by Paul Roscoe
“In the book, there are two dreams that he keeps having. One is where the gang are torturing a dog. The other is when-”
“When we’re playing a fake game of hide and seek, and we leave Mary to her own devices.”
“Yes. Exactly. How did you know?”
“I dreamt the very same thing. So did Buddy. And I’m willing to guess that might have been one of the last dreams Mary ever had too.”
Angela shook her head. “That’s unbelievable.”
“I know, I hardly believe it myself. And what’s even weirder is that the dreams are starting to change. They’re becoming like scenes in a movie, or chapters in a book. Chapter One was just waiting for Mary and then leaving her – I guess that’s pretty much what Tom dreamt about?”
She nodded.
“Then, the night Tom died – Chapter Two. We’re heading down the woods after dumping Mary.”
“Tom called it that.”
“Well that was pretty much the size of it. Anyway, we’re down the woods – Buddy, Tom, and me – and we’re kicking a ball about, then suddenly Tom runs off and never comes back.”
“Where did he go?”
“I don’t know for sure, but I think back to the old shelter.”
“Why there?”
“Because that’s were we ended up again at the end of Chapter Three.”
“Go on.”
“Well, that chapter was what I dreamt last night. It picked up just after Tom had disappeared. Buddy and me are walking through the woods, when all of a sudden Buddy starts to get worried about the other two. In the dream, I was all, you know, ‘don’t worry about it’. And then Buddy points out to me that we’re both older, and then I realise that the dreaming isn’t just about back then, it’s about now. He’s worried about Mary and Tom, you see.”
“You’ve lost me.”
“I mean, I think he was worried about the others because, deep down, he knew what had actually happened to them, he knew that Mary and Tom had died. In the dream, though, he just thought they had both gone back to the shelter. And so we went back too.”
“Did you see him? Did you see Tom?”
Alex shook his head. “No. Mary neither. But someone else was there.”
“Who?”
“Little David Hartman. All grown up. And dressed for a funeral, as a matter of interest. It was weird. I only saw him for a moment. When he noticed me, the dream suddenly ended.” Alex scratched his head. “It was as if I wasn’t really supposed to see him.”
“Yet,” Angela said – then wished she hadn’t.
Alex raised his eyebrows, then slowly nodded. “Yet.”
A small silence grew between them while Angela scrambled for something else to say. “When you said Buddy was more like the real life Buddy, did he also look more like the real life, grown up version?”
“In the last one we were definitely teenagers. In the one before, the one where Tom ran off, it was like we started off as little kids and then at some point turned older. Buddy’s face changed on the bridge.”
Angela pointed at Tom’s journal. “May I?”
Alex passed her the book. She turned to the last entry and passed it back, pointing at the open pages.
“Tom mentions that something is different about Mary in that one. He says that she’s a teenager.”
Alex scanned the lines then looked up. “I used to think I was dreaming – or we were dreaming – about the past. But I don’t know any more. The things that keep happening – Buddy wanting to go back to the…” He frowned, his eyes growing distant.
“What?”
“I bet that’s where Tom went when he disappeared. Mary too. That’s where everything happened. Buddy wanted to go back there and David was waiting for him.”
“That’s where you guys ganged up on David in the first place, wasn’t it?”
Angela was relieved, and quietly pleased, to see Alex turn bright red at that.
“That was the place. And for what it’s worth, Angela, Tom didn’t do any of the rough stuff. At the time we all thought he was a bit soft, but looking back, I guess he was just a bit more grown up than the rest of us.”
She took a deep breath and felt the choking sensation return, but she fought it. She was getting good at fighting it, or so it seemed. “Thanks. That means a lot.” Then, picking up her bag, “So, do you want to go and check it out?”
Alex looked at her in amazement – the idea hadn’t occurred to him. “I guess we could. Do you want to?”
Angela nodded, and they went.
4
“Not bad.”
