The Hounded

by Simon Butters

  She hurried away, her pigtails drooping mournfully behind her.

  That was the last I ever spoke to Pippa Wilson, the little rabbit girl who kissed me while I cried. She left Middleford and went to some girls’ school in the city where they all dressed in shirts and ties and shiny black leather shoes. Those girls would confide in each other, telling cautionary tales about all the horrible boys they’d left behind. Pippa would keep her story in the vault, I knew. She’d remain secretive and shy, unable to tell her new friends she was the girl in the CryBabyPool video. No matter what, the effects of that night would trickle down for both of us through the years. Time would not heal us. I still thought of her, and what I could have done differently. But maybe nothing would change the fact I was now a cruel and selfish human being.

  Alias: @The Full Monty

  Date: Monday August 4, 8.45AM

  There’s someone who knows the truth.

  Hello?

  You there?

  Okay, be like that. But I’m going to find him. He’s going to show me the dark. And I will be his master :)

  *

  A sudden jolt of the train as it changed tracks woke me. Out the window, sprawling identikit houses gave way to vast industrial estates. The sun fell into deep, orange streaks signalling the end of the day. Above the factories and their rows of smokestacks, the failing light mixed with exhaust fumes to create beautiful eddies of auburn-coloured steam.

  The city station was a windy, lonely place that smelled of diesel and ozone and the humid stink of a thousand office workers. Those harried suits shuffled to their seats, trying desperately not to look one another in the eye. That was another survival strategy, I guess. Train stations were always an odd mix of everyday office workers and the mentally deranged. All those accountants and secretaries and personal assistants knew they were mixing with bad company, but didn’t have much choice; running the risk of confronting one of life’s many weirdoes was the price they paid for cheap public transport. I looked around and nobody dared look me in the eye. Maybe I was one of the weirdoes?

  *

  The hovel was empty. All that remained of the man in the box was a smear of brown, I don’t know what, on the path under the bridge. His cardboard house was gone. It was as if he had never been there.

  A gust of cold wind ripped through the grey concrete walls of the city and funnelled straight into me, tearing at the skin beneath my shirt. I wondered how anyone could live on the city streets and survive. The homeless must be made of sterner stuff, I thought.

  I kept looking. I had to find this man. He had seen the dog.

  Kids flew vertically in the sky above the skate park nearby. The park had a good view of the bridge so I thought this was as good a place as any to start my search. They wore baggy jeans and weathered t-shirts that looked as if they’d never seen the insides of a washing machine. Compared to me, these guys were hardcore grunge. Maybe before Eliza sat me down to wash, I would have looked just like one of them. Not now.

  I watched a skinny looking guy on a skateboard fly horizontally above a twenty-metre sheer drop to the bottom of the skate bowl. He landed with practised ease on the concrete slope and slung himself up the other side to come to rest among a couple of other guys. They were all heavily tattooed and had piercings through every nose and ear lobe they could find. They were all well into their twenties, thirties even. Their faces were gaunt, skull-like sneers. Stubble and sweat hung from them. They stank of smoke and old grass clippings.

  ‘I need to find someone,’ I asked.

  The oldest one, the flying skateboard artist, stepped towards me threateningly. Two large, black rings squeezed open his earlobes. The holes were enormous. You could see right through them, like something you’d see on a member of an African desert tribe. It took all my energy not to ponder what it would be like to poke my finger in that terrible wound.

  ‘An old man,’ I continued. ‘The one who lived in the box.’

  Ear lobe guy looked across at the brown smear left by the old man and winced. They obviously had history.

  ‘Him? He’s a waste of space,’ he muttered.

  ‘Just tell me where I can find him.’

  The guy looked towards his two mates, amazed by my gall. As he turned his ear lobes swung around like ropes suspended from a tree. It was too much, and I began to drift into thoughts about low-flying pigeons and how they would get caught in there and accidentally hang themselves on his ears. Delightful punk jewellery, I thought. Maybe this guy would start a new trend and, in a few months’ time, all of his friends would be wearing dead pigeons too. Adorned with death, they’d rebel at life.

