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Johnny was given the fa, anyway But right fro with his sister They couldn’t be left alone together for five lances they stabbed at each other were poisonous even for hter for being spoilt (which is to say she bla her), and her husband bla, well; odd about the boy

’Well, of course there is!’ His ould round on him ’Johnny’s been a waif, without hoe Yes, and that wasn’t the best sort of place, either! Love? Suffer the little children? They seeer to be rid of him, if you ask me! Precious little of love there!’

And David Prescott had wondered: With reason, maybe? But what possible reason? Johnny isn’t even six yet How can anyone turn against a child that sed with the care of such unfortunates

The Prescotts had a corner shop which did very nicely, a general store that sold just about everything It was less than a ton from the north, and served a recentlynine till five four days a week, and Wednesday and Saturdayout of it With the help of a part-tiirl who lived locally, they were not overstretched

David kept pigeons in a loft at the bottoing, planting and growing things when the day’s as done; they took turns seeing to the kids on those occasions when their nanny took time off So that apart from the friction between Johnny and his sister Carol, the lives of the Prescotts could be said to be nors stood until the suht Indeed until then, their lives ht even be described as idyllic

But that hen David Prescott started having problems with his birds; and the fait, who slept with Carol and was the apple of her eye - went out oneperiods of that hot, sultry weather which irritates, exacerbates, and occasionally causes eruptions And it was the same summer when David built a pool for the kids, and roofed it over with polythene on an alureat fun, swi around in his own pool, but he soon became bored with it Carol loved it, however, which annoyed her adopted brother: he didn’t care for people enjoying things which he didn’t enjoy, and in any case he didn’tthree or four days after Moggit had gone ot up early He didn’t know it, but Carol ake and throwing her clothes on as soon as she heard his door gently opening and closing Her brother (she always put a heavy sneering accent on the word), had been getting up early a lot recently - hours before the rest of the household - and she wanted to knohat he was doing It wasn’t especially malicious of her, but the fact was she was a little jealous and , still she’d rather have hi his stupid, ames

As for Johnny: his time was all his o and no one to make demands on it School was out for the sus’ to do; he could usually be found beyond the garden wall, in the hedgerohere they blended into meadow and farmland that stretched out and away to the north and north west But he would always co hi back for mealtimes

Just what he did out there all the hours of the day was so else If his foster-parents asked hi,’ and that was all But Carol wanted to knohat it was he played at It was beyond her that he could find anythingthan the pool So she went out after hi past her parent’s roo cracked the horizon with its golden smile

Johnny went down past the pool under its polythene blister to the garden wall He clih wall at a well-known spot, jumped down the last few feet on the other side And he started out along the overgrown hedgerow into the ht after him

Half a rown tracks, the ju brarey-lichened wall and the buttressedstacks of stone Johnny cut diagonally through a meadow and only his dark head, shiny with sweat, could be seen above the tall, swaying grass

From where she balanced precariously on top of a disused stile, Carol sahere he was heading and resolved to follow him The old ruin was obviously Johnny’s secret place, where he played his secret gaer

Johnny had disappeared soroalls by the ti out of thethe tracks which had once serviced the farain!

What was that! A cry! The cry of a cat? Moggit?

Moggit!

Carol’s hand flew to herbreath and held it What, poor little Moggit, lost so old pile? Maybe that hat had drawn Johnny here: the sound of Moggit, ja ruin

Carol thought to call out in answer to Moggit’s strange, choking cries and ht no, for that would only et hi like that, so urgently and piteously, because Johnny was already trying to rescue hi her breath, Carol crossed the hard-packed, dusty tracks to what once would have been a wide entrance through high farap was aivy, with a few hazelnuts and straggly elders crushed under the weight of parasitic green Broken bricks and rubble shifted underfoot where a well-rowth, Carol supposed by Johnny

Dusty and cobwebbed, the trail in through the foliage was alht was shut out; seven-year-old Carol felt stifled as she forced her way through But when she it’s howls (she was sure itit was not) drove her on Until finally she broke cover into yellow sunlight, and blinking the grit out of her eyes saw Johnny where he sat in the central clearing And saw the

