The Truants

by Lee Markham

  He struggles to pull his sock back on, stuffs his foot into his shoe and pushes himself upright. There is a fresh cold sweat breaking out across his brow. The pain in his arm is plateauing now at a howling juggernaut of all-consuming noise, its very constancy making it somehow easier to bear – when it comes in waves, it is the peaks that really twist the knife; but now the tide is out and the rocky shore fully exposed all the time, it is easier to endure. It doesn’t thud and throb now. It doesn’t ease then ROAR, ease then ROAR, ease then ROAR. Now it just ROARS. Job done. Game over. And he can move on.

  In the hallway he leans down, grabs his coat and gingerly eases it on. His keys are in the pocket. He leaves the flat and makes it halfway down to the ground floor before he remembers the knife. He stops, considers going on without it, then figures against: a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity and he doesn’t want to run the risk of blowing it.

  He drags himself back up to the flat, lets himself in and then hesitates again. Where the fuck is it anyway? Hadn’t it been in his coat? He double-checks his pockets. Not there. He scans the floor around the inside of the front door. There is a pile of crap strewn there, but no knife. Had he put it down somewhere? He can’t even remember getting back to the flat. He closes his eyes and forces his memory to give him something to work with. No. He’d got in, dropped his coat on the floor and headed straight into his room and cooked up. What then?

  John.

  John had come in.

  What had he said?

  Just asked about his arm. Hadn’t he? He was pretty sure that was it. The memory was vague at best. His father was threatening to intrude upon the scene as it replayed behind the fusty curtains of his conscious mind. And that made no sense. But no. He couldn’t join the dots. He might even have lost it before he got back to the flat in the first place.

  Fuck it. He’d just have to explain it to Ste. Doctors can do blood tests and shit anyway, couldn’t they? What the fuck did they need the knife for? The more he thinks about it, the less sense it makes, the less it matters. He leaves the flat again, his mind chewing over questions that are starting to raise their voices: where was the knife? Why did Ste really need it? When did Ste start giving a fuck about Pete anyway? Wasn’t he always kicking the shit out of him as it was? Christ, hadn’t Cal even seen him set the dog on the poor little bastard, laughing, making like it was the funniest fucking thing he’d ever seen?

  And how fucked must he be to think a bag of gear in his flat was anyone’s but his own? And then to think it was Cal’s? And then to phone Cal and tell him to pop round and get it?

  Cal stops in his tracks then and almost makes the smartest decision of his life. He doesn’t know the phrase ‘honeytrap’, doesn’t even really know the concept, but all of these questions outline a not dissimilar notion now trying to solidify in his roiling mind. The notion very nearly changes the course of things. But then the scent of the honey lures more strongly, and insinuates other factors to counter the truth that he’s almost exposed.

  What else could Ste want? Cal doesn’t owe him money. He hasn’t robbed him. Hasn’t even robbed anyone Ste knows. And now that he’s thought about it, he really doesn’t have enough gear left. He does need some more. So even if he doesn’t end up getting the baggy for free after all, he can still tick another one and he’ll be OK until the morning. Then maybe he can take his arm to hospital and tell them he fell down some stairs like he probably should’ve done in the first place. He just needs to calm his fucking nerves. He’s sketching out like a bastard and another baggy and a bit more sleep and everything will be alright. And maybe he can start sorting his shit out tomorrow. Maybe he can even think about kicking the habit tomorrow.

  Yeah. That’s what he’ll do. Go to Ste’s, see what the fuck’s going on, get the free baggy, or tick one, whatever, go home, jack up and deal with everything tomorrow. Sorted.

  At Ste’s he knocks on the door. He doesn’t bang this time. He’s in too much pain and too exhausted and doesn’t have enough adrenaline pumping around his system. He hears footsteps coming down the hallway. The door opens. It’s Donna.

  It’s never Donna.

  She simply lets the door swing open and plods back down the hallway into the sitting room. Cal hesitates yet again, and then follows her in. The place has a funny smell to it. It always smells like shit and old sweat in here, and it still does, but there’s another, unfamiliar smell marbling it. A clean smell. Shampoo?

