The Sacrifice Box

by Martin Stewart

  Lamb dragged a hand over her face.

  ‘Fine!’ she growled. ‘But you’ll have to do it right now, because we need to get to –’

  ‘Get to where?’ said Tench, leaning out from behind a tree, the sunlight glowing redly through his ears.

  ‘Class, sir,’ said Arkle quickly.

  Sep blinked. The cigarette had disappeared as if by magic.

  ‘Wonderful. Strange place to find you all … together,’ said Tench, frowning at Sep. ‘Another detention, I think, Darren. I could see your puffs of smoke from my office. Come along then, the bell’s gone for registration.’

  ‘But, sir, we can’t,’ said Lamb, slapping Arkle’s head as Tench turned away. ‘We have to –’

  ‘What do you mean?’ said Tench, puzzled. ‘School’s started.’

  ‘But –!’

  ‘But what, Miss Lambert?’

  Tench turned to them, his broad face impassive, his eyes wide. Sep’s heart sank.

  ‘Nothing,’ said Lamb heavily. Then, as Tench strode off, she turned and hissed: ‘First break, all of you head back to my farm.’

  ‘What?’ said Sep. ‘Why?’

  ‘Come on, you lot,’ called Tench, hurrying them on with sweeps of his huge hands.

  They shuffled forward to catch him, then headed five abreast towards the side entrance. Lamb went first, letting the door swing closed in Sep’s face. Arkle and Mack followed her, and Sep found himself holding the door for Hadley.

  Looking over her shoulder at the distant forest, he tried to breathe out the knot in his stomach.

  ‘This is a disaster, isn’t it?’ he said. ‘I mean, think about what the box could be doing. We need to get there, like, now.’

  She nodded.

  ‘We’ll just have to leave at break, like Lamb said.’

  As she moved past he tried desperately to think of something to say, and blurted: ‘What were you listening to?’

  ‘It’s a mixtape,’ she said, looking fondly at her Walkman as though the bands were waving through the little window. ‘Fleetwood Mac, Wham!, Hall & Oates –’

  ‘Yuck,’ said Sep, before he could stop himself.

  She raised an eyebrow. ‘Snob much?’

  ‘I didn’t mean –’ Sep said, blushing. ‘I just don’t –’

  ‘I love Hall & Oates. They’re like a mix of new wave and soul. They’re fun, and … sincere.’

  She looked at him with her deep, warm eyes. Sep felt his defensive coil being stripped away with a little squeeze in his stomach, and opened his mouth to speak.

  To his surprise, what came out was: ‘Have you seen the comet yet?’

  ‘Yeah,’ she said. ‘It was amazing. It’s actually changed the way I think. You realize how tiny we are, and it makes me feel –’

  ‘Insignificant?’

  She frowned at him, then smiled.

  ‘No,’ she said. ‘Not at all. Think about it: you, September Hope, cleverest boy in school. You’re standing there, with all your skin shedding and hair growing and the blood rushing around. You’re, like, a miracle –’

  Sep realized he was leaning in towards her and tried to straighten up without her noticing.

  ‘– think about it,’ she went on. ‘Every ancestor you’ve ever had avoided car accidents and wars and disease and … sabre-tooth tigers! And they had the exact babies they needed to, so you could exist, because they were your grandparents and great-great-great-great grandparents. Imagine if a cave person relative of yours had slipped at the wrong time and fallen off a cliff – all their children and their children’s children would never have existed.’

  She flopped her head on one side and looked up at the sky behind him, imagining the comet tearing through space.

  ‘We’re all little miracles,’ she said, ‘everything about us: all our stupid habits and our jokes and our weird faces, on a spinning ball that’s a perfect distance from the sun. And now here we are, you and me, sitting on top of a million years of history.’

  She smiled again, then turned into the lobby.

  Sep followed her, wondering if she could hear the thud of his heart, and trying to remember how to breathe.

  24

  Change

  Dust hung in the sunbeams. They were sitting in their usual seats, and Sep was shocked to feel oddness in his solitude, in having found it strange to part with Hadley and the others at the door. He’d never gone to class with anyone, never made plans afterwards. There were only ever lessons, work and homework.

