Snakeskins

by Tim Major

  “I ask you, is that justice?” she said in a hoarse stage whisper. Instantly, she felt rather proud of the effect.

  “Is that a reef knot?” one of the boys said, peering at where the rope met the bike lock.

  The other shook his head. “Reef knot wouldn’t work. It’d come loose at the first pull. That’s a sheep shank. Right?” He addressed the question to Caitlin, his head tilting to see her beneath her leaf canopy.

  “Piss off, guys,” Caitlin hissed. If the rope knot was any type, it was a granny knot. She’d only attended Girl Guides for a single session, and had sat in the corner in a huff, then later declared the whole thing a parental conspiracy to turn kids’ brains into mush and to force them to respect authority unthinkingly.

  The first boy shrugged and shuffled away. His friend peered at the knot for a few moments longer, then followed without looking up again at Caitlin.

  The common area was almost empty now. With difficulty, Caitlin twisted her wrist to see her watch. Break time had officially ended three minutes ago.

  Out of the corner of her eye she saw somebody edge out of the shadows beside the bike shed. It was Spencer Blackwood. He glanced from side to side. He looked as though he’d rather be anywhere else in the world.

  “Please come down,” he said quietly.

  “Are you kidding?” Caitlin snorted. “I’m just getting started.”

  “Nobody’s listening.”

  “Then I’ll have to be louder, won’t I?” She turned towards the stone arch entrance to the oldest part of the college building, where some late-arriving students were still scurrying to their lessons. She bellowed, “Rights for Charmers!”

  “Stop!” Spencer hissed. “I mean, nobody wants to listen.”

  “That doesn’t mean we shouldn’t say anything. I’m doing this for you, Spencer. I’m doing this because you were victimised. Don’t you realise you were the subject of a hate crime?”

  He looked as if he might cry. Yesterday, Caitlin had assumed that the dark patches above his cheeks were the beginnings of two black eyes. Had he always looked like that? He was hardly the image of a super-healthy Charmer kid. She wondered whether the dark patches would disappear when he had his first shedding.

  Spencer shook his head sadly. “You don’t get it. If I wasn’t a Charmer – if those guys didn’t have that to use against me – they’d find something else. People like them prey on people like me. That’s just the way it is.”

  Poor sod. A lifetime of that sort of crap had left him totally spineless.

  Spencer held up a hand to stop her from responding. “It’s all right for you. You’re stronger. And that’s not because you’re a Charmer, either. It’s because you’re you.” His face flushed. Caitlin remembered that he had once asked her out on a date, years ago, when they were both in secondary school. It had been during one of her phases of telling everyone that all men were pigs, but she’d still managed to let him down reasonably politely. She’d thought he’d moved on since then.

  “Please come down,” he said. “You’ll only make things worse.”

  A thought occurred to Caitlin. “Why are you even here at this college? Your dad’s in the GBP.” Her parents hadn’t given her the option of going to a private school – they were well-off, but not wealthy. Her mum had explained how some Charmer dynasties used their extra lifespans and opportunities to gather wealth which accumulated over generations, but that had never been the Hext way.

  “My dad doesn’t want me to be here,” Spencer replied. “He’s embarrassed of it. Ashamed. But I begged, Caitlin. I don’t want to spend my time with Charmers. At least, not the ones who expect the world to come to them, who already have it made. Knowing that turns them inside out and their insides are rotten. But I was wrong about this place being much better. All I can do is keep my head down.”

  Caitlin rubbed her wrist as best she could, given the constraints of the bike chain. “You shouldn’t have to. You’re one of the good guys, Spencer. You deserve better.”

  “Yeah. Well. I’m smart enough to see how this pans out. I just need to get through college unscathed. My time comes later. A couple of sheddings down the line, Carl and Scotty and all the other idiots will be pot-bellied, middle-aged and washed up, and I’ll only be getting started. I understand how lucky we are, you and me, Caitlin. I don’t want rid of my gift. I want to be left alone to do my own thing. And, no offence, but this kind of stunt isn’t going to help. I know you mean well.”

