by David Almond
One video just shows a torch moving through a dark space, the beam rising and falling, going away, then coming back again, like it’s searching, like it’s playing Spotlight, until it rushes towards the camera, shines right towards the viewer.
“Gotcha!” says a growling sinister voice that I know straightaway. Then there’s a hand thrusting a knife towards you.
Other videos show a firing squad. Easy to see that the bodies are stuffing and straw, that the hooded heads are pigs’ heads or sheep’s heads or footballs or turnips. Easy to see the clumsy video cuts where real bodies are replaced with false.
“Maybe that’s part of the point,” says Dad. “Brutality’s a game. Bodies are stuffing and straw. Human heads are pigs’ heads.”
“Mine isn’t!” snaps Mum. She reaches out and cradles my head in her hands. She cradles Dad’s head. “And yours isn’t. And yours isn’t.”
There are hidden speakers with crackling voices, voices from radio reports of long-ago wars. Whispered accounts of ambushes and torture and abductions in the night. The noises of bullets and bombs and low-flying aircraft. Screams and howls and terrified appeals for mercy. Laughter and scorn.
It’s like walking through a nightmare.
In the hanging video, the victim climbs the steps, is noosed, then drops, then climbs the steps again as if rising from his death, is noosed and drops again, again, again, again.
“So?” says Mum as we stand together watching it.
“Horrible,” says Dad. “But hypnotic, you have to give it that.”
Mum turns away.
“And it makes you think.”
“Think of what?” says Mum.
“Of … Sisyphus,” says Dad. “It makes you think of Christ on his cross.”
“So you’d have it on the wall?”
“No. But—”
“But nothing. It’s voyeuristic trash. Anybody could do it! Anybody with a camera and a computer and a twisted-enough brain!”
The victim drops again. He climbs the steps again.
A voice from the wall repeats and repeats, a soft persuasive voice: Imagine anything. Yes, we can imagine anything…. Imagine anything. Yes, we can imagine anything.
Mum screams again, clamps her hands over her ears again. She leaves.
Imagine anything. Yes, we can imagine anything….
Dad laughs, shakes his head.
“That’s what I say, isn’t it?” he says.
“And it’s true,” I say.
The victim drops again.
“Tell you what else I say,” says Dad. “If you can imagine doing something, then you can do it.”
We turn to leave the room.
Gotcha! snaps Nattrass.
We go out again into the city streets.
“I feel … defiled,” says Mum.
Dad takes her hand.
“What about loveliness?” says Mum. “What about beauty? Where’s the stuff that’ll touch the heart?”
3
The tent’s blue canvas. It’s down by the fire pit. I sleep in it night after night. I light fires in the pit. I put up a little camping table and a camping stool. I light a camping gaz lamp and I read down there. I keep my knife Death Dealer with me. I look at the stars. I wait for Crystal and Oliver. I know they’ll come. I’ll be ready for them.
When I was small, when I first started sleeping out, Mum asked me, “Will you not get scared?”
“Of what?” I asked.
Dad raised his hands like claws and rolled his eyes.
“Of monsters, lad!” he hissed. “Of goblins and werewolves and ghoulies and ghosts!”
He mimed biting a child’s head off.
I mimed wringing my own neck. Bared my teeth like fangs.
“Course I’m not scared,” I said.
Mum shrugged.
“I’ll leave the door open in case you want to come back in.”
I never once went back. I was scared, though. That was part of the joy of it. Max and I told each other tales about the fiends and ghosts that roamed Northumberland: white ladies, horned devils, headless horsemen, gray children. We invented Farmer Flynn, who prowled the village gardens with a hatchet in his hand and murder in his heart. He looked for kids, especially for kids whose parents let them sleep outside in tents. He reached in through tent doorways. He slid his hands under groundsheets. He caught the sleeping children with his clawlike fingers. He dragged them to his abattoir, where he laughed as he chopped them and sawed them and bled them and minced them and handed them to his wife, Plump Betty. She mixed the children’s flesh with spices and herbs. She boiled them up on her ancient Aga. She baked them, turned them into pies and pates and sausages to sell at the county fair and village fetes and village shops.
“Oh, here he comes,” we’d whisper in the deep dead dark of three a.m. “He’s creeping nearer. I can hear his breath. Oh no, he’s almost here. Oh no, he’s at the door! No, I don’t want to be turned into sausages, Farmer Flynn! No! No! Aaaaaaagh!”
I dream of Farmer Flynn. I dream of Crystal and Oliver, of Nattrass and knives and Spotlight and snakes.
One night Mum brings some hot chocolate down for me, like she used to.
“No Max these days?” she says.
“He’s getting too old for sleeping out,” I say. “Boring and old.”
“Or maybe he’s moved to other things. Like girls, for instance.”
She smiles. I shrug.
“Maybe,” I say.
I think of Becky and Kim. I think of Crystal, of her green eyes, her pale skin, her kiss on my cheek.
“Summer’ll soon be gone,” I say.
“Most years it’d have been gone already.”
“I want to do more.”
“More?”
“Before the summer’s gone. I want to take my sleeping bag, a bit of food. I want to sleep out in the open. Just for a night or two.”
