by Paul Roscoe
“I asked Tom to look at the housing sign as a distraction. I wanted to know if, by there being two of us ghosts knocking around, there was any difference in how things behaved around us. I wanted to see if having both of us acknowledge the object made any difference as to whether it remained in one place when we turned our backs, or whether it returned to where it came from. Useful knowledge, as you can imagine.”
“And did it?” Tom asked.
“I think so. A little. When I turned back, for a split second it was still in the same place. I didn’t say anything at the time, because the result wasn’t that spectacular, but-”
“But now you’d like to have another try.”
“Exactly.”
“Okay, so what are we doing this time?”
“How about that?” Buddy pointed at a discarded fruit juice carton that lay at their feet.
Mary picked it up; she turned to Buddy. “Where?”
“In the middle.”
Mindful of Angela and Alex looking in her direction, Mary walked beneath the shelter until she came to its approximate centre. She carefully placed the spent Vimto carton on the paving flag and started to back away, keeping her eyes on it until she rejoined the others by the wall. “Are you all looking at it?”
Tom said, “Yes, Mary. We’re both fixated on the piece of litter.”
“Right then, on the count of three, everyone look away. One, two, three.”
The three schoolchildren averted their eyes. Buddy was the first to look back. “Abracadabra.”
Mary’s and Tom’s heads spun.
The carton had returned to its original position.
“So what does that mean?” Buddy said.
Tom stooped to collect the juice carton and turned to them. “It means we try something else. Come on.”
They followed him beneath the shelter.
“Now then,” Tom said, standing in the spot where Mary had placed the carton, “if your piece of road actually did linger, even if it was only for a moment, I think it had nothing to do with me at all. I think that because the idea was fresh, something new that you’d just thought of, you were probably concentrating harder than you realised. I reckon whatever happened happened because of you and you alone. I was completely unaware of what you were doing, and our recent experiment shows that our mere presence is not enough.”
“So you’re saying we just have to concentrate really hard?” Buddy asked.
“I’m saying that there’s more to it than simply keeping something in sight. In fact, I don’t think keeping something in sight really counts for much in this world. As Mary says, everything’s wrong here.”
Mary gave a look of surprise and then one of gratitude as Tom acknowledged her theory.
“Certainly the things that we see have a tendency to change; for example, the way we keep ending up at the summit. One minute you’re in one place, then whoosh, it’s Bracton Hill time all over again.” He held the carton aloft like a prize. “Maybe it’s more a case of believing that things are normal. That’s what I reckon happened with you, Mary. I think you were so convinced that another person would make all the difference, that you made the difference yourself.”
“So we just have to believe that the world follows its regular patterns,” Mary said.
“It might just be wishful thinking, but hey, it’s worth a go.”
“So put the carton down and let’s get on with it,” Buddy said.
From the corner of her eye, Mary noticed Angela and Alex walking backwards across the playground, keeping the shelter in their sights, and she felt as if she was part of an amateur stage group with an audience of two. Neither Tom nor Buddy paid the onlookers any attention.
“Just a minute,” Tom said, “I want us all to do the same thing. Mary, when you did your little experiment with the tarmac, what were you thinking about when you looked away?”
“Just that I hoped it would work.”
“Okay, then that’s what we’ll all think.” Tom placed the carton on the paving flag and stepped to one side. Buddy and Mary watched it, fascinated.
“Now then. On three, look elsewhere, but picture the carton where it is. Believe that cartons don’t move on their own accord. And cross your fingers, too. Ready? Here we go: one, two, three.”
By coincidence, all three looked down at the pavement, thus missing the mixed expression of fear and wonder as it dawned on Alex’s face.
4
To complete the illusion that they were doing some obscure field research, Alex made notes in the back of Angela’s Maths book. Without thinking of its poor taste, he had been doodling a Hangman: he had the gallows, the noose, the head, and all the vowels. So far, it spelled: E O E E _.
“It seems a strange place for a gang’s hangout,” Angela commented.
“I guess.” Alex turned to her; she had left her bag by the grass verge opposite the gymnasium and was busy making notes of some kind herself. “You know, we never really thought of it that way. In fact, I don’t think we considered ourselves a gang until towards the end, when we started to realise that we weren’t all that good for one another.”
Angela looked up from her book. “Well whatever you called yourselves, it’s still an odd place to hang out. There’s nothing to do.”
Alex smiled. “Well, as a matter of fact, there was plenty. Our hanging out was just playing. In the summer, we used to spend a lot of time playing on the fields, sometimes down by the pond.” Her eyes widened and he laughed. “If you think that was dangerous, you really don’t want to hear about everything we got up to. Especially at Old Man Heaton’s place.” Alex pointed to the run of windows that stretched from the main doors to the gym. “You see those windows there? You see the distance between that thin strip of brick and the concrete below?”
Angela nodded, already knowing what he was going to say. The land beneath the ledge gradually fell away until it reached the edge of the playground, where a slope fell sharply down to a narrow path that led alongside the gym. The drop from the ledge to hard concrete was the height of a grown man. “One of our favourite games – in fact it was almost a ritual – was shimmying along that ledge.”
