‘Well, ours are still in there,’ said Thom. He lifted her to her feet, and together they walked back down the hill.
18
Footprints
Cold rain speckled Sep’s feet as he pulled open the back door. He went into the garden, stooping like that might keep him dry.
‘What are you doing here?’ he whispered.
‘You shat it,’ said Arkle, his face split by a grin, a flap of hair stuck to his forehead.
‘I didn’t.’
‘Sure, sure.’
Sep looked around. There were no crows, no Barnaby, just the telltale rush of shadow as the fox darted along the treeline.
‘Well, your faces were all dark,’ he said, ‘and you’re outside my house in the middle of the night.’
‘Hey, I’m not judging,’ said Arkle, ‘but let’s face it – if you weren’t shitting yourself you wouldn’t be out here in He-Man pyjamas, freezing your sweets off in the rain, would you?’
Sep looked at his pyjama bottoms and swore inwardly.
‘They’re old,’ he said, looking involuntarily at Hadley.
‘They sure are,’ said Arkle. ‘It was nearly a full moon when you turned round to close the door.’
Lamb pushed Arkle out of the way.
‘What was that at your window?’ she said.
Her hair was heavy and wet, and Sep saw again how much older she looked than the others. He stared at them all, dark and serious in the rain, the moonlight making skulls of their faces.
‘I had the dream again, Sep,’ said Hadley. ‘I only fell asleep for a second and the voice was there, whispering things. Tell us, please. It was your turn – that’s why we’re here.’
Lamb’s eyes flashed.
‘It was Barnaby,’ said Sep, and as the words passed his lips they became things of iron and stone, heavy and permanent and true, and he felt the terror pour back into his chest. ‘It was Barnaby! Walking around!’
‘We told you it was the box!’ hissed Lamb, spitting the words at his face. ‘You still think it’s the damn comet?’
‘No!’ said Sep. His heart was still pounding in his chest. ‘Jesus Christ, what’s going on?’
‘It’s the box,’ said Hadley quietly.
‘There were rules,’ said Lamb, ‘and they’ve been broken. It’s the only explanation.’
‘Who’s Barnaby?’ said Arkle.
‘Holy shit!’ said Mack. ‘Don’t you remember? That’s the teddy he put in the box!’
‘I should remember that – why don’t I remember that?’ said Arkle, looking worried.
‘And apparently he’s come to life,’ said Sep.
‘What was he doing?’ asked Lamb.
Sep took a deep breath. For the first time in his life he’d been aware of his blood, hot and rushing round a fragile skeleton wrapped in thin, soft skin. He remembered the predatory intent, and the way he’d felt himself respond like an animal.
Like prey.
‘I think he was trying to kill me.’
‘Really?’ said Lamb.
‘Definitely. I heard this … noise, when he was close. It made my toothache worse. And it wasn’t a normal noise. I was hearing it with –’
‘Anyone want a Monster Munch?’ said Mack.
‘So have you, like, named your tapeworm?’ said Arkle.
‘It’s you next, Mack,’ said Hadley. ‘You were last.’
‘What did you sacrifice?’ said Arkle.
Mack pulled a face, then frowned.
‘My old watch.’
‘Yeah,’ said Lamb. ‘You stopped the hands, then put it in.’
They all thought for a moment, remembering their sacrifice.
‘Anyone want to admit breaking the rules?’ said Lamb.
Nobody spoke. She shook her head.
‘Pussies.’
‘How do we know it wasn’t you?’ said Hadley.
Lamb glared at her.
‘Because I’m telling you, that’s how!’
‘But we’re saying it wasn’t us! Maybe it wasn’t any of us?’
‘Think about it,’ said Lamb, ‘you know I’m right. It’s like … knowing it’s about to rain. So stop giving me your chicken-shit answers and just own up to it!’
The rain fell in gossamer rods, and Sep looked over his shoulder, wondering if he’d see Barnaby’s eyes glowing in the shadows.
They listened to the rain in silence.
