The Fetch

by Robert Holdstock

  ‘Into the past,’ Michael said, and the classroom erupted with laughter. ‘Long into the past,’ he said defiantly. ‘Millions of years. Thousands of millions of years, down to a beach by an ocean, into caves in rock that’s made of red sand. It’s guarded by hideous beasts …’

  He got no further. Mr Hallam raised his voice to calm the hilarity that had suddenly interrupted the proceedings. Steven Hanson was making frantic and meaningful threatening gestures with his forearm, grinning, the spark of violence in his eyes.

  ‘Be quiet, you lot! Maybe you’d all like to write out a poem by Robbie Burns – forty times before leaving school for the day?’

  The class – shocked by memories of this punishment – fell instantly silent.

  The lesson continued, with another pupil talking about what she’d seen through a microscope in the local tap water.

  Michael was aware of the tall man in the brown leather windcheater, standing across the road from the school, and some sixth sense made him respond with the thought: he’s waiting for me.

  The school yard was hysterical with children, departing on this fine summer’s evening, rushing home to play. Cars pulled out of the carpark, buses slowed and gorged themselves on the young, and somewhere an alarm bell rang, a persistent and nagging tone that was ignored by everyone.

  Michael, aware that Tony Hanson and his brother were after him, left through the gymnasium, and ran quickly along the path behind the scout hut. From here he was able to scramble up an earth bank, through scrub and bush, and get down on to the railway line. He followed the tracks until he came to the signal box, where children had gouged out an access from the nearby estate across the lines to the ponds and woodlands beyond.

  Michael followed this path into the red-brick estate, then hauled himself up on to a high wooden fence, staring at the distant school.

  He had hoped to see the Hansons and their friends lurking somewhere between, waiting for him, but to his slight concern he saw no sign of them.

  He also noticed that the brown-jacketed man had disappeared. For some reason that frightened him more. The man had been standing by the bus stop that Michael normally used. He could see a bus now, coming towards the school. He could catch it if he ran through the estate. If he missed it, there wouldn’t be another for about half an hour.

  He started to think white. He covered himself with chalk, painted his figure out from view. He closed his eyes, willed the chalk sea to wash around him, dry on him, make him white, make him invisible.

  He started to run.

  Glitter of gold. The swirl of dark that was the shadow cast by Chalk Boy. Glitter of gold, coming closer, the sharp, salty smell of the sea in the air … running … round the houses …

  He didn’t see what hit him, and was too stunned to think about it. His face had struck the ground and was singing that tuneless, buzzing whine that accompanies a sudden, painful blow. Everything was red and blurred. He was dizzy. He felt pressure on his back, and a pummelling sensation on his shoulders. His hair was wrenched and a stinking, pickled egg was being forced into his mouth. He spat and twisted, but the hand was too hard, and the sulphurous mass passed his teeth and made him gag.

  Flexing! Huge! Rising from the sea, the shadow of the boy fleeing before it in delight…

  There was a chant in the air: gold coin, gold coin!

  It was Hanson, of course, trying to get more booty from the younger boy.

  ‘Gold coin. Gold coin!’

  Michael struggled, but arms held him down. He managed to spit the disgusting, vinegary egg from his mouth, twisting to stare up into the fat face of Tony Hanson.

  ‘Where’s the treasure?’ the bully taunted. ‘Tell us where the treasure is, or we’ll feed you my father’s fishing bait …’

  Michael stared in horror at the small glass jar with its contents of long, black, flexing lugworms. The other boys laughed.

  Flexing … building … moving towards him …

  ‘Leave me alone!’

  Laughter.

  ‘What you gonna do, Mikey? What you gonna do?’

  Laughter.

  ‘CHALK BOY!’

  Laughter.

  ‘Chalky chalky chalky. Poor little Mikey, only got one friend, Chalky Boy, Chalky Boy. But no Chalky Boy here now, Mikey!’

  ‘CHALK BOY, HELP ME.’

  Laughter!

  ‘HELP ME.’

  Laughter. ‘Chalky chalky chalky. Bring us some gold. Bring us some gold.’

  Laughter!

  ‘Get the scissors. Cut his hair!’