  Really?

  No matter.

  He passes Pete’s room and the door is closed fully. It’s never closed fully. So is the bathroom door opposite. All of these little things. But none of them enough.

  He walks into the sitting room and freezes. There’s a little black boy, wearing a school uniform, sitting in Ste’s chair, looking at him. Donna is sat upright on the sofa, hands folded in her lap, looking at him. And between them, sat astride the dog, wearing a little wedding suit, head shaved, is Peter. Looking at him.

  The TV isn’t on.

  Everything is wrong.

  ‘Where… where’s Ste?’ Cal stammers feebly.

  ‘Ste’s gone, rat,’ reply all three people in the room in unison, their voice in harmony with another, deeper voice behind him in the hall.

  Cal’s eyes widen in terror, and he spins on his heel to see Ste coming at him, fist raised, swinging down. It smooshes Cal’s nose and his legs sit him down on the floor.

  The black kid, Donna, Peter and Ste – even the dog – all swivel their heads and watch him go down. The last thing he sees before his eyes flutter and he blacks out.

  ‘We need to talk, rat,’ they all trill in hellish harmony. The last thing he hears.

  Then he’s adrift in a darkness that will be the last moment of peace he will experience before the final dash to his appalling death.

  4

  Cal came to in the armchair. His nose smarted and there was blood painted in a stripe from his upper lip, down across his mouth and chin. He wasn’t restrained, but he had no particular urge to move, not confronted with what he was confronted with.

  Sat about the room, looking at him, were all of them – Ste and Donna, Peter and the dog and the black kiddy. The sofa had been pulled across the door to the hallway, and everyone but Ste was on it. Ste was in his chair.

  They sat there and regarded at him with curiously dislocated expressions on their faces. Well, Donna and Ste anyway. The kids looked fearsomely alive and present. Peter looked like no child Cal had ever seen before, but especially unlike the tiny mite that used to lurk in the corners whenever Cal came round here.

  Ste leant forward then, awkwardly, as if shoved, and said, ‘Would you like to take some drugs now, rat? It might help you through what happens next. I won’t be offering again.’

  Cal flinched at that. His arm was howling louder than ever, and his face wasn’t far behind it, and he’d love nothing more than a good hit. But the way Ste had spoken. The words he’d used. They weren’t Ste. Ste had never spoken to him like that. Ste had barely actually ever spoken to him at all, other than to do business. And he had certainly never called him…

  ‘Rat…? Did you call me rat?’ The old-one? From the park? But how…?’

  ‘Oh, I’m sorry…’ began Ste.

  ‘… would you prefer it if I…’ continued Donna.

  ‘… called you something else…’ chimed in the older child.

  ‘… like, perhaps, vermin?’ concluded Peter.

  The dog nodded.

  Then they all chuckled the same malignant chuckle.

  Cal pushed himself back into the chair then and started to shake his head. This had to be the final straw. Please god, let this be it now. The nightmare that was today kept getting worse and worse, and he couldn’t take any more. He wanted to wake up now. But he was already awake. ‘What the fuck? What the fuck?’ he trailed off into a failed attempt at repressed weeping. His blocked nose didn’t help, his sobs expressed themselves fully through his mouth and there was some dribbling involve
d. It wasn’t pretty.

  Peter hopped down from the sofa then and went across to Cal, reached out, took his hand and spoke to him in his lilting baby voice, his pretty blue eyes wide and sincere. ‘OK, rat, OK. I’ll give you one last chance: would you like to take some drugs? I think it might be best if you do.’

  Cal held on to Peter’s hand and looked at the little boy. ‘Why?’ he wailed. ‘What are you going to do to me?’ Then he continued hopelessly, ‘I’m sorry. I wasn’t really going to stick you, but when you grabbed my arm it hurt so bad I just did it, y’know, it just happened, it wasn’t my fault…’

  ‘Of course it wasn’t your fault,’ answered the older child coldly, one finger idly fiddling with a small tear on the inside leg of his trousers as he spoke. ‘It never is your fault. These things just happen. You just happened to get into trouble. You just happened to be carrying a weapon. You just happened to use it. Of course you didn’t mean to. Where is the knife now, rat? You were asked to bring it.’

