The Truants

by Lee Markham

  The sky is starting to brighten now. The shadows of the trees behind me starting to thicken across the ground before me like claws reaching across the field towards the old-one on the bench.

  The child stops at the bench and the old-one looks up at him.

  This could complicate matters.

  But hopefully not so much that I will need to alter any plans.

  The child, hopping from foot to foot, pulls something from his pocket, a blade surely, and the old-one smiles at him. That old, hateful smile. And I know then that the child will come to harm. But there is nothing I can do about that. We all come to harm one way or another, and it is our own responsibility to avoid and to recover from. We can’t all be saved.

  Then things happen quickly.

  The old man says something to the child, who then slaps the old-one. The old-one catches the child in a flash and the child squeals, his arm caught, and in all likelihood snapped. More fool him. The child, almost in a reflex action, thrusts his blade into the old-one’s side. That’s when the sun breaches the treeline behind me and the burning starts.

  At which point I begin to relax. It is pretty much done. I start to move away, down the path on this side of the park, back towards the safe house. I watch the end of it across my shoulder as I start away.

  Then something happens that stops me in my tracks.

  The child pulls himself, and his knife, free. And the knife is glowing. But the glow is more than hot. It is alive. Festering. And it speaks to me. It speaks nonsense, the babble of one lost in the deepest sleep. It tells me that we might not be done. The child, in his hood, carrying his broken arm, stuffs the still-glowing blade in his pocket and pelts from the park. I pause, unsure, uncertain that what I felt wasn’t just a refusal to accept that it was done. That my mind hadn’t constructed a madness to prolong the nightmare of his continued existence. But uncertainty will not do. I have to be certain. I’ve waited too long to leave anything to chance.

  So I give chase. I am faster than the child. And I know how to track.

  The next camera I pass is too slow to catch me. I am motion-blur, at best.

  I follow him down into the tunnels and maintain my distance. He’s not paying any attention anyway – he’s in too much pain. A guard at the gate straightens up when he sees me approach the barriers, but when I pull out a travelcard and wave myself through he quickly loses interest. No law against tramps down here. Just tramps without tickets.

  We head a few stops north and then up and out. The sun is up, but it hangs low in an overcast sky. And of course I came prepared. My hood, my coat. Scarves. Gloves. The perfect disguise. Everyone looks the other way.

  The boy heads deeper into the concrete underbelly of the estates, in between the towers, and I follow him. Through, up, along until he reaches his destination. I linger in a stairwell and listen to him bashing on a door down the way.

  ‘Ste mate, you there? Open up, mate…’

  A brief pause.

  ‘It’s me mate, it’s Cal. Lemme in, yeah?’

  Another pause. He doesn’t seem too welcome.

  ‘What do you think I fucking want Ste. You want me to make an announcement or what? Open the door man.’

  Only then is the door unlatched and opened.

  ‘You’re not letting the twat in are you Ste? I thought I told you to tell him to…’ A screech from further back, from somewhere in the bowels of the flat that has just opened up to the boy.

  ‘Donnashutup! It’s not like… Jesus Christ Cal… what happened your arm?’

  ‘Don’t ask. You got any?’

  ‘Course I got some. But what happened your arm?’

  ‘I said don’t ask, didn’t I? Fuck’s sake, man, just sort me out…’

  Then the door closes and he’s in and I have a moment to think. I edge down the gantry, listening closely to each door as I pass, listening for the sound of him. I don’t have to lean in to the doors, I just focus my ears. My hearing is as sharp as my vision. Which helps. Some of the flats are silent. It’s not that early, but nor is it yet get-up-and-go time. Not for this lot. A few rustles and bumps of activity from behind some of the doors – breakfasts being prepared, earlymorning TV. The door behind which the boy has disappeared offers the muffled sounds of televised rutting, and of them talking. The smell of dog-shit and drug sweat. A bad place. One of many.

