I asked the same thing of the twins, who both answered at once. “Nothing at all, Ben.”
Mel was more amused than anything, grinning at the question.
“This is one of them, like, practical jokes,” she said, “like when someone says your laces is undone and you ain’t got no laces, innit?”
I spent social studies crouched down at my desk in hiding. We were supposed to have researched our chosen news stories from the previous week, to be ready to discuss with the class. I’d given a lot of thought to the fire children, but I hadn’t done any actual work. My classmates got up to speak in turn, but the last bell of the day sounded before Miss Whittaker got to me.
The bell was still screaming through the corridors as I ducked inside the bathroom. In the mirror, the scar on my cheek was clearly visible. I was still examining it when a toilet flushed and Raymond Blight left the stall to wash his hands at the sink next to me.
“What you looking at, fish?” he sneered, catching my eye in the mirror.
“Nothing.”
“Fixing your makeup, huh?”
He didn’t have many social skills, old Raymond.
“Is there something on my cheek?” I asked, thinking I may as well while we were here.
Raymond shook beads of water from his hands and wiped them with a paper towel. “What, here?” he said. “You mean this?”
Without warning, he jabbed a hand hard into my chest, throwing me back against the sink with enough force to send waves of pain through my hips and legs. He pinned me there, pushing me back until I felt the cold mirror thump the back of my head. At the same time, he brought his free hand to my face, coiling his forefinger against his thumb.
“This here?” he said, flicking my cheek, flicking hard. It stung like a bite. “Got a mark on your face, fish? I’ll make you a mark. Where are your poncy friends when you need them?”
Flick flick flick.
“Stop,” I said. “I was only asking. And they’re not my friends. Ouch! Stop. I don’t even know them.”
“No, but you’d like to.” His fingernail snapped against my cheek again. “I’ve seen you sucking up to them . . . to Becky. Just ’cause you can draw you think you’re something, but you’re not, OK? You’re not.”
“Ouch! OK.”
“There’s nothing on your face,” he said. “I seen you asking the others the same thing. I don’t know what your game is, but you’re not making an idiot out of me. You’re just an attention-seeking mummy’s boy.”
He flicked me again, this time closer to my eye.
“Don’t,” I said. “Don’t say that.”
“What, mummy’s boy?”
Somewhere in the center of the pain, with the sink pressing into the small of my back, a white-hot anger came flooding out of me. I took hold of his hand and pushed it away from my face.
“I said don’t!”
Suddenly he stopped. A look of glazed shock came over him and he whipped back his hand, staring down at it in horror.
The forefinger looked like it had been slammed in a door — not once, but several times. The top joint was a mangled mess and bright blood seeped from the nail — or rather, where the nail used to be. Something had ripped it clean off.
Raymond fell aside, yelping. He set the cold tap running and doused his hand under it, then tore another paper towel from the dispenser and wrapped that around it, pulling it tight. He looked at me then, only a flash and then quickly away, unable to meet my eyes. “What did you do?”
“Nothing,” I said. “I don’t know. Here, let me look.”
He shrank away as if afraid one touch from me would kill him. He tottered backward, flat-footed, bashing into a stall door.
“Don’t come near me,” he whimpered. “You’re a freak. Stay away. Stay away!”
Nursing his injured paw in the crook of his arm, he kicked open the outer door and ran into the hallway, mewling, his cries reverberating through the school.
I stared after him, stunned. I couldn’t stop myself from shaking.
Stay away, enter at your peril. . . . Mr. October had explained the meaning of the runes, but he hadn’t said what it meant to be branded like this, to have to carry the mark wherever I went.
Only Becky had been able to see it. Now I had to know why. I washed and dried my face and collected my backpack from the hook by the mirror, and in the mirror I could still see the mark. If I hurried, I might still catch her. It might not be wise, it might be a terrible mistake, but I ran outside knowing the time had come to tell Becky the truth.
