50 Ways of Saying Fabulous Book 2 Anniversary Edition

by Graeme Aitken

  Neither of us spoke as we did the dishes. When we’d finished, Jamie muttered something about trying the phone again. But within thirty seconds he was back. Still no answer.

  The game of cards wasn’t a success. No one could con­centrate and Lou kept running outside to check on the fire, holding up progress. At ten o’clock she could still see flames. ‘Time for bed,’ Jamie announced.

  We all howled our protests. ‘We can’t sleep when the fire’s still burning,’ said Lou.

  Babe began to whine. ‘I’m scared. Why aren’t Mummy and Daddy home?’

  Jamie stared at her helplessly. Suddenly, I had an inspi­ration. ‘Maybe if you sleep over in the house Jamie, Babe’ll feel better. Knowing you’re here if she gets scared in the night.’

  ‘Would you like that Babe? How ’bout I sleep over here?’

  Babe nodded and began to smile through her tears.

  ‘I’ll go and check if the bed’s made up,’ I said and sped out of the room.

  I danced along the passage to my bedroom. I was so thrilled at the prospect of Jamie spending the night in the house. In the spare bed. In my room. My mind was dancing too, anticipating the night ahead. I would watch him get undressed. Completely undressed. I was certain he slept nude. I’d never seen any pyjamas under his pillow when I’d been over in his hut. My mother never seemed to hang any out on the clothes line for him. I imagined myself getting scared in the night and creeping into bed beside him. Would I dare to do it? Was I too old to do that sort of thing? If I’d been Babe’s age it would have been easy to get away with.

  The bed was made up. I hurried into the bathroom. It would be a disaster to miss out on Jamie undressing because I had to brush my teeth. I gave them a quick flick, rushed back into the bedroom and threw off my clothes. I didn’t want Jamie seeing me undressed. I was fatter than ever. I pulled on my pyjamas. When Jamie finally knocked gently at my door, I was in bed, pretending to read. ‘Come in,’ I said.

  Jamie edged into the room, looking a little startled at the posters all over my walls. A shirtless David Cassidy loomed over the bed he was to sleep in. ‘I thought you were David Cassidy when you first arrived,’ I confessed.

  I wanted to establish an intimate atmosphere. Jamie grinned, raising his eyebrows. He took his shirt off and preened beneath the poster, flexing his muscles. ‘You reckon?’

  Suddenly, there was a quick knock at the door and before either of us had time to respond, Lou had thrust her head into the room. ‘Just checking you don’t need anything,’ she said, exiting again before either of us had time to reply.

  Jamie closed the door firmly after her but the moment was lost. The atmosphere ruined. Typical Lou. Jamie sat down on the bed and began to pull his socks off. ‘You’re having a quiet Saturday night,’ I said, trying again.

  I’d worked out that if I was having a conversation with him, then I had a good excuse to be looking at him all the time, rather than sneaking glances. ‘Yeah, I guess,’ said Jamie.

  He was browner than ever. I was growing hard beneath my bedclothes. ‘How come you’re not seeing Belinda tonight?’

  Jamie stood up and turned his back to me, undoing the button on his jeans and then unzipping them. ‘She’s busy.’

  I wished I could’ve seen his face as he said that. He was wearing purple jocks. They slipped down on one hip as he stepped out of his jeans, exposing the beginnings of one starkly white buttock. I was desperate for something to keep the conversation going and for Jamie to keep undressing. ‘Belinda’s so pretty,’ I said wildly.

  Jamie seemed to hesitate, his fingers on the elastic of his jocks. He turned round to face me. I was aware of the bulge just slightly below my line of sight. We were having a con­versation and I had to look him in the eye, although I longed to look elsewhere. ‘She’s dissolute, Billy. Just like you told me ages ago. Dissolute.’

  I didn’t know what to say to that. He gave a sad little chuckle and climbed into bed, distracted, without taking off his underwear.

  ‘G’night,’ he said.

  I turned off the light. ‘G’night.’

  I had no intention of sleeping. I planned to lie awake all night, imagining what might happen given our situation. Staying awake was better than sleep where my dreams twisted and turned nonsensically. Their outcomes always left me frustrated. To simply listen to Jamie’s breathing as he drifted into sleep was the perfect accompaniment to the fan­tasies that began to stir in my mind.

