Lark

by Anthony McGowan

  “I like it here,” Kenny said.

  “Yeah, it’s not bad, is it? And it won’t be long now till we hit that path. Then we’ll find the road and the village, and it’ll all be sound. But let’s see if there’s a signal on this stupid phone, and I’ll tell Dad that we’ll be home a bit late.”

  I reached for the phone in my jacket pocket. My hands were so cold they were as clumsy as flippers. Still no signal, and the battery was down to almost nothing. I held it high, which was stupid – as if an extra six inches would make a difference when the signal has to come all the way down from a satellite that’s orbiting the Earth thousands of kilometres away. Maybe a bit less stupidly I leaned out a little bit, over the fence, then over the cliff and over the water, thinking that maybe that would help.

  And then, for no good reason, the phone fell out of my hand. One second I was holding it, the next second I wasn’t. I saw it slip from my fingers and begin to tumble, turning slowly in the air. I didn’t have time to think much then, not proper stretched‑out thoughts. But maybe a few images flashed into my mind. Jenny, nice Jenny. She’d saved my dad, and so saved us. She’d given me the phone, paid for out of her hard‑earned money from working night shifts as a nurse.

  And so I lunged out after the falling phone. I felt the top of the fence press against my thighs, holding me steady. I stretched a bit further and my fingers just reached the phone. But I couldn’t catch it cleanly. The phone flipped up, and I knew I had it. Like when you go to catch a cricket ball and it bounces out of your hands but pops up and you know you can get it with the second grab.

  And I did. I got the phone. But leaning out that extra few centimetres was too much for the rotten wood of the fence. I heard the crack and felt the fence give. I half turned so that I could see Kenny. I saw his mouth changing shape – from a wide smile to an “o” of horror.

  And then I was falling.

  Eleven

  I think that half turn before I fell saved my life. Without it, I’d have gone straight down – head first onto the rocks beneath. Would you die if you fell down seven or eight metres? Maybe I’d just have broken my neck and spent the rest of my life in a wheelchair, only being able to communicate by blinking.

  Anyway, that half turn meant I was able to throw out my arm, and I just managed to catch the edge of the cliff. There was no way I was ever going to stop myself from falling, but my desperate grab at the cliff slowed my fall. It made sure that I slithered down feet fist, crashing and bashing into the rocky cliff face as I went. My head took one big smash on a jutting fist of rock, but I hit the bottom before I registered it, and then there was a different kind of pain.

  It’s a funny thing, pain. When it happens, it’s the most important thing in the world – a stubbed toe, a burned finger, a bad tooth. You live inside the pain. The pain becomes you. If it’s bad enough, you’d do anything to make it stop. You’d even betray your friend (or your brother). And then it goes away and you forget it. It’s as if you never had the pain. It must be because it’s impossible to remember pain the way you remember other things. Like a times table at school, or the French for dog, or where you put your secret stash of sweets. That kind of remembering means bringing the things back into your head. But to remember a pain would mean having the pain again, same as before, and that’s not how it is. So all you can remember is how you felt about the pain, but not the pain itself. And even that comes back in a weak way, like orange squash with too much water in it. There isn’t the horror you had the first time round.

  So now, when I talk about this, it’s just words – words that I’ve tried to make true. But they’ll never take me back – back to landing on the broken rocks by the side of the stream.

  Instead of me feeling the hardness of the fall, I felt a weird softness. I expected an awful jolt as my legs hit, but it was as if I’d landed in sand. In fact, for a second I thought that’s just what had happened – that I’d been lucky and picked out some patch of sand or mud to land in.

  Except that I slumped forwards and realised that there was only rock. And that the feeling in my legs was changing. The soft feeling was mixed now with something dark and terrible. It was the sort of feeling you get when you’re being chased in a dream by some faceless monster. But the feeling wasn’t fear in my head but fear in my legs. Yeah, that was it. The pain – a sick, grinding ache – began to grow like fear. A terror in my actual flesh and bones.

