by Tom Hoyle
Because the rope hadn’t been tugged properly earlier I’d no idea when it had become unattached, or even if it was properly attached in the first place, though I thought I had a vague memory of holding my arms out while it was pulled on my harness as a check.
The safety rope slithered madly upwards. I tried to grasp at it, but it was gone too quickly, wiggling like a crazy thing as it disappeared up to the top wire and then fell down the other side.
I was now completely unsupported on a log forty feet in the air.
Terrified, I did what was natural: straight away, I dropped down and wrapped myself round the log, becoming completely rigid, arms and legs like rock. The smallest movement was petrifying. You might think that I was still swearing, but I wasn’t. I gave myself whispered guidance: ‘Just stay perfectly still and you’ll be fine; this is just a matter of time; don’t crack under pressure.’
Luke, still suspended by his safety rope, sat legs either side of the log, and said, ‘You haven’t fallen. They’ll come to get you.’ Then quietly: ‘I’m sorry.’ At least, I thought that’s what he said, but the boys below were shouting and I was concentrating so hard on staying calm that I couldn’t be sure.
Being on the upper side of the log, I was looking down, of course, and that made things a lot worse. Closing my eyes made it more difficult to keep my balance. Gradually I relaxed and realized that I wouldn’t fall if I actually kept my cool, but a slight giddiness was creeping in from the corners of my brain, and I couldn’t keep it back.
I concentrated on keeping my breathing shallow. It was the same drill as when you’re swimming: in through your nose, out through your mouth; keep calm and stay the course.
I then found myself slipping round the log: it was like I couldn’t get my bearings and was confused about how to balance myself. The log was smooth and not very thick (probably about four adult hands could have spanned it) and in trying to correct the movement I overcompensated and slipped round underneath.
Imagine what it would be like to hit the ground, I recalled Lee saying. You would know it was going to happen, but be unable to stop it.
‘Hold on, Georgey,’ said Luke. ‘They’re on their way.’
I didn’t need anyone to tell me to hold on. Upside down, I clung on to that log with every fibre in my body, folding my arms and interlocking my feet so that they couldn’t slip free. Slowly, I angled my head round and saw Jake, the instructor, leaping powerfully up the logs, a safety rope in one hand. He was shouting as he climbed: ‘Stay calm, George. Don’t move.’
‘I’m not planning on moving!’ I hollered back. ‘But it’d be good if you hurried.’ This bravado was pretty much an act, but deep down I knew that if I didn’t panic things would probably turn out OK. I saw myself from the outside, as if I was two people – one of them sensible and logical and advising the other.
When Jake arrived, he stood on the top log and threw the safety rope over the wire that ran above everything and then collected the end with the metal hook when it dangled down the far side.
‘Any time now would be good,’ I said, sensing that rescue was near and determined to come out of it with a good reputation. To think like that, I suppose, meant that I was back in control.
‘You’ll have to release yourself slightly from the log,’ said Jake as he descended to the log below, ‘so that I can attach this to your harness.’
As I tried to move my feet along the log towards my head, so that my waist would dip and create a space for Jake to attach the metal clasp of the safety rope to my harness, one foot slipped. Then the other slipped too. I know it sounds like a cliché, but it did seem to happen frame by frame, slow enough for me to be aware of what was happening, cling on even tighter with my arms, and aim my feet on to the log below. Incredibly, they plonked straight on to the log, and Jake clipped on the rope a second later. I was safe, and soon being winched down, heart pumping, holding tightly to the rope even though I knew – this time – that it was securely attached to my harness.
Everyone applauded, including Luke, who was also descending. It’s chilling to know now that everyone included some seriously nasty people. At the time, it just seemed like a freak near-accident.
At the bottom there were men in ties (looking worried) as well as a couple of first-aiders rushing in. ‘Are you all right?’ one asked.
‘Better than I would have been if I’d fallen,’ I said.
Jake, the instructor, was white-faced and shaking slightly. I told him that it was an accident and my fault. I thought I had somehow made a mistake, but knew he might have been careless. I never considered the possibility that someone had tried to kill me. I never imagined that keeping calm here was training for what happened later. And I never told my parents about what happened: I knew they would have worried. I did mention it to Jess, though.
After about fifteen minutes my heart rate returned to normal, but I still had to endure an irritating hour of form filling and medical checks. Finally I pleaded with them to let me go – I wasn’t harmed and didn’t want to waste the opportunity to get on and do other things. I also remembered a bit of advice my dad gave me when I was doing some tricks on my bike when I was about eleven: if you fall off, try to get back on as soon as possible, otherwise you’ll lose your bottle. I knew we had Zip Wire at 2.30 p.m. and was determined to give it a go.
Zip Wire certainly did the trick to get my confidence back. I heard a lot of encouragement – on reflection, some of it a bit forced, perhaps – and I did it the same as I always would have, apart from three or four extra checks that the metal clasp at the end of the safety rope was firmly attached to my harness this time.
‘Yeah! Yeah! Yeah!’ I shouted as I descended, wind gusting against my face, lost in the moment, absolutely loving it.
