All Sorts of Possible

by Rupert Wallis

  ‘I don’t think I’m ready to talk just yet,’ he said, picking a loose thread from the edge of the tablecloth.

  When Daniel clicked his bedroom door shut, he caught sight of himself in the mirror and placed his hand on his chest, trying to feel for the secret space that Lawson had shown him. But there was only the thump of his heart and his serried ribs, like the rungs of a ladder leading to somewhere mysterious inside him.

  After finally falling asleep, he dreamt of a world where death was a long sleep from which everyone awoke, wide-eyed and smiling, with all the answers to how the world works and how to live peacefully and well. You have to die to know, they said when Daniel asked them the secret to being happy, for they had all sworn not to tell a single person the truth.

  The Man in the Mackintosh

  27

  Bennett was all tanned after his holiday. It looked like his teeth and the whites of his eyes had been freshly painted. He was goose-stepping over puddles on the path, making every cloud in them shimmer, as Daniel wheeled his bike beside him, talking everything through, right up to the day before with Mason.

  ‘So?’ asked Daniel when he had finished. ‘What do you think?’

  Bennett stopped to peer down at his reflection in a puddle, a cigarette between finger and thumb.

  ‘What do you think?’ asked Bennett, bending closer to the water as if expecting his reflection to answer for him. When it didn’t, he sighed and shook his head and looked up at Daniel. ‘That you can’t tell anyone else about Mason, but then you know that already. Also, that you should be glad you’re not me. Because I’m the one who’s supposed to tell you everything’s going to be OK. But I can’t do that. I can’t lie. Otherwise, I wouldn’t be acting like a best friend should. It wouldn’t be me.’

  Bennett studied his reflection in the puddle again as if waiting to see if it had anything to add, then took a final drag and flicked his cigarette away, making the water hiss. Daniel stepped back, as if the water was alive, and Bennett noticed, but said nothing as he walked on.

  ‘There’s something you can do to help,’ said Daniel.

  Bennett’s large brown eyes grew wider beneath his fringe of black hair. ‘How do you mean?’

  ‘Come with me now, to look for some answers.’

  ‘Where?’

  ‘Where do you think?’

  ‘You mean climb down into the sinkhole?’

  ‘No, I meant go and explore where I got out.’

  Bennett coughed a bluish cloud and spat a gob of phlegm that landed on the wall beside them. He watched it scrambling down the bright red bricks like some green bug. ‘Do you think there’ll be any answers there?’

  Daniel shrugged. ‘It’s a place to start.’

  ‘You mean to help with the Mason situation? With finding someone to make the fit?’

  ‘With anything.’ Daniel wafted a toe over the gap between two paving stones as if wary of stepping on it and then put his foot down beyond it. ‘It’s OK. You don’t have to come if you don’t want to.’

  Bennett stopped and just stared at him, and then he peered down at the black gap between the paving stones before planting both feet across it. ‘I can see why you need to go back to the place you nearly died.’ Daniel didn’t say a word. ‘But I wouldn’t know what to do if it’s all too much.’

  ‘You’d know better than anyone else.’

  Bennett’s lips purred as he blew out a breath.

  ‘I’m still the same Daniel you’ve always known. The one you met in nursery who tried to eat your socks. I’ll be OK if you come with me.’

  Bennett dipped his toe into the puddle beside them and as Daniel watched the ripples it was like he was back underground. He thought he heard running water and he clutched his arms around him as a cloud passed over the sun. And Bennett noticed that Daniel was suddenly somewhere else.

  ‘Prove it then,’ he said and stepped into the puddle. The water was barely five centimetres deep. He held out his hands to Daniel. ‘It’s just a puddle.’

  ‘I know.’

  ‘So come on in, the water’s divine.’

  Daniel propped his bike against the wall. Closed his eyes. He took a big step and felt the water sucking round his trainers as he stepped into the puddle. When he looked again, Bennett was staring back, holding on to his hands.

  ‘I’m supposed to go home for some sort of family food “thing” in an hour or so. Lunch? You know it?’

