by Mark Tilbury
Chapter Nine
After Jimmy left, I dozed for most of the day. Before lights out, I looked at the photographs again. This time the images stayed still. I studied the one of Becky sitting on the bench, willing it to come to life again, talk to me, tell me why we’d spoken about going to the cops. Nothing. Not even a flicker. The seagull remained in situ, the chip waiting to be plucked from the wooden boards.
I looked at the wheelchair, dormant against the wall. Had it really reared up and banged into Carver’s leg? I mean, obviously, that was impossible, unless someone had physically pushed it. I didn’t know whether the thought of an unknown entity taking my side and attacking Carver was comforting or terrifying. The same entity which had helped me into the wheelchair two nights back and had taken me on a journey to the rain-swept terraced street.
But, this still didn’t alter the fact Carver had me by the balls. I wasn’t going to be saved by a ghost, was I? Perhaps my memory had been replaced by a bloody good imagination. What next? Flying around the hospital? Underwater adventures? Visits by angels?
Or devils.
I shuddered. Not only was I at the mercy of Carver, I was also at the mercy of a mind teetering on the edge of insanity. I took several deep breaths and tried to calm down. At least Jimmy was real. Tangible. Willing to help.
A little too readily?
Maybe. But, he was all I had.
Apart from the wheelchair pusher.
None of this altered the fact I was going down for Becky’s murder, and quite possibly the murder of some poor lad buried in the woods. There was nothing Jimmy and the wheelchair pusher could do about that. My best bet was to save up my painkillers and take the lot in one go. Get out of it. Be free of Carver. Free of his persecution. Free of my useless body. Becky’s mother would even get some sort of justice for her daughter.
I couldn’t spend my whole life in jail, being dependent on others. Carver would have influence over the guards, make my life a living hell. I might get out in twenty years, perhaps less, if I behaved myself, but there would be nothing left of me. And that wasn’t even taking into account doing time for the poor kid who was buried in the woods.
Part of me wanted to believe Carver was bluffing, playing stupid mind games, but, I knew he wasn’t. Either he’d killed the kid himself, or some sicko friend of his had done it.
Everyone thinks the world spins clockwise, but it doesn’t. Not on your nelly. It turns anticlockwise.
Two nights had passed since the ‘trip’ into the tunnel. The enormity of what had occurred was fading, like steam from a window. Part of me knew it couldn’t have happened, but why was the emergency door still there? The writing still there? Becky’s words?
Questions, questions, questions, and not one fucking answer.
The wheelchair moved. I heard the click of the brake, and the faint screech of the tyres on the polished floor. And then, it rolled towards the bed.
I bit down on my lip hard enough to draw blood.
It manoeuvred itself alongside the bed. The brake was applied. The bedsheet slipped to one side, and invisible hands pulled me up into a sitting position. I tried to call out, but my throat was frozen. My breath came in jagged gasps. My legs were pulled sideways, and then, those gentle hands were once again under my armpits. Small, perhaps a woman’s?
‘Becky?’ I whispered.
No answer. I was helped into the wheelchair, and my feet were lifted onto the footrests.
‘Becky? Is that you?’
If it was, she wasn’t saying. I was wheeled slowly across the room towards the emergency door. The bolt slid open and then the release bar was pushed down. The door swung open. There was a loud screech as the rusty hinges protested. Surely someone at the nurses’ station would hear that?
‘Please… who are you?’
We entered the black abyss of the tunnel in silence. The door closed behind us as a jail cell door might close on a prisoner. On and on, through the darkness. Back to the terraced street. Back to that house with the number “19” painted on the door.
‘Why do you keep taking me here?’
No answer. Just the rain splashing into the puddles. I looked along the street, expecting the abusive man to come staggering towards me again. Nothing. Just a car reversing into a parking bay, and a dog relieving itself against a garden gate. A tatty looking mutt, soaked and bedraggled. It sniffed at something on the pavement and then trotted towards me. Something stirred in my mind, as I watched the dog weaving in and out of gardens, sniffing dustbins and mooching.
The dog stopped near the wheelchair. It sat on the wet ground, and looked up at me with doleful, brown eyes.
‘Do I know you?’
