Clay

by David Almond

  We watch the gates. Nowt happens.

  “And she won’t want us lot standing gawping,” she says. “Come on. Let’s go back home.”

  I stand a moment more, watching, waiting. Nowt happens. The sunlight pours down upon the world, so bright and so clear. I reach down and scratch a little dirt from the verge. I hold it in my palm. “Move,” I mutter, and of course nowt happens. Everything outside this morning on Watermill Lane seems imaginary, unreal, a thing of dream. I try to tell myself that the tragedy across the road has nowt to do with me. Mouldy was drunk. He fell. And me? I try to tell myself that I’ve been fooled, I’ve been deceived, I’ve been hypnotized, I’ve been…

  “Davie?” says Mam.

  “Aye.”

  I let the soil fall back to earth. I stand up and start walking away with her and Dad. We move through the onlookers. We pass by Miss O’Malley and her dog. There’s a bandage wrapped around the dog’s head. It whimpers and shifts away as I pass by. Mam leans down, touches it. She touches Miss O’Malley, whispers comfort to her, murmurs about the wickedness that’s in the world. Miss O’Malley blinks her tears away.

  Crazy Mary’s at her garden gate with Stephen at her side. Her eyes widen as we approach.

  “It’s the good altar boy!” she says. “And his lovely mam and dad.”

  “Hello, Mary,” says Mam. She rests a hand on Mary’s forearm. Mary beams, delighted. “Are you all right now, Mary?”

  “Aye,” says Mary. “I just woke up!”

  She holds Mam’s hand.

  “What’s happening across there?” she whispers.

  “Oh, a little bit of trouble, Mary.”

  Stephen looks at me, so calm.

  “While all of us were in our beds,” he says.

  “Aye!” says Mary. “Would you believe it? I just woke up!”

  A look of wonder passes across her face.

  “And such a funny dream!” she says.

  She closes her eyes, and puts a hand to her head as if to pluck the memory from the darkness in her.

  “A monster!” she says.

  “A monster?” says Mam.

  “Aye! A monster come into my house! Heeheehee! It did!”

  She opens her eyes and holds her hand across her mouth and giggles and grins.

  “Great clarty footprints all through the hall! Heeheehee! And now he’s sleeping in the shed. He is! Heeheehee! He is!”

  nine

  That afternoon, two policemen come. Dad goes to the door but it’s me they want to see. He brings them in. One of them’s called Sergeant Fox, the other’s Police Constable Ground. They stand there with their helmets under their arms and their notebooks and pencils in their hands. They won’t sit down.

  “Now then, son,” says Sergeant Fox. “A couple of questions, then we’ll be on our way.”

  “Nothing to worry about,” says PC Ground.

  “OK,” I say.

  “Number one,” says Sergeant Fox. “Did you know the lad who died?”

  “A bit,” I whisper.

  “Speak up, Davie,” says Mam.

  “Yes,” I say.

  I’m trembling. Inside, I’m screaming.

  “Very good,” says Sergeant Fox. “Now then. What did you know of him?

  “Like what?” I say.

  “Like, what kind of lad he was. What he got up to. His…interests, things like that.”

  “His inner life, so to speak,” says PC Ground.

  I shrug.

  “Dunno,” I say.

  “He kept well away from him,” says Dad.

  “Is that right?” says Sergeant Fox.

  “Aye,” I say. “I was…”

  “You were…?” says Sergeant Fox.

  “Scared,” I say.

  The policemen scribble in their books.

  “And when did you see him last?” says Sergeant Fox.

  I search my memory.

  “Friday. After school. Outside the Swan. He was…”

  “Drunk?” says PC Ground.

  I nod. They sigh and shake their heads. They know. He often was. They whisper with Mam and Dad, then turn to me again.

  “Was he a bother to you?” asks PC Ground.

  “Sometimes,” I say.

  “That’s why he kept away from him,” says Dad.

  “Correct,” says Sergeant Fox. “We’ve spoken to your pal George Craggs. He put us in the picture.”

