He’d found the horn and was pressing with all his strength, terrifying himself with the sound but simply unable to take his hand off it. Then he was out of the car. He didn’t know how he’d done that. He only knew he was outside. The drive was hard through his slippers, the night was filled with the sound of torment and the creature from a nightmare was between him and the front door.
He realized he was screaming. Then he was running. Then he was screaming in his mother’s voice. And his dad’s voice. He was yelling ‘Tom, Tom, where are you?’ and she was chasing him, she was coming after him and run, it was all he could do, run, run, run.
And hide.
Everything was quiet. Cold. Wet. He had no idea where he was, but he knew he was somewhere dark and damp. He was lying down, but had no idea whether he’d fallen or just run out of breath. He was panting as if he’d never get enough air in his lungs ever again. Something hard was digging into his ribs but he didn’t dare move.
‘Tom!’
His dad’s voice. He was close by. Except… was it? Was it him?
‘Daddee.’ A soft voice, low and teasing, like a kid playing hide and seek. A voice that sounded – oh God – exactly like…
‘Tom, where are you?’ called his dad.
No, no, Dad, no. It’s not me!
‘Daddee…’
‘Really not funny, Tom. Come out now.’
‘Gareth, have you found him?’ His mother’s voice, from further away. She sounded as if she was crying. Was it her? It sounded like her, but…
Footsteps. Heavy footsteps close by. Too heavy to be…
Tom was on his feet. He was in the graveyard and his dad was ten feet away. He’d seen him, was coming towards him. Then Tom was being carried across the graveyard and suddenly there was his mum and they were inside and that horrible moaning noise was so loud in his head. He could see his mother’s face trying to talk to him but the noise was too loud. They were in the sitting room and his dad had put him down on one sofa and his mum was leaning over him, holding on to him and trying to say something, but he couldn’t hear because the sounds in his head were just too loud. Then she started to cry and Tom could see tears running down her face, but he couldn’t hear her crying because all he could hear, all he would ever hear again, was this horrible, horrible howling.
And then he realized who was howling.
‘Tom, angel, please stop crying, please stop.’
He had stopped. His mum just didn’t seem to have noticed. She was on the sofa too now and had pulled Tom on to her lap. He wasn’t much smaller than she was and he never sat on her knee any more, but he was so glad to be there with her arms wrapped tight around him. Then there were footsteps at the bottom of the stairs and his dad appeared in the doorway.
‘They’re fine,’ he said to Alice in a soft voice. ‘Both still asleep.’
Gareth crossed the room and knelt down on the rug in front of Tom. Then he reached up to stroke his son’s forehead.
‘What happened, matey?’ His dad asked, running his hand over Tom’s head.
He told them, of course. Why wouldn’t he? They were his parents, the people he trusted more than anyone else in the whole world. It hadn’t occurred to him that there are some things parents can’t bring themselves to believe.
32
11 October
‘All creatures of our God and King
Lift up your voice and with us sing.’
THE CHURCH WAS CLOSE TO FULL AND THE PEOPLE OF Heptonclough weren’t shy about using their voices. Harry scanned the congregation. Jenny Pickup was standing beside her husband, two rows from the front. Her face seemed composed.
One or two men in the congregation, on the other hand, looked as though they might be nursing hangovers, and he wondered how many of them had been involved in the festivities of the previous evening. Ritual slaughter on Saturday night; church the next morning. Ah well. He lived among farmers now.
He hadn’t spotted the Fletchers yet. Alice had assured him they would be well away from Heptonclough the night before but, even so, their house was just too close to the barn Dick Grimes used as the town abattoir. When he’d arrived an hour earlier, Harry had spent five minutes walking up and down the road. The street outside gets – how shall I put this? – a little messy, Tobias had said. Either it had rained in the night or the clean-up operation had been thorough. There was no trace of what had taken place the night before.
The hymn was drawing to an end. There was Gareth, halfway down on the left side of the aisle. Alice was by his side. One of her hands held a hymn book, the other was on Tom’s shoulder. Her eldest son seemed to be staring at his feet. None of them were singing.
‘I’ve been asked two questions rather frequently over the past three weeks,’ said Harry. He was in the pulpit and most faces were looking his way; always a good sign. ‘The first is: “ ’Ow’re you settlin’ in, Vicar?” The second: “You’re not a countryman, are you, lad?” ’
A few quiet titters around the church.
‘The answer to the first is: very well, thank you, everyone’s been very kind. To the second: no, I’m not. I’m not a countryman. But I’m starting to get it.’
In the crowded church, only three people were sitting in the front left-hand pew: Sinclair, his father Tobias and his elder daughter, Christiana. In the old days this would have been the Renshaw family pew. To all intents and purposes, it still was.
‘We can all get great comfort from the sense of living in an ordered universe,’ continued Harry. ‘Up here, among the hills, where the land plays such an important part in our lives and where the seasons govern so much of what we do, it’s perhaps easier to feel a sense of harmony with the world than we might do in our towns and cities.’
In the soft light of the church, Christiana Renshaw’s large, regular features looked almost beautiful, and very like those of her younger sister. She was looking not at Harry but at an apple in one of the window flower-arrangements. She was sitting several feet away from her grandfather.
‘There is a reason,’ said Harry, ‘why the passage I just read to you is so popular at harvest time, at christenings and weddings, even at funerals. At important times in our lives we like to be reminded that we are part of a great plan, that there is a purpose. And that everything has its place and its time. Our reading today, Ecclesiastes, chapter three, verses one to eight, conveys that better than just about any other biblical piece I can think of. ’
Gillian was sitting eight rows back, immediately behind the Fletcher family. Even from a distance, Harry could see that her hair had been washed and that she was wearing make-up.
‘So it’s rather strange then,’ he continued, ‘that the rest of Ecclesiastes should be the least understood book of the entire Bible.’
The service was almost over. The congregation was singing the offertory hymn, Dick and Selby Grimes, the church’s two sidesmen, were carrying round the collection plates and Harry was preparing for Holy Communion. He’d prepared everything the afternoon before, opening the wine and decanting it. All he needed to do now was pour the wine into the chalice. He took the stopper off the decanter, poured some wine into the cup and added water. He took the wafers of the host and placed them on the silver tray. He would carry them round and distribute them. Sinclair would follow him with the wine.