Neville the Less

by Robert Nicholls

  * * *

  It took a long time to teach my fingers to work again. When I got it lit, I saw the Quiet Man fallen to the sand beside Neville. Blood ran on his face and it looked, in the torch’s light, to be steaming hot; like it might sizzle where it fell. Even as he rose, he was pressing Neville hard into the sand, as he had pressed me; and pressing the magic bolt to Neville’s chest.

  I shone the torch about quickly, to see what Demons might have joined the battle, but there was only Shoomba’s Terrible Bill, looking like a small version of the Quiet Man, his back arched as high as a chair. Both Bill and the man looked into my light, their golden eyes blazing with danger, and both hissed through bared fangs. Then Bill turned and did what any sensible creature would do; he fled, away from Home Country.

  I might’ve wished to run away also. But I thought, there is already blood. If I take my light away, how will they know each other? And then, how will Neville not be lost, as Anosh was lost?

  So I stayed. And I thought, if this is the fury of soldiers, how could my Anosh have survived? I had not seen; could not know. But if my friend, Neville the Less, was to be taken, it would be different. I would know how and by who. Whatever befell him, I would be witness. If nothing else, I would know the shame of that man.

  The Quiet Man squinted into my light then and to my surprise, what I saw in his face was not death. What I saw, I think, was relief.

  He held out his hand, beckoning fiercely. Give it! Give it! I couldn’t go closer but I threw the torch to the ground beside him and he snatched it up, turning it straight back on me. And suddenly, all my vision was of the ruined plants and pots and broken things at my feet; and above them, a blinding circle of light.

  Mum

  I was gone twenty minutes. No longer, I swear! A neighbour kid had a lead pellet from an air rifle lodged in his foot. (He said his sister shot him: she said he shot himself. Not that it matters. In a house with guns, inevitably, someone will be shot!)

  So, why was I even there? I mean either one of them could’ve pulled the pellet out! Probably with less pain because, I’ll tell you what, I made no effort to go easy on him! Or her! Especially considering how ridiculously smug they seemed; like getting me mixed up in their mayhem was the whole point of the exercise.

  “Do you know what lead poisoning’ll do to you?” I squawked, waving the bloody pellet in his face. “It’ll leave you twitching and insane and peeing in your pants, that’s what! And then it will slowly and agonisingly kill you! Understand? You don’t have to be shot through the heart to be killed! You know? You should be seeing a doctor, not me! And get rid of the damn gun!”

  Probably did me more good than them; but at least it took a bit of the edge off their amusement.

  So twenty minutes! Tops! And in that little time, my post traumatically stressed husband who, for the past two months has been all but catatonic - uncommunicative on every level, particularly with Neville - numb in every corner of his being - had somehow got himself outside! Under the house! And into a huge one-sided rant with his son!

  Which . . . even that would be great! Wonderful! If it weren’t for the fact that he was scaring the living daylights out of Neville - and little Afsoon from over the back! Bailed up like a pair of beaten puppies, they were - huddled against one of the stumps - being harangued with the most dreadful, heart-rending back-flash of horror!

  I mean Neville . . . is the most vulnerable kid alive! In the past couple of months, for God’s sake, he’s convinced himself that monsters have begun gathering under our house at night! He’s terrified of his own home! So to not only be wrenched out of bed at night - which I suppose must be what happened - but to find himself then dragged off into the actual place of his nightmares . . .! I mean, should I be surprised that he’s managed to crack open his father’s skull in the struggle?

  And as for Afsoon, I still haven’t fully sorted how that poor little creature got involved! Though I can make a guess. Her family are Hazaran refugees, which obviously means that, together, they’ve already been through more needless terror than this entire neighbourhood, thank God, will have to know in its entire collective lifetime. I have a feeling that not all of them made it to Australia. So the effect on Afsoon - beautiful as she is - I’m sure it’s that that’s left her with this uncontrollable need to be wandering and watching in the neighbourhood after dark.

  She’s totally unconcerned about herself, mind you, because she has this idea - and Neville believes it too - that she has special mind-reading powers that, I don’t know, keep her out of danger or something. Even though, at the same time (and I don’t doubt this is where Neville got the idea) she seems utterly convinced that there actually is some sort of established evil that’s . . . got her marked. (I don’t know; maybe if you could look inside people’s heads, that’s the sort of thing you’d really see!) Anyhow, aside from all that, she’s just the most intelligent, exotic and beautiful kid you’d want to know and I’ve been sorry to have to make an issue out of their friendship. Her mum and dad are lovely too.

  So here’s the thing. Having seen what PTSD can do to adults, I’d be the last to think that kids couldn’t suffer from it just as acutely. And there’s this weird fantasy that keeps running through my mind. What if, in her bloodied view of the world, she sensed some connection between her family’s and my family’s experiences? The Afghan connection? The war connection? I sense it; why wouldn’t she? How tangled would that be?

