The Sacrifice Box

by Martin Stewart

  ‘I’ll be back soon,’ he whispered.

  She nodded, then slipped into unconsciousness again.

  Sep took the scrap of paper from his pocket and pressed it into her hand, then ran into the darkness.

  ‘Check out the bold Sep,’ said Arkle. Then he vomited behind a bush.

  54

  Sacrifice: 1986

  As he ran Sep reached into the forest with his deaf ear, searching for the whisper of the box’s noise.

  But there was nothing. Now the rotten tooth had gone he could no longer find its corrupt frequency.

  He cursed the blind darkness, empty now of warning, peering into every shadow as he found himself pulled back to all his resentments, to the small, selfish, lonely thoughts he’d hidden from himself for so long. He leaned against a tree, closed his eyes and fought back against the tide of self-loathing; focusing on how his empty world had exploded with voices and laughter, on everything his mum had done for him, on the warm glow of friendship the others had re-kindled in his heart; and he thought of Mario, his great friend. Always patient. Always kind. Always on his side – murdered by the box’s anger when Sep had led Barnaby to the surgery.

  He felt the memories of Mario giving him strength, and he reached for the Dictaphone, his bare feet skidding on more slick wood.

  Mario’s voice, whispering like a ghost through the rain, found his good ear.

  … antlers is cracked along base of pedicle. Neck seems potentially broken, is …

  He rewound further.

  … dead tortoise, is been maimed by cat, eyeball torn out and is missing … most likely eaten by cat who also is dead … the intestines of the tortoise have been …

  He wound it forward, just for a second.

  … ripped apart, kidneys dangling from wound under shell, and all other major organs have been torn from …

  He wound it forward again, laughing painfully at Mario’s frankness, then found what he was looking for.

  … are my great friend, September. Mario loves you. And he knows you will do brilliant things, because you are clever and brave. The bravest person I know …

  Sep sobbed into the night, rewound the tape and played it again and again as the clearing’s open, moonlit space came into view.

  … friend, September. Mario loves you. And he knows you will do brilliant …

  … September. Mario loves you. And he knows you …

  … Mario loves you …

  ‘I love you too, Mario,’ he said aloud, looking up to see a column of dark cloud twisting towards the sacrifice box. And in a tiny gap of clear night sky he saw the comet – a piece of distant magic he should have been watching from the chip-shop roof, sipping tea with his great friend – hurtling, indifferent, over all this chaos.

  He took a deep breath, felt the hot coal of Mario’s love burn in his chest and pulled himself over a fallen log.

  Barnaby leaped from inside the cavernous trunk and Sep fell, landing in a huge puddle of deep, slick mud. A fork of lightning slashed through the sky, illuminating the little bear’s antler-torn, terrible face as he bore down on Sep, his stuffing bursting out from the side of his head.

  ‘I know what you are now!’ Sep shouted.

  Barnaby’s bright eyes stared into his, and Sep realized he was staring into his own soul.

  ‘No! I know what you are!’ he shouted again. ‘You think you can hurt me, but you can’t! I own you! Everything that’s in you!’

  He threw a stone. Barnaby ducked, closed his eyes and – without their light – vanished.

  Sep scrambled to his feet and ran into the empty space the teddy had filled moments before. He peered through the forest’s murk, through the shifting leaves and the fists of thorns, searching for movement.

  ‘I know you’re here!’ he called, swinging his head under a low branch. ‘I know everything that’s in you, and I’m not scared of it!’

  He moved deeper into the darkness.

  ‘You’re her sickness,’ he shouted, ‘and my guilt for wanting to leave, even when I thought she might die! I had those thoughts, but I’m still a good person – I love my mum and I love my friends, and I’m not scared of any of that shit any more! I own it, all of it: all the bitterness and the guilt and the regret! They’re mine! I own them! And I own you!’

  Glowing eyes rushed at him from the branches’ depths.

  Sep aimed a kick at Barnaby, who grabbed his foot and ran up his leg, his soft limbs squelching with rain and mud. Sep beat at him, grabbing the ears and the neck, and gagging on his stink. With all his strength he prised the teddy away from his chest and held him in mid-air, locking his hands round him and squeezing, the pain of his severed finger roaring like a bright fire.

