Kit's Wilderness

We looked at each other, faces blooming in the moonlight.

  “Used to leave out biscuits for him, cups of water,” he whispered.

  “And he took them?”

  “It seemed he took them.” He smiled again. “A thing of brightness,” he whispered, “deep down there in the dark.” He squeezed my arm. “Often wonder if he’s down there still,” he whispered. “Night, son.”

  “Good night.”

  I tiptoed back to bed, back to sleep.

  I lay a long time with the moonlight flooding in on me. I saw him from the corner of my eye. He shimmered in the moonlight in the corner of my room.

  “Silky!” I whispered.

  I tried to focus on him but he just kept shifting to the edges of my vision. I reached out to him but he faded into the dark.

  “Silky,” I whispered as I fell asleep.

  “Silky!” I called as I entered my dreams. He was there, flickering in front of me. He started to run, and I followed him. Sometimes he stopped and turned and watched me and I saw his shorts, his boots, his skinny body, his gentle face. All that night I followed him.

  “Silky!” I kept calling. “Silky! Silky!”

  He ran all night before me, flickering through the endless tunnels of my dreams.

  It was late afternoon, the day the clocks went back. I was wandering alone. I found them gathered by the school gates. Allie, Bobby, a little crowd of others. Beyond them, the dark figure of Askew lurched toward the river with Jax at his side. I paused, my heart thudded, my palms were soaked. Allie saw me standing there. She pursed her lips and turned away. I went toward them, stood at the fringes. They watched me, suspicious.

  “Who asked you?” said Wilfie Cook through his teeth.

  Bobby grinned. “’S’all right,” he said, in his high soft voice.

  Askew disappeared. We waited.

  “Okay,” said Bobby, and the group moved out across the wilderness.

  I trailed behind. I kept slowing, hesitating, kept telling myself to stop, to go home. Allie strode at the front of the group and didn’t look back. The slope steepened. We waded through the long grass above the river and came to the den. When we were all gathered there, dead still and dead silent, Jax barked and Askew’s hand appeared and drew the door aside. He looked up into our faces. His eyes met mine and he grinned.

  “Come inside,” he said.

  I was the last to go down. I crouched like the others against the wall. Askew slid the door shut. He lit the cigarette, he poured the water.

  “There’s a new one come to play our game,” he said. All of them but Allie stared at me. I saw the excitement in their eyes, heard the sniggers. The cup of water in my hand trembled.

  “He’s chicken,” whispered Louise.

  There were giggles, then Askew whispered, “Silence!” He looked around the den. “What should we do with him?” he asked.

  “Skin him,” hissed Bobby.

  “Needles down his fingernails,” said Louise.

  “The Voodoo Slits,” whispered Dot.

  Allie looked down, down.

  Askew snorted.

  “What must we really do?” he said.

  They breathed in and waited for his voice to lead them, then they spoke together.

  “We must welcome him,” they said.

  “What must he keep?” said Askew.

  “The secret,” they answered.

  “What must he give to us?”

  “Life.”

  “What do we promise him?”

  “Death.”

  He leaned toward me; his heavy body loomed in the candlelight.

  “Do you agree,” he said, “to keep the secrets of this gathering, to tell no one of our game?”

  I glanced at Allie. She made a face, poked her tongue out at me, looked away.

  “Yes,” I said.

  “Drink the water,” Askew whispered.

  I took the jug from him with trembling hands and drank from it.

  “Smoke the cigarette.”

  I took the cigarette and drew on it.

  He smiled. “And now the knife.” He held it before my eyes. “Kiss the knife.”

  I kissed the cold steel. He pressed the point against my lips.

  “Understand,” he whispered. “If you break our trust, the mad dog Jax will tear you limb from limb.”

  “Limb from limb,” the others whispered.

  “This is Kit,” said Askew. “The new one. Any damage done to him is damage done to all of us. Will we avenge him?”

  “We will avenge him,” they whispered.

  He smiled deep into my eyes.

