by J. Thorn
"He was pulling one on us, and you know it."
"Of course he was."
"You listening in there boy?" called Remy through the grate behind the driver’s seat. "You’re to be cleaning chimneys in London pretty soon."
But somewhere along the way they changed their mind, and we all ended up getting out of that wagon, just around the corner from the place that they had called The Warehouse. Except it wasn’t a warehouse at all, but what used to be a butchers market in London’s East End. Now it had run into disrepair and been abandoned, apart from its one use, some nights of the week. On those evenings the old market was lit up again, and busy, but everyone kept it quiet and low key, because although people knew very well that it still went on behind closed doors, no one wanted anyone to know that there was a slave market right under their noses.
I was still trussed up like a prisoner, and dragged along the alleyway at the back, past the throng of street whores, homeless, and one small group of well dressed gentlemen who had no place being there at any time of the day.
Eddie had a hold of me by the back of my jacket, and his hand was a lot stronger than any resistance I might have put up. The gangly old fellow, Remy, rapped sharply on a small rickety old door that looked like it was hanging down off its hinges, and we waited for a few moments. There was a slight creak as the door opened just a few inches, and I saw a young man’s face peering out from the darkness. A muffled conversation later, and then I was being dragged into the darkness of the building.
The darkness didn’t last long. I think we went maybe ten yards down a corridor, past a few figures that I could barely make out, and then we emerged into what would have once been the main workhouse of the building. The dim light of the lanterns that adorned the walls of this old derelict hall were hard on my eyes.
I heard voices, many of them, and at that time I had no clue what an auction was, but later in my life I learned as much, and that’s where I was barely a few hours after watching my foster father die at the brutal end of a shotgun that he had crafted with his own hands. I was at an auction that was different to most that took place in the city, this one dealt in lives, human lives, and, worst of all, it was mainly children of my age who were being sold off to the highest bidder.
As my eyes adjusted to the light I saw there were many folks standing around in that vast hall. They were all over the place, talking in quiet voices with each other between the columned eaves, or sitting on the floor swapping bank notes, or arguing.
The centre of the hall was well lit, unlike the dark corners and arches that lined the place, where folks held their secret conversations. No, instead, the middle was lit by bright lanterns, lots of them, all the better to cast a light upon the platform in the very centre, where the auctioneer stood, calling out his bids, and taking stakes from customers who preferred to sit back in the dark, unrecognised.
As I stood between my two captors, a young boy maybe a few years older than me was being held still, in the middle of the platform, by a man whose size I've rarely seen the like of since then. He was a monster of a man, and disfigured in some way that I couldn’t recognise, and he didn’t seem to stand right, like his bones were having trouble holding up the mass of muscle and fat that constituted his upper body.
The bids were placed, and a few minutes later the boy was taken off into the darkness, I presume to join his new master.
I thought then that my captors were pretty scary men, but they were nothing like some of the other folks that were loitering around in that place. There was one man who I am pretty sure was thinner than was possible, I could see his face and one of his arms in the lantern light, as he sat on an empty crate smoking a pipe, and watching the proceedings.
You might think it wasn’t unusual for a man to be so skinny at that time, since there was a lot of poverty. But with this man it was different, his skin was paler than most, and there was a hole in the side of his cheek about the size of my fist, the skin around it dry and cracked, peeling back to reveal a grimace of teeth, and the side of his jawbone. More unsettling that that was the relative comfort he seemed to have in sitting holding his conversation with his companions, who were hidden in the darkness around him. Every time he took a puff on that pipe, smoke spewed out of the hole and drifted in a swirling column up into the darkness. To me, a hole that size in your face should have hurt, and I didn’t know what was wrong with him, I didn’t want to know.
We were there for maybe half an hour before I saw her for the first time, the girl who was to be my first love, my only love. I saw her for only a few minutes. They pushed her up on to the platform and she stood there with her head hung low, her arms folded tight around her middle. I could see the tears in her eyes, and sense the fear that she was so bravely fighting. For the briefest of moments she looked over at me and I didn’t think I’d ever seen such a pretty face, even behind the dirt, and the tangle of her hair that hung to her waist.
The bidding was furious, with several men raising the price time after time, and others joining in, appearing from the dark corners of the hall, to join in the chaos as hands were raised faster than the auctioneer could keep track of. He was a crooked-looking man, with a balding head and lank, greasy hair. In the harsh light I could see his pale skin glistening with sweat. His eyes darted here and there as he attempted to keep track of all the bids, raising the price by what I thought were random amounts each time he pointed at another bidder, ‘Gentleman’ as he called them all. I remember a wave of loathing coming over me, real hatred, as I watched. There was nothing gentle about any of the men in that place.
Then it was over, almost as suddenly as it had begun. Folks stepped back into the anonymity of the shadows once more. She was taken from the platform and disappeared from my view, into the darkness. For one moment she glanced back over her shoulder, and I would swear that she looked at me once more.
Then she was gone.
