this is the wolf run
Short story from 'old, persistent spirits'
Something terrible happened to my brother. A long time ago, when I was still very young. The chaplain is kind. She wants me to remember. I’ll try to piece it together. For her. Not for anyone else.
Late October. The sun is pale, and low in the sky. The nights are longer and colder; the soil turns to mud in the rain. The light of summer recedes.
If you’re young, new to life, and susceptible, then you’ll recognise the primitive dark of each evening. The night creatures you’ve read about are waking, in the shadows along the lane, in the odour of dankness under the trees, in the wailing of the wind. You’re receptive in your fears, eager to believe —
— at the tea-table I snatch the shell from Patrick’s eggcup. He grabs my arm and twists and I shriek in pain. I pull away, and we topple to the floor, wrestling for the eggshell. He sits on my chest to pin down my arms. I knee his back, and he pitches forward. I wriggle out from under him, and throw myself back on him, vision ragged with rage. We roll across the carpet, locked together, until my mother runs through from the kitchen and pulls us apart.
She understands and Patrick should, too. When he finishes his egg, he should turn the shell upside down and batter it through with his spoon. If you don’t hole the shells, they get used by witches as sailing boats. I have dreams about great creaking vessels, rolling amidst heavy seas, heading towards me, sailing on over my head as I struggle to swim in the giant waves. High above, I see the dreadful face of the witch as she peers over the jagged edge of the giant shell, oblivious to me as I shrink into the water.
I forgive Patrick, for he is too strong to understand my fears. Today it is my ninth birthday. This morning his face was kind as he told me about the ceremony. He told me how there was good, dark soil beneath the church at the end of the garden, and how he and John would help me through the worst parts of the tunnel. I had to tilt my head back to see him speak, for he is tall, strong, and powerful. He is twelve years old, and invincible. He has many friends, but John is the oldest. He is fifteen, and his chest is thick like a man’s. The muscles on his back tremble and the golden hairs on his forearms catch the sunlight as he climbs the apple tree. Last Saturday he told me about a family who spent the entire night trapped in their house by a yellow face which climbed the walls and looked in all the windows. The face was yellow like the new sickle moon; he said. It had a greedy smile and sharp teeth.
I keep remembering how it was still dark last Christmas morning when I woke. It was dark, but the streetlamp outside sent light through the curtains. Patrick knelt on the carpet. He was unwrapping a present. I watched long enough to see it was a book. I couldn’t wait any longer and I pulled the first box from the top of my pillowcase. On the lid was a picture of Godzilla wrestling with King Kong. They looked like they were dancing the waltz. I held it out in joy.
‘Look Patrick, a kit. We’ll do this first!’
He smiled at me and nodded, holding out his book.
‘You can have this, Davy. You’ll like it.’
When my hand touched it, the cold of the book ran through my whole body. I looked at the cover. A beautiful woman with long dark hair held a crucifix with both hands. She looked scared. On her shoulder, rested on her shoulder by someone standing up behind her, was a hand with long, sharp fingernails. Each fingernail was creamy white, from the point to the cuticle. The letters that spelled ‘Dracula’ on the cover were red and awful.
Patrick read the entire book after me, and he was brave about it. But then he was the one who found the spaceship in Crow Holt. It was late one night, so late the night was turning into morning, and he and John were out exploring. They saw lights in the middle of the wood, and a strange noise like the elephant sound the Tardis makes. As they watched, the lights faded out, and the noises stopped. They said they ran to look, but the ship had gone. I couldn’t believe their bravery, how like heroes they were, for they had already told me the story about the aliens who had landed in South America and left nothing of the Head Man of the village except for his skin, folded flat on a rock in the jungle.
Now it’s me that needs bravery. It is half-past six, after tea, and I stand in the white-tiled bathroom. I wash my hands over and over again. The water is warm, and the soap I watched my mother put on the sink smells nice. But through the frostings on the window, I can see the shadows of the trees moving outside. They make a scratchy, repetitive pattern, black and the moon is cold silver.
Patrick and John are waiting for me at the end of the path. I have my wellingtons on, my grey shorts and my green anorak with the hood. Patrick is wearing his big duffel coat. He is holding a torch. The light from it shines upwards over his face as he speaks. He tells me not to worry. He tells me that all the boys have to do it when they are nine. He has done it. John has done it. Everyone I see at school who is in Miss Bucannon’s class, and everyone who is older, has done it. They will take me to the tunnel mouth now, and they will meet me at the other end. The tunnel isn’t long, but I must go quietly, because the monster will be awake and listening.
