Ectopia (19 page)

- You're in this house, you're on my side, he says into my face.

His right hand gathers into a fist and thumps into my stomach. I fall back against the wall. That's OK. Ex-Dad's just finishing off what Soo started. Making sure. I can cope with that.

He moves across the room.

- I'm doing this for you, he tells me. He sounds calm but there's a catch in his voice, like he's choking on some emotion – For you, for Karen, for Paul. For the family. The future.

He picks up a deodorant, lifts his shirt, and sprays under his arms. I'm crap around sprays. They trigger things. He trades the aerosol for his gun and the spew of words keeps steaming from his mouth but the whole picture of him wobbles now, like in a heat haze, lines of shivers passing up from his feet and out through his head. His mouth goes still a moment, but I don't hear it go quiet coz a roar's gathering. It's like Mom's planes are flying from Heathrow again, roaring to bust my skull from the inside, the bricks and wood of the whole house shaking. Ex-Dad's speaking again, at least his mouth's making shapes, but I can't hear the words for the noise. The shivers gather him up coz one moment he's there then he's gone. The door takes up shivering where he used to be. Then the door goes too, the whole room disappears. Darkness swamps it, the room's just this black and roaring square with orange burning in around its edges.

Seeing the future's like a punch in the guts, only it's in the head. Some fist comes flaming in, burning up the present. Time doesn't stand still, it runs away with everyone else, and you're left behind seeing where they're headed and able to do fuck all about it.

My lungs stop. They're choked. It's like all the clean air's trapped inside a bubble in my throat and I can't gulp it down. My head hurts. It's more than hurt. It's like all my feelings contract into bone then pulse and buck and break. All goes dark and flashes orange then skullbreak comes and light bursts in. The light's white, a glare of strobe, and then the future's here. Stick a pin through time, that's what I see, one static moment still to come. My eyes stay shut but it's like they're seared, images etched into em. All color's gone but black and white and shades of grey between, like the future's already sealed and this image of it's an afterburn. I know the place. It's here. Outside. This hell realm is the garden. I know the people standing, too. It's teensquad. Ant Soo Skink Skel Dome all of em. Their feet and hands are sticking out like they're dancing but not together. They're not dancing and not together. They're bursting and alone.

I get down to the floor and stay low. Some air's got stuck down here, squashed beneath the heat. I'm breathing. I crawl. I've got to get to teensquad. Got to get to the garden and those etchings on my eyes before teensquad can reach em. Why get to see the future if you can't get there first? If you get to see the future you can stop it.

Seeing the future comes. And then it goes. My skull knits together and I'm looking at the inside of my eyelids. Next thing I know the floor's shaking. Karen's back in the bedroom, ex-Dad's gone. I look up. I've been dragged to the landing. Paul's mattress is at the top of the stairs. Karen comes out of the bedroom, walking backward, dragging Paul from a hold under his arms. She sits him on the mattress then swivels him round before laying him down.

- What are you doing? I ask, close enough to speak softly.

- You're having a turn. Your stomach's bad. You can't lift. This way I can get Paul down on my own.

She steps over him and stands on the stairs, grabbing hold of the mattress. It slides toward her and she lowers it. It lands at an angle, the bottom of the mattress wedging itself against a step. I get the plan. She means to toboggan Paul down the stairs, the mattress protecting his head and body from any knocks. The plan half works. The mattress sticks and Paul slides off it. His body's relaxed so it snakes down the steps.

- Great work, I say – Kick him when you're down there so he really knows you care.

She hurries down.

- Fuck your stomach, she says – Get down here, grab him by the legs and we'll do the rest of this together. Get him down the cellar.

- That's not our job, I tell her – That's Dad's job. That's what he wants us to do. It's a bluff. Paul's always been his favorite. Dad's worked it so we carry him to safety, then he lets rip. He won't do anything while Paul's around. If we carry him anywhere it should be back upstairs. We can prop him up in a window. He's our hostage. Dad won't do anything till he knows Paul's safe. Danger for him means safety for us.

