Hello Darkness (19 page)

There was a tense silence in the hall. It was broken by a low, sad, soft chuckle. A chuckle that seemed both sympathetic and mocking. A chuckle that put an arm around you so that it could more easily hold you up to ridicule.

“My boy, my poor boy.” Vole sighed. “Nobody could think that I would dream of hurting any animal, least of all my old friend, the beloved Bede.” He shook his head, slowly, sadly. “I blame myself. I should have seen this coming, given your history of mental illness. But I’ve always believed in giving a child the chance for redemption. Alas, on this occasion, it was a mistake… I left you in charge of the tortoise in my office. Miss Bickersniff will gladly confirm that, I am sure.”

He looked over the top of his half-moon glasses at Miss Bickersniff – she nodded back. Of course she would. She didn’t know what I knew.

And suddenly I saw the genius of the man. Like all great conspirators, he had a plan B. Plan A was to frame the Drama Queens, forcing Shankley to ban the play, with the added humiliation of the tortoise’s big entrance. He’d be despised, a figure both of loathing and fun. Plan B, only to be used if Plan A was rumbled, was to set me up. It was a safety net that he had kept all along, ever since the moment he knew I’d been in that cubicle when Hart dumped the insects. I’d take the heat and he could carry on bumbling until he took his pension, or he thought up a new plan to get rid of the Shank. That was why he’d given me the key. Everything else that had happened to me – Big Donna’s hit, the faked video footage in the Underworld – was intended to make me look like a psycho.

And it would have worked, it really would, if I hadn’t seen that receipt.

But I
had
seen it, and now I spoke:

“Mr Vole, I know you wouldn’t hurt the Venerable Bede. Stick insects, chickens, guinea pigs, yes. You felt nothing more for them than you did for the butterflies you asphyxiated. But you needed a last great gesture. It had to appear as though the school mascot had been slaughtered—”

“Appear? I can assure you, young man, that the tortoise is dead.”

There was a titter of nervous laughter from the audience.

“
That
tortoise is dead. But
that
tortoise is not
our
tortoise.”

“What on earth are you blathering about, boy?”

That was the Shank. My time and his patience were running out.

I took the slip of paper from my pocket. “This receipt is from a pet shop in town. I found it in Mr Vole’s desk. On it is written, ‘1 t. cadaver, £4.’ The manager of the pet shop told me that the ‘t’ is for tortoise. ‘Cadaver’ means ‘dead body’.”

The crowd erupted into excited chatter. The Shank quelled it with a glare.

“Yes, Mr Vole, you bought a dead tortoise. A tortoise cadaver. The pet shop guy told me that two or three tortoises die there of natural causes every week. You snipped off the head with your bonsai shears, and planted the body here on stage. You slipped the real Bede into your pocket when your back was towards me in your office. Then you stashed him in your briefcase.”

“Absurd, absurd.” Vole laughed, but I could see the sweat beading like mercury on his forehead. It was time for my final gambit. Everything rested on this.

“Really? Well, then, would you please open up your briefcase.”

I pointed to the old leather attaché case, which was propped beside the Principal’s chair.

Suddenly the whole hall was one vast eye, focused on the Principal. His mouth opened, but no sound emerged. He gasped, guppy-like for breath.

I
pwned
him.

“BRAVO
, bravo,” purred the cat. “You really said all that?”

“Well, you know, sorta, yeah. Mostly.”

And in my mind that was how the scene had played out, and those were the words I had used. But who is to say exactly what is the truth? Remember your first day at junior school? Remember how big everything seemed? And by the time you were leaving, how that school seemed so small. And which view was the right one?

“I am impressed. Did Vole open the case or did he flee, his tail between his legs?”

“I’m getting to it.”

I had triumphed. Vole wavered. The Shank glowered. The crowd hung expectant, like the guillotine blade waiting to drop. Emma, Ling Mei, Zofia, they were watching me now, each with a new respect. It was the great moment. The moment I had been waiting for all my life. The point of singularity that initiates the Big Bang and presages the creation of everything.

And then came not the big bang, but a small crash, as the back door again burst open. A thousand faces turned.

Ms Cassandra was silhouetted in the doorway, her hair a mess, her clothing in disarray, a look of horror on her face.

“Beware, beware!” she shrieked. “He’s got a knife!”

“
Beware
?” said the cat on the roof. “Who the hell says ‘beware’?”

“You don’t need to tell me. That alone should have alerted the crowd to the fact that she was a loony toon.”

But it didn’t. Her shrieks were answered by others.

I strode to the front of the stage.

“It’s not a knife,” I began. As I spoke I reached into my pocket with the intention of showing it to be empty. “It’s a scalpel, and it’s a meta—” But the “phor” got totally lost in the shouts and screams. The people on the stage fled from me. Even the kids in the audience surged back, falling over each other in their attempts to escape from me and my mythical blade. Ling Mei, Dorothy, Mrs Maurice, all of them seemed to dissolve into the chaos, as if they’d never existed.

I looked around into a grinning face. The years had fallen from Mr Vole. He appeared young again and vigorous, and began to move towards me. I could see the headlines:
Courageous Principal Disarms Insane Schoolboy
.

In front of me, the police had woken from their slumber and were coming.

For a second I considered my options. I could stay and argue, but I knew that they would not let me speak, and that Vole would hide the briefcase or somehow spirit away the Venerable Bede.

There was a crunch and a stumble. Vole staggered. He’d stepped on the headless tortoise. I took my chance. I ran past him, stooped and grabbed his briefcase, and sped through the back of the stage like a phantom.

