Alex and The Gruff (A Tale of Horror)

by C. Sean McGee

CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

  Alex walked along the corridor with a limp. His lip was swollen and he couldn’t breathe properly through his nose. It whistled every time that he inhaled and the bloodied scabs blocked off his right nostril. He carried a tray with two bowls and two spoons and his head was spinning so much that by the time he reached his room, he had forgotten whose bowl was whose.

  Alex stopped at the door. He looked at both bowls. One was blue and one was red but which was which? One of them had been poisoned for The Gruff and the other had been prepared for him, but which was which? He looked lost standing beneath the frame.

  “What happened?” asked The Gruff.

  He sounded concerned.

  Genuinely concerned.

  The Gruff rushed over to Alex and be hugged him. He wrapped his arms around his waist and he hugged so tight that Alex thought that either The Gruff’s arms would fall off or he would split in half. It felt wonderful. He hadn’t been hugged like that before. Not even from his mother. It took away the stinging pain from his swollen lip and bloodied nose.

  “He did this?” asked The Gruff.

  Alex looked down at The Gruff. He saw a friend again. This was so confusing. He didn’t feel like The Gruff would do him any wrong and yet, The Man had dealt him the same favor. He just wished he was at home.

  “I tried,” said Alex, shying his face away, showing his bruises.

  The Gruff lifted his hand to touch the wounds on Alex’s face and when he did, when he shifted his body, Alex saw it; the key. It was around his neck just like The Man had said. Maybe he was right.

  “I’m sorry,” said Alex.

  “Don’t apologize. Look at you. You’ve been bruised. What have I done to send you in there? But what choice did we have?” said The Gruff.

  He had his tiny hands over his face and it looked like he was crying as he doubted himself for having put his friend into the hands of that cruel monster.

  “What do you have?” asked The Gruff.

  Alex looked at the bowls in his hands.

  “I made it myself’ he said.

  Alex placed the tray down on the ground. He still had no idea which bowl had the poisoned meat.

  “I’m not hungry,” said The Gruff

  Alex looked defeated. What could he do?

  “Alex, are you ok? You should sit down.”

  The Gruff took Alex by the hand and helped him down onto the ground. He was as white as a sheet and panting like a thirsty dog. The Gruff took out a tissue and wiped away some of the blood that was trickling from under his nose. He rolled the tissue up and placed it back in his pocket.

  “I’m sorry Alex. You’re the only friend that I have. It pains me to see you like this. This is my fault. I’ll fix it. I’ll make it better” said The Gruff.

  “What are you going to do?”

  “I’ll kill him myself. I should have done it. I should have done it a long time ago. I shouldn’t have put you in there with him. The second he brought you here, I should have done something.”

  Alex looked at The Gruff. He seemed so genuine. The emotion on his face was smooth. He wasn’t tense at all. He didn’t look like people looked when they were lying. But Alex just had to know.

  “What is the key for?” he asked,

  The Gruff turned his head like a thinking dog.

  “What key?” he said.

  “The one around your neck.”

  The Gruff pressed his tiny hand against his chest. His fingers ran over the sides of the key and he clasped it in a clenched fist.

  “It’s nothing’ he grumbled.

  The Gruff ran to the other side of the room. He curled himself in a ball and he slid back against the wall. Alex approached him, slowly, not looking at him directly so as not to scare him off. The Gruff’s both hands encircled the key and he shook as if a fever were swimming in his blood.

  “Why did you bring me here?” asked Alex.

  The Gruff looked up at Alex. He had his head buried into his folded arms but he looked from the corner of his sight and it looked like there was some apology in his eyes.

  “I just want to know.”

  Alex crouched down beside him. He reached in between The Gruff’s chest and his legs, unclasping his fingers and pulling his hand away from the key tied to his neck.

  “When you do something bad, you should tell someone. You shouldn’t pretend that you did nothing wrong.”

