How Hedley Hopkins Did a Dare...

by Paul Jennings

  Finally, after about an hour or so, I reach the place where the track leads up through the sand dunes towards the grave. It is hard work pulling the ladder up the steep sand but somehow I manage to get to the top. I can see the big wire fence of the Loony Bin. No one could climb over it. Or under it, because it is fixed into a ribbon of concrete at the bottom.

  Then I see something which sends a chill through my bones.

  A hole. A hole in the wire fence.

  Someone has cut a hole big enough to climb through the Loony Bin fence.

  I try to tell myself that someone has been breaking in.

  But deep inside I know they could have been breaking out.

  I must go on. I turn my attention to the grave. There it is. The concrete slab is still off to one side. The grave is still open. This time the black hole makes me think of the entrance to the Underworld. I have heard creepy things like that on my crystal set when I am supposed to be asleep. Hell would start at a grave.

  I was crazy agreeing to do the dare.

  My stomach feels like there is a live jellyfish in there trying to get out. I just want to turn and run. But I don’t. I lower the ladder down the open grave until it touches the bottom near the end of the coffin. I nervously put my foot over the edge and feel around for the top rung.

  I find it and put my weight on to it. The whole thing starts to wobble wildly and the top of the ladder suddenly slides to one side. Whap. It hits the edge of the grave and my feet lose their hold. I cling to the top rung desperately. My legs flail in the air. The rung snaps with a loud crack and I plunge down. I land heavily on my side next to the coffin.

  I don’t scream out loud because I can’t. I have no air. So I scream silently at the bony face lying next to my own. I am looking straight into the vacant eyes of the skull. It leers at me. I fight for breath but I am totally winded.

  The skull has a large hole at the back. And on the top is a tiny patch of skin with a few hairs growing out of it. It is this hair that makes it so terrible. Wild visions run through my mind like scenes from a nightmare. Once this skull belonged to a man who combed his hair and had soft lips. And now it has all gone – shrivelled and eaten by worms. I know that I will never be able to touch the bony remains. Never in a million years.

  The face seems to warp and scowl just a few inches from my nose.

  Suddenly there is something worse. Is this a nightmare? Oh, please let me wake up and be home in bed. No, no, it is true. The terrible sight is real. Above me at the top of the grave is another horrible face.

  But this one is alive. His bald head shines in the moonlight like a dancing white bowling ball. He bobs about, skipping from side to side. His laugh echoes loudly and seems to bounce off the moon itself. He begins jumping from side to side like a monkey and pelting me with small hard missiles. He sends handful after handful raining down onto my head.

  It is Victor – the loony.

  Now there are more loonies. Five or six. A couple of them have bald heads and one has no teeth. Some of their faces have a lot of wrinkles. Too many for their age. And some have almond-shaped eyes. One of them has a huge head. I didn’t know that it was possible to have such a big head. They are all laughing crazily like Victor did in the Father and Son Night. The whole lot of them begin throwing down more hard pellets. I am trapped. There is no way out except up the ladder, straight into their arms.

  ‘Stop,’ I shriek. ‘Leave me alone. Go away.’

  The sound of my voice only makes them worse. And the pellets rain down even heavier. I have always been scared of crazy people. Not that I have ever met any. But I have read about them in comics and there are stories. You can’t reason with them. And this lot are crazy, the whole lot of them. My heart is beating as if a million hammers are knocking on my ribs.

  Instinctively, I look around for something to throw back. I have to stop this storm from above. It is defend myself or die.

  Grab me, the skull seems to say.

  In my terror I grab the skull and heave it with all my might. It arcs up towards the moon and then begins to fall. Victor catches it like a goalkeeper and then stares down in amazement at his prize. He shrieks with the cry of an enraged wolf and throws it to the crazy guy next to him. They all start howling and screaming. Then their heads disappear.

  I am alone in the grave except for the headless skeleton inside the lead coffin.

