Running Man

by Michael Gerard Bauer

  ‘What happened to it?’

  ‘It was dying. We chopped it down. My father planted a new one on the other side. Further away from the fire.’ Tom Leyton seemed mesmerised by the photo, as if he too were trying to find himself in the happy innocence of the boy’s smile. Joseph watched him closely and noticed his eyes move away from the central figure and drift around the background of the picture before some detail caught his attention. Then the hand holding the photograph inched closer and Tom Leyton’s eyebrows drew slightly together in concentration. ‘Gorgo …’ he said to himself.

  ‘What?’

  ‘Gorgo,’ Tom Leyton repeated.

  ‘There,’ he said, pointing with his finger as he handed back the photo. ‘That’s where Gorgo lived.’

  When Joseph looked at what Tom Leyton had indicated, he saw a shadowy hole just where the main trunk divided into two large branches, one that continued almost vertically and one that curved behind the boy in the photograph.

  ‘Who was Gorgo?’ Joseph asked, looking up at Tom Leyton.

  ‘A lizard.’

  ‘Why did you call him Gorgo?’

  ‘We used to go to the local picture theatre … Saturday afternoon. Mainly adventures or serials. One was about a creature … a prehistoric monster. Gorgo. Somehow he came back to life. He attacked a city.’

  Joseph smiled and thought about pictures he had seen like that. ‘What was he like, your Gorgo?’ he asked.

  Tom Leyton studied Joseph before replying without humour, ‘For a small boy, he was frightening enough.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘He was large, black … cold.’

  Tom Leyton’s eyes drifted away from Joseph. He looked over his head as if the past could be seen in the distance. ‘At the time, he seemed so big I imagined his tail reached right down into the roots of the mulberry tree. Perhaps that’s all he was … imagination. Maybe he didn’t exist at all. Maybe I only dreamed him. But he was real to me … back then. I always imagined him inside that tree, a cold, unthinking thing, waiting.’ He stopped, as if he might have said too much.

  Joseph looked at the photograph and tried to imagine the creature that Tom Leyton had described crouching deep within the heart of the mulberry tree. As he did so he noticed something just visible inside the shadows of Gorgo’s lair. ‘Is that a stick … in the hole?’ he asked, and handed the photo back to Tom Leyton.

  ‘Yes. I put it there.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Gorgo frightened me, but I wanted to see him. I thought I could make him come out.’ Tom Leyton stopped as if he were viewing the scene in his head. ‘My hand was shaking as I carried the stick to the tree.’

  ‘What happened? Did he come out?’ Joseph asked.

  ‘The first time I tried, I was so scared that the stick jarred against the edge of the hole and pushed splinters into my hand. The next time I was more careful. I took careful aim. But the stick plunged in deeper than I imagined it would go. My hand slid close to the mouth of the hole. I dropped the stick and ran … terrified. I couldn’t turn around. I thought I’d see Gorgo coming for me … relentless, unstoppable, unfeeling.’

  ‘Did he come out?’ Joseph asked again.

  Tom Leyton handed back the photograph. ‘No. He didn’t. Maybe I killed him. Maybe the stick had trapped him. Or perhaps he hadn’t existed in the first place. Whatever the reason, I never had the courage to take the stick out.’

  ‘Didn’t you ever see him again?’

  ‘No. The tree began to die. My father decided it had to be cut down and he asked me to help. We cut off all the branches until just the hollow trunk remained. He pushed against it. It tore easily from the ground. I thought for a moment I saw Gorgo’s tail twisting among the rotten roots. My father asked me to help him carry the trunk to the incinerator. He could have easily managed it himself but I suppose he wanted me to feel important … to be a man. But I was too frightened to move.’

  Again Tom Leyton stopped, and appeared to be watching the scene take place before him. Joseph let a few seconds pass before interrupting his recollections. ‘Did you tell him why you were scared?’

  ‘No. I couldn’t. He became angry, of course.’

  ‘What did you do?’

  ‘I helped him carry the trunk to the incinerator. It was terrifying. All the time I imagined Gorgo rocking inside, his eyes darkening with anger. I only just controlled my panic. I flung the trunk into the incinerator like it was already on fire and ran back to the house. My father must have thought I was mad.’

