by Damien Love
“But we only have a couple of days of school left,” Alex interrupted. “The holidays start next week. I could come with you. Couldn’t I, Mum?”
He looked at his mother, who turned to his grandfather with the beginnings of a nod, a smile, and a yes, all of which faded as she saw the worried look on the old man’s face, the slight shake of his head.
“Well, no, son,” she said, looking back to Alex. “You can’t just take days off school. And your grandfather won’t want you in the way; he’ll have his work to do.”
“Next time, for definite.” His grandfather smiled sadly.
“Yeah. Sure, okay.” Alex knew he hadn’t concealed his disappointment. “I should go up and do my homework.”
* * *
• • •
BY 11:34 P.M. on the computer’s clock, he had finally admitted to himself he had long given up on the last three math questions. He would ask David about them on the bus tomorrow. David was miles better at math.
Sitting chin in hands, staring idly at the old robot, Alex noticed a small black spot beside the hole where the key should go. Licking his finger, he rubbed at it, looked at the red smear. A little dried blood. He used his sleeve to polish it clean.
The bus tomorrow. He winced.
Things had taken on a more serious edge with Kenzie the past week. Alex’s project “Like Clockwork: An Illustrated History of the Toy Robot, from Postwar Tin to Tomorrow’s Tech” had been voted winner at the end-of-term Christmas exhibition, beating Kenzie’s glossy, multiscreen presentation of “Soccer Stars’ Sports Cars.” Kenzie’s father had paid a lot of money for a former soccer player to make an appearance and bring his car with him, but people had been more interested in winding up Alex’s old toys and watching them walk.
There had been a hard punch to the back of his head in the corridor the next day, the promise of more to come. After his run-in with Alex’s grandfather, Kenzie would be out for serious revenge. Maybe that’s why he’d felt so keen to get away on a trip with the old man.
Alex sighed and turned to the window. Pushing back the curtains, he was surprised to see his grandfather in the dim garden below. He stood silent and alone with his back to the house, leaning on his cane, watching the night. He looked almost as though he was on guard. A thin line of smoke rose from a cigarette in his right hand.
Alex pushed open the window, letting in the knifing air.
“I wish you’d stop,” he called as the old man turned sharply at the sound.
“Huh? Oh.” He waved the cigarette. “Quite right. Absolutely disgusting habit. What I’m doing here, Alex, is vile and stupid and unimaginably bad for you. You really must promise me that you will never, ever do it. Seriously. Of course, it’s far, far too late for me. When I grew up, none of us knew any better. But never take this up. Or, if you do, wait until you’re about seventy-four before you start. And take care of yourself until then.”
“You could stop if you really wanted.”
“Ha. Well, let’s see.” He puffed again at the cigarette, let it drop to the snow, snubbing it out with his cane.
“Well, look at that.” He grinned. “True enough. I’ve stopped. Alex, you don’t mind me not taking you with me, do you? You know I’d love to have you along. It’s high time we took a trip again. It’s just that things will be a little hectic this time out.”
“It’s okay.” Alex forced a smile. “Watch you don’t get cold. I’ll see you in the morning. Good night, Grandad.”
“G’night, Alex.”
III.
A RUDE AWAKENING
HE BECAME AWARE he was awake.
Alex lay on his back in bed, eyes focusing on the thin, dim orange line on the ceiling, where street light squeezed in through the curtains.
Something had woken him. He lay listening, trying to work out what it might have been.
The room was dark, silent. The house around it dark and silent, save for the slow tick of the clock in the hall downstairs. His eyelids wanted to close. He let them.
Seven ticks later, his eyes popped wide. He had definitely heard something. A small click. Followed by a smaller whirr. Frowning, fully awake now, he strained to catch it again.
Click. Whirrrrr. Click. Whirrrrr.
Alex sat bolt upright, peering in the direction of the noise. The noise stopped. Reaching out, he pushed the switch on the reading lamp above his bed.
