by Robin Jarvis
“Tell us about the market,” he asked curiously. “What is it like?”
Paul’s faint smile broadened and he half closed his eyes. “The colours are dazzling,” he said. “From the bolts of finest cloth, to the round, ripe fruits that vie with the treasure vaults for splendour. The bashful gold of apricots, the burnished copper globes of onions and the wide-awake yellow of quinces. The tumble of greengages, plums, goosegogs, redcurrants, raspberries… looking like precious jools winkled from a crown. Then there is the brilliant, flashing silver of the fresh, flapping fish on the cart nearby. So intense, so deep, and dancing a clamour of colour. All under cheery patterned awnings, supported on wooden posts whose gilded, turned tops glisten and flame ’neath the sun.”
He paused and stared into the distance. Carol looked at Martin. She had never heard her son speak like this before. But the boy had not finished.
“Then there are the smells,” he continued. “A new delight with every forward step. Scents that move the heart to love or make the stomach yap. Heaped spices of rainbow ochres that tickle the nose and set the tongue a-tingling. The hanging herbs to sweeten an airless chamber or infuse in potions. The sharpness of clove-steeped vinegars that pickle and souse and make the mouth squirt. The pinkly marbled meat, swaying from hooks – with warm, tangy blood dripping into cream stone jars below. The nosegays casting their perfume into the morning, underscoring everything with the yearning song of violets and rosebuds. And then there are the magickal wares, the goods that can only be found in the Dawn Prince’s land – take care what you buy and barter there…”
Carol pushed her chair back, shocked and dismayed. What was happening to him?
Paul blinked and directed his staring gaze at her.
“So you see,” he said. “That is why I must return there. Why I must escape this dingy tomb. If you keep me here, I will wilt and wither.”
“I’m calling Ian,” she announced, unable to bear it any longer. “We’re going to see him right now.”
Martin tried to keep calm. “There’s nothing he’ll be able to do,” he told her.
“But Paul’s ill!” Carol cried. “Listen to him, look at his eyes!”
What could Martin say? Yes, the boy seemed distant and not normal, but his description of the market was so detailed, so lucid and real. It wasn’t merely delusional rambling. It sounded like somewhere he’d really been. The maths teacher didn’t know what to suggest.
“OK,” he agreed. “Take him to see Ian.”
And so, as Martin left for school, Carol drove her son to the hospital where Ian Meadows examined Paul, took blood and urine samples and asked him questions. After an hour he led Carol aside and informed her that there was nothing physically wrong with the boy. He was perfectly healthy.
“Apart from the dilation of the pupils, I can’t find anything.”
“Well, that isn’t right for a start!”
The doctor agreed. “Mydriasis occurs for a variety of reasons,” he explained. “Blown pupils like his can be caused by drugs, trauma, disease…”
“He’s not on drugs,” Carol insisted. “But there was trauma aplenty last Friday at the Landguard. He was there, at the Disaster!”
“Not that sort of trauma. I meant a head injury. It could be damage to the oculomotor nerve, but I don’t think that’s likely here. The sample tests will determine if there’s anything I’ve missed. I’ll get toxicology to hurry things along there and call you as soon as I get the results.”
“But what about this obsession?” she asked desperately. “He won’t even acknowledge I’m his mother.”
The doctor frowned and was at a loss how to explain it. “And yet everything in that fantasy has its own rationale,” he said, rubbing the back of his neck. “It has its own internal logic. In fact, it makes more sense than most orthodox religions.”
“That doesn’t make it sane!” Carol countered. “What’s the matter with him?”
Doctor Meadows scratched his head. “I’m not an expert in child psychology,” he admitted. “I can give you the name of someone who is, but you wouldn’t get to see them till sometime next week.”
“Not till then? What will I do?”
“Just treat him normally. Maybe he’ll snap out of it, whatever ‘it’ is. I’m sorry, but that’s the only advice I can give. Paul’s in no danger, remember that.”
