“I don’t know, dear. Why?”
“We saw a gravestone with her name on it.”
“She’s probably some distant relative.”
“Can we go see Granddad?”
“You’re not going to bombard him with questions?”
“No, it would be nice to see him, that’s all.”
“You saw him yesterday.”
“And it would be good to see him again today.”
“Well I suppose, but only for a few minutes. I’ve got to get dinner on.”
But when we got to Granddad’s house, he wasn’t there.
“I suppose we ought to go home then,” Mum said.
“He might have gone for a walk. Can we follow the path that goes around the back of his house and comes out the end of the village?”
Will gave me a puzzled look.
“Go on then,” Mum said, and the five of us set off on a diversion. The path led us behind Teddy Barnham’s house and farmyard. The shed where he bred maggots wasn’t painted quite so well out the back. As we moved on a little further, we saw why. Teddy was halfway through painting the side and hadn’t got to the back yet. He was standing on a small set of stepladders, with the tin of creosote in one arm and the brush in the other.
“Poor old chap. He doesn’t have a single family member good enough to help him out and he has to struggle on all by himself,” Mum said.
He didn’t look like he was struggling though. He was standing straight up instead of bent and crooked like we’d seen him at the weekend and the job didn’t seem to be bothering him at all.
“Hello Mr Barnham!” shouted Andy.
He looked round and gave us a wave. “Back for more maggots young fella?” he shouted.
“Not today,” Andy said.
“Have you seen Granddad?” shouted Liam.
“I can’t say that I have.”
And with that we gave him a wave and continued our way, without coming across Granddad before we were back on Main Street.
At dinner, just after he’d finished and before he got down from the table Will said, “Tom saw something interesting at the church today, didn’t you, Tom?”
“What’s that?” Dad said.
I didn’t want to ask him in case he turned funny, but now if I didn’t it would be just as bad. “We were looking at the gravestones and we saw one for Enid Tilbrook. We wanted to ask Granddad who it was.”
“I can tell you that,” Dad said. “She was your granddad’s cousin, or more specifically your great-granddad’s brother’s daughter.”
“She was only twenty when she died,” I said.
“Is that so?”
“Do you know what happened to her?”
“Can’t say that I do. Are those plates gonna wash themselves?”
Will washed, and I dried. My hands were still really sensitive in water, so I was doing all I could to avoid that. After we’d finished washing up, I had another go at The Secret of the Scythe. My rolls for skill and luck were much better this time, but a couple of bad stamina rolls left me seriously weak. I stayed on the road and beat the goblin without hiding which meant I got the first hit in, and I didn’t go into the witch’s house at all. There was an option to snoop around, but I thought it was probably best avoided altogether. Just past the house was the entrance to the Underworld. You had to go in through the mouth of an enormous dead tree. As you approached, you were attacked by tree roots. I put the book down and stared out of the window at the tree in the field. Could it really be a gateway to Hell? And if it was the gateway to Hell, could something have emerged from there to take John?
NOW
Last year, Charlie had a piece of homework in which he had to produce a family tree. I was powerless to avoid thinking about my own family, and the names I’d have to put on there. As much as I wanted Charlie to do well, I simply couldn’t do it.
For the first time since I asked for his daughter’s hand in marriage, I gave Victoria’s dad a call. They hadn’t seen Charlie lately (entirely my fault – I didn’t have anything against them, I’d just blocked them out of my mind), so they were more than happy to take him for the weekend and work with him on their part of the family tree.
When he came back home, Charlie was quiet. At first, I thought that he’d had a bad weekend, which made me think I should keep him from his mother’s side of the family too, but eventually he showed me the piece of work he’d produced with his grandparents. It was fantastic. They’d taken Charlie back generations, and halfway across the world with their family tree, and what’s more, they’d presented it beautifully. I hadn’t been entirely honest about my reason for sending Charlie away to work on this project, and, thinking that they were being considerate, they’d left plenty of room on one side of the tree for Charlie to trace back his family on my side.
“Maybe I could just make it up?” Charlie said, staring at the blank side of the paper after listening to my outburst about my family.
“We don’t make things up,” I told him.
“What can we do about it then?”
I got out a pair of scissors, taking of the space where we could have put by side, and sent an email to his teacher, explaining that I didn’t have anything to do with my family, and didn’t want Charlie getting caught up with it. I thought that would make it okay. When Charlie got the homework back, the teaching had praised it highly. When Charlie brought it home, he put it in the bin.
Thursday 21st June 1990
It was the day of England versus Egypt. A win would put England through to the next round, and defeat would boot them out of the tournament. Wherever John was I knew he’d be excited for this one too. At break, it was all anyone could talk about (apart from some of the girls). Egypt had already drawn with the Netherlands and the Republic of Ireland, so they weren’t going to be easy to beat. But through all the excitement I kept turning my mind to John.
Chris punted the ball towards the football pitch and said that he was going to be Gazza. There was no way he was good enough to be Gazza, and if John was here, he would have been him.