Click. Whirrrrr.
The sound came from somewhere around his desk. He couldn’t think what could be making it. His eyes ran over the pile of math books, the unlit desk lamp, his laptop, the old toy robot beside it.
His jacket hung over the chair, his schoolbag over that. He thought about his cell phone, in his jacket, but he knew he had turned it off—the usual evening’s worth of texts from Kenzie and crew would be waiting in the morning. Anyway, it wasn’t that sort of sound.
Alex wet his lips. Kenzie. Maybe his grandfather had pushed the bully over the edge. Maybe instead of virtual harassment, Kenzie had come in person tonight, to finish him off.
Alex turned to his window in alarm. Nothing. He looked back at the door, his desk, the chair.
And there.
Just visible, behind the chair leg, the edge of . . . something. Something that shouldn’t be behind the leg of his chair.
He angled the lamp to shine on that spot, sending long shadows shifting around the room. He stared at the thing, trying to identify it. The small shape remained mysterious and, the longer he stared in the dim yellow light, somehow more threatening.
Click. Whirrrrr.
The whatever it was edged back out of sight.
Puzzled, Alex stepped one foot out of bed. There came a furious little run of many clicks and whirrs, and the something came out from behind the chair, moving fast, into the middle of the floor, where it stopped.
Startled, Alex pulled his leg quickly back under the covers and sat blinking at the thing on the carpet.
A toy robot.
One he had never seen. It looked old, like clockwork. Red mottled tin. Boxy and square, with tiny vents in its chest and a sad little face painted onto a cube head topped with a flimsy wire hoop, like an ancient TV antenna. With a whirrrrr, the head turned, until the face seemed to be looking at him.
Alex sat transfixed.
Whirrrrr. Click.
This time, the robot on the floor hadn’t moved. This sound was coming from somewhere else.
Lifting his eyes with effort, Alex looked behind it.
There were two.
This one was much the same design but silvery blue. It was somehow climbing, whirrrrr, click, whirrrrr, click, up the leg of his chair, as though heading toward his desk.
The red robot stood, looking disconcertingly like it was watching him. The blue robot climbed higher, scrambling onto the seat of the chair with awkward little movements that would have been funny, were they not so weird.
Keeping his eyes fixed on the red robot, and with no clear plan in his suddenly empty mind, Alex, moving very slowly, started gingerly to lift the bedcovers away.
A sudden, fast click-click-click-click-click made him freeze. This sound was angry, and very close.
Alex turned toward the bottom of his bed, where there now stood a small, thin, white robot with a head like an elongated egg and sharp silvery arms. The face on this one was frowning.
Eyes wide, Alex sat motionless, watching as this thing pulled itself steadily up the bed toward him. He opened his mouth to shout but found he couldn’t remember how.
Click, click, click, click, click.
He felt it click and clamber along his leg.
Click, click, click, click, click.
Onto his belly.
Click, click, click.
Onto his chest.
Click, click.
It finally stopped where Alex’
s folded hands lay on top of the quilt. There, with a click, it cocked its head, frowning its painted frown.
Neither of them moved for what felt like a long time.
Click.
The thing shook its head from side to side.
Click.
One of its little arms raised. Alex saw that it tapered to a point as sharp as a needle. A thin brown liquid dripped from the tip.
Click.
Only when the robot’s arm came down with a violent jabbing motion did he realize it was trying to stab him.
Several things happened almost at once. The robot’s needle-arm plunged through the sleeve of his pajamas, narrowly missing his skin, down on into the thick quilt, which Alex, finally managing a cry not nearly as loud as he had wanted, threw violently away from him, sending the white robot flying clicking backward through the air.
Beyond the foot of the bed, his door was thrown open, and his grandfather came bursting in. With one fluid motion, the old man brought his cane up and neatly caught the white robot on the end, plucking it from the air and redirecting its momentum toward the floor, bringing the tip of the cane down onto its belly and pinning it there while its spiky arms whirled.
