“We have to prepare the pupils for transition,” I heard someone say, and then it sounded like someone was moving towards the door, so we dashed outside.
“See” Liam said. “They’re still moving ahead with their plans.”
“What can we do about it?”
“We have to get into the staff room. They must keep something secret in there.”
“Maybe it’s not an alien invasion plan. Maybe it’s something innocent,” I said, thinking about how much Mrs Palmer had helped me.
“But it all makes sense. Remember last year when Ian Dalby had to have ages off, and they just told us he was sick? And since then he never plays, and he hardly talks to anyone? Maybe they turned him into an alien.”
“What about John?”
“They’ve got him now. He’s going through the… transition… and he’ll come back, but he won’t be the same.”
“But what would be the point in turning kids into aliens?”
“We won’t see it coming, Tom. When they launch the alien invasion it will be through us kids.”
At lunch, Liam and I met up with Will to decide on our plan for our search after school. We decided to walk up to the River Wissey and follow the bank the other way from where we’d gone fishing along up past the new bypass. There’s a good view of the cornfields from there, and while I didn’t like Liam’s alien idea, I didn’t want to rule out anything.
As we were chatting Becky Reid barged into our circle. “Tom, I need to speak to you,” she said. Ignoring her was not an option.
I followed her to the step by the infant entrance, where no one else was around. “Laura daren’t ask you herself, so I’m doing it for her.”
I felt panicky. Was Becky going to ask if I liked Laura? What would I say if she did? The only person I’d told that to was John. What if I said I did like her, and Becky said that she didn’t like me back? But what if I lied and said that I didn’t, and she did like me, and it would hurt her feelings?
“Laura wanted to know if you’d heard from John,” Becky said.
“No,” I said, and the panic disappeared, only to be replaced by disappointment. “No one knows where he is.”
“Okay. That’s all she wanted to know,” Becky said before turning around and marching off.
“What was that all about?” asked Will when I returned to the group.
“Did she ask you out?” Liam said.
“Did she want to snog you?” said Andy, and he kissed the back of his hand sloppily.
“No. Yuck. Nothing like that. She asked about John.”
“You two would make a good couple,” Liam said. “You’re both bigheads!”
At the end of the school day, Aunt Anne was waiting at the school gate.
“Have we got to go somewhere?” asked Liam. He ran his tongue across his teeth and looked as if he was pondering something.
“I’m taking you straight home. Tom, you too, I’m giving you a ride.”
“But why, Mum?”
“Because I say so, that’s why.”
“But we have to continue our search for John,” Liam said, he glared at me, wanting me to take over the argument.
“I don’t need a lift, Auntie, I can walk it.”
“Your dad asked me to make sure you went straight home, so as soon as Will and Andy are out that’s what we’re doing.”
Andy’s class were out next. Andy handed his mum a sealed envelope. She put it in her handbag to read later.
Will eventually trudged out the main doors with his hands in his pockets, chatting to some girl. When he looked up and saw us all waiting, he trotted quickly away from her.
“Who’s your girlfriend?” Andy said and over-exaggerated a laugh.
“Leave him alone,” said Aunt Anne, and beckoned us towards her car. It was unusual for anyone to come pick us up from school since we were in the infants, and even then, someone would only drive to pick us up if we had to go somewhere straight after school. It seemed strange to drive within the village but looking out of the car window there seemed to be so many fewer children walking home alone. Children pushed the cycles they normally rode on while walking beside their mums, or an adult would be with a cluster of children, urging them to stay close and take caution when crossing the road. Maybe the aliens had landed after all.
Aunt Anne said that Liam and Andy could stop over for a while to give her a chance to stop for a cup of tea with mum. They didn’t speak to each other while we all made drinks of squash. As usual, Andy had turned the tap on too high and water fountained out of his cup and all over his feet. When he slowed it down to a trickle, he was left with a drink not nearly as bright an orange colour as ours. As soon as we left the kitchen one of them pushed the door closed behind us. I could hear chairs scraping across the tiles as they moved closer, probably to talk about us. We might have been in trouble for some reason. It’s not like we don’t often play out after school and go wandering where we want, so I don’t know why they got so serious on Friday. When I asked Will about it, before we went to sleep, he said it was probably because they were worried about what happened to John, but it wasn’t like we were planning on running away or anything.
We put the television on and checked BBC and ITV, but there was no football on. That wasn’t right, there had been a four o’clock game every day since it all started.
Will knelt on his bed and checked the World Cup wall-chart. “No games until later. Argentina play Romania and Cameroon play the Soviet Union, but both are at eight.” He switched the TV to back to BBC, where Andi Peters was deep in conversation with Edd the Duck about the spate of quack circles which had been appearing in the studio. Whatever was happening on screen wasn’t sinking in. I blocked out Andi Peters singing the theme tunes and found my gaze drawn to the window. I looked out across the fields to where the old oak tree stood. Its branches seemed to be hanging lower, as if hiding something. I tried to look out further to the west, to see if I could see all the way to the riverbank, to where the police cars were parked previously.
Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles finished. I hadn’t even realised that it was that they’d been watching.