  He took The Gruff’s two hands. The Gruff fought at first, pulling them back towards himself, but he didn’t have the strength to fight free. These past days were wearing him thin. Alex didn’t try to hurt him, though. He didn’t try to wrestle him to the ground. He didn’t want a fight. He looked at The Gruff. His eyes gently washed away the fright and concern that wrinkled The Gruff’s face.

  “I’m not mad,” he said. “I just want to hear you say it. Why did you take me?”

  The Gruff’s eyes swelled and they reddened all over. He looked in Alex’s eyes for just a second before his lip started to tremble. Then he turned and he faced the wall and then he turned and he faced the other. He tried to gamble enough strength to shout or to curse or to stamp his feet up and down. He tried to inflate his disgust and his rebellion. He tried, but he couldn’t.

  Instead, he gave in. The tears rolled down his face and the words floated up from the sink of his chest like popping bubbles. One by one they exploded from his mouth and he heaved and he cried as he tried to confess the truth.

  “I tried to help you,” he said.

  Alex didn’t look mad. He was sitting calm, holding The Gruff’s two hands and looking him in the eye. This was something his mother had done to him. Whenever he had done something wrong, she wouldn’t yell like his father would, that only made him madder and got them further from sorting everything out. His mother started doing this at some point. She would sit down with him at his level and she would hold his hands. And she wouldn’t squeeze them so that they hurt. She didn’t try to make him feel like he couldn’t get away. She held them as if she were a port to which he could tie himself off so that his sadness and his remorse didn’t take him somewhere where his loneliness would make an awful friend of him. She would hold his hands and she would look him in the eyes and hers wouldn’t be mean or convicting, they would be kind and forgiving. They would turn his attention like the pages of a book, each time that that it was that his fear ushered him away. Her eyes wanted to see and to understand, nothing more.

  And she would ask the same question over and over and each time she would maintain her gentle reserve. She wouldn’t tire of her consideration and her soothing voice wouldn’t coil into a scornful rasp. She would just hold his hands and she would wait for the moment where he would no longer confide in denial and he would look at her and salted water would spill from his eyes and he would say exactly what he had done.

  And he would be lifted.

  And she would be lifted.

  And they could move on.

  And that was how Alex looked at The Gruff, without deception and without scorn. He held The Gruff’s hands gently and gave him all the time that he needed to admit to the truth. Not just for Alex, but for himself too; so if it was wrong what he was doing and what he had done, he could either live or live not with the person that he was and he could either change what he would be or celebrate in what had become. He held The Gruff’s hands and he asked him over and over the same question.

  “Why did you take me?”

  The Gruff turned away from his eyes. He tried bowing his head. He tried pinning it back between his legs and his chest. He tried looking up the roof and finding some dull patch of peeling paint that he could focus on, something that would absorb that emotion that was building inside of him. But each time that he turned, he could feel Alex’s eyes unchanging and his love unyielding. It was like the sun on his skin. It did not change in how it touched him no matter how hard he fought to shiver or to wrinkle his skin. For Alex’s eyes were the sun and the light of his consideration shone down on Th
e Gruff’s gritty defenses.

  No one look lessened than the one before. And no one look was more coarse or abrasive. There was no respite from his constant care and consideration. There was not a second where The Gruff could build some defense and there was nothing harsh for him to gather in his own stony hands and then throw back twice as hard. Love was the breath of his munitions and it was eroding the forte of The Gruff’s negation.

  “Why did you take me?” asked Alex.

  The Gruff turned and then he turned back.

  “It wasn’t me,” he said.

  “It’s ok. I’m not mad. I just want to know. Why did you take me?”

  “It wasn’t me.”

  “It’s ok Gruff. I’m not mad. I just want to know. Why did you take me?”

  The Gruff turned and he turned again. But each time, he grew more weakened in his fight. His lies were just empty shells rattling along the floor. They fell from his tongue like the autumn leaves in the setting sun.