  ‘I own you!’ he shouted again – and squeezed again, watching the bear’s defiant glare ebb away as the light died in his eyes.

  Barnaby went limp. Sep dropped him on the ground, and turned to the clearing.

  The box had gathered the forest like a protective cage. The clearing was barred by trunks that leaned and coiled together, knuckles of yew embroidered with birch and twisted with oak. Tangles of twigs and leaves had meshed high above, making an urn of shimmering, greasy air.

  Sep squeezed through a tiny gap in the trees, angling his body through a spider’s web of sinew and skin. His torn leg snagged on it with an explosion of pain that flashed lights in his eyes, and he roared, grabbing at the air around the wound.

  Bones popped beneath his feet with tiny, wet sounds as he stumbled over the roots that fell into the box. Its stone shone like licked skin, its open mouth blacker than night, larger than before – larger than it had ever been.

  Large enough for a person. Sep nodded in the shadows.

  It was waiting for him.

  The sacrifice box’s terrible pulse beat through him, through the soles of his feet and the pores of his flesh, the vibrations of a drumbeat he could no longer hear, but which hammered at him with all its strength. It flickered with a pulse that filled his head with hot tin, and he fell face first on to the mud and roots, shaking as he remembered the moment he’d wondered about his mum dying, wondered for a split second what would happen afterwards – whether her death would mean he’d get to leave the island.

  ‘No!’ he roared, dragging himself up and crawling on his knees towards the box as the roots grabbed at him. ‘She’s going to be fine. I love her, and I know myself, I know who I am – all my weakness and my strength, all the selfish thoughts and the love. I claim it, all of it! The misery and the light! It’s mine, not yours – mine!’

  He saw Here’n’now’s eyes glinting like stars on the edge of his vision; heard the buzz of insects’ wings and the slip of feathers.

  Sep counted the birds.

  Four.

  ‘You don’t scare me,’ he said aloud. Then he threw back his head and screamed it, screamed it at the sky and the sacrifices and into the box’s void: ‘You don’t scare me – I scare you! I scare you!’

  He reached down, picked up a slick little skull and crushed it in his hands – threw the shards at the crows as they came at him.

  And climbed inside the sacrifice box.

  55

  Love

  It pulled at him like a magnet – drawing his blood against his skin and filling his eyes with stabbing pain as his ears, both his ears, roared with the pressure in his veins.

  He had only one thought, but it beat at him like a hammer – that his mother and his friends were waiting for him.

  ‘I love you,’ he said, his mouth open in silent agony.

  And as he spoke he was taken by the roots, his flesh filling with thorns as the box’s solid, even strength gripped him like a fist.

  Sep screamed at the force of it – screamed until he felt the fibres tear in his throat and blood run from his broken lips – and a time passed around him that could not be measured or understood, leaving him hovering in a light that froze his skin and boiled his guts.

  I’m dying, he thought – a form
less notion spoken not with his mind, but with his soul.

  He stopped screaming.

  His fears and worries drifted from him like falling blossom. Sep laughed, watching them twirl.

  That’s all there is, at the end, isn’t it? he thought. People, and what you’ve shared.

  He thought of them all. Lamb. Arkle. Mack. Hadley. His mother. He leaned back against that swell of happiness – and felt the box tremble.

  ‘Oh, you’re scared of me,’ he said, and reached with all his strength into the roots that held him, found the evil the box had cast into the island and held it in his grip, pulling it back like a net from the sea, dropping the reanimated dead where they stood, the glow dying in their eyes as the box’s power began to shrink.

  As he withdrew the box’s poison he absorbed the wonder of his world: the crackle of growing grass, the pull of the tide and the soft breath of the people in their beds, their beating hearts like raindrops on a pond; he found his mother – and reached out his love towards her.

  And found something else. He’d thought her sickness had returned, but she wasn’t sick.

  She was pregnant.

  Sep felt joy wash over him as he listened to the tiny heartbeat thumping alongside her own. A little girl, curled and growing.

