Black Rabbit Summer

  What was it?

  I was too tired to remember.

  I sat down on the front step.

  The air was hot.

  The night sky rumbled faintly in the distance.

  I was so tired…

  I put my head in my hands and closed my eyes.

  Ten

  I woke up to the sound of the world exploding, and for a nightmarish moment I thought I’d died and gone to hell. My head was throbbing, my eyes were burning, the air all around me was booming and rumbling… and then something flashed in the distance, and another huge crash of thunder ripped through the sky, and as the rain started falling, pouring down like a tropical storm, everything suddenly came back to me.

  Eric and Nic’s place…

  I was at Eric and Nic’s place. I was sitting on the front step, getting soaked to the skin, and it seemed to be daylight. I was cold, confused, my backside ached…

  I must have been sitting here for hours.

  I must have fallen asleep…

  Lightning flashed again, thunder boomed, and suddenly the rain was really lashing down. I stretched the stiffness from my legs and painfully got to my feet. My clothes were already soaked through, so there wasn’t much point in getting out of the rain, but I edged back into the doorway anyway. I was shivering, feeling sick. My hand shook as I reached into my pocket, took out my mobile, and checked the time.

  It was 6.02 a.m.

  I put the phone back in my pocket, took one last look at the still-empty house, then I turned round and started walking.

  There was no one around as I headed back home along Recreation Road. The thunderstorm was fading into the distance now, but the rain was still pouring down, and no one in their right mind was going to be out and about at this time in the morning. The streets had that tired-out Sunday morning feel to them – the morning after the Saturday night before – and I don’t mind admitting that I took some kind of pitiful pleasure from the gloom and the emptiness all around me. I wanted everything to be miserable. I’d been through a night of madness. I’d lost Raymond. Messed it all up with Nicole. I was cold, I was wet, my head was still throbbing…

  I wanted to feel sorry for myself.

  So I did.

  I walked through that cold summer rain, sulking and shivering and hurting, and I let myself wallow in whatever misery I could find. I knew it was stupid and selfish and childish, but I didn’t really care any more. I wanted to wallow. I wanted to be selfish and childish. I wanted to be the guy in the movie who’s down on his luck and all alone in the rain, and if I could have had some miserable music playing in the background, and a million people watching me on TV, I probably would have wanted that too.

  But you can’t have everything, can you?

  So I just carried on moping in my unseen silence – along Recreation Road, down St Leonard’s Road, left into Hythe Street, up to the lane that leads down to the river…

  The gate to the lane was open, its padlocked chain smashed off. There were fresh tyre tracks leading down to the river, and I could smell the stink of burning rubber in the air. It wasn’t anything to worry about, just another stolen car. Almost every weekend there’s at least one or two left burning by the river. They usually smoulder there for a few days or so before the police eventually tow them away, and then a man from the council comes along and fixes a new padlock and chain to the gate, but it never makes any difference. The kids who steal the cars like driving them down to the river, they like racing them around for a while before setting fire to them, and that’s all there is to it.

  I walked on.

  It was still raining, but not so heavily now. The thunderstorm had left the sky with a washed-out daylight darkness, and as I moved down the street towards my house I could see a faint glow of light in the kitchen window. Dad’s car was parked in front of the house, so I guessed he’d just got back from work and was making himself a cup of tea before he went to bed.

  I wondered how wrecked I looked. Dad could always tell… he just had to look at my eyes and he’d know what I’d been up to. Mind you, he was usually pretty good about that kind of thing. I mean, he never really made a big deal about anything, but he wasn’t a pushover either. If he ever thought I’d gone too far, he wouldn’t just leave it. He’d want to talk to me, man to man, tell me a few home truths…

  And I couldn’t face that right now.

  I didn’t want to be a man.

  I didn’t want to know any home truths.

  So I crossed the street – like that made me invisible – and carried on down to Raymond’s place.

