Crow Boy

by Philip Caveney

  ‘It does actually,’ Tom assured him. ‘I just spoke to my dad, in Manchester.’

  ‘Did you really? That’s nice. And what did he have to say for himself?’

  ‘He told Tom something about his mother,’ said Morag. ‘I could hear a wee voice speaking but I couldn’t make out the words. What was it he said to you, Tom? About your mother. The thing that made you cry?’

  ‘He told me she was dead. Only . . . I’m pretty sure she isn’t, not really.’

  ‘Oh, right, that’s as clear as mud.’ Cameron nodded wearily, an expression of complete boredom on his face. ‘Is there anything to eat in here? I’m starving!’

  ‘But you haven’t seen me on the picture box,’ insisted Morag. ‘Tom just used it to paint a wee picture of me and it only took him a moment to do it.’

  ‘You’re as barmy as he is,’ muttered Cameron.

  ‘Come and look if you don’t believe me!’ cried Morag.

  Cameron sighed and began to plod over to them but, in that same instant, the battery finally gave out and the screen went black.

  He peered at it for a moment and then said, ‘It’s not the most flattering picture I’ve ever seen.’

  ‘That’s not it!’ cried Morag. ‘It’s gone. Tom, bring it back again!’

  ‘I can’t,’ he said mournfully. ‘The battery’s gone.’

  ‘Gone?’ She looked around the room. ‘Gone where?’

  ‘You don’t understand. It needs recharging. I don’t have a charger with me and, even if I did, I’d need somewhere to plug it in.’

  ‘See,’ said Cameron. ‘There’s always something that doesn’t quite work, isn’t there? Show her the piece of paper with the old woman’s face on it. Maybe that’ll convince her.’

  Tom scowled. He slipped the useless phone back into his pocket. ‘You’re always too slow,’ he snarled. ‘You miss everything.’

  ‘Oh, excuse me!’ sneered Cameron. ‘I may be slow, but at least I’m not a bampot. At least I know what’s real and what isn’t.’

  ‘Tom’s not a bampot!’ cried Morag. ‘He’s telling the truth about being from the future. I’ve seen proof.’

  ‘You’d believe anything he tells you,’ snapped Cameron. ‘Trotting around behind him like a wee lapdog; you’re ridiculous.’ He slipped into a parody of Morag’s high-pitched voice. ‘Ooh, Tom, Tom, you’re so brave talking to Doctor Rae like that! You’re my hero!’ He shook his head. ‘Can’t you see he’s just reeling you in with his fancy lies.’

  Suddenly, Tom couldn’t help himself. He was up out of his chair and striding towards Cameron. ‘You take that back!’ he shouted.

  ‘I will not. It’s the truth. You’re mad and you’re turning her the same way.’

  ‘Take it back!’ Tom reached out a hand and pushed Cameron hard in the chest. ‘Or else . . .’

  ‘Or else what?’ sneered Cameron. He bunched his hands into fists. ‘What are you going to do about it, bampot?’

  Something in Tom snapped. He threw a wild punch that caught Cameron on the chin, flinging him backwards across the kitchen and slamming him up against a wall. Cameron looked dazed for a moment. He wiped his mouth on the back of one hand and grinned maliciously.

  ‘Right then,’ he said. He came back at Tom, fists swinging. Tom managed to duck the first blow but, as he straightened up the next one thudded into his stomach, doubling him over. He managed to swing an arm up at Cameron, pushing him away, and the two of them grappled for a moment, flailing wildly around the kitchen like they were dancing with each other.

  ‘Stop it!’ cried Morag. ‘Stop it at once; somebody is going to get hurt!’

  ‘That’s the idea,’ snarled Cameron and then yelped as a punch from Tom caught him on the ear. He retaliated, flinging more punches in return. His left hook missed completely but the right one went full into Tom’s face and connected with his nose. Fireworks seemed to go off inside Tom’s head, a riot of colourful explosions – and for an instant he was a little kid again – he was with his mum and dad at a firework display; they were pointing up at the rockets exploding in the sky and saying, ‘Oooooh’ and ‘Aaaaah!’ and he was laughing wildly because he was so excited and also a little scared by the noise.

