by David Almond
“And sacks of puppies and kittens.”
“It’s what the tadpoles live on.”
“And the fish and the beetles.”
“Dead things,” she whispered.
“Death.”
She stirred more quickly and the water swirled and splashed, and as we watched, a frog swam up from the murky depths.
“Oh, look!” she said.
“We called him out,” I said.
“Hello, Mr. Frog,” she said.
She giggled.
“Look at him,” she said. “What a funny thing. Just an ordinary frog! Even the ordinary things can seem dead weird, can’t they?”
I watched it swim to the edge and perch on a stone and it glistened in the sunlight.
“Aye,” I said. “Dead weird.”
We could see the throb in its throat, the throb of its heart. It seemed so peaceful sitting there, so ugly, so lovely, so strange.
“Look, ickle tadpoles!” she said. “There’s your big daddy.”
Then the grass snake came. It darted out of the darkness of the undergrowth. It took the frog in its jaws. It bit and crushed and gripped. The frog struggled and kicked but there was nothing it could do. The snake started to swallow the frog headfirst. It was over in minutes. The snake closed its jaws. The frog was just a great lump in the snake’s body. The snake was dead still for a while; then it slithered sluggishly back to where it had come from.
“Oh,” breathed Maria. “Oh, my God.”
Our hands were clenched tight together. We goggled into each other’s eyes.
“That was…,” I said.
“Astonishing,” she said.
We shuddered. We looked at the dark surrounding undergrowth, at the quarry’s dark rim, at the silent still figures around us in the cave.
“I think we should go,” whispered Maria.
We edged around the pond. High above, the clouds were turning red. I narrowed my eyes. The angels you could imagine up there were thinner darker things now. We stumbled away from the quarry towards the entrance. We heard snorting behind us. We looked back. Nothing. We laughed. But we moved more quickly. The snorting came closer. There was the noise of undergrowth being pushed aside as something hurried through it. We laughed again, but we started running, hand in hand. We ducked through the thorn trees. The thorns caught our hair, caught our clothes. We pushed through towards the gate and we hesitated there. We giggled. We looked back. Nothing there.
“Silly us,” said Maria.
We leaned against a rusted gatepost and kissed each other. We held each other tight and pressed our lips together hard. I tasted her tongue and my head began to reel and when we parted my voice was low and cracked.
“You’re beautiful,” I whispered.
She stroked my cheek.
“And you,” she said.
We kissed again; then she pushed me away. She grunted.
“Look.”
I turned. Stephen was at Crazy Mary’s front door, watching us.
“Creepy weird,” she whispered.
He came towards us.
“Hello, Davie,” he said.
He looked past us into the garden.
“What was after you?” he said. His eyes widened. “Get back!” he yelled. “Get back, I tell you!”
We looked behind, but there was nothing there, of course.
“Just nowt at all,” said Stephen. He smiled. “You were deceived.”
He looked at Maria.
“Who’s this?” he said.
“My name’s Maria, if you must know,” said Maria.
She turned away from him and stepped away from the gate onto Watermill Lane. Stephen caught my arm and held me back and breathed his words into my ear.
“I know what I need you for. I know your purpose, Davie.”
I tried to pull away.
“Don’t bother with the lass,” he said.
He passed his hand before my eyes.
“Oh, look!” he said.
He pointed. I saw Mouldy further down the street, watching.
“It’s OK,” said Stephen. “He won’t come. Not now.”
He suddenly kissed my cheek.
“What you doing?” I said.
I pulled away. He started laughing.
I had to hurry to get to Maria’s side. She slowed down. We looked back and watched Stephen going in, closing Crazy’s door behind him. And we saw Mouldy turning a corner, disappearing.
“Very very creepy weird,” she said. She regarded me. “What’s between you two?”
“What do you mean? Nowt’s between us.”
She looked back. She regarded me.
“Lads are strange,” she said.
