The Year's Best Fantasy and Horror. Sixth Annual Collection

ABSENCE OF BEAST Graham Masterton

Robert knelt on the window-seat with his hands pressed against the window-pane, watching the leaves scurrying across the lawn below him. The clouds hurried across the sky at a delirious, unnatural speed, and the trees thrashed as if they were trying to uproot themselves in sheer panic.

The gale had been blowing up all afternoon, and now it was shrieking softly under the doors, buffeting the chimneystacks, and roaring hollow-mouthed in the fireplaces.

It was the trees that alarmed Robert the most. Not because of their helpless bowing and waving, but because of the strange shapes that kept appearing between their leafless branches. Every tree seemed to be crowded with witches and trolls and indescribable demons, their gaping mouths formed by the way in which two twigs crossed over each other, their eyes by a few shivering leaves which had managed to cling on, despite October’s storms.

And at the far end of the long curving driveway stood the giant oak, in whose uppermost branches raged the monster that Robert feared above all. A complicated arrangement of twigs and offshoots formed a spiny-backed beast like a huge wild boar, with four curving tusks, and a tiny bright malevolent eye that—in actual fact—was a rain-filled puddle almost two hundred yards further away. But when the wind blew stronger, the eye winked and the beast churned its hunched-up back, and Robert wanted nothing more in the world than to take his eyes away from it, and not to see it.

But it was there; and he couldn’t take his eyes away—any more than he could fail to see the blind Venetian mask in the tapestry curtains, or the small grinning dog in the pattern of the cushions, or the scores of purple-cloaked strangers who appeared in the wallpaper, their backs mysteriously and obdurately turned to the world of reality. Robert lived among secret faces, and living patterns, and inexplicable maps.

He was still kneeling on the window-seat when his grandfather came into the room, with a plate of toast and a glass of cold milk. His grandfather sat beside him and watched him for a long time without saying anything, and eventually reached out with a papery-skinned hand and touched his shoulder, as if he were trying to comfort him.

“Your mother rang,” said his grandfather. “She said she’d try to come down tomorrow afternoon.”

Robert looked at his grandfather sideways. Robert was a thin, pale boy, with an unfashionably short haircut, and protruding ears, and a small, finely-featured face. His eyes shone pale as agates. He wore a gray school jumper and gray shorts and black lace-up shoes.

“I brought you some toast,” said his grandfather. White-haired, stooped; but still retaining a certain elegance. Anybody walking into the library at that moment would have realized at once that they were looking at grandfather and grandson. Perhaps it was the ears. Perhaps it was more than that. Sometimes empathy can skip a generation: so that young and old can form a very special closeness, a closeness that even mothers are unable to share.

Robert took a piece of toast and began to nibble at one corner.

“You didn’t eat very much lunch, I thought you might be hungry,” his grandfather added. “Oh, for goodness’ sake don’t feel guilty about it. I don’t like steak-and-kidney pie either, especially when it’s all kidney and no steak, and the pastry’s burned. But cook will insist on making it.”

Robert frowned. He had never heard an adult talking about food like this before. He had always imagined that adults liked everything, no matter how disgusting it was. After all, they kept telling him to eat fish and cauliflower and kidney-beans and fatty lamb, even though his gorge rose at the very sight of them. His mother always made him clear the plate, even if he had to sit in front of it for hours and hours after everybody else had finished, with the dining-room gradually growing darker and the clock ticking on the wall.

But here was his grandfather not only telling him that steak-and-kidney pie was horrible, but he didn’t have to eat it. It was extraordinary. It gave him the first feeling for a long time that everything might turn out for the better.

Because, of course, Robert hadn’t had much to be happy about—not since Christmas, and the Christmas Eve dinner party. His father had raged, his mother had wept, and all their guests had swayed and murmured in hideous embarrassment. Next morning, when Robert woke up, his mother had packed her suitcase and gone, and his grandfather had come to collect him from home. He had sat in his grandfather’s leather-smelling Daimler watching the clear raindrops trickle indecisively down the windscreen, while his father and his grandfather had talked in the porch with an earnestness that needed no subtitles.