“Did anyone ever fall off?”
“Everyone, at one time or another. It’s a miracle no one broke anything.”
Angela made a loud hissing noise through her teeth, signalling part agreement and amazement. “So apart from beating up kids you didn’t take a shine to, and hanging off the edge of the school, what else did you used to do here?” She gestured towards the old shelter.
“Meet, mainly. Mary’s, Tom’s, and my parents thought Buddy was a bad influence, so after a while we stopped telling them who we were playing with, and on a Friday we would all just agree to meet here at some time over the weekend.”
“Do you mind if I ask what happened to turn you all against that little boy?”
“I don’t mind you asking, but I’m afraid I don’t have a very good answer. He showed up one Saturday morning, an ornithology book sticking out of his back pocket and nothing on his mind but a quiet stroll down the woods, maybe to climb some trees – who knows? There were plenty of good tree houses around this part of the woods back then.”
“Or maybe he was doing some bird spotting.”
Alex looked at her with surprise and admiration. “Would you believe I never thought of that? Anyway, he just chose the wrong day to be there. The summer holidays were coming to an end and we were all in a foul mood because of it. Truth be known, the last few weeks of that holiday had become a little much. We’d all had enough of each other’s company. Everyone kept fighting over nothing, and David walked right into the middle of that. And so instead of us all tearing strips off each other, we thought we’d tear some off him. Somebody took his magazine – I honestly don’t remember which one of us it was – and started teasing him with it. The problem was, he wasn’t used to being picked on, and he didn’t know how to roll with it. He just started crying, which made us meaner than ever. We s
tarted slapping him around to stop him crying, because it was making us nervous, and you could say the slapping went too far. It became out and out hitting. When he finally stopped crying, we rewarded his good sense by burning his magazine.” Alex lowered his eyes and folded his arms; he took a few paces towards the shelter and away from Angela. “Yep, we were a pleasant bunch.”
Behind them, familiar stirrings drifted across the still and warm air: chairs scraping, doors slamming. As the sounds slowly gathered in volume, Alex desperately scanned the old shelter, tracing its posts and jagged canopy, hoping to see whatever it was that Mary had seen when she had painted her weird picture: some clue as to its hidden power. If there was a time for him to discover such a thing, then now, having recited the old gang’s lowest moment, was it. But all he saw was the shelter and nothing more.
Then something flickered in the corner of his eye.
Alex turned to it, expecting a bird or a butterfly. He found himself staring into space, specifically, the space at the end of the wall that ran alongside the playing field. Whatever had caught his eye had disappeared – if there had been anything at all.
Oh yes, there had been something there. In that space, I saw…
What? What was it?
No sooner had he articulated the question, did his visual memory seize up, erasing whatever was forming there.
And there was something forming, wasn’t there?
Something, yes.
He told himself to stop concentrating, to just let it come – the idea that he should stop trying to concentrate on something when he didn’t even know what he was supposed to be concentrating on felt absurd, but he tried all the same. Slowly, like watching a Polaroid photograph develop, an image began to form. It was grainy and black, a thin haze of abstract movement; three indistinct shapes – barely outlines – shimmered there, at the end of the wall. Seeing the shapes gather in his mind, it felt as if he could fool himself into believing that he was actually seeing them again right now, right there in front of him.
The shapes came together, seemed to move together, and they grew.
Right there in front of him.
Alex watched, his mouth hanging open. He pointed at the wall and said, “Do you see…?” But his voice sounded muffled, and talking seemed such a bother, and so he didn’t complete his question. He couldn’t tell, and really didn’t care, if Angela had paid any attention to it. He watched the shapes move across the shelter – they were now recognisably human in form – and arrange themselves in a position that was all too familiar. One leant against a post; one stood either rubbing its chin, or smoking; and one shrunk down to the floor. The previous night’s adventures in the Townsends’ garage came back to him in a hurry; he saw Mary’s last painting and as soon as he thought of it, he visualised it superimposed upon the scene unfolding before him.
Alex stood very still, plotting the coordinates. The yellow cagoule matched up with the figure leaning against the post; the smouldering cigarette hovered above the figure that was no longer rubbing its chin and was now definitely smoking; and the baseball cap was a perfect fit. All that was missing was the bicycle wheel.
And its owner.
Alex blinked, and the shapes were still there.
He rubbed his eyes, and the shapes were still there.
He closed his eyes and held them closed as he counted aloud from one to ten, then he opened them.
The shapes were still there, and they were moving again.
They were coming closer.
5
The marks in the back of Angela’s History exercise book were illegible. They occupied a slender border between doodles and words, a place created by letters piled repeatedly upon themselves until any intended meaning is forever lost. ‘Writing in place’ she called it, and it was an old habit: something she did when she was nervous.
As the sound of the school gearing up for break time grew louder, she heard Alex ask if she saw something. She closed the book and looked up, automatically asking What?