I tried to shift from her gaze. Her eyes widened.
“It’s coming!” she said.
I spun around to look. Nothing there. We giggled.
I tried to kiss her again, but she stepped back.
“Silly you,” she said. “Silly us.”
And we walked homewards, awkward with each other again. 99
ten
We met on neutral ground, at dusk. We used the graveyard at Heworth. We stood in the oldest part, where the ancient weathered graves were. There were thin tall trees around us. There were clusters of black nests in the branches. Our grave was a table-high and blackened thing. Skinner and Poke were on one side, Geordie and I on the other. The sky had lost its brightness, blue had turned to gray.
“Where is he?” said Geordie.
Skinner shrugged.
“Probably in the Swan. We told him seven o’clock. It’s not far past.”
“You’re sure he’s OK about the truce?” said Geordie.
“That’s what he said,” answered Skinner. “You telling me you don’t believe him?”
He laughed and rolled his sleeve back and showed his wound, a thin scar on his forearm.
“It’ll be marked forever,” he said.
He looked at us, dead cold.
“Your mate’s a maniac,” he said.
“He’s not our mate,” said Geordie.
“No?” said Skinner.
He was a little wiry kid with knuckles hard as stone. In one of our fights, he’d nutted Geordie and Geordie still had the scar on his nose from it. But he was the one that started pulling Mouldy off me that time. He was the one that yelled, “Don’t! You’ll kill him, man!” And he’d quickly checked my throat and my face before he laughed and ran away.
We waited. I ran my fingers across the names of the people buried below. There was a whole bunch of the Braddocks, all of them dead for a hundred years or more. The stone said they had entered unto glory. I thought of them crumbling away, flesh and blood and bones turning to slime, turning to dust. By now there was probably nothing to separate them from earth, from soil, from clay. I looked towards the graves where we’d buried the two blokes just a few days back. What were those blokes like now? How close to dust were they?
“Mebbe we got the times mixed up,” I found myself saying. “Mebbe we should just abandon it.”
Poke grinned.
“Scared?” he said.
I shook my head. One day months back, I’d fought with him. We’d battled till we were both worn out. Nobody won. I ached for days. The grazes and bruises took an age to go away. “What’s the point of it?” my mam said when she saw all the marks on me. But Dad said not to worry. It was just the way things were. He shook his head. “Lads,” he said.
It got darker. We waited. Then Skinner whispered,
“Look!”
And there was Mouldy, lumbering through the graves.
“Mouldy!” called Skinner. “We’re over here!”
Mouldy came to the head of the grave.
“Hiya, Mouldy,” said Poke.
Mouldy glanced at him, curled his lip. He wiped a fist across his face, lit a cigarette. His eyes settled on me. They were empty, dead.
“So?” he grunted.
No one spoke. He thumped the grave with his fist.
“So?” he said.
“The kid with the knife’s not our mate,” said Geordie.
Mouldy licked a knuckle. I saw him as he would be in five years’ time, sluggish, heavy, slow, a great gut on him, a drunken dope that nobody’d take notice of. He pointed at me.
“He’s his mate. I seen him, talking to him.”
“Aye,” said Geordie. “But—”
Mouldy thumped the grave again.
“Shuddup! I seen him. And I seen lovey-dovey stuff and whispering stuff.”
“Lovey-dovey?” said Skinner.
“I seen the new sod kissing this sod.”
“Kissing?” said Skinner.
“Aye. There was a bint there. She seen it as well.” Mouldy kept his eyes on me. “Say I’m a liar,” he said.
I said nothing. He shaped a fist, pretended to go for me, grinned again when Poke caught his arm.
“It’s a truce, Mouldy,” said Skinner.
“Liars cannot make truces,” said Mouldy. He shaped his fist again. “You’re a lying Catholic Felling bastard,” he said. He blinked. He looked at each of us in turn. “What you going to say to that?” he said.
