Nicking Time (13 page)

We’ve made the den as dark as possible. Everything’s in place.

“Anybody for a Creamola foam?” I ask.

The water fizzes as it hits the crystals, bubbling up into a pale yellow froth. We’ve only got three plastic cups between us, so we have to take turns. The water in the bottle has warmed up in the course of the day and is now the temperature of used bathwater. We sip it appreciatively, hanging onto our turn for as long as possible.

“If you mixed Creamola foam with milk,” asks Hector, “would you get a milkshake?”

We think that you probably would. And that it would be worth trying it to find out.

The Curly Wurly proves a nightmare to split fairly. It becomes obvious that we won’t be able to bend it into equal parts – that just gets you covered in chocolate and caramel, which leads to arguments about you taking more than your fair share. So we have to trust to honour.

“Take a bite and pass it on,” says Hector, passing it to
Lemur first. What he doesn’t add but does make clear in his tone is, “And I’m watching you.”

We decide to try out the drums. We use Lemur’s rhythm first, the Time-to-go-now one.

“It’s a bit short,” I say.

“And maybe a bit rude?” says Bru. “I mean, he’s kind of like a visitor here, and you wouldn’t really say that kind of thing to a visitor, would you?”

“Or are we the visitors, if he was here first?” says Hector.

“Yeah, good point, Hector.”

“What d’you mean?” asks Skooshie. “This is all to get rid of
him,
isn’t it? We’re not going to get disappeared?”

It really is hard not to laugh at Skooshie’s panic. So we just do.

“Relax, Skooshie,” says Lemur. “You’ll be fine.”

We experiment with different chants. We come up with “
Time, Christy! Time, Christy
!”

“It sounds like we’re trying to clear a pub,” I say.

And Skooshie comes up with a football-inspired “
Chri-sty
Lo-rre-dan! Chri-sty Lo-rre-dan
!” It’s definitely one you can get into, it’s just like a chant from the terraces.

Then Lemur says, “What about this?” And tapping his drum, he chants quietly,

“Christy, Christy

Your time has come.”

We agree it’s the best so far. We have a bit of a practice getting the rhythm right. Soon we’re doing it in unison. If only Mrs Stevenson could see me now, I think. She’d realise what a mistake she made not letting me into the recorder group at school.

“What time is it?” Lemur asks Hector.

“Half past six. Why?”

“Just thinking we should start soon.”

“We should do our masks then.” There’s a drip of water left in the bottle – I had forgotten that we needed it for mud when I was mixing the Creamola foam. I tip it onto the mud pool. There’s just enough.

We dip our fingers into the mud and start smearing patterns on our faces. We don’t have a mirror so we’re relying on each other’s reactions to see how well we’ve managed to do it.

Hector’s gone for a lot of clear X shapes, as if his skin has been stitched – he looks like Frankenstein.

Skooshie’s approach is to flatten his whole hands into the mud, then clutch his face and forehead to leave giant prints. In fact, there’s not much of his skin left visible. He looks really scary until he gives us his big grin.

Bru has used all his fingers at once to cover his face in muddy spots – he looks like he’s sufffering from some deadly disease. He’s pleased with the looks of disgust we give him.

I’ve drawn exclamation marks and question marks all over my face. Bru nods approval when he sees it. “You look totally insane,” he says.

“Good,” I say. “That was the effect I was aiming for.”

But Lemur’s been the cleverest. He’s given himself a curling moustache and small pointy beard and round his eye he’s managed (without blinding himself with mud) an eye-patch. It’s very dark against his pale face. He looks totally menacing.

“Nice one, Lemur!”

“What’s left to eat?” asks Bru.

“The raspberries.” Lemur hands them round.

The raspberries are warm too, and sweet and squishy. Red juice runs like blood down our chins when we bite into them.

“Oh, that’s the other thing you need for a ritual,” says Lemur, with a bloody, raspberry-stained smile. “I forgot to mention it. You need a sacrifice.”

Skooshie freezes.

“Like an animal?” I ask, hoping Lemur means insects and not small mammals.