The dog wagged its tail. Once. As if sweeping rain from the pavement. It was a black and tan mongrel. Medium build. Not too threatening, but I didn’t fancy putting its teeth to the test. It cocked its head to one side.
‘If you’re looking for food, I haven’t got any. I haven’t even got any…’ I suddenly noticed my dressing gown had been replaced by a red T-shirt and grey baggy shorts. My legs poked out the bottom of the shorts like matchsticks. Only these legs were no longer my legs. They belonged to a child. My feet were bare. Small. Size five or six.
The dog edged towards me and licked my child’s hand. He barked once; the sound boomed along the street like a pistol shot.
‘What is it?’ I said, in a child’s voice. ‘What is it, Oxo?’
Oxo barked again. More of a yip this time. An acknowledgement, perhaps? And then, something miraculous happened. I climbed out of the wheelchair and stood beside him. He licked my hand.
‘Where have you been, boy?’
Oxo wasn’t saying. He scratched his nose with a paw, as if to say, mind your own business.
The front door opened, revealing the same battered woman from my previous trip. Face swollen. One eye closed to a slit.
‘Come on in, Mikey. You’ll catch your death out there.’
Her voice sounded as if she had a bad cold, but I knew, as sure as I knew my name was Mikey Tate, that it was because my dad had beaten the crap out of her again. ‘Are you okay, Mum?’
She nodded.
I walked up the steps, Oxo tagging along right behind me. ‘What happened to your face?’
She touched her nose. ‘Nothing. I banged into a door.’
A blatant lie. Her eyes told me that much.
‘Wait there. I’ll fetch a towel for Oxo.’
We stood under the shelter of the front porch and waited for mum to bring Oxo’s towel. She handed it to me. I loved the smell of that towel. Oxo’s special smell. My best pal in the whole world. He slept on my bed at night. I didn’t need an alarm clock to get up for school; I had a ready-made one in Oxo’s tongue. I also got to walk him most mornings before school.
Speaking of school, I was about to move up to secondary school after the summer. Hitting the big time. Twelve in October. One year away from the dizzy heights of being a teenager. The land of deep voices and girls. I wasn’t too sure about girls; they looked dangerous to me. All boobs and giggles, like they knew something important I didn’t. I was happy to just practice kissing in the mirror for now, or smooching with my pillow. I drew the line at practicing on Oxo.
We followed Mum into the kitchen. My stomach growled. ‘What’s for tea?’
‘Liver and onions.’ This came out as Libber an odions.
I saw a purple bruise extending down her face, almost touching her top lip. Some wardrobe door.
‘Did you have a nice time at the fair?’
‘Yes.’ A lie. I’d not been to the fair. I’d bought a pack of cigarettes, and gone up the Bunky Line with my mate, Robert Harkness. It was safer to have a smoke when I was staying at Aunt Jean’s. She clanged them off one after the other. Woodbines. Unlike my mother, who didn’t smoke, Aunt Jean could never smell it on me.
The Bunky Line was a great place to escape to. An old train line which transported goods from the malt factory to the main railw
ay station. I didn’t know what its proper name was, we just called it the Bunky Line because we bunked off school there. There were several old air raid shelters dotted along the track, about a mile apart. We’d pretend to be soldiers, jumping into the tall grass, parachuting into German territory. One of my mates, Steve Wilson, had a gun. I don’t know if it was real or not, we never got to fire it, but he reckoned his old man was in the SAS, and used to teach him survival stuff.
Sometimes, we’d stake out the malt factory, a top-secret German ammunition dump. Moving through the grass, getting ready to take out the German sentries protecting the imaginary barbed wire fence. Fine, until one night, I saw a rat making its way towards me. The bloody thing was huge. The size of a small cat. Bugger being a soldier, I ran for all I was worth, squealing like a big girl’s blouse.
Mum asked, ‘Did you go on many rides?’
‘The dodgems,’ I lied. ‘And I bought a toffee apple.’
Mum smiled. This seemed to hurt her. ‘I hope you’ve still got all your fillings.’
I returned the smile. It hurt me as well, but for different reasons. ‘Yeah.’
‘How’s Aunt Jean?’
‘I didn’t see her.’
‘I thought—’
‘Not with all that fag smoke.’
