by Cliff McNish
‘You want a drink now?’ Freda asked gently. ‘You didn’t want it before. You want it now, eh? You thirsty?’ She put the cup to his lips, but Milo shook his head.
‘Ee wants to do it himself, don’t ee,’ Emily said, understanding. ‘Ee wants a bit o’ dignity. Ah, here yer goes.’ She handed him the cup. Briefly what was left of Milo’s bandaged fingers closed around the handle. He clenched it. We could all see how much he wanted to be able to do just this one small thing for himself. But as he brought it towards his mouth, the cup slipped. It clattered against his chest. Milo’s skin sizzled as the water splashed over it. Tears appeared at the corners of his eyes. They evaporated at once, and Milo turned his face sadly into the mattress.
‘Ah, yer poor thing,’ Freda said. ‘If I’d a way, I’d dry yer tears.’
‘If I’d a way,’ Emily added in an undertone, ‘I’d end yer fears.’
Milo let out a small cry, then choked it back. He actually tried to gulp back his own tears. I stared at him, then. You could see how humiliating it was for him to be like this in front of us, so helpless, so incapacitated. He attempted to pull an edge of the sheet closer around him, but even that was beyond his weak grip. Emily did it instead, but when she bent her face to say a few nice words to him Milo just shuffled lower. He crept under the sheets until his head was entirely hidden. The twins both fussed over him for a few minutes, but he wouldn’t come out.
‘Ee sat up by himself, though!’ Freda said, ever hopeful. ‘That’s definitely improvement!’
I wasn’t so sure. As Milo slid under the sheets, I’d noticed only a small difference – the silver area on his wrist had gleamed more strongly than all the gold. Was that an improvement?
After another period of dozing off and on, I woke to find myself gasping for breath. Walter was beside me at once, offering a sip of water. I could barely swallow it.
‘What is the matter with me!’ I shouted. ‘I feel terrible! I’m worse than him!’
Emily rushed over. ‘Give yerself some of your own beauty, Toms,’ she said. ‘Why don’t yer? A nub of it, just enough to strengthen yerself.’
I tried – and heard Milo scream.
We locked eyes. Milo was sitting up, unaided. He looked stronger as well; while I’d been sleeping there had been some real progress in his condition. It was then I sensed how little of my beauty was left. I looked at the healthier Milo, even now drawing it out of me, and suddenly I thought with horror: is that why I’m so weak and ill? Because all my beauty is pouring into you?
‘What are you doing to me?’ I screamed.
I dragged myself from the floor across to him. Walter came between us.
‘D-don’t hurt him, Tommy.’
‘Me hurt him?’ I said. ‘Look at me! I’m a wreck! I can’t manage anything! Walter … he’s … he’s done something to me, I’m certain of it! All my beauty’s going into him! I can’t stop it! The longer he’s here, the worse I feel. He’s – ’
‘Calm down, Toms,’ Freda said firmly. ‘You don’t know what yer saying. Milo wouldn’t hurt anyone. Yer sick that’s all, it’s the fever.’
‘It’s not the fever,’ I said, pointing at Milo. ‘No one else’s got it, have they? Don’t you understand? It’s him. It must be! What is he? A boy? Convince me! Look at his skin, his throat! Look at those eyes!’
Emily said, ‘Toms, ee’s still a boy! Ee cries like one, even if his tears can’t make it past his eyes wivout drying out. Ain’t that a human thing?’
Before I could answer, there was a noise behind us – Milo. One of his hands scrabbled wildly in the air.
‘What is it?’ Freda asked him. ‘You want a bite to eat now?’ She offered a biscuit. ‘This? You hungry?’ Milo grasped the biscuit. Then, crushing it, he dropped the pieces down his throat.
‘What the –’ I gasped, and at last even Walter and the twins were truly afraid, because there was nothing normal about the way Milo ate that biscuit. The inside of his throat was like a hollow tube. He pushed the biscuit fragments down his tube-throat. When they disappeared – without needing to be swallowed – his hand flapped about for more.