  And then a child screams, and the volume of it nearly splits my head. They have a child in there with them. A baby.

  Oh god.

  I lean in to the door and put my eye to the keyhole and I see the boy fall back and drop the knife to the floor, and in that instant I know. I just know it. I step back from the door and towards the stairwell, my mind in turmoil.

  He is still alive. And he is in the knife.

  And soon enough he will awaken in the child.

  And what then?

  The old fear reawakens within me, the fear of him. A small, bold, reckless part of me urges me to break down the door and rip out all their throats, bleed the baby, the poor baby, take the knife and be done with him, once and for all. The rest of me dares not: too many variables.

  He may already be in one of the others.

  I’ve spent too long hiding everything from him to blow it now, this close to him being gone. I scuttle back down the stairwell and across the square at the bottom, and find myself a covered corner opposite where I can sit and wait before deciding what to do next.

  And I fret.

  A few hours later the boy comes back down and makes his way along the front of the tower before cutting across the square, across towards me. I examine his posture, the hang of his coat: does he have it on him? Or did he leave it behind? The awkwardness of his posture because of his arm, and his desire not to look any more suspicious than absolutely necessary, make it hard to tell. But as he comes closer to me, it becomes obvious that there is something weighty in one of his coat pockets. I have to assume it is the knife. And I have to decide now: stay with the child, the infected baby, or follow the knife.

  I look back up at the flat and make an assessment: the child won’t be going anywhere. Not immediately. The old-one will want to control the baby. He wanted to burn. He won’t allow the baby to infect anyone else. Assuming, once again assuming, that it works like it usually does and that control is an option.

  Fuck! What a mess. Fuck.

  The knife, on the other hand, he has no control over. The knife is the key variable in this disastrous equation so, for now, better to follow the boy, to stay with the knife.

  The boy heads two blocks over and then up and in.

  So I now have the old-one grid-referenced. He is in two places.

  Time to find somewhere from which I can watch, and wait, and remain undiscovered.

  Time to sit back and see how this plays out.

  Damn him.

  Damn him to hell.

  I smile at that.

  Knowing him like I do, hell is exactly what this will be for him.

  It would be poetic if it wasn’t such an egregious catastrophe.

  Fuck.

  Back into the shadows.

  Again.

  3

  Like moths to a flame they come from all around. The blue flashing lights and the police tape all but irresistible. They come and they watch and they listen and learn and almost by osmosis they start to know what has happened. Murder. Kidnap. Ritualised. Underworld.

  A lot of them know of them. If they’ve not scored off them themselves, then they’ve known people who have. A lot of the folk in the crowd are perfectly upstanding and suitably appalled. These people have made their beds, they think, and now they are lying in them. They are appalled. But they are not surprised. They pity the children. Everyone pities the children.

  Even the children.

  John and Bobby sit on a wall at the back of the crowd and look up towards the fourth floor, where the police arc lights throw a glow. They sit with a small group of younger people, most of them a bit older than th
emselves, maybe one or two ever so slightly younger, and they all compare notes.

  It’s definitely Ste and Donna. Ste was a cunt. Donna was a slag. Is the baby dead? Who knows – the baby’s gone. Serious? That’s what I heard. There was some other poor fuck in there too. Hands chopped off. Hands chopped off?! Hands chopped off and put in a fire. Fuck off. Nah man, I know the guy that found ’em. He lives in one of the flats next door, innit? He went in to put the fire out, found the poor fucker’s hands. All puffed up and shit like baked potatoes. Laughter. What about the dog? Who gives a fuck about the dog? Just askin’? Dog’s dead too.

  Fuckin’ hell.

  Cool.

  Bobby ducks into one of the flats behind them with one of the older kids to skin up, and they get a bit stoned. Another of the older kids has skinned up too. So they sit there smoking and shooting the shit and they get to talking about their day. And they get braggy. John doesn’t mention stabbing a little kid. He’s not sure people would be too impressed. But he reckons that they’d be impressed his brother knew them. The dead guys in the flat. And some of them are. Impressed that is. And some of them joke that maybe it was John’s brother with his hands cut off. They call him stumpy. They all laugh.

