I caught my breath, my trembling quickened. I looked across at Allie. On your own, her eyes said. You’re on your own.
Askew smiled. He reached out to me. I took his hand. He drew me to the center. He laid his hand across my head for a moment. I felt the tears in my eyes.
“Calm down, Kit,” he whispered in my ear, but I couldn’t stop the trembling. “Calm down, Kit Watson.”
I heard Louise: “He’s chicken. He’s a chicken.”
I heard the giggles of the others.
“Silence,” whispered Askew. “There will be a death this day.”
I knelt as I had seen others kneel. I crouched on all fours.
This is nothing, I told myself. It’s just a game, nothing but a game.
“Breathe deeply and slowly, Kit,” he whispered.
I breathed deeply and slowly.
“Breathe quickly and more quickly.”
I breathed quickly and more quickly.
“Look into my eyes.”
I looked into his eyes. It was like looking into a tunnel of endless dark. I felt myself staring deeper, deeper. I felt myself driven to the dark.
Just a game, I tried to tell myself. It’s nothing, just a game.
I told myself that I could play this game, that I could pretend, just like Allie had pretended.
Askew held the shining knife blade before me.
“Do you abandon life?”
“I abandon life.”
“Do you truly wish to die?”
“I truly wish to die.”
He rested his hand on my shoulder. He drew me closer. I saw nothing but his eyes, heard nothing but his voice.
“This is no game,” he whispered, soft, soft.
“You will truly die,” he whispered. “All you see and all you know will disappear. It is the end. You will be no more.”
He closed my eyes.
“This is Death,” he said.
And I knew no more.
I came to on the damp clay floor. My cheek was cold, icy. My limbs were stiff and sore. Only one of the candles still burned, a cold, meager light. A demon from the wall glared down at me. I heard nothing. I twisted, turned, sat up, pressed my eyes, shook my head. I remembered nothing, just darkness, emptiness. Pain and stiffness in my bones. Frail muscles. Crawled on all fours to the steps, reached up to draw the door aside. Then I heard the voices: little high-pitched whispers, little giggles. I stared into the darkness of the den, saw nothing but the bones, the paintings, the carvings.
I rubbed my eyes.
“Who’s there?” I whispered.
The giggling intensified.
I rubbed my eyes again, squinted, and then I saw them, skinny bodies in the flickering light. They hunched in the corners at the light’s edge. They blended with the walls. They shifted and faded as I tried to focus on them. But I saw their goggling eyes, their blackened skin, heard their high-pitched giggles, and I knew that they were with me, the ancient pit children, down there in the darkness of Askew’s den. They didn’t stay. Gradually they disappeared, and I was alone.
I drew the door aside. There was only Askew left, hunched over beside Jax, facing the river, and Allie in the long grass chewing her thumb.
Askew stared. “Well?” he said.
I couldn’t speak. I shook my head. I just returned his gaze.
“You saw,” he said
I turned away.
“You saw, Kit Watson,” he said again. “And once you’ve seen, you’ll keep on seeing more.”
I tottered to Allie. She stood up and held my arm, and watched me, and I saw the concern in her, the desire to protect me. We left Askew and began to walk together through the wilderness.
“Jeez, Kit,” she said. “Thought you were never going to come out.”
I couldn’t speak to her.
“Kit,” she said. “Kit, man. Mr. Watson.”
We walked on. I felt the strength coming back to me.
She kept staring at me.
“Kit,” she said. “Kit.”
“It’s all right,” I whispered. “I’m all right.”
“What did he mean?” she said. “What did he say you saw?”
I cast my eyes across the wilderness. I squinted, saw them again, the shifting skinny bodies at the edges of my vision. I heard their giggles, their whispers.
“I’ll kill him,” she said. “Caveman.” She made me stop. We stood together on the turf in the sun. “Come on,” she said. “Pull yourself together.”
I took long deep breaths, shook my head, tried to smile at her.
