by Chris Speyer
They both laughed.
‘How’s Grandad?’
‘He’s fine. He’s got a new cat.’
‘Grandad doesn’t like cats!’
‘He only pretends he doesn’t. Anyway, it’s not really his cat, but he gives it milk.’
‘What does Jenna think?’
‘She’s jealous.’
‘I’m not surprised.’
Zaki tried to think of things to say that would prolong the conversation but now his mother was saying goodbye, explaining she was going out, that she had to hurry, and as soon as he managed to mumble his goodbyes the phone went dead and she was gone.
Zaki sat looking at the phone. He reran the conversation in his head, holding on to the faint echo of his mother’s laugh. He pictured her leaning against the kitchen counter, a mug of tea cradled between both hands, laughing. It was the sort of laugh that made you smile no matter how you were feeling. Whenever Zaki thought about his mother, her laughter was the thing he could remember most clearly. Then he realised something he hadn’t thought about – before she left for Switzerland, she had stopped laughing. It had been gradual. When had it started? When they moved to Moor Lane? He couldn’t say for certain, but now that he thought about it he couldn’t remember her laughing in the months before she left. Did she stop laughing because she was going to Switzerland, or did she go to Switzerland because she had stopped laughing? she seemed to be happy now. Had they made her unhappy? Zaki wanted to ask her what they had done. He put his hand on the telephone – but she was going out, she wouldn’t be there. He folded the scrap of paper with her number on it and put it in his pocket.
Zaki could hear the sound of the television in the living room. His father would be watching the news. He put his dirty dinner plate in the dishwasher before leaving the kitchen. Passing the living-room doorway, Zaki saw his father sitting in one of the armchairs; the television was on but his father was staring at the window. Zaki continued on to his bedroom, where he took his mother’s telephone number from his pocket and hid it in his sock drawer, as if it were something he shouldn’t have.
g
That night Zaki tried to stay awake, listening for the sound of his brother returning, but the events of the day had worn him out and he drifted into a troubled sleep. He was in the cave again – the skeleton had gone and in its place, on the rock ledge, crouched a dark, shadowy form. It was growing. Each time he took a breath, the thing on the ledge got bigger. He tried not to breathe but he couldn’t hold his breath for ever. It would fill the cave. It would suffocate him! He wanted to escape, but he couldn’t move – couldn’t turn his back on that thing on the ledge. He woke. The house was quiet. He was sure the dark thing from his dream was somewhere in the room. Perhaps he was still dreaming.
g
Chapter 13
Breakfast the next morning was eaten in almost total silence. Michael had returned sometime in the night from wherever he had been and was up and dressed uncharacteristically early. Normally, Zaki would have demanded to know what his brother had been doing, maybe made some joke about a secret girlfriend, but Michael never once allowed their eyes to meet, closing himself off behind a barrier of silent hostility.
‘If you’re ready to go, I’ll drop you at school,’ their father offered. ‘I’ve got to go that way, I need some things from the builders’ merchant.’
‘Thanks, Dad,’ said Zaki, grateful that someone had broken the awful silence and had driven the shadows back into the corners. He raced upstairs to get his school things. He picked up the bracelet and put it in his pocket; they must ask Anusha’s father this afternoon if he had any idea where it was from. Even the thought of facing Mrs Palmer was better than spending any more time in this house.
The three of them climbed into the front of the van, Zaki in the middle. ‘I suppose you’ll want the usual rubbish,’ said their father, selecting Radio 1. Michael leant across in front of Zaki and turned the radio off.
‘Oh, for heaven’s sake, ease up, will you, Michael!’ snapped their father. But Michael maintained his stony silence as they reversed out of the drive and headed into town.
‘Is it OK if I go to a friend’s place after school?’ Zaki asked. He had the logbook in his rucksack. They could look at it at Anusha’s house.
‘Sure. Are you going to Craig’s?’
‘No – someone you don’t know.’
‘A new friend – good – what’s his name?’
