by Rhian Ivory
And ran.
I ran past Henry, who was staring like a madman into the water. I saw Emilia throw herself into the water as I reached the top of the bridge. I heard the screams of the women and the shouting men, trying to pull her out. I heard Henry and others pursue me as I jumped down from the bridge onto the path. I ran past The Swan, ignoring their shouts and threats. I ran on and on up the high street.
Someone caught hold of the back of my shirt and lifted me off the ground, pulling me through a doorway and shutting it firmly behind me.
I fell onto the floor, heaving, desperate for air.
‘Shut up. Just shut up, boy. Get behind that door. Now.’ A man shoved me into a cupboard barely big enough to hold me. It was dark and smelt of wood.
‘Stay in there, I’ll tell you when it’s clear.’ The voice was familiar but I couldn’t place it. I couldn’t breathe properly, let alone speak. My neck was sore and my throat dry and cracked. I did as I was told. I didn’t have much choice.
‘They’ve gone. It’s clear. Open the door, Aileen,’ he said some time later.
‘I canny guess what they were thinking of. Wha kind o’madness is this?’ A woman’s voice this time and one I recognised. It was the farrier’s wife. She opened the cupboard door. I could smell wood smoke and tea as she helped me out.
‘Hush now, pet, hush now, y’safe now. Thomas’s got ye, we’ll see you safe,’ she soothed, her voice carrying me away from the river, the crowd and the whispering water as I collapsed onto her cold kitchen floor.
CHAPTER 27
NOAH
Mum’s been really weird all evening. I try to work out what I’ve done but give up. I’m getting the silent treatment, which is ten times worse than being shouted at – at least that gets it over with. Maybe I’ve left my running kit on the floor in the utility room again? I can’t see why that would stress her out so much. When Dad gets in, they go off upstairs together. I can hear them arguing, but can’t make out the words. After a few minutes a door opens upstairs and their voices filter down into the kitchen.
‘Take a look, Daniel. Tell me if this is normal? They said that he’d been doodling in his exercise books, inside his History textbook, for goodness sake. It’s starting again, isn’t it? Another nightmare, that’s what this is, another bloody nightmare!’ Mum shouts at Dad.
It’s quiet for a minute or two, then I hear my dad swear.
I try to get out of the kitchen before they come down, but I’m too slow. I have nowhere to go. I can’t walk out. If I did, I’d still have to come home eventually and whatever this is would still be here, waiting for me. I hear one of them coming along the hallway. I feel sick, knowing this is about more than a few detentions or muddy trainers.
Luckily, it’s my dad and not my mum. I can hear her crying upstairs, which is even worse than her coming down and shouting at me. I’ve made her cry! Shit.
Dad sits at the kitchen table and puts down my History textbook. He opens it to a page covered in scribbles and black lines, then another page with colours – blues, midnights, blacks, navys, dark greens, watery colours – all running over the pages like fingerprints.
‘There were some comments at parents’ evening about your constant drawing, or “doodling” they called it. Apparently you’ve drawn over some of your textbooks and worksheets. The teacher found them. So your mum went through your school bag and found this. I wish she hadn’t, to be honest.’
He shows it to me. It’s a page full of colour and rips and tears. In the middle of the drawing is a bone, discoloured and decayed, set on a step like an offering or a sacrifice.
‘Want to tell me what this is?’ he asks, as if he doesn’t have the energy for long sentences, he’s talked enough upstairs.
I shake my head, feeling stupid.
He stands up and starts ripping the page up, tearing sheets out of my maths book. Some fall onto the floor as he spits at me, ‘You promised me! You promised us you’d never, ever draw this kind of thing again. Who on earth do you think you are? What are we going to do with you?’
He looks at me as if I can make any more sense of this than him. He shakes his head, turns his back and strides across the kitchen, then he changes his mind and swings back, charging over to me. Bits of paper fly up into the air like confetti as he stands over me.
‘I don’t understand you, I really don’t. Why would you draw such, such horrible things? For God’s sake! A bone? Someone’s actual bone? Why would you draw that? All that water too. It looks like someone’s drowned. It looks like someone is there under the water. Is that what this is? Is someone going to die?’ He looks desperate, his eyes wide in horror, as he searches through the images, clutching at them.
