by Jackson Lear
“Too late,” muttered Josh.
“Pfft, you’ve seen me in a hot tub,” said Anthony.
Claire cringed inwards. “Oh god, you’ve both seen me in a hot tub, haven’t you?”
“Back to Ian and his friends,” said Josh. “We can talk to them. If you start splitting them up then they’ll just resent you and they’ll hang out anyway and it will make the situation worse.”
“And maybe Ian’s friend wasn’t actually filming you,” said Anthony. “Maybe. He might’ve. He might not have. You only heard a beep that may have come from another room.”
Claire leaned back in the sofa and dug her nails into the arm rests.
Anthony shifted forward in a move he hoped would help to calm his sister down. “Right now Ian and his friends are around about thirteen. Of course they’re going to be bad influences on themselves. They’re only just starting to figure out how shit works. Part of that process is to do stuff you shouldn’t do. Sometimes they’ll get in trouble, sometimes they’ll get away with it.”
“Don’t tell me that,” said Claire. “I have nightmares that they’re collecting fireworks and are going to blow their fingers off and it’ll be miles from anywhere and they won’t have the sense to pick up their little fingers off the ground so they can be reattached at the hospital. Or that he’s going to fall from a tree and break his neck.”
“I bet you can’t name any actual story of someone doing that or blowing off their fingers,” said Josh.
“Not even I fell out of a tree,” said Anthony.
“And I don’t want Ian to be the first! Daniel and Warrick I’m less concerned about, they’re someone else’s kids. Just ... let my son make it to retirement age, okay?”
Josh ran a hand over his scalp to scratch the back of his head. He shot Anthony an apprehensive look to see if he remembered.
“Yeah,” mumbled Anthony.
“What?” asked Claire.
“We played with fireworks when we were their age.”
Claire’s eyes dropped as though a ghost had just walked through her. “Great. That’s a real comfort.”
“And we didn’t blow ourselves up,” said Anthony.
Josh drew a quick breath inwards to say something and was met with a sharp glare from Anthony.
It was too late. Claire caught the look. “For fuck’s sake, this is not something I want to be thinking about right now!”
“Simple solution, then,” said Josh. “You buy Ian a game console with so many shoot-’em-ups and racing games that he’ll never leave the house again. He’ll just bypass that whole mischievous streak completely. Of course, he’ll be a fat and lazy computer geek with limited social skills, but at least he’ll be safe.”
“I don’t want him playing violent video games,” said Claire.
“Why? In case they turn him into a raging psychopath and he guns down everyone in a rampage?”
“I don’t like the sound of all those guns and explosions coming from my TV. I bought the TV, it’s for whatever I want to hear.”
“Oh good. I thought you were about to have a go at video games being responsible for mass murders.”
Anthony shook his head at Claire, willing her to not provoke Josh any further on the topic.
Claire ignored him. “That’s what they say on the news.”
“And it’s complete bullshit.”
“Then why do they say it?”
“To get ratings.”
Anthony held a hand up for them both to see. “We are here about Ian, not–”
“I’m not getting him any more violent video games,” said Claire.
“What about Space Invaders?” asked Josh.
Claire shook her head as she strained to find the connection. “What?”
“It’s one of the first violent video games. Made in 1978, I think. The whole point of it is that you’re shooting flying saucers and trying to blow them up.”
Claire held her jaw open as though Josh had just jumped over two pages at once and hadn’t tied any of this to Daniel filming her. “I … what?”
“1978. Probably a hundred million people have played that game where the only way to win is by shooting everything in sight. And yet, by some unfathomably strange anomaly, there were mass shootings and killings before the rise of video games. It used to be books and risqué fiction that were to blame. Or someone’s been touched by the devil. The flavour of the month these days is that it’s foreigners and religious extremists who are responsible. Maybe next year the blame will fall upon phone signals being hacked by terrorists, turning us all into sleeper agents.” Josh paused, certain of his conviction.
“I’m not having a machine gun massacre game playing on my TV,” said Claire.
“Then get him a rally car game. He’ll be on the podium and popping champagne in no time.”
“We’ll talk to Ian,” said Anthony.
“Thank you.”
“Of course, things might get weird with Ian’s friend’s parents if the kids all become curious about filming naked women. It might lead to questions about sex and girls and jerking off.”
“Yeah,” said Josh. “That sounds like a potentially bad situation with their folks if we teach their kids about this stuff.”
Claire held her hands out as though she was caught in an impossible situation. “So what the hell am I supposed to do? Send them a text?”
“Nooooo.”
“I was being sarcastic,” said Claire.
“You need to do that thing face to face,” said Josh.
“Oh, sure. Be in an opportunity that lets me call out their bad parenting skills so that Ian becomes isolated not from two of his friends but the entire parent network at school.”
“Fuck ‘em,” said Josh. “Not literally.”
Both Claire and Anthony froze as they stared at Josh.
“I mean, they’ve got to be at least thirty, right? At that age who gives a fuck what another thirty year old thinks of them?”
