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<h1>3</h1>
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<p><em>August...</em></p>
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<p>"I bet we could find it."</p>
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<p>John Corcoran had swivelled on the fallen elm and was clambering to stand up on the massive trunk. He shaded his eyes against the high sun and pointed across the river, indicating roughly north.</p>
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<p>"It's up beyond the barwoods," Corky assured them. "Up on the moor."</p>
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<p>"I heard that too," Tom Tannahill agreed. "There's the bomb craters on this side of the woods. Remember the craters where we used to catch newts and frogs? The dummy village must be up that way, 'cause that's where the bombs fell."</p>
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<p>"I heard it was up at the Blackwood Stream," Danny Gillan pitched in. "Right at the source,"</p>
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<p>"I bet it's not as far as that," Billy Harrison countered, which was not entirely unexpected. "That's about twenty miles away. You could never walk that far in a month of Sundays."</p>
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<p>All of them had spent the better part of every summer holiday - except this one which was different from all the rest - playing in and around the Blackwood Stream which tumbled down a deep gorge beyond the barwoods and meandered to empty itself into the river just north of the town. They had been up beyond Blackwood Farm, and even to the low ridge of heathery hills beyond, but none of them had ever reached the end of the stream. There was a rumour that like Strowan's Well down in Arden the water came gushing pure and clear out of a cleft of rock, like the story in the bible, but nobody knew for certain, so Billy's estimate went unchallenged.</p>
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<p>"It's pretty far up, I reckon," Danny insisted. "It would have to be if they didn't want the Jerries to miss and drop them right here."</p>
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<p>"It would take too long," Billy argued. "We'd never get back in time. It would take more'n a day."</p>
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<p>"Who cares how long it would take?" Corky said. He turned back towards them, spinning quickly and almost losing his balance on the smooth wood where the bark had been stripped away. He pinwheeled his arms for balance, regained it and stood with his legs planted apart. "We could take the tent."</p>
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<p>Everybody stopped. It was one of those odd moments when an idea is tossed in the air like a shiny coin and just catches everyone's attention while it spins. There was a drawn-out silence. They all knew which tent. Phil Corcoran and some of pals had dumped it out of the scout lorry after a camp a couple of years before and it had never made its way back to the scout hall. Sometimes Corky and the rest of the boys would set it up on the flat meadow by the Ladyburn stream that wended its way down past Corrieside and on hot summer nights there would always be a selection of youngsters sitting out under the stars beside the red embers of a stickwood fire, playing three-card brag and pontoon, telling jokes and tall tales, poring over tattered copies of an old Parade magazine where they'd get all hot and bothered if they saw so much as one bare tit.</p>
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<p>Not this summer, though.</p>
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<p>Since long before the school term finished at the end of June, since April at least, there had been an unofficial curfew in the town that was as tight as any the council could have tried to enforce and for most of the summer, since the trouble began, no mother in town would allow any of her children to camp out at night. Most wouldn't let their children play out of sight.</p>
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<p>"No chance," Billy said. "My ma would throw a fit and a bad turn. She'd go
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<em>bonanza</em> if she even knew I was down here. She thinks I'm round at Doug's house reading comics right now."
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</p>
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<p>"Mine too," Doug agreed. "I have to tell her where I'm going and when I'll be back. After what happened to Don Whalen she was a nervous wreck. Our Terry isn't even allowed out of the front garden."</p>
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<p>Danny nodded along with them. There was still a nervousness about the town after what had been happening since the spring, and although it seemed to be over now, seemed to be over, it took a while for mothers to settle down again. They were like chickens in a coop still fretful after the stoat has gone, leaving the thick scent of blood in the air. Mothers were instinctive that way. They could still smell the blood. They were still scared in case the next blood they smelled would the blood of their own.</p>
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<p>"They would never know," Corky said, green-brown eyes bright and alive with that combination of mischief and adventure that made him the natural hub of their group. "We could say we're going along with the Scouts. They're doing the weekend camp up at Linnvale."</p>
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<p>That was true and well enough known. The past couple of summer months had meant every kid was kept on a short leash and the community had organised a series of events, summerplay picnics and day-trips, just to give the mothers a break, and to relieve the boredom of boys who needed to roam. The scout troop were taking groups of boys, sometimes forty and fifty strong, to a campsite nearly thirty miles outside town and as far as most parents were concerned in that particular summer, the far enough away, the better.</p>
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<p>"Nobody would ever know," Corky repeated. "We could load up with food and just skin out when the scout bus leaves. As long as we get back at the same time, we could still do it."</p>
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<p>"It would be some hike," Billy objected. "Could be twenty miles like I said, even more."</p>
