The Standing Water (29 page)

‘But how would the
thing think, move, know what to do if God hasn’t given it a brain or soul?’

‘I’ve got an idea,’
Jonathon said. ‘I’ve heard a legend there are these things called computers.
I’ve heard people down in London have started getting them and maybe even some
of the richer people on the other side of Emberfield. A computer’s like a
brain, but it’s made of wires and batteries and electronic things. If I got
one, I could stick it in my robot’s head and make it come alive.’

I nodded, but
couldn’t see where Jonathon could get hold of such a gadget.

‘This is all very
interesting, Jonathon, but why are you building a robot?’

‘To kill Weirton,
of course!’

I sucked in breath,
my heart started to thud, but I nodded slowly.

‘I understand why
you hate Weirton; I do too. But are you sure you want to kill him?’

‘We need to kill
him before he kills one of us! That whacking he gave me on the bridge – I was
sure I was gonna die! I was choking, the world was spinning, but he didn’t
stop! He just kept on whacking and whacking and whacking me, like he’d lost his
mind! I’m sure the same thing happened to Lucy and Marcus. I
bet
Weirton
murdered them – I don’t reckon it was kids anymore!’

I nodded again –
Jonathon’s logic was convincing.

‘Course, I haven’t
told my parents or Craig that’s why I’m building the robot. But there’s no
other way we could kill Weirton – he’s just too strong. But if I make a metal
man as big as him –’

Jonathon mimed
mighty hands twisting a huge neck, made a noise to mimic the shattering of
bones.

‘Yeah,’ I said, ‘better
get it done soon. One more year and we’ll be in his class. He can whack us all
the time – won’t even have to walk next door to Perkins. You see how many your
brother and Darren get!’

Now it was Jonathon
who nodded.

‘Only problem is,’
I said, ‘I don’t know how long it’ll take you to finish that thing. And you’ll
need a computer – don’t see any of
those
turning up in our part of
Emberfield any time soon.’

‘I know.’
Jonathon’s mouth gave a wobble. ‘But this is all I could think of to get rid of
Weirton.’

‘Don’t worry,’ I
said. ‘I’ve got a different idea …’

I explained to
Jonathon all – or at least most of what – I’d heard about the gauntlet in the
church at Salton.

‘Could be easy,’ I
said. ‘All we have to do is nick that gauntlet and find a way to slip it on
Weirton’s hand! Then he’ll be dead in a few weeks – long before we get anywhere
near his class!’

Jonathon’s tooth
nipped his lip.

‘Dunno,’ he said. ‘Just
think my idea’s more sci-ent-ific.’

‘It’s a good idea,’
I said, ‘might just take too long, and one of us could be dead by then! Being
dead could be really boring – imagine if I couldn’t draw anymore and you
couldn’t read or make inventions!’

‘Are you sure this
gauntlet thing would work?’

‘Positive – I told
you what Davis said!
And
you heard Weirton talk about it in the church!
They’re both
grown-ups
– these aren’t just kids’ legends!’

‘So that’s the plan
then!’ Jonathon nodded. ‘Just have to work out a way to steal it.’

‘Easy,’ I said, ‘just
go up there when there’s no service in the church, sneak in and take it!’

‘And if it
doesn’t
work,’ Jonathon said, ‘I could always use it as a hand for my robot. Save me
making one. So, in one way or another, that gauntlet will kill Weirton!’

‘Guess you could
keep on making the robot,’ I said. ‘You know, in case anything goes wrong with
the gauntlet. If we can’t kill Weirton with magic, we can always fall back on
sci-ence. Though, of course, magic’s much more reliable.’

Jonathon nodded
once more.

So here I sit
trying to write a novel. There’s something missing, but I don’t know what. I
get up from the table, pace around the room. I pick up books, objects from
dusty shelves, look at them, put them back. How this room boxes me! But I can’t
afford much more, not in London, no way. Thirty-five, shared flat, though in
this topsy-turvey city that’s not unusual. I’ll teach English at the language
school tomorrow morning to get a few more pennies before coming home and trying
to get something done. At least I’m published, I suppose, but the tiny dribbles
of cash from the last book have now dried up completely.

This one, I think,
has promise, but there’s still something I need. Perhaps I should get away for
a while, out of this maddening city. Fresh perspective, might see what the
missing piece of the puzzle is. Somewhere really different – Scotland, Wales,
somewhere like that. Clean air to blow away the city fumes that clog my mind.
Somewhere quieter without all these metropolitan distractions. Speaking of
metropolitan distractions, my knuckles ache, my fingers swell. Late night, too
much drink, stuff got started. Left this bloke bleeding on the floor of the pub
bogs. Staring up, surprised someone like me could have given him such a wallop.
Emberfield special. There are those who think the countryside’s all chiming
church bells, skipping lambs, village fetes and cream teas. They’d be shocked
so many of us country lads know how to look after ourselves. Like when those
four blokes tried to mug me. Went mad, plunged into some weird daze. Woozy
memories of smashing heads against walls, crashing my steel-capped boots into
bollocks, hearing the snap of ribs. Fucking blood everywhere. Came off badly
myself, of course, got a cab to a hospital in a rough bit of town where I knew
they’d ask no questions. But those bastards didn’t get my wallet or phone.

