by Paul Roscoe
For a small period of time, no one said anything – but the shared quiet communicated plenty. Five years, Mary found herself thinking, five years ago and already that morning feels like it happened in another lifetime. At last, Tom spoke:
“Well, I think we need to find out why your Art teacher felt compelled to hug your painting and run away.”
“So let’s find him,” Buddy said.
Alex stared at him. “That’s all very well and good, but how? He’s probably gone home.”
“Damn,” said Mary.
“Boys and girls,” Buddy said, the edges of his mouth gradually curling upwards, “are none of you familiar with the modern miracle known as ‘the phone book’?” He gestured towards the empty house. “Mary, after you.”
2
As they turned into Richmond Grove, Buddy’s jaws fell open.
“What is it?” Alex asked.
“I can’t believe it.”
Buddy goggled at the house hidden behind the overgrown hedges. There was nothing special about it; indeed, apart from its slightly run down look – a small section of guttering was missing, the windows were grimy, and the paintwork was in need of repair – it was indistinguishable from its stone-clad neighbours.
“I mean, I knew we were in the same area and everything, but this doesn’t make any sense.” He pointed at the building beyond the car they all recognised. “That’s Mr Ermey’s house?”
“Apparently so,” Mary said. “What’s the big deal?”
Buddy folded his arms across his chest, still staring at the house as if he could will it to be somewhere else, or something else. “I’ve been here before, that’s all.” He laughed. “And not that long ago, either.”
“When?” Tom asked.
“Saturday.”
Mary’s eyes grew wide.
“Really?” Alex remarked. “This is where that party was?”
Buddy nodded, his gaze remaining on the nondescript, suburban property that stood before him. It was smaller than it looked from the inside. The ground floor had consisted of a living room, a dining room, and a kitchen, maybe there’d been a toilet, and maybe even a utility room, he wasn’t sure. He was even less certain of the upper rooms, having only visited the bathroom and the master bedroom. Blue towels. He remembered the dark blue towels. And the bedroom with all the…
All the sodding birds.
Buddy’s tongue was dry. It was as if a light had suddenly been turned on in a dark and unfamiliar room, one in which he had been inching his way, tripping over shapes and jumping at shadows. A mental thread spun itself from the Sunday morning come-down with Lisa, starting in the bird bedroom, weaving its way through the strange bird-thing encounter in the park, and finally tying itself around the thing the two cops had talked about: Derek Ermey, the bird spotter. Derek, David...too close, and no longer a coincidence.
Had he been sitting on the key to this whole mess all along? Was the place where he’d slept so important?
Mary turned to him and spoke in a voice both gentle and calm, “Buddy, are you saying that the party you crashed was at Mr Ermey’s house?”
“It looks that way.” Buddy regarded her; her hair hung down at either side of her face, making her complexion paler than ever. “He wasn’t there, if that’s any help.”
Mary placed her hands on her hips and made a huffing sound.
Without realising he was going to say anything more, Buddy blurted out, “I guess he’s our bird spotter.”
“Who?” Mary asked.
“Ermey. His bedroom’s covered with paintings of birds.”
Realisation spread across the other boys’ faces; Mary simply stared at Buddy, hands still on hips. She was trying to remember if she had ever seen any of Mr Ermey’s paintings. There had been some small demonstrations of technique, nothing more than studies, really, and even they were never fully completed. She pictured her old classroom, saw the ramshackle store cupboard over in the corner, and mentally explored it, looking for examples of Mr Ermey’s own hand. She could visualise the still life bric-a-brac, an old green hat, a broken lampshade, an antique telephone, a log, but she couldn’t call to mind any non-pupil painting. For the first time, it occurred to her how strange it was to be taught a subject by someone who had never actually demonstrated their own relevant skills. She supposed Mr Ermey didn’t have to prove anything, that he could teach Art adequately without setting an example, but still, she wondered why he had never revealed his work.
Maybe he did, Mary thought, but a long time ago, when he was a new teacher and full of enthusiasm. Maybe something happened to change his mind about ever bothering again. She thought about the brittle laughter of the playground, the hollow shouts and yells, the empty spaces where she used to wander, and then she thought about bringing a personal interest – something really special – into that world. Not such a great idea.
Tom cleared his throat. “Now that we’re here, are we going to pay our birdman a visit?”
Although no one had suggested it, the four of them stood together in the same tight circle they had formed in Mary’s house. Momentarily, each was lost in their private reflection on events that, on the surface at least, bore little relevance to the present situation:
Alex thought of his childhood visits to Bracton Hill with his family; specifically, he recalled the cheese and tomato sandwiches his mother always packed. They were wrapped in the wax paper the loaf itself came in – she always saved the paper for packed lunches. Chasing this was the image of Craig Anderson, crying in the brilliant sunshine of a Games lesson, his tears obscene in the bright sun. The two images collided, creating a single emotion, that of everything he knew being torn away.
