Hello Darkness

by Anthony McGowan

  CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

  THE COLLECTOR

  I sat on a bench. There aren’t any words for what I was feeling. Music, sad music, maybe, but no words.

  “Hey, Middleton.”

  I looked up. It was Hart, as cool and perfect and unreadable as ever.

  “Hello,” I said, my voice betraying my uncertainty.

  “The Principal wants to see you,” he said, blandly.

  “Now?”

  “Yeah, now. In his office.”

  “How’d you find me?”

  “Rat said he saw you down there.” Hart nodded towards the Interzone. “Why you holding those rags?”

  I looked down at the scraps of filthy cloth in my hands. I couldn’t think of anything to say in answer to Hart’s question, so I just walked over and dumped them in the big metal bin outside the school kitchens.

  As we walked, Hart spoke.

  “Dorothy wants to know if you’ve got anywhere. With the chickens and guinea pigs. She’s worried. We’re all worried.”

  I gave him a stare. I tried to give the impression that I knew things. “I’ve got some leads. Shouldn’t be long now.”

  I was watching his eyes closely. His pupils dilated a little.

  “Anything concrete I can give Dorothy? She’s getting … tetchy. If they cancel the play … well, it’s not going to be pretty. I’m on your side, Middleton, but you need to help me to help you.”

  “Tell her I’ll be in touch soon.”

  He looked like he was going to say something else, but then swallowed it. “OK,” was all that came out. Then he walked on, his movement so smooth he might have been on skates.

  I’d never been in the Principal’s office before. I hesitated outside, and then knocked, weakly. There was no reply, so I knocked again, too hard this time.

  “Enter.”

  Mr Vole was sitting behind a huge old desk. It looked like it might have belonged to the master in the old workhouse days. Vole’s hands were together, as if in prayer, and he rested his chin on the tips of his fingers. I noticed the brown liver spots on his hands.

  Vole stared at me, looking perplexed. His watery eyes searched around the room for any help with guessing who I was, or what I might possibly want. He appeared to have aged since I’d last seen him. He could have been a thousand years old. I took the opportunity to check out the room. The first thing that caught my eye was the large glass vivarium, home to our school tortoise, the Venerable Bede himself. The tank was filled with variegated foliage and dominated by a broken, barkless log. It took me a couple of seconds to locate the tortoise. He was staring out from beneath the log, utterly motionless. I thought, briefly, that he might already have been assassinated – poisoned, perhaps, or pierced with a paralyzing dart. But then he half turned and retreated back into his jungle fastness.

  Next to the vivarium there was a gnarled bonsai tree in a terracotta pot. A pair of sharp pruning shears nestled at the base. The tortoise, the tree, the head teacher: three ancient specimens hanging on past their time.

  Still Vole said nothing, so I looked at the walls, which were full of certificates and old photos. One photo showed what might have been Vole as a young man, wearing a white lab coat. I recalled that he had once been a chemistry teacher, back in the days when he had something useful to contribute. There was a photo of what could have been the cast of a school play: rows of flower-garlanded boys, dressed in hula skirts. And, taking up almost half of one wall, there was a huge framed picture of hundreds of butterflies, arranged in a tight grid.

  “Ah…?”

  “It’s Middleton, sir. You asked to see me.”

  The fog cleared a little.

  “Yes, to do with…?”

  “The animals, sir. The stick insects. And the guinea pigs. And now the chickens.”

  “Oh, yes, yes, yes, bad business. You were there, this morning, of course you were. Poor creatures. You are the boy accused by Mr Shankley of involvement. No insight into character, Mr Shankley. He seems to believe that rules are all you need. But he doesn’t … which is to say, and I’m sure you’ll agree, that I do. I knew that you were never … that you hadn’t … and so I asked you to… Anyway, did you have any luck? Getting to the … ah, bottom?”

  “I’ve got a couple of ideas.”

  “Ideas? Oh, good, yes, excellent. Except that, ah, well, this all seems a little, how shall I say, posthumous. Insofar as most of our beloved school menagerie is now deceased.”