  He shook his head, felt the invisible barrier settle around him as it always did, and let his mind shift into learning gear.

  Mrs Woodbank was moving around the room.

  ‘Anyone?’ she said. ‘I know it’s still early, but come on. You’re not little kids any more –’ She snatched a scrap of paper from an outstretched hand. ‘Passing notes again, Stephanie? What’s so urgent it couldn’t wait? “I defo want to winch him up ASAP.” What does that even mean?’

  ‘As soon as possible,’ said Arkle.

  ‘Not the acronym, you – Just focus, all right? Think, and stop behaving like children.’

  Sep looked at the poem. It was the same one they’d been looking at the day before, but its little threads and connections were gone, like his head was an Etch-a-Sketch shaken to grey blankness by the terror of the previous night. He turned to his jotter, read the words he’d written:

  Life. Growth. Change.

  He wrote over Change until the letters were thick, shiny dents in the page.

  Hadley was watching him again. This time he held her eyes, just for a moment, before looking away.

  Long enough to see her smile.

  ‘We did this yesterday,’ Mrs Woodbank was saying. She rubbed her yellowed fingers together, as though asking for money.

  Don’t ask me, thought Sep. Ask someone else. Teach them something, for God’s sake. I’ve already got too much to think about.

  ‘September?’ said Mrs Woodbank.

  ‘Septic, Septic, Septic,’ chanted the boys.

  Sep took a deep breath.

  ‘It’s about life, growth and change.’

  ‘Yes!’ she said brightly. ‘See, class – now we have some themes to go on, and that’s really going to help us unlock this poem …’

  Sep eased back in his seat. He could see the puffs of green forest above the town, like mould in a forgotten mug. They would be there soon, the five of them, in the clearing with the box at its heart – cold stone from which Barnaby had climbed after years in the dark.

  ‘There,’ said Mrs Woodbank, writing Sep’s words on the board and drawing a circle round each of them.

  ‘Hey, Lamb,’ said Manbat. ‘What’s with your face? You break your nose or something?’

  Mack slapped his arm. Lamb faced forward, saying nothing.

  ‘Hey, Big Bird, did you catch deafness from Septic? I said what’s –’

  ‘Wayne Bruce,’ hissed Mrs Woodbank, ‘I won’t have talk like that in my classroom!’

  ‘Yeah, shut up, asshole,’ said Arkle.

  Mrs Woodbank’s face went pink.

  ‘Darren!’ she shouted. ‘Go and stand outside! How dare you use language like that in here!’

  ‘But Manbat was –’

  ‘I don’t care! I will deal with Wayne, not you. There’s no excuse for that kind of behaviour!’

  ‘He deserved it, miss,’ said Lamb.

  ‘Yeah,’ said Mack.

  Everyone turned to look at him. It was the first time he’d ever spoken in class.

  ‘Macejewski?’ said Mrs Woodbank. ‘What’s got into you all today?’

  Arkle rose and squeezed along the back row, stepping carefully through the chair-swingers on his way to the door.

  ‘What’s your problem, teeth-boy?’ whispered Manbat. ‘You hot for Big Bird or something?’

  Sep saw it coming, but by the time Woodbank had shouted his name Arkle had already burst Manbat’s nose and raised his fist to strike again. Sep was knocked over in the
rush to gather round, and by the time order was restored a grey-faced Mr Tench had arrived.

  The room smelled of adrenaline, and Sep’s heart was thumping. Hadley had come to stand next to him, and he moved closer to her.

  ‘Are you OK?’ he whispered.

  She nodded, then backed away as Arkle made another attempt to break free.

  ‘Nice going, dickhead,’ said Manbat, his quiff broken and squint, nose bleeding over his lips. ‘We’ll get suspended for this!’

  ‘Good,’ said Arkle, his eyes wild.

  But Tench had not so much as looked at them since entering the room. He spoke to Mrs Woodbank in a quick whisper before leaving with Arkle in tow, catching Sep’s eye briefly on his way to the door.

  Sep looked at Hadley, who was holding her head as though she might pass out – then at Lamb, who nodded.

  Something was very wrong.

  Back at his desk, Sep looked outside. The town was bright and normal, but the woodland that tumbled towards it seemed to have grown, like a muscle flexed in anger.

