

## Falling from Grace

SHORT STORY COLLECTION

by Stephen Melling

For Benjamin and Rebecca

Copyright 2011 by Stephen Melling

Smashwords Edition

This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you're reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to Smashwords.com and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author

.

Contents

1. Home

First published in Fusing Horizons 2004

2. BRIMSTONE & JERRY GATEMAN

First published in Black Petals 2006

3. SEEING DOUBLE

First published in the anthology RAW MEAT 2007

4. THE HOLLOW MAN

_First Published in the anthology_ _DARK DORWAYS 2006_

**5. PERPETUAL PUPIL**

New Story

**6. EPILOGUE**

First Published in Whispers of Wickedness 2006

**7. THE METEOR AND THE STRAWBERRY**

First Published in Whispers of Wickedness 2005

**8. FALLING FROM GRACE**

First published in Midnight Street 2008

9. BACK TO HUMAN

First published in Dog Tales 2005

### Home

In the mid-august heat Dorman Road sprawled with clusters of boisterous children. With a fanfare of bells and chimes, the ice-cream van drove away, trailing a group of toddlers in its wake. Once the vehicle had departed a group of boys flowed into the vacated space with their football. On the pavement, oblivious to the activity, two pigtailed girls played pat-a-cake until a small boy squirted them with a water pistol.

Seven-year-old Richard emerged quietly from the throng and heaved himself up onto Joey's garden wall, careful not to drop his ice-lolly. Beside him Joey attacked his double-cone with deliberate gusto and flashed a vanilla grin. Richard nibbled his lolly while he stole a glance across the road where his mum stood, baby Emma propped eternally on her hip, nattering to old Ethel. Never a full minute went by in which she did not seek him out with her ever-watchful eyes.

Checking on me, he thought grimly. Watching and waiting...just waiting for the chance to...

"Let's go down the park." Joey said abruptly. "Play on the swings."

A sudden attack of butterflies drew Richard's hand to his stomach. "Ooo no," he said. "It's... way too hot."

"Hot?" Joey frowned at his double-cone. "Yesterday you said it was too windy. Day before that too flippin' wet."

"Well, mum said I've not to disappear." Richard sucked his lolly and glanced up at his mother; at the same time she glanced back and he saw it, actually _saw_ it in her face. Oh yes, lurking in her eyes, just beneath the surface. The Move.

Moving house did not particularly upset him. After all, they'd moved before and he'd hardly skipped a beat. Piece of pudding. But on this occasion his mum and dad planned to leave him behind. Simply slip away without him, possibly when he'd just gone to school, or was out playing with Joey. When he returned, the house would be empty. Parentless, he'd be sent to a HOME.

At school, Scott Blaylock from year five, whose brother got into trouble for burning down their granddad's house, told him all about HOMES. Ugly grey buildings full of rough kids off run-down council estates. None had parents and they all swore, ate nothing but mushrooms, cold porridge and even toads in holes. They flushed your head in dirty toilets every morning. Thumped and kicked you – and wouldn't stop even if you cried. HOMES were terrible, terrible places.

Joey began drumming his heels impatiently against the bricks. "Go ask your mum if you can play for an hour. Bet she says yeah - bet you a million quid." He spat out a gob of vanilla and giggled.

Richard observed him with quite despair, pondering the unsettling revelation that he regarded his chubby friend with a peculiar kind of envy. Joey worried about nothing; if he wanted to go play on the park or by the brook on Chatburn Road then he would. Play all day if he so wished, and never once fret that his mum and dad might not be there when he came home.

"Can't leave sight of the house," Richard mumbled into his lap.

Joey sniggered. "Think your mum will be gone when you get back?"

Richard went bright red, wishing to God he'd kept his secret. But he'd felt he'd pop unless he told someone and, on one particular day last week, Joey happened to be his best friend. But Joey understood none of it, accused him of being silly, had laughed at him, and now Richard humoured Joey just to keep him quiet. "They could sneak away any time," he explained. "When I'm at Cubs, or when I'm playing on the park."

"They can't leave you all alone," Joey said with mock certainty. "Police will bring 'em back in handcuffs and throw 'em in jail."

"How could the police even _find_ them?"

"Easy-peasy. With frensics and cop sniffer-dogs. Don't you watch TV?" He devoured the remainder of his cone, leaped off the wall, and belched with aplomb.

A chunk of Richard's lolly broke away and shattered on the tarmac. Joey guffawed and gleefully trod on the melting chunk of ice. "Let's go!" he demanded. "I wanna build a sandcastle."

Richard let the uneaten portion of his lolly fall to the ground. "Playing in sand is sissy," he said, glancing up at his mum.

The sissy comment did it. Joey walked away, a scorned look on his ice-cream covered face. He got so far then spun around defiantly. "Thinking your mum will leave you is sissy," he yelled and skipped away.

Richard cringed, believed for a moment he might wet his pants, squeezed his crotch, and threw a glance his mum's way. Sure enough she was looking straight back at him. With three quick twitches of her index finger, which usually meant he was in lumber, she beckoned him over.

He pushed off the wall, absently wiping the lolly juice on his jeans. All around him the smaller kids squealed and screeched, but he heard nothing. A strange weakness had crept into his legs. Even the effort of hopping up onto the curb buckled his knees.

Mum hooked a thumb at the house. "Bathroom, quickly."

He blinked a few times before looking down at his hand fisted around his jeans; the skin over his knuckles had gone white. He let go and hurried past her.

"Don't forget to flush."

Cool air, quiet and the comforting smell of furniture polish greeted him inside, where the sounds of play outside became muted and distant. At the foot of the stairs, propped against the coat stand, he saw the spruce walking stick dad bought at Beacon fell last week. Richard examined the gnarled timber and recalled the weekend outing.

During their picnic he'd ventured alone into nearby trees hunting pine-cones. Returning with his spoils only several moments later he saw mum and dad hurriedly packing the hamper. Panic seized him, sending his double handful of pine-cones skyward. He burst through the tree-line just as they were getting into the car, whereupon he clawed for the passenger door, red-faced and on the verge of tears. A joke, they had assured him; only a joke. Oh, but he knew otherwise.

In the days that followed he'd begun to recognize more of their little ploys. Their newest was to drop him off at the Cubs early and pick him up later and later. He knew that before long they simply wouldn't be there when he came out. To combat this he had taken to faking illness on Cub nights.

On the landing he trailed his fingertips along the rail overlooking the hallway. Last week, he'd overheard mum on the phone confiding to Auntie Pauline that she only ever wanted a baby girl. Instead they'd gotten Richard, and although now they had Emma, they were stuck with the boy. Mum actually discussed placing a newspaper ad – small boy: free to good HOME.

Richard let his hand fall from the banister and he wandered into the bathroom. Through the half-open window he heard his mum whispering to Ethel. Few words filtered though the cacophony of street sounds. "New house...school... moving... HOME." He turned away in denial and left the room.

He'd gotten almost halfway down the stairs before realising he hadn't flushed the toilet. "Oh, pants!" He about-turned and got as far as the landing when he heard something _squeak_. It was the unmistakable sound of the linen-cupboard opening – he was sure of it. Which meant someone was in the bathroom. But how could that be? No one had passed him on the stairs.

From the landing his view extended into almost the entire bathroom – but not quite. So he pressed himself closer to the wall, trying to see around the door. Then he remembered the oval mirror over the sink, which revealed the hidden space beside the cistern cupboard.

A hooded figure clung to the back of the door. Beneath the hood he saw a pair of beady eyes, bad teeth, long straggly hair; but underneath it all, a child's face. At once Richard knew the boy's intention: to flush Richard's head in the toilet.

"My mum's only outside..." Richard began, and then blinked as the image dissolved and became the blue bath robe Auntie Pauline brought back from Euro-Disney. The design incorporated some or other character from a feature length cartoon.

With his heart still racing he quickly retreated to his bedroom. He spent a moment looking over his T-rex posters, hoping to drum up some enthusiasm that might lead his thoughts elsewhere. Then he trailed his finger along the spines of his picture books, but none piqued his interest.

Finally he slumped in the window looking down onto the road below. At the front gate his mum still nattered with Ethel. Baby Emma peered up at him, a smirk on her round face, as though even she were party to his fate. Farther down the road walked Joey and Scotty Parker, buckets and spades in their arms. Richard pressed his face against the cool glass, watching them dwindle with distance.

At that moment, swallowing up the space vacated by his friends, a huge van rounded the corner, its noisy diesel engine drowning out all else. Several grown-ups quickly herded the infants onto the pavement whilst the vehicle passed. Only it didn't pass. With a prehistoric hiss of hydraulics it rocked to a halt outside Richard's bedroom window, shuddering and steaming in the afternoon heat.

Richard looked on in horror. So high were the van's sides they obliterated his view of Joey's house across the road. The caption: MARSDEN'S DOMESTIC REMOVALS, written in bold yellow lettering, filled his vision. So close was the van it transformed his window into a mirror. In the faint reflection he saw the orphan boy standing in the doorway, leaning on dad's walking stick. But when Richard spun around he saw nobody.

At that moment dad pulled up in their car, got out, and approached the van driver. They chatted briefly, shared a laugh, then shook hands and parted. The driver rumbled away in a puff of black smoke. At the front gate, moving in unison like a shoal of fish, mum, dad, Ethel and even baby Emma looked up at the window. Dad waved him down.

When he stepped out of house the bright sunshine nearly blinded him. With one hand shielding his eyes and the other rubbing his tightening belly, Richard stood before his mum and dad on legs made of jelly.

They were going to tell him; just like that. No sneaking away while he sat through assembly at school, no waiting until he lost track of time on the park. Simple as pie they were going to tell him, here and now, in the middle of the street.

"I've got some news, Richard," dad said. "Though I suppose you've guessed half of it already," he winked. "We're moving house, Sport."

"We'll sure miss you..." said Ethel, her hands clasp together prayer-like.

"Miss who?" Richard's voice rose barely above a whisper.

"Why, we are, of course," said dad.

But Richard heard no more that afternoon. He fainted.

When he opened his eyes mum's anxious face hovered over him, conjuring vague and somewhat comforting memories of Chicken Pox and measles, when she rarely left his side. But those were the days before Emma came along. Dad paced the floor behind her, drinking beer from a small bottle, a tight frown on his face. Richard blinked at them.

"Hey, here he is," Dad said. "You okay, sport?"

Richard looked at his dad but quickly dropped his gaze, suddenly afraid to look him in the eye, because when he did 'it' looked right back at him. Mum dabbed his forehead and felt his cheeks. "He's still hot."

Dad put down his beer and shooed her aside. He sat down next to Richard and ruffled his hair. "Okay Rich, as I was saying earlier, we're leaving this house. We're moving and we're not coming back...do you understand?"

The tension built like a scream; all the fear, all the worry, all the uncertainty burst out of him at once. "Don't leave me!" His voice turned high falsetto, and he couldn't catch his breath. Mum quickly returned the damp cloth to his forehead, and tried to shush him.

Dad straightened, " _Leave_ you?"

Richard buried his head in a cushion. He simply could not look either of his parents in the eye. To do so would be acknowledging - therefore accepting - his fate.

"Don't put me in a Home," he sputtered. "I don't want to eat toads in holes and get my head flushed-"

"Richard-"

"I'll be good and not make a mess; I'll play with Emma and help her read and draw and build Lego houses."

"What's gotten into him?" Dad asked, as though it were mum's fault.

"How the heck should I know?"

Richard thrashed about on the sofa, hiding his face. "The bad kids from the Home will get me – I've seen them already. They've come for me-"

"Richard!" Dad shook him. "That's enough."

He smelled his father's after-shave lotion, beer and sweat, and he finally clawed for him, burying his head in his chest. "Take me as well. I wanna come to."

Dad screwed up his face. "Leave you where?"

"Here!"

Dad cast another accusing look at mum. "Who the hell gave you that idea....was it Joey?"

"Mum told Auntie Pauline she didn't want me and that she'd sell me to a Home and..."

"Oh _Richard_ ," Mum put both hands to her face. "We were joking with each other. Listen to me; parents do not move house and leave their children." Mum gently prised him from dad's arms and hugged him "Oh, you silly-billy."

Two weeks later, the day before the move, cardboard boxes and packaging crates cluttered the living room. Most of the large stuff had already gone, arranged by dad and the removals man. Only the bedroom furniture, the last few kitchen items and a few books were left. Richard enjoyed the prestige of packing ornaments in newspaper. A year ago she'd have had a duck's fit if he so much as touched her ornaments, yet now she had appointed him 'chief wrapper-upper'.

Mum left him alone and set to on the bedding, stuffing spare quilts into bin liners and then, which Richard thought hilarious, sucked out all the air with the vacuum cleaner, turning the bin liners into huge prunes. In the garden dad struggled to disassemble the greenhouse, calling it crap and cheap knock-together shite.

At nine-twenty Richard wrapped the last ornament and packed it with the others. He used the tape-gun to seal the box just as mum came through the door carrying pillows.

"Can I pack my dinosaur books, now?" He got up off the floor.

Mum surveyed his handiwork. "Plenty of time for that tomorrow," she said. "You've done enough for one day."

"I'm not tired at all," he said, stifling a yawn.

