Shades of Nothingness

by Gary Fry

  Nevertheless, after the other four had stomped out of the café, Florence surprised Will by getting up from her chair, muttering something incomprehensible, and then heading off in the same direction as her rowdy schoolmates. Which left just Will and Harry.

  “Sorry about that, ” said Will, gaining command of his voice again.

  “What do you mean?” Harry asked in an accent not unlike Will’s.

  “Well, I mean me coming between you and your friends. ”

  The boy looked at the doorway out. “I suppose we’d better go with them. They’ll only make my life miserable next week if I…er, if we don’t join in. ”

  We have to play by their rules, thought Will, and knew this was a phrase he’d often heard his parents use, whenever bills had come through the post or their jobs had proved hard to retain. Nevertheless, still clutching the tissue his new friend had offered, Will said nothing as he followed Harry out of the café and into the main body of the museum.

  In the large front doorway, the other children were waiting.

  Will had hoped a trip to the museum would involve time to look around what the place had to offer. He’d never been to this one before, but knew it had lots of artefacts from the area’s past. Will liked studying history at school and was interested in how the country had come to be the way it was. He understood that major events and significant individuals had shaped it, and also believed that it was important to understand the past to deal with problems in the present.

  As soon as he and Harry appeared in the museum’s hallway, however, Freddy called from the entrance, “Come along, boys. We’ve decided to go outside and have some fun. ”

  Something about the way the gang’s self-appointed leader had spoken sounded sinister, his voice lent a portentous tone by the hollow acoustics of the museum entrance. Freddy simply stood there, staring Will’s way, as the other boys and girls clustered behind him like devoted minions, some more eager than others to express affiliation.

  Bolstered by the stinging of his wounded hand, Will hoisted an arm and pointed up a grand flight of stairs for the next level up. “But I thought I might–” he began, but got no further because that was when Maggie intervened.

  “Oh, you don’t need to know about anything like that, ” the girl said as if reading his mind, and then shuffled forwards to make a neat U-turn, before pacing swiftly outside.

  The rest of the gang followed, leaving Will and Harry—the quiet boy appearing sheepish and conflicted—to pursue with hesitant strides.

  It was just after one o’clock and the daylight was a strange combination of midday brightness and inclement gloom. Will felt his eyes smarting against the glow, and then he shivered in a gathering October chill. At a distance, trees waved bony, limb-like branches, like the skeletons that sometimes appeared in Will’s horror comics…But all that was nonsense, just somewhere for his mind to flee to whenever the real world grew too confusing. He shoved aside these thoughts and started pacing across the museum’s car park.

  The gang—including Harry, who’d rushed ahead as if his future security depended on it—had convened near a wooded area, where a path ran directly into its heart. After reaching them, Will noticed that the path forked off in various directions, each bearing shadows clustered like living things. There was a scent of rotting pine and ripe conkers. The breeze rushed in like nasty nips from vicious crabs. And then Freddy spoke again.

  “We’ve decided, young Will, to play blind man’s bluff. ”

  Will didn’t care for the way he’d been addressed as “young”. After all, the other group members surely weren’t much older, and some— Maggie and Martin, especially—looked a bit younger. But seniority, Will realised at a nebulous level, was often conveyed by superior attitudes, and with the exception of Harry and Florence, each child had exercised this with ease. Indeed, in a voice that never wavered, Rupert endorsed what his friend had just proposed.

  “And since you’re the newcomer, we’ve also decided that you will be it. ”

  “It?”Will had played this game before, even though kids at his own school tended to prefer rougher ones like Bulldogs Run or Slap Tig. Nevertheless, the word “it” had made him feel like an object which could be moved around by others at a whim…He replied querulously, “What…what does that involve?”

  Maggie used those long finger-nailed hands to tug off the scarf she’d been wearing. “We have to blindfold you, ” she explained, coming forwards with little hint of making another U-turn. Reaching him, she spun him around like a commodity she was used to exploiting, and then tied her itchy woollen scarf around the upper half of his head.

  Unable to see, Will sensed other hands working on his body. He felt grubby and violated, quite the opposite of his feelings when Florence had been tending to his wounds. Something sharp jabbed against one arm, and he thought of the dangerous looking penknife carried by unpredictable Rupert. Seconds later, as the scarf tightened around his skull (maybe tall Freddy had set aside his brain-frying mobile to achieve this), he felt another few objects prodded at his neck. But Will quickly suppressed any silly thoughts about vampire teeth and concentrated on not straying further into what was obviously a prickly hedge alongside the path. He detected that powerful aroma of cough sweets from his right and then moved in that direction, knowing he’d be safer that way.

  But soon he found himself alone.

  Darkness ruled, even once he’d snapped open his eyes under the hot, scratchy wool. He held out his arms at full length, accidentally dropping the tissue that had soaked up his blood. But this was no longer a problem: his wound had dried up and only stung a little. It was time to move on. If he wanted to avoid further damage, he should just get on with playing the gang’s stupid game.