Buddy was sitting on the bonnet of a blue Ford Sierra, his registration teacher’s car. As he lit his cigarette, he watched a group of birds flutter around the treetops surrounding the pond. Mary and Tom stood to his left, their arms folded.
“It’s weird, isn’t it?” Mary said. “Hearing everything laid out like that. Seeing where my dream left off and yours began.”
Tom watched Angela and Alex walk along the car park, headed towards the hall at the rear of the school, wisely taking the route that would lead them past as few classrooms as possible. “What’s weird is that he’s the one piecing them together.”
“Alex is smarter than you think, Tom. Always has been.” Buddy slipped his Zippo back in a jacket pocket and shimmied off the car; he inspected the paint for scratch marks and was disappointed to find none.
“It’s strange how he said he saw David,” Mary said. “The more I think about it, the more I realise I’d been dreaming about that time at the old shelter for ages. That time, and the time we messed around with David. Both events took place at the old shelter; I guess that’s probably the reason why I was so set on painting the stupid thing. But I only saw David once, and when I did, that was it. He showed me…well, you know.” Her voice trailed off.
“Mary, he showed everyone the same thing,” Tom said, “I thought you realised that. I saw myself lying dead inside my bedroom. Buddy saw himself in the bath. You saw yourself in the garage. David was our own private version of the grim reaper.”
“Yeah, but David didn’t strike me as Death incarnate. He seemed too nice.” Mary untied her ponytail and ran her hands through her hair, teasing it around her shoulders. She let it fall over her face a little.
“Don’t shoot the messenger, Tom.”
Mary and Tom turned: Mary looked confused and Tom looked irritated.
“David’s the messenger, isn’t he?” Buddy said. “He didn’t kill us; he just showed us what was going on. So don’t shoot the messenger.”
“Okay,” Tom said. “But if David didn’t kill us, who did?”
“Well how the hell do I know? None of us wanted to kill ourselves, Tom. You’re not the only one.” Buddy tapped ash onto a nearby rose bush. “What I want to know is, did David have more than one message?”
“I don’t understand.”
“That’s because you didn’t think of it first,” Mary said, grinning. “It’s a great idea, Buddy. I don’t remember everything David said to me, so that might be a little hard to-”
“I remember pretty much what he had to say,” Tom interrupted. “He said he’d talked to you,” he pointed at Mary, “and made some joke about how you were hiding now that you’d become tired of seeking. Then I tried to apologise to him and he just fobbed me off. ‘Not you as well,’ those were his precise words. Then he said, ‘It’s a strange thing to disappear. To see another world through the cracks in this one.’ And if that’s the other message, Buddy, then I’m afraid it was lost on me.”
Buddy’s eyes were ablaze. “He said the same thing to me, more or less. Something about stepping into small moments of forgetfulness, or being lost in them. Something like that.”
Mary nodded. “Just before he showed me…me. I remember him saying that disappearing is easy. That every day is full of cracks we can slip through. I thought he was talking about what he was showing me.”
“He probably was,” Buddy said, tapping ash that
wouldn’t come.
“But if that’s the case, how is it a different message?”
Buddy stared at the glass atrium as if it might have the answer. “Tom? Any ideas?”
Tom walked a little way along the side of the school building, peering in at the classes, seeing the animated teachers and the docile pupils go through their motions. He turned around and spoke. “Half an idea, perhaps…if that.” Folding his arms, he looked from Buddy to Mary, satisfied that he had their attention. “We agreed that it’s strange how none of us feels particularly terrible over our losses. I miss Angela, sure, but for some reason my heart is not yet broken. If it was, I’m afraid taking part in this little primary school reunion would be pretty low on my to-do list.” He swept a hand through his hair with a gesture that was just short of theatrical. “So that is one thing we’ve noticed on our own, but there’s someone else who should probably be more annoyed than we are.” Tom worked at suppressing a smile as he watched the realisation ignite in his friends’ faces. “I said it myself: when I apologised to him, David just fobbed me off. And neither of you seemed very surprised at that. Now why would David, of all people, seem so forgiving? So blasé? Did either of you try to apologise?”