  His house was dark, as miserable and dingy as ever, and as I followed the alleyway round to his back gate, I could feel a cold shiver creeping inside me. Something felt wrong. There was something missing, an emptiness… a lack of something. I paused for a moment and looked around. Wet bin bags were slumped all over the place, their sodden guts strewn across the path – wads of stained tissue paper, chicken bones, bits of greyed meat – and as I breathed in deeply, trying to steady myself, my stomach lurched at the fetid smell of rotten waste. I closed my eyes for a second, concentrating on keeping the sickness down, and in that momentary darkness I suddenly knew what the emptiness was. It was Raymond… his presence. It wasn’t there. There was nothing there. No feeling of Raymond at all. I couldn’t feel his presence or his absence…

  All I could feel was a sudden sickening fear.

  I didn’t want to open my eyes then.

  I didn’t want to see anything…

  But I knew that I had to.

  I opened my eyes and looked down.

  I saw the ground at my feet, the cracked concrete path… that small grey world of stones and grit, asphalt repairs, insects and dust. I saw a trail of shallow brown puddles and rainy scuff marks leading up to Raymond’s gate. And at the foot of the gate, where the ground was dry, I saw blood.

  There wasn’t very much of it, just a few scattered spots…

  But blood is blood.

  Its redness screams like nothing else.

  And it was there…

  Screaming its violence at me.

  Christ, it was blood.

  It made me feel cold and small, like a child in an unknown place, and as I slowly looked up at the gate, something inside me switched off. I didn’t know what I was doing any more. I was just doing it. And when I saw what was hanging on the gate, impaled on a rusty nail, I simply didn’t believe it at first. I couldn’t believe it. It had to be something else – a discarded glove or something… an old black T-shirt, scrunched up into a ball… or maybe the remains of a child’s soft toy.

  But it wasn’t a toy.

  Soft toys don’t bleed.

  They don’t have flies buzzing round their eyes.

  No…

  I closed my eyes, hoping it would go away… but when I opened them again, Black Rabbit’s severed head was still there, still skewered to the gate, still dripping red in the rain.

  Eleven

  Everything drained out of me as I stood there looking at that gruesome vision on the gate. I just couldn’t take it in. It was too out of place, too wrong. Too sick to understand. It was Raymond’s rabbit, his immortal Black Rabbit, but it wasn’t a rabbit any more. It wasn’t even a rabbit’s head. It was just a thing, a small black brutalized thing. Teeth, fur, bone, blood… rain and flies… a dead skull hanging on a rusty nail.

  Oh God…

  I looked down at the ground, breathing steadily, trying not to be sick. I was drenched in sweat now. My legs were shaking. And I could feel a hollow sickness rising in my belly.

  Oh God…

  I doubled over, clutching my stomach, and threw up.

  My body felt a bit better after I’d been sick, but my mind was still numbed with shock. And I suppose that’s why I didn’t just turn round and go straight home. It would have been the sensible thing to do. Go home, get Dad, let him deal with the rest of it… whatever that might be.

  But I wasn’t sensible.

&nbs
p; I was insensible.

  I was just doing whatever I was doing, without even thinking about it.

  There really wasn’t anything in my mind as I stepped up to the gate, averting my eyes, and nudged it open with my elbow. My head was empty. The garden was empty too. I paused in the gateway for a minute… two minutes… standing perfectly still, listening hard, staring through the gloom at the rain-soaked lawn, the muddy borders, the dripping bushes. There was no one there. Nothing that shouldn’t have been there. I took a deep breath, stepped through the gateway, and looked over at the garden shed. The door was open, and a few bits and pieces were scattered outside the doorway – an old spade, some blue plastic sacks, a roll of wire-netting. My rucksack was there too. But I didn’t wonder about that for long. Instead, my eyes were drawn to the rabbit hutch beside the shed… or, at least, what was left of it. It was smashed to pieces. Someone had ripped it apart and stomped it into the ground.

  Just to one side of the ruined hutch lay the headless remains of Black Rabbit. His pitiful body was lying in a puddle – his neck gaping open, ripped and red… his sodden black fur darkened with blood.

  One of his back legs had been hacked off.

  I completely lost it then. Everything boiled up inside me – the shock of it all, the sickness, the fear – and I just started running. Down the garden, away from the horror, down to the back of Raymond’s house.

  ‘Raymond!’ I called out, hammering on the back door. ‘Raymond!’