  John doesn’t laugh.

  John doesn’t laugh because someone was after his brother this afternoon.

  They’d chased him down the street. Ricky and his crew.

  And isn’t that them? Over there, down by the police tape? John’s eyebrows furrow and he sits up straighter and he watches like a hawk. He can’t see Ricky, but the rest of them fit the bill. He pulls the knife out of his pocket and slides the blade out a single notch. Just in case. It’s one of the younger kids that notices it.

  ‘Whatcha got?’

  John ignores him. Doesn’t even hear him. He’s too busy keeping watch on the threat down by the tape. The younger child reaches out to investigate, touches it and pulls his finger back with a sharp hiss. He yowls and tears spring into his eyes. John doesn’t notice. Most of them don’t notice. But one of them does. This one slightly older.

  ‘What the fuck you got there Johnny?’

  John notices this lad. He has to. John is junior to this one, and one must respect one’s seniors. Them’s the rules. He glances his way, keen not to lose track of the guy from earlier. ‘What? This? It’s just a knife innit?’

  The other kids start tuning into the conversation then, one by one. These little moths have found a new little flame. The younger child who has nicked himself is making quite the silent fuss, hopping from foot to foot, alternately sucking and then shaking his finger.

  ‘Let’s have a look,’ says one of them, reaching for it.

  John pulls it away. ‘No man, fuck off. It’s mine.’ His eyes still flitting down towards the tape and the group of older, meaner youths over there. The senior pack. On patrol.

  The younger pack start getting a bit jostly then. They want to see the knife. Another one makes a half-hearted snatch for it. John thrusts one shoulder forward and swings the knife instinctively away, but another child, a girl, is coming in from the other side. It snicks across the back of her hand. She leaps back with a scream as if burnt. Heads turn their way.

  All of the younger children take a step back then and look at John. The girl is making a right old song and dance. Some of the bystanders beyond this little huddle start peering into the circle and they see the knife. It glints. They start commenting, quietly at first, but with increasing volume. The kids themselves get their backs up and start snapping and snarling at John. What the fuck you doing? Why’d you cut her? She ain’t done nothing.

  They form a pack and start to close in.

  John, his back against the wall, feels the terror well up within him. He’s seen this too many times before. But before, he’d always been one of the others, part of the larger group, closing in.

  And down the front, the senior pack prick up their ears. They smell blood. They start in towards this new entertainment. John, senses in a heightened state of alert once more, sees one of them gesturing across the mob to someone else. John looks desperately round, certain that he’ll see Ricky bearing down on him.

  He sees him too late. Ricky pushes through the loose perimeter of John’s acquaintances, his toothy smile underscoring the gimlet darkness in his eyes. John bites his lip, hesitates for the briefest of moments, before swooning into the arms of panic. He screams and starts swinging the knife.

  Ricky leaps back with a hiss.

  John snicks two more children. Three.

  They howl.

  The immediate huddle fall back and the broader crowd then start to low and moo and wash back and forth.

  John drops his head then and runs at them, pushing his way through, flailing. He has no idea if anyone else gets nicked by the knife, he doesn’t care because he’s out then and he’s breaking for home.

  He doesn’t stop running, he doesn’t look back.

  4

  The sound of the herd back at the scene chases him for a block or two, but the greater gravitational pull of the triple murder soon pulls them back into their tight orbit of morbid curiosity. As he nears home John slows and eventually does take a glance over his shoulder. How many times in one day can this keep happening? He has escaped them. Again. He is on his own. Again. He drops his head, turns and trudges the final furlong.

  At the foot of his block he looks up towards the flat. No lights on in the larger window beside the front door. Cal is out. Or still out for the count. Out of the way, either way.

