HOPE . . . because that's all there ever is.

by James Crow

  He touches a hand to Beth’s shoulder as he lumbers past and she shivers as a chill runs down her back.

  At the bramble pile there’s a broken mushroom smell on the air. It’s strong and rich and makes Beth smile. She shows the M&Ms her idea: bramble spikes. Actually, it’s a good thing Peter’s piled them all ways up and down and across because they can see the spikes as Beth imagined: as skirts and adornings.

  Martin says the spikes look like sharks’ teeth, which Beth thinks is true. Muriel takes lots of close-up pictures, saying what a fabulous idea, and that the curved spike shapes will be ideal for Martin’s shirt sleeves.

  While this is going on, Beth senses they’re being watched from somewhere within the trees where the yellow dragon is, the area where she’d found the circular platform and first met the wood spirit. She wonders if Peter has also met Elizabeth, but somehow thinks not, that Elizabeth’s presence is something only she can see.

  Muriel is on her knees and saying something, but her words are no longer clear. There’s another voice, although it appears to be in Beth’s mind rather than her ears. She’s now walking towards the gap Peter created in the thicket where the yellow dragon is arched and stiff. She stops at the edge of the yard and listens. The voice is clear now. It’s Elizabeth’s voice, soft and sweet. Beth repeats what she hears, ‘I am so fortunate.’

  Elizabeth steps into view. ‘Hello Bethany.’ She does look pretty, and she’s chosen to wear her yellow dress again, too. ‘I’ve a special surprise for you. Come,’ she holds out a hand.

  ‘Come where?’

  ‘It wouldn’t be a surprise if I told you.’ The wood spirit takes a step forward. Beth takes a step back. The girl cocks her head. ‘You must come now.’

  Martin and Muriel are still taking pictures of bramble spikes, seemingly unaware that Elizabeth has arrived. It also seems they can’t hear this conversation, which makes sense, Elizabeth being a wood spirit. ‘I don’t know I’ll have time. M&M will be finished soon and I’ll have to go. I can come back tomorrow.’ Beth feels her eyebrows going up.

  The wood spirit sighs. ‘No time? You have no idea of time, of what it does.’

  Beth doesn’t know what this means. ‘We’re making skirts, I’m sleeping over. It’s always a fun do.’

  The girl frowns. ‘Sleeping over what?’

  ‘Sleeping over at M&M’s cabin. We’re working on new dance costumes. I came up with an idea and M&M really like it.’

  ‘It was not your idea, it was my idea, I sent it to you.’

  ‘You sent me an idea? Why?’

  ‘To make you smile, of course. Look, your friends are engrossed, they won’t miss you if you abandon sleeping over.’

  ‘I don’t want to abandon.’

  ‘But you must come with me, I need you to meet . . . to see my home, to sleep over.’

  ‘You have a home?’

  ‘Of course I have a home. There’s lots to see and . . .’ the girl looks down at the grass. Beth can almost hear her thinking. ‘I thought,’ the girl looks up again, ‘that if I made your friends happy, you would come and stay with me. It seems being nice has scuppered my plan.’

  ‘Scuppered?’

  ‘Not very bright, are you? I’m tempted to think you might not be suitable.’

  ‘Suitable?’

  ‘As a friend.’

  Beth sinks at this. She sees the curled lips of Delaney Dodds, school bully, lunch-stealer and vicious neck-pincher. No one wants to be friends with a retard, Bethany Black. With these fake love bites you can pretend you have a boyfriend. Ha, ha, ha.

  ‘Look at me!’

  Beth looks up.

  ‘I’m sorry, Bethany, but you get upset too easily. It’s not a pleasant trait to be around. Please try and understand that.’

  Beth thinks if wood spirits had bricks those bricks would be as mean as the bruises Delaney Dodds left on her neck.

  ‘I don’t mean to be mean,’ the wood spirit says. ‘I can show you magic.’

  ‘Real magic?’ Beth says. ‘That would be a fun do.’

  ‘So you’ll come, to my home?’

  ‘Where is it?’ Beth imagines a hidden tree house or perhaps a fairy bower sprinkled with meadow flowers. ‘Are there others, like you?’

  ‘I already told you so.’ The wood spirit gives her a pitiful look. ‘Other woodfolk have their own places. Mine’s over there.’ The girl points across the yard to the old ruin.

