New Welsh Short Stories (12 page)

I surmised that little G_ could have sustained the injury prior to being on the bridge, but the more dramatic and memorable event of a large moth fluttering into him had taken the place in his mind as the reason for it.

Once I had convinced myself that the ‘red bat' must be a moth, I quickly got to
Tyria jacobaeae
. It is significantly and brightly red, and, as you know, its larva feed on ragwort. What then, I thought, if the toxin ingested at the larval phase was present in the imago, and
somehow
could be transferred? How a moth could come to cut even a child's skin I do not know, but the two things seemed feasibly linked.

When I showed pictures of the moth to the child though, he remained insistent. ‘No. It was a bat.'

This extra development meant I missed the train I had intended to take that afternoon, and, as many were still unconvinced of my conclusions, I took it upon myself to at least appear to be using my extra time here pursuing further answers. It is too early yet to decide whether that was a choice I am happy to have made, or one that will forever haunt me.

Using the excuse of
‘the bat', I returned to the clearing towards dusk. I took with me the light and sheet, interested anyway in what night
-
flying insects I might collect. In reality, I admit, my chief intention was simply to be away from the constant questions of the locals.

Thinking as I was of bats, and with the light dropping, the dusk exaggerated in the shadow of the trees, I decided to investigate the rock face. I had noticed a great many crevices that could feasibly harbour bats, and I wanted to be able to say with clear conscience that there were no ‘red bats' to be found. If there had been, I think I would have preferred it to what I soon discovered.

Taking my kite net, the handle unscrewed to use as a primitive ‘gaff', I scaled up to the rocks, my lantern lighting up the dew
-
covered leaves as if a strong moon caught them.

What happened next I relate as simply as I can. Believe me – it will be impossible for you not to wonder – when I vow I am entirely sane.

Very few of the fissures in the rock had any depth at all. Other than crawling insects and a few specimens of
Cochlodina laminata
, I found nothing.

Next, setting up my lantern on the ground, I noticed a low rock, and under it a shallow cavity. The cavity formed what looked to be a sort of ‘entrance' below the rock, excavated, or so it seemed, deliberately.

I poked my ‘gaff' in a little way and retrieved, to my surprise, a bright red horde of beetle wing cases, perhaps
Rhagonycha
, or perhaps
Cantharis l
. – the specimens will confirm. As I examined them more closely, I saw that some were notched with a blunt V, a ‘bite mark' almost identical in form to the wound on the little boy's finger.

I thought first of wood mice. I know they make collections, particularly of brightly coloured things. However, the bite marks, if that is what they were, did not quite fit. I fished around a second time, and this time felt the stick ‘held', as if briefly jammed, before it came free again.

My scientific curiosity was now piqued, and I was determined to know what rodent or such had collected the little pile of wings, and, I was sure, taken a grip on my unwelcome stick.

I assessed the size of the rock. It was flat and balanced over the depression, and about a foot and a half round. I concluded I could tip it up, much as I would if I was at a rock pool on the beach.

I moved the lantern to a better spot, set down my tools, and lifted it. Had I not been so frozen with shock, I am sure I would have dropped it instantly back down.

There was a creature, just bigger than a vole. It perched on its haunches like a chimpanzee might, holding the beetle it was chewing in a saurian hand.

The creature seemed to shrink itself under the light, and raised its wings in an attitude of defence. Its eyes, more the large eyes of a fish than anything, held mine. It was dark seeming, but the mesh of its skin was reddened, as if the pigment of the beetles was within its scales.

I put the rock down gently. I am in no doubt, and can describe it no other way than to assure you that it was a tiny dragon.

I cannot describe to you what has happened in my mind in the few hours since then. Everything is changed. If there are dragons, then what of unicorns, and mermaids? Of other fabulous things? The image of the thing is burned into my wits.

What if, like the
Equisetum
– the ‘horsetail' of our banks and riversides – that was in prehistoric times near a hundred foot tall and now a mere hundredth of its height, only a miniaturised remnant of this creature likewise now exists? What memory have the people of this nation of this thing that was surely once so vast an animal?

We must decide. I trust you with this, knowing of no more integrity in any other man. If we reveal this to the World, the effect will be sensational. The creature will not have a chance. Particularly, perhaps here, where it is so much part of their identity.
To discover that it actually lives!

