by Emma Newman
Then there was nothing to do except wait, poised, listening intently for the sound of the all clear. Some minutes later it was sounded, and Miri cautiously peeped out from behind the curtains.
They both knew not to leave the house until one of the Boys called round, just in case a rogue Gardner strayed into their square. It had happened only once since Zane had been alive, but that one time was enough to establish the rule firmly.
Sure enough, a short time after the all clear, a knock of three rapid raps, then three slower ones hit the front door and Miri rushed to open it, recognising Jay’s code.
But it was Grame who stood panting at the doorway, a gash above his left eye sending a steady flow of blood down his white face.
“Quick, come to our patch,” he gasped and turned and ran. Miri and Zane hastily followed.
Both Miri and Zane expected to see wounded Boys, both had even steeled themselves for the sight of ones that had died, but neither of them had prepared for what met them on arrival in Russell Square.
Most of the gang was clustered tightly around the corner nearest to the barricade. As they both ran over, they heard the sound of sniffling and whimpering of injured Boys, some calling Jay’s name, some of the older ones calling for Miri. She went straight to the nearest, Smudge, on the edge of the crowd, who was clutching his arm, blood seeping out between his fingers that were clasped over the wound.
Zane instead pushed through the crowd, intent on seeing what was drawing all of the attention. The Boys parted when they saw it was him, and then he saw Jay up ahead, still tense with both knives drawn, looking down at a body on the ground in front of him.
Zane paused mid-step as he approached and blinked in surprise; his eyes were drawn down to the body on the ground, and he pushed past a couple of the bigger Boys to get a better look.
The Gardner’s face was an awful ashen grey, and his breath was rapid and shallow. He wore the familiar black suit and black tie, but the crisp whiteness of his shirt was spoilt by a deep red bloom spreading out from a point high on the right side of his chest.
Zane gawped at the sight of him, then dropped onto his knees to swiftly loosen the man’s tie and unbutton his shirt.
“What are you doing?” Jay demanded in a low growl, but Zane ignored him.
“Finish him off, Jay!” shouted one of the Boys and then others agreed with eager shouts: “Kill him! Get him Jay!” The many voices began to settle into a chilling chant as Zane trembled on his knees, his hands poised above the Gardner’s chest. “Kill! Kill! Kill! Kill!”
Zane, not knowing why–only that he should–placed both of his hands on the Gardner’s skin. The moment he made contact he drew in a sharp breath and what little colour was left in his cheeks drained away rapidly. His eyes darted all over the man’s chest, sometimes focusing on the large stab wound, but mostly lingering in the region of his heart.
“Zane!” Jay yelled above the bloodlust chanting. “What the hell are you doing?”
“I can see it!” Zane said back, barely audible above the yells of the crowd around him.
The man’s eyes fluttered open, rolling around briefly before settling on Zane. “Help me,” he croaked, the breath gurgling and rattling in his failing lungs.
Zane gritted his teeth and took a deep breath, letting his eyes fall upon the wound. Many of the Boys watched as the blood seeping out of it started to slow.
“He’s going!” one of them yelled joyfully, thinking that the failing heart was no longer forcing the blood from the wound.
“It’s not enough!” Zane muttered, unheard above the jeering.
None of the Boys noticed the sweat break out onto Zane’s forehead; they only saw the Gardner’s dying breaths. With delight, they rejoiced in the moment when the tension in his agonised body drained away to leave him lying there, staring up at Zane with glassy eyes. Zane cried out in despair and pulled back, as if the body had suddenly become very cold and was freezing him.
An ecstatic roar leapt up from the Boys and Jay held the knives, still coated with his opponent’s blood, high above his head for all to see. Several of the Boys nearest to the body began to kick it, and Zane crawled away to let them close in around it, desperate for air. He managed to emerge from the crowd and stagger to his feet only to double over and vomit into one of the drains nearby.
Chapter 5
JAY’S CHALLENGE
Once again Zane found himself on the sofa, a blanket wrapped around him, and a mug of his mother’s tea in his hand. Miri watched him stare into space, her forehead furrowed with deep lines of concern.