‘Fine,’ said Lamb, glaring at them. ‘But we need to sort this shit out.’
‘How?’ said Hadley.
Mack finished his crisps and crushed the bag into his pocket.
‘When did you hurt yourself?’ said Hadley, frowning at him.
Mack waved his tightly strapped hand and forearm.
‘Football,’ he said.
Lamb leaned forward and pressed her finger in Sep’s chest. The headscarf hung wetly from her wrist.
‘What do you think, Genius Boy?’
Sep met her stare.
‘It’s obvious, isn’t it?’
‘Is it?’ said Arkle, eyes darting between them. ‘Oh, you mean the space thing? And the Soviets?’
‘No,’ said Sep. ‘I’ve already said – I was wrong about that. You were right. We’re each being targeted with the exact thing we put in the box, and that’s nothing to do with the comet or nuclear fallout.’ He took a deep breath. ‘It’s the sacrifice box. Once you eliminate the impossible, whatever remains, no matter how improbable –’
‘– must be the truth,’ finished Hadley.
‘God, you guys would have clever babies,’ said Arkle.
‘So?’ Lamb hissed. ‘What do we do? Don’t just quote shit – what do we do?’
Sep’s mind raced. The rules had come to him suddenly, unbidden. There had been no guide for what to do if things didn’t go to plan.
‘We reverse whatever’s gone wrong,’ he said. ‘So if the rules have been broken, we fix them. The rules say not to go there alone, not to go after dark – so we go together, in daylight.’
‘And then?’ said Mack.
‘We make sure the sacrifices are where we left them – in the box.’
‘And what if they’re not?’ said Hadley. ‘I mean, your teddy obviously isn’t.’
Sep thought. ‘Then we’ll make new sacrifices.’
‘What about the Soviets?’ said Arkle.
‘It’s nothing to do with them –’ Hadley began.
‘Reversing the broken rules is the only thing I can think of,’ said Sep. ‘Does it make sense?’
‘I think so,’ said Mack.
‘All right,’ said Lamb. ‘Fine. Meet in the trees beside the hockey pitch before registration. Then we go to the box. Bring a new sacrifice, in case our old ones aren’t there.’
‘Wait, we’re going to skip class?’ said Sep. The water broke through the last warm parts of his slippers and his feet began to freeze in the mud.
Lamb smirked.
‘Check your priorities, asshole – you want to waste time in English, or stop your teddy from murdering you?’
Sep held her eye.
‘Probably the teddy,’ he said.
‘See you tomorrow,’ said Lamb, pulling up her hood and walking into the darkness.
‘And so will I,’ said Arkle. ‘Oh, isn’t it wonderful? We’re a gang again! We can go on hikes and have picnics, and lashings and lashings of ginger beer, and –’
‘Shut up!’ Lamb shouted from beyond the hedge.
‘Night, Sep,’ whispered Hadley, then slipped away, Mack at her heels.
Sep stood in the rain and watched them go, their figures melting away from the pale glow of the kitchen light, footsteps quickly beyond his ear’s reach.
‘Goodnight,’ he said.
He was alone again, standing in the silence of the blue garden.
They might not have been there at all, he realized, as the night wrapped its cold tongue around his skin. Maybe all of it – everything they’d said, the moonlight on their faces – may
be it had all been some sleepwalked dream. He looked down.
Dented in the mud, four sets of footprints gathered round him, the toes pointing towards his – the space between them the size and shape of the sacrifice box.
He went back inside, past his mum’s snoring doorway, and found his Walkman before he climbed, shivering, into bed. He lay for a long time in the dark, grinding his aching teeth and watching shadows move on the curtains.
-1
Choices: 1982
‘Is that you, Sep?’
His mum leaned round the living-room door. Her hair hadn’t grown back completely, but it was getting fluffier every day. Sep liked to run his hand through it. It was shining like gold around her head now, and she smiled at him as she cinched the robe tighter round her waist.
‘Yeah,’ he said. ‘Did I wake you up?’