"Just park your bum, Batman." Mum disappeared into the kitchen.

Richard stretched and gazed into the bay window. Beside his reflection stood another boy, tall and skinny, with wild hair and a scruffy anorak. Richard went and cupped his hands to the glass. The strange boy sat astride a rusty, grimy bicycle, staring at him. "I'm going with my mum and dad," he whispered. "Not with you."

"Who are you talking to?" said his mum as she re-entered the room.

The kid rode away without looking back.

"Nobody," he said, and would have drawn the curtains had mum not already packed them away.

"Well then, chief wrapper-upper, drink this." She handed him a mug of hot chocolate

Richard settled in the only armchair not clogged with bags and boxes and gratefully accepted the mug. Mum patted his head before returning to the kitchen.

Before Richard drank a third of the chocolate his eyelids began to droop. The day's activity lay heavy in his limbs, drawing him deeper into the armchair and subsequently into sleep. A small part of him still awake fought to prevent the mug sliding from his fingers. Before it could fall, a grownup's hand took it from him.

His eyes flickered half open, then immediately began to close again. He imagined his mum's face studiously examining his own. Someone's thumb or finger raised his eyelids. "Crikey - he's out cold," dad's voice.

"Better get him upstairs," mum's voice.

Richard floated up and out of the chair, across the room and into the hall. Through narrow slits beneath his eyelids he saw the top of the door jamb, the landing light and the trap door to the loft, his own bedroom ceiling and the Superman light shade, posters tacked to his bedroom wall, T-rex... velociraptors...Doctor Alan Grant....

And then he saw only darkness.

Richard opened his eyes feeling cold and strange. Meagre light filtered through his bedroom window. Outside, a clinking milk float whined its way along the deserted road. He blinked and swallowed dryly, hearing the sounds, his mind providing images to go with them: milkman's feet trudging up garden paths, hands depositing full bottles and removing empties, gates opening and closing.

Light spilling across the far wall illuminated the yellow fangs of a snarling tyrannosaurus, beyond that his bedroom door, which hung half open. A chill draft raised goose bumps on his bare arms, and he felt for the duvet, but it had slid off the mattress.

Feeling heavy and cumbersome, he rolled out of bed and planted his feet on the floor, stubbing his toe on a cricket ball. "Ooo," he rubbed the sore spot and watched the ball spin through the gap in the door. It careened of the skirting and across bare floorboards.

Richard stopped rubbing his toe and looked up, frowning. Last night the hall was still carpeted. Mum and dad must have taken it up after he'd gone to sleep. Still... strange that he'd heard nothing, light sleeper that he was.

Feeling slightly woozy, he got out of bed and pulled open his bedroom door.

"Mum?" His voice sounded hollow in the bare landing.

"Dad?" Floorboards creaked under his feet as he approached his parents' room. The need to pee made him squirm but he held on and gently nudged his parents' door. It swung slowly inward. The room beyond was bare, from wall to wall; all that remained were sheets of age-yellowed carpet underlay.

Fear pricked his scalp, making him shiver violently. He turned away and approached his sister's door. "Emma?"

Another empty room. No furniture. No pictures on the walls. No Emma.

"Downstairs," he said. "They're all having breakfast."

He headed for the landing, feet slap-slapping on bare floorboards, fingers trailing the banister. As he ran he clipped the cricket ball and it preceded him down the stairs, thunking on each riser. At the bottom he chased it into the hallway. Another carpet-less room. Even the telephone had gone off the wall.

"Mum!" he shouted. "Dad!"

He burst into the living room. Empty. Several sheets of newspaper littered the doorway. Numerous coffee and tea stains marked the floorboards in the rough shape of the settee and the chairs. "Daddy!"

Using both hands he shoved open the kitchen door and rushed through. Water dripped into an empty sink. On the draining board stood a single cup, Richard's cup, the one with his name glazed on the side.

Eyes as wide as saucers, he ran back into the living room, circled it twice, darting here and there, fuelled by a desperate need to keep moving. Both hands were thrust out before him as though the furniture might still be there, merely rendered invisible by some simple trick. He moved in concentric circles until he sank to the floor, covered his ears and squeezed his eyes shut, subconsciously groaning out loud to combat the awful silence.

How long he remained that way he didn't know, listening to the world outside come alive. Up and down the road doors opened and closed; neighbours exchanged pleasantries; cars started up and rumbled out of driveways; kids hurried to school, among them Joey and Scotty Parker. But all too soon those sounds faded.

For a time he heard only the occasional drone of traffic, or pair of high-heels click by. Finally a familiar engine sound, footsteps on the path, and a brisk knock at the door brought him back to his senses. Dizzy with both relief and inertia, he got up and rushed along the hall. Through the portal of frosted glass he saw the blurry image of his father standing on the path. Richard threw open the door...and stopped cold on the welcome mat.

Before him stood a tall, stringy middle-aged man in a dark green suit, frayed and greasy at the cuffs and collar. He twitched like a mouse and his beady eyes never strayed from Richard's. A transit van idled at the curb. In the passenger seat sat the orphan boy, straggly hair and a black eye, face dirty and wet. In his grubby hands he carried a live toad.

Richard saw the stranger's hand reaching for his own.

### Brimstone and Jerry Gateman

In dark glasses and a threadbare cardigan, Jerry Gateman began his morning ritual of opening the bay window and settling in his rocker. Last night the sky over St Mark's glowed red, so he knew today's sunshine would draw them out.

At 7:00 am the gloomy shadow of the church spire began creeping across the square. By sunset it would shrink towards Amen Corner, where every Sunday bent-at-the-knee pensioners emerged from Barlow's Sermons gooey-eyed and saved. Slaves at their own hand.

Jerry cracked open a beer and slouched in the creaking chair, his rheumy eyes alert for stray pedestrians. It was still early, but someone always happened along, be it a slave exercising his dog or a bigger slave exercising himself.

The older Jerry got, the more fascinating the people became; each little vignette a pathetic, almost comic parody of their social condition. Jerry was pushing eighty - and eighty was pushing back - was unmarried and lived alone. Undistracted by religion, day-time television or over-the-fence gossip, he saw himself as the complete, unbiased social critic.

He rocked contentedly to and fro, mildly amused to realize he actually despised these people. But no sweat. If they knew who he really was, not only would they hate him back, they'd probably mass into a mob and with God as their witness, cast him into the river.

He gulped too large a mouthful of beer and belched with aplomb when the first passerby approached. Jerry aligned himself for a clearer view and then paused, squinting to focus on this somewhat familiar - and therefore sinister - figure passing his window.

As though sensing Jerry, the young man spared him a single, desperate glance and _bump;_ there it was. Mutual recognition snapped between them like static and the stale smell of Jerry's past snaked into the room, settling in the corner like an unwelcome guest waiting to catch his eye.

Jerry planted his feet, nudged his glasses down his nose and found himself face to face with Fletcher James Kerrigan, one of only two men who knew his identity. Fletch wore denims with that same old scuffed leather jacket; his jet black hair greased back.

But his _face._ That one time arrogant mug foundered beneath an expression of smoldering horror and regret – yes, remorse lurked in that livid face. More like a man en-route to the gallows than the park. But-

-but what was he thinking? Were Kerrigan alive he'd be grinding the cogs in his seventies. And he'd probably not seen English soil since fleeing to Timbuktu or wherever the hell it was decades ago.

Before Jerry could do or say anything, the man turned his face away. As quickly as he could - which wasn't quick at all - Jerry stood and leaned against the glass, but the look-alike disappeared into the park.

Swallowing hard, he resettled his bones into the rocker, his heart banging in his chest; not only could he feel it, he could see it, knocking against his skinny ribcage. Despite the heat, he shivered.

_Fletcher Kerrigan_.

He hadn't thought of Fletch in twenty years. When their club got raided the gang scattered. Only Jerry, Fletch and Miles 'Smiler' Jackson escaped. Smiler wrapped his car around a tree in the Costa del Sol a year later; Kerrigan simply disappeared up his own backside.

Jerry suddenly lost interest in the pedestrian soup – it went cold on him. He tossed his sunglasses and grabbed his beer. Several minutes later his heart still raced and he wondered, not for the first time, if today might be his last.

Jerry rolled his shirt-sleeve and with a gnarled index finger traced the blue lines on his thin arm. He flexed his right hand into a fist, encouraging the veins to swell. God knew why, but the action served as affirmation of his being alive.

He'd read somewhere that the average western male lived seventy-two years. He was seventy- _eight_. Each morning when his eyes peeled open, he would look gingerly around the room and listen for his breathing. Then he'd grin.

Jerry Gateman eased his bony frame out of the rocker, steadied himself, and then hobbled into the dimness of the back room where he dropped onto the old sofa, breathing hard, gazing at dust motes suspended in shafts of sunlight.

So why was he still alive? If natural selection were an enforceable law then by now any one of a dozen vulgar diseases should have picked him off. He was not afraid of dying. Dead was dead. You clocked on and you clocked off. To believe otherwise was to don wooly gloves and murder hymns along with Malone's blue-rinse parade across the square.

"Jesus," he said, closing his eyes. The Fletch look-alike had spooked him, stirred memories of his sins. But Jerry Gateman had beaten the system. He had won. Game over. Grown old a free man. He would die a free man.

During his first year as a fugitive he'd felt watched by everyone from postmen to spacemen. Of course that feeling had eventually faded but recently it had returned; only now it felt far more sinister. He sometimes felt watched even when he knew he was alone; almost as though he were being stalked.

Three days later thunderstorms crawled in off the Irish Sea and the good weather broke. His window looked out onto a dull and deserted, leaf-blown square. It was only three thirty in the afternoon but several streetlamps flickered on.

Like a long dead specimen suspended in formaldehyde, Jerry sat motionless in his bay window, chain-smoking, watching the trees in the church yard losing their leaves.

A car sluiced by, its sidelights reflecting in Jerry's glasses. Then he saw it was an old Hillman Imp. As it drew level, he caught sight of the driver – his long-dead buddy and fellow fugitive, Smiler Jackson. Smiler pinned him with a stare similar to Kerrigan's.

Jerry stood up too quickly, his knees striking the table and spilling his coffee. He squashed his face against the cold glass and peered up the road. But like Fletch, the Imp had vanished into the park.

Weak-kneed and scared, Jerry fell back into the rocker. Thunder cracked, and he recoiled. Smiler had owned a Hillman Imp a hundred years ago. And it was no secret that he had died at the wheel.

Unless Jerry was losing his mind, someone was playing a cruel, sick game. Though with what motive? Money? In truth, he hadn't a penny left from those halcyon days of crime courtship – only washed-out memories.

He pulled a leathery hand down his face. His dentures slipped their moorings, and he quickly popped them back in with his tongue. In his lap both hands moved endlessly, flexing into fists. _Flex...flex...flex_... He might have been chanting, "I'm alive, I'm alive, I'm alive..."

This wasn't blackmail. It was persecution. Someone he had... _wronged_ had tracked him down. A man who'd killed close to a dozen people would be hated at least once a day by someone in the world. It had to be persecution because the people he saw were dead, and nothing lay beyond death. No paradise, no _punishment_. The only genuine religions were selfishness and revenge and freedom.

Think logically _,_ he told himself. Revenge was a dish best served cold, but after forty years the dish wasn't cold - it was rotten.

Perhaps he really was losing his mind. Part of him secretly hoped so - and it figured. His father succumbed to dementia in his early fifties. Alan Gateman often referred to his madness as having a _Ghost in the house_. Maybe the condition was hereditary.

Jerry Gateman stood and caught sight of his reflection in the glass. He didn't look just old – he looked _prehistoric_. Over the last thirty years he'd lost half his body weight, several inches in height and most of his physical strength – in every way but sepia-toned memory the man he used to be was stone dead.

"There's a ghost in the house," he said to his reflection. "Can you beat it?"

The following day was overcast and still. An earthy smell hung in the air, and the nearby river running through the park gave off a wretched, sulfurous stench the parishioners blamed on effluent from the nuclear power station up the coast.

Across the square Father Malone attended a wounded Sycamore, wielding a shiny new handsaw, but the blade repeatedly jammed in the damp wood.

I'm as crazy as he is, Jerry thought grimly. Perhaps the mind didn't go with a merciful snap, but with a series of harrowing images that dragged you shrieking into a windowless room. Or maybe insanity was a virus, and its invasion of a host diagnosed as schizophrenia.

This thought made him cold. It seeped into his bones and stayed there. I'm not crazy – I just have a virus. I'll be all better when I'm dead and buried.

Outside, an old man wearing a white coat walked quietly by, his stride stuttering as he spared a single, tormented glance at Jerry.

Jerry flinched.

It was Alan Gateman, his long dead father. "Da...?" he whispered. But the man turned away.

Jerry got up and went outside. What little cold there was he felt keenly.

"Alan?" Jerry whispered. "Is that you?" The stranger glanced back over his shoulder, but Jerry's eyes were too weak to confirm an identity.

Hitching up his trousers, he started walking, a combination of fear and age keeping him five steps off the pace. As the distance between him and the house increased, his head spun with what he assumed was mild agoraphobia - he hadn't been outside in years.