The twins, scared stiff, started passing him whatever they could find. Old bread, vegetables, turkey. Milo ate everything, not even looking at what they were giving him. Maybe he had a great storage area down there instead of a stomach! Walter and I looked on in disbelief as he dumped the food down his gullet, without so much as a gulp or smack of his lips. Milo only made one sound – a piercing moan if the twins delayed getting the next batch of food to him. He couldn’t wait! Even the superfast twins were hardly able to keep up with his needs. Within minutes almost all our stocks were gone.
‘Stop!’ I screamed, seeing his skin alter in colour. ‘No more feeding! He needs the food to help him change!’
Walter and the twins gave me a blank stare.
‘He’s transforming!’ I said. ‘We don’t know what he’s changing into, do we? He’s bad enough now. What if it’s into something less human than he already is?’
The food had run out. For a moment Milo squealed, then something else happened: his entire face flashed silver. His back also bulged, a ghastly movement. Then both changes subsided, and Milo lay down again.
‘There wasn’t enough,’ I whispered, trying to understand. ‘That’s it! Don’t you see? He’s not a boy – or, if he ever was, he’s turning himself into something else. And we’re helping! By looking after him, by feeding him up, all we’re doing is helping him turn faster into a beast!’
The twins were listening closely to me. Walter seemed less sure.
‘Just look at him!’ I said to Walter. ‘No boy could eat as much as he just did! When you were changing, did you ever eat like that? Well?’ Walter shook his head. ‘Exactly. None of us did. He’s not like us, not at all. Listen to that heart banging away! You can barely hear anything else! A boy’s body doesn’t need a heart that size. I think he’s becoming something terrible … a monster …’
‘N-no, no,’ Walter said, placing his hands on me. ‘Y-you’re safe. We can g-get away. He c-can’t h-hurt us, Tommy. M-Milo c-can’t hardly move his legs. H-how can he hurt us?’
‘He doesn’t need to run after us,’ I said. ‘I’m telling you, he’s draining all my beauty. You’re next, probably. You’re useful to him now, he knows that, protecting him, feeding him up like a beast, he needs it, but I’m on to him, the only one of us, and he knows! Maybe that’s why he’s taking my beauty, trying to get rid of me …’
‘Stop ranting!’ Freda said sharply. ‘No one told uz this was going to be easy! Whatever’s happening to you … I dunno … it must be some kind of normal infection. Toms, listen –’
‘It’s not an infection!’ I shouted. ‘Not a virus-thing, not an infection! He’s doing it! Deliberately. Look at him! People don’t glow gold or silver, no matter what kind of disease they’ve got!’ I backed away from Milo. ‘I won’t stay in this shack with him any more. Get him out! Get him out of here!’
‘Y-you get out,’ Walter said, suddenly angry with me. ‘Until you calm down. G-go on!’
‘What? Me?’ I couldn’t believe it. Why couldn’t Walter see what was taking place here?
‘M-Milo’ll most likely die if you don’t still h-help him,’ he said. ‘You’ve g-got to!’
I said nothing.
‘Do you w-want him to d-die, Tommy?’
The shack became silent, except for Milo’s ragged breathing.
‘What a thing to say!’ I replied. ‘What made you say that?’
Walter looked right at me. ‘You d-don’t care much though, do you?’
‘What?’ I couldn’t believe Walter had said that. His words upset me more than I was willing to show. ‘All right!’ I shouted, covering up my feelings. ‘Have it your way! Wait till he sucks the life out of you!’ I struggled to get up. Without help from Walter, or anyone else, I pushed open the door of the shack and staggered out.
I sat down in the mud outside, trying to think.
No more rain, thank goodness. The sky was clear, with the reek of all the rubbish of Coldharbour stinking up the air after the storm. It made me want to gag – as if I wasn’t sick enough already! How ill was I? I forced myself to stand, but barely managed a couple of wobbly steps before I collapsed again.
Walter immediately left the shack and hovered nearby. Evidently he’d been watching me.
‘Go away!’ I told him. ‘I’m sick of the sight of you! Go back inside! Back to Milo – isn’t that what you really want?’
‘N-no. That’s n-not true, Tommy, y-you know –’
‘All right,’ I snapped, feeling too ill to fight any more. Actually, I wanted peace again between me and Walter, not arguments. If only I didn’t feel so awful! What crazy thing was wrong with me that everything had to hurt so much? I had a headache bad enough to make me want to cry, but I didn’t have time for that, did I? I had to figure out what was going on here.
