The Gift (16 page)

Davy set off confidently across the slope, but as he came, Bella moved steadily up the hill, so that in the end he had to circle right around the slate quarry before he reached her. She looked at him with an obstinate eye and tried for a while to edge past his waving arms, but at last she wheeled around and consented to be driven home.

It was almost dark by the time they reached the ridge. Davy could make out the farm only by the lights in its windows; he saw them black out one by one as Dadda went around closing the shutters. That was okay, he thought. Dadda had trusted him to cope with Bella alone; now that he had her on the downward slope he didn't expect any more trouble.

But she wasn't used to going home by this path, down at right angles to the lane, aiming for the gate a little below the farm; she kept seeming to remember that she had an appointment elsewhere, so it was a slow process working her down; Davy had to concentrate hard on her plunging gait, ready for the least attempt to veer to one side or the other; and now she was very hard to see in the near dark, and only the upstairs lights of the farm showed for guidance.

The buzz of thought began imperceptibly, a vague oppressiveness like the beginnings of a headache or the heavy feeling that comes when the barometer drops. Then Bella suddenly remembered where she was going and surged down the last of the slope. Davy relaxed and the tide of madness washed across him.

Something had happened to Wolf. It was the same mind, but changed, changed. Some channel inside it seemed to have burst its banks so that the pictures, instead of coming one after the other, rushed out into the night in a foaming jumble. There were the lit windows of the farm, but tilted and slithering, while the black outline of the roofs pitched to and fro like ships in a storm, and over the dismal sky whirled the squiggles, black and angry, obliterating the hills. Other things blinked into being and disappeared, almost too fast to be seen: a shapeless red mass, a heavy wheel with cogs on it, the screaming face of a woman, something like a cliff falling out of the dark, veined fire, spurts of fierce colors, Mr. Black Hat, a dead horse. But all the time behind this blizzard of pains the roofs and the lit windows heaved and wavered. Wolf was watching the farm.

It was like heavy snow falling on the windshield of a car, cleared for an instant as the wiper passes but already blotting out the road ahead before the return sweep. Davy could even feel the weary effort by which Wolf prevented the blizzard from filling all his vision. Poor Wolf. Poor Wolf.

Quite unconsciously his feet had been picking their way through the ridged tussocks down to the gate, where Bella was waiting. Now the need to concentrate on untying the knotted hemp with numb fingers in the dark drove Wolf's tragic furies from his mind. Into their place flooded shock and terror. Wolf had come to the farm to kill, to slaughter everyone, to fill the rooms with blood. Davy's hands tugged uselessly at the tough shreds which seemed to stay knotted even when the main cord was loose. Dad was sick in bed, Dadda was an old man. Granny, Mum, Penny, Davy. No one could help. There was no hope.

The string gave. He heaved the gate open. Bella lurched through with Davy beside her. He did not bother to shut the gate, but in his panic rushed to head her down the lane, away from the madman in the dark; she turned, baffled, and he slapped her hard on the rump, sending her down the lane at a handsome pace. Davy, shaking all over, trotted behind her, slapping her again whenever she slowed. She was his camouflage; Wolf had no reason to suspect a boy driving a cow down the lane. Davy was going to get help, he told himself. He was going to telephone for the police from Mr. Prichard's. That was the sensible thing … but really, he knew, he was running away.

Rather than think of that he relaxed his mind. Wolf's thoughts were faint now, but there was the lurching farm. A dim line of light gleamed toward one of the windows, a reflection off metal, a gun barrel. They can't expect me to fight a man with a gun, he whispered. I'm right to run away, to get help. Part of him even wanted to stop, to cower, to hide in the ditch till it was all over; but, covered in cold sweat and breathing in deep, shuddering gasps, he forced his legs to run. The next time Bella sheered toward the hedge he ran straight past her, freewheeling down the slope. He started to compose in his mind what he would say to the policeman. Is that Llangollen Police Station? This is David Price from … There's a gunman come … That wouldn't do—it sounded like a hoax. They'd …

A motorbike engine roared far down the hill, coughed on a gear change, deepened to take a steeper incline. The headlight glared for a moment along the valley, swung, and at last hit the hedge of the next bend down. Davy stopped running, stepped into the middle of the lane, and stood there, waving his arms. The blinding light surged up toward him. The motor cut.

