That’s like amazing said Sadie Passes the time Chester shrugged Ben lived alone but there were always people coming and going There was always music and laughter And there were two children that the dogs liked Two kids who used to come to Ben’s house They called him Uncle Ben What’s an uncle Sadie asked Chester Don’t know Chester admitted But I think it might have something to do with chips Chips Yeah said Chester He buys them chips whenever they come to the house The children a boy and a girl loved their Uncle Ben And it was clear Ben loved them But then the Black Dog slid into Ben’s house and hundreds thousands of other houses He came at night hiding in the darkness Dogs and most other animals love the nighttime It’s the time when they can be themselves when they can do most of their barking and howling They’re not expected to wag their tails forever or to fetch sticks and stupid plastic toys People go to bed and their pets can secretly relax It’s a magic time when the daylight rules wobble and the humans don’t notice things as much Unusual events seem normal or don’t get noticed Two talking dogs might actually be two human voices carried in the wind A black dog-shaped shadow creeping up the stairs is probably the moon behind the tree outside in the front garden It made the city’s animals angry that the Black Dog used the night to spread his poison But they knew There was nothing that Sadie or Chester or any of the city’s other dogs and pets could do to stop him Only the city’s kids could do that 4
ChApTER 1 Gloria Gloria Kelly lay in bed She was wide awake And she knew her brother Raymond was too She could tell by the way he was breathing It was awake breath He was lying there thinking thinking and listening Sleep breath was different It was longer and lighter less in and out Rayzer she whispered Raymond didn’t answer But she didn’t care She liked sharing the bedroom Although she knew Raymond Raymond didn’t But she didn’t care about that either She could like it in secret She didn’t have to tell him She’d been moved into Raymond’s room when their Uncle Ben had come to live with them For a while That was what her mam and dad had said Uncle Ben would be staying for a while Sometimes her mother called it a little while But the little had disappeared when Uncle Ben kept staying and 5
Gloria began to think that her bedroom wasn’t hers anymore And Raymond she supposed began to think the same thing His room had become their room She looked into her room sometimes when her Uncle Ben wasn’t in there He hadn’t done anything to it He hadn’t touched her pictures or her other stuff It was still pink nearly everything in it The only really new thing in the room was her Uncle Ben’s smell It was kind of an adult smell A mixture of soap and sweatiness There were none of his clothes lying around and just one book that wasn’t hers She’d looked at the cover but it had looked boring about a war or something Except Except for the fact that she didn’t sleep or play in there anymore 6