I will stay for now, and await your instructions, with the excuse of further researching the bites. Though I know how fond you are of your collections and your study, it might be, on this occasion, that you choose for once to travel. Meanwhile, I will protect the thing.

I am, as ever, your student.

In trust,

Name entirely obliterated, suggested to be S.J.

Copy from a notebook presumed to belong to S.J. The sketches show
Rhagonycha
and
Cantharis
, the ‘soldier beetles' posited as contributing to the observed red colouring. There is also detail showing scale of the ‘notched' wing cases.

Illustration from
British Entomology
Vol. 5 plate 499 (John Curtis, F.L.S. 1824
-
1840) of
Tyria jacobaeae
, the ‘cinnabar moth', alongside ragwort. It
is likely a similar picture would have been shown to the child G.J. in an attempt to identify the ‘red bat'.

Copy of the original letter showing key descriptive paragraph.

17

Thomas Morris

1.

When the police tried to arrest me I couldn't tell them my name.

‘He's resisting disclosure,' said the one with the Elvis quiff. His bald colleague, an ex
-
army type, shook his head.

‘Don't play the tough guy with me,
mate
,' he said. ‘Tell us your shitting name.'

I insisted I had a stammer. I tried to spell out the letters but this only angered them. I was singled out as a troublemaker and left on my own in the back of the car.

My friends were lined up against the front garden wall, three sports bags and a fully inflated yellow dinghy on the pavement in front of them. Gareth, boxer shorts over his jeans, looked perturbed. But Gareth always looked perturbed. His father was obsessed with germs and made him change his bedding every day.

Larry, meanwhile, looked cocky. With his Parka done up tight around his neck, he kept laughing, and I could see this was annoying Gareth. Boxer shorts aside, Gareth was serious. Gareth wore glasses.

But Larry remained cocky, and he pointed across the road, towards the house where the phone call had apparently been made.

‘I wouldn't trust them with a muffin,' he said.

And we all understood the reference. A year earlier, the bald one had been at Queen Street shopping centre, waiting outside a lingerie shop for his wife and holding his baby – or, more specifically, holding the pushchair – when an altercation at a nearby muffin stall distracted him. As he restored order to the tipped
-
over kiosk, a recently bereaved mother plucked the child and walked off into the deep cavern of the centre. Exiting the shop, his wife was confronted with the following scene: her husband, a raspberry muffin in his hand, horror on his face, and only a twisted white blanket where the baby had once been.

‘Not funny,' he said to Larry. ‘You'll be sorry you said that.'

2.

I was seventeen and in mourning for a first love gone awry.

Jessica and I had only gone out for three months, but it's wrong to measure first relationships in units of time. So I'll put it this way: when we broke up, it felt like I lost thirty pints of blood. Am I being over the top? Yes. But in the aftermath, I genuinely felt drained and unwell. I watched
Man on the Moon
six times in three days, and – in a severe bout of confusion – I believed I was
the American comedian Andy Kaufman. (Rationally, I knew I wasn't him, but part of me suspected I was. It was a strange doublethink, like being six years old and recognising my sister's handwriting in Father Christmas' letters, and yet still believing.) Anyway, after the break
-
up with Jessica, I had – in my Kaufman
-
confusion – arranged a town wrestling contest where I fought women and only women. On a big patch of grass beside Caerphilly Castle I assembled a makeshift wrestling ring, and each Saturday would charge £1.50 for a female to wrestle me. I pasted posters to the windows of long since closed
-
down shops, and advertised in large lettering the prize: £50 and an offer to organise the winner's finances.

And I happened to be very good at the wrestling. I made £27 on my first day of bouts, and a further £75 in the weeks after. But it all came to an end one shiny
-
wet May evening when a large woman fell on my collarbone, and snapped it in two.

I spent the next month
-
and
-
a
-
half in a sling.

3.

I should explain what preceded the attempted arrest.

Gareth had wanted to leave town for the weekend. His cousin Robert had just died from blood poisoning, and he – Gareth – had, in a dark alley beside the chip shop, taken the virginity of a fifteen
-
year
-
old girl and was convinced he now had AIDS. He booked an STI test, but it was going to take four weeks before the clinic would put the cocktail umbrella down his penis.