Three Strikes

by Lucy Christopher

  Annie leant forwards to pause the computer. Silence for a moment as we stared at that frozen image. Then everyone spoke at once.

  ‘What just happened?’

  ‘She got shot. She got bloody shot!’

  ‘Who are these people?’

  ‘Are they coming back?’

  ‘We have to get out!’

  ‘What do they want?’

  ‘What just happened?’

  There was an answer there lurking, but it was Sam who spoke it.

  ‘Drugs,’ he said quietly. ‘That’s what.’

  When the others turned to look at him, I added, ‘Lily and George hid drugs in our suitcases. Drugs, or something like it. I found the cases buried under the hut with the stuff inside them. I’ll show you…’

  And, really, what else could it be but drugs? It made sense, that strange bark with its odd sweet smell. The crops on the screens. We had what these men wanted, in our very own cases.

  It was one theory.

  But what did we have to do with it?

  ‘Cocaine,’ Pete said, nodding. ‘That’s totally green and bushy, like those crops. That’s what they’re growing here. And that’s big money! But they’d need a decent kitchen…’

  ‘It’s not powder in the bags, it’s bark,’ I said. ‘What about poppies? Opiates? Can’t they be bushy?’

  And something flicked across Pete’s face like well yeah, maybe, it could be that too. And I felt smug then. Even though, what the hell did it matter? If this theory were right and there were illegal drugs here, we were part of something bad whichever way was up.

  ‘We should get out of here,’ Annie said.

  Nyall shrugged. ‘Or get the drugs first and get out? Make some money at least.’

  Sam rolled his eyes. ‘I’m not touching that.’

  ‘But Lily and George as drug lords?’ Nyall said. ‘Seriously? They’re just…’

  ‘…hippies,’ Annie finished.

  ‘And therapists,’ added Pete.

  And then, my thoughts were like – why would someone want to hide drugs in my suitcase anyway? Why would someone who’s meant to be a therapist want to do that?

  Unless…

  ‘You know, it still could be part of the programme,’ I said. ‘…seeing what we’ll do, how we’ll react to this…’

  ‘You’re truly crazy,’ Pete said.

  ‘I’m just saying it could, that’s all!’

  ‘Batshit! You’re not thinking straight.’

  And perhaps I wasn’t thinking straight, hadn’t been thinking straight since we got here. But maybe none of the others were, either.

  And maybe that’s exactly how Lily and George wanted us to be. We’d been drinking their plant liquor after all, smoking their stash, talking about our darknesses. Our minds were different now … weaker.

  I just got up from the cabin to look for cameras in the trees around our camp.

  Two red lights, still blinking. Still on, then. Still recording. Is anyone watching, though? I stuck my finger up in front of them both, just in case. I wished Pete were still there in the camera cabin in the other camp to see.

  These cameras here are the real mystery. If it were just that L and G wanted surveillance cameras to protect a drug crop, why would they film us too? Why have cameras on our huts? On our shower? What kind of person needs to see that?

  Maybe it is batshit, but I still can’t shake the thought that we’re part of some reality TV show, something else at least. There was that folder on the computer that Pete couldn’t get into, after all – Tribe Members. What’s in there?

  And we’ve certainly had all the drama to make good telly – sex, crying, shouting, pleading, screaming. The group sessions.

  But then, the footage has no sound, and it’s not good enough quality for TV. So … what?

  WHAT’S GOING ON?

  Last night.

  Only last night?

  It feels longer ago than that.

  Almost 34 hours since we saw Lily get shot on screen. Since it looked like Lily got shot.

  We can’t be sure, after all. It – still – could be a trick, couldn’t it?

  The others thought I was so mad to even think it.

  ‘Why would someone play a trick like that?’ Annie.

  ‘It’s sick.’ Nyall.

  ‘Why would anyone believe someone could play a trick like that?’ Pete.

  Batshit.

  But anyone could do anything. And Lily and George are (were?) weird folk. I was wrong to ever trust them, to think they were like me or Mum.

  There is something else that keeps niggling at me, too. That question is this – what happened to the two thousand pounds they took off me (or, rather, Dieter) to come here? And the money from the others too? They never mentioned it. Come to think of it, did they even take any money from the others? Perhaps it was a free ride for them.

  The argument in the other camp started after we’d watched Lily get shot. Pete erupted when I questioned his theory about the soldiers taking L and G again. Annie started crying. When Nyall started rocking like he was a madman, Sam said he just wanted to go.

  But Pete was determined that we should go look for Lily and George. ‘We’re the only ones who know what happened,’ he kept saying. ‘They may need our help.’

  I wasn’t sure I cared about whatever help Lily and George did or didn’t need.

  Annie didn’t care either. ‘They’re bad people,’ she said, jaw firm.

  I nodded at that. ‘Weird people.’

  ‘Let’s go find a town,’ Annie said. ‘We can’t be the only ones on this island.’

  ‘Yeah, there’s the three guys with guns!’ Pete said. ‘Remember them?’

  ‘Lily and George haven’t told us something,’ I said. ‘There’s something we don’t know. More secrets.’

  ‘Obviously!’ Pete said again.

