by Sara Crowe
She let him go. She sipped her juice, set the glass down next to the basket and twisted off another ear of corn. ‘Did you have a good run?’
Ash hesitated. He wanted to tell her about the bird flying into his face, about the stag boy being hunted down, how the running boys seemed to vanish into thin air, the freaky storm clouds, the shadows that had chased him. But when the words formed in his mind, it all sounded creepy and unreal, a mad dream best kept to himself.
She had enough to worry about anyway, with Dad still not back.
‘Yeah, it wasn’t bad,’ he said. ‘I went up to Stag’s Leap. I saw Callie Cullen up there.’
‘Callie?’ Mum stopped breaking the corn ears from their stalks and gave him her full attention. ‘Was Mark with her?’
‘No. It was just her.’
‘What in the world was she doing out there by herself? Did you talk to her?’
‘Yeah, but she wouldn’t talk to me.’
‘Why ever not?’ said Mum. ‘Those poor kids. You and Mark used to be such good friends. I wish you’d try again with him.’
‘I tried lots of times.’ His face grew hot. It wasn’t exactly a lie – he had made an effort after Mark’s dad hanged himself. But bad things seemed to collect around Mark after his dad died. Dark and violent things. When Mark pushed him away, Ash let himself be pushed and then time passed and things got awkward. These days they scarcely saw each other.
He couldn’t explain all that to Mum. She wouldn’t get it. She’d remind him that Mark had been his best friend, tell him not to be so superstitious and silly. There’d be disappointment in her eyes, in her voice.
He couldn’t stand that.
He cleared his throat and changed the subject. ‘Has Dad called yet?’
Stupid question. If he had called, she’d have told him by now.
‘Not yet,’ said Mum. Her voice suddenly sounded too cheerful. ‘I’m sure he’ll be home soon though.’
Ash nodded and drained his glass of juice. ‘Right. I’ll go and have a shower.’
‘Good idea,’ said Mum. ‘I didn’t want to mention it but …’
‘Yeah, I’m all sweaty and I stink. I know, Mum.’
He stood in the shower for a long time, letting the hot water sluice away the sweat and dust from his run. Then he towelled himself dry, went up to his bedroom in the attic and put on fresh clothes.
Through the open bedroom window, he heard the garden gate shriek on its hinges.
It was probably just the postman, he told himself. But his heart leaped anyway and he rushed to the window.
It wasn’t the postman.
It was Dad.
FOUR
Dad was standing in the driveway, just inside the gate. He looked the way Ash remembered: tall, broad-shouldered, tough as teak. His jaw was shadowed with stubble. He was dressed in his civvies and his dark hair was messy, despite the regulation army cut, but he still looked a soldier through and through.
Captain Stephen Tyler, home from war.
Then Dad walked out onto the lawn and it all started to fall apart. He looked loose somehow, as if his bones weren’t properly connected. Dragging his feet, swaying, stumbling.
Like a puppet with its strings cut.
Ash watched and a tiny knife of anxiety twisted inside him.
In the middle of the lawn, Dad stopped. He stared at the house as if it was somewhere he remembered from a dream. Then he looked straight up at the open window where Ash was.
Ash stuck out his head. ‘Dad! Hey, Dad!’
Dad just went on staring, as if Ash was a stranger to him. No smile, no wave, not even a flicker of recognition.
Ash flinched as if he’d been slapped across the face.
Dad took another step, lurched sideways, almost fell.
Drunk, thought Ash. Or something else wrong, something worse.
Anxiety cut through him again.
Mum came around the side of the house. She was still wearing her old straw hat. She stopped for a long moment, watching Dad. He hadn’t noticed her. He was still staring up at the house as if he’d never seen it before. She called out to him, her voice soft and low and so full of love that Ash suddenly felt afraid for her.
Dad looked across at her. He smiled weirdly, then a sob broke from him and he buckled, seemed about to crumple to his knees on the grass. Then Mum was running towards him and she caught him in her arms, held him close, held him up.