  “Now, then,” says Sergeant Fox. He flicks through his notes. It’s now that I expect them to bring out the painted shift, to start asking me about what happened in the cave last night, to start talking about a clay monster, to start asking me what I know about a dog. But nowt happens.

  “It’s a sad sad do,” says the sergeant.

  He looks into my eyes.

  “Anything else you want to tell us?” he says.

  “Any important-looking facts and figures?” says PC Ground.

  “No,” I say.

  Sergeant Fox touches my shoulder.

  “Don’t take it to heart,” he says. “Such things happen. We grow away from them. They’re mebbe even part of…”

  “Growing up,” says PC Ground.

  Dad takes them to the door. I hear him say that I’m a sensitive sort but I’ll get over it.

  Mam hugs me.

  “We’ll send some flowers to Martin’s mam,” she says.

  She shivers.

  “There but for the grace of God,” she says.

  ten

  That night I wake up and something draws me to the window. I pull back the curtains and see the monster. There he is, down in the street. He’s under a streetlight, staring back at me. He’s massive, a huge dark shadow. I know he wants me to go to him. I know he wants me to speak to him. I hear a voice inside me:

  You are the one who made me, Master. I am yours.

  “Go away!” I whisper. “I don’t want you!”

  He doesn’t move.

  What do you want of me, Master?

  “Nothing! Get lost! Turn back to clay!”

  He lowers his head and walks heavily away from the streetlight and into the dark.

  “Stay away!” I whisper. “Jump back into the clay pond. Go away and bliddy die!”

  eleven

  Geordie’s waiting for me at the school gate next morning. He goes on like there’s never been anything wrong between us, like the battle between us never happened. He grabs me and puts his arm round me.

  “A dream come bliddy true!” he says.

  I pull away from him. He grins.

  “I know,” he says. “I know. It’s awful and he had an awful life and all that stuff but it don’t change the fact he was a bliddy monster.”

  “Was he?” I say.

  “Be honest, man. Did a little bit of you not start cheering when you heard?”

  “No.”

  “No? Are you sure? Right from the start we said it—the world’d be a better place if he was gone. Even Skinner and Poke’s pleased about it—not that they’ll admit it yet.”

  “How do you know that?”

  “I saw them yesterday. I could tell. They could hardly keep their faces straight. It was them that found him. They’d planned to meet up in the quarry early yesterday morning and wait for us and ambush us. Mouldy must have got there first when it was hardly light and he goes straight over the bliddy edge.”

  We walk towards the school. Geordie breathes deeply and turns his face towards the brilliant sky.

  “It’s a new world!” he says; then he stops dead still. “You know what this could do, Davie. Don’t you?”

  “What?”

  “It could put an end to all the battling. Skinner and Poke might turn into our mates. The truce could turn into a proper peace. The Pelaw-Felling war could be over. It could all be in the past. And all cos one kid’s gone and died. Pretty good, eh?”

  I walk on. He catches up with me and laughs.

  “Mind you,” he says. “Dunno if I really want all that!” Then he clenches his f
ists as we go inside. “It is! A dream come bliddy true!”

  twelve

  Last lesson of the day, and Prat’s all blather again. Clay and creativity and striding about the classroom and closing his eyes and staring at the sky and clay pellets and jelly babies flying around his head…

  “You can go too far,” I say when he’s in midstream.

  He blinks and looks at me.

  “Sorry, Davie?” he says.

  “You can go too far. You can create too much.”

  He comes to my table, leans over me, delighted.

  “For example, Davie?”

  “Well…” I look down. I stumble over the thoughts, the words. “Some of the things that we create are…”

  “Are?” he prompts me.

  “Some of the things that we create are…destructive.”

  “Exactly!” He punches the air and spins away. “The things that we create—some of them, many of them!—are themselves destructive!”

  He looks around the room, scans the faces.

  “Such as?” he says.

  “Guns,” he is told.