  “It’s ok Gruff. I’m not angry. I just want to know. Why did you take me?”

  The Gruff didn’t’ turn anymore. That part of him had settled. He was looking at Alex dead in his eyes and The Gruff’s were red and glassy.

  “We have to be responsible for what we have done. It’s ok Gruff, I’m not mad. I just want to know. Why did you take me?”

  “I wanted to help you. That’s all I ever wanted” said The Gruff.

  He burst into tears. His head hanged low and he tried to fling to either side, but not so he could hide or negate the truth, but because it felt so heavy having carried this weight for so long and it was heavier still, having to cast it out.

  Alex took him in his arms. The Gruff wrapped his tiny arms around his waist. His head was buried in Alex’s chest and his tears were flooding onto his white shirt. The Gruff wept loud. He hadn’t wept like this in so long.

  “You need to eat something,” said Alex.

  The Gruff nodded.

  As Alex brought over the tray, The Gruff sat on the floor with his legs crossed. He trusted Alex in a way that he never trusted The Man or any of the boy’s before. He watched his friend gently picking up the tray and carrying it towards him. He had the most caring eyes. He looked like he had had a lot of wrong done unto him but that it had not corrupted him, that he still had the good gene pulling his strings.

  Alex sat the tray down on the floor. He handed the blue bowl towards The Gruff and he humbly accepted. The whole time, he followed Alex’s eyes. They were so kind. He knew with all certainty that this time, things would be different. This time, Alex would have the strength to find his voice, unlike the other children, all the ones who came before. But The Gruff, he tried not to think about them.

  He was about to speak, but Alex shushed him. He put his finger gently on his mouth and he quieted whatever concern was willowing from his belly.

  “Eat,” he said. “Just one bite.”

  The Gruff smiled and Alex smiled back at him. He took the spoon and lifted it to his mouth, the whole time, his eyes locked tightly onto his friend and his companion; his confidant, his savior.

  “Will you do it?” asked The Gruff before eating.

  “You mean kill him?”

  “Yes. Will you?”

  “Why is he here? How did he get here?”

  “I don’t know. Just one day I was playing with my friend and the next, my friend was gone and he was there instead.”

  “Did you take him, when he was a boy?”

  The Gruff’s eyes widened.

  “No. is that was he said? I swear I didn’t.”

  “It’s ok Gruff. Here, eat” he said, helping him with the spoon towards his mouth.

  The Gruff had fear in his eyes. He saw now something different in Alex, something he hadn’t seen before. He didn’t look so scared. He looked committed like he had already started something and was prepared to see it through.

  The Gruff felt like he was inside that package again. He could feel the hard plastic pushed in against his face. He could feel the plastic binds holding his wrists and his legs tight against the cardboard backing. He felt the same uselessness that he had felt that night when he watched that young boy turn in the terrible way that he did.

  He couldn’t fight it. Alex took his hand and he lent it towards his mouth. The Gruff wanted to say no, but he couldn’t. He wanted to shout, but he had no voice. He wanted to throw the spoon to the ground, but his wrists were tied with the loving touch and pull of Alex’s consideration.

  He closed his eyes. He saw The Boy again, sitting on the end of his bed, blood running down the inside of his leg. The Boy was looking at him and he was just a doll in a box, unable to please and unable to make the child’s hurt seem less affectionate. And The Boy looked at him, safe in his packaging and The Boy said, “I wish I were you.”

  The Gruff chewed the first mouthful of food. It tasted like copper on his tongue and on his teeth. But Alex’s eyes assured him that everything would be ok. The Gruff closed his eyes. He saw The Boy again and he was weeping. He was tying off the noose that would make all of his hurt go away. The Boy‘s eyes were drawn upon The Gruff and he whispered and he mouthed, “I wish I were you, I wish I were you” and he tied the noose around the fan above his head and he climbed up onto his nightstand and it wobbled and he steadied himself, because he was worried that he might fall.