  ‘You can’t live there, it’s wrecked.’

  The girl taps her nose. ‘You won’t believe your eyes.’

  Beth’s intrigued, but a promise is a promise. ‘Maybe tomorrow I could,’ she offers again.

  The wood spirit doesn’t look pleased. She gives Beth a sorrowful look. ‘I didn’t want to tell you this, but there’s something wrong with your friends. I didn’t want to scare you, but you should not be with them, they’re, well, they’re in a bad place right now.’

  Beth glances at Martin and Muriel, both still on their knees, snapping photos.

  ‘You must trust me, Bethany. Come with me, I’ll keep you safe.’

  The M&Ms would never hurt her, they wouldn’t even hurt a fly. She’s about to say this when the girl does something quite astonishing, she picks up an egg-sized stone and throws it.

  Martin cries out as the stone bounces off his head. His hand flies to where the stone hit and he spins around, eyes glaring. Blood gleams between his fingers.

  ‘It wasn’t me . . .’ Beth looks for the wood spirit. She’s vanished. She looks back to Martin.

  ‘Beth?’ Muriel’s eyebrows are up, up, up.

  ‘It was . . . I think . . . a bird must have dropped it.’ Beth feels her face burning.

  The M&Ms get to their feet. Their bricks have gone a bit grey. Martin looks into Beth’s eyes. He looks worried.

  Or scared.

  5

  The narrow entranceway leading to the drama hall of St Anne’s Convent School for Girls in Newcastle’s West End is hidden from the street by three high walls, which is a good thing, because Pete is standing next to the doors in his underpants, discarded clothes piled at his feet, next to the holdall with the cash in it. The school is no longer in use but still has its caretaker, Lennie White – Pete’s supplier.

  Lennie’s daughter Sasha leans against the wall a few feet away. Sasha’s size is intimidating. Enormously fat with arseholes for eyes, chipmunk cheeks and a cloud of black hair. Breasts as big as beach balls strain at a tight red top. The tightness of her cleavage makes Pete want to set them free – a thought that surprises him. Tight white leggings give Sasha’s legs the appearance of over-pumped sausage links, and her swollen bellybutton pushes from beneath her top like an all-seeing eye. Pete feels his pants filling out and realises he’s getting an erection.

  ‘Underpants as well,’ Sasha nods to his underpants.

  Sasha used to do porn films before she got fat. Not that Pete ever watched them. Aware of his increased heartrate and heavy breathing, Pete pushes his underpants down and his cock is so hard that it slaps against his stomach.

  She’s staring. Her tongue is slipping along her bottom lip. She tells him to do a twirl, and Pete tentatively does, while a CCTV camera watches from above the door.

  When he stops twirling, Sasha gives a thumbs-up to the camera. ‘He’s clean. Horny, but clean.’

  A buzz on the intercom, ‘Crack search.’ Lennie’s voice.

  Sasha pushes off the wall and sucks two chubby fingers into her mouth. She pulls them back out with saliva dripping. ‘Spread ’em.’

  Pete knows this search isn’t really necessary, that Lennie’s playing games, but that’s okay. Len had warned that to fulfil his strange request in only a few hours would cost double the going rate. That’s fine, Pete had told him. Along with a thorough strip search, Lennie had added, as if to put him off. But that was fine, too; the excitement of what was to come far outweighed a few extra grand and a couple of probing fingers. Pete turns his back to the approaching Sasha, bends ov
er and spreads his cheeks.

  He lets out a yelp, then a grunt, then pain becomes pleasure as Sasha’s fingers twist around inside him. An image of the pit he’d found earlier and the wanking naked man comes to mind. The man had seemed real. It wasn’t an old stump he’d hit but a raised circular platform with a lid made from thick wooden beams – the cesspit he’d expected to find, he had no doubts about that. He also had no doubt that what was inside the pit was not antique shit. Deadly secrets lived in the pit. He knew these things because the naked man told him so. The naked man also told him, as the sun shone on his rippling muscles while he stroked his curved erection, that he thought Pete was a homo. At least Pete thought that was what he’d meant: You’re never androgynous, young man, no one ever is.

  He was tall, old, muscular, hair like a lion. Pete couldn’t answer back. Unlike any previous hallucination this man seemed to be solid; his neck muscles strained, and dark eyes bulged when his jaw made words. The cock in his hand was thick and curved like a scythe and Pete’s eyes had kept flicking to it as he’d backed away from the platform.

