by Tom Anderson
‘And if not?’
‘He has always to catch a fish this season. I’ss no problem. He will have fish and we will have rice too.’
‘So, aren’t you worried?’ I asked. ‘About your dad?’
‘Of course. I am worried very much. Nothing we can do after telling the police, so I must do the same things. Tomorrow I will make this statue again, then maybe try to do some showing-off tricks on my own. I have never done these without my father, but I cannot only be a statue.’
I wished there was more I could do to help.
‘Luca, you should swim home before i’ss nightime,’ said Alex. ‘If you don’t is muy peligroso – very dangerous – because you can maybe lose the spot in the sea.’
‘But I…’
‘You see me again soon. If I find my father, you will see me. If I do not, it’s same. You will see me. Now you must go to the shore. I can take you. Is very important to find the right place in the sea.’
‘I’ll know where to look,’ I told him. ‘It’ll be warmer than the rest.’
‘I am coming. It’s important I am saying thank you to you for being kind.’
‘It’s only kind if it works,’ I said. ‘If it helps make the police get off their arses and find him.’
‘This not true. Kind is kind. Any person is kind and it helps.’
Alex walked me to within sight of the shoreline, and hugged me before pointing towards the swirling patch of sandy water just beyond the beach. He turned and walked away, trudging a few steps then skipping a few, as if great forces of happiness and sadness were fighting inside him, taking it in turns to have the upper hand.
When the water hit my toes it was bathtub warm. I waded slowly out, waving at the disappearing Alex. Then the comforting luxury of the heated current began persuading me to sink in. When I could resist no more, I made a final wave at the section of road where Alex had been a minute ago, and then let the ocean draw me under.
The swimming felt so good. I stretched my shoulders and arms out ahead, felt the tiny trickles of colder water flick past me, then turned and kicked with my feet, downward, to the warmest parts of all.
‘Well done, Luca,’ whispered a voice in my ear. Maybe Alex’s voice, maybe someone else. ‘Well done. Now go!’
There was an off-beat starting to dance in my head. Like the music of Cartagena but older. Somewhere out there, my tune would play any moment.
The water was getting warmer, and I could feel it moving, fast along the ocean floor.
‘That’s it,’ whispered the other voice, even quieter than before. ‘This way. You know it already.’
Chapter 13
The current may have been warm, but the air was freezing once I waded up the shore back home. It was still night-time and my clothes were dripping wet. Being without my hoodie was better at first, because the wet clothes seemed to be making things even colder. As a sub-zero breeze whipped across the dunes, my soaking T-shirt and jeans seemed to fill with the frozen air particles, clinging against my skin.
All of this was shoved right to the back of my mind by the time I’d ran home, though. What would my mum think if she saw me drenched, with squelching feet and muddy hair? That would pretty much be the end of the world if it happened.
The streetlamps were still off, so I figured dawn had to still be a little bit away. Knowing my parents, that didn’t automatically mean they’d be in bed. Sure enough, there were lights on in my house, and that was when I realised that the front-door key was still inside my hoodie.
Inside my hoodie, on the floor, by a kerbside, in the walled city of Cartagena de Indias.
Now, I did have a problem.
It was time to weigh up which was going to be the biggest disaster of my life. Knock the door to get let in…? That would wake one of them, if not both. Dad would be the better option, but even he would throw a mental if he saw his son strolling out of the night looking like this. Other option was stay outside until one of them got up and opened the door. That might involve actually dying from the cold – and still getting caught anyway. Of the two, staying out still made kind of the most sense though. No streetlights, no horizons glowing at all. It was going to be a long one.
First thing was to get out of the wet clothes. I went round the back of our house where there were a few layers of tarps and old blankets that my dad would use to line his van when he shifted dirty or splintery objects around. One of them was a big cloth drape, almost as thick as a rug, and it felt dry compared to my sticky skin. I threw my T-shirt and jeans off, taking a moment to take out and grip the doubloon, which was still there, then wrapped the huge curtain round myself at the neck. It was no good. I was seconds from teeth starting to chatter, and once that happened I was going to be done for.
Done for, in this case, meant knocking my parentsʼ door. Suddenly death by hypothermia had fallen into a close second.
The cloth was around me like a robe when I wandered back to the front door and tried it again. Of course it was still locked. The rear door too. Why wouldn’t they be?
Another gust of wind shook through the trees between our house and next door.
Then I got the idea of running to keep warm.
I turned out of our drive, and hoisting the whole sheet of heavy cloth around myself, jogged to the end of the street, where the dunes began. I turned to go back, and did three laps of the street before thinking this would look too weird to anyone looking, so I headed back into the dunes.
It took about twenty minutes but eventually I was starting to sweat – this weird kind of sweat that felt hot on my face, but with my core still cold. It was the best I could do, though, so I headed back to the house and rolled myself under a tarp in the back garden. Pressed close to the wall, I asked whoever was listening for daybreak. The cold is your friend, I tried to convince myself. It feels good. It is good. People last days like this. Come on!
There was no sleeping before dawn came, but time still seemed to skip with a kinder pace than before. Maybe Alex, or my ghostly friends, were turning the dial a little. Or maybe I was getting good at discomfort.
