by T. Traynor
By now the rhythm of the chant is inside me:
“Your time has come!
Your time has come!”
I don’t even hear the words, I’m just part of the noise. But then there’s something wrong, somebody’s disrupting the rhythm. It’s Lemur. Suddenly I realise he’s not singing “Christy, Christy,” he’s singing, “Kit, Kit.”
And then there’s a flash, a burst of energy that throws us back from our drums. It shatters the noise. Dazed, we all look at Lemur to explain what has happened. He’s standing very still, right in the centre of the den.
And Kit has disappeared.
25
Lemur breathes a sigh of relief. “It worked,” he says. He looks pleased with himself, his face flushed with excitement.
“What worked? Where’s Kit?” I demand.
Lemur looks surprised. “Haven’t you worked it out?”
“Where’s Kit?”
“She’s gone,” he says, as if disappointed he has to spell this out to me. “But I’m here. It means I can stay!”
“Where is she, Lemur? Is she all right?”
“Yes – she’s perfectly safe. You don’t need to worry about her.”
“Why has she disappeared? Why can’t I see her?”
Lemur is starting to look a bit concerned about my reaction.
“Kit’s not going to be around for a while.”
I throw myself at him. He trips, losing his balance and falling onto the cushions. I’m on top of him and punching him as hard as I can and I don’t stop until Hector and Skooshie pull me off.
“Whoa, Midge – stop! He’s only winding you up.”
“No. He isn’t.” Because I know Lemur and I know that he’s telling the truth. “Are you?”
Lemur shakes his head.
“Tell us everything, Lemur,” says Bru.
And so he does.
“Do you remember one day in the den we were talking about putting time in a bank?”
“Yes – so you could save it when you didn’t need it and use it later.”
“And we said we should invent a time bank so we could do that?”
“Yeah…”
“Well, the thing is, I never needed to. Invent it, that is. It’s something I can already do.”
He looks around us all. “You still don’t get it, do you?”
I want to believe that all these days in the sun have scrambled his brains, that what we’re listening to is the ravings of somebody with heatstroke. But I know that’s not true.
“You’re Christy Lorredan,” I say.
He grabs me by both arms. “Midge, I knew you’d understand.”
“Let go of me,” I say. “Unless you want me to hit you again.”
He backs off.
“I don’t get it,” says Skooshie.
Lemur punches him.
“Ow!” says Skooshie. “All I said was, ‘I don’t get it.’”
“You felt that?” says Lemur.
“Yeah, I felt it!” Skooshie’s rubbing his arm.
“And you know that you can’t feel ghosts, don’t you?”
Skooshie’s eyes narrow. He suspects some other trick. “I know you’re not a ghost, Lemur.”
“But Midge is right. I was Christy Lorredan. I lived here all those years ago with my mother and father and my brother, Robert.”
“And you’re here now but not a ghost because you can bank time?” Hector’s trying hard to get his head round what’s happening here.
“Exactly! The story – I didn’t make it up. It all happened the way I told you. Robert dying, then me. But when I died, I was still here. I was stuck – I didn’t leave. For some reason I couldn’t not be. Do you remember what I told you at the end of the story? That I was waiting and waiting? That’s because no one came, no one knew I was here, no one saw me, no one talked to me. Do you know what that feels like?”
“It would be bad,” Bru admits.
“Imagine it. Imagine how much you would long for someone to play with. And this went on and on – I don’t know for how long. The house was a ruin. No one ever came into the grounds. It had all grown wild. Then one day I heard something. I was in the tree where the tree house had been – it was long gone too. I saw someone in the undergrowth. A boy. I watched him squeezing through the brambles, eventually finding the open space beneath my tree. He sat down and leaned against the trunk. He opened a bag and took out some bread and cheese and ate them. Then he lay down on the ground and fell asleep.”
Lemur pauses here. He swallows hard.
“At last here was someone to talk to. I knew he was tired so I let him sleep, waiting until it looked like he was going to wake up. What was a few more hours to wait after all that time? I climbed down from my tree and went up to him. The place he had picked to rest was exactly where Robert fell. Where I fell. I remember hoping it hadn’t given him bad dreams.
“He must have heard me because he jumped up, really alarmed, and all set to run away.
“‘It’s all right,’ I said, reaching out to him to reassure him. I couldn’t believe he was actually able to see me! The last thing I wanted was for him to leave. ‘I’m Christy,’ I said. ‘Please – stay! You can’t go!’
“When my hand touched his arm, there was a flash, like an explosion. I covered my eyes because it was so bright it hurt. When I looked again, the boy was gone. I collapsed on the grass, and I cried and cried. I realised the whole thing must have been a dream.
“But when the sun came up in the morning I saw it. The boy’s bag. I hadn’t dreamt it at all. I rummaged through it. An end of bread. A piece of cheese. A book. A book with a name in it: Stuart Coulter.
“And then I realised that I felt different. I had so much energy. It was a strange feeling, but a fantastic one. And even more strange: I was hungry. I ripped off a hunk of bread. I broke the cheese into pieces and stuffed them in my mouth. They were the best things I had ever tasted. Does that seem odd to you? It won’t if you think about it. I had eaten nothing since I died.”
