The Hounded

by Simon Butters

  ‘You destroyed him.’

  ‘He destroyed himself.’

  ‘And you watched?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘You did nothing. You could have stopped him. You could have helped.’

  ‘And what would that do? How would my intervention change anything?’

  ‘He could have been happy.’

  ‘No, he couldn’t.’

  ‘People loved him.’

  ‘No, they didn’t. He was alone,’ said the dog. ‘We are all alone.’

  The dog and I looked out of the shed, the night framed against the spill of an incandescent bulb. Rogue insects began their suicide missions against the light. It was a stupid, futile exercise. They couldn’t resist its magical charm, driven by some uncontrollable genetic urge. Moths to a flame. It always ended the same way. The dead bodies fell to the floor, discarded remains to be crushed underfoot. A waste. Nobody missed them. Nobody cared. They were simply an inconvenience.

  ‘You missed me, didn’t you?’ asked the dog.

  ‘No.’

  ‘Liar.’

  The day came for me to go to my new school. I decided I wasn’t going and refused to put on the yellow and blue uniform. I rejected my new life, new friends, moving on: it all seemed too hard. Everything seemed too hard. I stopped lifting the weights. I stopped eating properly. Sleep became a stranger once again. I only wanted one thing.

  ‘You’ve grown,’ said Eliza.

  I found her by the train tunnel. She’d come out of it so suddenly, materialising from the gloom, that it gave me a shock.

  ‘Shouldn’t you be in school?’ I asked.

  ‘Shouldn’t you?’

  ‘I thought you weren’t talking to me anymore,’ I said more as a statement of fact than a question.

  ‘Things change,’ she said.

  She looked out across Middleford, almost wistfully. I thought of offering her an out, like they do in the movies. I’d say something really cool. I’d hit the nail on the head and sum up everything that was wrong in our lives in a neat little speech that would leave her crying and wanting me forever. It would all be about how this place was holding us back and how all the people here were just selfish and didn’t understand us. We were important. It was all about us. If we could just escape from all of this and be together, we would be happy. We didn’t need Middleford. We didn’t need friends or family, just each other. Come on baby, I’d say. Let’s steal a car and get out of here. We’ll be rogues. We’ll travel the world on forged identities. We’ll be the world’s most wanted. And we’ll be happy, because we’ll have each other.

  ‘Did it hurt?’ she asked.

  ‘The burns? Yeah. They said I was pretty lucky. It just missed an artery. I could have bled out in the street.’

  ‘That would have been something,’ she said.

  ‘Yeah, something.’

  She peered at me and I could see she understood my pain. Her eyes swelled, ready to shed tears. She felt for me after all. She wasn’t cold and dead inside. That really threw me. Maybe I had Eliza all wrong.

  ‘Show me,’ she said.

  ‘What? Now?’

  ‘Yeah. I want to see.’

  ‘Okay. But I’m warning you, it’s not pretty.’

  ‘Your butt or the burns?’ she asked sarcastically.

  It was a half-hearted attempt at lightening up the situation. We smiled earnestly at one another, knowing the true gravity of what had happened. I dropped my pants, turning around so she could witness the damage. She was suitably appalled.

  ‘Geez, Monty.’

  ‘It’s okay. I deserved it,’ I said.

  ‘No, you didn’t. No one deserves that.’

  She gazed back into the tunnel and ruminated on Tony Papadopoulos.

  ‘You’re better than me,’ she said. ‘I would have shot him in the leg.’

  ‘I’m sorry,’ I quickly said. ‘For everything. For Pippa. I only went because I thought you hated me. It was a mistake.’

  ‘Yeah. Well, we all make mistakes,’ she sighed.

  ‘You ever want to go? I mean, get out of here?’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘Just asking.’

  ‘Why? You offering?’

  ‘What if I was?’

  She gave me a stern look. This wasn’t something to offer lightly. It was a once-in-a-lifetime chance that people like us took and never looked back. If we were to do this, nothing in Middleford would make us return. We’d go where desire took us. World’s most wanted and all that.

  ‘Don’t ask me that, Monty. Not if you don’t mean it.’