Mum laughed and held the side of her face. ‘You cheeky young bugger. Go wash your hands and get ready for tea.’
I scampered up the stairs. Oxo did his best to trip me up and beat me to my bedroom. Well, I say bedroom, it was little more than a broom cupboard, with a single bed and a wardrobe somehow squeezed into it. But, it was my broom cupboard. My private space. Somewhere I could imagine being anything I wanted to. A spaceman. A footballer. An astronaut. Owner of a dog who didn’t smell like the river.
But, right now, I only had one thing on my mind; it was Friday, Dad’s payday. The worst day of the week. Big Billy Tate. No one ever dared to say a wrong word to him. The bailiff had come to take away our TV once. Big man, with a crewcut. The only thing he’d left with was a black eye and a missing front tooth. The police hadn’t been quite so willing to accept defeat; three of them had set about Dad with truncheons, slapped him in handcuffs, and carted him away. It had given the neighbours enough gossip to last all winter.
Steve Wilson had thought my dad was some sort of hero for that, but I knew different, knew what a coward he was. How he beat up my mum. How he threw his dinner across the kitchen for no reason. How my mum walked around for days, making excuses for him. Blaming wardrobe doors. Blaming herself. It was a wonder poor Oxo didn’t get the blame sometimes.
Mum had a friend, Rachel, a kind woman who would sit at the kitchen table sometimes, drinking coffee, and listening to my mum talk about her latest incident with a fist-shaped wall or door. It was funny how adults didn’t think you were paying attention just because you were a kid.
Mum called us – yes, Oxo was invited, too – down to dinner. We ran down the stairs, Oxo scooting between my legs and finding his spot beneath the table.
‘You washed your hands, Mikey?’
‘Yes.’ A lie. I couldn’t see the point in washing hands.
She walked over to the table. ‘Let me see.’
I showed her my palms, confident.
‘Don’t fib.’
‘I’m not fibbing.’
‘There’s a grass stain on your right hand. What did you wash them with? Mud?’
‘No. I—’
‘Kitchen sink. It’s bad manners to eat with dirty hands.’
I did as she asked. My tummy was rumbling too much to protest. By the time dinner was served, I was almost hungry enough to eat Oxo. Only kidding. Too hairy. Although me and mum sometimes joked we could put his tail in a bowl and call it oxtail soup.
I wolfed down half of my meal without pause. I dared a proper look at my mum’s face. The top half was the colour of a plum. Her closed eye seemed fixed in a permanent wink as if sharing some sort of sick joke. Her right ear was cut. Her lower lip split.
‘You all right, love-bug?’
I nodded. As all right as I could be on Billy the Bully’s payday. I mopped up gravy with a hunk of bread and wished with all my heart I was older. Bigger. Stronger. That I could grow bionic arms, pick my dad up, and throw him out the window. Or rush downstairs when I heard the first glass or plate smash, stand in front of my mum, and tell that bastard to pick on someone his own size. But, I was just little Mikey Tate, knee-high to a grasshopper, as Aunt Jean called me.
‘Can I ask you something, Mum?’
‘Course.’
I’d thought about this long and hard all night, while I’d been trying to sleep on Aunt Jean’s lumpy mattress. Playing it over and over in my mind. ‘Why do you stay with him?’
She looked down at her barely touched meal as if the answer lay in the lumpy mashed potatoes. ‘What sort of question is that, Mikey?’
I felt Oxo wriggle closer, reminding me of his entitlement to scraps. Oxo didn’t seem too bothered about my violent, bullying dad, so long as he got fed, and let loose sometimes to roam in Baker’s field. ‘Just wondering.’
‘Wondering is dangerous, Mikey.’
So was living with that madman. ‘We could find somewhere else to live. He wouldn’t even know.’
She laughed. ‘He’s a lot of things, Mikey, but he’s not that dumb.’
‘I mean, he wouldn’t realise until we’d gone.’
‘And where are we supposed to go?’
I shrugged. I’d fallen asleep before I’d figured that one out. ‘Does it matter? Just so long as he doesn’t hurt you anymore.’
She put her knife and fork on her plate and pushed it away. ‘You don’t understand.’