“Lots of people,” said Claire.
Anthony leaned towards Claire. “I know how we can talk to the kids without their parents blasting us a new one. We lie to the parents the moment they start shouting at us.”
“Huh?”
Anthony grinned as though the devil was whispering from his shoulder. “If the parents blow up we’ll say we’ve noticed some troubling behaviour and we found pornography on the boys. Or cigarettes. Something like that. We can even say that you walked in on them in Ian’s room looking at some pictures. You decided that we should talk to them, as guys, so that the boys would feel comfortable. There wasn’t any time to call and let their parents know what we were up to. All we have to do is be very smooth about it.”
“And this will stop Ian from wanting to see his friends?” Claire asked.
“No, this is straightening them out. We’re trying to stop the bad influences.”
“You can always stop them from hanging out later,” said Josh. “Right now, straighten out. If that fails: social isolation.”
Claire felt a lump build up in her throat. There were a dozen ways of this ending badly with only a faint glimmer of hope that this would go exactly as Anthony and Josh hoped. “If they open up to you, you’ll be able to deal with this?”
“Yes,” said Anthony. “Well, maybe. But I’m sure we’ll handle it better than our teachers, who were only interested in telling us about the mechanics of getting someone pregnant and then feeling as though they did a good job if they listed all the symptoms of every STD there was.”
“Hang on,” said Josh. “Are we talking about fireworks and lost fingers, or porn and sex?”
“Potentially everything,” said Anthony.
“And what about them filming me?” asked Claire.
“If they haven’t done it we don’t want to give them the idea, but we’ll highlight that there are consequences to similar cases, and getting caught can be a fate worse than death.”
Claire sighed and collapsed back into her chair.
“Lovely. And if they start telling their friends everything they know from their cool uncles Anthony and Josh then I’m going to be in the middle of a shit storm among every parent in the school.”
“I’m leaning towards the fuck ’em argument again,” said Josh.
“It’s a small town and reputations travel fast,” said Claire.
Josh shrugged. “I’m sorry, are you looking out for the best interests of yourself and your reputation, or for your child’s wellbeing?”
“Both.”
“We certainly can’t do a worse job than Mrs Rowbotham,” said Anthony.
“What did she do?” asked Claire.
“She was as uptight as they came. Probably never gave a blow jobs in her life, probably never even had an orgasm. So naturally she was selected to answer every question we had about sex. We wrote down whatever we could think of, put our questions into a bucket, and these would be answered in front of the class. We were mostly fucking with her, but we had some serious questions hidden away, like ‘What is a clitoris?’”
Josh adopted a quick feminine voice. “‘It’s a body part near the vagina.’ No shit, really? Wow, thanks for clearing that up.”
“Yeah, we already knew that. We wanted to know why it was important enough to mention on TV all the time and why it was impossible to find.”
“Yeah, then there was the one that all the girls were freaking out about. ‘How much blood comes out during your period?’ ‘Not that much,’ was the answer. I guess the girls had been teased that it was going to be like them pissing blood and they weren’t sure how often they would have to change their pads. I don’t think our teacher gave a single straight answer no matter what she was asked. When she decided she’d had enough she took some of the more vulgar questions, matched our handwriting, and brought it up to the assistant principal. He sat us down and told us he was not impressed with any of us for making a mockery of sex ed. and that it made the girls in our class feel uncomfortable. So we’re not doing that to Ian and his friends. But if one of them asks what a clitoris is, I’m going to answer.”
“Please don’t be vulgar about it,” said Claire, as she pulled her shoulders inwards.
“I’m half expecting them to think they know more about this than we do,” said Josh.
“There is another way to find out what Ian’s up to,” said Anthony. “Use his phone. Check what he and his friends look up on the Internet. You just won’t be able to say anything about it because it’s a breach of privacy and he will never trust you again.”
“Yeah, don’t do that,” said Josh.
“But at least you’ll know how bad it is,” said Anthony.
“And put a GPS tracker on there as well. But don’t tell him. That way you’ll know just what kind of trouble he’s getting into. Maybe he’s just at someone’s house reading comics. Maybe he’s at some train station spray painting the walls. Either way, you’ll find out with GPS and the Internet. And check his computer upstairs.”
“I promised myself I wouldn’t do that,” said Claire.
“Well, it’s an idea,” said Josh. “So, do we talk to Ian alone, or get all three of them together?”
“All at once, since Daniel might be the guilty one,” said Claire.
“They’ll have the group mentality of silence,” said Josh.
Claire leaned forward and locked eyes with Josh and Anthony. “Break them. I want to know exactly what Daniel was doing in the bathroom.”
“Some things can’t be unknown once you hear about them,” said Anthony.
“I already know he did it. Break him. If your conversation with those three doesn’t scare the ever living shit out of Daniel then Ian’s never seeing him again.”
46
Daniel
There was no way Daniel could sit around at home as though nothing had happened, not when he was this giddy with afterglow.
“I’m going to Ian’s!” he called out.
“Okay, love. Be safe on the road.”
