Out In The Cold: Chapter Three

In the morning the wind had eased.  The television spoke of fallen trees and floodings; Connor filled the sink to as far as the overflow hole and snapped the tap back, watching the water sloop up and down as if the tiny peaks were looking for an escape.  He filled the sink with tubes and bottles and gradually the water slipped up to the overflow, gurgling away into the hidden abyss behind the walls.  Leaving things this way, he moved off to his room and planted his shoes on his feet before joining his mother in the car.  They pulled out and left the house behind.  It was their annual trip to his grandmother's house.

At the train station people moved at infuriatingly slow paces, filling up spaces that others dodged around in sweeping panic of hurry and semi-madness.  His mother had put a full day's worth of coins into the machine and left the car parked ready for the dash back to the sanctuary of home later that evening.  It would be dark and cold, Connor thought, when they got back home and he had turned off the heating as he left.  He couldn't just leave without some sort of blemish to cherish, but now he regretted it and he could see it would only be colder tonight, with the sky so clear overhead.  He wanted to dash away, disappear between the tubs waddling back and forth, in and out, but it was too late: their train was here.

Miranda found good seats, window seats, hurriedly discarded their bags in the overhead tray and directed Connor to sit.  He did so.  Though he dutifully obeyed, she shivered with terror: at any moment he might spring up and scratch, snarl and bite at a passer-by like some deranged animal.  She didn't imagine it, she remembered it.  His fifth birthday, at a Brighton café, he had done just that.  It had filled her with bitter tears that she fought back in order to dish out the several apologies, each one a tearing agony of embarrassment.

Connor picked at the fabric of his seat, looking for loose threads or tears he could worry at, or use to hide stones, rubbish or a dirty tissue in.  The window held his reflection and he watched his face bob and sway against a moving flurry of green fields and occasional embracing woods.  The journey to his grandmothers's was a yearly ritual that was pointless to consider escaping.  If he didn't come his grandmother would only come to them and she would surely stay the night.  He didn't like the way she looked at him, through him.  It made him cold.  Made him look away from her.  He felt like some animal made lame by her stare; acid, it burnt him, and under it he felt like the cold ash forgotten at the edges of her fireplace.

Miranda's book was held loosely between her fingers, the words wandered up to her, called up to the uninterested stare and lodged themselves briefly at her doorstep before the page fled from her.  The book was a prop while she worried over Connor, kept watch on those around them, checked his glances and where they took him.  Prayed he didn't need the toilet, doubting he would want to wander away from the tiny hole he was working into the fabric of his seat, but worrying in any case.

*

Christmas came and went without incident; the trip to Miranda's mother's had been smooth.  She had left in something of a state of shock, feeling that there must be something around the corner, something ready to step out of the darkness.  But it didn't.  Even Chirstmas day had been free from event, Connor had opened presents, disappeared to his room and spent most of it out of sight while she was left to watch television, or read in the box seat.  Her only source of disappointment had been the return to the house after the visit to her mother's: the heating was off and a tap was dutifully filling a sink to the overspill.  That was it though.  At other times, windows had been broken, bed sheets thrown into the garden; on longer periods away she had twice returned with Connor to find the freezer off, a foul and fetid stench filling the house.

Now New Year's Eve hung over her and the clock ticked along.  The rain fell outside, it fell as dutifully as her tap had run, filling up the sink.

Although his mother sat downstairs in her precious box seat, Connor had decided to retreat into his hole.  He rarely came in when she was still in the house, but she felt he was safe tonight.  He could hear the spit and thunder of fireworks even from his hole, his mother, he was sure, watched in gasping amazement at the window.  There was nothing better to do than carve his name into different joists and push back the felt insulation further and further, widening and lengthening his hidden recess.  He felt a master here; here he could feel free.  He played with the lights too; he sat in the brightness holding the bulbs up against his eye then killing the power to his 9 volt.  Lights flashed dully against the darkness.  Orange glows and blue rings snapped in and out of focus, his own firework display to accompany the whizz and crack of those outside and, in the darkness, he held his breath.

Miranda's window held little between the purpled flashes and the blues that sparkled in the air above.  Her neighbours all year around tried to out do each other every year, and, each year, it provided Miranda with a new and better display than the previous year.  Outside the wind stirred, the fizz of falling lights was caught up for a moment longer before fading into the night.  The temperature outside had risen with the onset of the rain and the familiar frosts had fallen away from her window, away from the paving slabs; the white fingers that had pulled up toward her palms on the glass pane were gone.  The air was filled now with misty rain rather than left empty by Winter's touch.  There was a week left before Connor returned to school, when he realised this, when it felt real, like it was clawing at him, she knew the calm would break.

Connor felt safe enough in his space and slept, slept through the chime of twelve.  In his dreams he felt a touch on his hand, against his cheek, saw his mother's look of wonder but everything felt wrong to him, his skin was hot where she touched him, her wonder wasn't mirrored by him.  She wasn't his mother.

Out In The cold: Chapter Two

Connor lifted himself over his mother's back yard fence, landing lightly among broken garden tools and wood scraps.  The back light was on and it threw enough light across the lawn to see his way back.  He opened the French doors, helped himself to cake from the fridge and went to his room.  It was a mess.  The sight shook him each time he entered, but it was momentary and he adjusted; he had made it this way, this was how he liked it.

Moving to his cupboard, stepping over debris, unavoidably crunching some of it underfoot, he opened the door and stepped inside.  He hunkered down and wormed his way down into the mole hill of clothes, shoes, blankets until he disappeared into the mound.  Scratching at the floorboards below he found the one he had worked loose and pulled it clear, heaving himself in below the other boards, into the darkness.  Here he was free, safe from his mother's watch.  The boards opened into a dead space underneath the hallway and the stairs; he had room to move about freely and could fit at least another two people his size if he wanted, but he wouldn't, why would he.  He turned on his little light, powered by a lumpy 9v battery; the light's plastic casing was shattered long ago.  He had pulled out the metal parts fastening them back together and now a series of lights dripped out enough light for him to see the copper piping that ran overhead along the beams, the ruined webbing in the corners, his tools, the box of matches he had hidden.  Here he also had bedding and a pillow and it wasn't long before he decided to bed down in his hole.

Miranda left the school, her head held low, like so many times before.  The leather strap of her bag had given way to age and she fiddled with the fraying edge, sat in the car wondering why he caused her so much grief, so much trouble.  His teacher had told him to sit down, but instead he hung at the window, his hand against the pane, had slammed the window with the flat of his hand and, annoyed it hadn't given way, struck the nearest child.  She heard the story, so familiar, the words were like echoes skittering back across her mind to the last time and the time before that.  She simply nodded and apologised, finally abashed when the teacher finished on the part where Connor had lashed out at him too.

She drove to several playgrounds, the library, the supermarket; she walked along the canal and then up through the woods her breath momentarily clouding the way ahead before clearing above her slumped figure.  The police had checked all these places and would call the moment they heard something.  In her heart she wanted to disconnect the phone and disappear into the night's darkness.  She opened her coat, purged herself of the warm air trapped inside and welcomed the chilled touch of the black air, it was an embrace to the wishes and the prayers.

She sank to her knees and murmurred broken words between salty tears, each word drifting away into the darkness.

*

It was two days before Connor made himself known again, he knew it was the only way to gain enough sympathy from the school, from his mother and from the services that by now would be involved.  All those involved were well aware he could disappear, this wasn't the first time, but this was the longest time.  It hadn't become a media story, so certain was everyone that he would turn up.  Each day his mother disappeared to search for him he used the time to feed himself from the tins she wouldn't miss at the back of cupboards; showered and brushed his teeth, read his books and mooched about in the garden collecting good stones, stones he could throw long and hard, or picked at the garden waste and the tools there at the garden's end.  In the night he lay in his hole relishing the tears he heard his mother crying, he knew though that they weren't for him, not really.

Scores of adults and children at school wanted to know where he had been, but he wasn't about to give away the best thing about the house.  He could go there any time and he knew it.  As long as his disappearances were his secret, he could vanish whenever he had a mind to.

Christmas was gaining momentum.  Decorations were in the classroom as well as an advent calender. Only the children who had performed well that day were allowed to open the doors to chocolates or riddles hidden there by the teacher. He didn't care to participate.  Instead, when Chrissie had won for the third day in a row he sneaked in at break and hid drawing pins in the cloth of his teacher's chair, he tore at the edges of display boards and sketched obscenities on Chrissie's desk.

By afternoon registration Chrissie was nowhere to be seen and his handiwork had been cleaned away, but if you looked carefully you could still make out a faint etching in the table's laminate.  The teacher had seen the pins, but the frayed boards went unnoticed.  At the weekend he disappeared for several hours and waited outside Chrissie's house.  No one paid him any mind and when Chrissie left with her parents, Connor took a well fingered stone from his pocket and aimed it at a window, each and every crash that accompanied the successful targetting met with an uncontrollable sense of exultation that ran, rippling though his core.

On the walk home he saw his mother pass in the car, she slowed.  She couldn't pass him without picking him up, but he ran into the wood and disappeared from view.  At home he had made himself a sandwich, leaving the fridge door open.  His mother left the car keys at the counter and closed the door, she began, silently, to pick at the mess her son had left for her.  He wouldn't allow her the slightest peace.

In the evening Connor sat in the box window completing his homework: he wasn't stupid and it wasn't hard.  He let his book flap loose on his lap afterward, idly watching it slip slowly to the floor.  The wind outside thudded against the glass, as if shouldering the window in frustration.  The wind's direction was indiscrimate, the trees outside were battered from a west-sided barrage, then an east.  Connor's eyes rounded, his pupils growing black and large as he sucked in the energy on display, for him.

Out In The Cold: Chapter One

On cold frost bitten nights when the rain is whipped into a frenzied blur, unsure of where it came from or where it's going to, and all the time losing its original understanding of itself as rain, becoming frozen hail, newborn should race for cover.  These new spirits pupate in the skies above, they fly high above or crash into the gloomy darkness of the earth below.  On nights like these our first thoughts are battered and bruised, caught in a wild whirlwind high above creation; our thoughts become darkened by hardship and the cold sting of the night and sit forevermore, ghosting the edges of our minds.

