“Jared!” he called. “It’s Dick.” There still seemed to be no movement from within the wooden box of the house.
“Who’s there?” a voice called from behind him. Dick spun around to see who had spoken. He couldn’t see anyone.
“Is that you Jared?”
“Who is that?”
“It’s me, Dick.” He still couldn’t see anyone, but the voice had come from close by. There was a rustle of branches, and Jared emerged from the bushes that lined the track to the house.
“What are you doing here?” Jared asked as he passed by Dick and pushed opened the unlocked door.
“I was hoping to stay for a night or two.”
“What’s wrong with your lodging house?”
“She knows that I knew her husband.”
“How did she find that out?”
“One of the kids was rooting through my papers and there was mention of him in there.”
“So she threw you out?”
“In a manner of speaking. She was very polite about it.” They both smiled at Dick’s version of events.
“And you have nowhere else you can go?”
“Not tonight.” Dick knew that Jared was apprehensive about being with him since they had gone through the hell at Cripple Creek together, but he also knew that having shared that vile experience Jared was not going to let him down.
“One night will do it,” Dick said to further his case.
“Fine,” Jared said, and Dick followed him inside.
They sat over a dinner of meat and potatoes and drank whiskey with it. They talked about the news, and what it was like at the Constable household. There was a tension in the air that Dick could palpably feel, and he knew that Jared could too. They avoided the subject of Cripple Creek, and they knew that they couldn’t talk about killing Rattleyard here either. This was not a safe place to talk plans about killing him. They couldn’t avoid talking about him altogether, and when enough whiskey had been consumed, they started on the topic as Jared lit a fire.
“I think he’s been ripping in the backyard of the Constable house,” Dick said. “A couple of nights I thought I heard it, but when I looked out the window it had always stopped by the time I got there. There was no sign of him but I could feel his eyes on me looking up through the dirt, laughing at me, knowing that I wasn't able to see him.” Jared nodded and looked out his window.
“It’s been the same here. I know he’s been outside some nights, knowing that he was scaring me. I even went out and dug a few holes one night to convince myself that he was there, but I found nothing.”
“You could have been killed!” Dick said.
“I’d had enough to drink that night that dying was probably what I was looking for.” An image came to Dick of his being in his grave and Rattleyard beside him under the ground and laughing. Jared was looking into the freshly blazing fire, the bright start that always begins before it dies down a little to the gentle glow that really warms the room. Dick thought about saying something about death not getting rid of Rattleyard, but he decided not to.
“Did you hear that?” Jared said as he shot forward in his seat. His head was cocked to hear something.
“What?” Dick too cocked his head to listen. He hadn’t heard anything but in his mind now he knew that he had heard the Ripping. They were both deathly still and silent, avoiding each other's eyes.
The noise came again, and there was no mistaking this time. It was the ripping; Rattleyard was nearby, clawing and crawling his way towards them under the ground. Now they did look at one another in fear, each hoping the other had some plan in mind. It got closer, and they stood motionless.
“We have to get out of here,” Dick said.
“To where? You know how fast he can move, here get up on the table,” Jared said, and he jumped up and tugged at Dick to do the same. Dick clambered up just as the floor shattered beneath him and the metal forearm of Rattleyard slashed at where he had been; where his throat had just been. The force with which Jared had pulled him at that last second carried him through across the table, and he fell to the floor on the other side. He turned just in time to see Jared pull the kitchen crockery cabinets down on top of Rattleyard.
“Get out quick!” Jared shouted. He jumped down from the table and ran with Dick towards the door. They heard the smashing and splintering of wood as they left the house and ran in separate directions. Dick was alone in the trees now, and he could hear the thrashing of Rattleyard’s limbs, but they were getting farther away. He was chasing Jared!
“Jared!” he called out. “He’s coming after...” A piercing scream shook the night and birds flitted in panic from their roosts. Dick felt the pain of Jared’s death, but his raw fear took his body up the branches of a tree, and there he stayed as he grieved his lost friend.
Chapter 12
Dick awoke to the throttle of birds calling to one another in the cold morning air. The light was coming fast, and he realised that he had fallen asleep in the tree. He was lucky not to have fallen from it. He had been awake most of the night, afraid to step down onto the ground knowing that within a few hundred feet of him was the body of his friend.
He had heard the ripping once or twice during the early part of the night and then he heard it in every cracking branch and whistle of the wind for the rest. He couldn’t have been asleep for long because it was near dawn when he last remembered seeing anything.
It was morning now. He would have to go to the mine and tell them to shut it down. Rattleyard was building to another massacre and all those who worked there were in danger now. He listened for a while and scanned the earth below him. He didn’t feel the eyes of the monster on him. He climbed gingerly down and stepped on the ground with the expectation that he could be dead in a second flat.
Nothing happened, and he took no more time.He raced back for his car. He thought about going to Jared, to find his body and perhaps bury him but he had to get to the mine before something happened there and even more people were killed. Jared would understand; this is what he would have wanted him to do.
