B.D. Watson

When Barney reaches the edge of Acorn Woods, there’s not just one howl but a cacophony of shrill screaming. His heart races.

He recognises the sound of children in sheer panic. Starts to run through the trees, encumbered by his bike, the pedals banging into his legs. 

By the time he stumbles into the picnic area, the children are being herded onto a minibus by a flustered, red-faced teacher. They scream anew when they see Barney dressed like a wildman, branches tied around his waist, leaves obscuring his face.

Barney urges the teacher to open a window, then shouts, “What was it?” 

She shrugs her shoulders. “Something that growled, started pelting us with acorns.” The teacher was clearly still gathering herself while she counted the children. 

“Such a terrifying roar, like a bear.”

Vinni, Barney sighs with relief. Must be Vinni. He looks up at the treetops for any sight of a red bundle of fur.

“Not a bear,” he says, but the teacher has closed all the windows. 

#

The day had not started well. 

Barney hadn’t noticed his van’s door lock was broken. Vinni –  the Red Howler monkey with the damaged prehensile tail – got out on the way to the vet. He needs his tail to swing between trees in his enclosure. The Colombian Red Howlers – Alouatta seniculus – are frequently killed in their natural habitat, or taken as pets. 

In the wildlife park where Barney works, focussed on conservation, Vinni was reportedly “mating well”. Barney had smiled to himself.

Around the van, the vast Yorkshire moors looked empty. Barney scrunched his eyes half shut, scanning for a fast moving red object. Listened for the distinctive howl – which apparently can be heard even three miles away. He saw only grass fronds and rocks stretching into the distance, and realised Vinni had likely hidden somewhere safe for a snack.

#

Later, Barney had been humiliated in front of the wildlife park boss. He kept his hands clasped in front of him, head down, staring at the ground as the boss vented his spleen. 

He’d jumped when a fist slammed on the desk, knocking over a full coffee cup.

“Just get out!” his boss had screamed as he mopped up the mess. 

Outside, Vinni’s number one mate howled from the Alouatta enclosure. Barney recognised something akin to heartbreak. He was all too familiar with that. 

#

Sally. At first, she’d made him laugh a lot, joking about his animal husbandry skills. How he was married to Vinni like one of his many wives. Later, she said she could no longer stand the smell of him. Barney had defended his troop to her.

“But they are open and honest, wild and free in spirit. No back-biting.” 

All the while rubbing the healing wound on his shoulder, courtesy of a large Vinni bite.

Sally couldn’t even touch a mouse, a spider, a worm, a bird. He’d found this charming in their early days; her delicacy. He felt he was her protector. Hardly a chore, to cope with small domestic visitors when you fed raw meat to an African lion up close.

She’d left when he threw the application to work in a supermarket in the bin.

#

After leaving his boss angry and ranting, Barney had sat on a bench to watch Vinni’s mate, Izabella. She was crying, a young female grooming her, chattering and whispering, picking off ants. Barney felt he’d let another family – Atelidae – down as much as the park he loved so much. 

Food and shelter, a place to be free. That’s all I want, Barney thought. He’d closed his eyes and suddenly remembered Acorn Woods: that place could provide the same basic needs for Vinni.

He’d rushed home to his tied cottage, grabbed the pop-up tent he uses for bird-watching. Bagged some nutty snacks from the walk-in cupboard, birdseed and almost-rotten apples. The scrunched up picture of Vinni that leans against a used mug, he’d stuffed into a shirt pocket.

#

Now, alone in the woods, he looks intently at the picture. Touching the big round face, hoping desperately that no-one will hurt Vinni, should they come across him. 

His phone pings in the eerie silence of the late afternoon.

An image flashes up: Vinni’s face, frozen in howling motion, accompanies a press release. In huge letters:

WILD ANIMAL AT LARGE. DO NOT APPROACH. MAY BITE.  

It makes Barney worry for Vinni even more.

The phone pings again. This time, a picture of Sally, smiling sheepishly. She’s holding a mouse in the flat of her hand. 

Feeling cheered she would think to send him this, Barney’s heart calms. Until he hears crows noisily rising up from the conifers. 

Could Vinni be in there? Barney remembers reading that a group of crows is a murder, and ravens are an unkindness. His brain gropes for a collective term that might work for Red Howler monkeys.

A clamouring? A cheerfulness? Maybe a crossness?

#

Daylight is going. The soft susurration of the leaves lulls Barney. That unmistakable howl suddenly roars across the canopy of oaks and elms that surround him. 

He IS here then. The crows knew it. 

Barney hears owls rhymically messaging each other as he erects his pop-up tent quickly. He then sits outside it, waiting. Cross-legged, still bedecked with luring tree branches, Barney dozes. 

He’s up a tree, sitting astride a broad branch with Sally, laughing as they hold on. She’s tickling him to make him fall, whispering in his ear. She smells of monkey. He starts to lecture her about hygiene… 

The loud chomping of the leaves attached to his waist jerks Barney awake. Deftly, by backing into the tent, Barney persuades Vinni inside. Closes the zip behind them.

Relief flooding through his veins, Barney calls his boss, attempting levity.

“I got him. We’re ok here. We’re in the woods and em…… also OUT of the woods as it were.”

Vinni bores of leaves. The tent begins shaking, fairly violently.

“Can you come …now!” 

Crackles, then the line disconnects. Poor signal in the woods.

Barney panics. Shit, shit. How will they find us? 

He imagines some fancy police technology finding him from his weak phone signal, maybe a helicopter with heat imaging. Or a man with a gun… 

Then Vinni starts howling and Barney laughs. 

That’ll work.

He puts his fingers in his ears, failing to deaden the one hundred and forty decibel din.

“A pandemonium of Red Howlers.” Barney smiles. “Yeah, that’ll do.”

B.D Watson (Dot) lives in Edinburgh with a view of the Pentland Hills. She has been writing creatively since she retired in 2021 when she found her writing rock in the online flash fiction community at Writers HQ. There she has developed her skills and found her writing voice by completing weekly flash challenges. Dot is starting to submit her work and has pieces published by Pure Slush in two of their Lifespan series: Loss and Retirement.