  Eliza pulled her sleeves down and crossed her arms. It was the kind of subconscious gesture people made when they wanted to protect themselves, like I was some kind of threat.

  ‘I do mean it,’ I said. ‘That’s what you want, isn’t it? To just disappear?’

  Her tears were a shock to me. They gushed down her cheeks so suddenly I thought she had accidentally stepped on something sharp. For a second, I didn’t think they were real: they’d come on so quickly. Then I realised the obvious, she’d held this back for a very long time.

  ‘I can’t, Monty. I just can’t.’

  I understood why. I had betrayed her. She wasn’t going to give me that chance again.

  Chapter Fifteen

  Back in the seventies, when my dad was as young as me, the nerdy types at NASA decided to send up a little greeting card inside the Voyager spaceships. The ships were the height of technology at the time, and had the computing power of a toaster. These tiny little calling cards flew out of the solar system and are, by now, the furthest things our civilisation has ever thrown away. Inside each one was a golden record, complete with instructions on how to play it, in case sometime in the next couple of billion years some aliens came across our little time capsule and just happened to have access to a record player. If they did work out how to play it, they’d get some pictures and sounds of all the wonderful things on Earth: the animals, the people, the land, the sounds of waves, even whale songs.

  Along with these wonders were directions to Earth. Some people apparently thought this was a really stupid idea. Maybe the aliens would love to visit Earth, and eat us for afternoon tea. But most people thought it would take aliens so long to get here, millions of years probably, that it wouldn’t be much of a threat. Besides, by that time, we might have evolved into something completely different, or become extinct.

  So what was this golden record all about? It summed up an entire species into a neat little package of images and sounds. That was it? That little golden record was all we’d bequeath to the universe, declaring that we, humanity, had ever existed? What’s the difference between that, I thought, and some teenage kid scrawling out his name on the side of a train? We had made our mark. That was it. The rest of it was all white noise. It made me think: what would my mark be? I couldn’t think of a single thing.

  Dolly was dying. She had passed away about three times overnight but each time, just as the sheet was pulled over her head, she’d suddenly take another huge gulp of air and miraculously rise again. Every time she took her last breath, and floated away into the aether, some strange force of nature abruptly recalled her back into existence. Stubborn until the end was Dolly. Apparently she was pretty annoyed by this.

  ‘Where am I?’ she asked. ‘Heaven? It looks just like the retirement village! Why am I still old? And why is the food still horrible? I should be young, eating fresh watermelons and kissing Karl all over for the first time.’

  Karl was her husband, my grandfather. He died when I was little. I never knew him, never got to bounce on his knee, or laugh at his old-man jokes, or wonder at the length of his bushy eyebrows. To me, Karl was only a figure in an old photograph. The only thing I really knew about him was an anecdote about some fishing accident. Apparently his tinnie got stranded out in the gulf and he had to swim for his life. Ever the miser, he managed to tow his bucket load of fish with him all the way to shore. Sharks cir
cled, but Karl didn’t give up his bucket of fish. Waves threatened, but Karl didn’t give up his bucket of fish. Exhaustion and hypothermia set in but, you got it, Karl didn’t give up his bucket of fish. Stubborn, just like Dolly, was Karl. He risked life and limb but at least the family had fish and chips for dinner.

  ‘If this is heaven, then show me hell,’ pleaded Dolly. ‘Maybe they’ll have better food!’

  My mother and father looked at each other, bewildered, and talked to the doctor.

  ‘You think it’s just an infection?’ my mother asked.

  ‘Yes,’ the doctor said. ‘The infection spread to her lungs. She was touch and go last night. But her attitude this morning is encouraging. She’s displaying a lot of energy.’

  Energy. That summed up Dolly. She was the type of grandmother who could knit you a woolly jumper and bake a batch of scones at the same time. Dolly had left us with specific instructions not to allow medical intervention in case of her demise. They could make sure she was comfortable and in no pain, but we weren’t meant to put her on life support or anything. So she stayed in her room in the retirement village, hallucinating, as she drifted in and out of life. The whole time, that greyhound sat out front, sniffing at the door.