  ‘Try Misery Mission.’

  ‘Huh?’

  ‘The hostel. He usually hangs out there during the day.’

  ‘Thanks,’ I said and began to move off.

  ‘Hey! Why the hell do you care?’ he called.

  ‘I don’t,’ I told him. ‘I just need to find him before he dies.’

  The guy looked at me, stunned by my frankness. He turned to the others and shook his head in disdain.

  ‘Freak,’ he jeered.

  Yes, I was the freak here. Ear lobe guy had nothing on me.

  *

  The hostel was a red brick monstrosity with one door out the front and no sign. It was placed opposite a green city square that performed the twin civic duties of roundabout and park for the homeless. A procession of threadbare horrors walked in and out of that building. Some carried old shopping bags. Others had nothing more than a large overcoat to carry their life’s possessions. All bore the same dispassionate look for the world, as if they had grown tired of it years ago. Nobody spoke. They ignored each other and disappeared into back alleys and dark crevices to merge with the cold, grey of the city.

  I ventured inside. The main doors opened to a glass cubicle and a long hall with a succession of doors off the sides. A sign told me that check-in was strictly at six and all rooms were to be given on a first come, first served basis. Anyone fortunate enough to get a room for the night would have to be out that front door again by nine in the morning, no excuses, or the police would be called. The list of rules went on. I was busy studying them when I heard a woman remonstrating through the glass.

  ‘Honestly, I can’t make it this weekend. I know, I’m always busy. I’ll come visit you on Wednesday. Okay, how’s Thursday morning then? Look next weekend I’ve got Sunday off. Well, alright. If you don’t want to see me either, just say so. No. I didn’t mean it like that. Of course I want to see you. I do.’

  She spied me through the glass and looked almost relieved to have an excuse to hang up the phone.

  ‘Someone’s waiting. I’ve got to go. No. I’ll call you back when I get a chance. Yes, goodbye Mother.’

  She hung up, breathed a deep sigh of relief, and smiled at me pleasantly. She looked way too old to be having parent trouble. I wondered how old this cantankerous mother of hers would be. Maybe she lived in the same home as Dolly? Maybe she wanted to see her daughter so much, and called her every hour at work to badger her, because she was afraid of some old greyhound that had been sniffing outside her front door? Even annoying people have their reasons.

  ‘You’re not here for a room I take it?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘You part of the church?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Didn’t think so. No tie. So what then? School project?’

  ‘I need to find someone.’

  She regarded me more seriously now. Her hackles went up and she went into a weary explanation about how family members couldn’t be told if their loved ones were booked in to the hostel.

  ‘Client confidentiality you understand?’ she said. ‘Everyone has a right to privacy. It doesn’t matter if he’s your father, your uncle, your long-lost grandfather, whatever. Our clients deserve respect. Besides, even if I wanted to, legally I can’t tell you anything.’

  ‘I don’t know who he is. In fact, I don’t care.’

  ‘You’ve
lost me.’

  ‘I just need to speak to him. Then he’ll never see me again.’

  She paused, looking curious. Her face set sternly and she leaned in to whisper gravely.

  ‘Has someone hurt you?’

  ‘Not recently.’

  ‘One of the men here?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Because if they have, you can tell me. I’m a social worker. Damn it, I’m not meant to put leading questions to you. Forget what I said, let’s start over.’

  ‘Nobody’s hurt me,’ I said. ‘You can forget your questions. I just want to talk to a man. He lives in a box.’

  She pressed her lips together and I could see she knew immediately who I was talking about. Recognition flashed red across her cheeks.

  ‘You know who he is,’ I said.

  ‘Look, as I said …’

  ‘Legally you can’t tell me, I know. Just point the way.’

  ‘You shouldn’t go looking for a man like that. It’s not safe.’

  ‘He won’t hurt me,’ I told her.

  She gazed at me quizzically and caught my solid assurance. Yes, when it came to the old man in the box, he was the hunted, I the hunter.

  ‘You got a mother?’ she asked.

