Up the high lane, the blackthorns link their claws across the horizon.  He’s coming.
+++Heavy boots splash heedless through clots of muck and brown standing water. A wet breeze skiffles through the leaves and sends the last of the rooks flapping away, dropping echoless cries of mourning or celebration over the barley stubble.  From the east, dirty folds of cloud are sweeping in, trailing grey threads of rain into the rising wind.
+++His head is down, face in shadow, lank hair plastered with wet. On his back and shoulders hangs a thick black overcoat, with the first raindrops clustering in the hollows like mould.
+++He’s coming. Two miles away as the rook flies, a dog lifts her head, and a woman in a cottage gathers her baby closer. The baby stiffens his new limbs and squirms away from the breast, as she shushes and rocks over his head.
+++The cottage is warm tonight, the fire bright, a bowl of soda bread sitting fragrant from the flat iron pan. An older child perches on her Daddy’s knee, giggling as he plays the game of opening his legs and pretending to drop her through. Outside, rain is starting to beat against the window, nearly full dark out there now.
+++The man sets the child down and walks over to light the lamps. The girl runs to the hearth and stands with her back to the fire, nightdress lifted round her waist.
+++“You’ll get your legs measled. Stand away a wee bit,” the woman says.
+++The girl pushes out her lip and stays where she is.
+++“Skiboo might come for ye,” says the man. The lamp flares up and casts hollows over his face, blackens the window.
+++“Don’t, John,” says the woman. She glances to the side, as if the window could have heard him. Out in the yard the brown dog, Tillie, starts whining to herself.
+++The girl takes one reluctant step away from the fire. Wee ashy pet, Granda would say.
+++“Who’s Skiboo, Daddy?”
+++The baby flinches in his mother’s arms.
+++“Ach, now,” says the man. He sits back down in his chair and shakes his head. The girl flops down onto the mat, hugging her knees, looking up at him with eyes that reflect the firelight.
+++“Skiboo is the bogey man,” he says. “He comes to the window on stormy nights and puts his face up against the glass.”
+++“John,” says the woman.
+++“Then he comes in, and he takes the bad girls away,” says the Daddy.
+++The girl’s face crumples.
+++“Don’t be daft, John, he does not,” says the woman. “There is no Skiboo, pet. Your Daddy’s just saying that. Don’t you listen to him.”
+++A low keening of wind is in the eaves and the dog outside gives a yelp. The man narrows his eyes at the woman and gets up. He lifts a pan of boiled potato peelings off the floor and carries it to the door, starts pulling on his boots.
+++“I’m going out to the dog.”
+++The girl is biting at the skin on her bottom lip. She looks up.
+++“Mammy, if Skiboo came and got me, what would he do?”
+++“I told you, there is no Skiboo.”
+++“But if there was?”
+++“Ach, pet. He would… he wouldn’t do you any harm, sure you’re a good girl.
+++“What if I was bad?”
+++“Even if you were bad, he would maybe just… just blow on you. That’s all he would do. But there is no Skiboo.”
+++The girl shivers and turns away to stare into the fire.
+++The weather comes blasting in as the man pulls open the door, flapping the end of the tablecloth and skittering the mat with dead leaves. The fire gutters and roars, until he yanks the door closed after him and the room stills again. They hear Tillie’s chain dragging across the yard, the metal pan being set down, his boots on the stones, then the dull slam of the outhouse door.
+++“Mammy? …Or maybe Skiboo is the man’s voice.”
+++“The… Ah now, I told you, the man’s voice is a dream. Do you not remember what I told you to do when you have that dream?”
+++“Yes, Mammy. I put my head under the blankets and the man’s voice goes away.”
+++The baby’s head has sweated into the crook of the woman’s arm. She shifts him and buttons up her clothes, letting her eyes stray back to the window.
+++He’s coming. The night and the storm are bringing him, to blow on her. To wreathe coldness about her shoulders, shawl her with his breath, touch the back of her neck with the tip of an icy tongue. She closes her eyes.
+++She jumps as the latch lifts and the man steps back in, stamping his feet, a cold smell of the night coming off him. He shoves the door closed.
+++“I was putting the snares away. We’ll not be out tomorrow night, either. I’ll maybe walk down to Willie’s and tell him I decided not to go.”
+++The woman’s eyes dart to the clock. It’s too late.
+++“Ach no, John, look at the time. He’ll know rightly you’re not going, on a night like that. And… it’s rough out there. I’d rather have you in the house.”
+++He narrows his eyes again.
+++“That’s never bothered you before. Ach, I’ll just stay where I am, then. I got half way there earlier and got soaked, so he can hardly blame me for not trying.”
+++He stands with his back to the fire, blocking the heat off her. Another blast of rain batters the door, and something close to the house falls with a crash. Tillie lets out a howl and trails her chain against the hollow sides of the doghouse. Her empty pan rolls and clanks around the yard.
+++The baby has fallen asleep. The woman stands, steadying him on her shoulder, and peers out the window. Carried on the wind comes the distant heavy barking of Willie McDonald’s big yard dog and a clatter of smaller ones, half a mile down the lane.
