Secret Heart Read Online Free PDF

coming through grass to take their prey.
    “Where was you today, Only Maloney?” they hissed.
    “Swallow them, burn them, blow them all away,” he whispered.
    He fingered the name of God. Nothing happened to them. They came closer, closer. He rolled his fists, clenched them.
    “What you bloody doing?”
    A new voice. It echoed across the ruins.
    “What you bloody doing to him?”
    The prowlers lifted their heads. They searched the landscape with their eyes. They stood, began to back away, back to their pack.
    It was Joff, standing on a heap of stones.
    They scuttled away from him, like crabs, like beetles. They kept turning their heads to him, muttering, but they moved away. He came to Joe, stood by the Blessed Chapel. He swiped his hand across his face and watched. He shook his head.
    “Boy,” he said.
    Joe raised his eyes.
    “Boy!”
    “Y—”
    “You got to harden up, boy.”
    Joff stroked the snakeskin tattoo at his throat. He chewed his lips with his golden teeth. He beckoned Joe from the chapel.
    “You think this is how you should be, boy?”
    “N-no.”
    “A father wouldn't've let you get like this,” he said.
    Joe hung his head.
    “Hiding in holes,” Joff said. “Scared of your own shadow. He'd have done something about it.”
    He reached down, took Joe's arm, drew him out.
    “You need a man, boy. You know that?”
    Joe saw the snake scales tattooed on the backs of his hands.
    “And that mother needs a man, boy,” Joff said. “You know that?”
    “Y—”
    Joe chewed his lips. Joff slid his hand around the back of Joe's neck and held him. He cupped Joe's chin in his palm.
    “The lad says you want to come out with us. Surviving. That's true?”
    “Y-yes,” he said. No, he said inside.
    “It'd be the making of you. You've seen the change I've wrought in Stanny Mole?”
    “Y-yes.”
    “Aye. I am not an easy master, boy. And I'll lead you into deepest danger. But lads that walk with me become survivors.”
    He stroked Joe's cheek.
    “I'll ring changes in you, boy.”
    Joe watched Joff stride away, past the blue tent as if it wasn't there, out of sight across the slope. He picked earth, licked it.
    “Spirits of the earth,” he breathed. He swiped his hand across the name of God. “Give Joe Maloney the strength he needs today. Our men. Our men.”
    He knelt there in the Blessed Chapel. He closed his eyes. The images of his life in Helmouth swirled within him. Then the image of the tiger came. It stared from the shadows, as if it waited for him.

Eleven
    As he left, a rat moved through the Blessed Chapel, low to the earth, and took no notice of him. A skylark dropped onto a gravestone three yards away and held its crested head high for a second, then went up again. Hung high over him singing, then went further to a higher plane and hung there too to sing. Then higher and higher till there was nothing but its song, so sweet, so ardent, and so far far far away. He thought of Corinna's mother spinning through the blue light, spinning so fast she went out of sight. Where did she go during those moments?
    He stepped across the stones.
    He walked through Cody's crew to the Cut. They hardly noticed him. Their eyes were blinded by hate and they were yelling at the tent.
    “Gyppo scum! Filth! Get back where you come from!”
    They stamped their feet, thrust their chins forward, jabbed their fingers, shook their fists.
    Beyond them, a couple of girls sat at the curbside, holding dolls in the air as if they were flying.
    “Look, Joe. Fairies!” They laughed.
    He paused.
    “See them fly!” they said.
    He laughed with them.
    “Yeah!” he said. He crouched and saw how ordinary dolls were transfigured by the children's vision. “Yeah!”
    He walked on. His mum would be back from the Booze Bin by now, her afternoon shift finished. He walked through the broken gate, along the path beside the house. He slipped in at the back door, into the kitchen. Cut himself a slab of bread, started to butter