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<h1>36</h1>
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<p><em>Reminiscence:</em></p>
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<p>For a long time, as we trudged up the moor, beyond the burning
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grass and heather which trailed white smoke into the now still air,
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nobody said a word. Nobody could. We breasted the hill and headed
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down the slope towards the distant Barwoods which formed the first
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barrier between the moor and the high farmland. Over the east, the
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sun had now risen well up beyond Langmuir Crags, soaring bright
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into a clear blue sky. Behind us, as we could see, every time we
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turned around (and none of us could resist doing that) the pall of
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smoke had risen up in a huge column that flattened out at the top.
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We had seen clouds like that before, in newsreels in the old Regal
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Cinema.</p>
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<p>We had gone down into the valley five days before, and we had
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come out again, and life would never be the same again, not for any
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of us. Every now and again, one would turn back to look at the
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rising pillar of smoke, the black and transient marker of what had
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happened, but mostly we looked over our shoulders just in case the
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raggedy, bloodied and somehow unstoppable monster with was
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clambering up the moor after us, waving that butcher's knife and
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repeating his own mad mantra.</p>
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<p><em>Dung fly...dung fly....</em></p>
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<p>We were all hurt and we were all bruised, both inside and out.
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Whatever <em>Twitchy Eyes</em> had done he had reached inside each
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of us in one way and another and left his mark on our souls.
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<em>Jesus</em>, we were only thirteen years old.</p>
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<p>Nobody said a word for a long time and that's how it stayed. We
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never, despite what happened after that, we never spoke about it to
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anybody else. Not ever. During that hot, crazy summer and the
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strangely bitter, unstable aftermath of the autumn which followed,
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we lived in the shadow of the man with the twitchy eyes. A few
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mothers in our town lived in this shadow too, and sisters and
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brothers and devastated families, but we had <em>seen</em> him.
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<em>We</em> had heard the sound of his voice, felt his touch.</p>
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<p>We had looked into those eyes.</p>
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<p>Back down the hill after those five days, carrying less in our
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hands than we had taken there, and weighed by so much more in our
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souls. We couldn't go home, not right away, so we stayed, huddled
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together for comfort in the heat of the afternoon, down in the damp
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shade of Rough Drain, waiting until the old bus came back with the
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rest of the scouts, and mostly waiting until we could face another
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human being who was not one of us. Nobody knew.</p>
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<p>Strange, isn't it? Nobody knew. Nobody suspected. Boys get away
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with murder, near enough. You come in with the knees torn out of
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your jeans and your furious Ma wants to know where she'll get the
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money for another pair, never mind torn skin. She asks what you've
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been doing and you tell her you fell and that's fine. You could
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have fallen off a cliff, but all she can see are holes in the
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jeans.</p>
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<p>You get a scrape or a cut and you say you fell. A bloody nose?
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Fell. Mothers just don't look and most times they don't ask, and
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fathers don't notice at all unless it concerns other business. You
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get a scrape or bruise every other day. A torn shirt or ragged
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denims can hide a multitude of sins and plenty of damage. They can
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hide what Billy needed to hide. They can cover forever the flaring
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then dying splashes of a shotgun blast. A kick from a madman's
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boot.</p>
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<p>Scrapes and cuts are a boys lot. Nobody really cares that much.
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Nobody sees. Boys hide it all, because that's the way boys are, and
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mostly that's the way men are too. We came back with the scouts and
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we took our knocks for damaged clothes and we hid our damaged
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souls.</p>
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<p>The killings that had begun in the spring with the slaying of
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daft Mole Hopkirk, who would never, despite his stated ambition,
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have become The Greatest Cat Burglar in the History of Crime, those
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killings stopped. Some people, it seems, had their own theories as
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to why.</p>
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<p>Little Lucy Saunders was long buried, laid to rest in a dry
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coffin, cleaned of the mud and her own mess. Don Whalen's mother
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spent two years in Barlane mental hospital, racked by the image of
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her son's gaping face and its covering of flies. Jeff McGuire, who
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found Mole's mutilated body, he was in and out of Barlane like a
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yo-yo, a strange and affected youth with an odd, distant look in
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his eyes.</p>
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<p>Up at Blackwood Farm, where the cock had crowed, master of all
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it surveyed for two weeks one far-off summer, they cleared up the
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pieces that had been Ian McColl and his tiny, brave wife.</p>
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<p>The killings stopped. After a while, the town tried to get back
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to normal, still looking over its collective shoulder, the way we
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had done on the strange, numbed trail down from the high moor that
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we'd climbed to get out from under, to find the Dummy Village of
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legend. Just in case. <em>Just in case.</em></p>
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<p>Nobody could really believe he was gone, but <em>we</em> knew.
