Move

by Conor Kostick

  ‘Your mother is suffocating you, but it’s your own fault. How could you show ingratitude to her, after all the time and money she has given to making your life as full as possible? Don’t you appreciate all her sacrifices?’

  ‘It’s you, isn’t it? The ghost.’ She was nearly as afraid as the dog was. ‘Your eyes. It’s true, about the eyes.’

  ‘Listen to me! You’ll never love or be loved. That’s the cost of your fooling around on the boat. Your bones will grow cold alone. Yes people will display consideration, but they won’t love the girl you really are, because they’ve never seen her and never will see her. All they will see is a plastic foot and a poor injured girl. Forget about children, forget about a husband. Boyfriends, yes, but what kind of sick boy wants a girl like you? Answer: those who can’t get a fully formed girl. The rejects and the helpless, equally deformed in their own way, but on the inside. You could never love them, so you are caught. Be pitied or do the pitying, but never a match.’

  At first, I made some progress. She began to open, a tear coming to her eyes, but slowly she composed herself, forcing me out.

  ‘Come on, Rascal.’

  She tugged at the lead and turned back towards her house, moving at a brisk limp.

  Very well, if the thin blade had not worked. I would try the hammer.

  ‘You love your dog.’ It was a statement. ‘Shame that he does not love you enough.’ She could move fast. I had to trot to keep up. A flick of my foot sent the terrier into the wall and I pounced on it, pinning it by the throat, its feet scrabbling for purchase on the pavement.

  ‘What are you doing? Let go of him!’

  Good, she was terrified.

  The dog gave up, no longer even whimpering, limp in my hand, while a stream of urine flowed to the gutter. We looked at each other a long time, the dog and I. The dog could not name its fear, but felt it as a dark shadow, filling its world like a bank of cloud covering the sky. When I stood up the dog was dead.

  ‘Rascal? Oh my God, you’ve killed him!’

  She was crying, bent over the limp body and already I could fill myself on her sorrow and loneliness. Fill myself? Never. It was not possible. But the juice tasted good. Succulent human feelings were far more satisfying than those of animals. Since she was bent down over the dog, it was easy for me to grab her by the throat and press her against the wall. Her legs slipped from under her, and her pink cotton tracksuit bottoms were now soaked and dirty from the last emissions of her pet. Would she wet herself with fear also? A touch of shame would be a pleasant addition to the fear I was consuming. Horror, shame and sorrow. It was a joy to be alive again and what’s more, young.

  When I eased the pressure on her throat she broke and ran. Exactly as I had hoped. Eating a human being was not like eating a dog. There was a lot more to unravel. Right now I had a hook to her insides, wounded and raw. The more she ran, the more she weakened, me a step or two behind her the slapping of my feet just loud enough to keep spurring her on, in her clanky way. The rather pathetic imbalance to her motion made me chuckle.

  Across the road we ran, heedless of traffic, past a chip shop. For a moment, she paused. Would she seek out other human beings? Yes. In she went, panting, cold, afraid, heartbeat already dangerously erratic.

  Four young girls, dressed in loud primary colours, were waiting for their food. They had been laughing and shouting as we came in. Now they fell silent and stared.

  Tearstained and in odorous tracksuit bottoms, she was a mess, and she was aware of it from the silver reflections of the counter.

  ‘Call the police. He’s trying to kill me. He killed my dog,’ she panted.

  This immediately made them all afraid too, I was gobbling as fast as I could and there was more coming all the while, especially when I turned my gaze upon them. The smallest and bravest of them got a pink phone out of her pocket.

  ‘Drop it.’

  The phone clattered on the shiny white tiles.

  Without looking, I reached behind me and turned the sign in the door window from ‘open’ to ‘closed’. This number of young human beings was good, manageable. Five inexperienced girls and a boy not much older; he was standing behind the counter, mouth open.

  ‘Turn up the cookers, all of them. All the way.’ He succumbed and moved around the room to obey me.