“You probably haven’t realized it, but for quite a long time your mother and father haven’t been very happy together,” his grandfather had told him, as they drove through Pinner and Northwood in the rain. “It just happens sometimes, that people simply stop loving each other. It’s very sad, but there’s nothing that anybody can do about it.”

Robert had said nothing, but stared out at the rows of suburban houses with their wet orange-tiled roofs and their mean and scrubby gardens. He had felt an ache that he couldn’t describe, but it was almost more than he could bear. When they stopped at The Bell on Pinner Green so that grandfather could have a small whisky and a sandwich, and Robert could have a Coca-Cola and a packet of crisps, there were tears running down his cheeks and he didn’t even know.

He had now spent almost three weeks at Falworth Park. His great-grandfather had once owned all of it, the house and farm and thirty-six acres; but death duties had taken most of it, and now his grandfather was reduced to living in eight rooms on the eastern side of the house, while another two families occupied the west and south wings.

“You’re not bored, are you?” his grandfather asked him, as they sat side by side on the window-seat. “I think I could find you some jigsaws.”

Robert shook his head.

“You’ve been here for hours.”

Robert looked at him quickly. “I like looking at the trees.”

“Yes,” said his grandfather. “Sometimes you can see faces in them, can’t you?” Robert stared at his grandfather with his mouth open. He didn’t know whether to be frightened or exhilarated. How could his grandfather have possibly known that he saw faces in the trees? He had never mentioned it to anybody, in case he was laughed at. Either his grandfather could read his mind, or else—

“See there?” his grandfather said, almost casually, pointing to the young oaks that lined the last curve in the driveway. “The snarl-cats live in those trees; up in the high branches. And the hobgobblings live underneath them; always hunched up, always sour and sly. ”

“But there’s nothing there,” said Robert. “Only branches.”

His grandfather smiled, and patted his shoulder. *You can’t fool me, young Robert. It’s what you see between the branches that matters.”

“But there’s nothing there, not really. Only sky.”

His grandfather turned back and stared at the trees. “The world has an outside as well as an inside, you know. How do I know you’re sitting here next to me? Because I can see you, because you have a positive shape. But you also have a negative shape, which is the shape which is formed by where you’re not, rather than where you are.”

“I don’t understand,” Robert frowned.

Its not difficult, his grandfather told him. All you have to do is look for the things that aren’t there, instead of the things that are. Look at that oak tree, the big one, right at the end of the driveway. I can see a beast in that oak tree, can’t you? Or rather, the negative shape of a beast. An absence of beast. But in its own way, that beast is just as real as you are. It has a recognizable shape, it has teeth and claws. You can see it. And, if you can see it . . . how can it be any less real than you are?”

Robert didn’t know what to say. His grandfather sounded so matter-of-fact. Was he teasing him, or did he really mean it? The wind blew and the rain pattered against the window, and in the young oaks close to the house the snarl-cats swayed in their precarious branches and the hunched hobgobblings shuffled and dodged.

“Let me tell you something,” said his grandfather. “Back in the 1950s, when I was looking for minerals in Australia, I came across a very deep ravine in the Olgas in which I could see what looked like copper deposits. I wanted to explore the ravine, but my Aborigine guide refused to go with me. When I asked him why, he said a creature lived there—a terrible creature called Woolrabunning, which means you were here but now you have gone away again.’

“Well, of course I didn’t believe him. Who would? So late one afternoon I went down into that ravine alone. It was very quiet, except for the wind. I lost my way, and it was almost dark when I found the markers that I had left for myself. I was right down at the bottom of the ravine, deep in shadow. I heard a noise like an animal growling. I looked up, and I saw that creature, as clearly as I can see you.

