Discovery

Awake at dawn.
All night long he’d lain ill at ease in his bed, twisting his heavy covers into a mess of uncomfortable knots. His mouth had been dry and sweat had drooled from every available pore, causing him to rise on several occasions to quench his thirst greedily, only for the sand to reappear quickly once more on his throat.
This was what fear felt like. The fear of loss and the fear of denial. The fear of defeat was hanging around as heavily as a burial shroud.
Now the sun was rising slowly in the autumnal sky, to hang magically in the dull red of a duck’s egg yolk, to welcome the dawn of another day. With its beacon through the partially curtained window, he was up and out through the unlatched door silently.
The air held a cold, crisp edge and the white tongues of frost which clung stubbornly to the lawn of the front garden indicated that winter was not so very far away once more. At the battered wooden gate at the bottom of the concrete path which led away from his home and out to the surrounding fields, he paused a moment in recollection.
The noises of the previous day and the boy’s struggles penetrated his memory. The cries of despair, the pain and agony endured to haunt him still. Surely he’d been seen. Surely at the place where the boy had lost that which he’d held most dear, he’d been seen. But no! Clearly this had not been the case.
He went through the gate and set off purposefully at a light jog. Out across the road to the fields.
His heart beat at a frenzy inside his ears, a dull thwum-thwump-thwump which blocked out almost all sounds but that of the myriad of birds that swooped and chattered in their own search for a breakfast hard found.
Breath eschewed from his slightly gaping mouth in white and rapidly evaporating clouds, like the ideas of a peaceful night dispelled, as anxiety set in.
He was at the edge of the woods now. The birdsong became less shrill here, the atmosphere more serious. More earnest.
The dull yellow that the sun’s beams had now become, had not yet permeated the thickening cover of the tree’s leaves as yet.
The woods here smelled cold. Foreboding and threatening, though he knew from experience that its depth was slight. He edged through the short bushes - holly, elder and ivy - slowly, his breath coming now in stark, panicky sighs as he confusedly tried to gain his bearings.
There was the tree from which was hanging the rope swing. There was the embankment where the children had hollowed out what they called a den for themselves during that long hot summer, whilst he’d watched from the cool and hidden shade within the hedgerows.
They’d paid him no mind as he’d lain there - watching. Their shrill cries of enjoyment hanging on the gentle breeze which managed to filter through, presumably on the wings of the flies and gnats that hovered incessantly around the rotting bark and dead greenery that lay on the floor of this forested area.
But not last night did they play here. Last night this area had been much cooler and filled with the desperate cries and beseeching of just one, desperate child.
From behind him, the sun rose sufficiently to cut a swathe through a gap in the faunae that cast a canopy above his head and, in so doing, illuminated the area into which he was staring if but for a moment.
It was for long enough. His sense of surrounding returned and once again he strode forwards, confident and sure.
There was the tree, prone and besmirched with carvings eked out by prying hands holding dull bladed knives. It’s once proud grandeur having been severed by the violent gusts of not so long ago.
Just behind that, turn left after three - maybe four- strides and then on for another dozen at most. Then he’d be near. Then he could begin to dig and put the boy at rest.
Within moments he was there. The smell told him so. Decay pervaded the air and assaulted his nose causing him to catch his breath involuntarily.
Dead and dying plant-life gave off noxious odours, no doubt mixed with the aroma given by a number of animals past. Here it was so dark, that he squinted to see in further beyond the little clearing he knew to be in front of him. Forward he walked. Slowly, peering into the gloom.
And then he saw and cried out a little at his recognition. He had no tools, forcing him to bend, forward and low, so that he could hack away at the ground beneath him.
The damp had made the vegetated floor of the woods thick with cloying mud beneath his nails. His efforts and the stench causing his breath to become heavier, laboured. The land, oh so recently disturbed, came away the further down he went in more and more clumped sections until at last an arm revealed itself.
He cried aloud again and changed position but not stopping his dragging motion at the under soil. There now revealed to him was a leg. It’s black booted foot shining even in this gloom.
He slowed, carefully circumnavigating so as not to damage what remained of the body. The other arm. The other leg. The head. So soft. So small. So perfect. Uncovered now, he left the body and hurriedly scurried back to the edge of the clearing, the edge of the woods and stared back the way from which he had recently travelled. No lights could be seen in the row of houses adjacent to his own.
He was pleased at this and hurried back to the place of his excavations. Once there again, he bent low once more and scooped up the body with ease and carried it back through the clearing, through the smell and through the flies. Out into the lighter, less virulent clearing and then on to the fields where the light covering of frost had been dispatched by the rising, yet still coolness, of the brightening orb that lit the sky.
