The Shelter (6 page)

"Alan?
Alan?
" - Mark was shaking him. "Alan what the hell happened? It was only a joke, shutting you in, only a joke. What happened?"

I was just seeing things,
Alan answered inside his own head, eyes still tightly shut. The words sounded hollow and paltry. Nevertheless he knew he should keep saying them to himself; what
else
could he say? He realised that all the kids books he'd read with titles like
Strange But True!
were comforting only because he hadn't believed them to be true at all, not the telekinesis or the Bermuda Triangle or the... ghosts. Comforting because they were just
books.

"Alan, fucking hell, get up!" Tom said loudly. "Alan!"

Just let me lie here...
, Alan thought.
In the sun. Just let me...

Tom shook him with rough hands. It wasn't the shaking that caused Alan to open his eyes, to angrily wave Tom away, but the other boy's smell, his hot perspiration up close. He got up, shaking his head to rid it of a humming sound.

He looked around but saw no sign of Duncan.

"Alan?" Mark said.

He didn't answer, but turned quickly, to the shelter. The lid was up, like a waiting mouth. The concrete looked old and worn, ancient like a monument. There were spots of Tom's blood on there still, Alan knew, although he couldn't see them.

"What happened?" Mark said. "Alan?"

"Nothing I just...
nothing
," Alan said, his voice sounding tetchy and childlike.
I was just seeing things
, he thought again,
stop asking me.

"Alan for fuck's sake!" Mark said angrily, and grabbed him by the arm. Alan looked down and saw Mark's hand gripping him tightly below the cuff of his t-shirt. It hurt and the skin was already going red. He looked up into the older boy's eyes, and saw how angry Mark was at his evasiveness. Saw the blazing, unreasonable anger that he'd felt himself, and seen in others ever since they'd come to the shelter.

He pulled away, and spoke reluctantly to the dusty ground.

"There's something down there."

"Something down there?" Mark said, looking puzzled. He glanced towards the shelter. "What? What's down there?"

Alan opened his mouth, but what could he say? Glowing people? Something
worse
that used the glowing people as bait? But if he didn't say anything the unnatural buzzing of this place would make Mark angry again, the blood rush to his head and...

Alan turned and was messily sick on the ground.

Tom sneered at him in disgust. "There's nothing down there. We
saw
."

"Then what happened to Alan?" Mark said, sounding irritated. Alan felt giddy in the summer heat and with the sudden nausea that had overtaken him, but he could sense the continuing anger in Mark's manner, now directed at Tom not him. Sense too how Tom was too sullen to notice.

"I don't know, he's just a
kid
after all!" Tom said. "
I
didn't want him hanging around with us! He was probably just imagining things and wet himself or something."

"Has your imagination ever got you scared like
this?
" Mark said, gesturing at Alan, who was still bent double.

"I don't have much of an imagination," Tom said smugly. "Maybe it was a... a rat or something. He's just a kid."

Mark shook his head absently. Alan had straightened up and felt embarrassed by his retching. He met Mark's questioning gaze, and got the obscure feeling that the older boy was begging him to say that it was a rat, that he was just a stupid imaginative little kid.

"I've had a bad feeling about this place ever since I heard about it," Mark said, as if to himself.

"What?" Tom said. "C'mon, are we leaving? I wanna catch that retard who did this to me." He fingered the scratch on his face.

"Alan, please," Mark said. "What's down there?"

I was just seeing things; it was a rat,
Alan thought...

"I'm not sure. But Martin Longhurst
was
down there, at some point," he said.

"Martin..?" Mark said slowly. His eyes looked angry for a second; a real, sad anger, not the inflated rage that had been pumped into each of them all day. "Fuck this. I'm going back down there."

Before Alan could react Mark had walked to the concrete shelter, and was getting ready to swing his legs onto the ladder.

"No, let's leave, don't go
down
there!" Alan shouted. "There's something..."

"It's okay Alan," Mark said. His eyes looked both scared and angry, like he'd been edged into doing something he didn't want to. Mark deliberately looked away from Alan to Tom. "I'm not a pussy, I'll be okay." Then he looked down, frowned, and set his first foot onto the ladder.

"No!" Alan ran forward, kicking up dust from the ground. Mark put his other foot on the ladder, although his body was still above the opening and his hands on the concrete outside. Alan reached the shelter and grabbed one of Mark's sleeves, pulling. "Mark c'mon, let's leave."

"Shit," Mark muttered, and tried to pull away. "Get him
off
me!" he shouted over at Tom. Alan felt suddenly furious. Couldn't Mark see he was trying to
save
him?

Two fat arms grabbed him around the waist and pulled. Angrily Alan elbowed Tom in his flabby stomach; Tom fell  over on his ass in the ground behind, crying out in pain and embarrassment.

"Get off me you little shit!" Mark shouted, flailing his arm, but Alan still hung on. He was being dragged further forward across the concrete; his face was level with the sun heated stone. Mark had let go of the ladder with both hands now; he was balancing on the squeaking ladder with just his legs and struggling with Alan.

"You bastard!" Tom said behind him, still sprawled on the ground, but Alan ignored him in his struggle with Mark.

