Hello Darkness

by Anthony McGowan

  “You ate the old lady?”

  “Funny.”

  “I work at it.”

  Of course I knew that cats couldn’t really talk, and that I was imagining words in the random cat noises that she made, but her voice made me feel better, somehow. I guess I was missing my family.

  “So, tell me, how are things at school?” she asked.

  “You don’t want to know.”

  “You can’t tell a cat what it wants.”

  She jumped onto my lap. It made me start. I looked down. It was a long way.

  “School’s fine. Struggling a bit with maths and physics, sailing through English lit and history.”

  “Yeah, like that’s what I meant.”

  “OK then. You asked for it. There’s trouble. Some sicko is bumping off the school pets. I’ve been on the scene once too often, so the Shank – that’s the Deputy Head – has me down as a suspect. But the Principal – Mr Vole – well, he’s three-quarters senile, but he’s basically OK, and he’s got me trying to figure out who’s behind it all. But things are getting murkier. Someone’s trying to frame me. Or maybe just scare me off. Or perhaps just mess with my head. I don’t know. And then there are the Queens—”

  “The what?”

  “The Drama Queens – you know, the theatre club.”

  “OK.”

  “Well, they’re mixed up in this, and the Queen Mum – don’t ask – well, she’s on my back as well. And when I went to the Lardies to try to find out who had hired Big Donna to sing me to sleep, all I got was a faceful of hot flab and a ticket to go visit the Dwarf.”

  “Dwarf?”

  “That’s what we call the school caretaker. Evil little dude lives in the Underworld.”

  “The Underworld…? This dwarf lives in Hell?”

  “It’s a figure of speech. The Underworld is the basement area beneath the Interzone. The ass-end of the ass.”

  The cat snickered. Couldn’t tell if she was laughing with or laughing at.

  “I see now why you look tired. Any good news?”

  “Well, someone’s trying to help me. There’s a girl—”

  “I thought so. There’s always a girl.”

  “Zofia.”

  “Hey, a zed name. I like a zed name.”

  “Funny, that’s just what I said. Well, I helped her out when those two stiff guinea pigs showed up in her locker… OK, I see I’m losing you here, Cat.”

  “It is all a bit far-fetched. I guess you’ve got a lively imagination.”

  I grunted and pulled the crumpled Warrant out of my trouser pocket. “What about this, then?”

  “Means nothing to me. I can’t read. Oh, do you hear that?”

  “What?”

  “Phone. Better answer it.”

  “It’s only Mum.”

  “Not this time, I don’t think.”

  “Psychic?”

  “Feline intuition. Go, tiger.”

  Then the cat leapt up and over the roof like Spring-heeled Jack, and I scrambled for the phone.

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  STARBUCKS

  HER: “Hi.”

  It took me a couple of seconds to place the voice.

  Me: “Hi.”

  Her: “You take some tracking down.”

  Me: “You’re quite the sleuth. How did you…?”

  Her: “I’d rather not reveal my methods. A girl needs a little mystery.”

  Me: “I suppose I should thank you for—”

  Her: “Thank me? I don’t get it. No, I called to see if … well, do you ever go out?”

  Me: “Under cover of dark. Sometimes.”

  Her: “I thought maybe I could buy you a coffee…”

  Me: “Well, maybe you can.”

  Her: “And maybe you could also tell me what the hell’s going on.”

  Me: “I’ll tell you what I know, but the truth is that it doesn’t add up to much.”

  Her: “That’ll do. Starbucks?”

  Me: “Sure.”

  Her: “Eight – is that enough time to switch to your night plumage?”

  Me: “Eight’s good.”

  Click.

  I had a grin on my face, and a date with a zed name.

  At one minute to eight I pushed through the door of the Starbucks on the high street.

  With a little choke, I saw that Zofia was already at the glass counter. She looked like a black flamingo. She was wearing a long skirt, the colour of night, and a tight jacket with something lacy happening at the wrists and neck. Very Morticia Addams. In a good way.

