Will flicked through them then pulled out Fu Manchu. “Look at this one’s moustache. He looks just like that bloke that works in the petrol station. Maybe he’s got John locked up in the back of one of the cars!” Will dramatically held his hands up by the side of his face, and let his mouth hang open.
Liam took a sharp intake of breath and Will dumped the cards back in his hands and walked off.
“Do you think he could be?”
“Nah,” I said, then had another look at the card. “But it’s a pretty good match.” And we sniggered all the way back to the classroom.
Mrs Palmer wasn’t in there yet, and we were the first back. On her desk was a set of exercise books. I dashed in, swiped a couple, gave one to Liam, and hid the other in my PE bag.
“What did you do that for?” asked Liam.
“We can start recording all of our ideas in there,” I said. “To help us find John.”
At lunchtime we went through the cards looking for other matches. We wondered if we could find anyone for Mr Inglehart. When he first came to the school three years ago people said he was like The Demon Headmaster. The book used to be in the school library, but then it disappeared. At first we all thought that he’d had it removed to stop the rumours, but it turned out that he wasn’t particularly strict, he never told anyone off for no reason, and he was good at training the football team, so the rumours stopped and everyone ended up thinking he was okay for a headmaster. The only card he looked a little bit like was Dracula, and as he was outside walking around the playground most lunchtimes, we figured he couldn’t be a vampire.
Liam started chuckling as he was flicking through the cards. He covered his mouth with his hand.
“What?” I said.
“Nothing.”
“No, what is it?”
“Well, you see this one?” He held out The Mad Axeman. It had a green face, and white hair. He had only one eye open. “Shaky Jake.”
I nodded and started flicking through the rest of the cards when Laura walked by with Becky. Laura had her hair in pigtails, and she was always smiling. Becky had a fringe that came down to the top of her glasses and was always moody.
“Hey Laura,” I said, and she came over. I could tell that Becky was trying to stop her, and in the end, she followed her over.
“Which of these three cards looks more like Shaky Jake?” I held out The Mad Axeman, Madman (yellow, lumpy face, brown hair, badly receding) and The Mad Magician (Long white hair, top hat, dark, creepy eyes and a weird smile).
“He hasn’t got white hair, but his face is a bit like the magician’s. His hair is more like the madman’s.”
“So, a cross between The Mad Magician and Madman then?”
“I suppose so,” said Laura, and she started to walk away.
“Have you ever seen him do any magic?”
“No.”
“Tell her about Mr Jenkins,” Liam said.
I shuffled through the cards until I found Ape Man. “We reckon Mr Jenkins could be the Ape Man.”
“That’s mean,” said Becky. “Mr Jenkins is a nice man.”
Becky walked off and Laura followed her.
I stared at Liam, and he shrugged.
“What?” he said.
“What did you have to go and tell her about that for?”
“It’s funny.”
“But you made her go away.”
“So?” I could almost hear Liam’s brain ticking. “You fancy her, don’t you?”
“No!” I said. I did though.
“Yes, you do!”
“Shhhh!” I said.
“Well I suppose it’s a step up from Mrs Palmer. We couldn’t have you hooking up with an Alien Creature.”
“I never fancied Mrs Palmer.”
“I’m not surprised. She’s an alien.”
“Let’s get back to work,” I said and flicked through the cards again. “How about this one: The Gorgon is Mrs Barnes.”
Liam nodded. “Yeah she has hair like that. It could definitely be her.”
“Okay, that’s good.” I picked up the next card. “What about The Freak?”
“You’re The Freak.”
“No, you’re The Freak”.
“Freak.”
“I know you are, but what am I?”
We didn’t get much further.
At afternoon break Liam and I sat under the shade of a tree. Liam started pulling and then splitting blades of grass. Eventually he stopped and looked at me. “Do you remember when we were round at John’s and he put that tape on of that TV show he’d recorded off Sky?”
John had satellite TV. He got to watch all of these cool American TV shows, like COPS and WWF Superstars. Sometimes he’d tape them and let us watch them, so we’d know who he was talking about when he went on about Hulk Hogan or the Ultimate Warrior or Rowdy Roddy Piper or Hacksaw Jim Duggan.
“Which one?” I said to Liam, because there were a lot of times, he’d taped shows for us.
“Unsolved Mysteries do you remember it?”
I thought for a second, and then it came back to me, “Yeah,” I said.
“Do you reckon we could get in touch with them and they’d help us investigate?”
“Hey Liam,” someone shouted.
We looked up, and the ball was trickling towards us.
Will was trotting over to collect it, so Liam got up and passed him the ball.
“What are you talking about?” asked Will.
“Unsolved Mysteries.” I said.
Will picked up the ball, drop-kicked it back onto the pitch, and then sat down with us.
“That was the show with the crop circles at the start, right?” Will said.
“There hasn’t been anything like that round here, has there?” I said.
“Worth keeping an eye out for,” Will said. “Don’t you remember – there was that bit about that lady who just caught fire on the show?”
“Spontaneous human combustion?” I said.
“Yeah, that’s it!” Will said.
