Let's Kill Uncle (20 page)

The warmth of the room faded and was ousted suddenly by a chill, nippy and unseasonable. He looked around in wonder; he was no longer in his father’s cottage, but in a strange room. A very strange room. It was unfurnished, the floor was of broad planks and the ceiling oppressively low for a man of his height, but standing up he realised he was not as tall as he had thought, for there was still ample headspace. Yes, there was no doubt about it, he was shorter. As his eyes swept the room, he knew with certainty that something was not right, but observant as he was he could not find the missing detail.

He walked to the lone window, and found himself staring out over an old city, familiar and yet unfamiliar. The streets were narrow and twisting, most of the houses were low, but the landscape was periodically broken by soaring spires and towers. A foot of snow on the streets logically accounted for the chilly air.

Then, from some distant quarter of the city, he heard the faint, long-drawn call of the town crier, ‘Beware, beware, there are wolves in the streets.’

Staring into the street below him, he saw a lone citizen running. The man looked up and waved as if he knew Albert, then he disappeared. Feeling lost and frightened, Albert leaned his head against the window, only to find it was glassless and he nearly lost his balance.

As he clutched the sill for support, he heard the first howls of the wolves. They were approaching and, although he was frightened, he was fascinated.

The pack flashed into sight, yelping, snarling and obviously hungry, driven from some winter retreat to forage in the city. Their coats were glossy, their bodies well padded with muscle, and their saffron eyes gleamed in the winter dusk.

They were racing toward the house that sheltered Albert, when the leader suddenly wheeled and disappeared down a side lane, to be followed by the rest of the pack. All but one.

Albert heard a scream, the scream of a man beset by wolves, and he knew it was the man who had waved to him.

One wolf had not followed the pack. It stood, staring straight at Albert, fixing him with its blazing eyes. Albert stepped back, and only just in time, for the wolf suddenly hurled itself at the house, trying to leap high enough to gain a foothold on the window.

Horrified, he saw the snarling face appear, with the hairy paws hooked over the sill, and he heard the beast’s hind feet scrabbling against the side of the house as it sought a purchase to vault into the room.

Hastily looking for a means of escape, Albert now knew what was not right about this room. It had no door.

He began to tremble, but sank back with a sigh when he saw the wolf fall into the street.

He sighed too soon, for once more he saw that vision at the window, and this time he could have sworn that the wolf,
with an unalterable prescience, had left its pack to single him out.

Again the wolf lost its foothold and slid back. Rushing to the window, Albert knew that his only chance was to stand guard and cast the animal down before it could gain entry.

Except for their evilness, the blazing eyes were without expression, and the lips drew back over a set of teeth that made the snow in the streets seem grey.

Some ancient instinct warned Albert that a creature of unbelievable malignancy and almost human awareness was weighing him, holding him spellbound as it prepared to spring again.

Dream or no dream, he had had enough, and he willed himself awake.

The room was black and he was unable to orient himself. He could not decide which end of the bed he was lying on or where the door leading to the kitchen was. It was imperative that there be light, and he stumbled about blindly until he found the open doorway.

Once in the kitchen he got his bearings and, with shaking hands, lit the oil lamp. The familiar shadows, the homely furniture reassured him, and with a sigh he sank to a chair, breathing deeply. After a few minutes he rose, lit the now cold kitchen range and put the kettle on for tea.

Sighing again, he sank back in his chair.

It was only a dream. It was not possible. His hands trembled as he lit a cigarette.

No, that was not the answer. The other thing, which he still dreamed of, had not been possible either, or so he had thought.

But it had been because he had seen it, and if that were possible it was impossible not to believe that one lived in a generation of monsters. Perhaps they weren’t new to this age. Perhaps they had always existed, elementals who formed basis for folktales and medieval superstitions. But how could one reconcile them with a civilisation of television and electronics?

Nevertheless, the six million had gone into cushions, lamps and crematoriums, proof that demons could roam the earth, and Albert had no intention of forgetting them.

Dawn found Albert standing in the doorway watching a fine sunrise. The ocean already had the glassy, still look which forecasts a long hot day, while birds carolled quarrelsomely and the sharp odour of rotting kelp and seaweed wafted from the beach.

It was reassuring to know the sun could be counted on to rise regularly, that nature’s laws were immutable, despite night fantasies to the contrary. The fear seeped away and he was again logical Albert, carefully assessing an unusual nightmare.

That day in court had been more unnerving than he was willing to admit. Then, having been in a state of complete exhaustion, so much so that he had not even bothered to take off his wet bathing trunks, he had forgotten to close the front door. When the kitchen fire died out and the cool night breezes from the ocean struck his half-nude body, the stage had been set for a winter scene. The undoubted fright he had received by foolishly swimming too far, coupled with his physical state, was enough to account for the rest.

Why, even the glassless window of that dream-room made sense. He had repaired Lady Syddyns’s greenhouse, and the incident, though minor, still lurked in his subconscious mind.

The wolf with the blazing subhuman eyes was merely the phantom of a shocked, overtired brain.

He felt much better when he had all the pieces fitted into such a reasonable pattern, and he dismissed the subject from his mind.

A
T MIDNIGHT
a strangely worried Christie awoke. She lay in her little troll-ridden bed sighing with the big fir tree and grieving for poor Desmond, who was so soon to join the angels.

When Barnaby called in the morning, Christie was very quiet throughout breakfast and all the way to the graveyard.

They worked diligently, for they no longer resented their enforced labour. Indeed, it gave a purpose and orderliness to their lives which they found increasingly necessary.

The pattern of nature had become unbalanced, and the children felt it. Uncle’s presence was proof enough.