Don’t like myself
when I’m like that. Feel it’s not really me. A lot of my friends would be
horrified if they knew I had such … characteristics. For them, I’m Ryan:
patient, easy-going, a good host, erudite, his bookshelves lined with tomes on
myth, foreign novels, poetry. The nice-guy teacher who gently guides his
students. And yet, there’s this other side as well. I know violence isn’t the
best option. I know plenty of people who’ve talked their way out of muggings,
dealt calmly with drunk idiots. But, with me, it’s like I don’t have time to
think, something just happens in my brain, some instinct clicks into action and
out my fist shoots.

Maybe that’s why
I’m trying to write about Weirton. Far more difficult than I’d reckoned, but
somehow I need to do it. Perhaps I’m using this book to purge a part of myself.
Maybe writing it will be like performing an operation that will cut a festering
cancer from my personality. That bastard! Whatever it is Weirton’s put into me,
he’s hammered it in so deeply I’m not sure I can ever get it out. Even so, I’m
not as badly affected as some. When I think of how Craig Browning, Dennis
Stubbs, Richard Johnson, Suzie Green, a whole lot of others ended up.

Just wish I could
talk to him. Have fantasies of summoning the spirit of Weirton, summoning him
back even from beyond the border of the otherworld, forcing him to explain why
he behaved the way he did. I wag my head, scatter such futile thoughts from my
brain.

Have to get back to
this book while I’ve still got a bit of mental fuel in the tank. I’m well aware
it can run out quickly. I sit down, pick up my pen, concentrate, try to see into
the past, try my best to make sense of Emberfield, of my younger self, of Weirton.

Having made our
plan, it took us a couple of weeks to put it into practice. We were encouraged
into action by some wallopings from our headmaster: two for me – one, cleverly
I have to say, engineered by Stubbs – and three for Jonathon. Swinging as that
palm slammed, we felt we were not only grasping for the air that hand hurled
out, but grasping to keep hold of the life we could feel ebbing from us with
each whack. We really had to do something to stop the teacher. So on a Saturday
morning in late June we met by Marcus’s pond. Though we’d had a couple of dry
weeks and the pond had shrunk a little, it was still a good-sized disc of
deep-looking water. We tossed in some sweets, which were swallowed with
satisfied gulps. Jonathon turned to me.

‘You first,’ he
said.

I started walking
into the pond. Marcus’s mud oozed under my wellingtons, made grasping sucks
when I lifted my feet. A stagnant stink floated up, a stench that got worse as
my boots churned the matter at the pond’s bottom. My heart banged. Had we done
everything to satisfy Marcus? Could I at any moment feel the grab, sweep and
tug of hands or tentacles which would pull me forever under? I stumbled,
wobbled, the mud went on sucking at my wellies, but apart from this no movement
came from below. Yet I couldn’t chase certain images from my mind: Marcus’s
slimy head thrust up the day we’d skimmed our stones, the handprint he’d left
on Stubbsy after we’d ventured onto his ice. I guessed the fact I was still
upright, still breathing Emberfield’s smoky air rather than having filthy water
rush down my throat meant Marcus wasn’t angry at us. I waded till the pond was
almost level with the top of my wellies. The sullen water sloshed as I turned
to face Jonathon.

‘Raise your hand,’
Jonathon said.

I brought my hand
up so its palm faced him.

‘Repeat after me,’
Jonathon said. ‘I swear I will do all I can to help get that gauntlet and help
kill Mr Weirton.’

I spoke those words
back to him.

‘And if I do not,’
he went on, ‘let Marcus pull me into this pond and let me never again see
daylight or feel fresh air on my face.’

I said those words
as my heart’s boom shook through me, but no tugs, splashes or sweeps came from
that water. There was just the quiet land around us, the occasional call of a
bird drifting across it, the odd hum of a car down on the main road.

‘So please help us
in our mission and please help kill Mr Weirton, amen.’

‘Amen,’ I echoed.

I trudged from that
pond – each punch of my heart pumping relief through me. Now Jonathon walked
into the pool. He turned, stood still, raised his hand, started reciting the
same vow – something we’d cobbled together from various prayers, TV cop shows
and court dramas, spending ages in his shed with our pencils poised over paper.
Jonathon toppling, crashing into the water, his face white and hands outstretched
as he was pulled beneath – I fretted this might happen with each nervous breath
I sucked. But he was able to finish his pledge, wade from the water unharmed.
He strode up to me.

