Fourth Horseman by Kate Thompson Page B

turning it on again; probably tossing and turning like me. The cheerful face meant nothing then. He was as alarmed by what had happened today as I was. I just wished that he would admit it.
    At about three a.m. I heard him turn off his radio, then get up and pad along the corridor to the bathroom and back. Soon afterwards the radio came on again. I turned over and tried to sleep. It was no use. Then I remembered something Mum had once told me: that if you’re angry with someone and it’s interfering with your peace of mind, the best thing to do is write them a letter. You don’t have to send it. In fact in most cases it’s better if you don’t. But writing it down can help you set your mind at rest. I thought about it for a while and eventually, driven demented by the persistent images, I got out of bed and found a notebook and pen.
    Getting it down on paper definitely helped. I made two columns on a clean page, and as I wrote I remembered some things I hadn’t thought of before.
    WHITE
    Appeared first alone.
    Wears a crown made of silver.
    Wears white clothes and a long flowing cape.
    Carries a bow and has arrows.
    Horse is well fed and strong. Has a very smart saddle and no bridle.
    Horse is very calm. The reins are loose.
    Rider has an arrogant expression.
    RED
    Appeared later with the white rider. Has not appeared alone.
    Has a beard.
    Wears shabby clothes. Rusty red colour. Bloodstained?
    Carries crude sword with blood dripping from it.
    Horse is thin and wiry. Has no saddle and the bridle is made of rope.
    Horse is restless and excitable. One of the reins is broken.
    Rider looks humiliated and angry.
    It didn’t look much when I’d finished and I wished I could remember more. I read it over a couple of times to see whether anything leaped out at me, but that was about all I could remember. It hadn’t helped much. I went back to bed but I still couldn’t sleep. I missed Mum dreadfully and wished I could talk to her. And suddenly I remembered that I could.
    Dad had put the old computer back in his study, and Alex and I used it for our email. I booted it up. I checked my email then set about composing a message to Mum. I wrote several versions, a few serious ones about what I had seen and the effect it had had on Dad, and then a light-hearted one with the story of the horseman added as a kind of afterthought. But when I read them through they all sounded as if I was going off the rails. I had no doubts at all about what I had seen, but when I saw it in writing it looked crazy. It was making things worse, not better. I deleted the emails and decided to leave it until Mum next came home.
    As I was getting up to go back to bed I noticed an unusual book beside the keyboard, half hidden by a couple of printouts. It had a white leather cover that I didn’t remember seeing in the house before. Dad was an atheist, and Mum called herself an agnostic, so I couldn’t imagine why either of them would have had a copy of the Holy Bible.
    Back in bed, still sleepless, I went over what I’d seen, over and over and over. I thought about what I had agreed to do with the boys in the morning but I couldn’t remember how I had felt when I decided to be a warrior. I could only remember the fear.
    By six a.m. I was so exhausted that I couldn’t think straight. I knew that if I didn’t get up and occupy myself I was going to go nuts. As I went along to the bathroom I could hear Dad snoring, finally asleep. I envied him, but the fact that he was sleeping sowed the seed of an idea in my head. I was going to have to go through with it; this search I had committed myself to. And if I had to do it, I wanted to get it over with as soon as I could. Why not now?
    I didn’t fancy my chances with the boys, though. When I went into Alex’s room the two of them were in deep sleep. Alex was on the top bunk. I tried him first.
    ‘Alex!’
    ‘Huh.’
    ‘Wake up. I want to go to the lab. I want to search for the riders.’
    ‘’Kay,’ he