The final activity of the day was archery. I was talking to one of the instructors, so was late leaving Zip Wire. As I walked to the archery I saw a jersey that looked like Reg’s hanging over the wooden fence, so I ran to pick it up. It was ridiculous that he had brought it on a baking-hot day, but I didn’t want him to think he’d lost any more clothes. By fluke, this meant I looked down the back of the sports hall, a large corrugated-metal building, and saw Peter and Luke. Peter had Luke by the hair and was pushing him against the side of the sports hall and speaking really aggressively to him, about two inches from his face.
Peter stopped almost as soon as he saw me. He gave Luke one more shove, then walked away, barging my shoulder as he passed. I was determined to stand my ground. ‘I can’t stand boys like him,’ he said, pointing in the vague direction of Luke, as he strode off into the distance.
Luke’s shoulders drooped as he approached me. There were tears and confusion in his eyes.
‘You OK, Luke?’ I asked.
He sagged further. ‘I’m OK. I hope you’re gonna to be OK.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘It’s . . . Never mind. Just remember that I told you to be careful.’ Luke kept on walking.
‘What’s that s’posed to mean?’ I said. ‘Come on. Tell me.’
‘Just remember . . .’ I didn’t catch anything else as Luke broke into a jog that turned into a sprint. Seconds later he disappeared down the path towards the archery.
I went into the archery with low expectations, but it was actually all right. Luke snapped out of his depression almost immediately and wouldn’t stop talking. It was at this point that everyone started calling me ‘Georgey’. I couldn’t complain: nicknames for others had been made over the past few days – Luke was Stick Man, Reg was Chubbs, and so on – and it would have annoyed everyone if I’d moaned. But I’m going to continue using everyone’s real name, even in speech.
A cry of ‘Well done, Georgeeeeeey!’ would go up every time I hit the target.
The only slightly unpleasant thing was Lee talking about death again – or, to be really precise, now I’ve had time to think about it – talking about dying. ‘If they didn’t hit any vital organs, I wonder how many arrows
it would take to kill a man.’ The others actually spent some time discussing this, gruesome though it was. Matt and I didn’t take it seriously and he kept on cracking jokes: ‘My dick could probably absorb twenty strikes,’ and that sort of thing. Good old Matt.
Matt was totally mal-coordinated and could hardly put the arrow on the bow, let alone hit the target. He became known as Malco.
Nick won the archery, a few points ahead of me. No one else could compete with us. Matt hit the target once, but he didn’t care; even Reg was better than him.
Later, back at base, we met up with the girls again for another barbecue. It did seem to be true about Australians and barbecues. Andrea brought the girls over (they always came to us, we never went over to their place), and we gradually spread out over the whole beach in small groups, eating (very) burnt sausages and crispy corn on the cob. It all went according to plan for Matt and me. We had spoken before about trying to spend time with Zara and Belle.
I want to be clear that Jess is the girl I really love; she’s the one I think about. I know that sounds a bit romcom now, but I know how I feel more than ever [thanks, Jess, for standing by me!]. I emailed her every day that I could from Australia – proper emails, explaining what had happened (minus some of the things I now know are important, and one thing that I will write about later, but including lots of other stuff). Those emails were totally different to the short notes I sent back to my parents.
But Matt and I found it much easier to get on with these girls than the other boys. It wasn’t just that they were pretty, they were also nice and friendly. You didn’t always have to prove something.
We talked about where we came from and why we were on the trip. They knew about me because of what had happened in the bay. Matt told the story again of how he was on a beach with his parents and wandered off along the rocks (‘because they were there and I was bored and sand was getting into places it shouldn’t’) when he found a kid in a massive panic halfway down the cliff.
‘The brilliant thing is that my pathetic climbing – I’m the Malco Man – was explained in the papers as being calming. I was s’posed to have gone up and down slowly, nearly going arse over tit for the amusement of the young scally. Really, I was as scared as a naked nun in a nightclub. So as a reward for being a silly git I was sent out here to do more of what I couldn’t do in the first place.’
‘It sounds like a sick thing to do,’ said Belle.
‘’Tis true I only really did it to impress the gals,’ Matt joked. He had both of them rapt, though he was an unlikely sex god with his pointy nose and wild hair.
Conversation drifted on to films, then to music, and we finally ended up trying to tell a joke that was worse than the one before. All of Matt’s were rude: ‘How do you make a door squeak? You pull its knob’ was probably the cleanest. That joke has stuck in my mind because it was at that point that Nick arrived.
I reckon that Nick had been drinking a fair bit. ‘So, ladies, when are you going to leave these w- [word deleted] alone and . . .’ He then suggested they do something they found offensive.
Zara was savvy and seemed to have dealt with this sort of thing before. She suggested that Nick did the thing to himself, if he could find his dick.
Nick then lunged forward. ‘How about a quick kiss, then?’
‘Come on, let’s go,’ Matt said to Zara and Belle.
‘You stay where you are, toss-pot,’ slurred Nick.
Zara then told Nick to leave in the strongest language possible.
I thought that this was bound to end in a fight, probably with me.
Fortunately, Toby came jogging over, straight away put his arm firmly round Nick’s shoulder, and guided him away.