  I craned my face towards him, as close as I dared, and felt the sigh of his breath on my face. I closed my eyes, basking in the sensation. Warm and masculine. A sweet, smoky odour clinging to it. The regularity of his breath was hypnotic, lulling me, soothing me. It seemed to whisper mes­sages. Enticing me. Inviting me to cross the small gap that separated our twin beds. I swooned forward, lost my balance and half fell out of bed. Quickly I righted myself and lay absolutely still. In the other bed, Jamie grunted, rolled over and turned his back on me.

  I lay there willing him to roll back the way he was. He didn’t. After a while, I decided I preferred him facing that way. It would be easier to fool him when I slipped into his bed. I would don my cow tail and creep beneath his sheets, alongside him. In the dark, in his drowsy state, the sensation of my ponytail brushing against his back would be evidence enough for him to mistake me for Belinda. He would welcome me, embrace me and by the time he realised his mistake, would be utterly lost in the sensation of my skin upon his.

  Then I remembered that he had fought with Belinda. He might spurn her advances. Perhaps he would welcome comfort from someone else. I could pretend to have had a bad dream, a nightmare about the fire and need comforting. We could hold one another, each of us confiding our fears. Or I could pretend to sleepwalk, thrust my arms out in front of me as I’d seen it done on television and stumble into his bed. I could remain in my trance and he could do anything he liked with me. Or maybe I could go to the bathroom and then come back and get into the wrong bed ‘by mistake’. Once I was there, Jamie would confess his own mistake in loving Belinda.

  I must have been almost asleep. Those wild fantasies cackled through my mind, sweeping me along, urging me to act. I was vaguely aware of my foot slipping out of the bed, compelled there by a rhythm of its own, as if engaged in a dance to which it knew the steps instinctively. My toes touched the cold linoleum floor between the two beds and a tantalising shiver ran through me.

  At that exact same moment, reality exploded in my ears, shattering everything. The silence. The mood. The seduction which had seemed so assured. My leg dangled out of bed betraying my intentions but I couldn’t will it back beneath the blankets. My muscles had crumpled. I knew I couldn’t possibly have heard what I was certain I had. I must’ve been dreaming and spooked myself. But Jamie was stirring and muttering from the other bed. He had been startled awake. Which meant it couldn’t have been a dream.

  Then the second gunshot exploded, echoing through the rooms of the house, overwhelming any lingering doubts, destroying all reassuring explanations. There was someone outside. Concealed by the night. Stalking me, with a gun. I jerked my foot off the floor, clutched my blankets to my throat and began to scream.

  4

  Chapter 4

  Someone loomed over me in the dark. It was a presence I could sense rather than see. Then a hand clamped down over my mouth and a voice began to hiss in my ear. I couldn’t understand a word. The gunshots still echoed in my head. They’d taken on a life of their own, reverberating again and again, as if the sound was somehow trapped between my ears, ricocheting back and forth, confounding my senses. Suddenly I knew this was what it must be like for Judy, lost in space. Utter darkness. The unknown. And fear rising up in her like an erupting volcano. I knew those gunshots had been intended for me. A warning. I must not contemplate sin.

  I screamed the way Judy screamed when she was confronted by aliens. I screamed for help, screamed for Don and fought against those hands that tried to restrain me. They were the hands of an a
lien, cold and cruel. It had me gripped by one shoulder, the other hand over my mouth. Cold alien flesh against my lips. I bit the hand as hard as I could until I felt the bone against my teeth. The voice swore and the hands dropped away. I knew I had to get away but escape seemed impossible. Those hands were relentless in their pursuit, grappling at me amongst the confusion of the bed­ clothes. I wriggled and kicked and scratched. Alien breath panted in my face from the exertion of trying to contain me. Alien breath that smelled of smoke. I shuddered. It was the alien that could breathe pure bolts of flame.

  Suddenly the door burst open and some sense of reason began to seep back into my consciousness. I was in my bedroom, in my own bed. But if this was the intruder bursting through my door, who was I struggling against? I squinted at the alien in the dark. Its grip weakened when the door opened and I pulled away, diving beneath the covers. I strained against the mattress, willing my bulk to disappear into it. The bedsprings were wrecked, giving the bed a considerable slump and I prayed that it might be significant enough to conceal me in the darkness of the room. Then I felt somebody tugging at my blankets, trying to wrench them up. I fought back viciously, even more frantically than before, kicking out with both feet. I had no doubt now that this was the person with the gun, who wanted to expose me, expose the evidence of my lust, the hardness between my legs, which despite my terror was refusing to wane. In fact, it seemed more excited than ever.

