The Disappeared

by C. J. Harper

  ‘Give me your money,’ says Navy Hood.

  Wilson scrabbles about trying to pull his currency card out of his pocket. He drops it and has to bend down to pick it up. He hands it to the man.

  ‘Thank you,’ Navy Hood says to Wilson.

  Wilson tries a shaky smile in return.

  The man headbutts him.

  ‘Uhhh!’ cries Wilson and lifts his hand to his head. The man behind us brings down an elbow into Wilson’s neck. Wilson crumples over, his face smashing straight into Navy Hood’s thrusting knee.

  ‘No!’ I cry.

  Both men turn to look at me.

  ‘You can’t . . .’ I begin, but my voice fails me.

  Black Hood’s eyes are in shadow, but I see him bare his teeth and I wince away just as he punches me in the nose. It’s like an explosion in my face. I reel backwards and Navy Hood kicks me in the stomach. As I go down I see Wilson trying to get to his feet.

  The men are kicking me; raining blows on my face, my stomach, my back. I hold my arms curled over my head. I can’t breathe. It feels like they’re splintering my spine with each kick. Why has no one come to help us?

  ‘Efwurding little brainer. Do you think you can tell us what to do?’ He kicks me in the stomach so hard it feels like his boot has punched through my flesh. ‘Think you’re better than us?’

  I try to call out, but I can’t get air into my lungs. I’m going to die.

  ‘Hey!’ Wilson shouts.

  The kicking stops.

  I gasp for breath. I retch. Keeping my arms over my head, I open my eyes. The two men are running down the long corridor after Wilson. I’ve got to get up. I’ve got to help Wilson. I roll over on to my knees and lift my head. There’s a rushing sound in my ears. I try to use my hands but they’re numb from where the men kicked them and my arms are shaking so hard I can’t support myself. I lean against the wall while I push up with my legs, then half run, half hobble down the corridor.

  I’m coughing and choking for breath and have to stop and suck in air to shout for help, but my voice is tiny in the dimly lit corridor. There’s no one in sight.

  I bang on the nearest door. ‘Help!’ I scream, straining my vocal chords. There’s no answer. I bang on the next door. Nothing. ‘Help!’ I shout again. ‘Police!’ The doors stare back at me blankly like eyes that don’t see.

  I’ve got to help Wilson – where is he?

  ‘Ahhhhhhh!’ I hear Wilson screaming somewhere outside. I try to run to the end of the corridor, but it’s like I’m moving in slow motion and the floor is made of sponge. I stagger through another set of fire doors out on to the outside balcony at the back of the block. I twist left then right; there’s no sign of Wilson or the men. They can’t have just vanished. I look from side to side again and up at the balcony above. There’s no one there either. The whole place is deserted. I look down over the railings on to the metal balcony below.

  And there is Wilson’s body.

  Wilson is totally still in a horrible, final sort of a way. One of his arms is twisted back at a sickening angle. The drop to the balcony below is deep. They must have thrown him over. His face is white against my red jacket.

  Footsteps thunder below me. The men are coming.

  ‘I’ll kill you!’ one roars. I turn and run back through the doors and along the corridor. My legs feel disconnected from my body and there’s a stabbing pain in my stomach, but I move faster than I ever have before. At the other end of the corridor I run back down the steps that Wilson and I were climbing only moments ago. Before everything went crazy. I keep twisting back to see if the men are following, but there’s no sign of them. All I can hear is the sound of my own ragged breathing. Below me there’s the metallic ring of something hitting the rail of the stairs. I look down the centre of the stairwell and see Black Hood looking up at me.

  I spin round and run back up the stairs. My legs are on fire. I feel like tendons are ripping with every step I take. Below, through the metal I can see the man getting closer. I stumble through double doors and down another corridor. This is hopeless. There’s nowhere for me to go. I can’t escape and, when they catch me, they’ll kill me like they killed Wilson. I kick the flat door nearest to me as I listen to Black Hood pounding up the stairs.

  This is it.

  Then the door in front of me opens.

  I’m pulled into the room, where I fall to my knees. I press my head to the ground and let my mouth hang open in a silent scream while my body shakes. As my gasping slows I’m aware of the men outside shouting. I freeze, pressing my hand over my mouth.