I let them push me forward. We go through the churchyard, almost halfway down to the lake, and we go into the bushes behind the church. We stop, and I see the mouth of the tunnel. It is dark, darker than the night around me. Patrick and John are talking to me, but I can’t hear what they’re saying. I stop listening. In front of me, the tunnel mouth opens wide. Darkness, drawing me, pulling me in. I think for a moment. I can picture how the monster sits and waits. He crouches, his bull head heavy. His eyes are blind, he doesn’t move. He listens.
Patrick and John have told me about the monster. I know his name, and I know his weakness, and this will help me past him. I know he is called Stonefingers and that he has only one arm. I know that the other socket had the arm ripped from it many years since, but that the blood still escapes there. I know he is powerful, and deadly, and that he is hungry, and angry, but slow. If he blocks my passage, I am to run at him, and to run at that side of him where his arm has to stretch to reach me.
It is my ninth birthday, and I must grow into a man. I am resolute.
There is mud underfoot, but no water yet. The trees close in on top of me as I walk. It gets darker as they cut off the moonlight, and then I know I’m in the tunnel.
It is not silent in here. I hear movements to my left, from behind me moving to my left. I stop to listen. I slip my hands into my pockets. It’s hard to breathe. My fists are balls, my toes are curled. Standing there, head held alert, eyes wide, wide open, I listen for movements.
Stonefingers lives all the year round in a cave under the lake where his breath steams around him and there is perpetual frost on his fur. He comes every autumn to test the new boys, to take one or two back, to find his food for the winter.
There are no movements.
I walk forward, and stop for a moment, thinking of the church, the massive tower standing far above my head, and how the weight of its holy stones should have clamped the mouth of the tunnel shut. I step on. Our family doesn’t go to church, and at this moment I wish we did. But my father doesn’t care, and my mother says it’s stupid, and the hymns make me yawn. Besides, would it make any difference? I ask God for help, and I try to pray to Jesus, but all I can think of are the evil bats that steal their homes under the rafters of God’s church, how the stones of the church crumble at the corners of the walls, how the candle flames at the altar throw such a dim light into the nave.
As I lift my boots, each step that I take throws sound into the dark air of the tunnel. I can’t see around me. Here it is dark, when our house is so light. At this moment, the fire is lit in the back where my mother and I sit in the evenings, the lights from the television illuminating our faces, playing on the ceiling, brightening the darkest corners of the room.
Thin water oozes under my feet. I catch my breath as I splash, far too loud. I am walking along the thin gutter that feeds into Stonefingers’ lake. I am walking the path to Stonefingers’ home. I stare to see, but there is nothing. All around me is black.
I think of my mother’s face as she watches the television, and then I think of my family. How they try to help me. My father knows I am weak and frightened, and he spent a whole evening with me, talking to me, telling me things. He showed me book after book, saying how vampires aren’t real, how they burned all the witches, how the spaceships are weather balloons and strange clouds. When he was with me, I felt his love, and I felt protected. But the next night he left me to myself, and my nightmares came back. My books don’t help. The books and the films and the TV don’t help at all. They make it worse.
I move on down the tunnel, and as I go, I repeat to myself how I do have the love of my mother, and my father, and most of all, I have the love of Patrick. To be with him, to be like him, I can do this.I keep stepping forwards.
Light flashes ahead of me. A beam of yellow lances down the tunnel, searching for me. And I can hear Patrick’s voice!
‘Davy, this way! You’re so close!’
I sob with a sudden relief. I drag my boots through the mud, not caring about the noise. I want to run —
— and there is Stonefingers. There, at the tunnel mouth, big against the light, is Stonefingers. He is huge, and he is growling. As his head swings from side to side, I know he searches for me, listening to pin me down. Yet I know he is slow, and blind, and that I must do it, so I run.
I dodge, he snarls—and they were wrong. Stonefingers has two arms. He moves like lightning, like a silver fish in the lake, and he has me! With his two massive fists, he clamps my wrists together. He bends closer, and I see the fur on his head, the cold white marble of his eyes, thick frost in each socket—and he pulls me to him.
