by Ian Woodhead
The sound of creaking was coming in that direction, somebody had made a swing and somebody wearing white was playing on it. Well, Alan had a white tee shirt underneath his jacket. The sound of laughter floated through the trees, it sounded like he was there with Jennifer. Damien would bet Tony was there too.
He couldn’t believe it, they had forgotten about him. Alan had run off with his new friends, leaving him to fend for himself. He stomped along the path feeling more betrayed than ever, their mocking sounds burning his back. He stopped and turned around, there was no way, he’d let them get away with this, and jogged towards the swinging figure. He was going to give him a piece of his mind and then he’d tell Jennifer just what Alan had been saying about her.
As he approached the swinging figure, he saw he was mistaken. It wasn’t Alan; it didn’t look anything like him. It was just some kid who looked even younger than him. The kid hadn’t noticed him yet. Good lord, what was he wearing? He looked like a miniature version of his granddad but with grey shorts on. He must be one of those posh grammar school kids from the next town.
The source of the laughter revealed itself. It was another young boy dressed like the first one who emerged from a hole in the bracken, carrying an armful of branches and berating the other one for not helping him.
Damien tried to retrace his steps before the boys saw him. He’d had enough excitement today without having to go through the awkward ritual of speaking to a pair of strange looking boys. The boy holding the sticks dropped them and informed the other that he was sick of building the roof before storming back through the hole. The white shirted lad placed both feet on the ground, turned his head and smiled.
“Hello. Do you want a go on my swing?”
He didn’t seem all that surprised to see him nor was he nervous about his sudden appearance. Damien knew that if the roles were reversed, he’d be terrified.
“No thank you.” he replied. “Have you seen a boy and girl pass through here?”
The boy shook his head. “Nope, nobody comes down here.”
Having decided that Damien wasn’t going to be his playmate, he grabbed the rope and got back onto the swing. The rhythmic creaking of the branch started up. Deciding that the boy had either forgotten about him or he was just being ignored, Damien made his way back to the path before his other friend showed up.
The sun was dipping behind the hills; it would be dark soon. Maybe he should ask the boys if they wanted to walk out with him but thought better of it. What if they said no or just laughed at him. He didn’t think he’d be able to deal with that kind of rejection. He turned around intending to at least wave to the lad when something big and black flew past him heading for the swinging boy.
Despite all instinct telling him to do otherwise, he set off in chase. Damien hollowed a warning but the boy carried on swinging, oblivious to the threat heading towards him at high speed.
The black, man shaped thing was almost on top of the boy and didn’t seem to have any intention of slowing down. The creaking of the branch was drowning out every other sound including Damien’s repeated attempts to get the boy to turn around. The black shape reached the boy and stopped. Damien could no longer see the swinging boy. The shape lifted off the ground, floating up. When it was above the boy’s head, it twisted into a funnel shape then fell into the top of the boy’s head.
Damien stopped. The scene in front of him faded out, slowly replaced by another. A man in a blue overall had lifted the boy off the ground and was wrapping the rope around his neck. Damien looked around the woodland floor to see if he could find anything he could use as a weapon. The only thing he saw was a broken branch; he picked it up and threw it at the man. The branch missed him but it got his attention, the man let go of the boy’s wrist, roared, then lumbered towards him.
He wasn’t expecting that. He was sure the stick would sail through the air, hit the man on the back of the head and knock him out. He never thought his plan might fail and he’d be putting himself in danger.
The man picked up the stick on his way past - not that he needed it, he was huge, he made Damien look like a garden gnome.
Damien found himself back in the heather, unable to move. The plants had wound themselves around his legs and held him tight. The man was almost on top of him, raising the stick above his head.
Damien’s frantic hands slashed through the plant stems but the stuff was growing faster than he could tear it off. He looked away from the man, not wanting to see the stick come crashing down upon his head, and into the clearing. The tree-stump was occupied by someone else. His brother was sat on it. Jennifer sat on his knees, both locked in a passionate embrace.
Alan ignored his screams. The only person in the world who had ever cared about him was too busy trying to get inside Jennifer’s bra than care what happened to his brother.
The man in the overalls lowered the stick and grinned down at the boy. His teeth were black, then he realised they weren’t teeth.
They were ants. The man opened his mouth wide, hordes of tiny, black ants poured out of his mouth, ears and eyes and dropped onto the heather. They travelled en mass towards Damien’s wrist. He grabbed a handful, ignoring the bites coming through the fabric of his gloves and squashed them together. An impossible amount of blood squirted through his fingers.
“You’re killing my brother, you fat pig!” Alan shouted. The man groaned again. He jumped onto the heather, the ants parted; he grabbed Damien’s hair and pulled him forward.
He was going to choke him, like he had tried to with that other boy. Some of the ants landed on his face, crawling up his cheek towards his eye. He felt the man’s hand’s around his neck.
His waist up to his chest was on fire due to the amount of bites he’d received but it was nothing compared to being choked. The man then pushed his head into the seething mass of wriggling black bodies; before he went under the baying laughter of his brother and Jennifer echoed through his ears.