The Alan Gateman doppelganger, dwarfed by the gargantuan cast iron entrance gates, descended into Hiller Park. Here the level of the river's stench increased tenfold, yet none of the other park-goers appeared affected. Negotiating the hilly paths made Jerry pant and drool like a mutt. Dew drops from his nose left a fading trail on the tarmac.

His quarry followed a path to the river's edge where, at a section fenced off by the City, he paused before scaling the barrier. The other side ran away steeply towards the water's edge.

Jerry collapsed against the fence, the mesh digging into his face, his breath tearing his throat. Through broken stems of giant hogweed he watched the old man take a withered apple from his pocket and toss it into the water.

"Hey!" Jerry croaked.

Slowly the man turned around and looked at him. Jerry gasped. There was no mistake – it was his father. Alan Gateman looked lost and very afraid. He turned away, took a deep breath, then stepped into the river as though it were the Sea of Galilee. The muddy water churned, sending ripples across to the other bank. A mass of large, flesh-coloured worms wriggled up from the blackness, coiling and embracing, pulling him under. The sharp smell of sulfur rose with them, withering the hogweed and scorching the grass.

" _You can beat it_..." His father's damned voice bubbled from the depths. "...if you can s _tay alive..._ " Then he screamed.

Back in his bay window rocker, Jerry could not recall his return journey. He hoped he'd imagined it all, but his joints sang with aches and pains and his breathing rasped.

Across the square Father Malone appeared in the archway, hands on hips, and stared.

A sudden revelation struck Jerry with enough force to stop his breath and make his skin crawl. That Malone and his congregation were right. God was not a myth. And if God was not a myth, then nor was S-"

Stay alive...

How could he do that? He was nearly eighty years old; cheating death with every new day, with every new heartbeat. Even breathing was no longer a reflex action; it was an act of will. The end for him was clearly nigh.

Father Malone waited with feet apart, hands sliding to his knees in a classic catcher's stance. Waiting. But waiting for what – a confession? For Jerry to grovel at his feet? Jerry Gateman knelt before no man. There was a ghost in his house and he would beat it.

Father Malone relaxed his posture and reluctantly retreated. The church door slammed behind him.

Jerry Gateman shivered under a cold shower, hugging his rack of ribs with skinny arms, watching the dirty water spiral down the drain. Later, dressed in a robe and spectacles, he wandered the house sipping glass after glass of water. But his urine never quite ran clear.

At dusk he drew back the curtain and in full sight of the church, whose stained-glass windows glowed from within, fell to his knees. Instead of joining his hands in prayer, he lay on his back and laced them behind his head, sit-up fashion. He started counting.

"I can beat it," he gasped, pretending he hadn't noticed the dark figure materializing in his rocker.

In the park, the river churned.

### Seeing Double

Spencer clock-watched the last hour of his shift and reacted to the buzzer like it were a starting pistol. He was first onto the parking lot and first to experience the early morning rain, a constant drizzle which gave the world a fuzzy, bleached look.

At least the protestors had rolled their flags and retreated, he thought as the gatehouse guard let him out. Last month's suspected reactor leak headlined in three nationals. No big deal, really. But such news always drew hoards of Greenpeace volunteers inland to petition the gates, grown men and women dressed as skeletons and waving miniature coffins.

After fifteen years working Nuclear Power Stations – including a stint at Chernobyl – he felt his mind start to fatten, and guessed he'd finally reached a point where he needed new experience. It wasn't just the long hours, or the commuting, or the irksome protestors. Strip away any of those and he'd feel just as gray. The long and short of it was that he missed his wife.

On a good week he saw Helen maybe two or three hours in twenty-four – and they were far from quality hours. During that short window Helen was generally gearing down from her day while he was on his way out. The weekends flew by with such swiftness they barely marked the memory. It was that old chestnut, he supposed: they lived to work - not the other way around.

Ninety minutes later, swinging onto his driveway lost in thought, he nearly tailgated a black car that was slant parked on the drive. He stamped the brake pedal hard enough to lock his seat belt and rock the suspension. Through the rain arc on his windshield he saw the driver's door hanging open. More importantly, it was Helen's Chevrolet.

She was _home_.

The manner in which the car had been left smacked of trouble. A thoroughly unpleasant feeling of dread overcame him, leeched some of the strength from his arms – indeed, climbing out of the driver's seat was a struggle.

Fine rain fogged his spectacles as he circled toward the car, stepping over the ruts in the lawn made by the Chevy's tires. Supporting himself using the roof and the open door, he leaned inside. It smelled of damp leather; half the driver's seat glistened darkly. His gaze flicked to the ignition. No keys; he found this somewhat calming – to him missing keys suggested there was no foul play. His guess was that she'd arrived home desperate for the little girl's room.

Still feeling uneasy, he locked Helen's car with the spare key he kept with his set. Rain fell heavier now, bouncing off the drive, splashing in the puddles in the tire ruts. He jogged up to the porch and tried the door - it was locked. Now this was more like Helen. Fifteen years as a government employee had made her a security freak, insisting on top dollar alarm systems. Helen's father joked that their home was the Fort Knox of Suburbia.

"Damn straight," she'd responded. "An intruder breaks and enters with his swag bag, you bet your ass he's leaving in a body bag. Both Helen and Spencer owned licensed firearms. Helen practiced twice a month with Henry Monroe, one of her colleagues. In fact Henry oversaw the installation of their current alarm system.

Which, Spencer noted as he entered the house, was deactivated. On the wall to his right the control panel displayed green lights across the board. This concerned him a bit – if ever she was home alone, Helen always activated external security.

"Helen!" He flinched at his own voice. "Jesus," his eyes strayed to the coat stand. It held just his Slicker - as he'd left it last night. Of course if she were sprinting hand-to-crotch for the bathroom she'd hardly stick around to hang up her coat. Right now it probably dangled from the shower head.

In the kitchen dining room he found an opened tin of tomato soup and a bowl, two unbuttered bread rolls and a spoon. Lunch for one. Only none of it had been touched – nor had the rest of the kitchen. Pots, pans, plates and mugs stood to attention in neat regiments. Worktops gleamed, cupboards were closed, sinks were dry. Yet a gentle blue flame flickered on the hob. As though walking a crime scene, he circled the breakfast bar and shut off the gas.

"Helen, are you home?"

For half a minute he held his breath, hearing nothing but the ping-ping of cooling metal. In spite of his concerns he gave half a laugh. It was like the Mary Celeste in here. Indeed, something about the untouched meal struck him as particularly wrong, but for now the significance eluded him.

He removed his jacket and quickly checked the remaining downstairs rooms. Apart from an overturned picture frame, and the lounge mirror hanging askew, everything was everything. He reached for the picture and angled it to the light. In it Helen gazed up at him from the easy slopes of Buttermilk, Aspen – their last skiing trip. Over five years ago.

As he relaxed into the memory, dim flashing in his peripheral vision drew his gaze from the image. The answer machine. Its tiny red light blinked urgently next to the number three. He re-positioned Helen's photo and quickly hit the _play message_ button.

After providing date and time, the machine erupted with Helen's voice, whose tone, regardless of the content, froze him to the spot.

"Spence!" she whispered urgently. "I...I...for Christ's sake where to begin? Just listen to me very closely." She paused to arrange her thoughts. "I'm at work. Something's happened in the lab..." Suddenly she fell silent and he got the impression she was hiding the phone call from someone who'd just entered the room. Then she was back. "There's been an accident...a spillage. But that's not the real problem. I couldn't call you at work and under no circumstances must you call here. I don't know who to trust."

Spencer leaned closer until his ear almost touched the small speaker. And though he absorbed only a fraction of the message, right away he knew they were in serious trouble because Helen simply didn't over react – she didn't know how.

"...Shit, someone's coming..." the connection broke.

Left suspended in the vacuum left by her words, Spencer puffed out his cheeks and exhaled slowly, straightening his back. The hand he dragged down his face came away sheathed in sweat.

All too slowly the answer machine rolled into its second message: "...it's me again," this time an echo distorted her voice. More cell phone than landline, he thought; and the location perhaps a corridor or stairwell. "Before I speak understand this: it's imperative that you believe me, implicitly, and do exactly as I say. Spencer, you're my husband and I love you, but it's not enough that I trust you – I need you to trust me."

"I do trust you," he muttered indignantly. "What's happened?"

"My gun is pre-loaded and ready for use." She took another breath "Take it from the lock box. Keep it with you. If in the next few hours I should turn up at the house, kill me, without question. Do not enter into a conversation. Do not look me in the eye. Do not respond to anything I say. Just shoot me."

A cool hand enfolded his heart and held it. "Jesus, Helen-"

"I _know_ this sounds ludicrous – even saying it out loud feels absurd. But you must do as I tell you. My life may depend on it – Christ, I know how cockamamie this must seem but I've no time to explain. First I need to...oh, screw these assholes," she said wretchedly. "I'm getting out of here." The answer phone beeped and he awaited enlightenment in the final message. But it was a telemarketer plugging life insurance.

Spencer stopped the machine and brushed his finger along the controls to replay the message when a cool breath, little more than a sigh, tickled the back of his neck. He stiffened. In the mirror he saw his wife standing directly behind him, her face hidden behind her hands, which she used to rub her eyes.

"Helen!" he reached for her and she collapsed into the chair beside the phone. "I...I just got your message," he gently eased her hands away from her face; she was white as chalk, her eyes badly bloodshot, not quite in focus and somewhat vacant; she winced at the overhead lights.

"Message..." she winced as though speaking hurt. She swallowed thickly, shut one eye and squinted at him with the other. "What's the matter, Spencer?"

"The matter?" his voice went falsetto. "I hoped you'd tell me."

When he'd gotten her a brandy he replayed the tape. Throughout the recording he watched his wife's face, but at no point did her expression alter. After the second message concluded he looked to her. "Well?"

"Can't be me," she said. "Problems in the lab, maybe – can't remember making any calls. I was ordered to get some rest...I guess I came home."

"I don't like this, Helen," he said, pacing the carpet. "I don't like this at all." He reached for the phone.

"No!" she grabbed his arm. "Don't call anyone."

Pain drew his gaze to where Helen's fingers sank into his arm. "Helen I need to know what's happened."

Slowly her grip eased. "I just feel so tired."

He took her arms and gently pulled her upright. "Upstairs," he said. "Then I'll call Doctor Freidman."

"Please," she said. "No doctor."

"Okay _okay_. Whatever you say, Helen." On their bed, as he fumbled to unbutton her coat sleeves, he noticed her wedding finger was bare; only the narrow tan line remained.

"Your ring," he said, but she was asleep. Out of curiosity he unfastened her top two blouse buttons. Her gold anniversary locket was missing.

Before calling Henry Monroe he decided to replay the message, figuring a more objective examination might make some sense – it could hardly make less. As he reached for the play button the phone rang in his face; he flinched and then cursed, angry with himself. But instead of picking it up he let the machine answer.

It was Helen's voice, desperate and scared, that crackled from the speaker. "Spencer if you're there I need you to pick up...Spencer?"

"What the..." Spencer pulled a face, looked up at the ceiling, and then snatched the phone from its cradle. "Who the hell is this?"

"Oh Spencer!" the voice screamed. "I've been calling your cell phone for an hour." This time there was no echo in the voice but a familiar, monotonous drone, as though she were calling from a moving car. "Now listen to me-"

"You listen to me, whoever you are," Spencer began hotly.

The caller fell silent. "It's already there, isn't it?" Genuine fear colored the words, which were partly drowned by screeching tires and the prolonged beep of a horn. "S _hhhhiit_...Spencer you have to believe me. For the love of God and...and the time we fucked in the parking lot at Disney World and used Mickey Mouse napkins for clean-up."

This crude recollection took him by surprise and tied his tongue long enough for the caller to fire away a few more sentences. A part of him knew it was a ruse, to trick him into listening a moment longer. It certainly worked. Helen, true to her form, thought on her feet. But how could this be Helen?

"The person at our house isn't me."

"The hell she isn't-"

"Stop talking and _listen_. She's an exact copy. And at the moment looks and acts and sounds like I do, and evidently has some of my memories – but memory is the key..."

"This isn't funny..." Spencer began, more out of subconscious homage to common sense than analytical thought.

"...the important thing is that her memories will be incomplete for several hours yet, and baby, at this point that's the only discernable difference. Three hours from now she will be my mirror image. A perfect impression of everything I've ever done, everything I know, my thoughts, my loves, hates, fears, my dreams will be hers. Including Disney World. The only thing of mine she won't have Spencer, is my _soul_."

"My wife is upstairs sleeping," he said. "You're a crazy bitch on the goddamn telephone." The cockeyed mirror threw back his reflection, all eyes and frown and bulging veins.

"In bed, is she?" the voice said quietly. "White as new snow, bloodshot eyes, feels dizzy and can't remember much? Hungry as hell but won't eat? Am I getting warm? Go check her third finger to see if she's wearing my ring. Or the locket you bought from Crockett's in New York for our tenth wedding anniversary? Spencer _I'm_ your wife.

"Go to hell," Spencer hung up and disconnected the cable.