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<p>"But we could be the first. The first ever. Nobody's ever found the Dummy Village before. Nobody's ever seen it, except Phil and he's a liar. We could bring something back to show the rest of them, eh? Better than hanging around all day going doo-lally, bored out of your brains."</p>
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<p>"But what if...?:" Somebody asked and somebody else threw in another spanner and somebody else thought they might get away with it and while they were talking the quarrymen let off another blast up on Drumbeck Hill. The sound of man-made thunder came rolling down on the still air and rumbled across the water. Each of them stopped talking.</p>
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<p>"Come on," Corky said. "This place still gives me the creeps."</p>
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<p>Billy ground his cigarette out under his heel. Danny picked up a pine-cone and flicked it against Corky's head. Doug loaded his little slingshot with a smooth acorn and aimed it at Tom's backside. In a minute they were out of the trees that bordered Keelyard Road by the river and were heading up towards the bridge, the memory of Paul Degman's death fading just a little in the light of the sun and in the heat of the agreement which might have been yet unspoken, but was somehow fixed between them all.</p>
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<hr/>
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<p><em>March:</em></p>
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<p>Sister Julia Gillies had come sweeping into the classroom in a rustle of beads and a jangle of keys. She was small and round and had a deep, almost masculine voice and an eye that could fix you like a spear when she meant business which was pretty much all of the time. She had a raised mole on her cheek with three stiff black hairs sticking out, as if her skin had trapped a fly under the surface and it was trying to work its way back out.</p>
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<p>She nodded to Matthew Bryden who was attempting to teach a class of thirty boys and girls the finer mysteries of Shakespeare and, only with a phenomenal amount of luck, getting through to more than a scant half-dozen. Quarryhill School was perched on the edge of an abandoned hole in the ground where sandstone had been blasted and cut to build half the old tenements in the town. It was just like any other school, a place where kids were sent for five days of the week for the catch-as-catch-can lottery of learning. Here, the teachers churned and hashed their furrows, never deviating one year to the next, scattering their knowledge like confetti, or
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<em>shite in a field,</em> as the local expression would have it. It landed on some and missed others completely and the grey teachers ploughed on regardless. It was up behind the school that something would happen, later that year, in the drop off at the old sandstone quarry. At this moment, however, the madness that would settle on the town was yet to stoke up. Only one person was aware of it, and he was not going to tell a soul.
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</p>
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<p>The tough little nun who ran the school turned at the table, one hand clenched around the wooden cross dangling from the outsize beads tied at her waist. She swivelled, as if on castors and scanned the class, eyes flicking from one desk to the next.</p>
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<p>"Paul Degman is dead." No preamble, no softening of any blow, though everybody knew it anyway. In schools and in schoolyards rumours, gossip and truth travel somewhere close to the speed of light. "He drowned in the river on Saturday and now he is with Jesus." She nodded her head when she said the holy name. Down near the front, two girls sitting side by side burst into tears and automatically turned to hug each other. Up at the back Billy Harrison and Doug Nicol stopped digging each other's ribs and leaned forward on their desk tops.</p>
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<p>"As you have often been told, playing by the river is dangerous. By now you will realise why. Remember that all of you."</p>
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<p>She swept her eyes round them again, somehow catching every one of them, making beady contact.</p>
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<p>"It could have been any one of you."</p>
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<p>Danny Gillan felt that cold shiver again. John Corcoran saw the look on his face. "We can swim like fish," he whispered. "Paulie couldn't."</p>
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<p>"The Good Lord can look down on you at any time and decide to take you, and that's what he did with Paul Degman, which is why you must always try to be in a
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<em>state of grace."</em></p>
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<p>"That's total shite," Corky said, keeping his voice low and Danny could tell he was angry just by the use of that word. Corky hardly ever swore, no matter how much his ne'er-do-well father and his crazy, jittery brother might curse. "What's she want to say a thing like that for? He fell in, poor sod. He was just unlucky."</p>
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<p>Sister Julia's voice boomed on. "So let us hope that Paul Degman's immortal soul was in a
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<em>state of grace</em> when the Lord decided to take him, otherwise...."</p>
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<p><em>Otherwise, he'd be in</em> - Danny Gillan closed his eyes -
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<em>He'd be in the bad fire,</em> wouldn't he?</p>
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<p>Danny didn't have to hear Sister Julia to know what was coming. He'd lived with the spectre of the
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<em>bad fire</em> flickering hot at the edge of his consciousness since before he'd even started in the primary school. Four and a half years old and he knew about hell and the everlasting flames that would burn and sear and never, stop.
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<em>Not ever!</em> If there was a hell, then it had to be burning flames that went on and on and on and shrivelled your skin and flesh and could never be put out, while God in his infinite mercy and wisdom allowed it to go on.
