‘But that’s not Michael,’ he says, peering at the photo.
‘Nah, Michael’s my step-dad.’
‘Oh, cool.’
He’s silent for a bit and I hope that’s the end of it, but of course it’s not.
‘So where’s your real dad?’ he asks. ‘Do you ever see him?’
‘Nope.’
‘Oh, man,’ Jem says, distress in his voice. ‘He’s not…’
A choking sound comes from beside me, and I turn to see Jeremy with his hands around his own neck, his tongue hanging out the side of his mouth. I actually laugh at his completely failed attempt at delicacy.
‘Nah,’ I say. ‘Well, maybe.’
‘Maybe?’
‘Well…’
Circle again. Left-one.
‘He disappeared.’
There’s a pause. I can practically hear him frowning, but I don’t look around.
‘He disappeared?’
‘Mm-hmm.’ Circle, circle. Square.
‘You mean he took off?’ Jem asks.
‘Well, that’s what the police said, but if you take off you pack a suitcase, don’t you? You take your clothes and your toothbrush and your car.’
‘And he didn’t?’
‘Nope. Didn’t even take the ring he always used to wear.’
‘Didn’t the police do anything to find him?’
‘They tried. Mum tried even harder. Went completely off her case for six months, trying to find out what had happened. She only came back down when she met Michael. Eventually we just had a memorial service for my dad and got on with it.’ I shrug. ‘I guess it’s easier for everyone to think that he’s dead. You can move on that way.’
‘But you don’t think he is,’ Jem says.
Hmm. Insightful.
‘Oh, I don’t know. I guess he is – it’s been so long now – but… well, I was there when he disappeared.’
‘You were?’ He scoots forward in his chair to peer into my face. ‘So? What do you remember?’
I sigh, pause the game, and turn on my stool to face him. It’s time for the acid test of this friendship.
‘I remember,’ I say slowly, ‘him disappearing.’
Jem blinks a couple of times. ‘You mean…’ He holds out his hands and mimes something disappearing in a puff of smoke, complete with sound effects. This guy must be great at charades.
I nod. ‘I was four. Not long after that photo was taken, actually. Mum had taken Claire and Peter out to gymnastics or something, so Dad and I were alone in the house. I must have done something bad because I remember he was yelling. Then all of a sudden he was gone.’
Jem just stares at me, and I can’t tell what he’s thinking. At least he isn’t backing away.
‘Look, I know that can’t have actually happened,’ I say, trying to reassure him. ‘People don’t just disappear.’
‘No. But you remember it happening.’
‘Yeah.’ I nod. ‘I don’t remember much from when I was four, but I remember that, clear as anything. I remember him standing in front of me, wearing his ring and shouting. Then he just vanished, and the ring fell from mid-air. I even remember the sound it made when it hit the floor.’
Silence follows again. I reach into my pocket and run my thumb round and round the edge of the ring in question. I’ve been keeping it closer than usual the last few days, just in case any blue ferrets try to steal it again.
Oh, well. If I lose my first friend over all this, at least I’ve got my imaginary creatures to keep me company.
‘So what happened when your mum got home?’ Jem says eventually.
‘Well, she quite naturally asked what had happened to Dad.’
‘And you told her –’
‘That he’d disappeared right in front of me. I also told that to four policemen, three neighbours, a couple of aunts and seven therapists.’
‘Seven therapists?’
‘Seven.’
Jem nods. ‘They figured you’d gone crazy.’
‘Well, they didn’t actually use that word,’ I say. ‘It was more “vivid imagination” and “coping mechanism”.’
‘Yeah, sure,’ Jem agrees. Then he leans forward and peers intently into my face. ‘But are you?’
‘Am I what?’
‘Crazy.’
Crazy? Well, now, let’s see. Emotionally scarred, loner, sees random blue things that aren’t there. No, man, I’m perfectly normal.
I would try to blow the question off, only I’ve paused too long now. Anyway, he should probably know – it’s only fair.
‘Almost definitely,’ I tell him.