  ‘I don’t know where it is… it’s gone…’

  ‘And where do you suppose you lost it?’

  ‘I don’t fucking know, do I? I had other things on my mind. Fuck off.’ He bawled these words pleadingly. They had no weight.

  ‘Ahh… there he is… there’s the rat I remember,’ they all intoned darkly. ‘Perhaps if I describe someone to you, you might be able to help me with my enquiries,’ continued the older child. ‘You see I – well, I say “I”, I mean Danny here–’ he patted his chest to indicate he was talking about himself, the black boy, ‘was making his way home from the library, minding his own business, when another boy ran into him, turned round and stuck your knife into his leg.’ Danny stood then and showed Cal where the knife had gone through his trousers and into his leg. ‘See? He did that, and then I was in him, as well as young Peter here, who also cut himself on your knife. I’ve not been dragged into anyone else since then, so I can only assume that the same boy that attacked Danny here still has the knife. I need to find him.’

  ‘OK… OK…’ Cal nodded feebly.

  ‘He had hair much like yours. He was younger than you, but older than Danny. Maybe a year or two older. He was wearing school clothes under a large… bomber jacket is it? No… ski coat… like a quilt?’ Danny looked as if he was having a conversation with himself internally, then he continued, ‘Oh, and he had a friend. Red hair. Curly. Freckles.’

  Cal’s eyes widened ever so slightly at that.

  Danny tilted his head, ‘And the redhead said his name: he called him John. You know who it is, don’t you, rat?’

  Cal shook his head and lied. Badly.

  ‘You do know, of course, that there are other ways that I can get the information if I have to. I could just climb in there and take it.’ Danny nodded towards Ste and Donna, who both looked at Cal, and who were both for the briefest of moments allowed to express themselves. And what they expressed was a sheer wall of confused terror, of being possessed, inhabited. Plagued. And then they were gone again, buried, and the dislocated absence was once more back in their place.

  Cal hesitated, but not for any worthwhile amount of time. ‘OK, OK, I’ll tell you… but you gotta promise not to hurt him…’

  ‘I have to promise no such thing, rat…’ – again, all of them – ‘… you will tell me now, or I will climb into your wretched little carapace and rip the information out of your worthless excuse of a soul. Then I will devour you and everyone who has anything to do with you, until I get what I want. Do you understand me?’

  Cal turned away from them, buried his face in the chair and wailed.

  Peter then continued, ‘Or you could just tell me, Cal, and the fate of the child will be in his own hands. If he proffers the knife without resistance, then I see no reason for him to come to any harm.’

  Danny flinched ever so slightly at that. Peter glanced briefly across at him and narrowed his eyes authoritatively. Cal missed this exchange, and gave in. ‘Alright. John’s my kid brother. He must’ve nicked it from my coat or something when I got in this morning.’

  ‘Where can I find him?’

  ‘Fuck knows… he’s never in until late… he just fucks about out all day, innit?’

  Peter sighed with exasperation. ‘Where do you live, Cal? What’s your address? He lives there too, yes?’

  Cal nodded and bit his bottom lip. And then he told them. He told them where his brother could be found.

  ‘Good. I think you’d better give me your keys. Now about those drugs. Perhaps, Ste, you could fix Cal up now?’

  And Ste did. He performed the task like a badly operated marionette. He cooked up a healthy dose, perhaps even an overdose, but enough anyway to send Cal up high enough not to feel too much of what came next.

  Cal wept quietly and proffered his arm when Ste came at him with the needle. Cal looked at Ste, who was mostly not there at all, but just round the edges, in the corner of his eyes, Cal could sense Ste shrieking to be free. But to no avail. Once Ste had finished his task he fell back into his chair.

  Danny and Peter didn’t hesitate then. Danny leapt across the room at Ste, tore a hole in his neck and fed. Ste didn’t resist. Peter went to his mother and did the same. She actually held her son as he drank her life away.

