by Ryan Casey
Adam and I didn’t usually talk about this stuff. Like a snail, I could sense his shell was beginning to crack, exposing that jelly interior. It had been that way for a few weeks now.
Before I could reply, I noticed something glistening on Adam’s face, reflecting the soft glow of the little bed lamp above his head. Usually, I’d think about teasing him, but it didn’t seem right. I didn’t think to ask him if he was okay. I don’t think he wanted me to see his tears.
Adam rolled over onto his side. ‘You’re lucky y’know, Liam. I’d do anything to be you.’
‘I…’ My throat grew heavier. I couldn’t think of what to say. ‘You don’t mean that.’
‘I know your mum and dad are arguing, but at least they’re here. I’ve got nothing. Just you, Gran, Granddad, and Carla. Then Donald.’
‘And Emily,’ I said.
Adam sniffed. ‘Emily doesn’t give a damn, not really.’
I thought about replying. Instead, I reached my arm over to his bed and rested my hand on his arm. I didn’t say anything. The gentle warmth of his arm snuck through the quilt. Maybe I was the lucky one, after all. He breathed softly through the duvet. It was so easy to get bogged down trying to keep him occupied, but the main thing he needed was someone to rest their hand on his arm when he was upset.
Chapter Five
The following morning, we awoke to some good news. Granddad was working on his car, putting a new coat of paint on it. Something to make it look shinier, anyway.
‘Do you boys fancy doing me a massive favour and taking Carla out for a walk?’
Adam leapt towards Carla’s lead and wrestled with her. ‘Just us? On our own?’
Granddad smiled and turned from Adam to look at me. ‘I figured you’re responsible enough to take her out on your own now.’ He turned to Adam, who grinned back at me. ‘But you make sure you let your cousin hold her first, Adam. Then you can have a turn.’
‘I, I’m not sure…’ I said.
‘Yeah, he ain’t sure, let me have her,’ Adam said.
Granddad stopped painting and turned to face me. ‘My rules or no rules. Liam, you take her, she’ll be alright if you hold tight. Then, Adam, you walk her back. I’ve got my spies on you, James Blond and his team, so don’t think of breaking my rules.’ He pointed and squinted at the two of us.
Adam put his head in his hands. ‘It’s James Bond, Granddad. Don’t talk about spying again.’
I powered down the road, dog in hand. Adam launched himself towards the hill in the road, prompting Carla to run after him. On the other end of the lead, I flew forward with her. For a moment, I felt like I was actually flying. We caught up with Adam, and Carla slowed to a walk. The sun beamed in full force, and Mr. Biggs tended to his garden. The smell of cut grass was rich in the air as butterflies flapped and glistened in the blue light of the sky.
We approached the entrance to the woods, Donald and Emily’s caravans nearby.
‘Give her to me now, cuz, stop hogging her.’ Adam grabbed hold of Carla.
‘But Granddad said—’
‘Granddad called James Bond ‘James Blond.’ So I’ll take her now, if you don’t mind.’ He pulled the lead from my hands and clutched it, puffing his chest out. ‘That’s better ain’t it, girl? Lanky holding you back?’
I looked at the entrance of the woods. At first I thought I saw a large log, but it was something else. I realised it was a grand stag. Giant antlers pierced out of its skull. It stood there almost unrealistically, like a painting.
My jaw dropped as I nudged Adam. ‘Adam, over there, look at that!’
Adam’s eyes grew. His face lit up, and his arms went limp by his side. Unfortunately for us, Carla had spotted the stag, too.
Everything happened in slow motion. Carla jerked forward, pulling her lead from Adam’s hand, and went barking into the woods. The stag vanished as she charged into the deep foliage, hot on its scent. We stood in shock.
‘Adam, you little shit,’ I said, but it was too late. He had already started sprinting towards the woods. I looked around for people, but nobody was watching.
Carla disappeared into the darkness. The distant chime of her lead rattled against the ground like an instrument.
‘Carla! Carla!’ Adam shouted. He stopped at the entrance, where I caught up with him.
‘We’ve got to go in and find her,’ he said, his pale face red and his eyes bloodshot. I was unsure.
