The Fearful (18 page)

‘What about everybody else?' Sarah asked.

‘I'm worried about my dad,' he said. ‘I'm scared of hurting him. I'm scared he'll never want to talk to me again.'

‘I don't just mean your dad. I mean Moutonby –
everybody.
What will happen to us if you're wrong?'

‘I don't—'

‘
You
don't believe in the Mourn, but
you
could be wrong, couldn't you? What happens if the legend is true? What if the Mourn attacks us?'

Tim didn't like this train of thought. ‘But it won't.'

‘How do you know?'

‘Because it's not true.'

‘How do you know? You're just guessing, aren't you?
Same as us, I suppose. But if you were wrong, it'd be like you're a murderer.'

This, Tim suddenly understood, was much how his father felt. And he sensed those ties that bound him to Mourn Home tighten. He couldn't leave, could he? He couldn't try to be anything else. If the Mourn was real, and it did kill, it would all be his fault for running away. Was this the responsibility his father had talked about?

‘I can't do anything,' he said. He stood up and paced the room. ‘I don't know what to do, but I can't do anything anyway.'

Sarah tried to shush him, still concerned with the night's main deceit.

With a great effort he forced himself to sit down again. He tried to make a joke. ‘Maybe I could train it to only eat people like Roddy Morgan, or Gully and Scott.'

Sarah didn't laugh.

He said, ‘I've been thinking how much it would piss those kinds of people off if the legend was true. At one point last night it made me wish it
was
true. I didn't tell you what happened, did I?' He told her about the previous night's events out on the feeding pier and couldn't stop himself from getting even more worked up and frustrated as he told her, as he remembered everything Roddy and the students had said. ‘Even I've got to admit that it would've been great to see the Mourn rise up out of the water and chomp a lump out of Gully.'

Sarah was thoughtful. ‘Why haven't you ever tried to do something like that?' She seemed embarrassed by Tim's
derisive snort. ‘What I mean is, you haven't looked for it properly. In Loch Ness they have actual scientific studies; they use radar and sonar and things. But nobody's ever tried to look for the Mourn. Not properly.'

He was going to tell her to forget it, but the words never came out. Because he suddenly realized she might be right. He was quiet, still, and Sarah had to ask if he was okay. But his mind was turning it over. Maybe this was exactly what he was meant to do. He wanted proof, didn't he?

‘Okay,' he said, standing up again. ‘Okay. Let's do it.'

Sarah was confused. ‘What?'

‘Let's go looking for it. We'll get the boat and row out to the middle of the lake with some feed and try to make it come to us.'

Sarah sounded horrified by the idea. ‘That's not what I meant.'

‘But that's all we've got.' The more he thought about it, the more it sounded like the only thing to do. It might be the only way he'd ever know for sure.

‘Tim, I—'

‘Come on, it's your idea.' He checked his watch. ‘It's gone midnight now; everybody else will be in bed. And you're right, I never have tried to look for it. I stand staring out my bedroom window expecting to see it pop up and wave at me, but I've never actually been out on the lake by myself, trying to make it come to me.'

‘You're being silly.'

‘It's your idea.'

‘It's the middle of the night.'

‘So? The middle of the night's when most monsters come out to play, isn't it?'

Five minutes later Sarah was wet and shivering in Mourn Home's garden. She poked her head in through the garage door, squinting in the dark for Tim. ‘It's a really bad idea. The water looks really rough. And the rain's getting really heavy.'

‘Really?' He pulled a random carrier bag out of the freezer and looked inside. A couple of starlings and a blackbird. That'd do.

‘What if your dad comes?' Sarah wanted to know.

Tim pushed past her, swung the garage door closed and fastened the padlock. ‘Let's hope he doesn't.' He pocketed the key.

‘But . . .'

