by R. D Rhodes
Chapter 25
H arry’s cheeks were red, his nose scratched to pieces, blood trickled from a lump of missing flesh in his lip. “They’ll be sending the search teams soon.” he panted heavily.
We kept looking out over the field. The tractor's engine droned away as it followed the same lines of its plough. We couldn’t see anyone else.
“What we gonna do?”
“I dunno,” I said. “What do you think, head north?”
“Head north.” He agreed.
We watched the road for a bit longer, trying to regain our breath, gather our energy for the next burst. No cars had yet passed, it was quiet but for the tractor and the stream.
“C’mon.” I said. We jumped up and ran down the other side of the hill, heading for the fields. We ran together at three-quarters full speed, a stitch prodded at my chest but I tried to ignore it and keep on.
“How long do you think we’ve come?”
I glanced back. “About four or five miles I think. Not far.”
I could feel warm blood trickling down my legs. We kept running and running. We ran one, two, three hours, always listening for sirens and I don’t know what else. We kept well away from the road and when we couldn’t avoid it cut across it as quickly and stealthily as possible. We kept well away from the lone cottages and farmers barns on the way, going through field after field, most of them churned up with black ridges of soil that made it difficult for us in our trainers. We passed flocks of sheep who ran away baaing to each other as we ploughed on through their shit. We passed through cow fields where the bulls turned and followed us, making us go even faster. We stormed through the dirt-brown puddles that splashed up and over our legs. I was soaked to the skin. I could feel my clothes getting heavier. My shoes squelched with each water-filled lunge and my jeans rubbed against me with every motion.
I don’t know how long we had been running when Harry broke down in exhaustion. I pulled him back up. Luckily we were near shelter. We climbed over what seemed like the hundredth gate and dragged our bodies down a streamside into the birch forest behind it, collapsing on our backs into the dirt. My ears pricked up. My heart was thumping but we were out of danger for now. I sat up on the mud and watched as Harry scooped water from the brown-colored stream and splashed it to his face, then dunked his head right under and drunk at it like an animal. I knew it was probably filled with sewage, sheep shit and fertilizer from the field next to us. But I didn’t care, I needed water. I dipped my head in fully and did the same. The water was foul and tasted awful. I limited myself to a few mouthfuls. I fell back and lay flat on the ground, my chest rising in and out as I hungrily gulped the air.
After a while, I regained my breath. I calmed down slightly, feeling safer. I watched as Harry started picking out the thorns that were embedded in his shirt and trackies and in his bloody bare arms. The blood had dried in crimson, and he went to washing it out in the river. He splashed water to his lips and dabbed his wound delicately with his finger. It was only then that I remembered my own cuts. I had ignored and soon forgotten the pain with all the running, but the sensations at the back of my calves returned. It stung.
But it was quiet. We were well hidden in the woods on our side of the stream, and on the other side a row of bushes separated us from the sheep so that we couldn’t be seen from the next field. Along to the left of the bushes there was a slight gap where I could see the open land and the white wooly bodies passing.
“I feel like Frankie fucking Detori.” I said.
“Aya fucker. Bastard. Bastard…I don’t think Frankie has to wade through cowshit and giant fucking barbed-wire fences at Epsom. That’s one race I’d like to see.”
“When you’re done with that, could you check some of my cuts for me?” I said. Harry looked up at me, his former thin lips had swollen triple size, and he was scratched to hell all over. I thanked God for my height.
“Alright.” He said, “Let’s see.”
I stood up with my back to him, undone my jeans belt and pulled them down to my ankles.
“Fuck.” Harry said.
“Is it that bad?”
“Ouch, er, you’ll need to wash that in the river.”
“I’m not washing in that. I’ll just leave it. Probably safer.”
“It’s still bleeding though.”
“Is it?” I tilted my pelvis forward and tried to look at the back of my legs.
“Here, wait a minute.” Harry got up and went into the woods. He came back with a couple of strips of rough birch bark and some brown strips of bracken.
“Tie this around it. Stop the bleeding.”
I looked at the gathering in his hands.
“No, it’s alright. I’ll just use my jumper.”
I took off my soaking hoody and wrapped it tight around my bare right calf, the left one wasn’t so bad, and sat down and pulled my jeans back up to just above my knees. Three rips stretched across the back of the denim. Harry shrugged his shoulders and bound the bark around his arms instead, tied it on with the bracken and knotted it at the end. He looked ridiculous.
“What a day to wear a t-shirt, eh?” I said.
“I know.”
“Your face looks sore.”
He dabbed his daffy duck lips with his finger. “It’s just stingy that’s all. I’ll be fine.”
He sat back down by the quiet rushing stream, took off his trainers and dangled his feet in the low water. I listened to its gurgling and the soft rush as the water hit the rocks and swept along, and it calmed my mind.
“So where we gonna go?” I said.
He watched the stream. A sheep ba’ed in the field. “Well the further north the better, I think. You got any friends around here?”