  Caitlin smiled sympathetically, but she was no longer giving him her full attention. Two faces had appeared at the window of one of the upstairs classrooms. Jane and Evie, pressed up against the glass while blind old Mr Bowcock pottered around behind them handing out exercise books. Evie’s face was hard to read, but Jane’s was another matter. She smirked, looking pointedly from Caitlin to Spencer and back again. Then she raised her fist and poked her tongue into her cheek, in and out, miming a blowjob.

  Caitlin felt her face redden. She had all the sympathy in the world for Spencer, but the idea of appearing romantically linked to him was distinctly unappealing. This whole thing had been a mistake.

  “Get back,” she said, glaring at him. “Go on, get lost. This isn’t about you.”

  Spencer obeyed literally, taking steps backwards until he thumped into a wooden post. Then he turned and scurried away.

  It was still important to protest. The whole college was corrupt. Even the teachers sniggered about Charmers behind closed doors, probably. Her mum had once described anti-prosperity protests she had witnessed in the centre of town, before the ban. She had waxed lyrical about the protesters’ noise and passion, the importance of their continued presence given the lack of any party in opposition to Great British Prosperity. But the target of their protest had left Caitlin feeling conflicted – given the make-up of the GBP, they might as well have been railing against the existence of Charmers. The hate for her kind was everywhere.

  She raised her head and shouted as loudly as she could, “Rights for Charmers! Stop oppression! Rights for Charmers!” She repeated the phrases, barely pausing for breath in between. The words were starting to lose meaning; she struggled to recall her initial intentions. She and Spencer had been insulted, sure, but Charmers weren’t oppressed, were they? But the distinction between her kind of Charmer and the type that ran the country was impossible to articulate.

  She saw movement at the fogged window of the staffroom.

  After a couple of minutes a teacher emerged. No, worse: the headteacher. Mr Pearl’s eyes – piggy behind his too-small glasses at the best of times – narrowed as he approached her. His hands were jammed deep into the pockets of his maroon cardigan. Caitlin shouted louder and louder. Her slogans sounded less meaningful each time she repeated them.

  “Miss Hext,” he said. His voice was stern.

  “Rights!”

  “Caitlin.”

  “For!”

  “Stop this. Now.”

  “CHARMERS!”

  Mr Pearl came to a stop a couple of metres from the tree. “It’s dangerous to stand on the bench. Among other things, I’m responsible for your health and safety.”

  Caitlin felt immediately deflated. It didn’t feel like oppression, at least not in a satisfying way. Then again, maybe this was how dictatorial regimes worked. Perhaps they came across as efficient and concerned about people’s safety, at first.

  “I can’t come down,” she said, willing her voice to sound more indignant than needy. “I’m tied to the tree and I don’t know the code to this bike lock.”

  Mr Pearl leant to one side to look at the chain digging into her wrists. “I expect Mr Beamish will have some cutters to get through that. Don’t you worry.”

  “If you come near me, I’ll shout louder.” Other students had gathered at the upstairs windows now, alongside Evie and Jane. Result. “Hey! Watch me being oppressed!” she shouted.

  Mr Pearl didn’t flinch. “That’s a new bike chain, isn’t it? Did you buy it thr
ough the scheme last week?”

  Caitlin didn’t reply.

  He nodded. “I bet you haven’t changed the combination settings yet. Let me guess. One, two, three, four? No. Okay. Four, three, two, one, then. Final offer.”

  Caitlin pressed her lips tightly together.

  “Good,” Mr Pearl said. “Right, let’s get you down from there. Then you can return to whichever lesson you ought to be attending right now. I know you’re not a bad egg, Caitlin. You’re a very promising student, your physics grades in particular. I’ve heard tell that you’re considering space science as a field of further study. And you were deputy head girl at secondary school, is that right?” He took a step forwards. “I do understand that things are fraught. I mean, with your—”

  “Stop right there,” Caitlin said. “Are you going to lecture me about my ‘changing body’ now?”

  “I wouldn’t dare to presume.” His movements slowed, but he still kept edging towards her with his hand outstretched to the bike chain.