- What did they do to you in Cromozone, Bender? she asks. She says my name like it's an in-joke, punching out the syllables like it's something to laugh at – Trade your brain with an amoeba's?

Karen's got spirit. Shooting insults is good but I need to stand up again before joining in. Karen sees the pain and comes running up the stairs to help me. She takes me to my bed, sits me down, and chooses me some clothes. A white skintop with thin pink hoops, matching shorts, and stale whiteflashes. The window's open and the choke of kerosene's coming through. Ex-Dad's in the garden, bending down the other side of a kerosene haze, pouring the stuff out of a can into his blue-lined trench.

- He's doing it, Karen said, helping me on with my clothes – He's going to burn us down. I'm the bait. You're the bait. He'll wait till your teensquad's come to get us, then burn us all.

- I thought you'd be gone, I tell her.

- Dad's taken the inside handles off the doors. Anyway we can't just leave Paul.

- They'll bring him a new terminal. That's all he wants. He'll be fine. Dad'll never burn Paul.

- You think you can outsmart Dad, she says – You're wrong. He knows you. Whatever the secret, sickest part of your mind is, even if you haven't discovered it for yourself yet, he's been there before you. He's sussed it out and tabbed it. He knows you don't give a toss for Paul.

I look up at her.

- Don't just let Dad worm his way into your sick brain. Get into his. We found Dad buggering his youngest son. You commit a crime like that, you get caught out, what's the best thing to do with the evidence? Burn it. You're not interested in saving Paul. Dad's played around in the sick part of your brain so he knows that. He's relying on that. He gives you the chance to save Paul. You can't be bothered. Paul dies. It's your fault. Dad's conscience is clear.
The evidence is burned. Come on. Get up. We've got to get Paul down the cellar. Dad's thought it through. The cellar door's gone but bricks are piled in the hall. And a bucket of mortar. We've got to get down there and brick ourselves in. It's the only way. See you downstairs.

Standing hurts. Walking feels impossible. But then a father locking up his kids and dousing the house with fuel isn't too likely either. I make my way downstairs, heading through the front room to the kitchen. I've got a plan. Fight fire with fire. I try it out but get nowhere then head down the cellar. Natural light gives out at the bottom of the stairs. I sense Karen breathing, and just make out the shape of her bent over Paul.

- The kitchen stove's blown a fuse, I tell her – It must have happened when ex-Dad exploded the terminal last night. I thought I could leave paper on the hotplates till they caught fire, but that won't work. And I can't find any matches.

- You want to set fire to the kerosene trenches.

That's a trouble with having a twin. You think you've had an idea but she shares it so quick it might as well be hers. A special trouble with Karen is that she won't leave it there. She carries your own ideas forward then presents em back to you as masterplans. She does the same thing now.

- You set fire to the kerosene rather than leave it to Dad, and that way the house goes up in flames before your teensquad gets caught in his trap. Is that right?

I nod. She goes on as if she can see me.

- Maybe Dad gets caught in the flames and that's a bonus. That's what you've seen in your visions all along, Dad going up in flames. Right?

- I see flames. I see Dad. He's at the heart of em.

She carries on.

- You've thought through all the alternatives. You've thought of the other ways of keeping teensquad away. Right? Like write a message.
It's a trap – stay away.
Tie it to a brick and chuck it over the fence. That's not an option?

I think it through.

- Dad's got the front garden covered. I just checked. He's up on his tower. The front window's unbreakable. Your window's boarded. Smash out the boards and he'd be waiting with his gun. He'd shoot my arm before I threw.

- Agreed. It's the only other idea I've had. The fire's the best thing I've thought up too. It saves the others and gets rid of the fence so we can get out ourselves.

- Exactly, I say, like I've thought of that bit for myself – So let's just get on with it.