He grins. ‘Excellent.’ And he pops another jelly baby into his mouth.
I laugh. ‘Excellent? Dude, you’re supposed to be running for the hills right about now. You’ve gone and befriended a loon.’
‘Exactly,’ he says, leaning back in his chair until it’s resting on the window behind him. ‘You’re new here, so you don’t realise how totally the same everyone here is. Honestly, it’s like they’re all mindless clones, all dressing the same and talking about the same stuff day in, day out. And I think it’s getting worse. But you…’ He shakes his head, trying to find the words. ‘You’re different – what you talk about, and the way you do it, and how you look –’
‘What’s wrong with how I look?’
‘You’re interesting. Seriously, you can count the number of interesting people in this village on one hand.’
‘Jeremy, are you just substituting the word “interesting” for the word “crazy”?’ I ask him.
‘No. Well, actually…’
‘I knew it.’
‘But yours is a good crazy,’ he insists. ‘The other crazy people are avoid-at-all-costs crazy.’
‘Like Pippa Green?’ I ask.
‘Yeah, you definitely want to steer clear of her. But at least she isn’t dangerous.’
‘Hang on,’ I say, holding my hands up. ‘This village has dangerous crazy in it?’
‘Well, only the Rambler,’ Jem says. ‘But don’t worry, he doesn’t exist.’
I frown. ‘Who’s the Rambler?’
‘Oh, this evil guy someone made up once to frighten children into coming home before dark.’ Jem puts his hands behind his head. His reflection in the window behind him does the same. ‘He’s supposed to stalk the streets of Ouse after sundown, preying on stragglers and stealing little kiddies. If he catches you he carves you up and feeds your flesh to his bloodthirsty hounds.’
Beyond Jeremy’s reflection, out in the garden, a dark figure appears.
I swallow.
‘But he doesn’t exist?’ I check.
‘Can’t do. There have been stories about him for generations. He’s a myth.’
The figure walks to the middle of the lawn, then stops and turns to the house.
‘And this mythic Rambler guy that definitely doesn’t exist – what’s he supposed to look like?’
Jem shrugs. ‘Long leather coat, big boots, scraggly hair, evil grin. That kind of thing.’
Light from the house glints off the figure’s boots, then his teeth as he grins evilly through a veil of scraggly hair. He reaches into his long leather coat.
‘Every now and then some idiot thinks he sees him,’ Jem continues, throwing the empty jelly baby bag at the bin, ‘and the myth just keeps going.’
A knife flashes bright in the darkness.
‘Aaah… Some idiot thinks he sees – him?’ I say, pointing.
Jeremy turns. Freezes. Then he stands up, blocking my view of the garden. ‘You’re joking,’ he whispers.
Suddenly he dives for the cover of my desk. I have half a second to see why before the dark figure, a yard now from my window and running at full speed, leaps and crashes straight through the glass.
I stumble away, knocking over my stool, hands raised against the flying shards. When my back hits the far corner of the room I peer through my shaking fingers to assess the situation.
The Rambler, la
rge as life and twice as muscle-bound, is crouching in the middle of the wreckage of my room. Pieces of glass shower down from his shoulders and cling to his hair as he stands up and walks straight towards me. His boots crunch down on the debris with each step. He raises his knife.
‘Haaarrr!’ he roars as he towers over me.
‘Aaaaaahhh! I scream as I slide down the wall.
‘Yaaarrr!’ Jeremy yells as he swings the stool straight at the Rambler’s head. It whacks the Rambler over the ear and he stumbles sideways. He takes in Jeremy and his makeshift weapon, rolls his eyes and charges off through the broken window and back out into the garden.
‘Quick,’ Jem says. He hauls me to my feet and runs to the window himself. Quick what? What are we doing? Building a barricade?
‘What?’
‘He’s getting away,’ he yells as he heads outside, still holding the stool. ‘Come on! Bring your phone.’