  I walked over and rested my hand lightly on her back. She turned and smiled and I felt that short, sharp punch in the guts that beauty gives you sometimes by way of “hello”. Her skin was pale and perfect and covered, as far as I could tell, the whole of her body.

  “Sorry if I kept you waiting.”

  “I just arrived.”

  I bought her a coffee – she wanted some weird mix with cinnamon and vanilla. I ordered mine black. I hate black coffee, but I thought it might impress her.

  I led Zofia over to a quiet booth against the wall. The place was dotted with idlers reading newspapers or gazing into space, which meant that there wasn’t quite enough of a buzz to disguise the slightly embarrassing silence when we sat down.

  It was Zofia who filled it.

  “You sounded surprised when I called.”

  “Yeah, well, it was. A surprise, I mean.”

  “A nice one?”

  “Four-balls-in-the-lottery nice.”

  I threw her my second-best smile. I wanted to keep something in reserve for emergencies.

  “I just wanted to say … what you did … at the lockers. It was cool.”

  “I’m a cool kid,” I said, and crossed my eyes and did something stupid with my mouth.

  It made her laugh. Suddenly we were having fun. And we carried on having fun while we sipped our drinks. I couldn’t remember the last time I’d had a normal, light-hearted, jokey, flirty conversation like this. Zofia may have looked like gloom come to life, but soon those purple lips of hers went up through the gears from pout to smile to grin.

  But there were things that needed to be said, on both sides. And so I asked Zofia about her old school, and what had happened there.

  She stared into her cup for a while and I thought I’d blown it. Then she spoke:

  “It was just… It was nothing. Look, there was this teacher there. Mr Cram. He was weird, you know…?”

  “Not really.”

  “With girls. He used to stand too close to you. And there was something about the way he looked at you…”

  “OK, weird like that.”

  “He didn’t touch us, but he was still creepy. And then he had a stroke and died.”

  “Whoa!”

  “And then one of the teachers found a little model made out of clay in my desk.”

  “So what?”

  “In the shape of a man.”

  “Oh.”

  “There were pins stuck in it.”

  “Voodoo?”

  She shrugged.

  “Someone … planted it?” I said, wanting to sound like I was on her side. Hell, I was on her side.

  There was a pause and then she nodded. She gazed at the floor with those green, catlike eyes of hers.

  “I guess, yeah. Someone’s idea of a joke.”

  “But you got chucked out?”

  “I wasn’t formally expelled, but it was obvious I couldn’t stay there any longer. Not when the papers got hold of it.”

  Then it was her turn.

  “So, that’s me and my troubles. I hear you’ve had you own.”

  “Yeah. Maybe I should have changed schools too.”

  Most of the kids knew that I’d had what was described as an “episode”. I tried to find the right way to put it.

  “I’m not a psycho, if that’s what you’re thinking.”

  “I wasn’t thinking anything.”

  “It was just…” What the hell was
it? “It was a year ago. I got stressed out by stuff at home. My mum and dad were arguing a lot. And I … I saw things that weren’t really there. No, not quite that. I started to see things that were there in a different way. Or something like that. I started to see meanings in ordinary stuff.”

  “Like what?” Zofia sounded interested. If she was freaked by the whole thing she was doing a good job of hiding it.

  “Oh, I don’t know. The angle of my desk or the way a leaf was blowing down the street. It’d be like it was all a message.”

  “Sounds kind of cool.”

  I laughed. “Yeah, well, I suppose it made each day into a sort of adventure. But then it stopped being fun, and I couldn’t leave my room because of all the crap in my head. That’s when my mum and dad got me to the shrink.”

  “And he fixed you up?”

  “It was a she. But, yeah, I guess. Well, she gave me some drugs. Strong drugs. And the world stopped talking to me the way it had.”

  “You almost sound as if you miss it.”

  I shrugged. Then there was another silence, and I slurped the last of my coffee.

  “I suppose,” said Zofia, her voice quietly caressing, “all this … stuff that’s going on now must … be hard for you?”

