The shed at the bottom of the garden was rocking.
It was not a shed that was supposed to rock. It was a steady, sturdy, sensible shed. It was placed on a very reliable slab of concrete. It was very much a shed that was constructed not to rock.
Yet it was rocking.
It had never rocked before, that Michael could remember. It was not the type of shed that inspired rocking. It was not the type of shed that inspired anything, really. In the shed way of things, that had been a good thing. The shed way is the quiet way. The shed way is to sit in the back corner of the garden and not be noticed. The shed way is to shelter the lawn mower, to hang the tools, to weather the weather. The shed way is not to rock.
Still, the shed was rocking.
What's more, the shed was talking. Rather, it was mumbling. Perhaps it was murmuring. It might have been whispering. It could possibly have been having a conversation, at very low levels, of course, sensitive to the idea that a shed shouldn't draw attention to itself. There was even a chance it was attempting to conceal that it was having an argument.
And that was what made Michael notice.
Michael, like any ten-year-old boy, loved to hear a good argument, for no other reason than that he was a ten-year-old boy.
It wasn't that Michael was troublesome. Michael wasn't troublesome. He wasn't angry or unhappy. He didn't have braces on his teeth, didn't trip over his own feet while playing football, didn't suffer any of the embarrassments of youth that mature into the embarrassments of adulthood. What he did have were the problems of youth that come from being a youth, which were too much energy, too much imagination and, again, too much energy.
So lying awake in bed, sensibly tucked under his sensible sheets, he was in agony. Not being able to hear the argument in the shed was unbearable.
He knew that in the morning this would seem silly. His parents would tell him that the shed was not rocking. They would assure him that the shed could not possibly be quietly arguing with itself. They would remind him that his imagination was going to get him into trouble some day.
In the sensible morning, that would be true. Being sensible, Michael would know it to be true. But this wasn't the sensible morning. It was the middle of the night. And in the middle of the night, none of what his parents would say was true. Sensible was out.
If sensible was out, so must be Michael's sensible sheets. First, he ruffled them. Then he kicked his feet loose at the bottom of the bed. Next, he tugged the sheets across and back, so that the sides untucked completely. Finally he twisted and twisted and twisted, so that soon he was wrapped like a caterpillar in a cocoon.
The reason for all this was that Michael knew he really shouldn't be getting up. He knew that it was, after all, the middle of the night. He knew that he should do as his parents would want and lie still and wait until he fell asleep, argument in the shed or no argument in the shed.
But he knew this was impossible, because of the argument in the shed.
Luckily, he also knew that wrapped as tightly as he was, he must soon surely suffocate and die, and this, he was pretty sure, his parents wouldn't want. So he knew that, wrapped up like he was, he was obliged to free himself from his self-woven doom. He must save himself from the confines of his sheets. His parents would want him to. Getting out of bed was his only choice. His life depended on it.
Feeling very clever, Michael rolled, sheets and all, off his bed and onto his throw rug, which did little to cushion him from the hard wooden floor. He landed with a thud--more of a thud than he had planned on, really--and he lay listening for any sign that he had woken his parents, whose room was beside his, or his little sister, whose room was across the hall. He held his breath to listen, and also to make sure that he made no additional sound to give himself away. This was unnecessary, of course, because no one would have been able to hear him, wrapped up as he was, had he breathed as loudly as he knew how, as loudly, even, as a snore.
He remained still for a minute even so, maybe for two minutes, until he was satisfied that nobody had heard his fall. Then he slinked his way towards the window. This was made easier by the fact that the head of Michael's bed was butted fully up against the wall just to the left of the window, with his side table under the casement. This way, his head was near the window when he slept, so that he could have fresh air in the summer. When he tumbled out of bed, then, he wasn't far from the window at all, and he could quickly pop up to see what was happening at the foot of the garden.
Popping up, though, would have spoiled the adventure. So instead of simply standing and looking out the window, he stealthily inched along the floor, still wrapped in his sheets, doubling up and straightening out like a giant silkworm, with two feet sticking out at one end, and a mop of sandy hair sticking out of the other. It was a good game.
It was also extremely difficult and uncomfortable, and Michael was soon having trouble breathing. He therefore remembered that he mustn't suffocate and anger his parents, and that he must, instead, unwrap himself and stand. This was not as easy as he expected, because all that creeping had tightened the sheets around him to a startling degree, but eventually he freed himself, and, hanging the sheets loosely over his shoulders, he rose to his knees to peek out the window and see what was up.
Nothing was up.
The shed, which had been rocking and whispering, was motionless and silent. The entire garden, in fact, was motionless, seemingly stopped in time by the moon, like an old photograph of a garden showing what had once been animated yellow and green and red as static silver and gray and black.
The only sound came from the stream that ran behind the wall at the end of the garden. Michael could hear the water trickling over the larger rocks and tickling against the low branches, brambles and grass, but even that sound was muted, as if the stream were trying to maintain the silence of the garden and just couldn't quite manage. The birds were all asleep, and the mice and cats and hedgehogs were either elsewhere or better than the stream at keeping quiet. It was as though the night lay under a sleeping spell.
Normally that would have suited Michael just fine. Michael loved moonlit nights like these, when he could lie in bed and gaze out the open window from his pillow. Lying flat on his back, he could turn his head and look through the corner of his eye at the world outside. And the world outside was a different place when viewed through the corner of his eye. A passing cloud became an army marching across the moon. A telephone pole became a king. A line of trees was a parade of soldiers. A branch was a long-fingered hand, gnarled and greedy and looking to grab.
Earlier this night, Michael had been looking out the window in just this way. There had been a lorry passing along the Vicarage Road, behind Michael's house, on the other side of the stream. Michael had imagined the lorry as a growling night beast. Growling was what night beasts did, he was pretty sure. As the lorry drove away down the road, its grumbling faded in the distance, leaving the normal sounds of a summer night in southeastern England.
That was, until the shed started rocking.
Perhaps rocking is too strong a word. The shed might have been jostling about. Or rather, something inside the shed was jostling about. There were bumps. There were scrapes. There was a knock or two. There might even have been a thump. With the thump came a grunt. It was a muffled grunt. It was a very muffled grunt. It was a grunt that was trying not to be grunt. It was a grunt that was trying to be no sound at all. There may have followed another thump which may have created another grunt. It was difficult to tell, since this thump and this grunt, like the first thump and grunt, seemed to want not to be thumping or grunting. Michael was convinced that none of this noise wanted to be heard. This was why Michael knew he wanted to hear it. All the things he most wanted to hear, after all, were the things that nobody wanted him to.
So he listened as more thumps became more bumps. He listened as bumps became thumps. Scrapes became scratches, which were followed by squeaking, as the boards of the shed started creaking. And very lowly, very secretly, the garden shed was whispering. This whispering was why Michael had to see what was happening at the bottom of the garden.
Lying in his bed, though, spying through the corner of his eye, peeking out his window, Michael could not be sure whether it was the shed or his imagination that was making the thumps, was making the bumps, was creaking and rocking and whispering. Yet lying in his bed, spying through the corner of his eye, peeking out his window, he was sure, absolutely sure, that the garden shed was at least rocking. There was nothing for it but to get a better look.
So it was with great disappointment that he kneeled at his bedside, with a full view of the shed, of the garden, and even of the whole row of back gardens behind the cottage row that made up his lane, and saw nothing happening at all.
Happily, Michael knew that the more complete the silence, the bigger the bang that followed just after. So Michael waited in the silence, waiting for the noise that was sure to come.
And it came.