Alan's face banged against the concrete and his lip split; he tasted blood in his mouth and saw it smeared on the shelter. In a rage, instead of pulling Mark forward, he pushed at him, and the boy over-balanced and one foot seemed to slip from the metal rung of the ladder... but Alan had hold of Mark's shirt and he didn't fall...

Tom, his face flushed, brought his leg up in a vicious kick that caught Alan straight between the legs. The sudden pain in his balls caused Alan to cry out and double-up; his hands lost their grip on Mark's clothing.

Mark, looking furious, still hadn't regained his purchase on the ladder, but had been pulling away from Alan's grip. He pulled with all his strength at the very moment Alan let go of him. His feet skidded and slipped on the smooth metal rungs of the ladder; his hands caught at the concrete lip of the shelter...

There was almost a pause before he fell, as if he would have been okay if not for something reaching up and dragging him down.

The sound of his legs snapping as he landed was audible to the two boys above. Then there was silence.

Alan and Tom leaned over the shelter's edge, and stared down into the darkness. They could just see Mark's limp figure in the gloom, sprawled at the bottom of the ladder shaft. He wasn't moving; from twenty feet above they couldn't even see if he was breathing. Alan felt the entire hot summer press down on him as he stared into the darkness below; felt the pressure and hum in his head intensify.

"Jesus," Tom whispered. "Jesus, you fucking killed him." He looked suddenly enraged, and raised his pudgy fists at Alan. But Alan didn't react at all, just kept staring downwards, and Tom lowered his fists, blinking rapidly. He looked down at Mark's still body again, and turned and ran without a word.

Alan was left alone, staring downwards at his friend. He realised, with a sick feeling, that he hoped Mark
was
dead, because then he wouldn't have to go back down. As he tried to visualise such a thing, he realised that he simply wouldn't be able to do it - to climb down that ladder, and hear its rusty squeaking again; to stand down in that blackness again and peer into the gloom where visions might appear - he wouldn't be able to do it.

"Alan...." Mark's voice said weakly.

Oh you bastard,
Alan thought furiously, staring down to where the voice was coming from. He saw Mark's body stir slightly, although the boy remained prone on the floor.

"Mark?" he said. "Are you... alright?"

"No you stupid bastard..." Mark said, and took a heaving breath. "My legs are broke." Alan got the impression he was smiling down there despite the situation.

I just can't,
he thought. What if the shelter lid shut while he was down there with Mark, trapping them in the dark with no one above to let them out?

"I'll go and get help!" Alan shouted.

"No!" Mark coughed, and tried to raise himself. "No, that fat bastard will, don't leave me alone..."

"I have to! He might not, I have to phone an ambulance! I'll run to Clipston, I'll only be gone ten, five..."

"No Alan, please, don't leave me alone down here," Mark said. He sounded more like a child than Alan had ever heard him before.
He'll talk me into it,
Alan thought,
he always talks me into doing what he wants...
And there was a hint of anger in his thoughts, even now.
He'll talk me into going back
down
there...

Without saying anything more, Alan turned and ran away from the shelter.

"Alan?" he heard Mark shout. "You there?
Alan?
"

There's nothing down there
, he thought
, I was just being a kid seeing things; it was just a rat...
He could taste blood in his mouth from where he had split his lip, and hear the delighted buzzing of wasps...

"
Alan!
" Mark shouted, as if terrified. "Alan please don't leave me alone down here!"

I just couldn't...

"Alan,
please!
"

Then the hatch of the shelter snapped shut, cutting off Mark in mid-cry.

***

... mid-cry.

Later, when glowing figures enfolded their arms around me, I screamed and kicked. The ambulance men in their fluorescent jackets took me in a firmer grip, pulling me away from the shelter's lid. I had been trying to get it open, but scared of cutting my fingers on the metal hatch, for I didn't want to bleed any more onto its concrete. I'd been too unhinged to find any of the tent pegs, or maybe they had been down underground with Mark. As I was pulled away the shelter had been lit up by the livid summer sunset, and I could see the dry stains of my blood aglow upon it too. And behind it the twisted trees writhed in a wind I couldn't feel, and the wasps swarmed. I don't suppose anyone would ever have cleaned my blood from the shelter. Who would bother?

All the time I'd been struggling to open the shelter, I hadn't heard a single noise from down below. No sound from Mark, or from anything that might be down there with him.

They wrapped me in a blanket despite the heat, asked me what had happened. Had Mark been conscious when the shelter lid had shut? Yes. Did I know the extent of his injuries? His legs were broken, both of them. Had his head been hurt? No, I didn't think so.

"Your friend will be alright then," one of them said to me kindly. "Kids don't die from broken legs."

They let me watch, as they opened the shelter lid - it opened easily for them, eagerly - and shone a torch down, shouted out. Then there was some kind of commotion, more shouting, and they didn't let me watch anymore. It was then that I knew for sure that Mark was dead - when they didn't let me watch anymore. They took me away, down the flat fields towards the gap in the hedge through which the four of us had come hours earlier. I knew I'd have one chance to look behind, that I could take them by surprise but that they wouldn't let me twice.