‘I don’t know, Dad. That’s the problem. I just don’t know. It doesn’t make any sense to me.’ I feel panicked and useless. I’ve scared him, I can see it in his face. I am freaking him out. I’m freaking myself out.
‘Then just stop it. It’s rubbish, total nonsense. If you don’t know what or who it’s about, then stop drawing it, for God’s sake!’ Dad shouts at me, raising his hands as if he could command me, the paper clenched in his fists. ‘You’ve really upset your mother. Again. Just when she thought you were settling down, making friends, being normal, you start drawing someone’s body and bones in the water. I mean, where is this, Noah? Is this in a river? I feel like I should do something, but I’ve got nothing to go on! Is this even real? I’m talking to you as if this is real, as if you can know! I’m going mad here.’ He slaps his hand against his forehead, as if the whole thing’s crazy. He’s right; it does sound impossible. But we both know it isn’t. He just doesn’t want to face it. But I have to.
He searches the pictures for the answers. Then he lets them go. For a moment my drawings are floating above us, until they fall down, spilling onto the floor. I see long tendrils of wet black hair curling around a face, eyes shut and mouth open in silent horror, like a mermaid. Her hands reach up and outwards trying to claw their way back up to the surface.
‘I don’t know, Dad. I keep telling you, but it’s not the same as before. This is different, I promise.’ I try to reason with him, turning away from the pictures on the floor.
I have to keep drawing. I have to see what’s going to happen. This time it could be something I can stop. I can’t hide from this.
‘I can stop it this time,’ I whisper, the words creeping out of me just loud enough for him to hear.
‘If you’re talking about what I think you’re talking about, I don’t want to hear it, Noah. We said we wouldn’t talk about that again.’ He stands up. ‘I can’t do this.’ He towers over me, his lips closed as if he can just zip them up and never let the words out. Well, I won’t do that any more. I can’t keep quiet, letting things fester. I jump up to try to meet his height, wondering if we’ll be level one day – equal.
‘You can’t talk about what happened and call it ‘that’. She died, Dad! Grace died and I could have stopped it. I should have stopped it, but I didn’t know how. I didn’t get what the drawing was showing me. How could I? I’d only just turned five. It wasn’t MY fault!’ I shout at him and he looks shocked, staggering back from me.
‘No one ever said it was your fault, Noah. Of course it wasn’t your fault. It was an awful tragedy. No one ever blamed you. We never blamed you. But you promised us. You said you could make it stop.’
‘But I can’t, that’s the problem. I keep promising you both, and I mean it at the time, but I can’t help it!’
I look at him. ‘I drew her in the garden, in the paddling pool with her hair floating up to the surface. I drew it before it happened, Dad. Then I hid it in my toy box. I should have shown someone. I should have told someone. I should have told you or Mum. But I knew it was wrong. I can see myself right now shoving it to the bottom of the box, wishing it would fly away or disappear.’ It feels so good finally to say the words, say what I’d seen and done.
But he’s saying, ‘No, no, no,’ under his breath, l
ike a mantra getting louder and louder as he paces around the kitchen, trampling the pictures into the floor tiles.
‘No! No! You need to see another doctor. We can’t just hope for the best, or that you’ll grow out of it or learn to control it. There must be a way to stop you from drawing in this way. I mean, you can’t go through the rest of your life drawing things that happen to people, not knowing where or when, can you? It’s just not right, Noah. It’s no life for you, or for us.’
He sits down again next to me and puts his hands softly on my shoulders, forcing me to look at him.
‘Noah, you’ve got to take control now. I believe in you and your mum believes in you and what you say about your drawing, but that doesn’t mean you can carry on like this. This isn’t right, mate. Your mother can’t take any more of this and neither can I. We’ll get you some help, whatever it takes. We love you, Noah, are you listening to me? We love you, son.’
He looks at me, desperate for me to give him what he wants. He carries on talking, getting louder and more agitated.