In its primeval state, forests covered the Island down to the beaches. Man had come, logged, cleared the land and planted crops. Only a vestige of the once mighty forest remained, and a cigarette, dropped by a careless smoker had, two years before, reduced it even further.

One half of the mountain was a desert of grey trees, acre after acre of a quenched inferno. The blaze had been so quick
and so intense that the trees were not charred. They had died almost instantly, and now stood with their barkless limbs entreating the sky for mercy, silver skeletons on a silent cratered landscape. And the silence was not the hushed cathedral silence of the living forest, but rather an eerie lunar stillness, as though the air itself could no longer carry sound. Apart from the few fireweeds and ragged foxgloves it supported, the very earth of the ravaged mountainside seemed dead.

In clearing the land, man had killed off nature’s euthanatic surgeons, the predators. The deer, overbreeding, were stunted and weak, so that even the children sensed in the appearance of One-ear something logical and necessary.

After clearing the land, man had abandoned it, and soon the bush, the wild bush, blackberry, salmonberry, salal and the useless alder, crept like a gigantic serpent across the fields, strangling out all other life; and the seedlings, borne by the winds to replace the dead forest, were smothered.

Their work done, Christie sat on Sir Adrian’s tombstone, her chin in her hands and her eyes pensive.

‘What’s the matter?’ asked Barnaby, sitting beside her.

‘I don’t know. Sometimes it hardly seems worthwhile. By the time you get one end done, the weeds are nearly out of hand at the other end.’

Barnaby chewed a piece of grass, then turned to her.

‘That’s not what I meant. What’s really the matter?’

Christie poked at the grass with a piece of twig and said nothing.

‘Well, what is it?’

She sighed and said, ‘We can’t do it.’

‘Can’t do what?’

‘Blame Desmond.’

Barnaby’s face darkened.

‘It was your idea. It’s him or us. Why can’t we?’

Christie opened her mouth, closed it, and said nothing.

‘Why not?’ Barnaby persisted.

She looked sad, for the vision of the tree, the rope and poor Desmond refused to budge.

‘My mother wouldn’t like it,’ she said.

Barnaby jumped to his feet. His eyes were cold and he kicked Sir Adrian’s tombstone.

‘That’s not fair! It was your idea!’

Christie sighed again.

‘Listen,’ she said, ‘it would be like we hanged old Shep.’

‘Who wants to hang old Shep? What are you talking about? I like old Shep.’

Christie nodded.

He sat down again, and this time it was he who had his chin on his hands.

‘Yes,’ he said after a long pause, ‘I see what you mean. I like Desmond too.’

It was unthinkable. Poor Desmond must and would be spared. They were distressingly sane; remorse, which clever Uncle Sylvester could never feel, dinned in their ears with the persistence of an unanswered telephone.

Barnaby rose, kicked Sir Adrian once more and leaned his cheek on the headstone.

‘Gee!’ he said, ‘why does everything always have to go wrong for me?’

Christie patted his shoulder.

‘Nevermind. We’ll think of something else.’

They went over to poor Desmond’s and sighed at the sight of that beautiful, useless gun. Sadly they wandered down to the store.

‘There must be some way out,’ said Barnaby. ‘We can’t always have such rotten luck.’

They sought refuge from the world under the counter of the store, where they sat eating licorice whips and thinking.

When Christie had finished hers she licked her fingertips fastidiously and turned her sticky face to Barnaby.

‘What about One-ear? Couldn’t we take him to Uncle’s cottage some night and have him kill Uncle? I’ll bet he could do it easily.’

Yes, one blow of that mighty paw could break the neck of a stag.

‘But suppose he doesn’t want to?’

‘He’ll have to want to. We’ll make him want to.’

‘How?’

Christie thought for a long while.

‘I don’t know,’ she said.

Barnaby stared into space, chewing the last of his candy.

‘You know,’ he said, wiping a trickle of black saliva from the corner of his mouth, ‘I’ve got an idea. They train dogs for hunting and killing. Maybe we could train One-ear. The last school I was at, there was a boy that had a German shepherd dog. He trained it so it would sit and run and fetch, and it only bit people he told it to. We’ll teach Oneear to be like that.’

It seemed like a sound idea to Christie and she nodded encouragement.

They were interrupted by Mr Brooks who came in bearing a sixteen-pound salmon he had just caught.

‘Barnaby?’

Barnaby came out from behind the counter, followed by Christie.

‘Golly, isn’t that a beauty,’ said Barnaby, reaching out and stroking the fish.

‘I’m going to cut some steaks off it for us. Do you think you could carry the rest over to Mrs Nielsen for canning? It won’t keep in this heat.’

‘All right,’ said Barnaby.

Mr Brooks took the salmon onto the porch, cut the steaks from it and wrapped the rest in newspaper.

‘Are you sure it isn’t too heavy? It must weigh a good twelve pounds still.’

No, no it wasn’t too heavy. They could manage. Yes, they knew it wouldn’t keep in the heat and they would go straight to Auntie’s with it.

Like two little Red Ridinghoods and carrying the big fish wrapped in newspaper, they promptly made a detour to look for One-ear.

They took a short-cut through the silent, dead forest. It filled them with awe.

Barnaby, carrying the fish, began lagging behind.

‘It
is
heavy,’ he finally admitted.

‘I’ll carry one end, and you take the other,’ offered Christie.

But that didn’t work. The damp paper fell off, making it even more difficult to hang onto the slippery fish.

If they had a knife, they could cut it in two and each take a half, suggested Christie, but of course they didn’t have a knife, so they struggled on, becoming wearier each step.

They did not find One-ear, instead, he found them. He had been strolling absently through the corpse-like trees when he had caught wind of the salmon.

He stepped smartly along behind them and surprised them at the edge of the forest, where, innocent and unconcerned, he led them to his bower.