Alex was gaping at the wall at the foot of the playing field. She followed his gaze as it panned across to the shelter itself, and searched for what he was looking at. So far as she could tell, there was nothing there.
Maybe he’s seen a squirrel, she thought, or a rabbit.
Angela approached him, and realised that whatever he was seeing, it was no woodland creature. Alex wore an utterly blank expression, a parody of stupidity: his mouth hung open, his eyebrows were raised in an almost comic expression of disbelief, and his entire body slumped forward, barely able to support itself. His eyes, however, looked frightened. Terrified, in fact.
Words appeared and organised themselves into neat little phrases like, What is it? What can you see? Is it David? but they remained locked in held breath as she waited for Alex to explain.
Angela waited.
From behind her, the scraping of chairs became a clattering, and slamming doors seemed to cascade one after another. And then the school bell rang and the inner workings of St Vincent’s groaned into life; the main doors squealed open, amplifying the sound. Alex turned to her, his facial expression now one of confusion, making the fear in his eyes seem even more desperate.
“What is it?” she said.
Alex leaped away from her, backing up and snapping his head from right to left. “What the-?”
“What is it?”
Alex walked backwards, circling around to the grass verge; he tripped onto the grass and scrambled to his feet, all the while keeping his eyes locked on the empty middle distance. At last he stopped, his hands held before his chest in a ‘don’t shoot’ pose. “Stop. Stop.” He peered, examining something. “Are those…birds?”
“Are what birds?” she nearly screamed.
People were flooding into the playground, some drawing close. Angela heard someone say Alex’s name, and then closely following that, laughter. She stepped onto the grass and slowly approached him. “Alex. This is Angela. Everything’s alright. Can you hear me?”
For a moment, confusion twisted his features harder than ever, then they relaxed. Their eyes met.
“Angela?”
“Yes, it’s me. Alex, are you okay?”
Alex straightened up and self-consciously lowered his hands. “Yes. Fine.” His eyes kept fluttering from side-to-side.
“What did you see?”
Alex took a deep breath. “I think I dropped your exercise book.”
“That doesn’t matter. Alex, what did you see?”
“Them.”
“Them? Who?” But even as she said the words, she knew.
“The rest of the gang. Only I couldn’t see their faces.” He frowned. “They were made out of birds. Millions of birds. Buddy told me about them.”
“How did you know it was them? Did they say anything?”
“I just knew. It was like Mary’s painting.”
“What painting?”
“The last one she did. They didn’t need to speak. I think they were trying to, just then…” His eyes did that shifty, side-to-side flutter. “Is that right?”
Angela watched him stare at nothing – a close-up nothing now.
“They were, but I can’t hear them. They keep fading in and out.”
“Can you see Tom?”
For the first time since asking him if he saw something, she felt Alex was really looking at her, that he could actually see her at last.
“Angela. I can see all three of them, I know I can. But it doesn’t make any sense. They’re just birds. Three tangles of birds, all flocking together. Millions and millions of them, swooping and changing.”
“I don’t know what you mean.”
“I don’t know what I mean either, they’re just there. And then they’re not.”
“Are they there now?”
Angela watched Alex look to either side of her, and saw him notice the gathering crowd for the first time; the terror in his eyes withdrew, allowing a more usual concern and awareness to take its pla
ce. “Angela, I’ve got to go.” He leant in towards her. “Are you coming?”
She stared at him, feeling the eyes of the gathering heavy on her back. Her cheeks burned. “Is Tom with you now?” she whispered.
Alex looked all around him, and then slowly shook his head. “They’ve gone. I’m sorry.”
Angela reopened her exercise book, scribbled something, and then tore out a page. She handed it to Alex. “My phone number. Call me tonight. I want to know more about what you saw.”
“Okay. Well, if you’re sure. I’ve got to go.” He turned and ran past the gym, its window glimmering his reflection as he went.
Angela watched him go and marvelled that, despite this being the strangest day she could remember, her sense of detachment had lifted. She looked for and found her bag and then, with no idea of where she was going, walked through the gawpers, her eyes locked on the distance.
6
Things were quieter and cooler in the shade down by the side of the gym, and Alex forced himself to stop running. Running was something desperate people did, people who had lost their minds.
People who were thinking about doing something stupid.
He walked beneath the fire escape, past the bins, past smokers’ corner, emerging once more into the stark and brilliant sunshine. The day had taken on a stark intensity. From either side, the trees swelled and rustled; the neat rows of cars gleamed and glinted; and the road seemed wider, rising up to meet him. He felt like he was floating towards the gates, not walking to them. Between the sensory information coming in and the inner person looking out, distance grew. His only thought was of Helen. The need to talk to her, to tell her everything from the police to the strange bird-things in the playground, was unbearable. As he walked, he tried to rationalise the situation. It would be early evening before he got the chance to call her, and probably another hour or so after that before they could meet. That was a long time to feel this frantic – before he met her, he needed to calm down.
If she’ll meet me, that is. She’s always got homework, remember?