The Perils and Dangers of this Night Read Online Free PDF Page A

scared.
    I was hurt and angry, and all I wanted to do was to get
away from the two people with whom I'd been abandoned.
I knew every inch of the building, after nearly five
years as a boarder there, and now I padded round corners
without slowing at all, up one ramp and down another,
past the dark cavern of the library and the forbidden,
fuggy den of the staffroom. The school was in darkness,
but I needed no light to guide me through the downstairs
corridors and into the changing-room at the back of the
house. I paused there, struck by the strangeness and
emptiness of the place which was usually so noisy and
smelly, where sweaty small boys stripped and showered
and tumbled and fought, where dozens of pairs of socks
and muddy boots were tangled and jumbled together.
    Now, in the gloom, all the lockers were empty, and all
the pegs were bare – except one, where my own outdoor
coat was hanging.
    I slipped softly through the changing-room, which had
already been swept out and mopped with disinfectant
and smelled, to me, so oddly, boylessly clean. I slid back
a puny bolt, pushed open the door and stepped outside,
into the cobbled stable-yard.
    To my surprise, as I crossed the yard I saw a glow of
light from inside the furthest stable. I approached as
quietly as I could, unable to believe that I could have left
a lamp burning the last time I'd been there. The door was
ajar. I peered through. There was a man moving slowly
in the corner, throwing an enormous black shadow into
the rafters. I could smell him too.
    'Roly?' I whispered. The man spun round, and I
slipped into the stable. 'It's me, it's Scott.'
    The man, startled by my unexpected arrival, squinted
at me. He was lean and wiry, with the leathery, raddled
look of an old jockey: his face reddened by the cold, a flat
cap pushed back on a head of thin grey hair. He was
wearing green corduroy trousers over a pair of heavy
boots, and a waterproof coat which filled the air around
him with a whiff of wood smoke and damp soil – not an
offensive smell, not to me at least, for it was the smell of
the woodland I knew so well, the smell of a wild
outdoors and the creatures that lived in it. A double-barrelled
shotgun leaned in a corner of the stall. Roly was
the gamekeeper, who lived in the woods, in an old
caravan a couple of miles from the school.
    'Scott,' he said. His smile was quick and weaselly.
'You're still here.'
    I crossed the room towards him. I edged past the
shotgun, for the dull gleam of it and its fume of oil and
burned powder were repugnant to me. I moved into the
stall and saw, with a twinge of relief, that the jackdaw
was calm, just bobbing a bit and staring to see me come
into the circle of lamplight. The bird was calm, but as I
stepped up to the man, something wild and strong
erupted inside his pungent coat, something kicking and
lunging hysterically.
    'I came with this,' he said, 'for the bird.'
    It was a rabbit. Roly pulled his coat open and expertly
grabbed the terrified animal. 'I was going to finish it off,'
he said, 'but then I brought it like this, to show you how.'
He held the animal out towards me. 'Go on, young man,
do you want to do it?'
    It had a gunshot in its haunches, a lot of blood where
the pellets had blasted it as it weaved and jinked through
the undergrowth. And then Roly must have caught up
with it as it tried to drag itself away, tromped it under his
boot, and he'd stuffed it under his jacket, securing it with
his belt so that, paralysed by shock, it was strapped
against his body – until, just then, in a trauma of
darkness and strangeness and slow suffocation, the rabbit
had burst alive again.
    I took it, and it kicked and squealed, possessed by an
extraordinary strength: every muscle, every tissue expressed
defiance and rage in the face of death.
    Roly was calm, expert, a good teacher. No fuss, no
hurry, he moved behind me and adjusted my hands to the
squirming body. I remember the smell of his clothes, his
beery breath, the heat in his