In family photos our parents match up to us. They glisten with the pleasure given by comparisons made by casual observers.  But not all observers see the resemblence, not all onlookers understand the connection at all; not all parents are proud; and some parents wonder if their child is theirs at all, or some soul flung into the womb by the casual hand of the cold winter wind.  Parents who wonder at it read up on the soul and it's origins, some discover the belief that a child's soul would flee the world and return to heaven's crib if it was unhappy and infant mortality was satisfactorily explained this way with the reassurance that, eventually, the child would return when it was ready.  Here, in this world, far from those beliefs, our children accept the situation they find themselves in, or, don't know how to fly back to the one they left behind.

The cold winter wind's brush had reddened Miranda's cheeks, but she bustled on, oblivious to the cherry glow on her face.  Christmas was nigh, time was precious; the food was all in bar the fresh veg, but that would be picked up the day before, she liked her carrots to crunch and snap before reaching the roasting tray.  Her son idled in aisle five: the entertainment section.  She passed the top end of it and shot a look down the length and there he was picking through a score of plastic cases or rearranging stationery goods held in the same section.  At the counter she saw the video game, well beyond his age range, add itself to the moving belt; her son sauntered away to the magazines and she moved it aside out of the way, away from her shopping.

In the car, her son's face was a tumult of fury; rifling through the bags, as soon as they were under way, his addition was quickly found to be missing.  Miranda knew that until tomorrow afternoon, at the earliest, things would be unpleasant.  And indeed they were.  Already a ruin, his room was now no place to vent any frustration and so the bathroom was spoiled, tiles cracked, mirrors broken and the toilet left overflowing.  Only when he saw his mother on her knees cleaning the wreckage did his temper ease and abate.

Eleven years of this.  Eleven years of what seemed like solitary confinement with a 'deranged beast', as her mother had once said.  But he was hers, what else could she do but weather the constant battles, the movement from one school to another, from one care professional to the next.  Christmas was coming and that was all.

In the night, when peace did descend, she sat in the box window praying to the night, to the dark spaces in the woods outside, to the shadows that hid from the light.  Darkness brought her peace and so she wished on it, night after night.

*

Connor sat at the end of his bed; the sun was up and his mother's alarm had sounded from her room some time ago.  At the window, white climbing arms spread like fungus, glittering against the pane.  He moved to the glass and held his sweaty palm to the creeping face of cold, gradually it fell away under the transfer of heat and retreated.

At breakfast he watched his mother move about the kitchen, wiping surfaces and clearing the dishes from the machine to the cupboards.  She moved with expert efficiency and only shot him the odd glance when she knew his head was bowed down to the wet cereal in front of him, even so he still saw her: nervous and fidgety.  She wouldn't give anything away, but he felt her inward sighs anyway.

He moved away from his bowl.  She lifted it revealing a milky ring on the wood below, cereal scattered in mashed piles by the spoon.

"I haven't finished."

She replaced the bowl after first cleaning the ring away, sucking it up into the sponge, the mashed cereal too.

He came back to his chair and finished the remnants; dropping the spoon with a ringing clatter into the bowl he looked at her eyes on him and moved away to his room.  She cleared the bowl sopping up the milky ring again and the loose particles of cereal mashed into the grain of the wood.

After he left, she watched him march to the road's end and on to the bus there.  He never made the five minute walk to the school.  Only once had she urged him to before she knew better, deciding to leave out the bus money beside his keys in silent capitulation.

Outside the clouds rolled across the sky with vacant intention, removing the light and casting silken shadows that sprung up from the ground, unwilling or uncertain of their place in the world.  Miranda let the phone click back into place, she would work from home today and finish putting the bathroom back in order.

By one o'clock both work for the day and the bathroom had come to a conclusion and so she locked the house and went out to the woods.

She found a frosted bench, sat, and wished in to the nothingness between the trees before letting her hope drop to the ground below.

At Miranda's feet the ice had cracked, sending splintered alarms to the edges of a frozen world.   Leaves, browned and blackened, sat half in, half out of the frozen cage.  Not even the light touch of the wind would pick at the exposed fringes.  She worked her heel at the looser escarpment of ice and freed the dead and lonely things there, bringing the souls of her shoes together like gloved hands she picked the leaves loose; some tore, others were pulled free and with an exultant rush, the wind foraged deep and low and scattered them up into the air, pulling Miranda's gaze back to the skies and the distant rolling shadows.

When she returned home a police car waited.

"He's run away.  Again.  Hit a teacher this time."

Disclaimer - What our children face; what they've always faced

What our children face; what they've always faced

A meaningful and hopeful future; a life of aspiration and promise; a land of plenty with rivers of honey.  Or, none of the above.

The world of the child is one that has been under attack from one generation to the next, but I think it is no more so than now that British children are under attack from a lack of hope and failure of future.

When I look around at the problems they face today, I see:
Broken homes
Unhappy parents
Missing mothers
Missing fathers
Adults who miss the point of childhood and innocence
Adult fashion on a five year old
An education built on sand with change after change sweeping away the footings
Children unafraid or unaware of the audience before them as they spout one expletive after another
A harassed sexual identity
A numbness to violence
Access to drugs
Invitation to alcohol

And all the time the erosion of their right to be a child and nothing other than this.

These stories are responses to my personal frustration with the world we find ourselves a part of today.  Each one is driven along by an interest in the classic motive of a fairy tale: to teach and to explore, or even to warn.

They are meant to be enjoyed, but I hope they provide some reflection and maybe even agreement.

Matthew Twelve: Chapter Seven

The light that pricked at Matthew's lids was a new light, almost scented; colours slipped up into his vision drawing his hands up to brush the sleep from the corner of his eyes. Rich, white nails brushed themselves along the skin of his cheeks and, surprising him with their alien touch.

The face that looked back from the mirror in his room was not his own, but he stood in front of the glass all the same. His hands were ever so slightly stretched, the skin taut, his nails white and new. He felt his jaw work tightly, free itself and click dryly as he worked it loose. Staring back at him was an adolescent version of his father's face, it made him cringe, stepping back, and as he did so, his lip raised, quivering with fear or anger, he wasn't quite sure. Colours stormed him again and the room swam with patterns, blemishes, stains. He turned to the window on the world outside.

The wild greens and clustered hills retreated from his gaze and the new scrutiny he regarded them with. The water was calm, slate blue, reflecting the empty openness of the sky above.

For an hour he stood at the window as the colours swam across his vision, his sense of aspect and distance playing with his mind; like the foreign texture of new clothes, his senses battled with something that was familiar, but suddenly wasn't. He felt loose in his own skin, even though now it felt that more taut and stretched. The bones in his hands seemed more prominent under the skin, almost pointed or sharpened, even ridged.

It was his birthday. His thirteenth.

Opening the bedroom door, he quietly let himself out on to the landing and slunk along to his mother's room. The room was empty but for the bright light of the morning reaching in from the west. The skin on his arms dimpled and the hairs rose.

Using the edges of the stairs and avoiding the creaks at the centre of the boards, Matthew made his way downstairs. From the second step he could see that his father was still sleeping, the tumbler's contents adding to his stained trousers.

Stepping into the embrace of the morning air, the sharp sun warmed him. A long line lit out through the grass, which was bent at an obscure angle, leaving a sunken fold in the dewy blanket. He picked out its direction, caught the lasting smell of his mother's scent and trotted down towards the creek.

Under a line of trees, the light pierced the nimble wooden edges of limbs and shifting patterns formed, fell away, swimming together across the mossy earth.

When Matthew reached the verge above the beach, he halted and scanned the sand. Soft steps, pressed into the sand, drifted down to the water's lip. He stepped up to the first, before hearing the crash and heavy pad of his father's maddened dash towards him.

Retreating to the water, Matthew fell back, step by step until the water reached his haunches. His father stood at the bank staring past him, the frenzied fury frozen there; his breath sent out puffs of steam like little signals and Matthew followed his eyes.

The upturned body of his mother sat as still as a leaf, floating in the light, wanting ever so desperately to follow the absent tug of the tide. The woman lay there uselessly and Matthew regarded her now for what she was: weak, frail and dead.

*

The body of his mother drifted around him, the face upturned and the eyes open to the open sky, occasional splashes added fresh tears to the lifeless face.

Matthew's father sank against the bank, merging with the muddy verge, his eyes locked on his wife's body. In Matthew's eyes he saw the same woman who, for the past two years, had barely the energy, or will, to nod her head, wave goodbye or greet him at the door. The woman was as mobile now as she had been in the best portion of his memory and he stepped away from her, his bare feet raking up the mud from the creek's bed as he moved away from her and his father.

As he took purchase of the far bank his father stirred, shaking his head as it snapped and stretched into a foul an inhuman shape. The nose pushed out and fell in on itself becoming a sharp-pointed muzzle and the eyes clouded over, while his fingers seemed to break and stretch into wide-spaced things that could claw and slash.

Now on the bank, Matthew raced up into the far woods, hearing the splash and suck of his father in the water behind him, then the crash and crunch as he tumbled into the wood in pursuit. He heard his father's voice, foul in his head, it left a stink there, the stink of misery and grief, muddied and gravelled.

He was getting closer, but Matthew didn't slow, he had a new-found well of energy and he wasn't prepared to slow: not yet. The road was getting closer and if he could reach it he felt the creature wouldn't follow him beyond the wood. The first day he had seen the man came back to him, he recalled that weary desperation in his eye and the bus that drew up just in time. He remembered his dog and the man that stood over the limp remains.

The road was coming into sight, but his father's heavy crash was closer; Matthew cut up a bank tearing at the earth with his outstretched hands pulling himself on and away and on towards the road. He didn't stop to look, to think, to listen, but instead fairly flew across the cold tarmac and into a car's empty wake. Behind him the wet, angry eyes of his father lurched out of the shadows and he plunged into the road. The bus struck him at an oblique angle, the creature's body flying ragdoll-like into the air almost perpendicular to the ground that it was launched from. Wheels ground against the road, the smell of melting rubber filling the air, brakes screamed into the quiet and his father's bloody body fell to the roadside.

Matthew saw it all and it became a long-treasured memory.

He buried his mother's body beside the dog, he owed her that much, but he buried her deeply.

He began to respond, on her behalf, to the letters in the post; he carried on collecting the money from her bank account as he had before, making sure the money went out for gas and electric, water and council, just as he had before. He told the doctor there was no need of a follow up and commended the surgery on their support. He informed the school that Matthew's behaviour would be addressed. And he lived that way until it was no longer necessary; he was still quiet, reclusive, but his teachers had become accustomed to this and so life, quietly, carried on in his empty house.

