Brilliant (17 page)

Raymond couldn't see. He couldn't see anything. Not a thing. He was buried. Freezing. He couldn't open his mouth—he didn't have a mouth. He didn't know where he was—or why he was. He knew nothing.

But he heard a voice. Near him. Ernie.

“We'll be grand, we'll be grand. Just a few more seconds.”

Ernie's voice was right at Raymond's ear.

“D'you know why I'm doin' this?” said Ernie.

Raymond forced the word through his freezing lips: “Why?”

“For my da,” said Ernie.

They were still moving. Paddy could feel it, the movement. He'd shut his eyes, but he could feel himself charging through the rolling snakes. He thought they were going up now, Paddy, Raymond, and Ernie—like they were climbing up the snakes' backs or something. But he could feel nothing under his feet.

“Everyone says he's a waster,” said Ernie. “But they don't know him. He's a great da. The way he was before the Dog got to him.”

Ernie coughed.

“So, that's why I'm here,” he said. “Here goes.”

Raymond and Paddy heard Ernie.

“BRILLIANT, BRILLIANT, bleedin' BRILLIANT!”

Down on the beach the kids couldn't see the three boys anymore. They were inside the Dog—they'd disappeared completely.

They waited. It felt like ages. Minutes.

Then they heard the voice from inside the cloud.

“BRILLIANT, BRILLIANT, bleedin' BRILLIANT!”

It seemed to come from miles away. But they'd heard it.

“That was Ernie,” said Gloria.

“Brilliant!”

They shouted as hard as they could. But the wind grabbed their voices. They had no breath left. They watched, and waited—and hoped. They could still hear Ernie, and Paddy and Raymond, in the sky above them.

“. . . brilliant . . . brilliant . . .”

But the shouts seemed to come from farther away.

“Look!”

They could see chinks now, tiny holes appearing in the cloud. Sunlight was getting through, narrow little beams of it.

Raymond saw the light, but he had no strength left, no voice. Paddy saw the light hit the snakes, saw the snakes start to fade. But he was so cold. He felt like he was frozen in ice. He just wanted to sleep forever.

“Here!” said Ernie. “Don't tell me you're bored. Wake up!”

Paddy remembered the word.

“Brilliant.”

“Good man,” said Ernie. “Louder, but.”

“Brilliant,” said Raymond.

One of the holes in the cloud got bigger, wider. He thought he could see the sun.

The kids were drenched and freezing. They could hear the boys way up in the Dog—they could just about hear them. But that stopped too. There was just the wind. The holes in the cloud were filling in.

They heard the Dog.

“Useless . . .”

“Oh, no.”

But Gloria noticed: The Dog wasn't loud this time. He was tiring too. The kids could still win, if they were quick enough. But the wind was charging all around, blowing stinging sand straight at them. Gloria put her fingers in front of her mouth like a mask and she inhaled as much air as she could.

“One more time!” she shouted.

All the kids copied Gloria. They protected their faces with their hands and sleeves, and breathed in deep. They inhaled the wind and they sent it down to their lungs.

Damien couldn't open his mouth. It was too sore. But he grabbed a stick and jumped up on a rock. Then, just like the conductor of an orchestra, he held his arms and the stick in the air. The wind tried to knock him off the rock. But it couldn't. Damien wasn't going to be bullied by the wind.

All the kids looked at him. They knew what he was doing. They held their breath—they waited.

Damien the conductor dropped his arms.

And the kids let go of the air. They fired it straight up at the Dog.

“BRILLIANNNNNNT!”

And it worked. The word ripped through the cloud. The holes were big again, and they could see sky. The Dog was breaking, becoming smaller, harmless clouds.

But that stopped. The clouds stayed together, remained one cloud.

And it snarled. The snarl came from a mouth and the mouth was holding something very big and white.

The funny bone.

Gloria was ready.