  “You know nothing about me,” Caitlin spat. “You know I’m a Charmer, but you have no effing clue about what that really means. And—” She watched him carefully, trying to judge whether or not her next words would hurt him. “You’re scared. You’re scared of me, and Spencer, and the rest of us. Terrified, even. You don’t know how to deal with us. Because you know we’re stronger than you.”

  Infuriatingly, Mr Pearl smiled. “You want to know the truth, Caitlin? I’m scared of all of you students. Charmers and non-Charmers alike. You’re all unpredictable. You can all be wonderful when you want to be, but when you sense that things are against you…” His hands reached the bike chain.

  Caitlin experienced the attention of the watching students as something physical, a blanket suffocating her and making her insufferably hot. She realised she had to get away. She had made her point. The demonstration had to be abandoned before it fizzled out with her being led away, humiliated, to the staffroom for one of Mr Pearl’s heart-to-hearts.

  She braced her shoulder blades against the rough bark. Then she bunny-hopped, using the looped rope as leverage, lifting both her feet and planting them squarely into Mr Pearl’s solar plexus. His eyes widened with surprise as he staggered back. Caitlin struggled to find her footing again, scrabbling on the smooth wood of the bench. The chain still held her hands tight before her, like a bound Egyptian mummy, and the rope still bound her to the tree. When her feet slipped off the edge off the bench, she bounced awkwardly, painfully, down the length of the tree trunk, an abseiler facing the wrong way. She came to a stop sitting bundled up on the bench, her hands caught under her chin, her hair over her face, and the rope now tugging her breasts upwards through her shirt.

  From somewhere beyond the curtain of her tangled ginger hair, she heard Mr Pearl groan. She could also hear the hoots of a dozen or more students.

  With great difficulty, she twisted and manipulated the combination lock. Four, three, two, one. She gasped as the chain and rope came free, the sharp end of the lock scraping against her forearm and producing an instant red weal. She pushed her hair from her eyes, then wished she hadn’t. The windows of the classrooms all around her were filled with faces. The students’ laughter sounded more raucous for being muffled by the glass, like the echoes of a chaotic children’s party in a leisure centre swimming pool.

  Mr Pearl finally managed to rise to his haunches. He retched and spat onto the gravel.

  This was bad.

  She ran. The bike chain dangled from her left wrist, jangling as it hit her leg with each stride. She didn’t look back.

  * * *

  Russell stood on tiptoes, trying to see through the glass door mottled with dirt. He had tried looking into the premises from the outside of the shared office complex, too, but black paint had been applied to the wide window from inside. It made sense. The rusted plaque on the door stated that the business was Haddo Photography – Portraits and Events. There was probably a darkroom in there, or a studio requiring full control over the light.

  He moved further down the corridor. The next office belonged to the first of the accountants, named Michael Trent, according to the nameplate. Russell had seen Michael before. He always wore a tweed suit and a bow tie, dressing like a relic from the past, despite the fact that he was only in his late thirties. Russell had always avoided him. There was something about his eyes.

  The two other accountants’ offices were on the opposite side of the wide corridor. Russell paused to listen at each in turn. He heard muffled voices speaking emphatically and with some urgency, as though the accountants were trying to communicate through their shared wall. Russell checked his watch. He had arrived at work even earlier than usual – it wasn’t yet half past six.

  He could hear more voices behind the door of the historical publisher, Tarragon Books. It sounded as though it was a heated discussion. What on earth could they be arguing about?

  At the door to the banner-printers, Russell could only hear a low rumble. That was normal enough, then. He had seen the rollers of the huge printer once or twice in passing. It ran constantly, making this part of the corridor floor shudder like a cross-channel ferry. The door had a thin, vertical window along its outer edge, but louvre blinds fixed to its inside blocked any view. Russell stood on tiptoes again to peer down through the narrow gaps between the panels of the blinds. Several figures were moving about inside, lit by strip lights.

  None of this meant anything. Ixion had put an idea into his mind, and of course it affected his perception of ordinary goings-on.

  A door closed somewhere behind him. Russell wheeled around.

