by Ally Kennen
“I can’t see anything,” says my dad. “You’re having me on.”
I suddenly feel very tired.
“You’ll see him if you get on top of the bars and look down.” I sound detached. My voice isn’t my own; it’s like I am speaking underwater. I pass my father the key. “Crawl over till you reach the hatch,” I say. “Then take a look inside. You can see him better from above, but you might have to lean over.” I can hardly believe that at last someone else is going to see him and realize just how dangerous he is.
My father grabs one of the bars and gives it a yank.
“Is this thing going to take my weight?” he asks.
“It’s metal but some of the bars are loose.” I hand him a dead chicken out of my rucksack. “If you drop this in, he’ll come right up to the surface.”
My father gives me a funny look, as if he is trying to work out what I am thinking.
But I’m not thinking anything any more. My mind is blank.
I watch as he clambers up the cage and balances himself on the bars at the top.
He is quite old now, my dad. He hasn’t got very good balance. Years of drinking have seen to that. And he’s not very clever. He thinks he is going to feed his son’s pet; like giving a dog a bone, like feeding seed to a budgie. Part of me feels sad. Me and my boy have made it alone for years. Now it is all over.
“Where’s Malackie?” I ask.
“With a mate,” says my dad.
I watch as he shuffles over the bars. His arms wave around as he tries to keep steady. The metal creaks beneath him and I think I can hear some kind of noise coming from the water. But it is like white noise, like the TV isn’t tuned in properly. I can’t get a grip on the exact location.
My father has reached the hatch. He turns the key in the padlock and opens the lid. He lets it fall back on to the bars and the clanging noise rings out. He leans over the hole, peering in. The dead chicken is dangling from his fingers. I hear a creak as the metal gives.
“Watch out,” I shout.
My dad yells out something and the chicken splashes into the water.
F o u r t e e n
I’m not the sort of person who hides behind the cushion in the scary bits. I have to see what’s happening. You’re never going to escape the aliens if you’ve got your eyes closed.
So I watch as the wobbly bar finally gives way and my dad falls heavily, his body straddling the open hatch. There is the sound of water crashing. I see a dark shape propel out of the water and my stomach turns inside out. I see the silhouette of massive jaws opening. The water boils and I am soaked as the creature smashes back down into the foam.
Then, to my amazement, there is a thud as my dad lands in the brambles next to the cage. How did he manage that? Sneaky bugger.
I’m so relieved I can’t speak.
Dad looks like he is winded, he’s clutching his stomach. He’ll be all right.
I take a small step towards the cage. The Beast is thrashing around in there. I bet he’s angry he missed. I fall back. He looks bigger than ever. The loose bar is now bent down into the cage, close to the surface of the water. There’s a big gap in the roof of the cage. I look at the animal inside. Could he get out?
My dad crawls right past me and flops against a tree trunk and sits there gasping. Even through all the facial hair I can see he’s gone pale. I think he’s having some kind of panic attack. There’s a dribble of white stuff leaking from the corner of his mouth and a cut on his forehead. But what I’m worried about is how I’m going to fix the cage. Could I borrow Eric’s welder for a night? Would he notice? Not that I know how to work the thing yet. I will soon though.
Dad grabs a bottle from his pocket and swigs it down. I wonder if he is having a heart attack. It wouldn’t surprise me. He hasn’t exactly had a healthy lifestyle. Does booze rot your arteries?
I have this mad urge to look right inside the cage and see what he is doing. He’s gone so quiet I’m worried he is up to something. I creep over, prepared to leg it if I have to.
He is floating on the surface; his massive head is turned towards me. We eyeball each other. A pair of white ridges run down the centre of his snout between his eyes. A couple of grey feathers stick out from his jaws.
“Sorry, boy,” I whisper. His eyes are black with a grey slit. He is not moving but his eyes are watching me as I move round the cage.
I look up at the broken bar and the open hatch.
This is it, I think to myself.
Have you ever had a nightmare, when you wake up, and it doesn’t sink in that it isn’t real for at least a few minutes? And even after you realize you are lying in your own comfy bed, you are so shit-scared you can’t move? You know it’s irrational but you lie there, as still as possible, hoping that the evil will pass over you. I feel like that now. I’ve had nightmares about this. About him escaping. About him following me everywhere I go. If he gets out I’ll never be able to go out alone again. And never after dark. And never near deep water. He knows my scent. He connects me with food. He’ll track me down one day.
I smell my father coming up behind me. He is breathing fast, horrible wheezy breaths. I wonder what he is thinking.
“Are you going to get me a gun now?” I ask. To my surprise, my dad claps me on the shoulder.
“Are you mad? He’s worth a bloody fortune.”
I feel tired. I want to go home. I want to go back and annoy Carol and see what Robert is up to. I don’t want to be here, stuck between my gross old dad and a killer reptile.
“Stephen,” pants my dad. He jigs up and down. His eyes flicker from me to the cage. “Let me sell him for you. We’ll be laughing.”
“Who’d want to buy that?” I ask. “A zoo?”