“No danger?” she retorted. “Right at this moment he thinks I’m some peasant and this… this world isn’t real life. How can that be safe? What if he thinks he can fly in that other place and jumps off a building? What if he thinks he can breathe underwater? What if…?”
“Carol!” Ian said gently. “Don’t get hysterical. The boy isn’t stupid. Whatever he thinks he can do in that other place, he knows this one is different. He won’t try anything silly.”
“I wish I could believe you,” she replied. “And if I get hysterical, there’s a good reason for it – you know me well enough to understand that.”
“Look, see how he fares over the weekend then call me again Monday morning and we’ll take it from there. If you like, I could prescribe you some junior sedatives if he starts getting anxious.”
The woman shook her head. “I’m not doping him,” she refused flatly. “He’s not a mad dog. He’s my son.” She was disappointed and angry. It had been a wasted journey.
“If it’s any consolation,” Ian told her as she left his office, “this isn’t the first case like this I’ve seen this week. In fact, you’re the twenty-seventh person to have come here, worried about a child or family member experiencing the same fixations and hallucinations.”
Carol stared at him, incredulous. “And you don’t think that’s something to get hysterical about?” she cried. “There’s an epidemic happening in this town and you’re fobbing us off with pats on the head and sleeping pills!”
Taking Paul by the hand, she hurried him from the office. “You need some leeches in here,” the boy advised the doctor as he followed her out.
“Plenty of them in the NHS already,” Ian muttered to himself.
Rereading Paul’s notes, he tapped the desk irritably. “What the hell is going on in this bloody place?” he blurted, kicking the filing cabinet so hard it hurt his toe and dented the side.
“Can I go to the school now?” Paul asked as they got in the car.
Carol fumbled with the keys in the ignition. “I think you should stay off today,” she said.
“I think Paul should go to school,” he told her firmly.
“You’re going back to the house,” she replied.
The boy glowered at her. “Paul should be with his friends,” he said forcefully. “Paul should sit with them in the library so they can read together.”
“In that case there’s no chance,” she said. “I’m not going to let you read any more of that rubbish.” Carol started the car and drove out of the car park, heading for home.
The boy’s face flushed red and he began to judder with rage and frustration. Suddenly he screamed and lashed out at her. He wrenched at the steering wheel and smacked the side of her head.
The car veered across the road. Carol cried out in panic. The front tyre mounted the kerb. She elbowed her son back against his seat and braked hard. Paul tugged at the seatbelt and pulled on the door handle.
“The child lock is on!” she shouted.
“Let me out! Let me out!” he shrieked in her ear. “Let me out – you evil scold!”
The woman stared at him in horror. He was having a fit. It was like being next to a rabid animal.
“Take me to that school!” he demanded, hammering his feet on the floor, slamming the dashboard and banging his head on the passenger window. “Take me there now!”
“We are going home,” Carol said, struggling to remain calm and trying to think how to reason with him. “If you do anything stupid like that when I’m driving again, you’ll never get back to your other world. Do you hear me?”
“If I had my dagger, I would plunge it in your hear
t,” her son told her as he folded his arms and glared out of the window. “If you possessed one.”
The car drove off and Carol held the tears back. She wished she had taken that prescription from Ian.
When they pulled into their drive, and the lock clicked up, Paul tried to make a run for it, but she caught him and pushed him into the house.
“Gaoler!” he screeched in her face as he thumped and tore at her. “You are in the service of Haxxentrot the witch. I hate you! I hate you and your poverty-reeking stink!” Then he spat at her.
Carol’s hand flashed out and she slapped him hard. The boy yelped. Carol uttered a cry. She had never hit him before. She stared at the reddening mark on his cheek and despised herself.
“You will suffer for this, peasant,” he vowed. “I swear it!”
“Go to your room,” she ordered in a cracked voice. “Go now.”