  “Tougher on the stick insects and the guinea pigs.”

  “So what the hell is going on?”

  “You want the facts or my interpretation?”

  “Both.”

  “Right, all we know for certain is that someone killed the sticks – probably poisoning them with ethyl acetate—”

  “Nail varnish remover?”

  “That’s the stuff. Then they – and I’ve got to assume it’s the same guy or guys – sliced up the guinea pigs.”

  “But why?”

  “That’s where the water gets muddy. As everyone knows, I got sucked into this because I was on the scene. Now I’m expected to sort it out. It’s my only chance of clearing my name. And if I flunk it, then the school play gets cancelled, and I’m going to end up dangling from a lamppost with a feather boa around my neck. And when they cut me down I’ll be expelled. The way I figure it, whoever’s behind this has a pretty neat twin-pronged manoeuvre going on. They want to break the Queens, which I’m guessing is the first objective, and they want to make it look like it’s me that’s responsible.”

  “And you’ve got someone in mind? I mean the evil genius behind all this?”

  “There’s only one man who has the right combination of cunning and power. The Sh—”

  “Don’t say it,” she said, and suddenly she looked desolate, like the last flower in a muddy field.

  “But why…?”

  And I looked at her, at her downcast green eyes that were bright now with tears.

  “He’s my father.”

  “WHAT?”

  “Shankley. He’s my father.”

  “But you’re called…”

  “Novak. My mother’s name. They are divorced.”

  “So that’s why you disappeared at the lockers.”

  There were black lines on her cheeks. I felt as numb as a novocained mouth.

  The green eyes.

  I should have known.

  “I’ll get a napkin from the counter,” I said, meaning to use the few seconds it would take me as quality thinking time.

  When I came back she was gone. She hadn’t touched her coffee. A man in another booth was staring at me. He was wearing a green hat.

  “Did you see where my friend went?” I asked, but he just buried himself in his coat, and pulled the hat down over his face.

  “Your hat sucks,” I said as I left.

  I walked home the long way, which took me down past the school. I was trying to fit the new information into the pattern. But that was the problem. There was no pattern. There was only white noise.

  And the Dwarf.

  But I didn’t want to think about the Dwarf now, so I focused back on the girl. Zofia was the Shank’s daughter. Stated plainly like that it seemed insane. How could something so ugly produce something so beautiful? Ugly in spirit, I mean, although even physically the Shank wasn’t going to get a contract as an underwear model. The whole thing was yet another layer of complication slapped on top of what was already a head-banger. It was as if someone had hidden a Rubik’s Cube inside a massively knotted ball of string.

  I tried to unknot the string. The key (and yeah, I know, keys don’t help you much with string) was our old friend coincidence. The Zofia–Shank–guinea pig nexus was just coincidence. Had to be. Someone had tried to implicate me, and, by pure chance, they’d stashed the bodies in Shank’s daughter’s locker by mistake. And even the fact that the Shank and Zofia were related – did that have to signify anything? We’d heard the rumours that the Shank had been divorced. And I supposed that once Zofia was kicked out of the convent she didn’t have much of a choice about where she’d go. But it must have been tough. Tough in all kinds of ways.

  By the time I reached home my head was throbbing like a stubbed toe. I swallowed four aspirin, gagging on the chalky sourness. There was no sign of the cat. No sign of life at all. I went to bed and dreamed of nothing, for ever.

  DAY THREE

  THURSDAY

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  THE THREE SISTERS

  I saw the mob as soon as I got through the school gates the next morning. I’d been thinking about Zofia. My plan was to find her and say sorry. Say sorry for what? Well, the rule is the same for God and for women. Just apologize and don’t worry about what it is you’ve done wrong – they’ll think of something. The thing was to get her on my side again. Someone to watch my back. Someone who’d give a shit whenever I got my head kicked in.

  The crowd put Zofia out of my mind. It wasn’t the usual school ruck, the sort you get gathering around a fight or a nasty accident. It was silent and utterly still. I knew straight away what had happened. Not the details, of course, just the general outline.