‘I think we both thought things had changed this time, after the move. You seemed to be settling down so well but clearly we were wrong. Clearly NOTHING HAS CHANGED!’ He shouts the last bit and then goes silent.
He gets up and flings any remaining bits of paper off the table onto the kitchen floor with the rest. I don’t know what to say. He’s shaking, red in the face just looking at me, and I’m properly scared because I’ve never seen him like this. Raging. I lean back a bit, to move away, but he grips my chair and tilts it so that he’s right in my face, so close I can feel his breath on my cheek. He holds my chair there, balancing on two legs, and then lets it fall back down with a crash, moving away from me, as if he doesn’t quite trust himself. We’re both out of breath and lost.
Eventually he bends down and picks up every single piece of paper off the floor, whispering something over and over. I lower my head to hear.
‘Grace, Grace, Grace.’
I turn away, but I find myself whispering too.
‘I’m sorry.’
When I look back, the kitchen door is wide open. He switches off the light in the hallway, climbs the stairs slowly and then shuts their bedroom door. I am on my own, again.
I sit there in the dark silence, trying to promise myself not to draw those pictures again, knowing that I will. Knowing that I’ll draw them over and over and over in more and more detail, etching out the lines and veins and skin on that bone. And each picture will be worse than the one before and there’s nothing my dad, my mum or a doctor can do to stop it.
I know that I’ll draw until I see the ink move, twitching and twisting under my eyelids like flesh and bone, clawing away at me until something comes into focus, something that makes sense. I have to wait for the images to become clear and develop into a picture.
CHAPTER 28
BLAZE
‘D’you think he can hear us, Thomas? Can you hear me, pet? Put him down there, in the wee cot.’ I felt someone put me down on a bed. Footsteps tapped around the room. My stinging skin was being rubbed with cloth, up and down my arms, until I could feel them properly again. I opened my eyes. A little girl with long white hair was staring at me, her thumb in her mouth.
‘Hush away now, Caitlin, move. Give him this, Thomas, it’ll help.’ He passed me a cup with what smelt like hot sweet tea. I was inside, it was warm, but I could hear my teeth clacking against each other. The child hovered between the man and the woman. It was the farrier, his wife, and their child.
‘What happened? Can y’tell us what happened, pet?’ the woman asked. I shook my head. I didn’t know where to start.
‘We need to move him, Aileen. We can’t keep him here, it’s too dangerous.’ The farrier spoke to his wife in a low whisper, but both the child and I could hear them. She was smiling at me, singing something gently to me in a language I couldn’t understand, as the farrier left the cottage. The room was starting to get light, the sun shining in through the window. I needed to leave.
‘My da’s gone for the doctor. He’s gone to see if they’ll take you in the hospital until he can think of a better plan. My mam doesn’t want you to go,’ she told me quietly, looking over her shoulder as if she didn’t want to be heard. ‘I ’member you now. I was sick and saw your face. Mam says you saved my life. Not going to die, are you?’ she asked without any sympathy or tact. I shook my head.
‘No, I’m not going to die.’
I was not going to die here, in this village. I was not going to die and join my mother on the wrong side of the church wall.
She carried on talking to me, as if we were friends now.
‘My cat is fat. She’s got babies in there. She’s having kittens. I like kittens. Do you like kittens?’ She stopped chattering as her mother came back into the room, shifting the child out of the way with her hip. I can see the cat isn’t the only one expecting, but say nothing. Now isn’t the time. She’ll find out soon enough.
‘Thomas has gone to see if they’ve a bed for you in the hospital. Get you better, make you right until we can work out what to do,’ she explained.
I started to head to the door, but she stopped me. She put her hand on my arm and guided me to a chair at the table.
‘Away now, Caitlin, away and find y’dolly. Go on.’ She tried to get rid of the child, to send her out of the room, but she wouldn’t go. She stood still, watching, as if she wasn’t sure what to make of me.
‘Now, pet, wait a while, don’t go yet. Let us help you. Is there anyone I can send for? Where’s your kin? Where’s your mam? Y’must have family somewhere, pet.’
