Mad Dog Moonlight

by Pauline Fisk

  What was going on? It took Mad Dog moments to grasp that the monster wasn’t trying to kill him and wasn’t even a monster, anyway. But the realisation brought no comfort.

  For the monster was Grendel Griffiths.

  Grendel Griffiths! On the mountain. In the night. Lost, like him. Frozen, like him. Scared, like him. How could this be?

  Before he could work it out, Grendel hit him with a stick – and then flung herself into his arms.

  ‘This is all your fault!’ she cried, clinging on tight and refusing to let go. ‘I hate you!’

  Mad Dog didn’t know what was worse, fighting Grendel or being hugged by her. She pinned him with one leg and hit him with the stick, which she clutched in her spare hand. Her breath on his face smelt of chewing gum, and her voice carried on about what she was going to do to him when they returned to civilisation. But, even so, she wouldn’t let him go.

  Struggling to get her off him, Mad Dog reached for the stick – only to recognise it.

  ‘My ffon!’ he cried out. ‘That’s my ffon! Where did you find it?’

  He tried even harder to grab the stick, but Grendel clung on tight. She wouldn’t say where she’d found it, only that it was hers. The two of them rolled over on the ground, Grendel shrieking, ‘Get off me!’ and, ‘It’s mine,’ and, ‘Find your own stick,’ until finally Mad Dog wrenched it out of her grasp.

  At this, Grendel started crying that everything that had happened to her was all Mad Dog’s fault. She started hitting Mad Dog’s chest with her balled-up fists.

  ‘What’s my fault?’ he demanded to know.

  ‘Everything,’ Grendel repeated, ‘beginning with Mrs Heligan blaming me for your getting lost. She said that, as my partner, you were my responsibility, and she made me go back and find you.’

  ‘She made you do what?’ Mad Dog said.

  Grendel bawled. ‘It was terrible,’ she wept. ‘First I lost the map, and then the heels came off my boots – both my boots, which means you owe me, by the way, because they were new – and then I don’t quite know what happened but every track I took always turned out wrong. And then, finally, it got dark. It was cold and scary, and I couldn’t see where I was going, not until I found that stick shining in the long grass. And now you’ve taken it and its light has gone out.’

  Mad Dog didn’t know what light she meant, and Grendel was in no mood to explain. ‘When I get home, I’m going to set my dad on you,’ she said.

  Mad Dog shivered at the mention of Grendel’s father, who was not a man to be messed with from what he’d heard. Grendel said again that she hated him – but that didn’t stop her pressing herself against him on the principle that two bodies were better than one, and he was warmer than nothing.

  She was right too. Mad Dog closed his eyes and prayed for dawn. The knack, he discovered, was to try and pretend that Grendel was someone else – his mother, for example, rocking him to sleep, or Aunty, or a nice warm fire. He prayed for morning too, or, at least, for Grendel to fall asleep, but her voice went on and on, covering every subject from sore feet to the recurring threat of what her father would do when Mad Dog came within his grasp.

  The only small pleasure Mad Dog could glean from the situation came from imagining what her father might do to Mrs Heligan as well, not to say anything of the school. Hopefully they’d sack her and she’d never teach again. After all, she was the one who’d sent Grendel back.

  But she wasn’t the one, according to Grendel, who’d end up getting sued. ‘Just you wait,’ she breathed into Mad Dog’s face. ‘By the time my dad’s finished, you and your family won’t have a penny between you!’

  Mad Dog tried to sleep, but lay awake for most of the night. When Grendel finally dropped off, he still couldn’t sleep, not even when he tried counting. But it wasn’t her father he was thinking about, or what would happen when the school found out he’d spent a night alone on a mountain with Grendel Griffiths. It was his ffon that occupied his thoughts – the strange way that it did that, come back to him every time he thought he’d lost it. And that thing Grendel had said about the light – what had that been all about?

  By the time that dawn broke, Mad Dog was worn out with thinking, as stiff as a board and soaked through from lying on the edge of what turned out to be a bog. As soon as it was light enough, he left Grendel snoring like a prize fighter with blocked sinuses and went to work out where they were. Below the sheep’s pen, he could make out what looked like a major crossroads between valleys with a river running through it that, he guessed, had a good chance of being the Rheidol. If it was, Mad Dog told himself, and he could find a way down to it, then he and Grendel could be back in civilisation in no time.

