Free Home Boys by Bernard Beckett Page A

show was the broad of his back, and the rolls of fat at his neck expanding and compressing as he nodded his agreement and slowly backed away.
    Someone else was there too. He stepped into view from behind the truck, straightening as if he might have been stooped down, inspecting something. Dressed for inspection too, with a thick blue uniform buttoned silver at the breast, and the peaked black hat of a policeman. His face didn’t belong to that world, and its expression showed he knew it. Shaved too close, protected too well against the sun, mouth too tight and careful to survive in a place like this. He had a notebook, and obviously wanted to say something, but first Mrs Sowby would have to stop, and in dreams there’s no need to draw breath.
    Then there was a fourth, and silence came so that they all, Colin and players too, looked his way. He was grey, the not-quite-colour between everything and nothing. Not a person and not a ghost. Not ghoulish, not dripping flesh or rotting on the bone, just grey and empty, and terrible for it. Grey as if burnt, the crust turned lightly to soot, a breath away from nothingness. He stood among them and they were silent, and the sight of him filled Colin with such fear that he didn’t dare breathe, or wake.
    The apparition opened his mouth as if to speak and Colin saw the greyness covered everything; lips, tongue, teeth andthe darkness beyond. Colin jumped. Away from the image, away from the dream, away from Dougal who had been holding him. He sat, wide awake in the darkness, the shapes of the bush distinguishable only by the depth of their blackness.
    ‘You can hear it too can’t you?’ Dougal’s voice, sitting up now, careful and quiet and filled with fear.
    ‘Hear what?’
    ‘What made you sit up just then?’
    ‘It was just a dream.’
    ‘You weren’t dreaming. He’s here. He’s followed us.’
    ‘Who’s followed us?’
    ‘Ssh.’ Colin felt Dougal’s hand on his shoulder, a warning at first, but it didn’t move. Colin listened to the sounds of the bush, a breeze working its way through the leaves, a small animal somewhere, possum, stumbling through the undergrowth, a branch letting go and falling to the ground. He strained his eyes to see through the blackness, but the only shapes to form were the shapes of his imagination, grey and dangerous.
    ‘Why do we have to be quiet?’
    ‘He’s listening,’ Dougal whispered, and Colin wanted to tell him to stop, because the darkness and the silence and Dougal’s grip, still tight on his shoulder, were frightening him.
    ‘If you don’t tell me who he is I’m going to scream you know, so loud the whole damned valley will be able to find us.’
    ‘Do it and I’ll slit your throat.’
    ‘Like you slit that sheep,’ Colin replied.
    ‘You should have held it still.’
    ‘You were dreaming, that’s all,’ Colin told him. ‘Same as I was.’
    ‘It weren’t no dream. I saw him.’
    ‘It’s too dark to see your own hand.’
    ‘There’s things you don’t know,’ Dougal told him.
    ‘So is he still here?’
    ‘I don’t think so. Here, listen, let’s be quiet for a bit.’
    They lay down again, side by side, the sheepskin stretched across them. Colin listened but the only new sound was the beating of Dougal’s heart, as hard and insistent as his own.
    ‘I think it’s all right. I think he’s gone,’ Dougal said, and Colin didn’t answer because it was like he’d been telling it to himself.
    ‘I’ll stay awake now, I think,’ Dougal said a little later. ‘To be safe. You can have your turn tomorrow.’
    ‘Dougal?’
    ‘What?’
    ‘What did he look like?’
    ‘I didn’t see him properly.’
    ‘It could have been a dream you know,’ Colin said. ‘You see things sometimes when you’re dreaming. Things that are real.’
    ‘What do you mean?’
    ‘Well,’ Colin paused. He didn’t know if this was the sort of thing people told each other, but then there wasn’t much he did know, in this strange