They both stood straddling the void where earth used to be.
‘Don’t go down there,’ said Trey. ‘You don’t know what’s down there.’
Kay tipped her toe at the edge and a little bit of grit scrambled free. They stood looking at the hole. It might be nothing, but it was definitely something.
‘What you think’s there?’ asked Trey, one foot staged ready to step.
Kay shrugged. ‘More of the same I ’spect, nothin and nothin again.’
‘Could be a way out?’
Kay shrugged and she descended the steps in one jump. ‘Hurry up the water’s gettin higher.’
Trey followed Kay into the pool of light.
‘It goes someplace,’ she said.
‘Where?’
‘Someplace other than here and that’ll do me.’ She swung the torch and he could see the room was smaller than the ones upstairs. This was the entrance to the tunnels proper. They watched the light contract and crawl towards the passage and its strength was good but not so good that it would show the whole way.
Trey stood in the light beside her and something in him took pleasure in being her equal at last and he was about to speak when David shouted something about the gang above them.
‘I’ll go look,’ said Trey. He climbed back up to the secret door despite the running rats for a quick look at the outside world.
The rain still slashed at the earth and lightning stabbed thin scissor-snap flashes towards the surrounding tors and the sporadic light made something of the black forever night.
A party was happening out there in the dark. Boys and girls who may once have been part friend or acquaintance danced rolling drunk and merry-mad through the muck and slop, wild things sniffing out a trail, good for the chase.
‘They’re half partyin, half huntin,’ he said and he fixed the door behind him as best he could and he returned to the others and helped David heave Lamby on to his back and they followed Kay down the steps into the belly of earth.
They went slow, Kay upfront leading with the torch and Trey to the rear, occasionally flipping his lighter for the comfort cuddle, David bent to keep from knocking the boy against the low bump ceiling and the little light they had was lost at their feet.
‘How close were them others?’ asked Kay.
‘Close.’
‘How close?’
‘Close and closin.’
‘You think they know bout this place?’
‘Dunno,’ he said and he wished they could go a little faster in any case.
They went on and terror walked alongside them. Silence was a startling heartbeat in their ears and there were times when they thought they heard the sound of kids playing at soldiers trampling the ground above their heads.
Trey thought about the night his parents were killed and it was more than thought; he was back home hiding in the strange evening light, dust stars falling and circling all around, hope and heaven and hell settling, turning him, pumping his veins with bad-spirit blood, closing and trapping him within.
Trey kept walking, but in his mind he was fighting. Past, present and future at war with the scared little boy sitting inside and he told himself that today he would win; from now on he would always win. Each and every battle he would jump and stamp to his own drum and he would have his future return. The fight would no longer be a battle inside but in his hands where he could let it go. Despite everything he was getting somewhere with his thinking and he liked that.
‘I got a plan,’ he said and he stopped suddenly.
‘What plan?’ asked Kay and she shone the light on to his face.
‘A plan I gotta do alone.’ He looked at Lamby and told them they had to go on without him.
‘Where you goin?’ asked Kay.
‘Back up.’
‘Above ground? You int gonna do nothin stupid, are you?’
Trey nodded and said he hoped so.
‘Don’t be no hero.’
Trey shook his head and said that was one word that would never belong to him.
‘I gotta do this,’ he said. ‘Prove I can do it.’
‘You int got to prove nothin, not to me anyway.’
‘To myself. I gotta do this, Kay, and you gotta let me.’
The two unlikely friends stood a moment and Trey wondered if she understood what he was asking and when she nodded that she did he smiled.
‘Don’t get killed,’ she said and she turned her back and told David to follow her and he did.
Trey couldn’t be sure if Wilder knew about the trapdoor, but he couldn’t risk him hunting down his friends. He took his time to retrace their footsteps and occasionally he flicked his lighter for small flame guidance. Up through the narrow gangways with the water shin-bone high he went on until finally he reached the steps that led to the door.
He held his breath a moment and listened out for the revellers through the hammer-hard rain and when he reckoned on the all-clear he pushed the broken door aside and crept out.
It felt odd to be back amongst the familiar, strange to have to spend one heartbeat more on the battleground, it was as if he was not done with dodging death.
He lay flat to the ground. His mouth a millimetre from mud and his eyes scanning the horizon, it was as if he himself was the sniper.
‘Wilder,’ he whispered. ‘Wilder, where you at?’ The sudden quiet was not what he expected. It unnerved him and he thought maybe the gang had found their tracks.
Trey pulled himself up on to his elbows and he took his time to crawl into the quarry. The further he was from the tunnels the better. He crawled and then he stooped and when he neared the quarry bottom with the puddle turned lagoon he stood and he ran until he reached halfway up the other side.
‘Wilder,’ he shouted. He listened. ‘Wilder, where you at?’
He heard one lonely gunshot go up like a flare and he shouted his enemy’s name until he saw the jagged shadow-line of heads frame the edge of the quarry.
Trey hoped his cousin would be stupid enough not to think to circle the pit. He thought for a moment that he would have to taunt him a little, throw some bait so he might come to him.
