The October Boys

by Adam Millard

  Finally, Kurian settled back into his own chair. The leather creaked beneath his weight. He glanced once toward the clock, and then asked Tom to begin.

  For the longest time, Tom sat motionless and silent in his chair. He had come all this way, had made it through the initial barrage of info-extraction, only to freeze up when it really mattered. Way to go, Tom.

  The clock ticked steadily and inexorably on.

  Tom fought to get the first word out, but when it came, and then another, and a third, he relaxed a little. It wasn’t going to be a wasted journey, after all.

  As he proceeded to tell the good doctor about the events of that terrible night back in ’88, Kurian made plentiful notes. The frantic scratching of pen on paper was off-putting at first, but Tom quickly learned to ignore it.

  When Tom explained how the ice cream truck—wraith? —barrelled toward them, intent on running them all into the ground, Kurian uhhmed and ahhed, nodded his head a little, as if, in his own mind, he had arrived at the crux of Tom’s problem. Surviving an attempted murder had to have a negative effect on a guy’s life, didn’t it? Or did it? Perhaps it should work the other way, with the survivor feeling almost reborn, lucky as hell, and ready to take on the world content in the knowledge that if he could outdo death, he could pretty much do anything.

  Tom paused momentarily as he recalled the moment the ice cream truck, with its clanging chimes, decided to pursue Ryan—little fat Ryan, dressed as Pugsley Addams for no other reason than he already looked like him, and it would be a shame not to capitalise on such good fortune by dressing as a generic ghoul. Little fat Ryan who would never make it to his house. Tom realised that he wasn’t talking, simply running the images through his own mind like some grisly video nasty. Kurian waited patiently and Tom cleared his throat.

  “It went after Ryan,” Tom said with a shake of the head. “I don’t know whether it was because he was the weakest of us all, or the slowest, or just that he was alone, running the wrong way when he should have been right next to us...” He trailed off there, for he knew what came next.

  “Take your time,” Kurian said in that relaxed monotone he had ostensibly perfected over the years.

  Tom took his time.

  FOUR

  October 31st, 1988

  Havering, London

  Marcus’s house was a terraced affair, wedged between a pair of identical residences, and as the three of them bowled through the door, breathless and yelling at anyone near enough to hear them, Marcus’s father appeared in the hallway, gripping a cricket-bat in one hand and a half-eaten sandwich in the other.

  Clive Berry cut an intimidating figure, having been a semi-professional boxer himself, and then, according to Marcus, a collector for one of the most feared gangsters in East London. But standing there, seemingly unsure whether to thwack the kids who had just piled into his hallway with the cricket-bat or offer them the remains of what looked like a cheese-and-pickle wedge, he didn’t look so tough.

  “What the hell is going on!?” he said, his accent neither Jamaican nor Cockney, but something in-between. He lowered the cricket-bat, rested it against the doorframe to his right. “You boys scared yourselves something silly?”

  Tom wanted to scream at the man, tell him to call the police before it was too late, but he knew it was already too late. Deep inside, he knew.

  “Dad, there’s a guy out there trying to run people over!” Marcus was doubled over trying to catch his breath; the boxing gloves around his neck almost touched the hallway carpet.

  Clive Berry frowned, and in that moment, Tom could see why the man had been an enforcer for powerful people. He had that look about him, one which said there would be no second chances if you failed to stick to an agreement. According to Marcus, his father had broken more legs than osteogenesis imperfecta, whatever the hell that was.

  “He try to run you over?” Clive was addressing only his son now. Of course he was. Tom and Luke were just his son’s friends. If they were mangled beneath the wheels of a demonic ice cream truck, Marcus would find new friends. So it goes.

  Marcus nodded and straightened up, his breath regulated enough to explain what had just happened. “It’s an ice cream truck, Dad. Can you believe that? In October? But I don’t think he’s got ice cream to sell. We have to call the police, Dad. The sonofabitch—”

  “Watch your language, boy,” Clive said, lifting his hand as a warning. The threat didn’t seem real with that half-eaten sandwich still clenched there.