“No, just my old social worker, Mrs. Mack- but I didn’t take her number with me. Don’t know anyone else.”
“Where is she?”
“London.”
“Hm.” He tightened the bizarre tourniquets on his arms.
“What about you?” I asked.
He shook his head.
We sat in silence for a while, trying to compose ourselves. I uncurled my hoody and looked at the blood stained through it. I adjusted it and tied it back on.
Harry looked lost in thought. I tried to think where we could go. I really didn’t know.
“The police helicopters could be out soon.”
“No, they won’t.” I said. “Don’t be so paranoid.”
“I’m not being paranoid. We’re marked now, police will have been informed. Maybe even news teams, they’ll find anyone in a city in hours.” He paused. “Maybe we could go to Scotland?”
I looked at him and wondered if he believed that it was some sort of divine coincidence that we both happened to be from there, the only Scots in the whole ward.
“Where about’s?”
“Well, I have a mate in Glasgow that could lend me some money, and there’s this place I used to go on school trips to when I was little. Glen Affric. It’s not that far from Inverness. It’s a nature reserve. Hardly any people. We’ll be safe.”
I gazed out through the gap in the bushes at the sheep fields and the flat land. You weren’t allowed wild camping in England. The laws protected all the rich people with their land. So inevitably we’d get found and pulled up if we stayed here. And he was probably right, we wouldn’t be safe in any city. The government follows you enough when you’re not even suspicious. Everyone was on the system, in a job, in a house, in a town.
“What about the Lake District or something?”
He shook his head. “Nah, we’re better up north. It’s just wilder, less people, they’ll never find us.”
“What will we eat? What we gonna live on?”
“The land. I know some stuff.”
“You can’t do that anymore.” I said sharply. “They’ve raped it too much. And it’s winter.”
“You got a better idea?”
“No.”
“Well, then the Highlands it is.”
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I didn’t say anything else. I fell back and lay flat on the wet leaves of the bank.
I watched the clouds roll through the grey sky. I could feel the pain in my legs receding slowly. Very slowly. My thoughts returned to the hospital, and to Nina.
“You think she’s dead?” I said.
“Yeah, she’s dead. No doubt about it.”
If truth be told, she was in the back of my mind the whole time I had been running. And now, sitting in the silence, it all came flooding back. How a girl in such a vegetated, forlorn state, who was so thin and fragile-looking, had managed to break free, I didn’t know. She had broke through what I thought was unbreakable glass, then there was the five iron bars, and then squeezing and jumping through the window itself. It was quite a drop, but it was possible to survive it. Maybe she had survived. In the unlikely event she hadn’t broken her legs, then she was away too.
“Pretty impressive how she fit through those bars, eh?” Harry said.
“I know…, Surely they’ll be some sort of investigation now?”
“No. That’s the third suicide since I’ve been there. Nothing will happen.”
I turned my head slightly and looked at him. “You’re joking, nothing will happen?!”
“Nope.”
“Well, we should do something then.” I sat up. “We’ll report them to the care commission. Tell the papers. I’ll go to London and tell Mrs. Mack.”
“There’s nothing can be done. I tried it already. Papers wouldn’t listen and the care commission did nothing. Some staff even contacted it when they left. Nothing gets done.”
“The care commission didn’t listen?”
“No, and why would they? It’s the cuts of their bosses that are causing most of it. Our chance went when that inspector passed through the door.”
I thought about Mack. Even if I did risk everything to find her and tell her, what could she do? She hadn’t been able to get me off. The justice system protected these people. She had talked about these things enough and not being able to change them, “having her hands tied behind her back.” No, she wouldn’t be able to help.
We lay in silence as the sun kept sinking down. It gradually got darker, and the trees and the land and everything around us turned into black shapes and shadows.
PART 2
Chapter 26
O ur cuts stopped bleeding, the blood dried and crusted over, and our thirst had been partially quenched by the river. We watched the moon came up. I put on my wet, blood-stained jumper and ripped jeans and we tiptoed out of our hiding place under the shadow of darkness. We seemed to be miles from anywhere. The lonely landscape was a series of black figures. But in the distance, we spotted what we had been looking for- the orange glare of a single cottage, its garden leading off to a plantation forest for the perfect ambush point.
As we neared it, we made out the lights shining from the windows with their curtains closed. We crept closer, constantly surveying the surrounding area for any sign of movement. A long winding pot-holed road ran up to its driveway, in which sat a lone blue jeep.
We turned and walked in the direction heading away from the house, then turned and headed back through the woods towards the garden. The trees were thick and clustered. Twigs snapped on our every footstep and our outstretched arms fumbled at the branches in our faces. We kept low and as we got within seeing distance of the house, we started crawling along the forest floor. We reached the fence that separated the woods from the garden, and we lay down and watched.
We waited for about half an hour. No movement came from any of the windows. The masses of stars shone brightly in the jet-black sky, and the house waited silently under them.
“Okay.” Harry whispered.