“You,” she said. “Too innocent, that’s your trouble. Drive me wild.” She squeezed my arm. We walked on. She took me toward the gate. “Kit,” she kept saying. “Kit, man. Kit.”
I looked again across the wilderness.
“You see them?” I whispered.
“See? See what?” She stared into my eyes. “Kit, man. See what?”
I looked around again. There was nothing there. Just the ordinary world, the ordinary children playing there on the ordinary wilderness. The pit children had gone.
“Nothing,” I whispered. “Nothing. I’m fine now.” I shook my head again, squeezed my eyes. Was it all a dream? “I didn’t pretend,” I told her.
“I know that, Kit. I can see that.”
I saw my mother at the window, gazing out.
“I’ll have to go,” I said.
“You’ll tell me sometime, though?”
“Yes, Allie. I’ll tell you what it was like to die in the den.”
We separated at the fence.
“I’ll see you tomorrow, Kit,” she said. She didn’t move.
“It really really happened, didn’t it?” she said.
I nodded.
“You,” she said. “You.”
I went inside.
“Where you been?” Mum said.
“Just down by the river, with Allie.”
She laughed. “That lass,” she said.
I sat at the table and started to pick at some food. I stared out through the window, toward the children of Stoneygate playing between the houses and the river.
Grandpa watched me as if I wasn’t there.
Afternoon light poured through the classroom windows. Burning Bush smiled at us all as she read my tale. I kept my head down, felt my face beginning to flush.
“It’s wonderful, Christopher,” she said, as she came to the end and laid the pages on the desk in front of her.
I heard a few of the others agreeing with her, heard a few sniggers. I glanced up and caught Allie looking at me from across the room. She grinned and put her tongue out; then she winked at me.
“And is it really true?” said Burning Bush. “Did the pitmen really see the boy?”
“That’s what he told me.”
She beamed.
“Well,” she said. “You’ll have to get him to tell you more tales if it produces work like this.” She held the story up to the class. “It’s another one for the wall, I think. ‘Silky,’ by Christopher Watson.” She put it down and picked up someone else’s story.
Annie Myers in front of me put her hand up.
“Yes, Ann?”
“Can we really call it Kit’s story if it’s one he got from his grandfather?”
Burning Bush nodded. “Good question. Yes, we can. All writers write down stories they’ve heard. Writers have always done it. The greatest writers, like Chaucer, or Shakespeare. It’s how stories work. They move from person to person, get passed down through the generations. And each time they’re written down they’re a little different. I’m sure, for instance, that Kit added a few touches of his own to his grandfather’s tale. Yes, Kit?”
“Yes.”
She smiled.
“So stories change and evolve. Like living things. Yes, just like living things.”
Ann turned round to me. “Don’t think I didn’t like it, Kit,” she said. “Just wondered, that’s all. Thought it was great.”
“And of c
ourse,” said Burning Bush, “the spoken story and the written story are very different ways of telling.” She pondered. “Get him to tell you more,” she said. “And I wonder—might he be willing to come here and tell one of his stories to us all?”
“You’ve recovered, then?” Allie said as we walked back home.
I smiled and shrugged. “Yeah.”
“What happened?”
“Dunno. Nothing.” I looked at her. “I didn’t pretend.”
“I know that.”
We walked on. I had my hand in my pocket. I held Grandpa’s ammonite in my palm.
“You don’t remember anything?”
“Nothing, Allie.”
“No devils, no angels?”
“Nothing.”
“Jeez, Kit.”
I cast my mind back to the game. There really was nothing to remember. It had just been total darkness that I’d entered. The darkness behind Askew’s eyes. The darkness of a pit. Only when I came out of it had there been anything to remember, and then the ancient children had faded as if they were a dream.
We walked on.
“What is it?” she said. “Hypnotism or something?”
“Dunno.”
“Would you do it again?”
“Dunno.”
She walked slowly.