  ‘Yeah, sure,’ said Daniel in a rush, feeling embarrassed to have asked at all. ‘I understand. That’s fine.’

  ‘So-o-o, in a roundabout way, I guess what I’m asking is, will there be food on this expedition of yours?’ Bennett grinned.

  Daniel smiled back. ‘There can be.’

  ‘I like crisps. And would there be fizzy drinks?’

  ‘Yeah, if you want.’

  ‘Well then, I can’t say no, can I?’

  The longer they stood in the cold water, the more Daniel could feel it pressing round the edges of his feet, like the puddle was trying to suck him down somewhere deep. When Bennett let go of his hands, Daniel wobbled and his friend grabbed on to his shoulder until all the ripples around them had vanished.

  ‘I’m sorry I wasn’t here when it happened,’ said Bennett, lighting another cigarette and taking a drag.

  ‘That’s OK,’ said Daniel. ‘You were on holiday. You weren’t to know what was going to happen.’

  ‘No one ever does, do they?’ said Bennett and he glanced over at the traffic going past them as if waiting to be proved right. ‘You’re sure though? You’re not upset with me?’

  Daniel didn’t know what to say, so he nodded. He looked down at the puddle. Saw his reflection smiling back. ‘I’m just glad you’re here now.’

  ‘I prefer salt and vinegar by the way,’ said Bennett. ‘And Diet Coke. At least a couple of cans.’

  Daniel frowned and then he grinned when he realized what Bennett was talking about and stuck his hands in the pockets of his shorts, making the change inside them clink. Bennett’s lips lit up in a smile too, as if the two of them were connected by an invisible current to which only they were wired.

  28

  They rode to the train station on their bikes and over the concourse through unamused looks to the ticket machines where they each bought a return, which the barriers swallowed and spewed back out to let them through.

  The platform for the local stops was tucked away from the mainline. A single track, with two rails smoothed syrupy and golden, and between them slender-necked weeds growing out of the grey ballast between the sleepers. Pigeons shuttled back and forth across the wooden struts in the eaves above them, cooing as they went. Wary of the smack of bird shit on the platform, they walked further down and found a bench and sat soaking up the sun, staring through orange lids.

  ‘We could go anywhere we wanted,’ said Bennett with a mouth full of salt and vinegar crisps.

  ‘We could.’

  The two boys stepped off the train with their ears ringing because all the windows had been open. Even so, the carriage had still felt like an oven.

  The platform was made of plain concrete with its edge striped yellow. There wasn’t even a bench. Daniel watched the two carriages disappear round the bend in the track, listening until he could hear nothing except for the birds and the breeze in the trees.

  When he turned round, Bennett was waiting patiently. ‘Are you OK?’

  ‘Yeah,’ said Daniel.

  ‘It’s just a day trip.’ Bennett held up his ticket. ‘We’ve already paid to go back.’

  Daniel felt for his own ticket in his pocket too and then nodded.

  The lane wound between high hedges. Daniel stopped every now and then to get his bearings, boosting himself up on to his tiptoes as he stood on gates and stiles. Each time he stopped and thought about going back, he looked at Bennett, saying nothing, until the moment passed.

  Once, standing on a five-bar gate, he watched a blue car on the horizon wending its way a
long the road in the shimmering distance until it disappeared behind the curve of a hill. He was about to turn round when the car reappeared, beetling back the other way. Daniel watched it, sunbeams strobing off the wing mirrors, until it vanished again, as if swallowed into the ground.

  He jumped down quickly, as hard as he could, to reassure himself how firm the lane felt beneath his trainers, before they continued cycling.

  ‘Over there,’ said Daniel, pointing across a sea of wheat to a meadow and the woods beside it. The boys heaved their bikes up and over the gate and walked down a bumpy tractor channel, the wheat hissing all around them, until they emerged from the field on to the grass.

  Daniel remembered how the skyline had looked in the dark when he had crawled his way out of the ground, and wiped a film of sweat from his brow. Before he could turn round and say anything, Bennett was pedalling past him, waving him on, ringing his bell as loud as he could. And Daniel followed him, scared of being left on his own with his thoughts.

