Clay (12 page)

ten

That night I wake up and something draws me to the window. I pull back the curtains and see the monster. There he is, down in the street. He’s under a streetlight, staring back at me. He’s massive, a huge dark shadow. I know he wants me to go to him. I know he wants me to speak to him. I hear a voice inside me:

You are the one who made me, Master. I am yours.

“Go away!” I whisper. “I don’t want you!”

He doesn’t move.

What do you want of me, Master?

“Nothing! Get lost! Turn back to clay!”

He lowers his head and walks heavily away from the streetlight and into the dark.

“Stay away!” I whisper. “Jump back into the clay pond. Go away and bliddy die!”

eleven

Geordie’s waiting for me at the school gate next morning. He goes on like there’s never been anything wrong between us, like the battle between us never happened. He grabs me and puts his arm round me.

“A dream come bliddy true!” he says.

I pull away from him. He grins.

“I know,” he says. “I know. It’s awful and he had an awful life and all that stuff but it don’t change the fact he was a bliddy monster.”

“Was he?” I say.

“Be honest, man. Did a little bit of you not start cheering when you heard?”

“No.”

“No? Are you sure? Right from the start we said it—the world’d be a better place if he was gone. Even Skinner and Poke’s pleased about it—not that they’ll admit it yet.”

“How do you know that?”

“I saw them yesterday. I could tell. They could hardly keep their faces straight. It was them that found him. They’d planned to meet up in the quarry early yesterday morning and wait for us and ambush us. Mouldy must have got there first when it was hardly light and he goes straight over the bliddy edge.”

We walk towards the school. Geordie breathes deeply and turns his face towards the brilliant sky.

“It’s a new world!” he says; then he stops dead still. “You know what this could do, Davie. Don’t you?”

“What?”

“It could put an end to all the battling. Skinner and Poke might turn into our mates. The truce could turn into a proper peace. The Pelaw-Felling war could be over. It could all be in the past. And all cos one kid’s gone and died. Pretty good, eh?”

I walk on. He catches up with me and laughs.

“Mind you,” he says. “Dunno if I really want all that!” Then he clenches his fists as we go inside. “It is! A dream come bliddy true!”

twelve

Last lesson of the day, and Prat’s all blather again. Clay and creativity and striding about the classroom and closing his eyes and staring at the sky and clay pellets and jelly babies flying around his head…

“You can go too far,” I say when he’s in midstream.

He blinks and looks at me.

“Sorry, Davie?” he says.

“You can go too far. You can create too much.”

He comes to my table, leans over me, delighted.

“For example, Davie?”

“Well…” I look down. I stumble over the thoughts, the words. “Some of the things that we create are…”

“Are?” he prompts me.

“Some of the things that we create are…destructive.”

“Exactly!” He punches the air and spins away. “The things that we create—some of them, many of them!—are themselves destructive!”

He looks around the room, scans the faces.

“Such as?” he says.

“Guns,” he is told.

“Bullets,” he is told.

“Poisons.”

“Nerve gas.”

“Bombs.”

“The nuclear bomb.”

“War itself.”

“Exactly!” says Prat. “Exactly! Exactly! Exactly!”

He closes his eyes. He taps his forehead. We know he’s about to tell us something that he thinks is dead profound.

“It is the human paradox,” he says. “We are creative beings. But our passion to create goes hand in hand with our passion to destroy.” He claps his hands together, makes a double fist. “And the passions are linked as tight as this.”

Then he shuts up for a while.

“Thank God,” whispers Geordie. “What the Hell did you get him started for?”

I roll a lump of clay hopelessly around my table. I find Maria watching me and she seems so cold, so distant. I look away from her, through the window, across the yard. It’s a misty afternoon. I see the monster at the distant iron boundary fence. He grips the bars and looks towards me. I hear his voice inside my head.

I am yours, Master. Tell me what to do.

“No,” I gasp.

“What’s up with you?” says Geordie.

“What things will we create,” says Prat, “when our ability to create intensifies? What monsters will we make?”

I watch my monster striding alongside the fence, seeking a way in.

“I,” says Prat, “am an optimist. I believe that the forces of good will defeat the forces of evil.”

The monster lurches towards the gate.

“What’s
up
?” says Geordie.

“But could it be,” says Prat, “that the end of creativity will be to make a thing that will turn back upon us and destroy us?”

He goggles at me.

“What do
you
think, Davie? Could that be human destiny—that we are driven to create our own destruction?”

Far beyond him, the monster’s almost in.