  The man had said something else: You can have it all, Peter. He even knew his name. Pete had felt the strain in his pants. He was hard and the wanking man was leering at him. I can help you, Peter, before the truth will out. Peter ran, then, but only as far as the front steps of the old ruin. He’d come in his pants and the girl in the yellow dress and her friends, the dancers, were headed his way. If he approached them they’d see his mess. So, he’d sat on the steps, head in his hands, the vivid image of the naked man difficult to shake. He couldn’t recall any conversation, but he did recall touching the girl’s shoulder as he left them to it, and the shiver that had run through him.

  Back in his cabin he’d dragged the scope to the balcony, sat in the rocker and aimed the lens through the gap in the rails, first viewing the cabin he’d given to the writer woman. One window open, curtains open. He could see her jeans-clad legs from the knee down, kicked out in a relaxed fashion near the window. Moving the scope to Beth’s cabin showed him a new vehicle, a Shogun 4x4. Mr Black must have arrived. No signs of life, though.

  One other cabin was booked out, a long-termer who’d arrived in March and paid up for a year. Said he was a recuperating aid worker. Years of working overseas repairing the spoils of cruel regimes had left him traumatised, and now the charity he’d worked for was looking after him. Mr Whittle kept himself to himself, kept himself hidden away for the most part, and Pete wasn’t really interested but he searched with the scope and soon found Whittle’s cabin.

  Sitting back amongst the trees on the southwest side of the loch, only one small area of window and porch were visible. No sign of Mr Whittle. Pete dragged the scope back inside and after showering his sticky mess away – a mess that stank of fish and almost made him vomit – he took five generous dabs of speed and lay on his bed with a towel wrapped around his waist.

  On his back and staring at the circular smoke alarm on the ceiling, Pete’s mind had returned him to childhood and a torch that projected Batman’s bat-signal. Only it wasn’t a torch. It was called a flashlight. Pete had bought a bucketful of bubblegum to get enough wrappers to send off for it. He could see the bat-shape now, centred on the smoke alarm. The image brought with it a faint smell of bubblegum and a smile to Pete’s face, then the bat-signal had faded, replaced by the face of a beautiful girl Pete had forgotten all about: Farley Pierce, a name he thought was made up.

  Farley stayed a week. A stunning blonde with long smooth legs. And there she was, on the smoke alarm, as plain as the sweltering day she’d walked up to his door with a blue towel over one shoulder and a beach bag over the other, her right nipple raising the blue material of her bikini top. ‘Oh, hi there,’ she’d sang. ‘Could you point me to where I can sunbathe without, well, somewhere I can go nude. I’m a model. Need an all-over.’

  Pete had pointed her to the southern end of the loch. ‘Aye, that little island you can just make out. Take a boat from the jetty. There’s a hidden cove.’

  ‘Super. Thanks. I won’t be disturbed?’

  Pete’s reply had been innocent back then, ‘We only get fishermen using the island, so you’ll be okay. Hear oars splashing, you’ll know company’s coming.’

  ‘Super.’

  Pete had not watched her tight backside as she’d walked away. Nor had he gone to the balcony and watched her down the hill. He hadn’t even taken his scope up the law and rested it on a boulder to spy on the cove below. He’d do that now, though. He’d probably also wank himself silly, probably even take a boat over there to see if she was game. An awful thought struck: what if she’d been coming on to him and he’d been too dumb to know better? But that was irrelevant, because back then he wouldn’t have cared if she’d flashed him her cunt.

  Pete gasped when Farley vanished from the smoke alarm, replaced by the writer with no tits. She was in her cabin, checking out the complimentary tins in the cupboard. Pete willed this vision to get naked, but it would do no such thing. It faded away, replaced by the skeletal face of a woman he thought he should know but could not place. Lots of little teeth, white hair. This image also faded.

  Now it was the Black woman, Alison, naked in front of a mirror, heavy breasts lit from the orange glow of a table lamp, breasts that rose and fell as she breathed. Pete had grinned at this, part of him thinking how amazing the hallucination was, another part realising he was once again aroused beneath the towel. This little show was fun to watch. He’d tried willing Beth’s mother to touch herself, but the image faded, replaced by a single eye, its iris strikingly blue. The eye had closed and so had Pete’s as he drifted into a warm place where the shivers abated and comforting sleep waited like lamb’s wool in a coffin of black. On his way in he’d heard the girl’s soft voice again, I know you’re coming. But that wasn’t all, this time the girl had more to say: Master knows you’re coming, too.