“So you were alive again?” says Hector.
“Yes.”
“Because you stole that boy’s life,” I say. “Stuart Coulter – he was dead. And now you’ve murdered my sister.”
“No,” says Lemur. “He was not dead! And I haven’t killed Kit either. I met him again. Honestly, I did. Look, I didn’t know how it had happened. But it was a chance for me and I had to take it. I found friends. I had people to play with and talk to again.”
“And you got this from Stuart Coulter. How can that work? What did you take?”
“What was Stuart Coulter like when you saw him again?”
Lemur looks at the ground. “An old man,” he says.
“He took his time,” says Hector.
“He’s a time thief,” I say.
Even Skooshie’s got it by now. He’s not impressed.
“So you nick time from people?” he says. “They go straight from being children to being old. And you use the time in between.”
Lemur nods.
“What happens when you’ve used up one person’s time?”
“I need to find someone else.”
“Like Kit.”
“Yes, like Kit.” He looks at me defiantly. “Why not Kit? I chose her for you. You’re always going on about how annoying she is.”
“We all go on about how annoying our brothers and sisters are! It doesn’t mean I said it was OK to make her disappear! Why did you pick on her?”
“It had to be someone who would come here and take part willingly. It had to happen here – like I told you. The ritual didn’t matter – we could have done anything. I just needed to have someone here – with me right on the spot where I died. And I couldn’t sacrifice any of you. So I persuaded Kit to come – it wasn’t hard. I knew she wouldn’t be able to resist being part of the gang.”
He means every word of this. And Kit’s gone.
“So you’ve kept going all that time and now you’re…” Hector does
a quick calculation in his head, “…168?”
“No,” says Lemur. “I’m still twelve.”
“You’re still twelve,” I repeat. “And you’ll never get any older?”
“That’s right.”
“So even though you make friends, you lose them all the time, because they grow up and you don’t.”
He nods, looking miserable for a minute.
“That’s going to happen again with us, you know, Lemur,” says Bru. “We’re going to get older.”
“No! You’re different. You’re the first people I’ve trusted enough to tell. I’m Lemur not Christy any more – you gave me that name! We can work out how to stay together. So that nothing ever changes. You can be like me! We’d never get any older, any of us – it would always be like this!”
No one knows what to say to this. Our silence throws Lemur.
“OK,” he says. “OK. The game’s a bogey, as Skooshie would say. I’ll bring Kit back and we’ll start again. With someone else. You’ll help me. C’mon.”
It’s Hector who says what everyone’s thinking. “We’re not going to help you do this, Lemur. It’s not right.”
“What kind of friends are you? I’d do it for you! Don’t we always stick together?
“None of us would ask you to do something like this,” says Bru. “Like Hector says, it’s just not right.”
“Well, I don’t need your help! Do you know that boy wasn’t missed when I used up his life? Nor were any of the others. Because that’s the clever thing. I take people and life just closes up around them. No one remembers they were ever born. No one misses them. That boy’s mother woke up the next day with no thought of him in her head. No one remembered me and now no one remembers them. Isn’t that funny? What happened to me, I can make happen to other people now.”
“You can’t tell us what to think!” I shout back.
“Oh, yes, I think you’ll find that I can, Midge. And when it happens, you’ll have no memory of Kit or any of this.”
“Why did you bother telling us then?” asks Bru. “Why not just make it happen so we don’t know? We just forget and everything goes on as normal?”
“Because I wanted you to know the whole story. I wanted you to understand what I need to do.”
“You want this to be our fault, not just yours.” It sounds like Skooshie speaks from bitter experience, like he’s very familiar with this approach of shared blame.
“Whatever happens now, you’ll share the responsbility. I can bring Kit back and we’ll find someone else – and you’ll remember everything that happens. Or, if it’s easier for you, I can make you forget and Kit will be gone. What are you going to choose?”
He makes it sound like Skooshie’s Game, like we have no option but to choose. That’s the rules. I have two thoughts. (1) I have to help Kit. (2) I really want to hit Lemur again.
I catch Hector’s eye. He puts his hand on my arm, either to stop me flying at Lemur or to reassure me, maybe both.
“Kit back. Then we’ll help you,” he says to Lemur. “You’re right. We need to stick together.”
Lemur grins. “You mean it? What about the rest of you?” he asks.
I nod. “Yes,” I say, maybe a bit too quickly.
“Me too,” says Bru.
“And me,” says Skooshie. He shoots his arm out, waiting for the rest of us to clap our hands on top of his.
But then the smile on Lemur’s flushed face fades.
“Do you think I don’t know that you’re lying? All you want to do is help Midge save Kit. You have no intention of helping me… I thought we would do anything for each other.”
Bru and Skooshie look at their feet. I can only glower at Lemur while Hector tries to convince him that we mean what we say. He’s not convincing anybody.
Lemur storms out of the den.
“What do we do now?” says Bru.
“We don’t panic,” says Hector firmly. “If we just stick together, we’re stronger than Lemur. He can’t make us forget.”
He can’t, can he?
