The Hounded

by Simon Butters

  Eliza just laughed like all this was part of the fun and we ran down alleys and through empty parks. Eventually, we tired and returned to a steady walk.

  ‘Do you do this often?’ I asked.

  ‘Not as much as I want to,’ she said. ‘Dad keeps a pretty close eye.’

  ‘Thanks,’ I said. ‘Just what I needed.’

  She smiled and we headed back to the station. It was close to midnight, and we had to hurry if we were to make the last train to Middleford.

  I guess the club was Eliza’s beach. Under the waves, there was nothing but emptiness. On the dance floor, you were enveloped by noise and light. Weirdly, they had a similar effect: both transported you to some other world. Both were free.

  To save time, we cut through some dark part of the park lands. A bridge loomed over a cold river. Eliza ran ahead. That’s when I heard his voice.

  ‘You think you’re alone. But you never are. And you never will be.’

  It was a man. He was old, tucked up under that bridge inside a cardboard box. It was an odd sight. I know he was homeless, and he couldn’t help it, but he looked strangely comical sitting in that box, like how little kids make cubby houses out of cardboard boxes left over after Christmas. He had fashioned a roof and a door out of spare sheets and was poking his head out like some angry gnome.

  His face was etched in pain. Looking into his eyes drained all the joy out of me. I knew the feeling well. It came to me the day I turned fifteen.

  ‘You must be the master,’ he warned. ‘Not the dog.’

  He slammed his cardboard door shut and disappeared inside. I wanted to bang on that door, tear it open and take him by the scruff of the neck. I wanted to demand answers. I’d scream in his face until he told me everything he knew. I didn’t get the chance.

  ‘Geez, Monty. Come on! Hurry up!’

  Eliza beckoned me, standing further up the riverbank. We only had minutes left before the last train to Middleford.

  I saw something standing beside her, a dark shadow that quickly merged with the gloom. A sudden protective urge surged through me and I ran to her, searching about in the darkness.

  ‘What is it?’

  ‘Nothing. I thought I saw something, that’s all. Are you okay?’

  ‘I’m fine, Monty. We’ve got to go.’

  She turned and ran up the grassy bank towards the station. I looked back to that cold riverbank and that poor creature in his box.

  ‘Stay away from us,’ I warned the darkness.

  ‘Never,’ said the night.

  Chapter Ten

  When I was about four or five we used to get the milk delivered. Our milkman was probably the last of his kind in Middleford. These days the only way to get milk was to visit one of those big fluorescent supermarket chains or the twenty-four-hour petrol station.

  People who went in to those places were duped into upsizing: they’d go in just to buy milk and come out carrying four bars of chocolate for the price of three. I liked the old milkman. His name was Geoff. He never talked, just whistled old show tunes. Mum would leave the money under a rock the night before. The van drove up in the dark before dawn and, come morning, there’d be a carton of milk left on the driveway. He couldn’t have made any money out of it, surely the price of fuel outweighed what he’d make in deliveries, but Geoff was a stubborn man. In keeping up something everyone else had abandoned years ago, he preserved a little piece of history. In the end, I think we were his only customers. He still came, determined to keep his identity alive.

  We were being robbed of our milk.

  Usually my mother’s mystery intruders were an illusion. But when the milk didn’t turn up, day after day, something was obviously wrong. Geoff’s truck could still be heard rumbling past the house just before dawn but by the time I’d go out to fetch the milk it had disappeared. Geoff wasn’t the kind to take the money and run. Plenty of times we’d forgotten to leave the money out and he’d still deliver the milk. My mother would then leave out extra the next night and we’d be square. This was different. Someone was stealing the milk.

  Now, most people would watch for the thief and confront them, photograph them, call the police, that kind of thing. Not my mother. She took to urinating in a bucket.

  It was drastic stuff. My mother filled up an old milk carton with her urine, glued the top back together and left it out the next night. The milk robber must have thought it was a bonus. Two cartons of milk there for the taking! I guess they got a real shock when they poured my mother’s stale wee on their cereal.