  I take a deep breath and try to make my brain slow down. I have to get out of this terrible hole. But what will I find above? Are they lying in wait? Have they gone to get more loonies? The thought fills me with even more horror. I begin to climb frantically up the ladder but it starts to wobble again. One rung is missing and I can’t find where to put my foot. If I fall back down again I could break a leg or worse.

  But I don’t.

  I manage to heave myself up the wobbling ladder into the cold night.

  There on the edge of the grave is the skull.

  Victor has dropped it.

  From somewhere inside myself I find a tiny grain of courage. I pull a handkerchief out of my pocket and lift the skull by the little bridge between the eye sockets. I take care not to let my fingers touch it. I take one deep breath and lurch off towards the water.

  8

  R.I.P.

  THE NIGHT IS cold now and mist from the pounding waves makes my shirt and pants damp. I would walk closer to the sand dunes but I want to stay out in the open where no one can jump out and get me. I keep throwing a look over my shoulder to make sure the loonies are not on my tail.

  I try not to stare down at what is in my hand. This skull makes my flesh crawl.

  Suddenly a nasty thought comes into my head. What if this person died of some terrible disease? In the old days they had illnesses like Leprosy and the Black Death. What if there are germs hiding under that bit of flesh? Or in the hairs that are still attached to it? I put the skull down on the sand and start to scratch. I feel itchy all over.

  Put me in a box, the skull seems to say.

  I stare around at where the seaweed is drying out at the high-water mark. This is where stuff that is washed up is to be found. I’ve often looked among the seaweed hoping to find treasure or a message in a bottle. Wouldn’t it be great if there was a message from my granny back in England? Inside the bottle would be a thousand pounds. Enough money for us all to go back to England to live. I could go to my old school again where everyone has the same accent as me.

  But there is no bottle with money in it. All I see are things like a twisted piece of rope, an old sandal, a dead fish, bits of white wood that have been roughly rounded by sand and rubbish such as mouldy potatoes thrown off ships.

  Then I see something different. I find some treasure. Well, it’s treasure to me. An old sack half-buried in the sand.

  I pull the sack out, and still holding the skull gently with my handkerchief, drop it into the sack. Now I won’t have to touch it. I won’t even have to look at it.

  The skull is out of sight but it is not out of mind. I start to feel guilty. One day after I am dead my own head will be in a grave somewhere. The thought of someone walking along the beach with it in a sack fills me with guilt. I know I wouldn’t like it if I was dead. The skull seems to weigh a ton. It’s heavy in my hand and it’s heavy on my mind.

  The dead should rest in peace. R.I.P. – Rest In Peace – that’s what it means. But I am a grave robber and this man is resting in pieces. All his parts should be together. I have made off with this skull just so I can make friends at school and save myself from looking stupid over the pee.

  I start to wonder who this man was. I think he must have been famous or important. I wonder what his name is. I should apologise to him.

  A song comes into my mind. A song we had to learn on Anzac Day at school. A hymn that remembers the soldiers who died in the War:

  We will remember them today,

  Who from their homeland sailed away.

  So bravely and so willingly,

  To give thei
r lives for you and me.

  Father, guard their sleeping.

  Whenever I think of this song I try hard not to let tears come into my eyes. I think of those men going off to war and not coming back.

  Back in England, my granny has a faded picture of my grandfather in his World War One uniform. He was young and smiling, not knowing that he was going to die in a trench from an enemy bullet. Granny has grown old and wrinkled. She never married again after Grandad died. She says he was the love of her life. His young face smiles at her old one every day from its place in a frame next to her bed. Sometimes I used to wonder what he would think if he came back from Heaven and found her all wrinkled while he was not. He would still love her. I do.

  What if the skull belonged to a soldier like my grandfather? A brave man who fought for his country? I might have taken the skull from a sacred grave. A war memorial. Like The Unknown Soldier at the Shrine in Melbourne. No one knows who he was.

