by Leo Hunt
The guy sitting on the left side is tall and bulky, with a shaved head and flattened features. There are three gold earrings glinting in his ear, and he has plenty of tattoos on his arms and neck, though I can’t make them out in detail. He slouches in his seat, with his feet up on the headrest in front. He’s wearing a red-checked shirt, buttoned to the throat, with stonewashed jeans and cherry-red Dr.Martens. He has bright-white suspenders cutting over his chest. I didn’t know you saw skinheads anymore, not in the wild.
His friend is even stranger, sitting poised and upright, as if about to begin a piano recital. His hair is black and greasy, and he’s got a pointed black mustache. He would probably be handsome if it weren’t for the angry red blotches on his forehead and jawline. He’s wearing a navy-blue suit, a white shirt, and a rumpled purple cravat. This is an inadvisable look when going out drinking in Dunbarrow, unless you really like having pint glasses smashed in your face.
I don’t know how, but they must have realized I’m staring at them in the reflection. They stop talking and look at me. The skinhead gets to his feet. He must be six seven at least; his chest is overloaded with muscle. His shirtsleeves strain against his arms. He takes three strides down the central aisle, red boots clomping.
Should I turn around and say something? The guy is standing halfway down the aisle, holding the seats, staring at me. Kirk says if you have to fight someone bigger than you, then you should just try to hit them in the balls and run. If this skinhead gets any closer, I’m going to aim a foot directly into the crotch of his bleached Levi’s. I refuse to be antagonized by people who can’t move on from the youth culture of thirty years ago.
The guy takes another step forward.
I turn around and look at him properly. My face is unsmiling, jaw set. I’m trying to show I won’t be a pushover. We make eye contact, and I realize I’ve made a mistake.
In the flesh he’s even uglier, with an unshaved face the color of cheese. There’s a cross tattooed on his forehead, and a long white scar on his left cheek. His eyes are gray pools. Whatever it is that normal people have, that makes you feel like they’re decent and sane and still able to think — there is not one spark of it inside this man.
I hold his gaze, unable to look away.
In a few seconds’ time he’s going to leap at me and twist my head off like a champagne cork. I can already hear them making the announcement in assembly at school. I’m saddened to say that one of our best-liked students was decapitated on the top deck of the X45 on Tuesday night . . .
The skinhead grins at me, showing a mouthful of crooked yellow teeth, and then he winks and walks back to his friend.
Before he turns around I think I hear him say something like this:
“Sorry, boss.”
I must have picked a, like, seven-leaf clover this morning and not realized it.
My legs are still shaking from adrenaline when I get off the bus in the center of Dunbarrow. The square’s not busy, but even though it’s a weeknight, there are a few groups smoking outside the pubs. I walk past, avoiding eye contact, and cross the bridge over the river, heading into the park.
It’s dark and still here, lit only with a couple of street lamps, but I know where to find my friends. It’s the normal crowd — Mark and the rest of the team, someone throwing a ball, Kirk and a couple of guys from his neighborhood, shaved heads and cigarette burns in their tracksuit bottoms. They’re all sitting around on the children’s play equipment: There are people up on the climbing frame, some girls laughing as one of Kirk’s friends pushes them on the merry-go-round. It rained earlier in the evening, and as I walk toward the park I see that each blade of grass is shining in the light from a nearby street lamp, like someone varnished the whole bank. Kirk spots me, lurches over, drunk already, holding out a big plastic bottle of cider.
“Luke, mate.”
“Hey Kirk,” I say. He topples into me, hugs me too hard.
“Luke, you’re all right, mate.”
“Yeah, I’m fine.”
“No, you’re all right, you’re all right.”
“I’m all right,” I echo. I don’t feel it. I’m keeping too many secrets. I’ve got more money now than Kirk’s parents probably make in a lifetime, and I don’t know how to go about mentioning it. What would he think of that? What if I told him who my Dad was? I’ve known Kirk eight years, and I barely know how to hint at what’s happened to me since Monday morning. He’s offering me the bottle of cider. I take it, swig as much as I can, hand the bottle back.