His breath was forced now. Thin streams of air similar to the excesses blown from the nostrils of smokers hung around him as he scampered homeward. His tongue, pink and wet - though feeling dry and heavy - protruded from what little gap there was between his gritted teeth as he laboured onward.
And then he was at the road. Here he paused and lay his cargo gently to the floor. He checked for signs of life from the other houses of his street. None was evident. Good!
He gathered up the small bundle and trotted over the narrow road, eased his way through the wooden gate and with a shallow cry, walked slowly - assuredly - towards the unlatched door.

Andrew James had woken early. He’d risen and had gone downstairs to make himself and Heather - his wife - a cup of tea. The kitchen floor had been cold against his bare feet and, in a pigeon toed motion, he’d moved to open the back door to allow the cool air of the morning in so as to waken him a little more as he did on most mornings.
Yet today, he felt his breath catch in his throat. Thank God he’d got up first. The back door must have only been half closed for the entire night, as he saw that it’s lock tongue did not need to be turned away from its housing to be opened.
If Heather had seen this, he thought, there’d have been hell to pay. Especially after the bad end to the previous day.
The row and the promises to go searching again at first light sauntered through his memory and he groaned a little inwardly.
Buddy pushed himself in through the emerging gap with effortless ease. He was soaking wet and he stank. His claws were covered with a filthy, dark, clinging mud. His breath came in short gasps, with strings of drool swinging freely from a mouth clinging grimly to something between his muzzle. Realisation dawned.
“Bloody hell!” Andrew mumbled, as he saw his ageing dog place the plastic figure of his son’s favourite soldier toy down on the now bemuddied linoleum of the kitchen and sit beside it, his tail sweeping the floor beneath in a rapid movement.
“Bloody hell I ….” Andrew began again before changing his cry to a shrill “… Heather! Heather, come and look. Come and see what the dog’s done!”
Sleepily, he heard his wife descend the stairs and, as she entered the kitchen rubbing her eyes wearily, she mumbled a word that sounded like the word “what” somewhat confusedly.
“Look” Andrew said “the dog’s found it!” He bent now and picked up the doll from the floor and excitedly showed it his wife, whose features crumpled into bemusement.
“He must have let himself out and gone looking by himself. Remember how he was whining when David was crying so hard? Well I reckon, it upset him so much that he’s decided to do something for him.”
“Don’t talk s’ daft! How the ‘ell could a dog have known …”
“Well look at him!” Andrew insisted “He’s soaked and covered in mud. His nails are caked in it an’ he stinks. I bet Davey’s been playin’ by that bloody cess pool again out in the woods. ‘ow many bloody times does ‘e need bloody tellin’ eh?
Any’ow, Buddy was out when I came down and the back door was open.” As soon as he’d said this, he felt a moments regret for the admission. But the non-changing look on his wife’s face soon made him realise that the comment had passed un-noticed.
“Bloody ‘ell!” His wife said, sitting herself slowly down onto one of the wooden chairs which were placed around the pine coloured dining table. “Bloody ‘ell!” she repeated before turning to the hero of the hour. “Whose a clever boy then? Yes you are ! Oh yes, you are!”
The black Labrador of some twelve summers barked and skipped as Andrew joined in with the adulation. He only paused for a moment to drink his bowl dry of what little water remained therein, before rejoining the couple to gain yet more praise.
“Davey will be made up to know his toy’s back.” Heather said at last “He thought that little sod Alan Weeks had nicked it you know. If you’d not found it this mornin’, I’d a gone ‘round to sort that little beggar out me’self. Poor little mite were that upset las’ night about it.”
“Aye well, there’s no need to now is there, Buddy’s found it. Don’t ask me ‘ow, but Buddy’s found it.” Andrew said, still stroking the back of his dog with pride. But less vigorously now, due to the grime that was matted into the dog’s coat.
“Wait ‘til he told the lads hear about this down the pub at lunch time. They’ll never believe it!”
“No, I ‘ardly believe meself!” His wife remarked. “Perhaps I should ask ‘im to lock up at nights, as it seems quite beyond you!” Buddy barked, they laughed and Davey slept on unknowingly … for the moment.
The boy was oblivious, for the time being, of the knowledge that his favourite soldier toy had been found.
Davey was also oblivious of the fact that the strictest warning concerning the dangers of playing by the stinky pool in the woods that the boy of some six summers had ever been given, was looming large from the direction of his loving parents.