Incurable

by John Marsden

  The man was following Gavin. I set out on a different route, to meet Gavin at the fountain. I don’t think the guy saw me at any stage. He’d somehow hidden the knife again. I don’t know how he did that, unless it was one of those trick knives that retract into the shaft. I guess he could have shoved it into his tracksuit pocket, but he’d want to be careful. He was gaining on Gavin. Gavin reached the fountain about three seconds before me, chucked a right, and went down another path, then immediately charged off to the left. I followed him. I’d say the guy was about three seconds behind.

  Gavin had disappeared again, behind one of the trees. I chose a tree at random, knowing the guy was too close and he’d see me for sure. But I was close to my limit and couldn’t do much else. I did at least choose the widest tree I could find, a big pine.

  We started another one of those childhood games, except that I don’t think this one has a name, just me circling the trunk, and him doing the same, me trying not to meet, him trying very hard to get closely acquainted. It was bluff and double bluff. Rock scissors paper, trying to anticipate what your opponent will do. I edged around to my right, then looked back and realised he was following. I went faster, and nearly ran into him as he came the other way. He had the knife again, but instead of stabbing with it, he tried to grab me with his free hand while pulling back the hand with the knife, so that he’d get velocity. I pulled my hand away, shrank back, then ran to the next tree, round the other side of it. The game continued. This tree was much thinner, so there wasn’t much room for bluffing and counter-bluffing. It was just me spinning around the tree, trying to keep away from his hands. Then, as he changed direction again, I jumped back and raced to another tree. All the time I was thinking that someone would come along, see what was happening, intervene, save us. This seemed like the quietest park I’d ever been in.

  Suddenly, like a wild little creature from the forest, Gavin raced up, kicked for the man’s balls, missed, but by a miracle got the knife instead. It spun through the air and bounced on the bitumen path. But it was too close to the guy for either of us to risk diving at it. Gavin had already taken off again so I followed him, the man losing a couple of seconds as he got his knife back.

  I’d only looked into his face for a second, but I thought I would remember it forever. The heavy eyelids, the thin eyebrows, the sharp nose, the badly shaved chin, but above all, the expression of cold hatred or, even worse, of no feeling at all. The total focus on one objective, getting rid of two people, and the sense that, nothing else existed, everything else in the world could take care of itself until this mission was accomplished. He was the ugliest, most horrible human being I had ever seen, but I guess I was biased by the fact that he was trying to kill us. If he’d been collecting for the Salvos I might have felt differently. If he’d been bending over me in hospital administering life-saving antibiotics . . . but no, I felt sickened at the image. That wasn’t in his face, kindness wasn’t possible for him.

  Yet we were in a dance. The sun suddenly spread light over the whole park and over the three of us. There was no real warmth in it, but it felt warmer than the shade we’d been in, the shade of the clouds. And I was plenty hot enough. So we kept dancing. Gavin ran across the stage, from tree to tree, but in the distance. I couldn’t work out how he’d got so far ahead. But it looked like he was doubling back towards the road we’d crossed a few minutes before. I hoped so. Any place where we could find humans was OK with me. His instincts, to run and hide, to be furtive, were not working well for us.

  Like I said, the sun was out, but we were dancing in the dark. Except that the darkness was the mystery of what was happening now, and what would happen in the future. Who was this man? Why was he doing this? Would we still be alive in one minute, in five minutes, in a couple of hours? The questions were in my head instinctively as I ran through the trees, even though I had no time to formulate them, and certainly no time to think of answers.

  I set out after Gavin. He was the leader of this dance. I had a sudden wave of fury that he was deaf. If he’d had hearing, this whole thing could have been resolved ten minutes ago. I would have shouted to him, ‘Go to the footballers!’ But he hadn’t figured that out, and because he was deaf he couldn’t hear it from me. All I could do was chase him, and at the same time try to keep myself alive.

  The man chased Gavin too. I’m not sure if that was a logical thing to do, because I was closer. If he was going to kill Gavin, then the smart thing would be to kill me as well, and it didn’t really matter who he got first. But logic had gone out the window. I guess his primary target had always been Gavin. His focus was still on him, and he was gradually adjusting to my being in the picture.

