Running Man

by Michael Gerard Bauer

  THE RUNNING MAN

  Michael Gerard Bauer

  An Omnibus Book from Scholastic Australia

  For my family, especially my wife Adriana, my children Meg and Joseph, my parents Elsie and Denis, my sisters Helen and Cathy and my brother Rob – and for the Running Man in us all

  Table of Contents

  Cover

  Title Page

  Dedication

  I: All Their Lives in a Box

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  II: In Dream too Deep

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  III: That Pang of Joy

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Epilogue

  Acknowledgments

  Copyright

  What lies before us and what lies behind us are small matters compared to what lies within us.

  And when we bring what is within out into the world, miracles happen.

  Henry David Thoreau

  I

  ALL THEIR LIVES IN A BOX

  CHAPTER ONE

  Joseph fixed his eyes on the coffin and thought of silkworms. Before him, the honey-coloured casket lay still and silent like a cocoon, and for a moment he was in another time, another place. He fought to hold the image in his mind, but each ripple of sound – a murmured voice, the clearing of a throat or the sharp echo of a shoe knocking clumsily against a hard wooden kneeler – reminded him of where he was, and then the sickly ache of regret and loss lurched inside him once more. ‘It’s my fault,’ Joseph thought, the words stabbing at his heart.

  Behind him, the whirring of an organ crept into the open spaces of St Jude’s Church and hovered like sorrow in the air. He had been to funerals in the past, but it was different when you sat in the front pew. Before he had been just one in a crowd of restless schoolboys lining a street for someone whose face he would later struggle to recall. Now he was at the centre of it all, and it encircled and held him like an unwelcome and unyielding embrace.

  He lowered his head and his mother’s hand settled gently on his knee. Joseph laid his hand on hers and forced a weak smile to his lips. Then he gazed again at the coffin, closed his eyes and let the darkness fold around him.

  Why had it happened? If he could somehow go back to a recognisable starting point and trace each moment through till he finally arrived again at this place, this seat, on this day, would some meaning or reason become clear to him? But what had started it all? It seemed impossible to know the precise moment when something began. Endings were a much easier proposition. Endings were clear-cut. When something ended, there were obvious signs. Things stopped. People left. Someone died. Beginnings were like shadows and mist, melting and smudging into everything around them.

  As he struggled to grasp a starting point, Joseph again found himself thinking of silkworms. He did that a lot lately. He couldn’t help himself. Sometimes he didn’t even know why they came into his mind: he couldn’t see the connection between those simple creatures and what was happening around him. But this time he did see it. Trying to unravel the tangled threads of the past was like unwinding the silk from a silkworm cocoon.

  To spin the silk you had to pinch the loose outside threads of the cocoon between your thumb and forefinger and carefully pull them to one end. Then as the hard body of the cocoon dangled from those threads, a gentle shake would cause the silk to break away, until only one strand remained. If you jiggled the cocoon from that thread it would twirl and unravel as it fell.

  That is what Joseph searched for now – one fragile thread that would lead him forward. As he concentrated hard to bring his thoughts into focus, they began to sharpen and separate until out of all the images, only the strongest remained. Among them were the faces of three men – three men who had never met, and yet whose separate lives had become entwined with Joseph’s in ways that he had never imagined possible.

  He saw his father’s face, the last time he had looked on it, bewildered, hurt, and angry. Then he saw Tom Leyton’s face, silent as stone, hidden deep within the shadows of his room. And finally he saw the face of the Running Man, his eyes burning with a desperate fire. There had always been the Running Man – always that phantom form somewhere in the distance, always shuffling relentlessly closer.

  As Joseph stared again at the coffin, the last loose threads of memory began to fall away one by one until a single image remained. It was the same image that he saw every night from his bedroom window. It was his neighbours’ old wooden house – Leytons’ house – perched high on its black timber stumps like some long-legged creature waiting in the shadows.