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<em>And on.</em></p>
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<p>"Remember now, Daniel," It was always Daniel. Never Danny, or Dan. He'd read about Daniel in the lions den - and read every other book in the bible besides - and sometimes he felt a strange kinship with his namesake. There were times when he felt he'd been put into a hole and somebody had rolled a rock over to close out the daylight and down in the shadows, eyes would watch him and beasts might roar. In his imagination, lions prowled in the darkness. Somewhere in the distant dark, there would be the hint of burning, the smell of smoke. "Remember Daniel," his father never tired of reminding him. "<em>He</em> can see everything you do, and you don't want to go to the
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<em>bad fire</em> do you now? That's where you go if you're bad."</p>
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<p>Always a warning, always a parable, and hardly a laugh along the way. This God business was a serious thing, as the young Daniel Gillan discovered at a tender age, and
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<em>He</em> was always ready to look down with fire in his eye and give it to you good and proper. No messing about here. His heavy hand could come out of nowhere and knock you to the ground. A paternal thing. What fathers were for, especially fathers almighty.
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</p>
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<p><em>Jesus loves me this I know…</em> But Good God's getting the furnace stoked and glowing.</p>
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<p>At the age of three, Danny's sister Agnes had been helping their mother in the kitchen. She had come out with a bowl of piping hot custard and Danny had stumbled against her, sending the bowl flying. The boiling custard had come down in a searing, cauterising splash to cover his back and his neck and he'd fallen, screaming to the linoleum floor, trying vainly to crawl out of the puddle of scalding liquid. His hands and knees could gain no purchase and the more he tried the more he slipped, while the skin on his neck and back puckered and blistered. The family had no car then - and still didn't - so it took a half an hour to get to the cottage hospital and another hour to be transferred to Lochend General where he spent three weeks getting the dressings changed twice a day by nurses with kindness in their eyes and ruthlessness in their fingers. At the age of thirteen, Danny could still remember the sear of the pain as the nurses pulled the lint away, taking off the thin slick of blistered skin while another nurse held his shoulders flat on the bed to stop him squirming. They could not stop him hurting and they could not stop him screaming. That had been bad. That had been excruciating.</p>
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<p>But it had been nothing compared to the scalding custard and the shriek of his nerve endings on the day it had happened. That had been the most fundamental experience of his entire existence. The pain had gone on and on and never seemed to stop while the skin all down his shoulders and back sloughed away and shrank on his flesh while he screamed and shrieked and tried to crawl.</p>
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<p>Burning was something he knew about.
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<em>Oh Hallelujah.</em> And according to Dan Gillan Senior, if you weren't in a state of grace when God took you, then burning is what you got. An eternity of it.
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</p>
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<p>All of his life, young Danny had been made aware of the
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<em>Bad Fire</em> and until he was seven years old, his dreams had been fraught with heat and flickering red shadows and the smell of burning flesh.
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</p>
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<p>And the idea of a God who could do that, who knew everything from start to finish and had it all planned in his vast mind, that was a very scary idea altogether. The young Danny didn't want to believe in the kind of God who was so two-faced he would pretend to love you while he knew you would burn forever. It was a set up.
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<em>It was a fix.</em></p>
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<p>But as a kid he'd been too scared not to believe. He had prayed at night so that the God of his father would spare him from the flames. He'd prayed. And occasionally his own father would get the priest, Father Dowran, to come round and reinforce the lesson, Father Dowran with liquor on his breath and a strange heat in his stroking hands. They'd all prayed. For a state of grace.</p>
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<p>"So tomorrow morning there will be special prayers offered up for the repose of his soul," Sister Julia was saying. A girl close to Danny and Corky burst into tears and beside her a boy started to snivel. Danny felt the cold shiver crawl up his spine and in his mind's eye he saw the pale shape under the dark surface of the river and the strange twinkle of light on the roof of the old outhouse buildings on the far side of Boat Pend.</p>
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<p>"Everybody be there at nine sharp."</p>
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<p><em>Yeah, so we can all pray,</em> Danny thought,
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<em>that he doesn't end up in the Bad Fire.</em> Danny knew prayers did no good. What a deal for poor Paulie. Down there in the cold water. One minute he was playing on the bank, throwing stones at gulls and tin cans and the next he's down there in the cold and the murk, swallowing river mud, and then we've got to pray so that he doesn't get hauled away to the
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<em>Bad Fire</em> by a terrible, vengeful god.</p>
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<p>Danny wondered what a boy like Paulie Degman could ever have done to have been allowed to drown down there in the river; what he could possibly have done to be allowed to burn. He couldn't think of
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<em>any</em> reason, any sin that would be bad enough to make you burn forever. On the curve of his shoulder, just beside his neck on the fine skin on the collarbone, there was still a flat, puckered scar that had been the mark of the scald as a child. Automatically, his fingers stroked the memory.
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<p>"It's shite," Corky said again, snapping Danny out of the black thoughts. "Once you've had it, that's it. Finished. Gone and done. That's why you better make the most of it while you've got it, and you only ever get the one chance." He turned to Danny. "You believe in all this garbage?"</p>
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<p>Danny shook his head. He'd shucked off his belief in an almighty only a year or so past, but old habits died hard and old indoctrination ran deep.</p>
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