The Fire-Eaters

by David Almond

  “These objects,” he said, “are worthy only of our contempt.”

  He wiped his hands together, as if cleaning away filth.

  “We are a community,” he continued. “It is our duty to care for each other, to protect each other, to ensure that none of us is made a victim of evil forces. When one of us is threatened, all of us are under threat.”

  He scanned our faces. “There is a wicked force at work inside our school,” he said. “We must not allow it to flourish. We must not allow it to corrupt us. The perpetrator—or perpetrators—of this evil may be standing beside you. Some of you will know who the perpetrators are. If you carry that knowledge, we call on you to speak up. Do not be intimidated. Your information will be received in confidence. At least one among you is that perpetrator. From you, whoever you are, we await a confession.”

  He was silent again. He searched our eyes. The teachers watched us. I felt my face burning. I looked downward.

  “There is no hiding place,” said Grace. “If shame will not drive you to us, then we shall search you out, just as the Lord searched out Adam and Eve in the Garden. Now, let us guide the sinner that is among us. We will recite the Confiteor.”

  And our voices joined together, began to groan the familiar prayer:

  “I confess to Almighty God, to Blessed Mary ever virgin …” Soon each of us made a fist. We beat our hearts, as we'd learned to long ago, at the crucial words: “Through my fault, through my fault, through my most grievous fault.”

  Afterward, we were left standing for an hour. Grace walked among us. He barked at anyone who moved. He said that he would make our lives a hell. It made no difference. That night, I walked over the sand through the darkness to Daniel's place. I crouched in the garden, looked through the window. Daniel was with his parents. There were heaps of photographs on the table. They shook their heads as they looked at them. They clenched their fists, they glared. They drank wine and listened to jazz as they scrawled across the photographs and raised their fists and laughed together.

  “He's here, in the dunes,” I said to Mam.

  “Who is?”

  “McNulty.”

  It was late in the evening. Dad had gone to bed early. She was stitching the seam of my new white shirt. We listened to the wind outside gathering force, rattling the roof, the window frames, the doors. We heard the waves crashing on the shore.

  “He came a few nights back,” I said. “He's in one of the old shacks.”

  “Maybe he wants to winter there. Keep himself safe and warm.”

  “We could take things to him. Bread or something. Tea.”

  Her voice rose and quickened.

  “I can't care for two of them, Bobby,” she said; then she passed her hand across her eyes. “I'm sorry,” she said. “Of course you can take him something.”

  She stitched on. Her needle slipped and pricked her finger.

  “Damn thing!” she said. She flung the shirt aside. “Why can't they make things to last these days?”

  She looked at her tiny wound. She sucked the blood from it.

  “Sorry,” she whispered. She looked away. “He's got to have some more tests, Bobby.” She pressed her finger to her lips as I began to speak. “That's all we know. Nothing more.”

  We switched the TV on, but within seconds a mushroom cloud appeared.

  “Not that!” she snapped, and she switched it off again.

  That night I woke and heard him groaning. The winds had calmed. I knelt at the window, listened to the far-off drone of engines. He groaned again.

  “Stop it,” I whispered. “Let me be ill, not him.”

  I pressed my needle through the edge of my thumb. I pressed it into the flesh between my thumb and forefinger.

  “Let me take the pain,” I said. “Not him.”

  I caught my breath and tears came to my eyes as I pressed the needle deeper.

  “I can take it,” I whispered.

  He groaned again.

  “Stop it! Leave him alone!”

  I said a string of prayers: Hail Marys, Our Fathers, Confiteors. I touched Mary and Bernadette in their plastic grotto. Then I touched Ailsa's broken heart, McNulty's silver coin, the tanners from Ailsa's dad, the penknife from Joseph, the CND symbol.

  “Leave him alone,” I said again. “Take me instead of him.”

  I saw a star fall fast toward the sea. I searched my head for the words to make a wish. I found a promise.

  “If he gets better,” I said, “I'll always be good. I'll always fight evil.”

  That morning, I left home early. I waited for Daniel in the hawthorn hedge in his lane. At last he came.