  I turn my head to the side and look up at the flat owner. It’s an old woman. Her birdlike head is cocked in the direction of the door. She’s completely still, with her hands slightly raised as if she’s waiting for them to come bursting in. I’ve got to hide. I roll over to look around the room. It’s tiny. The painted walls are flaking and there’s a purple-black bloom of mould across the ceiling. There’s a cupboard too low and narrow for me to hide in, a stove, a table, and a rickety bed. I crawl under the bed and press myself against the wall. There’s another shout from outside and the sound of the door at the top of the stairs swinging back so hard that it cracks against the wall. Then it’s quiet. I watch the old woman’s feet cross the room to the window. Outside, a car squeals away at high speed.

  ‘They’re gone,’ she says.

  I wriggle out. It’s hard to get to my feet. My bones feel broken, my skin feels split open across my back, and somehow my head seems swollen to twice its size. I have an overwhelming urge to lie down on the bed and sleep for a long time.

  ‘You’ve to go now,’ the woman says, watching me carefully.

  Go? Go out there? My mouth drops open. Everything is wrong and no one will help me.

  The woman looks away. ‘You’ve to go now,’ she repeats.

  I can’t find the words to tell her that she can’t do this to me. When she turns back I can only stare at her.

  ‘We’ve been told,’ she says. ‘Not to be opening the door. They say sometimes one of them gets out of the Wilderness. More animal than man they say they are.’ She looks me up and down. ‘I’m not to be talking to you. Do you understand?’

  I don’t understand. Who would tell her to ignore something terrible happening outside her own front door? ‘But I’m not from the Wilderness,’ I say.

  She doesn’t answer.

  ‘Call the police.’ I realise as I’m saying it that she doesn’t have a communicator in her room.

  ‘Call the police!’ she says. ‘Then they’d be knowing I didn’t do the thing they telled me to do.’

  The old woman is clearly mad. Paranoid. Prone to conspiracy theories. Who are this ‘they’ she keeps talking about? My head is swimming. I’m too battered to try to get this straight.

  ‘I don’t want to be all unkind,’ she says, putting out a hand, but dropping it before it touches mine. ‘I’m an old woman. I don’t want trouble now. You’ve best to go.’ She looks at the door.

  I shake my head. I find myself walking towards the door. I can’t believe she won’t help me.

  I stop. She has helped me. If she hadn’t brought me in here, I’d be dead by now. ‘Thank you,’ I say.

  She gives an almost imperceptible nod, but her eyes are still on the door, so I leave.

  I take a deep breath and sway my way back down those terrible stairs. The steps keep looming up into my face then shrinking away again. It’s hard to make my feet land in the right place. When I reach ground level I have to stop and throw up. I want to lie down, but I need to find a policeman and tell them about Wilson.

  When I reach the row of shops I almost throw myself at the first person I see, but suddenly I’m conscious of how messed and bloody I am and feel embarrassed. Embarrassed! It’s so ridiculous that I let out a little laugh that quickly turns to a sob.

  Not now. Find a policeman.

  I spot a police pod on the other side of the road. I limp across and rap on the enquiries wi
ndow.

  A chubby policeman with sandy hair slides open the glass. ‘What happened to you?’ he says, eyeing me up and down.

  I try to pull myself together. I don’t want to sound like a babbling idiot. ‘These men, they mugged us. They beat me up and my friend Wilson too . . . and they killed him. They took his currency card. They were huge, they had hoods . . .’

  The policeman is frowning. ‘Where did this happen?’ he asks.

  ‘In the factory accommodation block, come with me. I’ll show you.’ I turn to cross the road.

  ‘Wait a minute, young man. I’m going to want some back-up if we’re going to the accommodation block.’

  He slides his finger across his computer screen then taps it twice. ‘P.C. Wright, Pod 675 requesting back-up car for a five-niner at the East Hill factory accommodation block,’ he says.

  ‘Back-up car on its way,’ replies a voice from the speaker on the computer.

  P.C. Wright gets up and makes sure his taser is attached to his belt. He carefully places his hat on his head, checking his reflection in the computer screen. What does he think he’s doing?

  ‘Come on!’ I say. ‘They’ll be miles away by now.’

