Watchers

by Philip Caveney

  Will frowned. ‘They er . . . they massacred the entire regiment,’ he said. ‘And scalped them.’

  Mr Varney clapped his hands together.

  ‘Exactly!’ he said,

  Terry stared at him.

  ‘You . . . you want us to go out there and kill the other team?’ he muttered.

  ‘No, of course not! But I do want you to attack them. Attack is the best form of defence. Remember that.’ He looked hopefully around at his team and his gaze finally came to rest on Will. ‘Booth, I can’t believe that I’m saying this, but I want you to take Shaun’s place at centre-forward. Pringle can play full-back today.’

  Will’s mouth fell open.

  ‘Me, sir?’ he said. ‘Centre-forward? Are you . . . sure?’

  ‘No, I’m not sure, I’m desperate. I’d have to be desperate to put you in that position.’

  ‘Don’t beat about the bush,’ muttered Will. ‘Say what you feel.’

  Mr Varney ignored him. ‘As far as I’m concerned there was one decent player on this team and he’s flat on his back in hospital. And I probably want my head examining, but a little voice is telling me to put you in his position and I believe in playing my hunches, so . . . I’m going to give you this one chance. Don’t let me down.’ He glared at Will. ‘I don’t believe for one moment that we have a chance of winning this match, but if we could just salvage a little pride by scoring a goal . . . just one goal, that would be something, wouldn’t it? Do you think you could try and do that?’

  Will shrugged. ‘I’ll have a go,’ he said, and Mr Varney winced.

  ‘Our only hope of getting anything back from St Chad’s is to go out there and fight them. And when I say fight, I don’t mean that literally. But I want you to play hard, as though your very life depended upon it. You others . . .’ He swung a big, index finger around at Will’s teammates. ‘It will be your job to feed Booth the ball at every opportunity. Never mind how many goals they score, no matter how stupid they make you look, your object is to get at least one goal back. Do I make myself clear?’

  There were various nods and grunts around the room. Will sat there feeling very apprehensive. Centre-forward? Why had Kong picked on him? Surely there was somebody else better suited? But when he looked around the blank faces of his teammates, he realised that they were all as bad as each other. He was probably as good a choice as any to take up Shaun’s position.

  Mr Varney had already moved to the door and was holding it open for them. ‘Go out there, lads,’ he said fiercely. ‘Go out there and give them hell.’

  Will dutifully moved towards the door, wishing now that he’d got Mum to wash his kit. He looked forlornly down at his feet and felt a stab of shock go through him. Instead of the battered, mud-encrusted old Dunlops he’d been wearing a moment earlier, his feet were now encased in an odd-looking pair of golden boots. He was so astonished, he momentarily lurched to a halt, but was rammed from behind by the team following him and was obliged to pick up the pace again.

  When had that happened? he wondered. The Watchers . . . it must be part of their game plan. But it would take more than a flash pair of boots to make a football player of him.

  He trotted out onto the school pitch where the team from St Chad’s already waited, murderous gleams in their eyes. Will looked to the sidelines, hoping for a show of support from the small bunch of people who had turned up to support them and he got another shock, because he instantly recognised some faces in the midst of the straggle of onlookers.

  Ari was standing at the back of the crowd, huddled into his heavy coat and staring impassively at the pitch. The playing fields were open to the public, so it wasn’t unusual for there to be the odd stranger standing around, even one as scruffy as Ari.

  A few feet to his left, Will was even more surprised to see his mother. He was so amazed in fact, that he veered instinctively towards her and came to a halt a few feet away from her.

  ‘What are you doing here?’ he asked her.

  She smiled at him.

  ‘Oh, I don’t know. I’d just finished work and it seemed like such a lovely day, so I thought, why not come and cheer Will on?’

  Will looked up at the grey cloud-tumbled sky. A lovely day? What was she on about?

  ‘But you’ve never come to a match before,’ he protested. ‘Never.’

  ‘Well, perhaps it’s time for a change,’ said his mum, a bit defensively. Will noticed that she was smiling apologetically over his shoulder. He turned to find that the rest of the team were still standing behind him, looking vaguely uncomfortable.

