The Authorities are here.
A nest of spiders explodes inside me.
The Authorities. They’re going to take me away and I’ll lose everything. I’ll never see Ma again. They’ll steal my home. I have to stop them but I don’t know what to do.
But there’s one thing I do know.
Everyone’s afraid of ghosts.
I grab my bicycle and lift it up the stairs. At the next floor, I leave it by the stairs and I tiptoe into the room, past all of the dead machines, down to the other end. I start picking up the bowling pins. When all ten are standing in a triangle, I pick up the foam bowling ball and I return through the room. I grab a long piece of pipe and shove it under my arm and I’m back on the stairs.
I place the bowling ball here in the stairway. Then I carry the pipe and the bicycle up to the next floor and I leave them in the classroom, and I go into the big room, picking up pieces of metal and brick and glass and broken board and pipe and anything else I can find. I put them beside the open funnels. Then I’m back out the door and up the stairs to the next floor, and I cross the rotted boards and crawl across the pipe to the periscope and shove my ear against it.
‘. . . underground car park . . .’ I hear someone say.
Another man with a deeper voice says, ‘Personally I think the whole thing should be apartments—’
‘Which,’ interrupts the first voice, ‘is why you’ve never been invited to a planning meeting, Bob.’ They all laugh.
‘Anyway! From the drawings, gentlemen, you can see . . . the shops and . . . here and here . . . and now, if you’d like to follow me upstairs . . .’
I jump up and run down one flight. Their feet are pounding on the stairs. They are coming up.
I wait just out of sight of the stairs till I hear them go into the second-floor room with the dead machines. Then I come down, real quiet.
I stay close to the wall opposite the bedroom. I pick up the foam bowling ball and stand with my back to the wall. I hear the boards creak and I know they are walking over to the windows at the other side.
‘. . . six apartments per floor . . . Highest spec. So, Oly, my friend, no scrimping on the fire insulation!’
He thinks he’s hilarious. All the other men laugh. I peek real careful around the corner. They’re all looking at the glass office building across the road. Their backs are to me.
I take a deep breath. Step forwards into the doorway. Aim at the plastic bowling pins, slightly to the right. Wind my arm. And then roll the ball as hard as I can.
I jump back behind the wall and wait a few seconds. Then there’s a crash and I know I’ve scored a strike.
‘Jesus!’ the man with the deep voice says.
‘My heart!’ another says.
And then the one who thinks he’s hilarious says, ‘Ah, just some plastic pins. Obviously seen its share of squatters. Possibly the sporting kind.’ They all laugh. ‘Must have been the wind. Anyway, as I was saying . . .’
I hear them wandering through the room again. After a minute, I risk another look. They are standing by the last machine, right under a pipe. I jump back behind the wall and run upstairs to the classroom and into the big room. I sprint past the funnels till I reach the fifth one.
I pick up a brick. Open the lid. Chuck it down.
I hear a yell.
I run straight to the fourth funnel and put my ear to it and I wait. There’s talking and groaning. After ages I hear the men start to move and I think they are coming close to the fourth machine. I open the mouth of the funnel and I count to three and drop a piece of glass down. When I hear a scream, I know they’re right below me, so I throw a brick down after it too.
Now there’s more shuffling and groaning and I think they are leaving, so I run to the next funnel and throw a brick down it but I hear it crash off the ground below. At the next funnel, when I throw a metal bar down, I hear another roar, and I know I got another strike.
I run out of the room and grab the bicycle and line it up on the stairs. I hear the men coming close to the door below me. I know they are right there, just out of sight.
‘Bloody deathtrap,’ one of the men says.
‘Health-and-safety nightmare,’ the one with the deep voice says.
I see a shoe appear. I let go of the bicycle and jump behind the wall. I hear it roll and bounce and clatter and I hear a man shout, ‘Move!’
There is the sound of shuffling and grunting as the bicycle ploughs into them.
‘What in the bloody hell is going on here?’