  But that was only for an instant, because then a black hood seemed to drop over his head and shoulders and he was falling in slow motion, a horrible sick feeling lurching in his stomach. The hood came off and now he was falling amidst a confusion of dust and broken floorboards and lumps of stone. He looked up and saw a grey, flickering Morag gazing down at him through a large ragged hole in the floor above. There was concern in her eyes, but suddenly she wasn’t Morag any more; she was Mum, standing in the kitchen, smiling and telling him to take the picture quickly, before she changed her mind; she hated having her photograph taken. And he was just going to say ‘Smile’ when something hard slammed against his back, driving the breath out of him and he lay there, gasping, as everything around him shifted in and out of focus . . .

  And he was back in the kitchen of the orphanage. Morag was kneeling beside him, crying her eyes out and telling Cameron that he’d killed Tom. Cameron stood beside her, shaking his head, saying that he’d only given the lad a wee tap and didn’t it serve him right for starting something he couldn’t finish? Then the door opened and Missie Grierson strode into the room.

  She stood there, looking down at them, her hands on her plump hips. ‘What in the name of reason is going on here?’ she shouted.

  ‘Cameron’s trying to kill Tom!’ shrieked Morag.

  ‘Ach! He struck the first blow,’ argued Cameron. ‘I’m sick of him walking round saying mad things all the time. It serves him right.’

  Missie Grierson took the clay pipe from her mouth and let out a great cloud of smoke. ‘Haven’t we enough trouble to contend with, without you bairns going at each other like wild animals?’ she cried. She glared at Cameron. ‘You,’ she said. ‘The pigs still need their food, even if we have precious little for ourselves. Get out there and feed them.’

  ‘Oh, but Missie Grierson, Tom–’

  ‘Out, I say! Morag, you go with him.’

  ‘Do I have to?’ complained Morag.

  ‘Aye. Don’t vex me, girl. I’ve had enough trouble for one day and I’m likely to take a switch to your backside. Now, go on, the pair of you.’ Cameron walked over and collected the scrap bucket. He headed grumpily towards the back door. Morag trudged after him.

  Missie Grierson stood there, looking down at Tom. ‘Well, don’t just lie there, boy, get yourself upright.’ She fished in a pocket and found a grubby kerchief, which she pressed into his hand as he struggled to his feet. ‘Clean yourself up,’ she said. She indicated that he should take a seat and then settled into the one beside him. She watched as Tom dabbed at his bloody nose. ‘You all right now?’ she asked him.

  He nodded.

  ‘What was the fight about?’

  ‘Oh, it was just something that Cameron said about me. He keeps saying that I’m not right in the head. But he doesn’t understand. I’m just different.’

  Missie Grierson nodded. ‘I’ll tell you what I know,’ she said. ‘There’s a young girl in the room above who’s just made the most miraculous recovery in history and it’s all due to you and your magic pills.’ She took a couple more puffs on her pipe and looked at him intently. ‘So yes, I think you are different. I also think it’s time you told me the truth, Tom. Who are you? And where did you come from?’

  Thirteen

  Tom lay in an improvised bed on the kitchen floor, unable to sleep. Beside him, Cameron was snoring gently, his back turned. Tom had tried apologising to him earlier and had even offered to shake the boy’s hand, but Cameron would have none of it and he hadn’t spoken a word to Tom since the fight.

  Because of the quarantine situation, the boys couldn’t go up to their usual room under the eaves of the building and this was the only solution that Missie Grierson had been able to come up with: a jumble of bedding laid out on the hard sl
abs of the kitchen floor, a Spartan arrangement that made the meagre bed in the roof-space seem like paradise by comparison. Whichever way Tom tried to stretch himself out, he could feel the chill touch of the stone slabs pressing through the woollen blankets beneath him and he was left to lie there, thinking about what had happened earlier.

  He’d told Missie Grierson everything, leaving nothing out. To be fair to her, she’d listened patiently to what he had to say, but the look on her face suggested that she was beginning to think Cameron’s opinion of Tom was spot on. A bampot. Tom couldn’t blame her. He wouldn’t have believed it if somebody else had fed him a similar story. It was absolutely mental. There was no other way of describing it.

  The problem was, he had no proof now of where he’d come from. The phone had packed up completely and when he’d shown her the five pound note, she’d just looked baffled. When Tom finally asked her if she believed him she could only shrug her massive shoulders and say that she’d have to think about it, long and hard, before she could offer him an answer.