  Anyhow even that’s not the real problem. The real problem is that, up until last night I’d’ve sworn all of us were safe as houses in this neighbourhood - in this country. Despite Shoomba’s well-known penchant for peeping and the Hughes’s sanctimoniously judgemental observations and the Bogart’s gun fetishes and the Daisly’s parochially exclusive definition of who ‘belongs’ and who doesn’t. But now a child - Afsoon - has been actually, really, physically hurt! By my husband, of all people! Who, before I heard what I heard last night, I would’ve thought the last person to hurt a kid!

  Now? I just really . . . need to figure out how frightened I need to be! For all of us!

  The Quiet Man

  I tried ignoring them. I tried warning them. Stay away, you kids! I can’t be responsible! But they found me out; sniffed me out.

  It’s my training, that’s why. Everyone knows I’m trained. Things that’ve been hidden - I find them. Always under something; under the roads, under the carts, under the burkas . . . under our feet. Well hidden. But I know the signs. And I have the nose as well. Special talent. But I can’t be trusted, see? Because sometimes I miss. And sometimes - was it sometimes, or only the once? - I didn’t tell.

  Someone pointed him out. Rummaging in the barrels, looking for . . . I don’t know what he was looking for. Whatever it is they look for. Something salvageable. Six years old. Maybe eight. Nev’s age. We saw each other - us watching and him smiling, all dark hair and white teeth. And I saw the dirt around the barrel’s base. Loose. Wrong colour, wrong texture. I might’ve missed it, if they hadn’t pointed out the kid. But once I looked, I knew. And I didn’t tell. Didn’t call out. Instead I thought, right! Let them know what it feels like. Let them do one of their own this time; instead of one of ours.

  And I looked away, up at the sky, around at the buildings, down at my rifle. I think he found what he was looking for. I heard him grunt - a little boy grunt. Feet braced, sinking further and further into the soil. Yanking. Until . . . Gaboosh!

  Shards of metal and glass, erupting into the air. Like confetti. A cloud of confetti. And inside the cloud, a pink Rorschach stain. What do you see? I see what used to be a pair of arms. Now just a pink mist, settling out of the air.

  And on the boy, blood, everywhere. Except the eyes. Miraculous eyes. Saying, what happened? What happened? Pointless to explain then. But still, I went to him. Too late. Much too late. But how could I not?

  “It wasn’t us,” I said when I got to him. “We didn’t put it there.”

  I d
oubt he heard. Doubt he could’ve heard, even if I’d been shouting. Bled out in seconds. And that’s when I stopped looking in eyes. Anyone’s eyes. But especially kids’ eyes. No more kids, please. Not too big an ask I’d’ve thought. Just no more kids.

  But they found me out. Someone shot, they said. And then, kids going to do my job! Looking for the I.E.D.’s. ‘Things’, they called them; under. Didn’t even know the right name. So this time I stepped up. They’re okay, I think. But did that make it right? Make it better? I don’t know. Doesn’t feel like it.

  But that was definitely it. I’m not going looking anymore. I’m staying right here. If they want me, they’ll have to come get me.

 

  Riff

  We are safe. Another night passes and we are safe. But still, the neighbour brings Afsoon home, limping and crying, after dark.

  “How do we not see her go?” I say to Parisa. “I watch so closely. But still she goes by me.”

  “Maybe,” says Parisa, “she is truly the witch she claims to be.”

  ‘Soon

  I have lied to Riff and Raff. I told them I had a dream of Neville the Less’s Ava - that she was outside our house, calling me to help her get home. And I was sad not to find her, so I lay down on the ground and cried. And then the Quiet Man came out to see who cried and in the dark he fell on me. But I am okay.

  I cannot tell them - not Riff, especially - the story the Quiet Man has told us, about the Things from under that can steal a boy’s arms. Ai-ee-dee, he calls them. And the way he says it . . . it is like a cry of fear.

  “You were asleep?” Riff asked. “Or awake?”

  “I don’t know. Asleep, maybe.”

  “What is wrong inside your head, daughter, that you walk in your sleep?”

  I didn’t answer. He didn’t expect an answer. But I thought, look inside your own head, father. And see what you see.

  8. Phase Two

  It was an unsettling morning, right from the start. Still no Ava to lick him awake or to comfort the Quiet Man. And no magic cyclone bolt in the corner. And stranger still, when he got up, no Quiet Man on the lounge, no Mum in the kitchen.

  Mrs Hughes

  Chaos in the neighbourhood! Cookie saw lights reflected on the wall of his and Robert’s bedroom last night, and came running to tell.

  “An ambulance at Boogerville!” he was saying, (meaning, of course, the Bogart house). As though a carnival had come to town.