“Dunno, sir,” I say. “I’ve got to go, sir. I’ve got to bliddy go.”

And I push my chair away, and shove Prat aside, and I run.

thirteen

I run alongside the bypass. I run into the graveyard. I shelter by the Braddock grave. I pray. I want to turn back time, to go back to the past, to go back to the days that suddenly seem so long ago, the days of being an ordinary kid, the days before the arrival of Stephen Rose, the days before the monster. I watch the graveyard gate, the shadows. I watch for the monster. I snarl at myself, at how pathetic I am. I leave the graveyard and head for Crazy Mary’s house. I knock at the door but there’s no answer. I peep through the window and see Crazy sitting at the table and goggling into space. I knock again. Stephen comes. He lets me in.

“We been waiting,” he says. “What took so long?”

He leads me past motionless Mary and into the garden and into the shed. Sunlight slants down through the glass in the roof, and the edges and corners are deep in shadow.

I’m trembling again.

“What we going to do?” I say.

“You’re in a state, Davie,” he says. “You got to calm down.”

“I saw him,” I say.

“Him?”

“The monster. He came last night.”

“Mebbe you were imagining it, Davie.”

“And he came this afternoon, at school.”

“That can’t be true.”

“It is, Stephen. It’s true. It really worked. We really did make a monster.”

“I know that, Davie. Cos look—he’s been in here with me all the time.”

And he holds his hand towards a corner and now I see the monster standing there: dead still, eyes closed, massively muscled, head touching the ceiling.

Stephen smiles.

“Say hello to your creation, Davie.”

I move out of the brilliant light, move into the shadow, stand beside the monster.

“You made another one,” I said.

I dare to touch him—bitter cold, clay cold.

“No, Davie. This is him. He came back with me out the quarry. He’ll be safer here.”

I touch the monster’s great hands. I imagine them clenched tight around Mouldy’s neck.

“What happened to Mouldy?” I say.

“He died, Davie. He fell.”

“Fell?”

“What else?” The smile plays across his face. “He always was a clumsy lout.”

He comes into the shadow beside me.

“Our creature exists at the very edge of life,” he says. “He is dormant now. It is only our belief and our will that will keep him from crumbling back into the earth. He needs our command, Davie. What shall we tell him to do?”

“Nothing,” I whisper.

“Mebbe we should at least give him a name.”

“Clay,” I whisper.

“That’ll do. Hello, Clay.”

“Hello, Clay,” I whisper.

“That’s right, Davie. Now, Davie, command him.”

You are my Master
, I hear.
What shall I do?

“Nothing,” I whisper.

“Nothing means that he’ll crumble back into the earth. Nothing’ll be the end of him.”

The silence and stillness are deep as eternity. There’s nothing beyond the three of us, beyond this shed.

“What are you?” I whisper.

“Me?” says Stephen.

“Yes, you.”

“A boy like you.”

“That’s all?” I say.

“Are you saying that
I
am the monster?”

I stare at him. He smiles.

“And what are
you
?” he says.

“A boy,” I whisper. “An ordinary boy.”

“You know that’s wrong, Davie. You know that you’re a boy who can do wondrous things. Don’t disappoint me, Davie. Calm down.” He passes his hand before my eyes. “Command your creation, Davie.”

Master. What shall I do?

I stare at this astonishing thing. I can’t resist.

“Move,” I whisper. “Live, Clay. Move.”

And I feel the creature drawn back over the edge of life. And I feel the spirit moving in it.

“Live,” I whisper. “Live.”

And it sways gently and turns its face to me.

Command me, Master.

And this time I don’t run, but I meet its eye, and I force the words out of myself.

“Walk.”

And the monster walks across the shed through the glare beneath the glass and into the far shadow.

“Turn.”

And the monster turns.

“Walk.”

And it walks back through the light again and into the shadow at my side. And Stephen Rose is laughing, like it’s all a joke.

Then he takes a stiff clay angel, and holds it out.

“Take this, Clay,” he says.

And the creature takes it.

“Destroy,” says Stephen.

And the creature crushes the angel between its massive hands and the dust and fragments crumble to the floor and Stephen giggles and giggles again.

fourteen

“Be still, Clay,” I say, and the monster is still again. It stands beside us in the shadow. I touch it, lean close to it. Nothing moves in it.

“It can’t be true,” I whisper.

“It is, Davie. Look at our creation. Clay lives. Clay moves. How can you deny it?”

“But it can’t be true.”