‘Anusha,’ said Zaki. ‘And it’s a girl.’ Zaki glanced at his brother, expecting some quip, but there was no reaction.
‘Fine,’ his father said. ‘Will you be home for tea?’
‘Probably.’
‘Well, call me if you’re going to be late.’
Feeling that the atmosphere in the van had lightened, Zaki decided to try to penetrate his brother’s brooding silence. ‘I spoke to Mum last night,’ he said brightly. Michael turned slowly to look at him, and that’s when Zaki saw the terrible darkness behind his brother’s eyes and he shivered, even though it was hot in the van’s crowded cab.
‘What did she say?’ Michael asked.
‘Just what she’s been doing, and that,’ said Zaki.
‘Nothing else?’
‘No.’ Zaki waited for his brother to say more. ‘Why?’
A sudden sense of dread, a fear of something he didn’t know that he should know, gripped Zaki.
‘So she didn’t say she wasn’t coming home?’
The words circled around Zaki’s head but his mind refused to let them enter.
‘What?’ Zaki said.
‘Michael!’ growled his father.
‘She’s not coming home,’ Michael repeated.
His father braked hard and swung the van to the side of the road. There was an angry blast from the horn of the car behind as its driver, taken by surprise, had to swerve to pass them.
‘Michael, it’s not as simple as that,’ he heard his father say, but Michael’s words had broken through and were now imbedded deep inside Zaki like a barbed hook in the gut of a fish.
‘It seems pretty simple to me,’ said Michael.
‘Michael . . . listen – your mother and I need some time – that’s all. Nothing’s settled, nothing’s definite.’
‘You’re splitting up! Admit it. Just admit it! Don’t you think we deserve to know?’
‘Dad, is this true?’ Zaki managed to force the words out, willing his father to deny it.
Michael opened the passenger door and got out. Slamming the door shut, he set off down the road on foot. His father lowered his head to rest it on the steering wheel as though utterly exhausted, then, taking a deep breath, straightened and sat back.
‘Zaki, I’m really sorry,’ he said. ‘We should have talked to you.’
Zaki didn’t think he was crying, his body was quite still, but the tears were pouring down his face, dripping off his chin into his lap. He picked up his rucksack from the floor by his feet, opened the van door and followed after his brother. His father made no move to stop him, but remained sitting in the parked van.
Michael was walking fast. At first Zaki wanted to run and catch him up, but it was as though the earth’s gravity had suddenly doubled, dragging him down, making his limbs heavy, and it was all he could do to keep walking. The gap between Zaki and Michael steadily grew wider and wider until eventually Michael was no longer in sight.
When Zaki reached the intersection at the bottom of the hill he should have continued around to the right towards school but he felt an overpowering urge to be alone, and he turned left instead, taking the road that led out of town. He walked past the local moorings. The tide was out and the little motorboats and day-sailors were sitting on the mud, leaning at drunken angles while gulls and ducks searched the silt around them for anything edible. He continued on past the waterside apartments and pubs and then up a small rise, away from the harbour through the scatter of suburban houses on the outskirts of Kingsbridge. He hadn’t meant to skip school; the
thought that that was what he was doing hardly entered his head. It took all his concentration to walk steady and upright in a world that had been knocked off kilter. Surrounded by the familiar, he felt totally lost.
After walking for a further quarter of an hour, Zaki reached the top of the rise and the road began to drop back down to the water. The downward slope kept Zaki moving forward, but when he came to the long, low stone bridge with its many arches that carries the road across a branch of the estuary he hesitated. Should he continue on across the bridge? Where was he going, anyway?
To the right of the road a short flight of steps led down to a large old landing stage, evidence of the days when fast fruit schooners traded between Salcombe, the Bahamas, the Mediterranean and the Azores. Now, local people used the stage to store dinghies and yacht tenders. Zaki and Michael had sometimes come here to fish. Being early on a weekday, there were few people about. Zaki descended the steps and sat on the big rough-cut stone blocks that formed the edge of the landing stage and stared out across the water. A woman walking a small dog came up the slipway from the water’s edge. The dog trotted around sniffing busily at tufts of grass and weeds. The woman paused near Zaki. ‘Shouldn’t you be in school?’ she asked. Zaki ignored her. The woman waited, but when Zaki continued to stare into space she tut-tutted, then called her dog and climbed the steps up to the road.