She laughs at me.
“What a boy,” she says.
“There couldn’t be anywhere safer to do it,” I say. “And it’s still warm enough, and—”
“And by the time next year comes round you might have moved on to other things.”
“Yes.”
She regards me.
“We couldn’t let you do something like that. Could we?”
“Nothing’ll happen. It’ll be something to remember for the rest of my life.”
I look at her.
“You know it’s the kind of thing you want for me. You don’t want me boring and tame. Let me do it.”
“I’ll have to talk it through with Dad.”
And I know what he’ll say:
Live an adventure. Live like you’re in a story.
4
That night I try to clear my mind of everything but Crystal and Oliver. I try to draw them to me by the power of thought. I imagine their journey. They move out of the city into the emptiness beyond. They walk on country lanes, on boggy footpaths. They’re tiny figures in the hugeness of Northumberland. I see them hiding in sheds and ditches by day. I see them stealing fruit from country gardens, catching rabbits, gulping icy water from streams. The dream deepens, strengthens. I rise from the floor of the tent. I look down and see myself lying there, brown, longhaired, eyes closed. I move higher, through the blue canvas, into the air outside. I look down upon my tent, my flickering fire, my house. I see Dad behind his window, his face illuminated by the glow of his computer screen. A great silver moon has risen over the moors, and the countryside’s bathed in its silvery light. Bats flicker around me. There are owls. I see the orange glow of the city in the distant sky. I see the village streetlights, the lights in houses and cottages. I move eastwards. I see the silver slick of the river, the dark ribbons of the military road and the wall. I see the great dark emptiness to the north. It’s dreaming but not like dreaming. It’s like moving weightlessly, easily, comfortably. I pause over the ridge, over St. Michael and All Angels. I look down upon the surface of the world and it’s beautiful under the mo
on, and I see how it is like Mum’s photographs, how it is like skin. And I move to the east again and follow the route of the wall, the thing that once marked the division between wildness and civilization. And I see them, the two figures, striding loosely and easily. They move through the field beside the wall. Their moon shadows fall before them. I want to fall, to swoop down, to descend from my dream to their side and say, Here you are at last! Here I am! But suddenly I’m awake again and lying alone in my tent. I try to sleep again, to return to my dream of flight, but when sleep does come it’s empty, nothing but restless shadows.
5
Next morning, though, it’s like the dream continues, like it’s all around me. I go up to the house through the brilliant morning light. Mum’s gone off to Newcastle. I sip some juice. I look out the back window towards the sheep and cows and grass and the blazing sun.
I hear Dad moving about upstairs. I hear his printer. Soon he’s on the stairs and coming into the kitchen. He looks at the clock.
“No school?” he says.
I look straight back at him.
“Thought I might stay off,” I say. “I’m …”
I think about finding an excuse, but I just shrug.
“Young,” he says.
“Yes,” I say. “I’m young.”
And he shrugs, too.
He puts the kettle on, spoons coffee into a cup.
“Thomas Fell,” he says.
“Eh?”
“Thomas Fell. Remember? They found his body in the hills.”
“The German. The old prisoner of war. The tramp.”
“The wanderer is a better description. But yes, that’s him.”
“What about him?”
He grins. He clenches his fists. He bites his lip.
“He’s the father, Liam,” he says.
“What?”
“He’s the father of the foundling.”
“Of Alison?”
“Yes!”
I rub my eyes. Am I still asleep? Dad watches me and grins.
“But he was eighty years old,” I say.
“Doesn’t matter. It’s possible. He was the father; the woman in the red hat, who is a troubled young woman from the northern fells, is the mother. It was his final affair, perhaps his only ever affair, right at the end of his lonely life. Then he died, and in her grief and confusion, the mother left their baby to be discovered in Rook Hall.”
“Have you tried this out on Mum?”
“You know I don’t tell anybody my stories when I’m only halfway through.”
“You’re telling me.”
“But you’re involved in it. You’re the one that found the foundling. Anyway, she’d probably say it was barmy.”
“It is barmy.”
“Maybe. But it’s a great story.”
I start asking more, but he shakes his head, puts his finger to his lips.
“No! Too much talk’ll put a stop to it.”
I sigh, shake my head. He laughs.
“By the way,” he says. “Mum told me about your own romantic notion. Your desire for a bit of wandering nighttime vagabondage.” He grins. “Looks like barminess runs in the family, eh? You reckon you’ll be safe?”
“Course I will.”
“Sounds fine to me. Wish I’d had a chance when I was a kid.”
He stares out the window with me. A distant black jet streaks over Hallington Ridge.
“Thomas Fell,” he murmurs. “Prisoner of war. Treasure collector. Foundling father. It all fits.”
He puts his hand on my shoulder.
“Sometimes it’s like dreaming,” he says. “It’s like having visions. You see the story, you see the characters, you hear their voices. The story goes on, takes its own shape, like it’s destined to be that way.” His eyes glaze over. He laughs. “Anyway, you do your romantic wandering. I’ll put my bum on a boring seat and write the words.”
“OK.”
