Wicked Bindup

by Paul Jennings

The bright sunlight made the new arrival into a silhouette against the windscreen. Who was it? I watched the shadowy form sit down in the driver’s seat. I stared at those familiar shoes as the left foot depressed the clutch. A gloved hand turned the ignition key and the engine sprang to life. The bus began to rock gently as if it was parked at a bus stop waiting for passengers.

  Then the driver turned. And smiled.

  I didn’t return the smile. I screamed.

  The driver was Louise. Dawn’s dead mother.

  FIVE

  I dreamed I was asleep on a hard wooden floor and someone was shaking me.

  Then I woke up and someone was shaking me.

  ‘Dawn,’ she was saying. ‘What are you doing here? You look terrible.’

  I blinked in the daylight. A woman was bending over me. A woman I knew.

  ‘Mum,’ I screamed.

  I staggered to my feet. My neck and back were so stiff from the floor that I could hardly get my arms up to throw them round her, but I managed.

  Then I stopped.

  It wasn’t Mum, it was Eileen.

  My guts dropped with disappointment. The kind of disappointment you feel when you think your mum’s come back from the dead and then you find it’s just the woman your dad’s replaced her with.

  ‘What’s going on?’ Eileen was saying, concerned. ‘Is Rory here?’

  I stared at her. She had twigs in her hair, lamb stew on her face, and her arm was in a sling made from Dad’s camping shirt.

  ‘Dad,’ I gasped. ‘Where is he? Is he all right?’

  ‘He’s fine,’ said Eileen. She sat on the floor with a groan. ‘We had an accident yesterday and I was concussed so he went back to town to get help.’ She frowned. ‘For some reason he didn’t come back.’

  My heart stopped beating, partly because of what might have happened to Dad, and partly because of what I could see charging through the door behind Eileen.

  A sheep.

  With a rusty dinner fork in its mouth.

  Prongs aimed at Eileen.

  I pushed Eileen one way and dived the other. The sheep tried to turn towards Eileen but its hooves couldn’t get a grip on the floorboards and it skittered over to the other side of the room. It dropped the fork, sneered at us and ran out the other door.

  ‘What are you doing?’ Eileen was shouting. She sat up, holding her hurt arm.

  ‘Sorry,’ I said, dazed, not sure if it had really happened. ‘A sheep tried to stab you with a fork.’ I realised how dopey that sounded. ‘It was probably just trying to be playful,’ I added uneasily.

  Eileen didn’t look playful. She took a deep breath. She had the expression she got first thing in the morning if she found there was no coffee.

  ‘Listen,’ she growled, standing up. ‘I’ve got a sprained shoulder, badly bruised ribs, I’ve just spent the night sleeping in a ditch, I walked two hours to use the phone here and it’s gone, and I’m not in the mood for stupid games.’ She grabbed my arm. ‘So why aren’t you at home, and where’s Rory?’

  I gulped. My mouth was dry. How could I tell her? How could I just announce that her son’s innards had been sucked out by giant worms and that his skin was probably flapping somewhere in the morning breeze?

  I turned away, struggling to find the words and keep the tears in. Then I saw something out of the window. A sheep running across the paddock with an electrical cord in its mouth, dragging a phone and answering machine behind it.

  ‘Look,’ I yelled. ‘There’s the phone.’

  We dashed out of the house. The sheep tried to run faster but we soon caught it. As we took the phone the sheep tried to bite us, but we pushed it away. Then we ran back into the house and plugged the phone in.

  It didn’t work. The whole thing was covered with teeth marks and the cord was half chewed through.

  Eileen swore. I stared at the cord and felt dread seeping through my guts. Eileen turned to me.

  ‘Well?’ she said.

  I knew I couldn’t put off telling her any longer. I tried to prepare her for it by starting at the very beginning. The slobberers in the church. In the stew. On her bike.

  ‘Great,’ she exploded. ‘That’s really going to help my courier deliveries, having my bike at the bottom of a dam.’

  I couldn’t look her in the eye, so I squinted out the window. Several sheep were struggling across the sunlit front yard, dragging an old garden rake. ‘Look,’ I whispered in alarm.

  ‘Don’t try and change the subject,’ snapped Eileen, not taking her eyes off me.