  At least there’s that.

  The smaller window of the door is aglow though, and that means his mother is still up. Although she’s always up. Doesn’t mean she’s conscious. He would in fact be very surprised if she was. He hopes he’ll be able to sneak in without disturbing her. She’d just get on his case and he isn’t in the mood.

  He heads for the stairwell that leads up to his floor. A shadow is waiting there for him. He freezes. The shadow stands and moves towards him. The knife is out of his pocket without a moment’s hesitation and is held up in front of him.

  The shadow raises its hands in a calming gesture and says, ‘Child.’

  John stops backing away, but remains very much on his guard. ‘What you want?’

  ‘You are in danger, child. If you go up there, you will probably die. Like your brother.’

  ‘What the fuck you talking about?’ The sound of broken glass in his voice. He is at his limit now. Not much more he can take. ‘How’d you know who my brother is?’

  ‘Because I have been watching. And you are in danger. Your brother has got himself into some trouble hasn’t he?’

  Images of bigger kids chasing him down the street. He nods. ‘Maybe. What of it?’

  ‘Your brother has got you into trouble, hasn’t he?’

  John wilts somewhat then, and the tears come. He is tired and scared and alone. And this shadow knows. And no one is supposed to know. He lowers the knife and the shadow takes another step closer.

  ‘Well, the trouble is up there, child. It is waiting for you. And if you go up there, it will kill you like it killed the others. It won’t hesitate. It will show no mercy.’

  ‘The others? You mean…?’ Images then of blue lights and police tape. Burnt hands. Stumpy. His head a swirl of confusion and conflict. The day has been more than the usual amalgam of bedlam and strife, but he hasn’t given it any weight.

  ‘Your brother is dead, child, and you will be too if you don’t trust me and come with me now.’

  The shadow takes another step towards him. John glances back up to the flat. The door opens and someone comes out. John steps instinctively into the shadows and watches as his mother steps across to the balcony and looks down. She scans all around, looking for something. Or someone.

  Looking for him.

  She never looks for him.

  He takes a sharp intake of breath and in that instant believes every word the shadow has spoken. He nods, ‘OK.’

&nb
sp; Then the shadow takes his hand and leads him away. And the shadow now knows what it had suspected since the dawning of the light this morning. It knows that the knife carries the trace of the old-one. It knows that the nightmare is not yet over. Or perhaps that it is over, and that a new one has begun.

  But the child from the tower has taken its hand and departed, away from the towers and the troubles that lie among them.

  CHAPTER SIX

  PESTILENCE AND PAIN

  1

  It was the home of The Original Gutbuster™. It was open twenty-four hours a day. The food was greasy, the coffee brutal. And it was where Tom and Anna retreated shortly after midnight to try and gather their thoughts.

  None of it made any sense, and it was getting even less logical with every new development. And it wasn’t that they weren’t making any connections either. It’s that they were making too many.

  Anna took a seat in one of the booths beneath the mirror that ran the full length of the wood-panelled diner. The lights were too bright. Left nothing to imagination. Right now, that was a distinct plus as their imaginations were running away from them. Tom went to the counter to fetch coffee. And he tried to focus.

  Anna seemed to be coming apart at the seams. Which was fine. The slaughter at the flat was distressing. No two ways about it. But she was acting strange now. Tom knew they had their differences existentially, and worried that her propensity to assume the worst perhaps meant she had nowhere to go in the face of this, philosophically speaking, to hold it together. He didn’t know for sure. She was a pretty closed book. All he knew was that she was fraying at the edges. And that he hadn’t seen that coming. But then he hadn’t seen any of this coming. How could he have?

  He was handed two cups of coffee without a smile. He paid for them and took them across to the booth. Anna sat with her head forward over the table, roughly rubbing her eyes with the thumb and forefinger of one hand while her other hand rested on the table in front of her.