doing. The boy was kneeling over the pond where the Action Man floated, covered with strands of weed. His hands were clasped together, his head was tilted skywards and his lips were moving. Caleb's flesh tingled with disquiet. What kind of game was it that necessitated prayer?
Jack and Gary raced into the dunes ahead of Caleb and Cyril. A stiff breeze blew in from the east, across Oxwich bay, unleashing small, foam flecked waves to snap at the shore. Caleb followed the terrier up the steep, sliding bank of a dune.
The boys were waiting for him atop the grassy ridge. Jack looked skinny and frail next to his friend, who, though only a month older, was a good six inches taller and a few pounds heavier. Sometimes Caleb feared for his son when he watched the rough and tumble of their play, but he was glad too that Jack had such a friend. Gary seemed to him indomitable, and he hoped that some of that strength would rub off on Jack. No nightmare last night. Third dreamless night in a row. Perhaps Polly had been right after all.
'We're gonna hide now,' Jack said. 'You gotta count a hundred.'
Caleb nodded. He called Cyril to him and held on to the dog while the two boys took off. He began counting out loud as he watched them scramble further up through the tough marram grass. Cyril whined and struggled to chase after them, but Caleb held him until he had reached fifty. Then, still holding the dog by his collar, he crawled up the slope and peered over the crest of the dune.
Jack and Gary were sixty or seventy yards ahead, running through the small dip towards another rise. He waited until they had disappeared around the side of the hill, then called out that he was coming.
Letting Cyril race ahead of him, he followed their path, before cutting across and up the dune at a steeper angle. Crouching as he came over the crest of the hill, he scanned the dune slack below, searching the bracken and coarse grasses for anything other than wind-induced movement. He spied a patch of yellow moving beyond the pink and white trumpets of a bindweed-choked tree, and quickly chose a route that would allow him to get ahead of the two boys.
Soon after, he popped up from behind a thick mound of marram grass and made booming noises as he shot them with his forefingers. After yelping in surprise, the boys collapsed spectacularly into the scrub.
By the time they had picked themselves up and started counting, Caleb was already heading deeper into the dunes.
He ran for about a hundred yards, found cover in a clump of bracken, and lay on his back to watch the cirrus clouds race across the sky. He could hear the sea rolling in over the long flat stretch of the bay, the screech of gulls and the wind whistling through the dune grass.
He closed his eyes for a moment and heard voices carrying on the breeze. He was surprised at how much distance and the wind distorted the sounds, made them indecipherable, barely recognizable as human. The vastness of the sky overhead instilled in him a sense of isolation, which added to the strangeness of the voices. Despite the coolness of the breeze, he felt trickles of sweat on his back as the words shaped themselves in his head. Something about time.
He listened more intently, made out Jack's voice, frightened, asking what happens at thirteen o'clock. A sudden rush of panic swept through Caleb. He sprang up from the bracken and spun round, searching the immediate vicinity for his son. There was no sign of either boy. He was about to call out when he heard Jack shouting from the top of a dune some sixty yards away. The boy waved to him, then followed Gary and the dog down the slope.
'You're s'posed to hide, Dad,' Jack said, as they arrived, breathless, beside him. 'That was too easy.'
'We would have found you anyway,' Gary said. 'Cyril had your scent.'
There was nothing in either boy's faces to confirm what Caleb had heard. He had imagined it, he told himself. The wind and his own anxiety about Jack. Understandable, if foolish. He thought the boy looked a little pale, but he seemed untroubled. 'Okay,' he said. 'I think it's time to go.'
'Not yet,' Jack said. 'We only had one go of hiding.'
Gary nodded, and without waiting for Caleb to agree, he tore off up the nearest slope. Caleb felt a surge of anger but he suppressed it. He gestured to Jack. 'Get going,' he said. 'Make it good.'