None of us spoke. High above, beyond the trees, above the church, great streaks of red had appeared in the sky.
“OK, then,” Mouldy said. “I’ll do the lying bastard now.”
“Don’t,” I whispered.
I backed away from the grave.
“Geordie,” I said.
“There’s a truce,” said Geordie, but Mouldy just spat at him, a gobful straight into his face.
I ran. Mouldy came after me. He kicked my feet away. I crashed to the ground. He stamped on my head and my ribs and my back. Everything was black and starry till the others were pulling him away. I curled up against a gravestone. For they are like unto the angels, it said.
“Davie, run!” said Geordie.
“Run!” said Skinner.
And I picked myself up and belted out of the graveyard and onto Watermill Lane and kept running till I saw the dark figure waiting. Stephen Rose, leaning against a tree. I slowed, stopped.
“Davie,” he said.
I looked behind. Nothing.
“It’s all right, Davie. There’s nowt there.”
His voice softened.
“Relax, Davie.”
eleven
Home was a hundred yards away. Lights burned in the windows. I wanted Dad to come out, or Mam. I wanted them to yell out into the street and send Stephen running back to Crazy Mary’s. But they didn’t come out. Nothing moved. The darkness deepened. Stephen breathed his calming words. He passed his hand before my eyes. And I did relax. And I thought of the angel that had cast Stephen down and raised him up, and I thought of the power that I had seen flowing from him and I told myself that Stephen Rose was something strange and new, something that had been sent to me, something that stood before me as I grew from being a boy into a man. I couldn’t turn away. So I said to him,
“What you after, Stephen?”
He shrugged.
“Just a word or two.”
I looked towards the Sacred Heart medallion silhouetted in our door. Deliver me from evil, I said inside.
He touched the weal on my cheek.
“Mouldy did it?” he said.
“Aye.”
“He’d be better off dead, eh?”
I didn’t answer. He laughed softly.
“He would,” he said. “We all know that. Just imagine. No Mouldy. No monster.”
“He’ll be a slob soon enough,” I said. “Just got to keep out of his way till then.”
He laughed.
“You’re not doing very well so far.”
I laughed with him.
“Just imagine if it happened, Davie. Just imagine you’re fast asleep in bed and you wake up and it’s a sunny ordinary morning and your mam says to you, ‘Did you hear that Martin Mould is dead?’”
He grinned.
“It’d be something to celebrate, eh? ‘Martin Mould is dead!’ Go on, admit it. Aye?”
I shrugged.
“Aye,” I said.
“Good. Now listen. My angel came again.”
“Your angel?”
“The one I told you about. Surely you’ve not forgotten her? Anyway, she talked about you. She told me you could help me in my work.”
“An angel? Stephen, man. It’s just barmy.”
“I know. It’s mental, it’s barmy, but it’s true. And isn’t it what they tell you in church? We are not alone. There’s precious beings all around us. So why should you be surprised?”
I looked up past the streetlights towards the stars.
“It’s still bliddy crazy,” I said.
“I know,” he said. “But mebbe the craziest things are the truest things of all.”
He grinned while I thought about his words.
“Look,” he said. “Here’s a really crazy thing.”
He reached down into the grass verge at the pavement’s side. He ripped the turf open and tugged out a handful of soil. He spat into it. He spat again. He held it in the pale pool of light cast by a streetlight.
“You as well,” he told me. “Spit into my hand. So a bit of you is in it. Do it, man.”
I spat into the soil. He worked it with his fingers. He spat again, told me to spit again. I spat again. The soil was damp and pliable. He rolled it on his palm: a fat wormy thing, a sluggy thing. He raised it to his lips.
“Move,” he whispered. “Live.”
He held it on his opened palm.
“Tell it, Davie,” he whispered. He raised his eyes to me. “You got to,” he said. “Go on. Tell it to move. Tell it to live.”
I felt so stupid. I couldn’t speak; then the words came out.
