Brilliant

“Now I can.”

  It stayed bright till they got to the backyard, where it was already bright enough for them to see the things that were in their way: a lawn mower, a wheelbarrow, a fork, an empty bucket. The lawn mower was buried in the grass. The grass was really long, and a bit frightening because it seemed to be making noise and even grabbing at them as they walked through it to the shed.

  Gloria spoke very quietly. She wasn’t scared—not really—but she wanted to hear a voice, even her own, so the grass would just be grass again and everything would be normal.

  “Mam says Mr. O’Driscoll has a bad back,” she said, quietly. “And that’s why he never cuts the grass.”

  “Dad says Mr. O’Driscoll’s just a waster,” said Raymond, quietly.

  They were at the shed now. The door was open, but they didn’t go in.

  “Here, Fang.”

  They heard Fang’s tail thumping the floor of the shed. But he didn’t come out.

  “Fang?”

  His tail thumped the floor again. But his tail was the only part of Fang that moved. They went to the shed and looked in. It was pitch-black. The shed had no window. But they heard Fang—thump, thump—and then they could see him. He was lying on his rug, looking at them. It seemed warm in the shed, and the dog smell was nice. So they stepped in.

  “Don’t shut the door,” Raymond whispered.

  “There is no door,” Gloria whispered back.

  They stood there and looked down at Fang.

  Fang was older than both of them; he’d always been old. He was a mix of about twenty different breeds, and most of them must have been big. Because Fang was huge.

  Gloria remembered why they were there.

  “Are you depressed, Fang?” she asked him.

  Fang farted.

  “Is that depression?” Gloria asked.

  “Don’t think so,” said Raymond. “Or if it is, Dad’s really depressed. Here’s the test, watch. Fang?”

  Fang’s tail walloped the floor—and stopped.

  “Fang?”

  The tail drumming started again.

  “See?” said Raymond. “Fang’s definitely not the Black Dog of Depression. He’s too happy.”

  He sighed. This job was going to be harder than he’d expected—although he hadn’t really expected, or anticipated, anything. There was another black dog on the next street, but Raymond didn’t know if there was any point in—

  “What are yis doin’?”

  The voice came from nowhere.

  Gloria screamed, but nothing came out. She could feel the scream in her throat, but it was clinging there, too scared to climb out of her mouth.

  Raymond might have screamed too—he wasn’t sure. His face was an exploding red ball—that was what it felt like. His heart was in the middle of his head. He couldn’t see a thing.

  Gloria had never had been afraid of the dark. But it wasn’t the dark that had frightened her. It was the voice. A voice with no body.

  Her scream finally came out.

  “. . . ohmygod . . . !”

  Then she saw the head.

  Raymond saw it too.

  An upside-down head.

  “Ernie?” said Raymond.

  “Wha’?” said Ernie O’Driscoll.

  “What are you doing?”

  “Hangin’ upside down,” said Ernie.

  “Yeah,” said Raymond. “But why?”

  His heart was back where it was supposed to be. He could see Ernie O’Driscoll properly now. Ernie was hanging from a wooden beam that went across the shed, just under the roof. His arms were crossed, over his chest. He was hanging by his legs, like a bat.

  “Well,” said Ernie. “I’m a bit of a vampire, like.”

  Ernie O’Driscoll’s name was well known all along the street. “If you don’t do your homework, you’ll end up like Ernie O’Driscoll.” “If you don’t eat your cabbage, you’ll end up like Ernie O’Driscoll.” Ernie was famous. All the local kids knew about him. But the fact that Ernie was a vampire was red-hot, brand-new news.

  “A vampire?” said Gloria.

  Ernie nodded once, upside down.

  “Since when?” said Raymond.

  He saw Ernie nearly every day.

  “Last week,” said Ernie.

  “Oh.”

  Gloria thought about this.

  “Hey, Ernie,” she said. “Did you, like, decide to be a vampire?”

  “Me ma told me to get a job,” Ernie explained. “So there you go.”

  “Vampire’s a job?” said Raymond.

  “There’s a recession, bud,” said Ernie. “We make our own jobs. And it kind o’ runs in the family.”