  “Bullets,” he is told.

  “Poisons.”

  “Nerve gas.”

  “Bombs.”

  “The nuclear bomb.”

  “War itself.”

  “Exactly!” says Prat. “Exactly! Exactly! Exactly!”

  He closes his eyes. He taps his forehead. We know he’s about to tell us something that he thinks is dead profound.

  “It is the human paradox,” he says. “We are creative beings. But our passion to create goes hand in hand with our passion to destroy.” He claps his hands together, makes a double fist. “And the passions are linked as tight as this.”

  Then he shuts up for a while.

  “Thank God,” whispers Geordie. “What the Hell did you get him started for?”

  I roll a lump of clay hopelessly around my table. I find Maria watching me and she seems so cold, so distant. I look away from her, through the window, across the yard. It’s a misty afternoon. I see the monster at the distant iron boundary fence. He grips the bars and looks towards me. I hear his voice inside my head.

  I am yours, Master. Tell me what to do.

  “No,” I gasp.

  “What’s up with you?” says Geordie.

  “What things will we create,” says Prat, “when our ability to create intensifies? What monsters will we make?”

  I watch my monster striding alongside the fence, seeking a way in.

  “I,” says Prat, “am an optimist. I believe that the forces of good will defeat the forces of evil.”

  The monster lurches towards the gate.

  “What’s up?” says Geordie.

  “But could it be,” says Prat, “that the end of creativity will be to make a thing that will turn back upon us and destroy us?”

  He goggles at me.

  “What do you think, Davie? Could that be human destiny—that we are driven to create our own destruction?”

  Far beyond him, the monster’s almost in.

  “Dunno, sir,” I say. “I’ve got to go, sir. I’ve got to bliddy go.”

  And I push my chair away, and shove Prat aside, and I run.

  thirteen

  I run alongside the bypass. I run into the graveyard. I shelter by the Braddock grave. I pray. I want to turn back time, to go back to the past, to go back to the days that suddenly seem so long ago, the days of being an ordinary kid, the days before the arrival of Stephen Rose, the days before the monster. I watch the graveyard gate, the shadows. I watch for the monster. I snarl at myself, at how pathetic I am. I leave the graveyard and head for Crazy Mary’s house. I knock at the door but there’s no answer. I peep through the window and see Crazy sitting at the table and goggling into space. I knock again. Stephen comes. He lets me in.

  “We been waiting,” he says. “What took so long?”

  He leads me past motionless Mary and into the garden and into the shed. Sunlight slants down through the glass in the roof, and the edges and corners are deep in shadow.

  I’m trembling again.

  “What we going to do?” I say.

  “You’re in a state, Davie,” he says. “You got to calm down.”

  “I saw him,” I say.

  “Him?”

  “The monster. He came last night.”

  “Mebbe you were imagining it, Davie.”

  “And he came this afternoon, at school.”

  “That can’t be true.”

  “It is, Stephen. It’s true. It really worked. We really did make a monster.”

  “I know that, Davie. Cos look—he’s been in here with me all the time.”

  And he holds his hand towards a corner and now I see the monster standing there: dead still, eyes closed, massively muscled, head touching the ceiling.

  Stephen smiles.

  “Say hello to your creation, Davie.”

  I move out of the brilliant light, move into the shadow, stand beside the monster.

  “You made another one,” I said.

  I dare to touch him—bitter cold, clay cold.

  “No, Davie. This is him. He came back with me out the quarry. He’ll be safer here.”

  I touch the monster’s great hands. I imagine them clenched tight around Mouldy’s neck.

  “What happened to Mouldy?” I say.

  “He died, Davie. He fell.”

  “Fell?”

  “What else?” The smile plays across his face. “He always was a clumsy lout.”

  He comes into the shadow beside me.

  “Our creature exists at the very edge of life,” he says. “He is dormant now. It is only our belief and our will that will keep him from crumbling back into the earth. He needs our command, Davie. What shall we tell him to do?”