  I fought until I recognised what was being said. Someone was calling my name, over and over. A familiar voice, a comforting voice, drowning out the echo of the shots. It was Lou. I peeked my head out of the top of the blanket and immediately Babe scuttled beneath the blankets beside me, clinging to me. Lou turned the light on. Jamie stared at me, dazed, sucking his hand. There were raised red swellings across his torso from my struggles with him. He looked at me with an expression torn between astonishment and annoyance. Of course, it had been him trying to quieten me down. Somehow I had forgotten him.

  ‘He didn’t realise it was you, Jamie,’ Lou explained. ‘He thought it was … ‘

  She didn’t finish the sentence. We all knew who she meant. Jamie snapped the light off. ‘Sshhhh,’ he whispered. ‘Listen.’

  We huddled together on my bed, straining to detect any sound, any clue to the presence of the intruder in the night. But there was nothing to be heard, except the panting breath of our communal fear. Outside, ominous silence reigned. We crouched there in the dark, clutching at one another. The pressure of our fingers expressed our fear more eloquently than words. Finally, we heard the sound of a vehicle and everybody tensed.

  ‘It’s alright. It’s your parents,’ Jamie said with relief. ‘It’s a car coming up the drive, not going away.’

  We all listened. It did sound like the family car. But despite his confident tone, Jamie didn’t seem entirely convinced. He didn’t rush out to greet the car but lingered by the window, peering out into the darkness. We all waited to hear it park in the garage. Then we would know without a doubt. But the car didn’t glide into the garage. It stopped short of it, not quite at the top of the drive. The engine rattled off into silence but the headlights continued to loom out into the night, casting light up high on my bedroom walls.

  Then the voice rose up, cutting through that dead silence. An unearthly chilling voice. Surely a voice that could not be human. A cry of anguish, desolate and mournful. Simulta­neously, Lou, Babe and I lunged forward to cling to Jamie. I clutched his knee cap, weeping into his calf muscle. He bent over us, patting our hair, whispering for us to be quiet, but there was no hushing us. ‘It’s an alien,’ I sobbed to Lou and she nodded her agreement.

  It was only when our sobs had subsided, that I recognised there was a pattern to the sound. A word was being repeated over and over again like an incantation. But no matter how I strained to hear I couldn’t make sense of it.

  Then we heard the front door creak open. We all gasped in unison, the fingers that had relaxed, clutching one another harder still, pinching. A light went on somewhere in the house and then, unbelievably, thankfully, we heard my mother’s voice calling our names, plaintively, as if she was uncer­tain of where we’d be. Jamie hurried out of the room, calling out to her, reassuring her that we were here and alright. The three of us hurried after him.

  My mother stood pale and dazed by the front door, which she had neglected to close. She had turned the kitchen light on and moths had swarmed inside and were flitting around the light bulb. My mother seemed oblivious to them. Usually, she couldn’t bear moths. Ever since Nan died, she’d detested the sight of them. Grampy’s house had been filled with them, the night Nan suffered her stroke. In his hurry to get her to the hospital, he’d left his front door open. The moths had streamed in. Seeing them now, in our home, made me shudder. I knew something was terribly wrong.

  My mother had one hand on the telephone as if she was about to use it. She stared at us, her eyes distraught as we ambled forward out of the hallway shadows, blinking into the light. The sound outside hadn’t stopped. Standing there, with the door open to the night, there was a horrible clarity, almost a familiarity to the sound. We were so close, it shivered across my skin. We were all waiting for my mother to say something, to explain, but it was as if she had been rendered mute.

  Lou stared at her, frowning, struggling to comprehend. Then suddenly she was gone. Out the door. My mother’s hands flailed hopelessly after her, as if to retrieve her but they clutched at nothing and though her lips moved, no sound escaped them.

  ‘I’ll go after her,’ said Jamie in a low voice and he fol­lowed Lou outside.