  Raymond didn’t really know what Ernie was talking about.

  “Does that mean ‘Yeah’?” he asked.

  “It does, yeah,” said Ernie. “We need young people with vision. That’s my motto, like. And I get to stay in bed all day.”

  Gloria wasn’t even a bit scared now.

  “This is mad,” she said.

  “They said that about your man Einstein,” said Ernie. “The fella that invented the Xbox.”

  “I didn’t mean you’re mad, Ernie,” said Gloria.

  There was a vampire in the shed who thought she’d just insulted him. But Gloria still wasn’t scared—not at all. She thought it was great that she knew a vampire.

  “I meant it’s mad—cool mad, like,” she explained. “Finding you like this. Why are you hanging upside down?”

  “Seen it in a fillum,” said Ernie. “It’s good for the oul’ digestion.”

  “Did you suck someone’s blood tonight?”

  “An oul’ one in Tyrrelstown,” said Ernie.

  “Deadly,” said Gloria. “Did she scream?”

  “She didn’t even notice,” said Ernie. “She was watchin’ EastEnders. Hang on.”

  They heard a grunt and the whoosh of Ernie’s black cape—and Ernie was standing in front of them.

  “Brilliant!”

  The shed was suddenly full of light, and they could see Ernie even better.

  “You don’t look anything like Robert Pattinson, Ernie,” said Gloria.

  “Ah, well,” said Ernie. “He can’t have everythin’, I suppose.”

  “Did the light not hurt your eyes there, Ernie?”

  He hadn’t even blinked.

  “Ah, no way,” said Ernie. “That’s just a story.”

  “But you really drink blood, don’t you?”

  “Ah, yeah.”

  He belched.

  “It’s heavy goin’, but,” he said, “but that thing about vampires bein’ scared of the sunlight—that was made up to fool people into thinkin’ they’re safe durin’ the day.”

  Fang thumped his tail again, and that made Raymond remember why they were there.

  “We’re chasing the Black Dog of Depression, Ernie,” he said. “Want to come?”

  Ernie thought about it.

  “Is he big, is he?”

  “Huge,” said Gloria. “I’d say so, and anyway.”

  “Grand,” said Ernie. “Dessert, wha’.”

  He patted his belly, and Gloria laughed.

  “What’re we waitin’ for?” said Ernie.

  “Are you coming, Fang?” said Raymond.

  Fang thumped his tail and farted.

  “There’s your answer, bud,” said Ernie. “Seeyeh, Fang. Mind the house.”

  It was dark again, but they heard Fang’s tail walloping his rug. They followed Ernie out of the shed. Gloria heard a voice—or she thought she did—behind her.

  “Good luck.”

  She looked back, but there was no one there. Ernie and Raymond were in front of her. So that meant . . . it might have meant that Fang had spoken. Had she just heard a dog speak? It was mad, but, tonight, it wasn’t as mad as it should have been. She’d just found out that Ernie was a professional vampire. She’d discovered that a word—Brilliant!—could explode into bright and beautiful light.

  But it was quite windy.
Gloria could hear branches groaning, and, somewhere far off, a door slammed. It was probably just the wind that had made a noise that sounded like “Good luck.” But—

  “Thanks, Fang,” she said over her shoulder, just in case.

  Fang didn’t answer.

  Gloria ran after Raymond and Ernie. Ernie was in the lead, and they followed him out to the front, along the dark side of the house—

  “Brilliant!”

  And out to the street.

  Ernie stopped. He looked up and down the street.

  “So,” he said. “Where’s this black dog?”

  “We don’t know,” said Raymond.

  But as he spoke, they saw the Dog. At the end of the street.

  Not the Dog exactly—its shadow, and only for a second. It was huge, and it slid against the wall, the side wall of the grocery store, up as high as the upstairs window, as it turned the corner. It made no noise. But it had definitely been the Black Dog.

  It was gone. There was no sign of it, or sound. But they’d seen it.

  They stood there for a while—excited, scared, uncertain.

  Then—

  “Come on!”

