The Fearful (2 page)

Tim didn't get the chance to answer.

‘No, I would not.' The old lady simply refused to back down. ‘I would see it as doing my duty. And if “certain people” would also do theirs, then you would not be outside my house at the crack of dawn collecting roadkill, would you?'

Bill slowly shook his head, looking at the dead dog. ‘No,
Mrs Kirkwooding, I don't think we would.' He tugged on his beard, as was his habit, and sighed heavily. ‘I don't think we would.' Then to Tim: ‘I'll bring the van round. We'll have to carry him between us.'

Tim nodded, not exactly sure what to say. His father left and he stared down at the dead Marshal. Okay, at least this meant they had enough for the Feed and could go home now, so he guessed he was pleased. But Marshal certainly wasn't their usual kind of collection. And for some reason it made Tim feel peculiar inside.

‘The lake was one of his favourite places to be walked,' Mrs Kirkwooding was saying.

Tim nodded and murmured a kind of ‘um' sound. He had often seen the two of them. Maybe that was what was so strange about it.

The old lady smiled at him. ‘Maybe you'd like to include him in the Feed next Saturday? It would certainly be an honour on your special day. I'd like to feel I'd made a contribution to your Carving celebration.'

Tim stayed quiet; he wouldn't look at her.

‘I'm sure your school friends are all very envious.' She was standing at his shoulder, beaming down at both him and Marshal. ‘You're going to be the most important person in Moutonby.'

And with a bit of effort he managed to hold his tongue.

Ten minutes later they had Marshal covered by a blanket in the back of the van and were heading home. Bill had been right: it had taken the two of them to carry him. Tim
couldn't stop himself from turning round every so often and staring at the hump of the dirty, brown blanket. The tip of the dog's tail poked out at one side.

‘We'll get complaints about this,' his father said. ‘Somebody's bound to say something, just you wait. Somebody'll complain.'

‘Are you really going to use him as feed?'

‘I don't suppose I have much of a choice, really. Mrs Kirkwooding can be very specific when she wants to be.' He smiled, albeit briefly. ‘I'm just not looking forward to having to fend off the phone calls from outraged animal-lovers in the middle of the night. It'd be nice if these people would realize that we're doing it for their own good. I know it's unpleasant, but if it wasn't for our family, well . . .' He sighed, looking tired; looking like a man with the weight of the whole town on his shoulders. Which is exactly what he believed he was, of course.

Tim didn't say anything in reply, but he managed to turn round and face forward again.

They drove home in silence along the streets of the small northern town. People were just beginning to wake up; you could almost hear the hundreds of alarm clocks ringing. They'd be sitting down to breakfast and beginning to psych themselves up ready for another day at work or school. In the old days, or so Tim had been told, everyone would have waved or shouted greetings to his father as he passed by, just as they had done to his grandfather, and great-grandfather, and great-great-grandfather. And so on. Everybody in those days had been Fearful.

The Milmullen family history had been a proud one in Moutonby. As the Mourner his father would have been one of the most respected men in the town. People would have asked for his opinion and advice. But times had changed – or so Tim had been told – because nowadays his family were the butt of every joke these people told. Not that his father seemed to notice. He still followed the old traditions; he still talked about duty and commitment; he still held dearly to the legend. He spent two mornings a week scraping roadkill out of the gutter to protect these people. These people who no longer waved or shouted greetings, but laughed as soon as his back was turned.

Tim hated these people sometimes. And then other times . . .

He watched his father behind the wheel of the ancient, crappy van. He looked older than he should, with deep lines across his brow, and more than one bag under each eye. Recently he'd acquired a few silver threads in his beard. Tim had been told a hundred times or more by the other kids at school that his father was crazy. To Tim he just looked tired. And he knew that one day he would be just as tired, just as talked about.

Just as crazy?

The Milmullen family tradition says that the son will take over the father's role when he turns sixteen, which was exactly what his father had done before him. And his grandfather, and his great-grandfather. And so on.

