The Challenge

by Tom Hoyle

  I wasn’t sure whether Sam was joking about the abseiling.

  Jack told me about the short but grisly operation to remove the pole. He could have been kept in hospital for longer, but there was no infection and everything was predicted to heal well if he rested.

  ‘And it means that I can sit here setting some wicked Challenges.’ It was that word again.

  ‘Challenges?’ I asked.

  ‘Oh, it’s just a game,’ he said airily.

  Again, I thought about the note from ‘Will’ and zoned out.

  ‘Is everything OK, Ben?’ said Jack, putting the keyboard to one side.

  Hi Benny. I’M NOT DEAD.

  Everyone wants to know what happened to Me – I know that.

  Look, I know I can trust you. Its importent you dont tell anyone at all.

  ‘Ben,’ said Sam, ‘if something’s up, we want to be in on it.’

  Since Will died, secrecy was natural for me, but The Twins managed to drag out a half-truth. ‘I was just thinking about a friend of mine who died,’ I said. ‘It was four months ago, but . . .’ This was the moment to tell them, but I let it slip away. ‘Sometimes things happen that make me think about him.’

  ‘We heard,’ said Jack with concern and a hint that he felt awkward talking about something that upset me. ‘Is it right that he was killed?’

  I felt exposed when the Twins looked straight at me: their dark brown eyes seemed so bright, as if little lasers were being fired.

  ‘Yes. An unsolved murder,’ I said. ‘Or almost certainly a murder. I was there seconds before he was taken. I was the last person to see him,’ I mumbled. ‘Apart from whoever did it.’

  ‘Let’s hope we find out who it was,’ said Sam. ‘Then we can get him – and make him pay.’

  ‘Or her,’ said Jack. ‘Whoever it is, we’ll smash them.’

  We had become allies. But they didn’t press for more information – instead, Sam leaped up and pointed at me with both index fingers.

  ‘I’ve got it,’ he said, face alight with an idea, ‘if Jack is going to lie there like a beached whale, you can come abseiling with me. We’ve got all the kit. And we’ve got . . . the cliff.’

  With Jack lucky not to have been speared up the backside, I was worried (as well as fascinated) by what the The Twins’ daredevil natures would lead to next.

  ‘I’m not so sure,’ I said evasively. ‘I’ve never done that before. I wouldn’t really . . .’

  ‘We’ve done it a thousand times. We’ve abseiled down and we’ve climbed up. We call it the “Stairway to Heaven”. If you like, you can feed the safety line. You don’t have to go down if you don’t want to.’

  The ropes had to be threaded through something at the top of the cliff, and the solution was clever: Sam leaped in the Land Rover and, spinning the steering wheel with one hand, swung it round until the back was about five feet from the cliff. Ropes were threaded through hooks above and below the back door.

  ‘I’m not so sure about this,’ I said nervously. ‘I don’t want to get the blame if something goes wrong.’ This was the old Benny talking.

  Jack had hobbled next to me at the top of the cliff. ‘I couldn’t stay away,’ he said. ‘Maybe I can help you with the safety rope?’

  Sam put on a Black Diamond helmet that weighed about as much as a baseball cap, and went down twice. With the safety rope being fed through the Land Rover’s hooks and a metal clasp, there wasn’t much that could actually go wrong.

  The Twins didn’t pester me to have a go. They didn’t even encourage or hint – just slowly drew me into their world. ‘You’re miles better with that safety rope than Jack,’ said Sam.

  ‘I think I want a go,’ the new Ben blurted.

  A harness came out of the large black equipment bag, then a clasp, then Sam handed me his helmet – and with each piece of kit I retreated to being nervous.

  ‘You can say no at any time,’ Jack reassured me as he checked my harness. ‘We’re not setting you a Challenge.’

  I wiggled my head to make sure that the helmet was tight. I was going to do it; I didn’t want to let them down.

  ‘I’ll go on the safety rope for Ben,’ said Sam.

  ‘I’m fine with it, really,’ said Jack.

  It was the first time I’d seen them disagree. Then: ‘We’ll both . . .’ they said together. Perfect, as always.

