The Bunker Diary (13 page)

Down here the evenings last for ever.

There’s not much to do.

I think a lot.

I think of all sorts of things.

You wouldn’t believe some of the
things I think about. And I’m not going to tell you either. I mean, think about
it. If I told you all my thoughts … well, imagine that. Think your darkest
thoughts, then imagine telling them to a stranger. How does that feel?

Right.

Thinking isn’t criminal.

But there’s another reason I
don’t tell you everything, a more practical reason. You see, you are the unknown.
You are you,
and sometimes you’re me, but you’re also Him,
The Man Upstairs. Or at least you
could
be Him. I’m not saying you are,
but I have to bear that possibility in mind. I mean, I do everything I can to keep these
words hidden. I don’t leave the notebook lying around. I close it when I’m
not writing. I always write with my back to the cameras. But there are no guarantees
down here. Anything is possible. I have no way of knowing that The Man Upstairs
isn’t reading my thoughts. I have no way of knowing that He
is
either.

I suppose I could just ask Him.

Hey, Mister, are you reading this? Give me a
sign if you are. Knock on the ceiling or something. And by the way, while I’ve got
you on the line, let me tell you something. Let me tell you this: I know that I might
die in here. I’m well aware of that. I know that you might kill me. In fact, I
think you probably will. But you can’t kill my thoughts. Thoughts don’t need
a body. They don’t need air. They don’t need food or water or blood. So even
if you do kill me, I’ll still be thinking of you. Do you understand what I’m
saying? I’ll be thinking of you until the end of time.

And that’s a stone-cold promise.

Think about
that
, Mister.

You think about that.

Now He’s started playing games.

When the lift came down this morning there
was the usual bag of food, plus some cleaning stuff that Jenny had asked for – bottles
of disinfectant and bleach – and there was also a large cardboard box. It was one of
those packing boxes that supermarkets throw out or leave by the door for putting your
shopping in. A big one. All taped up. It was Anja’s turn to get the food out of
the lift, but we were all there when it came down. We usually are. It’s the
highlight of the day. Anyway, we got the food out and put the box on the kitchen table
and then opened it up.

It contained:

Six bottles of vodka.

Ten packets of cigarettes.

Three disposable lighters.

Several pornographic magazines (of various
persuasions).

A syringe.

A metal teaspoon.

A small polythene bag full of brown
powder.

Some newspaper clippings.

We all just stood there for a while,
staring at all this stuff like fishes studying a worm on a hook, and I felt my heart
sinking.
I looked around at the kinds of eyes and faces I’ve
seen a thousand times before – hungry eyes, hungry faces, empty heads saying gimme,
gimme, gimme.

I knew what it meant.

I could visualize The Man Upstairs watching
us all with a sick grin on His face, thinking to Himself –
Right, let’s see
you working on that lot together
.

It was a smart move, I’ll give Him
that. Smart and nasty.

Fred was the first to crack. I somehow knew
he would be. He stepped forward and reached for the polythene bag and a bottle of vodka,
and then the rest of them jumped in and took the bait. Snap snap snap. Gimme, gimme,
gimme. Anja ripped open a packet of cigarettes and scrabbled for a lighter, and Bird
grabbed a bottle and twisted off the cap.

‘Hold on,’ I said.

But they weren’t listening. Their eyes
burned fiercely as they tore open their toys.

I turned to Russell. ‘Do
something.’

‘What?’

‘Stop them.’

He shook his head sadly.

I turned back to the table. Bird was taking
a slug from the bottle and Fred was dabbing his finger in the polythene bag. I grabbed
his arm.

‘Don’t be stupid,’ I said.
‘You’ve only just got off it.’

He brushed my hand away.

‘Come on, Fred,’ I begged.
‘Please?’

He just stared at me.

‘I
need
you,’ I told
him.

‘I need
this
.’

‘Why?’

‘Why
anything
? Why
not?’

‘But –’

He pushed me away, grabbed a magazine and
some cigarettes, and marched out of the kitchen. I sighed and looked around. The table
was strewn with ripped cellophane and torn paper. Bird had gone. Anja was sitting down,
sucking hungrily on a cigarette. She looked up at me with a self-satisfied grin and blew
smoke into the air.

‘Yeah?’ she said nastily.
‘What are
you
looking at?’

‘Nothing.’

I’ve burned the remaining magazines.
I was going to burn the cigarettes too, and pour the vodka down the sink, but then I
thought – it’s not up to me, is it? I can’t make choices for other people.
We all want and need different things. And besides, if I poured the vodka away and
burned the cigarettes I’d probably get beaten up.

The newspaper clippings were mostly about
Jenny’s disappearance. There were a couple about Anja, and one about Bird, but the
rest were all about Jenny. There were photographs of her, of her parents, of the street
where she went missing. There were articles, theories, suppositions, details of various
suspects the police had interviewed, words of outrage from politicians and
journalists.

I didn’t let Jenny see them.

