Taken Away (10 page)

Big-hands Charlie, shirtless from crumb-up, is anxiously shaking Jolly by the arm and insisting, ‘It's the gas! It's the gas! I seen it drowned men like that before!' But Jolly is on his haunches looking at my face, and he knows it's not the gas. I roll onto my side, coughing up another mess of salty water, and gulp in a lungful of the sun-bloated air. Shamie – all blue eyes and terror, heartbreakingly young – is gazing at me over Jolly's shoulder.

The first time I try and say it, it's lost in a gurgle of water in my throat. I sit up, struggling to speak. Though I have no idea what it means, I need to tell Shamie this. It's very important that he knows. Finally I can breathe, and I yell up into his frightened face.

‘Francis found a place to hide, Shamie. He's found a place to hide!'

I WOKE UP CALLING
for Dom and found his side of the bed empty and cold. Dee was crying in the room across the hall. No, she wasn't just crying – she was bawling, screaming, as if she'd been stung by a wasp. I lurched to the side of the bed and scrambled for the centre of the room, looking around for my brother. Not here. Dom wasn't here.

He's in the bathroom, you dope. He's taking a piss.

Yes, yes. Plausible. But no. I knew he wasn't. He wasn't in the bathroom. I backed to the window, my eyes on the empty bunk, and I knew that wherever he was, Dom wasn't in this house. Dee's screams reached a desperate pitch across the hall. I heard Dad murmuring to her, the floorboards creaking as he walked up and down.

Dad. I flung myself out the door and into my parents' bedroom. Dad swung around in surprise. Dee was in his arms, bawling hysterically. He was rubbing her back, and though she was obviously not quite awake, she had bunches of his T-shirt clutched in her little fists, clinging to him in terror. Dad's eyes were clouded with fatigue. In the adjoining room I could see Ma, a lumpy shape lying in their bed. She raised her head to look at me and then let it fall back in exhaustion and dropped her face into the crook of her arm.

‘It's alright, Dom,' said Dad. ‘Deirdre's just having a bad dream.'

That stung me, even then. ‘
Dad!
It's
me
! Patrick!'

He looked at me blankly and shook his head a little. ‘Uh. Sorry. Sorry, bud. Look. Everything's alright, okay? We're looking after her. Go on back to bed now.' He returned to wearily trudging the floor. I watched him a moment, ridiculously angry at him, then closed the door. Fine. I'd find Dom myself.

I ran to the bedroom, meaning to get my jumper and runners, and paused at the window, looking down into the garden. I wasn't at all surprised to see Dom down there, strolling along in his pyjamas, but the sight of his companion made my knees unhinge. The little white goblin-boy was prancing along beside my brother, his delighted grin a black half-moon in his chalky face.

He was chatting away, obviously in the middle of a very animated and amusing conversation. Dom was smiling his lopsided smile and sauntering along, idly swinging a stick at the untidy bushes against the wall. He seemed perfectly comfortable in the company of this naked little creature. The boy said something and Dom laughed, glancing at it with the same affectionate amusement he usually reserved for me.

I threw myself at the window, fumbled the latch and shoved up the sash. Dom's voice floated up to me on the cold air. ‘Really?' he said. His stick swung,
thwack thwack
, against the bushes.

‘Oh, yes,' said the creature. ‘Look. Put your arms out like this. Then put your head back . . . '

I stuck my head over the windowsill. The little creature flung his arms wide and put his head back. If he'd looked a little to his left, he'd have seen me peering down from the bedroom window, but he only had eyes for my brother. And he was looking at Dom with a kind of tragic joy – a heartbroken devotion that would have been moving had it not been on the face of such an awful creature.

‘Now close your eyes,' he said. He watched my brother do as he was bid. ‘Do you feel it? Do you feel the moonlight?'

The tolerant smile that had been quirking my brother's mouth got a bit more crooked, and he shook his head. ‘Nope! I just feel cold.'