“Move…. Live…. Move…. Live….”
“Be tough, Davie,” said Stephen. “Command it.”
He passed his hand before my eyes.
I spoke again.
“Move. Live.”
And the thing moved. It started to squirm on Stephen’s palm in the silvery light.
“See?” he whispered while we watched in wonder. “The power is in you, Davie, just like it is in me. You’re one of the special few.” He smiled. “Go on, touch it,” he said. “Touch your creation, Davie.” And I reached down, and I felt the thing squirming beneath my fingers. “This isn’t an ordinary thing for ordinary folk,” he said. “You understand that, don’t you? Do you think your mate Geordie’d be able to do this? Do you think that lass’d be able to do this?” I said nothing. I felt it move like there was life in it, like there was spirit in it. “Course they wouldn’t,” he said. “It’s only you, Davie. You and Stephen Rose.”
He let it fall back to the earth, and it lay there in the gathering dark, a lifeless clod. He wiped the dirt from his hands.
“Really crazy, eh?” he said. “But really true. Do you agree? Do you believe?”
How could I not believe?
“Yes,” I said. “But how can we do it?”
“That was just a little bit of easy magic. We can do lots more together. Lots more true and crazy things. That’s what the angel was on about.”
“What did she say?”
“She said that my strength and your strength isn’t enough. She said we’ll also need the strength of the Lord to help us.”
I met his eye.
“The strength of the Lord?” I said. “How the Hell do we get that?”
“You get it for us, Davie. You get the body and blood of Christ and bring it back here. It’s your task.”
He smiled.
“You’re the good altar boy, Davie. You got to steal the body and blood of Christ.”
“An angel told you to tell me to do that?”
He shrugged. He looked at me dead calm, like he was daring me again to believe him.
“Aye,” he said. “She did. Angels work in mysterious ways, Davie.”
“And what good will it do?”
“It’ll h
elp us make a…”
“A what?”
He studied the sky, the thickening stars.
“A creature, Davie. A thing that will stand up and walk beside us and protect us.” He laughed. “A monster!” He breathed the words into my ear. “A bliddy monster. A thing that’ll terrify Mouldy and brutes like Mouldy. A thing that would even kill him for us, if that’s what we told it to do.”
I glanced at the house.
Come out, I said inside myself. Get me away from this.
“When’s your next Mass?” said Stephen.
I searched my memory.
“Sunday,” I said.
“You got to do it then.”
He slid something cold and metallic into my hand.
“Put them in this,” he said, “and keep them safe.”
It was a small round silver locket.
“Will you do it?” he said.
He looked into the sky.
“The precious beings is looking down on us,” he said. “Mebbe one day they’ll show themselves to you as well, Davie. Will you do it?”
I laughed. I laughed at Stephen, at me, at dreams of monsters and angels and illusions of moving clay. Stupid, all of it. Crazy.
“Will you, Davie?” he said.
“Why not? Yes.”
“Good,” he said. “They’ll be very pleased with you.”
Then Mam’s voice called from our garden.
“Davie! Davie!”
“You can go now,” Stephen whispered, and he disappeared into the dark.
twelve
Inside the house, Mam touched the wound on my cheek.
“Fighting again!” she said.
I tried to shake my head.
She stared into my eyes.
“It’ll end in something awful,” she said.
She shook me again. She chewed her lips, she peered into my eyes.
“You’re in a dream. You’re scared stiff.”
“No, I’m not.”
“Yes, you are. Who hit you? And how hard?”
She was nearly in tears.
“Nobody,” I said. “It’s nowt, Mam.”
I tried to pull away but she wouldn’t let me go.
“Nowt?”
“Nowt.”
She gave me some aspirin and some tea. She opened a bottle of Lourdes water and dabbed my head with it.
“I’m taking you to the doctor,” she said.
“No.”
“Do you feel dizzy? Do you feel sick?”