Milo. Was he really doing this to me? I’d lost my head back there in the shack, but it wasn’t all just in my feverish imagination. His throat! And, I remembered now, Helen had been frightened of him, too. She could read minds; she probably knew exactly what was going on inside Milo’s head. Was that why she’d run from him, even into that awful storm?
I glanced across at Walter. After one of his usual security checks round the neighbourhood, he’d edged closer, ready to catch me if I keeled over. As always he kept one anxious eye on me, the other looking out for dangers that might be approaching from the world at large.
Walter, me, the twins, Helen – and the mysterious Milo.
What was going on between us all? I thought about Walter, those massive haunches of his. And the twins: all that spindly-speed and smell-sense. All three of them were special types of children. I, too, had a gift, my beauty. We were, as Freda said often enough, a sort of family. I even think the girl Helen belonged with us. I’d had that feeling the second I saw her.
Then Milo had come along. Everything had been fine until he swished on his arms out of the darkness!
What was he? Just desperate and in trouble? Someone to be pitied, to be helped? I’d thought so at first. But when you looked at what had taken place, wasn’t it obvious what he was? Hadn’t he latched himself onto me from the start? Hadn’t I felt sick the moment I set eyes on him, as if I already knew? The second he saw me he attacked, sucking at my beauty! I didn’t mind at first, but he never stopped taking it! And now, when I had virtually nothing left, he was still taking it! I’d been ill since he came into my life, and now I was so ill that I could hardly walk! Every second I felt worse.
Was Milo some type of parasite, living off my beauty? Like a kind of cuckoo-child, I thought. He’s like a cuckoo, being fed, growing stronger on the food of others, until at some point he’s ready to push everyone out of the nest! Perhaps, I thought, he uses everyone – or maybe he just seeks out the ones like me.
Emily handed a jacket to Walter from the shack. He crept up behind me and arranged it around my shoulders. ‘You f-feeling better, Tommy? N-not too cold? Don’t w-want to g-go back inside?’
‘I’m fine,’ I murmured, so locked into my ideas that I barely heard him. Could I be wrong about Milo? But look at what he’d done since he arrived! The rest of us supported each other, but all Milo did was take! At first it seemed that he belonged with us, but that was obviously just part of his trickery. He knows exactly what he’s doing, I thought. First he takes my beauty, using it to strengthen himself. Then, to make sure that I don’t catch on, he acts the part of a disfigured boy, when underneath it all he’s changing into what he wants to be. By the time I realize the truth, it’s too late. He’s won Walter over, he’s won the twins over; while I’m eking out my final dying breaths it’s him they’re surrounding to protect, not me.
I trembled slightly, thinking about it.
Was it him or me? Was it as basic as that? Yes, I thought. I’d been stupid shouting my head off in the shack. Now Milo knew I was on to him, and would probably try to finish me off even more quickly. I’ll have to get rid of him, I thought. Not kill him, of course. Not unless I had no choice. But I had to do something fast. How long would it be before I was too weak even to lift my body off the floor?
I took several shallow, painful lungfuls of air. Whatever I decided to do, it wouldn’t be easy. There was no point trying to convince Walter or the twins to help me. Milo already had them wrapped around his lack of fingers! Whatever needed to be done, I’d have to do it myself.
‘I’m ready to go back in now,’ I said to Walter. I gave him a smile, but it was so long since he’d seen one from me that I think it just made him suspicious. As soon as he helped me inside the whiff of decay hit me from Milo’s body.
The twins were crying.
‘What’s wrong?’ I asked, moving across to them.
‘Ee’s been so much worse since you went out,’ Emily said. ‘Ee can’t seem to bear it wivout your beauty close by.’
Of course he needs me close, I thought. Easier to take the beauty that way! I stared coldly at him.
‘Ee’s been trying to talk as well,’ Freda said. ‘Throat’s just not right for it any more, though. Ee can hardly do it. But ee’s been trying to say something.’
‘Well, like what?’ I asked, pretending to be interested.
‘Your name, we thinks,’ Freda said.
‘My name?’
‘Ee did it before, too. Earlier, when you was asleep. Ee’s been trying to say it to you all day, last night as well.’