  I watched him disappear into the dark and felt a pang of loss. I wanted to be with him. Not left there with my mother. I couldn’t bring myself to look at her. Not when she was in this dishevelled state. It was too disturbing. She cleared her throat as if she was about to speak and I fled out the door after Jamie. The darkness and the unknown seemed prefer­able to whatever she was about to say.

  The concrete path was cold on my bare feet. Jamie and Lou stood a few yards ahead of me on the path, obstructing the view. I could see the car. It was stopped almost at the top of the drive, abandoned, the doors wide open, the headlights illuminating something slumped in the driveway. I had to step onto the grass to see past Lou and Jamie, to see for myself what lay beyond. There was a dew. On my toes it felt like …

  Blood.

  There was so much of it, as if the entire driveway had been paved over in slick red asphalt. It flowed out of him where he lay in the centre of the driveway. Seeped out of the great gash in his throat. My father knelt beside him. The blood soaking into his pants as he cradled that great head, studying the awful wound there as if the explanation for how such a thing could have happened was somehow buried deep within. He was dead of course. Shot through the skull and then his throat slashed for good measure.

  My father must have sensed he was being watched. He looked up, his eyes awash with tears and the wailing died in his throat. Now that I saw him stretched out there dead, I could recognise the word my father had been repeating over and over. It was his name of course. Dante.

  There was utter silence for a moment and then the dogs chained up at their kennels burst into crazed howling.

  ‘Come inside Jack,’ a voice croaked behind us.

  We all turned. My mother was standing by the door, her arms cradling herself. ‘Come inside. We can’t do anything until morning. Just come inside. Leave him be.’

  In the end Jamie had to help my father to his feet. My mother hovered by the door as Jamie half-carried my father up the path to the house. ‘It’s the shock and the exhaustion,’ my mother explained to Jamie, ‘from fighting the fire. He’s half-dead on his feet. Billy-Boy give Jamie a hand.’

  I got on the other side of him though I was too short to be much use. My father seemed glad to have me there though. ‘Poor old Dante,’ he muttered to me.

  I had to turn away from him. His breath was rank. I knew that smell, not that I
’d ever smelled it so bad before, espe­cially not on my father. He was drunk. My mother had walked ahead of us into the house. ‘Have a bit of a celebra­tion after putting the fire out, eh Jack?’ said Jamie.

  My father nodded, grinning sheepishly. ‘Someone’s killed me best bull, Jamie,’ he slurred. ‘Me best bull.’

  We got him inside. ‘Put him in his chair,’ said my mother. ‘Don’t worry about the blood. It’s vinyl. It’ll sponge off tomorrow.’

  We heaved him into his Lazy-Boy chair and he rocked back and forth for a few moments. We all stood round staring at him. He was filthy. There was black ash smeared all over his clothes and even across his face. He smelt of smoke and spirits and blood. My mother stared at him grimly for a moment and then beckoned us all into the kitchen. She closed the door after us. ‘Leave him be. Maybe he’ll doze off for a bit.’

  ‘He’s had a skinful,’ said Jamie.

  My mother frowned at Jamie. ‘What happened here?’ she asked.

  It was the sort of voice Aunt Evelyn used on us in the schoolroom. Jamie seemed to recognise that tone too. He stared at his feet and shrugged. ‘There was a gunshot.’

  ‘There were two gunshots,’ I corrected him. ‘You didn’t hear the first one. It woke you up.’

  Jamie nodded. ‘Okay, two gunshots. Someone shot the bull.’

  ‘Then cut its throat,’ Lou added.

  Now Lou was the object of my mother’s forbidding stare. ‘I think you children had better all go to bed.’

  That remark created a commotion. Babe began to cry, saying she was too scared, and Lou protested over Babe’s noise, practically shouting. It stirred my father in the lounge who started muttering away to himself. ‘Me best bull,’ he said mournfully over and over. ‘Me best bloody bull.’

  My mother hushed us all. She smiled, a strained effort but still a smile. ‘Let’s all have some supper,’ she said, ‘and calm down.’

  She brought out some lemonade from the fridge and a bottle of beer for Jamie. She even had a glass of beer herself out of Jamie’s bottle. When we’d finished she had Jamie help her get my father into the bath. Then she insisted there was nothing we could do that night and that she would report it to the police in the morning. In the meantime, she had Jamie go over to his hut to get his gun. ‘Just for peace of mind,’ she said.