Nicking Time

by T. Traynor

  We talk on as the day disappears into the dark. There are so many fantastic impossible things to describe that really we could’ve easily filled a whole month of nicked days.

  23

  “Do you fancy,” asks Lemur the next afternoon, “taking part in a ritual?” He’s leaning back against the big tree in the den. He’s the only one of us who looks like a normal human being at the moment. We’ve retired to the den because the heat outside is too much and the rest of us are red-faced and probably about to keel over with heatstroke. It might have been a better idea to schedule the Rolling Down the Hill competition for a cooler part of the day.

  “Not now,” pants Hector, with his eyes still closed.

  “Do we have to move?” groans Bru.

  “What’s a ritual?” says Skooshie, raising his head from the floor to show polite interest – then letting it crash back down because it’s too heavy.

  Lemur leans forward, his pale face lit with excitement.

  “It’s a kind of ceremony, a special kind of ceremony.”

  “Like a wedding?” Skooshie is propped on one elbow now and looking anxious.

  “Yes,” I say. “It’s a leap-year surprise for you. She’s a lovely girl, Skooshie. You’re going to like being married!”

  The look of horror on Skooshie’s face is priceless. A few moments of loud amusement – all at Skooshie’s expense – is enough to revive us all.

  “Not a wedding, Skoosh,” says Lemur, giving him a reassuring thump. Skooshie looks very relieved. “Something important. Maybe the most important thing you have ever done in your life.”

  We are now all ears.

  “Remember the story I told you about how the Lorredan brothers died? And how Christy Lorredan couldn’t ever leave this place? Well, I’ve been thinking about how we could help him.”

  “Brilliant!” says Skooshie, a bit too enthusiastically.

  “What would we do?” asks Bru.

  “Well, it doesn’t really matter what we do,” says Lemur. “It’s the fact that we make it up together. It’s got to be all of us to make it work. What do you think?”

  So we pool what we know about rituals and pick out the bits that sound most fun. Skooshie’s well up for it. He liked the words “make it up” and, now we’re all pitching in with ideas, seems to feel pretty sure this is a game and not a detour into the dark and spooky netherworld.

  “Right,” says Hector. “So far we’ve got:

  1. Masks

  2. Chants

  3. Dancing

  4. Drums

  5. Food.”

  “Masks,” says Bru thoughtfully. “Like Hallowe’en masks?”

  “What about making our own?” I say. I dip my fingers in the dust of the den floor and smear it on my cheeks to leave dirty streaks. “That looks good,” says Hector.

  “The very ground they died on,” murmurs Bru. Skooshie, fortunately, doesn’t hear this.

  “Any suggestions for chants?”

  Lemur picks up a stick and looks around. He finds an empty Jaffa Cake box. He starts to hit the stick against the box, settling into a rhythm: SMACK, tap-tap-tap, SMACK, tap-tap-tap, SMACK, tap-tap-tap. And he starts to chant, so softly at first that we can’t make out what he’s saying. The hitting, the chanting get louder, then it’s clear: “TIME to go now! TIME to go now! TIME to go now!”

  We all join in for a bit of a practice, dancing in a circle round the den, until Lemur gets bored and throws down the stick and box. “We’ll need better drums obviously,” he says.

  “Skooshie and I know where we can get drums,” says Hector.

  “Great. Dancing – I think that’ll fall into place once we’ve got the drums.”

  “OK. And for the food, everybody just bring something?” says Bru.

  “Sounds good,” I say. “When are we doing this?”

  “Tomorrow,” says Lemur. He makes his voice scary. “Tomorrow… at midnight.”

  “Midnight?” We all stare at him like he’s gone mad.

  “It’ll be scarier if it’s dark,” he says.

  “Yeah, but one small drawback,” says Hector. “We’ll all be in bed, asleep.”

  “No way I’ll be allowed out at night,” says Bru.

  “Your mum and dad would let you do that, Lemur?” I ask.

  He laughs. “Of course not. I meant let’s sneak out.”

  I don’t know what Lemur’s house is like, but you’d think he’d’ve paid a bit of attention when he was in my house or Bru’s.