Ash turned away, embarrassed. They didn’t seem like his parents any more. Instead they were like two strangers caught in the middle of something huge and terrible, something he didn’t understand, didn’t want to see.
He lay on his bed, stared at the ceiling.
A door slammed downstairs. He closed his eyes. A blood-red glare behind his eyelids, and circling specks of black that opened dark wings and flapped away like carrion crows over a battlefield.
He curled up into a ball, rocked himself for a while, opened his eyes again.
However much he wanted to, he couldn’t stay up here for ever. Sunshine outside, Dad downstairs. Mum. The Stag Chase only a fortnight away. Everything waiting for him. So he got up, went down there.
They were sitting at the kitchen table, mugs of tea in front of them. Typical, Ash thought. Everything falling apart and Mum had made a pot of tea.
Dad looked exhausted. Bruises under his eyes, his skin too thin and too tight, greyish under his desert tan. He glanced at Ash and then away again.
He looked ill. Injured, maybe, Ash thought. But the army would have told them if Dad had been injured, so not that. It wasn’t just drunkenness though. He’d seen Dad drunk before. Not often, but enough to know that this was different in some dark, deeper way that he didn’t understand.
‘Your dad’s home,’ said Mum. As if Dad wasn’t sitting right next to her.
‘I know,’ said Ash. He tried to smile, to make a joke of it. ‘I can see him.’
He pulled out a chair. The chair legs screeched across the lino and Dad winced.
Silence except for the tick of the wall clock.
Mum shot him a look. He knew what she wanted him to do. He was supposed to talk to Dad, act as if everything was normal so they could all pretend it really was, that Dad was his old self and that everything would be wonderful now he was home.
That was how it was supposed to be when your dad came back after months away at war. Family time. Hugs and laughter and love. A celebration.
The silence filled the room. Then Dad’s eyes half closed and he slumped a bit in his chair, almost slid off it onto the floor, grabbed the edge of the table to save himself. Tea slopped out of the mugs.
‘He’s drunk,’ said Ash. The words punched out like machine-gun fire before he could stop them. ‘He stinks of beer.’
‘That’s enough, Ash,’ said Mum sharply. ‘You’re not helping.’
He looked at her, looked at Dad. Tears burned behind his eyes.
‘I’m tired,’ said Dad, to no one in particular. The words slurring together. ‘If you don’t mind, I need to sleep now.’
He stood up. So did Mum.
‘No!’ said Dad. Voice cracking out like a whip. Mum looked shocked. ‘Sorry,’ he said. ‘I’m sorry. I just need some sleep. I’ll be all right tomorrow.’
He moved into the spare room with his rucksack, as if he was a guest.
And Ash knew he wouldn’t be all right tomorrow.
FIVE
Morning, and the distant mountains looked like a watercolour dissolving in rain, colours running together. But it was the heat haze that made the air shiver and blur, not rain. There hadn’t been any rain for almost two months. The grass was brittle and burned golden brown and the streams had shrunk to sluggish trickles that were more mud than water. Everything was tired, wilting, dusty, and Ash felt the same way, felt a hundred years old, all his strength and energy leached out.
He had a shopping list and a folded ten-pound note in his pocket. He knew the shopping was just Mum’s excuse to get him o
ut of the house but he didn’t care. It was a relief to get out for a while, not to be at home with Dad in such a mess, not to be saying stupid angry things like he had yesterday. He was better off out of it.
He headed past the Old Rec, towards the row of little shops on the other side of the main street.
Then he saw her out on the Rec, sitting on one of the swings. Callie Cullen, barefoot and still wearing the dusty red dress he’d seen her in yesterday. Her serious grey eyes watched him. He got the feeling she’d been waiting for him. But she couldn’t have been. She couldn’t have known Mum would send him out to the shops.
He went over and sat on the swing next to hers. He breathed in the smells of hot tarmac, rubber, old bubble gum. Playground smells.
‘I saw you yesterday,’ he said. ‘Out in the mountains, up by Stag’s Leap.’
‘So what?’