  Joseph smiled as he imagined the scene, but the sombre face of Tom Leyton remained unmoved.

  ‘Do you think Gorgo was really inside?’

  ‘No, I don’t think so … but I did then. And yet … when my father eventually lit the incinerator, it wasn’t Gorgo that I imagined burning. It was silkworms. That was all I could think of – silkworms blackening and bubbling, eggs popping one by one and moths flapping their useless wings before the flames.’

  ‘I saw you one night … looking into the incinerator. I didn’t mean to spy … I only … were you thinking about the silkworms then?’

  ‘No. But sometimes,’ Tom Leyton said as if confessing to a crime, ‘sometimes … I imagine I hear things.’

  ‘In the incinerator?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘What do you think you hear?’

  Tom Leyton’s answer floated into the stale air like a line from a poem. ‘The scratching and rustling of some dark, charred, relentless thing, that shuffles through the ash.’

  Joseph stared at Tom Leyton in disbelief. ‘But he couldn’t be still alive.’

  ‘Maybe he never was … but nightmares are much harder to destroy than other dreams.’

  ‘Did you have nightmares about Gorgo … when you were little?’ Joseph asked cautiously.

  ‘Many times.’

  ‘What were they like?’

  ‘Always the same. Being chased by some unseen creature and waiting for its claws to strike.’

  Joseph remained still, but inside his head doubts and fears raged like a cyclone. He knew just how Tom Leyton must have felt in the moments before he finally decided to face his fear and thrust that stick into the black unknown depths of Gorgo’s lair. And he knew about those kinds of nightmares too.

  ‘Tom? Joseph? Are you there?’

  Caroline’s voice descended tentatively into the heavy atmosphere of the room. She came a few steps down the stairs and smiled nervously at the living frieze of man and boy.

  ‘Oh, there you are. I wondered where you’d got to. Thought you might have been caught in a novel landslide down here.’ She looked from one to the other. ‘Is everything all right?’

  ‘Fine,’ said Tom Leyton. ‘We needed more boxes.’

  ‘Well, come on up,’ she said cheerfully, ‘I’ve got some nice fruit loaf for both of you, if you’re interested.’

  When they returned to his room, Tom Leyton added some leaves to the new boxes and began picking out a few silkworms from each of the old ones. Joseph sat on the window seat with a plate resting on his knees and a large piece of fruit loaf draping limply from his hand. He watched Tom Leyton for a while then laid the slice back on to the plate and licked a smudge of butter from his finger. There was something he wanted to say, but he was afraid the words would jag in his throat if he tried. When he finally found the strength to speak, it was as if he had edged to the lip of a cliff and let himself fall.

  ‘I’ve had dreams like that,’ Joseph said, barely audibly.

  Tom Leyton’s body remained stationary, but his head turned immediately towards the sound of the voice. The image of a large, dark lizard suddenly sensing the movement of its prey leapt into Joseph’s mind, but he knew it was too late to stop.

  ‘I’ve had dreams too … like yours … nightmares.’

  Tom Leyton lowered himself into his chair, swung it slowly around until he faced Joseph, and waited.

  And that was how the Running Man escaped the murky streets of Joseph�
��s dreams and memories, and shuffled wide-eyed and naked into the confines of Tom Leyton’s room.

  That afternoon, for the first time in his life, Joseph spoke to someone else about the man who for so long had fascinated and unnerved him. He revealed his childhood encounter with the Running Man and his recurring nightmares. Through it all Tom Leyton sat in silence and listened.

  At the start, he was apprehensive and hesitant, but Tom Leyton’s face held no judgment or criticism, and more and more Joseph felt his thoughts and words, for so long secret and hidden, being drawn into the vacuum of silence. When there was nothing left to tell, Joseph concluded with, ‘I used to have those dreams all the time when I was little … but not any more.’

  As always, Tom Leyton seemed distant and detached, but just as Joseph was half-expecting him to turn back to his desk and tend to the silkworms, he lifted his head and spoke. ‘You call him the Running Man?’

  Joseph hesitated, embarrassed by the childishness of the name. ‘I called him that when I was little,’ he explained. ‘I don’t know his real name. It’s just that he always runs.’

