I’d fallen into a rhythm, I was hypnotised by it, so I almost missed his sudden plunge into the trees. I had to break into a run again. Up the grass bank, across the road and down the bank on the other side, keeping my eyes locked on the place where he had been. I parted low branches, ducked into the undergrowth. The trees closed over me.
In the forest everything was black and silver. Mostly black, though. I stood still, just inside it, listening. I heard the crack of dead wood, bracken hissing. It had to be him. I began to move forwards, following the noise. Something caught on my cheek and tore the skin.
At last I saw a path.
It was quiet now, except for my own feet in the leaves. I walked on, further into the forest. It was quiet, but not peaceful. Once I saw a man’s head float between two trees. Mazey? But it was too high off the ground, even for him. It must have been a bird. Or a piece of pale bark. Or just the fall of moonlight.
All of a sudden, there was a thrashing in the undergrowth ahead of me and to my right. It sounded like horses being ridden in a stream. It sounded wet. A scream lifted out of the darkness. One high note held for three or four seconds. Then it cut out. Darkness poured back into the space it left. Darkness pushing at me, almost too thick to breathe. The scream wasn’t human. But it was pain. It was definitely pain. I gripped the rifle hard. Shock had dropped me into a kind of crouch and I was panting.
I forced myself to go on again, along the path. Towards the scream. I kept low and I whispered to myself, it didn’t matter what, just words, any words. I felt the ground with my foot each time I took a step. I thought of a mother rolling up her sleeve and dipping her elbow in a tub of water, testing it for temperature. Not my mother, though. Someone else’s. And all the time I scanned the forest that massed in front of me. Trees jumped sideways. Moonlight was fog, then snow, then water. Darkness bellied like a black sail with the wind behind it.
Then I saw him.
He was below me. There was a glade, a shallow bowl among the trees. A steep bank rose on the far side of it, casting a shadow. The earth had eroded there, and I could see a tangle of exposed roots. The path I was on circled the edge of the glade, keeping some distance above it.
I stood still, one hand braced against a tree. He was sitting on his haunches with his back to me and, just for a moment, I had the impression that he was washing clothes. I took two silent steps and stopped beside another, larger tree. I could see one side of his face now — half of it, anyway: an ear, part of his cheek, the tip of his nose. In the moonlight his skin shone like bone. He was crouched over something. An animal of some kind. Not a dog or a cat. Larger than that. A deer, perhaps. He seemed to have his hands inside it. His arms were black to the elbow. Though in daylight, I realised, they wouldn’t be black. They’d be red.
That scream, it must have been the animal.
WHO COULD DO SUCH A THING?
Whether I made a noise as I stood there, or whether he just sensed my presence, I couldn’t be sure, but suddenly he was looking over his shoulder, with his head angled in my direction. He didn’t move for at least a minute. I knew he was looking at me, but I didn’t think he knew who I was; I didn’t think he recognised me. And yet I found I couldn’t move. I was hardly even breathing.
At last he stood up. He began to walk towards me. He didn’t hurry, though. His arms didn’t swing at all, or even bend; they just hung at his sides like dead weights. He came up out of the glade in one straight line and for the first time in minutes I was aware of the wind moving in the trees above my head.
He stopped in front of me. I noticed something I’d never noticed before. The colour of his eyes wasn’t a colour at all, not even grey. It was just empty, drained. Or perhaps this was another trick, something moonlight did.
He was staring at me.
I could see dark patches on his clothes and his arms. I could smell the blood. I wasn’t frightened of him, and yet I knew I had to speak first.
‘It’s very late.’
I used my strictest voice with him.
‘You should be in bed.’
His face didn’t alter.
‘No baby,’ he said.
He had looked in the hotel. He had looked in his grandfather’s house as well. He had looked high and low — behind doors, under beds, in drawers. Then, one night, his mother had explained where babies came from. A hand placed over her stomach. In here. And if they came from there, they could go back again. They could hide in there. And so he began to look for the baby in living things. All those dogs and chickens slaughtered and torn open. He was looking for Nina, that was all. He wouldn’t rest until he found her.
I lifted the rifle until it was pointing at his head. He didn’t move. Moonlight down one side of his face, his eyes still searching mine. Pull the trigger. Pull it. I felt my finger tighten. Because I wasn’t sure what else I could do. There was the institution, of course. I could go to Kroner in his wheelchair and I could say, ‘You were right about the boy.’ Kroner. The tension in my finger eased. I lowered the rifle, looked at it. It was Kroner’s rifle. There was his name, etched into the stock. And he was channelling his thoughts through it. I couldn’t believe I’d listened. His mind like cardboard when it’s been rained on. His brain all soggy. And I had listened.
On the way back to the hotel, I threw the rifle into the bushes. If we were broken into, I’d use a hammer to defend myself. A kitchen knife. The broom.
At seven-thirty the next morning I went into Kroner’s room and drew the curtains. He was awake. One eye clear and blinking, the other sloppy.
I put my face close to his. ‘You think that’s going to work, do you? You really think that’s going to work?’
His mouth fell sideways like an ice-cream melting. ‘Dssh —’
‘I suppose you were going to make his death look like an accident,’ I said, ‘or was it suicide you were thinking of?’
‘— Nnnnsshh — Nnnnsshh —’
I picked his glass up from the bedside table and held it above his face. I tilted it very slowly until the water trickled down the outside of the glass, off the end and down, in one thin stream, on to his forehead, into his eyes.
‘Now look what you made me do,’ I said.
He was moving his head from side to side. Some of the water had gathered in the worry lines. Interesting. Some of it had slid into his ears. I reached for a cloth and dabbed his face with it. Then I sat down on the edge of the bed.
‘I’m going to tell you something about accidents.’ I stared at the ceiling for a moment, as if I didn’t know quite where to begin. But I did, of course. I knew exactly. ‘You remember my brother and his wife? They had that terrible accident. The one where their truck went off the road and down that steep slope and they both died —’
He was making his usual soggy sounds. I could tell he was listening, though. His one good eye was fixed on me.
‘It wasn’t an accident at all,’ I said. ‘I killed them.’
I watched the eye move round in its socket, trying to escape. There was nowhere for it to go.
‘I borrowed one of my father’s hacksaws and cut through a track-rod. I only sawed into it a bit. I didn’t have much time, you see.’ I smiled to myself. ‘It’s the kind of thing that might not have worked. Not when I wanted it to, anyway.’ I paused again. ‘I was lucky, I suppose.’
I looked down at him once more.
‘Yes, that’s right, it was me,’ I said when I saw the look in his eye. ‘I did it.’
Outside, it was bright and cool. When I drove into the clearing with Mazey, my father was sitting on the back porch cleaning his rifle. This didn’t strike me as a coincidence at all. It was more like part of what had happened. The fever lifts. You return to normal. Something’s run its course. In daylight the idea of shooting Mazey seemed far-fetched and desperate, the light wind of someone else’s madness blowing through my head.