  Standing at the top, looking over my shoulder down three miles of Lake Hintersea, all of the setting of my life was within sight. Cormorant Holm was between Timberline and Compton Village. I thought of Will in his boat. Somewhere out there behind me was the answer . . .

  I let myself down one step, then two, and lost sight of Timberline behind the rock face. If anything went wrong now, there would be nothing to stop sixty feet of gravity’s pull. My legs weakened, but then grew stronger with each small step, and the steps gradually became more like jumps.

  ‘OK down there?’ shouted one of The Twins.

  About halfway down, my feet dislodged looser rock and sent it spilling down, bouncing off the cliff wall as it went, and then I came to a halt. I tried to jump down as I had before, but swung back against the same part of the cliff. The rope wasn’t being fed through.

  ‘Guys, what’s going on up there?’ I shouted.

  No response.

  ‘Guys? I hope you’re not arsing about!’

  Nothing.

  I started to fall.

  It’s a horrible feeling, of course, when you start falling and feel that all of your insides are a few seconds behind the rest of you. I made a sort of yawning noise as I breathed in heavily. Immediate panic. My hands and feet waved about pathetically.

  But I fell only three feet before I came to a sudden jolting stop, the wind taken out of me. ‘What the hell?’ I shouted.

  A face appeared over the edge about forty feet above me. ‘Don’t worry – it’s just the rope, but we’ve sorted it now, mate – bounce off just as you did before . . .’

  I gingerly continued on my way. Gradually the ground came closer and closer until I could shout that I had reached the bottom. YES!

  ‘What was all that about?’ I said, when I reached the top.

  ‘It’s the rope,’ said Jack. ‘Sometimes a knotty bit gets caught in the hook.’

  I looked at the rope. Some of it was a little uneven, perhaps. Sam said that he would go down once more to try to prove that he was still better than me.

  ‘I challenge you do it in two leaps,’ said Jack.

  ‘Challenge?’ said Sam.

  ‘Yes, a Challenge,’ Jack said. ‘If you make it, I’ll slave for you for the rest of the day – even with this leg.’

  ‘Piece of piss,’ responded Sam. ‘You’re on!’ As they slapped hands, Sam turned to me: ‘My brother sometimes underestimates what we can do.’

  What we can do.

  ‘I’ll be on the safety rope,’ I offered.

  I offered Sam the helmet but he shook his head, flicked his hair back, quickly threaded one rope through a harness, and disappeared over the edge without any safety back-up. I was so surprised by his athleticism and bravery (or madness?). It was like watching a superhero.

  I raced to the edge to see Sam swing against the side, already twenty-five feet down, in complete control. He shouted ‘Yeah!’ and then, letting the rope escape through his fingers at just the right speed, without any further bounces against the cliff, reached the bottom with the grace of an experienced abseiler. Incredible.

  ‘Does that count as two leaps or one?’ he shouted as he threaded the spare rope through his harness. Straight away, he started sprinting up the zigzag driveway.

  ‘I’m going to do it in one leap,’ Jack said, looking over the edge. ‘But only when I can, and that will be when Sam Challenges me.’

  ‘See?’ Sam panted as he returned. ‘You don’t really need the safety rope. But we’re all human, aren’t we, Jacko?’ He playfully patted Jack’s leg.

  I then went down a second time, faster, bette
r. There were no problems with the rope. I had nothing to fear with The Twins around.

  ‘You’re sick at this,’ said Sam. ‘We should have Challenged you.’

  ‘What’s with these Challenges?’ I asked, looking between house, Twins, and the magnificent view of the Lake towards Compton Village, knowing that my life was changing. ‘Is it your game?’

  Sam draped his arm around his brother’s shoulder. ‘Our game? S’pose it’s a game,’ he said. ‘And sometimes more than a game.’

  They looked out across the Lake and laughed.

  Attachment

  OCTOBER 2011

  MAGIC

  It was on the last Friday of the October half-term that The Twins held a Halloween party at their house. The email read: The Thatcher Twins invite you to a Halloween and Firework Party. We want to thank you for welcoming us to the Lakes. Parties like this didn’t happen often in our part of the world.