  CHAPTER 7

  They ran to the corner as fast as they could, even though they were probably running toward danger.

  But the Black Dog had gone. He’d disappeared.

  They could look down four streets from here. But there was no sign of the Dog—no sign of anything. It was cold, a kind of moving cold, like a freezing, invisible animal was rubbing against them.

  “Well,” said Ernie, and he pointed at both streets across from their corner. “He can’t have gone down there. We’d have seen him crossin’ the road.”

  The cold crawled around them. There was no sound now from the wind.

  “This one,” said Raymond, and he pointed left. “Come on.”

  He started to run, past the front of the grocery store and Hair2Day, the hairdresser’s.

  “Why that one?” Ernie asked.

  “The other one’s a culdy-sack,” Raymond shouted back.

  “Dogs love culdy-sacks,” said Ernie.

  He was right. Most dogs loved a good cul-de-sac, a trapped street of interesting smells that were going nowhere. But—

  “Not this one,” said Raymond. “He’s definitely going somewhere. Come on.”

  Gloria was impressed. Raymond sounded like an expert, the Black Dog Hunter. But, really, she didn’t want to go any farther. She was frightened—she admitted it to herself. The cold scared her, the way it seemed to move, to creep around her.

  But Raymond started running. Gloria thought of her Uncle Ben and the weight of the Black Dog on his back, and she ran after him.

  They ran to the next corner.

  There was no Black Dog. They could see nothing on the street ahead, no shadow or anything solid. It was very late, very quiet. Very cold.

  “Here, Ernie,” said Raymond.

  He shivered.

  “Wha’?” said Ernie.

  “Can you not fly?” said Raymond.

  “No way,” said Ernie.

  “I thought vampires could fly.”

  “Only in the fillums, bud,” said Ernie. “We have to get the bus, like everyone else. But look wha’ I can do.”

  He spread out his arms so his cape looked like a huge bat’s wings.

  “The business, wha’!”

  “That’s so cool,” said Gloria.

  Then they felt the cold moving again, around them, like an animal. Rubbing against their legs. It wasn’t wind. It was like solid, invisible cold.

  “What’s happening, Rayzer?”

  “Don’t know.”

  The cold seemed to push at them, to make them face the same direction.

  And they saw it.

  A cloud.

  A low, black cloud—it was lower than the house roofs.

  Ernie pointed at it. “It’s kind o’ shaped like a dog.”

  He was right. The cloud moved away from them. It seemed to become even more dog-shaped as it drifted farther down the street. Two dark wisps looked like its ears.

  “It’s a bit horrible,” said Gloria.

  “Yeah,” Raymond agreed.

  And it was gone again—around a corner.

  “Come on!”

  Ernie was fastest. He ran ahead, down the new street, and Raymond and Gloria followed. He waited for them at every corner, and at every corner they were quickly cold. The corner was a cold hint, something the Black Dog seemed to be leaving behind, telling them which way to run.

  Raymond wondered if they were really chasing the Dog or if the Dog was leading them somewhere. It didn’t matter, he decided—he didn’t think too much about it. Because they still had to catch the Dog.

  They could see the Dog ahead, then gone, then back. He was playing with them, maybe—although it wasn’t funny or anything like funny.

  They kept running. But they were tiring.

  “Look!” said Gloria, and she pointed.

  They were running past Uncle Ben’s empty house. The timing was perfect, a reminder of why they were out in the cold. They could see the neighbors’ dogs, Chester and Sadie, at their windows. They were barking, but Gloria could hardly hear them.

  “That’s amazing,” she said as she ran.

  “What?”

  “Sadie’s barking,” said Gloria.

  “What about it?” said Raymond.

  “It sounded like, ‘Go get him, girl!’”

  “Didn’t hear it,” said Raymond.

  They ran. They stayed warmer that way and running seemed to be the right way to measure their love for Uncle Ben. They wanted to hear their breath, and their feet stamping the ground. They wanted to feel their lungs working, and their hearts.

  “Where are we, Rayzer?” asked Gloria, after a while.

  “Don’t know,” said Raymond.