Upstairs Helen slept deeply, peacefully. Spencer crept to the bedside and touched her forehead. Her skin felt very cool and a bit clammy. Only now, sitting with her, did he realize a small part of him had actually begun to believe the voice on the phone. Feelings of guilt and anger and God knew what else – embarrassment, probably - reddened his face. "I'm sorry, Helen."

At the sound of his voice her eyes peeled open and, when he met her gaze, such a feeling of icy horror washed over him the skin on his back shrank and _shifted_. For several ghastly seconds he found himself staring into the eyes of a stranger. Any semblance of his wife merely shape and form; her eyes were cold and blank, without history, without...memory? Then it was gone – Helen blinked and once more seemed only confused.

"How you feeling?" he stuttered.

Her eyes became slits. "Shredded...can't hold a thought."

"What happened at the lab?"

Her gaze drifted away and her eyes widened. "I don't know. I remember seeing...someone who looked like me. Right there in the lab...staring at me. A big man with a moustache was yelling."

Spencer felt the color leave his face. Big man with a moustache? Henry Monroe?

Helen sank into the pillow, deflated, her eyes closing. "I just need to rest...a few hours. Then I'll be all right." She passed out.

At the back of his mind a seed of doubt began to germinate. Spencer tip-toed out, closed the door, and went back downstairs to reconnect the phone. In the rolodex he found and dialed the listing for Henry Monroe. If that corporate prick...

"Yeah?" said Monroe impatiently.

"Spencer Darwin" Spencer began. "Helen's-"

"Darwin?" he seemed suspicious. "What...what can I do for you buddy?"

"I'm not sure. Helen's home and she-"

The line clicked and went dead. "Hello...Henry?" Spencer frowned at the mute handset, then held down the disconnect buttons while considering his options. But the phone rang in his hands.

It wasn't Monroe calling back. It was Helen. "Two minutes is all I ask, Spencer." She said quickly. "Two minutes and I'll tell you everything."

"This better be earth-shattering."

"All right – to begin with, I don't work for Trasc Pharmaceuticals. Trasc is a cover for a government funded research facility. For the last five years I've helped develop a technology you've only ever seen in movies. We're in the final stages of developing an advanced transportation system that will, well, change the world as we know it. In a nutshell: Teleportation."

"And I thought your first story was poor."

"The basic technology is not all that new. For years we've been able to teleport sub atomic particles. But more recently we've had several massive breakthroughs – mainly through huge advances in computer power. We've successfully teleported rats, mice, birds and even monkeys; but they all suffer the same side effect: memory loss. On every other level the teleportation process works. But medical test's reveal that _acquired_ memory – as opposed to reflex or race memory – is either damaged or...misplaced during teleportation."

"So you teleport people from A to B? Gee, that's just terrific."

"No, we recreate the source, in the amino-protein vats. It would take me forever to talk you through the scientific process so I won't. What we produce is a perfect copy. Is this illegal? Bet your ass, that and a bit more. So, to create the illusion of moral responsibility the ethics committee implemented some half-baked protocols. A two day life - as if creating these things is fine so long as you kill them after the weekend. The intention, once the technique is perfected, is destroy the original and keep the clone.

"But that is decades away because it takes years to monitor the clone to rule out genetic aberration or mutation, or any other anomaly that may only manifest itself in five, ten or even twenty years. Or a hundred years. The truth is we don't know."

Spencer stared at the slanted mirror, stunned at how quickly the neat, button-down fabric of his life had come undone. Without thinking he reached out and tried to straighten the mirror. In his mind's eye he saw Helen – or was it Helen – wandering into the house like a zombie, gazing at her reflection, reaching out to touch it; preparing a meal she can't bring herself to eat.

He sat bolt upright and looked toward then kitchen door. That was it. Tomato Soup. Helen despised it. Always had.

"Oh my Christ,"

"Spencer?" Helen said.

He let out an exasperated breath. "I called Henry Monroe."

"You _didn't._ "

"He sounded...strange."

"I'll bet he did. The son of a bitch is not your friend, Spencer. He's taken over the project and if he gets his way he'll recover the clone for analysis - keep it alive. I'll be dammed if I let them use me as a guinea pig for the next thirty-five years."

"What do you care," Spence said, shrugging inwardly. "About a carbon copy?"

"This is the real trick, Spencer. The clone wouldn't see itself as something created in a lab. Other than different birthdates it will be Helen Louise Darwin through and through. No one – not you, my sister or my mother would tell us apart. The only contradiction would be the new memories we made, and they started a few hours ago."

"This is insane," he said levelly.

"It is insane, Spencer. Can you imagine my meeting this thing, created in a lab and privy to every thought I've ever had? If you don't act right now, then one way or another, I'm going to be a fucking lab rat for the rest of my life. And I'll never forgive you for that, not when you can stop it." She fell quiet; the only sound the muffled engine and distant bu-bump of tires rolling over seams in the concrete.

"Why would they allow this - _clone_ to leave the facility in the first place?"

"A leak in one of the protein vats compromised security and the other... _me_ got dressed and just walked out. No one thought to stop her because they believed it really was me. By the time we secured the leak she was long gone. Of course no one knew where – but for obvious reasons I had a damn good idea."

"I...I can't do it," he said.

"You _have_ to. I won't get there before Monroe – he's got access to the company's chopper so could be there before nightfall. Oh Spence, if I were there I'd kill her myself, but I'm not. You are, and the longer you leave it the harder it will be." She cursed. "Shit, my cell phone needs charging. In about a minute we'll be cut-off."

"I can't do it," he said in a very small voice. _Did he believe this? Was he really, honest to God taking any of this science fiction bullshit seriously?_ Then, in a louder voice: "What did I say to you before leaving yesterday?"

"What?"

"About the reactor leak. I said something that made you grin?" He was shouting now. "If you can tell me that-"

She quickly broke in: "You said if the reactor leaked you would _glow_ about your business as usu-" the line went dead.

Spencer lowered the phone. Blood roared in his temples and he couldn't swallow. In the upstairs closet he found the lock box, tapped in the combination and took out his wife's gun.

As he ascended the stairs the house grew uncomfortably warm. In their bedroom the curtains were drawn but sufficient light seeped in to pick out the vague hump beneath the sheets. The room smelled...odd.

He raised the barrel and drew a bead, grimly applying pressure to his mind in order to apply pressure to the trigger. His hand quivered. "Lord, Jesus Christ this is insane..."

The Helen clone turned over, pushing the covers away, sat up and looked at him. Color bloomed in her cheeks; her eyes were wide, clear, alert. "Oh dear," she said quite calmly. "I guess I told you to kill me."

He said nothing.

"I thought so. Spencer, put down the gun. You've been hoodwinked by a clone.."

"I can't." he said painfully.

"I'm your wife, Spencer."

"No," he said. "You must _know_ that you're not."

"I'm Helen Spencer Darwin."

He tore his gaze away.

"Spencer look at me," she said, suddenly worried. "Look at me."

"They'll take you back," he said to the floor. "Treat you as a lab rat."

"I'm so sorry, Spencer," she said. "I should have told you long ago."

He shook his head miserably.

"Just put down the gun and come to me. Spencer...Spencer look at me!"

He looked at her.

"I'm your _wife_ ," she said, there were tears in her eyes. "And deep down I think you know that. You must do what you're heart tells you."

During the early hours a car drew up. Nimble footsteps crossed the porch. A key scratched in the lock. Quick fingers danced across the alarm's keypad. Spencer stirred in bed, semi-aware that someone had come into the room. He caught wind of a strange, sickly urine smell and thought briefly of leaking vats. Curious fingers touched his neck, and in the darkness explored every contour of his face. When they brushed his lips he opened his mouth, there they lingered while he kissed each in turn.

There was no wedding band.

His eyes opened to a cold room.

A dark shape loomed over him.

"Helen?"

" _Oh yes..._ " she whispered in the darkness.

### The Hollow Man

Every morning felt like the morning after: stale and muted, still as a stopped watch. For seven lonely nights his gaze had traced ceiling shadows, patterns on the wallpaper and pleats in the curtains. Sarah's side of the bed was cold and undisturbed, yet still imparting her lingering scent. Similarly fragrant would be the other man's sheets, only warm and tangled and... _sighing_.

Johnny turned on his side, wincing at both the thought and the familiar pricking sensation behind his eyes. Tears made him feel foolish and pathetic, but in shedding them he'd learned a few human truths: time healed nothing - it was a monster. And dignity? A privilege of those who hadn't been pushed hard enough to lose it.

"It's not a fling. I _love_ him." It wasn't so much the words that leveled him as the subtle softening of her expression they inspired.

By then he had gone into shock anyway. "But _I_ love _you_..." Unable to bear the look in her eye, he'd quickly grabbed and hugged her and stared wide-eyed and terrified over her shoulder, but such was her response he might have been embracing a corpse. And then she was gone.

Damn it

Heart thudding from the recollection, Johnny rolled onto his back and stared at the ceiling. Sleep was light years away. With the stubborn resolve of a spurned lover his mind applied nudge and tweak to their last conversation, striving to see it differently.

But the meager solace he found in mind games did not bring her back.

Exhaling wearily, he turned on his side and slid a hand into his shorts, closed his eyes and imagined faceless women. It was a purely functional act, after which he slumped, hot skinned and mellow in the post-coitus condition that allowed a moment of emotional indifference where memories no longer tormented him. If he was lucky, sleep would find him before she crept back into his mind.

Sometime later a cluster of noisy sparrows gathered outside his window. Like a jack-in-the-box he sprang upright, a hundred percent wide awake, his memories and thoughts already saddled up and raring to go. Groaning, he crumpled back into the pillow.

Evidence of his earlier hour self-appeasement was smeared on the sheets and his pyjamas. Feeling absurdly self-conscious and somewhat sordid, he slid out of bed and into the shower and quickly soaped up. But while water splashed and steam billowed, his muse flashed him a crisp image of his girl pinned beneath the other man, limbs impossibly wide, her expression almost desperate, her brow dimpled with perspiration-

"You.... _bitch_!"

He flicked the water jet to cold and shivered for a full minute, holding on to the wall, riding the storm of lewd images running through his mind. Finally he planted his forearm against the tiles, reached down and grabbed himself, initiating another therapy session, just to take him through breakfast, get him to work where he could abandon himself in the saw mill; deaden his senses amidst the thumping of machinery.

'lo John," old Pearson croaked as Johnny left his house. "Looks like rain."

Johnny grunted but didn't look up – not after what he thought he'd seen yesterday. No thank you sir. But at the last moment his glance flickered at his next door neighbour. The old duffer grinned broadly, revealing twists of straw between blackened teeth. The bloodless facial wound Johnny saw yesterday was still there, only now held together by a crude woollen cross stitch.

Johnny snatched his gaze away and hurried on.

Fifteen minutes or an hour later he found himself not at work manning the machines, but in the local park, staring at the murky duck pond. He felt he'd just applied an ingenious tweak to the break-up, one that inspired Sarah to open her hands and fall into his arms. But maddeningly he couldn't recall the precise details, and like a dream they fragmented.

Footsteps scraped the cinder path behind him, alerting Johnny to a stranger's approach. His undulating reflection was joined by another. Paper rustled briefly, then several bread crusts flew past him and plopped into the water. Casually keeping his back to the stranger, Johnny turned away and sat on a wooden bench.

Once seated, he watched the new arrival dip an arthritic hand into a polythene bag and scatter crusts like he was sowing seed. The old man wore a grime-shiny overcoat, thick socks with no shoes, and a flat cap. Even at this distance Johnny detected the reek of must and decay. Lord, what an existence. Feeding ducks in a park while quietly decomposing.

The world turned colder. Johnny dragged himself away, helped along by a savage gust of wind that whipped across the pond. Ducks quacked and complained. A few feathers and then the old man's flat cap blew past him, spilling filaments of straw as it tumbled.

Johnny glanced back, expecting to see the pensioner lumber after it. But the old man lay crumpled at the water's edge. A duck waddled up and boldly picked a crust from his fingers. Only reluctantly did Johnny go to his aid, and then all he found was an empty raincoat, stuffed and stitched penny-for-the guy fashion with balled newspaper. A burst football for a face.

By mid-day Johnny had dismissed the paper-stuffed pensioner as another stress-induced hallucination. With the wind gusting, he retreated to the benches facing the playground, where he sat hunched, watching the tree-line. In his mind's eye Sarah returned to collect her remaining belongings. While she silently gathered her stuff he sat in a chair and read the paper. This seemed to bother her. His devil-may-care attitude made her realize that...that-

A flash of movement before his eyes became a runny-nosed toddler with a blue band-aid bridging his nose. He was eyeing a blue Frisbee lay at Johnny's feet. Driven by an instinct he couldn't quite understand, Johnny lunged and grabbed him. The kid jumped but didn't cry out. Johnny pulled him closer and peeled off the band-aid. Inside the wound beneath he saw an intricate fibre-glass skeleton.

Johnny let go as though he'd touched a snake. He thrust both hand into his pockets, looked only at the ground, and hurried away. In his peripheral vision he glimpsed button-eyed mannequins, puppets without string, even animated scarecrows. All he needed was a Tin Man, a Lion and he'd have the set.

He desperately needed to talk to Sarah – if only for a minute. Or even a few seconds. A civil word from her lips would calm and carry him through the day. Nights, of course, were another matter.