+++“The dogs are going mad,” says the man. “I should go back out for a look.”
+++“Ah, don’t go out. It’s likely the fox. The one that was taking the bantams.”
+++“I shot that one.” He looks at the baby. “There’s more than one fox out there.”
+++The girl has gone to sleep on the mat. The man reaches down and lays a hand against her damp cheek.
+++“That wean should have been in bed an hour ago,”  he says.
+++“Sure I was just putting her to bed when you came back in. She was too excited after that. She had thought you were away for the night.”
+++“Aye, well. So did I, and so did you. Come on, then.” He stoops and gathers the girl up, carries her away with her flushed face lolling against his shoulder.
+++As he leaves the room, the woman cradles the baby against her chest and wraps her shawl around him. She goes to the door, lifts the latch and pulls.
+++Wind and wild rain rage into her face, and the baby starts to fret again. She turns sideways to shelter him, steps outside and pulls the door closed. Hunched over the baby, rain soaking through her clothes, she looks over her shoulder into the yard.
+++She can make out the shape of Tillie in the darkness at the far end, barking and yelping with her chain pulled tight, but there’s nothing else.
+++“Tillie! Be quiet! Go to bed!”
+++Her voice is ripped away by the wind.
+++“Tillie! Bed!”
+++The dog is desperate, claws scrabbling for purchase, nearly choking herself, frantic to get at something in the darkness further down the lane. The woman turns and takes a step towards her, but the wind nearly lifts her off her feet. She looks down at the baby and turns back to the shelter of the cottage.
+++Back in the kitchen she struggles, one-handed, and finally gets the door shut. She stands and looks at its blank face for a long minute, then reaches out her hand and draws the two heavy bolts closed.
+++The man is back in the room behind her.
+++“I heard the door. What were you doing out there with that wean?”
+++“He was wrapped up. I only looked out for a wee minute, to see what it was that broke. It was one of those two pots of flowers you had on the windowsill.”
+++“Ach, well. It can lie there till the morning.” The man sits down in his chair with a creak, pulls a penknife from his pocket and starts cleaning under his nails with it.
+++“You should put him down. He’s sleeping,” he says.
+++“I’d rather hold him. I’ve only just got him settled.”
+++The man shrugs and goes back to his nails, scraping the worst bits out with his teeth and spitting them down onto the mat. The woman drags her stool up to the window, and settles her chin against the baby’s warm tufted hair.
+++Out in the shrieking night, the dog flings herself at the end of the chain again and again. Her howls echo round the yard. The woman listens, rocking the baby back and forth, tapping her foot and beginning to hum.
+++Tillie stops howling and gives a low, rattling growl, followed by an explosion of steady barking. She has taken a vow of protection.
+++The man is intent on his nails.
+++There is an eager yelp, a scuttle of claws on stone, and the dog stops barking.
+++The woman stands and begins pacing to and fro, to and fro, in front of the window, cupping the baby’s defenceless head in the palm of her hand. She sings to the baby.
+++“Ah, the wind and the rain… yes, the wind and the rain…”
+++The latch on the door is beginning to lift. She sings to the latch.
+++“… and the mammy, and the daddy, and the wind and the rain…”
+++Silently, the door pushes inwards and meets the bolts. A tear drops down her face.
+++She walks over and stands by the window, shifting the baby down to nestle him in her arms. She moves the clothes away from his face and holds herself straight, frames them both in the window by the light of the lamp. The baby curls tiny fingers up beside his cheek.
+++Now a shape is shifting outside, two inches on the other side of the glass.
+++She lifts her voice and sings in warning out to the blackness.
+++“’Twas the wind and the rain blew the daddy back again… Go awa’ frae the winda, bogey man.”
+++The wind mourns and lulls in the eaves.
+++The woman stands still, showing the baby. A hand rises out of the dark and lays five calloused fingertips onto the glass. Something scrapes against the stones, and then the shape is gone.
+++The woman takes a long breath. She closes her eyes and drops her head onto her chest, letting the baby warm her skin.
+++The chair behind her cracks as the man gets up.
+++“I’m for my bed. Are ye coming?”
+++“…Aye. Aye, in a wee minute. Here, can you take the wean and see if he’ll go down? I’m just away to the outhouse.”
+++The man carries the baby off to the bedroom. The woman rubs a hand over her face, draws the bolts, lifts the latch, opens the door.
+++Outside, the wind has died down and the yard is slicked with wet. Under the window, one of John’s flowerpots lies smashed in a pile of earth, and petals, and ruined roots. The other one remains on the sill.
+++She reaches her fingers behind it and draws out a small bundle wrapped in cloth. Pushing the folds aside in the lamplight, she holds up a wooden rattle, carved and sanded smooth, carefully painted in red and yellow and blue.
+++Tillie, a thrown marrow bone abandoned at her feet, stands at the doghouse door and howls her grief into the falling wind.
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Mandy Taggart studied language and literature at Trinity College, Cambridge, and spent several years as a technical author before deciding to indulge her more creative tendencies. She lives with her family in rural Northern Ireland, two doors down from the cowshed.