Keeping to the shadows – not a difficult task – he crept swiftly on the trail, an imperative that tugged at him with strange urgency. He could taste his quarry, and it knew nothing of his pursuit, which was the first thrill of the hunt. When it sensed him and knew the first small stirrings of fear, that was the second joy of the hunt. And the third was the kill, the taste of its terror that sweetened the meat. Yet there was that about this prey which seemed to promise more than soft small children. Some spice, some savour. Something he did not understand.
Impelled by this odd compulsion as much as by the need to feed, he padded along a path he discerned as easily as a man would a broad road; and if anyone sensed his passage it caused them no more than a momentary unease.
Zé, his senses completely overloaded, was immersed in a microcosm of India’s vastness, drinking in sights and sounds and smells the like of which he had never imagined. He had just eaten some pastries, stuffed with mind-blowingly-hot spiced vegetables, that he’d bought from a hawker, and was now sucking in breaths of air in an attempt to cool his mouth. He paused to watch a snake-charmer, a lithe brown boy of about his own age who was playing his pipe to the swaying hooded head of an enormous cobra. The spectacle markings stood out clearly on the reptile’s back, and Zé watched its motion, as fascinated by the snake as the cobra itself was by the music.
Close by, another boy was trying to interest passers-by in a somnolent python that was looped hugely round his shoulders. He had hold of it just behind the head, and was lunging at people with it, a manic grin on his face, laughing uproariously if they flinched back and capering ponderously under the snake’s weight.
This scene was lit by a sputtering fire that cast shadows at strange angles when the flames spurted and sparked, and Zé abruptly realized, with a start of guilt and alarm, how dark it had grown. Oh! he was going to be in hot water. He stared round the crowd in sudden apprehension at the inevitability of punishment. Seeing a gap in the direction in which he thought the waterfront lay, he headed for it purposefully, nimbly dodging the boy with the python.
Ten minutes later he halted, panting heavily, a stitch stinging his side, thoroughly and comprehensively lost.
And then, behind him, in the darkness, something growled. Da Silva’s scalp prickled. What is this, another new sense? he wondered sourly. He considered unsheathing his long knife, but decided against it. It would be too conspicuous. Instead he fingered the revolver in his pocket, and wondered briefly about silver bullets. Well, I’ll just have to rely on virtue, won’t I? he thought, with a mirthless grin that made him look more than a little wolfish himself.
It was not just a tingle of unease. All his nerve endings felt raw and exposed. And his whole back was as taut as rigging in a high wind. Sweat trickled into his eye and he flicked it away automatically with a finger, scanning the crowd of living and dead with every sense he could muster. Sight was less important in the gathering dusk than his awareness of ghosts and this new sensitivity to . . . something evil in the night.
Rounding a corner, he found himself abruptly in another world altogether, and cursed at the realization. He had stepped out of the populous town into its noisome underbelly, stinking mud underfoot, noxious drifts of garbage to either side, uncertainly lit by fires here and there. The stench made him gag.
Da Silva took out his revolver and cocked it, holding it in his right hand. He was left-handed, but finding a target was easier this way round since he had lost his left eye. Besides, it kept his other hand free should he want to draw his knife. And that, he thought, turning his head to look at his surroundings, was a distinct possibility. At times like these it was a distinct disadvantage to have no sight at all on one side. Sweat crawled in his hair and ran down his sides. He felt his heart pounding. In fact, he could hear his heart pounding, and damned loud it sounded, too. Raising the gun, he stepped cautiously forward.
The scent of the quarry was very strong now, so powerful that it quite overwhelmed everything else. Saliva surged into his mouth in anticipation, and he loped along, tasting the prey’s fear, feeling no need to hide in shadows any more.
Close now, so close – and then, just as he was on the point of springing, something else intruded. An alien sense, like a knife-blade in his brain, and his senses splintered: sight, or the memory of it, spilled into his mind, putting him off. And he remembered.
He knew this prey – this boy. It – he – was his friend. He could not kill it. But it was not, he suddenly became aware, what he had really been seeking: it was merely an echo of it. His real quarry was – there.
