Mad Dog Moonlight (18 page)

Crying tears of helpless fury, Mad Dog tore upstairs and dragged the second FOR SALE sign out of his bedroom window. But even without it there any more, nothing in the house felt right.

‘How could they do this to me?' Mad Dog cried. ‘How could they do this to No. 3?'

He'd never again trust Aunty and Uncle. And he'd certainly never go back to them! He'd go back up Plynlimon, he told himself, and live like a wild boy, eating berries and making snares the way his dad used to do in the old days, and catching fish with his hands.

Mad Dog crouched at his bedroom window, hidden behind the curtains so that nobody would see him. It was a perfect summer's evening – at least for everybody else. He could hear voices calling to each other across the marina and see boats coming in and out. He dropped off to sleep, exhausted and overwhelmed with emotion.

When he awoke, the harbour had fallen silent and
nothing was moving any more apart from one final boat that was making its way down past the pontoons like a shadow in advance of night. He watched it cut across the Rheidol and head for the Gap. Usually it was only local folk who moored in the Gap, but Mad Dog didn't recognise this boat and the people who came off it were total strangers.

He watched them come ashore, expecting them to hurry off into town like all the other yacht marina people did. But they sauntered along the Gap as if they had all the time in the world. Their arms were around each other and they were laughing. When they reached the gate to No. 3, they stopped and looked at the FOR SALE sign lying broken on the ground. Mad Dog waited for them to carry on but, after glancing at each other and saying something he couldn't hear, they opened the gate and started up the path.

At the sight of potential buyers, come to snoop around the house, Mad Dog didn't think twice. Nobody –
nobody
– was going to buy No. 3! Like the master of a ship preparing to repel boarders, he tore downstairs and crouched behind the front door as if the hall was under attack. A bell rang, its sound shrilling through the house. Then the letterbox fluttered and Mad Dog caught sight of a pair of eyes peering through it.

Mercifully they didn't see him crouched behind the door. ‘It looks like no one lives here any more,' he heard a woman's voice say. Then he caught a glimpse of the two of them starting round the side of the house as if looking for a back way in. Immediately he raced down the hall to the kitchen – but arrived too late.

‘
What d'you think you're doing?
' Mad Dog yelled,
as the strangers came strolling in as if they owned the place. ‘This is private property! You're trespassing.
Get out!
'

The strangers looked surprised, to put it mildly. Mad Dog shouted that if it was a house they were after they could go and buy another one somewhere else. They said they didn't want to buy the house, and were sorry for trespassing, but all they were doing was looking for old friends.

‘Well, you've come to the wrong place!' Mad Dog said, marching to the kitchen door and holding it open.

The strangers headed for the door as if they couldn't get out fast enough. But then right at the last minute, one of them – an elfin-faced young woman with sharp, sparkling eyes – said, ‘Hang on. We
haven't
made a mistake. The decoration's different, but remember drying our things on that stove? And our trunk opened out there in the middle of the floor? And look on that shelf. Look up there.
Those are our cups
.'

Mad Dog looked where the woman was pointing. On Aunty's top shelf, where she kept the things she never used, sat a stack of white porcelain cups that had been there so long that he'd all but forgotten them.

‘What do you mean,
your
cups?' he said.

The woman crossed the floor and got one down. Inside it, beneath a thick coat of dust, she found a fifty-pound note, which she handed to her companion.

‘Remember this?' she said.

He said he did. ‘It was this house,' he said.

‘What house?' Mad Dog said.

‘And you must be Ryan,' the man said. ‘Little Ryan Lewis, all grown up. Don't you remember us?'

He smiled at Mad Dog, but Mad Dog glared back. He didn't know any Ryans, he said, and most definitely didn't remember these strangers. They weren't like anyone he'd ever known, and any even remotely passing resemblance to sailors he remembered from years ago was a coincidence. Those sailors had been old, and battered by the sea, but these ones were far too young for the sorts of stories that Mad Dog remembered them telling him, keeping him on the edge of his seat. They weren't hardened mariners like those other sailors had been. And they didn't have the ocean in their eyes.