I edged closer to Milo – not too close – and looked at him. What a state! What a hideous state! Then suddenly – it was amazing – he reached out with his stubs and tried to grab me. I slapped him back, as if he was a spider jumping on my hand. ‘Don’t you touch me, you freak!’ I yelled. ‘Don’t –’
‘Th-th-th–’ he was going. ‘Th-th–’
His eyes were pleading with me. I hated him, but even I couldn’t look into those eyes without feeling something. Whatever he was doing to me, his suffering was real enough, you couldn’t have any doubt about that. He managed to sit upright and take a half-clear breath. ‘Th-than-thank-thankyou thank you,’ he whispered, in an agony to get out the words, nearly passing out with the pain of it. ‘I-I-I-I’d be g-gone now. By now I would. Only you are keeping me alive with your beauty, Thomas. Bless you.’
He fell back on the bed, almost dead with the effort of those words, and the twins had nothing on me for tears, did they? All my plans to get rid of him went out of the window, and I just held his rags of hands and cried and cried.
Fourteen
abandonment
HELEN
Dad ran down the garden path, my oversized clothes sparking off all kinds of wild thoughts in him.
‘It’s all right,’ I said. ‘I borrowed these, and no one’s coming after me.’
‘Are you sure?’
‘Yes.’
I think Dad almost wanted an attacker to chase off, something physical to confront – but it wouldn’t be that easy, would it? He carried me into the house, and I didn’t object. After running away, I’d been preparing myself for his anger. How stupid of me! There was only a single emotion shooting through Dad – relief, his sheer relief at finding me alive. It made me weep, because I’d felt that same relief before.
The first time he saw me, as he lay there in the mud, I’d felt it from Milo.
Not wanting to think about that, I asked for a few moments of privacy, sloped upstairs and took a long, long shower. When I dressed and came down I noticed that Dad had locked the doors and windows against all our enemies. There was soup on the dining table, some coffee as well. The fire was lit, making the room slightly too warm – which felt right after so much coldness. Outside, the sun shone down through a sky full of birds searching for morsels uncovered by last night’s storm. I closed my eyes, not wanting their appetites today.
Dad poured the coffee, watching me closely. In his mind I saw the missing person report he�
��d filed with the authorities. Of course, they hadn’t known where to look.
‘I’ve phoned the police to say you’re back,’ he said. ‘And if you’re reading my mind, you’ll know the question I have is, should I be telling them anything else? Someone to go after, I mean?’
‘No,’ I said, ‘I don’t think so.’ Even if I could find my way around Coldharbour without Milo, I knew it wasn’t help from the police he needed.
‘Well,’ Dad said, hoarsely. ‘At least … thank goodness you’re safe, Helen.’
In his mind I saw it all, the despair of last night – and his guilt for allowing me to escape from the house. His guilt! As if there was any reason for that! Hadn’t Dad done everything he could to keep me safe? What had I done? I’d left behind a wounded boy who’d called out to me from the edge of his life …
I told Dad everything. I cried all the way through it – couldn’t stop myself – and Dad did what I suppose all dads do when their daughter is falling to pieces next to them. He sat there and racked his brains for whatever he needed to say to hold me together. But I’d had plenty of opportunity to consider what had taken place back there in the storm. Not even Dad could convince me that I’d behaved decently. I knew the truth.
‘I deserted him,’ I said. ‘That’s what I did. Milo needed so much, and I just left him there.’
‘No, that’s not what happened at all,’ Dad answered sharply. ‘That’s just nonsense. You did everything you could for Milo, Helen. You even walked at night through a storm to reach him! And when you got there, faced with the thing you saw … well, anyone would have reacted the same way.’
‘You wouldn’t have,’ I said. ‘You’d never have left him out there.’
‘Yes,’ he said firmly, ‘I would.’
‘I don’t believe you, Dad.’
I looked away from him, and for a while Dad simply held me.
‘You trusted Milo,’ he said. ‘Then what did he do? He showed you a kind of … monster.’
I considered that. Was Milo a monster? I’d certainly fled from him as if he was a kind of monster. When he lay in Coldharbour’s dirt with his hands falling apart, and saw me run, I wonder what Milo thought of me?