Johnny circled the park, virtually marooned in memories, until daylight merged into dusk. Those fateful six and a half seconds during which Sarah ended their relationship replayed on his mind continuously, each a slight variation, each viewed from a new perspective in which he'd look for a sign - however small - that might suggest she still loved him. It was the freezing rain hammering the earth that interrupted the loop. His clothes were saturated. His hands and face numb.

Go home, take a shower, and get hold of yourself.

Ah, the muted voice of logic. Something he occasionally heard but felt incapable of heeding. Logical thought reminded him too much of his mother.

Are you a man or a scarecrow?

Warm light from the nearby houses glinted through glistening shrubbery at the park's perimeter. Johnny found the right place instinctively, left the path and pushed through dripping laurels, fighting against the stems until he saw the house beyond. He settled in the wet-earth smell amongst discarded soda cans and sandwich wrappers.

Her hair in pigtails, an apron about her waist, Sarah stood chopping vegetables at the kitchen window. The mere sight of her both swelled and tore his heart. It also sharpened his awareness of how simply wretched he had become.

"Sarah," he whispered, rocking himself in the deepening chill. "Sarah...Sarah."

As he said her name she looked out of the window. But he knew she could not see him. The darkness would throw back her reflection. In truth he could probably step onto the lawn and remain invisible. Even sit within a few feet of her.

With slow, deliberate movements he clawed his way out of the laurel and stepped over the fence. The lawn squelched underfoot as he padded up to the house and squatted under the window. Faint strains of a musical beat came to him.

Feeling vaguely foolish and pathetic yet compelled to continue, Johnny slowly raised his head above the ledge until he saw into the kitchen. Sarah looked straight at him but gave no sign that she saw him. Shivering violently, feeling mugged by the injustice, he watched his girl preparing food for another man.

" _Sarah_ ," he whispered intensely. " _What have you done to me_?"

At the side of the house a door slid open and brisk footsteps approached. A five hundred watt security light lamp flooded the garden with light. Johnny scuttled weasel quick behind the wheelie bin. "Sarah?" It was a man's voice - shockingly close. "Better open the window, love."

Above him, the window opened and out spilled warmth, cooking smells and finally Sarah's hand on the latch. It was close enough to touch. Johnny's hand twitched.

The footsteps were right on top of him when the bin he was crouched behind shifted on its wheels. The plastic lid swung open, the vacuum sucking out rancid air, and something thumped inside. Gagging on the stench, Johnny held his breath, not daring to move. When the footsteps did not retreat he slowly raised his head.

A dark-haired stranger, silhouetted against the light, stared at him expressionlessly. "Sarah?" the guy said. "I think you'd better come out here."

His tone of voice brought Sarah marching out before Johnny could fully emerge from his hiding place. In full view of them both, he stumbled to all fours and crawled onto the muddy grass, where he stood like a naughty child.

Sarah quickly dried her hands with a tea towel, her flushed cheeks rapidly losing their color. "The hell are you doing in our garden?"

_Our Garden_...

"I... wanted to see you." It was the plain truth. His ability to bullshit had evaporated along with his dignity.

The man huffed.

"You," Johnny said, spinning. "You're to bla- "

An explosion of stars filled his vision. The world tilted away like a falling painting, releasing another starburst, from which Sarah's face swam into view. Robbie stood at her side, fists balled, swapping his weight from foot to foot.

Johnny stared for a long moment into Sarah's eyes. They were blank as doll's eyes. The look he'd so desperately hoped to see again was utterly gone. How could he have believed otherwise? The line had been crossed. She had lain with another man: kissed him, held him, let him touch her.

For the second time he dragged himself up off the lawn, but instead of crawling away, he went in low and charged his attacker. They both went down, with Johnny on top. But the feel of the man's body writhing against his own sickened him. Johnny had never been a fighter – not even at school. After a token attempt at wrestling, he gave up and broke away.

Sarah barged past and pulled her man to his feet. "Oh Robbie..." In the fall, Robbie had sustained a four inch cut to his right cheek. Although it went fairly deep it did not bleed. Inside the wound - which to Johnny looked like a fabric tear - he saw tiny bundles of tightly packed straw. At sight of this he shut his eyes and drove his knuckles hard into his temples, clenching his skull.

While her arm meandered around Robbie's waist, Sarah regarded Johnny with casual hatred. Robbie smirked, his facial movement further opening his damaged cheek and spilling more stuffing. Sarah spotted this and sucked in a melodramatic breath, fussing and kissing him better.

Johnny narrowed his eyes. "Why?"

Sarah cocked her head. "Christ, you really don't know, do you?"

" _Please_."

"Go home," she suggested. "And take close look at yourself, Johnny."

Feeling frostbitten and forlorn, Johnny trudged home and stood slumped beneath the hot shower, but the cold stayed with him. Even the old faithful ritual of self-appeasement failed; whenever he felt the stirrings of arousal, an image rose of Sarah writhing beneath a sticks and straw lover. Eventually he shut off the shower and approached the mirror, wiped an arc in the condensation and regarded his reflection.

Had Sarah left him because he was going insane? Or was he losing his mind because he'd lost her? Trickles of condensation distorted his image until he no longer recognized himself.

Alone at the kitchen table he uncorked a bottle of red. He drank until his head spun too quickly for hurtful thoughts to take hold. He felt massively weary, but his body refused to close down. When his glass was empty he rose slowly and returned naked to the mirror, where he stared himself out, hoping for enlightenment but getting none.

Perhaps, he thought, remembering the scarecrow, the answer lay deeper.

A steadying hand on the washbasin, he reached for his razor, held his palm upward and pressed the blade hard against his wrist.

Let it be blood, he thought. Surely only a genuine, flesh and blood human being could feel so much hurt. So let it be blood; warm and crimson and spurting.

Swaying on his feet, he sucked air, closed his eyes and pulled hard on the blade.

He looked down. "Oh no."

Lord, how it hurt.

And finally, Johnny understood.

### Perpetual Pupil

"It's a derelict building." Cindy muttered, killing the engine. "Hardly going to hurt you now."

Calvin Littlechild quietly regarded the old school across neglected, windswept playing fields. In the foreground aging goal-posts sagged and leaned, as though succumbing to the marauding ryegrass. A dozen or more roof pitches were missing ridge tiles or patches of slates. The entire ground floor was shuttered, but here and there sunlight picked out windows with missing boards.

"Looks smaller somehow...." he mused.

"It _will_ look smaller," Cindy said, rooting in her handbag. "We're a mile away."

"Feel like a stroll?" Calvin asked, immediately wishing he hadn't.

"It was your school - not mine." She lit a cigarette and lowered the window. "I can't believe I let you drag me here."

"Doctor Williams said it would be... therapy."

"They're your demons, Cal," she said, looking at her watch. "You go on and cast them out. Just don't be long."

"I won't be," he said, getting out of the car.

Sweat beaded on his brow before he'd gotten ten feet into the long grass. He looked down at his feet, marvelling at how completely chaos had reclaimed the turf. Where once there was a football pitch there was now a meadow. The land had reverted, but the school's singular character withstood the rot.

He used his sleeve to blot his face and he squinted back at the car. Cindy was tinkering with the radio, probably expecting him to lose his nerve and scurry on back. But he had to follow this through; he had to look upon the school - upon his old classroom. Confront his childhood fear with adult sensibilities.

With the building ahead and to his right, Calvin tramped through the grass towards the tennis courts. The chain-link perimeter fencing and its steel frame were long gone. A tract of sun-bleached tarmac and faded white lines provided the only clue to its history. Broken glass and beer cans littered the weary expanse.

It occurred to him that during his five years at St. John's he'd never once set foot on these courts. Crossing them now made him uneasy, as though he were breaking school rules. He scoffed at himself, but the grass verge at the other side came as a relief. He snuck a glance back at the car. Cindy had blurred to a slender pastel smear through the window. Had she come along she'd have probably had him beating a no-nonsense path to room 5A. Flush his system with a full on confrontation with his fears. But he needed to do this alone.

The building looked so much older than its thirty-seven years. Dozens of second floor windows were now jagged webs of broken glass. Several were flung wide, and out of them hung the same atrocious green curtains from sixteen years ago, now faded and torn. Their familiarity drew a shudder from him.

Deep inside the building a door slammed, the _boom_ echoing down empty corridors. A seagull suddenly broke from the roofline, screeching madly. Calvin started, his hands retracting to his chest. The curtains flapped and unfurled. Of course, the wind had a clear run right through the upper floors; doors and windows would slam all day.

He pressed on but dragged his feet, eyes soaking up the familiar lines and angles of footpaths that would eventually lead him to room 5A. Around the first bend the path was obstructed by a plywood sheet; KEEP OUT stencilled on its face. Above it, a jemmied window creaked in the wind. Strewn about were several pots and pans, as though vomited by the classroom. Calvin stepped up to the window and tiptoed to peer inside.

A dozen or so hobs and double ovens were still plumbed in, and the theory half of the classroom still had tables and chairs. Cupboards and drawers hung open, ransacked, their contents spilled. It was as though all the pupils had simply vanished. And instead of clearing out the school they'd just boarded it up.

Calvin heard what he thought was laughter. He turned around, fearing somebody was standing at his shoulder. _Nonsense_. This side of the school faced open farmland. No residential properties stood within half a mile in every direction - the next closest human being was Cindy.

Scoffing at his jumpiness, yet glad of the distraction, he wondered what other equipment had been left. He cupped his hands to any gaps he could find, glimpsing ill-defined rows of tables and chairs, which looked strangely forlorn without pupils. A stool placed upon a desk briefly became a dust-covered teacher presiding over a still and empty classroom. Today's lesson? The nature of decay. How did the saying go? _Given enough time, everything will rot_.

At the chemistry lab near the end of the wing he stepped on a fallen board marked with a dozen dirty shoe-prints – some of them child-sized. A flash of silver on the inner sill caught his eye, and when he touched what he thought was a bead of solder it acted like liquid. Mercury! Probably from a thermometer – or the jar Mr Harris kept locked away.

A cloud sailed over the sun, dropping the temperature several degrees. Calvin took a backward step and swept his gaze across the deserted outbuildings, finding something deeply offbeat about the lack of clamour, of boisterous goings on, of perpetual activity. It gave the place the sinister appeal of a deserted bird's nest.

Exactly how he'd seen it twenty years ago when Mr Bates lost his mind and held him here overnight.

He felt in his gut the slow burn of fear and excitement because he was _doing_. See me Cindy? I'm doing. This indeed was therapy – the entire school at his mercy. No longer accountable to its straight-line regulation or playground codes or Mr Bates' feverish all-night one-on-one tuition.

Calvin disregarded his quickening pulse and continued his countdown to room 5A. On the next block the greenhouse extension of the biology lab was a patchwork of broken panes. The lab door hung wide open, allowing him a direct view inside. He held his breath. Faced with an open door into the building he felt on the verge of a revelation; about himself; about the school, and precisely why Mr Bates went insane. The answer lingered on the fringes of his understanding but he couldn't quite pin it down. It had something to do with _control_.

After a third deep breath he entered the school through the lab door.

He was inside.

Straight away he whiffed the sickly stench of old gas. He stopped cold, stunned by the pocket of memories trapped in that distinctive aroma. As familiar to him now as sixteen years ago. For a few nauseating seconds he regressed and experienced the mindset of his eleven year old self, the fears and naiveties unique to that mindset. This quickly subsided but didn't altogether vanish.

At the front of the classroom he went behind the teacher's desk. Ironically, vandals had used school chalk to scrawl names or obscenities on the blackboard. A huge smiley amoeba overlooked the tables with the heading: _Today's lesson_ , _reproduction_. _Get 'em out lads!_

An unbroken stick of chalk lay on the floor at his feet. He stretched for it and began adding his name when he noticed another inscription: _Bates woz ere ok cha!_

The chalk snapped on the 'L' of Cal. Superfine flurries of yellow dust rained down from his fingers. He felt a sudden, desperate need to use the bathroom, and he lowered his arm. Had St. John's been revisited by Mr Bates? Unlikely – the man was surely dead by now – Bates had been pushing retirement twenty years ago, and probably spent his last years writing his name in crayon. Calvin peered over his shoulder, imagining a full class witnessing his defacing of the blackboard.

To convince himself that he wasn't spooked - which of course he was - he finished his scrawling. Whilst scrutinizing his artistry he realized he'd never written his name here in anything other than an exercise book. Never a carved initial on a desk or a school bench.

"There's another one, Frank," a voice said. "Destructive little bastards."

Calvin turned and through the doorway spotted two men approaching the lab via the tarmac path. Both wore in hi-viz work gear and yellow hard hats. Calvin quickly dropped to his haunches and leaned against the desk. Sweaty and mischievous, he listened as the men hammered away at something. Two minutes later their voices became muted with distance. He peered around the desk and saw that they had nailed the door shut, locking him inside.

His mind sprang back twenty years; he was eleven and trapped in the school with the lunatic Mr Bates, forced to complete endless spelling tests, essays, define meanings of obscure words; recite the alphabet, poems, hymns and prayers; work the gym equipment. No one had missed Calvin because he was supposed to stay at Pete's house. When he didn't turn up there, Pete assumed he'd decided to stay home. No one imagined that he'd been seized by an unstable teacher and held overnight in school.