  ‘Right,’ said Mrs Woodbank, once they’d all returned to their seats and Manbat had been taken to the nurse. ‘Let’s move on to something else, shall we? Macejewski, could you please open the windows? It’s got a little tense this morning, so let’s try to clear the air.’

  Sep could see she was worried by whatever Tench had said. Her eyes kept flicking towards the door.

  ‘Hamlet,’ she said, dropping a pile of yellow books on to the front desk, their spines torn and broken, a few still covered in wallpaper and gift wrap. ‘I think we might have had enough of poetry for now. So here we are – a procrastinating, self-involved youth with daddy issues. Would anyone like to volunteer to read a part? September?’

  ‘Pardon, miss?’ said Sep.

  ‘Would you like to read a part?’

  ‘No thank you, miss.’

  She scowled at him.

  ‘Yes, thank you – you can be our Hamlet, and perhaps …’

  Sep switched off while she handed out the other parts, his book closed in front of him, and watched the waggle of Hadley’s pen as she drew on the desk.

  ‘We’re starting with Miss Lambert and Mr Ashton as Bernardo and Francisco then,’ said Woodbank, looking at the door again and fidgeting. ‘Miss Lambert, if you could read the stage directions too, thank you, and try to enunciate, people – nothing spoils the bard more than a surly teenage monotone.’

  Lamb sighed, then ran her finger down the page to the start of the text.

  Sep watched her brows knot in concentration. The room had grown warmer since the fight, even with the windows open. His skin crept with the heat.

  And the pain was swelling in his bad tooth.

  He turned to Hadley. She was already looking at him, her eyes wide with terror.

  There was something in the classroom.

  Everyone felt it, Sep realized – the smush of chatter had pitched a key higher, and he looked in panic for a sign of Barnaby.

  Lamb caught his eye. He nodded, and she bit her lips.

  ‘Now, please, Miss Lambert,’ said Mrs Woodbank.

  Lamb sighed.

  ‘I saw him again today,’ she read in a surly monotone. ‘He’s so handsome. I watched him finish training, but he didn’t see me –’

  Sep’s head exploded – his ear and mouth alight with pain, his guts seizing tight as he realized what was happening, his jaw shut in agony.

  ‘What are you reading?’ said Mrs Woodbank, pulling her focus from the classroom door. ‘Has someone graffitied that book? Read the actual play, come on.’

  Lamb screwed up her face and turned the page to check what was there. The rest of the class did likewise, and Sep forced his head to turn towards Hadley. Her eyes were brimming with tears.

  ‘But he didn’t see me,’ Lamb carried on. ‘So I watched him gather in the little cones. I think his eyes –’

  ‘Stop,’ Sep managed between his locked teeth.

  ‘– and when I got home I thought about him again and imagined his arms closing round me. I really think I love him, diary. I do. I love Mack! And – Oh –’

  ‘Hadley!’ shouted Sep as she ran from the room. ‘Hadley! Wait!’

  ‘Oh, shit,’ said Lamb.

  ‘What the hell is going on?’ said Mrs Woodbank, grabbing Lamb’s copy. ‘What are you reading?’

  She flicked through the book, took in the spidery writing and the misspelled words.

  ‘What the hell is going on?’ she said again, as the door slammed behind Sep and the class erupted in cruel, braying laughter.

  25

  Tracked

  The sun soaked into the leaves. They glowed, luminous and pale, unmoving in the breathless air. The clearing boiled with stuck heat, its floor a carpet of moist, dead things.

  Roxburgh shifted his weight to his other boot. His knees were screaming their age, but he kept still, working the beads of his rosary through his fingers.

  The flies had come in their thousands, and they flowed like water – blacking the red, spoiling flesh. Above them sat the three crows, watching with eyes like dark glass, white bone gleaming through torn, dog-bitten skin.

  Three.

  Roxburgh spat. First there was Morgan, then Lizzie, and now Shelley. Three.

  He turned to the box and moved his hands on the gun.

  Roots as thick as his wrist had curled round the sacrifice box. The stone was wet. The wetness was red and black and brown. At its edge rotted leaves were packed with the forest’s mammalian dead: fleshy piles of peeled, sticky skin. Occasionally one of the birds wing-squeaked its way across the clearing, striping through columns of sunlight, its shadow moving on the stone like a tongue running over dry lips.

