Sabrina Fludde (6 page)

At the bottom of the lane she found the water high and fast after days of rain. The path was flooded right up to the wall, and the river level was high under the railway bridge. But Abren headed towards it without a qualm. Once she'd fought against that dark, old bridge, but she wouldn't fight again. It was where the river had first brought her –
and now it had brought her back again
.

Most nights the town glowed a dull red. It went quiet at six when the workers went home, but was throbbing by ten. You could even hear it under the railway bridge. In between trains rumbling overhead, you could hear the club life around the station. Hear bass lines thumping and drums rattling, and people shouting to each other on their pub crawls round the town. And always they'd end up back here where they'd started, picking up taxis and buying late-night pizzas.

Tonight, however, the streets around the station stood silent and dark. All the clubs were closed, and there was little fun to be had out and about. No neon lights flashed cocktail-lounge signs or offered cheap beer. Even the station lights were out, the platforms standing silent with no trains running and no loudspeakers apologising for anything.

From his hidden world beneath the station, perched up on the girders, Phaze II looked out at the town. It might appear deserted, but he only had to draw back the darkness and there they all would be – the good people of Pengwern with their food and drink and stupid paper hats, their Christmas presents and crackers full of jokes, their tinsel trees and enough cash spent on just this one day to keep him going all year.

But that was scuds for you! Phaze II smiled grimly.
Stupid scuds – he hated the lot of them! He pulled his black coat round him, imagining the river rising until it was high enough to fill all their houses, never stopping until they'd been washed away. That'd show them! That'd cut them down to size!

Phaze II would have laughed out loud, but a crowd of boys came along. They entered the tunnel, shouting over the din of the swollen river. Water soaked their trousers and ran over their boots. But it didn't put them off. It ran against them in waves, but they splashed along the cobbles, breaking bottles and cheering to each other, never looking up to see a boy in the shadows watching everything they did.

Phaze II moved back out of sight, making sure to keep it that way. But he needn't have bothered. The boys were staggering, plainly drunk. They didn't know he was there. And neither, for that matter, did they know what danger they were in, larking about on a path whose edge, only inches away from them, lay under water.

But Phaze II knew. He watched their antics and waited for trouble. They were shouting at each other, fighting for the fun of it and chucking more bottles about. Then they fell quiet and Phaze II heard the hissing and rattling of spray cans, and caught a whiff of paint. He moved to get a better view. There were no streetlights underneath him, but it was still possible to make out the BC boys' special brand of Christmas greeting. It grew across the tunnel wall – a whole new layer of graffiti spelling out in shiny paint just where Jesus, Mary and the town of Pengwern could put their Christmas cheer.

Phaze II knew just how they felt, but it didn't make
him feel any better about them ruining his wall. He willed the boys to hurry up and finish. They had homes to go to, but this was all he'd got. He wanted it to himself, and he didn't want their ugly graffiti all over it. But as if they had no intention of going anywhere, the boys started yanking the doors off an electricity generator cage, ripping down grills for keeping out pigeons, and scrambling up the niches in the tunnel wall, trying to get up to the girders.

Phaze II turned away, feeling under threat. Before he could slip away into the darkness, however, a new figure appeared in the tunnel. It came wading along the path with its head down and shoulders hunched, obviously unaware that something nasty waited up ahead. There was nothing that Phaze II could do to warn it – not without giving himself away. He watched the figure approach the centre of the tunnel, where there were no lights and the boys were hanging off the wall. They saw the figure before it saw them – and jumped down in front of it.

Afterwards Phaze II blamed himself. It should have been possible for him to shout a warning without getting caught – a boy like him, who knew the bridge and all its secret getaways! But once the thing had started, there was nothing he could do. The figure looked up, and there they were – a crowd of BC boys bursting for trouble.

‘Well, who do we have here?'

