The Stone Bones: Chapter Six

Rain gathered in the skies above and thundered down into the clearing, the air was choked with thick drops.  Churned up by the mad scramble of the boys as they slipped and fell, the ground gave way to mud which gave way to the boys' footings.  Each one fell and slithered, eventually working their way out and under what cover was offered at the clearing's edge, like worms, as Henry's dragon advanced.
His heavy paw made a sucking sound as it came free of Connor's body, twisted and melted into the earth under the dragon's savage embrace.
Henry held on and heard the words repeat and repeat through his mind, echoed by the dragon's great voice, as it strode forwards towards his tormentors.  The voice of his father and the voice of the dragon becoming one, becoming whole; metre by metre Henry felt the layers of fear, dismay, worry and terror for a world without either his mother or father disappear, leached out by each swathe of rain as it clapped itself upon him.
Finding their voices once more each boy screamed like beasts driven mad by the poisoned bite of a master's whip, crashing through the bushes in a wild panic.  Each step of the way the stone dragon drew himself closer and closer upon their heels; trees fell to the ground like paper towers from a bruised, frayed and forgotten deck of cards.
The rain continued to fill the air, the clouds above drawn ever closer to the ground below.  The hillside began to flood, branches and loose rocks tumbling down, dragged by gravity and the forceful surge of rain as it gathered into a torrent pulling anything that would join it deeper into the valley and on towards the town below.
People in neighbouring villages stopped and witnessed a black cloud, like an ink stain, cover and hide Henry's home as if it had never been anything but a terrific smudge in the distance.
Charlie screamed at his friends, but each one splintered from the direction their leader had taken and slipped on in vain, fighting centuries of soil determined to push them back towards the dragon's embrace.
Tripping over rocks loosened from the once firm banking, Kai's ankle snapped and he howled in horror at the pain and the sight of his bones pushing the skin out in a bloody bubble.  He fell as though pulled back and thrust down by an unforgiving bully's blow and as he looked up one last time the sharp beak of the stone dragon's claw sent Kai's face back into a furious mess of gurgling mud and leafy remains.
Pushing Kai back into the ground the dragon surged on at a severe pace; the great stony bulk moved without any regard for impediment, fixing only the boys in its sight, and, all the while, the voice of the dragon called out to Henry: 'Hold on'.
The boys carried on up the valley's steep sided banking, fighting the ground below them as it turned to nothing under the beating of the rain.
In the village the river swelled up and spread out onto the car park, then next the road before opening doors into unsuspecting homes, sucking out the contents and spilling them out into the path of cars and pedestrians as they fled the flood tearing its way through the quiet town.

*

Henry's aunt stood above the town's harbour as branches, trees and cars hurtled down the swollen line of the river.  A helicopter moved ponderously in the air above winching people away from the danger of their roof tops and into the tin inners.  She saw her car buckle under a fresh shoulder-thrust the water was making from the side streets before it scraped and tore at the cobbles below and disappeared like a penny's wish, emerging again with a loud and desperate yelp as its windows gave way, shattering under the pressure.

At the valley's peak Jake and Jim struggled upwards, neither now distinct from the other, they looked like disgarded rags, torn and useless; bizarre puppets under the pull and tug of a maniacal master.  Charlie was all the time ahead of them, his face burnt with fear and dread and his fingers numb as they clawed their way onwards and upwards out and away from the beast at his back.

Henry's dragon planted its stony arms into the soft ground and raked back the earth encouraging the ground ahead of him to give way as the foundation it once rested on was tossed aside.  Jake fell back as if he were standing on a duvet pulled from under him; his head snapped forward as his crown met the hard stone of the dragon's muzzle; he breathed in the thick mud below him, immobile.  Choking and vomiting, he was lifted into the air, his collar neatly held in the stone jaw.  The dragon tipped back its head, presenting Jake to the sky above and under the rain's clean shower the mud streaked away from his face.  With one violent twitch his neck cracked and the dragon spat him to the floor; his body rolled away, unfaltering, joining the loose detritus as it hurried to the town below.

Charlie, now at the valley's rim, looked back at the scene below him.  He saw his friend's body hurtle out of sight.  He saw the impossible picture of the stone dragon as it pawed at the ground; Henry on its back.  Henry's eyes searched upward as the last friend Charlie would ever see slipped and dropped from view emerging again under the back foot of the dragon.  The creature sent Jim's body away without even a look back, like a bull scraping and cleaving the ground with its hoof, its stare and that of Henry's, pinned solely to Charlie.

Charlie now stood in the lower field of Home Farm.  He dashed up into the clearing away from the clouds that had filled the valley.  Behind him the town was nothing but wave upon wave of black, slate grey cloud sloshing from side to side.  His legs burned and his arms swung back and forth at his side, but they were numbed and deadened and each step he slowed and floundered, breathing harder and harder.

Stumbling forward, he planted his palms in the ground and sank, shivering.  He tried to crawl as best he could away and out of sight toward the hedging that ringed the field, but he couldn't.  His body was arrested by the cold bite of the dragon's jaws, then dropped and nudged forwards, but all Charlie could do was roll like a rag doll that held the imagined potential of motion and movement.