  ‘There’s a crop full of them,’ muttered Sam.

  I tried to explain. ‘I’m serious – they said the immersion project would be unconventional … that we’d be tested to extremes psychologically, that we’d have to make difficult decisions…’

  Pete crossed his arms. ‘This isn’t the programme anymore, Kasha. I’m going looking for them. With you guys or not.’

  ‘And I’m getting out of here.’ Nyall looked across to Annie for agreement.

  She nodded, after a moment. ‘You might be right, Kash,’ she said. ‘But I don’t want to spend any longer here if there’s a chance people with guns will turn up again.’

  She had a point.

  ‘I still think we should go back to our camp,’ I said. ‘Stick the flag up on the hill behind camp and fulfil any other tasks. Be sure we’ve done all we’re meant to on the Programme first – eliminate that possibility. After that we go, we try to find a town. Once we’re sure this isn’t still a task.’

  Sam moved his head, a little like a nod. ‘I guess we’ve covered all bases like that.’

  Pete made a scoffing noise. ‘You really are batshit, Kasha. Maybe you’re the only one of us who really believed in this Tribe thing in the first place. Who was really crazy enough to see it for something more than being famous, getting cash…’

  ‘Enough, Pete,’ Sam said.

  ‘And you’re just as cuckoo,’ Pete added, ‘…believing her.’

  I reached out and took Sam’s hand, squeezed his fingers. Sam squeezed back. It didn’t feel terrible, doing that. It felt nice.

  Maybe I’m changing in that way, too. Letting Sam in.

  Is that OK?

  OK

  OK

  Sometimes I want to cut myself for thinking about what I did with Sam last night. Was that OK too? Was it OK what I told him – lying still in the dark – and OK what he said back? I don’t know anymore.

  Don’t know much, it seems.

  For instance – I don’t know if it was the right thing, coming back to this camp only with Sam. Leaving the others to walk down that rutted track, away from us. Maybe we should hav
e gone with them. Stuck together.

  Maybe I wouldn’t be alone right now if I had just swallowed my pride about the tasks. Maybe Sam wouldn’t have left.

  Last night, in the dark and quiet of our hut, I told Sam what’d happened with Mum. The truth. Finally. All of what I saw.

  I’m going to write it here. I think I am. I’ll try.

  I’m going to keep writing so I don’t use the knife. I can always cut the words out of here if I don’t like them after. I’d enjoy that.

  But if I start to write … if I write…

  Then, at least, I can say I’ve done all my tasks. No excuse on Lily and George’s behalf for keeping me here. I’d have fulfilled my … what was it? … contract. The one that said that we’d get to go home after we’d done everything they asked.

  Apart from the task about getting the flag to the top of the hill – that’s not done yet.

  So.

  Here goes.

  After leaving Sam in Mum’s car in the quarry, I kept running, up the mountainside to the summit. I crawled through the ring of hawthorn that was around the edge of where she always made a fire. But Mum wasn’t there. I spun around to make sure. Nothing. No one.

  There was a fire in the middle, sure enough, but it was out. There was still a trace of warmth to it though, so Mum had been there recently. Rabbit bones were laid out neatly beside the embers. The lure she’d set for the black cat? Maybe she’d eaten that rabbit herself, picked the bones clean with fingers and teeth. I kicked the ash and sparks danced up. I went searching all around, even looking over the edge.

  ‘Mum?’ I called out. ‘You there?’

  I wondered if she was playing with me, whether she thought she was being funny and was about to leap out at any moment … even pretend she was the cat. She’d done it before. But nothing moved up there. I frowned as I traced my finger over the patterns in the dirt – animal prints, cat prints. Mum had drawn them, part of her art … her obsession. She had a tattoo just like these that led all the way down her spine.

  But these prints, this time, led into the trees.

  I blew hard to make them go away. I was angry right then, because Mum still kept on with this stupid pretence of a big black cat on that mountain, because Mum being crazy AGAIN had spoilt my one chance of properly getting with Sam. I mean, as if there was a big black cat, on that mountain, in our town? We’re practically suburban, practically in the city. If a cat had ever escaped from a zoo it would’ve gone north, not here.

  Right then, I would’ve blown and rubbed clean every single one of her black cat drawings and art works. I would’ve scrubbed raw the ones on her back! Perhaps it wouldn’t have been the worst idea to move into the city and be near Dieter, like he’d suggested. Maybe that would stop Mum being so mad. Maybe in the city, she wouldn’t be reminded of the cat all the time … if she could get some sort of friendship going with Dieter instead, like he said he wanted…

  I followed the prints from the summit and into the darkness of the trees, rubbing them out as I went. The smell went sharp and pine-y. I checked my phone for any more messages – nothing. Maybe Mum had gone home. If I was quick, maybe I’d catch her on the way down the mountain. I texted her to say I was almost back. I almost texted Sam to say sorry, too.

  I went away from the summit, down the track towards our house at the bottom. I was listening for my phone, waiting for Mum to tell me she was home. I’d almost started to relax. Perhaps Mum had stopped to find patterns in the stars; she loved that. Perhaps she was already back, tucked up in bed and listening for me to get in; maybe she wasn’t replying because she was still angry. Or maybe she was still out checking her traps, being quiet to prove some sort of point.