  When Peter was done, he laid a small kiss on her cheek. Planted a rose.

  Cal watched this as he drifted away on his cloud. He watched it and thought it terrible but didn’t much care. He was starting to feel OK again. It had been a rough day. A crazy day. But now, now it was time to put all that behind him, time to forget about it all.

  He was barely aware of them rattling around in the kitchen, and didn’t feel a thing when Danny started sawing at his wrists with the serrated bread-knife.

  He was already dead, his blood pooling across the floor at his feet, by the time they took his teeth.

  5

  The towers looked down on the feral scuttling form of the mother as she dragged herself home. She was in her early thirties and had been a mother longer than she had ever been just a girl. And she’d been on her own all along. Something she had inherited from her own mother. And her mother before that. A true child of the city. Born and bred.

  She pulled her synthetic, zipped and hooded top tight round her frail and malnourished body against the cold. She didn’t really feel the cold, her huddle against it muscle memory more than anything. The chemicals coursing through her veins in ever-diminishing amounts as she metabolised them, shielding her for now from the elements.

  The key turned in the lock but the door resisted. Something snarled up on the floor on the other side. She pushed against it, squeezed into the flat and pulled one of the boys’ coats up off the mat. She cursed and dumped it on the pile of coats and shoes avalanched against the wall just inside the door before closing it behind her. The coat rolled off the top of the pile back onto the mat, and lay in wait for whoever came in next.

  The place was quiet. Deserted. She flicked on the light in the hall. Bedroom doors all shut. Kitchen, bathroom and living room doors all open onto darkened, silent rooms. She bashed on the first bedroom door. ‘Cal. Cal, you in there? Cal!’

  Bangbangbang.

  Silence.

  She turned the handle, pushed open the door and looked in.

  No one there.

  By the light spilling in from the hallway she can see the glint of his discarded needle. She swore under her breath again and pushed the door further open, hit the light switch and headed in. He’s not just left his needle lying there, he’s left his little baggy of gear.

  Silly boy.

  She reached down, picked it up and pocketed it with a mean smile. ‘Confiscated,’ she chuckled to herself. Then she pushed herself upright, headed back out, pulling the door closed behind her, and headed across to the next bedroom door. She tapped gently on this door. ‘Johnny? Johnny baby? You in there?’ She put her ear to the door. Silence. She thought about going in and checking, but there was a little baggy of gear burning a h
ole in her pocket, so she decided to leave it for now. If he wasn’t there it’d only fuck her off and there was nothing she could do about it, so why bother? He’d come back in the end. They always did.

  Into her room next. It was immaculately tidy in here. Dirty though – hadn’t ever been vacuumed or dusted, but everything was put away, and the bed made. Just in case. She reached under her bed and pulled out a small wooden cigar box. Her kit box.

  Then across to the kitchen. Turned the cold tap on and poured herself a glass of water. Her mouth was gacky. She didn’t rattle through the cupboards looking for food. She wasn’t hungry. Tended not to be. And didn’t really get food in. What’s the point? Might as well eat out and then you didn’t have to wash up. Bread, milk and jam generally covered it. One of the boys had been at the bread and jam. Left it out. Figures.

  She headed on into the sitting room, dropped the cigar box onto the coffee table and fumbled her way across to the floor lamp on the other side of the room. She couldn’t face the glare of the ceiling light. The lamp would give her enough illumination by which to sort herself out. Click. On. The curtains were closed. She turned back to the table and the tatty old seats positioned round it and screamed.

  Sitting on the sofa facing the window, their backs to the door, were two children. One of them, a small black boy with strikingly pale eyes in his school uniform, a dark stain on one leg, and the other a white boy, baby, couldn’t be even two yet, head shaved, wearing a wedding suit. They sat there and looked at her like two cats eyeing a mouse.

  ‘What the fuck you doing here? Get out! Go on, fuck off! The pair of ya.’

  Shrill.

  ‘I am waiting for John to come home. He has something of mine,’ both children said in unison. ‘You can wait with me if you’d like.’