Disbelief almost stopped Da Silva in his tracks, disbelief and dismay. What in the name of Christ and all the saints was Zé doing here? But he saw his son standing in the dingy, fire-lit alley, and he saw the wolf at the same time. And it saw him.
He sensed, rather than saw, its muscles bunched to pounce, and raised the gun. As he did so a voice he almost recognised shouted indistinctly, ‘Leaf’im, ski’-er!’
‘I can’t,’ he said. ‘That’s my son.’ And he fired.
His shot caught the wolf in mid-spring, right in the centre of the chest, but the beast’s momentum propelled it forward almost unchecked by the force of the bullet to smash into him. They crashed to the ground together with an impact that drove the breath from his lungs and the gun from his hand – he swore as he heard it skitter off in the darkness – and then the wolf’s wide, fanged, stinking, snarling jaws were an inch from his face.
Da Silva stuffed his right arm in the beast’s maw while he fought to unsheathe his knife from underneath his body. Fangs slid into his forearm like hot knives into butter and he hissed through his teeth at the pain, and then something knocked the creature off him. He felt his flesh tear as the beast relinquished its grip, and heard Zé shout something.
Gasping for breath, Da Silva whipped out his knife as he lurched to his feet, to see another wolf battling with the first one. This beast was much larger, and had reddish fur. Its teeth were in the grey wolf’s throat.
Zé grabbed his hand and pressed the revolver back into it. ‘It’s got a silver bullet in it,’ he whispered, wide-eyed with fright.
The captain shot him a glance that was both astonished and relieved as well as threatening retribution to come, and took hold of the weapon, pushing Zé behind him. Blood running down his arm made the grip slippery, but he brought the gun up, only to shrug helplessly at the growling, snapping mass of fur that was the two battling wolves.
A moment later, the bigger animal’s strength and size told, and the grey wolf was pinned to the ground beneath it.
‘Shoo’ i’, ca’-n,’ the red wolf panted, barely intelligible. Its mouth had not been designed to frame human words.
‘Harris,’ said Da Silva, and put the gun to the grey wolf’s head. ‘I’ll need to talk to you later,’ he added as he pulled the trigger.
The recoil jarred his bitten arm painfully, but the smaller beast spasmed in death, blood and bone and brain matter spurting from the exit wound. Zé made a small sound of disgust, and the red wolf stepped back, its eyes on Da Silva, who nodded once, with a slight smile. Then it turned and padded away into the shadows.
‘Look!’ said Zé. The dead wolf that lay on the ground seemed to shiver, and its outline blurred. Its body jerked and twitched, as if things were moving under the skin. Which was exactly the case, Da Silva realized, sheathing his knife. The grey fur seemed to fade into the flesh, the muzzle of the face shrank, the shape of the skull changed as if an unseen hand were remoulding it like clay, and a naked boy lay there with a gunshot wound in his head.
‘Mother of God,’ said Da Silva, slipping the gun back into his pocket. He squatted down to look for the bullet, gritting his teeth at the pain eating his arm.
‘It’s Vik,’ Zé breathed in a mixture of wonder and horror. Then he turned away and abruptly lost the pastries he’d eaten earlier. Da Silva found the bullet and straightened, pressing his bleeding arm against his ribs.
‘Co
me on,’ he said, putting his other arm round his son’s shoulders and giving him a rough hug. ‘Let’s get out of here.’
When they got back to the Isabella Zé, somewhat to his surprise, did not get the anticipated hiding, and he thanked the sailor from Providence for that.
CHRISTOPHER FOWLER
Crocodile Lady
CHRISTOPHER FOWLER’S SHORT FICTION is collected in City Jitters, The Bureau of Lost Souls, Flesh Wounds, Sharper Knives, Personal Demons, Uncut, The Devil in Me and Night Nerves. His short story ‘Wageslaves’ won the 1998 British Fantasy Award, ‘The Master Builder’ became a CBS-TV movie starring Tippi Hedren, while an adaptation of ‘Left-Hand Drive’ won Best British Short Film.
