Chalk

by Paul Cornell

  They’d come as Bananarama.

  Oh God, oh God. I could hear the mocking laughter over the music. It started with amazement and rose to a crescendo. I backed into a corner by the speakers. I couldn’t bear it. ‘You’ll find out!’ I yelled at them, lost under the music. ‘They’ll fix you too!’

  Grayson’s sister was yelling. ‘Here’s the queen and her princesses. Let’s all bow!’

  ‘You love Waggoner!’ a girl called out. ‘You’re going to marry him!’

  That wasn’t what I’d expected to hear. And . . . instead of laughing along and at me, Angie had turned aside. Her friends were hustling her away into a corner.

  Those taunts had been at her.

  But I thought telling people about my stories was her joke on me.

  Oh. Oh no. She hadn’t betrayed me.

  I fell back against the bar. I looked round for Waggoner. He was suddenly right in front of me, looking urgently at me. ‘It doesn’t change anything,’ he said. ‘It doesn’t make everything all right.’

  There was a disturbance on the stairs. There was Drake, on his own. He elbowed his way down. He was in his tiny concessions to werewolf again: sideburns and a lumberjack shirt. ‘What?’ he was shouting at some kids near him. ‘Didn’t hear you! Say that again!’

  The girls were silent. Just. Though they laughed again as soon as he went past. Angie was looking awkwardly at him and then away from him. Drake looked horribly on his own. Like an animal about to be brought down. Angie looked like she needed a lot more from him.

  I tried to get over to Angie, but her friends blocked my path with looks and muttered words and then with their bodies, until the crowd, intent on being close to them to catcall at them, shoved me away with comments that now meant nothing except I was, after all, the same as her.

  I stood in a corner, panting. She must have felt like I’d abandoned her, all those weeks when we could have been strong.

  Louise was calling kids over, putting cookies into their hands, saying there were always more, replacing them every time one was taken, keeping her spiral pattern intact. Waggoner went over and got two. He ate one himself, and, before I could do anything, grabbed the back of my head and shoved the other into my mouth. It was choke or swallow. I swallowed.

  While I was still staggering, Waggoner took a dirty handkerchief from his pocket. He opened it up. Inside was a congealed mass, but what was at the centre of it was unmistakable. An unbroken eye. It moved. It was swiveling. The pupil was huge, panicking. Waggoner closed his hand round it. Mr. Rushden took a giddy step back from the decks and had to steady himself. Then he stepped forward, suddenly certain again, and put another record on the turntable. It was ‘Red Red Wine’. He carefully took the microphone. ‘Now we are going back,’ he said., ‘All the Number One hit singles, from this Halloween to the last!’

  I stumbled away from Waggoner. It felt like the dance floor had tilted. Or I felt drunk. But that couldn’t be. I fell into the bar, and saw, as I turned around, that others had fallen with me. I saw where Angie was trying to get up, and made my way back across the dance floor, foot after foot, in long steps, and landed at her feet. There was a great roar of laughter and applause. Wolf whistles. Suddenly every reaction had got bigger. There had been teacher laughter too. Netty and Jenn looked daggers at me, but Angie indicated something to them, and Jenn got up, and I landed in her seat and Drake stopped where he had started to come over from, swearing and pushing at someone.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ I said.

  ‘It’s too late for that,’ said Angie.

  ‘I didn’t tell them about the stories.’

  She looked at me hard, not believing me. Then she did. ‘Oh. I thought you did.’

  ‘I thought you did.’

  ‘Why would I do something moronic like that?’

  Waggoner was watching me, like he was afraid of what I might do. ‘Why would I?’

  She had to pull herself together before she could continue. ‘It’s childish anyway. I’ve got bigger things to worry about.’

  ‘What?’

  Angie suddenly laughed. Then she looked like she might cry. She pushed her hair back. ‘Fuck. Anything else you want to ask? I’ve brought the Cup back.’ She indicated her enormous Virgin Records bag. ‘I’m going to try and sneak the stupid thing back to Mr. Clare’s office.’

  ‘The Cup isn’t stupid. The Cup is really important.’ Or it was to Waggoner. I wanted to say that she shouldn’t have brought it back.