  ‘I’m sorry, Major Manners,’ I say in a sad voice. ‘I didn’t want to disturb your sleeping. But I had no choice. The boys at school are picking on me.’

  I don’t know where I got that name from except that on the grave is part of a word. I remember it said MANN. Major Manners just sort of popped into my head. Something inside of me says that this man was a soldier. A warrior.

  ‘I am really, really, really sorry,’ I say again.

  It’s okay, cobber, says Major Manners. You’ll put me to rest when the time comes. I trust you.

  The skull does not actually say this in words that you can hear. It just talks to me inside my head. It makes me feel better. I walk all the rest of the way home without looking back over my shoulder. Major Manners has given me a little bit of his courage.

  9

  worth your weight in sawdust

  WHEN I GET back the house is in darkness except for the sitting room. It is all lit up. I peer through the window and see Mum darning a sock. She is sitting in front of the electric fire. It is one of those fires with a red light bulb that shines beneath painted metal coals. The heat from the light turns a tiny fan which throws flickering shadows on to Mum’s worried face. The fire is a fake. It is like our teacher, Mr Tinker, who is different on the outside to what he really is on the inside.

  No one likes Mr Tinker because he is a bully and he gives the boys the strap at the slightest excuse. This is the reason we all change his name from Tinker to Stinker when he is not there. For some reason he seems to hate me. He will give me the strap for the smallest mistake. Even things I can’t help, like getting a sum wrong.

  My father says that if you get a punishment at school you should get another dose of the same thing when you get home. This is why I never complain about what Stinker does. I can see my father through the window now, standing looking at himself in the mantelpiece mirror. He stands stiffly like he always does when there is a problem.

  Once I saw a man standing on the end of the pier watching the sunset. He was just a black silhouette against the red sky.

  ‘There’s Dad,’ I said to Mum.

  ‘That’s not your father,’ she said. ‘He would never stand like that.’

  I knew straightaway that she was right. The man was standing with one foot up on a bench with his elbow on his knee. He was leaning against his fist in a really relaxed way. Like a male model getting their photo taken for an advert for jumpers or cardigans. Even when he wasn’t posing for a photo, my father always stood like someone getting their portrait taken in the olden days. Straight up, with an embarrassed look on his face. Trying to smile but not being able to do it.

  On another occasion Mum said, ‘He is uncomfortable in his skin.’

  I am not sure what that means but it makes me remember the little bit of skin on Major Manners’ head. I cannot waltz into the house with a skull in a sack. I have to hide it.

  I walk round to the back garden and push the sack in behind a shiny-leaf bush. ‘I’m going to leave you here for a while,’ I say. ‘But I’ll be back. You can count on me, Sir.’

  No worries, says Major Manners.

  A feeling of dread fills my heart as I walk slowly across the dark lawn towards the back door. In books kids run away and join the circus and become rich and go back home in triumph. But in real life you just have to crawl back with your tail between your legs because you have no money and you don’t meet anyone and there is nowhere to sleep. I am going to be in big trouble for running away and staying out late at night. I know I am.

  I will just have to go in with a stiff upper lip. Like Biggles who is a pilot in my favourite book. He is fearless in every situation.

  When I step in the door of the sitting room, Mum’s face lights up with a happy smile. But just for a second. The smile vanishes quicker than one of Ian Douglas’s cigarette butts disappearing down the toilet.

  ‘What are you thinking of, Hedley?’ Mum yells. ‘We have been sick to death with worry. Where have you been, you thoughtless child?’

  My shoes are covered in sand. I have to tell the truth.

  ‘The beach,’ I mumble.

  ‘Why did you run off?’ she asks.

  I look at Dad. He didn’t tell her about my stupid question at the Father and Son Night.

  My father’s not brave. One day I found a little sliding bolt on the inside of my parents’ bedroom door.