  Mad Dog set off to investigate. The valley turned out to be easier to get down than he’d expected, but the river was bigger than it appeared from a distance, and too deep to breach. Mad Dog had to cross two other streams before he could even get to it, then wade upriver to a place where it looked shallow enough to pick his way across – except that it wasn’t as shallow as it looked, which meant he suddenly found himself up to his waist in water.

  Mad Dog clambered out, frozen and gasping, and started running on the spot, trying to keep warm. A small hillock stood on this side of the river and he started up it, hoping to find the waters of the reservoir when he reached the top. Cliffs rose on one side of him and sloping grassland ran down the other to the river. A stony track lay ahead of him and, tucked into its side, lay the ruins of a cottage with collapsed walls and the broken remains of a chimney breast with a blackthorn tree growing out of it.

  Mad Dog slowed down when he saw the cottage. It was the first sign of human habitation he’d come across since yesterday but, instead of warming to it, he found himself going as cold on the inside as he was on the outside.

  What was the matter with him? Mad Dog pressed on up the hillock, telling himself that what he felt was nothing to do with the cottage itself, and all to do with having spent a night out in the open. But, as the cottage grew closer, he slowed down until, by the time he was level with it, he’d stopped altogether, feeling physically sick.

  ‘Come on,’ he goaded himself. ‘You’re nearly there. At the top of the hillock, you’ll see Nant y Moch. And there are farms beyond Nant y Moch. You could get down to them in an hour. Then you’ll get breakfast and a bed, and they’ll come and rescue Grendel, and phone Aunty and the school, and everything will be all right.’

  Mad Dog tried again, but with no success. It was as if a physical barrier was stopping him from going any further.

  Finally, feeling as if monsters of the order of the Red Judge of Plynlimon and his Dogs of the Sky lay on the other side of that hillock, Mad Dog turned back. The crossroads between valleys stretched out before him, with the river flowing through it and the cottage in the centre of his vision. And suddenly it all looked so familiar that Mad Dog cried out. If he’d been standing on the path to No. 3, the view couldn’t have looked more familiar.

  ‘I don’t understand! What’s going on here?’

  After that, everything became a bit of a blur. Mad Dog started running back down the track as if the Dogs of the Sky really were after him. He’d no idea where he was going, but somehow he made it back across the river, and found himself at the sheep pen again, where a furious Grendel, thinking that he’d abandoned her, waited for him.

  ‘I was getting worried. Where’ve you been?’ she shrilled at him.

  ‘Nowhere,’ Mad Dog cried, trying to extract himself. ‘I’ve been nowhere. Believe me – it was nowhere.’

  He grabbed his things and tore off. Grendel tore after him. ‘Where d’you think you’re going?’ she shrieked. ‘What about me? Hey, wait!’

  After that, they ran for hours, getting twice as lost as they’d been before. One valley led to another, one river to another. The ground was rough and the going hard. There were no more ruined cottages or other signs of civilisation. Sometimes they found themselves on open grasslands that seemed to stretch for mil
es, sometimes running over heather, sometimes wading through peat bogs.

  Finally they ended up in forestry commission land on the far side of Plynlimon. Grendel pleaded with Mad Dog to stop, certain that they were running round in circles. But Mad Dog didn’t even want to slow down. A shadow had fallen over him when he’d reached that ruined cottage, and it refused to go away. If those legendary Dogs of the Sky – the Red Judge’s cŵn y wbir – really had been after him, Mad Dog couldn’t have felt more frightened. Anything could happen on a mountain like this. Unpredictable was the word that Mrs Anwen Jones had used for it. And she hadn’t been far wrong.

  By now, Mad Dog was so scared that he could almost see the Red Judge of Plynlimon along with his dogs, stalking through the misty forest with deadly intent. He could almost hear their breath. Almost smell them. They were that real.

