Kit's Wilderness (4 page)

S
aturday morning she came knocking at the door.

“Somebody for you, Kit!” Mum called. “A friend of yours. Allison.”

I went down and found them talking and laughing about Grandma on the step.

Allie led me out of the garden, across the fence and into the wilderness.

“You’re a stupid fool,” she said.

“Eh?”

“A stupid fool. Only here a few weeks and already you’re in with that daft lot.’

“You’re in with them.”

She threw her hands into the air.

“Jeez,” she said. “I can see you’re going to drive me wild! Have you seen them? Have you really looked at them and seen them? Bunch of wimps and jerks and thickos and no-hopers. And that brute at the middle of them, hunking and lurching like a caveman. It’s a farce, man.”

“What about you, then?”

“Oh, you perfect-behavior stupid nincompoop!” She stamped the ground and glared at me. “It’s called experience. It’s called getting to know what goes on in the stupid world. It’s called watching other people’s stupid behavior and getting to know how people work.”

She strode away. She shook her head and swung her arms. She kicked out at a massive thistle. She turned round and pointed at herself.

“I’m going to be an actor,” she said. “An artist. I need to see these things ’cause the day’ll come when I’ll be able to act the thickos out!” She glared at me again.

“And you . . . ,” she said.

“Me what?”

“Exactly! You what? Mr. Nice. Mr. Perfect. Mr. Butter Wouldn’t Melt. What’s your plans, eh? Join the Civil Service or run a computer shop or God help us—yes, that’s it!—a teacher! Yes, sir, Mr. Watson. No, sir, Mr. Watson. Can I go to the toilet, Mr. Watson, sir?”

She burst out laughing and kicked the thistle again and the seedhead exploded into the air. “Is that right?” she said. She looked at me. She giggled. “It is! It is!”

And she ran away laughing toward the river and flung herself down into the grass.

By the time I reached her she sat up chewing a stem of grass. She pursed her lips and didn’t look at me as I sat a few feet away from her. I watched the river flowing, saw how it churned at the center as the tide turned.

“Have you died?” I whispered.

She clicked her tongue, said nothing.

“Died!” she said at last.

“Have you?”

“Once.”

“What was it like?”

“Hell’s teeth, Kit.” She shuffled angrily, as if she wanted to run again. “You will,” she said. “You’ll drive me wild.” She bit the grass, spat the end of the stem out. “Yes,” she said. “I died. But I pretended.” She giggled. “Made them wait, though. Hardly anybody left when I came back out.”

“What did you tell them?”

“All the usual stuff. Bright lights at the end of tunnels. Dark rivers. Devils and demons. Angels singing. All that stuff.” She giggled again. “Good bit of acting, that.” She turned and looked at me and shook her head. “They all do,” she said. “Everybody.”

“Pretend?”

“Yes. Pretend. They say they don’t, but they do.”

“How do you know?”

“Just do. Thickos and louts, that’s what they do.”

I thought about the dark den, what it would be like to be alone down there, what it might be like to be dead.

“But you couldn’t know,” I said. “Could you? There’s no way of knowing if they pretend or if it’s real.”

She glared at me.

“No, sir, Mr. Watson. Of course you’re perfectly right, sir, Mr. Watson.”

“You think you know everything,” I said. “You think everything’s just a game. You think everything’s for your own stupid entertainment.” I felt tears running from my eyes. “People
do
die. People
do
. People
do
.”

I lay staring down into the grass. I heard Grandpa’s songs running through my head. I heard Grandma’s far-off whispering.

“They do,” I softly said again, and the words were carried away across the wilderness on the breeze.

Allie shuffled closer.

“Jeez,” she whispered. “I was right. You do need somebody to protect you.” I felt her watching me.

“Trouble with you is,” she said, “you’re not one of the louts or thickos or no-hopers. And you’re not in it for fun like me. Left to yourself you’d be begging Askew to dig a hole and chuck you in.” She tapped my skull. “Hey,” she whispered. “Hey. Mr. Watson. Mr. Innocent.”

“What?” I muttered.

“I’m just looking after you,” she said. “Like your grandma would have wanted me to.”

“How d’you know what she wanted?”

