گلوله‌ی نقره

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

Silver bullet

It was a long time before Susie could stop shaking. She felt so cold. The worried faces of Tom and his wife Kathryn watched her as she drank the hot sweet tea. They were good people but she felt small and lost. They’d taken away her wet and bloody clothes. They’d put a blanket around her, like a child. She was in the warm light sitting-room of their house. She was safe now, after the darkness and danger.

Kathryn smiled at her. ‘You’d better stay here with us, my dear.’ She was quite worried about the young woman who was sitting and shaking on the sofa. Something terrible had happened. It was clear that Susie could not return to her holiday house.

‘Tell me,’ Kathryn wanted to know, ‘Tom says he found you out walking about up on the hill. It’s the middle of the night. Did something happen? What were you doing there?’

‘I . I don’t really know.’ She was too tired to try to remember. She started to cry and cry. She couldn’t stop.

‘Now, Kathryn,’ Tom said, ‘See what you’ve done? No more questions now. Come on, my dear, you need to get to bed.’

That first night in Tom and Kathryn’s house, Susie slept deeply and dreamlessly. Several times during the following morning Kathryn looked at her. She saw how white Susie’s face was as she slept. Kathryn knew that she needed to sleep. She moved away quietly. Susie did not wake until the afternoon.

Slowly, in the days that followed, Susie began to return to the world again. But she couldn’t remember much about what had happened.

She said to Kathryn, ‘Someone. Richard. was taking me to see Charlie. We went to his house. Then I don’t know what happened. Perhaps I went for a walk and got lost. I don’t know. What must Charlie be thinking? Can I phone him?’

‘Now there’s no need to be worried about that husband of yours. Tom has already seen him and told him what happened’ Kathryn said to her.

‘What did Tom tell Charlie’ Susie asked.

‘Oh, that he found you up on Brynmawr Hill in the middle of the night while he was out hunting for the thing that’s been killing his sheep,’ Kathryn replied.

‘What did Charlie say?’

‘I don’t know, my dear.’ Kathryn looked at her. ‘But I know Tom told him that you’re fine. He promised your Charlie that you’ll go and see him very soon, just as soon as you’re strong again.’

‘Charlie must think I’ve really gone mad,’ Susie thought to herself. ‘Perhaps I have.’

‘I’ve lost my bag,’ she said to Kathryn. ‘I don’t know where it is. My money’s in it. And the key to Cynghordy House.’ She felt stupid.

‘Perhaps it’s in your holiday house’ Kathryn said.

‘I don’t think so, I don’t know,’ Susie said, unhappily.

‘Well, then, perhaps Richard’s got it’ Kathryn said.

‘Ah, yes perhaps he has it,’ Susie said finally.

She realised that the sound of Richard’s name made her feel strangely afraid. She started to shake a little.

‘Now, now.’ Kathryn put her arm around her. ‘It’s all right. Don’t worry about it now. I’ll ask Tom to go over to Richard’s house and get your bag for you.’

Susie knew that she had been into a place of darkness. The Underworld. For a moment, she had wanted to stay there. Yet somehow she had escaped with her life. She didn’t want to try to understand yet. It was too soon. She just knew that the place she had seen was dangerous. It was somewhere that living people do not usually go. If they do, they do not usually return.

A day or two later, Tom was sitting at the kitchen table, eating his dinner. Susie saw that her bag was on the table next to him. ‘You got it, then’ she said.

‘Yes,’ he said, his mouth full of food. He kept his eyes on his plate. He didn’t look at Susie. He knew what she was going to ask. He wasn’t sure that he wanted to answer.

‘Did Richard have it’ she asked.

‘Er. well, yes.’ Tom stopped, looking uncomfortable.

Something in Tom’s voice made Susie ask another question. ‘Did you see him, then?’

‘No, he wasn’t there.’ Tom looked at the table. ‘Strange thing is, no-one’s seen Richard lately, you know. He hasn’t been into the pub since that night,’ replied Tom.

‘Oh?’

‘And what’s even stranger.’ Tom spoke very quietly. ‘He told everyone, you know, in the pub, that he was working on his house.’

‘Yes,’ Susie said. ‘He was. I saw it. A lot of it had fallen down and the windows were broken. He said he had to start building some of it again. There were a couple of rooms that were OK, I think.’ She remembered a room full of large pictures.

‘Well, this morning,’ Tom began, ‘I had to move my sheep down onto a field on the other side of the hill, down near Richard’s house. So I decided to go and ask if he had your bag. ‘

‘Go on,’ Susie said.

‘Well.’ He looked carefully at her. ‘If it ever was a house, it’s not a house any more. It’s fallen down. There’s trees and grass growing on the stones, too. I went for a closer look. I’d say no-one’s touched that place for years. No-one’s been near it or done anything to it. It’s just a mountain of stones. I’d say it’s been like that for a hundred years or so.’

Tom’s voice shook. Susie could hear that he was afraid of what he was saying. The hair on her skin stood up and a cold feeling went down her body.

‘Where was the bag, Tom’ she asked finally.

‘It was lying there, on the stones. and I found something else too,’ he said softly. ‘In the woods on the hill.’

‘What’ Susie asked.

After a few seconds, Tom got up and went out of the room, returning with something in his hands. He put it on the table in front of Susie. Looking down, Susie saw that it was a large heavy black belt with a silver dog’s face on it. Tom watched her closely. Her face had lost all its colour.

‘Tom, I have to ask you something’ she said slowly.

‘What really happened up there on the hill? You know, that night when you found me? Was it a dog out after the sheep? And you shot it?’

‘Perhaps,’ Tom said. ‘I was fairly sure I hit him. Not the first time, the second time I think.’

Susie looked at him. He hadn’t answered the real question. ‘Yes, I’m pretty sure I got him in the heart,’ Tom went on. ‘Strange thing was, I went to look the next day and. well, there was no blood or body, nothing.’

Then he said, ‘You had a lucky escape. Lucky I had this. And some of these.’ He held up his gun and a silver bullet. ‘You know, he nearly got you,’ Tom said.

‘He’ Susie asked.

They looked at each other. They both knew that what they were thinking was impossible.

After a few moments, Susie said quietly, ‘I’d like to see Charlie.’

‘Sure, no problem,’ Tom said. ‘Kathryn’s going shopping this afternoon, she said. She can take you in later.’

‘Thanks, you’ve both been very kind, you know,’ Susie said.

She thought about seeing Charlie and what she could say to him. She wanted to say that the days they’d spent together here had been good. In London they hadn’t seen each other much in the last few months. They had such busy lives. She wanted to tell him she was sorry that he was hurt. Perhaps they could try again to have a holiday? And she wanted to talk about having a child some time. Not now, but soon.