“Do you wanna play football?” Andy said. At least he’d been paying attention.
“Or we could say we’re going to play, but then go off and explore,” Liam said.
I nodded and Will headed for the door. We bundled down the stairs and into the kitchen. Mum and Aunt Anne gasped as we crashed through the door.
“Can we go play football?” Will said.
“Only out in the yard,” Mum said.
“Can’t we go down the rec?” Will said.
“No. You’ll stay in the yard or not go out at all.”
We went out. I dragged the football from under a hedge then we passed it to each other as we jogged towards the barn.
“Who’s going in goal?” Liam said.
“Tom,” Will said.
“Andy,” I said, knowing I’d have a better chance of scoring against Andy as he was almost a foot shorter than the rest of us.
“No,” Andy said, “That’s not fair.”
“Well why don’t we dib for it?”
Will did the ip-dip-dog shit song, and it turned out Andy was going to start in goal anyway. He didn’t mind, because the rhyme had chosen him completely fairly. So, he enthusiastically dived for the ball as first Will banged one into the corner of the goal we’d marked on the shed, and then Liam put one over his head. There was some debate over whether it might have hit the crossbar, but as it was hard to tell exactly where the crossbar would be. Then I had a shot and it sliced off my foot and off across the yard. I went after the ball. It had a black splodge on it. I traced the path of the ball back across the yard to where it had picked up its stain. There was a black patch on the ground. Was it a burn spot? The grass looked dead around it, and some of that was black too – but it didn’t really look singed. I must have been staring a long time because Will had trotted over, followed by Liam, and then Andy. L
iam looked at me and was clearly thinking about the burn spots we were supposed to be looking out for. What if John had exploded right there? But there were always some remains, like a stray limb or a shoe or something.
“Oil,” Will said.
“It’s burn, isn’t it?” Liam said.
“Nah, definitely oil. Touch it.”
Liam looked at me. I reached out towards it
“What the bloody hell are you lot doing?” Dad was marching over to us. “Don’t touch that it’ll get all over your clothes.”
“What is it, Uncle Trevor?” Andy said. He had to look up so high to look Dad in the face that he was squinting.
“Tractor’s leaking oil. You should know better than that, Tom. Are you soft in the head or something?”
“We were only playing football,” Will said.
“Playing football in a pool of oil. Daft bloody kids.”
“No, by the barn.”
“Well you’ll have to stop now anyway; I’ve got to move the combine. Go on, get out of here.”
I picked up the ball, forgetting about the oil on it until it was all over my hands.
We went back into the house, to find Mum and Aunt Anne drinking tea in silence. Will, Liam and Andy went back upstairs, and I went over to the sink to wash my hands, but I couldn’t get all of the oil off. The soap didn’t seem to touch it unless I really scratched at it, then Liam shouted, “Tom, quick!” I wiped my hands on a tea-towel, leaving a dirty black stain.
I ran up the stairs to see them gathered around watching Newsround. There was a story on about crop circles.
“There’s been more of them!” Liam said, then, whispering to me, “The aliens are coming.”
Mum served a beef stew with dumplings and mashed potatoes for dinner.
Dad rubbed his hands, said, “Lovely grub,” like he always does, and picked up his knife and fork.
“So,” Will said, holding his fork close to his mash, “how come we weren’t allowed out after school today.”
“Never mind that. Eat your dinner,” Dad said, his words distorted as he kept a piece of beef in his mouth by wedging it between his tongue and his teeth.
“But it’s not fair,” Will said.
“I’ll tell you what’s not fair. That poor boy that’s gone missing,” Dad said.
“Trevor,” Mum said, and Dad shovelled more food into his mouth.
“How about,” Will said, ignoring Mum’s glare, “if we went straight over to see Granddad tomorrow? Liam and Andy too? Well go straight there.”
“I don’t know,” Mum said. “I’d prefer you to come straight home.”
“Go straight there, and call home the second you arrive,” Dad said. “And I’ll pick you up from there at dinner time.”
“Surely we can walk back from there. It’s only five minutes.”
“Leave it, otherwise you won’t be allowed to go at all,” Mum said.
“But...” Will said.
Dad jerked his arm out, pointing at Will with his knife. A bit of mashed potato flew from it and landed on my lip. I brought my hand up to wipe it away.
“What’s that on your hand?”
I look down at the black smears of the oil I couldn’t get off.
“I thought I told you not to play in that bloody oil.”
“It got on the football.” I said. “I didn’t see it.”
Dad wasn’t listening. He was out of his chair. He leaned across the table and grabbed my hand and yanked me off my chair and around the table.
“You’re bloody filthy.” He shoved me towards the sink. “Your mum’s cooked you a lovely meal and you come to the table in that state.”
My lip started to quiver. I hate it when it does that. I didn’t know what to do.
“Wash your hands.”
I turned on the tap, grabbed the soap and rubbed it on my hands. It wasn’t coming off. Then I sniffed and I heard his chair scraping.
“Wash your bloody hands, boy.” He grabbed my hands and pulled them under the water.
“Sit down and eat your dinner,” Mum said.