Becky’s gang was already heading up the street on the bus when I got outside. Becky was waiting at the roadside to cross.
“Déjà vu,” she said, seeing me.
“Can you still see it?” I said, prodding my cheek.
“Yeah. How’d you get it?”
“Long story. Doesn’t matter. But I’ve been thinking. . . .”
“Oh, have you?”
“You were right about the kids, Becky. I did see them, clear as I’m seeing you.”
She all but shrieked with delight, clapping her hands together. Then, suddenly serious, she dropped her voice to a whisper.
“At that desk near the back of the class,” she said. “The one where no one ever sits.”
“Yes.”
“They weren’t there today, though.”
“No, not today.”
“Last week,” she confided, “I noticed something too, but I dismissed it, thought I was imagining it. But then you threw a fit, and I knew.”
“You saw something too?”
She thought about it. “Not exactly. I felt something there, though, and the light seemed unusual on that side of the room — you know the way it refracts through a prism? And I could’ve sworn I smelled something too. Something burned.”
She has it too, I thought. If not the same gift, then something like it. Unlike me, though, Becky seemed happy, even eager to talk about it.
“Do your friends know?” I asked.
“I can’t tell them. They don’t believe in this kind of thing. Matthew likes ghost stories, but that’s all they are to him — stories. Make-believe. I don’t have anyone I can talk to about this.”
“Me neither.”
“So what did the kids do? Did they say anything? And why were they there in the first place?”
“They didn’t say much, but I knew they needed help. They’re trapped somewhere. Lost. But I haven’t seen them since, and I don’t know where to start looking.”
“Maybe they’ll come to you,” she said. “They did once before, so maybe they will again.”
I hadn’t thought of it that way. “Yeah, maybe. In their own time.”
“What’s up with him?” she said suddenly, staring past me.
Raymond Blight was coming our way up Mercy Road, his face screwed into a rictus of pain. As soon as he saw us, he stepped aside into the road, skirting around us at a safe distance. By the looks of it, he’d come straight from the nurse’s office; his finger was wrapped in clean gauze. He scowled but didn’t speak as he passed.
Becky turned to me, puzzled, after he’d gone. “Funny, he looked afraid of you. What was that look for?”
“Nothing. He got his finger caught in a door or something and he thinks it’s my fault.”
“What a dope.” She hitched her bag on her shoulder. “Are you going my way? Race you to the nearest caff. I think I can manage a hot chocolate now that the anesthetic’s worn off.”
I hesitated. I’d be expected at headquarters soon, but now it seemed more important to be at home for Mum.
“Got a phone I can borrow?” I asked. “I’m supposed to be somewhere later, but I’d better call home first. Mum’s not well.”
“Sorry to hear that.” She found her cell phone in the depths of her bag. “It’s OK, I’ve got loads of credit.”
Mum sounded upbeat when I called, much brighter than I’d expected.
“Do whatever you like,” she said. “I’m fin
e. I’m not made of glass. Ellie’s coming for the evening and we’re going to have ourselves a good old heart-to-heart, so you’d only get in the way.”
“If you’re sure, Mum.”
“I’m sure.”
“Sounds like good news,” Becky said when I handed back her phone.
“It is, in a way.” But I didn’t want to say more. “Now what about that caff?”
“Last one there can pay.” She grinned. “Don’t worry. The place is dirt cheap.”
And off she ran.
The Portuguese café on the edge of De Beauvoir Square was cramped and dark inside, but there were wobbly tin tables out on the sidewalk, so we took one and sat watching the street. I ordered a Coke, Becky a hot chocolate topped with whipped cream, which gave her a foamy white mustache. She laughed and wiped it away when I pointed it out.
“So you believe me about what I saw,” I said.
“Course I do. I told you what you’d seen, remember? Getting you to admit it was like drawing blood from a stone. Besides,” she added, “I don’t have a problem with these things — with death and ghosts and all that. I’ve always taken it for granted. Accepted it.”
“Oh?”