It was like a huge wolf, except that its head was larger than a wolf, and its shoulders were heavier. It was formed not from flesh or fur but entirely from the sky in between the trees and the overhanging rocks.”

Robert stared at his grandfather, pale-faced. “What did you do?” he whispered. “I did the only thing I could do. I ran. But do you know something? It chased me. I don’t know how, to this day. But as I was scaling the ravine, I could hear its claws on the rocks close behind me, and I could hear it panting, and I swear that I could feel its hot breath on the back of my neck.

“I fell, and I gashed my leg. Well ... I don’t know whether the Woolrabunning gashed my leg, or whether I cut it on a rock or a thorn-bush. But look . . . you can judge for yourself.”

He lifted his left trouser-leg and bared his white, skinny calf. Robert leaned forward, and saw a deep blueish scar that ran down from his knee, and disappeared into the top of his Argyle sock. ^

“Thirty stitches, I had to have in that,” said his grandfather. “I was lucky I didn’t bleed to death. You can touch it if you want to. It doesn’t hurt.”

Robert didn’t want to touch it, but he stared at it for a long time in awe and fascination. Not a beast, he thought to himself, but an absence of beast. Look for the things that aren’t there, rather than the things that are.

“Do you know what my guide said?” asked his grandfather. “He said I should have given the Woolrabunning something to eat. Then the blighter would have left me alone.”

The next day, after lunch, Robert went for a walk on his own. The gale had suddenly died down, and although the lawns and the rose-gardens were strewn with leaves and twigs, the trees were silent and frigidly still. Robert could hear nothing but his own footsteps, crunching on the shingle driveway, and the distant echoing rattle of a train.

He passed the two stone pillars that marked the beginning of the avenue. There was a rampant stone lion on each of them, with a shield that bore a coat of arms. One of the lions had lost its right ear and part of its cheek, and both were heavily cloaked in moss. Robert had always loved them when he was smaller. He had christened them Pride and Wounded. They had been walking between them—his mother, his father and him—when his mother had said to his father, “All you worry about is your wounded pride.” Then he had learned at nursery school that a group of lions is called a pride, and somehow his mother’s words and the lions had become inextricably intermingled in his mind.

He laid his hand on Wounded’s broken ear, as if to comfort him. Then he turned to Pride, and stroked his cold stone nose. If only they could come alive, and walk through the park beside him, these two, their breath punctuating the air in little foggy clouds. Perhaps he could train them to run and fetch sticks.

He walked up the avenue alone. The snarl-cats perched in the upper branches of the trees, watching him spitefully with leaf-shaped eyes. The hobgobblings hid themselves in the crooks and crotches of the lower branches. Sometimes he glimpsed one of them, behind a tree-trunk, but as soon as he moved around to take a closer look, of course the hobgobbling had vanished; and the shape that had formed its face had become something else altogether, or just a pattern, or nothing at all.

He stopped for a while, alone in the park, a small boy in a traditional tweed coat with a velvet collar, surrounded by the beasts of his own imagination. He felt frightened: and as he walked on, he kept glancing quickly over his shoulder to make sure that the snarl-cats and the hobgobblings hadn’t climbed down from the trees and started to sneak up behind him, tip-toeing on their claws so that they wouldn’t make too much of a scratching noise on the shingle.

But he had to go to the big oak, to see the hump-backed creature that dominated all the rest the Woolrabunning of Falworth Park. You were here, and now you have gone again. But all the time you’re still here, because I can see the shape of you.

At last the big oak stood directly in front of him. The hog-like beast looked different from this angle, leaner, with a more attenuated skull. Meaner, if anything. Its hunched-up shoulders were still recognizable, and if anything its jaws were crammed even more alarmingly with teeth. Robert stood staring at it for a long time, until the gentle whisper of freshly-falling drizzle began to cross the park.

