Mad Dog Moonlight (22 page)

Mad Dog left them heading for the dining room to be fed like kings, and went and sat out on the vardo step. Here he looked out over the garden and listened to Uncle getting Elvis ready for bed. It was the music of home, and it sounded good.

Up above him the moon rose. All around him the
night was gentle and still, warm and safe. Mad Dog pulled the
ffon
towards him, feeling as if he'd reached journey's end. His story was complete. Everything he needed to know had been found out. Everything that needed to be done had been accomplished.

Silently he nursed his
ffon
, drawing strength from it in ways he'd never understood before. Its silver topknot glowed in the moonlight, its intricately engraved swirls looking almost fluid, like the currents running through a river. Mad Dog remembered what Grendel had said about it shining in the long grass. He remembered what she'd said about its light and he'd thought she'd made it up. But it
did
have a light.

Mad Dog tipped the topknot towards him, running his fingers over its letters and catching them in the light. It was as if the cane was speaking to him, explaining that he'd got it wrong and his story wasn't over yet, not quite.

Slowly, curiously, Mad Dog ran his fingers over the engraved curls that made up the W, then followed the outline of the A, then traced the imprint of the fancy Os that were so intricate he scarcely could believe that human hands had made them. Finally he traced the letter at the end, which he'd always thought of as a C for ‘cat' but, he now realised with some surprise, looked more like a G for ‘God'.

Mad Dog held the topknot close, wondering if, when he'd thrown the
ffon
at Abren, it had got damaged. There were no dents that he could see, not even any scratches. But the letter was definitely a G and, if he'd ever thought otherwise, then he'd been reading it wrong.

Mad Dog ran his fingers back over the letters,
checking for other mistakes. He reached the middle Os, and probed behind them, lifting them close again. Suddenly it came to him that they weren't the same. The second was an O, most definitely, but the first looked more like a D, or even two Ds, looped inseparably around each other.

Mad Dog sucked in his breath. Instead of spelling out W-A-O-O-C, as he'd always thought, the word now spelled out W-A-D-D-O-G, or WAD DOG! Or even, if he'd got it wrong about the W –

‘
MAD DOG!
'

Mad Dog said the words out loud, and a thrill, as powerful as electricity, ran through him. What was it his father had once said about the
ffon
being there for him when he grew up
and wanted to know who he was
?

‘This is it,' he whispered, staring at the word. ‘Who I am, spelt out for me! I can't believe it, and yet it's true. All these years it was
my name
that followed me around and never let me go, always close to hand though I never knew! It was
my name
that made me feel so safe! That's what lit up the darkness when Grendel found it on the mountain. And, in that river, when I nearly got swept away, it was
my name
that steadied me and saved my life!'

He started laughing. It was the simply best laugh of his life, open and pure, with nothing to taint it. He had cracked it at last. The secret code he'd struggled to decipher. The mystery he'd tried so hard to fathom. It wasn't just a bunch of letters, after all. It had a meaning, and he knew what it was.

It was
himself
.

He
was its meaning.

He,
Mad Dog
.

Uncle called, ‘You all right out there?' and Mad Dog called back that he was, oh, yes, he was! He got down from the vardo step, too overwhelmed to stay still, and started walking about the garden, swinging his
ffon
and feeling his name beneath his hand. Once he'd thought that there were mysteries in life that went deeper than words, but now he knew that nothing could go deeper than the right word understood at exactly the right moment.

Mad Dog did a victor's lap around the hotel grounds, starting with the lawn that ran down to the road, then crossing the front of the hotel where the guests ate out in the evenings, and then slipping down the side of the building, passing the conservatory on the way, and cutting round the back between the kitchen and the one reminder of the Aged Relative's old B & B that Aunty had never been able to get rid of – the dripping cliff.

‘You all right?' called the kitchen ladies as Mad Dog bumped into them, pulling on their jackets, ready to head home.

‘I'm fine,' Mad Dog called back. ‘Couldn't be better.'

Ruth turned out the light, and Kathleen closed the kitchen door and said, ‘Well, goodnight then.' They headed for the car park and were quickly gone.

