The Insect Rosary by Sarah Armstrong Read Free Book Online Page B

and carried it at arm’s length so the drips didn’t land on his shoes. She went in the front door and held her hand up.
    â€˜You can’t drip it through the house.’
    â€˜But, what about the dog?’
    â€˜It’s a sheepdog. You’re not a sheep. Just pretend that you’re in charge.’
    He went around the house and she took her bag to the parlour and sat down in Agatha’s chair. Elian was exhausting. She assumed Hurley had gone upstairs. Nancy heard the dog barking, but the dog was always barking at birds, at visitors, at the weather. The dog stopped barking, and there was a moment of silence. That’s when the screaming started. She hadn’t heard Hurley scream like that, not as a toddler, not in one of his most recent tantrums. He screamed now and, tasting copper at the back of her mouth, she ran.
    â€˜It just attacked him,’ said Elian, kneeling by Hurley, his hands clasped together.
    Her hands slipped against the door handles, her knees buckled at the step and she half fell towards Hurley. He held his hand towards her and she smiled, for some reason, smiled with her mouth but her eyes kept sliding away from the blood. She could smell it, like a handful of copper coins held in a child’s palm for too long, that stink of blood she carried with her. She shrugged her cardigan off, her elbows getting caught, and gently wrapped his leg in the green wool thinking, this isn’t good for the wound, this is even worse for my cardigan, but her brain preferred the cool mint to the scarlet lacerations and she managed to block out Hurley for a few seconds to think, where is the dog?
    The dog that didn’t deserve a name was back below the decaying staircase, hunched down as if it was waiting for them to move. Its mouth was curled upwards and its nose looked wet. It eyed them both, it seemed. Nancy began to walk Hurley towards Donn’s car. The keys were in the ignition, as usual.
    â€˜Elian, tell Donn I’m taking the car. Tell them we’ve gone to hospital.’
    â€˜I want to come,’ said Elian.
    She half saw him closing the door behind him. The ordered way they were discussing this, somehow hearing each other’s enunciations above and beyond Hurley’s cries suddenly struck Nancy as funny. She kept her eyes on the dog as she opened the rear door and guided Hurley through the gap. Elian got in beside him.
    Hurley was getting louder, possibly. Nancy turned the keys and backed out of the driveway, turning at the gate. She messed up her three point turn and just about missed the wall before speeding down the driveway.
    Drive on the left, drive on the left, she thought, before turning right into the road. She didn’t know the way to Coleraine, but she knew the general direction. With the sound of the engine making Hurley fade into the background she wondered if he had run out of fear, run out of energy or was fainting. It hadn’t seemed like a lot of blood loss, but shock. Did shock kill nowadays? Elian said nothing. Maybe they should have phoned for an ambulance. She’d done it wrong, she always got it wrong. She could make it not her fault. She could, if only Hurley would stop screaming.
    She drove on. Her hands started to shake as if all the action she had suppressed in front of the dog was happening all at once, the running she didn’t do, the throwing things that she couldn’t do. Her throat started to tighten and she counted her breaths in through the nose, out through the mouth, the techniques they’d been taught at counselling to deal with Hurley. But this wasn’t him. She couldn’t hear him now.
    She adjusted the rear view mirror to look. His head was back on the seat, his face pale and eyes open. His chest was still going up and down. Elian was just looking at him.
    A car horn blared and she swung back on to the left. Drive on the left.
    â€˜Hurley, are you feeling any pain?’ she asked.
    His eyes