I think my dad smells worse when he’s wound up.
He taps the side of his nose. “I got contacts who’d go mad for this.”
I can’t think of anyone who would want him. Not unless they were thinking of suicide. Crazy old man.
My dad leans close to me and his beard scratches my ear.
“Fighting,” he whispers and his breath stinks of alcohol. “Imagine him against a pack of twenty pit bulls.”
This is the wrong thing to say to me.
“Is this what you’re intending to do with Malackie?” I ask.
My dad susses I am not happy.
“A grizzly bear then,” he says pulling at his beard. He can’t keep still. “Or a pond rammed full of piranha.”
“You’re disgusting,” I say. Why did I bring him here? I must be mad.
My father puts his hand on my shoulder and guides me away from the cage. He seems to have forgotten about his injured ankle.
“We’d get twenty grand for him,” he says. “We can split it. Don’t tell me you don’t need the money?”
I reckon the Beast can sense what we are talking about because he starts hissing gently.
“They can climb trees you know,” says my dad. “Bloody trees!”
It begins to drizzle with rain and we just stare at each other. My bad tooth starts buzzing. I thought it was better. Then there is a sound which sends a chill over me. It starts off quiet then it gets louder. It is a noise I have heard in my worst dreams. A dull thump, thump, thump; the sound of thick skin on metal. I turn back to the cage. My boy has pulled himself up to the highest ledge and has grabbed a bar with his jaws. He twists his body back and forth, back and forth, smashing into the bars with his tail. His snout is sticking right out of the bars. I could touch him if I wanted. I’ve never seen as much of him out of the water before. I’m surprised how dark and rough looking he is, almost black with green flecks of algae and things like little barnacles stuck to his skin.
The joins in the metal don’t look secure enough. How old are they? If one bar has rusted through, why shouldn’t all the others? He crashes his weight against th
e metal, over and over. I wonder if he has done this before, maybe countless times. I wonder if the noise can be heard from the path. Probably not, or someone would have come looking to find out what it was.
“Dad,” I say. “Let’s get out of here.”
But my father is gazing through the bars.
“Look at that,” he breathes. “Look at the size of it.”
The neck of the bottle pokes out of my dad’s coat pocket. I reach in and pull it out. There is only about a centimetre of brown liquid in the bottom.
FINEST WHISKY.
Dad grabs it back off me. No wonder he’s acting so weird. He’s pissed up to his eyeballs. He starts shaking the bars.
“Go on my son, come and eat me,” he shouts.
“Shut up,” I say. I have to get my dad out of there. I’m scared, I admit it. If the Beast breaks out, he’ll kill us both. We won’t have a chance.
“Come on, Dad.” I pull at his sleeve. “This is too dangerous.”
But he’s lost it. He’s found his stick from somewhere and pokes it in the cage with these crazy darting movements, jabbing it into the thick flesh.
“Stop it, Dad,” I shout and try and pull the stick away but my dad swipes me aside like I am a fly. I was wrong about his strength. I thought I was nearly as tough as him by now. But I’m not. I think the fright has driven him crazy. I sit on the grass. I might just run off and leave them both. If my old man gets eaten alive, who could connect that with me?
BANG BANG BANG.
The sound echoes out over the water as the animal smashes against the bars. My dad swigs the last of his whisky and chucks the bottle at the cage.
“Didn’t get me, did you, you bastard? Didn’t get your nice fresh meat.”
I’ve seen my dad like this before. Only last time it was in a pub car park and he was taunting a couple of blokes. I don’t remember why, but I do know he was acting just like this, trying to be the hard man and me and Selby were waiting by the fence wishing he’d shut up otherwise we’d all get our heads kicked in.
BANG BANG BANG.
One of the uprights has come loose. Has it always been like that? There are some big trees nearby. Apart from that I am surrounded by bracken, grass and sheep shit. There’s no protection.
BANG BANG BANG.
My old man is going crazy: jabbing his stick and laughing. I watch him from a distance, but I can’t take my eyes away from the loose strut.
A prickly feeling comes over me as I see another upright is wobbling. No, there’s more. Four bars are moving freely at the top of the cage.
BANG BANG BANG.
He won’t be able to get out, I tell myself. He won’t be able to pull apart the bars. They’re made of metal.
“Dad, stop it,” I shout.
My dad can’t stop himself when he’s like this. Eventually he or someone gets punched out or the police arrive. But there’s no chance of either of those things happening here.
“He’s really angry.” My voice breaks. I’m freaking.
“I’m teaching him a lesson,” pants my dad. “The ugly bastard.”
This is the worst thing that could have happened.
BANG BANG.
I heard there are a few words people say just before they die:
1) God
2) Mum
3) Shit
“Shit,” I say.
I freeze and my father screams as the Beast slams into the wobbly bars with the entire weight of his body. He’s got his head between the bars. It’s hideous. Massive, massive jaws. I stop breathing. With a jerky movement he smashes the rest of his body through. He thuds into the bracken. He’s done it. He’s out. He moves so quickly it’s pointless for me to run. I’m crapping myself and I can’t move. The size of him takes my breath away. I reckon he’s about twelve feet long.