“Please don’t chase after me,” said Robert, to the beast that was nothing but sky-shapes in the branches of a tree. Here . . . I ve brought you something to eat. ”

Carefully, he took a white paper napkin out of his coat pocket, and laid it in the grass at the foot of the oak. He unfolded it, to show the beast his offering. A pork chipolata, smuggled from lunch. Pork chipolatas were his favourite, especially the way that grandfather insisted they had to be cooked, all burst and crunchy and overdone, and so Robert was making a considerable sacrifice.

All hail, he said to the beast. He bowed his head. Then he turned around and began to walk back to the house, at a slow and measured pace.

This time, he didn't dare to turn around. Would the beast ignore his offering, and chase after him, the way that the Woolrabunning had chased after grandfather, and ripped his leg? Should he start running, so that he would at least have a chance of reaching the house and shutting the door before the beast could catch up with him? Or would that only arouse the beast’s hunting instincts, and start him running, too? ’

He walked faster and faster between the trees where the snarl-cats lived, listening as hard as he could for the first heavy loping of claws. Soon he was walking so fast that to all intents and purposes he was running with his arms swinging and his legs straight. He hurried between Pride and Wounded, and it was then that he heard the shingle crunching behind him and the soft deep roaring of—

A gold-colored Jaguar XJS, making its way slowly toward the house.

Because of the afternoon gloom, the Jaguar had its headlights on, so that at first it was impossible for Robert to see past the dazzle, and make out who was driving. Then the car swept past him, and he saw a hand waving, and a familiar smile, and he ran behind it until it had pulled up beside the front door.

“Mummy!” he cried, as she stepped out of the passenger-seat. He flung his arms around her waist and held her tight. She felt so warm and familiar and lovely that he could scarcely believe that she had ever left him.

She ruffled his hair and kissed him. She was wearing a coat with a fur collar that he hadn’t ever seen her wearing before, and she smelled of a different perfume. A rich lady’s perfume. She had a new brooch, too, that sparkled and scratched his cheek when she bent forward to kiss him.

“That was a funny way to run,” she told him. “Gerry said you looked like a clockwork soldier.”

Gerry?

“This is Gerry,” said his mother. “I brought him along so that you could meet him.”

Robert looked up, frowning. He sensed his mother’s tension. He sensed that something wasn’t quite right. A tall man with dark combed-back hair came around the front of the car with his hand held out. He had a sooty-black three o’clock shadow and eyes that were bright blue like two pieces of Mediterranean sky cut out of a travel-brochure.

“Hallo, Robert,” he said, still holding his hand out. “My name’s Gerry. I’ve heard a lot about you.”

“Have you?” swallowed Robert. He glanced at his mother for some sort of guidance, some sort of explanation; but all his mother seemed to be capable of doing was smiling and nodding.

“I hear you’re keen on making model aeroplanes,” said Gerry.

Robert blushed. His aeroplane models were very private to him: partly because he didn’t think that he was very good at making them (although his mother always thought he was, even when he stuck too much polystyrene cement on the wings, or broke the decals, or stuck down the cockpit canopy without bothering to paint the pilot). And partly because—well—they were private, that s all. He couldn't understand how Gerry could have known about them. Not unless his mother had told Gerry almost everything about him.

Why would she have done that? Who was this “Gerry”? Robert had never even seen him before, but “Gerry” seemed to think that he had a divine right to know all about Robert’s model aeroplanes, and drive Robert's mother around in his rotten XJS, and behave as if he practically owned the place.

Robert’s grandfather came out of the house. He was wearing his mustard Fair Isle jumper. He had an odd look on his face that Robert had never seen before. Agitated, ill-at-ease, but defiant, too.

“Oh, daddy, so marvelous to see you,” said Roberts mother, and kissed him. “This is Gerry. Gerry—this is daddy.”

“Sorry we’re early,” smiled Gerry, shaking hands. “We made much better time on the M40 than I thought we would. Lots of traffic, you know, but fairly fast-moving. ”

Robert’s grandfather stared at the XJS with suspicion and animosity. “Well, I expect you can travel quite quickly in a thing like that.”