  The opening to the tunnel was canted at an angle of about forty-five degrees, as if the ground had found a mouth to open in an ‘O’ and gawp in wonder at the sky. It was cool and filled with shadow as the sun beat down.

  Wooden posts had been hammered into the ground in a rickety circle all round the tunnel entrance, and up over the grassy hump that rose behind it and down the sides, and were strung with bands of new barbed wire. Lying on the ground were little bouquets of faded wild flowers with notes attached. Letters and cards had been tacked to the fence posts and some were hooked to the barbs on the wire.

  ‘You’ve turned this place into a shrine,’ said Bennett as he scanned a letter asking for someone’s daughter to be cured of cancer. Before dumping his bike down, Bennett detached the headlight and then hitched himself up over the wire, ignoring the wooden sign telling him to KEEP OUT in red painted letters. He took the few steps across the grass on the other side and crouched by the entrance, staring into the tunnel.

  ‘It’s just a hole in the ground, Dan,’ he said matter-of-factly. ‘And you know what’s down there anyway.’ He crept on through, picking his way round the boulders and rocks scattered inside the opening, and vanished.

  Daniel stood listening to Bennett’s shoes slipping and sliding until there was just the grass prickling beneath his feet and the wind in the wire and the sign knocking gently. He raised his arms and waited for the goose-bumps to melt in the sun. Then he climbed over the fence and edged carefully towards the tunnel.

  The sound of the waterfall was just audible above his breathing.

  He remembered how cold the water had been.

  He peered into the cool dark mouth of the tunnel, watching the crown of Bennett’s head bobbing below him. His friend was already halfway down before Daniel started to follow.

  29

  The chamber was lighter than he had imagined it would be in the daytime, like a church lit by low winter sunshine. The grey walls were veined with marbled white lines and pocked with deep dark hollows.

  When Daniel looked up at the tunnel mouth, it seemed smaller and brighter from below, an oculus filled with sky, and around it a corona of fuzzy blue daylight.

  He and Bennett could have been worshippers of some kind as they picked their way round the shoreline, the cowls of their hoodies resting on the backs of their necks.

  Sometimes the din of the waterfall amplified without warning, echoing louder round the chamber, forcing the boys to raise their voices, adding to the constant noise.

  Ripples skittered across the green water.

  Hoops of gold moved over the walls.

  A chill blew off the pool.

  When Bennett pointed to a low archway in the wall that Daniel could not remember seeing before, they made their way towards it, stooping through into a much smaller chamber where they could hear each other more easily.

  It was darker though, and Bennett turned on his bike light and stood it upright between two rocks, opening up a fizzy white funnel to the ceiling. The cold was nipping at their bare legs and he drew out a hip flask from one of the pockets of his cargo shorts and spun off its silver top and took a swig before handing it to Daniel.

  ‘Whisky,’ said Bennett, ‘and a drop of Diet Coke.’ And he winked.

  Daniel took a sip. It tasted like coarse, hot sherbet when he swallowed and it lit a fuse that burned down deep into his chest. For a moment, all he could think about was the fit and how it had felt.

  ‘It’s beautiful,’ said Bennett, looking back through the archway at the waterfall, the spray coming off it like dust. All around the walls bejewelled webs shimmered in the updraught as the water fell.

  ‘Yes it is,’ said Daniel.

  When Bennett pointed at something behind him, Daniel turned round to look. A circle of red handprints on the wall of the small chamber they were in, and inside it six red spokes, drawn wobbly over the rock, joined to one point at the centre, like the crude design of a cartwheel.

  Daniel shook his head. ‘I never saw any of this.’ He bent closer to look. ‘How old do you think they are?’

  Bennett took out his phone and played the light from the screen over the red paint and then shrugged. ‘Do you think they mean anything?’

  ‘I don’t know.’

  They matched their palms to the echoes of ones that had gone before, understanding nothing except the rock against their skin and how it must have felt to whoever had made the pattern.

  Further round the wall they found a set of square holes.

  ‘Think they’re man-made?’ asked Bennett, feeling the edge of one.