She waved her hand to dismiss the idea, but then yawned.
‘I’m sorry, Mum.’
‘It’s fine. Chemo is exhausting. I’ll get back to sleep in no time. Where were you today? In the woods again?’
‘We were at the beach earlier, but we’re going to the woods now.’
‘It’s nearly dinner time,’ she said, raising a thin eyebrow.
‘I know, I won’t be long. I just told the others I’d –’
‘“The others”,’ she repeated. ‘You’re enjoying these friends, aren’t you? Darren seems a nice boy, even if he is a bit …’ she searched for the right word, ‘smoky.’
‘He likes to burn things,’ said Sep. ‘I don’t,’ he added quickly.
‘Well, I’ll be back at work at some point – if I ever see him doing that aerosol thing, I’ll cuff him – and you can tell him that from me.’
Sep paused halfway up the stairs. A sunshower started outside and a whip of rain hissed on the window.
‘You’re going back to work?’ he said.
‘Not until I’ve finished my treatment,’ she said, tilting her head. ‘Sep, we talked about this – the mortgage needs to be paid. And I’m looking forward to going back; it’s been a while since I handcuffed a rowdy drunk. I miss it.’
‘But I’ve got a job.’
She laughed and leaned against the bannister.
‘And I appreciate it. But wrapping chips on a Saturday doesn’t bring in enough, my brave boy.’
She gripped her side, and blinked slowly.
‘I’m going to lie down again,’ she said carefully. ‘If I’m sleeping when you come back, can you –’
‘I’ll make myself something.’
‘All right.’ She smiled at him. ‘What are you back for, if you’re going to the woods?’
‘I’ve got to find something. Something that … means something to me, like an important object. It’s a kind of friendship thing.’
She smiled again as she turned back into the living room, her footsteps fading into her TV movie.
As Sep reached under his bed for the thing he’d always known he would sacrifice – the thing he’d taken to his mum before she came home from the hospital, that had sat beside her as sickly breaths rattled in her chest – the others rifled through their own childhood clutter, throwing open their closets and pulling out drawers.
Time coiled slowly round them as they chose.
Hadley flicked through the pages of a book she wanted never to see again – a book filled with regretful secrets. She turned the little key that bound the solid leather covers, and watched as it swirled in the toilet’s flush, closing her eyes and wishing it eaten by the crabs.
Arkle’s breath hissed through his clenched teeth as he gripped the charred dragonflies, thinking of the report card he’d burned just before he found them floating on the river. He writhed in a pincer of shame, remembering how the flames had forced the card open, exposing his stupidity – and how the others had looked away to spare his embarrassment. He took his lighter from its secret place in his bottom drawer and tucked a cigarette behind his ear.
Lamb brushed her hair and imagined the way her mother had looked in the dresser mirror. The bedroom still smelled of her: her perfume, her clothes, the sweet leather of her shoes and handbags in the too-small wardrobe. Lamb looked at herself, ran her hand along her jawline, then went to the dresser’s bottom drawer and – snagging the headscarf she’d tied round her cast – took out the compact tortoiseshell mirror her mother had promised to pass on to her when she’d admired it as a little girl.
Mack sat on the edge of his bed, watching the second hand of his watch as it ticked a slow circle and wishing it might stop: wishing that the end of the summer would stay forever distant, that they’d always stay as they were now.
Sep’s hand closed on something soft and fluffy, shoelace stitching on its round middle.
He pulled Barnaby from the dust swirls behind his comics and board games, looked at his ever-smiling face, and squeezed him until his fingers hurt.
19
Truth
Daniels – Mohawk long since wilted with sweat – sat trapped on the edge of his bed, fear burning inside him like a stoked brazier. He was cleaning his rifle with melodic swipes of an oiled rag, trying to draw his mind from the piss-ache in his belly with the song of fabric on steel.
His torn ear thrummed painfully, its swollen heat creeping inside his head and blocking out sound, and his brain felt hot and itchy. He thought of ice melting on his boiling skin and imagined drilling into his skull – releasing the pressure in a great hissing burst.