“No!” Lemur laughs. “Like her.”

We look in the direction he’s pointing. And see Kit standing just inside the entrance to the den.

I’m furious. “
What
are you doing here?” I’ve got her by the arm.

She shakes herself free and steps further into the den. She spots the empty tin on the ground.

“That’s
my
Creamola Foam as well, you know.”

“Kit, go home. You’re not allowed here. You’re not allowed to cross Prospecthill Road.”

“
You’re
not allowed to go into Cathkin, but you still did it,” she says.

“But this is our den –
no one’s
allowed here without our invitation.”

She looks at me and smiles. “But I was invited.”

“
No – you – WEREN’T!
” Four of us at once, loud in outraged protest.

“Lemur invited me.”

Lemur isn’t denying it. For a moment we’re speechless, then we turn on him, tripping over our words because we’re so angry.

“You did what? You told me—”

“What were you thinking?”

“We’ve never—”

He stops us by holding up his hand. Maybe it’s his pirate disguise. We’re not questioning that he’s in charge.

“Like I said, every ritual needs a sacrifice.”

“It sounds fun,” says Kit. “Nice masks, by the way.”

This wasn’t what we were expecting. But it looks like Lemur has a plan. And Kit seems willing to go along with it. We’re waiting to see what happens.

Lemur gives Kit a few raspberries that he’d kept, then makes her stand in the middle. Our drums are positioned around her in a circle.

“Chant,” says Lemur.

We follow his start, drumming with our fingers and chanting very softly:

“Christy, Christy

Your time has come.”

“Spin,” Lemur tells Kit. She starts to birl round in the centre of the circle.

Our drumming gradually gets louder and louder until we’re thumping the metal surface hard with our fingers.

“Faster,” Lemur tells Kit.

He leaves his drum. We keep drumming and chanting, while Lemur chants and dances in front of us, inside our circle, around Kit. Kit’s twirling faster, giggling and breathless.

By now the rhythm of the chant is inside me:

“Your time has come!

Your time has come!”

I don’t even hear the words, I’m just part of the
noise. But then there’s something wrong, somebody’s disrupting the rhythm. It’s Lemur. Suddenly I realise he’s not singing “Christy, Christy,” he’s singing, “Kit, Kit.”

And then there’s a flash, a burst of energy that throws us back from our drums. It shatters the noise. Dazed, we all look at Lemur to explain what has happened. He’s standing very still, right in the centre of the den.

And Kit has disappeared.

Lemur breathes a sigh of relief. “It worked,” he says. He looks pleased with himself, his face flushed with excitement.

“What worked? Where’s Kit?” I demand.

Lemur looks surprised. “Haven’t you worked it out?”

“Where’s Kit?”

“She’s gone,” he says, as if disappointed he has to spell this out to me. “But I’m here. It means I can stay!”

“Where is she, Lemur? Is she all right?”

“Yes – she’s perfectly safe. You don’t need to worry about her.”

“Why has she disappeared? Why can’t I see her?”

Lemur is starting to look a bit concerned about my reaction.

“Kit’s not going to be around for a while.”

I throw myself at him. He trips, losing his balance and falling onto the cushions. I’m on top of him and punching him as hard as I can and I don’t stop until Hector and Skooshie pull me off.

“Whoa, Midge – stop! He’s only winding you up.”

“No. He isn’t.” Because I know Lemur and I know
that he’s telling the truth. “Are you?”

Lemur shakes his head.

“Tell us everything, Lemur,” says Bru.

And so he does.

“Do you remember one day in the den we were talking about putting time in a bank?”

“Yes – so you could save it when you didn’t need it and use it later.”

“And we said we should invent a time bank so we could do that?”

“Yeah…”

“Well, the thing is, I never needed to. Invent it, that is. It’s something I can already do.”

He looks around us all. “You still don’t get it, do you?”

I want to believe that all these days in the sun have scrambled his brains, that what we’re listening to is the ravings of somebody with heatstroke. But I know that’s not true.

“You’re Christy Lorredan,” I say.

He grabs me by both arms. “Midge, I knew
you’d
understand.”