26
When I wake up, I lie in bed, thinking about the night before. It was a long telling off. I think, not for the first time, that it must be quite good to be Skooshie – there are so many of them, his parents don’t really notice if he stays out a bit late. But my parents can concentrate all their attention on me – they’re always on my case. On the plus side, I don’t have to share a bedroom with three brothers, like Skooshie does. It is nice to have a room all to yourself.
My mum crashes in looking for clothes to wash. She picks things up from the floor and the chair, wrinkling her nose in disgust.
“You’ve been wearing these shorts for days. They can practically stand up on their own, they’re that dirty. I’m not going into the pockets – here, you clear them out.”
I wait until she’s gone before I sort through my stuff. There’s an unexpected treat there – a sherbet dip. Those don’t usually make it to the next day but perfect for breakfast! Yeah – I bought it at the garage on the way home last night – that made me even later getting back. I frown because there’s something nagging at the back of my mind. What was it the man at the garage said? He was surprised. “A pen? Do you want me to gift-wrap it for you as well?”
Why had I wanted a pen? What was it for? I turn the sherbet dip round and that’s when I notice the big black letters written on the back.
***
I bump into Bru – literally – as I sprint out of our flats to go and find him.
“Hiya,” he says. “Is it today we’re going to the park? I’ve got some money – maybe we could scrape together enough between us for a round of pitch and putt?”
“C’mon,” I say. “We need to get to the den.”
The others are deep in conversation when we get there.
“Hey!” calls Lemur. “What took you so long? We’re just wondering if it would be possible to get into Queen’s Park after dark? Or we could hang about in the bushes as it gets dark and get ourselves locked in!” He’s loud and jumping about the place. There’s something odd about it, like he’s had too much sugar or he’s trying too hard.
“I’ve got a sister,” I say, interrupting him. “Her name’s Kit. She’s two years younger than me. She’s small, with brown hair, quite annoying.”
“Midge, if you’re going to have an imaginary family member, go for a brother. An older brother – much better than a sister. That’d be a real pain.”
“I do have a sister, Hector. She calls you ‘the Inspector’ and Skooshie ‘Stookie’. She calls Bru ‘Bru’ – I think she likes him. She doesn’t like Lemur – she’s always been a bit suspicious of him. And she was right to be.”
“What?” says Lemur. “Are you feeling all right, Midge? Has the heat got to your head?”
“Think.” I am looking at them – Bru, Hector, Skooshie. I am trying hard not to shout. “Please think. D’you not remember when she was about five and she decided to leave home and she was heading off with her wee bag packed but the van arrived so she decided to stay, just till the next day?”
“Pal,” Bru has his arm round my shoulder, trying to calm me down. “We’re just not finding it that funny.” I shake him off furiously.
“Kit, Kit, Kit – short for Kirsty. She decided she needed a nickname because we all had one. You suggested ‘Krusty’, Skooshie, and she hit you. You must remember!”
Still blank expressions on their faces.
“Or the time she spent all the money for my birthday present on herself? She bought a big box of chocolates, which she kept. And the only thing she got me was…”
“A sherbet dip!” Hector and Bru yell at the same time as I wave the packet in front of them.
“YES!” I thrust the sherbet in Lemur’s direction. It’s like we’re in court and I’m producing the final bit of evidence that shows what a liar he is.
“Do you remember what Lemur said to us? That we’d forget it all. I bought this last night on the way home
– I can’t see one without thinking of Kit. And I wrote on the back. Look.”
I hold it out. In big accusing letters:
SAVE KIT – LEMUR LIES.
Lemur looks at me with a kind of grudging respect. Then he says, “Actually I’ve never lied to you. You’re my friends. I just didn’t tell you the whole truth till now.”
He sits down on the cushions, slumps against the tree. “If I get you Kit back, I won’t have long. Can’t you see that? Didn’t you see how tired and pale I got before the ritual? I’d run out of time. But look at me now – I’m just like you. I need to do it. It’s the only way.”
Skooshie goes to sit down on one of the drums on the other side of the den. He stops himself, then steps back. It’s clear he means to give the middle of the den a very wide berth.
“It’s all right, Skoosh,” says Lemur. “Nothing’s going to happen to you.”
“I just thought – you know – we’ve been standing on the spot for months and we could’ve disappeared at any time?”
“No. I need to make it happen. It only works when I decide to take your time.”
“Nick,” I say. “Not take. Don’t try and pretend it’s not wrong.”
“Is it wrong?” says Lemur. “It doesn’t hurt them.”
I’m looking at him and I’m wondering where Lemur went. The old Lemur, the one who captained us to our famous footballing victory at the recs, who jumped up and down with delight when he watched The Flashing Blade, who helped us get revenge on Mrs Whistle-Blower for Bru, who planked a ball in Cathkin so we could play on the pitch. It doesn’t feel like he’s here any more either.
You see, what I can’t get out of my head is all the lost stories. Stuart Coulter’s, Kit’s. The others’ – how many others? The things they were going to do. The things that would have happened to them. The people they were going to be.
Lemur’s not seeing any of that. He asked us to imagine what it was like for him but I don’t think he has at any time imagined what it was like for those other children. He needs to.