“I don’t think you should be Gazza,” I said.
“Doesn’t matter what you think. You’re playing for Egypt,” he said. So, I decided I wasn’t playing at all and walked off. Liam followed, which was good because he was on the England team and it would have left the teams still even.
“Do you think John will be allowed to watch the football, wherever he is?”
“John could convince them to let him,” I said. I felt a tear trickle down my face. “He always was pretty persuasive.”
“Do you remember that time he talked Mr Inglehart into letting the whole class come down to watch the match against Hilgay?”
“That was ace. We cheered every pass and every tackle!”
“Hilgay looked scared.”
“No wonder he didn’t let us do it for the next game.”
“What’s it going to be like next year?”
“What do you mean?”
“Will and his class will have all gone up to big school. We’ll be in the top class.”
“It’ll be strange. I always imagined John would be with us. The three of us would be like the kings of the school.” In truth, I’d imagined John and I as the kings of the school and hadn’t thought about Liam in this little fantasy at all.
“John will come back. He’s got to.”
“Should we be doing more about it?”
“Like what?”
“Like have a good look in the staff room to see what the teachers are hiding.”
“Now?”
“No, we’ll do it at lunch time.”
We sat and watched the others play for a while and when the ball came rolling our way after Chris had hit a shot a mile wide (he’s no Gazza) we decided to re-join the game.
I couldn’t focus through the science experiment that we were supposed to be doing. Mrs Palmer had had to go into her cupboard to get out some of the equipment, and Liam had quickly jumped up to hel
p her get stuff out.
“Do sit down, Liam Carter,” she said.
“Thought you could use a hand, Miss,” said Liam, and held his arms out to take whatever she had to hand out.
“That’s very kind of you.” She sent him into the cupboard, and he came out carrying a stack of beakers shortly after.
After handing them out, Liam came over to me. “It’s clear,” he said.
Together, we worked on the experiment very badly. We measured out the wrong volumes, adding too little of the substance so that nothing happened. That was probably a better outcome than what happened to Daniel and Brain though, who managed to put too much in, and had their mixture bubble up and foam up over the top and onto their textbooks. While muddling through we formulated a plan, and when Mrs Palmer let us out for lunch instead of rushing for the canteen, we dashed around the back of the school.
Apart from kids heading towards the canteen, we encountered no one. We got all the way around the back of the school, so that we could see into the staffroom window. This allowed us to scope out where we needed to look if we were able to get in. There was a small area that we couldn’t see which looked like a good starting point. Otherwise the staffroom full of nothing other than comfy chairs and bits of paper pinned to the wall.
“If the plan’s on one of those,” I said, “we’ll never find it.”
“But it’s empty at the moment,” Liam said. “If we don’t go now, there might not be another chance.”
We went into the school through the side door, so we were quite sure that no one had gone into the staff room as we made our way round. Carefully I turned the handle and was surprised to see it open. Before I stepped inside, I took one last glance at the sign on the front.
STAFF ROOM. NO ADMITTANCE TO PUPILS.
I gulped as I stepped inside, and Liam quickly followed. It smelled strongly of coffee, and there were newspapers strewn on the tables.
“I really want a go on one of those seats,” said Liam.
“We don’t have time to mess about.”
“But they look so cosy.”
I walked over to the corner we couldn’t see through the window, the part which had been partitioned off. Behind it were a bunch of pigeonholes, half of which were crammed full of paper, and another door. “Where do you think that leads?” I asked. It couldn’t go anywhere, surely. There wasn’t room for much, as it was on the external wall, and it definitely didn’t lead outside. Was this the portal to the alien base? I looked round, waiting for Liam’s response, but saw that he was slumped in one of those chairs.
“Liam, this is important.”
“So’s this,” said Liam.
I looked around expecting to see him pretending to be asleep. Instead he was holding a newspaper. “NO NEW LEADS IN MISSING BOY CASE”.
“What’s it say?”
“Not much more than in the headline. It’s been eight days…”
I heard a laugh from outside. It sounded deep. Maybe Mr Inglehart.
“Quick,” I said. “Hide.” But there was only one place to go: Through the door. I waited until Liam was beside me, and then pulled it open, half expecting to see John in there attached to a bunch of machines and wires, or to see stars and planets, but instead it was stacked with exercise books and textbooks going back decades. We bundled in and pulled the door closed and were stuck with the smell of mouldy books for the rest of lunchtime.
Luckily, we could hear the conversations going on inside the staff room. They weren’t very interesting, and Mrs Palmer only said nice things about our class, but they did give us an idea about when the room was clear, and we were free to make our way back to our classroom.
“Why don’t you come over mine to watch the game?” said Liam. “Bring everything we’ve gathered so far, and we’ll see what we’ve got. It might give us something to concentrate on.”
“And hide that newspaper somewhere,” I said.
Liam looked down. I think he’d forgotten that he was holding it as he’d had it so long. Quickly he stuffed it into his P.E. bag, and we went back to class.