  Bizarrely it actually worked. We were never robbed of milk again. Yet there were consequences. Soon after, Geoff quit the delivery business. Apparently someone had complained to the local health department that it wasn’t hygienic to leave milk out un-refrigerated in the night. We were forced to buy our milk in the supermarkets like ­everyone else.

  Alias: @The Full Monty

  Date: Tuesday July 1, 5.03AM

  She is more than you can imagine.

  @Gutentag

  I am having the jealousy of you.

  @The Full Monty

  So you should. She’s so amazing it hurts.

  @Gutentag

  Do you like this hurt?

  @The Full Monty

  I don’t mean it like that. It’s a figure of speech.

  @Gutentag

  I am to disagree. You like to hurt? I like to hurt.

  @The Full Monty

  Chill. Don’t do anything. Okay?

  @Gutentag

  Too late.

  *

  I sat by myself at lunchtime in a dark recess of the school grounds so I wouldn’t be seen. Most days, I didn’t have anything to eat so I mimed eating a sandwich.

  Miming eating was a great way to appear less conspicuous. People’s hunter instincts looked for things out of the ordinary. When someone passed by, they would subconsciously sum you up out of the corner of their eye. All they would notice was some nondescript person predictably eating at lunchtime. The slow movement of food to mouth, even though there was no food, made sense to the part of their brain that was on the lookout for points of difference in the world. I faded into the background. Tim Smith would have been proud. Of course that only worked if someone wasn’t looking for you.

  ‘You don’t even have a sandwich, you know.’

  It was Becky McDormond. I continued miming, just to annoy her. She rolled her eyes and flicked her hair, flooding me with the scent of artificial strawberries. By her side was another girl. Becky McDormond had quickly replaced Amy.

  Pippa Wilson had a face like a cartoon rabbit. She had a sweet little button nose and two enormous front teeth. Her eyes were deep brown and way too large for the rest of her face. Her auburn hair curled up behind her head in long pigtails, pinned back against her skull in an effort to make her look even more rabbit-like, I guess.

  Pippa Wilson was the new apprentice, there to learn the dark arts from Becky. She hung on Becky’s every word, begged for her attention, and basked in her presence. It was only through Becky’s recognition that she gained ­credence. She now existed, because Becky had noticed her. All the other girls now took her seriously, more out of fear than respect. Of course, Becky didn’t care about Pippa Wilson at all. She would have her uses.

  I took another bite of my imaginary sandwich. They looked at me as if I was from another planet. I guess compared to them, I was. This infuriated Becky.

  ‘Stop doing that. It’s weird,’ she pleaded.

  Another bite had her looking to Pippa, exasperated. She handed Pippa a ten-dollar note and gave her orders.

  ‘Go get him something to eat. And hurry up.’

  ‘Sure thing, Becky!’

  Pippa Wilson hopped away gleefully. She looked happy to be of service and zoomed off on her mission. Becky sat down close next to me. The strawberries were intense.

  ‘You know when perfume was invented, don’t you?’ I asked.

  She looked at me blankly.

  ‘Eigh
teenth-century France,’ I told her. ‘Everyone thought the palace at Versailles was such a wonderful place but in actual fact it was a cesspit. People rarely washed and there were no toilets so everyone had to poo in the corner. That’s why people loved perfume back then—to cover up the stink.’

  ‘Are you telling me I stink?’

  ‘No. I mean, when you cover up stuff, you have to ask, what are you really hiding?’

  She stared at me blankly for a few seconds wondering, I guess, why she had bothered to talk to me in the first place. I wondered too.

  ‘You’ve changed,’ she said. ‘The hair. Your face. You don’t even have pimples anymore. What happened?’

  ‘I washed,’ I told her.

  She didn’t buy it. People didn’t change without a reason. Mine was a subtle transformation, yet each day I washed, each day I combed my hair and brushed my teeth, I slowly encroached into the middle ground. I had rejoined the living, after staying so long out in the wilderness. Most people hadn’t noticed. I was just so used to attracting minimal attention that these subtle differences went by unseen. But Becky McDormond had singled me out long before as a potential meal. She knew I was a fraud.