The things he had there; but without really seeing them at first, because her child’s mind couldn’t conceive, couldn’t believe And finally she saw but no, no, there was no way that this could be Moggit

What, Moggit of the snohite belly and paws, the bushy tail and Lone Rangerblack back and neck and ears? This tortured, dangling thing, Moggit? Carol almost fainted; she slumped down behind a broken wall and knocked loose a brick, and Johnny heard the clatter When his head snapped round on his neck to look Carol’s way, he didn’t see her at first, only the ruins in the clearing as he’d always known the, emotionless eyes, and bloody, clawlike hands His penknife lying open beside him on the here he sat, and the sharpened stick with its red point clutched tight in one hand

And she still saw Moggit, too Moggit with his hind paws just touching the ground, feebly dancing to stay upright and keep his weight off his neck, which was encircled by a thin wire noose that hung down fro out on a thread, dribbling wetly and dancing on his wet furry cheek even as Moggit danced; and his fat white belly thin and crie of shiny black, red and yellow entrails dangle!

And Moggit wasn’t all There were two of Carol’s father’s favourite pigeons, too, hanging lis twisted all askew And a hedgehog still alive but with a rusty iron spike through its side, pinning it to the ground; so that it staggered dizzily round and around on its own axis in unending agony, snuffling horribly Yes, and there were other things, too, but Carol didn’t want to see any more

Johnny, satisfied that no one was there, had returned to his ’ga with tears, Carol saw hieon in one hand and thrust his stick right through its clay-cold body And he worked the stick in its unfeeling flesh al at all! As if he really believed that the bedraggled, stiff, broken thing could feel it And all the while he laughed and talked and muttered to these poor, tortured, alive or dead or soon-to-be-dead creatures, caring nothing for their waking or sleeping agonies Indeed, his sister now understood so harried a living thing to its death, Johnny couldn’t bear that it had escaped hihtless world beyond!

And at that she was the first to know the truth about her adopted brother, without even knowing she knew it For, a child herself, she recognized a child’s fancy when she saw one, knew also that Johnny was siined just couldn’t be

But Moggit, poor Moggit! Finally it got through to Carol that it was indeed her battered, half-eviscerated cat which Johnny was slowly hanging And she could bear it no longer

’MoggHW she screamed at the top of her voice And: ’Johnny, I hate you - oh, how I hate you!’

She stood up, stued half of a brick Johnny finally saw her and his red-blotched face rapidly turned pale He snatched up his penknife - not to use on her but with an entirely different, perhaps even worse purpose inwhich held down Moggit’s branch Strands parted but the string didn’t; in a sudden rage Johnny jerked the string this way and that, and Moggit was lifted and whirled like a rag, his hoarse cat cries cut off as the wire bit into his rubbed-raw throat

Then Johnny gave a gasp of triuit was jerked aloft, choking and spitting for a second or two as the noose tightened to finish the job But Johnny was so intent on theher arms, she came at hirasped tight in the other He avoided her raking nails, but a sharp, broken corner of the brick struck him on the forehead and knocked hi his head, looking around for his knife And his eyes blazed as he glared at his sister and threatened, ’First Moggit, and now you!’

He got unsteadily to his feet, his forehead grazed and bleeding, then spotted his penknife and pounced on it And in that saer Johnny couldn’t let her tell her parents what she had seen, what he had done And there was only one way he could be sure to stop her

With a backward glance that took in the whole scene one last ti with the asping its life out where it lay, and the dead,up in a row - she turned away and fled for horowth out of the ruins, she knew that Johnny was right behind her

And he would have been; except he knew that if she got ho someone to see And he it and the birds, and yanked the hedgehog’s stake fro froeneral, he tossed the lot into a deep, stagnant hich he’d discovered on the site, whose battened cover had long since rotted away in one corner He hated to see his dead and dying things go down into the dark like that,splashes in the deep, black, unseen water below Wasted, all of them, and so much ’life’ still left in them! It was all Carol’s fault Yes, and there’d be a lot ot ho and the wild, zig-zag, trail she left through the long grass