“Well, it’s funny, you know,” said Gerry. “I never think of her as a 'thing.’ I always think of her as a ‘she.’ ”

Robert’s grandfather looked away from the XJS and (with considerable ostentatiousness) didn’t turn his eyes toward it again. In a thin voice, almost as if he were speaking to himself, he said, “A thing is an ‘it’ and only a woman is a ‘she.’ I’ve always thought that men who lump women in with ships and cars and other assorted junk deserve nothing more than ships and cars and other assorted junk.”

“Well,” flustered Gerry. “Chacun & son gout. ” At the same time, he gave Robert’s mother one of those looks which meant, You said he was going to be difficult. You weren’t joking, were you? Robert’s mother, in return, shrugged and tried bravely to look as if this wasn’t going to be the worst weekend in living memory. She had warned Gerry, after all. But Gerry had insisted on “meeting the sprog and granddad, too ... it all comes with the territory. ”

Robert stood close to the Jaguar’s boot as Gerry tugged out the suitcases.

“What do you think of these, then?” Gerry asked him. “Hand-distressed pigskin, with solid brass locks. Special offer from Diner’s Club.”

Robert sniffed. “They smell like sick.”

Gerry put down the cases and closed the boot. He looked at Robert long and hard. Perhaps he thought he was being impressive, but Robert found his silence and his staring to be nothing but boring, and looked away, at Wounded and Pride, and thought about running beside them through the trees.

“I had hoped that we could be friends,” said Gerry.

Friends? How could we be friends? I’m nine and you’re about a hundred. Besides, l don’t want any friends, not at the moment. I’ve got Wounded and Pride and grandfather, and mummy, too. Why should I want to be friends with you?

“What about it?” Gerry persisted. “Friends? Yes? Fanites?”

“You’re too old,” said Robert, plainly.

“What the hell do you mean, too old? I’m thirty-eight. I’m not even forty. Your mother’s thirty-six, for God’s sake. ”

Robert gave a loud, impatient sigh. “You’re too old to be friends with me, that’s what I meant. ”

Gerry hunkered down, so that his large sooty-shaven face was on the same level as Robert’s. He leaned one elbow against the XJS with the arrogance of ownership, but also to stop himself from toppling over. “I don’t mean that sort of friends. I mean friends like father and son.”

Robert was fascinated by the wart that nestled in the crease in Gerry’s nose. He wondered why Gerry hadn’t thought of having it cut off. Couldn’t he see it? He must have seen it, every morning when he looked in the mirror. It was so warty. If I had a wart like that, I’d cut it off myself. But supposing it bled forever, and never stopped? Supposing I cut it off, and nothing would stop the blood pumping out? What was better, dying at the age of nine, or having a wart as big as Gerry’s wart for ever and ever?

“Do you think that’s possible?” Gerry coaxed him.

“What?” asked Robert, in confusion.

“Do you think that could be possible? Do you think that you could try to do that for me? Or at least for your mother, if not for me?”

“But mummy hasn’t got a wart. ”

It seemed for a moment as if the whole universe had gone silent. Then Robert saw Gerry’s hand coming towards him, and the next thing he knew he was lying on his side on the shingle, stunned, seeing stars, and Gerry was saying in an echoing voice, “I picked up the suitcase ... I didn’t realize he was there ... he just came running towards me. He must have caught his face on the solid-brass corner.”

He refused to come down for supper and stayed in bed and read The Jumblies by Edward Lear. “They went to sea in a sieve they did ... in a sieve they went to sea." He liked the lines about “. . . the Lakes, and the Terrible Zone, and the hills of the Chankly Bore." It all sounded so strange and sad and forbidding, and yet he longed to go there. He longed to go anywhere, rather than here, with his mother’s laughter coming up the stairs, flat and high, not like his mother’s laughter at all. What had Gerry done to her, to make her so perfumed and deaf and unfamiliar? She had even believed him about hitting his face on the suitcase. And what could Robert say, while his mother was cuddling him and stroking his hair? Gerry hit me?

