and the anticipated cave behind it, was nowhere to be seen. Instead, the barrier was much higher than Danny remembered it, and water seeped and sprayed around the edges in a fine mist, catching the sun and forming tight little rainbows of haze.</p>
<p>Doug poked his stick at it. "It's plugged up. A tree's come down and blocked it off like a log jam." The water gurgled down the mass of twigs and branches that had stemmed the main flow. There was no cavern in the rock. They started to turn back when Corky stopped them.</p>
<p>"Wait a minute." He pointed at the top of the blockage, a dozen feet or more above their heads. The top twigs and branches were white and dry in the sun, but the flow started only a few inches below the topmost edge, trickling through the packed weave.</p>
<p>"How deep is it on the other side?" he asked. Danny pointed at the original lip of the rock cleft which  only head height to himself, chin-height to Billy.</p>
<p>"Just a couple of feet I think. Maybe a yard at the most."</p>
<p>"A lot deeper now," Corky said, grinning. "Come on."</p>
<p>The cleft was blocked, which meant they had to climb the steep side, digging their hands into the shale to get a purchase and finding smooth and unreliable toe-holds in the mudstone layers. It took them five minutes of slipping and sliding on the loose gravel to reach the lip of the natural wall. Corky got there first with Tom,  who was wiry but agile, close behind. They stood on the hard stone wall and looked down. The backed up stream water reflected the blue of the summer sky in a long, zigzagged lake with a surface so calm it threw back  a perfect reflection.</p>
<p>"It's a dam," Corky said, his voice filled with wonder and satisfaction. Billy and Doug scrambled up behind him, almost knocking Danny off the stone. A small rock  rolled and splashed below them with the echoing <em>plop</em> of deep water. Ripples spread out to lap at the edges and quickly disappeared.</p>
<p>"It's a damn dam," Billy said, delighted with his own wit. "Damnation." Below them, an old spruce trunk, spiked with broken branches and probably dislodged from further upstream by the snow-melt of previous winters, had jammed itself in the narrow V-shaped crevice which had allowed the water to spill away in a narrow cataract. The spines had trapped heather clumps and divots brought down by erosion, and a weave of reeds and rushes from marshes somewhere up on the moor, compacting them into a thick plug. Behind it the water backed up beyond the first bend of the stream. Billy stood on his tip-toes, despite the twenty-foot drop behind him.</p>
<p>"It goes back for miles."</p>
<p>"This wasn't here before," Danny said. "Is it deep?"</p>
<p>"About ten feet," Corky said. He turned to Doug who still had the slender ash sapling. "Poke around and see how far it goes."</p>
<p>Doug got to his knees and reached down. The end of the stick only trailed on the surface. He got up again, reversed the slender branch, hefted it like a javelin and threw it at the water, thick-end first. It broke the  surface almost silently and went straight down, its seven foot length disappearing in an instant. They watched, wondering if it had stuck on bottom mud. But a few seconds later, the sapling came back up again, reversing its direction, the thin end rising to three feet out of the water before it toppled slowly to float on the surface.</p>
<p>"At least ten feet," Doug said. "Could be fifteen." He was standing there, string vest tattered and muddied with shale, one knee out of his jeans and a toothy grin wide on his face.</p>
<p>"We must be the first to find it," Corky said. "That means it's ours."</p>
<p>Billy laughed gleefully. "I hereby name this damn dam..." he stopped and looked at them. "Any ideas?"</p>
<p>"Heron lake," Tom suggested, but Danny shook his head and shot him a look. He didn't want to be reminded of what he had done to the bird, even though he hadn't meant to kill it. The feeling of foreboding tried to push its way back and he shoved it away.</p>
<p>"The Blue Lagoon," Doug suggested.</p>
<p>"Lonesome Lake," Corky said. "That's just what it's like."</p>
<p>Billy looked at him askance. "Was that in the Dambusters?" Corky shook his head almost sadly. Danny thought the name fit somehow. Lonesome Lake, up here beyond the barwoods, miles from the town,  in a cleft in the moors. Up here where there was only the occasional moan of wind across the tussock grass and the mournful piping of the curlew. The water dead still, its surface glass flat.</p>
<p>Billy turned and clambered off the narrow wall onto the couch grass clinging to the slope grass of the slope. He heeled off his baseball boots, undid his belt  and pushed  his still damp jeans down to his ankles, then stripped them off.</p>