Mary shook her head.
“I told him he could stick his apology.” Buddy waved his cigarette in a small circle. “But now that you mention it, he didn’t seem to care either way.”
“When I asked him about what had happened after he was kidnapped,” Mary said, “he just kind of shrugged it off. Like it wasn’t important.”
Tom rubbed his chin. “So we seem fine about dying, and David seems fine about being beaten up and left for dead.”
“Oh come off it, Tom,” Buddy said, scowling, “we didn’t beat him up that badly.”
“Well we certainly didn’t leave him standing, you must remember that.”
Buddy’s gaze returned to the atrium, sparkling in the bright sun. “I remember.”
“And the fact remains that he did disappear. Five years ago. And according to what the police told Alex today, he was murdered. And yet, we meet him and everything is okey-dokey. No need to apologise, oh no. At best, he just seems mildly curious about the whole thing.”
“So he’s okay with it. So what? The thing that bugs me is the idea that the police found his killer and none of us knew,” Buddy said.
“Maybe they didn’t.” Mary stood up and started walking down towards the hall. “C’mon, let’s catch up with those two.”
Buddy chased after her and caught her by the arm. “What do you mean, ‘Maybe they didn’t’?”
“Well, it’s just another thing that’s wrong with this whole picture, isn’t it? No one is upset about their deaths, and what we thought was an unsolved crime appears to have been sewn up long ago. The more you think about them, the more you realise both things are absolutely impossible.”
“So what’s your point?” Buddy asked.
Mary stopped and turned to them. “The point is that this could be David’s real message, or his other message, or whatever you want to call it.”
“Which is?”
“That everything is wrong. He’s wrong. We’re wrong. Everything is wrong.”
“I don’t get it.”
“I think I do,” Tom said. “‘It’s a strange thing to disappear. To see another world through the cracks in this one.’ Well we’ve disappeared, haven’t we? No one can see us anymore. So maybe we’re seeing that other world, one where everything is wrong. Maybe we’re looking through the cracks and seeing what could be, but isn’t really.”
Mary and Tom stared at each other, and then they turned to Buddy, who simply stared back, an incredulous expression on his face. Breaking the spell, Mary continued down towards the hall, turning into the shady part of school, heading towards smokers’ corner, the gymnasium, and the old shelter beyond. The other two followed in silence.
Chapter Thirteen
1
Mark Penney, a former pupil of St Vincent’s and now a resident of the neighbouring town of Lenerton, bundled his passenger into the front seat and then knelt on the pavement at the side of the car. He stared at the boy’s leg, wondering what to do next. Then he stared at the boy’s head, wondering if anything he did would make a difference.
Maybe he was right, he thought.
The leg was wedged in the open doorway, bent sideways at an angle no unbroken limb could achieve. A wild urge came over Penney to grab the car door and slam it as hard as he could, just to see if he could snap it in two; it was the kind of transitory shudder that would occasionally haunt his sleepless nights, those clammy moments where he imagined diving off high places into the great unknown. Instead of slamming the door to see what would give, however, he delicately lifted the shoeless foot and tried to fold it into the foot well; it came close, but a grinding sensation of bone on bone told him not to push his luck. He let the foot return to its awkward spot and he rubbed his chin. Then he tucked both hands underneath the boy’s thigh, counted, One, two, three, and tugged. The foot bounced upward towards the car, and Penney quickly guided it across the threshold and into the foot well, where it came to rest crossed beneath its partner. The boy looked like he had fallen asleep in the middle of a Highland jig.
Penney planted his hands on his hips and exhaled with a grunt; then he hunched down again and tugged on the seatbelt. It caught with a bang, caught again, then caught again. No matter how gently he pulled, it just wouldn’t come.