The figure realised that it was in trouble, and tried to back away. But it was already too late. Boys poured out of the shadows, crowding round and blocking off its retreat. Phaze II couldn't see what was happening, but he could hear them shouting and caught the words
witch
and
bitch
and
out, out, out
. Then the BC boys started pushing the figure about. It tried to break away from them – and suddenly Phaze II got a clear view.

It was the girl, again
. The one who'd stared at her reflection in the market door, dressed up in that stolen sweater. The one he would have noticed anywhere, even if he hadn't dreamt about her, because there was something different about her. And the BC boys didn't like people who were different. They only liked people just like them. They were frightened of everybody else.
Even little girls
.

As Phaze II watched, they started laying into her. Obviously they thought that they could get away with it, here under the bridge on Christmas night with the river in full flood and nobody to see. They crowded round the girl, chanting at her and pointing their fingers as if her stumbling into them had made their day.

‘Witch! Bitch! Out, out, out!'

Phaze II heard their spray-cans hissing and heard the girl's cry. Clouds of startled pigeons flew off into the night and the boys cheered. They sprayed again, and Phaze II caught the stink of paint. He reminded himself that the first golden rule was not to get involved. But the girl cried again, and he flushed red with shame. To think he'd seen this coming but hadn't done anything! And to think that he sat above it now –
and still he wasn't doing anything!

The girl cried again. Phaze II didn't know what to do. A bottle smashed beneath him. And then the girl screamed.

For a moment silence fell.

Then,
‘Bloody hell!'

Suddenly, boys were disappearing in all directions – Border Commandos taking to the shadows, crying out in a panic as they melted into the night. No longer were they drunk, but stone-cold sober. Phaze II watched them running off as if they'd never stop. Try as he might, he couldn't see what had happened to the girl. She wasn't on the path any more. They hadn't taken her with them, and she hadn't run off down the tunnel.

The only place left was the river! Phaze II forced himself to look down, to where it swirled and crashed between the bridge's rows of iron legs. Perhaps the girl had fallen in by accident. Perhaps the BC boys hadn't meant to push her in. Perhaps she'd simply lost her footing and failed to see the edge. But she was down there, wasn't she? Phaze II couldn't see her, but he knew it in his bones.

And so did the boys.

‘We're not to blame!' they shouted as they ran.

‘We didn't do nothing!'

‘It was all her own stupid fault!'

‘
Let's get out of here!'

Finally they were gone, and silence returned. Phaze II knew that tomorrow they would tell themselves that it hadn't even happened – that in some drunken stupor they'd imagined the whole thing. The fact that a body was found downriver would be just a coincidence. Nothing to do with them.

He stood upon the girders, red with anger as well as shame. Anger at the boys, and anger at himself. He should be jumping in the river and rescuing the girl. Even now every precious second could count. But he
knew he wouldn't do it. He wasn't that sort of boy. Wasn't a hero or the sort to draw attention to himself. And he didn't trust the water, anyway. Never had done, for all that he lived on a bridge over a river.

Even when he saw the body, Phaze II knew he wouldn't do a thing. There it was right under him, waves breaking over it. And he knew he couldn't help. Not with the river in full flood. Not in the dark, with the water as cold as ice, and waves with jagged edges like hungry white teeth.

‘I can't!' he shouted, peeling out of his coat.

‘I won't!' he shouted, pulling off his boots.

‘NEVER IN A MILLION YEARS!' he shouted – and he jumped.

Abren lay upon a concrete island. Something had got hold of her legs and something else was tugging in the opposite direction, with a grip under her shoulders. She didn't know where she was or how she had got there. She stared around her, trying to work it out. All around her were other islands in rows, massive iron pillars rising from them into a darkness which smelt cold and bitter. Waves crashed over them, swirling into whirlpools, then chasing each other off down-river.

‘Where …? What …?
I don't understand!
'

Abren brushed a hand against her face, and found a swelling over one eye. She must have hit something, but couldn't remember what. Her hair was wet and stuck flat to her head. Her clothes were sodden and her blanket clung like wet ice to her shoulders. Suddenly a wave broke over her too, running down her and tugging at her legs.