“Holiday’s here,” he says, then swills the cider himself. It’s cheap, nasty, tastes a bit like felt-tip pens smell.
“Really?” I say. Honestly, when Kirk claimed she was coming down, I took it with a big dose of salt. I’d assumed Holiday Simmon would have something better to do on a Tuesday night than drinking white cider in the park, but it looks like I was wrong about that. I can see the back of her blond head. She’s sitting at the bottom of the slide in the playground, next to some other girl.
“Go for it,” Kirk says, “get in there.”
“You think?”
“Don’t . . . don’t think too much. Just do it.”
“All right,” I say, and take another drink of cider. I don’t know why Kirk drinks this stuff. He pays a homeless guy to buy us booze, so I guess he probably can’t be too picky. I make my way over to Holiday. I’ve seen her on the sidelines of our games and had a few classes with her and stuff. I know her to say hello to, but I’ve never really spoken to her past that. She has her own circle of mates who aren’t quite the same as mine, and she had her boyfriend in Brackford — not to mention I’ve basically always been scared of her. I’m nervous right now, watching her blond head drawing nearer as I cross the park. I’m not exactly sure what I’m going to say. I remind myself that I’m a millionaire. Millionaires don’t have trouble with girls, ever. I try to get myself into the millionaire mind-set, cross the last few steps with a millionaire walk. There’s a queue of underwear models and French actresses waiting to take her place if she doesn’t want me. I mean, that’s if whoever left a breakfast for me this morning doesn’t gut me before Berkley can transfer the money . . . come to think of it, those guys on the bus were definitely looking at me . . . they know something . . . no, stop thinking about this . . . you’re talking to Holiday right now . . . she’s literally saying something right now. I need to reply. I need to stop thinking about hypothetical French women and hypothetical murders that might happen to me and reply to Holiday.
“Hello!” I say, sounding more shocked than glad to see her.
“Well, I was asking how your day went,” Holiday says, “but hello will do.” She smiles. I was already essentially struck dumb, but her smile completes the process.
She’s not exactly dressed up, wearing jeans and a North Face jacket, but she looks incredible, radiating the kind of casual beauty that’s a gift and can’t be earned. Her hair’s done up in a bun, and she’s wearing heavy-framed glasses, which I’ve never seen her in before. She’s still smiling, expectantly.
“Luke Manchett,” I say finally. “I’m on the team? The rugby team.”
Someone kill me. Strike me dead.
“We know who you are,” says the girl next to Holiday — named Anna or something?— thin and sour-faced. You can just tell by looking at her that everyone knows her as “Holiday’s friend.”
“Alice,” Holiday says. “Luke, do you know Alice Waltham?”
“Nah,” I say. “Hello.”
“Hi.” Alice glances up at me with industrial-strength disinterest, and then gets a cigarette pack out of her coat and starts fiddling with that instead.
“Do you smoke, Luke?” Holiday asks me brightly.
“No,” I say. “Training. I mean, I can’t because of training.”
“I don’t smoke either,” she says. “Mum’s got a nose like a bloodhound. I’d never get away with it, even if I wanted to. But, like, I think my little brother is smoking, and he’s twelve
. Do you think that’s weird? To smoke when you’re twelve? I mean I can’t prove it, but I’m pretty sure he does. And Mum doesn’t say a thing.”
“Even twelve-year-olds don’t know what twelve-year-olds should be doing,” I say, which I don’t think really makes sense, but Holiday laughs anyway. I can’t believe we’re actually having a conversation. It was this easy the whole time. I just had to walk over and talk to her.
“Do you have any brothers?” Holiday asks.
“No, just me.”
“I ought to know that,” Holiday says. “My mum actually knows yours. They were on a Reiki retreat together or something. My mum’s into some weird stuff like that.”