“What's up?” said Ian, invisible beyond the glare.

“Wolf's at the farm!”

“Who is?”

“Wolf. You know, the man I told you about who got away from the robbery. The one who blew up our house.”

“Have you seen him?”

“No, but …”

“Look, Davy …”

It was too late to lie now.

“I
know
he's there,” cried Davy. “I can't tell you how, but I know!”

Ian was still screened by the wall of light, but Davy knew from the tone of his voice what his face would look like in the uneasy zone between kindness and contempt.

“Look, kid, you've been having a rough time, getting Dad out of his mess, and then the bomb at the house and now this pneumonia. Just relax. Take it easy. The guy couldn't be here. The fuzz wouldn't have told anyone where they were taking Dad, would they?”

“That piece in the
Examiner
. Mr. Boland put the address in.”

“Hell, he wouldn't have seen that.”

“He's got a gun, Ian.”

“You haven't
seen
him, kid.”

“Well, I'm going down to Prichard's to ring up the police.”

“You're bloody well not.”

“You can't stop me. He's there, I tell you. He's there. He'll kill them all. He's like that.”

Ian was fiddling with the controls in an indecisive way. Davy could hear the throttle cable sigh and click.

“Okay,” said Ian suddenly. “I'll go and get someone.”

“He really has got a gun. And he's quite mad. He's very dangerous.”

Ian only grunted and swung the bike away so that at last Davy was out of the glare, but still too night-blinded to see his brother when he hesitated again.

“You coming?”

“Perhaps I'd better. Then I can persuade them …”

“You haven't persuaded
me
,” grumbled Ian. All at once he seemed to make his mind up.

“You stay here,” he said. “Don't do anything stupid. I shan't be long.”

He pushed off and allowed the bike to sidle down the hill. Davy ran a few steps after him, stopped, and watched the taillight vanish around the bend. He stood in the road, panting, and allowed his night vision to come back to him. It was very dark now, even so.

He could still run down to Prichard's and telephone the police. But that was another two miles, and by then Ian would be back with his Nationalist friends, with guns. The police wouldn't come armed, not for a telephone call from an excited boy—but if they did come, and found Ian and his friends there, what would Ian think? He had shown a sort of trust, going off for Davy on what he clearly thought was a crazy errand, but if Davy betrayed him, Ian would never trust him again. It was better to leave it to the Nationalists.

And that meant that Davy could go back and warn them at the farm that Wolf was there. He could have done this in the first place, if he hadn't panicked. Seeing Wolf's thoughts would allow Davy to keep away from him, to get in on the other side …

Slowly, reluctant with the fear of what he must face, he started back up the road. Far down the hill he heard Ian's motor start; then, as if that had been a signal, clamor rose from the farm.

Rud's savage burst of barking was cut short by a louder noise, three or four sharp, slamming explosions. A man shouted. A door crashed shut. Glass broke.

Davy was running back up the lane. He was afraid still, but the need for action mastered his terror. Ian would be back with his friends in twenty minutes. One or two minutes gained by any kind of diversion might make all the difference.

In the black shadow of the hedge a blacker shadow shuffled. Davy stopped, heart bouncing. Bella. He dithered for a moment, but the noise of her reminded him that it was no use getting there with a clatter of shoes and loud, gasping breath. Wolf would hear him, and he'd be too tired to be any use. He walked on carefully, using the verge where he could, trying to still the harsh breath that came and went through his throat. The slope began to ease. He was nearly there, so he stopped to try to think; but once he had stopped fear locked him. He could not force himself to face it.

More glass broke. A window creaked and Dadda's voice called out, “You there! You cannot get in. My shutters are good oak and I have a shotgun in my hand up here.”

Silence and dark. Davy shut his eyes and waited. For a moment he saw nothing, but then into his mind blazed a pillar of pure light, a clean crack in the blackness; a couple of squiggles whirled across it; a curve of blue edged into the pillar from the left, then drifted out again; next a dark brown vertical line edged in from the right. That vanished and the blue curve showed again.