She sighed and clicked her tongue.

“Tell you what,” she said. “I’ll stop going to the game as well, eh? I’m sick of it anyway, being down there with that lot and that lout. We’ll start doing other things together, eh?”

I stood up and squeezed the tears from my eyes.

“You haven’t got a clue, have you?” I said. “What if I
want
to play? What if I
want
to see what really happens?”

And I hurried away from her across the wilderness, past the kids playing, squeezing back my tears.

“L
ook at this,” said Grandpa.

I was in my room, doing homework, something boring about time differences between England and the rest of the world. It was a chilly evening and rain was pouring down onto the wilderness. I kept looking up from my desk, staring out. I worked out that if you traveled fast enough you could get to where you wanted before you even started. I didn’t write that, but wrote what they wanted: that if it was such and such a time in Stoneygate, then it would be such and such a time in New York. Boring. Then Grandpa knocked on my door.

He put it on the desk in front of me. It was a flat rectangle of coal, polished like the pony. There were deep imprints on its surface. I ran my fingers across them.

“It’s tree bark,” I said.

“That’s right. Tree bark. Lots of coal’s got tree bark patterns on it if you slice it careful enough.”

“That’s what coal was,” I said. “Trees. Millions of years back.”

“Correct.” He nodded at the window. “That’s what you’d’ve seen if you sat here then. Massive trees. Swamps. All those millions of years back.” He ran his fingers over the coal. “There’s this as well.” He put a black fossil on the desk. A spiraling horn-shaped shell. “Guess,” he said.

“Some kind of animal. Something that lived at the same time as the trees.”

“Correct. An ammonite. This is the fossil of its shell. The creature lived inside, like a snail does, or a hermit crab. This too came out of the pit, just like the tree bark.”

I held it in my palm.

“Thing is,” he said. “It’s a creature that lived in the sea.”

I imagined it squirming its way across sand, beneath the water.

“The sea came in and flooded the place and the trees fell down and time passed and the sea laid down sediment that turned to rock and the earth churned and laid down more rock and time passed and the rock thickened and pressed down on the ancient trees and animals and time passed and passed and turned them all to coal.” He laughed. “But you know this, eh? They’ve told you this at school?”

I nodded. He laughed again.

“When we dropped down in the cage we dropped through time. Million years a minute. Pitmen. Time travelers.” He ran his hand across my book. “Very neat. And all the right answers, I’m sure. You’ll go a long way, lad.”

I stared out, saw the trees, the swamps, the sea flooding in. Then blinked, and saw the wilderness, the falling rain.

“Mysterious business,” he said. “It was the light and heat of the sun that made those trees grow. Then they lay pitch-black in the pitch-black earth. And we come along and dig it out. And what did we want from it? For the heat it gave, for the light it gave.” He touched the tree bark. “This stuff, blacker than the blackest night, holding the heat and light of the ancient sun in it.”

He giggled, moved the fossil across the desk as if it was still alive. He slid it onto my written page. “It’s for you,” he said. “And the fossil tree as well.” He slid that onto my page, rested it on my answers. “Gifts from a time traveler,” he said. He touched my shoulder, laughed gently. “Giving out my tales and treasures,” he said. “Soon there’ll be nothing left to give.”

I slipped the ammonite into my pocket, told myself I’d keep it with me always now. A treasure from my grandfather. A gift from the deep, dark past.

“L
ook,” said Mum.

It was Saturday afternoon. Bright sunlight. She was at the open window; a gentle cool breeze was coming through.

“Come and look,” she said.

I stood beside her.

“What?” I said.

She put her arm around my shoulder. “There.” Askew’s father was further along the lane, tottering alongside the fence. He kept stopping. He reeled, held on to the fence, lowered his head, drew deeply on a cigarette.

“Here!” he yelled. “Get yourself here!”

“Drunk as a lord,” said Mum.

He rocked backward, caught the fence again. “Get yourself here!”

“Jack Askew,” she said. “Drunk as a lord again.” Then there was Askew himself, head hanging, walking slowly from the river toward the man. His dad called him on, with drunken swings of his arm. And Jax was there, walking slowly too. Shuffling.