“Let go of me,” I say. “Unless you want me to hit you again.”

He backs off.

“I don’t get it,” says Skooshie.

Lemur punches him.

“Ow!” says Skooshie. “All I said was, ‘I don’t get it.’”

“You felt that?” says Lemur.

“Yeah, I felt it!” Skooshie’s rubbing his arm.

“And you know that you can’t feel ghosts, don’t you?”

Skooshie’s eyes narrow. He suspects some other trick.
“I know you’re not a ghost, Lemur.”

“But Midge is right. I
was
Christy Lorredan. I lived here all those years ago with my mother and father and my brother, Robert.”

“And you’re here now but not a ghost because you can bank time?” Hector’s trying hard to get his head round what’s happening here.

“Exactly! The story – I didn’t make it up. It all happened the way I told you. Robert dying, then me. But when I died, I was still here. I was stuck – I didn’t leave. For some reason I couldn’t not be. Do you remember what I told you at the end of the story? That I was waiting and waiting? That’s because no one came, no one knew I was here, no one saw me, no one talked to me. Do you know what that feels like?”

“It would be bad,” Bru admits.

“Imagine it. Imagine how much you would long for someone to play with. And this went on and on – I don’t know for how long. The house was a ruin. No one ever came into the grounds. It had all grown wild. Then one day I heard something. I was in the tree where the tree house had been – it was long gone too. I saw someone in the undergrowth. A boy. I watched him squeezing through the brambles, eventually finding the open space beneath my tree. He sat down and leaned against the trunk. He opened a bag and took out some bread and cheese and ate them. Then he lay down on the ground and fell asleep.”

Lemur pauses here. He swallows hard.

“At last here was someone to talk to. I knew he was tired so I let him sleep, waiting until it looked like he
was going to wake up. What was a few more hours to wait after all that time? I climbed down from my tree and went up to him. The place he had picked to rest was exactly where Robert fell. Where I fell. I remember hoping it hadn’t given him bad dreams.

“He must have heard me because he jumped up, really alarmed, and all set to run away.

“‘It’s all right,’ I said, reaching out to him to reassure him. I couldn’t believe he was actually able to see me! The last thing I wanted was for him to leave. ‘I’m Christy,’ I said. ‘Please – stay! You can’t go!’

“When my hand touched his arm, there was a flash, like an explosion. I covered my eyes because it was so bright it hurt. When I looked again, the boy was gone. I collapsed on the grass, and I cried and cried. I realised the whole thing must have been a dream.

“But when the sun came up in the morning I saw it. The boy’s bag. I hadn’t dreamt it at all. I rummaged through it. An end of bread. A piece of cheese. A book. A book with a name in it: Stuart Coulter.

“And then I realised that I felt different. I had so much energy. It was a strange feeling, but a fantastic one. And even more strange: I was hungry. I ripped off a hunk of bread. I broke the cheese into pieces and stuffed them in my mouth. They were the best things I had ever tasted. Does that seem odd to you? It won’t if you think about it.
I had eaten nothing since I died.
”

“So you were alive again?” says Hector.

“Yes.”

“Because you stole that boy’s life,” I say. “Stuart Coulter – he was dead. And now you’ve murdered my
sister.”

“No,” says Lemur. “He was
not dead
! And I haven’t killed Kit either. I met him again. Honestly, I did. Look, I didn’t know how it had happened. But it was a chance for me and I had to take it. I found friends. I had people to play with and talk to again.”

“And you got this from Stuart Coulter. How can that work? What did you take?”

“What was Stuart Coulter like when you saw him again?”

Lemur looks at the ground. “An old man,” he says.

“He took his
time,
” says Hector.

“He’s a time thief,” I say.

Even Skooshie’s got it by now. He’s not impressed.

“So you nick time from people?” he says. “They go straight from being children to being old. And you use the time in between.”

Lemur nods.

“What happens when you’ve used up one person’s time?”

“I need to find someone else.”

“Like Kit.”

“Yes, like Kit.” He looks at me defiantly. “Why not Kit? I chose her for
you.
You’re always going on about how annoying she is.”

