The voice howled with laughter in my head, the yelp from the dog sang through the trees as he was thrown from the bank into the river, the barrels crashing into the shallow water after it. The woman’s cry was louder still. To her credit her first instinct was to save her dog. She splashed desperately into the river and bent down to tend the beast. My head was thundering with the uncontrolled, psychotic wails of utter joy pouring from the voice. It was a terrifying and wonderful thing. It was infectious because it was so raw, so pure. The absolute certainty of its own will, like the roar of a lion, was both frightening and perfect. I felt something akin to an orgasm but of the mind. My entire being seemed to shiver and shudder in dirty raptures. The darkness was seducing me.
It was minutes later, when the woman had established that the dog would be ok, that she turned her attention to finding whomever had done this. The four of us were no-where to be seen. We had frozen to the spot when the barrels had hit but a moment later, realising we were not yet discovered, we had all come back to life. The undergrowth that high up the valley side is difficult to penetrate. But not impossible. In fact, to four boys who spent every weekend in those woods it was as easy as a stroll through an open field. We knew these woods like the backs of our hands. By the time the woman looked up to where the barrels had come from we had, in our vernacular, done a legger. All four of us were relieved to have escaped unseen. The others were relieved to have not killed the dog or the woman. The voice was disappointed and I was beginning to wonder.
For a few days after that we avoided the woods. We took the opportunity to play at the railway station at Sea Mills. It was only a mile away and it pleased Sam because he lived the nearest to it and so was usually the first there. The station was a just a little branch stop so had a single platform and a single line. Just before the station itself the railway line crossed a bridge across Sea Mills harbour. The harbour opened onto the river Avon but was hardly used anymore. It had a history stretching back to Roman Britain though so couldn’t be touched. The bridge across it to carry the railway had been a Victorian concession to progress. There was a path running underneath the bridge to the river bank beyond the station. Here was the station master’s cottage and a path that ran along the edge of the muddy river bank to the first of the railway lines tunnels on its way to Temple Meads. Walking through that tunnel was perhaps the stupidest thing we ever did, being shot at by the station master for doing it was clearly the most dangerous. Before our run in with the station master we had contented ourselves by playing around the station. Under the bridge was a place to climb up and stand on a low wall. By doing this your head would stick out of a hole beside the railway line on the bridge above. The rush of air and the proximity of the trains wheels as it thundered across the old bridge was a thrill not to be missed. During term time there was little point in making the journey down to the station on a Saturday because the timetable was sparse. There was no service on a Sunday at all so even though it was close to church we wouldn’t go. In the holidays though Sea Mills station was a different prospect. Plenty of trains and plenty of time. Unless the station master starts shooting at you for buggering about in his train tunnel.
The summer continued in that vein. We ventured back to the woods when we were sure there was no retribution coming for the incident with the dog. We went on building dens, playing hide and seek, damming up the river at various points and riding our bikes for hours though the woodland estate. The building site sprouted three houses and a boundary fence of metal panels set in concrete blocks. Through it all, through all the fun and the danger and the bonding, I thought about the girl. I passed the house a few times a day. I slowed my walk as I got near so I had more time to casually observe it. I grew more and more disheartened. I had no idea how to proceed. I was gaining nothing by walking past the house but what else could I do? I was stuck. Until one day near the end of summer when Riley, Garret, Sam and I were at the corner. We were trying to decide what to do that day and were sat on the roots of the old oak tree, our bikes laid on the grass behind us. No-one could come up with a plan exciting enough so we lounged there, bored and uninspired. Garret started throwing small stones across the road, trying to hit the sign that said, “Grove Ave BS9” on the wall opposite. We all joined in and soon we were inventing rules to make it more challenging. One eye closed, throw with your left hand, turn around and throw over your shoulder, that sort of thing. After a while we started finding other targets. A manhole cover fifteen feet away was ten points, the lamppost a bit further down the road towards Riley’s house was twenty and so on. We played this game for a good while and were getting our eye in. We needed harder and harder targets to keep the interest up. Sam suggested the padlock on the gates to the old, reclusive farmer’s grounds, next to the lane that led to the field and so opposite the corner where we lounged. The grounds of the large house were surrounded by a tall stone wall and the main entrance was denoted by the large, rusting, double iron gates in flaking green paint. These were always secured with a heavy chain and padlock. That chain and padlock hung between the gates like the forgotten shrine to a Lord Mayor or Rapper who had died there. The padlock was about twenty feet away and we decided that only very small stones could be used. There was no point just chucking a piece of brick at the thing, this had to be a suitable challenge. Riley went first, then me, then Sam. We all missed. Garret, confident as ever, stepped up. With a delicate little underarm lob, he let fly his missile. As we were beginning to mock his throw we heard a clink, a clink of stone on metal. Garret threw his arms in the air and declared victory. We weren’t so sure. I was dispatched to see if he had hit the padlock, the chain or just the gate and when I got there it struck me. Garret had indeed hit the padlock but not directly. His shot was too high but having hit one of the gate’s uprights it had rebounded and struck the back of the padlock. As I stood looking at the scuff mark on the back of the rusty old padlock I realised that I’d been looking at my problem the wrong way around. I was never going to see anything from the road. Walking past the house every day wasn’t getting me anywhere when all the evidence was on the inside. There was no point being this side of the lock, I needed to get inside the house.
