Inch Levels by Neil Hegarty

Author:Neil Hegarty [Hegarty, Neil]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781784975777
Publisher: Head of Zeus

9

Patrick looked out of the window into a silver moonlit night.

The garden was – changed, somehow. Not as it might if snow had fallen, or a light mist come down, altering the life, the dimensions of the place. It had changed completely. The lawn no longer broad, substantial: instead, it had become hemmed in with plants. Plants crept out across the grass: some unfamiliar, white-flowering, their blossoms catching the moonlight; others he recognised – dead nettle that grew rapidly and choked invisibly, ivies set on strangling in silence the plants around them. Tendrils moving along the ground and winding into the surrounding trees, round and round their trunks; and the trees unfamiliar too, with silvery leaves and smooth bark that shone white in the silver light. The moonlight, the garden, the world, now: all was silver and shadow-dappled.

What is this place? Does it belong to him? – no, not to him, that much was certain; and his eyes filled with tears at the thought, for he knew that here at least, in this garden at least, he had sometimes felt safe, comfortable. In hides, in dens, behind curtains of blackberry brambles. No longer.

His mother was responsible, somehow. And Robert. They had arranged all of this. As a treat, he knew, somehow: arranged as a treat – for him, in secret and silently, without saying a word. We won’t say a word, he heard them say – though indeed, neither his mother nor Robert was anywhere in sight. We won’t say a word, they repeated; and now here they were – here they were in sight now, standing behind him, framed, paired in the doorway. Patrick opened his mouth – but no, they were having none of it; would not meet his look, for one set of eyes flickered away and then another; and now they were gone; and the door closed silently.

He returned to the window. He looked out for some time: then, he caught the clasp on the window frame and opened it wide and slid out into the garden. The moonlight was more distinct here. Harder: the silver light filling the air was gone now, replaced by a clearer white and black – the white of the moon, the black of the hedging, enveloping shadows, the white gleam of leaves, the black of shadowed trunks and stems. The tendrils of the unfamiliar plants crept across his bare feet – but no, they did not wind around his bare legs, he would not be throttled by them, he knew that he was – not safe, no, but not in danger of death either.

Not yet.

He looked again around this white and black garden, and now he saw something else: that each of the trees, each of the shrubs was dead. There had been only a semblance of life: for the trunk of each tree, the stem of each shrub had been severed – a clean cut, surgical, close to the ground. The moonlight had deceived him: he must bend, now,

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