I hear shouting. I don’t know if it is me or my dad. The animal moves fast, heading for the water. I can’t see anything except him moving over the ground in a dark blur. He runs like a fucking dinosaur, moving from side to side, flattening everything with his massive, thick tail. He climbs over the bank and I am just in time to see him slip over the shingle and into the reservoir.
The water closes over him. I see a dark shape swimming out towards the middle of the lake.
He’s gone.
F i f t e e n
Number 11. Aged seventeen. Let a maneating crocodile loose into a reservoir.
I’m driving like a madman.
There’s a killer loose in Gruton Reservoir. I know what he can do. I read it on the Internet. He is a crocodylus porosus, an estuarine crocodile. A pukpuk. He is also called a saltwater crocodile because he can live in the sea as well as fresh water. He could grow up to eighteen feet and live till he is seventy years old. Soon he will start looking for food. Salties attack by surprising and pouncing on their prey. They’ll eat anything. They’ll do whatever it takes to survive. I have seen him tear a pig in half. I have seen him lunge for me. I don’t reckon he will let himself starve. Even now he might be eyeing a family picnicking on the shore.
I slow the car as I reach a junction. I am weak and my head feels tight and weird. I pull over into the verge and switch off the engine. I left my dad behind. I couldn’t cope with him. I ran off and left him at the lake looking at the water with his mouth open.
I’m so angry I don’t think I’ll want to ever see him again.
My head clears and I look at my watch. It is five to one. I realize I am hungry and I need to eat more than anything else. I start up the car and drive.
Verity gives me the once-over when I come indoors.
“Where have you been?” she asks. “Not at work?”
“Nope,” I say. I decide then that I am never going to go back. What is the point of spending my last days of freedom in a stinking meat factory when any minute I’m going to get done for illegally owning a dangerous animal, or maybe I’ll just get eaten alive. The Dam Man will remember me asking questions about his tooth necklace. The pigs will trace me. Whatever happens, I have a very strong sense that time is running out.
“Stephen, are you all right?” Verity plays with the handle of the broom.
“Fine, it’s just the drugs. They’ll wear off in a minute,” I say.
Verity sucks in her breath. She is not amused. She has been different to me since the fire. I mean, it has been proved that I couldn’t have done it, but I think, in her heart of hearts, like Jimmy, she holds me responsible.
“There is half a quiche in the fridge,” she says. “If you’re hungry.”
Thank God for Verity. I cut myself a massive slice and eat it with my fingers. It is cold and the cheese is too strong but I bite through peppers and bacon and my mouth waters even as I am stuffing it in. The pastry tastes of butter and there are chunks of onion and mushroom. I drop crumbs all over the floor.
“Plate,” snaps Verity and slams one down in front of me.
“It is,” I say. I ram the last bit of pastry into my mouth. I give her a grin. She has saved my life.
“Stephen,” says Verity. “I’ve bought you a bag to move your stuff.” She fishes behind a chair and brings out a massive rucksack. “I think you’ll find it useful.”
This time yesterday I would probably have told her where to stick her bag. But now nothing seems to matter. In fact, the sooner I leave this place the better.
“It’s lovely,” I say, taking it. “I can live in it.”
I lie on my bed for the rest of the day. I’m not doing anything. Just thinking and looking at the ceiling. No one disturbs me. I like it this way. But every time I hear the phone ring I tense up. I expect it to be the police, or Mindy. But none of the calls are for me. I look at the wallpaper and think about the drawings behind my head. I don’t mind them any more. They are harmless. How could I have let them spook me out for so long? One crazy
kid taking out his frustration with a felt tip. My trainer is lying on its side on the carpet. The sole has a complicated triangular pattern with deep grooves in the rubber. It looks like a crocodile skin. I think I might be getting ill. Maybe the flu or something. I turn over.
I wonder what he is doing now. I imagine his tail sliding through the reeds, his mouth opening to snap at a fish. Maybe he is looking at the bottom of a rowing boat. Looking and wondering. Maybe he gives it a little knock with his snout. Maybe there are some kids inside, who have blagged themselves a boat. Maybe the knock is enough to tip them into the water. Maybe, maybe.
I think of my dad. I didn’t offer to give him a lift. I just ran. For all I know, the monster could have come right back out of the water and eaten him alive. I hope he likes his meat well marinated.
Maybe I could leave an anonymous message at the police station. But would anyone take it seriously? Would you? I doubt it. The police always mess things up. I’m not going to risk getting involved with them. No way.
I could leave it there, couldn’t I? I could leave the Reynolds’s home soon and never come back. I could slip quietly out into the world and never be seen again.
But life is never like that, is it? Things keep happening until you die.
I have to leave my room to take a leak and Carol comes up to me on the landing. She’s holding a school exercise book.
“What’s the difference between a crocodile and an alligator?” she asks me.
There is a long silence.
