Andrew Hawks

by John Booth

  “Take me, Andrew! Take me on the floor right now,” she demanded in a voice filled with fear and need.

  I was so surprised, I dropped my torch. It smashed into a dozen pieces as it hit the ground, plunging us into total darkness.

  I think we both screamed.

  4. Things you don’t want to know

  Yeah, right. Where was I? I had to stop writing because I just got called downstairs to see Ms. Lord, Kylie’s aunt, and I’ll tell you about that later. It was all rather embarrassing and, at first, I thought Kylie had made up some lie about me and got me into trouble, but it wasn’t that at all.

  Kylie and I were terrified when the torch smashed. I didn’t know that was what happened at first, but after groping around in the dark with Kylie stamping on my fingers thinking they were snakes, I found enough pieces to be sure.

  “Ow! Stop doing that. Those were my fingers.”

  I danced around putting my fingers to my mouth and blowing on them. Inevitably I knocked into Kylie and she screamed in terror.

  “That was me.”

  “H, h, how do you know?”

  Since a mammary gland has a distinctive shape and softness I had reasons for my conclusions, but chose not to voice them.

  “The torch is broken.” Obvious is my middle name.

  Kylie calmed down enough to present me with a few seconds of disgusted silence.

  “And whose fault is that?”

  “I…”

  She panicked again and I could hear her shuffling round the walls trying to find the way out. It seemed like a good idea and I stepped forward with my arms stretched out. Naturally, what they encountered was her face.

  Kylie was hyperventilating between calling me highly inventive and blush inducing names. I was a little surprised the heat from my face wasn’t enough to illuminate the room. We moved round the room following the walls and bumping into each other on every circuit. The entrance appeared to have vanished.

  After a while, I gave up. I slumped to the floor with my back against the wall, and tried to get my breath back. A few moments later Kylie ran into me.

  “I’m sitting down to think.”

  “Good idea,” she said and I gasped in agony as she used my crotch as a support as she slid down to join me. “Sorry”

  She didn’t sound the least bit sorry.

  I wondered how long we’d been in the cave and whether anybody would be looking for us yet. I pushed the light button on my watch and blinded myself as green light spilled across the room. I stopped pressing the button plunging the room back into darkness.

  Seconds later I was fending off Kylie, who was trying to tear the watch off my wrist and apparently was prepared to take my hand with it.

  “Get off.”

  “Give it to me, you bastard.”

  Kylie got more upset as I grabbed her arms and pushed her away.

  “You… rapist.”

  That was so left field that I stopped defending myself and scuttled away across the floor, seeking safety. I thought she had gone crazy, especially as it was the sexual suggestion she made that got us into this mess in the first place.

  Okay, that was unfair. It was me who dropped the torch, so it was my fault. Anyway, I waited for her to calm down from a safe distance. She must have thought I had found the way out and left because she shouted, “Please don’t leave me,” and started crying again.

  They should give boys manuals on how to deal with girls, like those manuals they have for fixing cars, complete with an index so you can look up the symptoms and know what to do.

  Since I don’t have one of those or even a quick start guide, I just let her calm down on her own. When her sobbing reduced to a manageable level, I explained the situation to her. I’d been thinking about it so I was able to be concise.

  “We can use my watch to get out, but I’m not sure how long the battery will last, so we have to use it only when we need to get our bearings. We’ll have to move slowly or we’ll bang our heads on the rocks. I’ll use the watch to find where the exit is and then I’ll move there. Then I’ll light the watch again and you come to me… slowly. Understand?”

  There was silence for a short while before she mumbled a reluctant, “Yes.”

  I pressed the button on my watch and she ran straight at me and grabbed me round the waist. After a brief struggle to get free, I admitted defeat and gave up. I would swear she’d got a death grip on me.