Tim was sixteen in only eight days' time – next Saturday,
the 25
^th
. He'd have his Carving and then his future would quite literally be set in stone.

The road ran around the tip of the lake and the houses fell away. Bill swung the van off the road onto the muddy track that led across the waste ground towards the water's edge. The van bounced and groaned in the ruts. Their house stood alone on the shore and Tim had once asked his father why no one else had a house next to the lake. ‘Because the town likes to keep its distance,' had been the simple reply.

Built over the year 1699 to 1700 by Old William Milmullen, it no longer looked like the sentinel or ever-watchful guard it had originally been intended as. But neither did it look like the welcoming guesthouse it was meant to be now.

From the outside it was a tall, spiny, grey, angular building – remarkable for its ugliness. There was a patchy wall of conifers on one side, and a garage on the other – a very twentieth-century addition and pebble-dashed to prove it – but no lawn as such. There was the attempt at a gravel driveway with room enough for several guests' cars. No doorway faced the town, but an arched entrance opened out onto the lake shore (and Tim's mother's ‘garden', consisting of two much-fussed-over flowerbeds on either side). Above the door, carved into the weathered stone of the arch, were the words
MOURN HOME
.

A side door led from the kitchen onto the driveway. Bill pulled up beside it. ‘You go get changed and ready to help
with the breakfasts,' he said. ‘I'll be okay getting everything to the freezer.'

‘Don't you want me to give you a hand with Marshal?'

‘No, no; I'll manage.' He smiled at his son, but looked slightly distracted as he did so. ‘He's big enough to make two feeds, and I'd rather sort that out myself.'

Tim nodded, but couldn't help sneaking one last glance at the hump of the brown blanket (and the tip of the tail) as he climbed out of the van.

He headed straight upstairs. He could hear his mother and sister starting breakfast in the kitchen but decided he wanted to leave the job of talking about Marshal to his father as well.

His bedroom was at the top of the house, third floor up; it used to be the attic. He dumped his cagoule on the floor in front of his wardrobe and set to work getting rid of the four jumpers he'd stuffed himself inside.

The room was messy, but massive; he didn't have enough posters to cover the walls. The floor was wooden, which looked nice, but was way too cold first thing in the morning at this time of year. A scattering of threadbare rugs made a well-trodden path from his bed to the washbasin in the far corner. He had a bulky, almost-antique bookcase that wasn't as full as he'd like it to be, and an old dressing table that he used as a desk, with last week's homework still unfinished somewhere in among the chaos of papers scattered on top.

There was also a second-hand electric typewriter from when he'd wanted to be a journalist. Leaning against the
wall next to his wardrobe was an acoustic guitar because he'd wanted to learn how to play at one time. It was covered in dust and had two broken strings. There was a pile of photography books that needed to go back to the library because he'd never been able to save up enough to buy himself a camera. Over and over he'd tried to find something he could be that would take him far away.

The most remarkable feature of his room was the three huge windows looking east, south and west. Moutonby and Lake Mou are buried in the heart of Yorkshire, and Yorkshire is renowned for being the largest county in England. Which was why he couldn't see too much of it, even from up here. The imposing lake filled the valley and the view – to walk its circumference would take at least half a day and over nine miles worth of anybody's stamina.

Tim often stood at his windows. To the east he could see the deep, dark waters of Lake Mou. And to the south he could see the dark, deep waters of Lake Mou. While the view out of the west window was, well, pretty much the same really.

No, that's not strictly true. To the west the shore was uneven and ragged, with the pine woods tumbling over the hills and rushing all the way down to the water, and the slow blue of the river Hurry threading its way down between them towards the town and its lake. Pure picture-postcard scenery. South was just water – water for as far as he could see. But stretching out seventy metres or so from the shore was the gangplank feeding pier Great-Grandfather Thomas had built when he'd realized he was scared of boats.

