Killer Game

by Kirsty McKay

  ‘You shouldn’t call him Alex,’ hisses Martin, lying on his back and jerking his feet into the air in an attempt to dislodge the peg tethering him to the ground. ‘He’s the Grand Master.’

  ‘Yeah, and doesn’t he know it?’ Tesha mutters. ‘Alex!’ She clearly feels like she can break rank. There was that rumour about them tussling tongues last term, not long after we did, so maybe she has something on him. Didn’t help me much, and it doesn’t seem to be helping her either.

  Martin has given up on trying to pull up the peg and is now moving away from it in a kind of breakdance body-roll style. He’s not your natural athlete, but he gets a gold star for effort.

  Tesha looks at him scornfully. ‘What the hell are you doing, Martin? Ack!’ She gives a cry of frustration. ‘You’re so bloody keen, it’s unnatural!’ She turns to me. ‘What are we supposed to do?’

  I shrug. I absolutely know, but I’ll give her the bliss of a few more seconds of ignorance.

  I wiggle forward on my belly. Sand sticks to me. It’s quite tempting to burrow into the sand for warmth, but I have no intention of burying myself so early on in the Game. No, I’m in this for the long haul.

  Martin’s ahead of me, with the same idea in mind. ‘The secateurs,’ he grunts. ‘We can cut ourselves free.’

  ‘But they’re covered in something. What is that crap on the ground?’ Tesha calls.

  ‘Crap, on the ground,’ Martin deadpans. His bungee rope is now taught. He stretches his upper body forward, then flops like a charging walrus, but the bungee pulls him back, tauntingly dragging him in the sand. ‘Too short!’ He strains forward again, groaning, but he can’t move any further.

  So this is our test: snake our way over to the crap on the ground, retrieve the secateurs, cut ourselves free.

  I feel the tightness on my ankles too. I inch towards the cow poo, digging toes into the sand to give me a foothold, but I’m still a good body length away. This is impossible.

  Behind me, Tesha is getting with the programme. She’s trying to bring her tied hands under her feet; yes, tied hands in front are much more useful than tied hands behind. Tesha might be fleshy, but she’s certainly supple. I try to copy her, but neither of us is successful. I’m not sure I’m willing to break my wrists, even for the Game.

  Martin’s waggling his tether again, but he can’t shift it. He moves to mine. ‘Help me pull my peg!’ he says to both of us.

  ‘First time for everything,’ Tesha rolls her eyes at me and falls on to her side, knickered bum in the air.

  I wiggle over to Martin.

  ‘It’s stuck fast,’ he says, trying to pull it up with his hands behind him. ‘Dig around the bottom, maybe we can get them out of the ground that way.’

  ‘Dig with what?’ I answer my own question by sitting on the sand with my back to the peg and scrabbling ineffectually with my cupped hands. Tesha joins me, and we all dig. After a minute, we’ve made a pathetically shallow hole.

  ‘It’s no good,’ Martin grimaces as he reaches down. ‘It’s attached to some kind of steel ring.’ He reaches further. ‘Set in concrete. I think they have them here to anchor scenery to the stage.’

  Tesha swears. I don’t blame her. I’d be even more miffed if I was in my scanties. An idea hits. ‘Teamwork.’ I sigh. ‘Right idea, just wrong place.’ I push myself up to my feet and jump towards the cowpat until my bungee is taut. I crouch down and begin to dig a little trench. ‘OK. Now, Martin, come towards me and pull my rope behind you as much as you can to give me some slack. Tesha, here.’ I nod to the ground.

  She looks at me, not moving. ‘You scare me, girl.’

  ‘Come on!’ I say. ‘We have to do this. We can’t be the only initiates to fail the test, it would be so embarrassing. Plus, I’m flippin’ freezing.’

  Tesha jumps over and flops down beside me. ‘What do I do?’

  ‘Feet in this trench,’ I show her. ‘Then stretch out on the ground on your back.’

  She plants herself on the sand reluctantly. ‘Now what?’

  ‘Now I climb up you.’ I lean against the extent of my bungee. ‘Martin, more slack!’

  He hefts my rope and I feel the bungee slacken a little. I kneel and lean forward until I’m lying lengthways on Tesha. She’s tall, and meaty. A good launching pad.

  ‘Hey!’ she shouts, from under me. ‘What the hell?’