Paul looked her up and down disdainfully. Then he turned and stomped up to his bedroom. When the door closed behind him, his mother fell against the banister and broke down.
Chapter 24
The game of Hoodman Blind is a great favourite at Court and the Jockey’s delight. Watch the victim grope about in his darkness, seeking for something tangible, something to hold and clutch at in his blundering. Prod him, poke him – make him squeak – make him stagger. Keep him guessing, lead him on – keep him spinning.
MARTIN BAXTER WALKED through the school gates that morning, yet again amazed at the massed heaps of floral tributes and cuddly toys that had multiplied over the course of the week. Was it really only a week since the Disaster? It seemed far longer.
A pungent, rank perfume of sweetness and decay filled the air. If memories of old love affairs had a smell, it would be just like this. Once more he wondered what Barry was going to do about the rotting bouquets. This was one problem he wouldn’t leave for the new Head to deal with. He would want to sort it himself. He had a responsibility to the memory of those dead kids and ex-pupils. Martin shook his head. The school really wouldn’t be the same without Barry Milligan. In the space of just seven days, everything had changed so drastically.
He wondered how Carol was getting on at the doctor’s with Paul. There just had to be a sound and sensible explanation for this mania. There was no possible alternative.
Before entering the building, he scanned the playground. The children waiting to go inside were abnormally quiet. He noticed that even more of them had cut up their blazers to achieve the hanging sleeves illustrated in Dancing Jacks. Was there anyone without a playing card pinned to their uniform now? If there were, he couldn’t spot any. Some of the children turned to him as he pulled the door open. Their blank expressions were disturbing – even chilling.
Martin’s thoughts were so taken up with Paul’s condition that he didn’t notice how quiet some of the teachers were in the staffroom. Mrs Early was sat whispering to Miss Smyth, who was gently rocking backwards and forwards.
Emma Taylor had decided not to go to school that day. The other kids were getting too weird and mental and she was sick of having to check her behaviour and bite her tongue, knowing that the Head had her in his sights. Besides, there was yet another double maths that morning. Whoever composed that timetable needed shooting. So she decided to play the sympathy card with her mother and complained that her burned legs were giving her jip. She spent a cosy, lazy day lounging about the house in her dressing gown, eating as much toast as she liked and cackling during Loose Women. It was a blissful world away from the bizarre happenings at school.
Martin’s first lesson was eerie. The Year 9 class were sitting upright in their seats, their eyes weirdly dark and staring. Their lips were stained and discoloured. Every child wore a playing card and they were like dummies. They listened impassively to everything he said and, when he told them to get on with it, diligently picked up their pens and began working in silence. In all his years of teaching, he had never known anything like it. After twenty minutes he could bear it no longer.
“So what do the cards mean?” he asked a blonde-haired girl wearing the two of clubs.
She looked slowly up from her work and touched the card pinned to her blazer. “It shows to which Royal Household we belong,” she said.
“They remind us,” a boy added, “when we are here, in the empty dream time, who we really are.”
“And the numbers?”
“Our rank and station in the White Castle of course,” the girl replied impatiently, as if the question was a stupid one. “I am but a lowly kitchen maid of the South Tower.”
“You really have bought into this completely,” Martin said. “But why would you choose to be a rubbish servant? Where’s the fun in that?”
“It is who I am,” the girl answered.
“And yet here you are in school, without a castle in sight, doing sums.”
“We cannot order our dreams,” the girl said with regret.
“And we need this rest so that our proper lives can be lived with more vigour – more excitement,” a second boy chipped in.
“The Ismus says that sunshine is paid for with rain,” the girl agreed. “This place is…”
“A wet Friday in Felixstowe?” the maths teacher suggested.
“Dreams are not to be understood,” the child said. “They make no sense, they are only necessary.”
Reaching into her pencil case, she took out a small glass jar containing a putrid-looking ointment and, with her fingertip, rubbed some on her lips. A slight tremor shuddered through her. She closed her eyes and nodded with pleasure.