  ‘Amy’s in a new school,’ she said. ‘Heathmont High. Everyone there hates her. She had all her books stolen and she’s been beaten up three times already. She’s going to quit school and work in the supermarket.’

  ‘We all need to buy milk,’ I said.

  As soon as I said this, I knew how insensitive it sounded. I didn’t want to be mean about Amy. Becky fought the urge to slap me, I could tell. Pippa bounced back into our orbit carrying a hot chicken roll.

  A fever gripped me. I’d never had a hot chicken roll. Those things were all the rage at the canteen. They cost a bomb and I’d never had anywhere near enough money for one, even if I could bring myself to eat something like that. It was a huge, foot long sub sandwich packed with hot roast chicken and creamy mayonnaise. Teenage boys gulped them down in droves while I resigned myself to an invisible sandwich.

  I didn’t mind. I was used to the way things were, but to have one placed in my hands was a shock. My stomach instantly lurched sideways, either out of hunger or disgust I wasn’t sure. When you haven’t eaten for long enough the hunger pains get all mixed up and turn back in on themselves. You start to become repulsed by the very thing you crave.

  ‘Go on, then. Eat it,’ Becky urged.

  I took a bite. It was far richer than I imagined. I chewed the fat and licked the grease. It slipped down the back of my throat without effort. I gulped uneasily.

  ‘There,’ grinned Becky. ‘That’s better than that stupid imaginary sandwich, right?’

  A little bit of chicken-flavoured vomit erupted out of my mouth. Mayonnaise spurted out of my nose. I managed to staunch the flow before it exploded everywhere but a little ball of sick now sat on my tongue like a hot lump of blubber. I had no option but to re-swallow.

  ‘Euw! Did he just eat his own vomit?’ Pippa winced, utterly horrified.

  Becky fired her a look that silenced any criticism. They were there to offer charity and you don’t complain about the sorry state of those less fortunate than you. Either that, or Becky wanted to keep me onside for some reason. Becky smiled cagily.

  ‘Pippa and Amy used to be really good friends, you know.’

  This was more an accusation than a mere statement of fact. Becky sat there looking smug. She had something. Information. Ammunition.

  ‘Isn’t that right, Pippa?’

  That was her cue. The rabbit girl’s entire reason for being was summed up in this one moment. I pitied her then. I could see she would be discarded the moment she fulfilled her duty. Her usefulness over, Becky would toss her aside. Her momentary rise would be short-lived. Afterwards, she’d become bitter and spiteful. Maybe she’d look for a weak underling of her own. I pondered what this other poor creature would look like. She’d be even more subjugated, even more timid, even more rabbit-like, but with terrible claws.

  Pippa was halfway though explaining her relationship with Amy when my mind finally returned and I involuntarily squeezed the hot chicken roll.

  A squirt of oil suddenly leapt out of the soft bun and flew past Pippa’s head. It just missed her and she threatened to bolt, fearing I had taken to firing greasy missiles at her.

  ‘See, this is what I was talking about,’ said Becky. ‘He can’t concentrate. It’s ADHD, or something. You just have to wait until he comes round.’

  She talked to Pippa as if I wasn’t there, explaining that I suffered from some sort of genetic disability or something.

  ‘It’s just a seizure,’ she was saying. ‘All you can do is make sure he’s safe and wait it out. Oh, and if he turns blue call the ambulance.’

  Becky nodded a silent command for Pippa to continue. This kind of thing was par for the course in talking to someone like me. Encouraged, Pippa went on.

  ‘Amy lost her phone,’ Pippa explained. ‘The last time she saw it was in German class. With Eliza.’

  That’s all Becky needed. She slid forward and looked me straight in the eyes. Her hand reached out to perch on top of mine. Her grasp was soft and warm, and a single finger stroked the back of my hand seductively.

  I’d never been touched like that before. My pulse quickened and she sensed the tension flowing through me. She knew I was on the hook. Her grip tightened.

  ‘Amy didn’t send the pictures,’ she grinned.

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘Somebody took her phone. Those pictures weren’t her.’

