'Where's the la-la?' she said. Damn stupid phrase; mother-in-law's euphemism.
Maggie chipped in. She was better with Debbie in these moods than Ron. 'You can go behind the hedge,' she said. Debbie looked horrified. Ron exchanged a half-smile with Ian. The boy had a put-upon look on his face. Grimacing, he went back to his dog-eared comic.
'Hurry up, can't you?' he muttered. 'Then we can go somewhere proper.'
Somewhere proper, thought Ron. He means a town. He's a city kid: its going to take a while to convince him that a hill with a view is somewhere proper. Debbie was still being difficult.
'I can't go here Mummy - '
'Why not?'
'Somebody might see me.'
'Nobody's going to see you darling,’ Ron reassured her. 'Now do as your Mummy says.' He turned to Maggie, 'Go with her, love.'
Maggie wasn't budging. 'She's OK.'
'She can't climb over the gate on her own.' 'Well you go, then.' Ron was determined not to argue; he forced a smile. 'Come on,' he said.
Debbie got out of the car and Ron helped her over the iron gate into the field beyond. It was already harvested. It smelt
... earthy. 'Don't look,' she admonished him, wide-eyed, 'you mustn't look.'
She was already a manipulator, at the ripe old age of nine. She could play him better than the piano she was taking lessons on. He knew it, and so did she. He smiled at her and closed his eyes. 'All right. See? I've got my eyes closed. Now hurry up,
Debbie. Please.'
'Promise you won't peek.'
'I won't peek'. My God, he thought, she's certainly making a production number out of this. 'Hurry up.'
He glanced back towards the car. Ian was sitting in the back, still reading, engrossed in some cheap heroics, his face set as he stared into the adventure. The boy was so serious: the occasional half-smile was all Ron could ever win from him. It wasn't a put-on, it wasn't a fake air of mystery. He seemed content to leave all the performing to his sister.
Behind the hedge Debbie pulled down her Sunday knickers and squatted, but after all the fuss her pee wouldn't come. She concentrated but that just made it worse.
Ron looked up the field towards the horizon. There were gulls up there, squabbling over a tit-bit. He watched them awhile, impatience growing.
'Come on love,' he said.
He looked back at the car, and Ian was watching him now, his face slack with boredom; or something like it. Was there something else there: a deep resignation? Ron thought. The boy looked back to his comic book 'Utopia' without acknowledging his father's gaze.
Then Debbie screamed: an ear-piercing shriek.
'Christ!' Ron was clambering over the gate in an instant, and Maggie wasn't far behind him.
'Debbie!'
Ron found her standing against the hedge, staring at the ground, blubbering, face red. 'What's wrong, for God's sake?'
She was yabbering incoherently. Ron followed her eye.
'What's happened?' Maggie was having difficulty getting over the gate.
'It's all right... it's all right.'
There was a dead mole almost buried in the tangle at the edge of the field, its eyes pecked out, its rotting hide crawling with flies.
'Oh God, Ron.' Maggie looked at him accusingly, as though he'd put the damn thing there with malice aforethought.
'It's all right, sweetheart,' she said, elbowing past her husband and wrapping Debbie up in her arms.
Her sobs quietened a bit. City kids, thought Ron. They're going to have to get used to that sort of thing if they're going to live in the country. No road-sweepers here to brush up the run-over cats every morning. Maggie was rocking her, and the worst of the tears were apparently over.
'She'll be all right,' Ron said.
'Of course she will, won't you, darling?' Maggie helped her pull up her knickers. She was still snivelling, her need for privacy forgotten in her unhappiness.
In the back of the car Ian listened to his sister's caterwauling and tried to concentrate on his comic. Anything for attention, he thought. Well, she's welcome.
Suddenly, it went dark.
He looked up from the page, his heart loud. At his shoulder, six inches away from him, something stooped to peer into the car, its face like Hell. He couldn't scream, his tongue refused to move. All he could do was flood the seat and kick uselessly as the long, scarred arms reached through the window towards him. The nails of the beast gouged his ankles, tore his sock. One of his new shoes fell off in the struggle. Now it had his foot and he was being dragged across the wet seat towards the window. He found his voice. Not quite to voice, it was a pathetic, a silly-sounding voice, not the equal of the mortal terror he felt. And all too late anyway; it was dragging his legs through the window, and his bottom was almost through now. He looked through the back window as it hauled his torso into the open air and in a dream he saw Daddy at the gate, his face looking so, so ridiculous. He was climbing the gate, coming to help, coming to save him but he was far too slow. Ian knew he was beyond salvation from the beginning, because he'd died this way in his sleep on a hundred occasions and Daddy never got there in time. The mouth was wider even than he'd dreamed it, a hole which he was being delivered into, head first. It smelt like the dustbins at the back of the school canteen, times a million. He was sick down its throat, as it bit the top of his head off.
Ron had never screamed in his life. The scream had always belonged to the other sex, until that instant. Then, watching the monster stand up and close its jaws around his son's head, there was no sound appropriate but a scream.
Rawhead heard the cry, and turned, without a trace of fear on his face, to look at the source. Their eyes met. The King's glance penetrated Milton like a spike, freezing him to the road and to the marrow. It was Maggie who broke its hold, her voice a dirge.
'Oh ... please ... no.'
Ron shook Rawhead's look from his head, and started towards the car, towards his son. But the hesitation had given Rawhead a moment's grace he scarcely needed anyway, and he was already away, his catch clamped between his jaws, spilling out to right and left. The breeze carried motes of lan's blood back down the road towards Ron; he felt them spot his face in a gentle shower.
Declan stood in the chancel of St Peter's and listened for the hum. It was still there. Sooner or later he'd have to go to the source of that sound and destroy it, even if it meant, as it well might, his own death. His new master would demand it. But that was par for the course; and the thought of death didn't distress him; far from it. In the last few days he'd realised ambitions that he'd nurtured (unspoken, even unthought) for years.
Looking up at the black bulk of the monster as it rained piss on him he'd found the purest joy. If that experience, which would once have disgusted him, could be so consummate, what might death be like? rarer still. And if he could contrive to die by Rawhead's hand, by that wide hand that smelt so rank, wouldn't that be the rarest of the rare?
He looked up at the altar, and at the remains of the fire the police had extinguished. They'd searched for him after Coot's death, but he had a dozen hiding places they would never find, and they'd soon given up. Bigger fish to fry. He collected a fresh armful of Songs of Praise and threw them down amongst the damp ashes. The candlesticks were warped, but still recognisable. The cross had disappeared, either shrivelled away or removed by some light-fingered officer of the law. He tore a few handfuls of hymns from the books, and lit a match. The old songs caught easily.
Ron Milton was tasting tears, and it was a taste he'd forgotten. It was many years since he'd wept, especially in front of other males. But he didn't care any longer: these bastard policemen weren't human anyway. They just looked at him while he poured out his story, and nodded like idiots.