Sixteen Horses by Greg Buchanan (readict TXT) 📕

‘Why?’

‘Don’t know what it’s carrying. Wild animals, they will have all sorts.’ He sighed, looking down at her. ‘Come on, let’s get back into the house and have some tea.’

‘We haven’t fed the sheep yet . . .’

‘They’ll keep.’

Two days ago, Rebecca’s mother had asked her to strip. Rebecca had forgotten to take the dog in overnight. She kept forgetting things.

I found him cold, Becca.

Take off your top, Becca.

Take off your top.

‘Mum, please—’

Take off your trousers.

‘Mum, please don’t—’

It’s cold, isn’t it? This is how it felt for the dog.

‘I’m sorry—’

You can’t be sorry. You can’t be.

This is empathy.

Stand here.

Her mum had left to go into the byre.

A few moments later, water started spilling from the hose end, the whole thing still coiled on the floor.

The breeze bit into Rebecca, standing there without her top or her trousers.

She started to shake, and her mother didn’t come back.

The water trickled along the ground and began to creep towards her bare toes.

‘No no no no no—’ she began to murmur. ‘No no—’

She shook, her cry a little louder.

Still, her mother did not come back.

Across the road, an occasional car passed and did not stop. The fields rolled on and on, the clouds spreading darkness as they drifted, replaced by light just as soon.

The water touched her feet and she wet herself from the cold and wet, shaking, uncontrollably now.

Still, no one came to switch the hose off, no one came to point it at her, either. It just lay there, unspooling itself against the stone. Rebecca shivered, clutching her arms to her body, crying, unable to move, and she would think about that in the months to come, why she did not move, what she had allowed.

They had not spoken about it since. Rebecca didn’t even know if her father knew, if he’d agreed with it, if he’d been part of it.

Her mother would be nice to her for a while now.

She was always nice to her, after the worst of it.

After they found the baby deer in the barn, Rebecca’s mother made tea in the kitchen and they watched some boring Sunday documentary of the kind made solely for boring Sundays. Rebecca’s father told her to stay inside; he’d take care of the sheep today. She should rest. Looked like she was coming down with a cold. Her mother protested that she looked perfectly fine, but that was that. Rebecca stayed inside for a while, even though she didn’t want to.

Her mother took her own medicine, heart pills.

She wanted Rebecca to eat better, to exercise better, so she wouldn’t end up like her mum. The girl would later learn her mother’s condition was nothing to do with what she ate. Blood-clotting disorders didn’t work like that.

Later that day, Rebecca was sent to the byre to get some garden peas from the freezer.

The sheep were inside and outside, the sky starting to grow darker. There was no sign of the baby deer. The troughs were full of water. Sheep ate what they could as fast as they could, so the empty troughs were not surprising.

She returned to the freezer and took the peas.

Halfway back to the house she heard a scratching sound.

She turned around.

There was no one there. There was nothing there.

She kept going, until she heard it again, louder this time. Now she recognized the sound. It was a tool. Her father was in the workshop.

She went back, walking past plastic and metal. Buckets for making sandcastles. An old lawnmower, collapsed into three pieces. A woman’s suitcase.

She moved towards the open door.

Her father had his back to her. He was working at the table with his apron on, the whole surface draped in tarp. He hadn’t heard her arrival, or he didn’t care about her arrival. Either possibility might have been true.

He put his tool down. There was a body on the table in front of him. Four hoofed legs, two either side of her father, curling round him like a magnet. They dangled off the table, pink and moist.

Rebecca stepped closer.

‘Dad, what—’

He became very still, very quickly.

‘What are you doing?’ She couldn’t tell what it was.

‘Why are you out?’ He didn’t turn around.

‘Mum told me to get peas.’ She held the peas higher as proof, despite the fact he wasn’t looking. Her cheeks grew slightly red and she lowered the peas to her side.

Her eyes flicked to the creature on the table. It had been skinned.

‘Dad?’

He turned, and as he did, she saw it.

The neck of the creature ended in a stump.

There was nothing beyond that stump.

Her father had cut off the head. Of course he’d cut off the head.

It’s what you do when you kill a deer.

Day Three

CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

It was night. The door to the mud room was open when Rebecca got back. The police had left the farm. The horse heads were gone at last.

There were muddy boots, wax jackets, half-finished cat litter bags and hamster feed, and boxes for things broken or forgotten years ago. A leaflet from the council, a few unopened letters.

‘You left the front door open!’ she shouted, but her father did not answer.

She pulled her wellingtons off, hopping one leg onto the straw thatch mat as she did so. Through the dirty window she saw a truck zoom past. There were no street lights to mark its path.

Pulling off her outdoor fleece, the movement caused her pain. There was a rash all along her right arm, down to the back of her hand. It was a nasty thing, black scabs over portions of welted skin. She’d put cream on it earlier. She got inflammation sometimes, from lambing and milk-replacement powder. She once had a great big brown tick attach itself to her eyelid. A rash was nothing.

She walked straight to the bathroom and locked the door. She peeled off her dirty clothes and finally, stepping into the plastic tub, showered. Her whole body ached. She felt light-headed, too, but the water helped with that at