Jason Hightman - The Saint of Dragons

” … Simon St George here?” he heard the man in white say.

“Is he in some kind of trouble?” asked the principal, but the man answered that his father was inquiring about him.

His father? Simon tried to hear more. Then he glanced down and saw several rats. They had been scurrying beside the building and were now stopped, staring at him. Very large white rats with red eyes.

Simon froze where he was, afraid of getting bitten, afraid he might scream and give himself away.

“I’m very sorry to bother you at this late hour,” he heard the man in white say. “My plane arrived late and I just desperately wanted to speak with the boy.”

Simon winced as a rat began to crawl on to his foot. He was going to scream after all, but something the man said stopped him: “Has the boy been doing well?”

He strained to hear the reply: that Mr St George had nothing to worry about, the boy was doing fine, acceptable work, but he was curious as to why the family had never come to see him in person.

At this the man in white sounded sorry, as if it hurt to explain. “If he ever asks about that, you just tell him his father would like to see him very much, but work has taken him far from home and, you know, as time has gone on, it’s become harder for his father to simply show up out of nowhere. It’s difficult, as I’m sure you realise. His father thinks it might be better to stay away than to stir up a lot of angry feelings, especially if the boy is doing all right without him.”

Simon leaned out to look at the man’s face, but he couldn’t see clearly, not in the dim light. All he could see was a coat, a hat, nothing more.

“I can tell you,” said the principal, “the boy is doing well; you can be sure of it.”

“Well, that’s good,” the man said. “Because I have concerns for him.”

“Concerns?” the principal asked.

“There is always a certain kind of rabble who are drawn to a boy from a family of means,” said the man. “Rotten, disreputable people. I just want to make sure you turn away anyone … unsavoury … if someone should come round, looking in on the boy. You know, I suppose I should probably talk to him myself. Is Simon around?”

“Yes, of course. He’ll be thrilled. He’s here somewhere,” the principal said. “Might take me a moment to find him.”

“Well, now, wait a moment. I don’t want to interrupt all this if he’s having a good time,” said the man in white. “I can’t imagine a worse way to meet him, come to think of it. I didn’t know you were having a party here. I’ll tell you what. I’ll be back tomorrow and maybe I can get away with the boy for a while.”

He smiled at the principal, shook hands and headed for an old white Rolls-Royce.

For a moment, Simon just stared. He had never heard a word from his father and now two people wanted the job in the same day? The well-dressed man certainly fit the part in Simon’s mind, but he had no time to weigh the matter – the rats at his feet were squealing murderously.

Simon stepped away from them, backing up into the field where dozens of masqueraders were now leaving for the library to hear ghost stories. The younger students were all carrying jack-o’-lanterns and a little boy handed one to Simon.

Simon stared blankly at the pumpkin, as above him the sky clouded over in a sudden desire to make a storm.

Panicked that he had missed his chance to see his father in person, Simon scrambled through the throngs of boys with their pumpkins, hurrying to catch the man in white.

Simon ran across the field, but the ground was slick with mud and he nearly fell.

As he hurried to catch the man, he did not notice the lizards – several of them – that had slithered out of the undergrowth to get to him, just missing. He did not see the bats that had gathered above him, swarming in a tangle of moonlit motion. The boy was focused completely on catching his father.

Simon ran down the lane from the building, but he could not see the landscape well, even with help from the lighthouse and the stern glow of the moon. There was no sign of his father. No sign of anything; the car had vanished. The awful emptiness of the night slammed into him with the power of the ocean wind.

Whoever he was, the man was gone.

Simon stood there, watching the boys continuing to pass over the field, and with a confused sort of feeling he joined them. He couldn’t think. He just started moving with them.

They began to walk across the dark field with only their jack-o’-lanterns, a few flashlights and the lighthouse itself lighting their way. The lighthouse beam would sweep across the field, and then it would spin round and light the ocean, so the field would go dark.

Flash. Flash. Light. Dark. For most of the boys, it was a weird and perfect end to a Halloween night.

Light. Dark. Light. Dark. The boys could hear the ocean rushing back and forth against the rocks. Simon thought he could hear something else too. Thunder. Not the usual kind of thunder from a rainstorm, but something somehow less real. Then he realised it was not thunder he was hearing at all. It was a horse’s hooves.

Walking at the end of the long group of boys, he stopped to listen. “Do you hear that?” he said to the boy in front of him. The boy turned, and then all the boys turned.

“What is it?” said the next boy.

“It’s a horse,” said Simon, “somewhere out there.”

Everyone turned round, searching the foggy night. They could hear the thunder of the horse’s hooves getting closer and closer.

The lighthouse spread its beam across the cloudy field. Suddenly a shape launched out of the fog. A man on a great horse. In a second he had swooped up Simon into his arms and thrown him atop the horse.

The boys screamed and ran. Lanterns were dropped. Before anyone knew it, the horseman had rumbled off into the fog. The librarian called out to Simon, but no answer came. As the lighthouse beam swept past the boys again, the light showed them nothing but the whiteness of the fog. The beam did not fall on the horseman, nor on Simon St George.

Both of them had vanished.

Simon could not yell. He was in a panic, with no air in his lungs. The horseman’s face was nearly all covered in a long black scarf and his great black trench coat was fanning out from the wind, like giant black wings.

Simon clung to his back, afraid of falling. In that quick moment, he felt a strange flash of fear that the horseman was the hideous creature he had seen crossing the street – a creature with a long snaky tail. But now the horseman’s scarf fell down from his face and Simon could see it was the shabby man who claimed to be his father.

For some reason, this made Simon feel better.

Suddenly, he heard sounds up ahead. Shouting. In the greyness near the cliff, he could see three men rushing at the horse. The horseman drew a long sword, heading for the first man, who may have held a gun. It was hard to tell.

But then, behind the three men, came another, out of the fog, who slashed at the attackers with a long wooden staff. The staff slammed into the first two men, throwing them to the ground. Then the man with the staff attacked the gunman, knocking loose his weapon.

It was the old lighthouse keeper, there, in the thick of the battle, brandishing his long walking cane! The old man was holding back the three attackers! Simon gaped in surprise as the horse galloped past the fight.

“Go!” the old man shouted.

The horse galloped into the safety of the fog shroud.

Gone into the night.

When Simon finally found himself able to breathe and speak in more than a whisper, he was a long, long way from the Lighthouse School for Boys. The horseman said not a word, urging his horse on through the fog. He must have gone a very long way, because Simon did not hear any sirens and he knew the principal would have called the police immediately.