  So we both chased the little lonely lost boy. He reached the end of the park and turned left along the footpath for about fifty metres, while I prayed that he would keep going into a more public area, or that a whole crowd of people would suddenly emerge so he could run right into the middle of them. Where was everybody? It was a Saturday morning for God’s sake! I guess they were shopping or at sport or sleeping in. They were probably the three choices for the teenagers. Plus it wasn’t a very nice day, so that probably kept people away.

  To my horror Gavin did what I suppose he could be counted upon to do: the worst thing possible. He turned left again and raced into the thickest patch of trees, the wildest and most remote corner of the park.

  By then, the man was ahead of me. We had hit the footpath at different angles, and his had been better than mine, so if I had run the adjacent and the opposite, he had run the hypotenuse. Life’s just all triangles. His route brought him out about ten metres ahead of me, onto the concrete. Suddenly I was in the weird position of chasing the guy with the knife, not knowing what I would do if I caught him. I probably would have caught him too. But I didn’t dare to. I’m fairly strong, but I didn’t think I was strong enough for him. If I tackled him from behind, I might bring him down. He might knock himself out on the footpath. But there was no guarantee of that. He could just as easily roll over on top of me and stab me to death. He could hear me coming, turn, and let me run onto the knife. Even as we ran, I was terrified that he would turn suddenly and I would be onto the knife before I could stop myself. The gap wasn’t really as close as that. But if he turned and came at me, it would be a close thing. I would have to go left or right, or turn around, and in doing any of those things I would lose a split second, and he would be so close then that I wouldn’t have put a dollar on my own chances.

  But he didn’t turn around. He wanted Gavin.

  The cruellest thing of all happened then. A car came along the road. I thought it was unlucky that there was only one. He was going the same way we were, and I didn’t hear him until he was fairly close. By then we were near the point where Gavin had plunged off the path. I had a terrible choice. Should I swerve onto the road and force the car to stop? If I did, by the time the driver got out and I explained what was happening, the man with the knife would have plenty of time to run into the trees, find Gavin, and kill him while I was still out on the road talking.

  I could wave my hand to stop the car and at the same time keep running. Or I could ignore the car and concentrate on the man and Gavin.

  With only a second to choose I waved my hand and veered, so that I was running along the edge of the gutter, trying to get the best of both worlds.

  The car drove right on past. I had a glimpse of the driver, and he was talking on his mobile phone. He didn’t even see me.

  The man with the knife chucked a hard left, and went into the trees. I had to follow. It was dense in there, pretty really, like a European forest, or so I’d imagine, never having been in one. It was very quiet. The ground was sodden with dead leaves, and I tried to see any possible Gavin tracks, where he might have left the little bitumen path and headed into the trees.

  Again, I didn’t know what to do. Should I follow the man? Or should I go off on a different tangent and look for Gavin myself, and gamble that I would f
ind him before the man did? If I followed the man and he found Gavin, he could have killed Gavin by the time I caught up with them. One violent stab to the heart would be all it took. Even if I threw myself on them before he had stabbed, what guarantee did that give? What hope did I have of holding his arm, of wrestling with him, of overpowering him?

  Yet it seemed impossibly cold and heartless to leave him and go in a different direction.

  As I thought about this, the man did what I had feared while we were running along the street. He turned suddenly and came straight back at me, at full speed, with the knife held in front of him. He wanted to run me through. I had another perfect mental photograph of his face. His eyes were so narrow that they might as well have been closed. His top lip was drawn back from his teeth, which made his teeth look like fangs. I think he was totally focused on killing me, and no other thought was in his mind, except of course the other one that said, ‘Kill Gavin.’ I could sympathise with that as there were moments when I’d felt the same way, but this man was taking it too far.