‘But Granddad said we can’t go in the woods.’
Adam stamped the ground. ‘Jesus, Liam, she couldn’t have gone far. We’ll nip in and have a look. Grow a pair, for god’s sake.’
‘Okay, alright, but this is your mess.’
The mouth of the woods invited us in, luring us into its belly. We shouted for Carla. We threw stones, and we circled the area. But nothing worked. Carla had gone. The forest had tricked us and taken her away.
‘If you’d just kept hold of her, we wouldn’t be in this mess,’ I said.
‘Well maybe if you hadn’t made such a fuss over a fucking big deer, we wouldn’t be in this mess, either.’ Adam shouted and paced about with his head in his hands.
‘We need to tell Donald. He knows these woods better than anyone,’ I said. ‘He’ll be able to track Carla down. He must be able to.’
I turned round to face the entrance of the woods and was surprised to see Donald approaching.
‘Is something wrong, boys? Thought I heard some commotion,’ he said.
We told him about our ordeal. About the stag. About Carla running off.
‘Funny you should mention a stag. I was just in my cabin fishing out an old photograph of a deer I’d taken some time ago. Small world, huh?’
‘Donald, we need your help,’ I said. ‘We’re in huge trouble if we don’t get Carla back.’
Donald still stared at us, his eyes like glass. He looked distant, like his body was here with us but his mind was somewhere else.
‘Donald, are you with us?’ I said.
Donald came round, again, readjusting himself to the real world. ‘I’m sorry lads, I was miles away. Just what… just with you saying about the stag. Got my imagination going, you know? I’ll keep an eye out for your dog. Just tell your grandparents the truth. They’ll understand. It’ll all be okay when Carla comes back.’
Adam groaned.
‘Donald, we really need your help right now. We need to get her back. Granddad will kill us for this,’ I said, turning my gaze towards Adam. Stupid, careless idiot.
Donald arched his neck and glanced around the woods. He seemed distant.
‘I’ll keep an eye out, boys, but I’m kinda busy at the moment. You need to tell your grandparents as soon as you get home. It won’t be nice, but they need to start searching. She’ll know their voice, or their smell, or something.’
Crestfallen, we turned away from the interior of the woods and headed back home.
*
Telling Granddad was nothing short of torture.
‘I ask you… to do… one simple thing.’ My granddad’s face reddened to traffic-light levels, flickers of spit showering us.
We both stood quietly with our hands in front of us and took what we knew we deserved.
‘I bloody told you, Granddad, she just ran off!’ Adam said. Gran sat on the sofa, looking at us both and shaking her head.
‘Well you clearly weren’t holding her tight enough, were you?’ Granddad shouted.
Adam kicked at the cabinet next to him.
‘Adam…’ I said. I didn’t want him to lose his temper again.
‘No, you shut up.’
‘Don’t speak to your cousin like that,’ Granddad said.
‘Why are you looking at me? Why is this all my fault? Just because I’m younger, it’s always me you blame.’
Granddad shook his head. ‘Oh, be quiet, Adam. It’s because you’re useless. You can’t do one simple thing—’
Adam cracked. ‘Try having your fucking parents kill themselves, fucking drown t
hemselves. Just try it for one fucking day.’
My granddad flinched. Gran covered her ears. I contemplated saying something, but I couldn’t. My cousin’s eyes were red, demonic.
‘You—you pretend that you get it. You pretend it’s something that you can all solve but none of you have any idea,’ Adam said.
‘Adam, that’s not tr—’
‘No, don’t tell me it isn’t true, Granddad. It is true. Your parents didn’t drown themselves. Neither did yours, Gran. And you, Liam, your parents might be arguing, and they might be apart, but at least you’ve still got them. So, stop pretending it’s okay. It’s all just stuck in my head, all of this mess, and I can’t get it out. I can’t fucking get it out!’ Adam threw his head into his hands and collapsed to his knees. He rocked back and forth.
I considered going over to him and putting my hand on his back, but I wasn’t sure this was a good idea. He’d flipped. He could do anything. I wished Emily and Donald were here right now. I wish all his friends were around him.