  I probably sounded like a madman or something, but I didn’t care. I just kept thumping on the door, screaming at the top of my voice…

  ‘Raymond! Are you there? It’s me, Pete… Raymond? Raymond! RAYMOND!’

  … until, eventually, I heard the clatter of an upstairs window opening, and a guttural voice called down from above.

  ‘What the fuck’s going on?’

  I stepped back from the door and looked up to see Raymond’s dad leaning out of the window, glaring angrily at me. I’d obviously just woken him up – he was bare-chested, his eyes all bloodshot and sleepy – and he looked like he wanted to kill me.

  ‘It’s me, Mr Daggett,’ I called up to him, ‘Pete Boland.’

  He squinted at me. ‘Whuh…?’

  ‘I need to see Raymond,’ I told him. ‘It’s really important –’

  ‘Raymond…?’

  ‘Yeah – is he there?’

  ‘Christ’s sake, boy… d’you know what time it is?’

  ‘Yeah, I know, I’m sorry –’

  ‘Go on,’ he groaned, waving his hand at me. ‘Piss off.’

  ‘No, you don’t understand –’

  ‘I’m not telling you again.’

  ‘He’s missing.’

  Mr Daggett hesitated for a moment, rubbing his eyes. ‘Who’s missing?’

  ‘Raymond…’

  ‘What d’you mean – missing?’

  ‘I don’t know where he is,’ I said. ‘I mean, he’s probably not actually missing… but we were at the fair together, and we got split up… and I think something might have happened…’ I was getting all flustered now, trying to work out how to explain everything. ‘His rabbit,’ I spluttered, pointing up the garden, ‘someone’s killed Raymond’s rabbit…’

  I heard Mrs Daggett’s voice then, a faint and irritated whine. ‘What is it, Bob? Who’re you talking to?’

  ‘It’s nothing,’ Mr Daggett told her. ‘Go back to sleep.’

  ‘I can’t sleep with all that noise, can I?’ she snapped. ‘What’s going on, for God’s sake?’

  ‘It’s just some kid,’ Mr Daggett sighed, ‘wants to know where Raymond is.’

  ‘What kid?’

  ‘The one from up the road, you know… the copper’s kid.’

  ‘What’s he want?’

  ‘I just told you… he’s looking for Raymond.’

  ‘He’s not here.’

  Mr Daggett looked over his shoulder at her. ‘You sure?’

  ‘Yeah, he’s not been in all night… probably out in the garden again. Come on, Bob, shut the window. I’m trying to get some sleep here.’

  Mr Daggett turned back and looked down at me. ‘He’s not here.’

  ‘He’s not in the garden,’ I told him. ‘Someone’s been up there, someone’s smashed up the rabbit hutch and… no, hold on.’ Mr Daggett was starting to close the window. ‘Wait a minute,’ I yelled at him. ‘What are you doing? You can’t just… hey, listen to me!’

  The window slammed shut.

  ‘Mr Daggett!’ I shouted.

  The curtains closed.

  ‘Shit.’

  I stood there for a few moments, staring angrily up at the window, wanting to scream and shout and make Mr Daggett listen to me… but I knew it was a waste of time. He didn’t give a shit – about Raymond, about Black Rabbit, about anything – and that was that. There was no point getting angry about it, was there?

  I turned round and started running again – back up the garden, past the carnage, through the gate, down the alley…

  The rain was getting heavier again now, but I barely even noticed it. I was running on fear and anger. Up the street, through the front gate, round the back of the house, slamming open the kitchen door and breathlessly barging in…

  ‘Pete?’ said Dad. ‘What is it? What’s the matter?’

  He was sitting at the kitchen table, a big mug of tea in his hand. He was shocked to see me, and I could see the sudden alarm in his eyes, but there wasn’t any panic in his voice. Just a calm and controlled concern.

  ‘It’s Raymond…’ I gasped, trying to get my breath back. ‘I think something’s happened to him… and his rabbit’s –’

  ‘All right,’ said Dad, getting to his feet. ‘All right, just calm down a minute, take your time…’ He came over and put his arm round my shoulder and guided me over to the table. ‘Sit down,’ he said quietly. ‘Take some deep breaths.’