  It was the chickens.

  I pushed my way to the front. I was too late for the first screams, and all that remained of the crowd’s emotion was the stunned fascination elicited by violent death.

  The chickens – three pale-grey spinsters from the same brood – lived in a wood-framed wire cage, with a cosy, straw-packed wooden box at one end. The names “Olga”, “Maria” and “Irina” were written in white paint on the outside of the box. Some said that Olga was sensible and serious, that Maria was witty and vivacious and that Irina was rather silly and romantic, but to me they were just chickens, and I couldn’t tell them apart.

  The only way into the cage was through the hinged roof, which was secured with a serious padlock. Well, that was the theory.

  I peered through the wire. Blood and feathers and unidentifiable gobbets of flesh were smeared, scattered, sprayed all over the run. There was nothing left that looked remotely like a chicken. Except for a beak. A solitary beak, attached to nothing beyond its own symbolism. I also saw that a ten-centimetre square had been cut through the wire.

  I closed my eyes and saw it happen. The early hours of the morning. A figure, dressed all in black, stealthy, furtive, unhurried yet urgent. The harsh snick, snick, snick of the wire cutters. The three sisters clucking nervously, edging back into the warmth of the straw. The dark figure finishes his work and slips silently away. The chickens emerge to sniff at the gap in the wire. Freedom beckons, but freedom to some is more terrifying than captivity, and the three sisters return to the familiar enclosure at the end of the run. And so, twenty minutes later, when the old dog fox comes padding along on his nightly rounds, he finds his supper as neatly packaged for him as a microwave pizza. In a few seconds of efficient butchery, the chickens are dead and dismembered.

  “Why? Why? Why?”

  I recognized the sad tones of Mr Vole and opened my eyes. I turned to see his bleak, grey face. He was speaking, it seemed, to himself.

  “I told them. Bring them in. Bring them in. I sent a memo. They were not safe.”
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  Desolate though he sounded, it was the first time I’d heard the Principal speak without every other word being an “er” or an “ah”.

  He looked at me. Recognition flickered, but then the flame went out. The kids in the crowd saw me, realized who I was, and a space opened up around me.

  “Him,” said someone.

  “Murderer,” hissed another.

  “The mental kid.”

  I saw teeth bared. I saw eyes filled with hate and vengeance. I felt spittle slap into my face. I felt the crunch of fist and foot.

  I managed to spin and tear myself out of the hands that grasped, but it was Vole who saved me. He put his arms around me and dragged me out of the mêlée. At first, the kids, half-blinded with rage, didn’t heed the fact that it was the Principal who was protecting me, and carried on trying to land kicks and punches. But then other teachers arrived, along with a gang of prefects, and the crowd split up into smaller knots and solitary snarlers. They left, looking over their shoulders like a clan of hyenas driven off a kill by lions.

  “Better get to your, er, ah,” said Vole.

  It was good advice. I scampered with all the dignity of Rat Zermatt to my form room.

  Out of the frying pan and into the scorching merde. As soon as I entered the form room, I knew things were going to get dirty. Pretty-boy Wilson, my official class tormentor, was waiting for me. He and three or four other boys were sitting on the desks at the front of the room. As I came through the door, he nodded, and I noticed someone slip out behind me.

  “Psycho’s here,” Wilson said, in a whining, psycho voice. The faces around him were hard and fierce.

  “Get screwed, Wilson.”

  I wasn’t in the mood for a fight, and I tried to reach my desk. Suddenly the boys were standing in my way.

  “You’ve gone too far this time, nutter,” Wilson said. “No one cared about the stick insects and the guinea pigs, but you shouldn’t have killed the chickens. They belonged to all of us. You’re a mental case and a murderer, and we don’t want you here.”

  I looked behind the mob, trying to find a friendly face. But even the girls stared at me with hatred, and the only thing that diluted the hatred was fear.

  “No one’s gonna help you, loser. You’ve no friends here. You’ve never had any friends here. You’re on your own.”