  CHAPTER TWO

  There had been Leytons in the big house on the corner of Arthur Street and Ashgrove Avenue for over sixty years, although ‘Old’ Mr and Mrs Leyton, as the neighbours still referred to them, had died well before Joseph and his parents moved in next door. It didn’t take long for the Davidsons to be filled in on the local history. Mrs Mossop from across the road saw to that. There was very little that she didn’t know about the goings on in the neighbourhood.

  Joseph was only five when his family moved into number three Arthur Street, but he could remember quite clearly Mrs Mossop’s ‘just popping in’ for a chat that very day. It was the first of many such visits. As he grew older Joseph noticed how his mother seemed to slump slightly when the doorbell rang and a cheery voice trilled, ‘It’s just me, Laura.’

  It soon became obvious that the Leytons were one of Geraldine Mossop’s favourite topics, and over the years pieces of their story had floated in and lodged in Joseph’s mind. He knew that old Mr Leyton had been a judge and that his wife (who, Mrs Mossop always pointed out with raised eyebrows, was quite a deal younger than her husband) worked at the State Library. He knew that they had only two children – a son called Tom and a younger daughter, Caroline. He also gathered that the Leytons were a happy family and well liked, which was why the ‘terrible tragedy’, as Mrs Mossop always described it, hit the neighbourhood so hard.

  The terrible tragedy was a car accident that took the lives of both parents. At the time, Caroline was still living at home. She was studying journalism and had already landed a newspaper job. Two weeks before her parents died Caroline had announced her engagement. According to Mrs Mossop, ‘she had the world at her feet’. Yet Joseph knew that Caroline had never married. Now she worked at a local chemist and lived alone with her brother Tom in the old family home.

  Tom Leyton was the real mystery. All Joseph knew for certain was that he had returned to the family home some time after the funeral and for many years now had hidden himself away. Caroline’s brother became a tantalising riddle, and rumours spread quickly. The local kids told Joseph stories of horrible deformity and madness, as well as more sinister tales that could be revealed only in sly whispers. Whatever the truth might have been, it was soon lost like a delicate flower in a tangle of noxious weeds.

  Although Joseph didn’t really believe the cruel stories he had heard, like everyone else he was drawn to the mystery of his secretive neighbour. There were rare glimpses of course: sometimes just as a fleeting shape passing by an open window, or on other occasions a huddled figure like an apprehended criminal in the passenger seat of Caroline’s car. The only impression left by these sightings was of a tall, quite solidly built man whose face was lost behind his bushy hair and beard.

  Mrs Mossop seemed to have her own ideas about Tom Le
yton. Whenever she referred to him it was in terms such as ‘that brother of hers’, ‘that man’, or ‘him next door’. Yet she never talked openly about Tom Leyton when Joseph was present, as if it was a subject she considered unsuitable for a young boy.

  Over time, Tom Leyton became for Joseph an accepted unknown, like the dark interior of a house passed by every day but never entered.

  It was early September, three months before he would find himself in the front row of St Jude’s Church, that Joseph stepped closer to Tom Leyton’s world. It was a Saturday morning and he had just finished mowing the lawn when he heard his name being called. He looked up to see Caroline at the fence.

  ‘Great job,’ she said with a smile.

  ‘Thanks.’

  ‘Look, I don’t know if you’d be interested, but the man who does our yard has retired, so I need to find someone else. Would you like to earn some extra pocket money? Going rate is forty dollars. I’ll even throw in some drinks.’

  Joseph nodded. It seemed like a lot of money. ‘Yeah, that would be good.’

  ‘Great, but check with your mum first and let me know. If it’s OK then you could give it a run over next weekend.’

  Joseph packed the mower away under the house and went upstairs to find his mother. She was sitting at the kitchen table. Mrs Mossop sat opposite her.

  ‘Hello, Joseph.’

  ‘Oh … Hi, Mrs Mossop.’

  ‘All finished?’ his mother asked.