  The Boy placed the noose around his neck and he pulled it tight so that his throat lumped as he continued to say, “I wish I were you, I wish I were you.”

  The Gruff fell to the floor. His body went limp. Whatever poison had been in the food had taken affect. Alex looked around. The Man wasn’t here yet. He called out to him.

  “It’s done,” he said.

  There was still no commotion, no response at all.

  “Hey, I did it, it’s done” he shouted out.

  He shouted in a whisper, thinking that even in his slumber that The Gruff might hear him and know of his treason, know of what he had done. Maybe he would find out. Maybe he would wake up after they had gone and his anger would be something that couldn’t control. Maybe it wouldn’t be funny.

  Alex didn’t want to hurt The Gruff. He didn’t seem like a threat. He just wanted to get home. He wanted to see his mum and dad. He wanted to hold his mother’s hand. He wanted her to hold his. He wanted to feel her sunshine warming the bumps in his skin. He wanted to say he was sorry and he wanted to hear her say that it was ok, that it would all be ok.

  A door closed at the end of the hall and Alex could hear the sound of dragging through the stillness of the dungeon. The Gruff was entrenched in unconsciousness. His breath was loud and heaving, but it sounded nothing like whatever was being heaved up the hallway.

  Alex turned to The Gruff. He opened up his shirt, undoing the top two buttons. When he pulled it back, he saw the marks all over The Gruff’s body. It looked like someone had beaten him for years. The cuts, they ran deep into his skin and they scarred into chasmal grooves that wreathed around his body, from the ridge along his chest and down to the sunken ravine in his lower back.

  There were so many marks where some pronged metal instrument had been lashed and slashed against his skin, over and over. It looked like he had been taken to with a belt or with a ringed fist.

  Alex looked around his neck. He reached his hands around the soft felt that hanged a small silver key to his chest. This was his freedom. This was his salvation. He could hear behind him, The Man grunting as he heaved some heavy box or container along the hall towards the room. Maybe it was his possessions, the things he wanted to take with him.

  “I’m sorry,” said Alex as he took the key from around The Gruff’s neck and he put it around his own.

  The Man burst into the room.

  “Is it done? Did it work?”

  He sounded desperate like he wanted to escape but like he assumed for it never to happen. Alex turned to him. He had The Gruff still in his arms. He was limp, but his body was warm. He was sleeping and not dead.


  The Man dragged a chest into the room.

  “What’s that for?” asked Alex.

  “It’s for you,” said The Man.

  “What do you mean?”

  The Man smiled. He took a large knife from under his vest and he let it hang beside his body. It shone and glistened so much. It looked so shiny and so pretty. Alex could see his own fright looking back at him.

  “It’s not a large chest. I would have preferred bigger. It was the only one they had. But it will do.”

  Alex’s heart was racing. They weren’t escaping together. This is what it felt like.

  “Why do you need a chest,” he asked.

  The answer was obvious but asked nonetheless.

  “To put you in,” said The Man.

  “But we’re going to escape, you and I.”

  “I don’t want to escape. This is my home. The Gruff, he is my family.”

  “Then why did you tell me…”

  Alex broke down in tears. He held his hands to his chest.

  “I love The Gruff, I always have. He’s the only friend I’ve ever known. Even if I’m not that for him, he still is for me. I will be again you know. I just have to get rid of you” The Man said, sharpening the large knife on a stone.

  “Let me go. You can have him. You can be his friend. I have friends at home. I just want to go home. I don’t wanna be here.”

  The Man smiled and then sneered.

  “I can’t let you go, Alex. You’ll just tell your whore mother and then she’ll tell your father and then he’ll tell the police and then they’ll all come running and they’ll find me and they’ll find The Gruff and they’ll lake him away from me. I can’t have that. You can’t go home. Your home is here, in this chest.”

  The Man opened the lid. It squeaked and squawked as the metal turned and it flipped backwards. The smell was atrocious. The stench of death.