  Now what else was there for him to do but try to get on with the crazy, scrambled life that had been handed to him and hope that, one day, he’d somehow get back to where he’d come from?

  A scrabbling sound made him look up and, in the rays of moonlight filtering in through the room’s one window, he saw a rat creeping along the wall, the same rat he had seen before, of that he was pretty sure, though he couldn’t for the life of him think why. Didn’t all rats look pretty much the same? This one was moving forward in a straight line, as though it knew exactly where it was going but, when it was about halfway across the room it unexpectedly stopped and turned to look at Tom. Tom felt a chill go through him. It was almost as though the rat knew him and had stopped to say hello. It raised itself up on its hind legs and stayed where it was for the moment, peering at him, its nose twitching agitatedly.

  ‘Shoo!’ hissed Tom, not wanting to wake up Cameron, who was in a bad enough mood already. ‘Go away!’

  The rat tilted its head to one side, as though trying to puzzle out what Tom had said. Then it dropped back onto all fours and began to approach the bed. A sense of total dread settled over Tom. He lay there, his skin crawling, his heart thudding in his chest, hardly daring to breathe as the rat came steadily closer. It reached the foot of the bedding and hesitated, sniffing at the blankets, as though trying to figure something out. Then it came on again. It crept up onto the grimy covers and moved closer, closer, staring at Tom intently all the while. He lay there mesmerised, aware of beads of sweat popping on his brow and running down his face. He wanted to scream out loud but somehow couldn’t make a sound.

  And then, almost before he knew it, the rat was on his chest; it was staring at him as though it knew something and wanted Tom to know about it too. And then, most incredible of all, it reared onto its back legs again and spoke in a tiny, whispering voice.

  ‘He’s not what he seems,’ said the rat and, with that, it whipped around, scampered back along Tom’s prostrate form and onto the floor. It went straight back to the wall and resumed its former course, as though it had dismissed Tom completely. He saw the dark shape of it scuttling along until it passed out of sight behind some wooden barrels.

  Only then did he remember to breathe.

  ‘No way,’ he murmured. Now he knew he really had lost it. Never mind going back in time to 1645, never mind the unplanned visits to various family units that could never be; now he’d been spoken to by a rat! And what had it said to him? He’s not what he seems. What was that supposed to mean?

  Beside him, Cameron murmured something in his sleep and then gave a really creepy-sounding laugh.

  ‘Great,’ muttered Tom. He snuggled deeper into the so-called bed and pulled the grotty covers up over his head. He tried to put his mind in the drawer labelled ‘sleep’ but he had a hard time of it and it was only in the early hours of the morning that he finally located a small gap at the back of the drawer and dropped through it like a coin, into a deep, dreamless darkness.

  He woke alone, with the early morning sunlight streaming onto his face and the sound of a fist banging repeatedly on the front door. He lay for a moment, staring blearily around. There was no sign of Cameron. Why hadn’t he woken Tom when he got up? Still in a bad mood, most probably, wanting to make him look like a layabout.

  Now Tom could hear the sound of voices out in the hall, Cameron’s voice, he thought, followed by a hoarse, muffled rasp that could only have belonged to one person. The talking seemed to go on for quite a while before it was replaced by the thudding of heavy boots going up the stairs.

  The sound galvanised Tom into movement. He clambered out of bed and hurriedly dressed himself, longing, not for the first time, for his real home, where he would have showered himself fully awake with soap and hot water. He went out into the hallway to find the front door left ajar, and now he could hear voices coming from up on the first floor. He hurried up the stairs and found Missie Grierson, Morag and Cameron standing outside Alison’s room.

  ‘What’s happening?’ he asked them. ‘Why didn’t somebody wake me?’

  ‘I thought you could use the sleep,’ Missie Grierson told him. ‘Doctor Rae’s in with Alison now.’

  Tom realised that he was probably supposed to wait out here too, but somehow couldn’t bring himself to do it. He walked past the others and, pushing open the door of the room, went inside. Alison was sitting up in bed, looking perfectly relaxed, while The Doctor bent over her like a huge, black bat, checking her neck for signs of infection. By the window, the man had the hot brazier ready and he also had the metal implements slung across his shoulders, but there was no sign of Joshua this morning. The Doctor turned his masked head and stared at Tom as he entered the room.