The boys in the cloud saw the funny bone. It wasn't as dark in there and the snakes had faded away. They should have been less frightened. But what they saw now was even worse. The funny bone was being held by teeth—real, sharp teeth. They were inside the jaws of the Dog. The cloud, all around them, was becoming solid—and fleshy.

“We're standing on his tongue,” said Raymond.

“He's going to swallow us!” Paddy yelled.

“He's not swallowin' me,” said Ernie.

The boys felt Ernie strengthen his grip on their clothes, and they flew across the tongue and the Dog's drool. They charged up to the bone, right up against the back of the Dog's teeth.

Ernie let go of Paddy and Raymond.

“Push!”

Gloria had kept some breath, just enough for one last small—

“. . . brilliant . . .”

It was enough.

The word—the light, the tiny bit of desperate happiness—hit the cloud and the Black Dog exploded.

It just disappeared. One minute, there was the gale and the colossal snarling Dog. Next, there was silence—nothing. Except blue sky and quiet.

And guts.

“Oh my God!”

“Run!”

They ran to the dunes to get away. They heard the guts fall, slapping the sand like hard-boiled rain. They heard the shouts of three screaming boys.

“Look out below!”

Raymond held onto Ernie's waist while Ernie held his parachute-cape in one hand and the back of Paddy's pants with the other.

“Let go!” Paddy yelled.

“Don't think so, bud,” said Ernie. “Even sand is hard when you fall this far.”

The kids below saw something else, something big and white, and—

“Oh my God again!”

They ran even farther away, into the dunes, even into the water. They heard the thump—they felt it. It lifted some of them off the ground.

They turned, and saw Dublin's funny bone. It was lying on the beach, white and bright and kind of funny. Exactly like a city's funny bone should have looked.

Ernie, hanging on to Paddy and Raymond, landed beside it in the sand. He stood up and shook the guts off his cape.

“Nothin' to it,” he said.

The air was suddenly full of seagulls and, a minute later, there was no sign of the guts or the Dog. There were no seagulls in the air. They were too full to fly. They were waddling around like drunk robots.

One of them waddled past Gloria.

“Never again,” it said.

“Are you a girl or a boy?” Gloria asked.

“Is it not obvious, like?”

“Girl?”

The seagull nodded.

“Never again,” she said. “I'll stick to the veg.”

She stopped waddling and pointed her beak at the funny bone.

“Good job,” she said.

“Thanks,” said Gloria.

Ernie was leaning against the funny bone. Hundreds of kids were climbing all over it.

“So this is the funny bone,” said Gloria.

“Looks like it.”

“Where are all the laughs?”

“Inside in the marrow,” said Raymond.

Damien was standing on top of the bone. He got down on his knees and put his ear to the bone.

“Shake it,” he said.

Dozen of kids started pushing the bone, making it rock in the sand. The kids on the bone held on or fell off.

“Hear anything?”

They all heard it, like the sound came from deep inside a cave. It was laughter.

“Ah, deadly!” said Gloria. “The funny bone's laughing.”

Everybody started laughing, including the bloated seagulls. Damien stood up on the bone.

“Hey!” he yelled. “My toothache's gone!”

Then they heard a voice. They thought they did—it seemed to come from inside the bone.

“Do you want it back?”

“No, thanks!” said Damien.

Ernie was still leaning against the bone.

“What'll we do with this thing?” he said.

“Don't worry,” said one of the seagulls. “The city will take it back.”

“How?”

He hadn't finished speaking when he fell onto the sand. The funny bone had disappeared.

“That's how,” said the seagull. “It's back where it should be. Inside the city, like. Everything will get back to normal now. Except my stummick.”

CHAPTER 11

P
addy climbed onto the garden wall.
Then he made the jump to the shed roof. The jump was easy, but he always worried that the roof would cave in and he'd fall into the shed.

But he landed safely, not too loudly. He waited a second—he listened.

“8654326,” he whispered.

He was trying to remember Alice's phone number. He'd been whispering it all the way home from the beach. He was afraid he'd dropped a number or two on the way—he wasn't sure. He'd phone her when he got into the house.