  ‘Go on, get!’ I snapped at the stupid creature.

  It didn’t seem to understand I was angry at it and just kept sniffing at Dolly’s door. I gave it a kick in the guts and it yelped and ran off, tail tucked under its legs. It wasn’t like the black dog. This one felt pain. Still, it knew things we didn’t.

  ‘You’re wrong,’ I yelled after it. ‘She’s going to be fine.’

  It didn’t speak to me. It didn’t seem to understand me at all. That greyhound simply cowered and limped off. I’d keep it at bay. Dolly deserved that at least. I went to her room while my mother and father talked to the doctor. I gave Dolly a sip of orange cordial. She seemed to like it. She always liked sweets.

  ‘Tell him to get out,’ she hissed.

  She was looking behind me, towards the window. I turned around but there was no one there.

  ‘Who?’ I asked.

  ‘Him. The man in the black hat.’

  ‘What’s he want?’

  ‘Me. He wants me, of course. Tell him to get out of here! I’m not going with him.’

  I moved to the window and gestured towards an empty section of wall.

  ‘Here?’ I asked.

  ‘Yes. There. He’s standing right in front of you!’

  I fixed the empty space with a cold stare and whispered in this imaginary man’s ear.

  Dolly watched me intently, and I saw her face ease into relief. She began to cry, soft and birdlike.

  ‘Is he gone?’ I asked.

  ‘Yes,’ she said. ‘He went back through that door. Lock it for me. Don’t let him back in.’

  There was no door of course, just and empty section of wall beside her bookshelves. Still, I reached out and turned the invisible knob until her reaction told me I’d found the secret portal and had it locked.

  ‘Have you seen this man before?’ I asked.

  ‘Sometimes. He never says anything. Just stands there and holds out a hand for me. I don’t like him. It’s his eyes.’

  ‘Does he have a dog with him?’ I asked.

  ‘In heaven?’ she squawked. ‘They don’t let dogs in heaven!’

  ‘Maybe they don’t,’ I said. ‘More cordial?’

  ‘Thank you Silas,’ she said.

  ‘I’m Monty,’ I told her.

  ‘Don’t be ridiculous. You’re Silas.’

  ‘No. I’m your grandson.’

  ‘Yes. My grandson. Silas,’ she said and grinned at me over her cordial.

  I was confused. She only had one grandson.

  ‘You’re such a nice boy,’ she said. ‘It’s so good to see you all grown up. You proved them wrong, didn’t you?’ she beamed. ‘I knew they shouldn’t have given up on you. Poor Silas.’

  I caught my mother outside in the garden, sitting with some other old lady, one of Dolly’s concerned neighbours I guess. They were sharing cigarettes.

  ‘She’s not long for this world,’ my mother rasped.

  ‘Who’s Silas?’

  My mother pinched her cigarette so hard it split in two. Hot ashes fell to her feet. All she held was the decapitated stub.

  ‘What did she say to you?’

  ‘She thought I was her grandson. Silas.’

  ‘You shouldn’t listen to her. She’s not in her right mind.’

  ‘No, I think she knows what she’s talking about.’

  ‘She’s not in her right, mind. Monty. That’s all there is to it.’

  Her deflection was thick with the dismissive tone adults held in special reserve for their children. It was the sound of indifference. She regarded me with contempt. I was too simple and childish to understand the world around me. I should just run along and play.

  ‘Why should I believe your word over hers?’ I asked. ‘You’re lying.’

  My mother ignored me, relit the charred stub of her ciga­rette and inhaled. The old woman by her side watched me talk back to my mother with clear distaste.

  ‘You shouldn’t speak to your mother like that,’ the old woman said.

  She shot me a condescending smile and placed a comforting hand on my mother’s arm. But who was she to judge? She didn’t know me at all. She was just some passer-by in this sorry tale. They puffed their smokes in unison, looking down on all those around them.

  ‘It’d be quicker if you just walked in front of a bus,’ I told the old woman. ‘Spare us all the waiting.’

  ‘Monty!’ My mother shouted.