  I checked and he was right. Hardly surprising mayhem should erupt there! So I sent him straight back to bed because, obviously, it wouldn’t be right for the boys to be thinking the neighbours’ troubles are our interest. But I went myself down to the back fence. Not to be nosey, you understand. You can’t see through anyhow because of the choko vine on their side. But I did just want to hear if there was anything I should do to help. From what I could gather, a shooting had occurred! Awful! Just awful!

  I wanted, of course, to call out but (the possible presence of guns notwithstanding) I knew it would be awkward. So I sent Mister Hughes to have a look because, I said, if there are things like that happening in the neighbourhood, I said, we have a moral duty to know about them - to protect the children. He went to the Rahimi’s corner, thinking the choko vine might be thinner there. But it seems not. When he came back he said he’d had to climb over and had gotten tangled in a quite dense bit of it and, by the time he’d gotten free, the kerfuffle in Bogart’s yard had died away. But . . . there was a kerfuffle of a different sort, for Goodness sake, occurring at Neville and Bettina’s house!

  Since my chat with poor little Neville last week . . . (I hate thinking of him as ‘the Less’. But it just suits the timid little fellow so well. And it does help to distinguish him from the father. And also, ‘Once heard, never forgotten,’ as they say.) . . . anyhow, since then (and ever so much more so after last night!) I’ve been awfully concerned for the well-being of that family.

  The gist is that Mister Hughes heard something that sounded very like pleading! Incomprehensible words, he said; and crying. And then he saw little Afsoon Rahimi, possibly injured, being assisted back to her home by Bettina and Less - back through the banana palms. All of them crying!

  Mister Hughes’s first thought was that violence had spilled out of the Bogart yard. Then again, he thought, considering what he’d just found in the chokos at the corner of the properties, who was to say where it had begun?

  “Did you step out and ask if you could help?” I asked Mister Hughes. “What the trouble was? If there was any need for alarm? If we should call the police?”

  “I was about to,” he said. But he heard Mohammed Rahimi’s voice coming through the palms and little Afsoon’s tears turned into a full on sobbing story about that lost little dog, of all things! And how she’d wanted desperately to find it; and something about being on the ground and being tripped over. An accident, apparently, but oh dear!

  Mister Hughes says he did then step out of the darkest of the shadows, prepared to offer the clarifying assistance that a Christian must offer in times of confusion. But at that same moment his hand, which’d been fumbling in the bag which he’d just stumbled over, half buried amongst the chokos . . . his hand emerged with terrible confirmation of our suspicions. It was a pistol!

  Where did it come from? Well! There was no telling at the moment, of course, but a clue has subsequently been provided. Because also in the bag was an Afghanistan service medal! Which can only have belonged to a certain recently returned serviceman! And we all know who that is! Needless to say, so shocked was Mister Hughes on finding himself suddenly and lethally armed that he turned away without speaking and came directly home.

  All of which has left us in the most awful state of worry! We’ve long been aware, of course, of Mohammed’s furtive little night time watch over his own property; obviously paranoid about his family’s safety. By all accounts, dangers were often abroad for people of their background in Afghanistan. So we understand that. And we’ve prayed for him also to understand that he’s in a Christian country now, where such things cannot happen.

  By the same token, we’ve just about become reconciled (not comfortable but at least reconciled) to Dennis Shoomba’s torchlight prowlings. He claims, of course, that he’s observing the wild life, but we all know it’s not the out-of-doors wild life he’s hoping to see. Blinds down after dark! That’s the rule around here!

  They, as I say, are two that we’ve come to think of as ‘unsettled’ neighbours and we’ve just about come to grips with them. Sometimes Ralph Daisley’s name also comes up, but what he gets up to behind his ridiculous ‘Folly’, to my way of thinking, is not a concern. Out of sight, out of mind as they say.

  Now, however, it seems that an armed ex-serviceman, with an uncertain state of mind, might’ve been added to the mix! (Well, no longer armed, hopefully, since Mister Hughes’s happy confiscation of that horrid weapon.) And also added into the mix, it seems, are children! Why on earth - how on earth - a fragile thing like Afsoon Rahimi - a girl-child, as well - would be out after dark, alone, in a neighbour’s yard! With those awful disturbed men on the loose! It’s like allowing a lamb to stroll about in a kennel full of wolves!

  Our first impulse this morning was to call the police and, at the very least, hand the pistol over. But how much more tension would their presence add to the neighbourhood, we asked ourselves. Mister Hughes’s alternative idea was to hide the object away on a high shelf in the hallway where the boys can’t stumble across it! And then to plan a gathering of all the adults around at our house for an hour or two of discussion, reflection and prayer.

  Personally, I dread to imagine what sort of mischievous, misguided belief systems are present in our neighbourhood but I suppose, God willing, the light of Christian salvation can be shone into even the darkest of corners