I don't believe in ghosts. I don't believe in spirits, mediums, the supernatural, any of that bollocks. Superstitious shite. As if people didn't have enough to be getting on with in this world without creating something else to be worrying about. The only mystery as far as I can see it is how the bastards responsible for promoting such arse get away with it.
I believe in what I can see. I've worked with horses all my life. And I don't care what you've heard about horses spooking easily or being sensitive to spirits, it's not true. I've been training with horses for almost forty years now. I've trained a dozen winners and I've trained a hundred each way. So I believe in the world. The straw. The water. The feed. The turf. Steam rising from the flanks at the end of a race. The tremor in the ground as a pack thuds past. Things I feel. What I don't believe in is The Ghost.
Here's the thing. Horses die all the time in races. This happens. They break their legs, they break their back, they break their necks. Sometimes it's the jockey's fault, sometimes it's the owner for running the horse when it shouldn't be run, sometimes it's the trainer's fault for pushing it too fast, too soon, too young, too old. It's sad but it's life.
And when a horse breaks its leg or its neck or its back going over a fence, that's it. You can't set breaks like that. Horses won't rest long enough for them to heal. And so they call the vet and erect a screen around it and they shoot it in the head with a rifle, sometimes with a captive bolt gun, though sometimes they'll inject it with barbiturates. It happens out of the public eye, off-screen, quietly, without fuss. You'd hardly notice even if you were there.
They die and the knackermen hoist them up into their vans like a breakdown service winching a car onto a truck and they sell them on to the glue factory or the meat factory to be turned into food for dogs. And that's it. But you hear the story. The ghost. The creature. The beast. I've heard it a thousand times and it's different every time. The older lads tell it to the younger ones like it's some kind of ritual to be passed on.
It goes like this:
Every time a horse is killed, every time we put a bullet its head or inject it with poison, if you look into its eyes you will see it. They don't die immediately, you see. It takes a few minutes, even after they've been shot. They're stubborn bastards. What kills them is the suffocation. The brain goes, then the breathing stops, then the heart. But if you look into their eyes you can see the place they go to, the thing they become part of. There, in the dark, is a hollow, shadowy creature, like a horse but not, a beast that has never been, nor every will be broken; a monstrous animal, unshod, reignless, and saddle-free, a thing not just feral but truly wild, an ancestor of horses, the horses that tore at the turf and the rock and the sand and the sea before man himself had even come down from the trees. The hair on its body is thick and coarse, the muscles beneath roped and exploding with power, its mane tangled and wild, it stands 40, 50, 60 hands high, its nostrils are like fists, its eyes obsidian orbs the size of footballs, and it grows with every bullet that passes through the brainstem of its fallen children. And at the centre of its head, between its ears, lies a single bleeding wound that will weep for all time.
But it's not the vets, the ones who do the killing, who talk about it. They know better. They're educated. They know the same as I that a horse is just meat, meat and blood and bones and hair, just like everything. It's not the vets. It's the ones who work with the horses you hear it from. The trainers. The stable lads. The jockeys. Because, they whisper, it grows stronger, they say, with every gunshot. It wants out, they tell each other. It's coming soon, they say. And every time a horse bolts or refuses at a fence or throws its rider they look knowingly at each other, and someone will mutter, the ghost, and another will nod and whisper, soon.
And sometimes, they look at me.
I was a junior trainer at the time. It doesn't make much difference what I was though. I've done the same today or yesterday or any day of the week you choose. It was a point to point in Holcombe on Easter Monday, a bastard of a day, pouring with rain, and bitterly cold. A colt had fallen at one of the fences and come down hard. It was a miserable sight, I'll grant you that: it had snapped its left leg above the knee, and it had come right off, leaving a bloody stump, its severed limb lying a few yards away. There were three men trying to keep it down to prevent it trying to stand again, but it was thrashing about, squealing and snorting. So they called for the vet, but he was sick that day, and had left his apprentice in charge. So this pasty-faced lad appeared, looked first at the animal, then at its useless leg, and finally at the owner, who by then had appeared with the trainer in tow. The owner gave a grim-faced nod, at which the apprentice opened his case, bringing out the pistol all vets at the track carry for occasions such as this one. He loaded it with shaking hands, and called in a faltering voice for the men to stand back.
The men stood aside, and the vet's apprentice stood still and we waited for him to step forward with the gun raised. But he did nothing. Someone shouted, I think it was the owner, go on, do it, do it, at which the boy turned to us, even whiter than he'd been before, looking like he'd just pissed in his pants.
Of course, the horse had begun to fret again, and without the men holding it down, it tried to stand, raising itself up onto its right foreleg. Unable to bear the weight, there was a terrible crack, and that leg snapped as well. The horse fell back to the track and rolled onto its back, its two severed legs running uselessly at the air. And that's when the useless prick of an apprentice fainted dead away.
We all looked around. All eyes were on the horse and not a single one of them stepped forward to do a thing about it, this poor wretched creature in agony like that. And that's the only place it was, the ghost - on their faces, in their minds, not in the eyes of the animal on the floor. Not a man of them willing to help. Even the owner just stood there. That's the only time I have believed in it, this ugly thing. And I knew I had to kill it.
No-one stopped me. I took the gun from the apprentice's hand, clicked off the safety, held the barrel six inches from its forehead and aimed between its ears as I had seen it done before. The horse snorted again and I pulled the trigger.
I felt the pistol jump in my hand, and heard the bang as an afterthought. The horse stiffened immediately, then twitched, its rear legs beating at the turf for a minute, and eventually it lay still. I knelt down and put my finger to its eye to test for reflex, but there was none. It was dead, and all I saw there was my own reflection. I turned and the vet was sitting upright, looking at me, tears running down his eyes. I shook my head and stood up. The owner and the trainer and several others shook my hand as the knackermen dragged it into the centre of the track and covered it with a tarpaulin. And that was that.
I do not believe in it. I cannot feel it getting closer. At night I do not lie in my bed and hear the stamp of its hooves as I fall asleep and wake in the middle of the night with the burst of its breath on my skin. I ignore the stories of horses dying in the Racing Post and at the track I feel little when they fall. It means nothing.
I do not believe. My odds, I think, are good.
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