  They’d run out of the place they knew, the area they would have called home. None of the buildings around them were familiar.

  “Look!”

  Raymond had just seen it—the Dog.

  “Oh my God!”

  It was moving, just a shadow, right under a bunch of small trees, in front of a huge, long building.

  They knew the building. They’d been here before, loads of times. They were at the Liffey Valley Shopping Centre.

  The Dog was a shadow moving through other shadows. A darker shadow, sliding, rolling slowly. Gloria could feel her heart pumping.

  “Come on,” said Raymond.

  “There’s not much blood in a shadow,” said Ernie, and he sounded disappointed.

  Gloria tried to laugh. But she couldn’t. Her mouth was too dry.

  There were no cars or people—it was very late. It was just Raymond, Gloria, Ernie. And the shadow. Raymond ran straight at it.

  He couldn’t believe he was doing this, running at his biggest fear, charging straight into darkness. “But,” he thought, “it’s only a shadow.” He knew that shadows were easily explained. They were made of light and shade. So he wasn’t just surprised when his hands touched something solid.

  He was terrified.

  “Aaah!”

  “What’s the story?” said Ernie.

  “I felt it!”

  “Felt what, Rayzer?” said Gloria.

  “The Dog,” said Raymond. “The fur.”

  “But there’s nothing here,” said Gloria. “It’s gone.”

  She was right—but she wasn’t. There was no dog near them, or in among the trees. But there was something.

  The cold.

  It seemed to be right over them now, a dark, icy cloud. Or a freezing, silent animal leaning over them.

  “Ah, here,” said Ernie. “It’s only a cloud.”

  Now Gloria laughed.

  “Brilliant!”

  And the cloud—the weird patch of extra darkness—moved away.

  “It’s not even dog-shaped,” said Gloria.

  They weren’t sure now if it was even there.

>   “It was definitely fur,” said Raymond.

  Gloria believed him. They were looking up at the sky, searching for the cloud, trying to make it out in the darkness.

  “Poor Rayzer,” she said. “It must have been disgusting, was it?”

  “A bit,” said Raymond.

  “Here,” said Ernie. “Why are we doin’ this, and anyway?”

  “For Uncle Ben,” said Gloria. “Me and Rayzer’s uncle. He’s depressed.”

  “And the Black Dog has stolen Dublin’s funny bone,” Raymond told Ernie.

  “And Uncle Ben will get better if we can get the funny bone back,” said Gloria.

  “Says who?” said Ernie.

  “Our granny,” said Gloria.

  “Ah, well, then,” said Ernie. “Fair enough.”

  “Do you know our granny, Ernie?”

  “No,” said Ernie. “But I always feel brainier after I’ve drunk a granny’s blood.”

  “Really?”

  “On the level.”

  “Deadly,” said Gloria. “But you’re to promise not to drink our granny’s blood, Ernie. She’d freak out, she would. Ernie?”

  “Wha’?”

  “Promise.”

  “Okay,” said Ernie. “I promise. But it’s against me principles.”

  “That’s it there,” said Raymond, pointing down the street, and up. “Look.”

  The cloud was back—it was definitely there.

  “Is it only a cloud, Rayzer?”

  Gloria hoped it was, just a cloud behaving strangely. But that made her feel bad because she knew she was supposed to hope it was the Dog. But this—the cloud, the shape, whatever it was—was more frightening than a solid dog, even a huge one, would have been.

  “Rayzer?” she said. “Is it only a cloud?”

  “I heard you the first time,” said Raymond.

  They stood still, looking.

  “Well, is it?” Gloria.

  “Don’t know,” said Raymond. “Don’t think so.”

  “Is it a mirage?”

  “Wrong time of day, honey,” said Ernie. “You only see mirages in the daytime, I think.”

  “It has to be hot for a mirage,” said Raymond.

  “Then it’s definitely not a mirage,” said Ernie. “I’m freezin’.”

  “Maybe it’s nothing,” said Gloria.

  She knew what she was doing, what they were doing. They were filling the air around them with their voices, protecting themselves against the silence. The cloud was less scary while they talked.