Children could say lots of things but they couldn’t say things like that. Saying Gerry hit me would have taken more composure and strength than Robert could ever have summoned up.

His grandfather came up with a tray of shepherd’s pie and a glass of Coca-Cola with a straw.

“Are you all right?” he asked, sitting on the end of Robert’s bed and watching him eat. Outside it was dark, but the bedroom curtains were drawn tight, and even though the wallpaper was filled with mysterious cloaked men who refused to turn around, no matter what, Robert felt reassured that they never would; or at least, not tonight. The night was still silent. The Coca-Cola made a prickling noise.

Robert said, “I hate Gerry.”

His grandfather’s tissue-wrinkled hand rested on his knee. “Yes,” he said. “Of course you do.”

“He’s got a wart.”

“So have I.”

“Not a big one, right on the side of your nose.”

“No—not a big one, right on the side of my nose.”

Robert forked up shepherd’s pie while his grandfather watched him with unaccustomed sadness. “I’ve got to tell you something, Robert.”

“What is it?”

“Your mother . . . well, your mother’s very friendly with Gerry. She likes him a lot. He makes her happy.”

Robert slowly stopped chewing. He swallowed once, and then silently put down his fork. His grandfather said, uncomfortably, “Your mother wants to marry him, Robert. She wants to divorce your father and marry Gerry.”

“How can she marry him?” asked Robert, aghast.

There was a suspicious sparkle in the corner of his grandfather’s eye. He squeezed Robert's knee, and said, “I'm sorry. She loves him. She really loves him, and he makes her happy. You can’t run other people’s lives for them, you know. You can’t tell people who to love and who not to love.”

“But he’s got a wart!”

Robert’s grandfather lifted the tray of supper away, and laid it on the floor. Then he took hold of Robert in his arms and the two of them embraced, saying nothing, but sharing a common anguish.

After a long time, Robert’s grandfather said, quite unexpectedly, “What did you want that sausage for?”

Robert felt himself blush. “What sausage?”

“The sausage you sneaked off your plate at lunchtime and wrapped in a napkin and put in your pocket.”

At first Robert couldn’t speak. His grandfather knew so much that it seemed to make him breathless. But eventually he managed to say, “I gave it to the beast. The beast in the big oak tree. I asked him not to chase me.”

His grandfather stroked his forehead two or three times, so gently that Robert could scarcely feel it. Then he said, “You’re a good boy, Robert. You deserve a good life. You should do whatever you think fit.”

“I don’t know what you mean.”

His grandfather stroked his forehead again, almost dreamily. “What I mean is, you shouldn’t let a good sausage go to waste.”

Not long after midnight, the gales suddenly rose up again. The trees shook out their skirts, and began to dance Dervish-like and furious in the dark. Robert woke up, and lay stiffly listening—trying to hear the rushing of feet along the shingle driveway, or the scratching of claws against the window. He had a terrible feeling that tonight was the night—that all the snarl-cats and hobgobblings would leap from the trees and come tearing through the house—whirled by the gale, whipped by the wind— all teeth and reddened eyes and bark-brown breath.

Tonight was the night!

He heard a window bang, and bang again. Then he heard his mother screaming. Oh, God! Gerry was murdering her! Tonight was the night, and Gerry was murdering her! He scrambled out of bed, and found his slippers, and pulled open the door, and then he was running slap-slap-slap along the corridor screaming Mummy— mummy—mummy—

And collided into his mother’s bedroom door. And saw by the lamplight. Gerry’s big white bottom, with black hair in the crack; and his red shining cock plunging in and out. And his mother’s face. Transfigured. Staring at him. Sweaty and flushed and distressed. A sweaty saint. But despairing too.