A hole was opening up in Zaki’s stomach, a hopeless, aching emptiness. He had a desperate longing to be anywhere in time except in this moment.
A herring gull alighted a few metres from where Zaki sat. It folded it wings, shaking the feathers to settle them into place. Zaki felt a rising irritation at this new invasion of his solitude, but when he turned to look at the bird his attention was trapped by the glitter of the gull’s eye. He began to gather together some part of himself – something that wasn’t part of his body. He detached this inner self until he was free from physical sensation, and then, riding on a breath, he fled from his body into the body of the gull; fled the aching emptiness and the desperate feeling of loss. Escaped, for a time at least, from his brother’s words.
He stretched his wings, bent his legs slightly for the take-off spring, then launched himself into space. As he climbed upward, wing beat by wing beat, he saw his human self still sitting on the stone edge of the landing stage. He flew fast down the estuary, drawn by the emptiness of the open sea and the desire to be lost among the endless rolling waves.
He passed over lines of boats moored bow to stern, then over the clusters of larger craft on swinging moorings all turning together like compass needles to face the incoming tide. Soon he was flying past the wind-carved, rocky outcrops of Bolt Head and when other gulls called from the cliffs his own gull’s voice cried back, a cry that came from another time, from the time before speech, a cry of pure loneliness. He flew on. ‘Out to sea, out to sea,’ beat his wings, keeping on until the land dropped away from sight behind him. He allowed his gull-nature to take over and lost himself in the thrilling pleasure of flying; gliding just above the water, dipping one wing so the tip brushed the surface, wheeling round then sliding down, down into the deep, green hollows between waves, there to swoop up, up again over the crest of the advancing swell. He had no past or future, just the exhilarating sensation of flying.
He had no sense of time passing, but eventually the solitude of the ocean that had drawn him out to sea drove him back to the shore. Loneliness swept him like the flood tide back up the estuary to the landing stage where he had left his human self.
Circling, he looked down and was shocked to see that, rather than sitting lifelessly staring, his body was standing, moving, gesturing, talking. It had an independent life, an independent will. While his will was guiding the body of the gull, some other force was inhabiting his body, directing it, animating it. What? Who? Panic gripped him. Could his life somehow continue without him? He wanted desperately to be reunited with his human self, but he was shut out. No longer needed.
Now he saw that there was someone else on the landing stage, a girl. It was Anusha and she was shouting. He flew lower to hear what she was saying.
‘What’s wrong with you? What’s wrong with you?’ she was screaming.
She was keeping her distance, slightly crouched as if ready to run. As he watched, the two figures moved around each other like fighters in a boxing ring.
He heard his own voice say, ‘Come here. I’m not going to hurt you,’ and Anusha say, ‘No, stay away from me!’
What had happened? What was going on? What had he done to her? He felt guilt, horror; like a sleepwalker who wakes to find he has committed some awful crime in his sleep. This was worse, because he was condemned to watch himself menacing his friend with no power to stop what was happening. He was certain also that Anusha could not possibly know that his human body was not under his control.
Then he saw Anusha stumble, tripping on the uneven stonework, and he saw his body bending, heaving up a jagged rock with both hands, pausing for a split second to balance the rock, then rushing at Anusha with a triumphant yell. He dived, shrieking, beating his wings in the face of Anusha’s attacker, driving him back, forcing him to drop the stone. He was fighting against himself, but in that nightmare moment all he knew was that he must give Anusha a chance to escape. Eye to eye with his own body, Zaki saw evil looking out, and that evil thing directed the body to seize a piece of broken plank and lash at him, slashing the air so that he was forced to fly out of reach. But he must keep the attacker’s attention, not let him go after Anusha. He dived again, aiming for the face, again the plank lashed out, but the bird swerved clear and attacked again and again, forcing a retreat. Back they went towards the edge of the landing stage until Zaki saw a look of horror cross his own face as his body stepped back into empty air and toppled slowly, then fell on to the rocks and shingle below.