I don’t wait. I grab the long piece of pipe that I left leaning against the wall. I sprint as fast as I can up to the sixth-floor room with the massive corkscrew. I run on my tippy-toes along the boards by the wall, and I crawl on my hands and knees across to the centre, right up to the massive corkscrew. I bring the pipe up over my head and I swing it as hard as I can, down on one of the bars that is holding the corkscrew in the air.
There is a loud dong. My hands sting from the shock, but the corkscrew sways. I smack it again. It jerks and the wires move. I smack it again and the whole room creaks. I hit it one more time and I hear something tearing and I take a step backwards. The ceiling dips. Cracks run across it like a spider’s web. I take a few more steps back. There is another tearing sound. The corkscrew shakes. I’m crawling backwards and I grab the wall just as the ceiling breaks. It loses its grip on the wires and they all snap and the corkscrew plummets straight down, right through the floor.
I’m already running back towards the door when I hear it crash into the next floor. It tears the wood open and there is another crash. It must have gone through to the fourth floor! It crashes again and again and again and then the whole mill is shaking.
I’m sprinting down the stairs. The corkscrew has completely destroyed everything. At the fourth floor the periscope has vanished and there’s only a hole there now. On the third floor there are three funnels left and a massive hole. On the second floor there is one machine missing and another one is sliding towards the hole in the middle.
I creep down to the basement and peek around. All four men stand with their mouths wide open, staring at a gigantic corkscrew that has smashed into the concrete. The air tastes like stone.
One of them tilts his head back real slow till he’s staring up, through the holes in every single floor, at the roof of the mill. They all do the same thing. They are covered in dust. One man’s jacket is ripped. The other one has a bloody hand.
‘My God,’ the man who thought he was hilarious says.
‘Once is bad luck,’ the man with the deep voice says. ‘Twice is a sign. This –’ he waves a hand – ‘this is an act of God. Or nature. Or whatever you want to call it. I don’t care. It’s a threat. And I, for one, am getting out of here.’
‘My God,’ the hilarious man says again.
The man with the deep voice starts to walk real quick towards the door and all the other men turn and run after him. They are holding their hats tight against their heads.
They’re leaving! It worked! They’re leaving! I throw my arms up in the air and I spin around and I’m dead happy.
But a man steps out from the kitchen and I freeze. He’s right there. Right in front of me. I don’t even drop my hands. It’s too late to hide. He’s going to grab me.
‘What in the name . . . ?’ he says, but he’s not looking at me. He walks like he’s in a dream, right past me. He never looks at me. He stares at the mess that used to be the ceiling. And then he runs for the front door.
He didn’t even see me.
THE ALLEYWAY
I had thought that the shed was the worst place we would ever stay. I was wrong.
We slept in loads of different places after we left the shed and none of them were good. The night before we found the mill we were in one of our spots. It was in a quiet alleyway that ran between two streets. There was a doorway where we could hide in the shadows and not be seen as long as we slept close together, which was fine cos by then
it was the middle of winter and it was real cold.
We had hardly eaten all day and Ma totally forgot to go find food for me. But Ma couldn’t remember anything that day. That day, she could hardly speak. She was just waiting till she had enough coins so she could buy what she needed and then we went back to the doorway in the alley.
Our sleeping bags had got wet a few nights before and they hadn’t dried, and I hadn’t eaten anything all day except for a sausage roll that I’d seen someone chuck in the bin that morning, which was hours and hours ago.
I told Ma I was hungry but she didn’t listen to me. Instead she fell back into that doorway, and I turned away cos I didn’t want to watch her eyes go all empty and I didn’t want her to see me cry. That night she wouldn’t have cared anyway and that would have made it even worse.
After a while, she went all limp like she always did. But my stomach hurt. I knew I wasn’t supposed to leave her, especially at night cos anyone could grab me at night, not just the Authorities who were always looking for me, but anyone at all, a total stranger, and if they took me, Ma wouldn’t have a notion where to find me. I knew that.