  Once, a long time ago, there was a bird that died out the front of Alex’s house and nobody came to clean it up. His mother and his father, they didn’t want to touch it in case they got sick so they just left it there to rot. And then every day when his mother and father came home, they would drive over the bird and they squash more of it in to the ground each time. And whenever Alex came home, he had to walk past the bird but it wasn’t the site of the dead animal that made him feel sick, it was the smell.

  And the smell, it carried throughout the garage and up the steps along the side of the house towards the front door. He smelt it every morning when he walked to school and every afternoon when he returned. When they ordered pizza, he would smell it when he went to the door with his father and when he ate his pizza, the smell, it stayed in his nose.

  And the chest, it smelt like his driveway.

  “But you can go home,” said Alex pleadingly. “You can see your mum and your dad. You can see your brother again. Don’t you want to see them?”

  “They won’t know who I am. Look at me. I don’t know who I am. She won’t hold me, not like she used to. I’m old and I’m big and I’m strange now. She won’t know who I am.”

  “She’s your mother,” said Alex, “of course she’ll know you.”

  “I saw her,” said The Man.

  He stopped carving his knife.

  “I went to my old house. They were still living there; my mum and my dad. My brother, he was living somewhere else but my mum and dad, they never moved. They were scared to move. They thought like a dog that one day I’d find my home.”

  “How do you know?”

  “Because I asked her and she told me. She told me my brother was married and he had three kids of his own and he was living in another city and he was a teacher. I always wanted to be a teacher” said The Man.

  He looked despondent.

  He looked cold.

  “But what happened? Were they happy to see you?”

  “No, they weren’t. They were expecting their son to walk through the door, not a man, not a stranger. They never wanted me to come back. They wanted that boy; that abducted boy to walk through the door. Even after all those years, they kept photos of me in my fanciest clothes, even though they weren’t the ones that I used to wear. And they thought of me every day but they didn’t think about me, they thought about that boy who got abducted. And when that happened, when that man took me and brought me here, I stopped being that boy. I stopped being myself. Their son became an idea. He became an impossible ideal. He became the thought in their head that stopped them from moving on.”

  “That’s sad,” said Alex. “But she still loves you. All mothers do.”

  “She had no love in her eyes. She looked at me like a menace. She just kept gripping that picture, that picture that was no longer me. All the things that had been done to me for all those years; they didn’t matter, she didn’t care. They disgusted her, they frightened her. I frightened her.”

  “What did you do?”

  The Man took the handle of the chest in one hand. He dragged it along the room and the stench worsened. Alex held his nose. He tried not to breathe in and he tried not to imagine what was inside.

  “This is my mother,” he said, reaching into the chest and lifting out a severed arm.

  “This was the hand she used to coddle me when I was a child.”

  He put the arm back into the chest. Blood was dripping from his hands. Then he reached in and he pulled out a severed leg.

  “She used to sit me on her lap during storms. I used to get so frightened, but she would gather me up and she would take me in her arms and she would sit down in front of the fireplace and she would sit me on her lap. She used to rock back and forth and she’d smile with every bolt of lightning and she’d lean in a second later and whisper “I love you” with every crack of thunder. I loved that” he said, throwing the served limb back into the chest.

  “And this is her,” he said, taking her severed head and throwing towards Alex.

  Alex screamed. He jumped back and the head rolled along the floor and it stopped with its face staring at him, its eyes hollowed out and its teeth, having all been removed.

  “I have another chest,” said The Man. “There’s one for my father. There’s one for my brother and his stupid wife. And there’s one where I keep all of his kids. I don’t want to go home Alex. I have my family here with me. And I can’t let you go. You’ll just break us apart.”

  “I promise I won’t. I won’t tell anyone” said Alex.

  The Man just shook his head.

  “I have to kill you too,” said The Man.

  “But why? We’re the same. I was taken like you. It’s The Gruff, he did this. Kill him.”