Matthew Twelve: Chapter Six

And this was the way of it for weeks, seemingly without end: his mother a silent figure withering from view, his father a towering bully; insignificant days passed at school followed by letters home that banked up along with persistent correspondence from the doctor's surgery.
The man never seemed any cleaner one day to the next, his grubby face haunted Matthew's mind and each time Matthew felt himself growl and shake with hot rage just as the dog did whenever it saw the man through the window or a gap in the door.
At night the man never seemed to sleep and paced the hall outside; Matthew couldn't imagine an end.  His mother was no use, but then she never had been; when he remembered back he always saw this, the figure of a woman silhouetted in a frame, immobile and dull of eye.  He remembered at first she had sought out help, but gradually this came to an end and the letters started to come.  It was as if the first ten years of his life were nothing.  A black memory.  There were photos of a boy in the house, but it wasn't him even though he had the same hair, the same looks.  The boy had a smile.
Two months passed by and on a Wednesday his teacher held him back, speaking to him clearly, calmly.  His voice was soothing and it chipped at Matthew's resolve, the teacher saw the edge of a tear, but nothing more.
Matthew missed the bus and his father's voice raked at the edges of his mind leaving cruel clefts of hatred there.  Matthew waited for the bus, but the time slowed and eased its way on, indifferent to the building sense of urgency in Matthew's bones.  His skin crackled and his brow seemed to fever, until the bus eventually drew alongside.  The dog was no where to be seen.
Matthew launched himself from the bus steps and hurled through the wood, his feet clawing at the ground faster and faster.
He broke through the tree line and on to the lawn where the man stood, a belt in his hand and the dog at his feet.

*

Matthew charged at his father, but the belt whipped out, the buckle catching his cheek, the shock made him miss a step and he tripped and fell.  His father's knee burrowed in to Matthew's back and the growl that broke forth was not his but his father's; hot saliva dripped against the sides of his now muddied face and the sneering, gruff animal voice of his father barked inside his mind tearing and biting at his senses.  In the black pitch of his soul Matthew rumbled with fear, hatred and his anger boiled, but he was powerless, pinned to the floor.  He gnashed and spat and bit at the soft earth until his father rolled him over, holding him firmly at the throat.  Matthew's eyes opened, blood red at the edges, he stared up at the man his mother had called his father and saw the man before him who now had a muzzle with brown and broken fangs that dripped with bitter white foam.
His father's voice crawled its way out of the animal's throat.  "Stay!"
All the fight disappeared.  Matthew lay there and watched as the man stepped back, picked up the belt and stepped over the dog, moving back to the house and disappearing into the shadowed hallway.
Finally Matthew rolled over and rested at the dog's side.
It wasn't cold, but it was dead.  The heat of its body was slowly drifting away.  Matthew's fingers froze aloft the brindled flank, the downy fur was matted and damp and at the dog's mouth a small amount of blood had clotted.
Matthew buried his dog in the woods, marking the spot with soft, sad tears.  The dog had felt like a gift, something he hadn't had in years.  In that moment he remembered his birthday, the last one his mother had been there for.  There was a cake, candles, presents and in that same moment of remembering he knew it was his birthday the following day.  He would be thirteen.
He turned back to the house, a sense of expectancy hanging on his shoulders.
The man followed Matthew to his room and shut the door.  From the other side he didn't see the smile on Matthew's face.  Now he knew, knew what the man was, knew what he was.
Sleep came quickly.  Too quickly.  His dreams were gone and he felt buried by blackness.  He didn't hear the handle to his mother's room turn, or her padding down the stairs.  He didn't feel the chill draught creep up from the open door, stealing the heat from her room.
The man slept too, an emptied tumbler of alcohol staining his trouser leg.
His mother disappeared in to the night air, following the path to the creek.

Matthew Twelve: Chapter Five

In the night Matthew crept back up to the house and edged to the skirt of light thrown out from the living room windows.  His mother sat in an armchair, motionless, her eyes downcast.  The man paced back and forth, a glass in his hand.  He hadn't changed and was as grubby as the first day Matthew had seen him in the woods.  The dog lay beside him, its belly flat against the damp grass; it let out rhythmic growls that shook the folds of skin at its neck and ever so occasionally followed a series of growls with a short whimper.
The man gradually became louder and Matthew moved to the front door.  Below the reception table there was a bag of clothes for PE.  He planned to take them and maybe a coat to see him through the night.
Lifting the latch as tenderly as he could he pushed the door in on itself and reached in for the bag.  Next he caught the cuff of his coat and tugged until it slid away.  The crack and tremble of tree branch alerted Matthew to a gathering gust and he began to retreat, but not quick enough to stop the gust from forcing its way in and slamming shut an open door somewhere inside.  He ran for the trees.
The man wrenched open the front door shouting and screaming into the night.
"Come back, boy.  Be a good boy.  Get back before you feel the back of my hand!"
He carried on like this while Matthew hunkered down at the wood's lip.  He saw his mother move past the man framed in the light, but he caught hold of her wrist as she attempted to make for the stairs, slamming the door behind him.  A series of crashes and screams followed and then, nothing.
Matthew, using the wood's cover, moved to the side where he could see his mother's bedroom window, holding his breath, wishing it to break away from darkness and into light.
Shadows moved and the light breathed an orange glow into the room as the bulb warmed up, becoming whiter.
His mother was at the window.
Matthew felt the dog push against his sides and he moved off.  The boathouse at the bottom of the creek would do tonight.
He left behind his mother and the man she called his father.
The boathouse was damp and the draught seeped up between boards and in from the rotten doorway out to the water, but the dog and towel from his PE bag helped to warm him up.  His dreams took him once more to the creek, the dog by his side and his eyes fixed on the waves cantering after one another.
In the morning his father stood outside, waiting.  He was hauled and dragged all the way back up to the house, the dog barking, racing in and biting at the man's ankles but it made no difference.  The kitchen door slammed shut on the hound's bared maw and the man threw Matthew into his mother's room.
True to his word, Matthew was soon covered in blotchy purple shadows frothing up to the surface of his skin, along his arms, his legs and all the while he was almost smacked asunder his mother lay mute in her bed, listening but not hearing, watching, but not seeing.

*

The dog's face could be seen popping up from behind bushes and at the sides of hardy trunks rearing up from the earth, like bars holding the house back from the world.  Matthew sat at the glass, looking out.  Rusted metal splinters had been screwed into the window frames, now not even the air could slip in or out: the house had become a prison.

Occasionally the dog barked from the confines of the wood, but this only served to remind Matthew of the mess he was in.  He had been called down twice over the day to make his mother's breakfast and then her supper.  There wasn't much in the fridge, the man had pawed it up into his mouth as Matthew buttered bread and heated the kettle, knowing none of it would be eaten.  His mother hadn't eaten properly in months.  She hardly drank; she missed doctor's appointments; in the space of a year Matthew had become her carer, shopping, cleaning, cooking.  He had no friends to tell and now everyone at school was set against him because of his behaviour the week prior.

The man stepped into Matthew's room, a belt in hand.

"What's wrong with her?"

He repeated the question and Matthew looked up into his cold dark eyes.

"The doctor can't decide."

He grunted.  "She hasn't eaten."

"Then you eat it."

He smiled and Matthew saw the crumbs at the lip edge of his beard: "I have."

They both glared at each other for a time before the man announced that school was still on.  He didn't need to threaten him, he just smiled and shut the door.

Matthew's dream didn't shift, he was at the creekside again.

The man's cold face watched him as he ate breakfast and made his lunch.  He wouldn't queue for dinner today, he would hide away somewhere.

The man's words crept into Matthew's head as he stared at him: You keep quiet.  You stay quiet.

"I'm your father, you know.  You do what I say."

Matthew felt the man's eyes on him as he walked down to the path, the dog greeting him there, jumping and licking and whining.  It wasn't until he was out of sight of the house he sat down and fussed the dog, tears welling in his eye but quickly blinked back.

He looked back.  A hungry fog lifted up from the ground and followed Matthew to the bus stop.

Each lesson passed slower than the last, minutes felt like hours.  He heard teachers shouting and occasionally realised it was aimed at him.  He copied the date and the title into his books, but copying was all he managed.  He lost his break to a detention; he lost his lunch to a detention.  Each teacher tried to reason with him but he just muttered a response and looked away from them.

At the end of the day he heard his father calling to him: Home time, Matthew.

Matthew Twelve: Chapter Four

Fragrant coffee slipped through the house like a welcome ghost; Matthew hoped again that his mother would come down, maybe sit with him this morning.  He left the letter from school between the sugar bowl and the butter at the table alongside another letter from the doctor.  This time there was a hospital appointment she was expected to attend.  The second one.
His dreams had plagued him in the night.  Standing at the edge of the creek that led out to the sea, he was aware he was looking for something there; his eyes surveyed the dark lines of waves as they were thrown up and the dog beside him occasionally whined.  The sense of the dream hung with him, at the back of his mind, like a familiar taste.
The journey through the wood was a careful one.  He had the dog with him this time and he intended to take him all the way to school.  But for all his worry, he didn't see the man again and keeping the dog at the heels of his feet he managed to shuffle aboard the bus without any bother.  School would be an entirely different matter.
Matthew was the last to step down from the bus.  The driver had seen the dog of course, but didn't seem to mind.  Stepping on to the grass, Matthew heaved a sigh and looked about for a hiding spot, but before he could move away the dog sprang away and quickly disappeared.
Lessons went by; Matthew's attention was held by the skies outside that seemed to be boiling with cloud moving in from the sea.  Huge tumbling formations bundled and twisted over each other in peals of greys and slate colours.  All day they hung there teasing along the coastline.
In the queue for food he heard his name used around him, but it flitted about like an idea at the edges of his mind.  The dinner lady ticked his name from the free school meal list and let him move away, his squeaking polystyrene box held tight in one hand.  Outside he stood and absently swallowed the food down, all the time scanning the brooding sky and occasionally looking out for the dog.
When his knees crunched into the ground his food slipped from his hand and spilled across the playground; a foot kicked his sides and he lurched away, but was shoved down again and again.  Hands gripped him under the arms and carried him towards the bramble hedgerow where he was hurled and left to unpick himself from the nipping bite of the thorns.  He saw the boys as they ran away and recognised each one of them from his form group.
The care assistant phoned home, but Matthew knew there would be no answer, not even from the mobile number he had given them at the start of term.
The afternoon was spent alone in isolation, work was sent but this time he failed even to lift a pen. 
The deputy head he had spoken to the day before came to see him, but Matthew wouldn't speak; he mumbled, but the man didn't understand and seemed to become annoyed with Matthew.  All he wanted was their names: Matthew mumbled and looked in his direction, but couldn't meet his eyes.