Mum and Dad were more than happy for us to spend the evening at Aunt Anne and Uncle Alan’s house. After dinner, which included ice cream topped with the magic chocolate sauce which instantly went hard so that you have to crack it with the side of your spoon, we went up to Liam’s room. Will stayed downstairs with Andy. He said that he didn’t feel like talking about it.
I got out my exercise book and started to flick through the pages. “We said that he might have run away. What evidence do we have for that?”
“Nothing,” Liam said.
“Well, not nothing. We know he wasn’t happy about being left at home on his own, but is that enough to make you run away?”
“No. I’d love it if Mum left me alone once in a while.”
“But if it was every day?”
“True.”
“What evidence have we got against him running away?”
“He never told us. I think he would have done.”
“Also, if the police thought he’d run away I think they’d have questioned us a bit more.”
“Okay, so he might have run away, but there’s no evidence for that. What’s next.”
“Hit by a massive lorry. That’s out. Surely if that was the case, they would have found him. We’ve walked all the way up and down the village and not seen a thing.”
“What else?”
“Kidnapped.”
“By aliens.”
“Aliens is one of the possibilities for kidnappers. But a non-alien could have taken him.”
“We have motives for aliens though. Remember, ‘transition’.”
“Plus, I saw a bunch of weird alien-looking slugs.”
“But what else can we do? We’ve checked the staff room. Where else is there?”
“We have to keep our eyes open and listen for possibilities. What else have we got?”
Liam got out his Top trumps and spread them on the floor. He pulled out the Alien Creature and put it to one side. “Oh, and remember, Mrs Johnstone is the Zetan Priest.”
“But we don’t really have a motive for that.”
“Do Zetan Priests need a motive?”
“You don’t even know what a Zetan Priest is.”
“So, neither do you.”
“Well if we’re going on look-alikes Teddy Barnham looked like The Sorcerer, and I swear he has to have some kind of powers to do that painting he was doing the other day, plus to put up with the smell of the maggots.
“That’s another motive there. Granddad said maggots can feed on dead flesh.”
“You don’t think John’s dead, do you?”
We were both quiet for a while. Liam was eyeballing the cards. “Hey,” he said, pointing at The Hangman (Horror Rating 88), “he looks like your dad.”
I grabbed the card and looked at it. “He doesn’t look anything like that.”
“He has the same hair.”
Liam was right, he did have the same hair. I picked up The Cannibal (Physical Strength 93), who was completely bald. “Well if we’re going on hair, this one looks like your dad.”
We both laughed, then another card caught my eye. “This is odd,” I said, pointing at the Beast card. For some reason the hairy, green creature was on a stage. “Reminds me of Uncle Rodney.”
“Uncle Rodney’s never on stage for very long though; he normally falls off!”
“You know who I’ve seen wandering about in the village more than usually lately?”
“Who?”
“Shaky Jake.” I picked up The Madman card (Killing Power 69). His mouth was tight, and his eyes were closed, exactly how Shaky goes when he’s wound up, and his hair was exactly the same too: brown, receding, and sticking up in random tufts.
“He might even be an alien too.”
It would certainly have explained why he was so weird.
I don’t even remember watching the first half of the football because I was still thinking
about the cards. Liam had left them in his room when I wanted nothing more than to look through them all again. But, by the time the second half had started, and England had missed their first chance I was interested. Because only a win would mean they were through for sure we all got a bit worried every time they kept giving the ball back to Egypt. Luckily, we didn’t have to wait until the last minute for a goal or anything as Mark Wright scored when there was still half an hour to go. We were cheering on England to score more goals, but they didn’t, but we knew that would be good enough. At the end of the game the people in the studio showed us the table and said that because Ireland and Holland had ended 0-0 it meant that England finished top of the group. Because the games from group E were played earlier in the day, it meant we found out that England would be playing Belgium in the next round.
Mum came in not long after it had finished. “Are you boys ready to go home?”
“Where’s Dad?” Will said.
“He’s having a chat with your uncle. Come on, it’s late and you’ve all got school in the morning.”
We went outside. Uncle Alan was leaning in and talking to Dad through the Land Rover window.
“Well, thanks for the update,” said Uncle Alan, “I’ll catch you later.” As we passed him on our way to the Land Rover he said, “See you later boys,” and then started chanting, “Engerlund, Engerlund, Engerlund.”
If England had gone out of the tournament, I don’t think I could have taken it. The fact that they had got through, that they had survived the group stage made me think that John was probably still be okay too. All England had to do was win the tournament and everything would work out just fine.
NOW
Having watched England in a number of tournaments since, I’ve learned now to depend upon them too much.
Driving through the old part of Little Mosswick makes me see that this place is still as sick as ever. But if he’s dying, if he’s really dying, then maybe that’s what the village needs to be healed. If I don’t see him go, then I’ll still think he’s out there. Maybe I need to see him die too before I’m healed.
Dead Branches Page 13