“Tell me more about what we’ll have to eat,” Kenny said when we were halfway up the next slope.

“What have we got so far?”

“Tea, cake, sausage rolls, chips.”

“What else do you want?” I asked.

Kenny considered this for a few moments.

“More chips,” he said.

“More chips it is, then. What else?”

“Another sausage roll.”

“Coming right up,” I promised.

“And then more cake.”

“Same cake as the first one, or a different kind?”

“What was the first kind?” Kenny asked.

“Chocolate. With Smarties on top.”

“OK, then,” Kenny said. “For cake seconds I want more chocolate cake. And can I have the Smarties off of yours?”

“No way!” I said.

“Go on.”

“Tell you what, you can have the Smarties from my second piece of cake, but I want the ones on the first. Deal?”

Kenny thought about it for a while, weighing it up. Finally, he nodded, as if making a big sacrifice, and said, “Deal.”

He stuck out his hand and we shook on it.

Seven

Seven

About then I noticed that the solid grey of the sky had changed. At first I thought it was just that the clouds had got even thicker, but then I realised that it was getting late in the afternoon. Somewhere out beyond the clouds, the sun was going down.

Kenny was dragging his feet, going slower than a sloth with three legs walking in treacle. “Come on, Kenny,” I said, “we don’t want to be out at night with the gytrash on the prowl.”

“The guy what?” he said, as I knew he would.

“Gytrash.”

“What the bloody hell’s a gytrash?” Kenny asked.

“They sometimes call it the shagfoal.”

Kenny laughed nervously. “You’re just making it up.”

“Hah, it’s true,” I told him. “It’s a special kind of Yorkshire monster that hangs out on the moors. Sometimes it looks like a big black dog, and sometimes it looks like a horse – but a horse with claws, not hooves. But whether it’s in the shape of a horse or a dog, it always has red eyes, and that’s how you know it. You see them glowing in the dark.”

“What does it do to you?” Kenny asked.

“It leads you away from the right path.”

“Then what?”

“No one knows,” I said.

“How come?”

“Cos you’re never seen again.”

There was a pause as Kenny thought about it, then he said, “What does it do to you?”

“Eats you.”

Kenny chewed that one over.

“If you’re never seen again, how come you know it eats you?” Kenny asked.

“Because sometimes they find what’s been left after it’s finished eating you.”

“Why, what’s left?”

“Something and nothing,” I said.

“How can it be something and nothing?”

“Just is.”

“That doesn’t make sense,” Kenny complained.

“It does.”

“So what is it, then?” Kenny asked. “The thing that’s left?”

“Your bum hole!” I yelled.