Blue Dome (The Blue Dome Series) (2 page)

There was also another reason
why I had difficulty sticking Justin in the same box as Vince, although I’d
never admit it to anyone. If I was completely honest, Justin was pretty good
looking. Not in a conventional way really – his face was too lopsided – but
there was something kind of soft about him. It was a look he’d sometimes get, when
he didn’t realise anyone was looking, as if he was harbouring a small, crumpled
secret that he was afraid to tell anyone. It was hard to explain, but
sometimes, when I looked at him, I’d get a weird kind of twinge in the pit of
my stomach and for the briefest of seconds I’d wonder if maybe, just maybe, I
actually knew him better than the BBTs did. I knew it was totally stupid,
especially when Justin didn’t even know I was alive.

If things weren’t already
humiliating enough, they were about to get even worse. I should have clued onto
it straightaway, the minute I saw one of the BBTs looking right at me and
giggling, but it took me a couple of seconds to realise what was going on.
Vince had started doing an ape dance behind my back and before I could stop him
he reached across and snatched the hairclip from my ponytail. It hurt, too, as
he grabbed a whole fistful of my hair with it. He waved the clip in front of my
face, before shoving it into his pocket and laughing like a deranged hyena. Now
the whole class was looking. I wanted my desk to open its lid and swallow me
whole.

“Give it back,” I said to
Vince, trying to keep my voice as calm as possible and not draw any more
attention to myself.

“Give it back,” he
mimicked, while the BBTs laughed maniacally.

Out of the corner of my
eye I could see Thomas watching with a kind of horrified disbelief and for a
moment I forgot all about the hairclip. I turned to see him quickly shovelling
his stuff off his desk and into his bag, before heading for the door. He almost
made it too, before Vince slid out of nowhere and blocked his exit.

“Ah, not so fast,” he
said.

Thomas quivered. The top
of his head only just reached the bottom of Vince’s throat and whereas Vince’s
shoulders jutted out from the base of his neck like a broad coat-hanger,
Thomas’s sloped away like a sheet draped over a piano stool. There was no way
he’d be able to take on Vince without being pulverised. I cringed as I saw a
mix of humiliation and defeat flash across Thomas’s face. Then, suddenly, a voice
piped up from across the other side of the room.

“Let him go Vince. I need
a smoke.” Justin was walking towards the door, pulling a packet of cigarettes
from his back pocket.

“But what if Old Crusty
comes back?” said one of the BBTs. “You’ll get seriously done.”

Justin shrugged. “Shit
happens.”

As he brushed past Vince,
a small gap opened in the doorway and Thomas leapt through before Vince could
stop him. The sound of panicked footsteps thundered down the hallway outside,
as if Thomas was running for his life.

I glanced at the clock
again, willing the big hand to be on the six and the small hand to be on the
three. Surely, if there was a God, he’d make the damn bell ring. Then, as if my
prayers had suddenly been answered, the gorgeous, ear-splitting sound cracked
the air like a pneumatic drill. The BBTs immediately slid off their desks and
oozed out of the door faster than wet slime. Vince followed them, but not until
he’d had a chance to flash my hairclip at me one more time and smile nastily. It
struck me that he had way too many teeth.

I gathered my stuff and
crammed it into my bag. My hair was now driving me crazy, falling forward over
my face and making it difficult for me to see what I was doing. As I left the
classroom the sound of ‘ging-er’ kept replaying in my head, like a buzzing
insect had flown into my ear and become trapped. The most frustrating thing was
that I knew there was nothing I could do about it. Going to a teacher and
complaining about a stolen hairclip was obviously unthinkable. They’d probably
just look at me as if I was about three years old. As for telling them what had
actually happened, well that was just too mortifying. I hardly wanted to admit
to myself, let alone to anyone else, that I was a social pariah. Besides that,
it was Vince, the school darling who’d done it, so there was no chance the
teachers would even believe me. My only consolation was that it was Thursday
and there was only one day of school left to go. Plus, Dad and Arlene would
still be at work by the time I got home, so the house would be mine for a
couple of hours. Perfect.

I turned out of the
school gates and started heading towards the shops. It was the long way home,
but I really needed the walk to clear my head. I’d only gone a short way and
had paused at Mama Jo’s to watch a four-layered cake stand being squeezed into
an impossibly small corner of a window, when I heard a familiar, flap, flap,
flap of fast-moving feet approaching from behind. I froze, forcing myself to
keep staring at the glass. The last thing I wanted to do was make eye contact
with Mary.

I don’t remember when I first
became aware of Mary, but I know that she’d lived on the streets of Wiltsdown
for as long as anyone could remember. She was often seen around the shops, her
wide, startled eyes permanently haunted. She was very thin and very tall – at
least as tall as me – with a mop of crazy, steel-grey hair that looked like
something you might scrub the bottom of a pot with,. Her skin was so weathered
and wrinkled it was like a piece of old brown parchment that had been screwed
up and then flattened out again, hundreds of times. Arlene simply branded her
‘The Resident Crazy’.