  I swerved left, leaving the path. Right away, though, my legs were slowed by wet leaves. There were lots of conifers in this part of the park, but a lot of deciduous trees too, and they had shed leaves big-time. I was panting like crazy by now, and thinking that surely Gavin, even Gavin, could hear my fear, and then I had a quick thought about his terror, the special fear that comes with silence. The feeling he must have, hiding behind a tree and not knowing whether the man might appear beside him with knife raised. For Gavin, there would be no warning. Unless he could smell the man. But surely if he was smelling anything right now it would be my fear. People say cattle and dogs can smell fear. Maybe Gavin could do the same. If so, the smell of me must be filling his nostrils and overpowering his sense of smell, because I was terrified. This whole thing was totally inexplicable to me, and I guess that added to the fear. ‘May fears always have names . . .’ That’s from a poem I once read. This fear had a name, it was ‘man trying to kill us with knife’, but I needed more information. Who the hell was he? Had Gavin done something terrible to him? Surely not. I know I whinge about Gavin all the time, and it might give a false impression of him, because the truth is that he’s a pretty sweet kid in many ways. He really loves animals, which made the whole thing with Mark’s neighbours’ cat so hard to understand, but he loves people too, only they don’t always give him a chance to show it. If you saw the way he hangs around Homer, and his constant attempts to guess what Homer might want when he’s doing any work at my place . . . he gets him tools and holds the other end of things and rides on the back of Homer’s bike without a word of complaint (he hates riding on the back of my bike). If I cook something, all he wants is to take pieces outside to feed to Homer, even more than he wants to eat it himself. And of course he never gets any argument from Homer on that one.

  No-one in his right mind would want to kill Gavin.

  So, this guy wasn’t in his right mind.

  That face, the pure focus on killing, the light of murder shining from him, the devotion to putting a knife through me and then through Gavin: he had to be totally psycho.

  I skidded around a bush and for a moment I was out of his sight. I thought of doing a quick zig but decided on a zag instead. God, it’s awful when your entire existence depends on whether you zig or zag. I was half trying to avoid the man and half looking for Gavin. I saw the fountain, closer than I’d expected, and sprinted back towards it, I’m not sure why. It was like that was the centre of the park. I suppose you are automatically drawn to the centre of everything. And maybe Gavin would be drawn to it too.

  I got to it and ran around the side. Circumnavigation. Christ there he was. In the middle of the bloody fountain! Trying to be a cherub. Well, he would have needed more than a harp and a pair of wings. It was a pretty impressive fountain, with some old guy, his arms and legs spread out, holding a sceptre or a spear or something. Gavin had wet legs up to his knees, and he was clinging to the old guy like he was clinging to life itself. It actually wasn’t a bad hiding place because someone small like Gavin, so long as he saw the man coming, could clamber around from side to side and even wriggle down into a spot deep inside the arms where I think he would have been well and truly hidden. The trouble was that instead of choosing the safe option, Gavin had popped up and was waving to me. He got my attention but he also got the attention of the man with the knife.

  Things happened kind of fast from then on. The man hesitated but he was obviously going to wade across the pool. Gavin turned around to look at him. I didn’t think Gavin could get down from the fountain and run through the water with his little legs in time to get away from the man. So I used the statue for cover and started into the pool. Freezing cold it was too. Fm surprised it didn’t turn me to stone like it had the statue. But I ploughed fast through the water. Jumping in that quickly had given me a lead over the man, although I didn’t realise it until I saw him again. He had only just got in and I was nearly at the left leg. Then he saw me and that revved him up a bit. He started coming at me like a hippo on heat. Not that I’ve ever seen a hippo on heat but I’ve got an imagination. Gavin had gone up the statue instead of down. I wasn’t sure about that. He was pinning a lot of faith in this statue. But I realised that it had possibilities. The guy could chase us all over the statue but if he had to hang on with one hand while he stabbed at us with the other, we might be able to get out of his reach. We just had to be careful not to get trapped at the ends of the arms. And sooner or later someone had to come along. Didn’t they?