  ‘What exactly were you doing in the block, sonny?’

  ‘We were delivering a package.’

  ‘Who to?’

  ‘I don’t know.’

  P.C. Wright raises his eyebrows. ‘Do you know who it was from?’

  ‘Of course I do! Facilitator Johnson. He’s my teacher.’ I stand up straight. ‘At the Willows Learning Community.’

  ‘Where is it?’

  ‘Where’s what?’ I say, feeling increasingly impatient.

  ‘The package, where is it?’

  I stare down at my empty hands. I don’t know where it is. I must have dropped it when the men were kicking me.

  ‘So you’re a Learning Community boy and your facilitator sent you to a factory accommodation block to deliver a package?’

  Oh great. He doesn’t believe me. ‘Listen,’ I say. ‘My friend is dead. You’re a policeman. I think you should come and look.’

  A squad car pulls up by the pod with another policeman inside. ‘This is P.C. Barnes,’ says P.C. Wright as he waves me into the back seat. I nod to the other policemen and finally we head for the accommodation block.

  We stop at the front of the block, the side without the balconies, where Wilson and I came in. I can’t believe it was only an hour ago that Wilson badgered me into lending him my jacket.

  I lead the men up the stairs. These horrible stairs; it’s like a nightmare where I’m forced to keep on going up and down them for ever. My whole body is throbbing. There’s a screaming pain in my jaw where I’ve lost a tooth. My stomach feels like someone has ripped back the skin and pulled out bits of my intestines.

  ‘This is where they came at us,’ I say when we get halfway down the corridor. ‘They took Wilson’s currency card and started kicking and punching us, then Wilson ran further along the corridor and they chased him.’ I lead the two policemen down the corridor. ‘I tried to go after them, but I could hardly stand and when I got out here’ – I open the far set of doors ‘– they all seemed to have disappeared, but then I saw that Wilson had been thrown over the balcony.’ I approach the rail and screw up my face ready to look at poor, broken Wilson. The policemen draw up on either side of me. We peer over the railing.

  Wilson is gone.

  I can’t believe it. What has happened to Wilson’s body? I make the policemen go down on to the balcony to check if there is any evidence that Wilson had been there. Nothing. I make them knock on the door of number eighty-seven, where Facilitator Johnson told us to drop off the package. No reply. I almost tell them about the old woman, but something stops me. Mostly because I know she won’t open her door again, but also because I’ve got a horrible creeping sense that maybe there’s some truth in what she was saying. So we trudge down the steps again. P.C. Wright turns to me.

  ‘Listen, son, I don’t know exactly what happened to you . . .’ He eyes my swollen face.

  ‘I told you those men killed—’

  ‘And I’m not sure that I want to,’ he interrupts. ‘We all know that there are some things it’s best to leave the police out of.’

  My mouth falls open. I bloody well don’t know that. ‘I was under the impression that the police were here to safeguard the people and to arrest criminals – but you don’t seem to want to do either of those things,’ I say.

  ‘I’ve seen no evidence of a crime, smart man.’

  ‘Urrr!’ I slam my fist down on to my thigh. ‘This is ridiculous.’

  P.C. Wright takes a step towards me and P.C. Barnes puts his hand on his taser.

  ‘Listen, boy,’ P.C. Wright says. ‘I’m sorry about your friend, or whatever it was that you think happened, but we don’t get involved in factory worker fights, okay?’

  Factory worker fights? He thinks I work in a factory. And live in an accommodation block like some moron.

  ‘I am not from a factory,’ I say.

  He takes a step back. ‘You’re not . . . Wilderness are you?’

  ‘No! My name is Jackson and, I told you before, my facilitator sent me here. I belong to the Willows Learning Community,’ I say drawing myself up. ‘I’ve got an AEP score of 98.5.’

  ‘98.5 is it?’ he says, but at least he takes his hand off his taser.

  Obviously appealing to sense is going to get me further than anger.

  ‘Officers, I appreciate that my appearance is rather unkempt,’ I say. ‘And I understand that you don’t want unsupervised kids roaming about. But I can assure that I am a Learning Community student.’

  ‘He can’t be a worker,’ P.C. Barnes says to P.C. Wright. ‘They’ve all got security chips fitted so he wouldn’t have been able to get out of the factory compound gates to come to your booth.’