*

Ringing out a call to freedom, the school bell signalled the end of Matthew's silent vigil.  Swinging his bag over his shoulder, he slowly made his way to the bus.  From the isolation room he had seen no one standing in wait and as he hopped on to the bus, the dog appeared and joined him, tucking itself between his legs, its jaw resting on his shoe's toe point.  No one noticed the dog, or no one seemed to mind; he couldn't tell and he wasn't bothered.

The days carried on like this for the rest of the week.  He took the dog to school: it disappeared.  He was shoved or pushed or spat on.  He became quiet, but the mumbling continued.  At home the recorded messages from school were soon deleted and letters were used to help the fire brighten up into a blaze.

He poured unfinished or untouched coffee, cold, down the sink.  He disposed of uneaten remnants from his mother's meals in the bin, or fed the hungry dog that always looked on and, more and more, followed him every step around the house.

When Saturday morning came he walked down to the creek, the dog at his heels.  It neither walked ahead or disappeared into the bush at the path's edge.  It became a shadow.

At the creek's side Matthew skimmed stones. Some plopped and disappeared into the black water, others found their way to the other side, bouncing off dry trunks and clattering against other rocks.  Wiping gritty dirt away from a fresh collection Matthew heard the dog begin to growl.  A low rumble rattling from its craw.
Moving to the edge of the creek and climbing to the brow of a stand of rocks, Matthew stood on tip toe looking back at the house.  From here he could see the kitchen door, open.  He had closed it.
He raced back up to the house, slowing as the kitchen light winked into life. A smile pounced onto his face, his mother was up, she was in the kitchen!
Matthew stepped into the warm air, closed the door behind him.  His mother was sat at the kitchen table, ashen faced, her hands hidden in her lap, a cup of tea whipping steamy yelps into the air.  The man sat opposite her, grease stained his clothes along with mud, his hair hung in cold wet streaks and as he turned Matthew saw again the man who had chased him, the man who had waited for him.
The dog barked.  It was outside.  Locked out.
The man smiled up at Matthew and rose, the chair's feet screeching along the tiled floor.  Matthew stepped back against the wall.  A tingling terror fought against his cheeks, his eyes glazed at the sight of the man nearing him.
"No!"
It was his mother.  He hadn't heard her speak in months.
The man sat back down, his eyes fastened to Matthew's, until a voice bent itself up against his ear.  The man's mouth didn't move, his lips were held shut, but he heard the voice, his voice: Mine.  You are mine.  It scratched and clawed at him, repeating over and over until his mother interrupted.
"Matt, this man is your father."
He didn't remember opening the door, leaving the house behind, splashing into the creek or disappearing into the woods at the other side.  It was dark when his mind came back to him, the dog at his feet.

Matthew Twelve: Chapter Three

The day was long.  Double science meaning two hours with the girl from his bus.  PE, meaning humiliation again from the teacher who didn't like quiet boys.  Tutor time with the absent tutor.  The others laughed at how awful he was, but they all knew it wasn't right.  Normally Matthew could laugh along with this, but today, with his mind on the man who had chased him, only found it irritating that Mr Parish didn't care for any of them.  The fact that the PE teacher disliked him so much, today, felt unfair.  Before now he had simply ignored the fact, but now he felt his neck redden with righteous anger.  The girl from the bus, from his science class; the other girl in the shop: they had no right to look at him the way they did.
The bell rang.  They could go.
Normally he ate his lunch alone and he attempted to do so again today, but the seat he had taken a liking to was filled with sixth formers and his other nooks seemed to be occupied too.  Returning to the bench with the sixth formers he decided to wait, standing behind them, waiting for them to leave.
At first he was patient and stood as a statue might while its master chiselled at the chin or the arm, but the longer he waited the redder he became.  He felt the blood pump at his neck; could feel the hot fat swell of blood pushing at the stiff collar, tight around his neck.
He moved a little closer.
After a while he moved closer still, until, had they been his friends, he might have seemed a part of the group.
Gradually the girls stopped talking and looked at him; they tried to carry on with their chatter, but again their attention returned to him.  One of them asked him if he wanted something, but he just stood dumbly, hot, angry and silent.
He spat at them.
He couldn't believe it.  He had spat at them, but it wasn't him.  It wasn't something he would ever do, but he had done it.
They had all shot up; the girl with the spit in her hair screamed and they backed away.
He sat down and ate his mother's unfinished sandwich.

No one came.  The girls left.
After lunch, in registration, a man appeared looking for Mr Parish and, finding him absent, asked for Matthew by name.  He was quickly pointed out and taken away.
In the man's office he was asked if had spat at the girl, but he didn't reply.  The man wasn't surprised he didn't speak, he had been speaking to his teachers about his behaviour today and his PE teacher had reliably informed him that he was out of sorts.  At the mention of her name Matthew tingled.
Reaching for the phone, the man informed him he was calling home: Matthew spoke.
"I'm sorry, Sir."
"Sorry?"
"Yes", he mumbled back.
He spent the rest of the day in a small room alone.  Work from his lessons was sent along and he completed all of it in very little time, however each time the care assistant looked in he held his pen and appeared to puzzle over some problem he had found.  But when the door was closed fast he sat on the table and stared out through the window and wondered how to avoid the man with shabby rags standing near the bus stop.

*

Standing at the gates of the school, a letter for his mother from the care assistant and deputy head in his hand, he watched others step on to coaches, buses and fall into waiting cars.  From his vantage point he could see that his bus was waiting at the usual spot, pupils piling on board.  He could see too the man watching each and every one as they stepped up., until finally he too stepped aboard ushered by the driver impatient to keep to time.  Matthew had decided to take the next bus.
The bus for his village came every hour and so, as the sun grew quieter in the sky, the air became chill.
Matthew wondered what would happen at his stop.  He wondered if the man would be waiting for him, or whether he had given up, or had been chasing him at all.  Whatever the answer he had resolved to either get off at the stop before his, or the one shortly after.  The stop in the village would allow him a shorter walk home, but the one before was longer.  But despite the length of the longer journey, Matthew knew he would have a better chance tramping through the fields and using any number of routes, whereas his other options only gave him one.  If that one route should be blocked by the man then he would be trapped.
A different driver picked Matthew up.  The bus was empty.  The sun was quickly sinking into the horizon's borders, but it was still a clear sky and the light would be enough.
At the stop Matthew was careful to have a good look round before making the final step from the bus to the earth.
Before the bus pulled off, Matthew used it for cover as the wood embraced him.  Thick twigs and branches clattered back together like a saloon door in a Western; Matthew waited for quiet to return before plunging further into the wood.  The wood was thick here and at times, when branches persistently tugged at his jacket, he huffed and became annoyed that he could not have just walked home as normal.  But then he remembered the weathered and dirty look on the man, the filthy beard and torn clothing.
At the wood's end he stood surveying the field.  It was wet from the farmer's hose shooting spurts of water out in great arcing circles.  The sound futtered and sliced through the air.
Timing his dash, Matthew ran through the field rather than around; his jacket was quickly soaked through but he outstripped the rotating hose and walked the last hundred metres of pathway along the hedgerow, climbing up to his house.
A single light was on in his mother's room meaning she hadn't thought to light the hall for him or the driveway.
He used the kitchen door and stuffed his jacket in the washing machine along with his other wet clothing while the dog jumped and licked at his hands; he let it out, though it seemed reluctant to leave him. 
After a warm shower Matthew built the fire up and let the dog back in.  It quickly bolted in through the gap knocking the door open and scraping its sides, turning it growled at the door as Matthew closed and bolted it.
In his dreams he and the dog stood at the water's edge, it seemed like the creek at the foot of the hill, but it was silent.

Matthew Twelve: Chapter Two

On a Saturday morning school became a foreign memory.
Matthew's hand drifted over the belly of the dog laid out before him.  A thin line of hairs stood on end along the ridge of its back, dark against the light.  He dipped a finger forward allowing it to catch and drag over like a distant gust.  His fingers were splayed, almost an inch between the longest and his nails were beautifully clean after scrubbing them with his mother's nail brush every evening.
Underneath his hand the dog breathed on, deeply.  Occasionally its face quivered from a dream, tickling the edges of its mind and spilling onto the sleeping jowls of its face.  Equally, at times, the legs would shake, simulating a final mad dash for some faraway prey.
A shadow passed through the room; a solitary cloud strayed into the sun's sight, lingering longer than it was welcome, before moving into the east.  Returning to the room,  light blanketed every inch in rich, warm light.  Matthew felt the breath of heat return to his outstretched hand, warming the thin skin above bone and blood-invested veins  The corner room was always filled with light this way; it was at the eastern and southern point of the house, with windows giving way to folded views of green fields, or in later seasons, large yellow swathes of rapeseed that spilled up to high bordered hills.
Matthew could sit here, secluded and alone for hours, but now there was the dog.
They had never had a dog before.
The dog's ears twitched at a creak from above; the creak of the floorboard continued as his mother's foot planted its weight down.  Footsteps slowly, quietly, drifted from the landing until reaching the hallway.  The latch raised up on the kitchen door letting in a draught that slipped through the house and woke the dog.
Moving to the window seat Matthew watched her as she disappeared past the wood's edge, down toward the bench again. Taking his list from the night before he slid his empty shoes on and left the house, the dog beside him every step, bouncing and only occasionally looking up at Matthew.
Re-stocking never took very long, he counted out as near he could to the exact change.  The girl at the counter always smiled.  Matthew thought she probably smiled at the time he took to order the coins, by value, in his palm.  Fifties, tens, twenties, pounds and coppers.  The dog barked from outside and the girl's smile receded and she watched Matthew leave hurriedly.
Deciding to detour through the wood, Matthew swung the bag at his side, the dog took off and burst through hedges first ahead of him then emerging behind him, circling in a wild dash.
At the end of the path the house came just in to view and there he stopped, sucking in the wood's air and listening to the branches sway and wave.
The dog barked once and sat at the path's edge, looking back at him, a stern intensity in its eyes.
Matthew smelt smoke and saw a dark puff exhale from the kitchen door.