  A hand jabbed at Michael’s stomach and he yelled as the pain took his breath away and sent a renewed surge of nausea through his body. He felt his head wrenched back and heard the sound of scissors closing sharply. Golden hair drifted in front of his eyes, blown by laughter, blown by hands waved in delight as the humiliation occurred …

  The shadow came. It punched through from the beach, bringing the sharp scent of sea air. It swirled up the main tunnel, a glimpse of light and dark, a shape that couldn’t be seen, only sensed, and yet which seemed powerfully present in the corner of his eye, screaming just outside of hearing …

  And came through Michael’s arms, and struck like a punch.

  The housing estate shuddered. The very ground shook. Windows rattled.

  The five boys were blown apart.

  The shockwave, the dull thud, the moment of explosion, had been muffled, but had punched into this world like a thousand tons of hard, coarse iron.

  The five boys were blown apart.

  They struck houses, fences, lamp-posts, letter boxes. They were stunned. Slowly they picked themselves up, staggering, holding cut faces, bruised arms. How they managed to walk was astonishing. Michael sat up and looked around him. The whole area was silent. The shapes in their sneakers, colourful windcheaters and jeans limped away in different directions, like shadows, fleshy shadows, creeping off to lick their wounds.

  Michael realized that he was deaf.

  Slowly his hearing returned, and he heard the sobbing. He heard defiance from Tony Hanson, but only despair and confusion from the other boys. His head sang, a single tone, high-pitched. The smell of the sea was strong.

  Always that sea.

  Always the same sea.

  ‘Chalk Boy?’

  A shadow fluttered around him, vanished into the evening sky like a bat, a passing moment of greyness, turning back, dropping and dipping, then flowing into nowhere.

  Michael spat again, the last taste of the rotten egg. He climbed to his feet and picked up his satchel, sucking the deep cut on his index finger. Two or three adults had come out of their houses to see what the sudden disturbance had been. They didn’t seem to link the vibration of the ground with the scruffy, dishevelled boy who stood in the street, battered and bleeding.

  And then Michael saw it. It glittered at him. It screamed its gold at him. It almost rolled towards him!

  He ran quickly to the hedge and grabbed the ice-cold artefact. It was the object he had glimpsed during the torment, a disc of gold, heavily inscribed with the oddest of patterns and marks. It was heavy. He felt it tug at his shoulder as he hid it in his satchel and started to walk from the estate.

  It had come back! His talent had returned!

  Almost too excited to think, and still hurting, he ran across the road, aware that a bus was approaching.

  He drew up suddenly against the man in the brown leather jacket, stepping back quickly, frightened and confused. The man looked down at him, then reached out a hand and took him by the shoulder.

  ‘Michael? You are Michael, aren’t you?’ He smiled and squeezed, the fingers getting a good purchase on the boy’s jacket.

  ‘No.’

  ‘Michael Whitlock? Yes. I think you are. I’d know that ginger hair anywhere. Why are you squirming, sonny? Don’t be afraid. There’s nothing to be afraid of. What’s this? Hurt yourself? Let’s have a look …’

  Michael couldn’t fight against the man. He was too
strong. His arm was lifted, the cut on his finger examined. ‘That’s all right, Michael. Soon heal. I’ve seen worse cuts than that. I’ve seen whole fingers cut off. Nasty. Very nasty. It is Michael, isn’t it? I know your dad. Father. Dr Whitlock.’

  ‘How?’

  ‘He’s a friend of mine. I worked with him. Talked a lot with him. Know him well.’

  Michael was released. The man dropped to a crouch. His eyes were like a fish’s, pale and watery, round and dead. His mouth smiled and there were deep furrows in his face. He smelled of aftershave and had three thin gold chains round his neck. The leather jacket parted slightly over his chest and a smell of sweat made Michael recoil.

  ‘Your daddy told me that you have a quite remarkable ability for finding treasure. That true?’

  ‘Found a coin once,’ Michael said, and tried hard not to touch or pat or shrug the satchel as it tugged at his shoulder, heavy with gold. He could hear the bus pulling in. It belched diesel, applied brakes, and droned to a halt at the stop.

  ‘That’s my bus.’

