Mad Dog Moonlight (15 page)

‘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.

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 that 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?
'

Mad Dog hung his head. ‘If I got lost, it was my own fault, not the school's or anybody else's,' he said.

‘So that's what you call it?' Uncle said. ‘
Getting lost.
'

‘I don't know what else to call it,' Mad Dog said.

‘Try
mucking about
. Try
not listening to your teacher
. Try
wandering off and doing the opposite of what you're told
,' Uncle said.

He collected Mad Dog's belongings from the house, thanked the sisters for all they'd done and frog-marched him out to the car. But at the last minute, instead of getting into it, Mad Dog hung back. He wanted to go home – of course he did, no matter how much trouble he was in. But he didn't want to leave this peaceful garden where he had felt safe.

But he had no choice. Uncle packed him into the car and the sisters came and stood round it, wishing him all the best. One of them gave Uncle directions for a short cut back over the mountain, avoiding the main pass road, and the other seized the opportunity of Uncle's being distracted to lean through the open window and tell Mad Dog that Plynlimon might be full of tricks, but it was a wonderful mountain too.

‘Some people go up there and never feel a thing,' she said in a low voice, as if for his ears alone. ‘But some go up there and Plynlimon comes alive for them. And that's what happened to you, isn't it? Well, there's a treasure on that mountain, if you're brave enough to look for it. You mark my words.
It's up there, waiting to be found
.'

When Mad Dog got home, Uncle wasn't the only one who was furious. Everyone was furious, right down to Aunty's kitchen ladies, Ruth and Kathleen, who'd been up with her all night long, making drinks and manning the phones.

Even Elvis was furious, leaping out and punching Mad Dog in the stomach the moment he climbed out of Uncle's car, as if to punish him for all he'd put him through. Then, no sooner had they got into the house, than Mrs Heligan phoned up, seeming to think Mad Dog had done the whole thing deliberately to get at her.

Even the police had to be faced, who wanted to get Mad Dog's story straight and tell him how much the search for him had cost.

Then finally Aunty – who was rarely a woman lost for words – told Mad Dog what she thought of him. ‘
Do you realise what you've done?
' she said for the whole world to hear, including her guests. ‘How much pain and grief you've caused? How much trouble you've put people to? Really Ryan, what were you
thinking
of? HOW DARE YOU PULL A STUNT LIKE THAT?'

Mad Dog baulked at that word
stunt
. He knew he'd behaved thoughtlessly, but that was all it had been, and it would have been nice if Aunty could have been pleased to have him back. Getting lost wasn't something
he'd done on purpose to cause a fuss. He tried explaining this, but Aunty said that, if it hadn't been on purpose, how else would he describe it?

‘I suppose your legs just took off on their own!' she said. ‘And Grendel's legs along with you. Because this isn't only about you, is it? She got lost as well, and not only have we had our own fears to contend with but we've had Grendel's father breathing fire all over us, threatening what he'd do if you as much as harmed a hair of his princess's head!'

For days after that, Mad Dog kept trying to find ways to say sorry, but nobody seemed interested. Elvis's fear of losing him had turned into a total refusal to have anything to do with him. Aunty said she'd got no time for apologies because she had a business to run. Uncle said that words were cheap.

Mad Dog even tried apologising to Ruth and Kathleen, in the hope that they at least could find it in their hearts to show a bit of sympathy. But they were no more impressed than anybody else. ‘You think you're in trouble now,' they said. ‘But you wait until your school gets hold of you. There'll be hell to pay when you get back!'

They were right. Mad Dog only had to walk across the playground to find himself a major spectacle. Grendel and her gang glared at him as if he were evil incarnate. Mad Dog shuddered at the memory of their night together and wondered what she'd told her friends. Certainly, Luke, Hippie and Rhys teased him mercilessly about his ‘sweetheart' and blew kisses at him every time Grendel was around.

Everybody had it in for him. Teachers stared coldly at him. The head teacher had him in his office and
tore him off a strip with Aunty and Uncle present. Even a representative of the search-and-rescue services came into school to tell a special assembly what they thought of little boys who went wandering off by themselves on lonely mountains. Afterwards the representative had words in private with Mad Dog, and then words with Mrs Heligan too, who came out looking furious. The talk around the school was that her job was on the line.

Nobody, however, was as furious as Mrs Anwen Jones. Lovely Mrs Anwen Jones – Mad Dog's favourite teacher ever, who might have had food poisoning on the day in question, but had put hours of careful thought into that trip, and was distraught about the way things had turned out. Around school, people said there'd been a massive bust-up between her and Mrs Heligan, and that they weren't talking any more.

But she certainly had plenty to say to Mad Dog. ‘That trip was meant to be a
treat
,' she said in a controlled but very scary voice, when she got him on his own. ‘But you had to go and mess it up, didn't you? One small boy doing his own thing, and the whole thing's ruined for everybody else! Well, Ryan Lewis, I want you to know that if you as much as blink without permission from now until the end of term, you're
for it
.'