“Drink the tea, Zane, you’ve had a shock.”
He sipped at it obediently and looked up at her. “Mum, I think something weird is happening to me.”
“It’s just shock, it’ll pass.”
“No, I don’t mean that, I mean … the Gardner earlier today, something weird happened and I don’t know what to make of it.”
Miri perched on the sofa next to him and rubbed his back slowly, reassuringly. “Why don’t you describe how it felt to me and we’ll see if we can work it out together,” she said gently.
Zane searched for the right place to start. Miri watched his hands shaking the mug, threatening to send the hot liquid spilling over the edge. She wrapped the blanket tighter around him as the shivering started again. “Sip the tea,” she whispered and he did so.
“Today, the Gardner … I know they’re horrible. I know they hurt and kill the Boys, but I couldn’t stop myself from trying to help him. Even before I saw him, I sort of knew he was down on the ground and in pain.” Miri listened intently, stroking his hair like she did when he was small and had woken from a night terror. “I … could really see him, like normal but clearer, but then I had the urge to touch his skin, so I did and then it was like I could really see him. It was like he had a kind of blue glow around him that was fading, and I could see the blood rushing out of that stab wound, and how his lungs were filling with blood and how his heart was starting to give up.” The words rushed out of him in a torrent, his eyes fixed on the floor in front of him as if he were seeing it all happen in front of him again. “Even though I knew he was a bad person, I couldn’t stand that he was in pain, and I wanted the wound to close and … and … it started to. In front of my eyes, and I knew I was doing it. I knew it. But it was too late, and he died, and when he did, it was like putting my hands in snow, and I felt cold. It was just horrible.”
Miri was silent for a few moments. She cleared her throat quietly and then said “It’s hard to see a person die for the first time. It’s natural for you to feel odd at the moment.”
“No, Mum, I feel normal now, just a bit wobbly. What I’m saying is that I felt odd then.” He sipped more tea. “Do you see inside the Boys when you bandage up their cuts?”
Stunned by such an odd question, at first Miri simply shook her head. “No … never,” she eventually said. Zane was disappointed, lost, and in the moments of silence that followed, she composed herself. “Zane, you’re a bright, imaginative boy. I think that you’re really talented at helping and healing people, and when you’re there with someone that is hurt, you really feel what they do. You empathise with them.”
“What does empathise mean?”
“It means that you put yourself in their place and know how they feel so much that you begin to feel it a little bit yourself too. I think that you’re so good at that, that you begin to think you’re seeing into them. You know enough about the human body to be able to imagine these things very clearly. I don’t think you’re odd.” Miri paused as she thought about this and then said more firmly, “No, you’re not odd at all, just very involved. That’s all.”
Zane let the confidence in his mother’s voice soothe him.
“Finish your tea,” she said, “and I’ll make us some lunch.”
And with that, Miri went into the kitchen. As she peeled vegetables, the deepest part of her mind took what Zane had confided in her, threw a dark cloak over it, an
d like a magician worked to change it into something safer, more normal, and less frightening. By the time soup was ready his story had already begun to fit much more comfortably into the slot reserved for products of her son’s overactive imagination. With its newly acquired shape, she found it easier to ignore; after all, she was constantly working on the hard business of survival. They needed to eat, plants needed to be picked and pruned, and just as she had through all of the trials life had brought, she clung to that distraction like heather clings to an Atlantic cliff.
By the next day, things were almost back to normal. Zane tried hard to convince himself that the extraordinary moments with the Gardner had been nothing more than being “very involved” by busying himself in the garden and changing the dressings on the injuries sustained by some of the Boys. One by one they drifted to Miri’s door, sent by Jay to be cared for, relating the tale of how they got the cut or gash and what Jay had said about it. Mercifully it had been a small attack of three Gardners and only two of them lived to return home. Zane shuddered when each Boy gleefully described how Jay had stripped the dead Gardner down to his underwear and dragged his body to the top of the barricade single-handedly to throw it over to the other side.