“Move it!”

Askew reached the fence. The man grabbed his son by the throat, pulled him close. We saw his bare teeth, saliva dripping, his great flushed face. He snarled into the boy’s ear. Askew looked down, hung his arms by his side, tried to turn his face away, but the man kept dragging it, slapping it back. He whispered, gripped the boy’s throat tighter, laughed and snarled. Then he let go, reeled backward, caught the fence, stood upright, spat, smoked, staggered on along the lane.

“And let that be a lesson to you!” he yelled. He turned to the houses. “What you looking at?” he shouted. “Eh? What you looking at?”

We took a step backward away from the window. He went on glaring, reeling. Cigarette smoke streamed from his open lips.

“Imagine,” said Mum. “Imagine having to live with that, having to put up with that.”

I nodded, and felt her hand stroking my shoulder.

“You’d have to get so tough,” she said.

“Or pretend to be tough.”

“Yes, or pretend to be tough.”

Jack Askew staggered onward. His son watched him for a moment; then he eased himself to the ground, and leaned back against the fence. He sat there with his head hung low and his arm around Jax. We saw his shoulders trembling.

“Poor lad,” whispered Mum. “Poor soul.”

A
skew’s den. The floor was damp with yesterday’s rain. Water had trickled down the walls through Askew’s carvings. The scent of damp, of the candles, of the bodies crouching there. Allie faced me through the flickering light. She watched me, but there was nothing in her eyes. I stared at the others, these children like me from the ancient families of Stoneygate. Had something like death really happened to them? Had they really gone through something like the children on the monument? Or was it just a game and they had all pretended? I read their names.

John Askew, aged thirteen; Robert Carr, aged eleven; Wilfred Cook, aged fifteen; Dorothy Gullane, aged twelve; Alison Keenan, aged thirteen; Daniel Sharkey, aged fourteen; Louise McCall, aged thirteen . . .

Below them was the wide space for the names to come, and I saw my own name there, as if I was dreaming.

Christopher Watson, aged thirteen.

All around us were paintings of demons and monsters, of bright beings with great white wings, of the gates of Heaven and the snapping jaws of Hell. The water came to me and I sipped it. The cigarette came to me and I drew on it. I looked at Allie again. She was steely, blank, just returning my gaze. I saw it in her eyes: You’re on your own down here, Mr. Watson. I wanted to shout across to her, to tell her that she was right, that we should get away from the bunch of louts and no-hopers and find other things to do, but I just sat there and sat there, and the more I sat the more I trembled, the more I was terrified that the knife would point at me that day. But I also wanted it. I was driven to it like Grandpa had been driven to the darkness of the pit. I wanted to know something of what the children on the monument had known, something of what my grandma had known. I stared down at the knife as Askew laid it on the glass.

“Whose turn is it to die?” he whispered.

“Death,” we all chanted. “Death Death Death Death . . .”

The knife shimmered, spinning. It spun on and on.

Me
, I thought, as it spun to me and then away again. Me, not me, me, not me, me, not me . . .

And then it slowed and came to rest.

Me.

I caught my breath, my trembling quickened. I looked across at Allie. On your own, her eyes said. You’re on your own.

Askew smiled. He reached out to me. I took his hand. He drew me to the center. He laid his hand across my head for a moment. I felt the tears in my eyes.

“Calm down, Kit,” he whispered in my ear, but I couldn’t stop the trembling. “Calm down, Kit Watson.”

I heard Louise: “He’s chicken. He’s a chicken.”

I heard the giggles of the others.

“Silence,” whispered Askew. “There will be a death this day.”

I knelt as I had seen others kneel. I crouched on all fours.

This is nothing,
I told myself.
It’s just a game, nothing but a game.

“Breathe deeply and slowly, Kit,” he whispered.

I breathed deeply and slowly.

“Breathe quickly and more quickly.”

I breathed quickly and more quickly.

“Look into my eyes.”

I looked into his eyes. It was like looking into a tunnel of endless dark. I felt myself staring deeper, deeper. I felt myself driven to the dark.

Just a game,
I tried to tell myself.
It’s nothing, just a game.

