"Don't be a critic. Hush," reprimanded the old man sternly. And by the time The End came up, the boy sat gazing at the screen in awed silence, as if he had been witnessed a kind of miracle. Which, in a way, he had.

"Still think it was crap, then?"

"No." Ethan down-tilted his head slightly, reluctant to concede his change of heart. "It was good, that was," he said.

Grampa nodded, a twinkle in his eye. "Attaboy," he said, sinking back in the armchair, knowing he had a convert at last.

"Dad, if the giant Ymir from 20 Million Miles to Earth and Gwangi from The Valley of Gwangi had a fight, who d'you think would win?"

Vic's back was hunched over the steering wheel, knuckles as white as his pallor. "Ethan, honest to God now, I'm really not interested in the slightest, OK?"

"No, but.. ,"

"Never mind 'No, but..."

"Yeah but, say they had an encounter and ..."

"Really, Ethan." He raised his voice. "I know you don't believe me now, but I've got no interest whatsoever, all right?"

His son went silent, dropped his chin to his chest, and said nothing for the rest of the drive to school. Inevitably, Vic wondered what he was thinking. Was he thinking what a bad, horrible, nasty father he had? Was he thinking that all he wanted was a little show of fake interest from his dad, for once? Not much, just a little?

He stopped the car just beyond the school crossing. Ethan got out of the passenger seat, hauled his bag onto his shoulder and shut the door after him. Vic wasn't thinking about work any more.

"Okay, butty?"

Ethan nodded.

Vic watched his son trudge in through the gates. He seemed strangely apart from the flow of chatting, skipping children around him a" a sad and lonely little boy. Tears prickled Vic's eyes and he quickly shut out the rest of his thoughts and concentrated on driving to work.

"Oi! Gay!" Dylan Drew was not the archetype of a bully. If there was an American Idol of bullies, he wouldn't even get through the first set of auditions.

"Oi! Gay boy, I'm talking to you. Why aren't you walking over here with us?"

Ethan didn't look up. He kept his eyes strictly focused on his own shadow in front of him on the pavement.

"Not gay enough for you, are we?"

Ethan said Shut up in his head and for a moment he was scared he'd said it out loud, but they didn't need that kind of incitement. He knew that in seconds he'd be surrounded by Dylan and his brainless musketeers, Huw Gronow and Matthew Pamplin. Shit, shit, shit.

They walled him off. Dylan in front, nonchalantly walking backward, the others keeping pace. Ethan tried not to slow his speed, tried not to look up. But Gronow immediately started picking at the Creature from the Black Lagoon sticker on his shoulder bag. Ethan shrugged him off but he was like a seagull going for a crust of bread.

"He do like monsters, gay boy do!"

"Van Helsing."

Ethan thrust his elbow back. "I don't even like that film." He gave a quick jab back with the other elbow. Pamplin was pinching the skin at the back of his neck, causing Ethan to duck down in his collar like a tortoise into its shell.

"It's his favorite, favorite film. Bless!"

"Get lost! Its a kids' film!" Ethan protested.

"That's what I mean. He loves it."

"I don't!It's stupid. It has Dracula wanting to produce babies. Why does Dracula want to produce babies when he reproduces by biting people and ..."

"Oo-ee, he knows all about ree-pro-duction, guys." Drew wobbled his jaw from side to side. "Not bad for a gay boy"

Ethan had had enough. "Stupid..." he said before he could stop it coming out. He was halfway through barging past the boy in front of him, who stood with his hands on his hips, but already Ethan realized he was too close and he should have kept his trap shut.

"Who are you calling stupid, freak?"

Dylan had caught Ethan round the head with the hook of his arm and wasn't letting go in a hurry. In the same blur of motion one of the others had snatched Ethan's bag off his shoulder and was swinging it in the air in big circles. "Freak!" That was the word they always used, and he hated it. "Skinny fucking freak-a-zoid twat!"

No! Ethan kicked backward with one foot but hit only air.

"Oi! Less of that!"

He felt his own school bag hit his left leg just below the buttock. Dylan had let go and one of them a" Ethan thought it was Gronow again a" held his head at arms length.

"What have you got in here?" Dylan was doing an inventory of Ethan's belongings, now being shaken out of his school bag all over the road. "Nutri-Grain Bar. Nice." He held up the offending object. A rectangle of protein, nuts, sultanas: a healthy substitute for sweets in his lunch box, Ethan's mum told him.

"Don't," said Ethan.

Dylan unwrapped one corner. "Shit. Looks like what fucking parrots eat. You a bloody parrot, freak?"

"No. Give it here."

Gronow sniggered. "Jesus. It looks as if it's been shoved up a goat's arse."

"Smells as if it's come out of a goat's arse," said Pamplin.

"Give it here!" said Ethan.

"Why?" said Dylan, walking toward him, waving the Nutri-Grain Bar in front of Ethan's face like a flick-knife. "Do you want to shove it up your own arse, gay-o? Is that it, freak-o?" He stabbed it toward Ethan's face but Ethan turned one cheek then the other.