“Jeez, Kit,” she said. “Not pretending. Everybody else does. I’m sure they do.”
We walked on.
“Was it scary? Like dreaming? Like being asleep?”
“Dunno, Allie. It was like nothing. It was like being nothing.”
“Jeez,” she whispered. “Jeez.”
“There was something when I came out of it,” I said.
“Something?”
“Yes.” I looked down. I was certain she would scoff at me. “There were children, lots of them. Children from the Stoneygate of long ago. But when I look back now I think they were just a dream.”
She just looked at me. “Jeez, Kit,” she said. “Like the boy in your story, Silky.”
“Yes, but lots of them.”
“You’ve seen them again?”
“No, Allie.” I stared across the wilderness, squinted. “No. They were just a kind of dream.”
We came in silence to the gate. Grandpa was in a deckchair in the garden, grinning at us. He had his battered sunhat on.
“It’s that bad lass!” he called. “That little imp that drove me old missus wild!”
He waved us in. “Said it was the wildest bairn she’d ever known,” he said. He laughed and patted Allie’s arm. “The wildest and the loveliest. That’s what she said.”
Allie giggled and wagged her finger like Grandma used to, spoke just like she used to.
“Allie Keenan, you’ll drive me round the twist and round the bend and up the pole, I’m telling you you will!”
“Hahaha!” said Grandpa. “That’s her! That’s her to a T!” He shook his head and grinned into the past. “Give us a song,” he said. “Go on, hinny, let’s have a song.” He winked at me. “Should’ve heard this one singing as a littl’un. Sang like an angel, danced like the devil.”
Allie thought.
“You join in,” she said. “Like she used to.”
“Go on, then. You start it, pet.”
Allie took a deep breath, started, and he quickly joined in.
“Wisht, lads, had yer gobs
An I’ll tell yez all an aaful story,
Wisht, lads, had yer gobs
An I’ll tell ye aboot the worm . . .”
They sang and sang, leaned close together, swayed together, moved in time to the music that joined them one to one.
I did want to ask Grandpa to come into school to tell his tales. The trouble was, we were already worried that the tales were coming to an end. It was Mum that noticed first. It seemed nothing, just little moments when we lost him. Once she told us to look out for it, though, we got to easily see when it was happening. We’d be eating a meal together, the four of us, talking, joking, telling each other about the day we’d had, and suddenly it would be like he wasn’t with us for a while. He’d stop talking and listening. He wouldn’t touch his food. His eyes’d go blank and dull and he’d just stare out across us. Sometimes it was just the tiniest flicker of time when he lost attention, sometimes it lasted a few seconds. Sometimes Mum had to lean across and tap him on the arm.
“Dad,” she’d say. “Dad.” And he’d come back to us again, with his eyes all confused.
“Eh?” he’d say. “Eh?”
“Where you been, Dad?”
He’d blink his eyes, he’d look at us like he was seeing us for the first time, he’d shake his head.
We’d all smile at him, dead gentle. Mum’d rub his arm. And he’d sigh and his eyes would clear and we’d all laugh about it together.
“Been off with the fairies?” she’d say.
“Aye,” he’d whisper. “Aye, that’s the style, eh?”
And we’d all laugh again, and start to eat and talk again, and try not to let the fear show in our eyes.
Some days it was worse, long periods when he just sat on the sofa or at the table with his body slumped and the blankness in his eyes. One day I sat with Mum after school in the living room and we watched him: two minutes, three minutes, four minutes, and he went on with his eyes just dead and blank, staring, but like he was seeing nothing inside and nothing outside.
“Oh, dear,” Mum whispered. “Poor soul.”
“Maybe he’s just remembering,” I told her. “Like he always did.”
“No, son,” she whispered. “What he’s doing is forgetting.”
And I said nothing more. I thought of the den, of knowing nothing, remembering nothing. I trembled as I watched him, lost in his darkness. I knew that what Mum said was true.