“What about it?”
Wait,” Liam said. “How about if that happened to John? He got really hot while we were watching that, and, remember, he was the only one of us who had a shell suit.”
“So?”
“Tom! You’re not thinking! Don’t you remember anything? Like when Wade came into the school with the fireman and they did that demonstration of how easily shell suits could catch on fire? And that’s why they were banned from school?”
“Liam, calm down,” Will said, and he stood up and heading back towards the game.
“You’re still not getting it!” Liam was starting to go a red. “What if he was wearing his shell suit – got really hot and then spontaneously combusted!” Liam stood up too.
“Where are you going?” I said.
“To tell Mr Inglehart, so he can pass it on to the police.”
“No, Liam, I don’t think that happened.”
“But surely they have to investigate the possibility?”
“There would be some kind of evidence though, right? Scorch marks on the ground or something.”
“Good plan. After school we can search for burn marks and crop circles.”
I nodded my head. “Ace.”
Liam sat back down.
“You don’t think he’s really gone forever, though, do you?” I said.
“I don’t know, Tom.”
“It’s so weird. Nothing like this has ever happened before.”
“How about when your dog went missing? That came back, didn’t it?” Liam said.
“Chappie always used to wander off and come back,” I said. But he’d not done it recently. He’d not done much at all recently.
“Yeah, but dogs are smart.”
“John’s smart too, Liam. He’ll be okay.”
After school we talked over our plan for the afternoon. “We could follow the drove round the back of the school. He might have gone off that way,” I said. As you pass behind the scho
ol you can see into the staff room. We liked to mimic the teachers, make up pretend conversations they might have had about us.
We each picked up long sticks as we started our walk, except for Andy who plucked his nun-chucks from his rucksack. Liam thrust his stick into some elderberry bushes. There was a rustling and some birds flew out.
“What if John is out here?” Liam said.
“If we find him? Good.” Will said.
“But what if I poke him in the eye, or something?”
“Didn’t do Granddad Norman any harm.”
“Seriously though,” I said, “what if we do find him and he’s not okay?”
“What do you mean?” Andy said.
“Nothing,” Will said.
Andy looked sadly at the ground. He poked at a branch with his foot.
“He didn’t mean anything,” Will said, and put a hand on Andy’s shoulder. “Those are some cool nun-chucks.”
Andy smiled, and gripped the handles tightly.
“Let’s keep going,” said Will.
Around the corner were a group of older boys, Jimmy Wilson’s older brother, Gavin, among them.
“Watchya Bill,” Gavin said.
One of the other boys was smoking.
Will nodded towards them.
“What are you doing around here?” Gavin said.
“Hanging out,” said Will.
“With a bunch of little kids?”
“My brother and my cousins.”
“Wanna ditch them and come with us? Drew’s pinched some fags from his dad.”
“Better not,” said Will. “I’ve got to look after this lot.”
The boys walked on past us. Was that really the only reason that Will hung out with us after school? I suppose he was one of the cool kids, and sometimes I felt pretty far from it. I tried to forget it and looked through the gaps in the hedges towards the school, trying to look into each room to see if anything peculiar was going on, or if anyone unusual came in or out of the school. It wasn’t until we got around to the back of the school playing field that we found anything interesting, just past the Broom Cupboard – our small storage area where we kept a few sharpened sticks and a couple of bow and arrows.
“Hey, what’s this?” Andy said as he pushed aside some leaves. There were a couple of empty packets of Fishermen’s Friend – sweets so gross that no child I know would ever eat them - and, partly covered by loose dirt and wedged under a protruding root, a magazine. On the cover was a woman in her bra and knickers. It was called Fiesta. We decided to take it with us as evidence.
We heard a twig snap and looked up. Coming from the opposite direction was Shaky Jake. He looked at us and then quickly turned around and hurried back the way he’d come, back towards his house.
From a distance, we followed him. The drove curved back round onto Main Street, a couple of hundred metres past the school, and opposite Downham Close. Shaky Jake had already gone into his house, and we could see his curtain twitching.
“Do you think we should report him?” I said.
“What for?” Will said.
“That’s twice we’ve seen him snooping around. Perhaps he knows something.”
“We can’t report him for that though.”
“Wade asked if we’d seen any weirdos hanging around. He’s a weirdo,” Liam said.
“Maybe he’s worth keeping an eye on,” Will said, and then he looked over Liam’s shoulder. “Is that Dad’s Land Rover?”
Dad sped towards us and broke sharply. He wound down the window. “Where the bloody hell have you lot been? Your mothers have been worried sick.”
“Hi Uncle Trevor,” Andy said.
“Get in, the bloody lot of you.”
We all looked down at the magazine, which had somehow ended up in my hands.
“What you got there, boy?”
“Nothing.” I moved it to behind my back.
Dad threw the door open, climbed out and spun me round. He took the magazine from me and looked at it.
“Bloody filth.” He tossed it into the front of the Land Rover. “Get in. Now.”
We all climbed into the Land Rover. The smell of smoke was thick, and it was hard not to cough. I’d never seen Dad smoke, though there were often packets of tobacco around the house.
