Read Online Brilliant by Roddy Doyle - Free Book Online

are we doin’ this, and anyway?”
    â€œFor Uncle Ben,” said Gloria. “Me and Rayzer’s uncle. He’s depressed.”
    â€œAnd the Black Dog has stolen Dublin’s funny bone,” Raymond told Ernie.
    â€œAnd Uncle Ben will get better if we can get the funny bone back,” said Gloria.
    â€œSays who?” said Ernie.
    â€œOur granny,” said Gloria.
    â€œAh, well, then,” said Ernie. “Fair enough.”
    â€œDo you know our granny, Ernie?”
    â€œNo,” said Ernie. “But I always feel brainier after I’ve drunk a granny’s blood.”
    â€œReally?”
    â€œOn the level.”
    â€œDeadly,” said Gloria. “But you’re to promise not to drink our granny’s blood, Ernie. She’d freak out, she would. Ernie?”
    â€œWha’?”
    â€œPromise.”
    â€œOkay,” said Ernie. “I promise. But it’s against me principles.”
    â€œThat’s it there,” said Raymond, pointing down the street, and up. “Look.”
    The cloud was back—it was definitely there.
    â€œIs it only a cloud, Rayzer?”
    Gloria hoped it was, just a cloud behaving strangely. But that made her feel bad because she knew she was supposed to hope it was the Dog. But this—the cloud, the shape, whatever it was—was more frightening than a solid dog, even a huge one, would have been.
    â€œRayzer?” she said. “Is it only a cloud?”
    â€œI heard you the first time,” said Raymond.
    They stood still, looking.
    â€œWell, is it?” Gloria.
    â€œDon’t know,” said Raymond. “Don’t think so.”
    â€œIs it a mirage?”
    â€œWrong time of day, honey,” said Ernie. “You only see mirages in the daytime, I think.”
    â€œIt has to be hot for a mirage,” said Raymond.
    â€œThen it’s definitely not a mirage,” said Ernie. “I’m freezin’.”
    â€œMaybe it’s nothing,” said Gloria.
    She knew what she was doing, what they were doing. They were filling the air around them with their voices, protectingthemselves against the silence. The cloud was less scary while they talked.
    â€œMaybe it’s just something we think we can see,” she said.
    But, as Gloria spoke, they watched the cloud sink to the street, and it stopped being something they thought they’d seen and became something solid and real that they could definitely see. The cloud had black streaks that looked like legs. They touched the ground.
    â€œThe Dog!”
    â€œOh my God!”
    A big black dog. A big, ordinary dog—they could even hear his paws smack the ground as he ran away.

    What they’d just seen, a strange cloud changing into a black dog, was frightening, nothing close to anything Gloria and Raymond had ever seen before. But the result of the change was far less terrifying. The Black Dog was scary—but he was still just a dog.
    â€œCome on!”
    They ran down a road that was a steep hill, where cars leaving the shopping center rolled onto the main road, back to Dublin or away in the other direction, to the country. There were no cars or trucks now, though—it was too late. They had to slow down because the slope was making them go too fast. Their chests and heads were going ahead of their legs, and they’d have toppled over. They could see the Dog clearly under the streetlights. They could see his coat gleaming, like he was healthy and well looked after.
    Gloria knew which way they were going. She knew she lived in Dublin West and that the rest of Dublin was to the east. She’d learned that in school. She’d followed the main road, the N4, on the map with her finger, from where she lived to the city center. She’d loved it, that you could see a real place, a place as big as Dublin, on a page that fit into a schoolbook. They were running east now, toward the city—or “town,” as