Chapter Two
Damien awoke with a scream dying on his lips. He opened his eyes, the vivid dream fragmenting and fading away like wisps of smoke. He ran his hand over his face, sweat pouring off him. He wondered if he was coming down with something, he always had freaky and downright weird dreams just before the onset of some annoying virus. As he threw the covers back, he realized that he wasn’t alone. He looked up and saw his older brother, Alan, grinning back at him, holding one of his many games out in front of him like it was a sacred trophy.
“I finished Biogenesis 4 twenty eight minutes ago and I saved the game.”
His brother’s face showed a mix of optimism and apprehension. He’d seen the look on Tony’s face recently but couldn’t remember where, did he just dream that? A picture popped up showing Alan snogging his girlfriend.
“Do you want to watch the replay with me?”
Damien shook his head to clear the images, wondering if he ought to dose himself up with a few Lemsips just in case.
Alan’s hands were bereft of his trademark black leather gloves. The ends of his fingers were red raw, what the hell had he been doing?
“Have you lost your gloves again?”
Alan shook his head. “I didn’t put them back on after I put the game pad down.” He ran his finger down the edge of Damien’s light switch.
“See! I’m cured. There’s no way I’m putting those gloves back on.”
Damien climbed out of bed and placed his dressing gown over his boxers. Alan was about to make the bed but Damien shook his head, guiding his brother to the door.
Was Alan managing to get to grips with this weird obsession with dirt or was he just pretending? He could never tell what was going through his mind.
“I’ll watch the replay with you later this afternoon Alan, I promise.”
Alan padded out of his bedroom heading for the bathroom and Damien clicked the door shut. He waited a minute then eased the door open a crack. His brother left the bathroom, now wearing his gloves.
Damien
opened his wardrobe and started the task of working out what he was going to wear today. It was Saturday so no college; he decided on casual but smart. He was supposed to be meeting Jen later so the grey canvas shirt she’d bought for him last week was the perfect choice. He wasn’t too keen on it but she liked to see him wearing her purchases.
He threw the clothes on the bed and shut the wardrobe. Alan had left his video game on his pillow. The cover displayed a large man covered in insects holding a studded club. Damien screwed up his face.
“Very nice.” he said. His brother played some seriously strange games. He was good at them too, and he knew for a fact that he could outplay any of Damien’s friends.
He slipped the shirt over his T shirt, put his loafers on then picked the game up. He’d better return this. Alan was fanatic about his possessions, almost as bad as this thing he had with hygiene. He was surprised he’d left it here; it was so unlike him to be so forgetful. Damien put it down to him being so excited with finishing it. He flipped it over and read the blurb. As far as he was concerned, all these games were just a load of rubbish designed for big kids. He shrugged, who was he to criticize? It was the only thing that kept his brother happy.
He opened the door and wandered into his brother’s bedroom, expecting to see him plugged into his Xbox. The bedroom was empty.
He must have gone on the hunt for food. Either that or he’d discovered a tiny piece of dust on his hands and was intending to spend the next hour scrubbing his hands raw.
Before dropping the game on his bed, he took one more look at the cover. There was something about the grotesque image that bothered him. It seemed familiar but he hadn’t a clue why.
He cracked the case open, intending to look at the manual when something small and black fell out and landed on the carpet. He bent down to pick it up, thinking it must be a piece of fluff.
It was a dead ant.
He dropped it into his top pocket; he’d flush it down the toilet once he was out of here. Damien didn’t have a problem with insects but Alan would have a fit if he found that on his carpet
After checking the box for more dead ants, he threw the case on the bed where it bounced off, spilling the contents all over the floor. Damien washed his hands of the whole affair, Alan could sort it. There was no way he was going anywhere near that horrible cover again. That picture was the stuff of nightmares.
That passing thought caused a cascade of gruesome and violent images to pass through his head. His fell to his knees and clutched his head. Oh Christ, this was bad. Eventually the images faded, leaving him weak and washed out.
Damien opened his eyes, grabbed his brother’s covers, pulled himself up and sat on the edge of the bed. He’d snapped the game CD in half; he must have fallen on it when he went down on his knees. His brother would be so upset.
The doorbell rang. Damien got up and staggered over to the window to see who it was.
Jennifer and her brother stood there; the door opened and he saw himself wander out, followed by his mother. The full memory of last night’s dreams hit him in the face with the force of a studded club. The last thing he heard before falling against the glass was Alan screaming behind him.
Chapter Three
Andrew Butterworth jerked his finger out from between the bars like he’d touched a naked flame. Pete Grayson heard the new starter swearing at the little animal in the cage and padded over with foreboding. What had upset him this time?
“What’s wrong, Andrew?”
Andrew pointed at the chinchilla sat on its hind legs at the back of the cage munching on some fresh leaves. The lad shook with anger.
“That vicious little bastard just tried to bite me. Have you seen the size of its fucking teeth?”
Andrew gave the animal in question evil stares, so Pete felt it safe to roll his eyes and sigh.
“I swear, if that thing had gotten hold of my finger, it would have bitten it through to the bone.”