‘Rudeboy,’ Wilder shouted and he jumped from the side of the crater. Trey waited until his cousin was halfway down in the skid before he made the break.
He ran from the quarry where the gradient was less steep and on towards where he could see the outline of the camp buildings. Dawn was heading fast, pulling the rain clouds into hiding and replacing the dark with thin beginning light.
Trey could feel his heart beat crazy in his chest and his bare feet stung from the rock and stubble marshland and still he went on running.
Time was unimportant now. A few snatched minutes were all he had on Wilder and his gang, but with all their shouting and firing at Trey they were slow.
When he was near to the buildings he made sure to hide in the shadows. To go unnoticed was to keep from some gang wannabe telling all to Wilder. He went on.
Past the slaughterhouse and the bunkhouses and out across the clearing and when he saw the farmhouse he picked up speed and sprinted towards the back.
The things you notice in passing and the things you notice through obsession in the end only come down to one thing; memory when insight is needed. Trey had noticed the two-thousand-litre kerosene tank out the back of the house on his first day of camp walkabout; it had settled into the back of his mind and had made itself comfy, a dormant piece of information, until now.
The tank that was meant for warmth had a new destiny. It was meant for firing and a hundred times over it was meant for this.
Trey was quick to climb up to the tank and he turned the cap and the smell was catnip to him.
He could hear that the shouting was getting nearer, closing in on him with his fate perhaps at the whim of a trigger after all. He took his lighter from his pocket and rubbed his thumb across its calming steel one last time. It had become a part of him, had given him both guts and guidance, and here now it wou
ld be his sacrifice.
He flicked the flint for the last time, dropped it into the tank and ran for his life.
The explosion was enough to send Trey to the ground, enough to have his ears go deaf and his eyes blind a moment as he hit the wet earth.
He got up and despite everything he ran because he knew in that one brief minute the world had stopped turning so he might go on running. Wilder and Anders and all the kids in that camp on that moor would have stopped and stood and stared. This was his wormhole, his escape.
It was only when he reached higher ground that Trey dared stop and he allowed himself a moment’s glory; fire not for the sake but for his future. He put his hand into his pocket with the lighter gone and he held on to the empty space and all the possibilities that in time might settle there. The lighter had done its job. The fire was going strong and Trey could see the flames dart up the side of the timber farmhouse, heading towards the rafters and hooking into every joist in its pursuit of destruction. He saw it glance occasionally from the windows, deciding which one then this one for the crack and slam. He thought about Wilder and knew all his hopes and dreams were in that melt of flame and fury, everything that boy had wished would soon be nothing more than an ashen memory of what could have been.
It was then that Trey turned towards the quarry and the tunnel. His eyes and heart and everything that was soul filled with the beauty of magnificent fire. It was all he would ever need, ever want.
He started to run when he realised dawn was upon him. He jumped the trapdoor and set the broken boards in place. Nothing would come between him and his freedom now, not even the pitch-black tunnel or the water that splashed hip high.
He waded on through the darkness, his feet pulsing with a hundred cuts and bruises and his hands outstretched for both balance and guard. With each step he felt the push and peel of the mud-clubbed walls and it was as if he were walking a tightrope strung between his past and his future. He hoped the tunnel had taken his friends somewhere safe and that it would guide him the same.
He went on and he dug his toes into the compact earth and he asked some god any god to guide him towards the place where his friends had passed by.
The fire that was in his heart filtered into his eyes and it lit up his future with a million possibilities. He glanced behind him to check for chasing signs but nothing followed.
The camp was behind them. Trey knew this because his new heart told him so. Hope had replaced all else and a cool wind blowing replaced the soul-fire, it was coming to him, closer and closer. Red had been replaced by blue, a hole at the end of the tunnel, getting closer and closing around.
Trey closed his eyes and felt the wind stretch out to greet him, its fingers about him, gathering, pulling him forward, leading him towards the light; a new day dawning, a new life waiting on the other side of the fence.
‘You dead?’ asked Kay. ‘You breathin?’
Trey smiled and he opened his eyes and saw Kay and he smiled a hundred times over and he looked skyward to see a strip of paradise blue split and break the storm clouds into bubble pieces.
‘Did we make it?’ he asked and he went to sit up. ‘Did we make it to the other side?’
‘Take a look for yourself,’ said Kay and she propped him up against a rock.
Trey looked down into the sharp cut of valley below and through the ridiculous fence towards the camp. From that distance he could see the compound in all its restrictive glory. He could see the flat-packed buildings and the ridge with the scrawny trees and the trenches dug ready for the secret haul things that would never be. Fires still smouldered and puffed out the wet night dregs and kids roamed in territorial packs, hunting for hunting’s sake.
‘How’d you get me up here?’ he asked.
‘David,’ said Kay and Trey looked around to thank him but he was nowhere to be seen. He took some water and asked what had happened and he told her he remembered a lot of setting the fire and a little of running the dark tunnels, but nothing much more than that.
‘You bashed your head comin out; David carried you up this hill, first Lamby and then you. Lucky to have a big lad like that on the team.’
‘Where is everybody?’
‘Gone.’
‘Gone where?’