  Trees shivered as he tore past, and he shivered too and so did Grendel. His panic was a disease, and she had caught it. The two of them ran together, stumbling and falling, tripping and crying.

  Not even when a road appeared beneath them did they stop. A road. A proper, tarmac, made-up road! At the sight of it, Grendel’s legs almost gave way but Mad Dog pulled her on, yelling at her that she mustn’t give up now.

  They reached the road, and started racing along it. By now their clothes were torn and their legs scratched and bleeding. A village sign came into view, announcing OLD HALL, but they scarcely noticed it. They passed a group of cottages without stopping. Passed a school, a church and a farm with barns on the road.

  They would have carried on too, if someone hadn’t stopped them.

  ‘Hey, you two? Where are you going? Are you all right? What are you up to? Stop right there! Stop, I say!’

  It was Grendel who stopped first. She turned her head and saw an elderly woman heading towards them from the back of a parked car, and a second woman, obviously her sister, straightening up from unpacking bags of shopping.

  ‘Of course they’re not all right,’ this second woman said, then called to them, ‘Don’t be scared. We won’t bite. Come over here. Let’s take a look at you.’

  Mad Dog would have dragged Grendel away. His fear had reached such a pitch that he dared not trust anyone, not even a pair of sweet, white-haired old ladies with well-meaning, if slightly bossy, voices.

  But Grendel had had enough. It only took a smile on the first woman’s face – and she burst into tears and flung herself into her arms.

  19

  The Ingram Sisters

  Mad Dog knew he couldn’t leave Grendel on her own. The women sounded well-meaning, but they could be anybody. They started ushering Grendel up a garden path towards a heavy oak front door, and he followed, half-expecting to find a gingerbread cottage inside, with ovens big enough for cooking children. Even when he discovered that the house was a converted chapel rather than a witches’ lair, it didn’t make any difference to how he felt.

  Grendel disappeared inside before he could get her back. He reached the porch and stared at a brass nameplate that said ST CURIG’S HOUSE. INGRAM. NO HAWKERS OR CIRCULARS. GENUINE CALLERS ONLY. The oak door remained open, but Mad Dog stood before it for ages, trying to work out what to do. He knew he should go in, and felt a coward for staying outside. But there was a wilderness inside his head. Wild places. Wild things. Scary thoughts. A world of nameless fears that held him back.

  No one tried to make Mad Dog go in, although one of the old ladies did stick her head round the door to check if he was still there. Finally, however, managing to get a grip on himself, he stepped inside to find himself in a large open-plan all-purpose room where there were no ovens, cauldrons or books of spells, only an untidy chaos that spelt out the word home. Relief washed over him. But what had happened to Grendel?

  The women led him to the bathroom, where he found her wrapped in a massive towel, looking like an ordinary girl again, the terror washed out of her. At the smell of soap and the sight of hot, comforting steam, Mad Dog felt the wilderness drain out of him.

  After Grendel had finished in the bathroom, pausing only to examine her face in the mirror, he had a shower too. Then all the scratches on his legs were attended to as if the women were used to rescuing injured people off the mountain. He was put in fresh clothes, which didn’t fit but at least felt warm, then he joined Grendel in front of massive plates of eggs, mushrooms, fried tomatoes and honey cakes.

  In all this time, the old women didn’t ask a single question about what they’d been doing to end up in such a state. But once they’d eaten, they were fair game. The women settled them on a massive sofa before a window which was full of sunlight. Then they wanted to know everything. And some of their questions were very pointed too. Not only did they ask ‘Who are you?’, ‘Where do you come from?’ and ‘Do your parents know where you are?’ but, ‘Why were you on Plynlimon?’, ‘Did something frighten you?’ and – most pointedly of all – ‘What were you running from?’

  The questions came thick and fast, with very little time to answer before the next one came along. Mostly it was the Ingram sister with the glasses who spoke – the one who’d stopped them in the first place, her mouth snapping open and shut like a letterbox. Apart from that, the two of them were fairly interchangeable, both tall and thin with the same twin peaks of old ladies’ hair piled up on their heads, and the same bright sisters’ eyes that looked from Mad Dog to Grendel as if they knew more about Plynlimon than they were letting on.