“Oh,” I say, “I didn’t know that.” I’m really surprised to hear about Mum talking to anyone else in Dunbarrow. She’s never really been that interested in getting involved in the town. She’s happy to live in the countryside, and that’s as far as it goes. I don’t think she knows the names of the couple who live on our right-hand side. I have a sudden chill when I wonder if Mum told Holiday’s mum about Dad and the separation. Whether Holiday knows I’m Dr. Horatio Manchett’s son. If she does, she hasn’t shown it.
We talk a bit more, about school and exams and mutual friends, and somewhere along the line Alice snorts extra hard with contempt and gets up and leaves us alone, and I sit down on the slide beside Holiday. Things are going smoothly and our knees are just starting to touch when I look up and see something at the tree line, up the bank, that nearly makes my heart stop.
The two guys from the bus, the skinhead and Blotch-Face, are standing under the farthest street lamp. The skinhead is leaning on a tree, mostly in shadow. I can see the glim of a cigarette at his face. Blotch-Face stands ramrod straight, right under the lamp, and he’s looking directly over at me, like he wants me to see him watching.
“Luke?” Holiday says.
“Yeah?”
“Are you all right? You’re shaking.”
She’s right. My hand is fluttering on my knee. I grab at it with my other hand, to try to keep them both under control.
“I think . . .” I try to find a way of putting this. “I think there’s someone following me.”
She raises an eyebrow.
“These two guys . . . two weirdos. They’re right over there, at the top of the bank. Don’t look yet. Look slow. Over by the street lamp. They were watching me on the bus, and now they’re here. I’m serious.”
“What guys?” Holiday says, smiling.
“Those guys,” I say. “I can’t point at them. They’re by the lamp.”
“There’s nobody there!” Holiday punches me in the leg. “I know it’s nearly Halloween, but stop trying to scare me! My dad pulls this all the time. I’m not falling for it.”
“Holiday,” I say, looking her dead in the eye, “I’m really serious. There’s two of them watching us. Right up on the bank.”
“There’s nobody there,” Holiday says. “I know you’re messing with me!”
She just looked right at them. Do her glasses need a new prescription? Blotch-Face is exactly where he was before, staring at both of us. He’s probably six feet tall and right under the street lamp — you can’t possibly miss him. As I watch, the skinhead leans out of the shadows, says something only Blotch-Face can hear.
“Are you messing with me?” I ask. “How can you not see them?”
“See who?” comes Mark’s voice from behind. He claps me on the shoulder, making me start like someone fired a gun next to my ear. Holiday gasps, too, then giggles.
“Luke’s being a jerk,” she says. “He’s trying to freak me out.”
Her tone is light, jokey, but there’s a little hint of something else in her eyes. Like she’s starting to see that I’m genuinely scared.
“Am I nuts?” I ask Mark. “There’s two guys watching us up on that bank. Look.”
“Huh,” he says. “Well, if they were there, they’re gone now.”
He’s right. There’s nobody up on the bank anymore. Just a lone orange street lamp and an enormous dark oak tree, branches rippling in the wind that’s rising.
The night doesn’t really get back on track after that. Whatever moment me and Holiday were having is lost, and Mark stands behind us while he’s talking, so I have to crick my neck to look him in the eye. I keep waiting for him to leave, but he doesn’t. I can’t relax. I keep thinking about the two men and the breakfast, wondering if they put it there, wondering if they knew Dad somehow. After a while it starts raining again, and I take it as an excuse to leave. Holiday says something about a Halloween party at her house, and I nod without taking it in. The buses don’t run this late and I walk up to Wormwood Drive the long way, drizzle fizzing on the shoulders and hood of my raincoat, the gutter running with a shimmering flush of water. Every step I take I’m thinking of Blotch-Face and the skinhead, trying to work it out. Maybe they know about the money, are trying to get hold of it somehow? What exactly were the complications Mr. Berkley was talking about? Kirk’s been robbed for twenty quid — don’t want to think about what people would do to me for several million. I need a bodyguard or something. By the time I reach the crest of our hill, I’m convinced that the skinhead’ll be lunging out of every shadow, and when a car drives past, I flatten myself against a fence, wondering if it’s going to stop and unload a pack of ski-masked kidnappers. As I reach my road, I imagine that they’re already in my house. Mum’s alone, and Ham’s a coward: He’ll hide in the laundry room.