  “—he went after Ryan. Chased him down the street, Dad, and Ryan’s not like us. He can’t run, Dad.”

  “Ryan the fat one?” Clive asked, as if it mattered somehow. Yeah, Ryan’s the fat one. Make a hell of a speedbump someday, that Ryan.

  “Mister Berry, please,” Tom said, not liking the sound of his own voice. Whiny, small, terrified. “If you could just call the police. I think something terrible might have happened to Ryan.” He knew something terrible had happened to Ryan Fielding; there was no way on God’s green earth he had outrun that truck.

  Clive Berry motioned toward the living-room. “This better not be some sort of… foolish Halloween prank, boys, ‘cos I ain’t in the mood.”

  “It’s not a prank, Dad,” Marcus said, rushing into the living-room and snatching up the telephone from its cradle. He dialled 999 and waited a couple of seconds before speaking. Tom mouthed the words as they came out of his friend, spilled forth from his lips, a torrent of madness. When he was finished, he replaced the telephone and turned to his father, who had now finished his sandwich and simply stood there in the middle of the room, staring at the television encased in a wooden cabinet three feet to his left. Crude rubber puppets were belting out a musical number and dancing. Here was the Queen, rubberised and thumping Prince Phillip with a hammer. Tom didn’t know what the show was, but it looked absolutely terrifying.

  “How long did they say they’d be?” Luke asked. He looked more like a zombie now than he had all night.

  “I’ll getcha some towels,” Clive said, and with that he left the living-room.

  After a few seconds, Marcus whispered surreptitiously, “He’s gone to hide his marijuana plants.”

  They sat down, all three, nervous as hell and waiting for the police to arrive. On the television screen, some spitting latex politician used a combination of big and curse words to comedic effect. Just when Tom didn’t think any of them were going to say anything, Luke did.

  “Do you think he made it?”

  Ryan. Did Ryan make it all the way home? Was he there now, damp and breathless and crying into his Mom’s fat bosom, whining about the nasty ice cream truck?

  Pop goes the weasel.

  Tom shook his head. “That thing was doing some speed,” he said. He felt guilty almost immediately.

  What was he saying?

  That Ryan, their best friend since they were little kids, was now nothing more than a piece of roadkill? All squashed and bloody against the kerb, with one eye in and one eye out, just like the cat they had found last summer? Is that what he was saying?

  “He might have made it into someone’s yard,” Marcus said, unravelling the boxing gloves from his neck and draping them over the arm of the chair. “He can’t run, but maybe he got behind a wall. That lunatic wouldn’t drive at a brick wall, would he?” He sounded dubious.

  When the police arrived ten minutes later, Clive answered the door to let them in. “I don’t have a clue what’s gone on out there tonight, officers.” As if they were going to blame him and it was best to get his protestation out of the way first, before they got the cuffs on and dragged him toward the Panda outside. Tom wondered how many times Clive Berry had been arrested. Marcus always said his father was too smart to get caught, but that was what they all said… just before getting caught.

  As yet more police officers piled into the tiny living-room, wet from the rain and stern-looking, Tom, Luke, and Marcus exchanged nervous glances. They had never seen so many uniforms in one
place. There must have been three cars sitting out front, four to each car. Tom was just pleased they were taking this very seriously.

  Five of the policemen stood at one end of the living-room, pretending to be involved when it was quite clear they were more occupied by the rubber puppets now dancing again on the screen.

  “Turn that off, Constable Brownlee,” a severe looking officer said, motioning to the TV. Constable Brownlee, looking more than a little disappointed, reached down and pushed the button on the front of the set. The puppets continued to dance for a moment before the screen went dark and they were reduced to a tiny white dot, which faded to nothing over the course of three seconds.

  The severe-looking officer, a man they would come to know over the impending weeks as Sergeant Wood, ushered aside two constables and arrived at a vacant armchair. Clive Berry’s armchair. If Marcus sat in that chair, he would be on the receiving end of a whooping, but Tom didn’t think that same punishment would extend to the sergeant getting comfy in it now, not unless Clive Berry was feeling brave and stupid all at the same time.