It would only have upset her.

I burned them all.

Then I went to my room and screamed silently
at the walls.
It’s all about games. He’s playing His and
we’re playing ours. His involves giving us what we think we want, our vices, or
what He thinks will damage us, our weaknesses, and then seeing what happens. I suppose
it’s a bit like one of those artificial-life computer games. You know, the kinds
of games that let you play God. Yeah, I can see Him liking that. He’s bound to be
that kind of person. An only child, probably. The sort of kid who spent all his time on
his own, setting light to ants and pulling the legs off spiders.

Yeah, I can see that.

10.00 p.m.

Games.

I’ve spent most of the night playing
word games with Jenny and Russell. Tennis Elbow, Hangman, stuff like that. I
wasn’t really in the mood for it, but I didn’t want to leave Jenny on her
own. There’s a nasty feeling in the air tonight. Fred’s whacked out of his
head in his room. Anja’s sobbing drunk. And Bird’s been stomping around
shouting like a lunatic all night.

It’s nothing to worry about really,
but it’s probably pretty scary for a little kid.

So that’s why we’ve been playing
games. It helps to pass the time and it takes Jenny’s mind off things.

Mine too, I suppose.

Russell’s really good with Jenny.
He’s got this ‘twinkly old man’ thing about him, like he’s wise
and pleasantly stupid at the same time. I know it’s only an act, and I think Jenny
does too, but it’s still pretty good.

Like when Jenny asked him what he was.

‘I’m a natural philosopher,’
he told her.

‘What’s that?’

‘A sort of physicist. I ask questions
about the world, and then I try to answer them.’

‘What sort of questions?’

‘All sorts, but mostly the kinds of
questions we forget about asking when we grow up. Like why the sky is blue, why space is
black, why stars shine, why we have two eyes.’

Jenny smiled. ‘Why
do
we have
two eyes?’

Russell plucked a loose button from his
shirt and placed it on the bed about half a metre from Jenny. ‘Close one
eye,’ he told her, ‘then touch the button with your finger.’

Jenny looked at him.

‘Go on,’ he said.

She closed one eye and reached out to touch
the button. Her finger started wobbling, she frowned, then jabbed at the bed, missing
the button by a couple of centimetres.

‘Hey,’ she said, opening her
eye.

Russell smiled. ‘That’s why we
have two eyes, to stop us
Hey
ing.’

The night goes on. It’s just me and
Jenny now. Russell’s face started looking a bit pale about half an hour ago, then
his head started nodding and his eyes began to close. I gave him a nudge and told him to
go back to his room and go to bed.

‘Will you be all right?’ he
said.

‘No trouble.’

‘Are you sure?’

‘Yeah, go on.’

He went.

So here I am, sitting with my back to the
door, talking to myself again. Jenny’s in bed with the sheets pulled up over her
head, trying to sleep. Outside, Bird is still stomping around, shouting his drunken
mouth off.

It’s one of those nights.

I’ve been here before. Sitting in my
room listening to Dad going crazy about something. Nights at boarding school, stupid
stuff going on. Nights on the street, crazy people fighting over cardboard
boxes …

I’ve had it worse than this.

Today feels like a Sunday. I don’t
know why. Every day’s the same down here. Same air, same light, same routine.
Nothing changes. But for some reason today feels different. It’s got that Sunday
emptiness to it. That post-Saturday night sourness. The smell of dried sick.

Last night, after the lights went out, Bird
kept up his ranting for an hour or so, then he banged around in the kitchen for a bit,
went to the bathroom, made some horrible noises, and then everything went quiet. I
couldn’t get to sleep. I just sat there staring at the dark, listening to Jenny
sleeping. She was making funny little breathy sounds, the unsettled sounds of dreaming –
ka ka ka … nuh nuh … mmnoo
 …

Sometime in the early hours I heard a door
opening and unsteady footsteps shuffling along the corridor. Someone knocked on a door.
Then I heard a drunken whisper. I couldn’t hear the words, but they didn’t
sound very nice. After a minute I heard Anja’s voice hissing in reply.

‘Go
away
.’

Mumbling.

‘No,
NO
! Just leave me
ALONE
!’

More mumbling, a drunken curse, then
footsteps stumbled
back along the corridor, a door opened and closed,
and it was quiet again.

Nothing happened the rest of the day.
Nothing at all.

I haven’t written anything for a
while. No reason, really. I had a few things I needed to think about. I wanted to empty
my mind. Sort things out. I just wanted to be on my own.

You haven’t missed much.

The drink and drugs have all gone. The
cigarettes have all been smoked. The party’s over, and now we’re all paying
the price. Fred’s gone back to howling and moaning all day, and Anja and Bird are
hungover and irritable. The place is a mess. No one’s done any cleaning. The
bathroom stinks. The rota’s been forgotten. No one cares any more. The evening
meetings don’t happen. We don’t talk about escaping. We don’t talk
about anything.