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We knew why, and we never told a soul because we couldn't. Simple
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as that. There were five boys whose lives had been altered,
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infected by the touch of the man with the twitchy eyes. We tried to
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put it away, tuck it into a dark corner, but if you're reading
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this, you'll know that things that lurk in dark corners come out,
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and they always go for the throat. We could not tell anyone what
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had happened to Billy Harrison. We could all remember the
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deathliness in his voice when he stood there beside the crumpled
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tent.</p>
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<p><em>Kill him!</em></p>
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<p>We couldn't tell, not then. It's hard enough even now, after all
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this time.</p>
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<p>Doug Nicol's father came home in the autumn, and a fortnight
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later, they had emptied the house along Braeside Street and gone
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off to Toronto. The last I saw of Doug, he was standing, blinking
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tears from his eyes, holding on to little Terry's hand, sniffing
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hard so that his big teeth showed. The sun was turning his ears
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pink. My throat was dry. He reached out and touched me on the
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shoulder and I put a hand on his and I still remember that touch. I
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always will.</p>
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<p>I remembered him, remember still, how he had turned to the rest
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of us, when we could all have got away clean, while the man was
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still grunting like an animal in the tent, and I can recall the
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words he said in that deadly low whisper.</p>
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<p><em>We have to help him.</em></p>
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<p>Skin-and bone, thirteen years old, and he would have laid down
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his life for his friend. Greater love has nobody, than that.</p>
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<p>I remember Doug Nicol when he stretched out, choked by the wire,
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to get his foot to the bag, nearly killing himself for us all. He
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had run forward to snatch the shells away before the madman could
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load the shotgun. Then he had strode forward, raising that smooth
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stone up, to slam it down again. Doug Nicol. I never saw him again
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after he left town, never heard from him again, but I'll never
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forget him as long as I live. I hope he is happy. I really hope to
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God he is.</p>
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<p>Billy Harrison's mother, who'd doted on her boy and filled his
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head with heroic tales of derring-do, myths of a hero father who
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did not exist, she met another sailor, not an American one, and
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moved to Portsmouth, met yet another, came back up north again and
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stayed, dragging Billy with her. They settled in Kirkland, a few
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miles along the Creggan Road and she took to drink and died
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sometime in the late seventies. Billy was never the same after that
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week in the valley. God, none of us were, for sure. Many years ago,
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I saw him coming out of a bar, in another place, another city, with
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another guy who was tall and black haired, taller than Billy
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himself, and for a moment, my heart just stopped. Billy had a dog
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chain around his neck and the other man held the free end. Years
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after that, I hadn't heard but I found out later, he got a five
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year stretch after a police raid on a child porn ring. There was
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talk that some of the videos weren't just sex, but nothing of that
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was ever proved in court. Billy went down to Drumbain Jail. He
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hanged himself in his cell.</p>
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<p>I only found this out after I'd come back myself, for my own
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personal reasons, and by then I'd seen what sparked all this off
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again, uncovering the memories I'd tried to bury down deep. I later
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discovered, from the records of the inquiry, that he'd hung himself
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with a tightening loop-noose made from baling twine from the prison
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farm's harvester.</p>
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<p>I remember Billy Harrison on the ground, while the man hauled at
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him, trying to get the gun, a prostrate shape, flopped and
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flapping. I remember his heartrending cries of desperate terror in
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the dark of the night. I recall his triumphant return from the
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Dummy Village far up on that bleak moor with the ram's skull
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paraded on top of his stave, like a Roman standard. I remember the
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wet patch spreading on his jeans as he climbed up the hill. I can
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still see the dreadful lost and barren look in his eyes down in the
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valley when he realised he had been singled out as the first
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special victim.</p>
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<p>Whatever drove him on after all that, the man with the twitchy
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eyes was behind it, and for that alone, I hope he is burning in the
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everlasting fire. Billy Harrison was maybe a crazy kid, big in the
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mouth, tough in the talk, but he was never a bad one, just a bit
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<em>troubled</em>. Whatever else the man with the Twitchy Eyes had
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done, he'd touched Billy Harrison and passed on some of the
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infection of his own appalling sickness.</p>
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<p>A year after Billy Harrison died, I met Tom Tannahill, by sheer
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coincidence. He was still small, still thin, and his curly hair was
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getting thinner still, but he was wiry and there was a toughness
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about him that was quiet and strong and it was good. He had been
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working in a hospital in Rwanda, right in the middle of the
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madness, all that killing. He had led a party of kids out, through
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the bush, through the wilds, past the marauding bands of bandits