After a while the fear subsided and Calvin sighed, making a deliberate attempt to get hold of himself. After all, his purpose here was to weaken the hold of his childhood trauma, not to reinforce it. Perhaps being locked in by the workmen provided an ideal opportunity for confronting and overcoming the fear. He'd simply have to find another way out. But first he needed to pee.

Because of the shuttering the ambient light in the corridor was poor, and his bravery soon wilted when faced with the frosted glass in the toilet door. A twice or thrice daily haunt for five years, yet now he stiffened, plagued by feelings of being observed. Bates had followed him down here, watched him urinate and made him doubly scrub his hands before marching him back upstairs for more lessons.

After half a minute the quietness became surreal, demanding mutual silence. If Cindy were to see him this way...he quickly hurried across the corridor and pushed at the frosted glass.

It was dusk in the toilets. The constant plink of a leaky tap and the muffled hiss of feeder pipes the only sounds. The dull green walls, almost black in this light, were streaked with slime. Mildewed wash-basins were islands on stilts in an inch of stagnant water. He skirted the foul smelling pool and grimaced his way into the first cubicle. The enclosed space amplified his fumbling and he aimed for the porcelain rather than the water.

_Hurry, boy..._ a voice whispered intensely.

Fingers and thumb stopped the flow and he cocked his head. All he heard was the leaky tap and his own heartbeat. When holding himself became uncomfortable he un-pinched his fingers and urinated explosively onto the seat.

I said hurry!

Straining to listen, Calvin pressed his ear to the partition, hearing what sounded like the swish of fabric...shallow breathing. He quickly finished his business and zipped up.

What's taking you so long, boy!

An expanse of blackness denser than the surrounding darkness heaved itself silently above the partition. Calvin sensed this but dared not look up. Nor did he feel around for the chain pull. He threw open the cubicle door and scrambled out. Although he kept his head lowered, he thought he saw reflected in the stagnant water a vaguely human shape descending into his cubicle.

He tumbled into the corridor gasping for breath and holding his sides, already cursing his overactive imagination. Cindy would no doubt be in hysterics. After he got his wind back he looked left towards the assembly hall, where the gloom was not so deep. Maybe down there he'd find a way out and.... and what? Scurry back to Cindy with his tail down?

He dragged a hand though his hair and squeezed the back of his neck, thinking. Perhaps what happened to him as an eleven year old had remained in the school along with the abandoned equipment; in its peeling paintwork, in the dust on the lampshades.

His search for an open window brought him to a junction of three corridors and a sea of blue and pink folders. What caught his eye were the one-inch sized pupil photographs glued in the left hand corners. He reached for one and in the glow of a skylight observed the squirrel-faced school-boy: James Pendlebury. The file contained personal information dating from primary school. "Personal files..." Calvin whispered. "...in a derelict building?"

Responding to an impulse he began gathering and arranging the folders into stacks; one for boys and one for girls. After collecting a few dozen or so he found himself staring at a one inch portrait of himself; a mop of mousy hair and a scattering of freckles. In the file he found a press-clipping: NIGHT SCHOOL TERROR FOR 1ST YEAR PUPIL. Calvin stared at the clipping and the attendant photographs of Mr Bates and himself.

Boom! Boom! Boom!

He looked over his shoulder. The booming came from somewhere off the east wing, signalling the boarding of yet another way out. If he didn't move more quickly he'd risk being locked in the school for real.

Calvin clutched his file and hurried along the west wing. The once gleaming double-width corridor by the main entrance was now a lustreless expanse that stuck to his feet. But the smell of old wax-polish endured. He peered through the wire-glass in the assembly hall doors, hoping to spot an unshuttered window.

A few narrow fingers of light arrowed into the huge space, illuminating the stage and rostrum from where the headmaster once breathed his fiery sermon: " _Cleanliness is next to Godliness._ " To the pupils something of a cosmic joke, but to the headmaster words to live by.

Calvin pushed through the swing door and threaded a path through hundreds of desks. All of the windows were boarded and dark, the exit doors secured. As his eyes became accustomed to the gloom he noticed three acrylic angels on the far wall, praying since the day of his admission, bathed in beams of heavenly light.

He ascended the stage and tried the door in the wings, but that too was locked. Before leaving he approached the rostrum and imagined an assembly, a small face at the front – freckled and unassuming. A row back and a year on the school-boy carried a troubled expression. Another year back and the eyes were dull and downcast. The final rows he could see only blurred features in the dimness. He turned away.

Back in the entrance hall he tripped on the uncoiled red fire hose, which sat in a pool of wetness and meandered into the boys changing facility. He followed it through the pale blue door, intending to escape through the gymnasium. But the gym door was locked; windows boarded.

He checked the shower stalls, which amazingly were still equipped with the same tarnished nozzles from sixteen years ago; the same institutional green tiles – the only difference the growth of mildew. A muddy football game ended here, condemning him to his first communal shower, shivering and naked in the company of others. He'd been so deeply self-conscious he'd turned purple and had trouble dressing. _Cleanliness is next to Godliness._

He noticed a black and white school tie draped over a coat hook, gathering dust. The silky texture reminded him of the morning ritual of striving for the perfect knot. Curiosity got the better of him and he looped the tie around his neck. After half a minute's fumbling he mentally slumped. The fit too loose, the knot too big and anything but symmetrical.

Straighten that tie boy!

Something moved in the shower stalls.

Calvin froze. "Is someone there?"

The plumbing rattled, knocked against the tiles underfoot. A moment later he heard the distinct sound of water striking tiles. Too spooked to simply walk in and look, he craned his neck to peer around the partition. In the dimness he saw tendrils of steam. Something skittered across the floor and stopped at his feet. Mistaking it for a rat, he almost shouted, but then he saw it was a chunk of carbolic, caked in grime and dust.

Boom! Boom! Boom! Another window shuttered.

Calvin turned to run, slipping twice before stumbling out into the corridor. His mind buzzed with the white noise of a school in session: indistinct chatter, doors opening and closing, the bustle of migrating pupils. Through the hall doors he saw or imagined an assembly in session, the Headmaster menacing the years from on high. The purple and bloated face of an irate teacher floated up to the glass. It was Mr Bates; his expression ghastly, his eyes ringed in red. Calvin continued, head down, keeping to the left hand side.

Boom! Boom! Boom!

Outside the Headmaster's office he paused to catch his breath. He made no attempt to rationalise his hallucinations. He was driven only by the will to get the heck out of the building.

" _Both_ hands," a muffled voice demanded. "Do it, lad!"

Through the headmaster's open door Calvin thought he saw on the wall the shadow of a boy surrendering his palms to a huge leather strap. "Cleanliness," whack! "Is next to," Whack! "Godliness!" Whack!

On the final stroke the boy whimpered.

"What is cleanliness?" the voice boomed.

"Next to Godliness, sir."

He tore himself away and broke into a sprint, but his legs seemed governed by other forces and slowed him to a brisk, orderly walk every few strides. His thoughts were scrambled, infested with those of the subservient school-boy, demanding that rules be obeyed. Keeping obediently to the left hand side, he tracked back to the cookery room. When he got there he discovered the window he'd looked through earlier was now shuttered.

"Oh no!"

Upstairs! None of the second floor windows were boarded. But the only room he knew of with a flat roof below it was the Library. Mr Bates' class. Room 5A, which right now was the last place he wanted to see.

With his stop start gait he made for the stairs on the west wing. As he passed the toilets he heard one of them flush. He put his hands over his ears and gritted his teeth.

The stairwell leading to the library was strewn with biros, pencils and books; Of Mice and Men, A kestrel for a Knave, and Lord of the Flies were creased and torn on the steps. Mr Bates would burst a blood vessel! Weaving through these he reached the first floor landing. The door to room 5A was closed. He peered through the glass before turning the knob and entering. His nostrils twitched at the smell of old books. He picked his way across the classroom on his toes and looked out of the window. Six feet below, just as he remembered, lay a flat asphalt roof.

Blessed late afternoon sunshine bathed the room with colour and warmth. Wind through the broken panes rustled loose pages of discarded books and pamphlets. Only the teacher's station had escaped vandalism. Mr Bates' padded chair sat obediently beneath the foot well. Drawers were sensibly shut and the desktop implements neatly arranged as though Mr Bates had just popped out.

Daylight shining obliquely through broken glass threw long and filigreed shapes across the tiles. The one cast by the teacher's chair fell between the aisles of books, looking more and more like Mr Bates was sitting in it.

Calvin put down his file and reached for the window latch, pushed it half open. Hinges squealed and loose glass tinkled onto the roof below. He winced, stopped breathing a moment and held perfectly still. When he applied more pressure the hinges squealed again. Several shards tumbled out and fell inside the classroom.

He heard the sssffffttt of skin against fabric; a grunt of displeasure; Mr Bates' chair creaked against the floor; footsteps across the classroom. Calvin felt a gentle push of air against his neck, raising the fine hair. A large shadow joined his on the floor and he thought he saw a hand reach for his blue file.

A fiery voice in his mind. " _Back to your seat, boy._ "

Calvin Littlechild slowly closed the window and quietly found his seat. The awful presence lurked at his shoulder, breathing heavily, smelling of pipe tobacco and aged fabric – aromas he associated with madness. At the edges of his vision other pupils busied themselves sharpening pencils, arranging text books, selecting titles from the library.

Boom! Boom! Boom!

Calvin ignored the sound and kept his head down. He neatened his tie and straightened his back. A maddening itch erupted on his scalp, which he forced himself to ignore. Finally the shadow moved away and Mr Bates' chair creaked again. Calvin cleared his throat and opened his text book.

"A noun is a naming word," he said.

_Gooood_.

"A verb is a doing word."

Yeeessss.

"An adjective is a describing word."

Again.....

### The Meteor and the Strawberry

You sit on the middle swing and push off with your sneakers, gaining height with timed pulls and thrusts, savouring the heady, momentary weightlessness, the mad rush of air, your feet swooping at the ground.

In the sky above the Monkey Bars, blazing a mercifully distant path across the upper atmosphere, you spot another meteor. You close your eyes and whisper to the darkness: "I wish Lucy Thomas was my girl," as you do at every sighting. Which is often. Ever since the rogue comet hit the asteroid belt Earth is in a three month long turkey shoot. Thousands have perished – kids as well, and you can't hide because meteors could smash concrete.

Life goes on around you. Mum walks to work; your brother Hal thumps you if you pass him on the stairs and as always you pine for Lucy Thomas.

Greenlands Park and its playground is your universe. On this balmy August afternoon every piece of apparatus spins or swings to the delight of screeching children; only the climbing frame is quiet, hijacked as usual by Scott Garrett and assorted eleven year olds, who perch on the bars like so many carrion crows. In the midst of them, the focus of their dubious attention, sits Lucy.

At eleven she is three years older but, as you're almost the same height, you've decided the gap is bridgeable. It just has to be because you cross-your-heart-and-hope-to-die love her to death. You sneak her face into your dreams, and when no one's looking, kiss your bare arm and pretend you're kissing Lucy. This morning you couldn't face breakfast – your mother thinks you're sickening. For what she doesn't know.

Twenty strides from you, Lucy remains ensconced in the company of crows, casual yet careful in faded blue jeans, her lemon sweater rolled at the sleeves, her blonde hair braided and in pigtails. Slowly your eyes lose focus as you slowly dissolve into another fantasy.... You are alone with Lucy. She _smiles_ and under her gaze you cease to be your mother's son and Hal's kid brother. Instead you are Lucy's secret boyfriend, together on the seesaw, facing each other as you alternately reach for the sky.

A minute or an hour later, your feet scrape the ground and the swing stops, dumping you in reality. You feel giddy and slightly breathless and adjust your focus to see Lucy watching you intently – her fixed gaze almost stops your heart. Could she be locked in a similar daydream?

Scott Garrett notices Lucy drifting and playfully pulls her pigtails. In the blink of an eye the spell breaks and she turns away. Part of you despairs because you know Scott is false, beguiling with his slick tomfoolery. Your fear is that if Scott can trick her into laughing at him, he might also trick her into liking him.

A second meteor cuts the sky beyond the climbing frame. "I wish..." you say out loud, but can't finish. The air smells of newly cut grass as you shrug free of the swing and count your steps to the climbing frame. Four boys lock horns in unspoken competition for Lucy's attention. Her delightful giggles at their brutish antics make you cringe. You take hold of the bars and climb.

"Hi Lucy," you say, unable to breath until: "Oh, hi Lenny," she replies, smiling and holding your gaze. If only the older boys would go play in the sand or on the swing-boats or just go on home. A moment alone with Lucy is all you need and then you'd know; you'd _know_.

"Get stuffed, shrimp." Scott Garrett says, swinging towards you. "Snotty little scabs aren't allowed on the frame."

"Then what are you doing here?" you shoot back, realizing too late you've said it out loud.

Everyone freezes, except for the half dozen pairs of bemused eyes, flitting between you and Scott. Primal playground instinct urges you to descend, to escape, but Scott doesn't seem angry; he seems afraid. Clinging to the bars like spider-monkeys, his five or so familiars share the expression.