Fowler’s novels include Roofworld, Rune, Red Bride, Darkest Day, Spanky, Psychoville, Disturbia, Soho Black, Calabash, Full Dark House, and the recently completed Plastic, about a shopaholic housewife trapped in a blacked-out building. He also scripted the 1997 graphic novel Menz Insana, illustrated by John Bolton, and has written a book about the cinema, Electric Darkness.
‘I first had the idea for this story in 1979,’ explains Fowler. ‘Back then it was called “Red Rovers”, referring to the all-day tickets you could buy to ride the buses. I always wanted to write a story about a schoolteacher losing a pupil, which must be the ultimate nightmare – or dream – of many a teacher. Then I remembered that the author Joanne Harris used to be a French teacher, so I talked to her about the problems of controlling classes, and she gave me plenty of observational tips. I’m also getting into training for when I eventually do my Underworld London book.’
I: Finchley Road to Swiss Cottage
London has the oldest underground railway system in the world. Construction began in 1863 and was completed in 1884. Much later it was electrified, and since then has been periodically modified. A great many of the original stations have been abandoned, renamed or resited. A partial list of these would include Aldwych, British Museum, Brompton Road, York Road, St Mary’s, Down Street, Marlborough Road, South Kentish Town, King William Street, North End and City Road. In many cases the maroon-tiled ticket halls remain, and so do the railway platforms. Even now, some of these tunnels are adorned with faded wartime signs and posters. Crusted with dry melanic silt produced by decades of still air, the walls boom softly as trains pass in nearby tunnels, but the stations themselves no longer have access from the streets above, and are only visited by scuttling brown mice. If you look hard, though, you can glimpse the past. For example, the eerie green and cream platform of the old Mark Lane station can be spotted from passing trains to the immediate west of the present Tower Hill Station.
‘You know what gets me through the day? Hatred. I hate the little bastards. Each and every one of them. Most of the time I wish they would all just disappear.’ Deborah fixed me with a cool stare. ‘Yeah, I know it’s not the best attitude for a teacher to have, but when you know them as well as I do . . .’
‘I think I do,’ I replied.
‘Oh? I thought this work was new to you. Being your first day and all.’
‘Not new, no.’
‘My boyfriend just decided he wants us to have kids. He never liked them before. When he was made redundant he started picking me up from school in the afternoons, and saw them running around my legs in their boots and rain-macs asking endless questions, and suddenly he thought they were cute and wanted to have a baby, just when I was thinking of having my tubes tied. I don’t want to bring my work home with me. We still haven’t sorted it out. It’s going to ruin our relationship. Hey, hey.’ Deborah broke off to shout at a boy who was trying to climb over the barrier. ‘Get back down there and wait for the man to open the gate.’ She turned back to me. ‘Christ, I could use a cigarette. Cover for me when we get there. I’ll sneak a couple in while they’re baiting the monkeys, that’s what all the other teachers do.’
Good teachers are like good nurses. They notice things ordinary people miss. Ask a nurse how much wine she has left in her glass and she’ll be able to tell you the exact amount, because for her the measurement of liquids is a matter of occupational observation. The same with teachers. I can tell the age of any child to within six months because I’ve been around them so much. Then I got married, and I wasn’t around them any more.
But old habits die hard. You watch children constantly, even when you think you’re not, and the reflex continues to operate even in civilian life. You bump into pupils in the supermarket. ‘Hello, Miss, we didn’t know you ate food.’ They don’t quite say that, but you know it’s what they’re thinking.
If there’s one thing I know it’s how children think. That was why I noticed there was something wrong at Baker Street. My senses had been caught off guard because of the tunnels. Actually, I sensed something even before then, as early as our arrival at Finchley Road Tube station. I should have acted on my instincts then.