Three beats of his powerful wings and Zaki the bird was looking down at his inert body lying stretched out below, one leg in the water, the right arm flung out to the side. Dead or alive? He searched for signs of life. Had he killed the body, or the thing in it? Could one die without killing the other? If his body was dead, what then? What did that mean for him? A short life as a seagull, is that all he had to look forward to? Panic gripped him once more, then all his senses lurched and he seemed to be sliding, falling, plunging through total darkness. The world steadied and he was left with a dizzy nausea, like the feeling at the end of a rollercoaster ride. He slowly sat up, then rolled to one side and vomited. He wiped his mouth with the back of his hand.
His hand! His mouth! He was back in his own body! He examined his hands, touched his legs, felt his face. There was a stinging cut on his cheek where the seagull’s beak had found flesh. His head ached. He felt the back of his head. There was no blood, but a lump was starting to rise where his head had struck a stone. He pulled his wet leg out of the water, then tried making small movements. He was bruised and sore, but nothing seemed to be broken. He looked up. Anusha was standing at the edge of the landing stage, looking down. She took a quick step back.
‘It’s all right. It’s me. I mean . . . it’s really me,’ he said.
Warily, Anusha returned to the edge.
‘It wasn’t me. Whatever happened, it wasn’t me.’ He knew he wasn’t making much sense but how could he explain? ‘I was in the seagull. Something else took over my body. I know it’s not possible, but that’s what happened. You have to believe me.’
‘Stay there,’ she called, her voice cold and hard. ‘I’ll get help.’ And she disappeared from view.
‘No! Wait! Don’t go. Please.’
Zaki waited, hoping she had heard him. She reappeared and cautiously looked down. Zaki felt a wave of relief; somehow he had to make her understand that he hadn’t been responsible for his body attacking her.
‘I’m not coming down there,’ she said flatly.
‘Please, Anusha, it’s OK now – really – I’m not going to do anything.’
‘You just tr
ied to kill me with a great big rock!’
‘No – no I didn’t.’
‘You bloody did! If it hadn’t been for that seagull, I’d be dead!’
‘I – was – the – seagull! That was me!’
It was hopeless. How could you explain something as crazy as this? But she’d seen the hawk in the classroom, knew that he had made that appear.
‘Look,’ he struggled to make it sound logical, ‘it was like the hawk, only this time I left my body.’ He watched her face, watched doubt and distrust losing their grip. ‘It really wasn’t me that attacked you.’
She took a big breath, lifting her shoulders then dropping them as she huffed the breath out.
‘Well, you do sound more like you.’
‘Where did the gull go?’ asked Zaki.
‘I don’t know – I didn’t see. When you fell over the edge it seemed to hang in mid-air and then it was off.’
‘That’s when it happened. That’s when I went back. I thought I’d killed my own body and I was going to be stuck as a seagull for the rest of my life, and the next I knew, I was back in my body.’
Zaki got shakily to his feet.
‘Wait,’ called Anusha, ‘I’ll come and help you.’
Zaki sat back down on a large, flat stone; he still felt very giddy. Anusha came down the slipway to join him. She stopped a few feet away. Zaki raised his head and tried to smile. Would she trust him?
‘You look really rubbish,’ she said.
‘I feel rubbish.’
‘What about your shoulder?’
He hadn’t thought about his shoulder, which, in itself, was odd since the fall should have made it worse. He tried it now. There was no pain. In fact he could even lift his arm above his head, something he had been unable to do that morning when he was dressing. He prodded his collarbone. Nothing. It was as though he’d never fractured it.
‘It’s fixed.’