"You know what?" Ethan said. "My mum says you are what you eat, and she must be right because you eat shit"

Gronow laughed a" it was an ill-formed rejoinder but amusing, he thought a" then quickly bit his lip because Dylan wasn't laughing at all.

"You know what your mother eats? Your father's fat prick every night." He threw the Nutri-Grain Bar into the gutter.

"Yeah. Probably," said Ethan cheerfully.

Dylans nostrils flared. "Are you trying to be a funny fuck?"

"No."

"Well don't."

"I' m not."

"Well shut up when I'm talking to you."

Ethan did.

Dylan came up close, closer even than before. So close he had to tuck his chin in. "Friday. By the park gates. Straight after school," he said, showing Ethan his fist at close range as if he wanted him to examine it. "I'm going to beat your fucking head in. All right?"

Though it sounded like a question, Ethan, sensibly, decided it probably didn't require an answer.

After they'd gone Ethan's heart started thumping as he walked to the bus stop. I'm going to beat your fucking head in. He didn't like that word. Didn't hear it that much at home, but when he did he knew there was going to be trouble, so he covered his ears till the nastiness was over.

But he knew this time the nastiness wouldn't be over. On Friday Dylan Drew would hurt him. Hurt him really badly like he bashed other boys and made really strong boys cry and scream. Ethan knew the sweet tingly feeling of a nosebleed and he knew it would be worse than that. He knew the way boxers came at each other and hit and hit, and hurt and hurt and he wondered if he could stand that, and what would happen if the hitting didn't stop, didn't stop ever, and then you'd die? What would happen then, he wondered?

Three months before, Ethan's nan and grampa had cheerfully decided one day to drive over to the Abergavenny open-air market to give it the once-over, seemingly oblivious to the fact that it was the hottest day on record for several decades and there were warnings on the radio for old people not to go outdoors at all. Grampa was eighty and his wife was seventy-six. Vic was mad at them afterward, more angry than upset, or so it seemed to Ethan. It seemed like he was being like Diane was with Ethan when he stepped out into traffic without looking, and she slapped him on the back of the legs. If Grampa hadn't been old, Vic would have slapped his legs too, Ethan reckoned.

The heat had got to him in Abergavenny and he'd fallen over, too heavy for Nan to steady him, and she'd cried out for help as he slumped to the ground. As luck would have it, a nurse was passing and they got him to the nearest hospital, where he recovered, weak, wheezing, and embarrassed, and the diagnosis was "heart failure." When Ethan heard that expression from his dad he thought it sounded like failing an exam: as if his grampa's heart had been told "must try harder."

From that point on, the old man became more fragile day by day. The word "complications" started to be used. The boy didn't want to ask what that word meant a" "complications." But inevitably he saw the result of his grandfathers steady decline.

He was told increasingly, when he got overexcited or boisterous, that "Gramp gets tired quickly now, love" a" which he knew. He could see. He wasn't blind. He could see him get breathless and cough more and use his puffer more often. He wasn't stupid.

He still went there from school and gave him the lowdown on what monster films he'd seen, and the two of them would discuss the verdict: "Crap" or "Good." But Grampa didn't look at him so much and sometimes Ethan had to touch his chin and turn his face to him, and when he did he thought his eyes were a little bit glazy looking. But Grampa said he was just tired, that's all.

Sometimes Ethan would put his hand on the old mans cardigan sleeve and shake it gently. He didn't want him to be tired. He wanted to talk. Come on.

"No more monsters."

"Just one," Ethan would say.

The old man would sigh. "All right, then. Go on then."

And sometimes his nan would look in at them as if she was going to cry too. Everybody had that bleary, reddy, cry-y look about them these days.

Ethan knew something was wrong. He knew Grampa wasn't chatting so much, and ran out of steam, and didn't like his ham sandwiches anymore, and didn't want anything but a nice cup of tea. Where he once took ten tablets a day he now took thirty. "Bloody tablets." Once he said to Ethan, "you know what I think they should do? Stop all the bloody tablets and then see what happens." Ethan thought of Dr. Jekyll taking his potion, gripping his throat, writhing in agony on the laboratory floor. "Bloody tablets." In his mind's eye he saw a transformation. But transformation into what?

Grampa's arms were always fattish, roundish, but now he had the arms of a skeleton. When Ethan felt them there was nothing there because he wasn't eating a" only jelly and ice cream, not "proper food" as his nan called it. Which was when she'd dab her eyes with a tissue.

Gradually the old man became sad, gray, and wizened. Ethan thought he had the gray cardboard color of a zombie from Plague of the Zombies. He thought his grampa might be turning from color into black and white. Is that what happens when people get old, he wondered? Because all those old films are black and white, aren't they?