- You've checked all the kitchen cupboards for matches? she asks.

- It's like ex-Dad's seen the possibility. Like he's hidden em.

- You and him, Bender, you're the same. He's just had more practice. Whatever bad thing you think of doing, he'll have got there first. You think he'd pour kerosene around the house and not hide the matches? He's a parent for fuck sake. All our lives he's tried to think of the worst things we could do just so he could stop them. Sure he's hidden the matches. You search the shelves, I'll search the table.

I can't even see the shelves, but Karen goes straight to what must be a table and starts picking up glass jars and banging em down.

- You can see, can't you?

- Kind of, she says – You got to run the streets, I got to stay indoors. I get this house to myself at night. I developed night vision to make the most of it. But this is dark even for me. Maybe this'll help.

I hear a scratch. Smell sulphur. A glow of orange light illuminates her face as she bends to look across the surface of a table.

- No matches, she says – But this jar's got a candle in it.

The candle flames up inside the jar. I can see around the cellar now but don't bother. I just stare at Karen as the candle casts shadows round her eyes.

- You had matches all along?

- In my bedroom. I've got things hidden all over the house, just in case.

- Give em here.

I reach out but she ignores me and climbs the steps.

- You any good at bricklaying? she calls back down. She lines a row of bricks up along the base of the cellar doorway then starts slapping mortar around – I figure if we build the whole thing but leave mortar out of one section, then we can push those bricks out to make a hole. We set fire to Dad's trenches, leap back in through the hole, plug the bricks back inside it, and that's about the best chance we've got. Come on, get some bricks in place while I fetch water.

She heads for the kitchen. I come out to the hallway and set to work. I've laid three bricks before she's back. It's good work, the mortar even, spillage trowelled from the sides.

- Beautiful work, Karen says – I'd make you a bricklaying diploma only it'd go up in flames with the rest of us as we scream ourselves to death. Come on, Bender. Cut the neatness crap. Slap it on, pile them up. Take five more minutes, max.

She's carrying the bucket from under the sink, filled near the brim with water. Mom's collection of kitchen towels is tucked under her arm.

- I'll take this lot downstairs, she says – The water and towels will give us something to work with if smoke gets through. Then I'll give you a hand. I'll spread, you lay. It'll soon be done.

I don't stop to listen. She waits for my response but I simply build fast and high. She has to step over a height of three bricks just to get back into the cellar. She leaves the bucket down the bottom, comes back up, and I'm on my fifth row. She waits the other side. When I'm done I push in the few bricks from the middle that I've just slotted in without using mortar. Karen works on the inside, catching and stacking em. It leaves a hole the width of my shoulders and about the height of my waist.

- So I chuck a lighted match in the trench, jump back in through the hole, and brick it up before the house burns down, I say.

As a checklist for a mission it's simple. Paul could come up with a mission as simple as this as soon as he learns to gibber. Karen passes her box of matches through the hole.

- Strike it in the kitchen, away from the fumes, she says – Light something you can throw so you're not hanging over the kerosene when the whole trench blasts.

She runs down the stairs and comes back up to reach a box of nails through the hole.

- This should do it. The cardboard's old. It'll flame well. Leave some nails inside to give it weight.

She's popping out ideas like she's mainbrain. That's my role. She's stuck me in the dumb role of all-action hero. Life's a twist. I take the nailbox to the kitchen and strike a match. It's pink head goes spinning off the end of the wooden splinter and fizzes to death in a spill of water on the floor. Great. Five matches left. I press a finger over the head and hold it down against the matchbox's side as I strike again. It spits into flame.

Karen's right about the nailbox. The edge of the lid catches light at once. I'm not thinking straight. I've now got to carry a ball of flame to the only open window. My bedroom. I start forward when the front door slams back against the wall.

- That you, Bender?

A flame touches my fingers and I drop the nailbox. The rush of air as it falls sees the flame spurt up then die as it's rolled on the floor.