Chris nodded.
Their dad took a hammer and a small chisel, and started chipping away the plaster, then raked out the mortar between the bricks. He chose the higher of the two holes, because when he’d stood on a chair and listened at the wall, it sounded like the tapping was coming from there rather than the closed-up fireplace below. He stopped every now and then, and they took turns to get onto the chair and listen to the bird. But the sounds it made were becoming painful to hear.
“We’re scaring it,” said Chris, and he put his hands over his ears to block the noise out.
As their dad loosened the last of the bricks, the noises became more desperate—as though something was beating its life out against the other side of the wall—right up to the moment before the hole through was finally made. As the soot of years cascaded out of it like a dirty river of muck and twigs, spilling in a rush onto the sheet on the floor and filling the air with acrid black dust, the noise simply stopped. When everything had settled, there was only a breath of chilly air from the hole—far colder than the day outside.
A breath of chilly air, and absolute silence.
Their dad peered in—looked up, looked down.
“It’s gone,” he said. “Must have just needed the noise we made to get it going.”
He shone a flashlight in just to be certain it had left, but there was nothing there. Then they saw him reach in and bring something down, only it wasn’t a bird he held in his hand.
It was a small leather boot.
The leather was biscuit dry, scuffed and stained with rain and soot. It still had the laces in. He climbed down off the chair and they all looked at it. It was about the size of Chris’s foot—they measured the two of them together and they were the same.
“It was probably in there for luck,” said their dad. “You find things in old chimneys.”
But something about that just didn’t seem right to Sara. It was something about the silence and the cold air—there was nothing lucky about that. She looked up at the ragged hole. It was nearer the ceiling than the floor.
“Even up there? How would they get it right up there?”
But her dad was pulling the edges of the decorating sheet together and making a pile of the dirt and soot. He wasn’t listening. There was dirt and soot everywhere—on their faces, in their hair, down their necks. It covered everything. They could even taste it, like grit between their teeth. It tasted bitter, like the smell of the chimney.
As it was a hot day, Sara put up the orange kiddie pool in the yard and filled it with warm water. While their dad was sorting out the mess in the room, she washed Chris in it: put the watering can and then the hose on him—made rainbows with her finger over the end. They tried to get the dog in as well—that was always a good game; “soak the dog” they called it—but he wouldn’t come near them and that was odd. He slunk away. Even when Sara picked him up and tried to put him in with Chris, he twisted wildly in her arms and bit her so that she dropped him. He’d never done that before. He wouldn’t come back to her either.
She ran her hand under the tap in the kitchen, then went upstairs and had a shower. As she dried her hair, she looked down from the window onto the yard. Chris was still in the pool, but he was playing pretend now—she could see him talking to someone who wasn’t there, tipping the watering can high over their head as well as his own.
She put a Band-Aid on her hand and went back down to the yard, told him to get out of the pool while she tipped the dirty water away. She filled it with clean water, but it didn’t seem to matter how often she changed it, the water ended up just as full of soot. She couldn’t figure out where it was all coming from. Chris didn’t make it easy for her either. He ran in and out of the water the whole time like a wild thing—showing off just like he did when he had a friend around to play. She didn’t like him very much when he was like that, and he was like it all day. He ran in and out of the house so often. There were lines of wet footprints up the path and across the tiles of the kitchen floor. She could see where he’d only bothered to put one of his trainers on, because she could make out the two lines of wet footprints—one foot bare, one foot shod. She gave up even trying to mop them up. At the end of the day when he came in at last, she put a cloth over them all and the cloth came away dark with soot.
In fact, she couldn’t get any real sense out of him all day. He took himself into corners and carried on his pretend game there, talking to himself. Whenever she came too close, he’d stop and wait until she’d left before he’d start it again, and she’d hear him giggle as she walked off, as though he was laughing at her with someone else. Even when he came in, he was like that.
Their dad had tidied Chris’s bedroom—stacked the bricks back into the hole in the chimney. He said he’d put some mortar in them when he could, but Chris didn’t seem to mind. Long after they’d put him to bed they could still hear him jumping around in his room. He made so much noise that Sara went up to tell him to quiet down. She found him breathless and red-faced. All the thumping had loosened even more soot from the chimney. It was on the carpet and over his bed. There were dirty handprints of it on the white of his pillow.
And there was something else wrong too, not just with Chris. They couldn’t get the dog to come back into the house at the end of the day; he just wouldn’t do it. As it was warm, they put his basket and water bowl by the back door and left him in the yard with the porch light on. But when Sara looked out the window as she went to bed, she couldn’t see him anywhere.
* * *
Long into the night, she was woken up by the sound of Chris still playing—he was talking to himself too, and that was really annoying. She could hear him through the wall. She pulled the bedclothes over her head, but at last it was too much for her to get any sleep, and she got up and went in to him. He was running around, his toys spread all over the floor. He’d managed to get soot on them too, and his pajamas.
“You need to get to sleep,” she said, and she put him in his bed, but he looked up at her, all excitable and grinning, so pleased with himself, and the moment she was out of the door she heard him get out of bed, laughing and giggling.