“Yeah. Like when I was six, my great-gran passed away. We called her Blue Grandma because of the blue cardigans she always wore — she must’ve had twenty different ones in different shades of blue. One night my mum came to my room, very weepy and whispering. She said, ‘Blue Grandma went to sleep and she’s going to sleep for a very long time.’ It made me feel very grown up that she’d share this important news with me, and I knew what she was trying to tell me. I said, ‘You mean she’s dead, dontcha, Mum?’ I could be incredibly blunt when I was little.”
“Blue Grandma,” I said thoughtfully.
“A real sweetie,” Becky said. “Plus, I got to see her again at the funeral. I almost expected to. I wasn’t surprised. She was standing on the far side of the grave with her sisters on her left and this elderly man in a white suit on her right. Struck me as odd, him wearing white to a funeral. Gran didn’t say anything, she just smiled at me like she knew I knew she was there. But I never mentioned it to Mum later on — I thought it’d upset her. In fact, I never told anyone else until now.” Becky paused, watching me critically. “Question is, do you believe me?”
“Why wouldn’t I?” I took a sip of my drink before asking, “The man at the funeral . . . Did you know him?”
“Oh, him. No. Never saw him before or since. I just remembered him for his kind eyes and grubby white suit.”
She shivered, watching the sky. A cool wind was bringing pale gray clouds.
“Drink up, Ben; it’s looking like rain,” she said.
I wasn’t in a hurry, but I didn’t want the rest of the Coke. I was jumpy enough already without the caffeine. We set off along the blustery street.
“Do you see things all the time?” I asked.
“Mostly I sense things. I can’t say I’ve seen that much, except once a couple of years after Gran. I was nine then, and driving up to the Lake District with my parents for the weekend. They’d offered to bring some of my friends, so Kelly and Ryan came too. There’d been a train crash the week before — really horrendous. Maybe you remember the news.”
I didn’t offhand.
“Two fast trains on the East Coast line had hit each other head-on and burst into flames. They said you could see the fire for miles. We had relatives who lived close to the scene of the accident, and my folks decided to pay them a visit to break up the drive and recharge their batteries. The back of the house faced a huge field, and across the field you could see the leftover wreckage of the crash. The fronts of the trains were fused together by the heat, so you couldn’t tell where one started and the other ended.”
She went quiet until we’d crossed the next intersection.
“It was Ryan’s idea to investigate the crash site while my folks had tea with my aunt and uncle. The rails were all torn up and that part of the line was closed. It still smelled of diesel and something like burning rubber, and you could see from the way the trains were mangled why so many had been killed and injured.”
“That’s awful.”
“Yeah, it was. Kelly suggested a game of hide-and-seek, ’cause you could still get inside some of the carriages. I wasn’t sure because of the people who’d died there, but I went along with it anyway. When it was my turn to hide, I climbed inside a compartment near the front and huddled down between the seats. They’d never find me in there, I thought. The carriage was so dark, they could walk right through and never see me. So I waited, listening to them moving away along the train, slamming doors, and their voices growing fainter all the time.
“It was creepy in there, and I could still smell burning. I thought I’d give it a minute and then go and give myself up. And then I heard something shuffling in the carriage, and this wheezy-sounding breathing. You know, like asthma?”
“God, you must’ve been scared,” I said.
“Petrified. My hands were over my face, but I couldn’t help peering through my fingers, and all these shapes were moving around with smoke coming off them. Some were floating high above my head, moving in all directions through the carriage. I was glad of the darkness, glad I couldn’t see more. There were so many voices all whispering at once. I wanted to run but I couldn’t make my legs work. Then I started to see more detail: badly burned faces and arms and shredded bits of clothing. Just flashes. The smell of smoke became stronger, and I cowered down and shut my eyes, and one of them spoke close to my ear.”
We walked to the next block while I digested what she’d just told me. Becky stared into space, reliving the memory.
“Isn’t that nuts?” she said.