  I sat down, breathing slowly, trying to calm myself.

  ‘Are you all right?’ Dad said. ‘I mean, you’re not hurt, are you?’

  I shook my head.

  He sat down next to me. ‘Do you want some water?’

  ‘No… no, I’m OK, thanks.’

  ‘Sure?’

  ‘Yeah… I’m fine.’

  Dad put his hand on my arm. ‘OK, tell me what happened.’

  ∗

  I didn’t tell him everything, obviously. There wasn’t enough time, for one thing, and I honestly thought that most of what happened wasn’t really relevant anyway. But there was also a lot of stuff that I just couldn’t tell him about – the drinking and the smoking, all the weird stuff that happened, the thing with Nicole in the den…

  I mean, he was my dad.

  You can’t tell your dad everything, can you?

  But I told him as much as I could: how Raymond had gone missing at the fair, how I’d looked for him everywhere, how I’d gone to his house and found his mutilated rabbit…

  ‘What time was this?’ Dad asked me.

  ‘Just now, about ten minutes ago…’ I looked at the clock on the kitchen wall. It was nearly quarter to seven now. ‘It must have been around six thirty.’

  Dad nodded. ‘So, you saw this rabbit’s head on the gate… what did you do then?’

  I told him about the smashed-up rabbit hutch and the remains of Black Rabbit, and how I’d woken up Mr Daggett and tried to talk to him.

  ‘And what did he have to say?’ Dad asked.

  ‘Not much…’ I shook my head. ‘He didn’t want to know, Dad. I tried to tell him about Raymond, but he just didn’t care…’

  ‘Did he check to see if Raymond was in his room?’

  ‘No… but I heard Mrs Daggett telling him that Raymond hadn’t been home all night.’

  ‘Were they expecting him home?’

  ‘I don’t know…’

  Dad looked at me. ‘I thought you were staying the night at Eric and Nicole’s?’

  ‘Well, yeah… but I don’t know if Raymond was supposed t
o be coming with me or not. I mean, Nicole didn’t actually invite him… and it didn’t happen anyway.’

  ‘What didn’t happen?’

  ‘The thing at Eric and Nicole’s…’

  Dad frowned. ‘It didn’t happen?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘I don’t know… I kind of lost touch with Eric and Nic at the fair, and then I spent hours looking for Raymond –’

  ‘So where have you been all night?’

  I rubbed my eyes. ‘I went to Eric and Nic’s place, but there was no one there…’

  ‘And?’

  ‘I waited for them.’

  ‘All night?’

  ‘I fell asleep on the step.’

  ‘You fell asleep?’

  ‘Yeah, I was tired…’

  Dad looked into my eyes. ‘How much did you have to drink?’

  I shook my head. ‘I was just tired, Dad. It was late, I’d been walking round the fair all night…’ I looked at him. ‘What do you think we should do about Raymond? I’m really worried about him.’

  Dad sighed. ‘I’m not sure there’s all that much we can do at the moment.’

  I stared at him in disbelief. ‘How can you say that? We’ve got to do something… he’s missing, his rabbit’s been killed –’

  ‘We don’t know that he’s missing, Pete,’ Dad said calmly. ‘He could be anywhere…’

  ‘Like where?’

  Dad shrugged. ‘With some friends –’

  ‘He hasn’t got any friends.’

  ‘He could be at home, for all we know.’

  ‘But he’s not… his mum said he hasn’t been home all night.’

  ‘I know, but we don’t know that, do we?’

  ‘He’s missing, Dad. You’ve got to do something…’

  ‘Just calm down a minute,’ Dad said, putting his hand on my shoulder. ‘I didn’t say I’m not going to do anything, but I can’t just report him missing because you don’t know where he is –’

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘Listen,’ Dad said, ‘let me go and speak to his parents and see what they have to say. All right? If Raymond’s not there, I’ll get them to report him missing, and then we can start looking for him.’

  ‘Yeah, but what if they don’t want to report him missing? You know what they’re like, Dad… they don’t give a shit about him. They never have. And what about his rabbit? I mean, can’t you just get forensics or someone to go round there and take a look at it?’