  “Psst!” I called. “Daniel!”

  He looked in at me.

  “I want to help you,” I said.

  “Help me?”

  “With the photographs. I'll help you to put them out.”

  He came toward me.

  “They'll catch us,” he said. “You know that, don't you? I've always known, right from the start. Catching me's been part of it. They'll catch me in the act, or somebody will turn me in. It'll happen very soon. And when they catch me, then they'll have to face up to what the photographs show.”

  We gazed at each other.

  “So they'll catch us,” I said. I pulled my blazer open and showed him the CND symbol I'd pinned beside my heart. He grinned. “And we'll stand together,” I said. “Side by side.”

  He opened his schoolbag. He showed me the photographs. Now they contained only Todd. His enlarged face filled each frame—teeth bared, froth at the corners of his mouth, eyes glaring down at some unseen victim—along with the repeated words: EVIL, WICKED, CRUELTY, SIN.

  I nodded.

  “They're great,” I said.

  We shook hands, he told me what to do, and that day I dropped his photographs into desks and dustbins and I slid them into library books. My only close shave was at lunchtime, when I scuttled out of the boys' changing room, where I'd left one in the showers. Miss Bute was passing by. She hesitated.

  “Hello, Robert,” she said.

  “Miss.”

  “Is there sports club today?” she asked.

  “Yes, miss. No, miss.” I looked down. I felt so stupid, caught so soon. “I don't know, miss.”

  We stood there. For a moment I thought of opening my bag, showing her: Yes, it's me, miss.

  She reached up and caught something in the empty air.

  “Oh, look!” she said. “Hello, little dangler.”

  A tiny spider. It crawled across her palm, then hung from her finger on a string.

  “Look at the skill of it,” she said. “Look at its perfect spiderness.”

  She turned it three times around my head. “It will bring you luck, Bobby. Make a wish.”

  I smiled.

  “Thanks, miss.”

  She let the spider climb right down to earth; then she turned away.

  “Take care of yourself, Bobby,” she said.

  Maybe Ailsa read my mind. It was late afternoon. I was doing my homework, a drawing of the skull, the way the bones are fused in it, the way the openings are formed in it, the way it's so beautifully made to protect the brain. I was shading in the pitch-black eye sockets. But my thoughts were in the dunes, seeking McNulty. I was about to ask Mam if I could take some food to him. There was a knocking at the door.

  “Who's there?” called Mam.

  “Ailsa Spink!” came the reply.

  “Come in, pet!” yelled Mam.

  Ailsa clicked the latch and stepped inside and stood there grinning.

  “Hello, pet,” said Mam, ruffling Ailsa's hair.

  “I brought you these,” said Ailsa. She opened a cloth and showed a plateful of jam tarts, all bright and glistening. “We had some spare, Mrs. Burns.”

  “Spare? Even with them ravenous men of yours?”

  Ailsa winked.

  “Kept them out of sight, sneaked them out the house. They'd eat the plates if I let them. Go on.” She held them out to
Dad. “I know you like them, Mr. Burns. Black currant or plum. They're lovely.”

  Dad smacked his lips and chose black currant. He ate. She held out the plate to Mam and me. We ate and grinned and licked the crumbs from our fingers and said how tasty they were.

  “You'll have come for our Bobby, then?” said Dad.

  “Distracting him from his work,” said Mam. “Leading the poor lad astray.”

  Ailsa shrugged and pondered.

  “That's right,” she said.

  Mam clicked her tongue.

  “We hear you're still not going in,” she said.

  “I'm not,” said Ailsa.

  Mam pointed and wagged her finger.

  “You'll regret it, you know. Silly lass. School could open up a whole new world for you.”

  Ailsa sighed. She stared at the ceiling.

  “I know,” she said. “And probably I will go in the end. Even stupid Losh and Yak know that. Then they'll lose their skivvy, eh?”

  “Too much fire in you, that's your problem,” said Dad. “You'll lead them a dance when you do go in.” He grinned. “You'll be the brightest of them all.”