  A breath.

  I know you heard me, sir.

  Who are you? Pete had thought in reply.

  Silence.

  Warmth had spilled onto his thigh.

  ‘A friend.’

  Pete had shrieked and scrambled up the bed. A girl was standing by the curtains. With her blonde hair, she looked like an angelic version of Bethany Black. And she was totally solid, just as solid as the naked man had been. ‘You’re real,’ he’d said to the girl, with absolute certainty.

  ‘Of course I am.’ The girl smiled at him.

  ‘I didn’t hear you come in.’

  ‘Quiet as a mouse can be.’ She’d folded her arms and appeared to be smirking at him. ‘Thank you,’ she’d said.

  ‘For what?’

  ‘You listened for me.’

  ‘I did?’

  When the girl stepped forward and sat at the bottom of the bed, the mattress dipped. Pete had seen and felt this. ‘That dress.’

  The girl looked down at her dress then back to Pete. ‘It’s like Bethany Black’s, I know. I gifted her the same, as a thank you. She listened, too.’

  Pete could smell the girl, a sweet smell, like soap. ‘What do you want?’

  That’s when the naked man with the lion hair appeared once more. His eyes were sparkling darkness, his smile all-knowing. The memory of this man’s presence seemed to be the strongest thing, a knowledge imparted had knocked Pete to sleep where great wonders came to him, ideas for an adventure so wild that Pete’s heart seemed to bloom. When he’d come to, the man and the girl had gone but the sweet smell of the girl still lingered, and the ideas he’d dreamt up were threatening to blow his mind.

  One phone call to Lennie, another to his bank branch in Newcastle and Pete had got in the jeep, arriving at the bank in just over three hours, and then to Lennie’s place where he’d been directed by the lovely Sasha to stand beneath the CCTV camera.

  Sasha’s taking her time, feeling around – prodding. It’s nice though, the feeling of her fingers sliding around inside him sends pleasure waves to his ever-straining cock. Uns
toppable spasms come from nowhere and his cum splatting the floor surprises Pete.

  Sasha laughs and withdraws her fingers.

  The intercom buzzes. ‘I take it he’s clean?’

  ‘No, he’s a dirty bastard.’ Sasha laughs again. She smacks Pete a good one across the arse.

  Another buzz and the door to the drama hall clicks open. Underpants back on, Pete carries the rest of his clothes and the holdall with the cash in it. Sasha leads him down a short corridor to a door marked Dressing Room. She shoves him inside and closes the door after him.

  Lennie is sitting at a desk below a frosted window. Standing at his side is a short-arsed youth in a mechanic’s overall. On the desk is a monitor and the control deck for the CCTV. Pete’s dealer’s face is drawn, one side of his mouth hooked into a permanent smile. Pete can smell stale beer.

  ‘Car keys,’ Lennie says.

  Pete finds them in his jacket pocket. The youth comes around the desk, takes the keys and leaves the room.

  ‘Money,’ Lennie says.

  Two long bench seats run the length of the room, placed before two rows of lockers. Pete rests his clothes and the holdall on one of the benches, takes two thick wedges of £20 notes from the holdall and places them on the desk in front of Lennie.

  Lennie takes his time counting the money.

  ‘Twenty grand,’ Pete says. ‘It’s all there, aye.’

  Lennie presses a button on the deck. Sasha comes in with a drawstring bag. Lennie drops the cash into the bag and Sasha leaves without a word.

  ‘Anyone know you’re here?’ Lennie asks.

  ‘Course not,’ Pete says, suddenly feeling nervous. ‘Cheers for doing this so fast.’

  Lennie stares at him awhile, then, ‘Are you dealing now, Pete?’

  Pete hears his heart beating and for once in his life he thinks quickly, ‘I’m going away for a few months, visiting friends on Skye, just stocking up.’

  ‘And you couldn’t give me more notice?’

  In a flash: ‘An old friend died. Well, cousin, actually. I’ve a lot of family up there.’

  Lennie pulls a black book from the drawer, opens it. ‘Sez here, mate, your average take’s one key every six to eight weeks.’