  I nodded warily. She pushed the phone through a large slit in the glass.

  ‘Call her. Tell her where you are. She’s probably worried sick about you.’

  ‘What? Like your mother,’ I defended.

  ‘You don’t know my mother,’ she retorted.

  ‘And you don’t know mine.’

  A glaze of mist rose in her eyes. Her perception of me swung, distorted through that glass. I was no longer a lost child to save. A future client maybe? Certainly I already held the same empty look as the old men she counselled day after day. She looked shocked to see it start so young. She pitied me I think.

  ‘Listen to me,’ she said. ‘It doesn’t matter what’s happened, or what you think will happen. Your family is important. It’s the one thing that binds you. Everything begins with family. Do you understand?’

  I knew she wanted some recognition, some indication that she’d solved my problems for me. She honestly cared for people, that much was obvious. She cared for everybody it seemed, even some lost urchin off the street. But why? I wondered. Was her need to help driven by her own lack of family? She wanted others to have what she couldn’t.

  ‘Yes,’ I lied. ‘I’ll call her soon as I’m done.’

  She relaxed into a soft, benevolent smile. It had become so easy to tell people what they wanted to hear, I thought. She pointed out the door.

  ‘He was too late for a room tonight,’ she said. ‘He’ll be down at the other end of the square. Good luck.’

  He spotted me straight away, before I even got close. The old man in the box sniffed the air, as if he saw the world through his sense of smell. He wasn’t like other people, caught up in the world and its day-to-day obstacles; the old man in the box meditated on life with an appreciative eye on everything. He saw both sides of the stream. His face curled into a snarl as I approached, warning me off like I was a rival come to usurp his territory.

  I snarled back.

  He dropped his gaze first and retreated to his box, ­circling round and round until he found a comfortable spot. The old always bow to the young eventually, I thought. We sat in the park together for what seemed an eternity, watching the cars go round and round the square. People with jobs and husbands and wives and children and bills to pay and holidays to arrange raced past on their incessant digressions.

  All this, I realised, the world and its many passions, were also illusions: another play put on by a deeper force for our entertainment. Even if the play had sad moments, or a terrible sequence of tragedies, that only helped make it all the better. Comedy and tragedy were twins on the same coin, as were the two worlds. They were inseparable.

  ‘You see it now,’ he grumbled from inside his box. ‘It’s them who stray from the path.’

  He was first to speak. So I had taken his crown. I was now the alpha.

  ‘You have also strayed,’ I told him.

  He looked fearful of me. From the sideways angle of his nose and his missing front teeth, I understood this man had seen plenty of beatings in his life. I knew he would do as I did. He’d lie down and take the blows while his mind drifted away. He’d watch on from afar and hope for release, but that day had never come. Eventually he’d return to the blood and the flesh, resentful. Physical pain held no fear for him. He feared me in an entirely other realm.

  ‘You see the dog,’ I said.

  He remained silent, but I could almost hear his thoughts rambling away. He wanted to lie to me, to defend all accusations, but he knew that was pointless. His mind was open, like an old movie projector. He tried his best to exorcise me from his mind, but he was too weak. He was too old. He succumbed to my will and showed me images of his youth, his dead parents, his first car, his first love, his last, and then his wife. He showed me a career and success and a house and tailored suits and holidays and a life just like those driving around us on that roundabout. He showed me cancer and a child and a terrible, demon-filled night when his world came crashing down around him and his mind was lost forever.

  And in every scene of this passion play was the dog.

  ‘Will you kill me?’ he asked.

  ‘No.’

  ‘I can’t do it myself. I’ve tried. But I can’t. I’m too weak.’

  ‘Yes, you are weak Martin,’ I told him.

  ‘How do you know my name?’

  ‘You’ve shown me everything,’ I said.

  I had what I wanted. Giving him the gift of salvation wasn’t my place. He would have to find that for himself. The weird thing was he wasn’t responsible for any of the bad things that happened in his life. They were all merely a set of unfortunate events that were either going to happen, or not happen. There was no reason, no blame behind any of it. There was no such thing as fate. It was meaningless: a random set of atoms bouncing off one another and that was all. He had prescribed a hidden meaning to his life and come to the conclusion that he was to blame. And the dog had watched, always waiting, biding its time.