<p>"Last one in's a big Jessie," he called across. Doug hauled his dirty vest off. Billy stripped completely, standing naked and pale. He had a thick clump of black hair on his crotch in stark contrast to his smooth skin. Tom and Danny stared.</p>
<p>"When did that happen?" Tom asked innocently. Billy looked down. His penis swung from side to side, thick and heavy, more than twice the size of Tom's and  Danny's.  Billy grinned proudly.</p>
<p>"Huge, init?"</p>
<p>"Seen bigger," Doug said.</p>
<p>"On a cart-horse," Billy shot back. "I could fill that rubber johnny no bother at all."</p>
<p>"Too late," Corky said. "You've probably got the <em>siff </em>anyway. From kissing Phil's spunk."</p>
<p>Billy pulled a face, stuck out his tongue and made exaggerated wiping movements with his fingers, flicking his spittle to the side. He spat violently, just for effect, turned quickly and went down to the stone barrier again, braced himself and then dived straight out. Danny called out, too late. The water might have been deep, but there could be other spiky logs down there just under the still surface. He envisaged Billy plunging straight down and impaling himself on a skewer and immediately the recollection of Paulie Degman came  rolling back, stuck under the black water of the river, fighting for breath and clawing for air. Danny shook his head to dismiss the memory.</p>
<p>Billy hit the water cleanly, with hardly a splash despite his weight. He disappeared. Ripples spread out and hit the sides of the narrow lake, washing some of the shale from the valley walls down into the depth. They all watched, waiting, until  Billy came up to the surface, spluttering.</p>
<p>"Bloody freezing, but it's terrific. Come on in."</p>
<p>Doug kicked off his torn and greying underpants. Without his clothes he was even stringier than he normally looked, slat-ribbed and all knuckles and joints. He gave a toothy grin, scampered on the barrier then jumped, turning over in the air, holding his nose between finger and thumb. He landed backside foremost, missing Billy by inches and hitting the water with a loud booming splash which sent a wave crashing to the steep side  beyond.</p>
<p>The others got undressed quickly, though with furtive glances at each other to check the comparisons.  Corky was showing wispy hairs but little more. Danny and Tom were still boys. Tom scampered out onto the rock, did a little bob and without hesitation launched himself upwards. He turned, slender and small and graceful, his curly hair pushed back from his forehead. He arched  slowly, twisted in a corkscrew and  arrowed down. He hit the water so silently that there was barely a ripple. Danny and Corky followed him, more clumsily but just as enthusiastic. The water was cold, colder than any of them would have imagined on a hot late summer's day, but wonderful to swim in. They splashed and swam for an hour before  climbing out to dry in the late sun and after that, Tom and Corky went exploring up towards the far end of the natural lake. Billy and Doug climbed over the ridge and down to the other tributary, the Blackwood Stream proper. Danny went with them, brushing his wet hair back with his fingers to keep it from flopping in his eyes.</p>
<p>"We could bust it," Billy was saying. "Just like the Dambusters.  That would be really brilliant."</p>
<p>"You can do it," Doug said. He was about to continue when he stopped abruptly.  Billy turned to him. Doug was frozen in mid step.</p>
<p>"Did you hear something?"</p>
<p>Billy shook his head. Danny turned. Doug's head was cocked to the side in a listening attitude, His eyes were fixed on the gnarled clumps of hawthorn and hazel that dotted the far side of the slope which rose up to the moors beyond Blackwood farm.</p>
<p>"I saw something," he said. "Over there." He pointed to a hollow where the ferns crowded around some jagged lumps of moraine rock left by ancient glaciers. The other two followed his direction.  There was nothing to be seen.  Beyond the rock, just a patch of white some distance away, a sheep moved in the ferns.</p>
<p>"Just a sheep," Billy said.</p>
<p>Doug shook his head. "No. I saw something. I think it was a man."</p>
<p>Danny scanned the hollow. He could see nothing. A small shiver of apprehension trickled up his back. They turned back to the brook, heading upstream. Danny couldn't shake the feeling. Since he'd hit the heron and watched it writhe, the weird sense of  ill-luck had settled uneasily on him.</p>
<p>They got round a tight meandering bend and began to cross again when Doug let out a sudden, and quite startling howl of disgust. Billy stopped and Danny bumped into his back, shoving the bigger boy forward off balance. Billy windmilled his arms and then slipped off the stone.</p>