  I glanced at myself for a fifth time in the mirror. There wasn’t much in my wardrobe, but I eventually decided on a dark blue hoodie with a logo plastered across the front – the most expensive piece of clothing I owned. It reminded me of the hoodie Will used to wear. My ‘costume’ was the standard Scream mask.

  Ethan had offered to give me a lift to the party.

  ‘Hey, man,’ he had drawled the day before, ‘we need to, like, share the world’s resources.’ I didn’t mention the environmental impact of his father’s Jaguar XF – but my gran hardly drove her car any more, and I hadn’t started driving lessons yet, so relied on others.

  The short journey from my house to Timberline was filled with Ethan’s father rattling off questions with a fluency that suggested he’d asked them before. I sat silently in the back next to Anna, looking anywhere but at her.

  ‘How many people will be there?’ was one question.

  ‘I dunno,’ said Ethan, his voice lower and lazier than ever. ‘Like, loads. Definitely tens. Maybe hundreds.’ He turned round to me and mouthed: Millions?

  His father immediately took a different tack. ‘And who will be in charge? Who will make sure nothing goes wrong?’

  Yawning and stretching drew out Ethan’s responses. ‘Like, loads of grown-ups, really responsible people, The Twins’ parents, geezers like that.’

  ‘Sorry about my old man,’ said Ethan as we walked up the zigzag lane to The Twins’ house. ‘He was never young.’

  Ethan had suggested it would be nice but dull, with people sitting around like monks, but the reality was totally different. There were signs of adult involvement – food, signs for the toilet, organized drinks – but I never saw anyone older than us from the beginning to the end of the evening. That, and the remoteness of the location, generated a buzz.

  Sam and Jack were standing near the door as we approached, each with a bottle of beer in hand. Music pumped from somewhere near, and there was the raucous chatter that suggested a lot of people had already arrived. The cliff I had abseiled down a couple of weeks before was in darkness off to the right.

  ‘Hey, it’s the great Ben,’ said Jack. ‘The action man.’

  I was flattered that they had mentioned me first, but we had been spending a lot of time together in school as well as outside.

  ‘And the dude Ethan; and a girl I really want to hug,’ added Sam as he stepped forward.

  Anna’s witch’s hat fell off as she held on to Sam for slightly longer than seemed necessary.

  Some people had been serious about their costumes (zombies, skeletons, witches) but others hadn’t dressed up at all. Most, including The Twins, had done next to nothing – Sam’s and Jack’s nods to the theme were their T-shirts: they had cartoon representations of themselves (and doing what they could, as always, to help everyone distinguish them). One was drawn in orange pyjamas, face half hidden by a sack with buttons for eyes, with ‘Samhain’ written underneath; the other had a pumpkin-like head with a candle-like body above ‘Jack-o’-Lantern’. Original.

  More people were arriving behind us and Anna and Ethan were moving away.

  ‘Ben, we’ll see you around,’ said Sam. ‘Don’t neglect us.’

  ‘Yeah, OK,’ I said, slightly uneasy with such a big party. ‘Sure.’

  Jack put his arm around me and whispered conspiratorially. ‘We really will see you around,’ he said. ‘I know we’ve invited all these people, but you’re different.’ I felt his breath on my ear.

  Only some of the party took place in the house, and most of that was in a large conservatory at the far end. There was a double garage open and a summer house in the trees beyond that, the path lit by lights on a string.

  I had wandered over to the garage where there was a vast supply of alcohol – three tables were stocked with beer cans and bottles (there were already quite a few gaps), and another had wine and spirits.

  A lot of people were smoking in the summer house, and not all were smoking ordinary cigarettes. Ethan inhaled deeply and offered me something from a clear plastic pouch pulled from his inside jacket pocket. Fear of the unknown, and stories of how people die after a bad experience with drugs, made me hesitate.

  ‘No thanks, mate,’ I said. ‘I should see if Blake’s here.’

  I went back to the gravel drive in front of the main house just in time to see Blake arriving with his parents. The invite email had been clear: Drop-off and collection at the bottom of the track, please. It didn’t quite say You’re doing A-levels now, don’t bring Mummy and Daddy, but everyone else got it. What’s more, if Blake’s parents either saw the drink, or anything that hinted of drugs, Blake would be dragged away and the police called.