  During the brief lighting of the watch, I had got my bearings and knew which way we had to go to get to the tunnel. It’s difficult to get up when you can’t see and somebody has you in a bear hug, but I managed it eventually. I stayed bent over with Kylie being dragged behind me like we were some kind of pantomime horse. I stretched my arms out in front as we moved towards the tunnel.

  I missed the exit. It took two more watch lightings to get into the tunnel. By this time Kylie was actively helping, but she wouldn’t let go. We followed the tunnel heading away from the room. I kept my left hand firmly on the wall so we wouldn’t get turned around. Every two or three turns in the tunnel, I lit the watch again, though more for the comfort of it than for confirmation of direction.

  Kylie slackened her death grip as she realized I wasn’t going to leave her behind, and even half-smiled at me one of the times I lit the watch. After what seemed ages of travel, I fumbled out the bottle of cola from my rucksack and we both took a long drink.

  “Sorry for all the names I called you,” Kylie muttered as I passed her the bottle.

  “No problem. I would never rape a girl. It’s not in me.”

  “Not in me either,” she giggled. “Sorry, that was in poor taste. Have you ever done it with a girl?”

  I was glad we were in darkness because I found I was blushing again. This girl asked questions that left me speechless.

  “I’ll take that as a no then,” she continued as I wished the ground would swallow me up. Well me, or her, one of the two of us. “It’s no big thing, Andrew. It’s just something people do. It doesn’t change who you are, no matter how many times you’ve done it…, or why”

  “Sure,” I mumbled, absolutely certain that it would be a massive thing for me when it finally happened.

  We finished the bottle of cola and started off again down the tunnel. I won’t bore you with further descriptions, except to say it was like being trapped under an enormous blanket with no way out. When we finally tumbled out into daylight it was the most glorious feeling I’ve ever had. Born again Christians eat your heart out, because you have no idea what really being born again feels like, believe me.

  We staggered over to the torn roots of the oak tree and collapsed on them with our hands over our eyes. The daylight seemed so bright. I had no thoughts, but to sit there for a while and be glad to be alive.

  There was a rumbling sound and the tunnel collapsed. The soft soil tumbled down from above and within seconds, there was no trace it had ever been there. Kylie and I looked at each other, speechless, and I think a bond grew between us at that moment.

  Thinking of bonds reminded me of the snake that entered my arm. It hadn’t been important until that moment, because immediate survival had driven it from my mind. Had it really happened or did I imagine it? I looked at my wrist and saw a long pale scar running across the big blue vein. It had been real.

  I looked at Kylie who had followed my lead and was staring at her wrist. She turned it so I could see the mark and I showed her mine. We jumped up and ran our hands over our bodies. It was as if I had just seen a scorpion run up the inside of my jeans. My skin itched with terror.

  “Check me over, Andrew, please,” Kylie begged, and though I would rather she checked me out first, I ran my hands over her back and sides.

  “No, do it properly,” she demanded and ripped off her jeans, jacket and tee-shirt so I could see everything except where her bra and panties covered her. I checked her armpits and along her legs, feeling as well as looking for any sign of the silver snake that entered her body. The
re was nothing, not a sign beyond the scar across her wrist, not a trace.

  “Do me now,” I said as she put her clothes back on. I stripped down to my boxers to give her full access.

  She ran her hands over my body as I had done to her, and somewhere in the middle of it, the feeling became sensual. I don’t know why it triggered that reaction in me, because touching her had been all business on my part. She noticed, of course, and her fingers lingered over my thigh before she laughed and stood up, her face inches from mine, looking expectantly into my eyes.

  “Thanks Kylie,” I said, resisting all sorts of animal urges and started putting my clothes back on. Some sort of shadow passed over her face and then she smiled at me, the first genuine smile I’d seen her give since we met. She looked so much prettier when she smiled.

  “What do you think happened? With the snakes?” Kylie asked when I was fully decent again.

  “I’ve no idea. But we have no proof of the tunnel let alone that our bodies were invaded by snakes. And whatever happened doesn’t seem to have harmed us.”