“Alex. Window,” he said.
“Buh—” Alex managed.
“Alex,” his grandfather said, with a firm but pleasant nod. “Open the window, there’s a good chap.”
Flinging himself from bed, Alex ripped back the curtains and pulled the window up as far as he could.
“Now, stand back, if you don’t mind.” Wielding his cane like a golfer pitching in the rough, his grandfather scooped the flailing white robot up in a smooth arc that sent it sailing click-click-click-click out into the night.
“Buh—” said Alex again. He gestured wildly at the red robot whirring over the carpet toward his grandfather’s feet, and at his desk, across which the blue robot was now clicking at surprising speed.
“Yes,” the old man said. “Good point.”
Reaching into his coat pocket, he scattered what looked like white powder over Alex’s desk. As the stuff fell around it, the blue robot stopped moving.
The red robot almost at his foot, Alex’s grandfather kicked out, sending it flying toward the window but not quite making his target. It bounced off the frame, falling writhing at Alex’s feet. With a surge of panicked inspiration, he dropped to his knees and heaved his bed up, dragging it over. Just as the old man said something like “Alex, no!” he let the leg drop heavily onto the little robot’s chest, crushing it, splitting it open as its arms and legs whirred and clicked.
On his desk, the blue robot was trying to walk again, but with erratic movements, stumbling in ragged circles closer and closer to the edge, until it finally fell over, at which point, swinging his cane while it was still in the air, Alex’s grandfather batted it surely out through the window.
Kneeling, the old man raised Alex’s bed and pulled it off the crushed red robot, which had stopped moving.
“It’s . . .” Alex said.
His grandfather produced a large white handkerchief and spread it on the floor, delicately beginning to place the jagged, glistening remains of red robot on it.
“It’s . . .” Alex repeated, pointing. “It’s wet. Inside it . . . Wet.”
“Yes,” his grandfather murmured, knotting the handkerchief into a loose, messy bundle. “I’d rather hoped we might avoid that part. I really don’t like to kill them if I can help it.”
“What—” Alex began, waving his hand at his desk, trying to catch hold of at least one of the scramble of thoughts racing around his mind. “White stuff? The—the white stuff. You threw.”
“Huh? Oh, salt. Just salt.” His grandfather stood, handkerchief dangling sadly from his hand, looking damp, a little pink. “I stocked up on packets at the chip shop. They don’t like it. Confuses them.”
“What—” Alex tried again.
“Never mind that right now. I need to check outside.”
He turned—then stopped and turned back, stood considering Alex. Gripping him by his shaking shoulders, he steered him gently to the bed and sat him down. Dropping to one knee, he waited until Alex’s eyes locked on his, brown on brown.
“Alex,” he said softly. “You know, you look very much like your father did when he was your age? Listen, now. I’m going to check outside. Then we’re going to write your mother a note to say we’ve changed our minds, and you’re coming to Paris with me after all, off for the early connection. I don’t think you should stay here now. We can phone her later. Now: pack a bag. Not too much. You have a bag?”
Alex nodded.
“Good man.” His grandfather patted his shoulder and left, leaving Alex sitting openmouthed.
He stared at the scattered salt grains shining on his desk. He shivered at the touch of icy air from outside. He looked at the window, his mind replaying the image of the white robot flying through it, rattling out its clicks. He shivered more.
His grandfather leaned his head back in the door.
“Chop-chop. Train to catch. And make sure you bring that.”
He pointed his cane at the old toy robot on Alex’s desk.
IV.
STATION TO STATION
DUMPING HIS HASTILY packed rucksack on the kitchen table beside the old man’s gray Gladstone bag, Alex found his grandfather in the back garden, bent over his cane, studying the ground.
There were two small dents in the snow beneath Alex’s bedroom window. Two frosty little lines of square tracks led woozily off toward the missing plank in the fence with next door’s garden, crossing over a fresh set of fox prints.