‘You remember that track that brought you to camp?’
‘Spose.’
‘They headed that way, thought they might pick it up further down the line and then towards the main road.’
‘Lamby still alive?’
‘Just.’
‘Spose he’d be dead by now if he was gonna die, he’s lucky, guess we all are.’
Kay sat next to him and took out a box of matches from her pocket and opened it.
‘What’s that?’ Trey asked.
‘Cigarette.’ She struck a match and lit it.
‘Where you get that from?’ he asked.
‘Bin savin it.’
‘For when?’
‘For now.’ She took a long drag and then passed it to Trey and he took it. ‘Kept it for when we survived.’
‘What if we hadn’t?’
Kay looked at him and shrugged and Trey did the same. They both laughed.
‘Spose I should thank you for savin me life.’
Trey nodded. ‘Go on then.’
‘What?’
‘Thank me.’
Kay shook her head and she thanked him and took the cigarette back into her hand.
‘Spose you owe me one,’ said Trey.
‘You reckon?’
‘I know it.’
‘Don’t get sappy on me now. Lamby was bad enough with all the sad-sap.’
‘That’s true.’ Trey smiled and he could have cried for the sake of happiness. He let his heavy head fall into his hands and shook out the sentimental mush. ‘I feel like crap,’ he said.
‘You look it.’
‘My head hurts.’
‘Course it does.’
They both laughed and Kay asked if he was ready to get going.
‘Not yet.’
‘Take as long as you like.’
‘I will.’
‘Just don’t take forever.’
‘I won’t.’
They sat in silence and watched the new dawn spiral around them and colours settled like pools of dipping rainbow water everywhere they looked. Trey thought about their individual destinies laid out before them beyond the moor, healing the bit of their hearts that hurt the most, and he thought about kin and he smiled. Maybe destiny was a thing after all.
‘I got a brother,’ he said suddenly. ‘Spose you heard Wilder say somethin but, anyway, I got a brother.’ He took a long drink of water and he settled back against the rock to tell Kay his story and about the Preacher and the words came rolling like spitting stones and he didn’t know if they landed right or if they made any sense at all.
‘You gettin any of this?’ he asked.
Kay nodded. ‘Why dint you tell me bout everythin earlier? Could have saved you a whole lot of heartache.’
‘What you mean?’
‘Revenge and all that, it’s a big fat waste of time. Nothin ever comes of it; nothin ever comes from goin after a ghost.’
Trey passed the bottle of water and he took his time to get some way back on to his feet.
‘Kay?’ he asked. ‘How you get to know so much bout everythin?’
‘You jokin?’
‘No really, seems there int nothin you don’t know, seems you’re right in all.’
Kay shrugged. ‘You get to know a lot of things when you’ve had a life like mine, spose anyway. Thing is nothin but trouble comes from revenge. Trouble and heartache and a whole dump load of lost time.’
‘Least I know I won’t be goin after no one no more, Preacher or Wilder or some crazed junkie, none of it matters now.’ He closed his eyes and as if for the first time memory came to him clear as parallel thinking. He saw the chapel cardboard black and cut out in a silhouette against the summer colour sky and the two coffins
coming and passing and entering the gloom. Two coffins, Mum and Dad, and two people dead and all because of something maybe and nothing mostly.
‘I never thought I was there,’ he said suddenly.
‘Where?’ asked Kay.
‘The funeral, had no memory or nothin, like it dint happen.’
He looked at her for one more answer and she told him it was denial and that was all.
‘I dint want to believe it,’ he said. ‘Is that it?’
‘You couldn’t imagine it to believe it. Death’s outside most kids’ circle of thinkin.’
Trey thought about Mum and the way she sometimes came to see him in spirit and he knew it was all connected. He looked down towards camp and he looked beyond mere looking and saw the blue come clean and clear above their heads.
‘Feels like somethin’s been lost, somethin’s been lost and found again.’
‘Like the light,’ said Kay and she started to pack the nothing bits that surrounded them into her sack bag.
‘What you say?’
‘Int that what Lamby says? It’s science, somethin bout scattered light, the purer the sky the deeper the blue we’re set for, the blue is the light that gets lost.’
‘Why’s the light lost?’ asked Trey.
‘The light at the blue end of the spectrum don’t travel the whole way from the sun to us. It dissolves amongst the molecules in the air.’
Trey shrugged and there was something in her words that made sense. ‘Spose a lot’s been lost in all of us.’ He nodded towards the wandering kids below them. Something of innocence had been separated from them all, separated and damaged and lost.
‘We headin?’ he asked.
‘Spose, if you’re up to it.’
‘Course. Where to?’
‘Same way as the others, towards whatever humanity can spare us.’
They descended the hill and were mindful of the compound and they circled it good and wide.
‘So, you gonna walk in there and ask for that brother of yours or you plannin to spring him in the dark?’ asked Kay.
‘Dunno, int thought that far ahead in me thinkin.’
‘You want some help? I’m good at pickin locks.’
‘I wouldn’t mind, if you int got no plans of your own.’
The Light That Gets Lost (Shakespeare Today) Page 18