*

His mother lay on the floor and stank of acrid black smoke.  The frying pan was ruined and cleaning the stove took Matthew longer than he expected.  The walls were dirty now from the stink of oil and choking smoke.  Dragging her clear of the kitchen had been easy, she was feather heavy.  Her chest rose and fell and so Matthew left here there, shutting the door to the hallway while he doused the pan and fanned out the invading pall.

In bed, his mother turned from one side to the other, coughing and occasionally spitting into the bucket Matthew had left beside her.  He had used a sponge to clean her face and now he watched as she moved about.  The sound of the sheets shuffled and a lost bluebottle buzzed at the window, inches from escape through the opening there, but failing to realise.  Gradually this became the only sound in the room as his mother eased her way into sleep.  Matthew brought the sheet up tight to her, caught the fly and tossed it clear into the night air.  Keeping watch on the woods, the dog sat in the garden, listening to shadows, turning once to the sound of Matthew at the window.

All night the dog sat there and in the morning Matthew fed it: cold meat from a can.  Without school to worry about he took paint and brushes and hid the worst of the kitchen's soot under a fresh coat.

All day his mother lay in bed, though this wasn't unusual.  Once the painting was finished he made sandwiches for them both, eating his in the sun outdoors.  Hers remained untouched, which was usual.  And, as always, he covered them in foil for his pack lunch the next day.  The rest of the day he spent keeping watch over her and paranoid a neighbour might call about the smoke, rising like distress signals, the day before.  But no one came.  His mother slept on.  The dog kept its vigil in the garden.

In the evening the fire was built up again and the dog exchanged its sentry post.  Both he and Matthew stayed there like that for a second night.

In the morning Matthew set about his usual routine, tempting his mother out of bed, but she didn't rise and he was forced to leave her there, but before the dog could hop out through the door with him, he twisted and locked it in, though it grumbled and howled.  School was no place for a stray dog.

Matthew reversed the detour he had used at the weekend and pushed on through the wood to the bus stop, though it was a longer route.  The trees stood still today without a breath to move them or bring forth a familiar wave.  Overhead the sky was clear, but it was chill and there was a dampness to the wood's air.

Seeing the open road ahead of him Matthew quickened his pace and saw the bus, on time, fly by.  It would circle at the village's top just in time for him to catch it without wasting time standing silently with the others.  In the distance he heard the dog's howl and turned as if to see the sound breaking through the trees' guard, but saw instead a lone man in shabby ragged clothes running toward him.

Matthew Twelve: Chapter One

Every household is different,  every household has its quirks.  When one child is invited to another's, for the very first time, there will even be a new smell in the air.  It may be a kitchen smell, it may be a garden smell or the smell of washing damp on a radiator or dry in the tumble.  One household may in fact be a flat: five rooms, four, three, two.  Some children may not even invite anyone back.  It may not be the size of their home or indeed the smell, it may be that when their door is at last opened to a stranger, that stranger will see the truth beyond the doorway's frame and that truth may not be a pleasant one to see reflected in another's eyes.

The toast popped away from the filament and was quickly spread with margarine, halved and laid on the plate.  Leaving it on the table he took the coffee cup and stood at the stair's bottom.  The bedroom door was ever so slightly ajar.  The window panes, set in the wall and keeping track with the steps, allowed in a finger of light that lit up wisps of steam rising towards the door.  Matthew returned to the kitchen leaving the mug at the toast's side and left via the kitchen door.  This door he left ajar, ever so slightly.  Moving the empty plant pot at the kitchen window's heel, he stepped up to the dirty glass.  Carefully he tipped the pot over and used it to gain a better view, balancing on one foot then the next.  The edge of the terracotta pot crunched and crumbed slightly as his weight shifted about, but he held his gaze steady on the kitchen table and the empty chair there.

The light flicked from the hall as something passed by and in to the kitchen stepped Matthew's mother, a light robe with sprawling vines spread this way and that covered her.

Matthew watched as she slowly sipped then nibbled and bit by bit finished the toast.  A smile rose then as she drew herself up and stepped towards the door left ajar.  He sat back on the pot.  Smiled.  Heard the creak of the garden chair and caught the scent of the coffee.  It was the sun that had drawn her out and now she sat there, bathed in it, coffee resting at the table's edge.

Creeping in through the front door he readied himself for school, made the beds, making sure to firmly tuck in both sides of her duvet and open the window, left out a fresh towel and, as an experiment for today, took an empty mug from the rack, dropped a spoonful of coffee in, filled the kettle and went to school.

Today would be a good day, he could feel it.  The lessons today were all favourites, though he didn't especially like the science teacher or the girl he sat beside.  On the bus he sat alone, as was his custom.  The girl he sat next to in science took the same bus and he saw her look at him then smile at a friend.  The friend looked too.  He shifted on his seat and looked out at the fields passing by, seeing his reflection, the dark rim around his eyes and the smudge around his neck.

*

The door was open wide when Matthew came home.  He could see that the post had come: all the usual.  He picked it up and screwed up the junk, taking it straight to the fire basket.  The only remaining letter in his hand was from the doctor.  He opened it, read it and resealed it before the gum dried out, leaving it at the side table in the sitting room.

The back door in the kitchen was still open.  The coffee cup from the morning was still there and the empty cup with its spoonful of instant was untouched.  He moved through the house quietly, searching.  Every room was empty, upstairs and down.

Certain now that she wasn't at home he left and went into the woods.  Around his house a thin spread of woodland touched the edges before giving way to fields rolling down to the water's edge and a short rocky beach.  The rocks here were dark with seaweed and the ground made a wet crushing sound under his deft tread.  But it was empty and so he began to circle back to the house along a path that shadowed a thick hedgerow.

She was sat at the bench, her body facing the water but her eyes somewhere else.  Matthew watched her.  Watched her silently.

In the evening he ate his dinner alone and afterwards made a list: butter, bread, oil.  He wrote down everything that needed replacing, conscious of one thing missing.  Upstairs he heard a board creak as his mother shifted her weight in bed.  Matthew knew it meant she was dreaming tonight.  Normally there wouldn't be the slightest movement after getting her into bed.  She would lie there statuesque and he would watch to see that she carried on breathing in and out, in and out.

A bark came from outside.  Matthew put his pencil down to listen.  The bark was from outside the house, not the woods or the path.  He heard it again and an accompanying scratch at the door.  Flicking on the porch light, Matthew opened the door.  A dog sat squarely at his feet forcing him to step back and has soon as he did it hopped in and settled down in the sitting room before the empty fireplace.  Outside, a gust shivered through the air and the trees stirred up waving as Matthew closed the door.

The dog lay unmoving, curled in upon itself, refusing to rise and recognise him and so he sat in the armchair opposite watching the dog.  All the time the dog stared back and the two blinked at each other in the darkening light; with the drop of the sun a cold cursed through the house and Matthew was forced to lay a fire down. He took the balled up junk mail and made a bed of paper and kindling before building the fire up with larger logs and lighting the touchpaper.  The cold retreated and he sat closely as the kindling cracked and spat and burnt up the edges of the wood and everything settled into place.  The dog now moved and shifted and finally turned to lay its head on Matthew's knee.  He wanted to jump back, but he equally wanted to stay like that all night.

He dreamt that night of himself standing at the water's edge, the dog standing by his side.

The Sparrow Eater

Chapter One

Every young boy craves the attention of his father, or craves the attention of someone they might think of as a father; they might look up to their brother, an uncle or a character from their favourite book. But not every boy has someone like this to look up to: they simply have a favourite football team and footballer, a singer, a band all in plain sight through a television screen or the pages of a magazine. Tom had none of these. He had a father, but if you knew Tom’s father you would understand why he barely deserved the name.

Tom sat in the back garden. He closed his eyes and heard distant cracks and tremors in the eaves of the trees, rooks were gathering before the sun went down; they cawed and called to one another as they hopped from one branch to another until they found a friendly perch.

The cat’s coat brushed up against the hedge, his head held up as he watched shades pass in the air above, making their way to their perches in the woods. In the cat’s mouth a mouse hung on to the last moments of its life, it lay still, its heart beating manically; upside down in the cat’s mouth, its belly faced the air where the rooks were passing by, its eyes facing down to the earth. Sensing a change of posture the mouse twitched, but the cat held on as it sauntered over to Tom, brushing itself up against Tom’s legs that were crooked up so that his knees supplied a perch for his chin. Eyes closed. Listening intently. All was silent except the bullying of the rooks in the woods and the cat’s steady purr of pride.

Vainly the cat stepped about Tom’s feet, the mouse in its jaws dead still now, Tom’s eyes blinked open as it passed in front of him, dropping it casually, one paw pressing it against the ground, the other held up as it licked and smoothed away a dab of blood.

It wasn’t his cat and he didn’t ask for these mice it kept bringing, but he took them anyway, never touching the cat in thanks or gratitude. He was unsure of the black mog and had no idea who it belonged to; he wasn’t even sure he liked it all that much, but even so it kept coming back.

Doors slammed behind him. His father was back. The door always seemed to slam. It would only be moments now; he picked up the limp mouse, still warm and wet, from the ground and stuffed it into his pocket. Sitting up he watched the cat disappear through a gap in the hedge, always the same gap he realised.

Tom’s father stood behind him, his gaze on Tom’s hand still stuffed into the pocket with the limp, wet mouse.

*

His father wasn’t happy and never seemed to be happy. The neighbours thought he must have his reasons, but none knew what they were or why the doors slammed the moment he came home and throughout the evening. Neither Mr of Mrs Ford had been over to the house since, they felt, there was little invitation there and imagined a rude greeting from Tom’s father should they ever do so. The other neighbours felt the same way, though never said so, preferring to keep their talk to themselves.

Tom’s jacket hung over the end of the banister where his father had told him to leave it: it wasn’t cold, so there was no need to have it on. Tom disagreed, but hung it there all the same, the mouse still curled in his pocket.