Sep’s face danced in his mind.
Daniels scratched his ear and carried on cleaning the gun, trying to ignore the crow at his window. But it tapped the glass with the pellet lodged in its eye socket, and he heard a cruel voice in his mind whisper that most poisonous of things.
The truth about himself. About the person he was.
Daniels wept. Reluctantly at first, then uncontrollably, smothering his face in the pillow as shame filled him like dirty oil.
The bird shuffled its gleaming feathers as he pissed into the mattress.
‘Daniels doesn’t miss,’ he whispered, tears leaking from tight-shut eyes. ‘Daniels doesn’t miss.’
20
Maguire
Aileen Maguire listened to the radio without focus, its words a shapeless blanket around her. Though it was past midnight she had not yet gone to bed. Instead she sat stiffly in the lounge, her husband’s chair beside her – empty but for the pale shade that lived on the edge of her sight.
The small room was neat and warm, decorated in consumptive florals that had browned with age, like old blood. Maguire’s empty glass had warmed in her hand. She rolled it, following the syrupy wisps of alcohol on its sides and wondering if she could stop herself refilling it before sleep eventually came.
If it came.
Rain lashed the window. Maguire took a deeper breath and felt – as she often did, sitting in the little room – tight and sore, like her skin had dried and shrunk on her bones. She thought of the school and the flash of violence in the corridor – thought of Sep, and the likeness he bore to a headstrong, clever girl who’d attended Hill Ford High more than forty years ago, and never left.
She thought of Shelley Webster – dead now, like Lizzie and Morgan. Shelley’s daughter hadn’t said much on the phone, just that her mother liked to stay out late and that she’d always kept her hair long. It was awful, she’d said again, before the phone fell on to the cradle.
Maguire allowed her thoughts to mellow.
Shelley’s hair.
She gripped her glass tighter.
Of the five who had been to the box, three were dead: Morgan, lung cancer in ’68; Lizzie, a heart attack in ’76 – events that had blown mortality’s cold breath down the back of her neck. And, with each death, a new crow had come. The old pair were there last night – watching with sharp, unmistakable eyes.
That morning, a third had appeared – right before the phone call from Brooklyn.
Shelley had always wanted to go to America. Now she was dead – ki
lled on the New York subway.
Maguire set her lips, flattened her thin hair, stood.
And froze.
There was a noise at the other end of the hall. It was coming from the old study – the scratch and wriggle of tiny movements against stone.
She peered into the gloom beyond the lamp.
Another scratch came from the study.
‘There’s a bird in the chimney again,’ she said quietly.
‘You should take a pot,’ said her husband’s shade. ‘I used to catch them in a pot.’
The scratching stopped for a moment, and she found herself leaning away from the door. Then it came again, quicker and more frantic.
Maguire’s skin squeaked on her glass.
‘It might die. Remember the seagull that got stuck up there.’
‘I remember,’ said the shade. ‘Take care, love.’
‘Bloody birds,’ she muttered.
She went to the kitchen, took a small pot from the stand and walked along the corridor, each step massive in the silence.
The noise stopped when she touched the study door. She paused, listening to the sounds of the building: stone groaning in the wind, the gurgle of guttering and spat of rain. She leaned on the handle.
The study had been her husband’s room. It might have been years since she’d been in, and the door was swollen tight in the frame.
The lock gave way.
Maguire tumbled into the room and stood still, listening through the dark. Then she raised the pot and clicked on the dazzling bulb.
Nothing. Just the calm of a room lying undisturbed beneath time and dust – but she felt fear, animal and sharp, raise its snout in her belly.
The bulb snapped out in a shower of breaking glass, and she yelped.
Steadying herself against the wall, she waited for her eyes to adjust to the sudden dark and for her breathing to slow.
Some noiseless thing moved in the black. Its paper whisper was almost smothered by the roaring silence, a flutter she felt more than heard, like the rattle of a train below the ground.
The Sacrifice Box Page 9