The Red Road

by Stephen Sweeney

  Initially, I expected both my parents to be annoyed that I was once again being made to return home when I should be out from under their feet. I was surprised then to see the horror on their faces when they arrived to pick me up. My mother even hugged me tightly as she exited the car. They wanted to know if I was okay and if I had seen anything. They were appalled to discover that I had been one of the first to do so, my mother whisking me into the car and setting off as quickly as possible. Even so, I couldn’t help but feel that it would still not be a good enough reason for me to leave St Christopher’s before I completed my A-Levels. I gave it only a couple of days for the shock to pass before they would discuss my possible return to the school, should it ever reopen. I had a feeling that this time it might not.

  ~ ~ ~

  My mother and father had meetings and all kinds of other things going on the first week I returned to Baconsdale, and so they had little choice but to leave me at home on my own. They would insist that I spend as much time with Rob as possible, so that I wouldn’t destroy the house. I looked on it in a different way, as a test of how I would cope at home the following year.

  For the most part, I did okay. I did once succeed in burning baked beans when I left them too long on the hob. I had been distracted by a film preview show on Sky Movies, featuring an intriguing-looking movie called Basic Instinct, which was apparently whipping up a storm in America. I also broke various things around the house on occasion. Small things though, luckily. I tidied up quickly after myself in all instances. I even managed to mend a door handle that had come loose, raiding the garage for a screwdriver to do so.

  After the first few days, my parents set me tasks, such as cleaning and doing the odd spot of food shopping. Mostly this was for milk and bread, the milk floats around our way not being able to traverse the roads that were still thick with ice and snow. The gritters had come nowhere near us.

  The strangest thing then happened to me in the second week. I was visited by the goblins.

  At home.

  That had never happened before, and it startled me that the location of my dream had shifted to match that of where I was staying in Surrey. It scared me quite a bit, too, as it meant that the goblins were capable of pursuing me almost as much in real life as they did in my dreams.

  In the dream, I found myself waking up in my own bedroom. The door was open. The upstairs landing of the house was gone, however, the door leading into a corridor that went elsewhere. I got out of bed and wandered into the corridor, discovering it to be a match for the one I would normally materialise in during my encounters with the goblins; sterile and mute, plain walls, floor and ceiling, locked doors on the left-hand side, impenetrable windows to the right. The shadows of the goblins could be seen at the far end, around the bend, though here they appeared to be preoccupied. There was choking, sobbing, and evil-sounding cackles coming from around the corner. I made to return to my bedroom, but it had vanished, replaced by a dead end.

  I walked the length of the corridor for the first time, rounding the corner and finding myself in my parents’ bedroom. Several of the goblins were there, dismembering my father, who they had dragged onto the floor, staining the cream white carpet a dark crimson with his blood. He was dead already, his eyes staring blankly up at the ceiling. The choking was coming from the bed, where a number of the other creatures were amusing themselves by disembowelling my mother. She was being held there as they ripped out her entrails, thrashing and choking on her own blood, like John Hurt in Alien.

  “Joseph ... Joseph ... Joseph,” I thought I could hear her saying between the chokes.

  The goblins cackled with glee as they continued their work, quite aware that I was watching from the doorway and knowing that I could do nothing to stop them. One of them picked up my father’s severed arm, bending his finger into a V shape and waving it at me.

  “You’re next,” it laughed in a scratchy, throaty voice. “Cut your throat, we will,” it added, drawing a thin, bony finger across its own.

  I had never heard them speak before and knew in the back of my mind that that wasn’t a good thing. I only wanted to wake up.

  I did so, finding myself standing in my parents’ bedroom, the goblins gone, the scene one of normality. The lights were on, and my mother and father were watching me from their bed, softly saying my name. It was the first time they had seen me sleepwalk. I had never told them about the incidents at school in the past.

  They walked me back to my bed, making sure I was settled in and comfortable before returning to their own bedroom. I didn’t sleep.

