The Deviants (10 page)

‘But I can only think of a Truth. OK then, let me think.'

As Fallon pondered, Max levered himself up on his elbow. ‘I dare you to text Hamlin something nasty.'

Fallon beckoned a small rat-type-thing to come out from behind the sofa cushion. ‘Who's Hamlin?'

‘Pete Hamlin,' I said. ‘My running coach.'

‘Oh,' she said. ‘What do you mean, nasty? Something mean?'

‘No,' said Max. ‘Kinky stuff. Something like,
Hey Sexy,
Thinking of you and me getting moist tomorrow at training
. Kiss kiss. Monkey face. Heart eyes emoji.'

‘Max!' I said. ‘That's ridic, he'll kill me.'

‘No he won't. He can take a joke, can't he? He'll know it's just a laugh. Go on.'

‘I'm not doing it. We should start tidying up anyway. Rosie will be back soon.'

‘Ooh forfeit, forfeit!' said Corey.

‘No, I'm not doing it. And I'm not doing a forfeit either.'

‘
I'll
do it then,' said Max, and before I could stop him, he fished my mobile out of my hoody pocket, holding me at bay.

‘Max, give me that phone! Max! Please! It's not funny.'

He was scrolling. He clicked on Pied Piper. He was texting. ‘Please Max!'

He hit Send. ‘Done!'

‘I can't believe you!' I snatched the phone back from him and checked my sent messages.
Can't wait to get sweaty with u tomoz, Bae X

‘You bloody idiot!' I yelled. ‘How could you do that?'

‘Oh for God's sake, Ells. It's a joke. Be interesting to see what comes back, won't it?'

I didn't like the look on his face as he sat back down again – it was almost spiteful. ‘What do you mean by that?'

‘You never know, do you? Like, he could come back with something similar. Maybe you
hope
he does.'

‘I don't think it's funny, suggesting my running coach is some kind of paedo.'

‘Oh, come on, he must have tried it on with you at some point. You've been having one-to-ones with him for ages. And he's a hot guy.'

‘So?' I shouted. ‘I'm training for the Commonwealth
Sodding Games, Max. Newsflash: you need to train quite a bit for that.'

Max reached into his pocket and pulled out the little key bunch Pete had given me. I instinctively checked my own pockets – nothing.

‘Fell out of your trackies earlier. There's a Brynstan Academy fob on there they only give to teachers. Why's he giving you his house keys?'

‘So I can use his punchbag, all right? He's been teaching me how to box. Now give them back.' I grabbed the keys from Max and shoved them in my trouser pocket again, zipping it up this time.

The silence between me and Max at that moment would have frozen water. Fallon looked worried, like a child watching her parents argue. Then my phone beeped, and the screen lit up. Pied Piper had replied to the message.
You'll do anything to avoid cross-country, won't you? See you tomorrow. Don't be late, Bae

‘See?' said Max. ‘He can see it's just bants.'

‘Bugger off,' I spat.

‘You won't go home, will you?' said Fallon, a note of desperation in her voice.

‘What?' said Max.

She looked hurt. ‘You're going to argue and then you'll phone someone to pick you up and you'll go home, won't you? Can you stay – just for another hour? Please?'

We all looked at her. She was practically in tears.

‘Why, Fallon?' asked Corey, sobering. ‘Why's it so important to you?'

‘The Shaws are coming. The ones we saw on the Strawberry Line, earlier. They've got into the habit lately of bothering me every night. I'd like a break.'

‘Why?' I asked. ‘What do they want?'

‘Nothing. They just pester me, that's all. Stones at the window. Spooky noises through the letterbox. That kind of thing. They frighten me.'

‘But nothing frightens you,' said Corey. ‘Don't Dare Fallon, remember? I dare you not to be scared of them.'

She shook her head. ‘It doesn't work with them. I still don't like them coming round. But if you're here…'

Max made a clicking noise with his tongue. ‘Hang on a minute, those kids we saw on the Strawberry Line were, like, kids. Little kids. All of them under twelve at least.'

