Feynard by Marc Secchia

you have a nice time.” His tone was as warm as an invitation to the gallows. Kevin shivered at his brother’s departure, as if suddenly taken with an immedicable chill that centred on his frail heart. Brian used to be nasty. These days he was downright evil.
    Funny, he thought, that business about New York. He was no idiot. Brian was going nowhere near New York. Why the lie? That said–he tut-tutted under his breath–there were undoubtedly many Jenkins secrets he was not party to. And his day was now ruined. Kevin stumped over to the bed in a right old sulk. Best get on with it.
    *  *  *  *
    Three days and half a night later, that feeling of haleness was the last thing on Kevin’s mind. He had not forgotten. But there were more pressing matters afoot.
    Tonight was the night.
    “Relax,” he instructed himself, as sternly as a headmaster castigating a recalcitrant student. “It’s nothing but a little stroll downstairs. I’ll mosey on down to the Blue Room …”
    He froze as something creaked out in the hallway. Old houses like this were full of such noises. Kevin might have retched, but there was nothing left to expel after a wretched hour earlier spent hanging over the toilet bowl. His attempted chuckle was more a dull wheeze–shockingly loud against midnight’s silence–and he clutched his pillow for comfort. His imagination turned the shadows beneath the drapes into the scaly paws of hidden ogres. Was the utter stillness out there comforting, or merely terrifying? Too many nights he had lain thus, awaiting the dreaded creak of Father’s tread in the hallway.
    With a convulsive surge, he thrust the bedclothes aside, murmuring, “Trumpet sounds the charge , Jenkins.”
    Once he had forced himself into motion, donning his slippers and belting his favourite bathrobe, of a dark colour he imagined was suitable for sneaking about at night, he found the fear easier to cope with. There was a kind of momentum. If you did not stop to think about it, you might find yourself at the head of the stairs. Then you might scurry on–losing several years to a creaky stair three quarters of the way down–and duck behind the armour exhibit on the landing. The apparel of several burly knights was on display there, behind which he easily concealed himself. Pant and wheeze for a minute. Before the fear of discovery spread like snake venom into the cardiovascular system, you might just lurch forward and try the handle to the smoking room, where the men used to gather for cigars and port after dinner. Round the overstuffed armchairs and a squat leather sofa, ease open the oak-carved double doors and stop to catch your breath before the patch of moonlight that illuminated the gigantic dining table and its many straight-backed chairs where, on the rare occasions he was invited, he had dined from silver platters. Such were Father’s pretensions.
    In the luminous half-light, his momentum vanished. Kevin curled in towards himself, hugging his thin body as the tremors started in his calves and rocketed into his gut with familiar, sickly glee. For several interminable minutes he stood swaying in his frayed old bathrobe, all his inner resources concentrated upon the awful, impending explosion brewing in his bowels. No, he must hold on, he must deny it. He broke into a cold sweat. He must dam up the evidence. There was no toilet nearby. Failure was unthinkable.
    Just when the sensation had become unbearable, when he had already given up the battle and was about to succumb to the unclenching of vital muscles, something altogether unexpected happened. For a fraction of a second, he thought he saw the Unicorn in the moonbeam–which was impossible, or the moonlight was playing tricks with his imagination–but certainly he thought … that jutting horn … Kevin rubbed his eyes and blinked a couple of times, startled and perturbed to discover that there was no sodden warmth spreading down his leg, that the tremors had stopped, and that his