Halfway across the field

Text 1: The Short Cut, by Robbie Kenward

An original short story extract.

The footpath sign pointed straight across the field, and the field was empty, or looked empty, which was not the same thing. Kieran climbed the stile and set off along the trodden line through the grass towards the far gate, a white bar in the hedge maybe three hundred metres away. It was a short cut. He had taken it twice before.

He was a third of the way across when he saw it.

It was standing in the shade of the oak in the corner, which was why he had missed it: a great black shape, so still that he had taken it for part of the tree. Now it lifted its head. The head was huge, broad as a door, and it turned slowly towards him, and Kieran understood that he was exactly halfway between two places he could not reach in time.

Do not run. Somebody had told him that once. Do not run, do not stare, do not turn your back.

He kept walking. He made himself walk the way he would walk to the shops, steady and boring, his hands loose at his sides, his eyes fixed on the white gate. The grass whispered round his trainers. A crow went over, laughing. In the corner of his eye the black shape moved.

It was coming. Not fast. It walked as if it had all the time in the world and had chosen to spend some of it on him. He could hear it now, a heavy tearing as it pulled at a mouthful of grass, then the dull thud of its hooves, then its breath, a long hollow snort, like air forced out of a bellows.

The gate was a hundred metres away. Then eighty. The sweat ran down inside his shirt. His legs wanted to run so badly they were shaking with it, and he would not let them, he would not, and the gate came closer with every step and also, impossibly, seemed to stay exactly where it was.

Fifty. Thirty.

Behind him the snorting stopped.

Kieran did not look round. He reached the gate, put both hands on the cold metal bar and vaulted it in a way he had never managed in any PE lesson in his life, and landed in the lane on his hands and knees. When he finally turned, the bull was standing ten metres from the hedge, chewing, watching him with a mild, considering expression, as though it had only wanted to see what he would do.

Explore how Robbie Kenward uses language and structure to create tension as Kieran crosses the field.

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