His skin was dry like parchment, like a really old manuscript. Like something precious from a museum. Ethan would touch the back of the old man's hand a" dry, so dry, so unlike the softness, the pinkness of his own a" and think of Boris Karloff in The Mummy. Wrinkles upon wrinkles upon wrinkles, century upon century. So this is death. This is how we turn into frightening things. Mummies. Zombies. Night of the Living Dead. It happens now.

The boy was frightened; he didn't know of what.

He was afraid sometimes when the old man was groaning in his chair and he didn't know if he was sleeping or awake.

Then he'd brighten again when his grampa would ask him to fetch something, and go: "Attaboy."

They had the bed moved downstairs. Ethan's dad put a second banister rail beside the stairs (a better job of DIY than he ever did at home, Diane said), and a seat in the shower. But by then his grandfather had difficulty getting out of his chair, let alone upstairs. Ethan would stand in front of him and take him by the hands, and help him up.

"Att-aboy!"

Medically speaking, one thing happened after another in swift succession. Grampa got an infection in his chest. That was the point at which Diane said, "He looks bloody awful, get the doctor up here," and they called 999 and whipped him into hospital that night.

Ethan didn't visit him after that, the last time he went into hospital. His father told him he didn't think it was a good idea.

A few nights later Ethan heard his mum say not to worry but his dad, Vic, was sleeping up at the hospital that night, in Grampa's room. Again Ethan nodded, and when Diane asked if he was OK, nodded again and returned to his Game Boy. It upset him that he didn't know what he was expected to say.

One night he was watching the end of The Day the Earth Stood Still m his bedroom and he heard his dad downstairs saying something about "pumping lots of morphine" a" except Ethan thought the word was 'morphing' and he thought of his grampa 'morphing' into some new, strange creature, like the Alien Mother from Aliens or the shape-changing being from John Carpenter's The Thing.

He crept downstairs. His dad hugged him and went back to hospital that fifth night, after telling his son to be tough and strong for his mother. Ethan sat and watched TV with her, and Diane held his hand on the sofa and sometimes kissed his fingers one by one and got them wet and sticky.

The next morning she threw back his curtains and the light that came in blinded him with its whiteness and before he could even open his eyes he could feel her holding him but not see her as she said, fast, like it was glue she didn't want to stick: "We've all got to be brave now, baby. Grampa's gone. He's not hurting any more and he was peaceful like he was sleeping. He's just gone into a deep, deep sleep and we've all got to be strong, sweetheart."

And Ethan cried. Or rather, he pretended to cry. Oh yes, he howled, because he knew that's what you were supposed to do when people died, so he'd better, or he might be in trouble. His eyes were still tightly shut and the room was full of sunlight he didn't want to see, and he could feel warm breasts against his cheek. Poor Ethan. Sobbing his little heart out against his mother's chest. He just wasn't sure what he felt, or whether he felt anything at all.

When he got home from his encounter with Dylan, after his dad picked him up from his nans, his mum had fish fingers and oven chips ready for him on the table. He dumped his school bag, sat and looked down at his food but didn't feel hungry.

"Anything wrong, love?"

He shook out a dollop of ketchup.

"No."

All he wanted to do was go upstairs and watch the skeleton fight from Jason and the Argonauts, and the scene with the Harpies. Shaky monsters. Ray Harryhausen. Grampa had liked that scene, and Ethan loved the way their color shimmered, like they were half in one world and half in another.

Thursday night came all too quickly. He tried to slow down time in his mind but it didn't work. His bedroom light was switched off, and in the dark, like all anxieties, Ethan's anxiety about the next days fight grew to Godzilla proportions.

"Oh God, oh God, oh God," he sobbed quietly into his pillow.

He tossed and turned, trying to get himself to sleep a" except he didn't want to sleep because sleep would only bring the morning faster. His pajamas started to feel sticky with sweat, tugging and riding up in the wrong places. He tried to rid his mind of bad thoughts, but it was no good. He wrestled with his blanket. Tried to count sheep. Sheep were useless a" they just turned into Dylan Drew and his flock, sidling up to him, hands in pockets.

It was pelting outside. Hammering on the roof. Tamping hard on the window panes. Lightning lit the room sporadically. He thought of Boris Karloff's hand flexing. He thought of a jagged trident in the sky above a castle. He thought about monsters.

Kreeeeee-AAAAAA!

His eyes popped open wide, glistening in the dark.

It was the thunder. It had to be. It was in the street but it sounded like it was in his head. He felt his bladder slacken and he needed the bathroom but didn't want to go there. He held himself between the legs.

KKKKKAAAAAaaaaiiieeeee-cccchhhhhh-AAAARRRRR!

It sounded like King Kong and Gwangi in hideous cacophony. It was nothing a" of course it was. But what were thunder and lightning for, he thought, his heart pounding, but to make things arise?

He threw back the covers and rolled out of bed. He shuffled over to the window on his knees and threw back the curtains, not knowing what he would see beyond the glass semi-opaque with rivulets of rain.

His back straightened and his throat took in a gasp of air so sudden his lips and teeth went cold.

He saw the song the Harpies sang.