<p>The deer carcass lay half-in the stream. Its head was arched back and its mouth was open. The eyes were long gone and the skin and muscle of the cheek had rotted away showing the great grinding teeth set in a strangely fierce grimace. The thick pelt was worn in places and they could see the white vertebrae of the neck where the flesh had been stripped. A magnificent spread of antlers reared behind the dead head.</p>
<p>"Christ on a bike," Billy said. He had stumbled against the foreleg which was being twisted slowly in the current. The belly and the hind legs, on the dry bank, looked surprisingly untouched, but as Billy moved back, a cloud of flies came droning upwards, thick and whirling. "What a stench," Billy said.  He turned and Danny caught a smell of it, sweet and thick, clogging at the back of the throat. He felt his palate click glutinously, ready to trigger a heave.</p>
<p>The ribs were high and curved, poking up against the skin in taut slats.  Below them, a gaping hole showed where something had gnawed right into the belly. Billy pivoted on the stone, got upstream of the dead animal and reached a hand out to grab the tine of an antler. He pushed himself back, heaving strongly and the whole carcass slowly turned over on to its back. He  gripped both hands now on each horn and twisted hard. There was a dull thudding sound and then a rip and the head came free, sending Billy stumbling backwards with the ruined skull  dangling between the wide spread of jagged antlers. It thumped to the ground. The heavy body rolled back again and the skin of the belly ripped. Danny thought he saw something moving in the black gnawed hole but then his attention was diverted to the mass of wriggling maggots which poured out, white and pulsating, from the gash at the joint of the ribs where the skin had ripped. They gushed out in a fleshy dribble, tumbling onto the shingle beside the stream.</p>
<p>The smell hit him like a blow and he twisted away, unable to stop himself retching dryly. He heard Doug make the same choking sounds.</p>
<p>"A trophy," Billy said excitedly, his wide face alive and animated. "Look at those horns. I could tell people I shot it." He held them up, his arms wide, once again like a young indian brave. The wide antlers waved in the air, curved and sharp. The dead, cratered sockets stared at the sky.</p>
<p>By the time Corky and Tom came back, Billy had fixed the deer's head up on the gnarled hawthorn tree in at the hollow  where the rocks made a natural corner, wedging the antlers in so that the wasted skull with its perpetually gnashing teeth hung downwards. A dribble of foul-smelling liquid oozed out of one hollow nostril onto the moss below. A tornado of small flies whirled in the air when the boys approached and then settled back on the rotting head.  The black insects were already clustered all over the sightless eyes of the heron.</p>
<hr />
<p><em>August 1. 6pm:</em></p>
<p>He had spent most of the day on the Blackwood slope, in the full glare of the sun. He had been watching from the other side of the valley, staying in the cover of the trees lower down where the gully widened out. From the height on the slope, he could see the narrow crevices where the streams had cut their way through the peat and the stone, forming the branching gorges that fed the Blackwood Stream. From here he could see everything. The sun was high and the drone of insects up in the leaves was a sleepy hum on the still air. Down the slope, the stream burbled.</p>
<p>He had watched and listened to their shouts, their calls echoing back from the steep sides beyond where they'd put the tent.</p>
<p>A boy had slapped another on the back and there had been a hoarse cry, this one deeper than the rest and it reminded him of the other one who'd come blundering through the window into the place where he sat in the shadows.</p>
<p>The laughter had come floating up, the laughter of children, ragged on his nerves. There was a faint whiff of woodsmoke on the clear air, not so harsh as it had been on the hillside when the flames had jumped from bracken to gorse and made the air shimmer with the heat. Here the scent was of pine, resinous and sweet.  The boys were marching up the defile where the tributary fed down to the main stream. The sun was on their skin, reflecting pale, not dark as one might expect on boys at the end of the summer holiday. These boys had not been out in the sun much this summer.</p>