  I heard a noise above the roar of the monster, the monster that was the stream.

  Tina barking. And a voice. “Nicky! Nicky!”

  And somehow I managed to shout back, “I’m all right, Kenny, I’m OK.”

  But I wasn’t. I’d landed on a narrow section of flat rock and gravel in between the cliff and the rushing water of the stream. My hands were stinging – I’d come down feet first but then slapped down hard. I looked at my hands. It was only then that I realised the phone was gone. Dropped in the river or smashed on the rocks, I didn’t know. One of my fingers was bent at a weird angle. It hurt, but I knew that wasn’t the real problem.

  I looked down at my legs, terrified about what I might see. I was on my side with my right leg on top of the left. I flexed my ankle and a jolt of white agony shot like a pinball up through my foot and my leg, right up into my head. I made a sound in between a groan and a scream.

  “Nicky!” Kenny’s voice came again. “Nicky!”

  I thought about my brother up there on his own, not knowing.

  “Just wait, Kenny,” I gasped out, trying to make my voice carry to him. “Just give me a second.”

  My right ankle was screwed – that much I knew. But something worse had happened to my left leg, the one underneath. I didn’t even try to move it. The sick feeling came from there. I had a picture in my mind. The kind of broken leg where the bones shatter and the ragged shards of it jab out from your skin.

  I thought I was going to be sick.

  But then I thought that there would be blood. Lots of blood. And my trousers didn’t look bloody.

  So it wasn’t the sort of broken leg with bones poking out. I tried to reach down to touch it, but then another wave of pain came. Not the piercing white icy pain from my ankle but the slow surging fear that pulsed up from the other leg. And it wasn’t that it hurt to move it. I couldn’t. I didn’t know if it was because I was paralysed, or if it was just some deep knowledge I had. A knowledge hidden in the bones themselves, which said “DO NOT MOVE”.

  More yapping from Tina. I tried to twist myself so I could look up, catch Kenny’s eye.

  But it was darker now. The sky was the colour of the painting water you dip your brushes in at school, the colours all running together to make a swirl of purple‑black.

  “Kenny, I’m all right,” I said. “I’m fine. I just need you to do something. I need you to carry on by the stream until you get to the road. And then you’ve got to stop a car and tell them what’s happened. Tell them I’ve fallen down and I need help. They’ll know what to do.”

  Well, that’s sort of what I said. It might not have made as much sense, and there was a bit of gasping and groaning mixed in with it, but that was the gist.

  It was wasted. There was more frantic barking from Tina, and then I saw something darker moving against the shadows of the cliff.

  “Kenny!” I yelled. “Get back! Don’t be an idiot!”

  He was trying to climb down. He was a good climber, Kenny. No tree he couldn’t get up. But this was wet rock. Two of us in a heap at the bottom would be seriously bad news.

  But Kenny was doing OK. There were hand holds and foot holds in the rock. There were stubby shrubs and bushes growing out of it. Kenny was halfway down, then two thirds down, when one of the bushes sticking out betrayed him. I saw him pull away from the rock face and fall towards me. I thought he was going to land right on me. I thought about the agony that would be to my legs more than I thought about Kenny.

  But the climb had taken him a little away from me. He landed with a grunt
on his feet and then fell back on his arse.

  “Jesus, Kenny, are you OK?” I said.

  Kenny sat up and turned to me. He looked sort of funny in his Leeds United hat and scarf.

  “Yeah,” Kenny said. “Sore bum. I thought you were … I thought you were badly …”

  “I’m all right, Ken,” I said. And then, after a second, I added, “Except my leg. It’s broken, I think. Hurts like buggery.”

  I mostly kept bad things from Kenny, but that was when I thought there was no point making him worried or sad. Now I had to let him know that we were in trouble.

  And then I heard Tina barking again. She was still at the top of the cliff, going frantic. And then the barking stopped and I heard her small feet scrabbling at the cliff.

