Scrunch. Last thing at night, Danny dumped the final binbag of Bonk in the last wheelie bin behind Teena Rama’s house. He rammed it in with more force than strictly necessary, then punched it repeatedly, just to see how it liked it. Fifteen seconds he’d been blind, fifteen seconds. And he still couldn’t walk in a straight line.
The disposal operation had filled all twenty-four bins. For all her talk of recycling, Teena Rama was wasteful, discarding things too easily, requiring the bin men call each morning. But she was never as wasteful as a man who’d blow a fortnight’s giro on something that made scientists dangerous.
If he could lay his hands on the bloke who’d sold it him. But he’d be long gone, laughing in some pub, spending Danny’s money, unable to believe he’d offloaded the junk after years of trying.
Teena wouldn’t have fallen for it. She’d have seen right through the man, and given a cold blooded assessment of why his theremins could never work. Then she’d have hit him, hard, in the goolies.
Danny jumped up onto the bin lid and sat there, pressing it down like the lid of an overstuffed suitcase. From his perch, he watched graffitied walls, having from the start been amazed that Teena’s home should have a back as grubby as anyone real’s. He’d not yet ventured more than three yards into the back alley labyrinth which connected the house with others in the area. He feared what he might encounter.
From his bedroom window the previous night it had been clear that the alleyways stretched all the way to Bougier Woods. Boggy Bill was claimed to inhabit those woods.
Lucy hadn’t understood at the hospital. Danny had.
One April morning, two years earlier, his then unemployed brother – Brian – went looking for Bill, attempting to become Britain’s foremost crypto-zoologist and adventurer. Two days later, he returned with a video. Wide eyed and gibbering, he swore it showed Boggy Bill out walking his dog, which may or may not have been called Tamba-lulu.
And an industry was born.
The Health Authority claimed the tape showed the hospital’s out-of-focus financial director taking his morning constitutional, and that patients were in no danger – provided they didn’t make him angry. From then on, the director was often mistaken for an inhuman creature, not least by the nurses. Fed up of being shot at by hunters, he’d taken to wearing a sign around his neck, I AM NOT BOGGY BILL. PLEASE DON’T SHOOT ME. It rarely worked. Wheatley’s big game hunters not being hired for their literacy skills, they’d often misread it as, I AM BOGGY BILL. PLEASE DO SHOOT ME. At least that was what they always claimed.
Brian claimed the whole story was a cover-up by an authority unwilling to admit to having built a hospital in the stalking grounds of the most ferocious beast this side of the Rockies.
The Health Authority said he was nuts.
He said they were nuts.
He wrote a book.
He made a fortune.
The Health Authority wrote a book.
They made a fortune.
The financial director wrote a book, I am not Boggy Bill. Please stop shooting me.
He didn’t make a penny. No one likes a killjoy.
Danny didn’t know which truth would be worse, a hospital that was home to a carnivorous man-beast, or a hospital whose financial director was easily mistaken for a carnivorous man-beast. It was possible both truths were true, and he had visions of accountant fighting yeti to the death after a chance encounter in the woods while walking their respective dogs.
He didn’t fancy the yeti’s chances.
But the relevant truth was, there was nothing to stop Bill making his way from those woods to Teena’s back door. And the reason Bougier Woods were now filled with hunters – each determined to be the one who shot the Wheatley Bigfoot – was because of Danny’s brother.
Bill would want his revenge. And if he couldn’t get Brian – which he couldn’t because Brian was up the Amazon, seeking the Brazilian potato fish – then he’d come for his closest relative.
For anyone else this scenario would seem ludicrous. For a boy who rarely went a day without experiencing some implausible nightmare, it was almost inevitable.
Clink.
His ears pricked up.
His heart missed a beat, waiting to hear what happened next. Something had knocked over a milk bottle in a nearby alley.
Clink. Another fell.
Each falling bottle was closer to him than the one before. Something was approaching – something clumsy.
He jumped down from the bin and ran into the house, slamming the door behind him, fastening the bolts, locks and security chains before anything could get him.
Danny stood, back pressed against door, breathing heavily, heart pounding.
Now something was moving outside by the bins, knocking over Teena’s empty bottles.
Then there was nothing; just a long long pause as he imagined two great, hairy arms smashing through the door’s oak panels, grabbing him, dragging him kicking and screaming all the way to its Bougier Woods lair.
He listened.
And he listened.
Ice cold sweat trickled down his cheek.
And he listened.
Another milk bottle fell, some distance away.
Then another, more distant still.
And whatever it was, had gone.