  “There’s still the tortoise.” I pointed at the glass tank.

  “Eh? Oh. Of course. Dear, dear Bede. The last survivor. Still safe in our, as it were, bosom. You know, I’m sure, the story of the retreat from Kabul in 1842? Thirteen thousand soldiers and camp followers set off. All were massacred by the tribesmen, save for one. And even he had half his head sliced off by a scimitar. Somehow the fact that there was a single survivor made the whole, ah, tragedy more, erm, tragic.”

  His eyes misted over, while he went on his own retreat from Kabul. He even flinched a couple of times, as bullets whizzed past his ears and ricocheted off the rocks. Finally he nodded sadly to himself, and then looked at me as if he’d never seen me before in his life.

  “Sir?”

  “What?”

  “Was there something you actually wanted to ask me, sir? Something you wanted me to do?”

  “Do? Yes, of course. Hope.”

  “You want me to hope?”

  “Want you to hope? No, not much use in just hoping. I mean to say, that as long as the Venerable Bede is alive then hope lives. Hope that the show will go on. That great and noble institution. Part of school history. Part of – part of… Well, anyway, good work, ah, Munton.”

  “Middleton.”

  “That’s right, that’s right. Keep it up. Report back when there is, when you, when, ah, well…”

  “Sir.”

  I stood up and turned to go. As I did I took a closer look at the butterfly picture. It wasn’t. A picture, I mean. There was too much texture, an excess of the third dimension. The butterflies were real. Dead and mounted in the frame. Beautiful. And creepy. It looked like another one of the relics from the workhouse days. Perhaps one of the old Masters had been a butterfly collector.

  “Lovely, aren’t they? My hobby. Since I was a young boy…”

  I felt a sudden ripple of … what? Revulsion? No, too strong. It was just a bit creepy. I wasn’t even sure what the “it” was – the dead insects in the picture or something in my own head? But I couldn’t yet drag myself away from the butterflies. They seemed … significant. And then, as I gazed, the shapes in the picture changed. Butterflies no longer, I saw tiny images of the other dead creatures of the school. And then a face staring out, returning my gaze with dead eyes. It was me, there, pinned to the board.

  Vole was suddenly behind me. He put a hand on my shoulder and said something which I did not catch. I took it as a dismissal and, longing for breathable air, I got out of there as fast as I could.

  And bumped right into the Shank himself, who was just emerging from his own room. He pierced me with a glare that could have done good work with the Spanish Inquisition.

  “Middleton. What are you doing here?”

  “Mr Vole asked to see me, sir.”

  A slight pause. Then “In there!” He opened his door for me.

  I didn’t have a lot of choice. I went in and sat down.

  “Get up.”

  He hustled behind his desk, where he clearly felt more comfortable.

  “Sit down.”

  I sat.

  The Shank considered me. I considered him back. His face changed, slackening slightly, as if he were releasing the contents of a full bladder. I guessed it was the Shank trying to appear pleasant. It obviously took a lot of effort.

  It also took a lot of effort for me not to look into those green eyes and see his lovely daughter.

  “Look, John,” he said, in a way that was almost friendly. “It’s no secret that you’ve been … u
nwell.”

  “That was ages ago. I’m fine now.”

  “I’ve been trying to contact your parents.”

  “They’re away.”

  “Away? For how long?”

  “Back tomorrow. They’re at a funeral.”

  “Ah, I see. My concern is that your problems have returned. We think that you might need some help.”

  It was a good trick. The Shank knew that brutality couldn’t break me, so he was trying the velvet glove.

  “This is because you still think I’m the one responsible for killing the pets?”

  “Tell me, John, what would you think in my position? We have a boy with known psychiatric issues—”

  “I told you, I’m better now.”

  “With known psychiatric issues, who happens to have been on or near the scene of a number of acts of senseless violence.”

  “Senseless? You sure?”

  “Yes, senseless. Random acts of cruelty.” The Shank sighed. “All I want to do is to clear this up so the school can get back to normal. All you have to do is to tell me the truth. I’m a fair man, and if you confess I’ll make sure the whole matter is treated with discretion.”