  ‘Did you ever consider that there might be more to him than just a Running Man?’

  Tom Leyton’s tone was flat and impassive but Joseph felt a tinge of guilt nonetheless.

  ‘Maybe. I don’t know. Anyway, I hardly see him any more.’

  ‘Perhaps you’ve never seen him.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  Tom Leyton slid one of the shoeboxes from the desk and placed it on his lap. ‘If someone had no idea what silkworms looked like and I opened this box now and showed them, they would think that silkworms were large caterpillars. If I opened it in a month they would think silkworms were yellow cocoons. A month later they would say they were white moths. In another month, grey eggs.’ He rotated the box slowly in his hands. ‘Which is the true description of silkworms? Are they all right, or all wrong? And if it is so difficult to really see these simple creatures, then how much harder is it to see a man?’

  An uncertain frown settled on Joseph’s face.

  ‘All I am saying is that this man might not always have been like he is now.’

  ‘Then what changed him?’

  Tom Leyton shook his head.

  ‘Do you think he could ever change back – go back to what he was?’

  ‘No. I don’t think so. I don’t think you can ever get back what you’ve lost.’

  ‘I guess it’s stupid to be afraid of him.’

  ‘Devils come in many forms,’ Tom Leyton said darkly.

  Immediately Joseph thought of Escher’s drawing of the angels and devils that hung on the noticeboard, but as he looked at the man’s face, it was more the other image, the harrowed visage of the creature shocked by his own reflection, which confronted him.

  Joseph tried to steer the conversation to safer ground. ‘I just wonder why he runs all the time.’

  Tom Leyton raised his eyebrows slightly. ‘Everybody runs,’ he said, with a tired bitterness that caught Joseph by surprise. ‘Even if you sit rotting inside a decaying house for thirty years, you can still be in a mad flight somewhere. And the truth is, it’s pointless anyway. Whether you’re running after a desperate dream or away from a nightmare, you can never get one step closer or one step further away.’ He slumped slightly before adding, ‘Milton knew.’ Then his deep rich voice rolled into the room like the rumble of distant thunder.

  ‘… for within him Hell

  He brings, and round about him, nor from Hell

  One step no more than from himself can fly

  By change of place …

  Which way I fly is Hell; Myself am Hell.’

  For a moment Tom Leyton’s face distorted with anger and despair. It was as if Joseph had caught a glimpse of something through a partly open door that should never have been seen.

  ‘It’s from a poem … by John Milton,’ Tom Leyton said as he turned away. ‘I’m just saying that maybe your Running Man is like that … running from something … some hell … that he carries around inside him … a hell that he can never escape … no matter how far or fast he runs.’

  ‘Then why keep running?’

  The reply came with unnerving conviction. ‘Because it is all he can think of … all he has left to do … just to survive … to get from one day to the next.’

  Tom Leyton replaced the shoebox on the desk and remained with his back turned. A small breeze moved the curtains and caused Joseph’s original sketch to arch outwards from the noticeboard.

  Joseph studied the crude form and simple strokes of the drawing. ‘I’ve done some more work on your portrait. I could bring it over next time if you like.’

  Tom Leyton nodded without speaking.

  ‘Well, I should go,’ said Joseph, sensing that the visit had come to an end.

  Tom Leyton nodded again.

  Joseph picked up his empty plate and made his way to the door. Looking back at the dark brooding shape of Tom Leyton alone in his bleak room, he ventured a final question. ‘What was the man in the poem running from?’

  ‘Just himself,’ Tom Leyton replied, without turning.

  ‘Why?’

  ‘He couldn’t live with who he was.’

  ‘Who was he?’

  Tom Leyton spoke the name with the cold finality of a boulder rolled before a tomb. ‘Satan.’

  CHAPTER NINE

  Over the next week Joseph made brief daily visits to the Leytons’ house to check on the progress of the silkworms. With each visit he became more accustomed to the silence that was often the backdrop to their meetings and no longer interpreted it as a sign of rejection. There were two occasions, however, in the final week of the holidays where Joseph stumbled his way into Tom Leyton’s closed and private world.