The little creature's face dropped. He frowned at my brother for a moment, disappointed. Then he grabbed his hand. ‘Do you feel it now?'

Dom's crooked smile fell away, and though he still stood with his head back and his arms outstretched, his whole posture sagged. A low, amazed sound escaped him. The goblin-boy smiled up at him and nodded. ‘You do, don't you?'

Dom's eyes opened slowly and he looked up at the stars in wonder.

‘Wow,' he said, a long, drawn-out syllable of awe. ‘Wow.'

‘
Dom!
' I cried. ‘Let
go
!'

Dom flinched and gaped up at me, his face a naked mask of confusion. The little creature tightened his grip on my brother's hand and screeched in fear. Dom didn't seem to hear it; he continued to stare up at me with utter disbelief. ‘Wh . . . Pat? What the hell? How did you get back up there?'

I leant far out the window. If it had been possible, I would have flown out of the window – dived out and landed on that little creature and torn my brother from its grip.

‘Dom,' I cried. ‘Let go of its hand! Let go!'

The words seemed to sink in, and Dom turned his puzzled face to the little creature who was tugging and hauling at him in an attempt to get him out of my sight. I saw Dom's eyes open briefly in horror, and then the goblin-boy's own eyes welled up with tears. They ran as black as tar down its white face, and my brother's expression softened, and I saw him bend forward to hear the words the little creature was frantically gabbling.

‘He'll hurt us, Lorry! He'll take you away! You've got to come with me; you've got to be safe. You've got to be safe!'

Dom began to turn back to me, but as he was turning away the little creature snatched at him, opened its mouth, threw back its head and screamed.

‘
Loooorryyy!
'

I clutched at my ears – the scream was awful, a horrible, desolate cry. At its sound, Dom swayed, his knees buckled, his eyes rolled back to just the whites. He seemed to pass out on his feet and, as I watched, helplessly leaning out over the ledge, the white goblin-child led my unresisting brother up the path and further into the tangled garden. Out of my sight.

TAKE ME AWAY

I TOOK THE STAIRS
two at a time, my bare feet pounding the battered wood. I made no attempt to muffle my thunderous descent, but Dee was screeching at the top of her voice and I knew that Dad wouldn't hear me. I wanted him to hear me. I wanted him to follow me, and help me. But I knew he wouldn't. I was alone when I burst into the gloomy kitchen, and alone still when I slammed my way out into the back garden.

I stalled there a moment. The shadow-swallowed gate to the beach road was on my left, the tangle of overgrown garden to my right. The apple trees raised white arms over my head, and I listened.

Dom was here somewhere. He was here, and he was with that horrible little creature. Their footprints, clear and sharp on the damp sand of the garden path, led away into the furtive shadows of the undergrowth. I just stood there, my heart hammering, and was too afraid to follow them. I glanced up at Dad's window. Deirdre's squalling continued upstairs, and now she was repeating the one phrase over and over.

‘The man, Daddy! The
man
! The
man
!'

I shouted up at the window: ‘Dad!
DAD!
' But there was no response.

A scraping sound to my left sent me crouching, my bowels loosening with fear. For a moment, my eyes created a phantom: a soldier in a long coat with gleaming buttons. He was young, maybe twenty, and handsome in a clean-cut kind of way. His eyes were shadowed under the peak of his military hat, his mouth a hard line in the moonlight. He glared at me from the darkness, so very real that I raised my hands to ward him off.

Then the moon shifted through the tree branches and the man broke up into harmless shapes and wedges of light. I was left staring at the innocent garden wall. A stealthy rustling in the bushes to my right drew my attention, and I saw a flutter of white disappear under the dark overhang of a tree. The creature was leading Dom away from me, taking him deeper into the confused maze of bushes.

I glanced once more at Dad's window, swallowed my beating heart back into my throat and followed Dom's footprints down the cold sand of the shadowed path.