  We smiled together. I looked at Mam.

  “Aye, go on,” she said. “Long as you're back in time to finish it all.”

  I went upstairs and changed out of my uniform, then left the house with Ailsa. She lifted a package from the garden.

  “More tarts,” she said. “A bottle of warm tea. Howay.”

  “For McNulty,” I said.

  “That's right.”

  “I should take him something too.”

  I opened Dad's garden shed and took out two candles and some matches.

  We walked quickly toward the dunes.

  “We saw him wandering in the dunes,” she said. “Me and Daddy and Losh and Yak. Losh thought he was some villain after the chickens or something; then we saw he was just like a poor lost soul. Running back and forward across the sand and his eyes all wild and he's jabbering to himself. He seen us and he tailed it. We followed him to his shack. I tell Daddy and the lads what you told me: the war, the quayside, the fire and the skewer. McNulty turned and looked before he went in. Stared at us like he's looking back across a thousand miles. Then he looks straight at me and points at me and goes, ‘Come and help us, bonny bairn.' Losh stands right in front of me. He says nobody looks at his sister like that, and he's all for going straight down and kicking him on his way. But Daddy says, ‘Mebbe he's harmless, mebbe he'll go off of his own accord. Mebbe it could happen to any of us. Mebbe things has happened to him that'd drive any of us mad.' Losh grunts and spits. McNulty scuttles into the shack. We watch and wait. Nowt else happens. We head back to the house. I put the kettle on. Dad says I got to keep out of the dunes from now on. Losh and Yak's looking at each other. They're saying the wild man better keep away. Soon Yak's got a great big knife out and he's sharpening it on a stone.”

  We hurried through the pines.

  “They'll drive him out,” she said. “If it's not Losh and Yak it'll be somebody. We got to help him while we can.”

  We climbed the hill of sand.

  The sun was low over the moors to the west. It cast shadows into the hollow where McNulty's shack was. His fire smoldered outside. We watched and waited, but saw nothing. We walked down. The only window was broken and an ancient tattered curtain hung inside. The timbers were bleached as dry and pale as bone. The twisted door dangled from a single hinge. SWEET HOME was carved into it, and the remnants of some old birdand-flower pattern. Sand was heaped up on the threshold. Deep footprints led inside.

  We hesitated, a few yards away. The sun sank and the shadow fell across us.

  “Mr. McNulty!” I softly called.

  “We've brought some food, Mr. McNulty!” said Ailsa.

  Nothing stirred down here. High above, a flight of gannets headed north. A fox barked somewhere. The sea turned and groaned.

  “We could just leave it in the doorway,” I said.

  “Yes,” said Ailsa, and we moved forward again.

  Then the curtain moved, his face appeared and we stood dead still. He stared. The lighthouse light swept past and lit the air above our heads.

  “Come nearer, bonnies,” said McNulty through the broken glass.

  We didn't move.

  “We brought you food and light,” I said.

  He stared. I wanted to drop our gifts, to grab Ailsa's hand, to run back home again. He raised his hand.

  “This is the one I know,” he said. He beckoned me. “Come closer, bonny lad.” His face softened. “There was an angel at your side.”

  “Yes,” I said. “I helped you. I held the casket, I collected money. It was in Newcastle, at the quay.”

  Ailsa held the package out.

  “You must be so hungry,” she said.

  He closed his eyes.

  “Yes,” he said. “It is a time of great hunger, famine, waste and want.” He tilted his head. “There it is. You hear it? You hear the wailing and weeping that's all around?”

  “Yes,” said Ailsa. “Mr. McNulty, will you eat the food we've brought?”

  “Come inside, my bonnies. Come in through the door.”

  At first we didn't dare to move; then we caught each other's eye. We nodded. I lifted a stone as we crossed the threshold, waded through the deep soft sand there. There was a tiny dark hallway, then another door into the room where he waited for us. As we entered it I looked through the window and saw the final sliver of the sun go down.

  Inside, everything was vague and lumpy: a mattress, a broken table, a ruined armchair. The floor was inches deep in sand. McNulty stood in the far corner.