After the Boys had left, Zane sat alone in his room, gripped by the nausea caused by their delight in the violence of the day before. Not even the familiar comfort of being in his small room filled with books, conkers, and dried curiosities found in the garden was enough to comfort him.
Not for the first time, he wondered if there was something wrong with him. He was a boy, like those in Jay’s gang, so why didn’t he enjoy the fighting like them? As hard as he tried, he just couldn’t understand how they could hate being hurt themselves, yet delight in another person’s pain. Perhaps he was too much like his mother. When that occurred to him, he realised he didn’t think that was a bad thing. Perhaps it was the other way round; perhaps the Bloomsbury Boys were strange because they didn’t have a Mum to make them kind. That helped him to pull himself back together, and he went into the garden to find Miri. He hugged her fiercely whilst her hands were still deep in the soil, saying, “I’m so glad I have you, Mum.”
That evening, as Zane was tidying away the day’s work whilst Miri made dinner, he noticed a familiar figure at the corner of the square. He dropped the tools and ran over, excitedly calling, “Callum!”
The beard twitched and a dirty hand emerged from the bundle of clothing to shake Zane’s warmly.
“How are you, my lad?”
“Ok. You?”
“As fine as can be. I was wondering how your mother is now. All calmed down again?”
Zane nodded and smiled. “Why don’t you come and say hello? There might be soup too.”
Callum’s bright eyes looked down at the ground shyly. “That’s kind of you, lad, but I’m no company for a lady.”
“Oh. Alright.”
Callum cleared his throat and said, “I found this. I thought she might like it.” A small bundle of fabric was produced from amongst the mass of layers and Zane took it from him gently. “Only a tiny thing, but, well, I thought …” Callum shrugged and shuffled a little.
Zane smiled. “I’ll pass it on to her.”
“And I hope you’ve not been wandering off again?”
Zane shook his head solemnly. “I know not to do that.”
“Well, at least one lesson learned is some good to come out of it. Something’s brewing over in the Bloomsbury patch, so you tread carefully there. Jay’s worked up about something.”
“Do you know Jay and the Boys?”
The beard and matted hair moved up and down. “Ay, I know them. You be careful around them, Zane. Ask yourself why there are no grown-up Bloomsbury Boys.”
And with that, the old man shuffled off, this time heading east towards the area where he had saved Zane from the Hunters. Zane watched him go and then ran into the house.
“Mum! You’ve got a present! From Callum!”
Miri emerged from the kitchen. “The man who looked after you?”
She took the package from Zane as he nodded and watched eagerly. She carefully unravelled the scrap of material to reveal a dainty shawl pin in perfect condition. It was made of bright silver that had clearly been polished carefully. A delicate Scottish thistle decorated the top of it, and Miri smiled broadly when she saw it. “How lovely!” she exclaimed. “Is he Scottish?”
“Huh?” Zane asked, bemused.
“Never mind,” she said and pinned it to her favourite shawl that lay on the armchair.
“I’m going over to Jay’s for a little while, ok?”
Still smiling at the gift, Miri nodded, saying, “Be back before dark” as Zane slipped out of the door.
Callum had been right. When Zane arrived, most of the Bloomsbury Boys were clustered tightly around Jay in the middle of the square. Grame was posted on the edge of the territory, and even though Zane smiled warmly at him, Grame’s greeting was colder than usual.
“I reckon Jay wants to see ya,” he said, hands deep in his pockets, shoulders hunched.
“Okay,” Zane replied, remaining sunny despite the reception. Perhaps he could help fix whatever was making him so bad tempered.
The murmur of the gathered Boys dissipated as he approached, and the ones nearest to him moved apart to open a way to Jay in the middle. Zane noticed the absence of nods and smiles and regretted coming to visit.
“Hello,” he said, smiling despite his nervousness.
“Zane,” Jay said, straightening to his full height. “Funny you should come over now. We were just talkin’ ’bout you.”