But then the woman stepped forward and held out her hand, and it was a sailor's hand, seasoned by all weathers, and her eyes – when she fixed them on Mad Dog – were full of secret things that set his pulse racing.

‘My name's Abren,' she said. ‘I can't remember if I ever told you that. And he's Phaze II, which is a funny sort of name, I grant you, but there's a story behind it, and maybe you'll get him to tell it one day. I don't see why not – you've heard half his other tales, as I'm sure you will remember.'

She looked at Mad Dog as if willing him to remember. And, yes, there
was
something about her that he recognised, and it came to him that, if she'd seemed older once, it would have been because he'd seen her through the eyes of a much younger child.

‘You're not … I mean … you're not
the sailors
?' he said.

She laughed at that. They both did. ‘Well, I always
dreamt of being a
seafarer
,' the man said. ‘It had a ring to it, I seemed to think. But
sailor
will do, at least for now. It's as good a word as any, and better than some.'

That night, Mad Dog ate supper in the sailors' cabin on their boat. They sat on one berth and he sat opposite them, scoffing as if there was no tomorrow. All around them, the harbour was still and quiet, not another soul in sight. Mad Dog felt as if the three of them were bound together by some strange twist of fate that had brought them together, against all odds, just when he needed it.

All he could think about – apart from food – was the sailors taking him away with them. He'd dreamt about it when he was a little boy, imagining life on the open seas. And now that Aunty and Uncle had betrayed him, it was the only thing he wanted.

Before the subject could be broached, however, there were questions that had to be answered. What had he been doing, the sailors wanted to know, since they'd last met? And Aunty, Uncle and baby Eric – how were they? And why was No. 3 empty? Why was it for sale? And what had Mad Dog been doing there, all alone?
And why was he so hungry?

Mad Dog laughed when they asked that – and took another helping. He told them all about Aunty inheriting the Falls Hotel from the Aged Relative, and about her betraying him by selling No. 3. But he didn't tell them about Plynlimon or the strange procession he had seen, or the feather in his pocket or anything like that.

Finally the subject came round to parents. The sailors said they hadn't realised that Aunty and Uncle were any other than Mad Dog's real mum and dad.

‘We never picked up that you were adopted,' they said.

‘I'm not adopted,' Mad Dog said.

‘So what's your story, then?' the sailors said.

What
was
his story? Mad Dog shrugged. It was the most natural question in the world, but he didn't have the answer.

‘All I know,' he said, ‘is that one day I had parents just like everybody else, and my name was Mad Dog Moonlight. And the next I didn't, and my name was Ryan Lewis and I lived with Aunty and Uncle in a house I'd never seen before. I don't remember anything before I got there, only what I was told, which is that the police had found me. I remember them bringing me to No. 3, but I can't remember where I came from, or anything like that. And mostly I feel fine about it, but sometimes – especially recently – I don't.'

Mad Dog paused and looked up. The sailors were sitting absolutely still. There was a concentration about them that was total, as if they were hanging on to his every word. When he'd finished, Abren said that she too had lost her memory once but that, in the end, it had come back.

‘There's something very mysterious about the things we choose to forget,' she said. ‘And the process of remembering is even stranger. But these things happen when they're ready. You can't rush them. You have to wait.'

Mad Dog said he'd waited long enough, and asked
what had brought back Abren's memory. She said that, strangely enough, it had been a mountain.

Mad Dog felt himself go cold all over. ‘What mountain?' he said – but it didn't take much to guess.

‘
Plynlimon Mountain
,' Abren said. ‘Why are you looking at me like that? What's the matter? Do you know it?'

Mad Dog didn't answer, not at first. Then, haltingly, he tried his best. Not only did he know Plynlimon, he said, but he also knew that it was tied up with his past.

‘I can't explain how,' he said. ‘And I can't explain why. But there's a secret on that mountain waiting to be found, and I'm a part of it. I know I am.'