He rose to his knees and climbed over the fence and ran to the washing line, tagging the jumpers and trousers and pants and socks we had picked out. He passed the bundle over the fence into my arms and we turned and made our way back through the forest. We got well out of reach from the house, until we came upon a clearance where the stumps of trees jutted up from the ground. The moon beamed a light down on us and we sorted our clothes and put them on. Harry had a football shirt, a new-looking blue jumper, a pair of jeans, and most importantly- a black scarf to hide his neck. He’d got lucky; the scarf wrapped snugly, covering every bit of mangled skin.
I kept my original jeans on, the ones I had picked were too small. But to cover the tear below my ass I put a pair of black jammy bottoms on underneath. Anyone we came across could probably see the jammies through the rips, but it would have to do. A dry grey hoody replaced my wet one. I pulled it down as far as I could, but it wasn’t great for a tall person and only came down to my hips. I pulled the hood up, at least it would cover my hair. The cat-pictured socks must have belonged to a kid and made me feel even more guilty. But the family wouldn’t miss a few items, I hoped not anyway.
We clawed out a hole in the ground and threw in our old clothes, then tossed the mud back over and carried on our way. The plan was to get to the first town we came to and catch a bus or a train as far north as we could. We didn’t have any money on us, but Harry kept saying he knew a way. He said Exeter wasn’t far, about twelve miles he supposed, and if we kept at a good pace we might reach there by morning.
Under the night's cover, we felt confident enough to follow the country road, and when the headlights flashed in the distance coming our way, we simply jumped aside and crouched behind a tree or hid in a ditch. Most of the time the cars were going too fast anyway, and as we looked out from our side position the driver’s eyes were all fixed on the road ahead, totally oblivious to us.
The night was long and we walked all night. Both of us were hungry and both of us were tired. The silence was only broken by our footsteps and by the occasional passing bird or tweet-ta-woo of an owl. It was peaceful, everything was so still, and although it wasn’t in the best of circumstances, I cherished that fresh cold country air and the solitude and freedom I had craved. How did people handle years in that hospital? I didn’t know.
Then ahead we spotted a sign for Exeter. 20 miles.
“Ah shit. I’m sorry, man. I thought it was a lot less than that.”
“It’s alright.” I said. “Walk till morning then see if we can get somewhere to sleep?”
“Yeah, alright. Shit, I can’t believe that. Sorry.”
We walked on past the sign for Exeter. I blew out and watched my breath hang in the air.
“You got any brothers or sisters?” Harry asked.
“Nah, I’m an.. I was- an only child. You?”
“Two stepbrothers…I guess you didn’t have such a great family either.”
I didn’t know if it was a statement or a question. I didn’t say anything.
“You got many interests?” he followed up. “What kind of stuff do you like to do?”
“I like tennis.” I said. “And music, and reading, and, just being in nature.”
“Reading is my favourite thing in the world. It’s kept me alive up to now. What writers do you like?”
“Well, I haven’t read that many. I love Thoreau-
“Thoreau! Not many people know him! Oh God, that guy was a genius. Wow, I’m impressed.”
“I know, he’s great,” I said, “Who else do you like?”
“Lots. Dostoevsky, Chekhov, Pushkin, Lermontov. And Salinger. And Plath. And Bukowski and Hemingway. Reading Old Man and the Sea for the first time, wow, that blew my mind! Ah, but there’s too many.”
We chatted away for hours on various things as we trudged along that road. An owl hooted, and I spotted it perched above us on a branch.
“Harry?” I said.
“Hm-hm?”
“You seem so calm, and…” I couldn’t think of another word or expression in that moment but “..down to earth.” “How did you manage to end up in a place like that?”
“You know why. Because it’s crazy to want to kill yourself. Why, what did you expect anyway?” he smiled. “Mental illn
ess is a diverse thing, just like every person is, and there’s a lot more people with issues out on the street than there are in there.”
“Yeah, I know.” I said, “I just can’t believe you spent a year in there.”
“Year and a half.”
I scratched an itch at the back of head. “You think, that if she did die jumping from there-and she might not have done, it was only two floors-but if she did, do you think that thing, that ghost I seen, had anything to do with her?”
“Well, you’re not the first person in there to have claimed to have seen something.”
I stopped walking. “But I did see it. I swear to God I did. There was no way scientifically possible for a ball of…light… to just float along like that. Gravity wouldn’t say so, physics wouldn’t say so. I promise you, I swear on my soul that I seen it. I didn’t hallucinate. And I’m sure it was a ghost, or a soul or whatever you want to call it.”
“Hey, hey, I didn’t say I didn’t believe you. Just that you aren’t the only one in there that says they’ve seen things like that.”
“Oh. Right.” I said. I kept walking. “Yeah, I was thinking about that before. What if other people in there actually are, but nobody’s paying any attention to them? Jesus, that would drive me nuts.”
“Maybe it’s drove them nuts.”
“The thing that got me,” I said, “Is that it was floating towards her room instead of away from it. Like, I don’t know, maybe it was a guardian angel or something.”
“I don’t know.” Harry said.