“No, I don’t think so.”
“But I never felt like I was in danger. I never thought they meant to hurt me.”
“And one spoke to you. What did it say?”
“It sounded like, ‘Tell them sorry. I was trying to make it right, but I lost my way.’ Four years ago, but I still remember it like it was yesterday. I didn’t dream it up, Ben.”
“I know.”
We stopped under a tree on a corner as the first drops of rain began falling.
“Sometimes I still think about them,” Becky said. “I just hope they aren’t all still lost, like those children.”
“A lot of people are,” I said. “That’s why I —” But I stopped myself there, watching the raindrops rippling through the leaves. “Well, I have to get going.”
“Ah yes, the other place you have to be. Anything exciting?”
“Not really. Just helping someone out.”
“Very mysterious. You don’t give much away, do you? Well, see ya.”
“Yeah.”
She set off toward home, breaking into a trot as the rain picked up. I watched her go, glad to have someone to confide in but wary of saying too much. A little knowledge could be dangerous, and it wouldn’t be smart to involve her too.
Still, as I started to Islington, I couldn’t help wondering how long before I caved in and told her everything else. It wouldn’t be easy to keep it to myself. And I wondered what Mr. October would make of Becky, whether he’d see her the way I did, and whether he’d remember her from her great-grandmother’s funeral.
The cold and damp took over the week. Rain fell most nights, and the city streets glittered when I joined Mr. October on his rounds. Ellie had decided to call on Mum every evening, so I was free for the Ministry after school, and when I came home Ellie’s umbrella would be propped against the radiator in the hall.
Ellie was a big-boned, good-humored woman with smiling brown eyes and a Mediterranean tan. She’d been a friend of Dad’s before Dad met Mum, and she and her boyfriend, Ross, used to join my parents on double dates before they married and I came along.
Ever since Dad left, she and Mum had grown closer, and I knew Mum was in safe hands with her. Not that I was fooling myself — life didn’t feel very safe latel
y and Mum was anything but well — but after Ellie started visiting she seemed more positive, more like her old self.
Ellie couldn’t be there all the time, though. On weekends I worked short hours so I could spend most of the day with Mum. She seemed glad to have me around.
On Saturday morning we took a thermos of coffee to a bench in London Fields and sipped the hot liquid and watched dog walkers and cyclists going past. I’d brought my sketch pad and started a portrait of her, hoping to catch her off guard, looking calm and relaxed.
At first she was self-conscious about it, trying to wave me away and cover her face, but by the time I’d finished she was beaming with pride.
“See what I mean?” she said. “Capturing life as you see it, that’s what you’re good at. I’d rather that than have you keeping the dead company in graveyards.”
“It’s OK,” I said. “I don’t go to those places often now.”
And I thought, Because there’s no need to. Nowadays the dead come to me.
Later that day, she had her first hospital appointment, and I took the bus with her. The ride was rocky — you could feel every bump on the road — and Mum couldn’t disguise the pain, clutching her arm all the way.
The nurse attending to Mum said it would be best if I waited outside the treatment room. They would be at least an hour. She was settling Mum into a big adjustable chair like a dentist’s when they closed the door, locking me out.
Ten patients waited on hard plastic chairs across the ward. Three others waited in wheelchairs. At least half of them looked in much worse shape than Mum, and I hoped she wouldn’t become like them if the treatment didn’t work.
For a time I wandered from one white ward to another, down one corridor and up the next, the tiled floor squeaking under my sneakers. Everywhere there was a metallic clink of cutlery and surgical instruments, everywhere a sickly smell of disinfectant mixed with blood.
Phones rang around every corner. Porters rumbled gurneys in and out of elevators and operating rooms. I hated hospitals, though I’d never been a patient and I’d only ever visited twice before Mr. October started bringing me. Something about them made me uncomfortable. I’d never known why until Mr. October had explained that eighty percent of the Ministry’s cases passed away in places like this.
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