Scott's face reddens and his body trembles: "MMMETEOOORR!" he hollers, pointing, then along with the others swings expertly down through the bars. They hit the ground as one and scatter like field mice, clawing their way off the park.

Over your shoulder you see the beautiful fiery ball high in the sky – it has no contrail as it's coming straight at you, faster than a speeding bullet, hotter than hellfire. T.V. images flash through your mind – fires, people lying in the ashes.

You drop through the apparatus with the casual skill of a playground veteran. In three bar grabs and two seconds you're on your feet and chasing your shadow off the park. Around you kids and grownups alike scream and shout and through it all, a familiar voice calls for you to please, please wait!

Scott and his previously cock-sure clan of eleven year olds are all heels and elbows. Their stampede strikes you with a sudden and startling revelation: everyone is now equal. In one masterly stroke fear has infected the mob with collective panic. You stop pumping your arms and look over your shoulder. Lucy Thomas struggles to escape the lower network of bars.

Behind her the approaching meteorite grows larger and brighter. You can hear it, you can smell it, you can feel its power. While those around you flap and squeal, you feel a strange enlightenment, as though a large piece of the cosmic puzzle has slipped neatly into place. Scott Garrett will not beat you for being cheeky. If you run naked through the sand-pit no one will laugh. The park is still your universe...

You fight against the crowd towards Lucy; you're unafraid, you're nine feet tall, top of the class; like Captain Scarlet - indestructible.

The shooting star roars over your heads, stirring a whirlwind of grass clippings and litter. Lucy covers her ears as the ground heaves and a wall of fire engulfs the tree line. A fraction ahead of the warm push you reach Lucy; she embraces you, her lemon sweater pure and soft and forbidden. As the world burns you say: "I wish..." and you give her a kiss.

It tastes of strawberries.

###  Epilogue

Timmy hitched up his faded Paddington Bear rucksack and scrambled up the fence as I reached to lift him. "I can do it," he said. "Just watch me." In his eagerness to impress he all but tumbled over the other side.

"Well done, Tim."

"See?" he replied, arms aloft. "I can even climb trees."

"Course you can," I said, shifting my own pack. Beyond the fence the meadow fell away gently through deciduous woodland into the Ribble Valley. The usually hazy atmosphere above the distant cityscape was astonishingly clear, yet even here redolent of decomposition. A stench sometimes unbearable, at other times vague, but always there.

I stepped over the fence and surveyed the terrain immediately ahead of us. Timmy shuffled to my side, looked down at my feet and tried valiantly to mirror my posture - such a world-weary pose for a boy not yet five. Although he endeavored to be like me, Timmy was without a doubt his mother's son. He had Sam's eyes, her mouth, her pout, her chin; and he'd inherited her uncanny ability of knowing what I was thinking.

"When will we see mum?" he asked, his gaze stretching towards the city skyline.

"Perhaps after we've reached the hospital," I said, and briefly turned my face away. For a four-year-old Timmy was very perceptive. I shaded my eyes and stole a look down at him. He was observing me shrewdly, searching me with his mother's eyes. "Let's make tracks," I said, dismayed at feeling uncomfortable under my son's gaze.

As we walked on, Timmy stooped to pick up a weather cone. "Dad, why couldn't we follow the river?" He blew a lock of hair from his eyes and forced the large cone into his hip pocket. "You said we could skim stones."

"Sorry kiddo, I didn't expect it to be so _hot_. In the woods we'll have plenty of shade."

I grimly recalled our approach to the river, cresting a hillock and seeing the shallows clogged with cattle, sheep, dogs, dozens of smaller animals, and of course people. Always people. I'd turned us back before Timmy reached a point where he might see.

"Shall we have our picnic here?" he suddenly asked in the shade of a large oak tree. In Timmy's world every outdoor meal was a picnic. If ever he was off his food we'd simply lay out a blanket, problem solved.

"Sure."

Timmy sat down and rummaged for his water bottle. I almost called for him to go easy, but he knew this already and took the smallest of sips. Shook the bottle to check the level then put it away.

In baking hot silence, broken only by the drone of insects, we sat cross-legged and ate tinned tuna. Mid way through, Timmy stopped chewing and lowered his spoon, his face went slack and his eyes widened.

"Timmy." I said quickly. "Your food."

"...at my assembly," he said, chewing slowly. "Before you came for me, Miss Webb fell down on the floor and started crying – she had big sores on her legs. Phillip Pearson laughed but it wasn't funny. I wanted to cry, too, but I didn't. I wish I had."

"You're a good boy, Timmy,"

"Daddy," he said, his gaze resting on the floor at his feet. "I want to go home."

The following day was unbearably hot. In the shade of our oak tree we ate a breakfast of kippers and tinned pineapple. Timmy bolted his food and paced the ground, constantly fastening and unfastening his rucksack. We were nearing city limits and he was exited, probably believing he'd soon be reunited with his mother. My belly was in knots. Built-up areas were fly-blown and rife with incidental diseases. I would never in a hundred years have returned, but what I needed was in my office at St Bart's.

The streets of Preston were as still as a stagnant pond. The cogs of suburban life had ground to a resounding, irrevocable halt. Nothing larger than a butterfly moved as we threaded our way gingerly along Blackberry Way.

We turned right at a log-jammed intersection and Timmy saw the truck before I had chance to cover his eyes. A huge articulated flatbed, its cargo piled high under rope webbing. An almost biblical swarm of bluebottles softened the outlines. The driver hung from the cab, his overalls stretched and split, his face an indistinct mass of tiny movement. Even dying, he must have continued running loads to the incinerators.

Three weeks ago the sight would have utterly horrified me. What alarmed me now was my apparent indifference. When you had nothing, you had nothing to lose, or so the saying went. But I still had my son.

Timmy said nothing about the truck. Perhaps he was thinking of his mother and was afraid of what he might hear. But what could I tell him? What did the grown-ups say to the children of post-war Hiroshima?

The hospital was still a mile away and I resigned myself to blindfolding Timmy and leading him by the hand through streets littered with similar sights. The only sounds the white noise of insects and the lonely echo of our footfalls. I would have spared him from witnessing these horrors, perhaps by leaving him at the tent with his colouring books and weather cones, but I could never leave him alone – his mother and the world had already deserted him.

Entering St Bart's through the main doors was not possible. A rugby-scrum of bodies blocked the entrance to a depth of several feet. A few had begun to liquefy. Yet their only predators were insects. No wild dogs or stray cats, ravens or carrion crows, rats or mice.

I instructed Timmy to keep his blindfold while I carried him around to the fire-escape. My quarters were on the first floor. I read the name on the frosted glass twice before shouldering my way into the room. It had been ransacked. A body lay slumped against the wall beneath my safe. I recognized Joe only by his blue suit. Written on the wall beneath my safe were the words. WE BLEW IT, STEVE. SEE YOU IN HELL.

After swapping Timmy to my left arm, I tapped in the combination and popped the catch. The leather pouch lay as I'd left it three weeks ago. I grabbed it and quickly fled the building, navigating corridors in mounting panic. I paused briefly at the confectionery stall to grab a chocolate bar.

At the sight of our pauper's picnic beneath the oak tree we finally rested. The immaculate face of the sun, unblemished by pollution, sank towards the horizon in a blaze of burnt orange, unwatched and unfelt. I fed Timmy the rest of the Tuna. He insisted on sharing it, but I couldn't swallow.

The temperature dropped and Timmy suddenly announced that he needed to go to the beach. I could barely hear him over the thumping of my heart.

"Sure," I said. "We can go to the beach."

"And sail a boat?"

"All the way to Timbuktu."

His face changed. "Does mum know the way?"

"Oh yes," I said. "Mum will know."

I removed the leather pouch from my bag and laid it on the grass beside the chocolate bar.

"Are they your special needles?"

"That they are."

He squinted at the label. "M-or-pe. Mo-"

"Mor _phine_ ," I said. "The 'P' and the 'H' together make a _Fuh_ sound."

"Moh- _feen_. Are you going to prick me again?"

"One last time."

"Will it hurt?" he winced.

"A little bit."

"Okay, dad," he bravely rolled up his sleeve, one eye straying to the chocolate.

"Not just yet," I said, suddenly struck by the breath-taking beauty of my son's face. "Just this once, you can eat your chocolate first."

In the West, the sun touched the ocean, dragging a cloak of silent, silent darkness behind it.

### Falling from Grace

When his main chute failed, Karl's stomach shrank to a fist-sized knot in his belly. He quickly fumbled for the reserve and yanked on the ripcord; the canopy remained bag-locked and he tumbled earthward at a hundred and twenty miles an hour.

Oh fuck

The ambient told-you-so terror rushed him in a series of despairing waves. Hot vomit crawled up his throat. His bladder let go, the acidic warmth quickly freezing on his skin. A stream of senseless blabber rolled off his tongue until he mentally grabbed and shook himself. The reserve chute had partially deployed but the suspension lines were a tangled bird's nest of knots and fabric. Stay calm. Free the lines. Stay _calm_.

Miles below him, the seesawing collage of cornfields and forests expanded inexorably. Winding through them, thin as a pencil line, was the country lane he and Grace traveled en route to the Sky Knights Parachute Centre. Grace waited anxiously somewhere in the Knight's drop zone, radiant as ever in a summer dress, watching him free fall. Would she be aware yet he was in trouble? Grace worried herself green at his every jump – even dreamed of him falling to his death; the one dream he had promised her would never come true.

_God help me_.

"He can't help you, Karl," a voice replied.

A naked man with blood red skin and yellow eyes fell beside him. In one hand he carried a small graphite pitch fork. No sign of a parachute.

Several thoughts leaped through Karl's mind: he had been the only jumper in the drop zone; the wind screaming past his ears blew away any hope of conversation in freefall. Which meant he was hallucinating.

"This is no hallucination, Karl – it's a rare opportunity."

Karl shied away but the falling man moved in accordingly. "No time for coyness \- we have less than a minute to strike a deal before you strike something else. No time for conscience or council – we must reach an accord."

"Who the hell are y...?" But Karl suddenly knew. Hallucination or not - he knew.

His inner revelation coaxed a genial smile from his companion.

"What is it you want from me - my _soul?_ " The wind shredded Karl's words.

"My needs are a little more elemental."

Karl looked at the fields and trees rapidly emerging from the haze. He made out the perimeter of the landing pit clearly – too clearly. By now he should be riding the canopy home. Grace was going to watch him die.

"Someone down there...dear to you? " The devil mocked. "One who will identify your remains? Will they love again? One by one will your photographs fade from the walls?"

"What do you want from me?" he screamed.

"From time to time I will desire to investigate your...sexuality." Saying this, the devil licked a fingertip and lightly tapped Karl's forehead. The contact was slight, yet evoked a vile flashgun image of such swinish debauchery that he threw up again; tears doubled his vision, and through them he saw the devil drooling. "Would you rather fall?"

Karl's control slipped and he clawed for the tangled chute, tugged frantically but fruitlessly at the lines above him. At the drop zone two dozen assorted pale ovals were angled up at him – surely about to bear witness to the club's first fatality. Incredibly, he caught sight of Grace bringing her hands to her face.

"Last chance saloon, flyboy." The devil offered his hand. "Tick-tock."

Karl watched the sun sinking below the horizon. Violent tremors wracked his body, cracked joints, popped vertebrae. In his mind's eye he witnessed the gruesome reality of hitting the ground. Of course the suddenness would mercifully outrun the pain, but the aftermath of anguish for his lovely Grace would endure. It would destroy her.

For Grace, then?

He reached tentatively towards the scaly, crimson palm; as he did so he felt the chute above him loosen, unravel, begin to deploy. He narrowed his eyes and stared at the devil. The wicked, lecherous glint in those yellow irises made him falter. _Investigate your... sexuality._ Less than an inch from taking the devil's hand, Karl recoiled and curled into a fetal position. "I'd rather FALL!"

All at once the raging air became still as a vacuum before exploding with the shriek of a thousand tortured voices. The devil's features writhed, melted, and churned with an eternity of rage. Flame burst from his red skin. The sky turned briefly scarlet and became rank with the stink of sulfur. As though repelled by negative poles the devil suddenly and furiously pirouetted away to become a speck in the sky.

Karl now saw treetops, fences, cornstalks...

"God, help me," he pleaded and braced himself for-

The violent jolt and cruel tightening of the harness made him cry out. A whip-snap of fabric heralded chute deployment and two scant seconds later he thumped the ground just short of the pea-gravel landing pit. Through vision doubled with tears and illusory points of light he saw a dozen people hurrying towards him. He tasted blood from biting his tongue.

"What happened?" and "Awesome!" and "Jesus, you beat the devil," were hollered as they guided him back to the main building. Several of the more extreme sky-divers whooped and high-fived each other and clapped him on the back.

Grace stood alone on the tarmac apron, head lowered, face deathly white.

"I couldn't let you fall," she confessed as Beelzebub stepped out from behind her, licking his fingertips.

### Back to Human

No more high school, no need to work, her meals for nothing and a warm place to sleep, yet Louise remained troubled. She and Gina lay slumped in the dappled shade of mum's apple-tree. Just the two of them together... as usual. Nothing to do but watch the day go by...as usual. Today clouds of gnats off the river sketched erratic paths in the shade above them. At regular intervals Mr Barlow's noisy grass cutting penetrated their drowse.