<p>They disappeared round the first bend the voices faded away. He sat there, motionless, not in any hurry, not yet. The small one had seen him, turning quickly like a startled animal and had stared right at him, curly hair flopping with sweat. He had swung his head, about to call to the other boy who was laden down with dry pine logs but he'd swivelled back to take another look and by this time there was nothing to be seen. He had pulled back into the bracken. The small boy had blinked, scratched his head, slapped at a cleg which landed on his shoulder, and looked again, eyes puzzled.</p>
<p>Up the gully the shouts came wavering down again and saw them traverse the lip of the valley, all walking in single file. In the distance, they seemed to be dancing and their excited, boyishly jubilant calls came floating down, competing with the flies and the murmur of the stream. When they'd got up the cleft and then onto the high level, the taller one, black haired and ruddy had stripped off and he'd run over the ridge and out of sight. The thin one, with the ragged trousers, he had followed suit, and then the small one had gone.  He could hear their cries, high and clear, low and hoarse, a mixture of boy and man, the cracking age of youth. The water below the little falls shimmered as the ripples threw back the glare of the sun and he began to blink. The heat had built up on the top of his head, the deep sun-heat that brought the memories. The light was in his eyes, sharp and stabbing.</p>
<p><em>She hadn't been able to cry out. </em>There had been no time for the other girl.</p>
<p>He had hit her hard. Two right-handed punches that had thudded like hammer-blows, rapid fire on the side of her face and she had fallen like a dropped sack. He had caught her before she hit the ground and her weight had been nothing at all in his arms as he moved through the  jumble of derelict buildings and sheet-metal shacks.</p>
<p>The old bomb shelter was still here as he remembered from long ago, on the gap site where an even older building had once stood, but was now an overgrown mess of thorny brambles and jagged rose-creepers. The thorns had snagged at his legs as he waded through them, careful not to push a path that could be followed, but stepping over the clumps so that no-one would know anyone had been here.  Beyond a tumble of masonry there was a narrow stairway, hardly more than the width of a man, which fell steeply and turned to the left down a shaft made up of concrete that had been piled in canvas sacks and still retained the imprint of the long-rotted weave. There had been an ancient hasp on the door but it had broken away easily when he had been here before. Beyond the doorway the stairs continued down and turned again before another wooden door that led in to the shelter proper where a heavy, woodwormed table was pushed against the concrete wall. The corrugated iron ceiling curved to a low arch from a dust-strewn floor. The place smelled of old papers and cobwebs but it was dry and it was hidden. He put the girl down on the table, letting her flop in a series of muffled thuds as elbows and shoulders hit the surface. He lit the  candle, letting the light swell and push the darkness back a little.</p>
<p>The girl was silent but he had seen the tiny flicker in her eye, the reflection of the candle's light, that told her she was awake now, trying to deceive him, hoping vainly for a chance, for an opening.</p>
<p>There were no chances. He spun and clamped a hand over her mouth before she even had time to open it. Her eyes widened and he could see the fear flare in them, dark eyes, slanted in this light. He had squeezed until the jaw bones began to creak. He squeezed some more until she shuddered violently, and her eyes had widened so far they were huge in the candlelight..</p>
<p><em>Dung fly.</em> A voice spoke to him, one of the voices from inside his head. He cocked his head, still keeping his hand clamped to the fine features while her body shook and writhed....</p>
<p><em>He was out of this memory and into another</em>.</p>
<p>Conboy was talking to him again, his eyes filled with flies and his mouth grinning widely all the time, showing all of his teeth from stretched back, ragged lips while the maggots squirmed under the skin, making it come alive.</p>
<p>"Kill them all, slitty eyed bastards. " Conboy said, giggling now. "Shoot them down."</p>
<p>Conboy had a hole through the side of his forehead, a dark little eye. On the other side there was a crater the size of an orange and everything had leaked out. Conboy's thoughts had trickled out  with his brains and they could still be heard on the still, stifling air.</p>
<p><em>Dung Fly</em>. Over and over and over again. It never changed. The children had run away, yammering again and then the men had come down, creeping with their <em>parangs</em> and machete blades held high, edging across the log to where the truck nosed down into the swamp. The sunlight had rippled in the spaces where the water steamed and the gun had bucked in his hand and he had seen one tumble backwards  in a splash of red.</p>