“Shut up!” she snapped, and closed the door behind her.
* * *
In the morning, they couldn’t find the dog at all. There was no sign of him, and that was a worry. He hadn’t learned this house yet—not like the old one—and it backed onto open fields. There was a wall and a small fence, but if he’d gotten through that, he could be anywhere, and beyond the fields was an old quarry—it was like half a hillside with a dead drop, straight down.
And if that wasn’t bad enough, there was Chris.
Sara and Dad just didn’t know what had gotten into him, but he must have been awake the whole night. They found him sitting on the floor of his room—it was a complete mess. Everything that could be pulled out and played with had been pulled out and left over the floor. He was red-eyed, almost weeping with exhaustion, and his face was so pale. When they asked him what on earth was the matter; he just wouldn’t tell them. But he looked so frightened. He bit his lip and shook his head, like it was a secret that wasn’t to be told. He’d gotten soot everywhere. When Sara helped him out of his pajama top, he’d gotten it up his arms too, like big pinch marks on his skin. He wouldn’t eat any breakfast either, but when they were clearing up afterward, they found him trying to take food from the kitchen and hide it in his room.
It didn’t make any sense.
When Sara went into her own room, she found he’d been in there too—in her drawer. There were sooty finger marks over all her things. He had no business being there. There were finger marks on the towels in the bathroom as well. There was soot, and the smell of the chimney, everywhere.
But for the moment, she was more worried about the dog.
She said she’d take Chris with her and go looking for him—thought that doing that might calm him down. Their dad told her that if they were going to go across the fields, she had to be
careful of the quarry, and she wasn’t to let Chris go anywhere near the edge. She took the leash and they tried the streets in front of the house first—but no one had seen the dog. Chris hardly said a word the whole time, and when he did it was only to mumble. Sara had to put her ear close to even hear him. But he walked right next to her and held on to her so tightly, and he hardly ever did that. A couple of times it felt to her like he was actually trying to hide behind her, but when she bent down and looked into his face and asked him, “What’s wrong, Chrissy?” he just went very quiet, and wouldn’t look at her.
At last, there was nowhere else to search for the dog but across the fields at the back. The grass was waist high there, and Sara stood in the middle of it—the leash in her hand—shouting the little dog’s name over and over again. But he didn’t come, and when she stopped and listened, all she could hear was the sound of the grass moving in the warm breeze. Chris stood silent as a ghost next to her.
They were getting closer to the quarry now—a couple of ruined sheds stood at the edge of the field. Neither had a roof or a door, and she looked in them, but there was no sign of the dog. Chris followed her the whole time, never more than inches away. He stood by the doorway when she went in, but his eyes were always on the field outside. Then all of a sudden he caught hold of her hand.
“Make him go away,” he whispered. “I don’t want to play with him anymore. Make him go away!”
“Who go away?” she said.
“Him,” he whispered.
She looked out through the door.
“There’s nobody there, Chris.”
She bent down to him.
“Is someone at school bothering you?”
His face creased into tears, then he went quite rigid, absolutely white, his eyes fixed on the empty doorway behind her. No matter how much she tried to soothe him, he wouldn’t say a word.
“You’ve still got soot on you,” she said gently.
He had a little smudge of it down his cheek that she hadn’t noticed until then. She licked her finger and wiped it off. She meant it kindly, but it only made him cry even more. Then, over his shoulder through the open doorway, she saw the dog in the long grass.
“It’s Barney!” she said.
She took off, shouting the dog’s name. She saw him turn and look at her. He hesitated, as though torn between obedience and fear, then bolted back into the long grass. By the time she’d given up chasing him, she was almost across the other side of the field. Hot and breathless, she looked back at the ruined sheds. From where she was now, she saw with alarm just how close they were to the twisted wire fence and the quarry drop, and she couldn’t see Chris anymore.
As she started back toward the sheds she heard a cry, and her stomach tightened.
“Chris!”
She broke into a run, stumbling on the uneven ground and almost falling into the doorway where she’d left him, but he wasn’t there. Beside herself, she ran out and along the edge of the wire fence, looking down the dead drop into the crevices and the rocks and brambles below.
“Chris! Chris!”
Then, from behind her, she heard him laughing. She turned and saw him climbing back from underneath the wire. He was laughing at her like it was the best joke ever.
She was so angry.
“Don’t ever do that again!” she shouted, and she shook him hard.
But he just laughed more.
She caught hold of his wrist and jerked him back toward the house, and then she saw that he must have hit his head on something—on a rock or a stone—because there was a big bruise and it was bleeding, and all her anger just evaporated in that single moment.
“What have you done, Chrissy?”
He just laughed at her again. He pulled himself away from her hands and ran circles through the long grass until he fell down breathless on his back. He couldn’t have been more different from how he’d been earlier. She was really worried then, that he must have hurt himself—he wouldn’t even talk right either; he put on a silly, squeaky little voice.