‘I know,' she said. ‘But I've told them so many times. Luke – the eldest – he winds the rest of them up and off they go. They never come in. But sometimes they've thrown stuff through the window. A brick. A bottle. Once they set light to a hay bale, out in the barn. If I hadn't seen them, the whole lot could have gone up. We had kittens in there at the time too, they could have been killed.'

I started folding up the Monopoly board. The game was clearly over.

‘Little gits!' said Corey furiously. ‘How dare they?'

Fallon nodded. ‘The police won't do anything; I've rung them before. And they're too young for the courts to get involved. Mum says to ignore them; that they'll get bored soon. But I don't think they will. They know I'm scared. What can I do, Ella? What if they – try and do something to the baby when it's born?'

You know when you hear an annoying noise and it repeats on and on and on and on until you're so mad you could just kill whatever is making the noise? Like a banging door or a cough or a persistent fly that won't just find the damn window? That's how I felt right then – everything Fallon was saying about the Shaws just wound me up and
up until I was raging inside so badly I wanted to break something.

‘Ella, what are you doing?' said Fallon. I followed her gaze down to my hands.

Without even realising it, I had torn the Monopoly board right down the middle.

‘So the rage took over?'

9

A Little Upset

Y
eah, a bit. That horrible Acid Rain I drank just seemed to make it worse. I listened to more tales of the Shaws, and how they'd teased Fallon for so long now she was ‘almost used to it'. But what I saw was emotional abuse. Physical abuse. Arson. Their latest trick was blackmail. They'd scammed over sixty quid off her, this summer alone. And they still kept coming back for more.

‘Haven't you learned yet, Fallon, that paying them off doesn't work?'

‘It does, though,' she said. ‘They leave me alone for days when I pay them to.'

‘Days?' I roared, flecks of spit landing on my knee. ‘Days isn't good enough.' Corey was looking at me. Max fidgeted with his bootlace. ‘What? Is no one else going to say anything?'

Max stopped fidgeting and shoved his hands behind his head. ‘What do you want us to say? It's none of our business.'

‘Of course it's our business.' I got to my feet. ‘We need to do something.'

‘Like what?' said Corey. ‘It's, like, nine o'clock.' The little
wig-shagging Jack Russell was curled up like an Artic fox in his lap. ‘They'll all be in bed, won't they?'

Fallon was scattering some fish flakes into a murky green tank in the corner. ‘No, they've gone to the Harvest Home tonight. They said they'll be round after it finished. That'll be about ten.'

‘Right, then. We'll put a stop to it. Tonight.'

Max laughed. ‘Hang on, Liam Neeson. You're not seriously suggesting we all lie in wait to kick seven sorts out of them, are you?'

‘No, of course not,' I said, sitting back down. ‘But we could still get our own back. Well, Fallon's own. We could do
something.
' I could feel my fists start to tingle.

At that moment, the lean-to door rattled outside, and heavy footsteps scuffed across the concrete floor. The caged birds and animals squeaked and cawed, and then settled again as Roadkill Rosie wobbled through the doorway of the kitchenette.

‘Hi, Mum. You OK?' asked Fallon, struggling to her feet.

‘Yeah,' came Rosie's gravelly reply. She hadn't changed one bit, but for a few grey streaks in her long black hair. Still short and squat, with a wide face and the same old wart tucked into the crease beside her nose. No wonder people thought she was a witch.

The moment she clocked us all in the lounge she thinned her eyes. ‘What's all this, then? If you're them lot what keeps getting her to give you money, then you can piss off now or I'm calling the police!'

‘No, no, Mum, they're not the Shaws. These are my friends,' said Fallon. ‘This is Corey and Max and Ella. You remember them, don't you? From the old times?'

‘Oh,' she said, looking directly at Max. ‘You're the
Rittman boy. Surprised your dad let you come out here, what with all that business…'

‘He doesn't know I'm here,' he replied, reaching into his jeans for his tobacco pouch.