<p>The black eyes had stared at him and Conboy, half in and half out, had glared accusingly at him through the mass of flies.</p>
<p>The man who crouched in the valley blinked against the sparkle of light from the water and the memory winked out. Up on the hill the boys were shouting and yelling. Slowly he rose to his feet, cradling the black barrel of the shotgun in his arms and went silently up the slope and back towards the farm. He would come back later, when it was dark, just to see what was what. There was no rush now. He had all the time in the world.</p>
<hr />
<p><em>August 1, 6.30pm</em></p>
<p>"Just like Lord of the Flies," Corky said when he saw it.</p>
<p>"Who's that?" Billy asked, predictably. "Is he in the American comics? Like Lex Luthor, King of Crime?" The way he said it gave all the words capitals for emphasis.</p>
<p>"It's a book, dumbo," Corky said, irritated at last. "These kids on an island find a dead body covered in flies and they think it's alive, like a monster. Some kind of voodoo."</p>
<p>"Has it got super powers?" Billy asked. Corky snorted and turned away, shaking his head.</p>
<p>"Don't you ever read anything that doesn't have pictures?"</p>
<p>"Not if I can help it," Billy said. "That's a waste of time."  He poked a stick into the eye socket of the dead stag and left it there, jutting like an arrow. But later, at night,  round the fire, with the frames crackling on the resinous pinewood, Billy talked about the flies.</p>
<p>"Must have been what Mole Hopkirk was like, eh? All covered in maggots and flies. Jeff McGuire went loopy after he saw it, right off his head.  They had to take him away and lock him up.  Old Mole must have stank to high heaven."</p>
<p>"Would drive anybody loopy," Doug said. "His hair growing all over the place, right down his arm and along the floor. That's really creepy. His nails had grown right out like claws. It's true. That's what I heard. If it was me, I'd have died right there on the spot, swear to God."</p>
<p>They had all heard the stories. Danny and Corky looked at each other across the flames. They had come close to clambering in that back window.</p>
<p>"That wee girl was terrible. The one under the bridge." Corky had poked a thin twig into the fire and brought it out, jerking his hand to make the glowing tip write on the air. "He'd left her to die in her own pee. That's how they found her."</p>
<p>"Don't talk about that," Tom said sharply.  He leaned away from the fire and put his hands up to his ears as if to shut out what he was hearing.</p>
<p>"What's up with him?" Billy wanted to know. "Making skidmarks on his pants again?"</p>
<p>"Just leave it alone, will you?" Tom said tightly. "It's not funny."</p>
<p>"But Don Whalen was worse," Doug said, steering it away. "Stuck down there in the dark with that body. That must have drove him out of his mind. Sitting there waiting for old Twitchy to come back and do him in. Jeez. That must have been pure murder.</p>
<p>"He should have fought back." Billy declared. "Fought like a man." He stabbed his knife in at the log and left it sticking up on its own. Doug laughed scornfully.</p>
<p>"I suppose you'd take him on."</p>
<p>"Don't have to," Billy said. "They think he's hung himself, just like Judas, that's what my mum said. But if we had met him, the five of us could beat him no bother. I mean, all of us together."</p>
<p>A twig cracked sharply in the dark of the forest and they all jumped, whirling to stare at the shadows. The sound did not come again.</p>
<p>"Just a sheep" Billy said, slowly turning back towards the fire, but his eyes were wide. Doug yawned and said he was going to get some shut-eye. A few minutes later Billy stood up, looked into the shadows of the trees then followed him in through the tent flap. A minute later they could hear the muted, pseudo-American accent of the deejay on Radio Christina. There was a pause and then the Beach Boys were singing, in pretty damn-fine harmony about how they get around.</p>
<p>A while later, they could hear Doug snoring. The Animals were tinnily singing about the rising sun and warning mothers to tell their children. The stolen lighter clicked inside the tent and a flare of light threw a sharp shadow against the canvas. Corky crept to the flap, peered in and then came back, suppressing a giggle.</p>
<p>"He's into the blonde with the big bazookas again. Playing pocket billiards."</p>
<p>Danny and Tom laughed along with it, almost sure of what Corky was talking about but not wanting to ask. They were still below that cusp and while some things were hinted at, until they were actually experienced, they had no real meaning.</p>