  ‘Who has a match?’ This I asked aloud to help them understand what lay ahead. Before I left their burnt bodies here, I wanted to have devoured them completely and thus I needed their limited imaginations to anticipate the horror.

  ‘Help,’ whispered the oldest of the girls, about twelve years I would guess.

  ‘Stand still,’ I told her and turned back to my real target. ‘See what you’ve done? You’ve destroyed these children too.’

  ‘Don’t listen to him. Don’t be afraid.’

  I laughed aloud, this from a girl whose fear was a palpable wave of energy coming towards me with every erratic beat of her heart.

  The windows of the chip shop were all steamed over; the cheeks and foreheads of everyone in the room were shiny. As the sound of the bubbling fat grew louder, a smell of burning filled the room. Did they get it now? Was their initial horror at my presence giving way to a more specific fear: that of dying here, in an inferno of oil and smoke?

  ‘Let them go!’ she shouted at me, making me laugh again. This really was the best fun I’d had in such a very long time.

  It surprised me when she found the will to hurl herself at me. As we struggled, she opened the door and the cold air was a shock.

  ‘Run. Get out!’

  This time they responded. I lost them. O untimely escape! Bring me back my food! For several moments I was gasping for energy and the boy within me moved.

  Start all over once more. There was anger and fear to feast on from my pink quarry. Off she went again, with a brisk lopsided run across the street. It was easy to keep up.

  ‘Where are you going?’ I scoffed, all the while drawing her energy out of her. It would take time, but I was confident that eventually, like her dog, she would collapse and be found cold and dead in the gutter.

  The chase took us around the back of a community centre, where I was tempted to stop and enjoy the shame and revulsion of a boy being made to eat a worm by his older brother. It seemed as though she were going to head off across the dark field; I decided to follow. There, far from anyone else, in the gathering shadows, we stopped. Her panting was heavy for a moment, and then it became less ragged.

  Just before I came up with new taunts, she sat, cross-legged on the damp grass.

  ‘What’s this? Given up, like your dog did, going all limp on me?’ Annoyingly she was closing up the bright streams of fear that I had been latching on to. Because we were so far from any other food, I shivered a little. Surely it could not be that after such a gamut of emotion, she could find the means to control herself? Not now? Not after all she had just experienced.

  ‘You hope that Liam can see you properly. Not as a victim, like everyone else sees you, especially your mother, but as you were before the barge snapped your foot off. That laughing, intelligent girl, whose mouth turned up at the corners, not down as it does today. You are wrong on so many counts. When it comes to girls, all Liam seeks is the challenge of a new conquest. No sooner has he got you than he will want nothing more to do with you. Nor are you that girl any more. You are permanently a victim and you know it. Deep down inside you know that you must fail in all that you hope to do. Clumsy girl. Stupid girl.’

  It was not working. A slow, steady heartbeat filled my senses. It was not that she was ignoring me, trying not to listen to me, for that would be a weakness and a way in. Rather, she was looking at me, appraising me, feeling sorry for me? A burst of energy escaped me in a cry of frustration. This was not a stupid girl. Houses surrounded the field and their distant lights were reminders that close by were rooms with people who could feed me, who, at this very moment, were being hurtful, deceitful, cruel or simply callously indifferent t
o those around them. Where we were, though, was cold and dark. Too far. Everyone was too far away. She must have planned this. When I thought I was chasing her, she was leading me. Inside me the boy was somehow making his way back up. Did he feel me weakening?

  ‘Your dog is dead.’

  Not even a wince. Her spirit was encased with armour which she had managed to conjure for herself. I had not thought such composure possible in one so young.

  ‘You dog lies cold on the pavement and so will you, when I am done with you.’

  How had this happened? There had been so much to feed upon only a few minutes ago. The thought of it tortured me: the fearful children in the chip shop, her own distress, which she had somehow managed to master. I had to feed, but I could not feed here. The longer I stayed, the weaker I was getting and, although he was getting ready to fight me, I was not ready to surrender the body to the boy.

  ‘Stay here all night if you like, but I’ll be waiting for you.’