  “Be at home,” he whispered. “McNulty will not scare you.”

  I lit the candles and stood them in the sand. Ailsa opened the package.

  “They're jam tarts,” she said. “And there's tea. Drink it while there's still some heat in it.”

  At first he wouldn't touch anything; then he crouched beside us and crammed the tarts into his mouth. He sighed at their sweetness. He gulped the tea. His face glowed in the candlelight.

  “Such lovely bonny bairns,” he said. He licked his lips. “I been eating seaweed. I been catching crabs and roasting them. I been glugging water from rain butts. But jam's the thing. Jam and tea.”

  I saw there was another window in the back wall of the room, but the dune had grown over it. Behind the glass were sand and soil and roots. There were seashells and stones and bones. He saw me looking.

  “It's deep as the grave in here, bonny,” he said. “We're down where the dead live. You want to see the needles and the skewer stuck in?”

  He leapt for his casket, which lay in a corner on the sand.

  “No,” I said. “We need to go, Mr. McNulty.”

  I knew that people—Losh and Yak, my dad if he was able—would come searching for us now that McNulty lived beside us in the dunes.

  He grabbed my wrist with bony fingers.

  “You want to see the chains?”

  I shook my head. I clenched my stone.

  “Ailsa,” I said.

  He held me tighter.

  “The world's afire!” he gasped.

  We turned our faces to the shattered window. The sky above seemed filled with fire: great streaks of red and orange like flame and streaming lava.

  “It's just the sunset,” I said.

  “Then what's all that weeping and that wailing, bonny?”

  “It's just the sea, Mr. McNulty.”

  Ailsa touched him.

  “Yes,” she reassured him.

  “It's just the sea.”

  “We'll come back,” I told him. “Take care. Be careful of who comes looking for you.”

  “Just the sea?” he said. He listened. “No, more than that.” He held us for a moment. “Hurry home, children. Hurry to your beds and to your sleep. Oh, but then there's nightmares. What's to be done? Hurry home to your mummies and daddies and hold them close.”

  He let me
go. We backed away. He came with us to the door. His face burned, a wild reflection of the sky. We hurried away into the deepening dusk.

  “Get your shelters dug!” he yelled, as if to the whole world. “Dig down to where the dead live! Cover yourself with the earth. The world's afire! The sky's ablaze! There's no more night!”

  We ran. His voice echoed after us. He howled like an animal in pain. We ran through the pines. We kept stumbling, and crashing into tree trunks. At last we reached the beach. We laughed together at the fear and excitement we felt. The lighthouse light swung beneath the fiery sky.

  “Tomorrow,” we whispered. “We'll take him more.”

  I rushed back to my homework.

  Dad pressed his finger to his lips as I stumbled in.

  “Hush, Bobby!” he hissed.

  Neither he nor Mam took their eyes from the TV screen. There were pictures of nuclear missiles pointing at the sky. Then President Kennedy came on. He stared out at us. His gaze was calm.

  “The world is on the abyss of destruction,” he said.

  His face disappeared. A nervous newscaster replaced him. He licked his lips. No one smiled.

  “What's happening?” I said.

  “Cuba,” said Dad. He was racked with coughing. “Bloody Cuba.”

  “This is Cuba,” said Daniel. “This is the coast of America.”

  We were on the bus. He used his finger to draw in the condensation on the window. We perched on the seats around him: Diggy, Col, Ed and me. As he talked, others came closer: Doreen Armstrong and her friends, older kids.

  “They're only ninety miles apart,” said Daniel.

  “Ninety miles!” said Col. “That's bloody miles, man. That's as far as …”

  “Scotland!” said Diggy.

  “Why, aye. Scotland,” said Col.

  Daniel just looked at them.

  “Russia's put nuclear missiles into Cuba,” he said. “They're pointing straight at the USA.”

  “USA?” said Col. “That's miles away and all.”

  “Far side of the world,” said Diggy.

  “And me dad says the USA's always too full of itself,” said Ed.