  “One day, Kit Watson,” he whispered, “you will see your name written on these walls. You will join the long list of the dead.”

  He touched my cheek.

  “Your name will be written here, just as it’s written on the tombstone.”

  I stared past him to the names. At the head of the list was written “John Askew, aged thirteen.” Many of those beneath were already worn away by trickling water; then there was an empty space.

  “Now,” he said. “Let us play the game called Death.”

  He laid the knife on the glass and set it spinning.

  It didn’t point at me that day.

  Saturday morning she came knocking at the door.

  “Somebody for you, Kit!” Mum called. “A friend of yours. Allison.”

  I went down and found them talking and laughing about Grandma on the step.

  Allie led me out of the garden, across the fence and into the wilderness.

  “You’re a stupid fool,” she said.

  “Eh?”

  “A stupid fool. Only here a few weeks and already you’re in with that daft lot.’

  “You’re in with them.”

  She threw her hands into the air.

  “Jeez,” she said. “I can see you’re going to drive me wild! Have you seen them? Have you really looked at them and seen them? Bunch of wimps and jerks and thickos and no-hopers. And that brute at the middle of them, hunking and lurching like a caveman. It’s a farce, man.”

  “What about you, then?”

  “Oh, you perfect-behavior stupid nincompoop!” She stamped the ground and glared at me. “It’s called experience. It’s called getting to know what goes on in the stupid world. It’s called watching other people’s stupid behavior and getting to know how people work.”

  She strode away. She shook her head and swung her arms. She kicked out at a massive thistle. She turned round and pointed at herself.

  “I’m going to be an actor,” she said. “An artist. I need to see these things ’cause the day’ll come when I’ll be able to act the thickos out!” She glared at me again.

  “And you . . . ,” she said.

  “Me what?”

  “Exactly! You what? Mr. Nice. Mr. Perfect. Mr. Butter Wouldn’t Melt. What’s your plans, eh? Join the Civil Service or run a computer shop or God help us—yes, that’s it!—a teacher! Yes, sir, Mr. Watson. No, sir, Mr. Watson. Can I go to the toilet, Mr. Watson, sir?”

  She burst out laughing and kicked the thistle again and the seedhead exploded into the air. “Is that right?” she said. She looked at me. She giggled. “It is! It is!”

  And she ran away laughing toward the river and flung herself down into the grass.

  By the time I reached her she sat up chewing a stem of grass. She pursed her lips and didn’t look at me as I sat a few feet away from her. I watched the river flowing, saw how it churned at the center as the tide turned.

  “Have you died?” I whispered.

  She clicked her tongue, said nothing.

  “Died!” she said at last.

  “Have you?”

  “Once.”

  “What was it like?”

  “Hell’s teeth, Kit.” She shuffled angrily, as if she wanted to run again. “You will,” she said. “You’ll drive me wild.” She bit the grass, spat the end of the stem out. “Yes,” she said. “I died. But I pretended.” She giggled. “Made t
hem wait, though. Hardly anybody left when I came back out.”

  “What did you tell them?”

  “All the usual stuff. Bright lights at the end of tunnels. Dark rivers. Devils and demons. Angels singing. All that stuff.” She giggled again. “Good bit of acting, that.” She turned and looked at me and shook her head. “They all do,” she said. “Everybody.”

  “Pretend?”

  “Yes. Pretend. They say they don’t, but they do.”

  “How do you know?”

  “Just do. Thickos and louts, that’s what they do.”

  I thought about the dark den, what it would be like to be alone down there, what it might be like to be dead.

  “But you couldn’t know,” I said. “Could you? There’s no way of knowing if they pretend or if it’s real.”

  She glared at me.

  “No, sir, Mr. Watson. Of course you’re perfectly right, sir, Mr. Watson.”

  “You think you know everything,” I said. “You think everything’s just a game. You think everything’s for your own stupid entertainment.” I felt tears running from my eyes. “People do die. People do. People do.”

  I lay staring down into the grass. I heard Grandpa’s songs running through my head. I heard Grandma’s far-off whispering.