  I ran back towards those two brothers. Perhaps the young one had not yet fled to his mother, screaming and gagging.

  17

  In the Realm of Demons

  During that night, I felt a cold black emptiness spread itself throughout the entire metaverse and draw me into its embrace until only a handful of poorly lit universes remained and even they were receding, leaving me in the dark.

  This time there was no escape. No point in writhing. In any case, I hadn’t the strength. I was being swept down to the realm of demons. It was frightening of course, but even more horrible was the thought that corresponding to the fact that I had been dragged out of the metaverse, something wicked, without conscience, something implacably hungry, had found a way into the light and it was my doing. I shivered.

  What terrible crimes was it going to do?

  Never had I felt the need to act as urgently as I did now. But how was I to escape my nightmares and stop the demon?

  ***

  When I woke up it was in a place whose unnatural sky was a lurid purple, like the clouds of a thunderstorm at sunset. Visibility was poor and shadowy because there was no sun or moon. A building loomed over me, the front door open. The interior was darker still, but familiar. Those radiators, the tall windows, the smell of carbolic from the polished floor. It was my school. Except that the corridors and rooms were in all the wrong positions.

  This was awful, but a puzzle too. The world that I was in was hauntingly alien and yet somehow my past was here. Ahead of me was a corridor that stretched out towards infinity. From the distant emptiness came a clatter.

  ‘Hello? Is someone there?’

  My voice was tentative, so I tried again, louder. ‘Hello?’

  ‘Who’s there?’

  Another bang. Like a door shutting.

  Walking in the very dim light towards the erratic sounds set me on edge. I slowed, to reduce the noise from my footfalls. Perhaps I should turn back instead? What drove me on, though, was the need to do something. I couldn’t just hide. Not while the hungry ghost was free to gorge itself on the people of Earth. Behind me the corridor turned right where it had previously been straight. Great. This world was crazy. The weirdness of the building taught me one thing at least, I was in a world with different rules, a world of nightmares.

  It would have been reassuring to tell myself that this was a dream. But the problem was that I was completely lucid and all my senses were as acute as they never are in dreams.

  Why didn’t I try moving to get out of this appalling environment? I did, of course. But when I tried to slip into the frame of mind preparatory to making a move, it felt wrong and nauseating, like pressure on your funny bone.

  In any case, try as I might, despite the horrible sensation, there were no alternative universes that I could see from here. Not one.

  There came a crash, like a table had been upturned. It was close, from just beyond a nearby door. How strange, to feel the familiar brass handles of our school doors in such an otherwise unnatural setting.

  That was another unanswerable question, why did this place seem so like our school? Had someone created it out of my memories?

  Quietly pressing down on the handle, I inched open the door, ready to flee. The room was like our school’s big assembly room, set out for exams, with ten rows of desks. It was much longer than it should have been, the back wall of the room lost in purple shadow.

  Jane Curtis was sitting at one of the desks. She smiled when she saw me and put her finger to her lips. Moving slowly down an aisle formed by two rows of desks was Mr Kenny. His back was towards me, and his hands groped at each desk that he came to. Something was wrong with Mr Kenny. He waved his arms about above the seats, before moving to the next pair of tables. There was not far to go before he would come to Jane.

  Gathering up her pencil case and the papers on her desk, Jane created a rustling sound. Mr Kenny immediately lunged towards her, knocking a desk flying with a loud clatter, staggering as he did so.

  A little, uncharacteristic, teasing giggle came from Jane as she skipped away from his splayed hands, before moving, swiftly but with delicacy and in complete silence, to a desk on the other side of the room. When I opened the door wider, so as to keep her in sight, it gave a slight scrape. Mr Kenny immediately turned around.

  ‘Who’s there?’

  Eagerly but clumsily, he began lurching in my direction. As he passed through one of the patches of purple light created by the hall’s great windows, I saw his face. It was eyeless. Just hollow sockets, deep-set in pallid cheeks.

  ‘Who’s there?’ His voice was angry now.

  Not pausing to pull the door shut, I turned and ran, my footsteps far too loud and filling the corridors with echoes.

