The Standing Water

by David Castleton

  ‘This is an outrage!’ Weirton yelled. ‘I’ll get something done about this! People come here to enjoy a family bonfire and are nearly killed by stray fireworks!’

  Burn holes pocked the teacher’s fine coat and scarf. Due – I guessed – to one of his dives, a streak of shit had added a brown band to that coat’s front. He marched over to the men who’d been setting off the fireworks. His fist wobbled, his finger thrust as they waved palms and wagged heads.

  ‘I bet those fireworks came from that blasted guy!’ Weirton shouted. ‘Bet you thought you were so clever putting them inside him! But you need to know exactly what you’re doing! How dare you play with people’s safety! You very well nearly killed a boy and his headmaster! Let that be a lesson to you!’

  Weirton waved his fist in the men’s faces. He turned and stamped off, twisting back to point and shout he’d get something done. The crowd, after much discussion and arm-waving, started to break up as people trooped home, their faces screwed in anger, their feet kicking the ground. Dennis howled and snivelled; sobs shuddered through him. As his family walked from the blaze, his dad cuffed him round the head, told him not to be so soft.

  Chapter Forty-six

  There was a good hoo-hah about the Bonfire Night fiasco in the local paper, for which Weirton was even interviewed. But the council apologised, promised to make changes, and – after a couple of weeks – things settled down as the order of facts hardened into legends: ‘Weirton and the Rockets’, ‘Stubbs and the Burning Wheel’. Kids had a good time in the playground – aping Weirton’s run and dive, miming Stubbs’s tears and terror.

  Jonathon and I still wanted to kill Weirton, but didn’t know how. Now our need for the ark had gone, and our plot with the guy had failed, we tried resurrecting Jonathon’s robot. We tugged it from under the dusty sheet that shrouded it in Jonathon’s shed. I have to admit my first reaction was disappointment. What had seemed just over two months ago a gleaming and powerful machine now looked like a roughly strung-together, almost primitive figure made of bits of rusty iron and mismatched steel. The wastepaper-bin head stared at us, its mouth and eyes crudely gouged. Perhaps the robot seemed this way because of what we’d learnt while building our ark. But though the robot lacked the beauty, the smooth sanded perfection of our boat, I could see that ramshackle automaton would be able to carry out its task. The arms looked strong enough to squeeze the life from Weirton. The only problem was animating it.

  ‘We could always try magic,’ I said. ‘You know, like the rabbi did in Prague.’

  ‘Not so sure,’ Jonathon replied. ‘Of course, magic can work sometimes – I just don’t think it works very often. It didn’t with the gauntlet in spite of all the legends! It didn’t with your guy. Reckon we’d be better off stealing a computer to be the robot’s brain.’

  ‘Yeah,’ I said. ‘Though computers must be sort of magic too if they can control a robot. But the school hasn’t got a computer yet and we don’t know any families that have either.’

  ‘Maybe we should sneak over to the posh part of Emberfield one night, try to steal one!’

  ‘Yeah, could do,’ I said. ‘We nicked the gauntlet so I can’t see why we shouldn’t nick a computer.’

  But whatever our words, we didn’t manage to get our hands on one of those enchanted devices. We just had to content ourselves with filing the rougher parts of the robot’s body down, with Jonathon studying what his encyclopaedia had to say about brains so he’d know how to connect our mechanical mind when we got it.

  At school, our headmaster thrashed his way through the last frosty days of autumn and into early winter, whacking us even more than at the height of the deluge. He’d say some weird things afterwards, pointing out of the windows at the sky, telling us that only through the strictest punishment of sin could we hope to avoid triggering God’s rage, stop the Lord sending fire or flood upon us. When the headmaster said that stuff, Perkins would sigh, shoot up her eyebrows, pucker her lips, but this just made Weirton scowl more, shout louder about the Lord’s anger. Weirton really must have been worried about God’s vengeance because around that time he aged astonishingly. Though still sculpted into its rigid style, by the start of December half his hair had gone from blond to grey, and the teacher was also expanding round the middle. This didn’t stop him flinging down the most enormous hidings though he’d sweat and pant afterwards for a longer and longer time before he could straighten up. He’d often clutch his chest as agony screwed his face. In those darkening weeks, as the sun sailed lower in the sky and the tired year staggered towards its end, I copped six massive wallopings, Jonathon got five.