‘Dom?' I shoved aside heavy pine branches and clutching snags of bramble, shivering at the frigid drops that showered down my neck and at the horrible slimy dankness of the sand beneath my bare feet. It was awful in here, overgrown and confining. It felt as if the sun never shone and only cold things and damp things lived here.

I pushed through a particularly dense patch, the shadows released me, and I was out in the open again. I was on the very edge of the long lawn that led down to the old biddies' bungalow. Their home was a dark shape at the far end of the lawn. All around me were pools of darkness cut from the moonlight by walls and shrubs and the heavy overhang of trees.

The old outhouse sat to my right, ringed with beds of gnarly lavender, its beach-pebble walls gleaming under the moon. Dom was slumped against it, his posture a rag-doll parody of his usual grinning slouch.

He was watching me without recognition, his face pale and slack with fear, his breath a rapid pant. His legs were splayed, his arms hanging limply at his sides. His chin rested on his chest. Only his eyes were moving, and they followed me with all the terrified panic of a cornered deer.

That thing was with him, its expression twisted up in terror, hissing at me in warning. It had positioned itself between me and Dom, its white hand pressed to Dom's chest, propping him against the wall. I felt my fear give way to rage at the protective way it seemed to shield my brother from me.

I stepped forward, my hands bunching into fists. I thinkI may actually have growled. It was that fecking hand, that hand against my brother's chest, holding him up. And Dom's eyes, how frightened they were and how they were looking at me as though
I
were the monster here. I wanted to grab that horrible little boy-thing and pull him apart. I wanted to
shred
him and scatter the pieces. I wanted to make sure he never stood between us like that again – never made my brother look at me like that again.

‘Get away from him,' I said. ‘Take your hand
off
him.'

I didn't even recognise my own voice; it was so deep and low. Dom made a soft moan of fear, and the little creature opened its mouth in a childish mewl of panic. They clutched each other like frightened toddlers.

This really made me see red.

‘For
God's sake
!' I bellowed. ‘
Get away from him!
' I began stalking towards them, my hands up. I honestly think that, had I ever reached them, I would have strangled one or the other of them, it didn't matter which, whoever I got my hands on first. I was so thoroughly blinded with rage.

The creature flung itself against Dom, and spread its arms as though to hide him from me. Up 'til now, it had only been holding Dom's hand or pressing its palm to Dom's chest, but now it leant its full body against him, pressing him against the wall. The creature was tiny, barely coming to Dom's chest, but at the contact Dom moaned in distress and his legs sagged under him. He slipped down the wall a little. His eyes lost their focus, his mouth dropping open in shock. I could see his hands fluttering against the wall as if he was having a fit. And I swear,
I swear
, I heard a hissing noise where the creature's naked flesh came into contact with the warmth of my brother's body.

I was about to fling myself on them when a torrential sound surged behind me and made me turn in my tracks. The soldier was coming through the bushes – a flickering mirage of shadows and light; a mosaic of fragmented light that somehow made up a man. It was as though a spotlight was being passed over the leaves and branches of the heavy undergrowth, only everywhere it hit, it created the illusion of a tall man striding purposefully forward, stalking through the foliage to get to us. His long coat swept out behind him, the buttons gleaming. His face was a grim mask of determination, his eyes pinpoints of furious illumination beneath his army cap. I had no doubt in my mind:
this
was the bad man.

The goblin-boy screeched in fear, and I stood frozen, a witless paralytic, as the soldier left the trees and crossed the lawn in distance-eating strides. He passed me, without looking at me, and though I could have reached out a hand and grabbed him, had I the will, I still can't say that I ever actually saw him. I still can't say he was ever anything more than a scintillating trick of the light.

The soldier closed the distance between himself and the terrified creature in seconds. But as he got within reach, the little goblin-child – its cheeks wet and shining with black tears, its face contorted with terror – turned and leapt into my brother.