‘Get off me right now,’ Nick said. ‘I’m not Georgey. I don’t want your hands all over me. You don’t know what you’re dealing with.’
I could see Jason and Peter in the distance, and it was to them that Nick returned after he had shrugged off Toby.
Immediately afterwards, Matt and I implied that we were about to sort Nick out. Zara and Belle claimed that they were about to sort him out (in fairness, Zara had looked fierce). And then I thought of a pathetic joke and we were cracking up again. It was the last good evening I had, and it went on late.
A lot of drinking had happened while we were at the far end of the beach (beer bottles were strewn everywhere) but everyone was inside apart from Reg, who was sat on his own listening to an iPod. I felt guilty that he had been left out.
The girls left. No kisses. Just a quick hug and ‘see you tomorrow’.
I was tired, but Reg and I went to his room to try to get the Wi-Fi working.
I mention it because it meant that I saw Alastair’s iPad – he had a brand-new one and insisted we used it rather than my clunky old machine. He had been drinking and didn’t have much else to say that was sensible. It was when I typed something into Google that I saw his previous searches. Alastair was sitting opposite me and it felt like cheating or lying, but I couldn’t stop myself viewing his search history. Some of it was weird stuff.
I remember that the words torture and poison leapt out.
[Here ends the eighth part of George’s statement]
THE OTHER CHAPTER 8
(SAID IN THE HOUR BEFORE):
HIM
The way that you and that idiot Matt touched those girls was even more sickening on the second night. DISGUSTING. I had to drink myself senseless.
But the rest of the day was good. Goooooooooooooood.
‘You’re not in the water now!’ I remember saying that as you stressed on the stupid swing. You were pathetic and helpless. But not as pathetic and helpless as you are right NOW.
While I was up there I enjoyed thinking about what it would be like to fall.
To
fall
down
THUMP!
Brains everywhere.
So I decided to make it as exciting as possible as soon as I had the chance. And my chance came on that stupid Vertical Assault Course.
I know you want to understand how it was all done.
Luke was made to do it.
And this is when you have to realize the genius you are dealing with. The level of my immense intelligence. The way in which I am above and beyond ordinary people. A superman. You don’t know what you’re dealing with.
Here you are, alone with me, thinking of ways to escape, and you have the dreadful and bone-chilling realization that I have been the PUPPET MASTER all along.
You see – I had found out why Luke was on the trip. It was a fluke that I knew – THANK YOU, GOD.
Mistreated by his parents. I know all about that. So I really knew the way to pull his strings and make him join in my little game.
And that made him an accomplice.
I mean, a slave.
Look at this on my camera.
[Camera plays]
Right there.
[Camera plays again]
See it. When he was pulling you up to the top log. It was eighteen seconds before you noticed.
[Camera plays for twenty seconds]
Now, that’s MAGIC. YEAH!
Luke was good. He wasn’t nearly as stupid as he seemed.
But then he started to have doubts – started to feel the stupidest thing in the world:
GUILT. Guilt. That pathetic hand that covers your mouth and stops you breathing. Stops you living.
He had to be controlled.
And control is my business. Isn’t it?
You can hardly disagree. Given the position you’re in.
Come on. Let me hear you say that you agree. Let me hear you say it, Georgey.
‘YOU HAVE CONTROL OVER ME AND I’M HELPLESSLY UNDER YOUR TOTAL POWER.’
Not willing to say it?
Prefer to just sit there lazily?
I think you’ve made a mistake.
If they didn’t hit any vital organs, I wonder how many arrows it would take to kill a man.
STAT
EMENT #7
JAKE AGLAROND
I was in charge of the Vertical Assault Course activity on the day that George Fleet and the others from Ultimate Bushcraft came. And, er, my job included safety.
I’m Level 4 trained – the highest level – I’ve never had a safety issue on anything before – never – other than on the day we’re talking about.
We’re trained to follow the exact same procedure – always checking the link to the harness by giving it a good tug. I remember doing that on the day you asked me to talk about.
George Fleet seemed a good bloke. I don’t know how he managed to unclip his own link to the safety rope. But I’m told he was confused. Capable of doing stupid and horrible things while appearing normal. Not that I’m saying he’s guilty. I’m just saying.
CHAPTER 9
(FOUR DAYS BEFORE):
THE NINTH PART OF GEORGE’S STATEMENT
The third day of training was to do with survival in the wilderness.
It was the day that the first murder started. How easy that is to write: It was the day that the first murder started. The murder started. You’ll see what I mean.
It also contained something personal that I feel bad writing about, but there’s not much I can do as this is a factual account of events, written down for those who will judge me. I need to tell the truth.
The day was called Outback Survival. It was a series of activities that were supposedly preparing us for a week trekking through remote forests and hills. Preparing us? This wasn’t even nearly true, but someone anticipating a gentle stroll in the countryside interrupted by fun tasks might have thought it was some sort of training. I’m sorry to sound bitter – that’s not fair on Toby.
First we learnt how to make a fire. Firecraft. I felt uncomfortable, having been paired with Nick – but the strange thing was that Nick treated me as if we were best buddies, and we were good at fire-starting.