  ‘Who’s there?’ A bellow resounding around me as Kenny reached the door. Once I had reached the corner at which the corridor turned I paused, breathing hard, heartbeat loud in my ears. Would he follow? I had to see. I couldn’t bear to run off, not knowing if he was still behind me or if he had stopped.

  It was difficult to make him out in the dim light and I was grateful I did not have to look at that ruined face again, but he was there, standing outside the door. Silence quickly returned to the building as we both waited. Eventually the door closed again. Had he gone back inside the room? I thought so, but the light was so dingy that it was hard to be completely sure. Was that clump of shadow in the angle of floor and wall moving? Was he stealthily creeping up on me? For what purpose? Best not stay to find out.

  For over an hour I hurried through the cold school corridors, trying to find a door that would lead me outside. It was impossible to keep my footsteps quiet, because the polished stone floor magnified them. If I wanted to limit the sound, I had to slow down and move on tiptoe. From time to time, I did this, always keeping a glance back at the way I’d came.

  Just as I was considering whether to try smashing a window in order to climb out of the labyrinthine school, I heard distinct footsteps from ahead of me. They were strong, confident strides and growing louder.

  From the comparative safety of a junction, I peeked around the edge of wall, ready to flee. Christ, but this creepy version of school was making me sick with fear. Surely, though, this was not the eyeless Mr Kenny? No, the figure walking swiftly and confidently up the corridor was our headmaster, the Monk.

  Careful not to make a sound, my face screwed up with concentration, I backed away from the junction, and then turned on my toes to rush away as quickly as I could without slapping my feet down. But the corridor had changed again and as I came around a corner, it was a straight in to a dead end, whose only exit was a door. The Monk’s metronomic steps were coming closer, still in my direction. I nipped to the door, quietly opened it and slipped inside, just before he turned the corner. It was my third-year classroom, one we’d once decorated with our own paintings of the faces of a deck of cards. Then they had seemed colourful and merry, but now there was something sinister about these open-mouthed faces. O my racing heart, calm, calm; I
must breathe.

  I searched for somewhere to hide, terrified of the steps that were relentlessly coming towards me. Only the cupboard against the wall behind the teacher’s desk was large enough. I crawled into it, pulling the cupboard door shut behind me just as I heard the classroom door swing open.

  Hugging my knees to my chest, I felt my eyes fill with tears. One step, another. The Monk was inside the classroom, but he had stopped. What was he doing? If humans, like mice, could die of the overexertion of their hearts, I would have expired right there. He must have known I was in the cupboard, just from the noisy beat of my pulse. Another step, and then a brushing sound. Was he sitting down?

  ‘Forty-three. Forty-four.’ The Monk’s voice was cold, severe. ‘Forty-five. Quite a record, don’t you think Mr O’Dwyer?’

  Oh Jaysus, he knew about Michael Clarke. What was I in for? Now that he’d spoken, I found I had some life in me after all. Whatever was about to happen, I wasn’t going to stay grovelling in this hole. The boot that I gave the door was supposed to be followed by my leaping out, but unfortunately I hadn’t reckoned in it bouncing back, slamming me in the shins and my panicked exit from the cupboard was a mess of arms, legs and pain.

  Sitting on the desk, examining his fingers, was the Monk. As ever he was tall and bearded, but additionally he now had a sinister dark light in his eyes.

  ‘Welcome back, Mr O’Dwyer.’

  He licked his lips before glancing down at the desk he was sitting on, to where his finger was tracing the word ‘Arsenal’ that I had once scratched deep into it. I didn’t reply, but instead got to my feet and began to edge along the wall towards the door.

  When he stood up I ran for it. A fire ran down my right arm and I was stuck. His fingers were talons gripping me so tight that they had pierced my skin; blood was running down to drip from my fingers and splash on the floor. Those claws were iron and the pain was excruciating.

  ‘I’m going to eat you, slowly, your limbs first.’ His was a smile of shark’s teeth. ‘The first time is always the best. Then do you know what will happen?’