  ‘What do you lot want?’ he asked them.

  Terry shrugged. ‘We’re just following you,’ he said. ‘After all, you’re the captain.’ He nodded at Will’s Mum. ‘Hello, Mrs Booth,’ he said.

  The word made Will flinch. He hadn’t actually thought of that. But Shaun had been the team captain and Will had replaced him, so . . .

  ‘You’re the captain now?’ Mum sounded impressed. ‘When did that happen?’

  ‘Er . . . I’ll tell you later,’ Will said. He turned and moved back towards the centre of the pitch, but not before he caught a glimpse of Sophie, standing with a bunch of her female friends, watching him with apparent interest.

  This isn’t happening, he told himself. He went to stand facing his opposite number, a huge muscular lad with cropped blonde hair and a loutish grin, who Will happened to know was called Rodney Cropper. Cropper was a good head and shoulders taller than Will and had a reputation for playing dirty. He looked Will up and down for a moment and didn’t even try to mask a smirk.

  ‘Where’s the usual guy?’ he sneered.

  ‘He injured his leg,’ said Will glumly.

  ‘Yeah? Well, saves me a job,’ said Cropper. ‘You aren’t going to give me any trouble, are you?’

  Will shrugged. ‘Might do,’ he said.

  Cropper laughed unpleasantly. ‘Good,’ he said. ‘I’m in the mood for trouble today.’

  Will swallowed nervously.

  Mr Varney came over, dressed in his ill-fitting referee’s outfit. He was holding a fifty pence piece between his thumb and forefinger.

  ‘All right, lads, let’s have a good clean game,’ he suggested. He looked at Cropper sternly, knowing him of old. ‘No monkey business, ok?’

  Cropper grinned insolently.

  ‘Wouldn’t dream of it,’ he said, but he looked at Will and his eyes told a different story.

  ‘All right,’ said Varney. ‘Booth, you call it.’ He tossed the coin into the air.

  ‘Tails!’ Will said. And sure enough, the coin slapped down onto the mud, tails up. Varney retrieved his coin and handed the ball to Will. The St Chad’s players backed away and took up their positions. They waited, smiling confidently. They had beaten St Brendan’s a dozen times without breaking sweat and clearly expected this to be a pushover.

  Varney blew his whistle.

  Will took a quick look around and decided to start with a straight pass to Terry, who was waiting to his left. He took a couple of steps back, then ran forward and kicked the ball.

  ELEVEN

  Something really weird happened.

  The ball travelled a short distance and then spun and came straight back to Will’s right foot, as though attached by an invisible length of elastic. Will stared down at it in surprise and kicked it a second time. Once again, it only went a little way and came back. He started to move hesitantly forward and the ball went with him.

  He tapped it again, forward this time. It went straight towards Cropper – but as the big centre-forward ran triumphantly to it, it danced away from him and Cropper’s big right foot met nothing but empty air. Taken by surprise, he lost his balance and went down on his backside in the mud. Will, still moving towards him, had no option but to jump over him and the ball, acting as though Will’s foot was a magnet, simply sat on his toe until he landed on the far side. Then it launched itself forward again, snapping repeatedly back like an oversized yo-yo and Will found tha
t he was able to run up the right wing, kicking it repeatedly without losing control of it.

  He couldn’t quite believe what was happening. He could hear his teammates yelling at him to pass them the ball, but every time he tried it, the damn thing just snapped right back to him as though it wanted nothing more than to be reunited with his right foot.

  Another Chad’s player came running at Will and swung a huge mud-encrusted boot at the ball. His toe connected with it and Will expected it to simply fly away from him but instead, the ball seemed to momentarily turn to a lump of concrete. There was a loud crunch and the lad’s brutish face assumed an expression of pure agony. He dropped in his tracks as the ball stayed right where it was, balanced on Will’s toe and he was able to move forward again. He was still some thirty yards from the goal-mouth but he saw an opening and made a final dash, wondering what would happen if he actually tried to score. Would the ball still continue to come back to him? How weird would that look? But there was no time to think about it.