First out was my mum. She stepped out of the back porch to smoke. Nice one, Mum. A roll-up first thing in the morning. Must be taking it outside so Dad didn’t realise the smell. He wasn’t into her smoking unless they were on the rum together. Didn’t look like she had rum in her coffee, although knowing this pair it probably happened from time to time.
I crept round the side of the house, to see if she’d opened the front, but she hadn’t.
What time was it? Surely still too early for…
‘Luca!’ I head her shout, long and friendly, somewhere near the stairs.
She had gone back in, and was waking me up for school.
Crap! I yelled under my breath.
‘Luca! Did you set an alarm? I can’t hear anything? Come on. Attendance, attendance, attendance!’ I wondered why she hadn’t said that dreaded word three times in a row yesterday when Jeff and my dad were lining up my ‘apprenticeship’.
I was going to get one chance to get this right, anyway, and then that would be it.
Throwing the tarp to the wall and the blanket into a corner, I opened the back door behind her, trying super hard not to make any kind of latch noise.
I was in, and, leaving the door open slightly to avoid the noise of it shutting, I made straight for the shower room under the stairs. I got there just as she headed up to my room.
‘Luca? You up? Come on!’
I threw my wet boxers in the bin, and turned on the water current.
It was so warm I wanted to cry. I could get my clothes from the garden later without them spotting, no problem. They didn’t notice what I wore when it was on me, let alone scrunched up and covered in sea water in our weedy flower beds.
‘Luca? Lukee?’ She was coming back down.
‘In he
re, Mum,’ I yelled. ‘In the shower!’
‘Really?’ she asked. Then I heard her mumble something else, but the spraying water, cleaning and heating my soul, was too loud and too lush.
‘Have you been outside?’ she asked, as I came out into the hall again, my waist wrapped in the toilet’s hand-drying towel that they never washed.
‘No,’ I said. ‘Have you?’
‘What kind of question is that?’ she said.
‘Back door was slightly open when I came down,’ I said. ‘Maybe we’ve been burgled?’
‘That’s a horrible thing to say,’ she frowned.
‘Well, someone opened it, Mum. And anyway, what’s there to burgle here? The watches?’
She looked like she wanted to cry, but that was probably the sore head. They’d been up late, hadn’t they, intoxicated with tales of gold bullion and their traveller memories. Oh, and rum. Now one of them would probably try to offer me a lift to school to show they could still be responsible…
‘Your dad will be up in a bit. If you want some cereal I’m sure that will give him enough time to get ready to drive you.’
‘Nah, I’m alright,’ I said. ‘Don’t feel like breakfast.’
* * *
First prize out of a huge field of entries; that school day took the award for the longest in the history of the universe. I missed being late by seconds, which made me feel just as crap as if I’d been caught. It meant I had to go to assembly, where I swayed, on my feet in a line watching some visitor talk about joining the army.
Friday brought us Art, too, but Gaby wasn’t there. At least that was one less thing to think about – and I wasn’t allowed to stay in the lesson anyway. Kleener had marked me out to spend the morning in a revision group for kids who might not get enough exam results to make the school look good. Instead of doing what we sort of enjoyed or being left to just be us, I had to read over a Maths exam.
Then came lunch, so I went over to Mrs Rogoff to say sorry I’d missed her lesson for the extra Maths, and then asked if I could look at the Cartagena pictures she kept for our ‘inspiration’. She looked amused and then said, ‘Oh, want to finally do some work now then, do we, Luca?’
I flicked through the photo booklet she’d made, fighting a yawn big enough to probably break my jaw. There didn’t seem to be much that could help me in there apart from some web links on the back page, but I stuffed a student copy in my bag anyway and left to go and wait outside the Maths room for the afternoon, and Catch-up Class Number Two.
‘Not going to actually sketch anything, then?’ said Rogoff, as I left.
‘Sorry, Miss.’ I said.
‘No you’re not.’
I pretty much slept through the Maths then, which left only just enough energy to push my tired legs home across a grey afternoon of cold fog. I was out like a light until Friday had been and gone, my parents had partied again, and my messy house was shaking first thing in the morning to a sound I hadn’t heard for years. A sound which was telling me right away that stuff was happening in Luca Land which I should listen hard to.
Luca Land – the one place I might never get away from, no matter how badly it doesn’t seem to fit my size and shape.
Chapter 14
‘Lucifer son of the morning!’ yelled a husky old voice from downstairs.
Saturday and what a way to start.
It was coming from my parents in the living room. They hadn’t played this in years! Sure, it might have been shuffle, but, really? This song? Now? This morning?
‘Lucifer son of the morning!’ – then came the drum roll and scratching of a wood-stick shaker. The reggae sound, but they must have known what they were doing… ‘Lucifer son of the morning!’
The song pushed on, and I stared at the ceiling. I couldn’t make out the words once the instruments kicked in, but I didn’t need to. It was only the first line that mattered to me. This was it, the song that had started me. ‘Lucifer son of the morning!’