  “What do you suggest, that I climb out my bedroom window and dreepy down the wall?” I say. “The only way out of my house is down the hall, right past my mum and dad’s bedroom door. If Bru was lying in his own bed at home, with the blankets over his head, my mum could still hear him picking his nose.” (Bru looks suitably impressed.) “You think she’s not going to hear me unlocking our house door, then opening all the landing doors, then creeping down the stairs?”

  “If you can’t, you can’t,” says Lemur with a shrug. “After dinner then?”

  “Oh, and Midge,” he adds, as we wander down May Terrace on our way home. “Not a word to Kit about this. It’s got to be a secret. You don’t want to make her curious.”

  “I wasn’t going to tell her,” I say. “Why did you think I would tell her?”

  “Just don’t,” he says. “Not this time.”

  Then he’s gone, before I have time to react to the total injustice of being branded the unreliable one.

  ***

  We’d decided it would be a good idea to get everything in place early so we meet up at the den first thing in the morning.

  I’ve brought a bottle of water.

  “Is that all?” asks Bru, looking disappointed. He’s been waving a packet of giant marshmallows in my face. I suspect his mum might not yet know that these are missing.

  “It’s for the masks,” I say.

  “What??”

  I unscrew the top and pour a trickle onto the ground. I scratch up some dust with a stick and mix it to a smooth mud. I stick my finger in this and draw a big dirty line down Bru’s nose. “For the masks,” I say. He grins. He looks like a crazy, ginger, pint-sized warrior.

  “Magic!” he says.

  Hector and Skooshie appear with a huge empty tin under each arm. Skooshie is also wearing one on his head. The tins say:

  YELLOW CLING PEACHES

  Slices in Heavy Syrup

  and bring a sticky, sweet smell into the den. There’s a sticky, sweet smell about Skooshie for the rest of the day too.

  “We got them out the bin behind the Chinese restaurant,” Hector explains. “They’ve always got loads of them.”

  We wonder if it’s possible to attach some kind of strap to the tins, so we can carry them as we dance around. Skooshie has the idea that we could make holes in the bottom and the sides with a tin-opener, then thread string through the holes. But as we don’t have a tin-opener or any string, we decide to keep it simple. We find five sticks of more or less the same size. We turn the tins upside down and hit them to test the sound. It’s good. We also tear off the cling peaches labelling round each tin, to make them look more spooky ritual and less Chinese restaurant bin.

  Finally it’s ready. Mudpool prepared (might need topping up with a bit more water later if the day’s hot – I leave the bottle beside it). Food piled under one of the drums for safety, and the drum dragged under the shade of the tree for maximum coolness. We’ve got the marshmallows (brought by Bru), a packet of Hula Hoops (from Skooshie), a poke of big, red raspberries (Lemur), a Curly Wurly (Hector) and a tin of Creamola foam, lemon flavour (that’s from me – I’ve even remembered to bring a spoon to prise open the tin and measure out the crystals fairly and to the correct strength).

  All the organising has taken ages.

  “What’s the time?” Skooshie asks Hector hopefully.

  Hector glances at his watch. “Half past nine.”

  “So we’ve been here twenty minutes?” I say.

&
nbsp; “Could we not just do it now?” asks Bru.

  “No!” says Lemur. “It’s got to be later. It won’t work otherwise. We agreed it would be evening.”

  “OK, OK, keep your knickers on,” says Skooshie.

  “Well, we’re going to have to find something to do for the rest of the day,” I say.

  That’s easier said than done. The day passes slowly, slowly, slowly…

  ***

  We can’t settle to anything. We take turns making half-hearted suggestions and turning them down. We loll on the grass and try to play Skooshie’s Game but all the things we think of are rubbish. They get so rubbish that thinking up rubbish questions becomes the point of the game. “What’d you choose: to be an octopus or a Mars Bar?” “Have two noses or four ears?” “Be able to fight like a kitten or sing like a kangaroo?”

  Which was quite funny.

  For a while.