“AND
this is it?” The cat nuzzled curiously at Vole’s attaché case.

“Yeah, this is the case,” I replied, my mind drifting away over the roofs.

“Have you opened it yet?”

“Hmmm? No, not yet.”

“Why the hell not?”

“It’s not that simple.”

“Why?”

“Well, there are a couple of possibilities.”

“Go on.”

“OK. I open the case. There’s a tortoise in there. I’m right. Vole’s a psychopath.”

“Or…”

“I open the case…”

“Yeah?”

“And there’s nothing inside but some papers and a thermos flask of tepid soup.”

“And what would that mean?”

“You know.”

“Tell me.”

“It would mean… It would mean that I’m … that I’m not seeing things the way they are.”

“Your medication?”

“Yep, my medication.”

“I see.”

The cat went and peered over the edge of the roof, and then came back to my lap.

“They’re waiting for you, you know.”

“I know. I can see them.”

“You must go down.”

“Why?”

“You can’t stay here for ever.”

“I know.”

“Then open the case.”

“I don’t want to go back to the hospital. I’ve had enough of the lies, and the drugs they give you to make you believe the lies, and the other drugs they give you because the drugs they give you to make you believe the lies make you sick.”

I stood up, still cradling the cat, and moved to the edge. I wobbled a bit, and a sort of sigh came from the crowd. The particles that made up Ling Mei, Zofia and the others had re-formed down there. They were mixed up among the police and ambulance men, and the curious neighbours, and a man with a camera. My mum and dad and sister were probably down there, somewhere, but I didn’t want to seek their faces.

“Don’t hurt me.”

“Of course I won’t hurt you, Cat.”

“But … you hurt the others. I mean you
might
have hurt the others.”

“Which others?”

“The little ones.”

“The little whats?”

“You know very well.”

“Me, I don’t know jack shit.”

“The animals.”

“You don’t know what you’re saying.”

“But it’s possible…”

“Whose side are you on?”

“Cats don’t take sides.”

“All that’s necessary for the triumph of evil is for good cats to do nothing.”

“Will you put me down, please?”

“I promise you, you’re quite safe.”

“You’re not going to jump, are you?”

“Of course not. I don’t want to die. I love life. Every day is a new adventure. And there are mysteries.”

“Then what are you going to do?”

“I’m going to fly.”

“Please don’t. Open the case. Please open the case and see.”

“It’s fine. You’re safe. We’re together. Flying is easy, when you know how.”

I stepped from the roof and though, for a second, I felt that I was indeed falling, soon the air caught under my wings and I began to soar. I soared over the crowd, their faces upturned and filled with rapture, because they were seeing the most beautiful thing. And then I was beyond the people and above the roofs, and I felt the starlight fall on my wings like warm snow, and I brought the cat to my face and breathed into the fur at the nape of her neck and

“YOU
oscillate its tit a lot.”

“What?” I looked down. My feet were still on the hard edge of the world. I was cold. I didn’t feel cold, but I must have been, because I was shivering.

“You oscillate its tit a lot.”

“What…?”

“You oscillate its tit a lot.”

“Don’t just keep on saying that. What are you talking about?”

“It’s the answer to the question.”

“Which question?”

“How do you titillate an ocelot? Remember? Back at the beginning, on the toilet wall? You oscillate its tit a lot. It’s a sort of spoonerism, I suppose.”

“Oh, yeah, I see.”

My toes were sticking out over the edge. I wiggled them. I’d been meaning to do something, but now I couldn’t quite remember what it was.

“Just a simple play on words.”

The cat was looking up at me. The look on her face was, I guess you’d have to say, one of cunning.

“Yeah, sure.”

Something was troubling me. The cat. Those words.

“Hang on … how do you know what’s written on the wall of a toilet cubicle in my school? When have you ever been to my school?”

“Oh, well, I’m not sure. I just know.”

And then the cat said something else, but I couldn’t really understand it. It was a sort of mewling. A cat noise.

“John.”

The voice was behind me. I turned round. My dad was on the roof. He wasn’t supposed to be here.

“What?”

“Why don’t you come in, son? Mum and Cathy are waiting. They’re worried. It’s dangerous here, you might fall.”

My dad stretched out his hand to me. I put the cat down. I took my father’s hand.

UNLIKE
most of my books,
Hello Darkness
had a prolonged and agonizing birth. That it saw the light of day is down to the encouragement – and criticism! – of my agent, Philippa Milnes Smith, my friends Noga Applebaum and Tanya Epstein, and my editor at Walker, Annalie Grainger. Each helped to shape the final narrative, taking something that began as insane and unreadable and turning it into something a little less insane and, I trust, much more readable. So, my profound thanks to them.

ANTHONY M
C
GOWAN
’s novels for young adult readers include
Hellbent
and
Henry Tumour
, which won the Booktrust Teenage Prize and the Catalyst Award.
The Knife That Killed Me
was shortlisted for the Booktrust Teenage Prize and longlisted for the Guardian Children’s Fiction Prize. It is to be released as a movie in autumn 2013. Anthony was born in Manchester, brought up in and around Leeds and lives in London.

When Daniel Lever accompanies his dad to the Leisure World Holiday Complex, his expectations are low. But then he sees a mysterious girl by the fake lake and everything changes. Lexi is funny and smart, but why does she have wounds that get worse each time they meet? And is her watch really going backwards?

As the end of British Summer Time approaches, Daniel has to act quickly. Their souls depend on it.

“Ed’s voice is utterly distinctive: strong, emotive, haunting.”
Hilary Mantel