For Tim, looking east had always been the most interesting view, because the WetFun water-sports club sat on the gentle curve of shoreline – just off the main road which would take you to Lancaster, Leeds, York, wherever you wanted to escape to. The club was an endless source of fascination for him. He enjoyed watching the windsurfers and water-skiers doing their stuff. The night-time bar was usually loud and lively.

He often wished he had a fourth window, one to look north with a view of the town. The water could be beautiful, especially on summer days with the million golden camera-flashes winking in the sun, but he sometimes thought it would be nice to look at something solid for once, something which wasn't constantly rippling and shifting and changing. It could make your eyes go funny if you stared at the lake for too long.

He freed himself from the last jumper and moved over to the south-facing window. The wind chopped and stirred the surface of the water, making waves. He certainly had the best view in town of Lake Mou; there was no denying that. And he'd watched the water every day of his life for as long as he could remember. So if anyone was going to see the creature that supposedly lived there, it'd be him, right?

Yet so far . . .

‘
HAVE THEY BEEN
told?'

Bill Milmullen couldn't stop a sneaky draught of cold air from squeezing past him into the kitchen. He hurried the door closed and set to removing his waterproofs and heavy boots.

Like the rest of Mourn Home the kitchen had been built with a stately scale of ambition. But, like the rest of Mourn Home, it hadn't aged well. The stone floor was dangerously worn and uneven, and required concentration when carrying stacked crockery. The slab-like wooden table in the centre could easily seat ten, so to be able to hold a conversation without shouting during meal times the Milmullens all huddled around one end. And while the oven was probably great at roasting wild boar, it could certainly be a little heavy-handed when it came to fish fingers.

Bill glanced over his shoulder at his wife and Tim, but nodded at Tim's twin sister, Jenny, in particular. ‘The students,' he said. ‘Has anyone told them?'

Jenny was carrying two plates full of Full English. She shrugged. ‘I haven't said anything.' She tried to catch Tim's eye but he was determined to keep out of it as long as he
could – because he knew what was coming. He concentrated on the washing-up like it meant life or death or something.

Bill turned to their mother. ‘Annie?'

‘Let them eat first, love.' She was cracking fresh eggs into the frying pan.

It was sometimes difficult to tell with Bill whether he was honestly having trouble with his hearing aid, or simply wasn't listening. ‘They'll be wanting to get out there as soon as they've had their breakfast.'

‘I'm not sure if it's the kind of thing your guests want to hear about while they're eating,' Anne said, raising her voice just a little.

Jenny stood in the middle of the kitchen looking from one parent to the other, still holding the two plates. Tim scrubbed harder than was necessary at the cereal bowls, adding yet another generous squirt of Fairy.

‘I don't want them going out there without being told,' Bill said.

His wife smiled at him reassuringly. ‘I'll catch them before they leave.'

Anne Milmullen was a beautiful woman. Tim knew this. It couldn't be denied when you compared her to other Moutonby mothers. She wasn't drab, or grey, or gloomy. She'd been born here, lived all her life in this small town, yet he and Jenny reckoned their dad was lucky to have met her. And although they were twins, it was Jenny who was growing up to look like her. Whereas Tim worried he was getting more and more like their father every day.

Bill took over from Anne at the stove so she could get her own breakfast. Jenny was still standing there with the students' meals, unsure whether to serve them just yet. ‘Mum?' she asked.

Anne nodded. ‘Don't let them get too cold.'

But Bill was insistent. ‘I think Tim should tell them.'

Even though Tim could have guessed this was going to happen he still flinched at the sound of his name. He buried himself up to his elbows in suds and pretended he hadn't heard. He did not,
not,
want to have to talk to the students about the Mourn. They'd laugh in his face.

Jenny had been halted mid-stride yet again and clicked her tongue with audible annoyance. Nobody spoke. Anne was pouring herself a cup of coffee; Bill was pushing the spitting, popping eggs around in the pan. So Jenny sighed as loudly as she could.

Anne glanced across at her husband before making up her own mind. ‘Come on then, Tim. Their stomachs will be thinking their throats have been cut.'