‘Jem, wait,’ I call, but it’s no good. He’s pelting off into the darkness to chase a murderous maniac who feeds your flesh to his bloodthirsty hounds. I moan quietly as I grab my phone and inch my way through the broken glass in my socks. Ow! Ouch! Where have my shoes gone?
By the time I get outside, still in my socks, there’s no sign of either Jem or the Rambler. I think they were headed for the woods at the back so I totter in that direction, the wet grass soaking my feet. It’s so dark, though. The light from the windows cuts out a few steps away from the house. I wake my mobile up and shuffle forward in its dim light, tripping over clumps of grass as I go.
I finally reach the end of the garden and find the track they probably took through the woods, but I can’t see anything, even when I hold my phone as high as I can. There’s no trace of Jem. The Rambler’s probably caught him by now. Poor old Jem’s probably dog food.
Well, that’s just typical. A friend for less than a day, and the universe chops him up into Chum.
I reckon this is the moment to call the police, before anything else happens. I lower my hand and turn the phone towards me, and the display light illuminates a face right next to mine.
‘Gaagh!’ I yell and almost drop the phone. The display light fades as I clutch the phone to my chest, but I don’t need it now. That glowing blue cat has appeared again. It casts a ring of light all around us.
‘You shouldn’t be out in the garden all by yourself at night,’ Pippa Green says calmly. ‘Anyone could be out here.’
And she swishes off in her long skirt across the lawn as if she were the hostess at a garden party. The glowing blue cat trots after her. What the hell is her deal?
‘Nice cat,’ I call after her.
She turns her head just before she disappears around the corner of the house.
‘What cat?’ she says.
‘I lost him,’ a voice gasps behind me. I swing around, my mobile raised once more, and Jem appears out of the darkness of the woods.
‘Good,’ I say vehemently, thumping him on the arm. ‘What the hell did you think you were doing, running after him like that?’
‘Are you kidding? Do you realise who that was?’
‘Yes. Hence my desire not to chase him alone through dark, spooky trees.’
‘Well, I wouldn’t have been alone if you’d come with me,’ he points out, walking back towards the house and swinging the stool about. ‘You were supposed to be there to take a photo of me whacking him again.’
That’s why he wanted me to bring my phone? He’s insane.
‘Jeremy, you’re insane.’
‘I thought that was your job description.’
I jog to catch up with him. ‘Well, it appears to be contagious. We must have caught it off Pippa Green.’
He frowns. ‘Pippa Green? What’s she got to do with this?’
‘She just wandered through the garden being completely random,’ I say. ‘She said anyone could be out here.’
‘Well I believe that. We just got our lives threatened by a make-believe killer. For all we know, we’re about to be attacked by multi-coloured flamingos.’ He grins through the darkness. ‘If we are, make sure you get a photo this time.’
Like I said – insane.
‘I brought the phone so I could call the police,’ I say, ‘not so I could take action shots of you.’
He looks shocked by this idea. ‘You didn’t, did you? Call the police?’
‘No, but shouldn’t we? We were just attacked in my own home.’
‘Yeah, but the local plod here is old Plonker Wilson. He’s not equipped to deal with the Rambler.’
‘Neither are we.’
‘Oh, I don’t know,’ Jem says, hefting the stool. ‘I think we came out okay. Seriously though, Jim, we can’t go around saying the Rambler attacked us. That’s like writing your own ticket to the loony bin.’
‘Then what did you want a photo of him for?’
‘Because it’d be cool.’
‘Well, we’re going to have to say something,’ I say as we walk across the patio towards my room. ‘How else are we going to explain how my window got…’
My voice peters out as we both stare up at the window in question.
‘…broken,’ I finish. Jem steps forwards and runs his hands over the smooth pane of glass that, a few minutes ago, he was climbing through the wreckage of. It’s whole and clear, not a crack in it.
He raises his eyebrows. ‘That’s interesting,’ he says and slides the door open. He checks the glass on the other side, then peers about on the floor. ‘Not a speck,’ he reports. I walk in after him. He’s right. It’s as if the glass had never been broken.