  ‘Yep, and Mum, Caroline Leyton asked me if I wanted to mow her lawn next weekend, for forty bucks. That OK?’

  Mrs Mossop’s head turned sharply towards him.

  ‘Well, yes, I can’t think why not. As long as you’re happy to do it. It’s a big yard. Forty dollars? Don’t expect me to give you more pocket money to compete though, will you?’

  ‘I won’t. Thanks, Mum.’

  ‘That’s all right. Now get those dirty shoes off my clean floor or I’ll start charging you board.’

  Joseph sat down on the back steps and started untying his shoelaces. He could hear his mother and Mrs Mossop talking in the background.

  Suddenly Mrs Mossop’s voice was raised above the dull murmur. ‘… plain foolishness with that man about.’ She could only be referring to Tom Leyton.

  Joseph moved quietly up the steps and listened. It was his mother’s voice that he heard next. ‘He’s only mowing the lawn, Geraldine. I think you’re overreacting a little.’

  ‘Am I? Well, I’ve lived here for fifty-two years, so I might know a little bit more about things than you do.’

  The next time his mother spoke it was as if she was trying to calm a worried child. ‘Look, I appreciate your concern, I really do. And I know Tom Leyton’s behaviour is strange, to say the least, but losing both your parents like that – it must have been awful. And didn’t you tell me he’d been injured in Vietnam as well? I don’t know – maybe he’s seen enough of the world. Maybe that’s why he hides himself in that house. After what he’s been through, who could blame him?’

  ‘They were Caroline’s parents too, Laura, and she’s not kept locked up, is she? No. She got through that terrible accident and the funeral. He did nothing – just turned up on the day then disappeared God knows where. And then, when Caroline was just getting her life back on track, he shows up again and stays. Ever since then she’s had to take care of him – keep him out of sight. Keep him out of trouble. For all those years. And look what it did to her – drained her dry. Her career, her fiancé, her future – all gone.’

  ‘But what does all that have to do with Joseph mowing their lawn?’

  ‘There’s more to the story than that. I’ve told you before – that brother of hers was a teacher – taught down south I heard. Only been teaching a little while, when suddenly he has to stop for some reason. Then he comes up here and disappears into that house next door, afraid to show his face. Why would he do that unless he’s got more to hide than just himself?’

  ‘But you can’t be sure of anything. It might be entirely innocent.’

  ‘Then why does Caroline refuse to talk about him? If it’s as innocent as all that, why does she act like her brother doesn’t exist? You can’t get a word out of her. She just closes up on you.’

  Joseph sensed frustration and anger in Mrs Mossop’s voice. She seemed to take it as a personal affront that Caroline should have secrets that she wasn’t willing to share.

  ‘Even if it was true,’ his mother persisted, ‘and Tom Leyton had … done something, Joseph will be down in the yard and nowhere near him. And in any case, Caroline will be there and I trust her.’

  ‘But can you? Caroline Leyton loves her brother. She’s probably like you. She wants to believe only the best about him. But Laura, what if the worst is true?’

  ‘I don’t know. It just seems wrong to condemn him like that without really knowing.’

  ‘Wrong? I’ll tell you what’s wrong – allowing your fourteen-year-old son to get anywhere near a man like that. But if you won’t listen to reason …’

  ‘Geraldine, honestly … he’ll be fine … he will.’

  There was a brief silence before Mrs Mossop spoke, sternly this time. ‘I hope so, Laura, because I think Tom Leyton is a dangerous, sick man, and he’ll be watching your son.’

  Joseph heard the shuffle of chairs and moved quickly down to the bottom step. He was pulling off his shoes as footsteps approached from behind.

  ‘Bye, Mrs Mossop.’

  Geraldine Mossop turned as she passed Joseph and threw him a worried look. She hesitated slightly as if to speak, but then just nodded and smiled grimly before bustling off down the driveway.

