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Back Things that Fall from the Sky Save as PDF
Chapters (55)
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  2. Title
  3. A Walled-In Girl
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  30. The Five Lightning Strikes of Hamish Mackay
  31. The Five Lightning Strikes of Hamish Mackay
  32. A Mermaid Splashing
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  42. And That was The End of That
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‘Saara!’ Dad’s voice rises then grows more distant as he walks back to the stairwell. ‘Where are you?’

The girl is inside a wall. The sheep hangs from barbed wire. Auntie sleeps, unconscious, in the tower. Bruno lies in the grass, passed out.

The girl has been shouting for a while, but now her strength has gone and all she can do is lie and listen to the bleating of the sheep. All evening she also hears the calls of her idiot Dad but she doesn’t feel like wasting her last bit of energy on answer-ing him. There she lies, her wool tangled in barbs, and waits.

Once upon a time, there was a prince whom a witch changed into a frog. The prince’s disappearance was mourned by his servant Bruno. Bruno mourned so hard that, eventually, three iron hoops were needed to compress his heart and prevent it from breaking.

One day, the prince changed back into a human being and found himself a princess. The pair jumped into a carriage driven by Bruno and travelled towards the prince’s castle. Three times during the journey, a loud metallic bang rang out. The prince and princess thought the carriage was falling apart, but Bruno told them that the sound was only his heart being freed from the hoops of grief.

And that’s the end of that.

The Five Lightning Strikes of Hamish Mackay

THE FIVE LIGHTNING STRIKES OF HAMISH MACKAY

The Five Lightning Strikes of Hamish Mackay

Hamish MacKay was born fifty-eight years ago in the village of Crossbost on the island of Lewis in the Outer Hebrides. He owns a fishing boat and catches lobsters and crabs for a living.

Hamish MacKay has only left his village four times: once with the school as a sixth-former, to go to Glasgow; once to attend his sister’s wedding; once to buy a van. And when his wife Mary had her fiftieth, Hamish MacKay and Mary sent off for passports and flew to Thailand for a fortnight.

Thailand was hot. Breakfast involved the same sort of food as lunch and dinner did, and bread was nowhere to be had. For souvenirs, Hamish bought a T-shirt adorned with a map of Thailand, a tortoise shell and decorative dolls dressed in glittering clothes. Then he and Mary came back home.

Our story begins on a Sunday evening in 1988. The wind changed direction, to the north-east, thunder rumbled above the sea, and rain clouds gathered on the horizon.

Hamish MacKay decided a couple more ropes were needed on the boat. He walked to the sea, noticing that the landscape had turned yellow. The wind filled his ears. Suddenly, all colour vanished and the sea sank into darkness, though it was only six o’clock.