For the second cold night in a row Tim walked along the feeding pier out above the waters of Lake Mou. The wind tugged at him, threw waves at the thick wooden legs to splash and soak his trainers. He strode quickly all the way to the end. Maybe it was because his head felt so stuffed and confused, maybe because he needed to relieve the pressure, but he had a tightening knot of devil-may-care attitude inside. He was going to row out into the middle of the lake and try to summon the Mourn, not caring what happened if by some miracle or other it came. He really was. Because his head was too stuffed and confused to care how it could all turn out. Not tonight. Not now.

‘What do you want me to do?' Sarah asked.

‘You can hold this.' Tim gave her the carrier bag. He knelt down and untied the
Bonnie Claire
as it bobbed on the restless water.

Sarah held the bag outstretched from her body at the very end of her arm, wrist, hand, fingers. ‘I don't want to go out on the lake,' she said.

‘I might need you to help me row.'

‘I can't row.'

‘So what about as a witness? If the Mourn comes I'll need someone to pinch me and tell me I'm not dreaming.' He couldn't help it, he knew he was being particularly callous, but he felt like he needed someone to share in his frustration. ‘Scared?' he asked.

Sarah looked away, then nodded. ‘Yes.'

The lake was trying to pull the
Bonnie Claire
out of his grip and he held tight to the painter; the rope was almost solid with icy water. He refused to say as much, but the strength of the wind and the waves was scaring him a little too, because he'd never rowed at night before, and certainly not in this kind of weather.

‘No one knows we're here,' Sarah said.

‘No way would my dad let me do this, so I'm not about to tell him.'

Sarah nodded. ‘That's what I mean.'

Tim looked at her, nonplussed. He had to keep a pretty good grip on the painter to stop the waves from dragging the rowing boat away into the dark. ‘Just get in, will you?'

‘What do we do if anything happens? What if we fall in? No one will know.'

Now Tim understood. He looked out at the lake, and couldn't see the hills or the woods on the other side. He couldn't see a single colourful mast of a sailing dinghy docked at WetFun. He couldn't even see the stars or the moon overhead because the cloud was so thick. For a brief moment his couldn't-care-less attitude slipped, because this close to the water, in the dark, it was easy to believe the cold, black lake went on for ever. Not across, but down. Fall in, go under, and you go down a long, long way.

Sarah was quick to pick up on his second or two of second thought. ‘It's a silly idea, Tim.'

He nodded. ‘I know.' But it wasn't going to stop him. He stared at the water chopping around the pier's thick stilts. He yanked on the painter sharply and the boat's wooden prow struck the edge of the pier. ‘It's
my
lake. If you believe in the legend then the Mourner and the Hundredwaters are linked, so it would never do anything to harm me.' He pulled hard on the rope again, as if the rowing boat was a disobedient dog.

Sarah was quiet.

‘I have to go.' She still didn't speak. ‘I'm going,' he said.

He pulled the
Bonnie Claire
as close as he could. He stepped off the sturdy, solid pier into the little rocking boat, immediately sitting down on the middle thwart to try to calm its sway. He reached up for the carrier bag with the dead birds.

Sarah passed it to him reluctantly. ‘I can't fetch your dad if anything happens. I'm not meant to be here.'

He pushed away from the pier and took up the oars. He rowed away.

He pulled hard on the oars, the waves seeming to fight against him. He heaved at them, digging them deep into the water. He was soon out of breath. He rowed without looking where he was going. The rain found a gap in his anorak collar and ran down the back of his neck, chilling the sweat that already slicked the length of his spine. He rowed far enough so that he lost sight of Sarah and the feeding pier in the darkness.

It was easy out here in the middle of the lake, in the cold, the dark, the rain, to feel slightly ridiculous. It would be easy to turn back and go to his warm bed, he knew that. But he wanted something to happen; he wanted to see the Mourn.
Proof
. He didn't know how far out he was when he finally stopped rowing and pulled the oars back in, leaving himself to drift. He had the carrier bag with the dead birds, but that only made him feel more ridiculous. Like feeding bread to ducks; like feeding dead things to a monster. He simply emptied the bag over the side.

‘Come on,' he whispered under his breath. ‘I want to see you.'