  Mad Dog tried explaining that they’d been on a school trip and had got lost. But, as if she was afraid of him glossing over the true nature of the situation, Grendel suddenly burst out with, ‘I want my dad! You’ve got to phone him. None of this is any of my fault. He’s to blame – him, Ryan Lewis! He did the whole thing just to frighten me! He’s a beast. I’ve always hated him. I hope the school expels him. I hope the police arrest him. And they should too, because right from the start, he had the whole thing planned!’

  Mad Dog was furious, but there was nothing he could do to stop it. Words like injustice and barefaced lying sprang to mind, but Grendel wouldn’t let him get a word in edgeways. Finally, when she’d finished her character assassination, she flung herself back on the sofa and concluded with, ‘In case you’re wondering, I’m Grendel Griffiths and this is my phone number and I want to go home right now.’

  One of the Ingram sisters phoned Grendel’s father – and then all hell broke loose. You’d have thought that Grendel’s dad would have been relieved to hear that his princess was safe, but all that came across was anger.

  ‘At least they’re alive,’ the Ingram sister said down the phone. ‘However much they’ve been through, at least they’re off Plynlimon with only a few scratches and bruises to show for it. Some people go up there and never come back. And yet here they are, safe and well.’

  When Grendel’s dad finally turned up, the last thing Mad Dog felt was safe and well. He’d never actually spoken to Mr Griffiths before, but he’d seen him around school – a hulk of a man, given to few words, whose redeeming feature was his jewel of a daughter. One of the Ingram sisters went to answer the thundering on the door and, as Grendel’s father came storming in, Mad Dog found himself reaching for his ffon.

  Mr Griffiths had one of those faces that look angry at the best of times, but now it bore all the major features of a bull on a rampage. He came straight at Mad Dog without even stopping to greet Grendel, picked him up by the scruff of his neck, and shouted, ‘So you’re the boy that everybody’s telling me about!’

  Mad Dog whispered that, yes, he was that boy, whereupon Mr Griffiths opened his mouth so wide that Mad Dog could see halfway down his throat, and roared, ‘I’m going to kill you, so help me God.’

  He started shaking Mad Dog, and it took the combined effort of Grendel, shouting at him to ‘lay off, Dad’, and the full force of the Ingram sisters, to get him to stop. They were tough old women too – far stronger than they looked. But, by the time they’d extracted Mad Dog, he felt like a rag doll th
at had been pulled to pieces.

  Grendel’s father stood over him, trembling with fury. ‘You think you can mess with my daughter?’ he roared. ‘You think you can mess with me? You think you can mess with my family? Well, we’ll see about that! Nobody – and I mean nobody – takes my daughter up some mountain and gets her lost!’

  Finally he was persuaded to leave, grabbing Grendel on the way and storming out of the house without even thanking the sisters for what they’d done. When his car had roared away, the silence was overwhelming. The sisters made a pot of life-restoring amber tea because, they reckoned, Mad Dog needed it and so did they. Then they led him out into the garden because they reckoned they needed that too. The three of them sat on wrought-iron seats, looking at flowers and bees, drinking like guests at a vicarage tea party while they waited for Uncle to arrive.

  It was the first time since setting sight on that ruined cottage that Mad Dog had felt anything approaching a sense of peace. He leant back in the sunshine and hugged his ffon. It was good to be here. He savoured the moment. The sisters were chattering about honey and pollen and St Curig’s bees, and he could see the bees in question dancing between their hives amongst the trees at the bottom of the garden.

  Birds whistled and swooped from branch to branch, and a river glinted in the sunlight. A small white dog curled up between the sisters’ feet, fast asleep, and Mad Dog felt like sleeping too. He closed his eyes, and might well have dropped off if Uncle hadn’t turned up.

  He was politer than Mr Griffiths, but no less angry. ‘You’ve got some explaining to do,’ he said. ‘Do you realise what you’ve put us through? We all thought that you were dead. Aunty’s been beside herself, and so have I and so has your school. Do you know, there are parents threatening to take their children away because they think the teaching staff aren’t competent? And other parents threatening to sue. And all because of you. What’ve you got to say for yourself?’