The car rattled over the gravel road and the steep hills that wound their way up to the main entrance of the mine where the men would have been coming to work for the last half an hour or so. He drove like a wild man and pulled up at the principal shaft entrance, seeing men go down in the full grated box of the lift.
“Stop! Don’t go down there!” he shouted as he got out of the car, but his shouting could do nothing to stop the drop. He ran to the controls and flipped the switch to stop it.
“What are you doing?” the lift operator asked him roughly slapping his hand away from the switch.
“We have to close the mine; all these men are in danger!”
“Danger of what?” Dick couldn’t say what and be taken seriously; he looked around for the foreman. The lift operator flipped the switch and Dick flipped it back. “Get away from that!” the operator said, and he pushed him away.
“What's going on here?” a man said coming over. Dick knew he was in charge of something here but couldn’t recall what.
“This guy is drunk and stopping the lift going down,” the operator said.
“They are in danger!” Dick shouted
“What danger?” the man asked. Still, he could say nothing. In exasperation, Dick pushed the operator out of the way and began to draw the lift back up. The voices of the men in the lift could be heard complaining.
“Get away from that!” the operator said rushing back at him and the man grabbed a hold of him too. They pulled him away from the machinery, and he struggled against them, but he was weak from exhaustion and hunger. They bundled him to his car as he whimpered helplessly about a monster that was going to kill them all and he knew as he spoke and his strength failed him that he was talking nonsense to their ears. He drove away slowly back in the direction he had come from. His eyes were heavy as he did.
If no one was going to listen to him; it was time for him to do something. It was
time for him to try to get rid of Rattleyard once and for all.
Dick drove to a hiding place he had in the woods and uncovered the back of his car. He took out some heavy metal vats and carried them into the clearing in the woods, at the place where the bark had been stripped from the trees. He felt safe here, but at the same time he was apprehensive about bringing these metal vats here. They could be all Rattleyard would need to strengthen him, and this was only the tip of the iceberg of the metal he was going to need to smelt in these vats.
He got to the trees and set up a pulley from ropes and materials he had left there on his previous visits and pulled the vats up into the trees and put them in platforms he had made from planks and boards between the branches of the strongest trees. He looked down at the ground below. If this plan didn’t work, he would be killed in this place. He was sure of it.
Now, there was another important job he had to do; Jared had to have a decent burial.
Chapter 13
Crispin was at the table for breakfast when Arthur came down, the last of the family to rise this morning. He sat down and took some of the pancakes that Mrs. Constable had made. It was rare that she made these, and all the children were delighted whenever she did, but today there was no explanation as to why as she seemed to be in a dour mood. Her smiles were forced, and she moved listlessly- a manner that didn’t suit her.
“Dick will be sorry if he misses these,” Arthur said taking up the syrup.
“Mr. Duggan moved out last night while you were at your Aunt’s house,” Mrs. Constable said. She poured tea as though she didn’t think the children would be interested in this news.
“Why?” Elisha asked for them all.
“He didn’t say. He paid his bill and said he was leaving.”
“Where did he go?” Arthur asked.
“I don’t know.” None of them believed this. There was something else going on, and they knew that they were not going to get the answers they wanted from their mother. They would have to talk to Dick to find out what happened. Crispin looked at Arthur, and he knew they agreed. They would go as soon as breakfast was over to find him, but they couldn’t let their mother think this was the end of it.
“Will he be coming back?” Crispin asked.
“I’m not sure, but I don’t think so,” Mrs. Constable said. Mary was losing interest, and she began to talk about something that she did with a little girl a few houses away, and there was no more said about Dick.
As soon as they were able, Crispin and Arthur met outside the house and began their trek to the mine which was the only place that they thought Dick could be. It was a long walk there in the rising heat of the morning, and they spoke little in their discomfiture. Finally, after an hour, they got there, but when they asked at the mine, no one seemed to know where he was. They asked everyone they saw, and some said they thought they had seen him there earlier. The boys were getting nowhere.
“He mustn’t be here,” Arthur said looking around at the work going on around them.
“He could be under the ground,” Crispin said.
As he spoke, there was a terrific noise from under the ground, and they knew it was the ripping they’d come to recognize. They stood glued to the spot. Suddenly, about fifty feet from them, the ground burst open, and there was a horrible sound of thin metal clanging, and they saw the creature, this Rattleyard they had heard so much about, launch into the air and come down and slash at a group of men who were dead before they even really realised what was going on. It was only as big as a large man, and its legs, arms, torso and tail, were made up of razor sharp connecting and overlapping metal sheets. He clanked noisily as he moved around and this thin waist seemed to be able to twist and turn at will so he could change direction while he was moving at lightning speed.
Crispin and Arthur took to their feet in fright. They could hear the screams of men as they ran and then there was a horrible crash and they turned to see one of the tunnels collapsing and the monster jumping around and picking off the men with his sharp limbs and swooshing tail,. Crispin was crying then as Arthur pulled at him to keep on running. The mine collapse made him think of his father, and he saw for the first time how his father would have died. They ran on and on in the now sweltering heat until the sounds behind were faded beyond being audible.