Incredibly three months had crawled by since the accident. For Gina their misadventure had already grown hazy, filed securely in her memory and labelled history, despite the physical reminders they bore. For Louise the accident happened yesterday; some days it seemed only an hour ago – she would even tremble. Her world lay smashed, completely and irreparably, but unlike her sister she could not, _would_ not, accept this grim status quo. Surely where there was punishment there was also salvation. But she couldn't do this alone.

She needed Gina aboard.

Using her elbows she heaved herself off the grass, shuffling around to face her sibling. Gina lay on her side gazing across the river, her chest rising and falling, her eyelids sinking. Louise looked at her askance, and after a beat, shuffled a bit closer: "About the accident-" she began.

"Don't you even go there," Gina warned, eyes closed. "I'm...I'm not in the mood."

Louise lowered her head. "Don't you feel ashamed? Have you no conscience?" Suddenly a fat bluebottle swung low and buzzed around her nose. She sneezed violently and shook her head sufficiently to discourage the fly from re-launching its attack. Since the accident insects had become such a greater nuisance, as had living by the river, which in summer attracted them in droves.

"Stop bitching for Christ's sake." Gina said. "We bent the rules, got ourselves killed, came back as dogs. What's your problem?"

Louise composed herself. "Be that as it may, we can still make amends; balance it out. Learn from our slip ups and become worthy."

"Worthy?" Gina answered, as if unfamiliar with the word.

"Of forgiveness."

"Oh please," Gina scoffed. "You sound like Sister Joan from St Mary's."

"Now there's a topic," Louise said. "St Mary's."

"Don't even mention school to me," she mock puked. " _Hated_ it."

Louise considered. "When I was there I hated it, too. Especially P.E. and Maths. And as for French – ugh! I mean, learning a language you'll never speak."

Gina yawned massively, and laboured to shift her position on the grass, deliberately showing Louise the back of her head. She began humming the Grand old Duke of York.

"All along it was helping me," Louise said, stunned by revelation. "Building character; shaping me into a young woman. Why would anyone run from all that?"

"Boredom," Gina said simply. "When we first met Jason he said-"

"You swore never to mention that name!" Louise said. "You _swore_."

" _Jason Jason Jason._ "

Louise flinched as if stung. "Ja- _he_ lived only for himself – not for you, not for me. Underneath his lovable rogue ploy was a second-rate sewer rat in a track-suit and baseball cap." She spat the words with such venom Gina turned and gaped at her. Above them a chaffinch fled the apple tree and sought solace across the river.

"My, aren't we bitter." Gina teased. "Jay-Jay taught us more than mum or dad or any damn high school ever did; introduced us to all the latest stuff. Left alone we'd have ended up knitting scarves and watching Songs of Praise. Jay Jay was our escape."

"His words – not yours. And I can't believe you called him _Jay-Jay_ ," Louise said.

"Christ," Gina said to herself. "She's on another roll. Hurrah for distemper."

Louise turned onto her side, flopping over, semi-helplessly. "He ruined us." She said, remembering how she looked, slim and sleek and beautiful, before the accident - before Jason. "Every time I sleep I pray I'll wake as my old self, all of this just a bad dream. Oh, things would be different-"

"Oh be quiet you depressing bitch," Gina snapped.

Louise cringed and looked hurt.

"And don't start crying again," Gina said. "So what - the accident took away what we had, but life goes on. We're living proof of that. So just get on with it."

"How can you say that?" Louise yelled. "Don't you hate the way we were; the things we did; the trouble we caused? For my part I'm genuinely sorry. I've asked for forgiveness; I lie awake praying for it."

"Last night I thought he might answer – if only to tell you to shut up."

"Oh, Gina..." Tears flowed freely now, but she lacked the simple ability to wipe them away. "I just want a second chance."

"Get real," Gina sighed heavily. "Twittering away like a bible thumper will get you nowhere. Accept this is for keeps. It doesn't get any better."

"I don't believe that," said Louise. "Even if it takes forever I'll prove myself. If I can't do good things then I'll think good thoughts-"

"You do that," Gina said. "Feel free to offer up your little spoonful of thought at the end of each day. Just leave me out of it." She turned away.

All right then, Louise told herself. She would direct all her efforts into thought. The accident had taken away her body, but left her mind intact. Her thoughts were pure and that was the key. Her way out. She closed her eyes against the afternoon sun and while the land around her basked under its brilliance, recalled the memory which plagued her nights and tortured most of her days.

It was late evening and the river was high. A steady rain fell outside and a brisk north westerly kept it moving at an angle. Misty nudged her way through the dog-flap, her ample coat glistening under the kitchen lights. Her girth was now such that she barely fit through the flap, but squeeze through she did and promptly waddled over to Louise, who was busy fixing a sandwich.

"Are you eating again?" Gina called from the other room.

"I'm absolutely starving."

"Fat girl's excuse." Gina said.

Louise carried her sandwich into the living room, her appetite diminishing by the second. Gina lay belly down on the fireside rug, heels in the air, reading a magazine, barely skimming the articles before flipping the page. Her blonde hair spilled out across her slender back. She peered over her shoulder, grinning. "Miss piggy!"

When the telephone rang Gina lost the magazine and snatched the handset before the ringing could alert mum and dad. She pressed the phone to her ear and listened, her face lighting up, her free hand tidying her hair. 'It's Jason' she mouthed to Louise. After engaging in whispered dialogue composed entirely of yes's and no's she hung up. "You in a party mood?" she chimed.

Ten minutes later they were tip-toeing through puddles to the waiting car where steady rain pinged off the roof. Giggling, Gina barged past Louise to claim the much preferred front seat. Louise reluctantly accepted the back and closed the door. Cheap lager and cannabis, the usual smell of the car's interior, slunk into her nostrils, but excitement had dampened her awareness. Jason eyed her appraisingly over his shoulder, then flicked the peak of his cap to get Gina's attention. "You, er, have what I ask for on the phone?" Smoke from the roll-up in the corner of his mouth was making his left eye water.

Gina mirrored his cockeyed grin while her fingers tapped lightly on her purse. Jason winked, rolled the cigarette to the other side of his mouth, threw the car into gear and screeched away from the kerb, keeping perhaps three nicotine-stained fingers on the wheel.

Jason was driving too fast – which alarmed no one because with him ignoring speed limits was the norm. They'd journeyed only two miles along the A59 when, with just one hand on the steering and half a smile on his face, he casually manoeuvred into a bend at eighty miles per hour. Half way into the curve the tires began to slide on the wet road and the offside front wheel clipped the pavement. With a wicked snap, the steering jerked from Jason's grip, he pitched forward and his half smiling face struck the centre of the steering column, sounding the horn and crushing his smoke.

Louise felt her body whip-lash one way and then the other, gravity finally slamming her against the left hand door. For a beat they were sliding along the pitch dark road sideways, the high beams illuminating farmer's fields, torrential rain lashing the glass millimetres from her face.

Jason grunted and sat stiffly upright, his cap on crooked, for the first time in six months both sides of his face conveying the same emotion. His eyeballs in danger of falling out, mouth open and toothless, he clawed at the steering. All through this the broken cigarette remained spit-glued to his lower lip. Finally he abandoned all responsibility and threw up his arms to shield his face, knocking off the baseball cap.

Spinning like a dodgem, the escort slammed into the opposite curb. Through the windscreen Louise saw the world turn and the road coming for her. Steel hit tarmac, sparks ignited and then winked out on the wet road. Rain lashed the earth harder still, hissed and steamed on contact with the engine's exposed underbelly.

With her head thrumming like a cricket bat, Louise opened her eyes, and when her see-sawing vision eventually settled she could see Gina's face; blood trickled from her nostrils, defied gravity by flowing upwards to form pools in the hollows of her eyes, giving her a skull-like appearance. More blood stained locks of her blonde hair, dripped from her ears and fell upwards.

Louise realised they were upside down. Her own weight pushed her head against the upholstered ceiling. Hardly a crawlspace remained between the seats and half-flattened roof. She tried to move, but flexing even the smallest muscle caused pain to corkscrew from her shoulders to her neck; she tasted blood from biting her tongue, but from the waist down felt no pain. Again she tried to move, her worry quickly turning to panic, but her legs simply would not respond to her will. She couldn't feel them at all and –

(oh God no please God don't let me be crippled please)

-hot, blinding tears filled her eyes. Fumes from leaking petrol flooded the car and got into her lungs. Each inhale drew her further into a stupor until the world began to wobble; the pounding of the rain faded.

At the sound of grating metal her eyes flickered open. In the gloom she saw Jason kicking away frantically at the driver's door. When the catch finally gave a freezing gale swept through the interior and helped combat the fumes. In the darkness she watched Jason wriggle clear and then turn around to assess the damage.

"Jason hurry. Petrol's leaking on me," Louise wailed.

He flinched and hesitated toward the wreck, hunkering low and peering in through the driver's door, eyes wide and suddenly very sober. Rain had diluted the blood on his face to a shade paler than crimson. In the light from the high beams it resembled stage blood. Through the doorway his wide-eyed stare met Louise's desperate gaze firmly. He gaped at her, spread his hands as if to say, 'not my fault!'

"Get me out!" Louise stretched out her hand. "The petrol..." Tears again blinded her and when she cleared them, saw Jason on his hands and knees, reaching in, but when his fingers closed he came away clutching his baseball cap. He shuffled backwards out harm's way and jammed the cap onto his head. He took one last ponderous look at his car before turning away. Clearly his instinct for self-preservation emerged hands down as his dominant trait, for the walking he did was backwards. A savage gust of wind nearly blew him down and he zipped his track suit to his chin.

Louise suddenly lost all interest in what Jason was or wasn't doing, for she detected thunderous vibrations in the road. Moments later she glimpsed light through the shattered windscreen. A huge radiator-grill emerged snarling through the storm, its angry face rumbling along like a prehistoric monster, rattling the frame of the car.

It was a cement truck from the local factory, advancing inexorably, devouring the distance between them. Louise braced herself for impact as the monstrous air horn annihilated her screams for help. Twin headlights blinded her...then at the very last moment, with a deafening screech and hiss of hydraulics, the lorry veered impossibly to the left of the wreck, missing it completely. The eighteen-wheeled giant raced instead towards Jason, who had about turned and was preparing to take evasive action. Louise followed the path of the truck until it struck him at better than fifty miles an hour, driving him high into the air to land somewhere out of sight. Only his cap remained, fluttering down in the backwash of the cement truck.

For reasons unknown, Jason had not dodged to the left or to the right, but had actually tried to run away from the advancing monster of a vehicle....as if he might out-distance it.

With Jason gone, Louise turned her attention to her sister. Gina's face was pale and lifeless, clearly visible now in the sudden appearance of orange light, which danced and flickered over her features. Louise looked up and saw flames spill across the dashboard and onto the seats. Before they could reach her, something in the wreck clicked and pinged. There came a flash of light and a whoosh of immense heat as the fuel tank ignited, all but vaporising the car.

With a shudder Louise opened her eyes to the sun-washed garden. The lawnmower had silenced and Gina lay fast asleep, twitching within a dream. Louise heaved herself to her four feet and absently scratched her ribs with her hind leg. Wonder if you're dreaming of the accident, she thought at her sleeping sister. Pity you weren't conscious throughout - you'd know Jason was nothing but a cap-wearing coward of the worst degree.

At the rear of the house a door clicked open and Louise pricked up her ears. A sallow woman appeared, shading her eyes against the glare, her face almost skeletal. She called affectionately to Louise and Gina, not by name, but by whistling and making irresistible clucking sounds.

Gina snapped awake and struggled to her feet, shaking the tiredness from her furry body. She blinked at Louise and together they padded up the garden path. The sallow woman left the door ajar.

At the threshold Louise paused. "Wait."

"What is it now?"

"One more thing about Jason,"

"Make it quick," Gina said, scratching her ear.

"Have you ever wondered if he came back?"

Gina cocked her head, looked up and saw a flock of birds.

"If you're thinking of Jason you should look down, not up." Louise pushed rudely past her. "You're stubborn and stupid and you'll be a dog forever." She flounced away, tail in the air.

Gina stood alone on the path, thinking. A solitary cloud moved over the face of the sun, casting a cold shadow over the afternoon. Across the river near the churchyard a group of children threw a stick for a Golden retriever to fetch. All were laughing.

She was about to leave when movement by her paws caught her eye. Glancing down she saw a rickety looking earwig trundling along a cement seam in the paving. The lesser creature froze, tilted its body toward the canine giant, stringy antennae feeling the air, unseeing but sensing.

Gina remained perfectly still, overcome by sudden fascination with the bug. A ray of sunlight penetrated the cloud and washed over her, bright and warm. The frown she wore began to smooth out.

At that moment a huge black stag beetle broke from the woodpile and gave chase. The smaller insect might have skittered left and hid under a stone, or fled right and escaped into the grass.

But the earwig actually tried to run away from the advancing monster of a beetle....as if he might out-distance it.
Available from Smashwords

WOLFKIND............................................................... by Stephen Melling