But I was so cold and so hungry. So I went out to the street to see if anyone else had thrown their food into a bin, just cos they didn’t like it.
There was no one on the street. It was too cold. I reckoned everyone was probably inside watching TV and eating eggs and chips, cos that’s what I’d be doing if I wasn’t me. I remember my breath made clouds in the air and my fingers stung real bad. And I pretended my breath-clouds made an invisible cloak around me that kept me safe.
I walked away from the alley and down the street to the walls of the university. I kept close to the wall and I had to run between the patches on the path where the street lights stole away my invisibility. I walked slower through the dark patches.
I stopped when I could see the big gates to the university. There was a massive stone arch there, with doorways and sheltered parts. It was a place where you’d always find people sleeping with their cardboard boxes beneath them and their sleeping bags around them and their bags under their heads so no one could take them. I even recognized one man. He was tall and looked like, even if you fed him for a year, he’d still be all bones and shadows.
There were two people with him that were wearing gloves and hats and heavy jackets. One was carrying this big box with a strap that went over his shoulder while the other, who I think was a woman, scooped out soup in a cup and handed it to the bony man. I could see the steam rising from the cup even from where I was standing and that was worse than having no food at all.
I wanted to go up and ask for a cup real bad, but I knew I couldn’t.
So I didn’t move, I just stood there and watched and listened to my stomach rumble. I saw a copper come up and talk to the Do-gooders and look all around him and then walk off, and I knew Ma was right – that the Do-gooders were spies for the police and nowhere was safe, especially at night, and I wanted to cry. All I wanted was some soup.
‘You all right?’ someone said, and I nearly jumped out of my skin with fright. I hadn’t even noticed a man and woman walk up right beside me, and I was about to run till I saw her face. She was real tall, much taller than him, and she was dressed in high shoes. I could see her legs, which meant she must have been wearing a dress, but I couldn’t see it cos she had a long red jacket on. But she wasn’t looking at me. She was watching the Do-gooders and she seemed bored, and I knew that the man wasn’t going to hurt me, cos he was with the woman and she just wanted to get to wherever they were going. So I didn’t run.
‘Freezing, isn’t it? Must be twenty degrees. Or even less,’ he said in this weird accent, and he looked at the Do-gooders for a while. ‘You on your own?’ he asked.
I answered, ‘No,’ real quick.
But then he said, ‘Hungry?’ And I couldn’t say anything.
He lifted a paper bag and opened it up and pulled out a burger. It wasn’t even open, it was still in the paper box. He held it out. ‘Bought it for my friend,’ he said. ‘But he’s gone off somewhere. Have it, if you want. I’m stuffed.’
And I did want it real bad, so I took it and he said, ‘Okay, see you later,’ and they went off down the road. When I took it out, it was big and round, and it was one of those ones with two burgers between the buns, and it was still warm and everything so I ate it right up, the whole thing, standing there by the wall. And I only thought about keeping some for Ma when it was all gone, and then I felt real bad so I ran back.
I went straight to the doorway and pulled my sleeping bag around me and I didn’t say anything to Ma. I just rolled myself up as tight as I could and went to sleep.
But I woke up cos it got real cold. So cold that I went all numb and I couldn’t feel anything. I rolled over to try to get close to Ma, and that’s when I realized. She wasn’t there.
I was sure she’d been there when I got back, but she wasn’t there now.
And I got real scared cos what if she’d been taken away and locked up and I hadn’t even noticed she was gone and that was hours and hours ago? What if whoever took her came back for me and took me away into Care and she never found me again? But I couldn’t think of anything to do. So I lay there and waited.
I remember I was shaking cos I was real scared and real cold. But it got colder and colder, and the night went on for so long that I thought that maybe I’d just imagined the burger.
Then, from far off, I heard a siren wailing. It got closer. And closer.