“Talk properly, Chris,” she said.
But he just laughed and ran away again.
Eventually she got him back to the house and he sat quietly enough while their dad looked at his head. Chris didn’t say anything at all as the bruise and cut were washed clean, he just held on to their dad’s hand and smiled at him, and their dad ruffled his hair and said he was a real tough nut.
But her dad was furious with her—said anything could have happened, said that he’d told her to take care and this was what she’d done. And he was right, he had told her, but it all seemed so unfair because it was Chris who’d climbed under the wire. It was his stupid joke that had gotten him hurt.
Their dad put Chris on the sofa with a blanket over him, then sat with his arm around him and read to him from one of the picture books he had gotten for his birthday. There didn’t seem that much wrong with him now, and though her dad never saw him do it, every time Chris caught Sara’s eye he’d smirk at her. It was really unpleasant, and so unlike him, but she couldn’t say anything about it because it had been her fault he’d gotten hurt in the first place, and her dad had already had a go at her once.
So she went back out into the field to look for the dog—took his empty dinner bowl and rattled dry biscuits in it, but if he heard it, he didn’t come. She left the bowl by the back door just in case.
Their dad worked shifts. By the time she’d gotten back from the field, he had already changed into his work clothes. He’d left Chris on the sofa with the blanket and his books. He gave her a hug and a kiss, and then he was gone.
When the door closed behind him, the house felt so empty. Not like it normally did. It wasn’t just the dog not being there, it was something else—something that felt wrong in the house—and she couldn’t say what that was. It might have had to do with the hole in the chimney, because the house felt cold and it smelled of soot.
Her dad had left the cloth and the bowl of water he’d used to clean up Chris on the draining board. She tipped the water into the sink and there was even soot in that.
She got on and made some lunch. They sat at the kitchen table and ate it, but Chris shoved the food into his mouth with both hands like a little animal. He looked up and stopped mid-movement when he realized she was staring at him. His eyes not leaving her, he slowly picked up the fork and used that, but he did it as though he wasn’t sure how to.
Then he grinned at her—a big white-toothed grin.
“Don’t do that, Chris,” she said.
But he only grinned even more, and she wanted her dad to come back home because she didn’t like being on her own looking after him, not like this.
It was as though he was playing a game with her.
He followed her around all day, but he never said anything. She’d look up and find him watching her—standing at her bedroom door looking in at her. She tried to ignore him, to pretend he wasn’t there, but that made no difference. And when she got angry with him, he just laughed at her. It didn’t matter what she said or did. There was nowhere in the house that he didn’t follow her. Even if she closed a door, she could hear him standing outside it, waiting.
She tried to call her dad at work on his cell phone, but he didn’t pick up.
There was nothing for her to do but watch the clock until she could get Chris into bed, and then her dad could sort it all out in the morning.
He didn’t want to go to bed, though, and she didn’t know what to do. But he stayed upstairs and that was something. Finally she couldn’t hear him moving around and she went quietly up to his room so as not to wake him. But he wasn’t asleep.
He was lying on the bed in his pajamas, and he grinned at her when she came in. She looked at all the toys strewn across the floor.
“You go to sleep now, Chris,” she said.
She tucked his duvet around him, and as she looked into his face, it was almost as though it wasn’t him, as though another boy was looking at her out of
his eyes.
As she bent over him he reached up and, putting his arms around her neck, he kissed her hard on her mouth. She pulled herself away, wiping her lips and looking at him, angry and offended, but he only grinned at her.
His kiss had tasted acrid and bitter.
She stood wiping her mouth with the back of her hand. As she did, she could see the reflection of her face in the mirror beside his bed—
and her lips were smudged with soot.
“I’m not listening,” the boy said. “I’m not listening anymore. Not to you, not to your stupid stories.”
He hadn’t meant to listen to that one either, had tried not to, but it had just rolled over him, fixed him to the spot, and he’d been standing in the yard, feeling the warmth of the sunny day, the breeze, hearing the whisper of the long grass in the field behind the house. He could taste the bitterness of the kiss in his mouth.
He turned his back on the man and walked deliberately away along the platform. This time he’d stay there at the end of it, come what may—he’d just wait for the train. That’s all he had to do—wait for the train. The man didn’t matter; he didn’t have to talk to him.
There was a frost now. The boy could see it for sure, sparkling on the concrete in the white-yellow of the station lamps. He stood in the last cone of light, looking at it. Only once did he glance back down the platform to the bench. The man was feeding the little dog another biscuit, but, as though he’d felt the boy’s glance, he turned and looked straight back at him.
The man was like that, turned and looking toward the boy, when without so much as a warning, not so much as even a flicker, the station lamps went out.
Pik.
For a moment there was a tiny, diminishing glow inside their glass covers, and then nothing, just darkness. The boy couldn’t even see the edge of the platform. The only light that was left was the lantern on the ground between the old man’s feet. The man was lit by it, still turned and looking at the boy—like a small painted picture surrounded by darkness. Then the man turned away.
The Wrong Train Page 9