Dad reversed into the drove and turned the Land Rover around. He dropped Andy and Liam off first.
Aunt Anne was standing by the door, she put up her hand, but neither Will nor I dared move to wave back.
“Thanks Uncle Trevor,” Andy said, completely unaware of the extent of his anger.
As he sped towards home, he turned to look at me.
“We’ll have to have a talk about your little magazine later.”
Mum came out of the house to meet us. She must have heard Dad pull up. I saw him roll up the magazine and put it in the glovebox, and I caught a glimpse of what I thought was a bag of Fisherman’s Friends. Mum hugged me first and then pulled Will in too.
“Go in and wash your hands ready for dinner,” she said as she let us go. As we went through the kitchen, we saw that Granddad Norman was sitting at the dinner table holding a mug of tea. He was wearing his patch, so probably hadn’t put a glass eye in.
“What have you lads been up to then?” he asked, and leaned towards us, using his walking cane for balance.
“We were out with Liam and Andy,” Will said as he went over to the sink and turned the tap on.
“Your poor mum has been going out of her head,” Granddad said.
Will had turned the tap up too high and water hit a spoon in the bottom of the sink and sploshed all over his top.
“We were looking for John,” I said.
“That missing boy? He’ll turn up.”
I looked back towards the door, wondering why Mum and Dad hadn’t come in yet. Maybe he was telling her about the magazine. I wish we’d had a proper look at it when we had the chance. I know Daniel’s seen one before, because he kept going on about it like he was some kind of expert.
“What do you think’s happened to him?”
Granddad tilted his head to one side. I looked up into the same corner to see what he was staring at, but it didn’t look like there was anything there.
“Probably ran away from home to teach his parents a lesson.”
Will was wiping himself down with a tea towel.
“Your dad ran away from home once, you know. With your uncle Rodney.”
Will turned towards us, “Really?”
“You know your uncle Rodney’s always putting on plays with his drama group?”
“The MAD Society?” I said, chuckling to myself.
“Well he’s always been into that stuff; God only knows how as we never took him to see a show in his life. But when he was seventeen, he came out of his room with a suitcase and told us he was joining a traveling theatre. He never did want to work on the farm, no matter how much I was always encouraging him to help out. Your dad was completely the opposite. As soon as he could walk, he wanted to be out there. He’d ride with me on the tractor, and he could lift a bale of hay up over his head when he were six year old, so the last think I expected, was for him to follow Rodney out of the door.”
Mum and Dad walked in. Granddad pointed. “And just like that, a couple of hours later he walked back in. He was pale white, like all the blood had run from his face. Reckoned he’d seen a shug monkey and had done a runner. Later on, he said he’d only come home because he was hungry, and Rodney had made no plans for dinner. It was a couple of years before we saw Rodney again.”
Dad wiped his hands. “That story’s a load of nonsense.”
“You didn’t hear it, you were outside.”
“Yes, but I know how you tell it. I never ran away, and I never saw a shug monkey either. I walked with Rodney to the bus stop, and then walked home again when he got on the bus.”
“Then why were you carrying your rucksack?” Granddad looked at me and winked.
“Are you heading home f
or your dinner?” Dad said.
“Why? Don’t you have enough for me here?”
“Of course we do,” Mum said.
“Well that’s one of the reasons I came over. The other was to see if you boys fancied fishing on Sunday.”
Will eagerly said, “Yes,” and I was happy to have an excuse to be out of the house too.
Later, after we’d eaten and Dad had gone back outside murmuring “No rest for the wicked,” as he headed out, I was able to ask Granddad what a shug monkey was.
“You’ve never heard of one?” he said, leaning back in surprise. “It’s much like the black shuck in many ways.” He must have seen the puzzlement on my face. “Don’t tell me you’ve not heard of that either?”
I shook my head.
“You’ve heard of people seeing giant black dogs which suddenly disappear though, right?”
There had been something about it on an episode of Unsolved Mysteries that I’d watched with John once.
“It’s much like one of those, only crossed with a monkey too.”
“Have you ever seen one?” I asked.
Granddad leaned back and took a deep breath, as if he was about to launch into one of his epic stories. “No,” he said.
“Do you know anyone that has?”
“Only that your Dad reckoned he’d seen one that time.”
“Do you believe in them?”
“I believe what I’ve seen with my own eye first of all, but that don’t mean that things I’ve not seen can’t be true. I know there’s a lot more out there than we can always make sense of, but what’s to say that the shug monkey, the black shuck and the Fen tiger aren’t all the same type of thing?”
I thought back to what had chased me the other day. Could that have been one of these things? Maybe the makers of the cards had collected all of these types of beasts together under the name ‘fiend’ because there were so many different names for them, and if there were so many different accounts, there had to be some truth in it, didn’t there?
Back in my room I took out the exercise book I’d stolen and started to write down everything that I could think of, from Mr Jenkins, the Ape-Man, to spontaneous human combustion, confident that we’d be able to solve the mystery and get John back.
Dead Branches Page 6