“We all go on about how annoying our brothers and sisters are! It doesn’t mean I said it was OK to make her disappear! Why did you pick on her?”

“It had to be someone who would come here and take part willingly. It had to happen here – like I told you. The ritual didn’t matter – we could have done
anything. I just needed to have someone here – with me right on the spot where I died. And I couldn’t sacrifice any of you. So I persuaded Kit to come – it wasn’t hard. I knew she wouldn’t be able to resist being part of the gang.”

He means every word of this. And Kit’s gone.

“So you’ve kept going all that time and now you’re…” Hector does a quick calculation in his head, “…168?”

“No,” says Lemur. “I’m still twelve.”

“You’re still twelve,” I repeat. “And you’ll never get any older?”

“That’s right.”

“So even though you make friends, you lose them all the time, because they grow up and you don’t.”

He nods, looking miserable for a minute.

“That’s going to happen again with us, you know, Lemur,” says Bru. “We’re going to get older.”

“No! You’re different. You’re the first people I’ve trusted enough to tell. I’m Lemur not Christy any more – you gave me that name! We can work out how to stay together. So that nothing ever changes. You can be like me! We’d never get any older, any of us – it would always be like this!”

No one knows what to say to this. Our silence throws Lemur.

“OK,” he says. “OK. The game’s a bogey, as Skooshie would say. I’ll bring Kit back and we’ll start again. With someone else. You’ll help me. C’mon.”

It’s Hector who says what everyone’s thinking. “We’re not going to help you do this, Lemur. It’s not right.”

“What kind of friends are you? I’d do it for you! Don’t
we always stick together?

“None of us would ask you to do something like this,” says Bru. “Like Hector says, it’s just not right.”

“Well, I don’t need your help! Do you know that boy wasn’t missed when I used up his life? Nor were any of the others. Because that’s the clever thing. I take people and life just closes up around them. No one remembers they were ever born. No one misses them. That boy’s mother woke up the next day with no thought of him in her head. No one remembered me and now no one remembers them. Isn’t that funny? What happened to me, I can make happen to other people now.”

“You can’t tell us what to think!” I shout back.

“Oh, yes, I think you’ll find that I can, Midge. And when it happens, you’ll have no memory of Kit or any of this.”

“Why did you bother telling us then?” asks Bru. “Why not just make it happen so we don’t know? We just forget and everything goes on as normal?”

“Because I wanted you to know the whole story. I wanted you to understand what I need to do.”

“You want this to be our fault, not just yours.” It sounds like Skooshie speaks from bitter experience, like he’s very familiar with this approach of shared blame.

“Whatever happens now, you’ll share the responsbility. I can bring Kit back and we’ll find someone else – and you’ll remember everything that happens. Or, if it’s
easier
for you, I can make you forget and Kit will be gone. What are you going to choose?”

He makes it sound like Skooshie’s Game, like we have
no option but to choose. That’s the rules. I have two thoughts. (1) I have to help Kit. (2) I really want to hit Lemur again.

I catch Hector’s eye. He puts his hand on my arm, either to stop me flying at Lemur or to reassure me, maybe both.

“Kit back. Then we’ll help you,” he says to Lemur. “You’re right. We need to stick together.”

Lemur grins. “You mean it? What about the rest of you?” he asks.

I nod. “Yes,” I say, maybe a bit too quickly.

“Me too,” says Bru.

“And me,” says Skooshie. He shoots his arm out, waiting for the rest of us to clap our hands on top of his.

But then the smile on Lemur’s flushed face fades.

“Do you think I don’t know that you’re lying? All you want to do is help Midge save Kit. You have no intention of helping me… I thought we would do anything for each other.”

Bru and Skooshie look at their feet. I can only glower at Lemur while Hector tries to convince him that we mean what we say. He’s not convincing anybody.

Lemur storms out of the den.

“What do we do now?” says Bru.

“We don’t panic,” says Hector firmly. “If we just stick together, we’re stronger than Lemur. He can’t make us forget.”

He can’t, can he?