CHAPTER FIVE
A few days later, in the last week of the summer holidays, I was ready. I had spent the day playing in the woods with the boys as usual. We had climbed the beech wood cathedral and hidden behind the low wall at the top that marked the boundary of the golf course. We had made raids onto the seventh green to steal the balls of distant, approaching players. Our last act of childish terrorism before leaving had been to steal the flag from the hole and bury it in the undergrowth. After lunch, and another couple of passes of the big house, I had re-joined the gang and we sat on the corner moaning about the holidays being almost over. We had heard that some joy riders had driven a car into the estate along one of the wider footpaths that had once served as a route for horse and cart to get to and from the dairy. Not knowing the path well and, driving without headlights to avoid detection, the car had gone off the side of the path and deep down into the valley side. The dense nature of the untamed foliage had slowed it eventually and the youths had escaped, presumably un hurt. We made our way to where the car lay half buried by undergrowth and spent the afternoon trying to remove the badges for trophies. All of this should have been tremendous fun, and for the others I have no doubt it was, but I was pre-occupied. At the end of day, as we made our way back through the field towards Grove Road, I began to fully focus on the task ahead. My day was just beginning. I said goodbye to the boys at the corner and made my way home. I took my usual route, took my usual slow amble past the house, but once on Arbutus drive I sped up. I wanted to get home early. I couldn’t afford to draw attention to myself by being late. I couldn’t afford anything short of invisible normality.
I didn’t fight with my brother. I didn’t take the piss out of my sister. I offered to make the sandwiches for everyone’s tea. I made my father an extra one. I cleared up after
myself. I had no strong opinions, no sudden movements. I spoke pleasantly but not too pleasantly, often enough but not too much. I didn’t take too long in the shower and I hung my towel up neatly afterwards. There was no protest when I was told it was bedtime, I had even yawned a few times in the hour before hand to make my compliance seem warranted. I was the grey man. I moved as a familiar ghost through the house. I gave no-one any reason to notice me. I lay in bed at 8pm with the lights off. I could hear my parents still moving about. My sister would still be up but in her bedroom, my brother would be asleep by now. My mother and father usually went to bed at about 10.30 – 11 so I had a while to wait. It was going to be difficult to keep my focus for the next few hours. Even after my parents were in bed I had to wait until they were asleep. My father was a heavy sleeper and snored like a freight train rumbling through a Swiss mountain tunnel. Consequently, my mother never slept very well and was often up in the night. She was going to the obstacle to my success that night. If I was going to get out of the house, and indeed back in again undetected, I was going to have to focus on the sound cues from my mother. I employed all my hide and seek skills to remain still and focussed, a clumsy fall into sleep now would blow everything.
At 1.12 am I was ready. I had spent the last five hours listening to the sounds of the house die away as people settled to sleep. My father had begun snoring at 11.36 pm. My mother had stopped padding about at 12.28 am and made her way to bed. Over the next forty-four minutes I ran the scenarios in my head. What to do if I was caught, what to say, what to plead, whether to bother pleading or just accept the punishment. The voice was excited but too reckless. I had to work hard to supress its urge to just go, kill whoever got in our way. This was no time for instinct over planning.
At 1.12 am I was ready. I pulled back the bed clothes and silently sat up. I slipped on my black games trainers and stood. I felt like the world’s most disappointing ninja, trembling in black tracksuit trousers, a black t-shirt and dark blue sweat shirt. I slid my house key off the maths text book on my desk and tried to breathe. With the lightest footsteps I could manage I made my way onto the landing. Three steps and I was at the top of the stairs. There was no movement from my parent’s room. The blood was thundering in my ears as I descended the stairs. I remembered to stay to the edge to avoid the creaking of the middle of the boards. I remembered to completely avoid the sixth step from the top because that one creaked wherever you stood on it. At the bottom of the stairs I stopped and tried to breathe. I listened for sounds of discovery but there were none. I crossed the herring bone hallway to the front door. I had been gripping my key so hard it had left a perfect indentation in my right palm. I took the key in my left hand and with my right reached for the latch. A noise from upstairs. A door opening across newly laid carpet. Oh, Christ it was my mother! I held my breath like it was some precious commodity leaking from the hull of a torpedoed ship. Four quick steps on the balls of my feet and I was in the front room. I pressed myself against the wall just inside the room and waited for the creak of the stairs. Waited to see the slippered feet of discovery fall into view. It was my mother but she hadn’t discovered me. She crossed the landing to the bathroom. I tried to breathe. Think! Think! Think! This could be good. If she doesn’t come downstairs this could be good. I ran the scenario. It might work in my favour. It was all I had. I had to go for it. A few moments later I heard the flush. I had to be quick. As soon as my mother had passed the top of the stairs I darted towards the front door. With the noise of the flush covering me I opened the door quickly and stepped into the porch. As the flush silenced itself I slid my key into the keyhole. Turning the key clockwise to keep the door latch open I slowly pulled the door closed. When I was sure it was tight against the door frame I turned the key anticlockwise to secure the latch in place and lock the door. I breathed. Thankfully no-one had closed the porch door that I had purposefully left open earlier that day. I tucked my door key into the sock on my right ankle, waited in the porch for ten minutes and then left.