If the night had seemed quiet before, it was deathly silent now. The sailors leant towards Mad Dog, listening intently, their faces grave but giving little away. He told them about the dancers, but didn't show them the feather. He told them about getting lost on the school trip, and Plynlimon casting its spell on him, and he even told them about the ruined cottage, and the hillock and the crossroads between valleys. The only time that either of them interrupted him was when he told them what the Ingram sisters had said about people going up Plynlimon and never coming back.

‘Some people come back, but they never really get away,' Abren said – but she didn't explain what she meant by that.

Mad Dog shivered.

‘You're frightened of Plynlimon, aren't you?' Phaze II said.

Was he frightened of the mountain? Or was it
something on it that frightened him? Mad Dog wasn't sure, but he told the sailors about his long flight with Grendel in tow, imagining being chased.

‘I wouldn't be so sure that you were imagining it,' Phaze II said.

‘What do you mean?' Mad Dog said.

‘You're not the only one who's been chased across Plynlimon,' Phaze II said. ‘I have too, and so has Abren.'

Mad Dog stared at them, wondering what strange fate had brought the three of them together. The sailors looked back as if they were wondering the same thing. Then, as if this conversation had gone quite far enough, thank you very much, Abren got to her feet. Storms couldn't shake her – wild seas, broken boats, nights of peril on the ocean couldn't shake her. But this talk of Plynlimon could.

She started clearing away dishes, and put a kettle on the stove. Phaze II made a pot of hot black coffee and suggested that they might like to drink it under the stars. Mad Dog followed them up on to the deck where the night looked perfect for running away to sea. Silvery and bright. A mermaid night. An anything-could-happen-and-I'm-up-for-it night. A new beginnings night, where Mad Dog could put Plynlimon behind him, just like the sailors appeared to have done, and never talk about it again.

He braced himself to ask the sailors if he could go with them. ‘All these years, I never forgot you, you know,' he began, wanting them to agree that their meeting again was no coincidence.

‘We've never forgotten you either,' the sailors replied. But they didn't say anything about being bound
together or having a future, and they definitely didn't say anything about him going with them. Instead they started on about wonderful Aunty and Uncle were and how lucky Mad Dog was to have them for foster parents.

This conversation definitely wasn't going the way that Mad Dog wanted. Abren said that Uncle and Aunty must be worrying about where he was, but Mad Dog insisted that they didn't deserve to know.

‘Whatever they've done,' said Abren, ‘and however you feel about them, they need to know you're safe. You could always use our phone. Or we could even hire a taxi and take you back. It would be for the best. Don't you think?'

Mad Dog thought that no way, ever, was he going back. ‘You don't understand,' he said. ‘You haven't heard what I've been saying. I've got to be free. Free for adventures, just like you. I've always known that you'd come back.
I want to go with you
.'

The sailors smiled as if it was a nice idea, but simply not possible. Abren agreed that it was a strange coincidence that had brought them back, just when Mad Dog needed them. But they would always be friends, she said. It wasn't something that depended on his going with them.

While she was speaking, Phaze II got on the phone to the Falls Hotel. Aunty's relief could be heard right across the harbour. For a moment, she couldn't think straight and wanted to come and get Mad Dog. Then she said that perhaps it would be better if he spent the night at one of her sisters' houses, as it was so late. Then she said she wanted him back anyway, late or not, and never mind her sisters – the sailors should put
him in a taxi and she'd pay for it when he arrived.

After that, everything happened very quickly. A taxi was called for and suddenly it was time to go.

‘You don't understand,' Mad Dog protested as the sailors tried to coax him into it. ‘I'm not trying to pay anybody back. It's just that I'm not Aunty and Uncle's Ryan any more. I'm someone else. Plynlimon changed me. It turned me back into my old self and, if you send me back, I'll never be that self again. There's a Mad Dog Moonlight in me, trying to get out. And, if you don't take me with you, it never will. You've got to take me, or else I'll be Ryan Lewis for ever! Please,
oh please
!'