  He pulled back his foot and kicked the ball with all his strength. The thwack as his toe connected with leather seemed to fill his head and too late, he saw that the Chad’s wiry goalkeeper was leaping to intercept the ball. For an instant everything seemed to move in slow motion. He saw the ball whizzing through the air and the goalie leaping forward, arms outspread to capture it. The ball thudded against the goalie’s chest and he got his gloved hands to it, but it was travelling with such force that it simply lifted him clear off his feet and flung him backwards into the net.

  ‘GOAL!!!’ Will heard the roars of his teammates before he’d quite registered what was happening. He stood there, looking at the goalie who was struggling to escape the net which had tangled him up. A moment later, the arms of Will’s teammates were around him, he was being hugged and shaken and even kissed, which he figured was a bit much, but he pulled himself away and trotted back to the kick-off. Terry trotted beside him.

  ‘That was fantastic,’ he yelled. ‘I’ve never seen anything like it. You were like . . . George Best or something. How much training did you say you’d done?’

  ‘I just got lucky,’ said Will, smiling wildly. He threw a glare in Ari’s direction; one that he hoped would warn the Watcher to make things a bit less obvious next time. As he took his position, a mud-stained Rod Cropper came shambling up to him, an expression of total shock on his ugly face.

  ‘You jammy little git,’ he said. ‘You needn’t think you’re going to do that again.’

  But Will did do it again. He scored another four goals without any of his teammates even getting a toe to the ball. Then Ari must have realised he was overdoing it, because Will suddenly found that he could actually pass the ball to whoever he aimed it at. But he continued to be helped in other ways.

  In a frenzied scramble around St Chad’s goal-mouth, Will jumped for a high cross and felt an invisible hand lift him by the seat of his pants, so he got his forehead to a ball that was a good eight feet above the ground. The ball flew off at entirely the wrong angle, but then seemed to curve in mid-air and fly right into the top left corner of the net. A penalty kick that he took in the dying seconds of the first half managed to scatter several members of St Chad’s before it like so many bowling pins, before bouncing up in the air and dropping neatly in front of Terry so he could simply tap it into the net.

  The second half was another triumph and now Will was supplying the other members of his team with easy shots. Even Timothy Pringle managed to score a goal with a wild kick he took right from the back of the field. The ball twisted and looped its way past everybody who tried to stop it and even changed direction at the last instant to evade the keeper’s gloved hands.

  Chad’s, on the other hand, couldn’t seem to do anything right. At one point, Cropper was offered an open goal when the St Brendan’s goalie dived the wrong way. He lashed a powerful kick at the goal, which seemed certain to find its mark . . . but at the last instant, the ball angled upwards, hit the crossbar and bounced back, straight into Cropper’s face, knocking him flat on his back. Totally humiliated, he had to drag himself upright and slink back to his position with the laughter of the onlookers ringing in his ears.

  The final whistle sounded to a score of twelve-nil and the St Brendan’s team reacted with absolute joy, lifting Will onto their shoulders and chairing him off the pitch like a champion. As he was carried away he saw Mum waving and beaming at him and he caught a sly wink from Ari. He looked around for Sophie too, but there was no sign of her and he hoped she hadn’t left before he’d scored a few goals.

  In the changing rooms, the exultation continued. Mr Varney, who had been required to act fairly neutral out on the field stepped into the room, closed the door and performed a comical jig of delight.

  ‘Booth!’ he roared. ‘I can’t believe you’ve been hiding such a talent all these years. You’ve never given me any inkling that you could play like that before.’

  ‘I’ve er . . . been practising,’ said Will modestly. He glanced across the changing room at Terry and saw that his friend was sitting on the bench, looking at him suspiciously, like he knew something was wrong. Will tried smiling at him, but Terry’s expression didn’t change.

  Nervously, Will grabbed his towel and hurried off to the showers. He wanted to get washed and changed and out of there before Terry started asking him questions he couldn’t possibly answer.

  TWELVE

  Terry was waiting for him when he came out of the changing rooms. He was standing there with his bag slung over his shoulder and that same suspicious expression on his face. A patch of mud on his cheek suggested that he hadn’t even bothered having a shower.

  ‘What’s going on?’ he demanded.