  The man looked up, then back, smiling. ‘I’ll give you a lift home. Ever been driven in a Jag? Smooth ride. Like riding on air. Come on …’

  There was meaning in the man’s words. Michael nodded, ignored the extended hand, and started to walk with the stranger, away from the bus.

  At the last possible moment he turned (slipped! The satchel was so heavy!) and ran for the bus, holding out his arm. The bus driver let the door open again and Michael scrambled on to the step. The man in the brown jacket had turned and grinned, standing where he was. The bus driver said, ‘You all right? Is that man bothering you?’

  ‘Offered me a lift,’ Michael said, and the driver swore.

  As the bus pulled past the stranger, the driver extended his left arm and flourished a V sign. On the pavement the man watched Michael, grinning and slowly wagging his finger.

  TWENTY-SEVEN

  As if waking from a dream …

  Richard swung his legs from the hard hotel bed and sat for a moment watching the grey summer rain sleet against the window. A dull dawn light made the room seem austere and cold. His foot knocked the half bottle of Glen Morangie as he stood, and he caught it in time to prevent its remaining contents draining on to the carpet. The smell of the spirit made him feel sick. He straightened up, stretched, rubbed a hand across eyes that were sore and tired, then collapsed wearily back on to the bed, sinking forward.

  ‘What the hell am I doing?’

  It was truly like emerging from a dream. He looked around with horror at the scatter of his clothes, at his camera equipment spread on the dressing-table, on a chair, even in the small bathroom. Rolls of film were unlabelled and unsealed. Lenses lay gathering dust. Filters were lying around like parts of a board game. He swore loudly, then reached to pick them up, breathing on them almost by instinct, polishing them.

  ‘Dear God. What a mess …’

  In the bathroom he looked with horror at the ashen, unshaven, dark-eyed man who stared back, tramp-like and hungover, from the cruel reflectivity of the silvered mirror.

  ‘I don’t know you,’ he whispered. He felt like crying, but managed to hold back the unwelcome emotion. He stared at Richard Whitlock, faced him for the first time in months. And he saw a shadow in the face there, the shadow of a yellow-haired boy. His son. A boy who no longer smiled, just stared at him like a mask, eyes moving, but without expression. A dead face.

  The tramp blinked at him, breath misting on the glass.

  ‘I don’t know you. I refuse to know you. I’m going to send you away …’

  He banged the edge of the sink angrily and bruised his hand. The pain was its own catharsis and he laughed, then cried for a moment, cradling the aching flesh, turning from honesty to reality. ‘Jesus. What a mess. What a fucking mess.’

  The phone trilled. He lurched into the bedroom and snatched the receiver from its cradle, hoping to hear Susan’s voice, but it was Mandy from the site. She sounded subdued.

  ‘What’s up? I’m not supposed to be working at the dig today. Day off.’

  ‘There’s someone here to see you. He’s a friend. Dr Goodman?’

  Jack? Jack here? What was going on?

  ‘Send him over to the hotel, will you? I’ve got some equipment repair to do, and some developing.’ He glanced guiltily at the rolls of exposed film. If he cleared his head enough he would be able to remember the sequencing. There was no real difficulty save for his own laziness.

  He bathed and shaved, and drank black coffee with wholemeal toast in the cramped breakfast room of the small hotel. The owner, a charming Ulsterwoman in her sixties, chatted to him with new enthusiasm, having treated him with the utmost wariness during the preceding days. Perhaps she thought he was an eccentric photographer. Richard ate, smiled, talked, and gave her every reason to believe that he was a man of deep and changeable mood, and great artistic sensibility.

  Goodman arrived soon after breakfast, but not before Richard had telephoned Susan in Ruckinghurst. Susan also was subdued, almost frightened, he thought, and sounded anything but enthusiastic when he said that he’d be driving home.

  ‘My work’s not finished, but I can’t help that. I’ve got to leave. I’ve been a fool, Susan. We both have, perhaps. But me particularly.’

  ‘A fool? What about? What have you been a fool about, Rick?’

  ‘Everything. Michael. Everything. And what else is there?’

  ‘Carol!’ the woman snapped furiously. ‘There’s Carol. And me. Remember me?’