The edge of dislike in her voice shocked him. They’d never been friends exactly, but she’d always been there, at the edge of his life, a quiet, serious girl with a slow shy smile. He’d always thought she liked him well enough, as much as he’d thought about her at all. Now she sounded like she almost hated him.
He bit his lip, looked away. After a while he said, ‘Did you see anyone else out there?’
‘Like who?’
‘Like runners,’ he said. ‘Lots of them. Hound boys.’
‘No, I didn’t see anyone.’
‘You must have seen them. They ran up the path to the top of the ridge. They must have run right past you.’
‘The Stag Chase isn’t for another two weeks.’
‘I know that.’
‘They can’t have been hound boys then. Anyway, I didn’t see them. I didn’t see anyone.’
She was lying. He was sure of it. There was no way she could have missed the runners.
‘You’re lying,’ he said.
He expected her to get angry and deny it but she didn’t. She just gave him a look that said she didn’t really care what he thought.
Somehow that was worse. It meant maybe she was telling the truth and he was the only one who had seen the runners. And if he was the only one who’d seen them, then maybe he’d imagined them, maybe they’d never been there at all.
Seeing things, mirages, like people saw in deserts. Tricks of the light. Or of the mind.
He tilted his weight a little. The swing moved. His feet scraped across the safety surface.
‘I heard Mark moved in with your grandpa,’ he said.
A guarded look. ‘Yeah, we stay there sometimes.’
‘Only sometimes? Where do you stay the rest of the time?’
She shrugged, gazed off into the distance. ‘Here and there.’
‘How’s Mark doing?’
‘What do you care?’
That was it, Ash knew. The reason for the anger that kept coming back into her voice. She thought he’d betrayed Mark, abandoned him when Mark needed him the most. As far as Callie was concerned, that made him the enemy.
He didn’t blame her for feeling that way.
‘I couldn’t …’ he said. Stumbling over the words. ‘Everything changed after your dad died. Mark changed. He was like a stranger. I didn’t know what to do. I didn’t know what to say to him.’
‘What did you expect?’ said Callie. ‘We’d already lost our mum, then Dad killed himself. We lost the farm. Our home. We lost everything. After that Mark wouldn’t talk to anyone for a long time, not even to grandpa or me. He clammed up and got strange and crazy.’ She looked straight at Ash. ‘But he was still Mark.’
‘I’m sorry.’
‘Sorry’s no use. It’s just a word you say to make yourself feel better.’
‘I don’t feel better.’
‘You don’t deserve to. You were supposed to be his best mate, but you just gave up on him.’
‘I’m sorry,’ he said again.
‘He wants to see you,’ said Callie. ‘That’s why I’m here. I was going to go on up to your house later.’
‘What does he want?’
‘I don’t know. He’s the one who wants to see you, not me.’
‘When?’
‘Tomorrow night. It has to be tomorrow night.’
‘I can’t come tomorrow.’ Not when Dad had only been home a day, he thought. But he couldn’t tell Callie that, couldn’t tell her that his dad had come home safe from war when her own dad was dead.
‘You’re just the same,’ she said. ‘Useless.’
‘Maybe next week. I can’t get to your grandpa’s house tomorrow. Mum’s busy so I can’t get a lift.’ Immediately he reddened at the lie. It was only a few miles to Cold-brook, where Grandpa Cullen lived. Callie knew as well as he did that it would take him less than half an hour on his bike.
‘He’s not staying at Grandpa’s,’ she said. ‘He’s hardly ever there.’
‘I can’t make it,’ he said. ‘Why does it have to be tomorrow, anyway?’
‘Because that’s when he wants to see you,’ she said. ‘Because next week might be too late.’
‘Too late for what?’
‘It has to be tomorrow night,’ she said again, looking away. ‘That’s what Mark said.’
‘I can’t. There’s stuff going on at home. Mum needs me there.’
‘Your dad’s back,’ she said. ‘I know about that. You don’t have to lie.’
He stared at her, shocked. ‘How do you know he’s back?’
‘You know what it’s like around here,’ she said. ‘Everyone knows everyone else’s business.’
‘Seriously, who told you?’