  Despite her protestations, I squirm up her using her body for traction. We must look like two slugs bumping bellies. I manage to get all the way up her, and put my feet against one of her shoulders, pushing myself the rest of the way across the sand to the pile of poo.

  ‘Ow-ee!’ Tesha shouts. ‘You’re killing me!’

  ‘I’ll swap with you if you like,’ I say, straining my head over the ominous pat. ‘In a heartbeat.’ There’s a lump in the middle of the crap. The secateurs.

  ‘Actually, you’re all right.’ Tesha is looking at the cowpat too. Suddenly she’s realizing she has the better deal in all this. I give myself one more push and, hands stuck behind my back, I’m cobra-ing over the pile of stinking mess. Oh God.

  ‘Hurry up!’ Martin shouts. ‘My arms are burning.’

  ‘Sometimes you’ve just got to suck it up,’ I mutter.

  ‘What did you just say?’ he shouts.

  ‘Suck it up.’ I shudder. And then before I can stop myself, I plunge face first into the dark green gloop. I screw my eyes up and push the horrible stuff out of the way with my face, like a kitten with a ball of wool. Except this isn’t wool. The smell is horrendous, but the worst part is that it is warm. It actually steams. It covers my mouth, goes up my nostrils, gets in my eyes. I splutter, blowing the stuff off my lips as best I can. I want to scream, but I have to go down again. I nuzzle the plop until I can feel something hard and cool against my cheek. I shove at it, and the handles stand up a little. There’s a loop of metal between the handles. I try to hook it with my nose, but my nose is not pointy enough. There’s only one thing attached to my head that is. My tongue.

  ‘No!’ I splutter, but then I go for it. It’s only grass, it’s only grass, cows just eat grass and it’s only grass and festering bacteria from four stomachs and flies’ eggs and heaven knows what else oh help oh help oh help.

  I snag the loop. A handle falls towards me, and I bite it, and jackknife the hell out of there. Martin’s muscles must give way, or maybe Tesha’s shoulder dislocates, but I am catapulted out of hell and scraped along the sand, all the way back to my peg. I spit out the secateurs at Martin’s feet. And spit, and spit, and spit. And suddenly with a snip my wrists are free, and my ankles too, and I can stagger off to the front row of the amphitheatre and throw my guts up, tearing at my mouth with my wet pyjama top to try and rid myself of the warm, stinky goo.

  Job done.

  The Game is afoot.

  CHAPTER 2

  I have a very long shower the next morning.

  Too much of a risk to shower in the dead of night. In the morning, however, I scrub at my body like I’m Little Miss OCD. You can bet that I wash my hair more than once, thanking my stars that it’s short and shaggy, but wishing it was not the kind of dishwater blonde that picks up a hint o’ green from being dunked in dung. And yes, I brush my teeth three times, trying to erase the remnants of taste and the memories of texture. Mouthwash, floss, the works. Once done, and dressed in my usual outfit of don’t-care jeans and oversized checked shirt, I don’t think I’ve entirely shifted the smell. So what? I’ll wear it like a badge. I’m extraordinarily happy, because I’m in the Game.

  New term, new me. On the way to breakfast, I strut, feeling enlightened and shiny with the guilty thrill of being in the Game. I’m walking down the oak-panelled corridor of Main House on my way to breakfast in the dining hall, and I’m convinced that everyone can see my halo of initiation . . . or maybe they just smell me coming. It’s as if everyone in the know is absolutely aware of last night, and how it changed me. Except everyone is not. Only Martin and Tesha truly know what depths
I sank to. As far as the Guild is concerned, one of us somehow retrieved those secateurs from the cowpat, but they don’t know which of us, and they don’t know how. And Martin, Tesha and I have sworn a solemn oath on our apprenticed behinds not to tell the details. Honour is everything; they will not break our bond.

  After we cut ourselves free in the early hours, part of the deal was that we had to clean up and sneak back to school undetected. This was as important – in some ways, more so – than the initiation itself. Stealth is everything in the Game. Although the staff here know about the Game, we have to be very careful about how much we shove in their faces. They expect some disruption, and most of the teachers who actually possess a personality find it quite amusing. It’s tradition.