Blue lights were bouncing off the walls of the alleyway. Yellow Jackets were jumping out of a van. Coming for me.
I sprang up. Slipped out. Sprinted real quiet down the alleyway.
I hid in the next doorway.
I peeped around the corner and saw them stop by our stuff and crouch down. I thought the burger man must have told them about me and when they saw I wasn’t there they would start looking for me, so I stood as straight as I could and tried to become invisible.
It must have worked. Cos they never found me.
But I remember them lifting something up onto this tray that was so big, it took two men to carry it between them. There was a blanket on the tray. But it wasn’t a blanket, not like Caretaker’s. It was a black rubber sheet.
There were Yellow Jackets everywhere. Too many. I couldn’t escape.
But then Ma was there.
Through the blue and the yellow she came. She took me by the hand. And we walked away. Away from the Authorities.
ANCIENT HISTORY
I’m lying on my mattress but I can’t sleep. Ma said she was going begging on the bridge. But she never came home. Loads of times in the last few weeks she’s come back late. But she’s never not come back.
The mill feels different. Empty. With a huge hole in it that goes right through every floor from the top to the bottom. Like it has no heart. I roll over and pull the blankets around my chin.
It’s a real windy night. I can hear the bridge whistling outside. The windows are rattling.
I hear something else, though. It’s not the wind.
Shuffle, shuffle, shuffle . . .
I sit up straight and listen. Caretaker?
I can’t tell where it’s coming from. But I think it’s close by. I get out of bed and open the door real quiet. I hear a creaking. It’s coming from this floor, the one with the dead machines.
It’s real dark and I don’t want to run cos I can’t tell where the hole starts, so I keep close to the wall till I get to the first window.
Shuffle, shuffle, shuffle . . .
‘Caretaker?’ I call.
There’s a creaking sound, like someone trying to walk real quiet.
A gust of wind carries water from the canal, slaps it onto the window.
Thump, thump, thump.
It’s on the stairs. I start moving back to the door, but the moon is shining through the broken window and I think I can see something in my room. A dark shadow. Big.
It’s crossin
g the stairs. It’s in here now. Between me and the door. It’s coming towards me.
I try to call out but my breath is snatched away. It’s too big. It can’t be him. If it’s not Caretaker, then . . .
I take a step backwards. It takes a step closer. I step back again but I trip up. I’m on the ground. I can’t see anything now. Where is it? But then the shadow moves. It’s even closer. I’m trapped.
I search the ground around me. There’s nothing there to grab. I crawl back a bit more. I bump the wall. There’s nowhere else to go. I want to run but I’ll fall through the hole.
The shadow’s real big and it’s getting nearer.
I reach out. Search the ground. I only feel dirt. Then I find something. A brick? I wrap my fingers around it.
It comes closer. It’s right over me. The light from the moon comes in through the window. The shadow has a face. And the face has a scar. And three eyebrows.
Monkey Man.
I scream.
He leans forwards. His arm comes out. He’s going to grab me. I lift up the brick and swing it at his head as hard as I can and he stumbles to the side. I spring up and run. I can’t see where I’m going and the floorboards creak, but he’s right behind me so I run as fast as I’ve ever run.
I’m racing down the stairs. But there’s someone else there, climbing towards me. It must be Scarecrow.
I turn and sprint upstairs, but I hear footsteps coming fast behind me. They’re stronger than me and quicker than me and they’re going to get me. I have to escape before they catch me but I’m running up, not down. And there’s no other way out. I have to hide.
I get to the top of the stairs. The trapdoor!
I climb up onto the bricks, then onto the chair. I reach out to open the trapdoor but the chair slips. I fall backwards and I smack off the ground. I feel nothing but my heart roaring inside me.
I see him on the stairs below. And he sees me.
I jump up and run out onto the sky-bridge. The wind shoves me backwards. I push through it. The only way now is to go up onto the roof of the Silo but where do I go from there?
The Girl in Between Page 14