  “What are they doing?” says Lemur, standing up and peering down at a load of kids massing between the flats. Kit’s in the middle of them.

  “Usual wee kid stuff,” says Hector.

  “Let’s go and see,” says Lemur. And he’s up and off before we can object.

  The place is teeming with kids. Really. I don’t know where they’ve all come from. It’s like nobody is inside or on holiday – they’re all out here.

  We approach, interrupting a debate about teams.

  “Are you playing rounders?” Lemur asks.

  Kit waves the bat she’s holding in his direction.

  “No, we use this for skipping.”

  The posse of wee girls surrounding her giggles. The boys in the group marvel at her bravery and lack of respect.

  “Let us play.”

  “Well, I don’t know…”

  “C’mon. Let us.”

  “Aw, let them, Kit!” say some of the boys.

  And then they’re all at it. “Let them, Kit, let them! They’re big – it’ll be fun.”

  Lemur steps forward, the kids moving out of his way. He says something to Kit that we don’t hear. She looks at him, her eyes narrowed.

  “OK,” she says. “But you’ll need to do as you’re told. Agreed?”

  “Agreed.”

  “What did you say to her?” I ask Lemur as Kit starts organising people into teams.

  “That she wasn’t very good at rounders. That she wasn’t letting us play because she was scared we’d show her up.”

  He gives an evil grin. And not for the first time, we realise how clever he is.

  “Hey, listen!” Kit shouts to get everybody’s attention. “Teams: girls against boys!”

  Which is met with a roar of approval.

  ***

  “That was… fun,” says Skooshie, much subdued, when we leave the place of battle an hour later.

  “Yeah,” we agree.

  “But never again?”

  “Oh, no, never again!”

  “Those wee girls were vicious!”

  “I was nearly concussed by that one throwing the bat over her shoulder when she started running.”

  “And look at this bruise on my side – well, it’ll be a bruise tomorrow. She wasn’t even aiming for base – she threw it right at me.”

  “And such bad winners,” says Bru in a shocked tone. “I didn’t know wee girls knew words like that…”

  24

  We’ve made the den as dark as possible. Everything’s in place.

  “Anybody for a Creamola foam?” I ask.

  The water fizzes as it hits the crystals, bubbling up into a pale yellow froth. We’ve only got three plastic cups between us, so we have to take turns. The water in the bottle has warmed up in the course of the day and is now the temperature of used bathwater. We sip it appreciatively, hanging onto our turn for as long as possible.

  “If you mixed Creamola foam with milk,” asks Hector, “would you get a milkshake?”

  We think that you probably would. And that it would be worth trying it to find out.

  The Curly Wurly proves a nightmare to split fairly. It becomes obvious that we won’t be able to bend it into equal parts – that just gets you covered in chocolate and caramel, which leads to arguments about you taking more than your fair share. So we have to trust to honour.

  “Take a bite and pass it on,” says Hector, passing it to Lemur first. What he doesn’t add but does make clear in his tone is, “And I’m watching you.”

  We decide to try out the drums. We use Lemur’s rhythm first, the Time-to-go-now one.

  “It’s a bit short,” I say.

  “And maybe a bit rude?” says Bru. “I mean, he’s kind of like a visitor here, and you wouldn’t really say that kind of thing to a visitor, would you?”

  “Or are we the visitors, if he was here first?” says Hector.

  “Yeah, good point, Hector.”

  “What d’you mean?” asks Skooshie. “This is all to get rid of him, isn’t it? We’re not going to get disappeared?”

  It really is hard not to laugh at Skooshie’s panic. So we just do.

  “Relax, Skooshie,” says Lemur. “You’ll be fine.”

  We experiment with different chants. We come up with “Time, Christy! Time, Christy!”

  “It sounds like we’re trying to clear a pub,” I say.

  And Skooshie comes up with a football-inspired “Chri-sty Lo-rre-dan! Chri-sty Lo-rre-dan!” It’s definitely one you can get into, it’s just like a chant from the terraces.

  Then Lemur says, “What about this?” And tapping his drum, he chants quietly,

  “Christy, Christy

  Your time has come.”