  He started shuffling along what he hoped was the path he’d spotted earlier. Before rushing off with multiple scuttling feet, the other children had turned Will around a few times, as if shutting off his vision hadn’t been enough to disorient him. Now he felt drunk, or rather what he imagined this condition would feel like. He’d seen his dad in such a state often enough, especially while struggling with his job at the council before so many redundancies a few years earlier.

  Will heard a whisper up ahead, as if someone had just hissed his name. He struggled blindly along, catching his feet in tangled brambles, which helped him remain on the path he assumed the other children had taken. Then that voice-like sound came again, and with his arms still outstretched, Will hurried forwards, almost tripping. He steadied himself, refusing to believe that the sound of his own shuffling footsteps were sniggers of laughter from elsewhere. He must now be deeper in the wood; the sounds all around him—birds tweeting, creatures prowling in undergrowth—possessed a rich, tinny quality not unlike that inside the museum.

  Should he remove the scarf and abandon the game? Surely there was a payphone back in the building. He had change leftover from the chips he’d helped pay for. He could ring his dad to ask him to come and collect him early…But no, that would jeopardise everything his parents had tried to achieve by insisting on him coming today. Will knew they were keen for him to break away from the kind of friends he’d made at his state school. These were all rough kids, with few scholastic ambitions, but at least they were familiar. Will could predict them; he knew how they thought and felt. However, in the company of these other boys and girls—with the possible exception of Harry and Florence—he found himself bewildered, as blind as he now literally was.

  Just then, something scraped across his left arm. With heat on his face from the scarf, Will had rolled up his jacket sleeves, leaving half the limb bare. His flapping horror comic in one pocket made him yearn to be elsewhere—at home in his bedroom, with just the grisly tales for company. This seemed like a strange desire, but he acknowledged it all the same. He’d always tried to be honest in life, despite so many people and events making this difficult.

  The object against his arm had felt sharp, like the blade of a knife or perhaps sharp fingernails�
��Rupert and Maggie had boasted such respective harmful mechanisms. Whichever one had approached, however, made no difference to the fact that he hadn’t liked the sensation. He grew scared, especially when he heard more of that hiss-like sniggering.

  “Where are you?” he called, thinking of his mum and her warm embrace. “This isn’t fun. Let’s…let’s play something else. Please. ”

  He’d felt uncomfortable making this suggestion in case someone proposed an even crueller game, maybe one involving him assuming another compromising position.

  A buzzing sound, like electric whirring, had just struck up, the sort that might come from some giddy handheld gadget. Had Freddy come close, holding out his expensive phone to take a picture of Will, to upload on the Internet later? Perhaps he and his peers commonly did such things to people like him: manoeuvred them into ridiculous positions as a source of entertainment for themselves and associates. They’d laugh at the way these folk were hoodwinked, at how they foolishly staggered about, seeking direction. They’d scoff at their cheap clothing and functional haircuts, at their lack of knowledge and security in life. Even though people like Will often performed services for such people—tended their gardens, fetched their food, played along with their fickle games—that contemptuous attitude remained. It was maddening and sickening…so why didn’t Will do anything about it?

  The reason was, of course, that he was unable. After all, his dad depended on his job with Freddy’s father, and if he was sacked on account of his son’s behaviour during a recreational event, Will and his mum would also suffer. Dad would surely go back to drinking; their household bills would remain unpaid. Family life would be as bad as it had been in the recent past, and Will, despite having only a hazy memory of those dark days, didn’t want that at all.

  So he must play along; he must participate in this cruel game of life.

  By this time, he’d reached a part of the wood whose atmosphere was notably dense and silent. He was aware of how close to panic his thoughts had grown moments ago. He’d feared far worse acts from the boys and girls than they’d surely intended. Okay, so they’d made him feel uncomfortable, but wasn’t that just a consequence of the game, just a quirk of blind man’s bluff? Their strange behaviour earlier—Freddy’s unfair expectations, Maggie’s rough compromise, Martin’s vampiric prank, Rupert’s armed rage—was simply high spirits dictated by the way the day had developed. They wouldn’t always be unkind, just as Florence and Harry had proved. None of them would simply stand back and observe as someone little more than a boy endangered his life…

  Nevertheless, that was when Will’s feet ceased making whispering noises on soft soil and began issuing a clunking sound, like leather striking wood. Hearing figures shuffle around him and perhaps one stealing up behind with a rapid flurry of paces, he sensed himself losing balance, as if edging along a narrow walkway which presumably spanned an otherwise untraversable crater.

  He stumbled, his feet clattering against the wooden surface. There was clearly nothing on each side of this inches-wide plank. His right foot almost missed a step, falling away into emptiness. Will snatched the leg back. Then the same happened with his left, and he was forced to remedy the situation with a similar frantic manoeuvre. He realised that he must be standing in the middle of a chasm in the wood. Then he put up his hands and tugged off the scarf.

  His surroundings bloomed into focus, like some undesired resurrection. Trees stood around him, but all were unreachable, a good distance away in each direction. The path ran ahead, but before the rickety plank on which he was perched plunged into soil, there was a dark emptiness, a black cavity: a hole in the ground. And he was elevated way above it.

  Then Will looked down.

  The things he saw looking up at him—such creatures, every one expressing hunger and perverse joy—almost caused him to topple into their unforgiving embrace.