‘Relax. No one told me. I saw the taxi drop him off at the top of your lane yesterday. Then he walked towards your house. He looked in a bad way.’
‘Drunk,’ said Ash. ‘He was drunk.’
‘He probably had his reasons.’
‘I don’t know. Maybe he did. I don’t know what’s wrong with him. He’s a mess.’
She shot him a strange look and this time he glowered back at her. He’d had enough of her judging him all the time, first about Mark and now about Dad. So self-righteous. So sure that he was a waste of space.
‘Go on then,’ he said. ‘What reasons? Tell me.’
‘You’re an idiot, Ash Tyler.’
‘Tell me.’
‘Your dad just got back from a war.’ She spoke slowly, as if she was explaining something very simple to someone very stupid. ‘A war. He must have seen terrible things. He must have been shot at, seen bombs going off. He must have seen people getting killed. Blood and guts. His own men, and enemy fighters, and ordinary people who just got in the way. Old people. Women. Kids.’
The muscles in Ash’s jaw were so tense they ached.
‘Look up “shell shock” on the internet when you get home,’ said Callie. ‘Look up “survivor guilt” and “post-traumatic stress disorder”.’
‘How come you know it all?’
‘We did it at school last year. The First World War. A lot of soldiers in the trenches got shell shock.’
‘Right,’ he said, tight-lipped.
‘I’ll wait for you at the Monks Bridge at nine tomorrow night,’ she said. ‘If you come, I’ll take you to Mark. If you don’t, he’ll never ask you again.’
‘I’ll try,’ he said. ‘It depends.’
He remembered the shopping list in his pocket and stood up. The swing creaked on its chains, knocked against the backs of his legs.
She called after him as he walked away. ‘Those runners,’ she said, ‘the hound boys you said you saw – you should ask Mark about them.’
‘Why? What’s he got to do with them?’
‘He knows everything that goes on in the mountains. Ask him.’
Ash shrugged. She was probably only saying it to get him to meet her tomorrow night.
He crossed the road to the little grocery shop. There was a poster in the window, a stylised stag’s head in blood-red paint against a black background. ‘Share in the excitement of Thornditch’s historic
Stag Chase’, the poster said. A thrill ran through him. For a moment, nothing else mattered, not Dad, not Mark. Just that he was the stag boy, that he’d won the trials, beaten all the other boys. All eyes would be on him at the start of the race. His heart quickened at the thought of it. He’d run and he’d win and he’d be a hero for the first time in his life.
He went inside the shop, wandered along narrow strips of ancient chequered lino between high walls of shelving stacked with tinned soup, boxes of breakfast cereal, loo rolls. The hum of the refrigerator at the back of the shop. Reedy voices on the radio that old Mr Linnet listened to as he sat on his chair behind the wooden counter with its scratchcard display and trays of sherbet flying saucers. Everything exactly the same as it had been ever since Ash could remember.
Today it felt like the still point at the centre of a chaotic universe.
He took his time gathering the items on Mum’s shopping list: eggs, bread, milk.
‘Ready for the Stag Chase?’ said Mr Linnet.
‘Yeah, I think so.’
‘I remember when your dad was the stag boy. Must be twenty years ago now. There was a drought that year too, as I recall. Not half as bad as this one, mind. How is your dad, anyway?’
‘He’s all right. He’s home. Got back yesterday.’
‘He’ll be coming to watch you run then. He must be very proud of you.’
‘Yeah, I suppose so.’
As he watched Mr Linnet tot up the bill, the hairs on the back of his neck prickled as if there was something out there, in the hard sunlight outside. Something watching, waiting.
He looked up.
Five faces at the window, faces as pale and blank as masks. Boys he recognised from school, sixth-formers from Coldbrook.
He stared back at them, unnerved.
‘Four pounds and fifty-two pence, please,’ said Mr Linnet.
Ash fumbled in his pockets for Mum’s tenner. When he looked up again, the boys were gone. Only a movement across the street, a flap of black as if the breeze had caught the tail of someone’s coat as they swung a corner. Then there was nothing except a rook shaking out its feathers on a wall before winging away into the pale sky.
