Red Spikes (10 page)

The simulacrum re-set its head, lifted one wing and blew along it a single rolling ball of breath that burst against Scarlet’s white neck and spilled all about, up into her carefully tangled hair, down across the wrinkled dark purple cloth of her breast, down past the label of her clothing at the back and trickling down the soft warm indentations of her spine.

‘No,’ she said.

Nothing moved but their eyes.

‘You’re sure?’ said the man.

‘Yes. I mean, yes, I’m sure.’

‘I know what I’m doing. I won’t give you too much. And it’s pure; I’ve had it myself. It’s good stuff.’

‘No, take it out. I don’t want to.’

He took it out – again, he could have forced her, he could have squeezed some in. I don’t know for certain she’d have pulled away. Maybe there is hope for him after all?

He shrugged, and gestured for the tightener. She watched him, pulling down her raggy sleeve, not noticing the escaped bead of blood smearing on her skin. The simulacrum flew from her shoulder, straight for the mirror.

‘You’ll have all of it?’ she said. ‘You were only going to have half. Will you be all right?’

The man smiled – any girl might be taken in by that weathered, carefree face. ‘I was only going to go for a little ride. Out of politeness – your first time and everything.’

He did it to himself, then – to his own vein in his own arm, which was far beyond my powers of protection. He sat back in the big scratchy armchair, and sank away from her. He came back for a moment, to tell her how good it was, then fell away again.

She watched the whites of his eyes. She picked up the instrument and turned its emptiness over in her hands. The simulacrum perched low opposite me, peering into the cage, wanting home now that its work was done.

The man’s mouth had fallen open. Water pooled inside the lower lip, ready to drool out. ‘It’s not very interesting from the
outside
, that’s for sure,’ Scarlet murmured. She stood, picked up her bag.

I stayed with her as far as the street, then summoned the simulacrum back through. The moment we were incorporated, I slept.

In my dream I rose through to the Hereabove, a single flake or feather travelling upward on the indrawn breath of the god-who-admits-of-love. There curved its breast above me, densely feathered with souls. The freshly dead ones who had been kept and cared for on earth, they were the brightest; others whose Connections with the Hereunder were dying one by one were being resorbed, fading into the body of the god. All was warmth and light; earthly sensations fell away, the twitching fear, the gnawing hunger and thirst, the thinned-out feeling that tiredness gives you. My borrowed body’s false feathers with all their mites and dust dropped behind me, my bones heavy with earthly air, as I flew without beat of wing or heart towards the place reserved for me on the god’s skin.

I woke in a panic. A dark-clawed hand pursued me. Bars beat on my wings, on the back of my head.

They were the cage, and the claw was the hand of Scarlet, looming there in all her multifarious layers and odours.

‘Come on,’ she prayed. ‘You used to hop on anyone’s hand.’

‘Leave him alone,’ said Taylor in his pyjamas at the door, rubbing one eye. ‘You have to tame them up again – they don’t remember. You have to do it every day, and it’s been four weeks since he practised.’

‘Well, whoever had him should’ve kept him up to speed.’ But she pulled her hand away and closed the door, and dropped the cloth.

‘Maybe nobody had him. Maybe he was living wild and free.’

‘Bull, he was. He’d’ve been cat food in two seconds if he hadn’t found another home.’

They squabbled on, and I smoothed myself down. I lost a few feathers in the preening; now that the Defining Moment had passed, the form would not last long. I would be gone by morning from this itchy, seedy world full of frights, flown to the bosom of the god.

I fluffed up what was left of me and settled beside the dark mirror.

{ Hero Vale

Diammid Anderson gazed over into the Vale.
It was dark down there among the trees, and not just from shadow. He was glad of the rock’s coolness and solidity against his chest.

‘I don’t like that black mist,’ he said. ‘It makes me feel as if bits of my eyes are blind.’

‘Oh, you caint see straight in this place,’ said Razor. ‘And when you
do
see summink, afterwards you caint quite remember. You caint quite believe, you know? It will not stay proper in your head.’

Razor’s skin was like yellowed wax. He was dressed all in raggy black, his head thrust forward motionless, his miserable eyes taking in the overcast sky, the complex darkness of the Vale.

‘It’s not guaranteed we’ll see anything at all, is it?’ said Diammid.

‘Nuffing’s sure, no. Git out the glass, though – you never know, it might help.’

Diammid had forgotten about the spy-glass. He rummaged in the rucksack and brought it out. It was comforting to look at, and to hold – the old, tooled, red leather, the chased metal.

‘Crothel will notice it’s gone. Maybe even before he notices
me
gone.’ Diammid laughed nervously.

‘Long as we get us a half-hour here. Any longer and we’ll be for the nuthouse.’

‘Have you ever stayed longer?’

‘Last time I stayed an hour, but half of that I was behind this rock, not looking, while Ark and Chauncey went peculiar. I had to whack them in the end, to get them away.’

‘I heard that Ark hardly had any nose left.’