  Miserably, I carried on with my story. I told her about finding the car, the boat trip, the airborne slobberers and finally, in a tearful whisper, what had happened at the wrecker’s yard.

  Eileen listened without saying anything. Then she said a lot.

  ‘I’m disgusted with you, Dawn,’ she said angrily. ‘Taking my bike and crashing it into a dam is one thing. Coming out with a heap of disgusting and hurtful and ridiculous lies to try and wriggle out of it is … is … I’d have expected more of you than that.’

  ‘It’s true,’ I sobbed. ‘It is.’

  She looked at me with narrow eyes for what seemed like ages. ‘All right,’ she said at last. ‘Looks like there’s only one way to handle this, young lady. We’d better go to Lumley’s Wrecker’s Yard and have a look at these slobberers of yours.’

  ‘That wouldn’t be a good idea,’ I whispered.

  ‘Oh, yes it would,’ she said. ‘Come on.’ She strode out of the house.

  I grabbed Mum’s shoe and hugged it to try and make myself feel better. Then I went through the door after Eileen.

  She was glaring at me over her shoulder and yelling ‘hurry up’ and not seeing that she was stepping on a garden rake lying on the overgrown path. The handle flew up, just missed her head and smashed into the wall of an old shed.

  My guts tightened. It was the rake the sheep had been dragging.

  Before I could say anything, Eileen grabbed me by the arm and yanked me after her in the direction of the wrecker’s yard.

  ‘Step it out,’ she said. ‘We’ve got a long walk.’

  ‘Eileen,’ I pleaded. ‘You don’t realise how dangerous the slobberers are.’

  ‘Don’t worry,’ she replied. ‘Nothing gets in my road. I’m a courier.’

  Okay, I thought bitterly. Have it your way. You’re the adult.

  She obviously didn’t believe a word I’d told her. So I didn’t even bother telling her what I’d just seen behind the old shed.

  Four grinning sheep sitting on a tractor.

  SIX

  Dawn’s mum was dead. Yet there she was, sitting in the driver’s seat of the bus. Smiling at me. Had she come back to life like the dead goat? Was she a ghost?

  There was one thing for sure. Whatever she was I wasn’t hanging around to find out. I charged down the aisle of the bus and leapt out after the goat. My feet didn’t even touch the steps. I crashed onto the ground and rolled over and over and over. Finally I came to rest next to a pile of old steering wheels in the wrecker’s yard.

  The sun was starting to peep over the horizon. The first rays of morning scratched their way across the sky. But I had no time for the view. I could think of only one thing. The slobberers.

  The slobberers would suck me up for breakfast. I remembered the caretaker’s dog and what they had done to him. I wanted to run but I couldn’t get up. I was exhausted, weak and alone. This was it. This was the end of my life.

  Now that the moment had come I felt calm. My hand and arm stopped aching. The panic fled from me and my thoughts turned to other things. Actually, if the slobberers sucked me up I would be famous. The adults could get my skin and stuff it. Like Phar Lap, the racehorse.

  I would be the boy who gave up his life to the slobberers.

  I lay there on the ground next to the clapped-out Land Rover and waited for the slimy tongues to come for me.

  I waited.

  And waited.

  Nothing happened. />
  Nothing at all. I slowly lifted my head and looked around. The wrecked cars littered the yard like ghostly chariots. The bus rusted away and the tree that grew through its bonnet stood still and silent in the morning mist.

  The slobberers had gone. Not a sign of them.

  Yes. Gone. My heart leapt and I felt my energy return. I was safe. It was all over.

  But where were they? An image of Dawn fleeing through the night filled my mind. Had the slobberers gone after her? Were they hunting her like a pack of hungry seals?

  I suddenly felt sad. I had no right to be safe while she was in danger. Okay, she was a pain. But she didn’t deserve to die like that. Sucked out into an ugly mat. Even a step-sister didn’t deserve to end up like that.

  My arm felt warm and the ache fell away completely. Almost as if my thoughts were healing it. But the angry purple bruise was still there.

  I stared at the rusting bus. The rusting bus? A few minutes ago it had been covered in fresh paint. Its engine had been running. But now it just sat there on its flat tyres. Battered and broken and wrecked. The motor looked as if it hadn’t run for years.