It wasn’t just the way
that Mary looked that scared me, it was her unpredictability. I still
remembered the time I’d been standing at an intersection with a whole bunch of
people, waiting to cross the road, when I’d suddenly felt someone pushing and
shoving behind me, trying to get to the front of the queue. It was Mary. The
lights had turned and we’d started to cross, when Mary had danced out into the
middle of the intersection, tilted back her head and begun screaming like she
couldn’t quite work out the difference between pain and laughter. It had
seriously freaked me out. Since then I’d always tried to stay well out of her
way. Today was no exception.

I subconsciously drew
closer to the window, allowing Mary as much room as possible to pass behind me.
Suddenly the manic footsteps stopped. Had she passed already, gone around the
corner? She must have. I breathed a sigh of relief and turned to move away from
the window when I found myself suddenly face to face with her. Unfortunately
Mary doesn’t do ‘personal space’, so our faces were now uncomfortably close.
Her violet-blue eyes drilled into me as if I was some sort of science
experiment that had produced an unexpected result. She suddenly grabbed my arm,
making me jump.

“Can I help you?” I
stuttered.

Mary ignored the question
and kept staring at me with the same unflinching intensity.

“It won’t always be like
this you know,” she said.

“Like…what?”

Mary was now so close
that I could feel the stale moistness of her breath against my cheek. I drew
back, desperate for some space, as she studied me curiously.

“Sometimes we bite the
apple to the core. We don’t mean to. We don’t want the pips. But that’s the
risk. We still have to bite.”

She nodded at me, as if we’d
just reached some sort of common understanding, then spun on her heel and
scurried up the street as quickly as she’d arrived, the soles of her shoes
flap, flap, flapping against the pavement. I watched, dumbfounded, as Mary
quickly melded into the sea of backs. Had what just happened
really
happened, or had I imagined it? I could see that Arlene had a point, Mary was
seriously weird.

The rest of the journey
home passed in a fog and I was soon on
Hern Street
. Our house was the third on the left, one of those red-brick
bungalow things that Arlene had decided would make ‘a good family home’. As far
as I was concerned, we already had a perfectly good family home – the one that
Mum had helped choose – but somehow Arlene had managed to convince Dad
otherwise.

As I turned into the
driveway I noticed something odd. Our fence was buckled and the post that used
to stand closest to the concrete driveway was lying on its side in the grass.
Fresh clumps of dirt were strewn roughly around the hole where the post used to
stand. Still, it wasn’t the first time that something like that had happened.
Even Arlene admitted she was pretty lousy at backing the car. It wouldn’t have
surprised me if she’d just run over it again without realising.

It was only when I’d
reached the front door, and was fishing about in my bag for my keys, that I
noticed something really was wrong. The door was slightly open and hanging
lopsidedly on its hinges. I gave it a slight push and it made an unhealthy
splintering sound. I pushed it again, a little harder this time, and the whole
door collapsed in a diagonal heap across the entrance. Man, whatever excuse my
brother came up with this time, it was going to have to be good.

“Bede!” I shouted.

There was no answer. I
waited a couple of seconds then called again. There was still no reply. Dumping
my bag, I carefully edged my way through a gap in the doorframe.

Chances were, Bede had
taken off for the night to give Dad and Arlene time to cool down. I stepped
inside the house, then stopped short, as my eyes struggled to make sense of the
carnage that had become our lounge. Both sofas had been turned on their sides,
the stuffing ripped from their bellies, and the coffee table was now a mess of
splinters, strewn across the rug like a sacrificial offering to the Gods. As I
looked around I couldn’t see a single thing that hadn’t been broken. Would Bede
have gone so far as to deliberately trash our whole house? That would be pretty
extreme, even for him.

“Bede, are you here?”

I still had a vague hope that
he was out the back somewhere and hadn’t heard me yell the first few times. I
started following the trail of devastation that led from the lounge, down the hall,
towards Dad and Arlene’s bedroom. It was getting colder and colder and as I
entered the bedroom I could see why – the window was wide open and the curtains
were flapping wildly in the breeze. I glanced quickly around the room. Large
red pools were congealing on the floor and on the mirror, scrawled in blood, was
one word: ‘RUN’

A short, fleshy man
leaned against the doorframe of the office, panting heavily. He’d just climbed
three flights of stairs and wasn’t happy. Sweat ran down his forehead into his
small, squinty eyes. He tried to wipe it away with the back of his hand.
Pausing, his stomach wobbled over the top of his trousers, as he tried to catch
his breath to speak.

“Boss, the kid’s here.”

The man sitting at the
desk glanced up briefly from his manuscript, the candle flames quivering
nervously before settling again. He was dressed almost completely in black,
from his black suit and matching silk shirt, down to his boots. The only colour
that punctuated his dark silhouette was the decoration he wore at his throat.
Instead of a tie, a tiny emerald cross gleamed in the light.

“Power shortage again, eh
boss?” The sweaty man nodded towards the candles.

“Something like that,”
the man replied. He began writing his manuscript again as his visitor shifted
nervously from one foot to the other.

“Ah, erm, the boy…”

“Well, show him in then,”
said the man at the desk, impatiently.