Stonefingers opens his mouth. The revelation, the glistening blackness. His teeth are sharp and many, and the voice of his growling is ancient, deep, and murderous. As he pulls me in, I twist in his grip. Like mercury in a maze, I bend and slip. As he pulls me closer, I scream. I howl at him. He pulls at me, reeling my life in as my spirit leaves me in the wind from my mouth, in the snot dribbling from my nose, in the tears that run from my screwed-up eyes.
Then Patrick is shouting again. It’s confusing. I can’t understand it.
‘Davy! Davy! Stop it! John!’
I hear him splashing through the water. He is coming into the tunnel. This can’t happen. Patrick doesn’t have to meet Stonefingers again. He will die because of me. And yet, for a moment, I want to call out to him, to urge him on to help me, to die with me, to be there with me at the time of death.
Stonefingers lets me go, and I turn, and I run back, running for my life. As I run, I notice things. That the tunnel has no roof, only tree branches, that the walls are only the elder plants and tall cow parsley of the churchyard.I force my way back through the barbed wire fence, back into our garden, and I run out in front of the curtain of the willow tree. There is our back door with light pouring out, and my mother, calling for me.
‘Davy? Davy? What’s the matter? Where are you?’
I run to her, and throw myself at her, and as she holds me against her stomach and rocks me, I apologise for not being quick enough through. As I cry and scream and pour out my worthlessness, the bushes rustle behind me. She stiffens and stops stroking my neck, and I choke with new terror. But her voice is accusing, not fearful.
* * *
As I lie in bed, I can see spots of uneven plaster on the ceiling of my room. The nightlight points them out with hump-backed smudges of shadow. I know them all. There is a thin thread of spider web hanging from the beam by the window that has avoided being dusted for the entire summer. I know its shape like I believed I knew Patrick.
My mother showed me the wolf mask John had worn. Patrick cried in his bedroom later that night after father had come home. For a day, I was free. Then night came again, and I remembered what it was like to run back through the tunnel in the darkness. I know that when the curtains moved a few minutes ago, I was safe; I have new window locks on all the frames. Patrick said that I shouldn’t have them, that I was too stupid and that I deserved a real fright, but I made my mother get them for me and I tightened them shut myself until the key made white marks on the flesh of my fingers.Patrick said that going through the tunnel would make me a man. This wasn’t true. I am young, I am new to life, and I am weak. I remember how things looked. I saw the witches sitting up in the trees, and as I ran, I felt their soft hands draw through my hair. I remember how behind the elder plants there was the silver spaceman from that terrible film I watched with Patrick last Saturday night; and I am lost, even worse than before.
* * *
In the space of a day and a night, things change. Patrick and I go on. We live together, we get up each day, we eat our breakfast together—but it is different. I see him come out of the bathroom in the morning, his face red from the hot water and his hair sticking up, but the skin on his face still looks dirty. When John comes round after school, they go off together and ignore me. In the evenings, he does his homework, and we watch television. He comes and sits near me, on the settee, and I move away, onto the floor, to the other side of the room.
At night when we go to bed, I want to close my bedroom door, but I cannot. I must feel the light of the house on my face. Yet when the door is open, I can hear him there in the next room. He sleeps with his door open, and I hear him turn over in bed. I can hear the sighs he makes and the cries of his dreams; and I can hear his breathing. I hear his chest lift, and the flow of air past his teeth, across the red slab of his tongue, down the tubes of flesh into the centre of his body. He sucks on the world to breathe. I know biology, I see it on the television. I see how babies are born, shrieking and bloody, and I see how they die, returning to the blackness. I see all that life is in the films and the plays and the series on the television. I understand the world. I know what is happening. Evil is in our house. Evil has taken root and disguised itself. As I listen to him, I imagine what is happening. As the sound of his breathing swells and falls away, I see the pointed canine teeth growing, pushing back his lips. I hear the rustle as the snakes slip from his hair and the soft thump as they fall onto the floor, and the chirruping of the spiders that spill from his mouth to crawl into the warmth under the bedclothes.
I cannot bear it. I screw myself up, and pad along the landing to peer through the crack in the door at him. I am never quick or quiet enough to trap the signs before they retreat below the surface. I expect to see his face, dreadful, contorted, stationary, eyes wide open, staring at the ceiling, but he is always too quick for me.