‘All right?’

‘All right,’ I
replied.

‘So let’s go.’

Our next stop was
the Old School. We didn’t want to linger there as it wasn’t far from Davis’s
and adults walking or driving past to his shop might have got suspicious had
they seen our mud-caked boots. And, of course, we didn’t plan to stay too long
in case we saw the teacher with her cane. We lobbed in some sweets for the
ghosts of the kids then we raised our palms and said our vow together.

‘Oh poor ghosts of
the children in the school, we vow we will do all we can to get that gauntlet
and kill Mr Weirton. Please use all your powers to help us. And if we do not
keep our vow, may we end up in here with you, chased by the ghostly teacher
forever. Amen.’

With that we threw
some more sweets in, and walked down our patch of town’s main street till we
came to the gap with the witch’s hand.

‘Do you reckon
it’ll be there today?’ Jonathon said.

‘Hope so,’ I said.
‘Wasn’t last time we looked, but it’s magic, isn’t it? Sometimes it’s there and
sometimes it’s not. Wanna have a look?’

‘Maybe you first,’
Jonathon said.

‘No, you.’

In the end, it was
me. I stared down into that space. Sure enough, the hand was there – black,
withered, its evil radiating from its curved fingers. How powerful the whole
witch must have been! I wondered what had happened to the rest of her. Gazing
at that fearsome object, I raised my hand, palm backwards so it faced Jonathon.

‘Repeat after me,’
Jonathon said.

I did – asking the
hand for help in killing Weirton, allowing it to curse me if I should show
cowardice or do anything to betray our aims. After Jonathon had made the same
pledge we walked – swiftly – from that gap and back down our main street. This
was the point at which things got harder. We needed to find our way to Salton –
and we’d never been outside our part of town unaccompanied by adults. We
couldn’t go down the High Street – which was at least familiar – in case some
old biddy out shopping or gossipy neighbour spotted us and told our parents,
whose disapproval would soon reverberate from our backsides. But Jonathon had
stolen a town plan of his dad’s and worked out what he thought was a quick
route to get us to the gates of Salton. We walked down a long street of houses:
grey, their paint flaking, gates lopsided, gardens bumpy. As I was wondering
who could live in such strange dwellings, Jonathon piped up.

‘Know what those
are? My mum says they’re called council houses.’

He wrinkled his
nose.

‘She says common
people live in them.’

‘What does she mean
by common?’ I asked.

‘Dunno. Guess there
must be a lot of them.’

We came out by the
Big School. I gawped at its huge buildings, its vast playing fields. In just
over a year, Jonathon’s brother and Darren Hill would go there. Our little
school hummed with legends about the place – that there were giant kids as big
as teachers, the things those giants would do to the first years. Still, not
even the most gruesome of those stories sounded as bad as what Weirton did to
us – let alone what he might have done to Marcus and Lucy. Jonathon checked his
plan; we trudged down a couple more streets, and soon stood before Salton’s
threshold. I looked at those aged gates, the worn lions that topped them.
Again, it seemed to me those gates marked the divide between two very different
territories: the more everyday world of Emberfield and the ancient and haunted
realm of Salton. Of course, Emberfield had its scattering of spooks, its fair
share of legends, but this was nothing compared to Salton, where the air seemed
thick with ghosts and curses, where the ground shrouded so many bodies and
bones. I swear as I stepped through those gates, the air’s very texture altered.

We passed the
mildewed woods, the furrowed field, and soon stood on the bridge over the Bunt.
The murky water gurgled beneath. The knight’s breastplate had gone, probably
carried off downriver long before, its journey started by its collision with
the brother’s head. I thought of my dreams of following that stream as it
widened, of letting it lead me to new lands, but that day all I could see was
the steep v-shape it sliced through the flat fields running off to the horizon.
Jonathon was staring down at the water, face serious, lower lip trembling.

‘Can’t believe I pushed
my brother off here!’ he said. ‘Poor old Craig – he’s still got that scar to
thank me for! I should’ve shoved Weirton instead – it would’ve been a perfect
chance!’

‘Don’t worry,’ I
said. ‘We’ll get him with that gauntlet. Or at least with your robot if we
can’t do that.’

But I did worry
about one thing. I looked up at the sky. Swirls of grey, bulbous masses of
white drifted across blue. Surely it would be easier now for the Lord to fling
down a fiery bolt – scorch a mark onto Jonathon for the sin of sibling slaying.
It would be an apt place – the exact spot where he’d committed the deed. I’d
heard legends that in the past they’d sometimes hung people at the scenes of
their crimes so I supposed this would be a similar thing. But no lightning
streaked from the heavens. I suggested we moved on before the Lord got tempted
to shoot some down.