  ‘Of course. Of course, Susan. I know that. I meant our family. Of course. I’ve been a fool about our family, and what Michael does, and what we’ve done to him …’

  ‘What you’ve done to him. Don’t you start wrapping me up in your web of deceit and hatred. God! What a bastard …’

  Her voice, so dead, so tired, so full of repressed pain, became a barrier to conversation. There was so much he wanted to say to her, but the words became insults as he shaped them. They wouldn’t pass some internal censor that whispered to him: you’ll make things worse. Just shut up and leave her to think. Just shut up and go home.

  ‘Look. We have a lot of talking to do. I know that. I’m prepared for it. And I accept that you’re angry …’

  ‘You sound like some kid who’s just learned his first lesson in “dealing with people”. You sound patronizing.’

  ‘I don’t mean to. I’m not feeling very well, and I have a lot of thinking to do.’

  ‘Good. Think hard. You have a long drive ahead of you, plenty of time to think hard. So do it. And think clearly.’

  ‘How’s Michael?’

  ‘Hiding, of course.’

  ‘What does that mean?’

  ‘He’s hiding. We don’t see him any more.’

  ‘Where’s he hiding? What do you mean? In the pit?’

  ‘He’s always hidden in the pit. But this is worse. He’s hiding inside himself. I can’t see him any more, Richard. I just see the body. I can’t see the boy.’

  He shook and felt sick for some moments after the call, but he had a worse shock when Goodman rang the bell at reception. Richard went to the small sitting room and found Goodman leafing through a magazine. The younger man was wearing dark glasses and seemed tense and cold.

  ‘Jack?’

  ‘We’re in trouble,’ Goodman said. And sagged, suddenly sitting down heavily into one of the armchairs in the room. He leaned back and took off his dark glasses and Richard looked away quickly. The man’s eyes were yellow and black with bruising. He watched Richard through slits in lids that were puffed with fluid. Without speaking he unbuttoned his raincoat and tugged his shirt from the trouser band, revealing a midriff of blue and purple abuse that made Richard feel queasy.

  All Goodman said was, ‘As you can see, they’re a little impatient.’

  Richard was devastated. ‘Christ, Jack. I’m sorry. Have you contacted the police?’

  ‘The police?’ Goodman laughed sourly, t
hen added, ‘I like my legs exactly where they are, Richard. Attached to my hips. I find that a useful arrangement.’

  ‘There’s no money, Jack. There’s nothing I can do. Michael’s talent faded and what has been “fetched” has been “fetched”, and there’s no way back. The boy is dry. I woke up this morning and realized what a bastard I’ve been. My head is clear for the first time in years. Something happened to me, Jack, something very bad, something from the animal world. A sort of mindless, instinctive hoarding behaviour. I used my son like a machine. I never thought about him at all. And I’m ashamed …’

  ‘Very touching,’ Goodman broke in. ‘Very touching I’m sure. We all made mistakes, Richard, not just you. I made mistakes too. Have you ever tried vomiting when your stomach muscles don’t work, by the way? Difficult. Especially when three crew-cut eighteen-year-olds in army boots are standing over you urinating. So I’m very touched. But we need to make some decisions here …’

  ‘There is no more money. There is no more treasure-trove …’

  ‘Then that’s very sad,’ Goodman said dully. ‘Because it means that soon there’ll be no more Michael.’

  Richard’s shock was fleeting, but he was across the room and wrenching Goodman to his feet in a second. Goodman delivered a precise and painful blow to Richard’s chest, knocking the breath from him. Pig-like eyes in bruises blinked and a wet mouth twisted into anger. ‘Not from you. Not you. I’ve taken enough because of you. You keep your distance, Dr Whitlock. I’m ready to do some damage myself, and I’m not feeling particularly well disposed towards you at the moment.’

  ‘What about Michael?’ Richard hissed, holding his chest where the blow had landed. ‘What did you mean about Michael?’

  Goodman picked up his shades and covered his battered eyes. ‘They’re paying him a visit. They want to encourage him to open up a little more.’

  ‘Tell them the treasure is all gone. It was a limited find.’

  ‘Can’t do that. Sorry. When six very large black boots are conversing with your groin, truth does have its funny little way of coming out.’