  However, the tolerance only extends so far, and it’s a sign of the times that certain methods of Killing have been banned outright. Laxatives – for a death by ‘poison’ – are out. Bombs have to be extremely metaphorical. And for anyone in possession of a firearm more realistic than a fluorescent yellow water pistol, it’s instant expulsion. We play along. As weird as this place is, nobody wants to be kicked out. Least of all me.

  I’ve been at Umfraville for three years now, since I was thirteen, and it has taken me that long to find my feet. For the first year I spent most of my time with my stomach in perpetual knots of anxiety. Imagine it: a huge, gargoyley, mental-hospital of a school, set on a remote and windswept island, and largely populated by superkids. My parents own the island, but I’m the most normal here by far.

  Umfraville Hall is the only thing of significance on the little island of Skola, off the Welsh coast. The school has been here for a hundred years, in one form or another. It was a lunatic asylum until the sixties, and then a visionary by the name of Ezra Pendleton decided to turn it into a ‘centre of excellence’ for gifted kids. Now Umfraville educates over a hundred teenagers, luminous with specialness. We have mathematicians, track and field athletes, world-class musicians and master chess players. It’s an intense mixture of ego, hormones and Geekosity In Extremis. Ezra’s still here today, old, wheelchair-bound and mad as a bundle of sticks, but he loves the school, sure enough.

  Not everyone here is genius level; some just have uber-wealthy folks. And my story? Like I said, my family own the island. When I was eight my great-uncle died and left my parents a little bit of money, and a little bit of Wales. If asked, I’m sure my parents would have preferred an island in the Caribbean, or maybe the Med, but four hundred acres of moorland in the Irish Sea is what they got. There are some nice beaches here, but the sea is cold and the tides ferocious. We have cows and sheep for neighbours, and that’s it. Lonely? You can wave to the Liverpool-Dublin ferry, and when the weather is clear you can see the nuclear power station on the mainland. When we got rich my beloved parentals decided to stay in London, but move to a nicer postcode. Due to some kink in the deeds, they couldn’t kick Ezra and Umfraville off Skola, so what did they do? They sent their only child to school here.

  When I first arrived at Umfraville, I felt like I was drowning. I’m certainly no clever clogs, and my talents are few and modest. This is no humblebrag, it’s just the truth. I’m OK at Art, and luckily I like my Art teacher, Mr Flynn. He was the first person here I felt I could talk to. Yeah, well done, Cate; befriend a teacher. But after a while, I managed to chisel out precisely two friendships with people my own age: Marcia, who is the school newspaper editor and one of the cloaked Elders from last night. She has an IQ of 156 and no idea what to do with it. She’ll probably end up running a tabloid.

  And then there’s Daniel, again Guild, the ‘Dumper’. Poor, lovely Daniel. Alex gets off on tormenting him, but Daniel rarely complains about much. That’s one of the reasons I love him. He plays the violin, wonderfully, but is terminally shy. He finds it almost impossible to hold a conversation with anyone apart from me or Marcia. He was at the Lausanne Conservatory, but he’s killing a couple of years here because his parents want him to get A levels and a sense of proportion.

  I get on with most of the people here now, you know? Many of them are loners, anyway. Hothouse kids who never got to learn how not to chuck sand in the playground. Apart from the athletes, of course. They band together. Go team! It’s like elves and orcs around here; the geeks and the jocks. And me in the middle. Invisible.

  But not today, finally. Today, I am Guild. Today, I am in the Game. Today, I am part of Killer.

  As I turn the corner, a lively hubbub emanates from the dining room. It’s louder than usual, because it’s a Saturday, and the kind of Saturday that only happens around here a handful of times a term. People are excited about escaping to the mainland. There’s a causeway to this island, and today the tide is right.

  Twice a day a window opens up when it is safe to cross the causeway. On Saturdays we have lessons until midday, and all pupils have to be back on the island by 9 p.m. at the latest. So if the tide is out for a decent chunk of time, a bus is scheduled to take us to the mainland at lunchtime and back again in the evening. This timing only works out about once a month, and sometimes not even that, as there are fairly ridiculous safety margins in place to account for wind and foul weather, and the inevitable naughty folks who are late for the return journey. There’s nothing much on the mainland – a few shops, a cafe, a pub that doesn’t always check ID – but at least it’s not school.