I have not smiled at him again. I cannot. I avoid him. All the time I am sick inside, with metal on my tongue and bile in my throat.
Then, one evening when they are out and I watch television, there is the answer. There, in a film like all the rest, is the method laid out for me. I watch in terror as the slip into the abyss brings security for the ones who brave it. I understand the idea of allies, and we can use bad for good, and I see how to go forward.
The same night, in my bedroom, at the blue topped table in the window, I write my hatred on a scrap of paper—short, jagged runes, squashed close—and fold it small. I can’t give it to him, but I go downstairs and slip it through a ragged seam in the pocket of his red jacket.
* * *
On the last day of sunshine before the winter we go out alone, the two of us. My mother sends us off. She gives us a picnic: sandwiches and cake in a plastic box, and some orange drink, and we put our boots on, and we go down the lane to the lake.
I sit on the jetty and watch him as he kicks around in the mud, struggling with the oars. I refuse to help as he drags the boat into the water. My mother had told me to fetch both our coats. I went round to the cloakroom and stopped. I could smell the washing powder from the machine. I was on my own. I put on my anorak and pulled up the zip. I listened for voices, but they were out at the front of the house, waiting for me. I raised my eyes from the floor, and I committed the greatest of treacheries. Instead of picking up his duffel coat, I reached to lift down his old red jacket.
At last, we set out, rowing out over the lake to the island. He talks, but I don’t answer. He gets annoyed with me. I had brought the cricket set, and he had laughed at me, and told me it was the football season, but I didn’t care. I wanted to play cricket.
Alone, the two of us. I sit in the stern and say nothing. As he rows, I watch the zigzags on his jumper, I watch the drops of water from the oars that land on his jeans, and I huddle, despite the sun, into my coat. I wait.
We land. We lay out the rug, put up the stumps and play cricket, and I see how bored he is. We eat our sandwiches and drink the orange in silence. I sit still, knees drawn up to my chin, and scan the sky.
He clambers up the slanting trunk of a fallen fir and crouches astride it near the top. He looks down at me. He’s careful as he stands upright. He beats his chest with his fists and calls to me, expecting me to laugh.
‘Hey Davy, Tarzan!’
Eventually, he points at the sun, low in the sky, and says it’s time to go home. I hang back, waiting, watching the sky, and wondering. Then I see it. High above us, in a mass of indigo and purple clouds, I see the demon forming.
We launch the boat and start for home.
He says I should learn to row, so we stand up to swap places. As we cross over, I look up at his face. He is frowning, concentrating on keeping his balance. I rock my knees once and the boat sways. He squats and looks up at me, surprised.
‘Davy!’
We both sit down, and I pick up the oars, beginning to row.
Out there, across the petrol-coloured surface of the lake, we can see trees and hills, but no houses, no people. There should be other boats, people fishing, but today we are alone. The valley of the lake is long and thin, running from north to south. It is not a big lake, but it is deep.
I row us away from the island, away from the cover of the trees, away into the middle of the passage. I cannot row properly; the oars are too heavy. I skim the surface of the water with one oar while the other digs itself in. I splash and we circle. Sometimes we move forwards, sometimes I shower us with fresh water.
He lies in the stem, watching me. I study the mud on his shoes, then I gaze at his jeans, then over his shoulders. I cannot look at his face.
Above us, in the black, rolling cloud, sweeping low across the skyline, the demon gathers.
Bored again, Patrick stands up and makes to exchange places.
I stand up too. We cross, and for a moment we both stand, facing each other. He looks down at me. I push him in the stomach as hard as I can. As he falls, he shouts, and he grabs my sleeves with his hands, looking at me in surprise. He leans backwards, clinging on to me and we sway there as the boat rocks. I panic, thinking it will overbalance us. His fingers slip along the nylon of my anorak, and he leans out even further. He releases a hand and tries to snatch a new hold, but I pull my arm back, and his fingers clutch and miss. I lean forwards to catch my balance as he falls. His other hand slithers along my sleeve, and then he is gone.There is silence; then the demon falls on the boat.