  ~ ~ ~

  I told them that it was probably a reaction to being dragged out of school at such a random point, my mind struggling to cope with the change to its regular schedule, as well as having to cope with everything else that was going on. They hadn’t asked any other questions. Even so, I noticed after the incident that they took turns working from home, writing their reports and doing other duties that the job demanded of them. Initially, they seemed both a little put out by this, but eventually they grew to enjoy the lack of a commute, as well as the chance to stay in bed a little longer. I always thought that my parents worked too hard.

  “If you worked from home a little more often or maybe even part-time, then you could get another cat,” I told my mother one evening, while she was preparing dinner.

  “Oh, I’d love to have another cat,” she said, her face and voice softening at the thought. “But I can’t; I’m not here enough, and it’s too cruel to keep animals if you’re not home all the time.”

  “They can cope,” I said. “As long as they have a cat flap and food.”

  My mother shook her head. “No. They need company. It’s even worse if you have a dog. The Turners have a dog that they leave on its own all day, except for the walker that comes at lunchtime. I couldn’t do that; it wouldn’t be fair. The poor thing must wonder every day if he’s been abandoned.”

  I rarely saw my mother this way, acting a little more human. She was always stern and serious, blunt and to the point, so career-focused that I sometimes wondered if she had ever lived a real day in her whole life. Both she and my father truly were two people who lived to work. Craig Priest’s accusation of my being a mistake and an unwanted child fluttered into my mind a couple of times during those first two weeks, as I wondered if I was something of an inconvenience to them. But I was probably winding myself up needlessly. No more badmouthing would come from Craig Priest again. I felt oddly bad about that. Everyone wants to silence a bully, just not like that.

  “I’ve decided what I want to be when I leave school,” I then told her.

  “Oh? What?” my mother asked, sounding quite interested.

  “A trader, at a bank.”

  She stood there looking at me for a moment, to see whether I was being serious. I needed no effort to keep my expression deadpan. “You know that is very hard work, don’t you?” she asked.

  “Yes, I know,” I said. “But the rewards are worth it.”

  “And what rewards would those be?” Her tone was one of intrigue, but with a trace of condescension.

  “Big bonuses, big houses, lots of fast cars. I’ve heard most of them have stopped doing it by the time they’re thirty-five, too, and are retired. You can do whatever you want with your life after that,” I shrugged.

  My mother almost threw her head back as she laughed. “Only one of those is true.”

  “The money?” I asked. It led to all the other things, after all.

  “The quitting before they’re thirty-five.”

  “No, not quitting,” I said. “Retiring.”

  My mother laughed even harder. “Joseph, very few of them make it to thirty-five, and if they do, they don’t finish working there because they’re comfortable and ready to retire rich. It’s because they’re burned out from the work, and they can’t do it any more.”

  “Yeah ... but they will have made a lot of money,” I said.

  “Not necessary,” she s
aid. She smiled warmly now, without mocking me. “What else have you heard?”

  “Champagne parties—”

  My mother almost dropped the packet of rice she was attempting to open, needing to put it down on the worktop and cover her mouth from the giggles. “Go on?” she beamed.

  “Ex-models as wives ...?” I ventured.

  “Gold diggers, more likely.”

  I got the feeling that I had been grossly misled by the articles I had read in the men’s magazines. “I read about it in newspapers and magazines,” I told her.

  “Joseph,” my mother said, still wearing a warm smile, “you have to remember that while that might be true for some, it won’t be true for everyone. There will be some that will rake in millions every year, but there will also be many others that will have to make do with a lot less, peaking at eighty or ninety thousand a year, including the bonus. I’m not saying that’s not a lot, but it’s a long way away from the millions.

  “You need to keep in mind that people in the same job can be waged at different increments. Take professional footballers. The ones that play for the big clubs can earn upwards of ten thousand per week. The ones that play for the smaller clubs see only a few thousand per month. The same is true in banking.”