  I swerved from the track, took a detour towards where she kept her masterpiece – the trap she’d modelled on a design from the Middle Ages. The one once used to catch wild boar and wolves when they’d roamed through these woods, stringing them up by the ankles to hang in the trees. It wouldn’t take much longer to stop by and see if Mum was there. I jogged down the pathway, holding my arms out to bash back overhanging branches. It was darker there, spookier. I never went down that path by myself, usually. I tried not to go there at all.

  Turns out I’d never liked those traps.

  Long before I got there I could smell it. Blood. No other smell like it. Rusty and metallic and earthy.

  She’d caught something.

  For one crazy second, I thought it must’ve been the cat. She’d done it! Here was the proof that she’d been right all along. I remembered the text message she’d sent when I’d been in the car with Sam – she hadn’t been lying.

  When I got closer, I slowed. I called out to her.

  ‘It’s Kash,’ I said. ‘You there, Mum?’

  Then I saw it. The shape in the trees. Suspended above the ground. Hanging. Rope around its neck and legs, spread-eagled across the path, pointing like a star to the trees on either side. Here was the Masterpiece right enough, but it was too dark to see properly what it had caught. It looked big enough to be the black cat Mum spoke of, but surely it was a deer instead, had to be. But where was Mum? She’d gone home, leaving the trap still live? Hadn’t realised what she’d done?

  As I got closer, I saw the shape properly. Not deer shaped. Not cat shaped, either.

  But there were two legs. Two arms. A head. There was long dark hair.

  And when I got closer again, I saw the blood trickling in a stream from Mum’s neck.

  She’d caught herself. All trapped up.

  Dead.

  I told Sam that, last night, lying in the dark. Everything I saw and felt that night. Everything except about the paw prints in the dirt – I never told anyone about those.

  ‘It’s not your fault, Kash,’ he’d said.

  But it was my fault – all of it. If I hadn’t gone with Sam that night. If I’d got to her sooner… I could have stopped her getting caught. Stopped her getting hurt.

  I was the only one who could.

  ‘You’ve got to stop thinking you’re responsible,’ Sam said. ‘Something like that could’ve happened at any time. Your mum … well, you know what she was like…’

  I knew what he was thinking, what he was about to say. My mum was unhinged. Mad. It was only ever going to be a matter of time before she…

  Snuffed it?

  Popped off?

  Killed herself?

  Dieter had said something similar when he’d arrived to sort the house out after it’d all happened, and discovered just how strange and sick Mum had been over the last few months.

  ‘Like tinder,’ Dieter had said. ‘Waiting to ignite.’ Then he’d turned to me and said, ‘I wish I’d known, Kash. Wish I’d got here sooner. Wish I’d helped. Wish I’d helped her too.’

  And I’d thrown the closest thing to me – a vase, I think – right at his head, and said, ‘Yeah? Well, you didn’t!’

  It missed, of course. Smashed against the wall on the other side of him. I left him to clean it up. I took one of Mum’s secret bottles and went to the park. I hid in the concrete tunnel I used to smoke roll-ups in with Sam and drank it all until I threw it up on my shoes. When Dieter came to fetch me eventually, I hit him with it too. But the bottle didn’t smash like the vase had. And it didn’t stop Dieter from scooping me up and taking me back. Not even my foul tongue stopped that.

  Sometimes – thinking about all this, writing it down – I think that maybe Dieter isn’t so bad after all. Sometimes I think it would be OK to live permanently in the city with him. But then I think about his clean-smelling plastic box-house with Cynthia’s nail-art equipment in my bedroom there, and I take that thought back.

  Us against the world.

  Us against men like Dieter.

  Us against men who leave.

  But you left too, Mum, didn’t you?

  And at least Dieter didn’t make me clean up his mess.

  And what a fucking mess you were, Mum. Beautiful at times, sure, and so so SO much fun – back w
hen I was little you were amazing, back when you used to tell me stories and play games for days on end (why couldn’t that Mum have stayed around?)

  But maybe that was only another part of your madness.

  And even if you were so ill … it wasn’t my job to clean you up.

  Sam said that too.

  Maybe I’m starting to see.

  Most days I think Mum’s black cat wasn’t real, was never real. It was just something she made up to mean something else. Maybe her own special metaphor for how it felt when she went into one of her episodes … her mania.

  But then I remember those paw prints – so many that night, leading to the trap – and a part of me wants them to be real. Because if they’re not real, if Mum drew them all out so carefully, leading to the trap, did she actually want me to find her like that? Spread out and bleeding and hanging, and…

  No!

  Mum would’ve known I’d follow her prints. And I don’t think Mum would do that to me. I don’t! Even if she was full sick.

  That leaves the accident theory. Which goes like this – she set her trap to catch the cat and drew the prints just cos she always did and – bang!­ The Masterpiece went off with her in it. It was modelled on something hundreds of years old, after all – easy to make a mistake.

  It’s never been said officially – never proved – what really happened. Dieter thinks she meant to kill herself. I think Sam thinks that too.