  “The Gruff saved me. My family, they weren’t perfect. They were anything but. My father, he hit my mother. He hit her every night. He didn’t touch me or my brother. He didn’t have to. When we saw her bruises, when we saw what hurt he could do, we knew there was nothing that we could do. I tried once you know. I asked why, why we didn’t run. And you know what she told me?”

  Alex looked blank.

  “She said that she loved him and that I wouldn’t understand, that he was a good man and that a man who is kind in all of the ways has little honesty and little truth in either one. She said that in his apology, she found his kindness, a kindness that nobody else could see. A kindness that nobody could feel. A true and honest kindness that was hers and hers alone. And that, she said, was love.”

  “But my family wasn’t like that. They didn’t hit me. Why me?”

  “The Gruff wanted you. They didn’t hit, no. But they did silence you. They put you in front of monsters. I watched and I saw every time. It was your parents’ need to be kind and polite that saw them dangle you on a hook. They pushed you in front of people you didn’t know, people who poked and touched you and made you crawl inside your own shell. I watched. I watched many times. I didn’t see your whole life, only the last months.”

  “But we moved only weeks ago,” said Alex.

  “I followed you from city
to city and I watched how your mother and father shut you up. That time when you were in the doctors and you were crying. Do you remember that? Probably not. Why would you? By that time, this was just normal.”

  Alex gulped.

  He did remember.

  “You were crying so much, so loud. And I remember watching the doctor from outside the room. He asked you once kindly and then he asked you twice a lot more mean and you wouldn’t open your mouth. And you looked to your daddy and you were crying so much. And he was looking to you and he knew what your cry meant, he knew what your stare meant and you would learn about his. He wanted to stop that man. He wanted to take a chair and lift it high in the air and smash it over his face and beat him and beat him until his back broke and his neck split in half. He wanted to, but he couldn’t. He had no voice either. It was how he was raised. It was how we were all raised. We were domesticated, but in front of fear and when our senses shouted and begged us to fight, our teachers, the ones we adored, the ones who should have known better, they taught us to be quiet. They taught us to do what we were told. They taught to lower our arms and give up the fight. They taught us to give in and submit. They taught us to play along and to open our mouths. They taught to sit still while they fondled our hair. They taught us to be polite. They made us like obedient dogs. They beat and they educated the survival out of us so that we were polite so that we smiled and said thank you and said sorry and said please and so we only said what needed to be heard and not what we really felt needed to be said. They taught us to be victims. They taught us to have no voice. Your mum and dad, they taught you to be taken by me. They put you there in that school. They taught you to be molested by that teacher. And that would have happened, you would have been taken by her, had not been for The Gruff. That would have happened, had it not been for me.”

  Everything he said was true; the awkward feelings, the fear and the silent blame; learning not to even look in their direction anymore. Learning how to sneak inside his own skin and wait for whatever festive predator to have their way before they bored themselves and moved on.

  “But why do you want to hurt me?” asked Alex.

  Tears were pouring from his eyes.

  “Look at you. If you went home right now, you’d look just like your picture. You think The Gruff is any different to my mother or my father. I have changed with him, but I have changed. I’m not the same as my picture. Not anymore. I try, though. I try to eat less to stop getting bigger, but it doesn’t work. I try to shave off all the hair but it just grows back thicker and there’s always more of it. I can’t stop it.”

  “You don’t have to. We can be friends. All of us.”

  “We can’t and we won’t. You’re not the first. There were others before you. They couldn’t find their voices, not like me. I did away with them. I wouldn’t let them replace me. It’s not fair. I’m special. I’m the special one. Not you, not the others.”

  “What did you do with them?”

  “I ate them,” said The Man, licking his lips. “If meat can give sustenance than a child can give me youth. I ate them all. The Gruff, he thinks some of them ran away. He doesn’t know that he ate them too.”

  “Why didn’t you kill me before?”