  “Discretion?”

  “If I can, I’ll keep the police out of this. You may not even be expelled. A short period of suspension may be all that’s necessary. It will be an opportunity for you to get some help.”

  “That’s kind of you, Mr Shankley. Real kind. But we both know that you’ve got nothing. That’s what this is really about. And I’ve another idea I’d like to run by you. When you have a crime and you can’t find an obvious perp, then you have to ask yourself a question. Who stands to gain? I mean why would anyone want to kill the school pets?”

  Shankley didn’t like to be challenged and the mask, so recently put on, slipped.

  “Perverts, freaks … you people don’t need a reason beyond your own sick inclinations.”

  “Sure, it suits you to have everyone believe that these are random acts. But let me answer my own question. The person who stands to gain most from this mess is you.”

  There was a famous, rarely encountered, final stage to Shankley’s fury. The stage where he spoke quietly. He was there now.

  “Enough.”

  “Not nearly enough. You hate the Queens. Losing the show will break them, and that means you and your bully-boys will have total control.”

  If you’d given me the option, I’d have said all that in a pleasant, calm voice. I think I may have been a touch more emphatic than I’d intended. Anyway, the Shank’s face remained immobile, except for the tiniest hint of a tremor in his eyelid.

  But I still hadn’t finished. Shank was a rotten tooth and I had to shove my probe in and stab at the nerve.

  “You talk about freaks, but no one’s born a freak. Look at what you’ve done to your own daughter, how you’ve messed her up…”

  I didn’t really know what I was getting at, I just wanted to goad the Shank. It worked. Sorta. His face became ashen and wore an expression of bewilderment and fear. And then he pulled his features back into line.

  “I have no daughter,” he said, as stern and cold as the statue of a Roman emperor.

  “Yeah, sure,” I said. “And I spend my evenings talking to myself in coffee shops.”

  The Shank gave me a stare. He reached over and pressed a red button on his desk. A second later the door opened behind me. “This boy is clearly unwell. I think he needs to lie down. Take him to the sick bay, please.”

  Then Shankley stood and turned his back on me. He walked to his window and gazed out over the tussocky green field and onto the redbrick houses beyond. I felt hands on my arms and knew what to expect.

  “Playtime,” whispered Bosola into my ear.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

  SICK BAY BLUES

  I was slumped in a chair in the sick bay. My hands were tied behind my back. The old resuscitation dummy was staring me in the face. She’d seen better days. She looked like a one-eyed crack addict, beaten up and left for dead in an alleyway.

  But she packed a punch.

  Thwack!

  It was Funt who was playing puppet-master.

  “Wake up, baby,” he said in the voice of a trampy resuscitation dummy. “How about a little kissy-kissy?” Then he rammed the dummy’s head into my face. Again. And again.

  “That’ll do, for now,” said Bosola, from behind me.

  “Yeah, you do what you’re told, Funt,” I slurred. “I’ve had supermarket trolleys with more free will than you.”

  “You make me laugh, Middleton.”

  “Nah – to make you laugh now I’d have had to tell you that joke last Sunday.”

  Funt didn’t bother with the dummy this time, just gave me a serious backhanded slap. My face whipped round and a gobbet of blood flew from my mouth and splattered against the padded wall.

  “I said that’ll do, Funt. He’s trying to wind you up. It’s all he’s got now.” Bosola came round to the front. That was where I wanted him. My hands were behind my back, and I had no chance of working them free with him watching.

  “Mr Shankley requires some information. You’re going to give it to us. Understand?”

  I shrugged again. I was working pretty hard at those ropes and shrugging was good cover. I was also thinking. The Dwarf had given me cryptic clues and I had to work them out. The higher power. The smiling god. The benevolent devil. The lost queen. Paracelsus in his laboratory. Were these different people? No, just one, I thought. The lost queen made me think of Emma West. She was a Queen, but she wasn’t lost. Paracelsus … a scientist of some kind. Or maybe an alchemist. Meanings flickered just beyond my reach, like a piano playing in another room.