  ‘What did you put that there for?’ I asked.

  Dad looked nervously at Mum. Then he said, ‘In case burglars come in the night.’

  I didn’t say anything, but I thought, ‘You coward. Kate and I will be left out with the burglar while you are safe behind a locked door.’ I was very disappointed with my father.

  But now it is my parents’ turn to be disappointed in me.

  ‘You are an ungrateful child, Hedley Hopkins,’ says Mum. ‘Get out of my sight. Go to bed. You’re more trouble than you are worth. You’re good for nothing.’

  ‘Not worth your weight in sawdust,’ says my father.

  Whenever they are mad at me they say I am good for nothing. It is true. I am not really good at anything. I can’t play sport. I can’t do sums properly. And I don’t have any friends because I have an English accent. The only things I am good at are running away and imagining things inside my head and these don’t count.

  I go into my room and shut the door. I look out of the window down to the shiny-leaf bush at the bottom of the garden.

  ‘Goodnight, Major Manners, Sir.’ I say.

  Goodnight, mate, he replies. Take it easy. You’re a good bloke.

  10

  the first sign of madness

  NEXT MORNING I wake early and open my eyes to a feeling of dread. At first I am not sure where I am or what has happened. I am not even sure who I am. I often feel like this when I first open my eyes. It is as if the world has all just been made and I am trying to figure it out for the first time. Slowly, bits of memories come back like ink seeping along a piece of blotting paper. Now the feeling of dread has turned itself into memories.

  I remember the Father and Son Night and everyone laughing at me. I remember that I am going to have to face up to Ian Douglas and his gang. They will make mean jokes about me because I asked the question, ‘How much pee do you put in?’ I must be the only boy in the world who does not know. Everyone else knows how much.

  I just lie there staring at the ceiling.

  Suddenly I grin.

  I have the skull.

  Yes, I imagine the look on everyone’s face when they see me with the skull. I can smuggle it to school with me and show the gang.

  I have passed the test.

  No one has ever done anything as brave as this before. They will be amazed. Shocked out of their brains. I might even end up leader of the gang.

  I jump out of bed, have a shower and get dressed. I pull on my short pants and long socks but don’t wear garters. I put on my leather boots and a jumper because it is cold.

  Mum doesn’t like the leather school boots. She says they are what the ‘work
ing class’ boys wear and she prefers shoes because we are ‘middle class’. But for once I manage to talk her into it because every other boy in the class wears boots.

  At breakfast I can see that Kate still wants to tell everything about the grave. It is not that she is scared – it’s just that she still thinks it’s the right thing to do. She looks at me with big round eyes. She does not know that I have the skull but she knows about the grave. I shake my head at her and make my eyes big and round like hers. She takes a breath to talk but then closes her mouth. Kate and I understand each other. We can almost read each other’s minds.

  My father cannot read our minds but he is reading something out from the paper. It is about vandals who glued a beer bottle into the hand of a statue of Queen Victoria. They broke the other hand off and threw red paint over her head.

  Queen Victoria has been dead for ages but Dad still likes her.

  ‘She didn’t like drunks or fools,’ said Dad. ‘Like the vandals who did this.’

  ‘What’s a vandal?’ asks Kate.

  I wish she had not asked this question. I have heard the answer before. Dad goes into a long explanation about the Roman Empire in all its glory which was not as good as the British Empire but still impressive. The first Vandals were wild people who attacked Rome and broke everything that was beautiful. He finishes up with, ‘Vandals destroy what they can’t understand.’

  I know that I will be called a vandal if I am caught with Major Manners. Everyone will say I broke into the coffin and stole the skull. But I am not a vandal. Major Manners talks to me in my mind. I understand about the sad soldiers like him who died in the War and stopped the invaders. I understand what it must be like inside a lonely grave. It is like the inside of my head.

  ‘They should be locked up,’ says my mother. ‘There’s no respect for anything any more.’