  We agree it’s the best so far. We have a bit of a practice getting the rhythm right. Soon we’re doing it in unison. If only Mrs Stevenson could see me now, I think. She’d realise what a mistake she made not letting me into the recorder group at school.

  “What time is it?” Lemur asks Hector.

  “Half past six. Why?”

  “Just thinking we should start soon.”

  “We should do our masks then.” There’s a drip of water left in the bottle – I had forgotten that we needed it for mud when I was mixing the Creamola foam. I tip it onto the mud pool. There’s just enough.

  We dip our fingers into the mud and start smearing patterns on our faces. We don’t have a mirror so we’re relying on each other’s reactions to see how well we’ve managed to do it.

  Hector’s gone for a lot of clear X shapes, as if his skin has been stitched – he looks like Frankenstein.

  Skooshie’s approach is to flatten his whole hands into the mud, then clutch his face and forehead to leave giant prints. In fact, there’s not much of his skin left visible. He looks really scary until he gives us his big grin.

  Bru has used all his fingers at once to cover his face in muddy spots – he looks like he’s sufffering from some deadly disease. He’s pleased with the looks of disgust we give him.

  I’ve drawn exclamation marks and question marks all over my face. Bru nods approval when he sees it. “You look totally insane,” he says.

  “Good,” I say. “That was the effect I was aiming for.”

  But Lemur’s been the cleverest. He’s given himself a curling moustache and small pointy beard and round his eye he’s managed (without blinding himself with mud) an eye-patch. It’s very dark against his pale face. He looks totally menacing.

  “Nice one, Lemur!”

  “What’s left to eat?” asks Bru.

  “The raspberries.” Lemur hands them round.

  The raspberries are warm too, and sweet and squishy. Red juice runs like blood down our chins when we bite into them.

  “Oh, that’s the other thing you need for a ritual,” says Lemur, with a bloody, raspberry-stained smile. “I forgot to mention it. You need a sacrifice.”

  Skooshie freezes.

  “Like an animal?” I ask, hoping Lemur means insects and not small mammals.

  “No!” Lemur laughs. “Like her.”

  We loo
k in the direction he’s pointing. And see Kit standing just inside the entrance to the den.

  I’m furious. “What are you doing here?” I’ve got her by the arm.

  She shakes herself free and steps further into the den. She spots the empty tin on the ground.

  “That’s my Creamola Foam as well, you know.”

  “Kit, go home. You’re not allowed here. You’re not allowed to cross Prospecthill Road.”

  “You’re not allowed to go into Cathkin, but you still did it,” she says.

  “But this is our den – no one’s allowed here without our invitation.”

  She looks at me and smiles. “But I was invited.”

  “No – you – WEREN’T!” Four of us at once, loud in outraged protest.

  “Lemur invited me.”

  Lemur isn’t denying it. For a moment we’re speechless, then we turn on him, tripping over our words because we’re so angry.

  “You did what? You told me—”

  “What were you thinking?”

  “We’ve never—”

  He stops us by holding up his hand. Maybe it’s his pirate disguise. We’re not questioning that he’s in charge.

  “Like I said, every ritual needs a sacrifice.”

  “It sounds fun,” says Kit. “Nice masks, by the way.”

  This wasn’t what we were expecting. But it looks like Lemur has a plan. And Kit seems willing to go along with it. We’re waiting to see what happens.

  Lemur gives Kit a few raspberries that he’d kept, then makes her stand in the middle. Our drums are positioned around her in a circle.

  “Chant,” says Lemur.

  We follow his start, drumming with our fingers and chanting very softly:

  “Christy, Christy

  Your time has come.”

  “Spin,” Lemur tells Kit. She starts to birl round in the centre of the circle.

  Our drumming gradually gets louder and louder until we’re thumping the metal surface hard with our fingers.

  “Faster,” Lemur tells Kit.

  He leaves his drum. We keep drumming and chanting, while Lemur chants and dances in front of us, inside our circle, around Kit. Kit’s twirling faster, giggling and breathless.