You’re panicking. Slow down. Calm down.
Looking at his hands, he took a long breath and tried to hold it. Exhaling more sharply than intended, he took the belt in his hands and slowly, very slowly, started to pull. The belt came smoothly, and he extracted it as far as it would go. As he reached over to fasten the clasp, the boy’s head lolled forward onto his shoulder with a sickening, crunching sound. Penney shuddered at its touch; gooseflesh tingled up his arms, the back of his neck, and across his bare scalp.
He’s dead. I’ve got a dead body leaning on me.
No, he’s not dead, he talked to you. And what’s that slow, rasping noise? That’s the sound of someone breathing, so get a hold of yourself.
He fastened the clasp, adjusted the slack, and then stood up, relieved that the boy’s head was no longer touching him. He checked the shoulder of his shirt; where the boy’s head had been, there was now a thick streak of blood.
Mark Penney closed the door, got behind the wheel, and tried to remember the best way to Bracton Hospital’s Accident and Emergency unit.
2
At the far end of the playground, where Archdiocese property became Council property, and where bright and open tarmac gave way to shady and closed undergrowth, it occurred to Alex that the activity of school life was really just a day-long, massive-scale game of musical chairs. At the present moment, the music had stopped, and the school held its breath. He followed Angela’s gaze towards the old shelter. There was nothing remarkable about it, nothing that seemed any different from the dilapidated structure he remembered as a young boy: just a collection of rusty and bent tubes that somehow managed to suspend a fractured and perforated canopy several feet above the ground for no apparent reason. Why they had never torn it down was beyond him.
He checked his watch: they had ten minutes before the school bell; ten minutes before the main doors would erupt, spilling hundreds of pupils and one or two teachers.
Whatever they were supposed to be doing here, they had to do it now.
“Do you have any exercise books in there?” He pointed at her bag.
“Mmm-hmm.”
“We need to look like we’re doing schoolwork. Could you pass me one? And a pen, please?”
Angela unzipped her bag and produced two red, laminated exercise books. She fought with a tartan pencil case. “Where’s your bag?”
This brought a look of concern, and then a smile to his face. “That’s a good question.” He looked around himself, as if expecting to find it. “Old Man Heaton
’s place, probably. I think my mind has been on other things of late.”
Angela handed him a pen and one of the books, and they both set about the difficult and awkward task of trying to look busy whilst trying to figure out what they were doing there in the first place.
3
Mary, Tom, and Buddy arrived at the long, low wall that separated playground from playing field; or rather, since the three of them had intuitively favoured a quicker method of transport than walking, they materialised. Watching Angela and Alex set about their busywork, each breathed a sigh of relief that they hadn’t missed anything important.
“Tom, do you remember my little experiment with the tarmac?” Mary said.
His eyes locked on Angela and it took him a moment to realise he was being addressed. “Of course I do. What was all that about?” Realising explanation was in order, he turned to Buddy. “There was this little lump of tar that you’d kicked off the edge of the road when you and Alex were talking. I don’t expect you to remember doing it. Anyway, Mary picked it up, and asked me what it was – which was weird enough – but then she asked me about a housing development sign. And then she said it didn’t matter.” Tom shrugged, as if this was explanation enough.
“Well, the point of that was to see if we had cumulative strength,” Mary said.
The two boys looked at her.
“In this world, everything we touch isn’t really real. I mean, it feels real, but only while we concentrate on it. I know you’ve both noticed this, ‘cos I’ve caught you both looking at the same kinds of things I looked at when I first showed up on Bracton Hill. As soon as our backs are turned, the door we thought we opened becomes closed again. Anything we move goes back to its original position. Therefore, everything is real only to an extent.”
They nodded, and Buddy said, “Sure I’ve noticed. I’m a ghost.” He laced his fingers together and placed them behind his head, stretching. “To begin with, I thought it was kind of cool, but it’s really kind of not. So what?”