  “Nothing,” I whisper.

  “Mebbe we should at least give him a name.”

  “Clay,” I whisper.

  “That’ll do. Hello, Clay.”

  “Hello, Clay,” I whisper.

  “That’s right, Davie. Now, Davie, command him.”

  You are my Master, I hear. What shall I do?

  “Nothing,” I whisper.

  “Nothing means that he’ll crumble back into the earth. Nothing’ll be the end of him.”

  The silence and stillness are deep as eternity. There’s nothing beyond the three of us, beyond this shed.

  “What are you?” I whisper.

  “Me?” says Stephen.

  “Yes, you.”

  “A boy like you.”

  “That’s all?” I say.

  “Are you saying that I am the monster?”

  I stare at him. He smiles.

  “And what are you?” he says.

  “A boy,” I whisper. “An ordinary boy.”

  “You know that’s wrong, Davie. You know that you’re a boy who can do wondrous things. Don’t disappoint me, Davie. Calm down.” He passes his hand before my eyes. “Command your creation, Davie.”

  Master. What shall I do?

  I stare at this astonishing thing. I can’t resist.

  “Move,” I whisper. “Live, Clay. Move.”

  And I feel the creature drawn back over the edge of life. And I feel the spirit moving in it.

  “Live,” I whisper. “Live.”

  And it sways gently and turns its face to me.

  Command me, Master.

  And this time I don’t run, but I meet its eye, and I force the words out of myself.

  “Walk.”

  And the monster walks across the shed through the glare beneath the glass and into the far shadow.

  “Turn.”

  And the monster turns.

  “Walk.”

  And it walks back through the light again and into the shadow at my side. And Stephen Rose is laughing, like it’s all a joke.

  Then he takes a stiff clay angel, and holds it out.

  “Take this, Clay,” he says.

  And the creature takes it.

>   “Destroy,” says Stephen.

  And the creature crushes the angel between its massive hands and the dust and fragments crumble to the floor and Stephen giggles and giggles again.

  fourteen

  “Be still, Clay,” I say, and the monster is still again. It stands beside us in the shadow. I touch it, lean close to it. Nothing moves in it.

  “It can’t be true,” I whisper.

  “It is, Davie. Look at our creation. Clay lives. Clay moves. How can you deny it?”

  “But it can’t be true.”

  “Mebbe God said that to himself,” said Stephen, “on the morning he created us. ‘It can’t be true! I can’t do this!’ But his creature stood up on the earth and God was flabbergasted by his own power. And the creature walked. And the creature dared to look God in the face. And God saw mischief in his creature’s eye. And God was bothered by what he’d done. He said to himself, ‘Mebbe this is a bliddy monster that I’ve made. What horrors have I unleashed upon my lovely world?’ But it was too late. The deed was done.”

  I touch our cold creation. It waits again for our instruction.

  “He could have uncreated us,” I whisper. “He could have destroyed us.”

  “Aye, he could have. He even said he wanted to. Remember the tales? The folk he’d made were evil, they’d gone all wrong, they were wreaking havoc in the world. They were driving God bliddy mental. He got filled with anger and vengeance. He sent down floods and fires and plagues. But that God, he was too good for his own good.”

  I shudder. I watch the dust tumbling down endlessly through the light.

  “He loved us, see?” says Stephen. “He thought we were bliddy wonderful. He sent down the forces of destruction, but he couldn’t bring hisself to destroy the lot of us. He always saved a few.”

  “Like Noah and his family.”

  “Aye, like them. And a few like them were supposed to make everything turn out right. Fat chance, eh? Pretty soon he’s getting drove mental again by what’s going on and he’s sending down the fire and the brimstone and the bliddy plagues but nowt never turns out right and for centuries and centuries he’s just getting mentaler and mentaler till one day he just says, ‘Right, I’ve had enough. I’m off.’”

  “Off?”

  “Aye. He nicked off, Davie. He abandoned us. About 1945, I reckon.”

  “1945?”