“What’s that?” Martin demanded.
“Minchet,” one of the boys told him.
The girl smiled and opened her eyes. Her lips were more discoloured than ever. “When we are awake, we use it to fly to the Holy Enchanter at the Grand Revels. But here, in the dull dreaming, the taste of it keeps us and nourishes us. It helps us see the banners of Mooncaster more clearly in our minds when we are away from them.”
Martin strode over and took the jar from her hands. He sniffed the yellowish-grey contents warily. There was no smell.
“You may keep it if you wish,” the girl said. “I have more.”
The maths teacher screwed the lid back on. “Who else has got this muck?” he shouted. Every hand went into the air.
“Right – I want all of it on my desk now!”
The children looked at him in puzzlement, but they obediently went to his desk and deposited jar after jar there.
Martin ground his teeth in anger and wanted to throw every one of those filthy pots in the bin. He was furious, not with the children, they can’t have realised what was happening – it wasn’t their fault. No, he was furious with himself for discounting the obvious and only answer right from the start, even though at the back of his mind he must have known. It was simple and sordid after all – drugs. Why had he even considered it might be otherwise? So this was the cause of the abnormal behaviour. But the scale of this was staggering. Someone, and he had a shrewd idea who, had supplied the entire school with powerful hallucinogens and heaven knows what else. The thought of that enraged him. He could almost feel his blood boiling.
The children returned to their work and he waited impatiently for the end of the lesson.
When the bell rang, Martin ushered the pupils out of the classroom and, with a grimace of disgust, swept the jars of minchet into his briefcase. On the way out, he checked his mobile. There were seven unhappy and urgent texts from Carol. He called her back immediately and she explained what Doctor Meadows had said at the hospital and what had happened afterwards.
“I know this sounds crazy,” she hissed down the phone, “but Paul was like a demon. I’m scared, Martin.”
“What’s he doing now?”
“Just sat quietly on his bed, rocking back and forward. I can’t reach him. Can you come home? I don’t like being here on my own with him.”
“He’s your son, Carol!”
“Is he? I’m not so sure.”
“Don’t talk silly. I’ve just discovered what’s behind all this – and I’m mad as hell. I’m going to speak to Barry right now and call the police in.”
“Please come home!”
“I can’t!”
“Martin – please!”
“I think he’ll be fine once it wears off. Let him rest. I’ll see you both later.”
“When what wears off?”
“I don’t have time to explain, but check his pockets for any small jars of vile-looking stuff. Don’t touch it. Just take it off him. I’m going to…”
A boy from Year 8 had charged blindly into him. The mobile flew from Martin’s hand and smashed to pieces on the floor.
“Hoy!” the maths teacher yelled. “Look at that! What are you doing running in the corridors, Leo Henderson? Get back here!”
The boy didn’t stop to apologise. “They’re after me!” he yelled, racing away, trying to find a place to hide.
“Unbelievable!” Martin snarled, picking up the fragments and trying to fit them together again. It was hopeless.
Fuming, he marched down to Barry Milligan’s office and banged on the door.
The Headteacher’s strident voice yelled back, “If you’re one of the governors, you can kiss my…”
“It’s me – Martin!”
Barry was about to tell him to enter, but the maths teacher had already barged straight in. He dumped a handful of jars on the desk.
“What’s them?” Barry asked in surprise.
“That’s what’s behind all this mad behaviour!” Martin shouted. “Some sort of drug. Every kid in my Year 9 class had a pot of it.”
Barry picked up one of the small jars and inspected it carefully. “You sure?” he asked.
“I don’t know what’s in it, but it’s got to be an addictive narcotic. Look how lethargic the kids are, look at their eyes, look at the way their lips are the same colour and the way those two lads attacked Mrs Early the other day.”
Barry slid into his chair. “But that’s almost every kid in the school,” he said in a shocked voice. “Who’s been pushing this filth on them?”