It looked just like a hangman’s platform to me, just like the ones I had seen in the picture books I borrowed from the brothers. I used to sit reading them on the step in the back yard. Alexander had a lot of them in a big box under his bed and he didn’t mind me reading them, so long as I asked him first. I remembered the picture of a bad knight being hanged at the gallows, remembered that it chilled me to look at the picture, and I felt that same chill when I looked at the auction platform. There was even a stump of wood, near the middle, that looked like it had been cut off at about three feet. I swear that stump was the remains of the hangman’s pole, or whatever it was called. I also believe, even now, that the dark stains on the wooden boards were blood, or something else left behind when someone was hanged.
I had seen at least six or seven children, mostly older than me, step up, or be pushed up, onto that platform, before she had been taken up there. She vanished into the shadows, pulled along by the man who had bought her, a tall, thin gaunt man who I thought looked like the wind could snap him in two, like he was ill with some wasting disease.
I decided that this was not a place I liked, or a life that I wanted. I was only very young, but after moving from house to house and family to family and seeing all manner of folks, and their different, quirky ways, I was worldly enough to realise that what was happening to me was not a good thing. I had to leave very quickly, right now, if I could. There was no way I wanted to find out where I was to be dragged off to next.
Eddie still had a hold of me very tight, his grasp like an iron weight on my shoulder, fingers digging into the soft bit of flesh underneath my collar, but the ropes they had secured me with had been left to loosen during the journey, and with a little shuffling I managed to let them drop at my feet. They hadn’t tied them very well. I guess they didn’t expect me to struggle. In a few minutes I was able to step over the rope and free myself without them noticing. I gave the rope a little flick with my foot, just a few times so that it wasn’t underfoot.
I lifted my foot up, and hoped to god it was still there, nearly sighing with relief
when my hand clasped around that handle. How my knife had stayed lodged in my boot without cutting half of my foot off I had no idea, but it was there alright, and I clasped hold of it as tight as I could, pulled it slowly out, and took a deep breath.
I nearly hesitated, nearly couldn’t do it, but then from far back in the darkness, probably in some dingy corridor of the warehouse that I hadn’t seen, came a muffled scream. No one around me even took any notice of it, but it was clear to me, and it sounded like a child's scream.
I rammed the knife as hard as I could up into Eddie’s belly. No hesitation now, just hatred and pure violent instinct.
The shock hit me as the knife disappeared nearly up to the hilt. Six inches of wicked, serrated blade vanished into him, just like he was made of butter, and it was just as easy coming out as it was going in. I pulled hard and nearly let go of the knife as it whipped back out again.
The noise Eddie made, as he let go of the scruff of my neck and keeled over to the ground in front of me, was also nothing like I imagined it would be. I had heard a scream before, but never the scream of a dying man whose belly was spilling out over the floor in front of him. I hadn’t realised it, but as I pulled the blade out, Eddie must have felt the pain and pulled away, turning at the same time. His panicked struggle to escape the pain opened up his belly almost from hip to hip. All those years of over indulgence came spilling out in front of him with a wet slosh and a thud. I have no idea which bit of his insides made that horrible noise as it hit the floor, but whatever it was, it hit the wooden board so hard that it ruptured. Blood and a nasty green and yellow gunk splattered everywhere.
I didn’t stay around to see what happened next, though as I ran into the dark, trying to find a way to escape this awful place, I heard screams, mostly Eddie’s I believe, and shouts, and even laughter. I was pretty sure that at least a dozen folks standing nearby got covered with Eddie’s guts and they were probably freaking out about now, but I wasn’t staying around long enough to find out.
I stumbled into the darkness, running blind, turning corner after corner and darting around people. I was sure I went the same way several times in my blundering attempt at an escape. I could feel hands reach out at me, and shouts called. Some were probably just in surprise, but others were to alert anyone trying to catch me. I couldn’t find a back door, and was panicking. I remembered that there were guards there who might stop me anyway, so I ran for the next nearest exit I could find, which was out through an open archway and onto the walkway that ran along the side of the river. I had to jump over a figure sitting in the doorway, huddled up and dressed in rags. Fortunately whoever that was either didn’t notice or didn’t care.
As the shouts followed me outside, getting closer, I ran along the thin strip of cobbled ground at the back of the building, looking for a way out. I could see that the walkway ended in a sheer wall, and my heart nearly jumped into my throat as I turned around and saw three angry-looking men, one of them Remy, jogging towards me barely twenty feet away.
There was no way out, I thought, but then I saw it, the wall that ran alongside the walkway, separating it from the river, carried on further, a small foot wide gap that carried on past the sheer wall at the end, one that a boy might run along, but a man would struggle with. I ran again, just as I heard a clicking noise and saw at the edge of my vision that Remy had lifted the gun that he had taken from Mr Holcroft’s workshop. I took a hopeful leap onto the wall, but lost my footing, tripped, and banged my knee. I reached out, but not fast enough, and toppled over the wall, falling into those dark waters.