  Mrs Mossop’s parting words were never far from Joseph’s thoughts as he mowed Leytons’ lawn the following Saturday, and from time to time he shot uneasy glances towards the house. There was never any sign of Tom Leyton. It was only afterwards, when he and Caroline sat together in the cool concreted area under the house, that a creaking of the floorboards above spoke of another presence close at hand. It was a presence that neither he nor Caroline chose to acknowledge.

  ‘The lawn looks great. Hope it wasn’t too big a job for you.’

  ‘No. It was fine.’

  Joseph took a sip from a big glass of orange juice crowded with clunking ice cubes.

  ‘Eat up those biscuits. There’s plenty more.’

  Joseph smiled. He liked Caroline Leyton, but as always he felt awkward and self-conscious in adult company. He took a bite from a biscuit and in the silence was aware of every movement of his jaw as he tried to swallow it.

  ‘Have you heard from your dad recently? Where is he this time? New Guinea, isn’t it?’

  ‘Bougainville.’

  ‘That’s right. I bet he’d be driving some big machinery up there – a bit different from the council job, I’d imagine.’

  ‘I guess so.’

  ‘How long has he been away now – six months? Must be a bit hard on you and your mum with him gone for most of the year. You must miss him.’

  Joseph nodded and avoided Caroline’s eyes by wiping away some droplets that had formed on the outside of the glass. He didn’t want to talk about his father – didn’t want to think about that last day, and he recoiled from the memories that barged into his mind.

  Fortunately, Caroline moved on quickly to another subject. ‘And how’s school?’

  ‘Not too bad,’ said Joseph, relieved that the conversation had veered away from his father.

  ‘Your mum tells me that you love your art – showed me some of your work a little while back. Very impressive, I must say. I just wish I had your talent.’

  Joseph blushed a little at the praise.

  ‘Are you working on a new masterpiece at the moment?’

  ‘No, not really … but we’ve got a big project for next term.’

  ‘Sounds important. Tell me all about it.’

  ‘We have to do a portrait. It’s got to be of a real person, like someone you know, not someone from h
istory or a movie star. We have to hand in all our ideas and sketches and stuff as well.’

  ‘Well, a man of your talent should have no trouble with that. When’s it due?’

  ‘Not till the end of the year, but our teacher said to try and start as soon as possible because we have to find someone and then work out meeting times and everything.’

  ‘And have you put much thought into who you’d choose for a subject?’

  ‘Not really.’

  ‘Do you think you’d rather go for someone young or someone older?’

  ‘Not sure. Older I suppose.’

  ‘More interesting character lines for you to get your pencil around, eh?’

  Joseph smiled shyly then added, ‘Maybe my grandmother would do it, but she’s too far away.’

  ‘Yes, you’d need someone handy, wouldn’t you, and someone who could spare the time. What about your mum, or even Mrs Mossop?’

  ‘Mum wouldn’t do it,’ Joseph said, shaking his head. ‘She even hates having her picture taken.’

  ‘Mrs Mossop, then?’

  Caroline laughed at the frown that had appeared on Joseph’s face and read his thoughts instantly. ‘No, I don’t suppose that would be such a good idea, would it? I can’t imagine Mrs Mossop staying still for more than a millisecond.’ Then as an afterthought she added, ‘Certainly not her mouth, anyway.’

  It was Joseph’s turn to laugh now, and Caroline blushed slightly as if she hadn’t intended to make her last comment out aloud. ‘Oh that’s terrible. I shouldn’t have said that. I’m sure her heart’s in the right place, as they say, but there’s no doubt about it, that woman certainly can talk.’

  The whole neighbourhood was well aware of Mrs Mossop’s reputation as a tireless distributor of news and rumour (‘Mossop by name and gossip by nature!’ Joseph’s father had proclaimed with some bitterness on more than one occasion). But now, as Joseph watched Caroline’s face, he wondered if she knew just how much of Mrs Mossop’s talk revolved around her and her mysterious sibling. Something about the way she had said ‘that woman’ with a slight shake of the head convinced him that she did.