I told myself that I could play this game, that I could pretend, just like Allie had pretended.

Askew held the shining knife blade before me.

“Do you abandon life?”

“I abandon life.”

“Do you truly wish to die?”

“I truly wish to die.”

He rested his hand on my shoulder. He drew me closer. I saw nothing but his eyes, heard nothing but his voice.

“This is no game,” he whispered, soft, soft.

“You will truly die,” he whispered. “All you see and all you know will disappear. It is the end. You will be no more.”

He closed my eyes.

“This is Death,” he said.

And I knew no more.

I came to on the damp clay floor. My cheek was cold, icy. My limbs were stiff and sore. Only one of the candles still burned, a cold, meager light. A demon from the wall glared down at me. I heard nothing. I twisted, turned, sat up, pressed my eyes, shook my head. I remembered nothing, just darkness, emptiness. Pain and stiffness in my bones. Frail muscles. Crawled on all fours to the steps, reached up to draw the door aside. Then I heard the voices: little high-pitched whispers, little giggles. I stared into the darkness of the den, saw nothing but the bones, the paintings, the carvings.

I rubbed my eyes.

“Who’s there?” I whispered.

The giggling intensified.

I rubbed my eyes again, squinted, and then I saw them, skinny bodies in the flickering light. They hunched in the corners at the light’s edge. They blended with the walls. They shifted and faded as I tried to focus on them. But I saw their goggling eyes, their blackened skin, heard their high-pitched giggles, and I knew that they were with me, the ancient pit children, down there in the darkness of Askew’s den. They didn’t stay. Gradually they disappeared, and I was alone.

I drew the door aside. There was only Askew left, hunched over beside Jax, facing the river, and Allie in the long grass chewing her thumb.

Askew stared. “Well?” he said.

I couldn’t speak. I shook my head. I just returned his gaze.

“You saw,” he said

I turned away.

“You saw, Kit Watson,” he said again. “And once you’ve seen, you’ll keep on seeing more.”

I tottered to Allie. She stood up and held my arm, and watched me, and I saw the concern in her, the desire to protect me. We left Askew and began to walk together through the wilderness.

“Jeez, Kit,” she said. “Thought you were never going to come out.”

I couldn’t speak to her.

“Kit,” she said. “Kit, man. Mr. Watson.”

We walked on. I felt the strength coming back to me.

She kept staring at me.

“Kit,” she said. “Kit.”

“It’s all right,” I whispered. “I’m all right.”

“What did he mean?” she said. “What did he say you saw?”

I cast my eyes across the wilderness. I squinted, saw them again, the shifting skinny bodies at the edges of my vision. I heard their giggles, their whispers.

“I’ll kill him,” she said. “Caveman.” She made me stop. We stood together on the turf in the sun. “Come on,” she said. “Pull yourself together.”

I took long deep breaths, shook my head, tried to smile at her.

“You,” she said. “Too innocent, that’s your trouble. Drive me wild.” She squeezed my arm. We walked on. She took me toward the gate. “Kit,” she kept saying. “Kit, man. Kit.”

I looked again across the wilderness.

“You see them?” I whispered.

“See? See what?” She stared into my eyes. “Kit, man. See what?”

I looked around again. There was nothing there. Just the ordinary world, the ordinary children playing there on the ordinary wilderness. The pit children had gone.

“Nothing,” I whispered. “Nothing. I’m fine now.” I shook my head again, squeezed my eyes. Was it all a dream? “I didn’t pretend,” I told her.

“I know that, Kit. I can see that.”

I saw my mother at the window, gazing out.

“I’ll have to go,” I said.

“You’ll tell me sometime, though?”

“Yes, Allie. I’ll tell you what it was like to die in the den.”

We separated at the fence.

“I’ll see you tomorrow, Kit,” she said. She didn’t move.

“It really really happened, didn’t it?” she said.

I nodded.

“You,” she said. “You.”

I went inside.

“Where you been?” Mum said.

“Just down by the river, with Allie.”

She laughed. “That lass,” she said.

I sat at the table and started to pick at some food. I stared out through the window, toward the children of Stoneygate playing between the houses and the river.

Grandpa watched me as if I wasn’t there.