  “I’ve seen that film Alien and I don’t want to have a thing burrow out of my stomach,” Kylie continued, a little too graphically for my taste.

  “It must have been some sort of illusion. Possibly set by the ancients Celts or Vikings to protect the tomb,” I responded. “It would have killed us by now if it was going to.” This was a comforting idea that I decided to believe regardless of logic

  She nodded, probably making the same kind of calculation in her head that I just made.

  “It’s late. Can you walk me home? I wouldn’t ask, but I don’t know my way around here.”

  “Of course.” I offered her my arm as if I was some nineteenth century gentleman. “I know these woods like the back of my hand.”

  “I trust the woods are cleaner than the back of your hand,” she said, unable to reject even half a chance at a sarcastic comment. I led her through the woods and back through the village to her aunt’s house.

  I had just started to write up this adventure when the doorbell rang and Mum shouted to come down at once. She sounded angry and I ran down the stairs to find Ms. Lord waiting for me.

  I don’t know Ms. Lord very well. She’s in her forties and, until Kylie’s arrival, lived alone in a large cottage. She moved to Felorton from London about ten years ago and is still viewed suspiciously by the locals. When she’s been here another thirty years or so, we might begin to relax around her.

  Mr. Kelly says she has an important job in Darcester, but he doesn’t know what it is. Sometimes people come to visit her and I have to deliver extra papers, but no one has ever lived in the house with her before. Believe me, in a place as small as Felorton, that news would have been all over the village faster than a speeding bullet. Superman has nothing on the speed gossip moves around here. I was quite sure everybody would know I escorted Kylie home by now. It had been two hours ago since I left her at her aunt’s house, after all.

  “Jenny would like to have a word with you about her niece. What have you done now, Andrew?” Mum sounded very cross indeed.

  “No, no, Kathy,” Ms. Lord said hastily, “He hasn’t done anything wrong. I’m sorry I gave you that impression. I need to talk to Andrew about Kylie. There are some private things he needs to know.”

  Mum relaxed, but she made no move to leave Ms. Lord and me to talk. As I’ve said, gossip is almost a living thing in our village and Mum was as much a part of that culture as everyone else.

  “If I could talk to your son in private…?” Ms. Lord asked. Mum reluctantly pointed us towards the living room and with very bad grace stepped into the kitchen where she had been making dinner before Ms. Lord arrived.

  Ms. Lord took me to the sofa, which was as far away from the kitchen as it was possible to get and whispered so low I had trouble hearing her.

  “Kylie was upset when she got back.”

  “I didn’t do anything,” I said in a whisper.

  “I’m sure you didn’t. Kylie has some problems being with boys. She might have been a bit forward,” Ms. Lord continued. I nodded and blushed a bit. This was the last thing I wanted to talk about with a woman nearly as old as my mother.

  “You mustn’t tell her I told you this. Can I trust you, Andrew?” Ms. Lord was looking at me so seriously I wanted to look away, but found I couldn’t.

  “Yes,” I mumbled.

  “Kylie was sexually abused by her brothers for many years. Do you know what that means, Andrew?”

  “They had sex with her,” I mumbled, blushing bright red.

  “They raped her systematically from her eleventh birthday, both of them. They made her do things you probably have never heard of, horrible degrading things. They told her that if she said anything to anybody she’d be taken away and put in a home.” Ms. Lord paused for breath and I noticed her eyes were shiny. “They abused her for four years and none of us knew. I’ve never visited my sister as much as I should have, but I still should have known.”

  “It wasn’t your fault,” I said trying to comfort her, but not knowing how. I’m a seventeen-year-old boy, for God’s sake.

  “It gets worse. Kylie finally told a teacher she trusted. The evidence against those bastards was overwhelming and I’m ashamed to be related to them. But my sister wouldn’t believe her or any amount of evidence. Her sons are the apples of her eye and she disowned Kylie at the point when she needed her mother most. Kylie ended up in a home, just as her brothers told her she would, with her mother writing her letters calling her a liar and worse.”