Buddy saw himself making the sign of the cross in school assembly, and remembered how comforting it had felt, as comforting as his time with Lisa had been later that day. On this memory’s heels came the whole standoff between Pete and Daniel, played at high speed. He had been so proud of Lisa, of how kind and faithful she had been. At that moment, he had been in awe of her. Realising this, Buddy suddenly felt a burning sympathy for Tom for having to deal with being pulled away from Angela. It was true that none of them seemed as upset as they should be, but Tom was lonely in a way he could only imagine.
Tom thought of Angela, of course. He thought of her silently grieving in her bedroom, and of how he missed what he once considered her endless chatter. He imagined another boy now in that room with her (specifically, he visualised Craig Anderson), and knew that, in time, that other boy, whoever he was, would be able to make her laugh the way he had done. It was awful, but undeniable. Jealousy swelled up inside him, swelled until it burst – its tattered remains evaporating into a hollow feeling he had no use for. He set it aside. Tom stared at his three oldest friends and was glad to feel a comfortable sense of companionship. It wasn’t much, but given the circumstances, he thought it was far better than nothing at all.
In Mary’s thoughts, a giant spider descended from the ceiling and gobbled up the light. A snake emerged, slithering across the wall; this morphed into the head of an old man with a flat cap, who in turn changed into a swan. Mrs Broughton making the sign of the cross suddenly replaced her father’s shadow puppets. Her lips were moving, soundlessly explaining her personal difficulty in finding a comfortable sleeping position for her arms. It occurred to her that her primary school teacher had poor circulation. In turn, this thought re-summoned the endless movement of her father’s hands, casting their animal shapes against her bedroom wall.
His hands made a bird.
“Yes,” she said, breaking the silence. “Let’s do it.” Knowing that they would wait for her to move first anyway, Mary broke the little circle and started towards Mr Ermey’s house.
Chapter Seventeen
1
When the door was finally answered, her first thought was that it was her father standing there, doing another puppet show. The man held one hand against the sun, casting a black, writhing spider over the left side of his
face. He squinted, his lids almost closed.
*
For a moment, Tom thought he saw his father, only in his hand he held the stolen bottle of pills from the bathroom cabinet.
*
Buddy saw Pete, only a much taller version. It wasn’t a good look for him, but he couldn’t figure out why. Then he got it. It was Pete’s head – that was elongated too. A hall-of-mirrors-Pete stood in the doorway, one hand shielding his closed eyes from the sun. In the back of Buddy’s throat, a scream gathered.
*
At first Alex didn’t recognise the man at the door, but the outheld magazine was identification enough: a kestrel was on the cover. Alex looked Derek Ermey up and down, trying to get the size of the man, trying to see what a child-molesting murderer looked like in the flesh. There seemed to be little in the way of memorable features – the man had a plain, open-looking face, and possibly the worst shaving rash he’d ever seen – but what was he expecting? Charles Manson? Alex clenched his fists.
*
All four members of the old gang caught their breath as the figure at the door blinked against the light. Slowly, he opened his eyes.
And for an immeasurable portion of time, the present floated gently away.
*
Their world was grey and filmy and filled with the sharp tang of bleach and dust. Shapes appeared, defined by colour and movement. Then perspective fought to establish itself, to forge order in the void.
From a distance they watched a group of young children (too young, was the shared sentiment) wrestle a smaller child – possibly a boy – to the ground. The group kicked and spat at him. One tore something from the victim’s pocket and set it alight. The same member of the group jabbed the item – obviously a newspaper or magazine, from the way it caught – into the little boy’s face. The screams were piercing, the sobbing unbearable. More kicking and spitting followed. A dark patch spread at the little boy’s crotch and his tears diminished in terror and shame. As if this was an agreed signal, the gang seemed to lose interest in their plaything, and with a few barely audible threats and jeers, they disappeared.
Each of the old gang felt the coarse grain of a wooden pole in their hands, and each seemed to lean against it in their own way. Looking down, they saw a mop and bucket. The floor was covered with a speckled, dark blue linoleum. It glistened with moisture. The walls were peeling, and the chemical smell became more pronounced now that it had an identifiable source. To the left, a row of stainless steel sinks ran beneath a wide mirror; small elements of graffiti adorned the walls and the green toilet stalls to the right.
Alex, Buddy, Mary, and Tom, no longer conscious of each other, and no longer conscious of themselves as individuals existing apart from this moment, approached the window. They moved as one because they were one, and always had been. Using a yellow rag, they rubbed away at the windowpane’s coating of congealed dust. The clean patch revealed a playground, lined with a shallow concrete wall. At its far end stood a disused shelter of some kind, its roofing buckled and missing in places. Underneath the shelter laid the child. A boy.
He was not moving.
The grain from the mop twisted and pressed into their palms as a decision formed, namely that, No one had to know how long they had been standing there, just watching. With that understood, things started to move faster. The room spun around to reveal a door, through which they swiftly exited. A long, gloomy corridor opened up, and they raced along, past the empty rows of coat hooks. A hard left led to a pair of heavy doors and, with a practiced move, each of the old gang threw the thick bolts at the top and bottom. They produced a large key from deep overall pockets, and with a twist and a pull, bright sunshine spilled into the dismal space. They leapt through it as one, bounding down the stairs and out into the hot day.