The sweaty man turned and
shouted to someone outside the door. A tall, athletic boy sloped into the room.

“Yes?” The man at the
desk said, without looking up.

“I dropped off that
parcel for you boss.”

The boy paused, waiting
for a response, but the man kept writing.

“Umm…I was just wondering
if I could pick up my wages?”

The man scrawled
something into his manuscript with his left hand, reaching with his right into
the top drawer of his desk. He pulled out a thick roll of banknotes and peeled
off one, placing it ceremoniously on the table, directly in front of the boy.
It was only then that the man rolled his eyes away from his writing, fixing the
boy with a level stare.

The boy glanced at the
solitary note and curled his lip.

“You said you’d pay more
than that,” he said, waggling his fingers impatiently.

The sweaty man, who’d
been watching from the doorway, drew a sharp intake of breath, grimaced, then
quickly looked away. The man sitting at the desk raised his right eyebrow
inquisitively at the boy.

“So you think I am
your
servant now?” he said coolly. He paused, studying the boy’s face for a second,
before suddenly slamming his fist on the desk. The boy jumped back. “Don’t
ever
speak to me like that again.”

“S...sorry boss,” said
the boy.

An uneasy silence seeped
into the room as the man returned to his manuscript. The boy fidgeted with
something in his pocket, considering how best to phrase his next sentence.

“It’s just…well…you said
that you’d pay me double that if I delivered that parcel.”

“Yes, and I shall,” said
the man, continuing to scratch away at the paper with his fountain pen. “But
first I have another job for you. If you complete it I will pay you the
outstanding amount, tripled.”

“Tripled?” the boy
repeated, incredulously. “Does that mean I’ve passed the final test?”

The man’s eyes flicked
briefly towards the boy.

“Yes. I received
confirmation that the package arrived safely, and on time, so you can consider
yourself officially one of my staff.”

“Thanks boss, I won’t let
you down.” The boy’s face could barely contain his smile.

“I need to recruit
someone else for a particular job and I would like you to help me find the
perfect candidate,” said the man.

“Okay, sure,” the boy
replied, trying to sound casual but failing miserably. This had to be the
easiest money he’d ever earned.

“I have particular
specifications for this candidate and I need them to be met
precisely
.
Do you understand?”

The boy shrugged. “Sure,”
he said.

“Good.” The man rested
his pen in the inkwell and pushed back his heavy, dark mahogany chair. He stood
quickly and walked towards the window. Staring out beyond the derelict factories,
the man’s eyes settled on the thin, black horizon. “The first criterion is that
the candidate has to be small, by which, I mean, smaller than you,” he said.

“Like, small enough to
fit through a window in a house you mean?” said the boy, smiling knowingly.

“Yes, exactly,” said the
man, continuing to stare fixedly at the window. “The second criterion is that
the candidate has to be a boy who is about the same age as you.”

“You mean someone who’s
in my year at school?”

“Correct.”

The boy waited a couple
of seconds for the man to elaborate, but the only sound was that of the sweaty
man’s heavy breathing.

“So what job will the new
guy be doing?” said the boy. “I don’t understand…”

“I’m not paying you to
understand,”
the man snapped.
“
I’m paying you to do a job. You’re either prepared
to follow instructions, or you’re not. Which is it?”

“Okay, fine,” said the
boy quickly. The last thing he wanted was to lose the job.

“Do you know anyone who
might be suitable? Someone you could
persuade
to come and work for me?”

The boy paused, then
smiled. “Yes, I think I know someone who fits that description.”

“Good. I need him here
tomorrow afternoon,” said the man.

He turned abruptly from
the window, strode back to his desk and resumed his position in front of the manuscript.
The boy remained standing at the front of the desk, unsure whether or not he
had now received his full instructions. He began fidgeting nervously with the
thing in his pocket again.

“Go!” said the man,
flicking his pen impatiently towards the door.

The boy jumped, his hand
jolting free from his pocket. He didn’t notice that a hairclip had fallen out
and landed on the man’s desk. The man, who was now writing furiously, didn’t
notice either. The boy skated past the short, sweaty man standing in the
doorway and slid from the room. The man turned to follow, stopping abruptly at
the sound of his boss’s voice.

“
Stanley
, can you feed the pets?”

The man groaned. “Aww,
boss, you know those freakin’ animals give me the creeps. Do I have to?”

The man sitting at the
desk paused and raised his right eyebrow. “Do I
really
need to ask you
twice?”

“No, course not boss. I’m
on it,” said
Stanley
, snatching
the key labelled “pets” from the rack by the door. He turned to leave again,
his boss’s voice following him.

“Close the door behind
you.”

The latch clicked in the
door and the man sitting at the desk listened to
Stanley
’s footsteps pummelling the stairs. Once the noise had stopped he put
down his pen. Lifting his gaze from the manuscript, he rolled his eyes slowly
towards the hairclip perched on the edge of his desk. He studied it for a
couple of seconds, before reaching out, picking it up, and holding it to the
candlelight. The man brought the hairclip to his face and pressed it to his
lips, taking a deep, languid breath. He then placed it in the top drawer of the
desk and locked it away.