We came in view of
the farmhouse Henry VIII haunted. My heart boomed as we raised our hands.
Jonathon recited the vow first and I repeated it, begging that dread king to
help us get the gauntlet, begging that man who in life had proved so expert at
bumping people off to help bump off our teacher. We promised he could take his
spectral axe to our necks if we in any way chickened out or failed to kill
Weirton. Next we came to the land that had been owned by the Knights Templars. The
sun was raising mist from the dew-wet ground. As that mist drifted and hovered,
I was reminded of how the knight’s curse still floated over, infused the air
around Salton and Emberfield; how it still spread – even after so many years –
its feeling of melancholy and evil, eeriness and foreboding over our land, our
town. As we watched that malevolent mist hanging above the fields, we raised
our hands and spoke our vow, asking the Knights to use their potent magic,
their secret knowledge of God’s mysteries to help us topple our tyrant, just as
they’d defeated despots and bullies in the past. Of course, we allowed them to
curse us – just as the knight had his lady – if we should prove unfaithful to
our pledges or lack the guts for our mission. As we finished our vows, a jolt
jerked my spine’s base and a shiver rushed up my backbone – as if the Knights
had heard us and a magic spark had jumped the chasm of ages.

‘Wow!’ I said to
Jonathon. ‘Did you feel that?’

‘What?’

‘I felt kind of
weird after saying that vow.’

‘Yeah –’ he
shrugged ‘– it is a little spooky here. Let’s get going.’

We walked along the
path, between its barbed-wire cordons, till we came to the bit of land where
the Scots soldiers slept. We looked over the quilt of green that shrouded them
as sheep munched on it. All of course remained unturned, unsullied by spade or
plough. Just the sheep let their disrespectful droppings fall, but that was
sheep for you. At least we humans showed some reverence: reverence which meant
we wouldn’t have to cope with rampaging spectral hordes, their ghoulish banners
and transparent scraps of tartan fluttering as they hurled phantom spears,
threatened us with see-through swords, flung ghostly fire on our dwellings. These
thoughts made my heart resume its doleful bang; more shivers jerked through me.
Jonathon and I stared at the land for some moments before we raised our palms.

‘Repeat after me,’
Jonathon said. ‘I promise to do all I can to get that gauntlet and kill Mr
Weirton. And if I do not, or if I am in any way a coward, let all the ghosts of
the soldiers lying here rise up and haunt me for the rest of my days. Amen.’

I repeated the vow,
Jonathon said it in turn, and we moved away, letting our Scots friends sleep. I
thought of how great it would be if we could get all those ghosts on our side,
thought of the power their sheer numbers would give us. We now approached the
wood from which the top of the water tower poked. I remembered my ideas about
that strange structure.

‘Hey!’ I said. ‘That’s
the water tower! See that spike on top – it punctures the clouds and sucks the
water down to stop Emberfield getting too much rain. It could be like Noah’s Flood
here if we didn’t have it.’

Jonathon said I was
wrong, said his dad had told him the tower just pumped water from underground into
a tank so the farmers could have some stored for their animals.

‘Why would anyone’
– I glanced around me at the mist, at the boggy plains stretching away – ‘need
to store water in Emberfield?’

‘Dunno,’ said
Jonathon. ‘But you know what grown-ups are like. Bit dim sometimes, aren’t
they?’

He thought for a
moment.

‘Could maybe do both
things together,’ he said, ‘suck water down from the clouds so we don’t get
flooded then keep it to give to the farm animals. Maybe I should draw up a
plan.’

‘Yeah,’ I said, ‘though
the grown-ups would probably be too dim to follow it. Couldn’t imagine any of
them being able to make your robot.’

Speaking of dim
grown-ups, we came out of that patch of trees, saw the church and castle, and
walked towards the gate that led over to them – pausing by the stone which
commemorated the Drummer Boy.

‘Yeah,’ I said, ‘adults
really can be dense. Imagine making a little lad go down a dangerous tunnel –
sort of thing Weirton would do!’

‘Idiots!’ said
Jonathon. ‘And now the poor Drummer Boy has to stay down there forever!’

‘Do you hear him
sometimes at night?’ I said. ‘I do – I hear his beats rattling across the
land.’

‘I’ve heard
something like that sometimes,’ Jonathon said, ‘but I’m not sure if it’s the
Drummer.’

‘It is! What else
could it be? Anyway, let’s make our vow.’

We each placed a
hand on the Drummer’s stone, raised our opposite palms. Jonathon spoke the
words, which I said after him.