Sixteen Horses by Greg Buchanan (readict TXT) 📕

had said, so long ago.

That this – all this – wasn’t about the animals.

It was about the moment of discovery.

Of witnessing the pain in the face of the owner.

You could have saved him.

The smile is yours.

It was about him, Alec knew, somehow, some way.

This is what Cooper wasn’t saying, after all – this is what no one was saying.

Why else would they ask him the things they had asked?

Why else would they look at him the way they’d looked?

There was more than just the phone number: there was something else that linked Alec to these strange events; not enough to condemn him completely, but enough.

He sat in the dark and took his phone.

He logged into his profile and removed all of his friends, setting the account to private.

He went to Grace’s profile and added her as a friend.

If a game was being played, he’d play.

He’d do what he could, until he could do nothing else.

CHAPTER SIXTY-ONE

[00:18] Grace: Hi.

[00:18] Grace: I got your message.

[00:21] Grace: Do we know each other?

[00:21] Alec: No.

[00:21] Alec: I don’t think we do.

Finally, a hit.

CHAPTER SIXTY-TWO

[00:32] Grace: How do I know you’re a real policeman?

[00:32] Alec: I’ll ring from a registered number.

[00:33] Grace: Is it normal to contact someone this way?

[00:33] Alec: Not usually, no.

[00:33] Grace: Unless you’re friends, I guess.

[00:34] Alec: We tried your phone number but it wouldn’t work. I understand you’re no longer in the UK.

[00:37] Alec: Are you still there?

Day Thirty-One

CHAPTER SIXTY-THREE

[07:12] Grace: You don’t have many photos.

[07:20] Alec: What do you mean?

[07:21] Grace: On your profile.

[07:21] Grace: Did you look at my photos?

[07:41] Alec: No.

[07:50] Grace: Some good ones.

[07:52] Alec: Why did you leave Ilmarsh?

[07:58] Grace: Didn’t my husband talk to you?

[07:58] Alec: He did.

[07:59] Grace: Where are you now?

[08:00] Alec: In my bed.

[08:00] Alec: Where are you?

[08:01] Grace: Sitting near the beach.

[08:02] Alec: Why can’t people reach you on your phone number?

[08:02] Alec: If you give me a new number, I can ring.

[08:03] Grace: They wouldn’t want to speak to me.

[08:03] Grace: I’m not that interesting.

[08:04] Grace: What really happened there?

[08:08] Grace: What did Albert do?

CHAPTER SIXTY-FOUR

In the early hours of the morning, the house at Well Farm burned.

The fire was not seen until 4 a.m. By the time the fire brigade arrived, it was too late to save the structure.

That the empty house had followed the culling of the flock – it seemed natural, somehow. The end of the Coles’ story, written in flame.

Alec read about it on his phone. The local town group had noted the event.

Cooper did not tell him.

The inspector did not tell him.

No one did.

So he phoned a cab and left the ward without informing anyone in turn.

He’d been doing better, much better.

He was better.

He knew he was.

He knew.

Just a few months ago, Alec had seen a documentary. Most days, Simon had usually just gone straight up to his room once he returned from school, but this time, the boy had sat and actually watched this film with his father. It had surprised Alec. It had expanded his idea of his son, this thing he’d made, that was him, half of him at least. All that would be left of him when he was gone. All that was left of parts of Alec that had already faded. He could see it as the boy grew up, ghost echoes of a way he’d seen himself smile in photos, sounds he’d heard his voice make in old recordings.

So they’d watched this documentary together.

They’d sat there as the dark images on the screen passed by, as slow lines were read out by the croaking voiceover. The film was about plans to bury nuclear waste so that future cultures would understand not to approach. The plans involved building vast spikes in a maze to warn interlopers of the material within, planting signals of danger throughout time. In the centre there would be these words:

This place is a message, and part of a system of messages. Pay attention to it. Sending this message was important to us.

We considered ourselves to be a powerful culture.

This place is not a place of honour. No highly esteemed deed is commemorated here. Nothing valued is here.

What is here was dangerous and repulsive to us.

The danger is still present, in your time, as it was in ours.

‘This message is a warning about danger,’ he murmured, watching the snow coat the ruined structures.

The long level fields were white, too. Bleak, flat, barely textured.

The driver stopped the car and opened the gate, jumping back in. Alec had promised to give him fifty extra pounds for this. The police would stop them soon, he knew, but no one had been at the barrier.

They drove the same way the horses had most likely come.

They saw the vans parked in the distance, the cars, Cooper’s own.

Alec got out, his legs still weak, and she turned.

Markers stood against the white snow, crimson spears shot into the ground to delineate the points of burial, almost a mirror to the spurs of the sheep-pyre opposite, though here they were thin, spread out, elegant, almost metallic in their red. They had been harder to see from the road.

Alec thought back to the moment he had first caught sight of the glassy eyes, the coiled tails of these creatures.

Have you ever seen anything like this? he’d asked the farmer. It’s—

Grotesque.

Beautiful.

No. Have you?

That’s murder, the farmer had continued, his voice soft. Just look at them. Look.

Alec walked through the void. Smoke rose from one farm over.

Cooper would explain it all to him later.

The firemen had not been able to save the home.

At dawn, before they left, one of them had wanted to see the place where sixteen horses had been buried.

One of them had wanted to see the place of death.

He’d come here, right up to the red spears.

And he’d seen it.

Alec didn’t know this. He didn’t know anyone had seen