He goes away again.
I stay by the tent all day. I read, I play with fires, I sharpen Death Dealer.
6
Late afternoon I go to Max’s.
“Where you been?” he says.
“I’ve been desperately ill.”
“Ill! Your parents are too soft, that’s your trouble.”
“Bet I didn’t miss much.”
He counts the topics off on his fingers.
“Write a poem about spring. Trigonometry. Are people born good or bad or does environment make them that way? The origins of the First World War. And dead cow and dumplings with lumpy rutabega.”
“See?”
We’re in his bedroom. He’s got his homework spread on his desk in front of him. Posters of Che Guevara, Wayne Rooney and a Massey Ferguson tractor are on his wall.
I lower my voice.
“Oliver and Crystal are on their way,” I say. “I’m sure of it.”
“Oh aye?”
“Aye. So I thought we should take them up to Kane’s Cave.”
“Kane’s Cave?”
“You know. One of the places we stashed all that stuff.”
“What stuff?”
“Hell’s teeth, Max. The food and everything. When we were kids. For when the war or the plague comes. Remember?”
He shakes his head.
“God, we were really into it, eh? All that war and stupid surviving stuff.”
“And it worked, didn’t it? We’ve got provisions, we’ve got a place to hide them from the world.”
He groans.
“So the last days are about to start, are they? The end of the world is nigh! Grow up, man, Liam.”
“And you grow down, you boring git. Mr. Agricultural Engineer. Mr. Nice Little Northumbrian Girlfriend Kim.”
“Shove off, poser.”
“Is that what I am?”
He shoves his homework aside. He grits his teeth and stands up.
“Yes you are,” he says. “You and your asylum seeker. What’s he got to do with you?”
“So he’s nothing to do with us. So we wash our hands of him? So we let them send him back to—”
“What do you know about it? What do you know about Liberia and slaughter? You’re an innocent, Liam. What you going to do when he turns on you?”
“Huh! What do you mean, turns on me?”
“What I mean is you’re playing with fire.”
We’re inches apart, glaring.
“Anyway,” he says. “It’s not him, is it?”
“Eh?”
“It’s her. It’s that punky little lass, isn’t it. She’s the—”
I grab his collar. He just grins.
“I’m right, aren’t I?” he says.
“She’s not Becky sweet little Smith, if that’s what you mean! She’s not Kim little—”
He grabs my throat, knees me in the groin, shoves me down, holds me down. His face is right over mine.
“This is how tough you are, Liam,” he whispers. “You’re a birk. You’re a stupid innocent birk. …”
I reach down. I get out Death Dealer. I hold it up in front of him.
“Oh no!” he laughs. “It’s Liam Lynch and his pruning knife!”
He grabs my wrist. He forces the knife back towards me.
“Don’t you threaten me,” he snarls.
Then there’s footsteps on the stairs, Max’s dad’s voice.
“Max! You lads OK in there?”
We get up, straighten our clothes. I shove the knife back into the sheath.
“Aye!” calls Max.
There’s a knock at the door. It opens. His dad’s there.
“All right, lads?” he says.
“Aye,” we say.
“All right, Liam?”
“Aye.”
He comes closer. There’s tears in my eyes.
“You sure now, son?”
“Aye,” I say again.
“Good.” He reaches out and straightens Max’s collar. “Max’s got a lot on, son,” he says.
“Yes. I kn
ow.”
“You weren’t at school today, I hear.”
“No.”
“Not well?”
“No.”
“You look fit enough to me, son.” His face hardens. I see the look in his eyes. I’m a bad influence. I’m a weirdo from a weird family. “I wouldn’t like to think you were stopping our Max getting on,” he says.
“I’m not,” I tell him.
“Mebbe it’s best you get back to your own work, then.”
I move towards the door. He opens it wide so I can get through.
“We just get one chance at life,” he says.
“I know that,” I tell him.
“Then you’ll know we’ve got to make the most of it, haven’t we?”
“I know that, as well.”
“Good. You go home and do your homework, then, and get a good night’s sleep. You’ll see Max on the bus tomorrow. If your condition improves, that is.”
I shove past him. I go out.
The night’s dead still. The sky’s orange, yellow, red as fire. I head homewards.
A voice hisses from the shadows.
“So. What did you think?”
7
He steps out. He reaches towards me. He grabs my arm, holds me back.
“I said, What did you think?”
Nattrass, of course.
“I know you went,” he says. “I had me spies out. Who’d’ve thought that Gordon Nattrass’d turn out be an artist, eh?”
I try to pull away. He grips me tighter.
“We’ve got a title for it all now,” he says. “Should’ve had it from the start it’s so obvious. The Human Beast, we’re calling it. What d’you think?”
I stop moving, I let him grip me, I let him talk. He’ll soon be done.
“But doesn’t matter what you think, Liam. They think it’s great. They want me to do more. They think I’m some kind of arty savage and they’ve never come across nowt like me.” He comes in close. He whispers in my ear. “They give me help with all the stuff like sound effects and complicated techy stuff. But it’s mine, Liam. That’s what they say. It’s my work. It’s my vision.”