‘Just as well.' She sniffed. ‘Have my guts for garters, he would, if he thought you were anywhere near here. If you've come to cause trouble—'

‘He hasn't,' Fallon interrupted. ‘Mum, they came over this morning, looking for Corey's cat. I asked you on the phone earlier if you've picked up any ginger toms today.'

‘No, no toms. Couple more females but no toms.' I could hear her scratchy smoker's breath, even though I could barely see her in the gloom of the kitchen. ‘You keep them out of the Skin Room, Fallon, you hear?'

‘Yeah, I will, don't worry,' Fallon replied as Rosie went to the fridge to grab some food for her supper – a hunk of cheese, half a loaf of bread, three bottles of Acid Rain and a family pack of Penguins. She disappeared back through the door without another word.

When she'd gone, Fallon came to sit back down with us, smiling meekly. ‘Sorry about that. She's a bit protective of me, what with the baby and that.'

We all nodded in understanding, and Fallon started tidying up our mess. None of us said anything for a little while.

But Corey could only hold himself back so long. It must have been killing him.

‘Fallon, what's the Skin Room?'

*

When she was sure that Rosie had gone to bed, Fallon showed us the Skin Room. It came with a warning though.

‘Look, are you squeamish?' she said, hand resting on the handle of the basement door. ‘Because if you are…'

‘I'm not,' said Corey.

‘Depends what it is,' said Max. ‘What's in there?'

‘Well, you know what Mum does for a living now, yeah? And before she got busy, she used to do taxidermy as a hobby as well. You know the mounts on the kitchen shelves?'

‘Taxidermy?' said Corey. ‘Like, stuffing animals?'

‘Yeah. She did a few pets for people we knew, sort of putting them into little poses. There's a budgie in a rocking chair reading a book and a dog playing snooker – they went a bit wrong and the families sent them back.'

‘Oh, like Bad Taxidermy on Twitter, yeah?' laughed Max, swigging his bottle.

‘Yeah,' she said, with a frown. ‘Well, she still likes to do it sometimes, as a hobby. She calls it her ‘art.'

‘Riiiight…' I said.

Fallon looked sheepish. ‘We just haven't got round to sorting out what's for burning and what's for keeping yet. So, until we know what to do with it all, it goes in here. In the Skin Room.'

‘OK. Can we go in and have a look then?' said Corey, all but barging past her.

‘We're all grown-ups here,' said Max. ‘We can handle it.'

She nodded slowly, then turned the door handle and reached inside for the wall switch. The light didn't come on immediately. When it did, it revealed a rickety wooden staircase. The light blinked off, shrouding it in darkness again. Then on again, off again.

‘It'll come on properly in a minute, just takes a little while,' she explained. ‘Go on down, carefully. Mind the fourth step – it wobbles.'

Down we went, Corey first, followed by Max, then me
and finally Fallon, the tube light still blinking above the lower room. On and off. On. And off. On. And off.

We didn't need a steady light to get the picture though. If Fallon had told us twenty people had been shot dead down there, I wouldn't have been surprised. In fact, if she'd told us twenty people had full-on
exploded
down there, I would have believed that too. What I didn't expect was what I saw.

First thing I noticed was the blood; it was
everywhere
. Pools on the floor. Dry spatters and spray marks all up the whitewashed walls. A large wooden table in the centre, dyed red with it. And carcasses all over the place
.
On the side benches, on sheets of blue plastic on the floor, hanging from ceiling hooks. Hollowed out. Skins. Skulls. Ribcages.

‘Jesus Christ,' I said. I just couldn't look away from it. The jar of eyes on the huge wooden table. The hollowed-out pig's head on a shelf in the corner. The three rabbits, gouged out, hanging from three rusty hooks by the door. The bucket full of dead piglets, in an old tin bucket on the floor.

The next thing I noticed was how cold it was. Cellar-cold.