  ‘I don’t think so.’ But then Daniel shrugged. ‘I don’t know.’ He pushed a hand into one of the holes up to his elbow and his fingers came out gritty and brown and shining.

  A white snail shell, blobbed like cream in the topmost corner of another hole, shone amber when the light from Bennett’s phone swept across it.

  They stood for some time, looking around for anything else, but eventually all that was left to do was to kick through the stones and pebbles they were standing on. Bennett lit a cigarette he had rolled on the train and blew smoke into the beam from his bike light and watched it spiral round.

  ‘Anything else?’ he asked.

  Daniel turned to the archway and pointed to the rock on the shoreline. ‘That was where I ended up,’ he said.

  ‘Ready to take a look?’ asked Bennett.

  And Daniel took a deep breath and said he was.

  They sat on the rock and watched the low light being spun into golden threads on the surface of the water.

  ‘Well?’ shouted Bennett above the noise of the waterfall.

  But Daniel didn’t hear. He was too busy staring at the water, remembering how cold it had been. He wondered whereabouts his iPhone was lying, lost forever beneath the surface.

  When Bennett touched his shoulder, Daniel almost slid off the rock, gasping as the water kissed the soles of his trainers. He looked round into Bennett’s smiling face and almost swore.

  When Bennett saw the word H E L P scraped on to the rock, he picked up a stone and scrawled two more words beneath it . . .

  THE WORLD

  ‘Well,’ he shouted, admiring his handiwork. ‘It’s worth a try if someone really did help you out of here.’ And he noodled the stone between his fingers as if contemplating writing a request for something else. ‘Have you tried asking if there’s anyone else here? If they know anything about the fit too?’

  Daniel nodded. ‘But maybe I should ask more loudly?’

  ‘Be my guest.’

  ‘HEL-LO?’ shouted Daniel. ‘Can anybody tell me what’s inside me? How it works? What was the point in saving me if I don’t know how to help my dad? ANY-BODY?’

  But nobody answered back.

  They sat, watching for any sign, for any clue, passing the hip flask between them. Bennett took a big slug and his eyes shone. ‘We should try and make the fit.’

  Daniel looked at him, cocking his head like a little bird.
‘Bennett, seriously, you’ve drunk too much.’

  Bennett stared at him, then smiled and slowly shook his head. ‘Sorry,’ he said. He picked up a stone and hurled it as hard as he could and watched it land in the water with a springy, hollow sound as if it had been dropped into a deep well.

  ‘Let’s just stick to being best friends,’ said Daniel and Bennett nodded.

  ‘Yep.’

  ‘Thanks for coming,’ said Daniel.

  ‘You are very welcome, my friend.’

  And the two of them smiled at each other.

  Bennett spread his arms wide and flapped himself into a standing position like some lopsided chick on a ledge and grinned.

  ‘Maybe we need to go in,’ he shouted.

  Daniel shook his head as he stared into the green water. ‘It’s cold, trust me.’

  ‘It’ll be good for you.’

  ‘How’d you figure that?’

  ‘How do you know it won’t be?’

  Daniel’s fingers hooked even tighter into the little cracks and crevices on the surface of the rock. He kept looking at the water until he realized Bennett was still staring at him, waiting for an answer. It was the sort of thing he would normally have done without even thinking about it.

  ‘I’ll be here with you,’ said Bennett.

  They took off their trainers and socks and left them on the shoreline, wading in until their legs were eaten up to the bottoms of their shorts, the green and blue ripples coming at them. Greasy rocks moved beneath their feet, threatening to trip them up.

  ‘See, it’s not so bad, is it?’ shouted Bennett and Daniel shook his head.

  ‘No,’ he shouted back.

  Bennett scanned the surface like a lifeguard.

  When Daniel saw something silver, he peered through the wobbly surface of the water and saw a tiny fish gawping, fanning its fins, until it seemed to sense him watching and vanished into a deeper part of the pool.

  Bennett picked off a ruby crystal of blood where he had cut his finger coming down the tunnel and dipped it into the green water and watched a faint pink star-burst appear, then untangle itself into nothing. When he raised his hand, he studied the cut, as if surprised to see it still there.