  “Okay, sure,” I said. “But you just have to work your way up.”

  “Yes. Yes, you do. It’s a very hard climb though, Joseph, and most fail. I’m not trying to put you off, but keep in mind that working seventy-hour weeks—”

  “What?” Had she just said seventy hours? How was that even possible?

  “Seventy-hour weeks,” my mother repeated. “Fourteen-hour days. Five in the morning until seven or eight at night, and that doesn’t take into account getting to and from the office. It could take over an hour, door to door. That’s an extra two hours of your day gone. That’s sixteen hours dedicated to your job. And then you have to find time to eat and sleep. The solution for most is to simply live near the office. Can you see where the burn out comes from?”

  “Oh,” was all I managed to say.

  “Still want to do it?”

  I steeled myself. I could do this. There was no harm in setting your sights high. “Yes,” I said. “I’m sure I’ll get used to it.”

  “Okay,” my mother said, and began measuring out the rice into a pot.

  “And when I’m done, I’ll buy you and Dad a holiday home in the Mediterranean,” I said.

  My mother smiled at me then, but said nothing else.

  Dave called me towards the end of the second week. Sam had been staying with him in North London and wanted to know if Rob and I fancied joining them for the weekend. We didn’t have a specific agenda, but I knew we would find something to keep ourselves occupied.

  ~ ~ ~

  “Four for Basic Instinct?” Dave said.

  I tried not to hear the upwards inflection at the end of Dave’s sentence. It reminded me of how Rob had done a similar thing in the pubs back in Surrey, the previous week. It was almost as if he was asking the teller if it was the right film for us.

  “Um ... that film’s not out until May,” the teller said. “And you’re clearly not old enough, anyway.”

  “Yes, we are,” Dave said.

  “How old are you?”

  “Eighteen,” Dave answered, far too quickly and automatically.

  I tried not to look over to the Rob, Baz and Sam, who were hanging back, making out that they were more interested in the poster advertising the upcoming Batman Returns, rather than the prospects of full-frontal nudity, courtesy of Sharon Stone.

  “Well, how about ...” Dave scanned the listings board above. “Betty Blue?”

  The teller suppressed a sigh. “Do you have any ID?” he asked.

  Dave and I provided him with our IDs, once again far too hastily. The teller took one glance at the pair of laminated cards before returning them.

  “These are fake,” he said. “I see these ones all the time, guys. Sorry,” he added, as we opened our mouths to contest the assertion.

  “Oh, come on,” Dave started pleading. “We’ll sit at the back, out of the way, and won’t make any noise.”

  “Sorry, no,” the teller said. “You’re under age.”

  “But we’re eighteen!” Dave insisted. “If we were under eighteen, we’d still be at school.”

  “You can leave school at sixteen,” the teller reminded us as what looked like his manager, who had been watching from the other end of the counter, came over to join him. “We’d get in trouble with the police if we let you in. You can’t see any film classified as eighteen. You look about fifteen or sixteen to me, so I can let you in to any of those.”

  The manager fixed us with a stare that said that we should give up this fight.

  “For fuck’s sake,” Dave muttered.

  I could have told him that there was absolutely zero chance that Basic Instinct might be being shown earlier. The UK always seemed to get films several months after they were released in the US, sometimes up to a year after.

  “Dave, let’s just watch one of the others,” I suggested.

  “If you boys are interested,” the cinema manager started to offer, “I can get you into the advanced preview showing of The Lawnmower Man, starting in the next hour. It’s a science fiction thriller, just released in America. Mind blowing special effects. Won’t be out here until June, so you’ll be getting to see it early.”

  It seemed I was wrong; sometimes the UK did get films at the same time as the US. Shame it wasn’t Basic Instinct. “Is this a press screening or something?” I asked.