  And wait a minute. When I was in the bus the sun outside had been high in the sky. And now it was only just peeping over the hills.

  What was going on? The sun can’t go backwards. A bus can’t be made new again. My fingers began to throb and the wound started to weep.

  I wanted to run home. Every nerve in my body was stretched to breaking point. I looked at the bus. What was that on the step? It couldn’t be. But it was. The apple-man.

  I tried to swallow but my tongue was dry with fear. The apple-man’s face had become the face of my father. Horrible and distorted. Then it had exploded. And yet here it was, whole and intact.

  Slowly and in a daze I walked back to the bus. I picked up the apple-man and with knocking knees climbed the steps and looked inside. The goat’s skeleton sat there, its dry white bones glowing in the red rays of dawn. Dust covered the seats and spider webs barred the broken windows.

  There were no maggots. No flies. There was no Louise. Just an empty, decaying cabin of dreams.

  Was it a dream? Never.

  Nightmare? Maybe.

  Had any of this happened at all?

  A thought crept into my mind. If it hadn’t been a nightmare or a dream what was it? Maybe I was ill. My nervous system might be collapsing. All the pressures of Dad going out of my life and Dawn coming into it could be weakening my brain. Making me see things. Was my step-sister driving me crazy?

  I sat there on the steps of the bus in misery.

  Think, think, think. Some things might only be happening inside my head. I hit my forehead with my good hand and tried to get my brain back into gear.

  Go back over it all. Pick out the bits that are real and the bits that aren’t.

  Louise – starting up the bus. Dead people don’t drive. Maybe she didn’t die after all.

  The apple-man. Did it explode? No. Because it was still in one piece in my hands.

  The shoe. Was there a shoe? I looked around near the Land Rover. No sign of it. There was some dried-up blobs of cow dung on the ground but no shoe. No, there couldn’t have been a shoe.

  The slobberers. Not one in sight. They must have just been in my head, my insane mind.

  Dawn. Was there any such person as Big Bad Dawn? Yes, because she had been at my school since the bubs’ class. But her mother mustn’t have died. Fantastic. Maybe Dawn’s dad Jack wasn’t married to my mum. Maybe we were all together still. Me and Mum and Dad. In our old house. Our real house. Yes, yes, yes. Oh, someone wake me up. Or take me home.

  I looked down at the apple-man and my joy fled. Dad had sent me that apple-man after the bust-up with Mum. Louise had died. The step-marriage had happened. Dawn was my step-sister.

  I wandered slowly around the wrecker’s yard trying to work out what was real and what wasn’t.

  The caretaker. He would help me. I made my way over to his little hut and looked inside. His reading lamp was still on but the room was empty. A dog chain and a bowl of dog food lay on the floor. There was no sign of the dog. I felt so lonely and scared.

  And my hand had started to hurt again.

  My hand. I had cut it climbing over the fence. And … A shudder ran down my spine. Slobberers had licked my fingers and sucked the blood. Hadn’t they? I wasn’t sure about anything any more.

  I limped over to the fence. Yes, there were traces of blood on the rusting metal.

  The climb over the fence had taken place all right. But the bit in the bus hadn’t. Half of the mad things had happened. And half hadn’t. Maybe I was only half mad.

  The marriage was real. The apple-man was real. And Dawn was real. The blood on the fence was real. But had slobberers licked it or were they invented by my warped mind?

  I decided to leave the wrecker’s yard for good. It was time to go home. It was time to get help. I needed a shrink to put me on the right track.

  As I moved something caught my eye. A dark shadow on the ground. That sent me screaming down the road.

  It was the flat, empty body of the caretaker’s dog.

  SEVEN

  I had something on my mind all the way back to the wrecker’s yard.

  Sheep.

  I knew sheep pretty well, and I’d never seen them attack a person before. Not with a garden rake. Definitely not with a table fork.

  What’s going on? I wondered anxiously as I plodded along behind Eileen.

  Were the sheep just grouchy because Ernie Piggot had upped and gone and left them?

  Or were they out to get us like the slobberers?

  A shiver of fear ran through me. I thought about the sheep on the tractor. Could sheep get a tractor started? I told myself to stop being dopey.