‘I lost a frigging daughter in this, too, Adam,’ Granddad said, before storming into the bathroom. Gran squeezed her eyes together and kept her hands over her ears.
*
We went to bed early that night. Gran didn’t say another word to either of us. She made her cocoa in her flowery mug and went straight to bed. Adults seem to have a weird way of brushing children’s problems out of the door. It’s like they think they’ll heal with time and forget about it after a couple of games on the Nintendo.
It wasn’t an ignorant thing, I don’t think. Just seemed to happen a lot, especially with my own mum and dad. They sent me off to the caravan where I could run around and make up mysteries. They probably thought it was the best they could do for me, but I wasn’t stupid. I knew something was going on with them. They couldn’t hide that no matter how often they sent me away.
Adam was quiet and faced the wall with his back to me. I knew he was awake because he kept sighing and muttering.
‘Adam… I—you’re alright, aren’t you?’
Adam sighed again. Of course he wasn’t alright. What a stupid thing to say.
‘Adam, we don’t have to talk about stuff. Just so you know I’m here, okay? I know it’s tough, living with grandparents you’ve not spent much time with and stuff like that. But we’re alright really, aren’t we, cuz?’
I got out of bed to head to the kitchen to grab a drink.
‘Thanks, Liam.’
I turned around to look at Adam. He had his eyes closed now. I smiled. ‘You’re welcome, Adam.’
Granddad was still awake in the living room when I went into the kitchen. The tangerine glow of the corner lamp hung over the room. He’d decided to hand design some posters to put up, with various old photos of Carla glued to the front, to aid and speed up her retrieval. I asked him if he wanted any help, and he told me that it was something he had to do. But I could tell he was thankful.
‘You can put some up for me tomorrow,’ he said. ‘You know some of these places better than I do.’ He poured himself a glass of milk.
‘Are you, um… are you okay, Granddad?’ I whispered so that Adam could not hear from the bedroom.
Granddad lifted his glass to his lips before bringing it back down, turning his eyes away from me. ‘I will be, kid, I will be. You go to bed.’
He sat down and glued another picture of Carla to a piece of paper. He didn’t look at me again.
Chapter Six
I got up before everyone else and noticed that the four ‘Missing Dog’ posters had become twelve. Without the aid of a computer, this feat would’ve taken him a while. I tiptoed around the room and grabbed hold of a bundle of the posters. I’d decided it’d be best if I told a few of the neighbours about the disappearance so they knew what they were looking for. I should also probably tell Emily, seeing as we hadn’t seen her since the day before. Even though I grumbled when it happened, I missed her knocking at the door at that early hour.
The first place I pinned up one of Granddad’s home-crafted flyers was outside the caravan at the top of the road, as this was in the direct eye line of any car or person who happened to turn onto our stretch. It was good to get out of the caravan on my own. It felt like the other times I’d visited without Adam. Sometimes it had been better like that. I walked a bit further, around the corner and up the road opposite the entrance to the wasteland. It was best if I got out of the way for a while. Adam would be able to handle things in his own way and would hopefully resolve the problem with Granddad. I didn’t like arguments. They reminded me of bad times back home.
I stopped by at Emily’s after I’d pinned five posters up in various eye-grabbing spots around the site. Her bedroom blinds were closed. Strange. It wasn’t like Emily not to be up and about, seeing as it was now approaching 8:00 am. I was about to leave when I heard a voice call out from somewhere around the front of the van. It was Emily’s dad.
‘If you stare at our van any longer, someone might think you’re a statue, kid.’
Emily’s dad had an interesting presence. He constantly wore a frown that dug into his forehead. He was short, well-built, and had a blank expression across his face. His eyes were as blue as the sea I’d seen on holiday in Turkey, and his mouth flat and immobile, as if smiling were a physical impossibility.
‘I—I was just…’ I hesitated.
‘Emily’s ill. Got a cold. Been in bed all day yesterday. She’ll be back out again soon,’ he said.
‘Um thanks, Mr. Beadsley… I was just, er, wondering if you’d heard about my dog?’