  ‘Oh, go on, tell me a story.’ I’d never heard anyone say anything the way she said that. It started out ironic, but then in the space of one breath, I was sure she meant it. I looked round. Everything in the cellar was starting to shift. I could feel the boundary Waggoner had set up around the school. It was tipping. My body was shaking. I was having trouble pushing my thoughts out. They were tied up around what was turning. I yelled, and so did some of the others.

  The shaking stopped. We had nearly gone right over then, but something had stopped us. An imperfection had got in the way.

  Louise was glaring at Angie. I looked to her bag. Louise started forward.

  Drake stumbled over and hauled me out of my seat. The kids around us burst into more laughter and applause. I could see he hated it, because some of it was for him. Ignoring Angie’s screamed protests, he hauled me away.

  He ran straight into Waggoner.

  Drake reacted, startled. He could see Waggoner! He spun and looked at me. He could see both of us now. He staggered back, showing so many new expressions.

  The teachers had all been eating Louise’s biscuits too. Mr. Coxwell was gesturing in the air now. Nobody was listening to him. He looked afraid. Mrs. Coxwell arrived beside him, swaying, trying to pacify him. Mrs. Pepper was laughing and laughing, a high, neighing laugh. Mrs. Frenchmore had sat down in a corner, looking seriously at the kids who were dancing now, trying to understand. Mrs. Parkin was dancing to KC and the Sunshine Band, her girls all around her. Mr. Sedge was walking, nodding, across the dance floor, back and forth, sizing things up. Mr. Kent was just staring, such sadness on his face. Mr. Clare was looking for something behind the bar, on his hands and knees, his arse stuck out in his purple suit. Mr. Brandswick was grabbing at individual pupils, trying to shepherd them together into one corner, but as soon as he went for another, the ones he had slipped away. Mr. Land, at the decks, was lecturing Mrs. Mills, trying to make the bloody woman understand, but she wasn’t listening; she’d got her hands to the walls and was feeling it, feeling it, feeling it changing. She thought it was toppling back onto her, and she fell backwards, and hit the far wall and rolled up it.

  The kids from the dance floor took that in their stride as Paul Young came on. Every Number One would be played. The teachers and pupils walked down the dance floor and walked up that wall. The laws of physics going apeshit was the only way anyone could dance to that.

  Drake looked slowly back and forth between me and Waggoner.

  Rod Stewart came on. The kids were all dancing now. Elaine had her arms above her head, pleading for nobody to look at her. Surtees was dancing spastically, punching invisible assailants, nearly falling, was overwhelmed by them, hissing through his big teeth. Laurie Coxwell had come as a cat girl again. She was swaying, her eyes closed.

  Mr. Rushden, a look of panic on his face like he alone could see there was something wrong, was pulling out disc after disc, putting on each one in turn, faster and faster: The Police, New Edition, Spandau Ballet with ‘True’ . . .

  And there was that enormous start to David Bowie singing ‘Let’s Dance’. I looked over to Angie and saw a determined look on her face. She had to do something. She stepped out onto the dance floor.

  Thirty-eight

  The bottles of spirits in the Halloween disco were falling and breaking as the room rotated about an axis that nobody understood. The bottles broke near secret lit cigarettes. The room spun to the sound of Duran Duran and Bonnie Tyler and Michael Jackson, which made Fiesta dance onto the
ceiling. The room resounded like a drum with people inside. Forever’s going to start tonight. Forever’s going to start tonight. There was snogging and fighting. Surtees was lashing out at anyone he could connect his fists to, in a strange sort of pogo divorced from the music. There were bodies all around him, flying in and piling on. Mrs. Parkin was grabbing for her girls, to be with all of them, to be one of them. The first small fires broke out.

  I felt Angie’s dance trying to push against what was happening. She was thanking her broken mirror for this chance, asking it for more assistance, her two friends helping her, dancing beside her, in a ridiculous, passionate way, as if nobody was watching. She was leading up to something. I had no idea what. I had no idea what she could do.

  Drake was looking between me and Waggoner. He looked for a moment like he might start to understand. He reached for both of us, angry with us equally.