  “They do,” I softly said again, and the words were carried away across the wilderness on the breeze.

  Allie shuffled closer.

  “Jeez,” she whispered. “I was right. You do need somebody to protect you.” I felt her watching me.

  “Trouble with you is,” she said, “you’re not one of the louts or thickos or no-hopers. And you’re not in it for fun like me. Left to yourself you’d be begging Askew to dig a hole and chuck you in.” She tapped my skull. “Hey,” she whispered. “Hey. Mr. Watson. Mr. Innocent.”

  “What?” I muttered.

  “I’m just looking after you,” she said. “Like your grandma would have wanted me to.”

  “How d’you know what she wanted?”

  She sighed and clicked her tongue.

  “Tell you what,” she said. “I’ll stop going to the game as well, eh? I’m sick of it anyway, being down there with that lot and that lout. We’ll start doing other things together, eh?”

  I stood up and squeezed the tears from my eyes.

  “You haven’t got a clue, have you?” I said. “What if I want to play? What if I want to see what really happens?”

  And I hurried away from her across the wilderness, past the kids playing, squeezing back my tears.

  “Look at this,” said Grandpa.

  I was in my room, doing homework, something boring about time differences between England and the rest of the world. It was a chilly evening and rain was pouring down onto the wilderness. I kept looking up from my desk, staring out. I worked out that if you traveled fast enough you could get to where you wanted before you even started. I didn’t write that, but wrote what they wanted: that if it was such and such a time in Stoneygate, then it would be such and such a time in New York. Boring. Then Grandpa knocked on my door.

  He put it on the desk in front of me. It was a flat rectangle of coal, polished like the pony. There were deep imprints on its surface. I ran my fingers across them.

  “It’s tree bark,” I said.

  “That’s right. Tree bark. Lots of coal’s got tree bark patterns on it if you slice it careful enough.”

  “That’s what coal was,” I said. “Trees. Millions of years back.”

  “Correct.” He nodded at the window. “That’s what you’d’ve seen if you sat here then. Massive trees. Swamps. All those millions of years back.” He ran his fingers over the coal. “There’s this as well.” He put a black fossil on the desk. A spiraling horn-shaped shell. “Guess,” he said.

  “Some kind of animal. Something that lived at the same time as the trees.”

  “Correct. An ammonite. This is the fossil of its shell. The creature lived inside, like a snail does, or a hermit crab. This too came out of the pit, just like the tree bark.”

  I held it in my palm.

  “Thing is,” he said. “It’s a creature that lived in the sea.”

  I imagined it squirming its way across sand, beneath the water.

  “The sea came in and flooded the place and the trees fell down and time passed and the sea laid down sediment that turned to rock and the earth churned and laid down more rock and time passed and the rock thickened and pressed down on the ancient trees and animals and time passed and passed and turned them all to coal.” He laughed. “But you know this, eh? They’ve told you this at school?”

  I nodded. He laughed again.

  “When we dropped down in the cage we dropped through time. Million years a minute. Pitmen. Time travelers.” He ran his hand across my book. “Very neat. And all the right answers, I’m sure. You’ll go a long way, lad.”

  I stared out, saw the trees, the swamps, the sea flooding in. Then blinked, and saw the wilderness, the falling rain.

  “Mysterious business,” he said. “It was the light and heat of the sun that made those trees grow. Then they lay pitch-black in the pitch-black earth. And we come along and dig it out. And what did we want from it? For the heat it gave, for the light it gave.” He touched the tree bark. “This stuff, blacker than the blackest night, holding the heat and light of the ancient sun in it.”

  He giggled, moved the fossil across the desk as if it was still alive. He slid it onto my written page. “It’s for you,” he said. “And the fossil tree as well.” He slid that onto my page, rested it on my answers. “Gifts from a time traveler,” he said. He touched my shoulder, laughed gently. “Giving out my tales and treasures,” he said. “Soon there’ll be nothing left to give.”

