Sixteen Horses by Greg Buchanan (readict TXT) 📕

The moon came and went beneath the clouds.

‘Your gran and me, we’d be driving through town – we’d be coming back from a friend’s house, or the beach, sometimes . . .’ He paused. There were signs above the road. ‘It was cold and dark – colder than anywhere had ever been, in real life at least. And the wind, it blew down newsagent signs and restaurant menus and even dog walkers, it was just silly, really . . . I’d try to look at the sea, but there’d be nothing there, just noise. It was a town a little like this one, but bigger – in better condition, I guess.’

He paused, feeling an itch in his nose. He sneezed a great big sneeze.

‘Bless you,’ Simon said.

Alec smiled. Simon smiled too.

‘It’s so silly that we say “bless you”,’ Alec said.

‘Why do we even say it?’

‘We’ll look it up when we get back.’

He yawned.

‘What happened in the dream then? You just walk around with Gran?’

‘Well, in my dream . . . it was one of the only dreams I ever had more than once, like I said. We’d be in the car, and I’d see this black building . . . this ruin . . . and it looked at us from the hill. I couldn’t make out anything but for some letters – great big dirty white letters, the others all missing. It was tall. And I wasn’t myself.’

He scratched his head.

‘I’d see this building and I’d—’

Simon came to, something wet on his cheek. He touched his face, barely able to see, his sight blurred. Then he saw red. His hand had blood on it.

He struggled to straighten himself, one of his fingers crunching in pain.

‘What—’ he croaked, starting to focus on the trees in front of the car, illuminated only by the headlights.

They weren’t moving. He turned. The car was at an angle.

The driver-side door was open. His dad wasn’t there. The airbags had inflated in the front, engulfing the seats. He didn’t know the windscreen had been cracked. He didn’t see the blood.

Simon immediately shifted upright in his seat, eyes darting across the land before them. It was night. They were not on the road. He undid his belt and tried to open the door. Every bone hurt. His belt had worked, but he’d slammed forward nonetheless.

They’d hit something.

He swung the door open and staggered out.

There was a noise in the distance. Faint.

‘Dad?’

They had driven into a field, somewhere, somehow, tyre marks on the ground where they’d spun round. There was no road before him, just the mud the car tyres had churned up, just the filth and the trees and all those things an eye can’t see.

He stepped forward uncertainly, head bobbing as he lurched, adrenaline spiking through the groggy wake, the world moving up and down with his vision.

There was something wheezing on the ground in front of the car.

‘Dad, where . . .’

The noise, it was clearer now. It was sirens.

He moved closer to the body.

It had its back to him. It was long and brown, broken antlers springing back from its head as it coughed.

They’d hit a stag.

It was only a stag.

The sirens got louder. They were almost there. Ambulances. Something else, too.

His dad must have called them. Why wasn’t his dad answering?

What if he never answered?

Simon turned, looking behind him at the lights. The ambulances were coming down the road.

He looked back down at the stag. It could barely move, let alone stand. He bent down at its side and sat with it.

The ambulances drove past them.

There was silence, but for the croaking of the stag.

‘Ph—’ it coughed. ‘Ph—’

Simon blinked, his vision hazy with blood and tears. He’d not cried for so long.

He knelt in the dark. His father’s radio crackled out from the car.

All—

CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE

When Cooper woke up, it was still dark. There were no voices outside, neither in the hall nor in the street. The sea sighed through the thin window. She tried to make out the clock on the wall, but it was too dark. Her alarm hadn’t sounded yet. She felt terrible.

She reached for her phone, arm aching, and found it was ringing, silent, no sound, no vibration. There was an incoming call from an unknown number.

She’d been asleep for six hours. It was just past midnight.

She’d missed her alarm – she’d—

Shit. Shit shit shit, she’d been supposed to go to the vet’s, she—

She answered the phone, sitting up in the dark, her neck and back stiff.

‘Have you—’ There was static.

It took Cooper a while to recognize the voice, and even then, she was not sure.

‘Hello?’ Cooper cleared her throat.

There was static again.

Outside their buildings miles apart, the black sea shook, ancient stars caught in rippling reflections.

‘I have.’ Kate’s voice was thin on that line, caught close to laughter, to tears, to silence. ‘They screamed as he cut them.’

Dark cars drove down dark streets.

Through shadows that had once been marshlands, the long and level world stretched its teeth around them.

They danced through the darkness, through the void.

Red and blue lights, they began to dance.

They came towards the sea.

CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR

Kate’s speech grew slower, each sentence more slurred than the last.

She had taken something, or been given something. She wouldn’t answer Cooper’s questions.

‘Who did this to you? Who—’ Cooper’s voice was firm and deep across the noise, though she felt her heart beginning to race in her chest. She’d sat up, hands shaking. She remained calm on the line.

‘I drove us. I thought – I thought we were just, just taking them, I didn’t know what—’

Cooper struggled to switch on her bedside lamp.

‘He cut them in the back,’ Kate murmured. ‘I was driving. He cut them, and they screamed, they – they screamed, they could hardly move, I’d given them – I – I—’

The woman began to cough. Cooper looked frantically for her clothes, her keys.

‘Where are you, Kate?’

‘Crazy for Ewe. You – you liked my mug, you—’

‘Kate, what did you—’

‘He told me he’d tell everyone what I’d done,’ she whispered, the line croaky, full of noise. ‘I’d be struck