But, I did. He beat the shit out of her, and she kept on crawling back for more. Even Oxo wouldn’t have stood for that, and he was only a dumb mutt. ‘Then explain, Mum.’
‘It’s not that simple. For starters, we’ve got nowhere to go.’
‘Can’t we go to Aunt Jean’s?’
‘Don’t you think your father would come looking for us there?’
True. Aunt Jean was Dad’s sister. The first place he would probably look. Apart from Rachel, who lived a few doors along the street, Mum didn’t really have anyone else to call on. ‘But, there must be somewhere we can go.’
‘There isn’t,’ she snapped. ‘So we’ll just have to stay here.’
‘And wait until he kills you?’
‘He’s not going to kill me.’
Her face told a different story. Sometimes, in the mornings, before she’d put on her makeup, you could see tiny scars littered all over her face. Battle scars, from the most one-sided war ever. Suddenly, I wasn’t hungry anymore. I took my plate to Oxo’s bowl and scraped the leftovers on top of some dried Bonio biscuits. Oxo tucked in, snout down, backside in the air.
I took Mum’s plate to the sink and put it on the side.
‘He’s not all bad, Mikey.’
I almost laughed. ‘Really?’
‘You don’t see the other side of him.’
‘I’m not sure I want to.’
‘He can be quite loving, sometimes.’
Oh, yes, I’d forgotten all about that. The same Billy Tate who sometimes cried and told Mum how sorry he was after his latest drunken outburst. Who swore blind he would change. Stay out of the pub. Keep away from his precious mates. Go for counselling. Get a better job. Try not to step on the cracks in the pavement.
Oxo finished his meal and slurped water. Schlupp, schlupp, schlupp. Good clean water that didn’t turn your brain to mush and your fists into weapons, like booze did. My dad could learn a lot from Oxo.
I’d thought about talking to a teacher. There were a couple of decent ones who didn’t bawl at you for no reason. Mr. Griggs seemed like someone who might listen to a boy who feared his mother would get hurt bad enough to put her into a grave.
‘Go on up to your room, Mikey. See if you can get to sleep before he comes home.’
That
gave me until about midnight. Plenty of time under normal circumstances. But, these were not normal circumstances. I would be awake until that bastard had done his worst. Probably all night.
Chapter Ten
I lay on my bed, Oxo curled up at my feet; impressive, considering those feet hadn’t seen a bath all week. I tried to imagine a world without my dad, Billy the Bully. Billy the Drunk. Billy the Bastard. Why was I such a puny kid? Billy the Bully could probably flick me over with his little finger.
In my head, I was Superman, flying through the air, wind beneath my cape, fist held out in front of me. Invincible. Untouchable. The ability to fly through solid brick walls. I’d been sent to Earth to beat up Billy the Bully and save the world from his sledgehammer fists.
Oxo farted and spoiled the moment. Liver and onions, with a dash of sewer. I held my nose. ‘You stink.’
Oxo looked sheepish, if that was at all possible for a dog. He grinned at me in that odd way he had. As if baring his teeth to attack, but really showing love.
‘You’re sticking to your own food in future, if you keep stinking out my room like that.’
He rested his head on his paws and fixed me with a doleful look. Apart from my mum, I loved that dog the most. He was my best friend. I could chat away to him for ages, moaning and pouring out all my secrets, and he never once seemed to get bored. He would watch me, in that strange knowing sort of way, as if taking it all in. And the best thing about it? He wouldn’t tell anyone. From my hatred of my dad, to my secret crush on Karen Bridges, it all stayed locked in his head.
At least there was no school in the morning. Even if I didn’t get any sleep, I didn’t have to force myself to stay awake through a load of boring lessons. Just stay in bed until the afternoon, and then take Oxo along the Bunky Line, meet up with one of my mates, and doss around. There was a fizzy drinks factory nearby. The Creamery. God alone knew why it was called that, but they made the best fizzy drinks ever. Cream Soda, lemonade, orangeade, limeade, and dandelion and burdock. And here was the best bit: they used to leave the storeroom window ajar. If you got a long enough stick and hooked it through the gap, you could flip the latch and open the window right up. We’d often pinch a few bottles, and disappear up the Bunky Line, as if we were the smartest kids on the planet and adults were too dumb to mention.