  “It is, yes,” the manager said. “No charge, all you’ll need to do at the end is give your honest opinion of the film to the producers.”

  We ran the idea past Baz, Sam and Rob, who seemed more than happy with it. Our attempts to get into the pubs that afternoon had proven worthless, and they were clearly bored of trying. The chance to see a highly anticipated film early was also not something we should pass up.

  “The Lawnmower Man’s that Stephen King film, right?” Sam asked.

  “It is, yeah. It said so on an advert I saw for it,” Rob said.

  “Oh! Don’t they shag in that?” Baz then said enthusiastically. “I heard it’s got some cybersex scene in it or something.”

  “Cybersex?” Dave asked.

  “Yeah, with computers and that.”

  “They have sex with a computer?” Rob half-scowled.

  “No, not with a computer,” Baz said. “The guy and the girl do it in some virtual world thing. It’s meant to be really cool!”

  “Like Tron or something?” Dave sounded sceptical.

  “I guess,” Baz shrugged. “Just not as shit as Tron.”

  Dave looked a little despondent. He clearly wanted to see something filthier, but it was obvious to me that it wasn’t going to happen. The pubs had been a bust, the ‘theatres’ in Soho had been a bust. Now at a proper cinema, I just wanted to sit down, watch something and get off my feet for a bit.

  “Okay,” Dave eventually relented. “It might actually be quite good.”

  It wasn’t.

  ~ ~ ~

  “Your dad is pretty cool for letting us all stay here,” I told Dave.

  “Yeah, he is,” Dave said. “He trusts me to do whatever I want. That’s why I prefer to stay with him, rather than my mum. She always wants to know where I’m going and what I’m doing, when I’ll be back, and stuff like that. She fusses over me constantly. Except when Pete is there.”

  “Pete’s your mum’s boyfriend?” Sam asked.

  “Fiancé,” Dave said. “They got engaged a few months ago.”

  “Oh, you never told us,” I said.

  Dave only shrugged. He didn’t seem to care either way.

  “What does your dad think?” Rob asked.

  “Doesn’t really give a damn, rather the same as me. Pete’s a patronising, obnoxious prick.”

  “What does he do?”

  “Chef for some overpriced res
taurant,” Dave said. “Which reminds me, what do you want for dinner?”

  We all looked at each other, not quite sure what to choose. Dave lived in West Hampstead, near the Heath. It was unlike most other parts of London that I had visited, a lot less busy and more suburban. Dave’s house was quite near a bus stop, just a five or ten-minute walk down the road, from where we could get to Finchley Road or West Hampstead Tube stations, if we wanted to go back into the city centre itself.

  “Is your house like this?” Sam asked Baz.

  Baz glared at him. I knew that Sam hadn’t meant it as an insult. Dave’s house was big, almost what I would honestly describe as a mansion. Perhaps it was. I had always gotten the impression that Baz’s house was actually quite humble compared to many of the others that attended St Christopher’s. Even so, most others probably didn’t live in a place as big as this. There certainly were some very large houses on the street, a fair few even larger than this one. I wondered if I might find myself living on this street one day, thirty-six years old, having completed a stint in the City.

  “Shall we go back out?” I suggested.

  “No,” Rob said. “Let’s save our money for tomorrow. My parents only gave me a bit, and it’s only Friday.”

  “I could loan you some,” Dave offered.

  There were mumbles of refusal; no one wanted to be in debt to one another. It could cause problems back at school, living in such a close-knit community.

  “Okay, so how about pizza? And afterwards we can just watch a couple of films, or just chat or whatever,” Dave said.

  We all looked to one another and nodded agreeably. Dave went to the kitchen and returned with a Domino’s menu, a pad of paper and a pen, writing down what we wanted as we passed the menu around.

  I then heard the front door of the house open, and a man came walking into the living room, wearing a long winter coat and carrying a briefcase with him. We all shifted in our chairs, sitting a little more upright from how we had been lounging.