  So I climbed too. But I was surprised at how difficult it was. Wet and slippery, green with slime and moss, and I guess a bit of pigeon poo too. It didn’t compare to the cliff on Tailor’s Stitch but I struggled to get a grip. I was just above the old man’s rock knee when the guy with the knife lunged at me. He grabbed my ankle with a grip that clamped me straight to the spot. I kicked out and his grip slipped a little, so that he had my foot rather than my ankle. I kicked again and my wet shoe came off, taking his hand with it. I climbed then, climbed like a professional fountain climber, motivated by terror, and reached the chest in about two seconds flat. I probably set a record for statue climbing.

  The guy wasn’t far behind me though. Gavin manoeuvred himself around to the back where I couldn’t see him but that was OK as I thought he was fairly safe there. I went higher, up to the neck and then onto the beard, and sat looking down at the guy. I thought I was in a good position. If he came up there I could kick out and knock the knife from his hand, if not dislodge him as well. I glanced at the pocked and lined face of the statue. His blind eyes stared out at the park, at the sky, at nothing. Yet I felt there was wisdom in those eyes. Maybe I could trust my life to him. I peered around the back and could just see Gavin’s hand and a part of his arm. I looked down again and saw the man. He was going after Gavin, seemed like, edging around the front of the statue. He was like a blot on the huge old figure, like a moving cancer. I wondered how God could create people like Robyn and Fi and Lee and Homer, who were good people, always trying to do their best, and also create people like this, who wanted only to destroy. And he was dangerously close to doing that. I don’t think Gavin realised how close he was, because as I glanced down again Gavin came into view, doing a traverse around the back of the statue until he was directly underneath me.

  He looked up and saw me, and I waved to him to come up, and at the same time started going down to help him. I guess I distracted him for that moment and suddenly the man’s hand came around the side of the fountain and grabbed Gavin’s ankle in the same vice grip that I’d felt only a minute or two before. Gavin looked like he’d got 240 volts up his bum. He arched his back and nearly lost his grip. For a moment he did a different kind of dance to the earlier one through the park; this time he waved his arms and kicked out with his free leg and waggled his head frantically, trying to keep his balance. The guy started dragging at him. I couldn’t even see the man, could only see his hand and most of h
is arm, but I could see the pressure mount as Gavin got drawn away. He wrapped both hands around a knobbly bit of the statue, a kind of tree stump that the giant was leaning against, and he hung on for dear life, literally.

  By then I was nearly at his level, descending fast and furious. That practice on the cliff had definitely helped, although I almost slipped and crashed down at one point. Still, on the scale of things that had happened to me, I thought that rated pretty low. I was on a route that took me out of sight of Gavin, pretty much, because I wanted to get around the other side. But he grunted, ‘Help me, Ellie,’ in one of the clearest statements I’d ever heard him make. It was a grunt, but one that would have gladdened the heart of any Speech and Drama teacher. Then I heard him scream.

  Funny, I thought I’d been going fast before that, but I’d been shuffling along at the pace of a ute with thirty bales of hay. I know that because when I accelerated I could feel the wind through my hair. Almost. I got around the side of that fountain and launched myself onto the guy with a burning ambition: ‘Kill him.’

  I think from my limited knowledge that when you fight someone who wants to kill you, you’re at a bit of a disadvantage. His motivation is stronger than yours. He wants to save himself from being killed, plus he wants to kill you. You only want to save yourself. But that’s not enough. He’s got double the drive that you have. So you have to want to kill him too. Otherwise your energy won’t be as good. It’s horrible but it’s true. So I developed in that instant, from nowhere except my war experience, a total focus on ending his life right there in the cold waters of the fountain.

  He had stabbed Gavin in the leg, to make him let go of the knobbly bit he was hanging on to, and so the first thing I saw was blood down the man’s arm and on the knife and dripping into the water. At the same time he had heard me coming so he was expecting me, and he let go of Gavin and turned to take care of me. At least I’d taken the heat off Gavin for a moment. Now all I had to do was to kill this person. Our pleasant Saturday morning stroll through the park, towards a meeting that should have been wonderful, had turned into this: me intent on an act of homicide, having no greater purpose in life than to kill another human being.