<p>The fire was waning and they heaped some thicker logs on it until the flames crackled high and bright. Inside the tent they heard the rustle of the magazine pages and they sniggered again. After a while, Billy started to snore even louder than Doug. The three of them sat in  silence for a while until Corky spoke up, turning his fire-reddened face towards Tom.</p>
<p>"When do you go?"</p>
<p>"End of next month," Tom replied. "My Mum says it'll take a week at least on the boat."</p>
<p>"But it'll be summer when you get there," Danny said. "And it's really hot at Christmas."</p>
<p>"I won't know anybody," Tom said but Corky snorted almost cynically.</p>
<p>"That's a bonus, believe me Tom. Sooner you get out of this crazy place the better." He looked up and they could see a sudden,  unaccustomed anger tighten on his face. "Swear to God, if I could leave, the happier I'd be. Really I would."</p>
<p>"My mum wants away," Tom said. His voice was thick and sounded as if it might crack. "She says she can't live here any more, not since Maureen...." his words trailed away. The other two nodded, letting it go. Danny remembered back to the day in church just after little Lucy Saunders torn body had been found under the bridge. Over on the other side of the aisle he had seen Tom sitting beside his parents, head bowed, face tight.</p>
<p>His father's bald head had been  was raised to the massive crucifix which was suspended over the central aisle, bearing  a gory and bloodied Christ hung, nailed to the tree, each streak of blood lovingly painted on its plaster surface.</p>
<p>Frank Tannahill looked as if he was making an appeal to the bleeding man on the cross. Tom's mother, a thin little woman in a blue coat that had seen plenty of better summers, hadn't sat up to listen while the priest gave her sermon, but stayed kneeling, eyes tight closed and hands clasped in front of her. If ever there was a picture of desperate misery, that had been it. Jessie Tannahill was surely praying for the repose of the soul of her own daughter whom Christ in his infinite mercy and wisdom had taken away from her when she herself had gone out to the shop for only a half an hour.</p>
<p>The boys noddded, letting it go, but Tom wouldn't.</p>
<p>"I hate it when Billy goes on about that wee Saunders girl. He doesn't know. Nobody does." Across the fire, tears glinted in his eyes. The other two sat silent, Tom started again, opened his mouth, then shut it quickly as if trapping words unsaid. He slid down off the rock onto the grass and laid his head down on the warm stone. He closed his eyes tight and he looked as if he was holding back more than words. He seemed to be pressing against a tide of anguish that could break through any moment in a torrent.</p>
<p>"Ach, Billy's just a mouth," Corky said. "If he had any brains he'd be dangerous. But he doesn't mean anything by it. He just never thinks."</p>
<p>"Doug'll be in Toronto before Christmas if his old man finds a job," Danny said. "Wish I could get away to somewhere different."</p>
<p>"No chance Danny boy.  You and me, we're stuck here with the rest of the low-lifers. But your dad's studying, isn't he? He'll get a good job somewhere. Like a teacher. Something in an office. He can wear a collar and tie and carry a brief case, all posh. Maybe he'll even get a car."</p>
<p>"Sooner the better," Danny said. "We've been flat stony broke as long as I can remember. All I want is to get some pocket money once in a while. My old man says it'll be fine when he finishes but I'll be about twenty by then. Really old."</p>
<p>"Better than my Da," Corky said. He rarely, if ever mentioned his father even though everybody knew it would be another few months before Pat Corcoran was let out and came home again. "I  mean, he's okay when he's sober, but when he's got a drink in him, Jeez, it gets pretty rough, I can tell you. And Phil, he's a few slices short of a plain loaf. He'll end up in the Drum as well, that's for sure. I don't want to be like them."</p>
<p>"You got plans?"</p>
<p>"Yeah. Plenty of them. Star in films, eh? Be a big star like Sean Connery." Corky grinned, somewhat ruefully, somewhat sadly, as if no matter what dreams he had, none of them would come true. "Wouldn't mind making films. Like Lord of the Flies. Real adventures. Like what we're having here now."</p>
<p>"This is just a picnic," Danny said. He turned to Tom. "Isn't that right?"</p>
<p>But Tom had fallen asleep, his head on the warm, smooth stone. "Just you and me Amigo," Corky said. "We don' have to show no stinking badges. You ever read that?"</p>