Doors slammed and the key turned in the lock as his father left for work. Scattered about the house, heads of deer, bodies of badgers, a fox, heron, wren, stoat, rabbit, hare, and others, looked from one wall to the other, from mantle piece to window and from shelf to doorway. Tom always made it his game to look each one in its glass eye, see the outline of himself in profile, looking back.

The badger’s teeth were bared, one of them chipped, he imagined from a scrape with its partner or maybe the fox. He summoned up scenes of fox chasing hare, but settling for the rabbit that hare led him to. All around the house the smell of the chemicals his father used had spread and seeped into the paper, the floors and cushions and even the bread, despite the fact it was in a tin bin on the kitchen counter.

Beside the bread bin his father had left out his tools and chemicals. Each time he had the chance Tom relieved the jars of tiny quantities, in order not to be missed. Moving to the shed, he took his mouse and began his surgeon’s procedures.

It was stiffer now after its sojourn in Tom’s pocket, but he applied all his little tricks to give it back some movement before removing everything that was now unnecessary and depositing it in a jar, which he sealed tight after pouring vegetable oil over the contents.

Before long the cat’s mouse seemed to have some life in him and he was able to admire his work. When he peered into the creature’s eyes it seemed to stare at him in a way his father’s things never did.

The cat nudged the shed door and Tom hid his things away. The light that greeted him was brighter than normal and he blinked back a tear, almost stumbling over the cat. It reached up clawing at his trouser leg, but Tom wouldn’t pass him the mouse. Not now.

One of the cat’s claws caught and pushed through the fabric of his jeans, scratching at his skin and Tom yelped, the cat hissed and pulled away from him, turning its back. It stayed a moment before stalking off.

Closing his eyes he listened to the wind and imagined the clouds overhead, gusting over his valley. He felt the tug and nudge of the wind’s breath and in his mind he saw a kite drifting up under the wind’s guidance.

Chapter Two

A bell rang out from the doorway. The electric bell was new, fitted after dad was given the parts by someone Tom didn’t know and hadn’t heard of before. It rang again and a shadow moved back and forth, the shape spilled from one section of frosted glass to the next. Whoever it was knew he was there, Tom could tell. Could tell from the way they hung there, a physical shadow shifting in the glass. When the face came up against the glass he pulled himself back further than he thought possible. From the top of the stairs he saw the shape linger, shift, shimmer and reach for the bell again.

Polyester fibres scratched at his skin. He lay flat against the landing carpet, his shirt had pulled itself up after he had slunk back as much as he could and now the fibres scratched and bothered his skin.

The bell rang one last time. The shadow stood waiting, before finally melting away leaving nothing but light to press against the glass.

Tom waited until the light darkened, until the sun had left the sky, before he moved. He went first to the toilet, dropped the white plastic down and stepped up to peer through the crack at the top of the window. Nothing. But now it was almost too dark for him to see anything.

He moved to the next window in the room over the dining room. Nothing. Lamps flickered on. His eyes watered from looking so hard for something that wasn’t there. The dark moved into the house, into every room and up out of the corners until every space was filled and smothered. Tom sat himself down in the corner of the room and crooked up his knees and rested his chin there. If he turned a light on now and there was someone outside, someone he couldn’t see, then they would come again and ring the electric bell. They wouldn’t give up if they came again.

He stayed there long enough for his stomach to tremble and shake at him. If he moved to the kitchen and made anything to eat they would know he was here. And would come for him. So he sat there. Counting the beats of his heart.

Finally he began to fidget. He pulled at the back of his left trainer’s heel with the toe-top of his other right trainer, pulling it down so that the cool air filled the warm space there; he repeated the action in reverse, his right trainer worrying at his left. Over and over.

Spilling into the room, the moon’s light lifted the darkness up casting new shadows. Tom turned from his corner, pulling his left trainer back onto his foot, he turned and saw a full, bright moon looking in and flooding the street outside. He moved then, ducking under windows, to the stairs and moved to the back of the house. He unlatched the sliding glass door and took a cushion from the armchair.

Sitting down he shifted the cushion until he was comfortably bedded down, he moved his weight back onto the large planter behind him: terracotta, but grey in the moon’s glow. The fern that grew there tickled at his head and Tom sunk further down to avoid its touch.

He was too late for the rooks. Everything was quiet except for the wind in the trees lifting leaves and branches about, but even this was gracefully hushed.

His father didn’t return.

*

Tom was still in the garden the next day, fallen down, no longer propped up against the planter, but tucked under its gaze on the concrete flagstone. The bell was ringing. Its electric ting picked its way along the hallway and out through the open door at the back of the house. Tom stiffened. His mouth was dry, it felt clogged. He heard sounds at the side of the house but knew no one would come that way. At the side a wooden door with a simple latch blocked the way and was bolted from this side at its top and bottom. The top of the wall it stood in had a line of dried cement with jagged shards of glass stuck there. Nothing could come over or through that way.

The bell rang again and again. From the garden he couldn’t be seen from any angle and so he stood up and listened. If he moved back to the sliding door he might be seen through the window at the front, it looked into the dining room and into the kitchen and at its edge would catch sight of the back door.

Tom realised then the sliding door was open. Had been open all night. If they did look they might see it was open. They would know. It wouldn’t do any good to hide if they saw that. They would know and he couldn’t hide from then.

He leant up against the back wall, his jumper stuck like Velcro to the bricks’ rough touch. He pulled the left heel of his trainer down. The bell rang out.

Ringing down the hall and into the garden, the sound pulled at the hairs on the back of his neck. The gap in the hedge caught Tom’s eye.

If he dropped to his knees and hugged himself down to the ground he could get to the hedge without a chance of being seen. At the gap’s edge Tom flopped to his belly and filled up the space, first his head, then shoulders then his waist and he was through, on his feet. His trainer had come off. He put it back on and tightened the sticky strap. This was his first time through the hedge, even in the wood that was here. He had always played at imagining it from his side, from the garden where he sat on the concrete step.

Closing his eyes he let his mind picture again the paths here, the dells and hidden places. Opening his eyes he saw it all. The paths he imagined were there, the crowds of nettles, and open before him, a dell that curved away, its end out of sight.

The electric bell was a distant sound now and muffled by the hedge at his back.

A thread in his jumper had pulled and tugged at a branch in the hedge. He loosened its grip and began to march into the wood.

 

Chapter Three

That evening Tom sat at the top of the landing; the chair he sat on was normally piled high with newspapers, some unread. He had moved them to the floor; some had slid over, making a very untidy collection at his feet. A small plate teetered on his knees, a ham and cheese sandwich lay at its centre. It was cut up into quarters. He used to like it that way. He always wondered why his sandwiches were cut in quarters, though he never asked.

He started with the upper left corner and then took the bottom right. Always the same pattern. Once, in the old house, he had put his plate down to answer the door, afterwards he had forgotten which was the upper and which was the lower and had made two fresh quarters, starting all over again. His father had seen him do that and watched as he finished it off. He watched Tom do lots of things after that.

Before making the sandwich Tom had opened up his old trunk and taken out the periscope he still had from the old school. Now it was balanced on the sill of the upstairs window. After he finished his sandwich he planned to take another look at the street, happy that no one could see him when he did.

Every hour on the hour Tom took a peek through the periscope. Every hour the clock in the hall chimed, signalling Tom to put his book down and take another look. But each time he did, there was nothing to see.

In the morning Tom dressed, put his good boots on, and his Mac, he made a box of sandwiches and a flask of tea and burrowed through the hedge gap.

At the bottom of the dell he left his bag with tea and sandwiches and made off in search of a perch. It wasn’t long before he found the thick branch of a yew and pulled it down, dragging it through dry earth and tearing at resting leaves and other debris, untouched before Tom’s entrance. The branch made an excellent perch for him and he took some time securing it against wobbling before sitting down and taking a sip of tea.

The sunbeams tripped through branches that edged from side to side in the breeze; beams lapped at Tom’s knees and face before hiding behind the trees’ thick stems again. The angle of their descent shifted and changed and they moved from his left cheek to his right as he sat there through the day. There was a moment, in the middle of the sun’s movement, when Tom’s breath caught and held itself, paused. A badger moved against the horizon of the dell, waddling, head down snuffling at the dry earth. It didn’t see; it didn’t even hear Tom, he sat so quietly.

*

The badger’s entrance was the only sound to break the stillness other than the branches above him. Eventually the sun gave up lapping at Tom sat there on his yew branch, and passed beyond direct view, though Tom could make out the after-effects above him and beyond the trees. Golden reds and oranges filled up the sky. His neck hurt from looking up so much. Lowering his gaze he closed his eyes.

He heard them then. In the distance. Birds. Rooks. Coming home. They didn’t settle at first, but soon enough one took up a perch, then another and another, until all were joined in unison, cawing and cracking their voices across the dell. Each one hopped and took off, finding a preferable spot to take in the assembly. When the oranges and reds deepened, they began to settle down. Occasionally one would take a look at Tom. All had seen him there, sat so quietly, attending their every move, but they ignored him for the most part until occasionally one would become too curious or incredulous that he should be there.

Tom’s sandwiches were finished and his tea gone. Some breadcrumbs remained and he shook these out. He noticed one or two take a quick look at the crusts on the ground, but they seemed offended at such an offering and didn’t look for long. Though Tom waited, none came down and eventually a thin chill usurped the quieting stillness, mist began to rise from the ground and Tom packed himself up. The cat sat on the back step as Tom passed through the gap in the hedge. Held firmly in its jaws was a new catch, brown and wet. Tom stopped, watched the cat as it squeezed down on the body, before letting it fall from its jaw. Tom looked into the cat’s eyes in that moment, looked at the cold stare then looked at the small body. It didn’t move; the cat sat up and sauntered away, moving past Tom and away through the gap in the hedge.

A sound came from the front door, the tumblers in the lock clacked and a key scraped against the metal there. The door slammed and Tom raced to the small wet body quickly stuffing it in with his flask and sandwich wrapper. He threw the bag back over the hedge, out of sight of his father. A thin trickle of sweat ran down the side of his face and the thin cold he had felt as he left the dell now rested at the back of his head.

The back door slid open and his father collected him up and brought him inside. Tom lay on the floor, too rigid to sit, his eyes locked open.

His father moved around him; put away the jars that had been left out. He filled the fireplace with balled-up newspaper and covered it with thin strips of wood. One or two larger bits of wood went on then, along with some coal. He struck a match and soon the back room warmed up, the empty quiet disappeared against the crackle of the wood and in due course Tom’s eyes closed.