  “That’s not why you’re here, The Gruff, he doesn’t like grown-ups. They scare him. I don’t know why. But he likes to save kids from grown-ups and then when they grow up, he takes another kid to save himself.”

  “I just want to go home. I promise I won’ tell anyone. You can tell The Gruff that you killed me and that you buried me outside.”

  “I can’t do that. And I can’t let you live either. You just poisoned The Gruff. You tried to kill my friend and then you tried to kill me. You were gonna escape to the police and have The Gruff arrested. I caught you, just before your fed him the fatal spoon. And then I fought with you and you were brave but I was braver because it was love and not vengeance that steeled my heart and strengthened my fist. And I cut you into a hundred pieces that I scattered around the house so that The Gruff could know that even children had the spark of grown-ups and couldn’t be trusted. That it wasn’t age that made a friend; it was what they were willing to do to keep you alive. And when I tell him that, that you tried to poison him, that you stole his key, he won’t be angry with me anymore. And he’ll start to love me again. And I‘ll be able to laugh again like I used to, when he grumbles and when he gruffs.”

  The Man walked towards him. He was wiping the long blade against his leg. At any moment, he would slice and he would carve that blade into Alex’s chest and he would cut him into a hundred pieces. Alex looked on the floor, The Gruff was unconscious. There was nothing he could do.

  The Man edged closer, blood from his mother’s body dripping for his twitching fingers onto the long blade and down along the jagged edge to its fine tip and then drop by drop, onto the floor. Some of the drops splashed against The Man’s toes, others into the bowl of food.

  Alex had nowhere to run. He had nothing to think of. He stood silent and he took off his shirt. The Man stopped. He looked caged. But Alex was unhinged. He lay the top down on the floor and then he took off his pants and he laid them too, neatly on the floor.

  “What are you doing?” said The Man.

  He had his hands covering his eyes.

  “Look at me,” said Alex.

  But The Man couldn’t. He was ashamed like he was that day in the shower. He held his hands over his eyes and he pretended he was somewhere else for a moment. It didn’t work, though. When he closed his eyes, he only saw himself as an old and fat man with enormous breasts that hanged onto his enormous belly which hanged over onto his bulbous knees. And as much as he could shave every hair on his body, in his mind, it all grew back and he didn’t at all look like a child. He looked like the very man that took him away.

  When The Man opened his eyes, Alex was gone. There was a pile of his clothes on the ground. They were lying next to a severed head but the boy was gone and he had taken The Gruff with him.

  “I’ll kill you” he screamed.

  He turned. He heard a click from outside in the hallway and he ran, but it was too late. He slipped on blood as he scrambled for the door and by the time he reached it, Alex had already disappeared. The Man ran down the hallway, his feet stamping like an angry mule. He shouted and he cursed as he banged his fists against the walls and when he got to room number four, he pounded against the door. He beat so hard that his hand cracked and a small bone pushed through the skin.

  “I’ll fucking kill you” he screamed.

  There was no reply.

  The Man leaned back against the door and he slid down onto the ground. He could hear mumbling and fumbling from inside, but he couldn’t change the fact the he was here and they were there. He couldn’t undo what had already been done.

  “I didn’t want to get old. It’s not my fault. I just wanted to be his friend that’s all. I didn’t want to do those things. I’m sorry mum. I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to hurt you. I won’t do it again, I promise. Please let me in. Please. Mum? Please? I won’t do it again. I won’t. I’ll be good. I won’t kick and I won’t punch and I won’t hurt no more kids. I’m sorry. I won’t be bad anymore mum, I promise. Let me in. I wanna watch cartoons” said The Man, finding his voice, the voice he thought he had grown out of.

  “Mum,” he said. “I’ve done some bad things.”

  He sat there with his head in his hands sulking and blowing snot onto the floor. He hadn’t cried like this, not since the first night, not since he wished and he thought that he could find his way home.

  This was how he sounded now.

  This was the sound of his voice.