  Then I realised Eileen had turned and was yelling at me. ‘Stop dragging your feet,’ she snapped. ‘I want to get this charade over with. The sooner we knock this giant worm nonsense on the head, the sooner I can find out what’s going on.’

  She grabbed me by the arm and I had to trot to keep up with her. Then we both crashed to the ground.

  There was a length of fencing wire stretched across the dirt track. As I tripped and fell forward I noticed something glinting in the dust. When my head cleared after the impact I saw what it was.

  Glass. Jagged pieces of brown glass. Luckily I hadn’t landed on any of them. Neither had Eileen. Having her arm in a sling had made her fall to one side. She lay on the grass verge, swearing.

  Then I recognised a torn label on one of the pieces of glass. Sheep dip. We’d been tripped up so we’d cut ourselves on broken sheep-dip bottles.

  I sat up in a panic and looked around. Sheep were watching us from each side of the track. I was just in time to see one of them open its mouth and drop an end of the fencing wire.

  ‘Eileen.’ My voice was a whisper. ‘These sheep are out to get us.’

  The sheep grinned menacingly.

  ‘Bulldust,’ yelled Eileen, struggling to her feet. She dragged me up. ‘It’s just kids playing stupid tricks, and if I catch them they’ll suffer almost as much as you’re going to. Now come on.’

  She dragged me along the track. I glanced nervously over my shoulder. The sheep had gone. I was almost disappointed. If they whacked Eileen round the head with a fence post, then she’d know I wasn’t a liar.

  You’ll see, I thought helplessly. When we get to the wrecker’s yard and a hundred slobberers suck your innards out, then you’ll see I was telling the truth.

  At that moment I remembered I’d left my fence post back at Ernie Piggot’s house. I tried to turn back, but Eileen’s grip was unbreakable.

  At least I had Mum’s shoe inside my shirt.

  I held it tight through the cloth. It made me feel better even though it wasn’t much good as a weapon.

  We were close to the wrecker’s yard. I strained my ear for sounds of slobberers. My heart was pounding so loudly I couldn’t hear much. Just some birds screec
hing and Eileen muttering about kids and their warped minds.

  At the gate I stopped. ‘Let’s go to the police,’ I pleaded. ‘They can come and take photos of the slobberers and you can see those.’

  Eileen looked at me grimly. ‘If we’re going to be a family, Dawn, we’ve got to start being honest with each other.’

  She dragged me through the gate.

  ‘No,’ I yelled desperately. ‘We don’t stand a chance. They haven’t eaten for hours. We’ll be – ’

  I stopped and stared. The yard was empty. There wasn’t a slobberer to be seen.

  I tore my arm free and ran around the piles of scrap and the bus and the four-wheel drive and the big wrecker’s crane, looking wildly.

  Nothing.

  ‘Okay, young lady,’ yelled Eileen. ‘Come here and start talking.’

  I ignored her. I ran back to the bus and peered in, not caring if a tidal wave of slobberers poured out. At least then she’d know.

  The bus was empty. Just the torn seats and the smashed speedometer and the goat’s skeleton.

  ‘Dawn,’ roared Eileen.

  Slowly I turned to face a life of not being believed and possibly being accused of killing and eating Rory.

  Then I noticed something. On the ground. Big patches of what looked like cow poo. Dry and cracked. But not crumbly like cow poo. Hard like dried leather. When I kicked one I hurt my foot.

  Of course. I remembered the slobberers’ festering skins. They must have been dying. But what could have made them decompose so fast?

  My thoughts were interrupted by Eileen grabbing me.

  ‘I said,’ she hissed, ‘start talking.’

  ‘They’ve died and shrivelled up,’ I explained desperately. ‘Look, you can see where they were. There and there and there and …’

  ‘Cow dung,’ said Eileen icily. ‘It’s dried cow dung, Dawn. Just like you’re feeding me. Now tell me what’s going on. Where’s Rory?’

  As I blinked back tears of rage and frustration, I was tempted to just make something up. ‘He’s run away from home because you’re such a pain’, something like that. But I knew Mum wouldn’t have approved. She was a stickler for the truth. Even if it meant admitting she was five minutes late with the school bus because she’d got one of her uniform buttons jammed in my high chair.