 

Chapter Four

Tom’s boots were still on his feet when he woke, bone dry now after a night in front of the open fire. The lids of his eyes stuck together and there was a kind of yellow slick in their corners; between the roots of his lashes the slick had dried and flaked turning a pale yellow and white. Outside, brushing up against the clear glass of the door the cat moved about, it played sentinel at the back door, waiting. Tom washed and changed and cleaned out the cold fireplace; he opened the door where the cat waited, it followed him to the ash pit in the garden’s corner where a cloud of grey gently fell to the old embers in slooping waves.

When the cat moved to the gap in the hedge Tom remembered the bag, remembered the day before: the badger, the tea, the assembly he had sat below. It didn’t take him long to retrieve. It was damp and dirty. He emptied the contents, washed out the flask, put the wrapper from his sandwich in the bin and looked at the cold wet thing the cat had brought him. A mouse. No, not a mouse. A sparrow. He felt somehow sadder when he realised what it was. Looked at it a little longer, sighed and wrapped it in newspaper.

The sparrow lay there, covered in fading print for half the day before Tom decided to take it to the shed. He closed the door and turned the light on, it was dark today. Soon all his jars and hidden tools were out and he was at work. He cleaned it and tended it and eventually brought a semblance of life back to its broken body. It sat, by the end of the day, on a thick dry twig, about to take flight, caught forever more in that pose – the moment between the static earth and the free sky. A scratch came from the door and Tom let the cat in, it stretched itself up, its back curving in as it brought its face up towards the sparrow; leaping up, it sniffed and looked at Tom, its gaze was deep: Tom could almost hear its thoughts. The cat left then, rushing across the lawn, springing forwards and away into the hedge.

His father returned for tea that night; fish and chips from the chip shop, reheated in a pan. His father liked a lot of vinegar. There wasn’t a word passed between them and Tom cleared the plates afterwards while his father silently slipped to the study. On nights like this Tom knew to leave his father alone, knew not to speak to him. In fact he knew it was best not to bother his father at all if he could help it.

He was washing the dishes and the few things they had used when the doorbell gave a cry, ringing down the hallway. Tom heard something fall in the study, books or a box, something loud, then nothing. He stood motionless with a knife in his hands, half washed. No movement followed the sound from the study. The bell rang again and didn’t stop, in the gap in the hedge Tom saw the cat frozen still, another catch held in its mouth.

 

*

 

Tom’s father was gone the next day; Tom had slept downstairs for the second night in a row. He couldn’t remember sleeping; the light flickered its way through slits in the shades hanging down over the window beside the sink. The cat was at the shed door.

The second sparrow had a dappled breast; little dark brown spots were strewn proudly across its chest. An almost contented expression fell across Tom’s face as he took the pair of them in. The cat pushed and nudged at his legs approvingly. He decided then to take himself back down to the dell. He wanted to see the rooks again, sit in that silent nook of the earth waiting for them to spill down from the darkening skies.

He almost forgot to quarter his sandwiches, poured his tea in the flask and stuffed it into his bag. The cat was gone when he emerged from the house. He passed through the gap in one fluid movement, not even a stitch caught on the dry branches.

All was as he left it. The yew branch sat, beckoning for company, waiting for him. He sat and unwrapped his sandwiches straight away. He balanced his tea beside him on an even part of the branch and checked it didn’t tip before easing into the stillness.

An hour passed before he heard the familiar shuffle of the badger. He didn’t see it, but he heard it. It passed ahead of him, out of sight. Soon it was behind him. Sounds came from the right side and again from ahead of him. He slowed his breaths and listened. The badger was shuffling everywhere and sometimes all at once. He saw nothing, not a snout, not the black of its back or a flash of its eye.

A tail swished up and out of sight at the corner of his eye. The tail appeared again: it wasn’t the badger. Tom shifted about, moving the focus of his senses. The tea tipped and spilled into the leaves at his feet. A line of hot tea dribbled towards his perch and he stood to wipe it away and set everything all back in place. The flask lid had soil at the edges and he wiped it away. He dried the patch of tea as best he could and sat back down; he raised his legs up and tucked his knees under his chin. Dry leaves shifted then, behind him this time; they crinkled and cracked under the weight of someone’s step. Tom froze, his heart shook in his chest and his head felt tight: clamped.

“Are you waiting for the birds?”

“The rooks.” His voice was dry when it answered.

It was a girl’s voice that had asked about the rooks. Her mouth was at his ear. “Why?”

The tightness in his head shivered away and he thought. He didn’t know. “Why not?”

It wasn’t his voice, he didn’t recognise it, but it had come from his mouth. His chin was still resting on his knees. He hadn’t blinked since hearing the leaves crackle behind him.

“I’ll wait with you.” She moved from his back and sat alongside him, moving his flask cup. She licked her thumb and polished the edge of the cup, wiping the soil that had dried there away. “It won’t be long now will it.” She didn’t ask him, she stated it. She knew as well as he did, he realised immediately and moved one knee away from his chin; he let his neck twist his face around to look at her: nutty brown hair curled over her shoulders. In places scraps of leaves were stuck. She didn’t smile and neither did he. Together they waited; already in the distance the birds could be heard returning.

 

Chapter Five

Over the next seven days the cat continued to bring him regular presents and each day he went to work on the little bodies giving back the memory of motion and action to each and every one. Not all were sparrows, there was the occasional robin, or blue tit, even a blackbird with a beautiful yellow beak. Tom gave all of them a moment of life again and when he was done he looked his prize in the eye and smiled. The cat would wait and stretch itself up until it was almost twice the size in that last moment and a loud purr would thrum from deep inside.

Tom’s father didn’t come back in all that time. Occasionally the bell would ring, but Tom was ready; he had a flask of tea prepared and sandwiches in tinfoil, he would slip out through the gap and wait for the rooks to come back to court. The crusts he left behind were always gone, though not one rook would come while he sat there, and so he watched them skip and drop from one branch to the next; whenever he went down to the dell he was never alone anymore. The girl was always there an instant after he unwrapped his sandwich, poured his tea and sat down. Almost like clockwork.

They talked about so much Tom couldn’t keep track sometimes. She knew all about his father by now. There were things he never meant to tell her, but somehow his story would start to tell itself and before long another chapter would be revealed about how he and his father had come to live in their house on the edge of the wood.

On the eighth day Tom came back home to find his house a mess. There were newspapers everywhere. The cupboards were open, their contents all over the floors. Drawers were hanging on their runners, glass was smashed and tables and chairs were upended. The front door was broken, the wood at the edges splintered around the hinges.

Tom crept to his room, his belly brushing against the stiff polyester of carpet pile. He slowly poked his head into his room. The only room untouched. Outside the head of one of the deers had fallen from the wall and it eyed him as he dragged himself silently into his room and under his bed.

Tom stayed there as long as he dared. He could feel the cold breeze coming from the open doorway downstairs; the bottom of his bed was crossed by pine slats; he counted up all the stickers he had grouped there on the slat with the knots. Each sticker covered a knot and smaller stickers orbited. When he was finished he pulled his sleeping bag out from under the bed, took his duvet too, and crawled downstairs.

Tom took his things down to the dell and slept beneath the watchful eyes of the assembly above. They didn’t seem to mind; he imagined some might understand: they knew as much as the girl did after all.

The clouds had been punched away by strong winds earlier that day, the night was dark, stars winked and their light stuttered through the earth’s thick atmosphere. The cat appeared and kept him company. Its heavy body folded itself into the duvet and it purred happily, perfectly content with Tom’s change of address.

*

In the morning dew had collected on the blue nylon of the sleeping bag and his duvet was damp. The cat was gone, remnants of brown fur shed in the night left behind. The girl sat on the branch watching Tom unstick himself from his bed.

“Your father’s at the house”

“Is he?” said Tom.

“He’s trying to tidy up.”

Tom sat up and wrapped his arms around his knees; he looked down at the laces on his shoes. One had come undone. It was bright; scrunching up his eyes he looked back at the girl before looking away at the empty branches above.

“Where do you suppose they go every day?” asked Tom.

All day the two of them trudged across fields and over muddy tracks, through overgrown hedges and over broken fences. She showed him exactly where they went and together they watched them dart about across a valley full of fresh sown wheat. A river ploughed a path at the bottom, separating the fields and dividing the valley in two. Tom sat gazing across over the vision below him, at the birds laboriously picking at the trenches, twirling in the skies above. He closed his eyes and imagined the scene beside the river, the birds there, swans, swallows, heron and snipes. His father used to have a snipe, but it had been lost in the move. The girl rested her head on his shoulder, he didn’t tense, didn’t even twitch. He looked down at his shoes, the mud there and the splatters up his trousers.

Before the rooks decided to make their way back Tom pulled himself up and helped the girl who reached for his hand. At the dell his things were still gathered; before leaving he had tidied them, folding them neatly, but not so thickly that they wouldn’t dry during the day. He gathered them up and made his way back to the house.

He stood in the open doorway at the back watching a man move about his home, Tom stood there framed in the doorway for a full ten minutes before the man noticed him. The man called another from the front of the house. He spoke to him. Looked him right in the eye. Looked at his trousers, the mud, the bedding and then back at Tom.

“Your father’s in a lot of trouble.”

Tom kept his gaze, a hard knot forming at the back of his head, his fingers tingling.

“Do you know where he is?”

Tom could see from here that the front door was fixed.

“Is he back tonight?”

The other man carried on moving about.

“Tell him we were here. You’ll tell him won’t you.”

The deer’s head from upstairs was on the dining table now. Tom’s hands tightened and his eyes began to glaze, but the cat brushed his ankles and the tingling ebbed, the knot loosened and the cat purred.

“We want your dad, you realise that don’t you?”

Tom nodded. A phone rang. The man pulled the noise from his pocket and spoke into it as he moved away, his back turned on Tom and his voice spoke into the phone. Tom followed the cat to the shed stayed there, tucked into the corner.

Tom used the time to pull out his collection, put together from the cat’s offerings. He set each one out around him; they looked intently down at him, or up at him from the perches he had given them, some had heads cocked at an angle, or wings half spread and ready to take flight.

In the morning, when he woke, the collection had doubled and the cat was gone.