‘No,’ I replied, not willing to explain about my mother’s family and that I was on my way to them, that I was trying to help myself, if only they’d let me go.
‘Oh, wee pet, is there no one? I’m so sorry, I should have done more t’help you. I should have come and seen you, but it’s no’ easy is it, eh? It’s no’ easy living here with everyone watching your every move. I know what it’s like t’be an outsider, see. But still, I should hae come to see you.’ She sounded cross with herself, as if she could have changed what happened, as if she could have made a difference. It wasn’t her fault.
The door to the cottage burst open and several people came in, some in white, others in black, the farrier behind them. There were voices and shouts and two people pulled me roughly out of the chair. The farrier’s wife stood back, looking unsure. She started to argue with her husband again.
‘Can it no’wait a while, Thomas?’ she pleaded. He shook his head, moving out of the way.
‘Can we come and see him at least, pay a visit?’ She turned to the men in white, appealing to them.
‘Sorry, Missus, sorry. No visitors to the workhouse.’ They escorted me to the door. She reached out to me. Her husband pulled her back.
‘That’s enough now, Aileen. You’ve done your best by the boy, time to let him go,’ he said, soft and firm. She tried to argue with him, but he silenced her by holding the door open.
‘Thank you,’ I told them. I didn’t know what else to say. I caught sight of the little girl, tucked behind her mother, hiding in her skirts. She smiled at me, took her thumb out of her mouth, and tottered over to me, whispering in my ear.
‘Come back and see my cat but wait till she’s had the kittens,’ she instructed me.
‘I will and I’ll come back to see the baby too,’ I whispered back as she pressed a small damp kiss on my cheek before being scooped up by her father. I walked out of the farrier’s cottage under guard. I knew that the long road I’d travelled down before lay ahead and at the end of it waited the heavy locked doors to the workhouse.
CHAPTER 29
NOAH
I crane my neck, feeling the new weight of Beth’s stone bouncing against my skin as I run along the river path. I didn’t even ask Dad if he wanted to come, not after yesterday. Maybe it’s better if I just go on my own from now on. We’re barely speaking to each other. I skived off sch
ool, pretending I had a stomach bug, and spent the day in bed, bored out of my mind with brainless daytime telly for company. Anything not to draw. I convinced Mum a run would do me good, bit of fresh air and all of that. She didn’t put up much of a fight; I think she was glad to get me out of the house.
I look up through the ash trees and watch a bat twist and turn, flying very close then slowing and hovering, waiting for something. I am baking and want to jump in the river and cool down. Now I’ve thought of it, I can’t resist. It is too hot to run, especially on my own. I look around, but can’t see anyone other than the bat. The rapids thrash away endlessly, there’s the odd fish darting past, but no walkers, no other swimmers. I peel off my running shorts and sweaty T-shirt and wade in.
The water is icy despite the hot day as I plunge under, the coldness throbbing against my scalp. I keep far away from the rapids and stay by the rocks to start with. I let my feet go numb and blue. Once I’ve swum a few strokes, I start to drift across to the little island in the middle of the river.
I float on my back, letting the waves creep around my neck and into my ears. All sounds switch off. My ears tune in to the pulsing of the river and fade out the noise of the birds, the cars and the rest of the world. I have no idea what time it is or how long I’ve been in the river, I don’t really know what I’m doing, but I tell myself: only a few more minutes, just a little while longer, as the skies darken and the sounds and shape of the river change.
I slip into something, the way I slip into dark places when I’m drawing, but there are no pens or papers here. My eyelids get heavy, weighed down as if someone had placed coins on them. I can’t keep them open. My head droops to the side and cold water fills my ear, laps over my lips and nose, gaining in momentum, climbing higher. A high-pitched sound pierces through my eardrum, like a shrill whistle. I feel my mind and my body separate as I sink down into the dark water.
The river chokes my nostrils, fills my throat and makes its way down and down. I know I have to get out. There isn’t enough air in my lungs and the water will win. I am so slow. My legs won’t work and my toes clamp together in painful spasms. This is new: terrifying and completely out of control.