‘I dint do that. The other boy done that. Fighting like scranny-cats, they were.’

‘Is it true, then – they only hurt each other? Nothing else got to them, from down there?’

‘Ennink from
down there
,’ said Razor, with a bitter smile, ‘the boy wouldn’t be alive, I don’t reckon.’

It’s not possible,
Tregowan had said.
I
saw
Ark. No one
the size and make of Thomas Chauncey could do such damage.
His ear was torn near right
off.

Diammid hadn’t seen either boy right afterwards; by the time he’d got back from hockey practice Ark was gone to the hospital, all the way to London, and his parents shipped him home from there; Chauncey had been fetched from the school San and kept home six weeks. He had come back cold and quiet and no longer popular, lasted to the end of summer term and then gone away for good.

Diammid glanced at Razor again. The older boy’s eyes were like pale-grey buttons; his mouth was always pursed as if he were remembering some new thing to worry about. He was one of those people who would go through to old age with barely a change; he would wrinkle up a little and his dull brown hair would go grey, but that would be all. And then he would die. Diammid rarely thought about deaths like Razor’s; he suppressed a shiver, and turned back to the Vale. ‘There
are
colours,’ he said. ‘Just not strong ones. Just very dim greens and browns, and you have to look for them.’

‘They might stren’then, if summink comes,’ said Razor. ‘They tend to.’

‘You never properly said what you’ve seen,’ said Diammid.

‘Sh,’ said Razor. He had not shifted his gaze from the Vale.

A peculiar feeling flowed off Diammid’s last words to Razor,
You never properly said
. . . It hissed off Razor’s
Shhhh
. . . and it moved across Diammid’s mind like the black mist down there, which had just covered a patch of tree-trunks, tangling with the beardy stuff in the lower branches.
Razor is lying,
he knew all of a sudden.
He’s faking.
He’s making it up. He’s never seen anything here. He just
—

Then the mist passed, showing the tree-trunks again, the beards, the white haze of the beard-berries. And Razor’s eyes were steady; they didn’t dart guiltily or anything suspicious. And Razor hadn’t taken the money Diammid had offered him on Wednesday, had just looked at him by the roadside there where accosted and said,
Course I’ll take you, if you’re sure.
And pushed Diammid’s hand away, with the money in it.
No,
he’d said
. It’s not a
thing I do for money.

Razor turned and saw the stare on Diammid. ‘Have a bite,’ he said. ‘It’s best not to be hungry. But be quiet about it. And keep looking. More eyes the better.’

Diammid pulled out the cloth full of chicken-fritters, fresh-tuck swapped from a day-boy. He handed one to Razor and bit into another.

Oh, there was nothing like eating outside; there was nothing like striding away from Grammar and going somewhere one shouldn’t go, and then eating; there was nothing like salty yellow-and-brown fritter full of shredded white meat and glossy green peas; Diammid only just restrained himself from grunting with pleasure as he ate! My heaven, it was good.

You wouldn’t,
Teasdale had sneered across the supper table.

Would, too,
said Diammid – it was easily said.

You wouldn’t have the bottle. You’re just another spineless
tweaker from Roscoe’s dorm, all farts and giggles.
His cronies laughed like machine guns, showing half-chewed food.

Yet here he was, scoffing fritter above Hero Vale. And when Teasdale heard he’d gone, he wouldn’t believe it at first, but then he’d have to – Diammid hoped someone was watching, and could tell him later about the look on Teasdale’s face.

Who will vouch for this boy Rickets? For this worm? For this
weed?

Bully Raglan rowed and boxed and played rugby. He and all his lads were big, stuffed tight with muscles, excepting Arthur Septimus, who was tiny and weaselly and did all Bully’s listening and spying. Bully strutted about in the quad, ridiculous in his short pants and braces. Diammid wondered at how such a big baby-looking boy could make the whole quad-ful of boys stiffen and stink with fear.

Teasdale and his boys were up on the hall balcony, jostling and egging Bully on.

Rickets was white and his eyes were lowered; there was a spot of pee on the front of his shorts from when Bully Raglan had grabbed him so suddenly out of the huddle of new Preps.

What happens if no one vouches for him?
whispered a Prep behind Diammid.

He will destroy him, is what Hopper says.

What, beat him up?

Well, that too.

No one?
cried Bully.
Rickets is alone in the world? Rickets
is entirely without protection?
He smirked.
And
such
a fine
figure of a man, too. Shall we see just how fine?
he called up to Teasdale’s lads.

Show us his haunches!
they cried out.
Show us his
scrawny chest!

They won’t, will they? Diammid thought unhappily. They won’t take off his clothes?

Rickets slowly raised his face, the face of a boy who was always smallest and palest and most picked-upon. Diammid saw not only that they would strip Rickets and worse, but that Rickets knew they would, knew and was already resigned, so resigned he was almost saintly with it, sagging in his captors’ arms, reading his future in Bully’s bully eyes.