در میخانه‌ی سگ مشکی

CHAPTER FIVE

In the Black Dog pub

‘Let’s try that one, shall we,’ Charlie said. He was looking at a pub on the road going into the village of Llandafydd. They stopped next to a dirty old van which was outside the pub.

In the back of the van was a sheep, which looked unhappily at them through the van window. They walked up to the front entrance of the pub. Charlie tried to open the heavy door, pulling first then pushing it. It opened suddenly and he almost fell inside.

The pub wasn’t busy, although it was lunchtime. Susie went quickly to a seat by a welcoming fire. Charlie walked up to the woman behind the bar and asked for two beers and a menu. The room was very quiet.

A man at the bar watched as Charlie sat down opposite Susie. After a while, he turned back to the landlady behind the bar and started talking to her, speaking in Welsh. Susie and Charlie studied the menu while the strange sounds of the foreign language made it hard to think.

Looking up for a moment, Susie’s eyes were caught by a picture on the other side of the room. In front of dark moonlit hills, a black dog with strange red eyes was looking at her. As she studied the picture, a man who was sitting below it stood up, He walked slowly towards the bar with his empty glass.

He looked across at Susie. He had dark greying hair and very white skin, like a plant that has grown without light. She found herself looking into his clear blue eyes. She had an uncomfortable feeling that she knew him from somewhere. Suddenly, she did not want to be there, in that pub, in Wales.

‘Same again, Richard,’ the landlady said to the man.

‘Yes, please,’ Richard replied. ‘Problems, Tom,’ he asked the man at the bar, a farmer.

‘I’m afraid so, yes,’ Tom answered, in English now. ‘Found two of my sheep dead today. Looked terrible, they did. Tongues gone, ears and noses bitten off. Never seen anything like it.’ His voice became quieter. ‘And no blood. There was no blood. Not on the ground, Not on the body.’

‘It was probably just a fox or a dog, wasn’t it, Tom,’ the landlady said.

Tom the farmer shook his head. ‘Oh no,’ he said. ‘There’s no animal on earth that kills like that.’

‘It’s the Beast of Brynmawr,’ Richard told the landlady. ‘It’s come back again.’

‘Oh, come on now,’ the landlady said. ‘There’s no such thing.’

‘Of course there is,’ Richard said, smiling. ‘It’s a werewolf, everyone knows that. Half man, half wolf. Last seen on Brynmawr Hill a hundred years ago.’ The landlady laughed loudly.

Susie and Charlie couldn’t help listening to this conversation. ‘I think I’ll just have a cheese sandwich,’ Susie said quietly to Charlie.

‘Well, I’m going to have steak and chips. I’m really hungry,’ Charlie told her, and went up to the bar, ‘On holiday are you, then, the landlady asked as she took Charlie’s order.

She seemed friendly, Charlie thought.

‘Yes,’ he answered. ‘We’re staying up at Cynghordy House for a couple of weeks.’

‘Aha. On Brynmawr Hill.’ She smiled and looked at Richard and Tom. ‘They’d better watch out for the Beast of Brynmawr, then, hadn’t they?’

Richard laughed, Tom didn’t. ‘It’s no joke,’ he said in a low voice.

After lunch, Susie and Charlie went into the centre of Llandafydd. It was a quiet little village with only a few shops: a small supermarket, a post office, a tea shop and a shop which sold presents for holidaymakers to take home. Susie wanted to look in the tourist shop. She bought a plate with a red kite on it.

It was getting dark by the time they arrived back at Cynghordy House. But the wood fire was still burning and the house was warmer.

‘OK, what are we going to do now, then,’ Charlie said. He was not used to being on holiday. Usually he spent most of his waking hours at work, always on the phone, talking and talking, or on the computer. He never stopped moving.

Susie began to put their shopping away in the cupboards in the kitchen. ‘I’m tired,’ she said after a while. ‘I think I’ll lie down for a bit. Let’s have something to eat soon and have an early night, shall we?’

Charlie went outside to get in some more wood. The cold November light was beginning to go. Above the hill the red kites were still flying round and round.

To the east a full moon was rising slowly up into the night sky. Charlie was surprised to see that this moon was an orange-red colour, not the usual yellow-white.

He remembered the words, a ‘hunter’s moon’ from when he was a child. Was this a ‘hunter’s moon’?