  But soon Christmas was coming so – by Christ’s good grace – we’d have two weeks’ rest from the headmaster. The vicar came and talked to us in assembly about that great festival. The dark clouds lay low over the bleak land outside; his greying curls wobbled as his bald head jerked with quiet enthusiasm. He spoke about the three wise men: their gifts of gold, frankincense – not Frankenstein, I reminded myself – and myrrh. I wouldn’t have minded getting such presents, especially the gold, but – according to the vicar – each had been a kind of prediction of Jesus’s future: gold for His role as king, frankincense for His duties as a priest and myrrh for His destiny as a sacrifice. I wondered if all three had to be connected. Our vicar was a priest yet – despite his mighty magic – he was no king and no one – thankfully – wanted to make him into a sacrifice. I supposed Christ had been very special, having that trinity of functions. The vicar also told us about the angel appearing to the shepherds at the time of Christ’s birth, reminding me I wasn’t the only one to glimpse such beings at that time of year. That got rid of the slight doubts I’d been having that I’d really seen those angels. Of course, the visit of the shepherds to Jesus in the manger was also a prediction as Jesus would grow up to be a shepherd of men, the Church being his sheepfold.

  I saw no angels that year though I scanned the black sky for them. The boughs of our tree hung heavy with baubles and lights, which – along with the fire in our grate – I hoped would remind the sun of his duties. Though such lights were smaller and more subtle than the immense Guy Fawkes Night blaze, they were more suited to the sun in the festive period – a weak disc shining bravely through the gloom. And our lights and baubles gleamed from midway through December to the sixth of January – lights glowing all across the world to send out their soft encouragement to the sun at his weakest point and in the earth’s darkest season, lights which wouldn’t be taken down till that lamp in the sky was strengthening once more.

  Thankfully – due, I had no doubt, to our help – the sun was soon edging a little higher on his daily curve, his faded fire burning more vigorously as he orbited our globe. The time came for us to tramp back to school. That spring term would be a strange one, a period that would change much in our lives. But first we were plunged back into the pounding rage of Weirton. The teacher thrashed on through January. After his whackings, as his face glowed and sweated, as his victim sobbed and grasped for breath, he’d make his dark pronouncements, pointing out of the window to the clouds massed in the heavens, conjuring balls of fire with dramatic movements of his hands, talking of the need to ‘appease the Lord’s righteous fury’. There was certainly lots of fury in the school – around that time the teacher was dishing out a couple of hidings most days. On some, there’d be three or four; on one occasion there was even a record-breaking five! Jonathon – branded by his Cain’s mark – caught plenty. He was still an eerie mirror image of his brother as both still bore their scars of God’s justice. Maybe it was those scars that encouraged Weirton to wallop those boys so: seeing the marks of their sin upon them, the teacher perhaps felt the need to show God he could penalise their misdemeanours, without the need for any more divine punishments.

  I too caught my share of thrashings. I tried not to think about it, but I couldn’t force the unbearable thought from my mind that I had more than two years left at the school. And, after the next summer
holidays, two years would be spent in Weirton’s class, right under the red face and glowering stare of the headmaster. The brother and Darren Hill would at least escape to the Big School. I envied them though there were plenty of sinister legends about that establishment.

  ‘Compared to the Big School’ – Darren liked to boast – ‘this place is about the size of its cane cupboard. And watch out for the cream cakes in the canteen that give you the shits for a week!’

  There was also the supposed initiation of all first years by the dunking of their heads in the toilet. But even such a torture sounded preferable to Weirton. Jonathon and I were desperate to get rid of him, but – with no computers appearing that could spark life into our robot – we couldn’t think how. I tried to draw strength from all the spooks in Emberfield and Salton, hoping that with their magic they could help us withstand the teacher. We’d still look for the witch’s hand – seeing whether or not it chose to show itself that day. I’d still think of all our friends on the way to Salton – Henry VIII, the Knights Templars, the sleeping Scots, the Drummer Boy. Particularly, that lad’s ghost was a help. Many were the nights when I’d lie in my room, having been thrashed that day, sobbing quietly into the blackness, wondering how I could go on. Then those soft beats would float over to me – the patters, thuds, rattles and clanks – and I’d be comforted, know at least there was someone out there, though long dead, who understood our plight.

  But even our faith in our ghostly friends would be shaken. One wet day in early February, Jonathon and I were trudging home from school when we saw a man standing in front of the gap with the witch’s hand. Amazed someone dared stay there for so long rather than just grabbing a glimpse and sprinting away, we crept near to him. The man wore blue overalls and held a long pole topped with a small rake. We gaped when we saw him daring – actually daring – to stick the pole into the crack. The first time he did this, he brought out a mouldy stack of leaves and rubbish. As my heart thumped, he raked out more leaves and litter. My mouth dropped, my eyes swelled as he moved the pole up to about the height of the hand and readied his body to thrust that stick into the gap.

  ‘Is he crazy!?’ Jonathon whispered.

  ‘She’ll kill him with her magic!’ I hissed.