The world is a very different place at night. I walked quickly past still homes bathed in the orange glow of the lampposts on Arbutus Drive. I surprised a cat that was emerging from the garden of number 67 and watched with envy as it ran across the road and silently scaled a wooden fence running between numbers 58 and 60. I could do with some cat like grace myself tonight. A few houses showed signs of muted movement but for the most part I moved through an artificially lit post-apocalyptic wasteland. I began to enjoy the freedom of the night. The cold air and silence were invigorating. I was alone in a familiar place. I was God in this kingdom. I could almost feel the swelling of the orchestra that carries majesty before it. Like the lone cleaner in a shopping centre at night or the traveller in a holiday town in January I felt the beautiful solace of the sleeping giant surround me. Soon enough, in only a few hours, this place would begin to re-awaken. The rituals of the morning would take over from the silence and the humming of human’s being would hang in the air. All too soon I was at the top of my road. Grove Road lay before me like a dark river. There were no lampposts on Grove Road. I don’t know why but there weren’t and the road was all the more conspicuous for it. The darkness seemed somehow darker than it should be in the absence of the orange air of Arbutus Drive. I stood at the top of my road and stared into the black. I had never even noticed the lack of lampposts before and the complete darkness threw me. I was suddenly aware of being right on the edge of woodland. The wisps of half remembered fairy tales danced through my mind, creating witch’s cottages made of gingerbread and trees that reached out to grab unsuspecting children. The world seemed to close in around me and I felt my breath stop again. The orchestra stopped playing. The freedom of night gave way to the terror of the unknown. I heard things rustling in bushes, the black air stroked my face with it’s cold fingers. I turned back towards home. What was I doing? I was just a stupid kid who was going to get a beating for going out in the middle of the night. I’d be lucky if I got anything to eat for the next week after a stunt like this. My father was going to kill me. I ran home, angry now at the lampposts of Arbutus Drive for making me think the night was safe. When I got to within a few houses of home I slowed to a walk and then a stop. The house next to ours had no car on the drive and there was no longer the low boundary wall to obscure my view. Our neighbour, a drunken old spinster with no time for social interactions or personal hygiene, had kicked it down the previous year in a row with my mother about whiskey bottles being left on it. I rarely saw my mother back down from an argument but she had done that day. She had shoed us all inside and we had watched with fascinated horror as that angry, shouting bear of a woman had thrown bricks and bottles across our front lawn. My father had been tasked with clearing up the mess and re-building the wall. He had done the first part after, rather unwisely, pointing out to my mother that clearing a few empty bottles from the still standing wall would have been an easier job. He hadn’t got around to re-building the wall yet so I had a clear view of my house. All the lights were out so I approached silently. I took my key from my sock when I got to the porch and slipped it into the keyhole slowly, hearing every click of every tumbler like a lump hammer on sheet steel. I turned the key and opened the door. I reached around and held the latch in the open position before slipping into the hallway and closing the door silently behind me. I carefully allowed the latch to move into place. I slunk up the stairs by the edge, avoiding the creaky one near the top, went to my bedroom, silently undressed as the voice mocked my inability and cowardice, put my door key back on top of the maths book, climbed into bed and slept the fitful sleep of the defeated.
CHAPTER SIX
A few nights later I went back. I had bought a small torch from the hardware store in the small row of shops at the bottom end of Arbutus Drive. That second time I didn’t feel the freedom of the night, I knew I needed to be focused. I snuck out of the house in the same way as before but the novelty was already gone. At the top of Arbutus Drive I stopped and su
rvey the scene. The darkness of Grove Road was as complete as before but less engulfing. I walked towards the big house. There were no signs of life, no lights on, no sounds. The houses opposite were also still to the night so I took my time, knowing there was no-one about to see me. I stood by the hedge and considered my next move. I wanted to get inside the house and find evidence of the crime to get the police to re-investigate. I didn’t know what I was looking for or where it would be. I didn’t know how I was going to get into the house without a key. All I knew was that the police hadn’t paid much mind to the anonymous tip I had phoned in and had only had the briefest conversation with the man. They hadn’t searched the house on any deeper level than having a casual look around. What did they expect? The walls covered with blood and a body lying in the hallway with a confession pinned to her in the man’s handwriting? He’d obviously cleaned up and got rid of the girl, anyone watching Bergerac on a Saturday night could figure that out! I knew there would be evidence somewhere, something the man had overlooked and I was determined to find it.
Those who broke the boy: The Sons of Charlemagne Book One Page 4