  His sister.

  The sacrifice box struck back, crushing him, breaking him, killing him.

  As his consciousness ebbed away Sep saw the means by which he would live forever, dancing as a speck in a sunbeam, or growing in soil; sparkling in the wings of dragonflies or glittering in seawater; and he sensed his distant body falling apart until he was dust, the golden thread of his consciousness dissolving until he was nothing but the matter that had once been rock and starlight.

  Mum. Mum. I’m sorry. I’m sorry, Mum.

  Hadley.

  Her name struck him like thunder, and with it came the awareness of himself, of himself and all the happiness that was his to claim. He felt a tug from the world and knew that the others – his friends, his friends – had made it to the box, were speaking over it, making real sacrifices, little pearls of love; and calling him back, saying not the rules but a single word.

  His name.

  Light, white and blinding, filled him, and he was once more bones and muscle; once more a heart and gasping, wet lungs, lying in skin that was cut and bruised and cold. Something else came to him, something silky and light. He reached out, felt the pull on the other end … and then he was awake, the watch on his wrist ticking, the crows exploding from the trees in a silent constellation, drifting as feathers to the earth and filling the sky with the gleaming specks of their eyes.

  Sep gulped at the beautiful green air until his breath was taken by the force of Hadley’s lips – firm and soft and tasting of her, of her breath and her skin and her spirit – and they held each other, the rain washing them clean, each with the other’s heart beating in their chest; the headscarf gripped in his fist, a scrap of paper in her hand.

  56

  Mainland

  August

  Sep leaned over the railing and watched the jellyfish spinning like ghosts through the ferry’s wash. The sea was slate black and glassy, the sky the colour of polished brass – bright and pulsing with heat. He closed his eyes and turned his face to it, felt the light kiss his skin.

  The island was shrinking as the boat neared the mainland – already so small he could cover it with his hand. But even at this distance he could see the tide’s retreat from the island’s glorious, barnacled bones.

  And he could see the forest. He shuddered as he thought of the wet stone and the blood-black soil, remembering the smell of Barnaby’s fur as he’d wrung it in his hands.

  Here, surrounded by the laughter of day-trippers, it seemed impossible, but he squeezed the bandage on his finger and felt his pulse throb through the half-healed scar on his leg. He finished his soda and watched the island vanish into the haze.

  ‘You look serious,’ said Arkle, leaning in beside him. ‘You changing your mind? Cos, you know, if you wanted to stay that would be, y’know, cool.’

  Sep smiled.

  ‘No, I’m still taking the scholarship.’

  ‘You sure? I mean, you’ve got the little Tenchling on the way, your mum and him are moving in together …’

  ‘Dude –’

  ‘I bet Magpie would like it if you stayed. Daniels might be less keen. You know he blames you for the whole “pellet-eyed crow” thing.’

  ‘I know.’

  ‘He’s seeing a counsellor about his nightmares.’

  ‘I know, Arkle.’

  ‘I was at the last match of the season: Daniels missed two penalties, and got sent off. He’s lost it.’ Arkle’s eyes misted over. ‘It’s beautiful, man. You all right?’

  ‘Yeah, I’m just … thinking about everything.’

  ‘You think too much, Sepster. Take a leaf out of my book – it’s got cardboard pages and loads of pictures. And talking of pages …’ Arkle shuffled closer and lowered his voice. ‘What did you write on that piece of paper?’

  ‘What?’ said Sep, frowning.

  ‘The … paper,’ whispered Arkle. ‘The one you were going to sacrifice. I saw you give it to Hadley. And she’s had it ever since.’

  Sep laughed. ‘Why do you even care?’

  ‘Just that once you gave it to her she, you know. Kissed you. With tongue. I was thinking if I could get a similar message to Anna Wright then –’

  ‘I’m not telling you,’ said Sep, grinning. ‘Here, what did you do with Rosemary? You didn’t burn her or anything, did you?’

  ‘No way! I mean, I can’t believe I was cuddling that thing, but I buried her in the garden. I’m growing up, like.’

  ‘Good,’ said Sep. ‘Wait – whose garden?’