  “Okay, lads,” Sergeant Wood said. “What’s been going on?”

  At first it was a competition to see who could talk the loudest and without taking enough breaths, but then Tom took over at the request of Sergeant Wood, and only then did it start to make sense.

  “Did any of you get a good look at the driver?” Sergeant Wood asked. “Was he white, black, old, young—”

  With a shake of the head, Tom said, “Just a shadow.” What did that even mean? Just a shadow? But that was all Tom saw of the driver; a dark outline where there should have been a person. It didn’t make sense, but then nothing of what had happened in the last hour did, really.

  Sergeant Wood nodded and pushed himself up from the armchair. He removed his cap and wiped a bead of sweat from his balding head. Turning to one of his colleagues, he said, “I want you to head on over to the Fielding residence, make sure the son made it back okay.” He turned back to Tom, Luke, and Marcus. “If what you’re saying is true, I’d be surprised if we didn’t have at least one decent witness. Pop Goes the Weasel, you say?”

  Tom nodded.

  “There can’t be too many ice cream trucks out on the roads tonight,” said Wood, sighing heavily. “In fact, I’ve never heard of something so ridiculous. It’s Halloween, not Summer Solstice, for Christ’s sake.”

  The constables began to file out of the room, thanking Clive Berry for his hospitality as they went. If only, Tom thought, they checked the spare bedroom. He was certain they would find something of interest up there, something Marcus liked to call ‘Wacky Backy’.

  “I suggest you boys get yourselves home,” Sergeant Wood said, regarding each of them in turn. “You all live local?”

  “I don’t want to walk back on my own,” Luke said. He looked genuinely scared; Tom had never seen his friend so frightened. Luke was one of the toughest guys at their school. He liked to brawl, and he was in all the sports teams. Luke was the kind of kid who would grow up, join the army, serve twenty years and spend the next twenty manning the door of some boisterous nightclub. And yet here he was looking as if a sudden change in wind direction would push him over the edge.

  “What about you?” Sergeant Wood said. “Got far to walk?”

  Tom shook his head. “Not really.” He was trying to sound brave, and yet he didn’t know why.

  “And you?” Wood asked Marcus.

  Marcus stopped chewing his nails long enough to muster a reply. “I’m already home.”

  Sergeant Wood turned to one of the few remaining constables—Brownlee—and said something indistinct before marching from the room.

  “Come on then,” Brownlee said, smiling. “Let’s get you two home.”

  * * *

  It was half-past-ten when Constable Brownlee pulled the Panda away from Tom’s house. Tom raced across the driveway, gravel crunching underfoot, and arrived at the front door, out of breath and looking across both shoulders, half-expecting the ice cream truck to be there, sitting, idling, its shadowy driver standing at the hatch with a blood-drenched cone in his hand. After fumbling with his key for ten seconds or so, he managed to slip it into the chamber and turn.

  The house was quiet, dark, and most importantly empty. His mother hadn’t finished her shift yet, would probably be another hour or so if there was no traffic on the ring-road. Tom locked the door behind him—his mother would ask why, and he would tell her there were some kids out there being dicks, that’s why—and quickly rushed upstairs to wash the faded green paint off and change into his night clothes.

  He made his way downstairs just five minutes later, rushed into the living-room and over to the phone table, upon which sat the telephone, a pen, and a flowery address book filled with the names and numbers of all his mother’s friends and associates.

  Tom didn’t need the book. He knew his friend’s number off by heart. He picked up the handset, dialled, and then waited. He didn’t have to wait long, however, as there came a sudden click and then a female voice said, “Hello?”

  Tom didn’t know what to say. He wasn’t used to speaking with adults that weren’t his own mother. Mrs Fielding was a nice lady, but Tom didn’t really have a lot to do with her. “Erm, Mrs Fielding? It’s Tom. Tom Craven…”

  “Oh, Tom, is he with you!?” Mrs Fielding said. She sounded frantic all of a sudden. “The… the police are here… they’re saying… I don’t know what they’re saying. Just tell Ryan to come home. Tell him he’s not in any trouble, Tom. Just come home now…”

  Tom’s heart was in his mouth. Ryan had not made it back, as Tom had known he wouldn’t. “Ryan’s not with me, Mrs Fielding,” he said, feeling like one of those doctors whose job it was to tell desperate family members that they had better set one less place at the dinner table from now on.