  ‘Andrew!’ yelled Angie. She was stumbling towards the edge of the dance floor like she was on the deck of a ship, clutching her bag. Netty and Jenn were dancing even more frenziedly, dancing for her. She held out her hand, it was time, she wanted me to go with her.

  Drake’s hands closed on me.

  I shoved him and sent him stumbling back into Waggoner. I sped with big, leaping panto flying steps across the rotating dance floor. I grabbed Angie’s hand.

  She hauled me towards the exit.

  The door at the top of the steps was rotating, like something spinning into the distance as a futuristic video effect on Top of the Pops. But we had the Cup in Angie’s bag. Unlike all the other kids who were falling away from the door, we could escape. We ran at it. We burst through it without caring which way was up.

  * * *

  We stumbled out into a vision of two worlds colliding. We spun on the spot, the gravel flying up under our feet. It fell in great arcs, like we were walking on the moon. Two gravities were vying for our bodies.

  I looked around desperately, trying to find a horizon, a point of reference in what should be so familiar. There was the big tree, but it was also the omphalos. One thing was mapping itself onto another, like grids on a computer game intersecting. The perimeter flashed, trying to weld them together, a red heat where Waggoner had threaded the flesh. The horse was hauling itself up out of the football pitch. Its eye was blazing. Its hooves struck sparks. It had an enormous chalk cock, perfect and clean. The horse reared back and then mounted the ground, thrust into it, came into it, and the ground, pregnant, swelled up towards the sky, pushing the worlds towards each other. The rounded shape of the school buildings was becoming the rounded shape of trenches and ridges. Lightning was flaring as fast as sparks in a horror movie laboratory, connecting the black glass in the ground with the weight of the sky above, where clouds any moment were about to resolve themselves into something solid. There were earthlights floating up from the woods, lights bursting from the windows at the top of the school, lights in the far distance in the direction of Chippenham hospital.

  The effort was shaking the earth and sky. The pressure was huge.

  The man with two sticks stood above it all, on a promontory above the clouds. He was heaving his sticks towards each other, bringing them closer and closer. The fire blazed between them, more intense every moment. He looked to me and Angie on the ground. He was looking for the Cup. He found it in her bag. We felt the weight of his gaze. We fell off our feet, onto the gravel.

  Around him now, towering over us, we saw the ones with their shields and eyes. The rain that started to fall on us then was their rust and tears and blood.

  Angie and I tried to stand. I heard ‘Too Shy’ start to play. I hauled myself upright at the same moment she did.

  Waggoner stepped out of the cellar, smoke billowing up from behind him, carrying the sharpened, decorated pole he’d been making in Woodwork. Angie looked between us. She could see both of us now too. Waggoner slowed as he approached us. ‘We’re about to go onto the downs,’ he said. ‘Get her to give you the Cup. We need to break it.’

  ‘Why?’ asked Angie.

  Waggoner ignored her, addressing his answer to me. ‘It’s full of her ways. She’s changed it. Made it into something real. Her version of real. So it won’t fit any more. If it stays here, intact, as the worlds come together, there’ll be a rip in the map. We won’t be able to complete the sacrifice, complete your revenge. You won’t get healed.’

  Behind Waggoner, kids had started to leave the cellar, fleeing what was becoming one big fire. A whole bunch of teachers, led by Mr. Rushden, was holding someone who was struggling. They were forcing him to come with them. He was shouting. It was Drake. It was the first time I’d heard him afraid. Or perhaps I’d always heard him afraid. Mr. Rushden had an awful look on his face, like he was aware of what he was doing but couldn’t help himself. Louise walked beside them, gesturing, cajoling them on, leading them in the right direction.

  Angie looked between them and Waggoner and me. ‘Complete the sacrifice?’ She looked betrayed.

  ‘Run,’ I said to her. ‘Please. Get away.’

  ‘Yes,’ said Waggoner, ‘that would be fine. Take the Cup with you.’

  She couldn’t look at me. ‘What’ll happen then?’

  ‘Then everything will go back to how it should have been, centuries ago. We’ll be in the world. We’ll be free.’

  She considered for a moment. She looked over to Drake, who was being led towards the playing fields, towards the shining horizon.

