Fourth Horseman by Kate Thompson Page A

wasn’t sleeping now, no matter how tired he was. But I was glad he wasn’t down here with us. We could never have had this kind of conversation if he was.
    ‘I don’t think so,’ I said. ‘They were more like something from another time. Out of the past.’
    ‘There’s an idea,’ said Javed. ‘Maybe there’s a special place there.’
    ‘A portal,’ said Alex. ‘A time portal.’
    ‘Maybe they don’t have anything to do with the squirrels,’ said Javed. ‘Maybe they just slipped through a time portal because it’s there.’
    And it might have always been there,’ said Alex excitedly. ‘Since ancient times. That’s why someone built that dirty big wall around the place.’
    ‘Hmm,’ I said. ‘The only thing wrong with that is the way they were looking at Dad. They weren’t interested in me at all. They were definitely there on account of him.’
    ‘But they didn’t say anything?’
    ‘No. But I did.’ I had a sudden vision of Dad, his shirt front crumpled and lopsided, gazing like a zombie at the riders, and me, my voice high-pitched and whiny, waving my mobile and threatening the apparitions with the police. All the tension of the day found release through that absurd image, and I began to laugh hysterically. It was a long time before I could pull myself together enough to tell them what was so funny. Then I remembered the violent wind that had ripped the leaves off the trees, and I told them about that as well.
    ‘You know what we should do?’ said Javed.
    ‘What?’
    ‘We should just go there. Tomorrow. Search the place and see what we can find.’
    ‘Good thinking,’ said Alex. ‘Then if there’s any kind of wiring we’ll find it.’
    ‘If it hasn’t already been taken away,’ I said.
    ‘There’s bound to be some kind of evidence, though, if we look carefully enough,’ said Javed. ‘Broken twigs, bits of wire left around.’
    ‘And we can check out the wall,’ said Alex. ‘See if there’s any way a horse could get in there.’
    I wasn’t so keen. The memory and the fear were still too fresh. ‘You weren’t there,’ I said. ‘You’ve no idea how scary it was.’
    ‘You can be a victim in life or you can be a warrior,’ said Javed.
    Alex was a bit more sympathetic. ‘We’ll get Dad to come if you like,’ he said.
    My spirits shrivelled. ‘Actually,’ I said pathetically, ‘Dad’s a bit weird about it all.’
    ‘Weird?’ said Alex. ‘What way weird?’
    It felt almost impossible to explain, without making me look like an idiot. ‘He doesn’t want to admit he saw them.’ But as I said it, I realized the importance of going. If we found evidence, which I was sure we would, then we could confront him with it. All three of us. Make him talk.
    I decided to be a warrior. My spirit was returning. ‘Better without him,’ I said.

9
    I DID MANAGE TO go to sleep once or twice that night, but never for long. The two riders were in every part of my mind. If I dropped off I woke almost immediately, the horsemen vivid behind my eyes. Once the white rider was bowling at me with a huge, fiery ball, and the red one was keeping wicket behind me, standing right up to the stumps, breathing down my neck. The ball was going to be a bouncer, I knew. It was aimed right at my elbow. Another time the two of them were walking across the sky and I was in a hot-air balloon with Dad. I was trying to blow us away from them, but he was blowing smoke in the other direction, back towards them. He was winning. Every time I woke I would try to push the horsemen out of my mind; to vanish them the way they had vanished themselves. I couldn’t, though. They haunted me tirelessly from one edge of the night to the other.
    And pretty much every time I woke up I heard Dad’s radio, tuned to the BBC World Service, talking to him in his room. He had a sleep setting on it, which meant that it turned itself off automatically after half an hour. The fact that it was on all night meant that he was