His face is black and fiery and the air clashes in his wake. I cower in the bottom of the boat. I clench a cricket stump with both fists, and I kneel before his presence, his glory, and his darkness. I watch as he comes down on Patrick, and how Patrick’s hands slip from the side of the boat under the pain of his blows, and I hear his voice as the demon pounds his body with hoof and fist and gathers the life from him. I shout to celebrate him; I shout as Patrick’s eyes lock onto my own, as the cricket stump comes down upon his fingers, as the heavy wood smashes into his temple. He shouts and coughs, and swallows water, and his head dips again under the surface, and he surfaces only to choke again. I look him in the face as he thrashes, looking at his wide eyes as he grabs at the air, trying to block each blow; but the demon shows no compassion. I watch as he grows sodden with water, as he struggles more desperately, his body growing heavier. I see the strength of his arms leave him, how he stays under the water for longer each time, how he grows wracked in choking, and then how he stops.
Breathless, I crouch over the side of the boat. My hands grip the gunwale as Patrick slips away, as he turns face down, as he drifts out into the lake. I look up, away from him. Across the lake, the trees billow as a gust of wind blows over them. Clouds of leaves swirl down, then the wind passes. On the surface of the lake there is a great, pure silence.
I fall back into the bottom of the boat, shrieking with ecstasy and cold. Cartoon demons rush across the sky before my eyes. They have shiny red skin and pincer hands outstretched, and they are all fleeing from the greatest and darkest one; the demon I have summoned. I kick my feet and wriggle against the planks, pounding the wood with my fists, shouting until my head feels close to bursting.
After a long time, I look out over the bows of the boat, but I can see nothing. The daylight is going, and the surface of the water is grey. Leaning far out, I plunge my face beneath the surface of the cold water. I try to focus as I adjust to see underwater, then I pull back, screaming. His face had been inches from mine. I kneel for a minute, trembling, and then I lean back over the side and put my head under again, more slowly.
He hangs there under the surface, suspended in front of my eyes. I watch him swaying, turning over. I watch his hair drift across his face, covering his open eyes. I see his hands, his loose fingers, white in the pale green light, and how his arms hang. I see how the green weed at the bottom of the lake stretches upwards to grasp him and pull him down, and I see his clothes send tiny bubbles of air to the surface.
I pull myself up into the world again, gasping for breath, a shower of droplets spattering around me.
I am rescued from the boat, wet and crying, choking with grief, and carried home to my warm house; I am stripped, washed, and dried in front of the fire. My mother looks deep into my eyes, but I do not yield. I do not reveal how Patrick was taken. When I tell my parents about the storm, they look at each other. As I talk about the rain, and the cloud and the thunder out on the water, they look disturbed. I lower my head and I cry.
Almost noiselessly, I tell my mother how Patrick had been showing off in the boat, how he had stood astride, a foot on each gunwale, and how he had slipped backwards, and fallen, and not come up again. I tell her how the weed at the bottom must have grabbed him and held him for its own, and how I had taken the oars and tried to find him, but how the boat had only rowed in circles and how I had given up. How the wind had started and made me drift across the lake, but how I had kept on trying, until I was too cold.
I look up and see how her eyes are full of tears.
I remember how the evil left him at the time of death, how his eyes paled, how the light in them died. How his arms grew still, and his fingers relaxed, and how his face became beautiful again.
The doctor comes and gives me a tablet with some water. When they think I am asleep, they leave my bedroom, pulling the door shut behind them. The dark closes in on me like before. As I hover on the verge of sleep, I am sure the nightmares will come. Then, for the first time I can remember, the fear recedes. I know why. I made an ally among the soft calling shadows, and he came, and with him I destroyed an evil. Now I am as brave as Patrick was, and now I will sleep the fearless sleep of the strong.
The chaplain is kind, and her face is beautiful as she listens to my story, but it’s a trick.
When she is sure I’ve finished, she talks to me. She says there is no need for me to carry all this. She speaks some nonsense about how there is someone else, someone far greater, who loves me and who can carry all my pain—I stop her dead. I don’t know what she means;
there is no pain.
She asks me if she can pray for me. I shake my head. I’ve no need. No need for Jesus, no need for anyone else. I’m strong in myself.
We sit for a while longer, but we don’t talk. I’m happy. I know she has finished. The hour ends, the warder comes. He lets her out, and the door slams behind her.
Here I am, alone again. Safe again. All my life, there have been so many wolves. So many battles, but I’ve never lost one. Over fifty long years, I’ve beaten them all.