<p>Danny nodded. "And saw the film. Really dead brilliant. Especially when the bandits came at the end." He poked at the fire. "You think you could really do that? Make movies?"</p>
<p>Corky shrugged. "Maybe. I think I should be an engineer though. I can do maths with my eyes shut,  but you can never tell what's going to happen, do you? You got to get on an aprentice course, and everybody knows my old man. Mud sticks, you know? And there's no way he'll let me stay on at school. You have to go to college to get anywhere. You have to learn to be like those folk on TV. Wearing suits and talking with a gob-stopper in your mouth. Carrying a briefcase. That's what it's all about. But if I get  half a chance, I'm telling you,  I'll grab it with both hands."</p>
<p>"I want to paint," Danny said. "And be a naturalist. Maybe go exploring and paint all the animals I see." Danny poked a twig into the embers and sent sparks floating up to the sky. "But my Dad says I can't take art, because it's not a real subject. He says I have to stick with Latin so I can become a lawyer or a priest. Honest to God, he'd turn cartwheels if I went away to be a priest."</p>
<p>Corky giggled softly. "I can just see you as a priest. Father Danny-boy Gillan. I'd have to kiss your ring."</p>
<p>"The ring in my arse," Danny said and Corky giggled. "Anyway that's bishops."</p>
<p>"You could be the pope. They carry you around in a big chair all day."</p>
<p>"It's no joke. My old man says it's the biggest honour a man can have, a son who's a priest. Honestly, the only way I'd do that would be if I got to be a missionary down in Africa.  I'd get to see the elephants and lions and everything. Explore the jungle."</p>
<p>"And see all them big native women dancing about with their big bazoombas swingin' as well," Corky said with a leer.</p>
<p>This time Danny sniggered. "I'd rather see Janey Hartfield with no clothes on. We nearly did. I thought I was going to faint."</p>
<p>"Me too. I'd watch her any day of the week. What a <em>goddess</em>." Corky looked across the fire. "That's the kind of money I'd want. I mean, they don't even have to think about it, do they? They get everything done for them, and they've got fancy cars and they never have to do a day's work.  <em>Jeez</em>. See if my old man was rich?"</p>
<p>"He'd still knock the living shit out of you," Danny said. His lips were pulled back into a grin, but there was little  humour in it. "Same as mine. Sometimes I reckon Billy's got it made. He's got plenty of uncles and nobody to slap him around."</p>
<p>"Yeah, but you'd have to be half daft as well, just like he is." Billy's snoring droned out from the tent. "He still believes his old man was killed fighting  Japs. Hell, I think he still believes in Santa flippin' Claus." Corky raised his eyes to the dark sky. He yawned widely, stretching his arms wide.</p>
<p>"Time for beddy-byes." He nudged Tom who mumbled in his sleep and then woke with a start, his eyes wide and bewildered in his thin face.</p>
<p>"You want to sleep out here?"</p>
<p>Tom mumbled again, getting his bearings. He shook his head and Corky got a hand under his elbow to help him get  to his feet. Tom's neck had gone stiff from the hunched slumber against the stone. They went into the tent, leaving the fire to burn itself down.  Billy was snoring loudly and they pushed him until he turned over. Doug muttered  unintelligibly then gave a little high laugh which made the three of them snigger.</p>
<p>"Little red rooster," Danny said and they tittered in the dark, suppressing real laughter.</p>
<p>In the dusty, musty silence of the tent they lay quiet, listening to the snap and crackle of the pine twigs in the fire and the murmuring voice of the stream as it tumbled over the smooth boulders. Sometime during the night, Tom cried out. Danny woke up and heard him call out his dead sister's name, a pitiful, plaintive cry that trailed away into a wavering moan that twisted a bleak and forlorn sadness inside Danny's soul.</p>
<p>Sometime during the night, footsteps crackled in the thick trees downstream as something heavy clambered over dead logs and dry branches. Corky awoke and listened to the noise, wondering if a cow had come wandering down from Blackwood Farm's high pasture and got stuck in the trees. The noise stopped and for half an hour there was a silence and then, just as he dozed off, the <em>doom-doom-doom</em> of heavy footfalls echoed on the hard track beside the stream and startled him awake once more, with images of red-eyed rats snarling in his dream. They faded away into the night. Danny woke up and saw Corky pulling back from the flap.</p>
<p>"Whassamatter?"</p>
<p>"Thought I heard something," Corky whispered. They listened. Down in the trees a branch snapped with a harsh crack and the noise reverberated between the trunks. A night bird hooted, low and haunting. Something small shrieked and died.</p>