  So yes, the dining hall is humming, and there’s the smell of toast, which always makes my mouth water – except on the mornings when I’ve spent the night apple bobbing in excrement.

  As I enter the hall, I see the tables at the far end have been commandeered by the Guild. Most of them see me walk in, and those that don’t have soon been elbowed. Alex is centre; he flicks sandy hair out of his eyes with a toss of his head, and beckons me over, slowly. As I approach the open spot on the end of the last table, I see Martin and Tesha sitting there, both with a steaming bowl of porridge in front of them. My stomach lurches. Oh, I have so exhausted my tolerance for things that steam. But everyone at my table has the same gruel. I scan down the line of faces. I’m last. I sit, and someone places a bowl in front of me. I grit my teeth.

  ‘Dig in!’ Alex shouts. Every pair of eyes in the dining hall is on us as I lift the spoon out of the bowl. There’s something other than porridge on it. I gingerly pick it out of the oats.

  A wristband of black, plaited leather, with a neat silver clasp at one end.

  I look around me; everyone has the same surprise.

  A cheer goes up from the Guild, which prompts some cheering and clapping from the rest of the school, eventually dissolving into laughter and whooping.

  ‘Have a happy death!’ someone cries.

  ‘Aaaaargh!’ a fake yell sounds out. More laughter.

  ‘All right, all right!’ Mr Flynn – I mentioned, he’s my Art teacher – drew the short straw and is on dining hall duty today. He’s one of the good ones, though. He pretends he thinks the Game is ridiculous, but you know that if he was seventeen again he’d totally be running the gig.

  I can’t help the smile from spreading over my face. I suck the porridge off my band, wipe it down and clip it round my left wrist. All down the table, kids – apprentices – are doing the same. I marvel at the inky-black of the leather, and the clean silver glistening against the brown of my summer tan. There’s plenty of space for it there, because I think I lost my watch last night. That sucks, and I’m not in any particular hurry to retrace my steps and dig around in the sand for it. For now I’m more than happy to replace it with the black band. Game rules state that if I get Killed, the band will be cut off and nailed to the common room noticeboard. Some other members of the Guild have a blood-red knotted thread from last year. Alex has a very faded multi-coloured ribbon from the year before. Apprentices picked from lower down the school are few and far between; only Alex, my friend Marcia and another boy called Carl are on to their third Game, but Alex is the only one who’s never been Killed, hence he has all the bracelets. I like this year�
��s trinket. There it will stay, hopefully, for the duration of the Game.

  I can’t eat my porridge, I’m too hyped. I get coffee, playing with that thing around my wrist, the outward mark that they like me now, at least enough to be included, enough to be Killed. Around me, nobody is eating the porridge. The overexcitement is manifesting in a porridgy war, and Mr Flynn is threatening to lose his cool, which is considerable.

  A small, neat book, bound in the same shiny black leather as the bands, is pushed in front of me. I look up. Marcia is standing behind me, doling out the books to the apprentices.

  ‘Read this, it’s the rule book.’ She’s all business. Then she bends down, her long, brown hair nearly dipping into my porridge, and whispers, ‘Come and find me before class. Usual place.’

  I nod, a little too frantically.

  ‘We have plans for later this afternoon,’ she says.

  ‘Wait a minute,’ I say. ‘Aren’t you going on the bus to the mainland?’

  She shakes her head. ‘None of us are. Too good an opportunity to get everyone together here.’

  There’s a crash to my right; a yellowed skull has been slammed down on the table. Alex and the rest of the Guild leave, in a flurry of laughter, toast crumbs and clattering plates.

  ‘Quietly!’ booms Mr Flynn. ‘And don’t think you’re too good to clean up after yourselves!’

  ‘We have people to do that for us, Mr Flynn, you know that!’ Alex shouts back, and there’s more laughter.

  Mr Flynn shoots him a look, but then the Elders and the Journeymen have gone and it’s too late for a retort. We apprentices are left alone at our table, along with our horrific new friend, the skull.

  ‘Here it is!’ Martin cries, holding up the black book, then remembering the rest of the school around him, he leans in and whispers dramatically, reading from the book. ‘It says here, a skull means a Summoning is called. All Guild members are required to meet for the Summoning in the Place Most Holy.’

  Tesha picks up the skull with her fingertips and puckers her full lips. ‘Mmm, date night. Where and when?’ she asks the skull.