  I left the two of them there to stare after me, enraged by my gall. They could rage all they liked. It might do them good. They could blame that horrid teenager for all their problems. I could be their vessel, filled up with venom, so they could pretend to be pure. All I needed was to find someone to nail me to a cross.

  Yeah, bad thoughts, I guess. I was in a downward spiral. I had no idea how to lift myself from it. I was too far gone now. The only way out was to dig deeper.

  The public records office was at the back of Middleford town hall, down a long corridor framed with a succession of teak doors. I counted twelve identical offices running off that corridor, each one exactly the same as the one before it, save for a tiny plaque showing the occupier’s name: Mr Raymond Hawkins, Town Planning; Mrs Felicity Bradshaw, Communications Officer; Mr Henry Coombs, Social Services.

  How nice, I thought, to have a little sign that gave your name and occupation to everyone who passed you by. There was no doubting their role in the scheme of things. There it was, in black and white written on the door. These people had a function. They had a duty to serve. They could look back upon retirement, and take stock of their little sign. There. I did it, they’d say proudly. I planned all those towns, officiated all those communications, and serviced my society. I left the world a better place. Or maybe they’d look at their little sign and wonder what it all meant. Had they just wasted their entire lives because a little sign told them what to do?

  Mrs Jennifer Nolan, of public records, looked like a shrivelled cactus. Her skin was off-colour and pockmarked with dark circles, like craters on the moon. Her glasses were enormous, and they magnified her eyes to about twice their normal size. When she peered up at you, you had the distinct impression she was suddenly closer than she actually was, as if she had sneaked up on you and was about to devour you whole.

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘I want to find somebody.’

  ‘Name?’

  ‘Silas Ferguson.’

  She turned her enormous eyes to her computer and typed the name out with one finger, so slowly that the clock ticking above her head seemed to drone on for hours.

  ‘That’ll be thirty-nine, ninety-five,’ she muttered.

  ‘Huh?’

  ‘For the birth certificate. If that’s what you want?’

  ‘You got a death certificate too?’
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  She typed some more. Entire days seemed to drift by. Clouds raced above us in fast motion. The world spun on its axis, to finally come to rest.

  ‘No. Not yet, anyway,’ she grinned as if she was the keeper of all things. ‘That’ll be thirty-nine, ninety-five,’ she repeated drearily.

  ‘Look, I don’t need a print out,’ I said. ‘Can I just see?’

  She sighed reluctantly and turned her screen around. There it was. The names. The dates. Written in black and white. Silas Ferguson, son of William and Miranda Ferguson. He was four years older than me. Dolly was telling the truth. I had a brother.

  It was weird. I had no idea I had a brother, yet the news made me feel guilty, as if it was my fault I didn’t remember him. Had I been so caught up in my own problems that I hadn’t even noticed him? Or did he just get sick of my family and leave, never to return? Whatever the truth was, he had been kept secret.

  I went back to the retirement village to find Dad loitering in the entrance hall. He stood by a vending machine and repeatedly pressed the same buttons over and over, as if the damned contraption hadn’t got the message. Cruel things, vending machines, designed by cruel people. It slowly, excruciatingly, deposited a packet of chips in the bottom drawer and my dad had to force himself up to his elbow to retrieve it. He was madly scrambling for it when he looked up to see me.

  ‘Where’s Silas?’ I asked.

  Dad dropped his chips. Resignation flooded his face and he turned for the door.

  ‘Follow me.’

  We drove in silence across Middleford to park out the front of a dingy looking red brick home, bang in the middle of suburbia. A white mini-van was parked outside, and the windows had metal shutters locked into place. The garden was dead and the letterbox was wired onto a fence post, as if someone had ripped it off and this temporary fix had slowly become permanent.

  Dad waited as I knocked on the door. The doorbell, too, had been ripped off the wall and a stout middle-aged man with a long beard and tattoos answered. He looked at me quizzically through the security mesh door, until he saw my dad alongside me. His easy recognition told me Dad was a regular visitor.

  Silas sat at the end of a long table. He looked a lot like me, only older, and thinner, if that was possible. He didn’t look up when I stood before him, or indicate that he recognised my presence at all.