Pog by Padraig Kenny

Author:Padraig Kenny
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Chicken House

18

Penny and David and their father had gone to something called ‘the super market’. It had been a couple of days since his confession, and the guilt Pog felt about revealing the Necessary was gnawing away at him. It was his choice as Keeper, but he still wondered if it had been the right thing to do. He was a bit ashamed when he realized he might have just been showing off. He hadn’t heard Grandfa’s voice since that day, and he wondered if that was Grandfa’s way of showing his disapproval.

Grandfa is gone, said another voice.

Pog rubbed his nose agitatedly and gave a long hard sniff. ‘Quiet now. Pog is thinking,’ he said to the darkness in the attic.

He tried to ignore the words, but there was no denying the sudden ache in his chest. He blinked his eyes; they were stinging, as if irritated by smoke.

Smoke and fire, Pog, said the insidious voice. Smoke and fire and screams. Remember?

‘Hush now,’ Pog shouted.

His voice echoed in the dark. Pog felt suddenly alone. He tried to think of something else.

Penny.

Penny was nice.

Penny was always smiling and friendly, but Pog noticed that there was also suspicion clouding her eyes when she asked him questions. It hadn’t helped that whenever they spoke these days, Pog couldn’t seem to keep still. He moved from one foot to the other, and always found himself looking towards the nearest window. One day he’d scampered up to the kitchen sink, his hackles raised, while Penny was mid-sentence. He’d wrinkled his snout and sniffed the air. ‘Something’s up!’ he’d shouted all of a sudden, surprising even himself. He supposed it was instinct, and that he just couldn’t help himself. He’d turned around slowly to find both Penny and David gawping at him.

‘What’s up, Pog?’ Penny had asked.

Pog panicked. ‘Rain,’ he’d said brightly.

The sun was blazing outside. Penny and David looked bemused.

Pog gestured back towards the window. ‘Soon. Quite soon . . . maybe . . . rain. Pog knows . . .’ he said weakly, and he turned his face away and tried to think of something else to say.

The truth was, there was indeed something on the air. He couldn’t place it, but it was a raw, sour scent. It came from the forest, particularly at night, moving from one spot to the next as if something was probing for an opening. But nothing had passed through the Necessary recently. Pog would have known. Some nights Pog found himself in the kitchen, his right hand gripping Grandfa’s staff fiercely, snarling to himself, his snout quivering, and him muttering, ‘Pog is here. Pog is waiting. Come to Pog if you dares.’

But nothing came, and the smell shifted and changed, and sometimes disappeared altogether.

‘Something’s up, Mouse,’ he said, shaking his index finger. ‘And Pog will found out what it is.’

Pog climbed up the attic wall and crawled up on to the ceiling. He squeezed between a gap in the tiles and wriggled out on to the roof.

He sniffed the air.

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