“They’ve gone? They’ve gone?! Where’ve . . . Did you . . . ?” Alex looked frantically around. An image from an old Tom and Jerry cartoon flashed strangely in his mind: the legs and feet of a woman standing on a stool, screaming because the mouse was loose. He strained to reel his thoughts in, stay calm. “Where’ve they gone?”
“Not far, I shouldn’t think.” Still bent, the old man strode to the fence, Alex at his heels. Peering over, they could see the tracks ended just beyond, beside two sets of human footprints that led off from where they had come, into the darkness. One set had been made by shoes a bit bigger than Alex’s. The others were smaller, the feet of a child.
His grandfather straightened and looked at the sky, now cloudless, a deep indigo dotted with pinpoint stars, no sign of a moon. Throwing back his head, he inhaled a lungful of the biting air, let it out in a long, contented sigh of steam, beating his chest lightly with both fists. “Now. You’ve got the, ah, robot?”
Alex nodded.
“Splendid. Taxi’s on its way. I’ve written a note for your mother. You should add something. And tell her you’ll call her later. And a kiss.”
“But—”
“Come on. Time’s a-wasting.”
As Alex sat scribbling at the kitchen table, the old man strode through to the front of the house, watching the street. “Think this is our cab,” he called softly. “Now. Sure you have everything you want?”
Alex nodded. Then: “No, wait.”
Grabbing his rucksack, he ran as quietly as he could back up to his room, took the picture of his mum and dad from the wall, and tucked it deep inside his bag.
At the door to the bedroom where his mum was sleeping and Carl was snoring, Alex hesitated. He raised a hand to the door. He dropped it. He padded quickly downstairs.
His grandfather stood impatient on the front step. A black cab puttered at the gate, framed by exhaust fumes that hung like a wreath in the air.
“If we’re quite ready.”
As they glided through dim, empty streets, Alex’s racing pulse slowed. His mood settled from swarming confusion to something like irritation as his grandfather refused to answer any questions, electing instead to strike up a long conversation with the cabdriv
er about the government.
“Interesting fellow,” he said to Alex as the taxi left them in the forecourt of the local train station. “Mad as a loon.”
In the deserted waiting room, heat pipes coughed gently while Alex’s grandfather waved his questions away again, preferring to spend his time wrestling with a spattered drinks machine. Turning finally with two cups, he proffered one to Alex.
“Hot chocolate. Allegedly. Most likely hideous, but drink it down; sugar’ll do you some good.” He sipped gingerly at his own. “Ye gads.”
On the almost empty early train to London, his grandad stubbornly continued to refuse to address any of Alex’s questions. “We’ve got about two hours,” he said settling back opposite Alex. “Should grab some sleep.”
“Sleep?! I can’t—”
The old man shushed him. “I think you’ll find you’re feeling very sleepy. Very sleepy, indeed.” He spoke as lightly as ever, but his eyes seemed to burn, boring through the air between them. Alex sat staring back with a tight, angry frown. But after a short while, he felt his eyelids grow heavy.
The sleep was deep and punctured by fragments of a vivid, jumbled dream. He was a very small boy again, and his grandfather was taking him and his mother on yet another journey to see yet another doctor. Hospital corridors and hospital rooms. Weighing machines and measuring tapes, needles and wires. Blood samples and strange fingers testing his skin. The old man watching gravely from the corner, grim concern in his eyes. His mother trying to keep her anxiety hidden as she sat forward, listening to results that solved nothing, squeezing Alex’s hand.
He woke only once before London, opening his eyes barely a second, to see his grandfather sitting up very straight and very awake, staring bleakly out the window at the shadowy world falling away from him.
* * *
• • •
BY THE TIME they were walking through St. Pancras station, hunting for their platform, Alex had almost begun to doubt anything of the night before had actually happened.