  I was about to run over, but Sam was there before me, an orange and black jacket hiding his T-shirt. I could just about hear him. ‘Mr and Mrs Caudwell, isn’t it? Have you come to join us?’

  Blake’s parents were nice people who lived in the 1950s. ‘We just wanted to be sure Blake got here safely,’ his mother said frostily, determined to be shocked.

  ‘Our parents usually come down when it’s time to eat; they’d be delighted to meet you if you want a cup of tea,’ Sam said.

  I still wonder if it was a lie. In any case, we didn’t see The Twins’ parents at any point that evening. And if it was a lie, and his parents weren’t there, it was a massively risky one.

  ‘Oh, no, but thank you awfully,’ Blake’s dad said, pulling his tie knot a little to let in some air after the steep climb. ‘We wouldn’t want to intrude, would we, dear?’ He looked up at the house, (probably) impressed and (almost certainly) intimidated in the same way I had been.

  The mention of ‘parents’ and ‘tea’ had visibly softened Mrs Caudwell. ‘A very nice offer. We’ll see you at eleven o’clock sharp at the bottom of the drive,’ she instructed Blake.

  Sam then extended his hand to shake Mr Caudwell’s, which meant moving a can of Sprite from right to left. Mrs Caudwell actually forced out a thin smile at his politeness.

  Blake was only there because I had pestered him, and from the start seemed only a breath away from saying how much he hated it. But he couldn’t stop his quirky character amusing us.

  After half an hour with Blake, Anna (who seemed to think Blake was a circus act), an increasingly spaced-out Ethan and I went back to the garage to collect beers. Caroline Termonde was there, shoulder to shoulder with Mark Roberts. He had been nice to me in the Summer term after Will died; everyone had said he was the right choice as Wordsworth Academy’s Head Boy. Seeing him with Caroline, I felt that fiery mix of irrational hatred and frustration that is jealousy. He was, I suddenly decided, bland and smarmy, more of a weak teacher than a great pupil. Of all the boys in the school for Caroline to go for, he was one of the worst choices.

  ‘OK there, Ben?’ said Mark.

  OK there, Ben? There? What did that mean? I hated his blond curly hair and oh-so-trendy glasses worn instead of contact lenses. How could Caroline go for such a piece of cardboard?

  ‘Yeah, great. Good to see you,’ I replied, suddenly sure I was in the
same league as the likes of Mark. I was the one who had been to The Twins’ house already; I was the one who had abseiled down the cliff.

  ‘Hi, Ben! You’re in my History class,’ said Caroline as she put her arms loosely around my shoulders in the way girls do when they don’t really want to touch you.

  ‘Just getting some beers; see you around,’ I said, but they weren’t really listening.

  Things went from bad to worse. Blake came round the corner from the garden, probably looking for me – and at exactly the same time, Darren Foss strode across the gravel with the two thugs who were in the toilets when I first met The Twins. Darren had been less obnoxious since, but even The Twins’ impact seemed to be fading. None of us had understood the iron resolve of The Twins.

  ‘What you doing here?’ said Darren, heading straight for Blake. ‘You don’t come to this sort of thing.’ Darren had already been drinking.

  Blake looked at me and then at the sky. His first I told you so. At first, I thought he was going to stand his ground, but then he made an ungainly scamper into the woods beyond the garage. He should have known better.

  Whooping, Darren and his friends dashed after him. ‘Let’s get Blakey!’ they shouted. ‘Hunt the piggy! Make him squeal!’

  Swearing in frustration, I followed. Out of the corner of my eye I saw Mark Roberts do the same. I didn’t think it was any business of his and, football star or not, there was no way I would let him overtake me.

  I saw Darren point for one of his friends to go left and right to hunt Blake down. I thought they wouldn’t hurt him badly, not with so many people around, but it wouldn’t have been surprising if Blake reappeared without his trousers, or worse. Sound and light from the party leaked into the woods to begin with, but soon faded away.

  After about thirty paces, with Mark’s thudding footsteps behind me, just as it was getting too dark to distinguish trees from the black of night, I saw the white stripes of Darren’s top. Blake had stopped before a small ravine and its hidden, gurgling stream.