  The man turned to us.

  ‘You lads all right?’

  ‘Please, Sir,’ I stammered, ‘what are you doing?’

  ‘Oh, I’ve come over from Goldhill to do some work on this house. Right now, I’m clearing out this gap. Bit crazy, having a space this small between buildings – all kinds of rubbish is bound to end up in there.’

  ‘But … the hand!’ I said.

  ‘Oh yes, I’ve seen it.’ He nodded gravely. ‘Funny looking thing – almost looks human, doesn’t it, wedged in there? Take a look, shall we?’

  Before our hanging mouths could stutter words of protest, he shoved his stick into the gap then moved it down to scour the narrow floor. As I shivered, as my heart pounded, as the man made his raking motions, I saw fingers then a thumb emerge. With one more vigorous sweep, the man jerked the whole hand out into view. There it lay on the pavement – withered, black, radiating evil.

  ‘Yep, just as I thought.’ The man nodded at the ground. ‘Thing must have been down there a few years – look at the filth it’s caked in! Bet some brickie or roofer dropped that glove and couldn’t be bothered to get it back.’

  I gulped down my fear, forced myself to peer at that hand and saw he was right. Beneath the cracked dirt that looked like shrivelled skin were the faded colours and worn grips of a builder’s glove.

  ‘So it’s not a witch’s hand!’ Jonathon blurted.

  ‘A witch’s hand!?’ The man’s lips curved into a smile. ‘Aren’t you lads too old to be believing in stuff like that? Mind you, you know what they say about Emberfield folk! Like stepping back into the bloomin’ Middle Ages sometimes, coming here.’

  The man shook his head, went on muttering and chuckling to himself as we drifted off down the street.

  ‘So much for the witch’s hand!’ said Jonathon.

  ‘And we honestly thought it might help us!’ I said.

  ‘Well, I suppose we’ve still got Marcus –’ I shrugged ‘– and the Drummer Boy and the buried Scots and the others.’

  We trudged to our homes. Sadness settled on me in the way the rain and mist so often settled on Emberfield. And my mind was no brighter than Emberfield’s black soil. I had a sudden vision of lying under it – perhaps outside the church at Salton or in the graveyard on the way to Goldhill. I imagined a pleasant stone above me; my family and mates coming to lay flowers. How peaceful it would be – no stress, no worries, no Weirton, no Dennis Stubbs, just the rustle of yews, the songs of birds. No swooping palms, no playground fights. Just years of peace and slumber beneath a quilt of grass. Who could not prefer it to life with its endless troubles, with the bullying of its tyrants who couldn’t be overthrown? But how could I get there, how could I make the jump from my walking breathing state, the state that forced me to wake up in the morning, go to face Weirton? I shook these thoughts from my head, tried to chase all that gloom away, bring myself back to the present. Jonathon and I had a lacklustre talk about how to kill the headmaster. Neither of us could come up with any new schemes.

  A little later, one damp dripping day, something even more upsetting happened. My family were driving to Goldhill when – due to a road being closed – we took a different route. Salton’s castle came into view across the flatlands. Next to it was the church – ringed by its ancient wall, the tips of the gravestones peeping above, its tower standing strongly over the boggy plains. I saw Salton’s dark woods, the spike of its mysterious water tower, the tiny dip a mile or so further on where the murky Bunt gurgled. I thought of the Drummer trapped in his tunnel, though, of course, during the day we rarely heard his beats. But then – strangely – the beats started up. Clicks, clanks and rattles swelled over the marshes though I did find it odd that the patters and rolls got louder as the car sped away from Salton.

  ‘The Drummer Boy!’ I blurted.

  ‘What on earth are you talking about?’ Dad said.

  I checked myself, having noticed recently not all adults responded well to talk of Emberfield’s legends.

  ‘It’s just that noise,’ I said. ‘It sounds a bit like someone drumming.’

  Mum giggled; Dad snorted; my sister crinkled her face.

  ‘Someone drumming!?’ Dad said. ‘I don’t think so! You’ve got what could be called an over-active imagination, boy! I’m surprised Mr Weirton hasn’t managed to knock such silliness out of you! Give me a minute and I’ll show you quite clearly what’s making that sound.’

  The car drove on into a bit of countryside I’d never seen before. Not that – being all black earth, dark pools, dripping hedgerows – it was much different to the other land round Emberfield. There were just unfamiliar farms and wayside pubs, the church spires of unknown villages pricking the sullen cloud in the distance. Just before the road dipped under a bridge, Dad slowed down and parked on a verge. From the bridge on either side – raised a little above the plains – stretched the silvery strands of a railway track.

  ‘Do you hear the noise getting louder?’ Dad said.