Chapter 6 #3
But she does, and I do too. We know these woods like we know each other’s faces. This yellow dinosaur was not here before. Nor was the blanket bed. And that dog is howling to get at something, something that is its own.
I pick up the Belzers and go down on one knee, pulling the dog carefully towards me until I can reach the padlock.
It’s going to bite you, says Cat.
Maybe, I say. I don’t think so.
I jack the open ends of the spanners into the gap between the arms of the padlock and lever them against each other.
There’s resistance, but I put all my strength into it.
The shackles suddenly snap and I can’t stop skinning my knuckles against the chrome handles.
Before I can even swear or cry out in pain, the dog is off and running towards the quarry. Cat looks at me.
Come on, I say.
Shit, she says.
We both know why she swore. The quarry is dangerous.
Really dangerous. It’s that lurking giant hole in the ground, with that deep drop-off that’s so overgrown you wouldn’t know it’s there.
Not until you walked right up to it – or ran in panic right over the edge.
Like I said, it’s been eating itself and anything that comes too close since before the Geldings.
The dog is running right down the line of the toppled and broken pylons, following the drape of the fallen cables that they used to support, now caught on the treetops and festooned with balloon vine and red ivy.
I run after the dog, pulled by the urgency of its strangled barking.
I don’t care if Cat comes or not. And I don’t look to see if she is, because I know what must have happened to the owner of that yellow dinosaur with a horrible certainty: the child saw me and saw what I did to its father, and it has run off in justifiable horror, tearing its way through the brambles and bushes in sheer terror – trying to hide from us, thinking we mean it harm too.
Probably looking back in panic over its shoulder as it ran.
Too devastated and afraid of what might be behind it to give any thought about what might be in front.
Mouse! shouts Cat, batting at my shoulder as she runs beside me. Slow down! The edge!
Like I said: the edge is a killer. A drop longer than a pylon is tall.
We know this because the reason the other pylons fell in the first place is because a long time ago the far edge gave way and did actually drop a pylon into the quarry on the other side, and it hangs there upside down on the cliff face, not even close to touching the bottom.
And then, for one glorious moment, I think it’s all okay.
My eyes tell me that I’m seeing a small child in the dim shadow of the woodland ahead of me.
It’s a bright splash of colour among the green.
I open my mouth to shout a warning, telling it, to stop, to tell it there’s nothing to worry about, to shout that we mean it no harm.
But the dog runs straight up – and past it.
And before I can realise what this means I trip and stumble on one of the fallen cables that’s been pulled back into the floor of the wood by the ground ivy, and when I get back on my feet and get closer, I can see that it’s not a child, not a child at all, it’s just a scrap of yellow material that’s caught on a twig and ripped clear as someone has run past. I can see it’s just happened because the twig is half broken off and I can see the white sapwood and the fresh wetness still oozing out of it.
That solid bubble in my chest has turned into a hammer trying to punch its way through my ribcage with each jolting step I take as I careen through the undergrowth, not caring about the thorns ripping at me as I pass.
I don’t care because I can see it, see it all in my mind’s eye, because it’s already happened, it’s inevitable, and all that’s left is to see it with my real eyes and wash this unbearable, dark dread out of my head with the purer horror of what I’ve done and who else I’ve killed.
Better to see it now. See it fast. Get it over with.
I know the child has run over the edge because the dog has stopped and is now baying forlornly, staring into the void where the ground goes away and the fallen cables loop out of sight as they belly down across the deep chasm to where they’re still tethered to the fallen pylon on the other side.
I’m so horror-struck and suddenly fumble-footed at what I’m going to see on the quarry floor far below that I forget to slow down.
I can hear Cat shouting at me but I can’t handle whatever it is she’s saying and it’s only when she tackles me and we hit the ground so hard all the air goes out of my body and I lie there, shocked and winded, with the edge inches from my face that I stop.
Am stopped. Am saved. In a way. But the wrong way.
Because as I finally get that first breath back and pull myself forwards to see the inevitable, shattered body of the fallen child on the jumble of rocks far below, I know that dark cloud has come early and something worse, worse than the broken-backed pig is on its way.
And then I look down and Cat is shouting at me and the dog is whining and I see it’s not just one child.
It’s two. Though child is the wrong word. They’re bigger than that.
But they’re not lying broken and smashed on the rocks, or speared on the rusted machinery far below, or lying with broken backs making circles in the mud as they try and get up.
They’re hanging over a dizzying gulf of air, looped on the swag of fallen cable about twenty feet beyond the edge and about the same distance down, maybe a hundred feet over the quarry floor, one on each side of the thick electric wire. Joined together by a pair of those handcuffs.
Shit, says Cat, crawling up to the edge next to me. They must have run straight over the edge without looking, each on one side of the cable. And it saved them.
The dog whined at us. Looked at me and then the girls.
Maybe because of the soft toy I’d been expecting them to be smaller, little girls, but they were about the same size as Cat and maybe only a couple of years younger than me.
It was hard to tell, and the truth is I didn’t have anything to compare them with.
They were somewhere between me and the age Cat was when we ran from the strangers and the coughing.
I’m too shocked to feel the relief of it yet. So I just stare at them as they stare back at us.
I’d never seen a man until today when I killed one. I’d never seen a dog outside a picture until this one. And I’ve never seen girls, not ever, not any. Except for Cat. And not like this, not so strange, so hurt, so silent… so pale.