He crept along the perimeter of the field.
Come out, come out, you brain-dead Beast. Show your face just once again.
He slipped down to the creek and felt another burst of adrenaline overtake him.
Come out, come out.
Using the barbed wire medallion hanging on the tree as his base point, Daniel walked a hundred metres in each direction and back again to find out what was around him.
A dead man walking.
A grin curled around his mouth.
He snagged himself on a root along the river bank, froze at the crunch of a wayward branch in the distance, and dropped to one knee.
He reached for the gun in his waist band.
A bird chirped in the distance, a car thudded over the bridge nearby.
He peered over the edge of the ground, scanning the horizon.
After an age of working up the courage to press forward, Daniel moved back down the river bank, retreating from whoever was surely watching him.
He tried to find the medallion again but kept overshooting it. Even when he counted the number of paces he couldn’t figure out why one trip was significantly longer than the other.
This time he sprinted up the side of the river bank to force the retreat into a no-go option. He kept one hand on the gun for his own safety.
As the sun dipped over the trees every last childhood fear flooded the boy, leaving him as the play thing of the wilderness. He pressed himself up against a tree and listened for anything moving among the leaves.
Come out, come out.
He crept along as though moving through a mine field. His breathing tightened, his vision narrowed.
The blood red eyes of the feral human Beast were watching him.
A nervous tingle formed in Daniel’s crotch, pulling him forward.
A glint of gold caught his attention.
He crouched down, finding the lid of an empty jar standing upright near a tree. It could have been part of the Beast’s assembly line for stuffing cats and birds inside. If he kept going he would no doubt find the rest of the trail, of pets who had wondered too far and road-kill missing their limbs. How far away was the final stage, where the Beast left the jars in the sun to bake the creatures inside?
The glint faded as the sun dropped away. Daniel was still forty minutes from home and had to leave while he could still see. But he would be back, this time with another batch of bullets.
Two days later he ran home, jumped onto the computer, and sent a message to Ian.
‘I think I found the beasts lare. Bring a backpack with a torch, k? Ill bring smithy.’
It didn’t take long to get a reply.
‘When?’
‘Now.’
‘I have to be back by 3,’ typed Ian.
‘K. Tell your mum your coming over here.’
‘What about W?’
‘Ill send him a message,’ typed Daniel.
‘K. Coming.’
Daniel leaned back in the chair and closed the program. There was no way Warrick could be trusted in a life or death situation like this. He had been too nervous with the girl and even cried in front of James when they were first caught. If they did come upon the Beast, Warrick was likely to trip over his own feet and lie on the ground, whimpering, which was going to do a fat lot of good once the Beast caught up to him.
If Ian asked, Daniel could simply say that he sent Warrick a message and didn’t get a reply. He could later show Ian of the good reasons why Warrick was useless on this sort of adventure.
Daniel packed a survival kit. The entry point to the Beast’s lair was muddy. He would have to bring a change of jeans and a new jumper in case his mum found him trudging through the house with mud falling off him. He grabbed a stack of Band-aids and tissues for the broken glass they would find, a small bottle of Coke, a peanut butter sandwich, and the torch from the top of the f
ridge, the one his dad kept in case the power went out.
“Mum! I’m going over to Ian’s!”
“Okay, love. Dinner is at six, be back before then, okay?”
“Okay.”
Daniel waited for Ian on the street. It took longer than he expected. “What gives?”
“I had to get ready,” said Ian.
“Did you bring a torch?”
“Yeah, my mum keeps one in the garage.” Ian slipped off his backpack and showed Daniel the two kilo baton of a torch, which was several times larger than the dinky one from the top of Daniel’s fridge. “I just changed the batteries so it’s good to go.”
“Nice. I found his lair by the field, near the stream.” Daniel started to walk off down the road.
Ian hurried after him. “Wait, is Warrick coming?”
“I sent him a message. I don’t think he’s coming.”
“Okay. I have to be back before three, though.”
“I know, I know. It won’t take long.”
Daniel led the way, explaining how he first saw the Beast heading down the valley towards the stream, and since then Daniel had been hunting around the area, looking for where the scourge of Luxford lived. Daniel had expected a cave or even a long lost scrap heap, but no. Instead, he found an abandoned car with some blankets heaped in the back and wrappers of old food.
“Yuck,” said Ian. “He lives in a car?”
“I think so. All of the tires were flat. No one’s driven it in years. I opened the back door and the smell was bad, like old man fart.”
“Ugh. So why do we need a torch?”
“You’ll see.”
“Can you tell me now?” Ian asked.
“Sure. But I won’t.”
“Why not?”
“Because it’s easier to show you.”
Daniel led the way through the field and under the bushes to the valley. The boys helped each other down the slope and leaped the final gap before crossing the stream. Daniel let out a sharp breath of air as though he had been nearly winded by the trek.
He then pointed to a large tree, one that stood guard for the Beast as he carried a childhood’s worth of pets and road-kill to his home for dissecting, eating, or whatever he did with them.