  ‘Ah, the magician returns,’ said his muffled voice. He picked up the packet of pills from the bedside table and strolled towards Tom, tapping the cardboard box rhythmically against his leg. ‘There’s quite a transformation here. The girl appears completely cured. No sign of that buboe she had yesterday. No sign whatsoever.’

  Tom smiled proudly. ‘That’s great,’ he said. ‘I told you those pills would do the trick.’

  The masked head nodded. ‘So you did, boy, so you did. But I find myself wondering how was this miracle cure effected?’

  ‘Er . . . I told you. The pills.’

  ‘And what, pray, are the ingredients?’

  Tom shrugged. ‘How would I know?’ he muttered. ‘They’re just pills that you get from the doctor. Medicine. I don’t know what’s in them.’

  ‘But you must have been there when your Doctor . . . forgive me, I forget his name. Something Latin, wasn’t it?’

  ‘Doctor Wikepedia.’

  ‘Yes . . . he must have shown you the ingredients when he made them.’

  ‘Ah, no, it’s not like that, not where I come from. You just hand in your prescription and, ten minutes later, somebody comes out with the pills. And they don’t make them there, obviously; they’ll be made in a factory or something. I mean they must make millions of them . . .’

  ‘Millions? You can get millions of these pills?’

  ‘Er . . . I didn’t say I could get them, I’m just saying they make a lot.’

  The Doctor gestured at Alison, still sitting up in bed and smiling at Tom.

  ‘How do you feel, my dear?’ he asked her.

  ‘Much better,’ said Alison. ‘A little weak, maybe, but nothing more.’

  ‘Hmm.’ The Doctor turned back to look at Tom. ‘Of course, there are some who would say that what you have done here borders on witchcraft,’ he hissed.

  Tom shook his head. ‘Oh no, it’s nothing like that, it’s, er . . . science.’

  ‘Well, as a scientific man myself, I am delighted to hear that. Only . . .’

  ‘Only what?’ asked Tom.

  ‘I spoke to your young friend Cameron on the way in this morning. He told me a few interesting things about you.’

  ‘Did he?’ asked
Tom, doubtfully. ‘Oh, well, I think he’s just in a bad mood with me, because . . .’

  ‘He told me that you’re given to strange hallucinations.’

  ‘Really? Umm . . .’

  ‘He says that you arrived here with some ridiculous notion about being from another time. That you fell through it.’

  ‘Hah. As if!’

  ‘He says that you claim to have an imp in a bottle which allows you to speak to people all over the world . . .’

  ‘Oh. When you put it like that, it does sound kind of dodgy,’ admitted Tom. ‘But there’s a perfectly logical . . .’

  ‘So here’s what I suggest. I’ll take the rest of these Sassenach pills . . . and you’ll come along with me.’

  ‘With you? What do you . . .?’

  ‘Actually, it’s a very propitious time. My right-hand man, Joshua, has taken a bad dose of the contagion himself and I find myself in urgent need of an assistant. I have decided to confer that honour upon you.’

  Tom stood there, hoping that The Doctor didn’t mean what Tom thought he meant.

  ‘You’re saying . . . you want me to do Joshua’s job? Heating up the pokers and all that? I . . . I can’t do that. I’ve got . . . stuff to do here.’

  The Doctor placed a gloved hand on Tom’s shoulder with a grip so tight it made him wince.

  ‘Oh, but I insist,’ he said. ‘I think, with the right training, you’ll make an excellent stickman.’ He spun Tom around and grabbed him by his collar, then started marching him towards the door. ‘We’ll be on our way, shall we?’ he growled. He beckoned with his cane for the brazier man to follow him.

  ‘No! No, wait!’ Tom was propelled out of the room onto the landing, where he saw his three companions waiting for him. Missie Grierson and Morag had looks of horror on their faces, whereas Cameron could barely conceal his glee. ‘Please! No! I . . . I can’t help you. Missie Grierson, tell him!’ he pleaded.

  ‘Doctor Rae!’ Missie Grierson took a step forward to bar The Doctor’s path. ‘I must protest! Young Tom is my ward. I’m the one who has been charged with his upkeep. I’ll no’ stand for you taking him away.’