Sixteen Horses by Greg Buchanan (readict TXT) 📕

until early evening, most likely exhausted from the day’s driving and lifting and wrangling. He would be seen unloading sheep by those passers-by who knew him, those on their way to the show. One would mention that a sheep was loose on the road a little further down, but this was nothing strange, not for them.

In town, the people had walked to the park.

Some had paid five pounds to enter and received a short programme for their trouble. Others had stood outside, content with an unsanctioned view.

There had been hot-dog stands, candy floss, light-up games, even a cart dragging along representatives of the county’s radio station. Some years they had music, big classical theme tunes from films and television, all echoing out over the big speakers as fireworks took off through the sky.

Later, they would set fire to a giant effigy of a man who had once tried to blow up parliament.

Everyone had then started to go home. Some went to pubs.

And that was that.

Few could remember anything else but that which had felt normal. Vans had moved throughout the evening, dismantling the celebration, bringing supplies and people home. One more would not have been remarked upon. There was such noise, such light. The owners of the horses had been far enough away that their animals’ abduction could have gone unnoticed, absorbed into waves of cheers, of fire.

Many of the horses had been dosed with sedatives. As the police would soon discover, their owners had requested this themselves. They might panic, otherwise, they might quiver at each burst of light through the sky, each roar of distant thunder.

They were made sleepy, docile.

They would not have felt afraid, not at first.

Just as Alec finished up at the farm, the sky electric dark, thick grey rain seeping through his only coat, a call came from the station. An old man was waiting to speak with him – he claimed to have seen the whole thing, to have been there the night of the deaths. A vagrant, sleeping on the edge of the farm, seeking refuge within a stone ruin. No fixed abode. No electoral registration. No friends. No connection to anyone beyond his walking into a police station and sharing a story about animals and torchlight.

‘Do you think he was actually there?’

‘I don’t know,’ the inspector said. ‘Ask him yourself.’ The call ended.

So Alec went, driving to the centre of town, his trousers squelching in his seat. The police station had long since been merged with the town’s library, much of the county’s budget spent on electronic helpdesks in place of a normal reception or waiting area. The library – itself almost empty and ransacked since the merger – had a lift round the back in the loading bay, but they only used that when they had to. The security system was a pain. The entrance to the station was around the side of the building, up a zigzag of metal stairs.

A dozen cameras watched Alec as he rose up, holding firmly on to the rusted rails, the old metal slick with rain.

Alec held his pass to the electric pad. The light went green and the door buzzed open.

From his glass office, the inspector waved, then pointed over to the end of the room. Alec grumbled and went straight to the interview room. Not even a fucking hello, let alone a debrief.

The hermit was inside as promised. He had a can of cola on the table in front of him. It was unopened. The whole interview, it remained unopened. Both of them sat there, wet with rain.

‘Do you want a towel?’

‘What?’ The hermit raised an eyebrow.

‘I’m going to get towels.’

Alec left and could only find stacks of blue paper towels in the bathrooms. Blue like a bedroom wall of painted clouds. A nice blue. He brought a wad back.

Both men patted their hair with it, their clothes.

The hermit told him his story.

CHAPTER FOUR

The Witness

They’d carve out vast fields of conifers, tall and thick and green and beautiful, even at night. They’d be glad of it. They’d leave them long enough to establish ecosystems, to become a part of the land in the eyes of all those who passed along the road, who lived and made their homes here. Then they’d cull it all, selling the wood for paper. The beauty was in death, in brevity. They’d move on.

These charnel fields ran amongst the farms and the forests, the river and the ponds. There was water, there were trees, and there were places the conifers had once stood, side by side in the endless flatness, this place without curvature or motion.

The hermit knew the whistle of the air, the cries of birds you’d hear in land like this. He knew each sound, though he didn’t know the names of the actual species. He’d planned to use the library computer, whenever he went to town again. See if there was an answer there. He’d remember them all. He wanted to, truly he did. He’d do his best. He had his card, worn and faded though it was.

A few hours before the horses were killed, he’d walked among the trees, the sun low, mostly hidden behind a carpet of clouds. There were leaves everywhere, crumpled, desiccated. Each step crumpled more. It was satisfying. It calmed him. He looked up and around as he went. They were mostly skeletons around this place, though there were animals, still, squirrels and hedgehogs, badgers even. He’d heard stories of wild boar closer to town.

He’d found a life where living was the only purpose. He’d left everyone he had ever loved, ever cared about. He had found peace.

At the lake, half an hour past the treeline, near the rusted burned-out wreck of a car, he washed.

He dried himself with a rag from his bag, metal pans and cups clanking as he pulled it out. He’d make some coffee when he got back. He looked at the sky, wondering what day it was.

He