Published 'Auguries' 1993
Little boy Gordon called it Roken*Horz, a name from a large book he once read before he was fully able to grasp the meaning of the words in it.
Although he did not fully appreciate it (for this was the only one he’d seen), the version that seemed to move gently of its own volition (by the light of the flashing red advertisement sign outside the nursery window) was a gloriously old-fashioned rocking-horse with spit-polish saddle and whinnying lips drawn back from glinting, real-like teeth.
Gordon Picton would often lie awake (having been put to bed far too early for his age) and watch Dusk creep into the curtains, accentuating the rhythmically intermittent darkness with its groping fingers of Night. Roken*Horz, in the window bay, looked more alive than ever at those times.
During the day. Gordon would have rocked himself into reveries of the future (not having much past to call his own), with tiny legs wrapped round the glossy ivory-like midriff of the toy horse.
The lands they visited together were far beyond those depicted in the books that Gordon had available in the nursery, their frayed pastel spines ranged along the bookshelf above the hearth.
One day, he was put to bed even earlier than normal. Gordon had some oblique instinct that he had been naughty, but he could not comprehend the words shouted at him by someone who did not look like his mother.
So, not understanding, he did not even try to understand. He crept unquestioningly between the tight covers of his bed, with sunshine still shafting through the window upon the patchwork counterpane... for the curtains yawned in the evening breeze.
There was a deep ague in his calves, but he put it down to too much rocking during the day. When it increased, however, he put his head under the covers and crawled down to massage them. Whilst he was down there, he heard a snicker. A stifled bray. A call of matching pain.
He dared not come back up for air. Roken*Horz was moving about the room, as if it owned it. Gordon felt it snuftling at the lip of sheet. Frothing on the bolster. Grinding its teeth on the elongated curlicue of the bedpost. Long hot tongue curling down, down, down between the covers.
At last, the hooves clopped to the window bay. There was eventual silence, punctuated by the loudest heartbeat Gordon Picton had ever heard. Though, his pastern-joints felt better now. The air continued to pulse with blood-light.