  “He ain’t listening,” said Funt, and gave me a little shake to get my attention.

  “OK. Number one,” said Bosola, “why did you kill the stick insects?”

  “Because they were there.”

  Slap. Not too hard.

  “You admit you killed them.”

  “Sure, why not?”

  Slap. Harder.

  “OK, OK. Look, I like sticks. Sticks are cool. You got a stick, you can use it for anything. And if you break it in half, you haven’t got a broken stick, you’ve got two sticks. It’s magic. Just try that with a gun. So, it’s not right that stick insects pretend to be what they aren’t. They haven’t earned it. They had to pay.”

  “Let’s move onto the guinea pigs. Where are they?”

  “Inside a fat man.”

  This time it was a punch. Luckily Bosola was a coward and knew that a punch to my eye socket or chin would hurt him, so it landed on my cheek. It wasn’t fun, but it didn’t do me any damage.

  “The chickens?”

  “That was a fox, dummy.”

  “Someone cut the wire to let the fox in. That was you, wasn’t it?”

  I shrugged. I was bored. My mind was elsewhere. I thought for a minute I might be able to imagine away Funt and Bosola, that maybe I was just having a rest here in the quiet of the sick bay, a refuge of calm from the sound and fury of school life.

  But some things you can’t imagine away.

  “He’s off again, boss,” said Funt. “Look at his eyes. Someone’s blown out his pilot light.”

  “OK, that’s it. I’m going to get his attention. The chief said leave no marks, but screw that.”

  From what felt like a long way away, I watched Bosola reach into his pocket and take out a gleaming brass knuckle-duster. It had a certain brutal beauty, like the obsidian knives the Aztecs used to cut the hearts from their victims. It caught and reflected the harsh light. Like … like a cat’s eye in the night.

  “I’m going to punch you now, in the face. Not sure exactly where yet. If I go for your mouth, then I’m afraid those pretty teeth of yours are going to be embedded in the back of your skull. If I go for the jaw, then the bone’s gonna crumble like dried-up poodle shit.”

  He pulled back his hand, like Robin Hood drawing his bow.


  It was time to do something. I’d been working on my fetters, but my hands still weren’t free. I wrenched and twisted, but there was no way out.

  I shut my eyes.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

  THE QUEEN MOVES

  WHICH meant that I missed the good bit.

  Some part of my brain might just have registered the sound of the door opening. Dumb, really, of the two clowns not to have locked it. What my brain certainly registered was the sound of a goon being strangled. That and the fact that I wasn’t wearing an imprint of Bosola’s knuckle-duster on my face.

  I opened my eyes. Bosola was going purple. There was a feathery scarf around his neck. The ends of it were in the finely manicured hands of Emma West, aka Dorothy, aka the Queen Mother. Two other Queens had a hold of Funt and were squeezing the juice out him. In slightly different circumstances he might have enjoyed it. Right now he wasn’t enjoying it one bit. In fact, there were tears rolling down his cheeks and he was making a sound like a dying buffalo.

  One of the Queens doing the squeezing was a giant marshmallow that I knew by instinct must be my old friend Sophie. Sophie was big and pink, with fizz of curly blonde hair that also had bigness and pinkness in it. I was very glad that whatever it was she had been going to do to me back in the drama studio remained undone.

  The other Queen was Hart, looking as effortlessly distant as ever.

  Before Bosola passed out, Dorothy pushed him away, using the feather boa to spin him like a top. He rotated into a corner and slumped there like an oversized, pooper-scooped bag of dog waste.

  “Well, sugar,” said Dorothy. “Looks like we arrived in the nick of time.”

  “Another thirty seconds and I’d have been eating teeth. So, yeah, thanks.”

  While I was speaking, Sophie and Hart were disentangling me from the chair and helping me up.

  “Let’s get gone,” Dorothy said, looking with distaste at the resuscitation dummy and the two goons. “This place gives me the heebies. Reminds me too much of home.”