  “Then where the fuck is he, Tom?” She was screeching now; Tom imagined a roomful of police turning to the distraught woman. Was Sergeant Wood there? Tom wondered. “Why are you safe at home and he’s not? Why do you kids have to go fucking around in the dark, huh? What did you think was going to happen!?”

  Not this, Tom thought. Being chased by an ice cream truck with a madman behind the wheel in the middle of October was the last thing he’d expected as he’d pulled on his socks and shoes earlier that night.

  Just then, a male voice replaced Mrs Fielding’s. “Is that you, Tom Craven?”

  Sergeant Wood.

  So, he was there after all.

  “It’s me, Sergeant Wood,” Tom said. Part of him had wanted to hang up instead of speaking, but to what end? He had done nothing wrong, was just ringing to check up on a dear friend.

  Dear Ryan, who had not made it home and was probably all churned up as if he’d been run through a wood-chipper by now. Dear, dear, Ryan.

  “I want you to hang up the phone, Tom,” Wood said, calmly. “We’re doing everything we can to find your friend, but you’re going to have to let us to our job, okay?” Then a little lower, not much more than a whisper. “Mrs Fielding is very agitated right now, as is to be expected. Go to bed, Tom. Try to get some sleep. We’ll be in touch if there is any news.”

  Click.

  Tom stood there for a few minutes, phone in hand and a tremendous feeling of loss coursing through him. Rain hammered at the living-room window, a thousand tiny skeletal fingers.

  To the police and his own mother, Ryan Fielding was missing, but Tom knew better. That sonofabitch had got him. Had mowed him down before disappearing into the night.

  Finally, Tom cried, and he was still crying when his mother returned home forty-five minutes later.

  FIVE

  October 24th, 2016

  Redbridge, London

  Kurian paused momentarily from his note-taking and regarded Tom with a certain amount of sadness. Tom couldn’t believe how much he had just told the psychiatrist; he had surprised even himself.

  Could I tell him all of it? Tom wondered. There was so much
more to come… so much terror yet to reveal… so much—

  “Thank you for that,” Kurian said. “I can’t begin to imagine how difficult that was for you, but I truly think we’re getting somewhere.” He put down his clipboard and leaned forward. “I have a couple of questions, if you’re feeling up to it? I really want to try to find out more.”

  Tom shrugged. It wasn’t as if he had anything better to do. Danielle wasn’t waiting for him back at home, ready to massage his shoulders and tell him everything was going to be okay. He had no real plans for the rest of the day. A movie marathon, perhaps, followed by a joyless five minutes of masturbation, culminating in yet another sleepless night in which the Ice Cream Man would most certainly make an appearance, in some form or other. “Go ahead,” Tom said. “I really didn’t… I didn’t think I’d be able to tell you any of it. Might as well strike while the iron’s hot.”

  This seemed to please Kurian. Those perfect white teeth, a brand-new cemetery of ivory tombstones, appeared once again. Tom wondered, not for the first time, how much all that fine dentistry had cost Kurian. Was psychiatry a well-paid profession? Tom had learned everything he knew about shrinks from early morning Channel Four reruns of Frasier. The Crane brothers always seemed to do okay for themselves. “Do you feel at all guilty for what happened that night?”

  Just like that; no foreplay, no dancing around the question trying to find the right words. Straight to the point with a heated needle; Tom felt it penetrate his heart. “I feel… I feel…” What did he feel? It wasn’t his fault, after all, that Ryan Fielding had been about sixty-pound overweight, almost a whole other twelve-year-old. It wasn’t his fault Ryan’s mother fed him all the beige stuff when she should have heeded the paediatrician’s advice and served the boy up some salad once in a while. It wasn’t his fault that the bastard behind the wheel of that ice cream truck had turned left instead of right, gone after the weakest link with his chimes a-chiming and, more than likely, a dirty hard-on in his pants.