  If not for a horizontal length of rope he found close by, he’d surely have fallen. Grabbing the rope, which ran at roughly his height from one side of the hole to the other, he swivelled and glanced back the way he’d come. Just as in the other direction, the rope was attached to a tree trunk. This must be part of an adventure playground for children, but the boy standing at the hole’s first lip—it was Harry, the only one among the group with whom Will had connected today—looked less adventurous than the five other kids baying and beckoning beneath Will.

  He glanced down again and felt his heart perform a treacherous stunt inside him.

  Maybe his was perception adjusting to renewed daylight and over-dramatizing several things he’d associated with them earlier, but he now saw Freddy, Maggie, Rupert, Martin and even Florence in a whole new way.

  The group leader’s phone had rotted his brain. Eroding chunks of flesh had fallen from his temples as the big boy hissed and snarled and waved his vicious arms above his head.

  Beside him stood Maggie, but her hands were now lethal-looking, with savage claws instead of fingernails slashing against the underside of the plank.

  Rupert was brandishing his Swiss army knife, and from its tiny bodywork had produced a heavy sword-like weapon. As he lashed this back and forth, the air was cut in two with a nasty, whistling sound.

  Martin had his teeth back in, but these were no longer plastic. They were real, sinking into the skin around his mouth as he gasped and yearned like a famished vampire, licking blood from his lips as if ardently desiring a Will-sized feast.

  Finally, Florence stood there. She appeared less manic than her companions, as if she’d been coerced into participating in such pernicious rebellion. As Will stared with neediness, however, she gazed unblinkingly back…and then exhaled a mighty breath that set alight the area in front of her face. The flame from her mouth bore a scent of cough sweets turned toxic and rancid.

  Will looked away again.

  He must be imagining all this; he had to be. He closed his eyes; reopened them. Looked again. The same woodland came into focus; the same sounds—hiss, slash, suck, slither, burn—threatened from beneath. Then he glanced back along the length of rope to which he still desperately clung, and saw Harry there, gazing back, his expression plaintive and bemused.

  “Help me, ” Will mouthed, hoping the words could be perceived by the shapes they made on his trembling lips. “I know you’re not one of them. You’re like me. You…you know how hard things are for people like us. ”

  Harry didn’t immediately reply, because that was when someone—it sounded like Freddy, but after such violent transformations, it might be any of Will’s new assailants—said from below, “State scholarship boy, you must pay no attention to the prole. Listen to us. Unfasten the rope from the tree trunk. There’s a good lad. ”

  And before this could elicit a response, someone else—maybe Maggie on this occasion—added in a hectoring voice, “Difficult decisions have to be made. ”

  “Yes, sometimes it’s what we have to do, ” said another of the hungry onlookers. Will thought it had sounded like Rupert. “We’re all in this together. ”

  “Sacrifices are necessary. And this one is justifiable, ” finished a fourth member of the rabid quintet—Martin, almost certainly—and then Florence breathed out another hot mouthful of medicine-scented breath.

  Meanwhile, Will had looked at nobody other than Harry…but then the boy started edging towards the bulky knot securing the rope to which Will clung and which kept him aloft from the creatures below. Will thought of this boy’s parents—social workers, weren’t they?—and intuitively understood that he still had a chance to save himself and perhaps even Harry from such a terrible decision.

  “I have no choice, ” the boy said, mouthing the words, much as Will had earlier. Then he glanced at the baying pack beneath his new friend. “Without their good will, I can’t survive. It’s just the way things are. I…I have to do this. ”

  “No!” Will cried out, at full volume this time as the many sons and daughters of people who ran the country continued screeching and hissing and
beckoning.

  As the knot was untied, however, Will could only think of his horror comic. Indeed, after losing balance and falling from his tenuous perch, the monsters were upon him…and they were much worse than any child’s play fiction.

  THE CARELESS COMPANION

  ———

  (For “NS”)

  There could be a monster lurking in these woods, thought Ian. He had a digital recorder in his pocket, but knew he shouldn’t use it to make story notes. It belonged to the university, and he didn’t want his creative writing getting mixed up with the day job.

  He was headed for the last interview he’d arranged on this latest fieldwork trip, and could then go home: to Sally, his wife, and Vanessa, his beautiful daughter. They both looked forward to whatever tales he conjured while away working, but right now he was short of good ideas. The job had been demanding—travelling around the UK, talking to people in dire situations. He could appreciate that his own life was stable by comparison, but he still wasn’t getting much fiction written. He’d taken the university job because he’d thought it might allow him to support his family at the same time as freeing up time for his stories. No such luck, alas.

  Something moved among the trees in front of the housing estate he was headed for. He’d been unable to access the area in his hire car, because it was a new development in Swansea and hadn’t shown up on his sat-nav system. It was a murky afternoon, and shadows around him squirmed like prowling stalkers.

  Maybe he should keep such impressions to a minimum; there were enough dangerous people around without him inventing more, despite his fondness for the macabre. He’d published around fifty stories in the independent press and hadn’t shown all—especially the controversial ones, often about deranged killers—to his wife, let alone to his daughter.