A half- hen you’re a heartbroken child with your eyes full of tears Carol’s heart ha; but to drive her on there was always that picture burning on herin the wire noose, with his guts hanging out like a s of crushed fruits when her mother made jam in the kitchen And to drive her even faster was Johnny’s voice crying after her: ’Caaarol! Carol - wait for arden as just ahead, at the end of the hedgerow; behind her, panting - and yet growling too, like so hand missed her ankle by inches as she half-cliarden side she just lay there, too terrified, tearful, too exhausted to go on

And Johnny ju, s where he held them to his sides She looked toward the house but it was hidden behind fruit trees and the misted dome of the pool Would her parents be up yet? She didn’t even have the wind for yelling

Johnny snarled as he bunched her hair in a strong fist and co!’ he said, the word bursting fro swi to like it, I know And so am I Especially afterwards!’

For the last week or so, David Prescott had also taken to getting up early Alice didn’t complain or ask why, because he was always so quiet and considerate and invariably brought her a cup of coffee It s, the old ’early bird’ syndrome But in fact it was the mail

Out this way the mail deliveries were always early, the very crack of dawn, and David was expecting a letter Fronificance - he was sure it wouldn’t - but still he’d like to get to it before Alice If she saw it first well, she’d only say he was paranoid About Johnny And certainly it would look as though he was, else ould he write to the orphanage about his should work out all right; he really did want to love the poor kid But at the same time he’d always been more receptive of mood than Alice - more aware of the aura of people, especially kids - and he knew that Johnny’s aura just wasn’t right If it was so out of his past (but what past? He was just a child), soe would know about, then David believed that he and his wife should be told For he suspected Alice was right to coe; they had seeer to wash their hands of Johnny, or rather: ’To place hirow into a healthy person Healthy in mind, as well as in body’

That’s what the orphanage director had said the day they went to pick up their new son, and the words had always stuck in David’s memory: ’Healthy inwith Johnny’sa little sick? Or a lot sick? For that was the nature of the aura which David so out from the boy: a sick one, and clammy as an old man on his deathbed Johnny felt sick as death But not his death

And this h, the letter was there David tore it open and read it, and for a little while the words ars in the kids’ roo theies, even a kitten?

A dead kitten under his bed, crawling with s until they cae people had found out about it, when the other kids ca?

And David could hear the horrified screams of those kids from here Except it wasn’t those kids but one of his own - no, his own - Carol, froarden!

What?

And Alice’s sleepy,down, ’Where’s the coffee? The kids are up early’

And another screaly at its zenith

David had ever been the one to leap to conclusions, often incorrectly He did so now, and this tiown flapping, yelling for Carol, hoarsely, like crazy But no answer And a s at the side of the pool David burst in; it was Johnny kneeling there; he looked as if he were trying to drag Carol out of the water And she was floating there, face-down, ar water

Johnny had been playing in the fields; he’d heard Carol’s screa the wall out of the garden The man ran away across the fields and Johnny went to see what he’d been doing Carol was in the pool and he’d tried to drag her out

He told the story to David, to Alice, the police, anyone anted to hear it And h he didn’t want hih that would be hard to say for she wasn’tfrom that time forward

The police found a caht up a lot of rubbish fro rough there, stealing froeons) in order to eat It could be gypsies (the hedgehog), or et hiet anyone

And Johnny went back to the orphanage

Harry slept on and for a little while longer experienced Johnny Pound’s dreams Of course, he saw Pound’s past only fro orse than the whole picture and ht man But eventually Pound’s excesses beca memories of his own evil deeds a lurid litany to his inhurown into a rage

Johnny Found had lived all his young life a ot aith it, but until recently his step-sister Carol had rele human victim Between tiames’ with creatures dead of causes other than murder

But as men and monsters alike mature, so their tastes also rotesque for rotten from the start?

Once, for entirely unthinkable reasons which even Harry Keogh couldn’t bear to conteue; only to be fired when his boss became suspicious It was his dream about another job he’d had, however, this tihterhouse, which did the trick and, like the last straw, broke the Necro-scope’s back

That hen Harry had drawn back his shuddering telepathic probe, pulled out of Johnny’sExcept of course in Pound’s case the nightmares could barely match up to the reality