  Will adopted a puzzled look. ‘What do you mean?’ he asked.

  ‘Don’t play the innocent with me. Something weird is happening here.’

  ‘I don’t know what you’re talking about. Come on, we’ll miss the bus.’ Will started walking and Terry fell into step beside him, but he hadn’t given up.

  ‘First of all, you say you wish Shaun would break a leg and he very nearly does. Like, one second afterwards! Next, Varney puts you on as centre-forward, even though everyone knows you’re just about the most useless player on the team.’

  ‘Oh, thanks very much,’ said Will.

  ‘Except that you’re not useless any more. You play like Rooney, Beckham and Best all rolled into one. I mean, Will, I saw that ball do things that footballs have never done in the whole history of the game.’

  ‘Er . . . yeah, that was weird, wasn’t it?’ said Will. ‘Talk about lucky breaks.’

  ‘Luck had nothing to do with it,’ bellowed Terry. ‘Oh, and let’s not forget the new football boots.’

  ‘Umm . . . yeah, they were a present from my mum. I think that’s what helped me play better.’

  Terry laughed scornfully.

  ‘There’s no boots in the world that can improve your performance like that,’ he said. ‘And here’s the thing. They weren’t on your feet when you first got changed, I noticed that much. But somewhere between you going out on the pitch and scoring the first goal, that’s when they appeared.’

  Will gave an unconvincing laugh. ‘What do you mean, ‘appeared’? Football boots can’t do that. They . . . they were muddy when I put them on and the pitch was wet, so it must have cleaned them up, that’s how you didn’t notice I was wearing . . .’

  His voice trailed off. They were approaching the bus stop and Will could see Ari standing there waiting for him. The Watcher lifted a hand and waved. Terry stared.

  ‘Who’s that?’ he asked.

  Will’s mind went through some frantic bumps and somersaults. ‘It’s er . . . my Uncle John. Yeah, he . . . he’s visiting us.’

  ‘I’ve never heard you mention an Uncle John before.’

  ‘Er . . . yeah, we don’t see him very often. He’s . . . he’s from Australia.’ They had arrived at the stop now and Ari was coming forward to speak to Will
. ‘Uncle John, this is my friend, Terry,’ he said. ‘I was just telling him how you were visiting us . . . from Australia and everything.’

  Ari paused and looked at Terry.

  ‘Er . . . g’day,’ he said. He reached out a filthy hand to shake and Terry took hold of it with visible reluctance.

  He nodded. ‘You were at the match.’

  ‘Er . . . yeah, it was . . . fair dinkum,’ said Ari, in what had to be the worst Australian accent of all time. Will tried not to wince. ‘He’s a . . . good player, ain’t he?’

  ‘Bit too good if you ask me,’ said Terry. ‘I was just asking him how he’s improved so much.’

  ‘Hmm. Well, I hear he’s been practising really hard,’ said Ari.

  ‘Oh yeah, he told me. Ten minutes kicking the ball against the garage wall, wasn’t it? If I’d realised it was that easy to learn to play like a superstar, I’d have had a go myself.’

  Ari glanced up the road and saw the school bus approaching. ‘Oh, blow this for a game of soldiers,’ he said. He stepped forward, lifted a hand and placed the tip of his index finger against Terry’s forehead. Terry’s expression changed instantly from one of surprise to one that was all dreamy and vacant.

  ‘Oh great, here’s the bus,’ he said, in a weird sing-song voice. ‘Better get going.’ He smiled at Will. ‘You were great,’ he said. ‘Really great. Well, see you later.’

  The bus drew alongside and the doors opened with a loud hiss. Terry gave Will a brief wave and stepped onto the bus. The doors closed and the bus moved away, accelerating off down the road. Will stared after it for a moment and then turned to glare at Ari.

  ‘What did you do to him?’ he demanded.

  ‘Nothing,’ said Ari. ‘Well, something obviously. A little forgetting charm, that’s all. Nothing too serious. It’ll make the events of the last few hours seem a bit vague, that’s all.’

  ‘I’ve missed my bus now,’ complained Will.

  ‘Never mind, we’ll walk. It’s excellent exercise and it will give us a chance to talk.’