The boy lay curled into a foetal position, the same one he had adopted to shield himself as best he could. He wore blue trousers and a faded, red teeshirt. His hair, brown and thick as straw, made his head look too big for his shoulders. They didn’t recognise the boy, which meant he didn’t go to this school. From his size, he was probably too young, probably still at primary school. Two big, bloodshot eyes looked out from behind grazed arms.
“Are you alright?”
Despite everything, the boy managed to nod.
For a long time nothing happened. The boy remained on the ground, the sun kept shining, the charred remains of a magazine flapped in the breeze, and the world resounded with the sound of someone breathing heavily. Then the same voice spoke again:
“Right. I’ll go and get help, okay? I’ll call an ambulance. I’m going to have to go inside, but I’ll be back before you know it.”
The boy’s eyes burned with fear and his lips trembled, as if he was about to say something, but then the world spun on its axis, away from the boy, making a blur of the grass verge, of the gymnasium. The school building drew near. Back in the darkness of the building, the gang reached an office marked ‘Secretary’ and, pausing to extract another key from their overalls, unlocked the door. The office was an untidy room of memos and calendars, dominated by an enormous photocopier on the left and a cluster of pigeonholes beneath the window on the right. Like the girls’ toilets, the room looked out upon the playground. The old gang shimmied through the narrow space between copier and filing system, and then edged around the sizable desk at the far end of the room.
As a hand grabbed the telephone, there was movement in the playground: another shape, larger than before. Alone.
The hand froze.
The view spun back to the window and the thing that was wrong with this picture was so glaring, so obvious, that they looked behind it, and before it, to one side of it, and to the other. Then their inspection grew wider, as if they thought their initial appraisal was faulty. From the empty space beneath the old shelter, to the empty space across the playground, and from the empty space on the field, to the empty spaces in the woods beyond, they checked and checked and checked the thing they already knew:
One, the boy was gone.
Two, the boy was missing.
Three, the boy was nowhere to be seen.
The hand slowly replaced the handset in its cradle, and then it carefully repositioned the unit, setting it at the exact same angle as before. Backing away from the window, still scanning the diminishing view as if it might yield a different result, the old gang quietly exited the secretary’s office and returned to the playground.
A few drops of blood had soaked into the faded tarmac where the boy had been, but apart from the charred remains of his magazine, it was as if he had never been there. A hand picked up the magazine and a worn leather shoe kicked at the remaining ashes, turning them to dust.
The view took in one final panorama of the playground, lingering slightly on the woods that seemed to be watching, then headed back to the main entrance. The old gang pulled at the weighty door, taking time to note how it leaned off its hinges slightly, how part of it dragged, creating a worn arc across three floor tiles; they worked the bolts back into place and the world fell into shadow.
*
Eventually the darkness withdrew, revealing an old, tired-looking man stooping in the doorway, his hand raised to the sun, his eyes beginning to open.
Mr Ermey looked both relieved and terrified.
Chapter Eighteen
1
Mr Ermey opened his eyes.
Standing before him were four teenagers he felt he knew as well as they knew themselves. But never better than, he added. No, that would be a foolish mistake. Their clothes, so smart and formal, made them look older, Buddy especially. Mary, however, had always seemed beyond her years.
And she’s always suited black.
The clothes had thrown him, he saw that now. Of course, these were the strangers that he had noticed standing by Mary’s coffin – who else? And they had obviously seen him, because that was why they were here.
So this four actually made it here, old man. You were right.
Hold on: you made it! You’re here! Don’t make me go through all this again…
The four of them stood there. And stayed there. As he looked at his strange yet oh-so-familiar teenage visitors, Mr Ermey felt as if he was sinking into them, that the line between they and he had been violated and forever blurred. So here’s the old gang, he thought. That’s what they call themselves.
“That’s what we call ourselves,” a voice corrected.
The voice was his.
He started to think about Mary’s painting falling from his hands, and of the pandemonium that ensued as it shattered into its many pieces. He mentally retraced that morning’s desperate escape into the bright sunshine, his shoes slippery on the dry pavement, his car abandoned at the roadside. Panic jolted him as he remembered searching frantically for his keys, checking his rucksack for his Polaroid camera as he slowly approached the…
He stared into Mary’s unseeing eyes.
…as she slowly approached the old shelter. It was a Saturday morning, full of brilliant sunshine and the eternity of youth – recalling those nothing days that seemed to stretch out forever. I was fumbling with the camera, lining up a shot, and there was a newspaper or a magazine or a key ring in the shape of a Volkswagen Beetle.
Mr Ermey reached into a pocket and closed his hand around the warm metal of his keys. He ran his thumb along the smooth edge of the novelty key ring that had lost its paint many years before, and looked at his car, parked in the drive behind his guests. In the back of his mind, he heard the spit and scratch of the gravel beneath the wheels – that familiar and comforting sound that announced ‘home again’ after a busy day. He saw hands tugging gently on the handles; saw fingers sliding up the panes, checking the seals were snug; saw the bottle of whiskey being plucked from the box; and saw the hand on the light switch as he exited the dry larder.