Early morning in the kitchen. The sun blazing in at the window, but clouds gathering from the direction of the sea. Grandpa at the table drinking tea. No one else there. I hurried my breakfast, checked my bag. Everything was in there: last night’s homework, pen case, books, packed lunch. I checked my pocket, fingered the heavy hard ammonite that rested there.
“It’s like following Silky, son.”
I turned to him and touched his hand.
“That’s what it’s like. I’ve been sitting here, trying to work out what it’s like.”
I held him tighter. I watched and listened. I thought of the way he turned his face to the sun, the way he strode through the hawthorn lanes, the way he belted out his songs and told his ancient tales.
“It’s like following him all alone along the darkest tunnel, along a tunnel you never knew existed, way past all the other men. It’s like getting to where you think Silky is and finding nothing there. Just darkness. Just nothing. And you can’t move, and you don’t know how to get back. And the more you stand there the more the darkness comes into you, till there’s nothing but the darkness, and you don’t see nothing, you don’t hear nothing, you don’t know nothing, you don’t remember nothing.”
I held on to him, as if my grip might keep him here with us forever in the world of light. He took my hand in his, sipped his tea and smiled.
“That’s right,” he told me. “Cling on to me, boy. Keep me with you.”
“I do think I understand,” I said. “You don’t see anything. You don’t hear anything.”
“Nothing.”
“You don’t remember anything.”
“Nothing. Nothing to remember.”
“And you’re not scared till you come back.”
“Scared to find out that you’ve been away at all. Scared to think you’ll be going away again. But when you’re there . . . nothing.”
He shrugged and smiled again.
“And coming back’s like being found again. Like the men coming through the tunnels with their lamps and calling out to you.”
He shook his head again.
“Old man’s troubles. They’re not for lads like you, however much you think you understand,” he sai
d. “But I want to find a way to help you see what’s happening. If I can help you, be less scary for you, eh?”
“Yes,” I whispered.
He reached across and gently stroked my tears away with his fingertips.
“No need for that,” he whispered. “I’ve done my time, as you’ll do yours.”
And he winked at me.
“That mate of yours,” he said. “That lass. She’s the one. One that’s filled with light and life. Keep near to her, boy.”
I hardly slept that night. Children giggled and whispered all around me. I stared out and saw dark clouds hanging low over Stoneygate. Hardly a light to be seen. Grandpa groaned behind the wall. I tried to pray for him but the words were dead and empty on my tongue. Next morning he wouldn’t wake. It seemed as if he’d never wake. Mum sat by his bed with a mug of tea cooling in her hands.
“Dad,” she whispered. “Come on, Dad.” I said I’d stay with her but she snapped at me. “Go to school. Do your duty. Get to school.”
I ran through drizzle to the gates. The clouds stayed all day. Rain flooded down the windows during lessons. All day I thought of him lying there in darkness, in nothingness.
In geography, Dobbs yelled at Allie for taking no notice of him.
“You may think tectonic plates have nothing to do with you, Miss Keenan!” he yelled. “But that’s just because the plates in your own skull have yet to join up with each other. You’re an infant world, girl. You’re semiformed. You’re a tectonic gap.”
I saw the tears in her eyes, her clenched fists, saw how she’d like to rip him limb from limb.
We sat together in the corridor at break and listened to the rain hammering on the roof. I wanted to find a way of telling her about my grandpa, but she was filled with spite. All she did was stamp the floor, squeeze her eyes, spit her breath out.
“Hate this place,” she hissed. “Hate it and everybody in it. Maybe I won’t even wait till they let me go. I’ll take myself off early. Runaway, vagabond, make my own life.” She pinched my arm. “You could come with me, Kit. Take a bag and set off wandering. Me and you together.”
“Eh?” I said.
She laughed, her mouth twisted.
“Eh? Eh? You? Course you wouldn’t. And even if you did you’d drive me wild. Eh? Eh? Eh?”