Pete suppressed a chuckle, tapped a bar twice with his fingernail and stroked the back of its ear when the chinchilla scurried over to investigate.
“You must have startled it, Andrew. This little thing is about as dangerous as a wet dishcloth.”
“It knows you,” Andrew replied sullenly. “That’s why he’s letting you touch it.”
Pete walked back to the bird cages to continue feeding the budgies. He wasn’t about to start up yet another dispute. Andrew had shown him just how ignorant he was about caged pets half an hour ago when he’d thought the gerbils were mice. When Pete corrected him, Andrew called him a lying fuck and threatened to punch his teeth through the back of his throat. Andrew’s response had been so sudden. The only way Pete had escaped damage was by showing him the difference in a children’s book. He agreed with Andrew how easy it was to make the mistake, of course he didn’t mean to call him a liar and would he like anything from the newsagents over the road? Pete was just popping out anyway. Don’t worry, he was buying.
Pete’s boss had given him the impression that their new starter was going to be some sort of animal expert, a wiz at customer relations and a genuine down to earth nice guy.
Although he didn’t understand his boss’s decision to hire extra help, the store wasn’t that busy, he would welcome the company. It would give him somebody to talk to.
His profound shock must have been visible when he was introduced to the lad first thing this morning, and yet his boss had found his reaction amusing. Pete had been expecting some student, bookish type wearing glasses, perhaps a teenage version of Pete. Instead, the new starter looked like he wrestled cows before he killed and ate them. Ex army boots, combat pants and a khaki shirt that looked like it hadn’t been washed since World War One were Andrews’s idea of suitable clothing for an assistant in a pet shop. Pete guessed that his animal expertise stopped at trapping rabbits down Holburn woods or stealing hen eggs from one of the local farms.
What on Earth was his boss playing at? Couldn’t he see that this mean-looking scruffy ape would ruin the business before the month was over?
Pete had been given a couple of weeks to train him up. His boss had taken him to one side, leaving Andrew to sit on Pete’s favourite chair by the till, picking his nose whilst reading Pete’s paper.
“I’m not blind; I saw the look on your face just then.” He held up his hand. “Don’t interrupt Peter. Look, I’m doing this as a favour okay? That means you’re doing me a favour by looking after him. He’ll be out of here in a few weeks.”
His new boss led Pete to the front door and shook his hand. “Be gentle with him, Peter.”
He hated people calling him Peter. His boss then climbed into a bright red open top Porsche sports car and sped off down Holburn’s high street.
Pete didn’t need to be a fortune teller to predict that Andrew would make his life intolerable for the coming month and there was nothing he could do about it.
He’d be thirty nine years old next month. Pete had spent the last few years struggling to parent a very belligerent teenage daughter. His experience with dealing with his very own hellion should have given him enough proficiency to pacify even this thug.
Pete’s trouble was that he didn’t look his age. With his youthful round features and with a full mop of long, black hair, he could pass for someone a decade his junior. The boy must see him as some bloke just a few years older than him, certainly not as a father figure or someone in authority. It wouldn’t take much to provoke this gorilla into lashing out.
Andrew had followed him back to the bird cages, breathing down the back of his neck. It looked like he was going to have another confrontation whether he wanted one or not.
“You don’t believe me,” he said. “You think I’m making this up.”
He continued to feed the parrots, acting as if the boy wasn’t there. Pete was determined not to let the boy unnerve him. Andrew showed that he didn’t like to be ignored by prodding him twice in the back.
“That chinchilla is gentle and timid.
He wouldn’t hurt a fly,” said Pete. He kept his eyes fixed on the parrot. If he turned and faced him, Pete would start to stammer and he didn’t want Andrew to see the fear in his eyes.
The lad saved him the trouble by planting his shovel-like hands on his shoulders and spinning him around. His bag of bird seed flew out of his hand and hit the side of the counter.
“I know what I saw. That thing in there is dangerous.”
The only thing in the shop that was dangerous was the tiny brained gorilla, currently squeezing his shoulders. Pete would have big thick bruises there tomorrow, he knew it.
“I’ll tell you this much for nothing. If it tries that again, I’ll wring its fucking neck.”
Pete flinched. Andrew meant it as well, oh God. How the hell was he going to survive for one whole month with this evil bastard walking all over him? He looked into his blazing eyes and contorted features for a moment before averting his eyes. Why were all modern kids so angry at everything?
Andrew reached into his pockets, shuffled around and brought out a boiled sweet covered in blue fluff; he stared at it for a second then popped it into his mouth.
“Can you eat them? That grey rabbit thing?” Andrew looked at Pete’s aghast face then burst out laughing.
“I think I’m going to like it here”. He pushed past Pete and sat by the till, swung his mud encrusted boots on the desk knocking a neat pile of RSPCA leaflets all over the floor and started to read the back page of Pete’s paper.
Pete felt like he’d gone back in time twenty five years to his school days. He knew that the chances were very high that the big shit pretending he could read would be related to one of those bastards who used to steal his lunch money and beat him up on a regular basis. He would just have to keep telling himself that a month wasn’t all that long. Besides, he couldn’t see the lad staying in the shop all that time.