“Mebbe God said that to himself,” said Stephen, “on the morning he created us. ‘It can’t be true! I can’t do this!’ But his creature stood up on the earth and God was flabbergasted by his own power. And the creature walked. And the creature dared to look God in the face. And God saw mischief in his creature’s eye. And God was bothered by what he’d done. He said to himself, ‘Mebbe this is a bliddy monster that I’ve made. What horrors have I unleashed upon my lovely world?’ But it was too late. The deed was done.”

I touch our cold creation. It waits again for our instruction.

“He could have uncreated us,” I whisper. “He could have destroyed us.”

“Aye, he could have. He even said he wanted to. Remember the tales? The folk he’d made were evil, they’d gone all wrong, they were wreaking havoc in the world. They were driving God bliddy mental. He got filled with anger and vengeance. He sent down floods and fires and plagues. But that God, he was too good for his own good.”

I shudder. I watch the dust tumbling down endlessly through the light.

“He loved us, see?” says Stephen. “He thought we were bliddy wonderful. He sent down the forces of destruction, but he couldn’t bring hisself to destroy the lot of us. He always saved a few.”

“Like Noah and his family.”

“Aye, like them. And a few like them were supposed to make everything turn out right. Fat chance, eh? Pretty soon he’s getting drove mental again by what’s going on and he’s sending down the fire and the brimstone and the bliddy plagues but nowt never turns out right and for centuries and centuries he’s just getting mentaler and mentaler till one day he just says, ‘Right, I’ve had enough. I’m off.’”

“Off?”

“Aye. He nicked off, Davie. He abandoned us. About 1945, I reckon.”

“1945?”

“Mebbe a bit earlier. You know: war, concentration camps, gas ovens, atom bomb, all that stuff. Enough to drive anybody away.”

I touch the creature’s cheek. I hear its voice inside me.

I am yours, Master. Tell me what to do.

Stephen laughs. He points into the sky. Beyond the window in the roof it is clear and unblemished blue.

“Remember when they used to tell us God was in the sky, Davie? You ever seen him up there?” He touches his chest. “Remember when they used to say you’d find him in your heart? You ever found him there? Ever? Truly? He ever answer any of your prayers?”

I shrug. I lean on the creature.

“And in the church? You ever see him wandering there beside you on the altar?”

“But…,” I say.

“He’s gone. There’s just emptiness, Davie. Emptiness, silence, nowtness, going on forever. Mebbe he was here in the past, but these days, man, it’s all a bliddy joke.”

“But the power of the Lord. The body and the blood. You said we needed them.”

“Aye, I did say that.” He comes in close. He breathes on me. The three of us—Stephen, me, Clay—are tight together in the shadows. “But it was a lie, Davie.”

“A lie?”

“That’s right. Those things you stole were just stupid trashy knickknacks. But I reckoned you needed them, Davie. I reckoned they’d help you to believe in what we were about to do. But the things themselves? They were nowt, Davie. The power that made this thing was yours and mine, and nowt to do with God.”

He grins, face almost pressing against mine.

“God’s gone,” he says. “We’re the ones with power now. There’s nowt in the world but us.”

I hear Clay.

Master, tell me what to do.

“But the angel,” I say.

“What angel?”

“The angel on the beach at Whitley Bay. The angel that…”

“Ahahahahahaha! Did you believe
that
? Ahahahahaha!”

I stare at him. He rubs the tears of laughter from his eyes.

“You’re worse than I thought, Davie,” he says. “I bliddy made that up as well.”

“But she—”

“You’re a bliddy wonder, Davie. What an innocent.”

Master! What shall I do?

“Get him, Clay,” I whisper. The monster opens its eyes. I feel the life in it. “Do something,” I say. It turns to Stephen. It raises its hands. “Hurt the bastard!” I say.

And Clay does step forward, and Stephen does back away, but he’s still smiling. He raises his own hand and says, “Stop,” and Clay is motionless.

“See?” says Stephen. “You wouldn’t harm your maker, would you, Clay?”

He grins at me.

“You wouldn’t even harm Martin Mould, would you, Clay?”

“Martin Mould?” I whisper.

“Martin Mould, Davie. Will I tell you what really happened to your dear departed Martin Mould?”

I lick my lips. I stare into Stephen’s eyes.

“He fell,” I say. “The police said that. Skinner and Poke said that.”

“Aye. Hahahaha! And I said that, didn’t I, Davie? Well, open your lugs, cos I’m going to tell you the real truth—and the funny thing is, nobody but you will ever think that the truth could possibly be true.”