  Ms. Lord dabbed tears from her eyes. I saw how terrible that must have been for Kylie.

  “A month ago and almost a year after she was put into a home, her brothers were sentenced to ten years in prison. That means they will be out in five. As they were taken away, they screamed at Kylie, telling her they would… well that she would die at their hands. My own sister looked straight at her and said, ‘The little cow deserves it too’.”

  We sat in silence for a few moments.

  “I’d already started proceedings to get her here. But her mother opposed her coming and it’s taken me all this time to get the courts to agree to let her come. I think the courts only gave in, because in three weeks’ time, when she’s seventeen, they wouldn’t have been able to stop her.”

  “I don’t know what to say.”

  “She doesn’t know who she is any more, so she hides it behind bravado. And she’s been sexualized by what happened. That means she might try and encourage you into sex with her, because it’s the nearest thing she knows to being comforted. You have to be strong for her, Andrew. I know that’s asking a lot of a boy your age. But will you promise to try?”

  “Yes.” I nodded for emphasis.

  “She starts at Sutton College on Monday. Kylie’s very bright and has a chance to make something of her life, if she can put the past behind her. Will you look after her for me?”

  “I’ll really try,” I said, and I meant it.

  “You’re a good boy, Andrew. I knew that from the moment I set eyes on you when you were only six or seven,” Ms. Lord patted me on the leg and stood up to go.

  Mum was hiding behind the living room door pretending to be bringing in some tea and I could tell from the look on her face she’d heard nothing of our conversation. I ran up to my room and locked the door while Ms. Lord made her excuses and left.

  That’s where I am now. Hiding from Mum, because I’m not going to tell her a thing. There are some things the village grapevine shouldn’t know.

  5. Sutton College

  It is Monday night as I write this and a couple of days have passed since my last journal entry. Sunday was dull as ditch water as I had a lot of homework to do before Monday and I’d let it build up after all the excitement at the start of the weekend.

  Art homework is the worst. It’s pretty easy to do science, and mathematics is a doddle¸ but art is terribly demanding. The teacher can always see how much time you’ve spent on a
study. There was nothing for it, but to sit for hours with pencils and sticks of charcoal working on getting it right.

  Kylie stayed away from me on Sunday and I can’t say I blamed her. Those snakes and the time in the dark traumatized both of us and I was doing my best not to think about it.

  Actually, if the truth be told, I was trying my best not to think about her. When I ran my hands over her body expecting any second to feel the hard body of a metal snake beneath her skin, the last thing I’d been thinking about was sex, but going over it in bed produced a very different response. I had to mentally slap myself across the face, because I was all too well aware of the trauma’s she’s been through with her family.

  But I couldn’t stop my thoughts dwelling on how sexually experienced she must be, the things she must have done with her brothers. I am deeply ashamed of myself for those thoughts, but that didn’t stop them happening.

  Monday morning came around too quickly. Have you noticed how the weekend flies and there’s never enough time to get things done, while Friday afternoons drag on interminably when you’re waiting for school to end? It seemed like I just put my head on my pillow on Sunday night before Mum was shouting at me to wake up, deliver the papers and go to school.

  I can never find all my school things on a Monday. I can’t be late for the school bus because there isn’t another, and Dad has already set out for his office to miss the Monday commuter rush into Darcester. I swear my pencils and pens have a life of their own and go hiding in the night, no matter how carefully I put them away.

  The bus stop is just outside the Witches Haunt pub, right in the center of the village. The roads are narrow in Felorton, which is the name of my village, by the way, though I may have mentioned it earlier. They were built for carts moving at two miles per hour and not for modern vehicles. You would have to pull down half the cottages in the village to widen them. The only reason the bus stops at the pub is because it has a large parking area at the front so the bus can stop without blocking the road.