This time Davy knew what it was, a bit of the souvenir plate from Bangor that hung on the parlor wall; the brown line had been the edge of the doorframe. Wolf was peeping through the thin crack between the shutters of the little side window that looked up the valley—so it would be safe to go at least as far as the farmyard. He could hide there, spy on Wolf's mind, and do what he could to help, if he dared. He stole up toward the gateway.

The pillar vanished. More glass broke. In a panic Davy dodged around the gatepost and into the total blackness under the tractor shed. Fear so filled his mind that for some moments he could not see what Wolf was thinking about, but then came an image of fire, the pitching roof lines burning, flames at the doors, Dad running out into the orange glare and being gunned down. The sequence came two or three times, almost untroubled by squiggles, and was followed by a picture of a bright blue tractor, shiny as a toy. Beside the tractor was a bright yellow jerrican.

Dadda's tracor had once been as blue as that, though now it was patched and mottled with age; and beside it, at the front of the tractor shed, he kept a rusty jerrican of the paraffin on which it ran. Almost with relief Davy seized the chance to do something, to achieve a moment of delay. He felt his way up the far side of the tractor, found the jerrican, and carried it quietly back until he could settle it inside the big rear wheel of the tractor, right under the axle. Even by daylight you'd have to bend down to spot it there.

Davy moved around the tractor and nestled against its farther side. The night was going to get no darker now; by straining his sight he could distinguish a few objects out in the open yard, the milk churn stand and the huge tracor tire that had leaned for the last five years against the white asbestos wall of the generator shed. He would have liked to move to different cover, but Wolf was nearer now and Davy thought he might spot him, or hear him, if he tried to run.

Wolf came in silence, holding firm in the storm of his mind to the image of the yellow can standing against the tarred clapboarding of the wall. He must have spotted it, Davy thought, spying out the farm in the last light, after Dadda had finished milking and before he took Rud out for his final check around. Davy, crouched with one hand on the front wheel of the tractor, felt a slight jar as something bumped against the far tire. Wolf was able to recall exactly where he had seen the can, a fixed certainty among the upheavals of his mind. Then Davy heard a low grunt and the picture of the can blanked out. The tractor shed filled with a low, bubbling snarl as the furious black squiggles smothered Wolf's mind, pulsing like swarmed bees; it must have been a minute before he managed to wipe them away and tried to reconstruct his image of the can. It came unsteadily, shifting its color and outline and position. Davy could hear shufflings and gropings. As the squiggles began to whirl across the unsteady image, Davy felt the man's misery and despair run through him like a current.

“Poor Wolf,” he said, aloud.

Everything stopped, the noise of groping, the misery, the raging thoughts. What Davy could see in his mind was what he could see with his eyes, the total blackness of the tractor shed, through which Wolf was trying to peer. Suddenly Davy remembered his real name.

“Poor Dick,” he said gently.

He heard a grunt, but no snarl. All Wolf's mind was busy with the effort of searching for whoever had spoken. Then a picture formed, a slab-faced man in uniform with a sort of truncheon in his hand.

“No,” said Davy. “I'm not him. I won't hurt you, Dick.”

The picture blanked out and became the dark of the shed. In the long pause that followed Davy began to realize what he had done. The gift, linking him to Wolf, forcing him to share some of the man's rage and sorrow, had betrayed him into speaking aloud. But Wolf would not understand that. He had come to the farm to kill.

There was a light scratching noise, twice repeated. Just as he recognized what it was the match burst into light.

For an instant the flare was like sunrise, too brilliant to see by. But as his pupils narrowed, he saw Wolf's face, above and to one side of the match, deep-shadowed and ghastly. The skin was filthy with mud and sweat and there was a bloody cut on one cheekbone. The cheeks themselves were gray and hollow. The eyes had sunk back into their sockets and were very bloodshot. Several days' bristle grew along the jaw.

So appalling was this gaunt, exhausted face that not until the match burned Wolf's fingers and he dropped it with an oath did Davy think of looking for the gun in the other hand, and then it was too late. They had simply stood there, staring at each other, face-to-face for the first time. And now that he had seen him looking like that, Davy's pity for Wolf stopped being something that existed only in the half-real world of the gift. It became part of the solid, outside world, like his terror.