  I slipped the ammonite into my pocket, told myself I’d keep it with me always now. A treasure from my grandfather. A gift from the deep, dark past.

  “Look,” said Mum.

  It was Saturday afternoon. Bright sunlight. She was at the open window; a gentle cool breeze was coming through.

  “Come and look,” she said.

  I stood beside her.

  “What?” I said.

  She put her arm around my shoulder. “There.” Askew’s father was further along the lane, tottering alongside the fence. He kept stopping. He reeled, held on to the fence, lowered his head, drew deeply on a cigarette.

  “Here!” he yelled. “Get yourself here!”

  “Drunk as a lord,” said Mum.

  He rocked backward, caught the fence again. “Get yourself here!”

  “Jack Askew,” she said. “Drunk as a lord again.” Then there was Askew himself, head hanging, walking slowly from the river toward the man. His dad called him on, with drunken swings of his arm. And Jax was there, walking slowly too. Shuffling.

  “Move it!”

  Askew reached the fence. The man grabbed his son by the throat, pulled him close. We saw his bare teeth, saliva dripping, his great flushed face. He snarled into the boy’s ear. Askew looked down, hung his arms by his side, tried to turn his face away, but the man kept dragging it, slapping it back. He whispered, gripped the boy’s throat tighter, laughed and snarled. Then he let go, reeled backward, caught the fence, stood upright, spat, smoked, staggered on along the lane.

  “And let that be a lesson to you!” he yelled. He turned to the houses. “What you looking at?” he shouted. “Eh? What you looking at?”

  We took a step backward away from the window. He went on glaring, reeling. Cigarette smoke streamed from his open lips.

  “Imagine,” said Mum. “Imagine having to live with that, having to put up with that.”

  I nodded, and felt her hand stroking my shoulder.

  “You’d have to get so tough,” she said.

  “Or pretend to be tough.”

  “Yes, or pretend to be tough.”

  Jack Askew staggered onward. His son watched him for a moment; then he eased himself to the ground, and leaned back against the fence. He sat there with his head hu
ng low and his arm around Jax. We saw his shoulders trembling.

  “Poor lad,” whispered Mum. “Poor soul.”

  Askew’s den. The floor was damp with yesterday’s rain. Water had trickled down the walls through Askew’s carvings. The scent of damp, of the candles, of the bodies crouching there. Allie faced me through the flickering light. She watched me, but there was nothing in her eyes. I stared at the others, these children like me from the ancient families of Stoneygate. Had something like death really happened to them? Had they really gone through something like the children on the monument? Or was it just a game and they had all pretended? I read their names.

  John Askew, aged thirteen; Robert Carr, aged eleven; Wilfred Cook, aged fifteen; Dorothy Gullane, aged twelve; Alison Keenan, aged thirteen; Daniel Sharkey, aged fourteen; Louise McCall, aged thirteen . . .

  Below them was the wide space for the names to come, and I saw my own name there, as if I was dreaming.

  Christopher Watson, aged thirteen.

  All around us were paintings of demons and monsters, of bright beings with great white wings, of the gates of Heaven and the snapping jaws of Hell. The water came to me and I sipped it. The cigarette came to me and I drew on it. I looked at Allie again. She was steely, blank, just returning my gaze. I saw it in her eyes: You’re on your own down here, Mr. Watson. I wanted to shout across to her, to tell her that she was right, that we should get away from the bunch of louts and no-hopers and find other things to do, but I just sat there and sat there, and the more I sat the more I trembled, the more I was terrified that the knife would point at me that day. But I also wanted it. I was driven to it like Grandpa had been driven to the darkness of the pit. I wanted to know something of what the children on the monument had known, something of what my grandma had known. I stared down at the knife as Askew laid it on the glass.

  “Whose turn is it to die?” he whispered.

  “Death,” we all chanted. “Death Death Death Death . . .”

  The knife shimmered, spinning. It spun on and on.

  Me, I thought, as it spun to me and then away again. Me, not me, me, not me, me, not me . . .

  And then it slowed and came to rest.

  Me.