هدیه

CHAPTER SEVEN

The present

It was still dark when Susie woke up. Looking at her clock she saw it was three o’clock in the morning. She lay in bed in the darkness for a while, Charlie’s warm body next to her. It was strange that she’d woken so suddenly. Had someone knocked at the door and called her name? Or was it just a dream, as usual?

Suddenly, her body gave a jump. There was a small noise at the bedroom window. Was something trying to get in? The noise came again, and again.

‘Charlie, there’s something outside,’ she said. Her voice seemed very loud to her.

‘Um, what Go back to sleep, there’s nothing there,’ Charlie said sleepily.

Susie sat up. Outside the wind had become stronger and was blowing noisily through the trees. She climbed out of bed and went to the window. Pulling back the curtain she could see that a tree was moving against the glass. So it was the tree that was making the noise. Outside, in the light of the full moon, the trees and grass were waving and shaking in the wind. Anything could be hiding in the darkness.

Susie put on the lights and walked round the house, looking into every room. There was nothing there, of course. It was just the house itself, maybe, moving in the wind like a boat at sea, which had made the knocking noise. She got back into bed, moved close to Charlie and went back to sleep.

When Susie woke the next morning she could see the sunlight through the thin curtains in the bedroom. Charlie was asleep still. ‘It must be late,’ she thought. She decided to get up, make some breakfast for both of them and bring it back to bed.

Downstairs the fire was nearly out. They’d used all the wood the night before so she decided to get some more from the garage. She pulled on a coat over her nightclothes and put on some shoes. She went to open the door. Strangely, the door didn’t move at first. Something seemed to be holding it. She gave it a pull.

As the door opened, Susie heard herself scream. It was a strange sound, which came from somewhere far inside her. She had never made a noise like that before in her life.

‘Charlie, Charlie!’ She couldn’t move.

There was the sound of feet on wood as Charlie came running down the stairs.

‘What on earth is the matter’ Charlie said.

‘Oh my God.’ He saw the open door and the large and terrible thing on the ground, half in and half out of the kitchen. ‘Whatever is that doing there?’

‘What is it, Charlie?’ Susie found it difficult to speak.

‘It’s a dead sheep,’ Charlie replied, after a few moments. ‘Listen, you go back to bed and I’ll do something with it,’ he added.

The sheep’s body was not pretty to look at. The mouth was open. Charlie couldn’t help seeing that the tongue wasn’t there. The sheep was cut open from the throat down under the body as far as the back legs. But the cut was clean and there was no blood.

Looking more brave than he felt, Charlie took hold of the two back legs. He pulled the body out of the kitchen, and then across the road outside the house and into the field opposite.

‘We ought to tell somebody about it,’ he thought. ‘The farmer, probably.’

He asked himself why the sheep was there. Did it just die there? Or did an animal leave it by the door? He tried not to think about who, or what, had put the sheep there. Perhaps there really was a Beast of Brynmawr. Anyway, he felt sick.

He went back into the house, made a cup of tea and took it up to his wife. Susie was lying in the bed. Her pretty face, with her dark hair cut like a boy’s, looked small and white.

‘God, Charlie, that was one of the worst things I’ve ever seen,’ she said. ‘I heard some strange noises in the night, you know. I thought I heard someone knocking at the door. Do you think someone is trying to play some sort of terrible joke on us?’

‘Susie, you mustn’t think about it. It was probably just a fox or something. Maybe it decided it would eat its dinner outside our back door. Come on, let’s try and forget it. We’re here to have a holiday and enjoy ourselves.’

‘Well, yes. OK. You’re right. I’ll try,’ Susie said. But she could still see the cold eye of the sheep looking up at her from the kitchen floor.

‘Do you think the Beast of ‘ she began again.

‘No,’ Charlie spoke quickly. ‘I don’t. Forget about it. There’s no such thing.’