God knows, I was nervous enough to begin with. It was the first day of my first week back at work after twelve long years, and I hadn’t expected to have responsibility thrust at me like this, but the school was understaffed, teachers were off sick and the headmaster needed all the help he could get. The last time I had worked in the education system, the other teachers around me were of roughly the same age. Now I was old enough to be a mother to most of them, and a grand-mother to their charges. I wouldn’t have returned to Invicta Primary at all if my husband hadn’t died. I wasn’t surprised when the bank warned me that there would be no money. Peter wasn’t exactly a rainy-day hoarder. I needed to earn, and have something to keep my mind occupied. Teaching was the only skill I was sure I still possessed.
Which was how I ended up shepherding twenty-seven eight-year-old boys and girls on a trip to the London Zoological Gardens, together with another teacher, Deborah, a girl with a tired young face and a hacking smoker’s cough.
I hadn’t been happy about handling the excursion on my first day back, especially when I heard that it involved going on the Tube. I forced myself not to think about it. There were supposed to be three of us but the other teacher was off with flu, and delaying the trip meant dropping it from the term schedule altogether, so the headmaster had decreed that we should go ahead with the original plan. There was nothing unusual in this; the teaching shortage had reached its zenith and I’d been eagerly accepted back into the school where I’d worked before I was married. They put me on a refresher course, mostly to do with computer literacy, but the basic curriculum hadn’t changed much. But things were very different from when I was a pupil myself. For a start, nobody walked to the school any more. Parents didn’t think it was safe. I find parents exasperating – all teachers do. They’re very protective about some things, and yet utterly blind to other, far more obvious problems. If they found out about the short-staffed outings, everybody would get it in the neck. The parents had been encouraged to vote against having their children driven around in a coach; it wasn’t environmentally friendly. It didn’t stop them from turning up at the school gates in people-carriers, though.
Outside the station the sky had lowered into muddy swirls of cloud, and it was starting to rain. Pupils are affected by the weather. They’re always disruptive and excitable when it’s windy. Rain makes them sluggish and inattentive. (In snow they go mad and you might as well close the school down.) You get an eye for the disruptives and outsiders, and I quickly spotted the ones in this group, straggling along at the rear of the Tube station hall. In classrooms they sit at the back in the corners, especially on the left-hand side, the sneaky, quiet troublemakers. They feel safe because you tend to look to the centre of the class, so they think they’re less visible. Kids who sit in the front row are either going to work very hard or fall in love with you. But the ones at the rear are the ones to watch, especially when you’re turning back towards the blackboard.
There were four of them, a pair of hunched, whispering girls as close as Siamese twins, a cheeky ginger-haired noisebox with his hands in everything, and a skinny, melancholy
little boy wearing his older brother’s jacket. This last one had a shaved head, and the painful-looking nicks in it told me that his hair was cut at home to save money. He kept his shoulders hunched and his gaze on the ground at his feet, braced as though he was half-expecting something to fall on him. A pupil who hasn’t done his homework will automatically look down at the desk when you ask the class a question about it, so that only the top of his head is visible (this being based on the ‘If I can’t see her, she can’t see me’ theory). If he is sitting in the back row, however, he will stare into your eyes with an earnest expression. This boy never looked up. Downcast eyes can hide a more personal guilt. Some children are born to be bullied. They seem marked for bad luck. Usually they have good reason to adopt such defensive body language. Contrary to what parents think, there’s not a whole lot you can do about it.
‘What’s his name?’ I asked.
‘Oh, that’s Connor, he’ll give you no trouble. Never says a word. I forget he’s here sometimes.’ I bet you do, I thought. You never notice him because he doesn’t want you to.
‘Everybody hold up their right hand,’ I called. It’s easier to count hands than heads when they’re standing up, but still they’ll try to trick you. Some kids will hold up both hands, others won’t raise any. I had lowered my voice to speak to them; you have to speak an octave lower than your normal register if you want to impose discipline. Squeaky high voices, however loud, don’t get results. They’re a sign of weakness, indicating potential teacher hysteria. Children can scent deficiencies in teachers like sharks smell blood.
‘Miss, I’m left-handed.’ The ginger boy mimed limb-failure; I mentally transferred him from ‘disruptive’ to ‘class clown’. They’re exuberant but harmless, and usually sit in the middle of the back row.
The Mammoth Book of Best New Horror 2002, Volume 13 Page 14