The pain of the cold water hit me as I plunged into the flowing stream. I gasped for breath, my arms flailing as I struggled to pull myself up. Just as I thought it was all over, I managed to put my head above the water, and fill my lungs with air. There was a loud bang, and the water just a few feet away splashed. Something unseen whizzed past my face. I looked back towards the warehouse to see Remy trying to reload the gun, but he gave up as I drifted away, pulled by the strong current, down the Thames river and out into the city.
I never saw Remy again, but I would remember the curses he yelled at me that night.
I would remember those my whole life.
For the first time, I was truly alone. As I emerged from the river in another area of the city, utterly frightened, cold and wet, I remember wondering if Eddie was okay. I was only young, and it took a while for me to realise what I had done. Eddie was not okay, and never would be again.
Before I was even eight years old, I had killed a man. It wouldn’t be the last time, there were many more to follow in my life, but it was certainly the one that haunts me the most.
The pain today is especially sharp. The doctor came this morning to visit, and he said that I would get periods of time where it would be painful, and others where I might think I was perfectly fine. It makes me wonder where they get all this from. He can't be any older than maybe thirty years old. What would he know about pain? Don't get me wrong, he has probably seen a whole lot of people suffering, but to know what real pain is like?
You know there are some things that I believe are worse than physical pain, loneliness for one of them. I spent a long time wandering London after I escaped from the warehouse that night, and a lot of nights alone in the dark, sleeping under bridges and down alleyways, watching people go by, wondering who they were and where they might be going.
I often wondered during those days whether anyone thought that of me as they wandered by. Not that they would always see me. I did my utmost to keep out of sight, keep to the shadows and disappear whenever someone came by, but that didn’t always work.
It was rare during those days to meet anyone who cared much about anyone else. Everyone was far too busy suffering in their own way in that overcrowded and run-down city. Yeah, it had its beauty too, but when you walk a few streets along and turn a corner, you start to see the uglier side, the side that most normal folks wouldn't even have known was just a short distance away.
But, saying all that, I did occasionally meet some good folks, just like the folks of a place that I would never forget.
The Running Ground.
My stay there was much shorter than I would have liked, but the folks there, and the community of it all, have stayed with me my whole life.
There are some things you don't ever forget.
The Running Ground was a patch of land that ran between the arches of the railway and a shoe factory, just a dozen acres of overgrown ruins that had once been a street. Running through the middle of it was what I imagined had once been a cobbled road with pavement on either side, but that was all broken up and overgrown with weeds now. Rows of what once had been buildings played house to the teeming homeless. Immigrants, the old, the disabled, and plenty of people just down on their luck.
It was a pretty ugly place to live, but it was where I called home, for a while. After what must have been months of wandering London alone, it was good to see at least a few friendly faces.
I’d spent most of my nights since that night at the warehouse, living under bridges or huddled in some dark corner in a derelict building. My days were spent scavenging what I could find to live on, scraps and dustbin leftovers mostly. Yes, there were restaurants and markets to scrounge something from, but unless you were living on those streets back then you couldn’t know just how many people were in the same situation. London was heaving with the homeless and the destitute.
One day I had decided to move on, move to a different area. I’d been stealing from the same few dozen shops and market stalls for months, and the owners could spot me coming.
It was by accident that I found the Running Ground. It was late at night and I was trying to find somewhere to hide away from the rain. It was beating down with a vengeance and had been for three days. My clothes were soaked all the way to my skin, and the cold bit me all the way to my bones. I snuck into a rundown building through one of the bottom windows that had been smashed, and when I realised
the place was unoccupied I made my way up the stairs to one of the back rooms. I’d sat under an archway in the alley directly across from the house for at least an hour, just trying to spy out whether anyone was in there. I’d seen nothing. I also hadn’t seen the rooms downstairs, all stacked high with boxes and wooden cases.
Before I lay down to try and sleep I looked out of the back window. There, sprawled as far as I could see, was the shanty town that was the Running Ground. From my view up in the window it looked like a maze of huts and junk. In between the huts, dotted here and there, underneath the tall brick archways of the railway, were fires burning in old barrels, or roughly built brick circles. The homeless folks gathered around them in their droves.
The old man had risked his own neck just coming in after me, though I guessed he was much more used to moving around unnoticed than I was, because I didn’t even hear him coming up the stairs. How he had seen me, I will never know.
"Boy," he said, though it sounded more like a dog's bark.
I spun round. My heart was pounding.
"Out, quickly. You can’t be in here."
He turned and moved back towards the top of the stairs, glancing back at me several times with an irritated look.
"Don’t just stand there gawping at me boy. If they find you in here it will be Breaker’s Alley for you."
I didn’t know what Breaker’s Alley was, and by that name I wasn’t sure I wanted to either. I gathered my few things and rushed down the stairs after him.
We went out the back door and climbed over the wall. From the window upstairs it had looked small, but it rose at least seven feet tall at the very back, and there was no back gate. Fortunately there was a small stone shed that was part collapsed. I copied the old man and jumped up on it, shimmied to the back wall, and hauled myself over.
Hands grabbed me out of the darkness, and pulled me through tall grass and thorns. I tried to cry out, but someone clamped their hand over my mouth. It wasn’t the old man.