  ‘If you would just give me a lift back to my Learning Community we can sort all this out quickly,’ I say.

  P.C. Wright sniffs. ‘Well, I suppose it can’t hurt,’ he says.

  P.C. Wright takes me by the elbow and guides me into the car. ‘What’s your surname, Jackson?’ he asks. He and P.C. Barnes climb into the front seats.

  ‘Jackson is my surname. But that’s what they call me at the Learning Community.’

  P.C. Barnes turns round to look at me.

  ‘Well they do,’ I say. ‘Everyone is called by their surname.’

  ‘Got some funny ideas those brainer types. I heard they all wear dresses to eat their dinner, even the men,’ P.C. Wright says to P.C. Barnes.

  ‘Not dresses, robes. And that’s only on Fridays.’ I say.

  ‘Oh, just on Fridays. Do they save the frilly pinnies for special occasions?’ laughs P.C. Barnes.

  ‘I’m sure the Second Class Learning Community you went to had its own traditions,’ I say, coldly.

  P.C. Wright coughs. ‘Yes, of course. And that’s quite right, isn’t it, Barnes?’

  He doesn’t answer.

  ‘That’s how it should be,’ P.C. Wright goes on. ‘We all fit in somewhere, don’t we?’

  It’s good to hear him talking sense and sounding like a proper policeman. Maybe he can stop those men who killed Wilson after all.

  When we draw up at the Willows, P.C. Barnes sucks in his breath. ‘Fancy,’ he says.

  I stare out the window and try to see it through the policemen’s eyes. I suppose it’s a nice enough building. It’s old, grey stone with big bay windows. There’s a stained-glass rose window above the door. Around the side there are greenhouses and on the left is a tennis court . . . But it’s just a house really. I don’t know why he called it fancy.

  ‘Come on,’ I say. I’m desperate to get inside so Facilitator Johnson can make them do something about Wilson. We’ve wasted so much time already.

  I still ache all over from my beating and my head is throbbing, but I rush up the drive and P.C. Wright and P.C. Barnes follow behind. I notice neither of them
tries to hold on to my elbow now. I dash into the entrance hall, but they stop outside the front door. P.C. Wright straightens his jacket and takes off his hat. He widens his eyes at P.C. Barnes until he does the same.

  ‘Mrs Clark—’ I say to the receptionist, but before she answers me, P.C. Wright arrives at my shoulder and interrupts.

  ‘Ah . . . ahem. Got one of your pupils here. If it’s not too much of an inconvenience, could I have a word with who-ever’s in charge?’ He makes a weird little bob like a bow.

  Mrs Clark’s eyes flick sideways to me. I smile, but she doesn’t smile back.

  ‘One moment,’ she says. ‘I’ll fetch Facilitator Johnson.’ She disappears.

  I jiggle from foot to foot. Why won’t anyone hurry up? P.C. Barnes gives me a smile.

  ‘Nice place,’ he says. He walks behind the desk and leans over to get a closer look at the computer.

  ‘Stand still, man,’ hisses P.C. Wright.

  P.C. Barnes slowly pulls up straight, but his eyes roll around, taking in the Creativity class’s tapestry hanging on the wall and the wooden staircase carved with fruit and vines.

  P.C. Wright is sweating. He mutters something like, ‘Not really our jurisdiction . . .’ and smacks down P.C. Barnes’s arm when he stretches it out to touch the tapestry.

  Finally, Facilitator Johnson appears with a serious expression. I wonder if he’s already heard about Wilson.

  ‘Sir, something terrible has happened,’ I say, rushing up to him.

  He takes a step backwards.

  ‘Wilson and I took your package to the block and we were attacked and –’ a sob escapes me ‘– they . . . Wilson’s dead.’

  Facilitator Johnson’s forehead creases. He moves his lips several times before he finally says, ‘Who’s Wilson?’ He looks up at P.C. Wright and then back to me. ‘And who are you?’

  My mouth drops open. ‘Jackson,’ I say.

  Facilitator Johnson is still frowning at me.

  ‘I’m Jackson! I only left a couple of hours ago. You gave me a package to take to the factory block, remember? With Wilson?’