Chapter 14
Dick sat in the bar and drained another of the foul warm whiskeys in front of him, and he closed his eyes at the taste. The dirt from Jared’s grave was still fresh on him, and he could smell the blood that had been all over the ground where he had found his body. It was a horrible ordeal to have to bury someone who was so brutally murdered, but he thought it was right that he should be the one to do it. He could smell the acrid air where the grave now lay, marked by sticks banded together. An unremarkable grave. He raised his glass to Jared and wondered if he had gotten what he truly wished for, in the end, to be gone and not have to live in fear of Rattleyard anymore. How long would it be before there were more killings now? Would he be next? Would Rattleyard come bursting through these very floorboards and slash him to death?
His plan was ready to go. He knew how to kill Rattleyard- he was sure of it. All he had to do was lure the monster to the place in the forest where he would be weak. He drained another shot. He felt sleepy now.
Crispin and Arthur were suddenly around him and tugged at his clothes and were talking at the same time in panicked and terrified sobbing voices. The barman was yelling at the kids to get out of the bar.
“He’s killed everyone at the mine,” Crispin cried out and this was the first thing that Dick understood.
“The mine?” he asked. "When?"
"Now!" Arthur said. Something stirred in Dick, and he felt the anger rise in him. He stood up and fumbled for his car keys until he found them in his breast pocket.
"Do you know the forest well?" he asked them.
"Yes."
"Do you know the clearing where the trees have no bark?"
"Yes."
"Go there and stay there until I come for you."
"Why?"
"That's the place where he can do you no harm, where he will be weak." They nodded and with that Dick ran to his car. When he sat on the seat, he was dizzy from the heat and the run fused with the alcohol he’d had so far. He got the car into gear and knocked over an advertisement at the carpark exit.
The car was hard to control at both the speed and intoxication level he was at. He took long bends at unwise speeds and prayed that there was no one out walking in the blind ahead of him. More than a few times he felt the wheels slide on the gravel off the side of the road, and he had to straighten up, and each time he did he overcompensated and went onto the wrong side of the road.
He could see the collapsed mine some way from the entrance, and he was flooded with memories of Cripple Creek. He had to stop the car further away than normal due to the new holes in the ground and the bodies and body parts that littered the area. He saw Jared in each dead face, and he was sick at the sight of so much violence. He looked around, forcing himself to look for anyone who may be alive but there was no one. At each moment, he expected to hear the ripping, but there was no noise. A mine eerily silent on the mountainside on such a bright sunny day was all that greeted him.
He got back into the car and drove back towards the forest where the boys would be. What was he going to tell them? Should he just keep on driving out of town and hope that Rattleyard would follow him wherever he went?
The drive now was much slower, more controlled. All those families destroyed by death and they didn’t even know it yet. There was no point in Dick going to the police. He parked as close as he could to the clearing in the forest and walked to where the boys would be waiting.
Chapter 15
Crispin and Arthur waited in the woods where Dick had told them to go. It was quiet here, and as they looked around, they wondered why there was less iron here than everywhere else around. It didn’t look all that different to the rest of
the forest. The bark had been taken from the trees here, but nobody knew what had happened. There was a rumour that a terrific and powerful wind used to rush down here off Racketing Hill and that was what stripped the trees, but there was no sign of any breeze these days.
Neither of them had spoken, but they both knew what the other was thinking. How horrific a death their father must have suffered. Heroic or not, it must have been so awful for him. There were tear streaks down both their faces as the sun was setting. It would be dark very soon; evening fell very fast at this time of year and in the forest it would be dark even sooner.
Darkness fell, and there was still no sign of Dick. Had he been killed when he went to the mine? Should they go home? It was all so confusing to them; they were living lives they had never even imagined. They lived in a world where monsters were real, and people were savagely killed all around them. What would become of them?
They heard the first rip now, and they stood up on the rock they had been sitting on.
“Listen, Crispin, when it comes up, I’m going to try to distract it, and you just run the other way okay?” Arthur said. “As far as you can away from here.”
“No!” Crispin cried. “We have to go together!” There was more ripping, and it was closer now. Then slowly they saw a rising of soil, and they knew that Rattleyard was coming up. He was much slower now, first there was a hand, and then another and then the torso came up. They couldn’t make out the eyes of the monster, through the heaped earth, but they felt his gaze on them. Rattleyard burst forth from the ground finally, and he was on the surface with a huge leap. They screamed and saw his gleaming body in the moonlight, his red eyes looking mercilessly at them. Every part of him looked like it could slice through a person's flesh. Now he ran for the children, and they both fled but in their panic, they both ran in the same direction. There was a slice through the air, and Crispin was sure some of his hair had been cut off; he screamed and quickened his pace. Then there was another slice, and there was contact.
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