The wind’s dropped, and the trees along Wormwood Drive are still, but this only adds to my unease. It seems like the whole road is holding its breath. I make my way down to our house, ears alert for any unusual sound, wishing I had my skewer. The dark windows remind me of empty eye sockets. I’m holding my breath, expecting movement at every moment. The fear intensifies as I open our front door, and I’m cringing away from the darkness inside our house, absolutely certain a man’s shape will appear in the hall.
I hear a gentle movement in the kitchen and nearly jolt out of my body, and then Ham’s gray form appears from the blackness, and he calmly thrusts his warm head into my legs and waits to be petted. I burst into laughter and push him off me.
The house itself is fine. There’s no mystery meal waiting on the table. Television remote, sneakers, schoolbag, Mum’s house keys, frying pans, the fruit bowl in the living room, Dad’s papers on my desk. Each object sits in its proper place. Mum is asleep in bed. Seemingly hasn’t moved all day. If anyone came in here, Blotch-Face or the skinhead or anyone else, there’s no sign of it. I check every room and make sure every window is locked. I walk to the bathroom, fill a glass, and drink. Walk to my bedroom. Close my eyes.
Slate-gray Wednesday morning. When I open my door Ham is lying outside it like a draft stopper. I shouldn’t have let him sleep up here the other night. It set a dangerous precedent.
“Get downstairs,” I tell him, but he refuses to budge.
The chill I noticed yesterday is back, creeping into my toes. The relief I felt when I got home last night has vanished completely, replaced by a queasy sense of doom. I know I haven’t seen the last of those men. I need to check the kitchen. I take the stairs as quietly as I can and push the door open softly, using the finger of one hand.
Someone made me breakfast again. I stare at it, stomach churning. The mystery chef is back. The spread is less fancy this time: slices of processed turkey and a glass of mango juice. The meat has been arranged in a dainty fan across the blue plate. The air inside the kitchen is nearly subzero. I swear there’s frost on the glass of juice and the kitchen windows. I refuse to believe this is happening. I grab the plate of turkey strips and fling it as hard as I can into the wall. It smashes in a cascade of blue shards and flopping slices of meat. I feel calmer. I stride into the hallway, grab the cordless phone, and dial nine three times.
“Hello? Police, please. I want to report a break-in. Number seven Wormwood Drive.”
“Is this an emergency?” asks the o
perator.
“I think there might still be someone in the house.”
“You think the burglar may still be on the property?”
“Please just send someone over,” I say. “I’m afraid.”
I hang up the phone and then walk back into the kitchen, scanning every corner twice over. I go over to the cutlery drawer and pull out my trusty skewer. I climb the stairs as quietly as I can, check the bathroom, my bedroom, Mum’s room, where she’s sleeping, curtains drawn, body knotted up in her duvet. As I’m closing the door to her bedroom, I hear a small, sly movement, definitely coming from the kitchen. Ham is still lying outside my room. I know he heard the noise as well. I motion for him to follow me, but he doesn’t move. My skin is crawling with fear, my arms and legs itching and prickling like I’m covered in invisible insects. Every step of the stairs seems to take an age, every tiny creak of wood under my tread sounds as loud as a cannon blast.
I cross the hallway before I can think better of it, and throw the kitchen door open.
Blotch-Face is kneeling down, doing something on the floor. I realize, with a growing sense of unreality, that he’s cleaning up the fragments of the plate I smashed, sweeping with a brush and dustpan. He turns to look at me. His face is long and greasy. The blotches are more like pustules; he’s got worse skin than anyone at Dunbarrow High. We look at each other, him holding a brush, me clutching a skewer.
There’s a cough to my left.
The skinhead is sitting at the kitchen table, staring at me. I nearly choke with horror. He must be able to move without making a sound. I grip the skewer so hard my knuckles glow white. He’s smoking a roll-up, leaning his thick arms on the table.