 

Chapter Six

Tom’s father sat in his car; the light was red and he tapped at the steering wheel counting the seconds to green. Only a few people were out and it was dark, overcast. It looked ready to pour down. A few spots had already appeared on his windscreen, rolling into a long streak.

There was nothing in his mirror and the light was still red. He could see the other side of the temporary works. There was no one that side either. Edging out, he rolled through the single lane system and towards the exit. No one stopped to watch and he accelerated. As he passed through he could see that the opposite light was red as well. Broken. His grip tightened. Both lights, red. Useless.

Behind him a neatly wrapped package rolled around and as he turned the next bend, slid from right to left and into the foot space behind the passenger seat. When he straightened up he looked down at the brown paper parcel, it looked okay, but it was just out of reach to check. In his boot the faint chink of glass crept into the quietness. Tom’s father preferred it like this. No radio; no disturbance.

It began to rain. He thought of his son and in the same instant ground his teeth. He didn’t need him; didn’t want him. But he was his. He saw his own eyes looking back at him when Tom did look back at him. In those moments neither would look away and Tom’s father would drum his fingers, or tap his foot, until the sound moved his son’s stare away. His wife wouldn’t understand why her son slept under the bed, wouldn’t understand why he would collapse: refused. It was best just to ignore it, he thought. Best not to bother. But as he thought of him his teeth made scraping sounds in the quiet of the car, the engine rattled and the glass jars chinked in the boot.

He tried, though it was hard, not to think of Tom. Tom was a mistake and had ruined everything. Tom had his ways of spoiling things, but he was his. His eyes. His own eyes set in the body of his son, like the eyes he set in the animals he preserved. Tom was like one of his creatures: something in him was frozen, but even so, it looked back and haunted him. Another bend, taken too quickly, jogged the brown paper package from behind the passenger seat over the little hump between spaces and into the gap behind Tom’s father. Reaching round he picked it up and moved it to the seat beside him. At home he would put it away in the badger's belly, or maybe the deer’s head: he hadn’t decided. Thoughts about Tom distracted him and he remembered everything he had lost thanks to his son: his wife, his life. His fingers no longer tapped the wheel, they gripped the wheel and the leather squealed under the pressure.

He parked the car away from the house, turned off the lights and watched. The door was repaired now and a new thick oak frame held the door in place. Despite the new door he sat in his car waiting for his heart to stop racing. They wouldn’t come tonight, not so soon anyway.

 

*

 

Through his periscope, Tom watched his father from the upstairs window; he was parked across the road instead of on the drive and when he came in he didn’t turn the lights on until every curtain was drawn. Tom continued to scan the street and saw the passenger seat of another car light up as someone made a phone call: he counted the seconds from the moment it lit up to the moment it died. He counted too, the minutes it took his father to call up to him.

When he came down the head of the deer had been moved and a bowl of soup sat in its place: tomato. His father knew he didn’t like tomato, but always bought it anyway. He always watched Tom eat it all. At the end, when it was finally finished, the edge of his mouth would rise as brief as a wink, his eyes would flick to the sink and Tom would clear his place: afterwards, he paid Tom no mind.

He listened to his father from the other room. He made phone calls and moved a lot of boxes around. In the quiet moments Tom pressed his ear to the wall and listened to his father. He could hear him breathe, hear him shift and fidget in his chair.

The room Tom now sat in, ear against the wall, held the badger. It watched him as he knelt at the wall listening to his father. Tom became aware of its gaze and looked back, it had been held, captured in this single moment for years now, but now Tom felt it looked at him with a fresh gaze.

The phone rang and Tom’s father hurried to the wall where it hung. Tom listened without understanding. Heard the voice of his father, angry and threatening. It didn’t scare him, those tones were familiar to him, but he took the opportunity to move to the kitchen for a glass of water. At the glass door the cat brushed against the glass, pressing flat the fur against its side. It had seen Tom and stretched up against the clear pane, caught his eyes and sat back on its haunches. Tom heard the voice of his father grow in volume and he slipped out, leaving his glass half-filled on the counter.

Together they moved to the shed. Tom took a vegetable box and carefully filled it with his creations, using old newspaper to pack the gaps he give the birds the protection they would need: a nest, he thought.

He took one last look at his father through the kitchen window and left without catching a thread, through the gap in the hedge. It was wet, the rain had passed and it was a clear night, but soon his feet were wet from the muddy water creeping into and through the thin material of his shoes. His feet were warm, even if they were wet. The cat left him in the dell, darting into the undergrowth, appearing every so often with its tail held high and listening to the air. Tom sat and watched it disappear, guessing at where it would come from next.

Although it was cold and his breath formed tiny little clouds, he didn’t feel it and sat happily, his box, and the collection hidden there, at his feet. He sat on the yew branch, just as still as he could, all night.

In the morning he watched the rooks take to the air, the mist rise from the earth and the girl as she swung among the branches.

 

Chapter Seven

Tom’s father didn’t sleep all night. The phone call the night before had disturbed him and now he was worried. Tom had disappeared, but he was happier without him in the house. He sat through the night eyeing the door. It was locked and bolted across the top. The deer’s head was as good as new sitting on the kitchen table. The phone hung silently on the wall. One edge of his thumbnail drew itself across the grain of the chair’s arm so slowly Tom’s father could count the number of grains there. His head was a knot of anger and frustration. He had done everything asked of him; begun the business with the animals, even though he hated it, had taken the packages and never asked the obvious questions. He realised then that his problems didn’t stem from the packages or the animals, but from his son. Before Tom this had all been a sort of game for him and his wife, but since Tom it had all begun to change. She had left. They never wanted children; she never wanted Tom. He remembered her complaints about his eyes: ‘just like yours’. It wasn’t his fault, but it was an accusation nonetheless.

A knock came from the door. His thumb froze and his nail pushed an impression of itself into the grains. The bell rang. He stood up from the chair, unable to sit any longer. He didn’t plan to open the door, but despite the long night to think through what he would do, he was lost. He felt like a breath lost in a gale and the sound of the doorbell filled his mind.

A crash came from behind him then; glass fell to the floor splintering into a hundred pieces and a familiar face stood in the door to the garden, his hands bloody. The man called to the door and his boots crunched against the glass, pressing the shards into the floor. The man smiled and stepped onto a larger shard of glass, it cracked and in that instant Tom’s father rushed toward him. The man’s foot lost its hold and he slipped, falling to the floor. Everything was silent. The face, once so familiar, looked back at Tom’s father without seeing: with the full force of his weight his head had struck the remnants of glass still in the frame of the doorway. Tom stopped for a moment, his fingers tingling, his heart knocking at his chest furiously.

A shout came from the door and Tom’s father ran into the garden, he pushed his way through the hedge scratching his face as he did so and emerged on the other side. On the other side he freed his sleeves from the clawing grasp of the barrier between his home and the wood. He heard a crash; shouts; boots against the garden’s flagstones: a voice called out to him and he pushed off into the wood along the thin track.

Each step took him down and each step came quicker than the last. He saw footprints in the mud. Smaller than his own. When he heard someone pushing through the hedge from where he had come he turned and slipped his hands coming up wet and soggy from the mud at his feet. Dark edges of dead leaves stuck against his palms.

The sound of boots charging down the path brought him to his feet and he plunged ahead.

*

Tom and the girl were sitting together when his father slid into view. His father stood transfixed by the two of them. Tom’s fingers tingled and his palms grew warm and he rubbed them against his trousers. His father stepped forward and the girl dropped from their seat, hiding behind Tom. His father paused then, his eyes flicking from Tom to the girl and he moved forward again. A branch swung up behind his father and he fell, his knees sinking into the ground; the man behind him, the man Tom had met, stood over him ready to swing again, but his father fell backwards from his kneeling position forcing the stranger to stumble. The girl’s nails stuck into Tom’s arms and she held on to him; his palms cooled and his fingers no longer tingled.

The crunch of a branch shook Tom then. His father stood over the man who was silent and still at his feet, his face firmly planted in the floor of the dell.

His father’s frame heaved and turned. All the hate he had for his son surged up; all the memories of everything wanted and then lost, all the disappointment and now this. He threw himself at his son and the girl spilled to the floor. His hands flew into Tom’s face and as he hit him time after time, he felt relief flood his body. He shook Tom and threw him to the ground where the girl caught him up.

Tom’s father looked at the quiet shape of his son, smiled and looked to the heavens, obscured by the arms of the trees enclosing the dell. Above him a host of rooks stood on their perches staring back at the man below them. Tom’s father stuffed his hands into his pockets, deep against the edges, feeling the stitching there. Fluff and dust stuck against his knuckles and in the fresh wet cuts. The assembly above him stood silent, sentinel. None twitched, or hopped or even shuffled on their perches. Motionless they looked down from branches up high.

Shifting his weight from one leg to the other, his feet made deep recesses in the wet, muddy ground. His shuffling became quieter and quieter; he looked from one bird to another. He saw then that there weren’t just shaggy black rooks looking back, but smaller birds too. Each bird Tom had given a frozen moment of life to was now in the trees above, alongside the rooks. His vegetable box was empty. At the girl’s insistence they had found new perches for each and every one.

The rooks began to twist their heads and look to one another, look to the birds that Tom had brought back to them, scattered now in a great spiral. Each one looking down at the scene below: sparrows, robins, blackbirds finches and others, all looked at Tom’s father with black eyes; his profile was fixed in the reflection held there, and, again, he began to shift his feet, nervously now.

Sweat sprang from his brow and the tightness returned to the back of his head. A great roar erupted from the trees as the rooks took flight and beat their way into the air. As they did so each one of Tom’s creations broke free of their perches and twisted into the air gathering together in one great mass below the branches. They moved almost as one, swinging with a broken motion and as Tom’s father’s mouth opened in wonder and fear, a scream caught on the edge of his throat, the great swarm fell like darts and shot into his open jaw, stuffing up his mouth and burrowing deep down into his gullet until each and every one, each and every feather, filled up the man beneath them.

The girl’s hands smoothed back Tom’s hair, his head held in her lap. A tear pushed its way from his eye, but her fingers caught it up. Tom’s breathing evened out and eventually he sat up, resting his weight against the girl as they looked down at his father. Tom had always known he was a bad man, a bad father and in that instant found he was the happiest he had ever been.

The girl rocked him back and forth and purred into his ear.