Mad Dog listened to the sound of their cars fading and watched their lights disappearing. The garden was quiet again, and the night smelt sweet and musky. An owl called from a tree off in the wood somewhere. A little breeze rustled along the ground and Mad Dog shivered at the sound of it. Suddenly he felt lonely out
there in the darkness without Aunty, Uncle, Elvis and the sailors. His lap of honour was over and, wanting home, he turned back to the vardo.

‘
So, Mad Dog is it?
' a voice said.

Mad Dog spun round. At first he couldn't see anything, just the back of the hotel and the cliff half-hidden in shadows and glistening with moisture. But then something moved among those shadows, rippling like curtains on a stage before the beginning of a performance when the players are behind it, ready to begin.

‘Who's there?' Mad Dog said.

For a moment, no one answered. Then the shadows parted and a figure materialised, followed by a pack of huge, pale dogs. His face was grey and drawn, his eyes as black as wrinkled prunes and he had red tattoos all over his chest. His presence seemed to fill the space between the kitchen and the cliff. Mad Dog caught a glimpse of silver charms around his neck, and knew that he should run.

‘
It's you
,' he said.

The Manager's smile was tight and cruel. ‘And it's
you
,' he replied. ‘Little Ryan Lewis – who thought he had a secret message passed down by his parents, but it turned out just to be a name! And what a name! I mean,
Mad Dog
! What sort of name is that?'

He laughed, and Mad Dog shivered. He gripped his
ffon
but he could feel all his pride in his name and who he was slipping away.

‘Life's full of disappointments, isn't it?' the Manager said. ‘Secrets that aren't secret after all. Codes that tell you nothing you don't already know. Who'd have thought it? The things you put your hopes in always
let you down. Take parents, for example. One moment they're all over you – the best parents in the world with stars in their eyes and your life in their hands – and, the next, they're drunk and in the river, and you're all alone and fending for yourself. What sort of life is that?'

He laughed again. Threw back his head and laughed – and Mad Dog knew where he'd heard that laugh before.

‘It was
you
,' he said. ‘You last night when I went back in time. It was you I called to for help, but you wouldn't come. You standing on the shore with your armful of bottles. You who got my parents drunk. Got them dancing. Put a spell on them and made them fool about. You who drove them out into the river, and watched them lose their footing and didn't care. But
why
? What did they ever do to you? I don't understand. Who
are
you?'

The Manager didn't answer. Instead he took a step towards Mad Dog. His eyes were blacker than ever, and if his tattoos looked any redder they'd have burnt up the night. Mad Dog knew that he should be calling for Uncle, Aunty, the sailors – anybody – because he'd never get another chance.

The Manager smiled. He said that, even if Mad Dog did call, people were never there when you needed them. Didn't he know that?

‘However full your life may seem, you're always really alone,' the Manager said. ‘And when I say
alone
, this is what I mean …'

Leaning forward, he removed the
ffon
from under Mad Dog's arm as easily as taking candy from a baby, then threw it up into the air – and suddenly it wasn't
there any more. It didn't come down again. It simply disappeared, as if the Manager had conjured it out of existence. And, in its moment of disappearance, Mad Dog suddenly felt as if he too had been conjured out of existence.

‘
What've you done?
' he gasped.

The Manager laughed. Mad Dog tried to back away from him, but the Manager looked into him with his huge black eyes and Mad Dog felt aloneness soaking into him. In the Manager's eyes, he could see himself reflected – a pathetic little scrap of a boy who didn't even have it in him to save a walking cane, let alone his parents when they'd needed him!

For, if his parents were dead,
it was all Mad Dog's fault
! When they'd been drowning, he'd been floundering about. And, when they'd been swept away, he'd been saving himself. Instead of drawing on his Trojan blood and performing acts of heroism, he'd been out cold, lying on the riverbank. It wasn't because of the Manager that his parents were dead.

It was because of him.