<p>Upstream, way beyond the first few bends of the meandering gully Danny heard the harsh and lonely <em>kaark</em> call of a heron and the sense of foreboding swelled along with the dragging remorse. He knew it was the female, calling to its dead mate.</p>
<hr />
<p><em>August 1. Night:</em></p>
<p>The man came out of the shadows and into the moonlight, using the sound of tumbling water to mask his progress.  He walked slowly, one footstep at a time,  avoiding the dry clumps of bracken that would have crackled and rustled and woken them up.</p>
<p>He had watched them from further up the slope, sitting quietly in the cool hollow as the shadow deepened, watching the red flicker of the fire and listening to their voices, unintelligible in the distance, as they huddled round the fire. After a while he'd gone down to the trees where the darkness was almost absolute. Once he'd snapped a twig in his hands, just to see their reaction, to watch their heads jerk round warily. They reacted like animals, instinctively on guard in the night.</p>
<p>He'd gone back up the hill to sit in the hollow overlooking their camp, waiting there until the first two had gone inside. He watched the small one fall asleep, then listened to the low mumble of conversation between the two boys. Overhead the moon was almost full,  silver blue in a misty sky. He could see Conboy's face in it, eyes shadowed with dark flies.</p>
<p>The stream mumbled to him and he could hear a distant voice in that, a low murmur, getting louder, coming closer. He had sat by the dung heap, watching the clouds of insects eating at the head, and observing the rippling of the maggots under the skin. He had waited for it to speak but it had not said anything to him, not yet. But the voice would come, the way Conboy's would come, getting louder all the time until he could hear all of the words.</p>
<p>The two boys woke the small one and they all went into the tent and after a while, the man came slowly down the slope to the side of the stream where the grass was short and dry. The zephyr of breeze carried the scent of resin and  sap and something else. He sniffed at the air, trying to pinpoint the source, following the smell until he reached the hawthorn tree, thick and gnarled, with low spreading branches. The deer's skull and hung on its own branch of antlers, socketted eyes staring blindly. He had watched the boy set up this totem in the heat of the day, dragging the trophy over the ridge at the bend of the stream. The flies were silent in the darkness.</p>
<p><em>Dung Fly</em></p>
<p>The whisper came from far away or deep inside him. He stopped, cocked his head to listen. Up in the sky, the moon's mouth yawned and he thought he could hear Conboy urging him on.</p>
<p>They were snoring inside the tent and he crept past to sit on the rock beside the fire, feeling the waning heat of the dying embers. One of the boys mumbled in his sleep and then cried out. Another muttered, perhaps to himself, perhaps to the one who had cried out and all the time the snoring, loud and regular and utterly oblivious, continued.</p>
<p>He could go in. He could rip the flap back and rip the opening wide and they'd wake in fright, not knowing where they were or what was happening.</p>
<p><em>But not yet</em></p>
<p>The moon's reflection wavered in the stream and Conboy's fly-eyes shimmered with life. He eased himself up and walked down the bank to where the water ran shallow  at the end of the pool, leaving a thick deposit of fine sandy shale. The man walked along this, leaving his footprints clear in the gravel and followed the stream down towards the trees. He was almost at the first bend, where the valley jinked to the left in  a tight dog-leg. Here the bank was cut away by the action of the water,  overhanging a small, but deep pool. He stopped there, standing with his face up to the moon and then he stamped his feet hard on the firm-packed turf.</p>
<p><em>Doom-doom-DOOM.</em></p>
<p>The vibrations seemed to come up from the depth of the water. Up at the tent, one of the boys cried out again. The man faded into the shadows of the trees. In the light of the moon,  in the faint glow of the fire, he saw the tent flap open and a tousled head poked out, twisting this way and that. A boy's voice whispered. Down among the trees, the man put his foot on a dry twig and leaned his weight, making it break with a hard snap. The noise echoed off the tall trunks. Close by, an owl hooted. Up on the moor a bird rasped a night call, hollow and lonely and thin up there in the dark.</p>
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