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with machine guns and Kalashikovs and machetes, got them out to
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Zaire and to safety. He'd adopted one of them, a little girl,
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barely three years old, a girl he called Maureen. When he told me
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that, he looked me in the eye and something passed between us and
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that was enough. The next month he went back to Rwanda, where
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thousands were dying every day, and he was never heard of
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again.</p>
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<p>Tom. Tiny Tom with his high voice and his shaking hands.</p>
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<p>I remember him in the night, trying not to piss his pants
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because he did not want to die in his own mess. <em>Jesus</em>. He
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was thirteen, same age as me. I remember him swiping that book from
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the library so he could read a story to the little sister who was
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dying. Billy Goats Gruff. I recall, like it was yesterday, how he
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swung the gun by the barrel and I can still hear the thunder as the
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shot missed him by barely an inch. I remember him turning, despite
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his terror, at the top of the ledge, to reach down and help Billy
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up. Fixed in my memory is the picture of him facing up to the
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Twitchy Eyed madman, raising the gun in his hands, trying to
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protect the rest of us.</p>
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<p>Greater love hath no man than this.</p>
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<p>And John Corcoran. Corky to his friends.</p>
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<p>His old man, Paddy Corcoran, came out of jail even more crooked
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and a whole lot meaner and within a year he was back in for a
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two-year stretch for an assault on Corky's mother. One prophesy
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came true. Corky's shoulder was dislocated again and the court
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heard that had happened when he squared up to Paddy Corcoran, a
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big, blundering man with fists like hams who had thrown him around
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the room the way a terrier throws a rat. Corky told me about it
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later, grinning that slow, hard way of his, telling me it was worth
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it, because he'd got out from under. His mother was in hospital for
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a little while and when she got out, she left Paddy and abandoned
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Phil who was just as much out of control. She and Corky and his
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aunt moved to a house up on Cargill Farm Road, only a couple along
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from the bungalow where big John Fallon lived with his son and
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daughter.</p>
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<p>Corky stayed on at school for an extra year to get the maths
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qualification he needed to become an engineer. He'd given up on the
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idea of making movies, though he was the natural, the one with all
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the imagination. When I walk by the canal at Barloan Harbour, I can
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still hear the <em>doom-doom-</em>doom echo up from the tunnels dug
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by those Racine rats. Corky never got make movies, but he hauled
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himself out from under. And he was never going to be scared of
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anybody ever again.</p>
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<p>The words <em>up and over</em> somehow repeat themselves and
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maybe they're more appropriate. Corky got up and over. Big John,
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the police sergeant, gave him a solid recommendation to the
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shipyard at Barloan Harbour and he started his apprenticeship. He
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hauled himself up by the bootstraps, slogging away at night
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classes, determined to make something of himself. He got a good
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engineering degree, and he never bothered to learn to talk proper,
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the way the <em>toffs</em> did. Cargill Farm Road wasn't too far
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away and Corky and I stayed close in our teens. After a while,
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after the first few months, we never talked about what happened up
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in the valley, but it was something that held us together,
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something we had. Something private. We saved it for later.</p>
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<p>A couple of years back, before my walk down on River Street, the
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first I'd taken in this town for a long time, a <em>wheen of
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years,</em> as we used to say, John Corcoran was the chief engineer
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on a big gas rig out in the North Sea. You'll recall it went up
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like a bomb, and remember, I know about bombs.</p>
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<p>Corky stayed back, no surprise, getting men onto the lifeboats,
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waiting until the last minute, until the rest were safe. All of
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this is documented. It was in the middle of the night and a gale
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was blowing. The fireball had swept through the turnhouse and the
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sleeping quarters and Corky had been the one who got them out of
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there so that only four men, the ones caught in the blast, were
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killed.</p>
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<p>A young Norwegian, one of the cooks, he was coming across the
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gantry, while behind him, the metal of the walls was buckling and
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twisting in the heat. The rungs had started to pop out and the boy
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was slipping, hanging over a hundred foot drop. Corky turned away
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from the boat and crawled over the framework, risking his own life,
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grabbed the boy by the collar and dragged him back. Just then a
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stanchion higher up gave way and the whole side of the rig
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collapsed, taking John Corcoran and the boy with it, tangled in the
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safety rope. It slid down the leg and crumpled like a child's toy,
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dragging both men under the water. The young Norwegian says John
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Corcoran somehow got his knife out and cut the rope, still under
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the water, and pushed him to freedom. The lifeboat got to the scene
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a few minutes later, but it took them too long to shift the twist
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of metal and free John Corcoran, trapped just under the surface.