  Ellis Blackwood’s head was tilted as he watched Russell. Somehow, Ellis was already halfway down the corridor – Russell must have been so absorbed in his investigation that he had responded slowly to the sound of the closing door, unless Ellis had emerged from one of the other offices.

  “Ah. Good morning, Russell.” Ellis’s eyes flicked briefly from Russell to the door of the banner-printer.

  “Minister. Good morning. I was just—”

  “Good. Yes. Thank you again for taking Nell and Spencer to the theatre. It does the power of good for a developing boy, I’d think. Once more unto the breach, and all that.”

  Russell gave a weak smile. His head filled with thoughts of Nell and her wild hair and freckles. It was impossible to believe that she was capable of anything untoward. Generally, Russell had little faith in his instincts, but he was certain of this. If Ellis was up to something, might it really be the case that she was under threat personally?

  “Good,” Ellis said again. He nodded twice. “Let’s treat ourselves, Russell. Coffees from the cafe. If you would be so kind?”

  Russell was grateful for the excuse to leave. As he edged past Ellis he avoided looking at the door to the banner-printers. “From the greasy spoon, sir?”

  Ellis cleared his throat. “From Silvie’s. It’s a little further, I suppose, but people do rather recommend it. Thank you so much, Russell. And later on, remind me to speak to you about a particular assignment I have for you. Something rather specialised that I think you’ll excel at.”

  As Russell made his way along the corridor he sensed the minister’s gaze upon him. Once outside, he took a deep gulp of cold air. Then, acting on instinct, he jammed his heel into the doorway, stopping the door from reaching the latch. He counted to ten and peeped inside.

  Ellis was now standing before the security guard’s desk.

  “Of course, sir,” the guard said.

  Ellis fiddled with his cufflinks as he watched the guard operate a wall safe that Russell had never noticed before. From inside it the guard produced a small black box, which he placed carefully upon the desk. Ellis nodded and pressed his thumb firmly onto its lid. It beeped and then sprang open. Ellis plucked out a key, nodded again, and padded along the corridor.

  The security guard put the box back into the safe and settled into his chair with his magazine.

  Ellis paus
ed outside the door to the banner-printers. Then he unlocked the door and entered.

  Russell darted inside, patting his pockets in answer to the security guard’s accusing stare. He took long strides, then slid along the wall to reach the door to the banner-printers and its slowly narrowing gap.

  Inside the room, Ellis stood with his back to the door. Beyond him Russell saw the long, horizontal rollers of the printer, chugging away.

  A tall woman appeared from somewhere to the right. She wore a dark business suit and her hair was pinned up. The severity of the scraped hairstyle tugged at the skin of her forehead. Russell recognised her from TV news reports – what was her name? He chewed a nail while he thought. Angela McKinney. She was a low-ranking minister of something-or-other, but on TV she had always appeared mild enough. Here, in the flesh, she was fearsome.

  Angela took Ellis by the arm. She glanced at the door. Russell pressed himself to the wall beside the doorway. He held his breath.

  “You’re exhausted,” he heard Angela say. “Care to explain?”

  Ellis’s voice was as meek as a scolded child’s. “I apologise. It isn’t what you think.”

  Her voice became quieter. The door was now almost fully closed. Russell edged as close to the sliver gap as he dared.

  He caught only a few words. “I’m glad to hear it. You know, you really should—”

  Then the door snicked shut.

  * * *

  Gerry rang the brass bell a second time. Its jangle echoed from the door’s stone surround.

  She rapped with the iron doorknocker. Nothing. She turned and leant against the door. From here the slope tumbled downwards from Ilam Hall to a lumpy Saxon church that rose from the ground as if it were a naturally occurring rock formation. Its pale surfaces contrasted sharply with the green woodland on each side of the valley and the black of the rushing river in its centre.

  She made her way around the hall. A curl of steps led up to a large, square lawn with a perimeter dotted with heavy stone vases, filled with withered and black shrubs. Whoever tended the grounds of Ilam Hall was fighting a losing battle. Even cutting the grass must be a full-time job.