Looking to my phone to check the time, I saw a message had dropped in from Gaby:
‘Alive? Me neither. What u doing today LLcJ?’
I slid the screen open and went to reply, but the song was still too strong with its hold over me. Plus, I had nothing decent to say.
It must have been there, in my sleep, every time anyway. The song my parents were playing right now, the song that once made me think I was the devil. My mum reckoned it was the funniest thing I ever did, but I just remember being shit scared.
My thumb was thinking of something to text back, but my mind was stuck on the rumbling beats through the floorboard.
‘???’ was all I could manage as a reply to Gaby, but immediately she messaged back.
‘Come on. Let’s get outdoors. Bunkers? Or what about marsh markets. Bet that’s where u are already lol.’
Through the throbbing of the muffled music, I thought about the places I’d been since I last saw her in the tiny world of that misty beach. The jewel stalls in Birmingham seemed far enough at the time, but the other place? Yeah, as if I could really tell her – or anyone else, ever – about that.
Thumbs twitched for the best reply, but there wasn’t going to be one. Not for the next one and a half minutes.
‘Lucifer son of the morning…’ The song was on the bit where it went over and over that line. ‘Lucifer son of the morning…’ And like it always did, my mind was fighting not to hear the words as they had appeared to me for the first years of my life… Luca son of the morning!
I rammed my thumbs against my ears and tried to roll towards the wall.
It was no good. Luca son of the morning! He was coming for me. Whoever he was. The devil in me was calling.
I put my face in the pillow, yelled ‘COME ON THEN’ into the total silence of the feathers and fabric, and then turned back to the world. Best take it on, I thought. Head to head. Sliding Gaby’s message off the screen, up and out of my way, I searched out the same song, and stuck my earphones in. Let’s deal with this, before anything else gets in the way. Or before it gets in the way of anything else.
Yeah. Back at the controls, steering through the storm. Me choosing when to press play, how many repeats.
Five turns, five repetitions and I was getting somewhere. My parents hadn’t been to bed yet – they must be in a good mood about this gold-buying business. Through the music I could pick up their footsteps, plodding up the stairs.
‘Luca?’ my mum called out.
‘Yeah,’ I pulled the headphones off.
‘Yeah, he’s up,’ I heard her say to my Dad.
‘What is it?’ I called from behind my closed door.
‘We’re just gonna catch up on a few hours sleep,’ said my Dad. ‘We’re in, though. Had a bit of a late one. That’s all. Think Jeff Rafferty’s coming round for lunch. Will you let him in? And wake us when he calls. If we’re not up before then.’
I didn’t reply.
‘You got that, Luca?’
‘Yeah.’
‘Cool.’
The song had lapsed. The spell was lifting. Maybe.
I left the earphones on the bed and sat up, then grabbed Mrs Rogoff’s Cartagena pack. The ‘further information’ websites were at the back. Flipping my phone sideways, I went after the first suggested link. Couple of pics of the walled city. Nothing to help me though.
The second site was no more use either, so I went on Google Earth, then clicked on the little orange man to go into street mode. You could do it for Cartagena! Suddenly I was gulping the air. Did I really want to play with this stuff right now? As the screen blurred and began to resolve into the plazas and that old, stone wall, I had a sudden shudder. OFF! OFF! OFF! I couldn’t let myself see it all like this, in such an unreal way. Not after being there like I had.
I didn’t want to see Alex again, either. Not like that. It didn’t see
m fair.
Somehow at that moment, the internet and everything it could bring into your own home seemed, like, wrong, I suppose. It felt like Alex had the right not to exist online. I didn’t want to put him to that test. Also, did I really want, or need, to compare the place as a Google truck had shot it to the place where I had been? If they were totally the same, then that would be kind of freaky. But then it would be just as freaky if they weren’t, too. The pictures I’d seen in the Art pack were close enough already to be sure it was the same city.
Back on Mrs Rogoff’s list now, I worked through the rest of the links, until one had another link inside it about the performing arts of Cartagena de Indias.
I rolled through a gallery of street performer pictures, which you could tell from the clothes of the tourists in it was, like, twenty years old. Typical school resource then. Welcome to the digital age, teachers. With your pictures of 1975 or whenever.
A text from Gaby slid into view. It was a copy of mine from earlier:
‘???’
I flicked it out the way without opening. What I needed was only a few clicks away, I was sure of it. One pic flashed up, then another. A gallery of performing artists from Cartagena de Indias. This was going to be the right link. This method of connecting my journey to the real world would be okay.
Sure of where I was heading, I tapped back to Gaby’s message, and knocked up a reply:
‘Fine. Gonna be ready to come out in half hour. Where u gonna be?’
‘Town. Buying paints. Come to the Quarters.’
She meant the square of shops just before Chapel Shores ran into Chapel Marshes. Fine.
‘Ok. 1hr?’ I typed back.
The thumbs-up emoji arrived as a reply. I pulled on my spare hoodie – the one perk of having a dad who bought and sold wholesale crap; having two hoodies that had both fallen off the back of the same truck. Leave one in Cartagena and my folks wouldn’t notice, because he’d given me two at the time anyway. I slipped my shoes on too, ready to go out.