He walked over to me and snatched a poster from my hands. ‘The old mutt’s done one? Shame, kid. I’ll let you know if I see her. Can’t have got far with old legs like hers.’
I tried to laugh. He turned his back to me, walking towards his caravan. The sound of voices escaped the living room as he opened his door, the television blaring as usual. They always seemed to keep the front curtains shut. It was so gloomy in there. I worried that if they left the door open too long some of that darkness might weasel its way out into the caravan site and engulf us all. I didn’t really like going round to Emily’s van.
I set off with my remaining posters towards Donald’s cabin. I wondered if he’d seen anything since yesterday and whether he was less busy today. It wasn’t like him to go so quiet.
Donald wasn’t around today. I tried his caravan before moving on to his cabin, but the door was padlocked shut. I hadn’t seen him since he acted all weird when Carla went missing yesterday. The cabin itself was hardly easy on the eye. The wood was like dark mud with moss sprouting out of the stony roof. He had made the garden nice though, with a few gnomes, a water feature, and various arrangements of plants and flowers. We had never been inside the cabin. I figured there were top-secret documents in there, mystery-related. Or photographs, developing like they did on washing lines in the olden days. He’d showed us some in the past: beautiful pictures of the sun, close-ups of animals. Had he gone to try to find the stag from the other day and got lost out there or something? That wasn’t like Donald. He knew this place better than anyone.
I returned to the caravan around mid-morning. Adam pushed his spoon into his Coco Pops, and Granddad sat upright on the end of the chair, clicking his teeth against one another like he always did when he was annoyed about something.
I popped into the kitchen and spoke quietly to Gran. ‘Have they spoken yet?’
She shook her head. ‘You know what they’re both like. Stubborn as anything. Give them a bit more time.’
Gran fried some eggs for her own breakfast.
‘Are you… okay?’ I asked.
Gran nodded. ‘Just think your cousin forgets that we’ve all lost in this, sometimes. But he’s hurting, and we can’t blame him. We do our best, love.’ She turned to me and smiled, her eyes watering. ‘And they say retirement’s supposed to be a happy time, eh?’
A lump grew in my throat and I tried to force a laugh. ‘Well, I went to p
ut some of, um, Granddad’s posters up.’
Gran pulled her hands out of the soapy water of the washing up bowl and wrapped them around me, hugging me. The wet patches seeped through my shirt as her fingernails dug into my back.
‘You’re a good’un. You’re both good’uns,’ she said, frogs leaping round her throat. ‘Carla will come back. I promise you. And when she does, we’ll have a day on the front in Morecambe with her. We can go to the park.’
*
The following day started a little better. When I got up, Adam and Granddad already sat around the table: Granddad with his paper glued to his hand, Adam with his spoon ceremonially dunked in what must have been his fiftieth bowl of Coco Pops this week. Gran hung some washing up outside to dry in the warmth of the sun. She looked down the path, distracted, and I heard her greeting someone—Emily. Seeing her here was a relief, not only because it’d been so long by her standards, but because of the events of the last two days. She skipped up the steps, her brown hair waving in the breeze. A smile covered her face as if her absence the last couple of days hadn’t even occurred.
‘Hello, boys!’ she said, as she marched through the door.
My granddad looked towards her and smiled. ‘I’ll leave you three to it,’ he said, before heading into the back room, paper still glued to his palms. Was he addicted to his newspaper or something? I found the everyday news a bit boring. I mean, every now and then there would be a good, interesting story, something mysterious, like that girl going missing the other day and the stuff about asteroids and meteors getting close to Earth. But a lot of the time, it was all about money rising and falling, or something, or maybe somebody’s cat reading out a sentence. I didn’t care if a cat talked; there were far more intriguing mysteries in the world.
Adam raised his eyebrows and stirred his Coco Pops, peering at Emily. ‘And where have you been these last two days?’ he asked, with a fake adult tone to his speech.
I looked towards Emily.
She scratched at the side of her head before folding her arms. ‘Oh, don’t worry about me.’ She tossed her hair out from her eyes. ‘I wasn’t very well for a day, and we went up to Bareslow yesterday. So I’m sorry I’ve not been around.’