  I tried to remember. I drifted back under those waves where she fell down to meet me. I could see her shape, back-lit with sun. Yes. It was true.

  ‘Why would she do that to Amy?’ Becky asked.

  ‘I don’t know,’ I deflected. ‘I mean, how do you know it was even her?’

  ‘Oh, it was her. And you know why, Monty. Don’t you?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Eliza ruined her life, Monty. Do you understand?’

  Becky moved off, having laid the seeds of doubt. Pippa bounded after her, hoping to catch any look of appreciation for her good efforts. I was left shaking, holding the remains of my chicken roll. It had gone cold. The grease had solidified into horrid white lumps. Sick caught in my throat.

  The supermarket smelled of bleach and baker’s yeast. Pleasant music softly played on tinny loud speakers. These tunes were upbeat and catchy, designed to make shoppers feel happy about spending more money. Most people entered supermarkets carrying the burdens of the outside world in with them. But by the time they got to aisle three everything was forgotten. The drama of their daily lives would evaporate and they now lived in a new world of discounts and two-for-one deals. It was all the sinister work of those catchy tunes, I thought. The shoppers became happy little zombies under their cheery spell. Previously unwanted items gleefully leapt off the shelves into their shopping baskets. In the carpark, these poor souls would suddenly come to their senses, wondering why they’d bought five packets of beef jerky.

  Amy Fotheringham worked in the deli section and was slicing up a ham the size of football.

  ‘Number twenty-three,’ she called.

  I didn’t have a number. Whoever number twenty-three was had made a break for it between songs, suddenly realising they were vegetarian. Amy looked at me and made a big show of looking around for her lost customer.

  ‘Number twenty-three!’ she said again, more forcibly.

  ‘I think I’m next,’ I muttered.

  Amy ignored me, pressed a button on the counter that made the numbers change on a little screen above her head.

  I would have liked a little screen above my head. The red numbers that flicked from one to the next seemed important somehow. People took numbers like that very seriously. It proclaimed a sense of order in the world. It gave the impression there was a point to everything. A system was in play here. Some mysterious destiny was being shaped. You might not understand it, but you knew there
was someone, somewhere, in control of things. The numbers changed. There was a sequence. It was predictable. Everyone liked those numbers. They made the world seem less chaotic.

  If I had a little screen like that above my head, I could forget about the need for speech. Any question could be answered with a simple change of numbers. People would debate the hidden meaning of my numbers for years. They might suspect my responses were meaningless, but deep down they’d never really know. A simple series of numbers had gravitas. They implied meaning, even if there was none to be had.

  ‘Number twenty-four!’

  Amy almost screeched this in my face. I blinked and realised she had been waiting for me. I pulled out the ticket for number twenty-four from the little red dispenser on the counter. She obviously didn’t need me to take a number, I was the only one there, but I guess she wanted to make a point. I was a stranger to her. A number.

  ‘What do you want?’

  Salami, ham and cured sausages were thickly arranged. There must have been about forty dead creatures in there, all sliced into neat little shapes. I fished about in my pockets and came up with the grand sum of nothing.

  ‘Sorry,’ I muttered. I showed her my empty, turned out pockets.

  ‘Number twenty-five!’ she shouted.

  ‘I wanted to talk to you,’ I said.

  Amy gripped the back of the counter. Her fingernails were long and painted red. They had little fake gems set in the middle that tried to shine but couldn’t quite do the job. Those long claws dug into a slice of bacon at the back of the counter. I thought how easily she could pluck out my eyes with one of those fingernails. She’d probably be happy to slice me up and display my remains with all the other unfortunate, dumb creatures of this world.

  ‘Meet me out back in fifteen minutes,’ she said and turned back to cut up her ham.

  *

  I sat on a pile of cardboard boxes, folded up ready for re­cycling or something. The boxes smelled of bananas and rockmelon and spices and dead fish. It was a heady mixture that made my brain spin a little. Still, I couldn’t move away. It was a challenge, to discover all the smells hidden in those various boxes. Like some sort of nasal archaeology.