‘But we saw it happen,’ I say lamely. ‘The room was covered in glass. The whole wall was completely smashed up.’
‘Yeah,’ Jem agrees. ‘And the sound – it was deafening. Surely your family heard it.’
Suddenly I go cold. My family. Where are they? There’s been smashing and screaming and running around outside, and not one of them to be seen. The look on Jem’s face tells me he’s just had the same thought. As one, we run for the door, bolt down the passageway, and spill out into the lounge room in a tangle of limbs.
Michael looks up from his book. ‘Hello there. You two have been very quiet. Studying hard?’
Jem and I gape at him, speechless.
‘A little too hard, by the looks of things,’ Mum says, getting up from the table. ‘How about a hot chocolate?’
Chapter Five: Friends and Enemies
Can you die of sleep deprivation?
I pull myself out of the car and stare in despair at the school buildings. Do they honestly expect me to spend the entire day dragging myself from class to class, thinking and talking and writing? I can barely stand up, I’m so tired. Every little sound last night had me sitting bolt upright in bed, looking for attackers.
BANG!
I yelp and whip around, arms raised in defence. Claire looks from me to the car door she just slammed and back again.
‘You know how you told me to kill you if you do anything crazy?’ she says. ‘Does this count?’
I lower my arms and glare at her. ‘I’m tired, is all. I’m not crazy.’
And I’m starting to believe that, too. It’s not me. It’s something else that’s going on – something weird and abnormal, and for some reason I just keep getting involved.
And I’m getting sick of it.
‘You’d get a nice, long rest in a mental asylum,’ Claire says as we walk across the car park. ‘I bet they’d let you pick the colour of your straitjacket and everything.’
My bleary vision suddenly focusses on someone leaning against a tree on the other side of the yard. Someone I think I’d better have a word with.
‘We could get you a twin room to share with Pippa Green.’
‘Mm-hmm. Sounds good, Claire. Half a tick.’
I leave Claire gawking at me and stomp over to the girl under the tree. I’ll give her what for, being weird around me. Being stalker-like around my house. She’d better stay the hell awa
y from me.
‘Now, look here, you,’ I snap.
Pippa Green looks around and gives me a languid stare. Then she sighs, raises her right hand and whips it round.
Ow! My cheek. God, that stings.
‘Stay the hell away from me!’ she screams in my ear, and flounces off.
What the… I turn away, my hand pressed to my face, and find half the school smirking at me. Claire points at me and runs her finger across her throat.
Jem hasn’t turned up yet.
It’s only two minutes until our English class starts, and he’s still not here. Could be he slept in. Might be he had a podiatry appointment. Who knows?
Not that I’m worrying, mind. It’s not that I think he bumped into the Rambler again last night on the way home and now he’s dog meat. It’s more that I saved him a seat next to me, and I’d hate for all that effort to go to waste. It’s not that I’m panicking at all. No way.
Where is he?
‘Good morning,’ the English teacher calls as she charges up the aisle to her desk at the front. Oh God. The class has started now, and he’s still not here.
‘I believe we have a new face among us today.’
I crane my neck around and stare desperately at the door. I wonder if I should alert the authorities.
‘Young man.’
Because the longer it takes them to get to a crime scene, the more unreliable the evidence is. It could be days before they find his hideously mutilated…
‘Mr Munkers.’
I turn back to the front of the class. ‘Huh?’
She tuts. ‘Welcome. I am Miss Lassen, this is your English class, and I’d appreciate not only your full attention, but also for you to refrain from using words that should not be found in the English dictionary, such as “huh”.’
Sheesh.
‘Now, if we could continue on with our discussion of A Midsummer Night’s Dream that we started last week…’
She waffles on about the juxtaposition of the natural and the supernatural, and I spend an agonising five minutes trying to avoid contributing to the class, and casting furtive glances towards the door. Just when Miss Lassen thinks she has me cornered with a question about the futility of opposing the magical forces within the text, Jem comes in and sidles sheepishly into the seat next to me.
James Munkers Page 5