Jack sped off after his friend. Cyril stayed with Caleb of his own accord. It was getting on for seven and a chill lingered in the late April air. As he watched them disappear over the top of a high dune, he regretted letting them go again and considered calling them back. But they were gone now, and despite his sense of unease, he didn't want to spoil their fun.
He counted slowly to fifty, then set out on their trail. He climbed the dune and scanned the nearby hollows for any trace of them. 'Where they go boy?' he said, more to himself than the dog, who had stopped to investigate a few pellets of rabbit shit. Caleb shrugged, scrambled down the dune towards a trail that skirted the copse separating the dunes from the marshlands beyond.
He followed this path to the end of the trees, then climbed up the nearest slope to get a belter view. From the top, he saw the grey ocean and a thin line of sand, separated from him by the expanse of green, cascading dunes. A sudden, intense fear bloomed inside him as his eyes searched the wind-swept slacks. 'Jack,' he cried out. 'Time to go son.'
No voice came back to him, just the moan of the insistent breeze through the coarse grass and brittle sea holly. He moved in a shore-wards direction, clambering down one dune and up the next, calling Jack's name. He felt a tight knot in his stomach as he forced himself up the yielding slope. It sapped his strength and robbed him of breath. He reached the top, light-headed and panting. Cyril scampered up the path behind him, tongue lolling out of his mouth. He stopped abruptly and turned, just as a figure burst out from the scrub.
It was Gary. Caleb's relief dissipated when he saw the boy was alone. 'Dammit Gary,' he snapped. 'Where the hell is Jack?'
Gary's grin slipped. 'I–I'm sorry Caleb. We didn't mean to —»
Caleb saw that he had frightened the boy unnecessarily. 'It's all right. Just tell me where he's hiding.'
'I didn't see,' Gary said.
Caleb's fear intensified. 'Which way did he go?' he said, trying to keep his voice calm.
Gary looked around, then pointed back towards the marsh. Caleb took his hand, and together they headed down the slope. The sweat chilled his body as he raced over damp scabious, calling out.
The minutes ticked by and dusk began to roll in from the bay. Odd terrors clawed at the frayed edges of his mind, and his limbs shook with fatigue as he searched through the trees. What had he been thinking, especially after what Jack had been through? Please, please, let him be okay.
A whispered sound caught his attention. He turned and saw the dog running along another path back into the dunes. 'There,' he shouted at Gary, a sharp pain piercing his side. He staggered after the boy and dog. Beyond them, he caught a glimpse of yellow through the scrub, lost it, then saw it again, unmoving on the ground behind a stunted tree. His heart was pumping furiously and the cry of despair was on his lips as he came round the tree and nearly crashed into Gary, who stood over the motionless form.
Jack was grinning up at them. 'What took you so long?' he said.
For a second, Caleb teetered on the edge of rage, then he fell to his knees and hugged Jack tightly to his chest.
Caleb turned into the school car park. Beside him, Jack stared blankly ahead. He'd not spoken in the six- minute drive from the doctor's surgery to the school.
After a dreamless week, the nightmare had returned to ravage the boy. Caleb had heard him cry out sometime after midnight. He'd run to Jack's room and had found him sitting upright, his gaze fixed on nothingness.
Traces of whatever haunted his dreams lingered in his eyes even after Caleb had woken him, but he had been unable to ascribe it a material substance or meaning. And all the doctor had had to say was that there was nothing physically wrong with Jack. Jesus Christ — what did he expect? Broken bones? A gaping wound? Caleb had wanted answers, not fucking platitudes. Tell him why Jack was having these nightmares, what was scaring him. Instead, he'd had to listen to bullshit reassurances about Jack's overactive imagination and how they should maybe monitor his TV viewing and ease up on the bedtime stories.
Polly would be relieved, even if she had more or less predicted what the doctor would say.
Caleb turned off the ignition, his body tense with anger and concern. He glanced at his son in the passenger seat. Jack looked too fragile, he thought, too lost inside his own head. He wanted desperately to hug the boy, to let