  Arkle winked at him.

  ‘Never you mind. But listen, you’ll come back for holidays, right?’

  ‘These still are the holidays. I’ve not even left yet.’

  ‘I know, but you will, right? Cos Lamb’s getting Legend of Zelda and I thought –’

  ‘I promise. I’ll even be back at weekends.’

  ‘And not just to French kiss Hadley?’

  Sep rolled his eyes.

  ‘I thought you’d be happy for me.’

  ‘I am,’ said Arkle. ‘How’s your hand?’

  Sep held up the enormous bandage.

  ‘Not great.’

  ‘It looks sweet,’ said Hadley, appearing beside them, ‘like you’ve got one of Mickey Mouse’s fingers.’ She took a quick photo of her friends, then reached into a carrier bag, balancing Elliot in the crook of her arm. ‘The ferry’s shop isn’t great, but here you go: one stick of rock and one Milky Bar.’

  ‘Aw, Milky Bar Kid! You got it!’ said Arkle, beaming as he blinked away the camera’s flash. ‘Did you get my –’ Hadley passed him another box – ‘nicotine patches? Thanks, I’m gasping.’

  Sep turned over the rock, looked at the words on its edge.

  ‘Hill Ford all the way through,’ said Hadley.

  Sep nodded. He felt a tremor of recognition inside himself – a sense of place that ran up from the soles of his feet.

  ‘Thank you,’ he said, taking Hadley’s hand and turning it over. The cut had begun to fade.

  ‘It’s fine,’ she said.

  Sep nodded. He checked Mack’s watch, ticking steadily on his wrist.

  ‘How long till we dock?’ said Arkle.

  ‘Not long. Half an hour.’

  ‘Do you ever hear things with your deaf ear any more?’ said Hadley.

  Sep shook his head.

  ‘Not since Lamb pulled out my rotten tooth. You want to try – see if anything gets through?’

  He angled his head. Her lips brushed his skin, and sent a shiver through his body.

  ‘I love you, Sep Hope,’ she whispered.

  Sep smiled.

  ‘That’s my good ear,’ he said, squeezing her hand as they went to join the others.

 
Acknowledgements

  Nobody writes alone, and I was supported in the creation of this book by many wonderful people.

  Thank you first to my darling Julie, for listening to a thousand hours of out-loud thinking, for reading and rereading endless paragraphs, and for agreeing to marry me – you’ve made me happy and proud beyond measure. Thank you to Tessie, for bouncing on my knee as I finished the manuscript, and for filling my heart with joy. To my extended family, as always, for your support through difficult times. And to my friends, for giving me a template by which I could measure Sep’s growing friendships (Nicolas Anelka?)

  Thank you to my UK editors for their enthusiasm for this dark little story: Shannon Cullen, for guiding me through my first book and the early drafts of this one; Natalie Doherty, for your vision and patience as I wrestled the story into place; and Tig Wallace, for getting me over the finish line. To my American publisher, Ken Wright, and my editor, Leila Sales, for your guidance, and for believing in this book from the very beginning. To my agent, Molly Ker Hawn, for securing another unusual deal and for continuing to work magic with my career. To my copy-editors and proofreaders, Jane Tait, Frances Evans, Sarah Hall and Mary O’Riordan, for catching all the many errors that slipped past my eyes. To my publicist these past two years, Clare Kelly, for all your help, organization and enthusiasm; and to Harriet Venn, for your work in support of this book. To my young reader, Evie Baird, for your time and insight.

  The Isle of Arran has always played an important role in my life. All our family holidays were taken there, and its elegant silhouette is my constant companion when I run on the beach, weaving stories in my mind. Arran is where my imagination lives – the town of Hill Ford is a composite of Brodick and Lamlash – and I’d like to thank the island and its people for having inspired me to such an extent.

  Thanks also to the pupils and staff of the schools I both attended and taught in: Carolside, Williamwood, James Hamilton and Kyle. My memories of you helped Hill Ford High come to life. A special mention must go to my old history teacher, Lawrence Curran – my favourite of many brilliant teachers – immortalized here as Sax Solo, the music teacher.