Robert. Her voice sounded as if he were drowning in the bath.

He ran out again. Robert, his mother called, but he wouldn’t stop running. Downstairs, across the hallway, and the front door bursting open, and the gale blowing wildly in. Then he was rushing across the shingle, past Wounded and Pride, and all the dancing snarl-cats and hobgobblings.

The night was so noisy that he couldn’t think. Not that he wanted to think. All he could hear was blustering wind and whining trees and doors that banged like cannon-fire. He ran and he ran and his pajama-trousers flapped, and his blood bellowed in his ears. At last—out of the darkness at the end of the avenue—the big oak appeared, bowing and dipping a little in deference to the wind, but not much more than a full-scale wooden warship would have bowed and dipped, in the days when these woods were used for ocean-going timber.

He stood in front of it, gasping. He could see the beast, leaping and dipping in the branches. “Woolrabunning/” he screamed at it. “Woolrabutming!”

Beneath his feet, the shingle seemed to surge. The wind shouted back at him with a hundred different voices. “WoolrabunningJ” he screamed, yet again. Tears streaked his cheeks. “Help me, Woolrabunning!”

The big oak tossed and swayed as if something very heavy had suddenly dropped down from its branches. Robert strained his eyes in the wind and the darkness, but he couldn't see anything at all. He was about to scream out to the Woolrabunning one more time, when something huge came crashing toward him, something huge and invisible that spattered the shingle and claw-tore the turf.

He didn’t have time to get out of the way. He didn’t have time even to cry out. Something bristly and solid knocked him sideways, spun him onto his back, and then rushed past him with a swirl of freezing, fetid air. Something invisible. Something he couldn’t see. A beast. Or an absence of beast.

He climbed to his feet, shocked and bruised. The wind lifted up his hair. He could hear the creature running toward the house. Hear it, but not see it. Only the shingle, tossed up by heavy, hurrying claws. Only the faintest warping of the night.

He couldn’t move. He didn’t dare to think what would happen now. He heard the front door of the house racketing open. He heard glass breaking, furniture falling. He heard banging and shouting and then a scream like no scream that he had ever heard before, or ever wanted to hear again.

Then there was silence. Then he started to run.

The bedroom was decorated with blood. It slid slowly down the walls in viscous curtains. And worse than the blood were the tom ribbons of flesh that hung everywhere like a saint’s day carnival. And the ripest of smells, like slaughtered pigs. Robert stood in the doorway and he could scarcely understand what he was looking at.

Eventually his grandfather laid his hand on his shoulder. Neither of them spoke. They had no idea what would happen now.

They walked hand in hand along the windy driveway, between Wounded and Pride, between the trees where the snarl-cats and the hobgobblings roosted.

As they passed Wounded and Pride, the two stone lions stiffly turned their heads, and shook off their mantles of moss, and dropped down from their plinths with soft intent, and followed them.

Then snarl-cats jumped down from the trees, and followed them, too; and humpbacked hobgobblings, and dwarves, and elves, and men in purple cloaks. They walked together, a huge and strangely-assorted company, until they reached the big oak, where they stopped, and bowed their heads.

Up above them, in the branches, the Woolrabunning roared and roared; a huge cry of triumph and blood-lust that echoed all the way across Falworth Park, and beyond.

Robert held his grandfather’s hand as tight as tight. “Absence of beast!” he whispered, thrilled. “Absence of beast!”

And his grandfather touched his face in the way that a man touches the face of somebody he truly loves. He kept the bloody carving-knife concealed behind his back; quite unsure if he could use it, either on Robert or on himself. But he had always planned to cut his throat beneath the big oak in Falworth Park, one day; so perhaps this was as good a night as any.

Even when their positive shapes were gone, their negative shapes would still remain, him and Robert and the snarl-cats and the sly hobgobblings; and perhaps that was all that anybody could ever ask.