Immediately the tugging under her shoulders doubled its efforts.
‘You've got to move!
' a voice cried. ‘You can't just lie there! You've got to help yourself!
I can't do this on my own!
'

Abren turned her head, feeling sick and giddy, and a boy came bobbing into her vision. He was as soaked as her, and shivering with the cold, holding on to her and trying to keep them both out of the water.

It was an impossible task. Abren felt his hands
under her shoulders again – and understood at last. This was the railway bridge, and she was on one of the concrete islands which held its iron legs. She had fallen into the river, forced over the edge by her confrontation with the BC boys, and now this other boy was rescuing her. Or trying to, if she'd only give him a chance!

‘
Don't just lie there!
You can do it!
' the boy cried.

Abren did her best, but it was a feeble effort. It would have been so much easier to let herself go. She kicked against the waves but they were a hundred times stronger than her. Tried to draw up her legs, but they seemed to weigh a ton. Hauled herself backwards, but struck cold iron.

She turned around and found herself pressed against some sort of cage which the boy was squeezing through – an easy task for someone as thin as him.

‘Come on!'
he yelled at Abren. ‘You can't just stay there – the river's rising!'

Abren realised that the cage housed a metal service ladder. The boy started up it, and Abren would have been left behind if she hadn't hurried after him. She squeezed between iron bars and started climbing. Above her she could hear the boy coughing and shivering as if his freezing dip had done for him. She shivered in her wet clothes as if it had done for her too. By now her hands were white and she had lost all feeling. She couldn't get a proper grip, and had to bite her lip to force herself to keep alert. The higher she climbed, too, the less safe the ladder seemed. Some rungs were missing and others had lost their screws and hung loose.

Shaking with relief, Abren finally made it to the
solid safety of an iron-girder walkway. Here the boy was hauling himself into a big black coat and a pair of boots. Then, as if it was understood that Abren would follow him, he started along an iron walkway no more than half a metre wide, which stretched ahead of them without a handrail on either side.

‘I can't do that,' Abren said.

The boy turned back. ‘Of course you can!' he called. ‘There's nothing to it. All you have to do is tell yourself that there's plenty of room – and just keep walking! It's easy once you've made a start.
Just don't look down
.'

‘You must be joking!'

‘I'm too cold to joke.'

The boy pulled his coat around him, bowed his head and coughed into his chest. Suddenly, Abren realised that she had seen him before. It had been in the market on Christmas Eve. He was the boy who'd stared at her and she'd stared back as if they'd known each other. A tall, thin boy in a black coat – and she'd seen him before that, too, going through the bins at the market.

Now, he returned along the girder, biting back his impatience and offering her a cold hand. She took it with reluctance. Slowly, they edged their way out over the river, Abren clinging to the boy's words about not looking down. When they reached the end, he didn't say ‘well done'. He just let go of her hand and started up another service ladder and along a dizzying series of further girders until they reached the central core of black stone arches which formed the bridge's hidden spine.

Here they came to what seemed like a dead end.
There was no way forward on the girders, not that Abren could see. And there was no way back – at least not one that she could face.

‘What do we do now?' she whispered, a dangerous wobble in her voice.

The boy looked at her coolly, and said,
‘We jump.'

‘We
what
?' Abren replied.

The boy grinned tightly. ‘There's a gap,' he said. ‘Half a metre wide. Nothing much. You could always try to stretch across it if you want – but you'd probably lose your balance.
It's safer to jump
.'

Abren stared into the darkness. She couldn't see the gap and she couldn't see beyond it. And the boy could be lying. He could be playing games with her, just like those other boys. She felt herself panic, prickly and hot, forgot his advice and looked down at the river. There it was, black and full, running underneath her. But instead of making everything worse, it reassured her. The boy had rescued her from those dark waters, at a high cost to himself. He'd risked his life – and he wouldn't do that just to make her jump into oblivion! It didn't make sense.