The Manager laughed as if he knew exactly what Mad Dog was thinking. His eyes bored into Mad Dog's, and he felt himself shrinking. He was glad his
ffon
had gone, because he didn't deserve it and he certainly didn't deserve the name on it. Even Ryan Lewis was too good a name for him. And, as for Mad Dog Moonlight – it was light years beyond what he was worth.

Mad Dog shrank before the Manager's gaze. As the light and life went out of him, he could sense the Manager growing. It was almost as if he was feeding on him. His silver necklace gleamed upon his tattooed
chest, which seemed to be growing all the time. Everything about him seemed to be growing, from the hands that gripped Mad Dog to the lines on his tattoos – and there was nothing Mad Dog could do to stop it happening.

He was getting weaker by the minute, everything that made him unique and special coming out. And the Manager was doing it to him, but he didn't know how. First the newly regained memory of his parents came out, then the memory of his brother Elvis. Then his homes came out, both the vardo and No. 3, then all his memories of Aunty and Uncle. Then the sailors came out, and then Mad Dog's friends.

And then even Mad Dog's feelings came out – every last moment of happiness, sadness, tears and joy, as if he'd never had them. And his past, present and future came out with them, and then even his name.

Mad Dog's name – for God's sake, even that! Once he'd had a
ffon
to keep it safe for him, but now he couldn't even remember what it was!

Mad Dog felt what little fight was left in him go out like a light. There might be only one story running through his life, but it had run to its end. The little baby who'd howled because he'd missed seeing a silver river in the sky, and whose mother had said, ‘
Don't you ever let anybody take your name from you, because it's who you are
,' was dead and gone, and there was nothing Mad Dog could do to bring him back.

The Manager laughed as if he knew that, in this battle of his making, he had won. Mad Dog reached out – but felt nothing there. For a moment he teetered on the brink of darkness. But then, deep within
himself, something started rising.

Mad Dog felt it in his gut and he felt it in his heart. It rose in his bones and it rose in his blood. He heard it in his lungs, rising like a howl, and he heard it in his brain. And, like a massive flood, the howl came spilling out.

The sheer force of it drove back the Manager as if before the waters of a mighty flood. Mad Dog slipped from his grasp and there was nothing that could be done to stop it happening. Mad Dog felt himself break free, but that didn't stop him howling.
This is who I am
, the howl seemed to say.
This is how it is
, and the Manager couldn't stand against it. He couldn't bear it. He didn't stand a chance.

Suddenly, like a storm that had spent its force, the Manager went hurtling back into the shadows of the cliff, and his dogs went hurtling after him, and the darkness closed around them and they were gone.

But, even afterwards, standing there alone between the kitchen and the cliff, Mad Dog howled on and on. He didn't need the Manager to tell him his name. Didn't need his mother. Didn't even need a walking cane. So what if it was gone! He knew who he was. It was engraved in his bones. It was engraved in his blood.

‘WAOOC!' he howled. ‘WADDOG! MADDOG! MAD DOG!
MAD DOG! MAD DOG!!!
'

Long before Mad Dog finished yelling, half the hotel had come rushing to see what was wrong, including Aunty, Uncle and Elvis. Aunty reassured them all that there was nothing to see, just a boy having a tantrum, and ushered them away. But the sailors refused to be ushered away. They came flying to Mad Dog's side and closed ranks round him as if – even though they hadn't been there to witness it – they understood what was going on.

He was safe now, they assured Mad Dog. They were there and nothing could get him. Three were stronger than one – stronger by far, but it was over, anyway.

Over. Safe.
They repeated the words loudly to make sure he could hear. But, as if terrified of forgetting again, Mad Dog couldn't stop calling out his name. It flowed out of him like a river. Mad Dog … Mad Dog … Mad Dog … On and on it flowed until his voice gave out. And, even then, he wouldn't stop, whispering, ‘
Mad Dog … Mad Dog … Mad Dog …
'

Nobody quite knew what to do. Uncle tried coaxing Mad Dog back towards the vardo, but got pushed away. Aunty tried to hold him, but got pushed away as well. For the first time ever, she conceded that maybe a doctor would have to get involved. She was out of her depth, she said – and it wasn't often that Aunty admitted to anything like that.