  The first occurred the day Joseph brought along one of the sketches that he had been working on. Tom Leyton studied it in the same intense way he had examined the old photograph, as if it was a puzzle he couldn’t solve.

  ‘You can keep it if you like. I don’t need it. I’ve got others.’

  Tom Leyton pinned the drawing on the noticeboard beside Joseph’s original attempt. When he looked from one to the other Joseph saw how his first vague, tentative strokes had filled with depth and detail like a slide being pulled into focus. Yet even though the image on the paper was creeping closer to the man, the eyes remained cold and lifeless and the face was still impossible to read.

  Joseph turned from the sketches and ran his eyes down the row of freshly cleaned boxes spread across the desk. Over the previous two weeks the silkworms had doubled in size, and now three or four fat bodies attacked each leaf with ravenous efficiency, carving the dark green flesh rapidly from between the veins.

  ‘We’ll need more boxes again, won’t we?’ Joseph asked as he watched the caterpillars.

  ‘I don’t keep them all.’

  ‘What do you do with them?’

  ‘Give them to schools. Caroline takes them.’

  ‘How long have you done that for?’

  ‘Years … twenty years … more.’

  The mention of schools brought to Joseph’s mind Mrs Mossop’s shrill warnings about Tom Leyton and the rumours that hung around him. Joseph fiddled with the mulberry leaves on the desk.

  ‘Were you a teacher once?’ he asked as casually as he could manage.

  Tom Leyton stopped what he was doing and glanced across at Joseph.

  ‘Someone said you were … and all those books … poetry and stuff,’ Joseph offered by way of explanation. ‘Were you an English teacher?’

  ‘Once … a long time ago,’ he said flatly.

  Joseph focused on the silkworms in front of him. His next question, when it came, only just managed to squirm through the tightness in his throat. ‘Why did you stop?’

  ‘I just … stopped,’ he answered frostily.

  Joseph felt as if a heavy door had thudded shut.

  Stillness and silence closed around the man like bodyguards, but it was
Tom Leyton who spoke first. ‘I wasn’t well. I thought I was better. I wasn’t. I’d … been through a difficult time.’

  ‘In Vietnam?’ Joseph asked, before he could stop himself.

  Tom Leyton looked shaken and he fought to hide the wave of fear that seemed to ripple across his face. His words came out in short gasps. ‘But … how …?’

  ‘One of the photos … downstairs. There was a picture of a soldier. It had writing on the back. I didn’t mean to …’

  Tom Leyton saw the worry on the boy’s face and his eyes fell. ‘It’s all right,’ he said calmly.

  Reassured by the tone of Tom Leyton’s reply, Joseph chanced another question. ‘Was he your friend – the man in the photo?’

  A stillness settled like fine dust in the room. Tom Leyton’s voice wavered but he cleared his throat and continued more steadily. ‘Yes … but he didn’t make it back.’

  ‘What happened? Joseph asked in a whisper.

  Tom Leyton observed Joseph closely as if weighing up an important decision. Then he began to speak in a soft, faraway voice that seemed to be drawn from some deep well of sadness and loss. ‘We were almost due to come home. It would have been one of our last operations. Nothing too difficult. There were twelve of us. We were on our way back to base camp.’ He frowned and his eyes narrowed as if he were trying to get a clearer picture in his mind. ‘He came running towards us – a boy … a child,’ he said almost in disbelief. ‘He kept his distance but I could see his face – an angel’s face. He was crying. There were tears. I saw tears … and blood. He had blood smeared on his face, his arms, on his clothes … not clothes really, just rags. And his voice …’ He winced and his eyes closed. ‘He was crying out … pleading … in Vietnamese and broken English, something about his mother. His mother was dying. She needed help. “You come please! You come!” He was begging … and pointing into the bush.’

  Tom Leyton paused and Joseph watched the rise and fall of his chest begin to slow. The anxiety that had been growing in his voice had subsided a little when he continued.

  ‘And he carried something in his arms … a baby. It was wrapped in a dirty cloth … an old shirt I think. It didn’t make a sound. I was afraid it might be dead. He stood there, beside a track in the bush, crying and begging us to follow.’