The Boys closed in behind Zane, forming a tight circle around him and the young gang leader. Zane’s mouth went dry. “Me?” he replied, trying his best to stop his voice cracking under the tension. He failed.
“Yup. See, we was wonderin’ sommat, and now you’re ’ere, maybe you could give us some answers.”
“Um, okay.”
“Yesterday, you did sommat weird. That Gardner, when he was dyin’, you touched him. On the chest.”
Zane nodded hesitantly. “Yes, I did.” There was no point denying it; they had all seen it happen.
“The thing with Gardners,” Jay said louder, with more showmanship, “is that the only way to touch them is with the sharp end of yer knife, right, Boys?”
“Right!” several of them cheered.
“And, the thing about that,” Jay continued, “is it ain’t to do nothin’ but kill ’em. We don’t stick ’em with our knives to be nice, do we, Boys?”
“No!” more joined in, some snickering.
“You ain’t got a knife, Zane,” Jay rounded on him. “And you didn’t look like you were tryin’ to kill ’im.” He let the statement hang in the air. “So what I wanna know is, if ya didn’t wanna kill ’im, what the hell were you doin’?”
Zane’s stomach cramped with tension. He curled his hands into fists and thrust them into his pockets so Jay wouldn’t see them shaking. “I … I don’t know. He was hurt –”
“I know!” Jay interrupted. “I was the one that done it!”
There was a mixture of cheers and laughter from the assembled, but Jay didn’t look amused. Zane swallowed, peeling his tongue from the roof of his mouth.
“Mark ’ere,” Jay jerked a thumb at one of the tallest Boys, “says you threw up when the Gardner died.”
Zane nodded slowly. “Y-yes … I was sick.”
Jay scowled. “Why?”
“Um … because of the … the blood,” Zane replied, unable to think of anything else to say that wasn’t the truth, and he didn’t feel that here, right now, was the time to tell them about his strange experience.
“Bollocks!” Jay exclaimed. “You an’ Miri stitch us up all the time–you see blood nearly every day!” He took a step closer. “I’d ’ate to think you were lyin’ to me, Zane. I can’t stand a liar.”
Zane struggled to draw a breath; it felt like his chest had seized up. Jay stared at him
and the circle of Boys closed in a step. Zane could feel a tremor in his knees.
“See, Zane, I got a problem ’ere,” Jay continued when the boy said nothing. “Cos I like ya, and I think ya mum’s ace. And that’s good for you, cos if that weren’t true, you’d be pasted on the side of that buildin’ over there.” Mark picked that moment to crack his knuckles. “But the thing is, you looked like you were goin’ soft on that Gardner. And that worries me, Zane, it worries me.”
“I … I don’t want you to worry, Jay,” Zane replied, his voice wavering.
“That’s good, Zane, that’s good,” Jay said, planting a hand on his shoulder and gripping it firmly. “None of us want that. But I know what I saw, and so I want proof you’re not gonna start goin’ soft on them Gardners when they start on us again.”
Zane’s throat felt like it was closing. “Proof?”
“Go get one of their ties for Jay!” said Grame, sparking a round of jeering agreement from the circle.
“Don’t be daft,” Jay dismissed. “He’s too soft to stab a live one.” As the Boys laughed, Jay pointed at the barricade. “But he could practise on the one they left behind.”
Zane’s throat burned as bile rose up from his twisting stomach. He’d never been near a dead body before; his mother had made sure of that. But he had read about it in the medical books at home. He thought of the Gardner Jay had tossed over the other side the day before, how the body would be cold and stiff by now.
Zane swallowed hard as Jay continued, a chilling smile spreading across his face like a dark cloud on a spring day. “I’ll letchya borra me knife, can’t say fairer than that.” Jay drew one of the pair, tilted the blade to capture the last of the evening sunlight. “Go over and stab the body, Zane.”
“Yeah! Stab it!” Boys yelled around him, building themselves up into a chant. “Stab it! Stab it!”
