William awoke to a sharp tug on his throat. It was the middle of the night again. It was also misty again. In the boding stakes, things were already looking bad. Gradually, the young goat’s senses kicked in, one by one, and he realised that he was moving. Backwards.
More specifically, he was being dragged backwards across the paddock by a rope attached to the collar around his neck. While his conscious self thought “this is odd”, his unconscious self began to realise that the pressure around his throat was rather uncomfortable and was beginning to choke him. The pull on the rope was slightly off-centre, however, and the friction of his hindquarters caused him to suddenly spin round and face the direction of travel.
The rope now stretched away from William into the mist. With the pressure on his throat eased, his brain began to receive more oxygen and he awoke properly. He could not see what the rope was tied to but he knew it to be his brother, Billy.
Apart from the cat’s projectile vomiting, the meeting with Mystic Mog had not gone as badly as William had feared. Mog had been too shaken up by what she would only describe as an “Unpleasant Psychic Episode” to be angry with William for long for losing Billy. In truth, she was simply relieved that the young goat had suffered no damage from psychokinetic feedback or “mental friendly fire”.
Billy had obviously been annoyed at the revelation, especially after the praise that William had received from their mother for keeping him safe. Even he agreed that the experience with Mog was recompense enough and, though quick to anger, he was quick to forgive and forget. The main thing is that they were all determined not to let it happen again. This time, the two brothers were firmly attached. Wherever Pan took Billy, William had no choice but to follow – as he was currently finding out. Before tonight, he had not realised that his brother’s psychic weakness was so well compensating by physical strength.
The fence at the edge of the paddock loomed out of the mist, and William decide that it was time to take a more active role in his progress. With the nimbleness of, well, a goat, he managed to scramble to his feet without ending flat on his face. He then had a split second to discern whether Billy had gone under the fence or between the two crossbeams. The wrong choice would most likely result in an uncomfortable choking sensation and quite probably splinters in unfortunate places.
Between the crossbeams it was, and through William squeezed. Once into the field beyond, he wasted no time in closing the gap between himself and his brother. Where was Pan taking him this time? It was blatantly not the same route as last night, which took him down the lane, but William had been disorientated by his drag across the paddock and was not sure in which direction they were headed.
Normally, he would use the stars to pinpoint his position and direction but the mist and low clouds had ruled that out this evening. This did not stop him staring vainly up into the heavens, though, and he nearly walked straight into the back of Billy as a result, whose progress could best be described as slow and steady. That would probably not be a good idea – he did not want to risk waking him up.
Being careful not to trip either of them up with the rope, which was now slack and dragging along between them, William outflanked his brother and had a good stare at him. Were his eyes normally that glazed over? William assumed not but, having thought about it, realised that he had never really stared at his brother’s eyes before.
This time, William’s staring did cause him to walk into something – another fence. This was not a good sign. Toby O’Bee did not have too many pastures, so they would probably be leaving his land. William suddenly found the mist to be quite comforting, shielding them from view from any potential hostilities. At least, that is what he hoped.
There was no time to think about that now, though. Billy’s steady progress had already taken him through into the field beyond and if William did not follow promptly, he was in serious danger of getting tangled up.
Once into the field, his concerns were realised. This field was being used to grow some kind of food crop. Toby O’Bee was not a practising farmer. He did occasionally employ a local lad named Spike to make bales of hay when the sun shined but that was just for rustic charm.
The plants were head height for the young goat, and William found that he had to use the channel of flattened crops left by Billy if he were to stand any chance of keeping up. If the other goat was finding it heavy going, he was showing no sign of it. Presumably, such things were of no concern to Pan.
Ahead of them, William spotted a hazy shape in the mist that made his heart skip a beat. It looked like a human figure. And Billy was marching straight towards it. If they had entered the land of Garth Jones, this could be very bad indeed.
“Billy!” he hissed. “Billy, wake up!”
He may have been there to follow Billy but his primary concern was always his brother’s safety – and his own. Billy did not respond, however, and continued inexorably towards the figure. William would have to find another way. Gritting his teeth, he dug his feet firmly into the ground and braced for the sharp tug that was about to come.
When it did come, the tug on his collar was so sharp that it nearly pulled William off his feet. Billy had the strength of a creature possessed. But then, of course, he was.
William now found himself being dragged across the ground once more, ripping up chunks of foliage as he went along, his feet ploughing furrows into the topsoil. This was blatantly not working. He was not even sure that his was slowing Billy down.
With great reluctance, William conceded defeat. Even if he was making a difference, Billy was now dragging William plus the harvest of a small African nation. As a result, the strain on the rope and William’s collar – and, therefore, William’s neck – was getting just too much to bear. He would have to try a more direct approach.
Shaking loose bits of plant off himself, William trotted after his brother.
“Billy!” he hissed again, hoping that the figure ahead of them would not hear. “You’ve got to stop!”
Just as he reached his brother, he heard a whir and a click from the direction of the figure.
“Uh oh.”
Suddenly the air was full of Jehovah’s Witness propaganda. William ducked in reflex and was pelted across his back and right flank. The deterrent was obviously designed with smaller creatures in mind, but they still stung as they made contact.
In contrast, Billy seemed totally unmoved. Pamphlets were hitting his legs and glancing off his small horns but he plodded on, oblivious. Then a leaflet caught him square on the nose. He froze, and the quickly ducked as a second leaflet shot at him on the same trajectory. This was caught him square between the eyes.
Billy looked round in confusion. “What the…?”
He ducked as another pamphlet shot past at high velocity. Then there was calm. The figure in front of the goats was still clicking but nothing was being launched at them.
“I guess it’s run out of ammo,” whispered William.
Billy just stared around, wide-eyed, trying to take stock of what was happening. The clicking stopped. The two goats looked at each other and then at the Jehovah’s Witness, which, to their surprise, promptly disappeared from view.
Billy threw William a quizzical look. William dropped it with a hapless shrug.
Suddenly the Jehovah’s Witness sprung back into view. This time it was wearing a crudely fashioned turban and the informational literature had been replaced by something rather larger; and considerably more scary – a Kalashnikov assault rifle.
“Run!” screamed William.
At least, he tried to scream “Run!”. The end of the word was cut off by his collar whipping him backwards by his neck; Billy had needed no encouragement.
William and Billy had never heard a gun being fired before, and it was loud: loud enough to firmly convince them that to be hit would be to enter a world of pain. (The goats had already visited Eric Lovell’s World of Pain earlier in the week, when Toby Ron had been redecorating the spare room. Fortunately, this was simply the result of a missing ‘T’, although some of the shades of one-coat emulsion were quite traumatic to behold. This one would be worse.)
Fortunately for the goats, Farmer Jones had not upgraded the targeting system of this model and so it was just spraying bullets round at random. This was little consolation to the two animals, however, and they fled as fast as they could, fertilising the ground as they went. As it was, one of the bullets whistled by William’s ear, cutting the rope as it went.
Feeling the rope go suddenly slack, Billy glanced over his shoulder to check on his brother’s progress. Seeing that he was OK, Billy turned back, just in time to run headlong into the fence at maximum speed. Such was his momentum, Billy crashed right through the wooden beam, back into the land of his owner, where he tottered shakily on his feet for a moment.
“Are you OK?” asked William, breathlessly, as he caught up.
Billy did not answer. Instead, he turned to look distantly at his brother, then simply keeled over and passed out.
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