  No, I thought. If Martin wanted absolution he would return to his wife in his own time, by his own free will. Either that or the play would soon be over. He would enact the final tragedy, and the curtain would be drawn.

  Perhaps then the dog might show some emotion, might smile or cry at the story that had been told. Or would it still feel nothing? I wondered. Would it merely turn the pages to another story and watch another curtain being drawn, to while away the eons?

  I left Martin alone in the park. I don’t know what became of him. The dog certainly knew, and would be more than willing to tell me, if I asked. But how could you trust a talking dog?

  Chapter Fourteen

  Tony sat in science and flicked snot at me. He mined his nose for ammunition, rolled it into little sticky balls and machine-gunned them, rapid fire, at my head. I ignored the first five or six, but on the seventh I had enough.

  ‘You got a problem?’ I asked.

  ‘Yeah. You,’ he grumbled.

  Tony wasn’t used to being confronted, unless it came from his father. He stared me down with the cold intent of a predator.

  ‘You were meant to help me study,’ he said. ‘I failed the test. Because of you.’

  ‘No. I was meant to do a project with you. Which I did,’ I explained. ‘Passing the test was up to you.’

  He shook his head and stood up. He towered over me but I stood my ground.

  ‘There a problem here?’ asked Mr Rooney.

  The class jeered and goaded Tony to punch my lights out right then and there. Tony blamed me for all his short­comings in science, but the rest of the school still paid me out on a daily basis. After the video with Pippa Wilson, I would not be forgotten for a long time. I no longer had the luxury of merging into the background. I was sought out by all. Even the first-year ki
ds had taken to me. I was ­routinely slammed into walls, I had paint thrown in my face, and I’d even been tripped down the stairs. All this I had endured but I drew the line at Tony’s snot.

  ‘No problem sir,’ Tony sneered.

  I could see the wheels turning behind his eyes. Tony had a plan.

  *

  In the weeks after the video, humiliation became a daily chore. I told myself that people would get bored of singling me out soon enough, but that day hadn’t come. The thing with Tony was building up to something, too. I could hear the whispers and the jeers behind me as I walked the corridors. Someone filled up my locker with sheep poo. Another kid, I don’t even know his name, poured twenty litres of craft glue into my school bag. All my textbooks were destroyed, along with about half of my work for the semester. I had no option but to write it all out again. Ms Finch lectured the school on prank behavior. She asked everyone to put themselves in the position of the person being pranked. How would they feel if that happened to them? she asked. Everyone knew she was talking about me. Their eyes drifted my way, but none of their compassion. I was under siege. My head bulged under the pressure of it all. I wanted to explode.

  Eliza kept her distance. I saw her occasionally in the halls or by the bus stop, but she always simply turned away. I didn’t blame her. All this was my fault. She was in the girls’ loo washing her hands when I walked in.

  ‘Stop avoiding me,’ I ordered.

  ‘I’m not avoiding you.’

  ‘Then what do you call it? You’ve been acting all weird.’

  ‘Hey. You’re the one in the girls’ loo!’

  ‘Why did you tell me to go?’

  ‘You wanted to go. You wanted her, remember?’

  She was right. Damn it. I didn’t want her to be right.

  ‘I don’t know why I told you to go to the party, okay Monty? It could have been good for you. A chance to grow up a bit.’

  ‘Is that what you think—that I’m just a little kid?’ I asked.

  ‘No. I didn’t mean it like that.’

  ‘Come to the beach with me?’ I asked hopefully.

  She shook her head and walked out. After she’d gone, some girls from year eight walked in and screamed, running out to find a teacher, to tell them of the horrid pervert they’d found loitering in the girls’ toilets. That night I sat alone and waited for the dog. It withheld itself from me, making me want it all the more. I paced my room, lost. Even Gutentag had deserted me.