“Water’s not even hot. Cold water won’t clean it off.” He turned the hot tap on further and turned off the cold. “Now wash then properly.”
I put my hands back under the water for a second then picked up the soap again to lather up my hands. When I put my hands back under the water it was so hot, I pulled them back out again so fast I caught dad in the stomach with my elbow.
“Wash the fuckers,” he said, and grabbed both wrists and forced my hands back under the water again.
“Will you two stop messing about and eat your dinner,” Mum said.
The water was so hot I couldn’t hold back any longer and I cried out. Dad let go of me. My hands throbbed. They were pink.
“Sit down,” he said.
By the time I got around to the other side of the table he was already shovelling food back into his mouth. Will was looking down at his plate and eating slowly.
When I tried to bend my fingers to pick up my knife and fork, they hurt too much, and I had to put then down again. Dad stared at me, swallowed his mouthful of food, and said, “If you’re not going to eat it, you can go to bed.”
I got up. The chair scraped so loudly that I thought it was going to make my head explode. I didn’t look back as I opened the door, my hands burning as I gripped the handle, and headed towards the stairs.
“Well, the boy’s got no respect,” I heard him say, “coming to the table like that. He must be simple or something.”
When Will came up about an hour or so later, I was in bed. I’d wrapped my hands in a flannel I’d soaked in the upstairs bathroom to try to stop them feeling so hot and throbbing so much.
“Hey,” he said, in a whisper, and perched on the end of my bed, “Wanna sit with me and watch the football?”
I shook my head. I didn’t want him to see my hands.
“Do you mind if I put it on?”
“That’s okay.”
“I snuck you up this.” From his pocket he pulled an Orange Club biscuit. “I thought you might be hungry.”
“Thanks,” I said, and he put it down on the set of drawers by my bed, put the TV on, and sat on his own bed.
“Still nil-nil.”
Will sat and watched the rest of the match and I watched him as the sun went down and the room got darker, he started to glow green from the light of the television.
Even though I was only half paying attention to the football I realised that because it ended one all, both teams went through to the next round. No wonder people always said Argentina were cheaters, they probably arranged it beforehand. They had so many magical players, but they still decided to cheat. Perhaps that was the difference between good and evil, both could be magic, but evil could also be corrupted. After the game they showed the result from the other match. The Soviet Union had beaten Cameroon four-nil. What had happened to Roger Milla? Cameroon had been beaten by the biggest villains of all. How was that even possible? The table showed they still went into the next round though, so the magic was still alive, but with my hands throbbing it felt as though evil was winning.
Tuesday 19th June 1990
When I woke, I found my face cold when I’d slept on a wet patch from the flannel. One of my hands was still very pink and on the palm were a couple of small blisters. Every time I had to move my hand, I winced. There was no way I could get away with wearing gloves in June, so I spent most of the school day trying to hide my hands under the desk when in class, and in my pockets during break, and grimacing as I slid it hiding. No one really noticed them, which was good because I wouldn’t have known what to say. I couldn’t say it was Dad being horrible, because he only wanted me to wash my hands and probably didn’t realise the water had gotten so hot.
At break I didn’t want to play football when everyone else did because I couldn’t run around with one hand in my pocket, so I said I didn’t feel very well and watched from the side of the pitch. All of the goals w
ere celebrated with a Roger Milla style dance and people were laughing and joking. It was like everyone had forgotten about John, and he was the one who started the Cameroon copying when he shouted, “Omam-Biyik” when he scored the first goal at break eight days ago. Then he turned to Brian Harper, who was in goal, and copied Barry Davies, the commentator and said, “It will go down as goalkeeper error.”
I went back into the classroom. Mrs Palmer was setting up a Bunsen burner on her desk and had already got out some beakers.
“Hi Tom, the bell hasn’t gone.”
“Miss, how come no one talks about John?”
Mrs Palmer took a step towards me, “There’s really not much to say.”
“It’s like everyone’s forgotten about him.”
“Mr Inglehart is in touch with the police every day, and as soon as there’s some news they can share, all of the teachers will get together and decide how best to do that.”
It was odd that she was willing to say more to me alone than she had to me and Liam. It was things like that that made me think Liam was wrong, and she wasn’t an alien. “Normally when someone’s off sick or on holiday you ask someone to make notes for them, but you haven’t done that for John.”
“You seem like the ideal person to do that job.”
The bell went.
“Okay Mrs Palmer, I will.”
“Tom, what’s have you done to your hand?”
I put them behind my back. “It’s a… heat rash. It’s too hot.”
“Let me see.”
She bent down and took hold of my hand as Daniel Richardson walked in.
“Tom and Mrs Palmer sitting in a tree,” he said, and stared at us.
“K-I-S-S-I-N-G,” said Brian Harper, who was following behind him.
“Daniel, Brian, you’ve earned yourself a detention at afternoon break.”
“Ah, but Miss…” said Daniel.
And Mrs Palmer urged us all to sit down as she was going to show us an experiment and she wanted us to write down all of the equipment used and then the method of how she did the experiment. She gave me an extra sheet of paper so I could make a second copy for John, and it felt like everything might be okay again.
Dead Branches Page 10