The wind was rough with him. He shivered through all his layers. The silence of the lake would have been complete if it hadn't been for the slapping of the waves or the rattle of the rain on the surface of the water.

‘Come on.' If he could only see it. ‘I can't believe in you unless I see you.'

He wondered who else had been out here looking for it. Surely he couldn't be the only Milmullen son ever to ask questions and go searching for some answers.

He let his mind drift back through the history he'd had drummed into him since he was small, back along the long line of Mourners. His father and his grandfather; Great-Grandfather Thomas, who'd built the feeding pier; Donald, the writer, and his older brother Henry, who'd died of TB before he could have any children of his own. Then John; Richard before him. James who'd insisted on swimming in the lake every day of his life, until he'd died at the ripe old age of seventy-four – on dry land. The first Thomas; Henry before him. Young William, and finally, at the very top of the tree, Old William back in 1699. Some of them might have very probably felt just like Tim did now, yet they'd all ended up as believers, they'd all continued the tradition. So why couldn't he?

Had they all been brave men, sensible men? Or had they all been crazy?

How many of them had seen it? Did it matter if they hadn't? Tim supposed possibly not – not back then anyway. In those days people seemed to live most of their lives by blind faith. But Tim knew he was a modern person, someone who lived in a world that relied on scientific evidence.

He peered into the darkness. But it was hard to see anything right now. The
Bonnie Claire
rode the lake uneasily.

It could be below him now, he thought. Emerging from
its watery depths, rising up from its bottomless pit. Old William wrote in his diary that its eyes were ‘cold and ancient'; he said that it moved ‘as swiftly through the water as a hunting bird can fly'. Maybe it was sliding through the black water now, coming closer, wanting to appraise its new keeper.

Imagine the creature down there. Imagine it circling beneath the little boat. Would he be able to see it coming in the dark? Would he be able to see it rise out of the water? Imagine it swimming closer.

An unusually large wave buffeted the boat and it shuddered beneath him. He froze, held his breath.

Had the creature really come to him? He didn't dare move. Was it there?

The rain was relentless; the wind threw it in his face, but he couldn't move. He waited, tense, everything strained to listen, peering into the darkness.

Is it really out there?

He couldn't see anything. All he could hear was the rain. He forced himself to keep still, breathing as shallowly as he could.

Another swelling wave.

The rowing boat lurched awkwardly to one side. His backside slipped on the damp thwart. His feet went from under him as he fell backwards, arms windmilling as he tried to grab hold of the sides. He smacked his back painfully against the wood and couldn't stop himself from crying out. And for the first time that night he was scared.

He was suddenly very aware of his noisy heart; he could
feel his blood pounding in his ears. He gripped the sides of the little boat as it shivered beneath him.

If he fell in . . . Would he be able to climb back into the boat if he fell in the lake? Or would the Mourn . . .? Would it attack him?

He couldn't see anything in the dark. He didn't move, stayed crouched low as the
Bonnie Claire
rocked. The waves buffeted him this way, then that.

The rain fell heavier, soaking him. The wind was getting stronger. That was all. Just the wind. Nothing else. A sudden wave threatened to spill him. He yelped, clung on.

No. It's here,
he insisted. The Mourn was below him, wanting to see him. Wanting him to see it.

He was on his feet, not caring about the way the boat pitched and swayed. He had to see it. He was searching the dark water for something just below the surface.

‘Where are you?' he shouted into the rain. ‘I want to see you. Where are you? Make me believe in you!' He couldn't see well enough; the wind and rain fought against him. ‘
Where are you?
'

He turned round, twisting back and forth, peering, searching the darkness; no longer frightened of upsetting the boat, just desperate. He had to see it. The boat rocked treacherously beneath him, his trainers felt greasy on the damp wood, but he didn't care. If it was there then why didn't it show itself?

‘Come on!'

He snatched up an oar and beat at the water, smacking the wooden blade down harder and harder.

‘Where are you? Where are you?'

He tried to hurt the water with the oar – smacking it down, smacking it down. The wind tugged at his anorak, whipped his hair. He beat at the waves.