  To my surprise, she turned and ran.

  Waggoner put a hand on my shoulder. ‘Of course she did,’ he said. ‘What she’s about is slight. What we’re about is old and meaningful.’

  I didn’t know how I felt. I followed the procession that was forming behind the teachers holding Drake, a line of kids amongst the billowing smoke that was obscuring the lights that were now dancing all around us. I could feel the pressure of the worlds coming together. It couldn’t be long now. All it needed was the final sacrifice to seal it.

  The smoke started to be buffeted by wind. The belly of the earth rose under us as we slowly marched. The horizon of many distances dropped away. We were indeed heading up onto the backs of the downs above my home, but I could still hear the distant music of Men at Work and then Phil Collins far below.

  I looked at Waggoner’s expression as he walked, clutching his sharpened stake. He looked purposeful, determined, on the verge of a great victory. I couldn’t imagine myself looking like that. I didn’t know if I ever wanted to look like that. Ahead, Drake was screaming now, a primal, urgent call for help, like a baby.

  The people from long ago who were doing this, I knew how they felt. I knew how I’d summoned them. They were like me. But I realised something else now. Did they really think being born once more into the world would be enough for them? They wouldn’t just be satisfied with standing again in their own hill fort, not after all they’d been through. They’d want to control the world all the way to the horizon, and the next horizon, and the next. They’d keep their plan of revenge going; they’d have to find more and more things to take revenge against. They’d extend it to the places in my world where I’d seen different possibilities, to the New Forest, even.

  I still wanted Drake to suffer. I had been wondering if at some point his screams would be enough. But now I knew. Nothing would ever be enough.

  In the landscape below, the school was starting to blaze. Smoke was rolling all around us. The gas main had been caught by the smaller fires working their way inwards into the old, rotten wood of the cellars.

  I could feel something once again causing friction between the worlds, sparks in the sky, causing Waggoner to look around, startled. Ahead were the walls of the hill fort. A pale figure ran from it towards the procession. It was Vincent Lang, emaciated, naked and shivering, with scars at his neck and ribs. He was looking around desperately too now, hissing. I wondered what freedom he’d been promised when the worlds collided. In the sky overhead, the shape of the man with two sticks was twistin
g, looking all around, the fire between his sticks lighting him against the blackness.

  I saw Angie standing on the first bank of the hill fort, holding the Cup. She had followed us. From the horizon below I heard that awful music, ‘Save Your Love’.

  The procession headed for the omphalos. Waggoner held his sharpened stake over his head, a challenge to her. Suddenly, from the bounds of the hill fort, the stern onlookers with their shields emerged and ran at her. She dashed away from them, darting this way and that across the fort, but even with the Cup, surely there were too many of them? What was she hoping to do? As we reached the omphalos, the man with two sticks started to step down the sky towards us, and his light grew brighter and brighter, and I could still just about see Angie as she was surrounded and leapt upon and the Cup ripped from her hands.

  The water around the omphalos shone. Drake was hauled forwards at the same moment Angie was. They brought the Cup with their captives. The looks on the faces of those desperate ancients, their hunched backs, the nervous glee in their gasping breaths. They hid behind their shields even now, as if afraid even of the light that was going to free them. The teachers and kids stared at them, not understanding, unable to escape. Louise stood by the crowd, her fists slowly clenching and unclenching, her jaws working as she mouthed words that were like the sounds of eating.

  The man with two sticks stood between all of us. He was slowly bringing his sticks together, but the process could not yet be complete. Waggoner slammed his sharpened stake into the ground beside the omphalos. ‘Break the Cup,’ he said. ‘Bring the sacrifice.’

  They hauled Drake forward. Angie started yelling all the lyrics she could think of. They seemed as meaningless now as Waggoner said they were. But among them I heard so many things that reminded me of the trust we’d shared, the trust I’d shattered all over again. She let me make eye contact with her, and she wasn’t pleading with me, she was urging me. Demanding that I make a balance for all that happened, that I do it myself. I heard ‘Beat Surrender’ playing far below, I heard it change to ‘I Don’t Want to Dance’ and knew that while that was in the air there was nothing she could do, that it was up to me now. It always had been.