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When they brought him up, he was still alive, but lack of oxygen
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had caused dreadful and irreparable brain damage.</p>
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<p>Those thirty long minutes under the freezing waters of the north
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sea, they burned out the flash and the fire and the brave
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determination that was our Corky.</p>
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<p>Greater love hath no man than this. That he lay down his
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life.</p>
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<p>I remember those eyes flashing with fear and anger, damned
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righteous anger, feet spread, knife out, challenging the crazy,
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twisted killer who was baptising Billy in the pool in Blackwood
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Stream, preparing him for sacrifice. I remember him looking into
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that infinity of death and not flinching. I remember the awful
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grind of his teeth on the wire as he tried to free us all. I can
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still see his elbow jerking back twice, three times, to put the
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knife into the twitchy-eyed beast. In my mind I hear his soothing
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whisper as he pulled the damp tee-shirt away from the searing skin
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of my back, taking the embedded pellets with it one by one.</p>
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<p>John Corcoran. Corky to his friends. He had laid down his life
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many a time in that one summer.</p>
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<p>I saw him, picking up litter on River Street and his eyes looked
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into mine, through mine, with not a flicker of recognition, and of
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all the losses, that was the most painful of all. I could feel
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tears stinging in the back of my eyes and suddenly I could not
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swallow.</p>
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<p><em>Hey arse-face. How's it hanging?</em> The words stuck to the
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back of my throat and they still do. I remember those eyes flashing
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and I think of the dreadful waste of it all. The unfairness.</p>
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<p>Some memories don't fade, no matter how you try to diminish them
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and push them down into tight little boxes with heavy lids. The
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memories have their own way of breaking free, beasts in the night,
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struggling to come back, because memories have a life of their own.
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I can still see the looks on their faces the day the man came
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clawing is way up the hill after us, roaring like a mad beast,
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madness in his eyes and murder in his mind.</p>
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<p>For many years, I kept the memory right down and let it slumber
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fitfully, shying away from it, maybe hoping it would fragment and
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wither for lack of attention. For a while I succeeded, because
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you're supposed to go on, to grow up, to overcome. But then
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something would happen, a chance meeting, a record from those days,
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<em>Red Rooster</em> or <em>My Generation</em>, played on good old
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Radio Clyde, a cutting from an old newspaper, even an old movie
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like <em>Deliverance</em>.</p>
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<p>Or something like the eyes of John Corcoran who sweeps the
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streets and doesn't now have the brains he was born with. Something
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like that would happen and in a second, in the twitch of an eye, I
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would be a thirteen-year-old boy again, with a faded sloppy-joe and
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torn jeans and scuffed canvas shoes. Memories come back.</p>
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<p>Angus McNicol, the old policeman, he poured me a couple of
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whiskies and talked into the recorder, and probably exorcised a few
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of his own ghosts in the process. He asked me why I was asking all
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the questions, and while I spun him a yarn, by then I really
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thought I knew why.</p>
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<p>I needed to know who he was, the gaunt man who had come across
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the stream while we were guddling for trout.</p>
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<p><em>Twitchy Eyes.</em></p>
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<p>On River Street, where the first killing had happened, the
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murder of Mole Hopkirk in the back room of Old Cairn House, it had
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all come back, all of it in a rush, a crazy torrent like the one
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that had scoured the valley on the day the bombs exploded and burst
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the dam at Lonesome Lake. It came back clear as day, so powerful
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that I could smell the heather bloom and the sweat and the pine
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smoke from the fire. I could hear the flies buzzing over in the
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hollow where Billy had made his altar and the far-off crowing of
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the cock was still shrill. I could feel the searing burn of the
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pellets embedded in the swollen skin, the cold of the water, and I
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could see the parliament of crows judging me from the old swaying
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wire up in a deserted ghost village. It came back so powerfully I
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could feel panic rise in my chest and a hand squeeze in my belly
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and I had to know, to put a name to it. Now I have got a name, or
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at least I'm sure I do.</p>
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<p>It hasn't made a blind bit of difference, knowing that. I know
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<em>who</em>, but I don't know <em>why</em>. Who the hell knows
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what madness is? Maybe we all have a little bit of it inside of
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us.</p>
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<p>I know that I saw madness, absolute insanity in a killer's eyes
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and I lived to tell the tale. Who knows how life would have been if
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we hadn't gone up there to find the Dummy Village. Or if the
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twitchy-eyed monster had picked another town to work his evil.</p>
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<p>Late at night, or maybe in the dark and cold shallows of the
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morning when the light is murky, the colour of river water down at
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the old quayside, I wake up, heart pounding, from a dream, from
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<em>the</em> dream, the one where I see that grey and rotting hand
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come crawling like a diseased spider out of a bank of shale. Little
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trickles of gravel whisper down the steep slope and the fingers
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flex with a life of their own. The sifting granules are calling out
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to me.</p>
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<p><em>Dung fly...dung fly..</em>.in the dream I understand what
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that whispering hiss means.</p>
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<p>In the dream, my legs won't move and my feet won't climb and I
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can't move. I am nailed by my own dreadful fear.</p>
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<p>On top of the ridge, a lone grey heron stands and fixes me with
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its staring, yellow eye.</p>
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<p><strong>THE END</strong></p>
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