  A wind blew. A root twisted in the air. A bloodied leg kicked, once, then was still.

  Roxburgh’s gamekeeper instincts, bright and alert, shrieked of danger. He dropped his rosary in his pocket, placed his hand on the shotgun’s stock and waited.

  The wind blew his hair across his face and moved the clearing’s dead lumps with a damp, rancid sound – a sound of terrible, insistent rhythm. He thought there might be a voice there, if he knew how to listen. Above his head the crows shuffled their feathers.

  There were movements inside the box now, and it clicked with fluid.

  Roxburgh pressed more tobacco into his lip and thought about the night before. It had been Aileen’s own doll, no doubt about that – he’d never forget its little fire-soft face, and it had the rotten stink of the ground.

  The doll had been trying to kill her. It had been so strong Roxburgh had had to plant his boots on Aileen’s shoulders to pull it free. And it was still out there, somewhere.

  So he’d risen at dawn and spent hours tracking it through the chilly light, only to end up here, where he’d always known he would.

  A tiny hand came out of the box.

  Even though he’d been expecting it, he breathed in too quickly and spluttered as spit entered his lungs.

  The dogs began to growl, and Roxburgh quieted them with his palm.

  Another hand followed, then a soot-black head, and Sadie lifted herself into the clearing. She was sticky with blood, and the flies fell quickly upon her.

  An evil thing, thought Roxburgh, gripping his rosary. Save me, Lord.

  Sadie screamed, a violent sound of tearing flesh. The flies rose from their feast in a great buzzing cloud, then settled and fed once more.

  She’s hunting, Roxburgh realized, biting through his tongue as the doll began to prowl, swinging her head from side to side like a hound after a scent.

  Something else climbed from the box then, something white and thin: a puppet moving on wind-chime legs, and dragging strings darkened by corruption and rot.

  Here’n’now.

  Roxburgh’s mouth filled with thin, coppery blood as he looked at his old sacrifice.

  He grabbed the dogs by the collar and stood, ready to run, preparing in his mind the barricades he would build round his sha
ck – when he lost his footing and stumbled towards the box, crying out over the patter of the doll’s footsteps as she bore down on him, followed by the whisper of strings.

  26

  Hadley

  ‘Wait!’ shouted Sep as Hadley’s bright hair vanished down the stairs, scattering a couple of first-year girls carrying pillars of books.

  He jumped on to the landing, jarring his knees and swinging from the bannister.

  ‘Hadley, wait!’

  ‘Leave me alone!’ she shouted, turning to look at him before she disappeared between the fire doors.

  Sep squeezed through the gap and caught her. She dropped her head and breathed thickly, embarrassment and anger catching in her throat.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ he said.

  She nodded, hands over her face. The sun, still low over the trees, was trapped behind her head.

  ‘It was in my copy of the play too,’ she said. ‘I’d read it all before Lamb even started, and I wanted to stop her, but … it was even my handwriting.’

  She turned to him, her face hidden in shadow. He smelled her smell as she moved, and felt his chest tighten.

  Then he saw how stooped she was – how empty of strength.

  ‘Are you all right?’ he said.

  She nodded.

  ‘Just … since yesterday, I’ve been so tired. And just now, in class, I thought I was going to pass out.’

  ‘We’ll fix it, all of it – your diary and Barnaby and Lamb’s face.’

  Her eyes widened.

  ‘You’ve noticed that too?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Lamb. The way she looks.’

  ‘Yeah. Obviously – she looks totally different. Her whole face has changed.’

  ‘Has she said anything?’

  Sep snorted.

  ‘To me? No. She can barely look at me.’

  ‘You know who she’s starting to look like?’ said Hadley, checking behind her.

  ‘Who?’

  ‘Her mum.’

  With a chill Sep remembered Mrs Lambert’s strong, handsome face, her deep eyes and her broad smile; then thought about how Lamb had changed in the last few days.

  ‘That’s who it is,’ he said. ‘She was always like her dad, and it’s been so long since I’ve … seen her mum. Oh my God, exactly like her, right?’