  “Kenny,” I said. “I think Tina’s going to—”

  But she already had. Somehow, she had found a way down, with no more fuss than if she’d just run down the stairs at home.

  She came up to my face and sniffed, and then went to my legs and sniffed again. And then she came beside me, turned around and lay down, her body warm against me.

  Twelve

  So there we were, the three of us, by the side of the stream that had turned into a river, raging with white water, in the near dark, in the middle of absolutely nowhere. And I hurt so much I thought I was going to vomit.

  “You look … not good,” Kenny said.

  “Why did you come down, Kenny?” I groaned after a couple of seconds – seconds I spent trying not to scream.

  “I couldn’t leave you here on your own,” Kenny replied. “What would Dad say?”

  I was still lying twisted on the rocks. I managed to sit up, but the pain made me whine and whimper like a whipped dog. It was even darker down here, almost full‑night, so I could hardly see Kenny.

  “Kenny, you need to go and get help,” I finally gasped.

  “No! I’ll help you. We can … I’ll carry you! It’ll be a piece of piss. Dad says he’s done farts that weigh more than you do.”

  That made me laugh – I remembered Dad saying it when he swung me round as a kid. I couldn’t believe that Kenny remembered it, too. It’s funny what stuck in his head. But my laugh turned into a spluttering cough as the pain surged and raged again.

  “You can’t carry me, Kenny. I’m bigger now, and my legs hurt too much. You’ve got to climb back up there. Can you do it?”

  Kenny looked back up the side of the gorge. “I can try, but it’s very slidy,” he said. “You can slide down, but you can’t slide up.”

  “Have a go,” I said. “You’ve got to be like Spiderman. But be careful. Then get to the road, fast as you can, and wave down a car. It’s the countryside. People are nice. They’ll stop. Tell them what’s happened. Tell them they need to call for help. Police and ambulance.”

  “But I don’t want to leave you by yourself.”

  “I’ve got Tina for company.”

  “It’s nearly night time,” Kenny said. I don’t know if he was thinking about me here by the river or him being chased by the gytrash with its red eyes.

  “Just stay by the river. It’ll take you straight to the road. And, Kenny …”

  “Yeah?”

  “You’ve got to go now. I’m hurt … my legs are all ruined.”

  Normally, Kenny didn’t do hugs any more. When we were younger, he would hug anyone. But someone at his school must have told him hugging was for babies, so he stopped. But he knelt down next to me now and tried to give me an awkward hug. I kissed the top of his head. I don’t know why.

  And then Kenny began to climb back up the side of the gorge. It looked easy at first, because there were broken rocks for him to scramble up. And then he slowed, and I heard his grunts of effort. Dirt and pebbles skittered down.

  “Careful, Kenny,” I shouted, and the shout hurt like fire.

  I saw Kenny leaning backwards in the gloom, and I guessed the rock must overhang there. I saw his legs kicking at nothing, moving in mid‑air. And then he fell back again. It was only two or three metres up, not even halfway to the top, but he grunted with pain when he landed.

  “Kenny, Kenny, you OK?”

  “Yeah,” he said, and got straight back up. “Try again.”

  This time he slithered down before he even reached the overhang.

  He didn’t pause, but tried once more, inching his way up. He made it to the overhang, but it was no good – only a professional climber could have got past it. Kenny was stuck, and I felt nothing but relief when he managed to scramble down again.

  “Can’t do it, our Nicky,” Kenny said, no emotion in his voice.

  I tried to get my head straight so I could think properly. But it was hard. My mind was all over the shop. Drifting forwards and backwards. And then I saw Kenny looking at me, calmly waiting for me to think of something.

  Right, focus.

  He could go back along the stream, to where the banks were less deep and easier to climb up. But back that way the river went right up to the rock walls of the gorge, without any flat bank. Kenny would have to wade in the icy water, and I didn’t know how long for. We were both already frozen to the bone. Getting soaked might … Well, I didn’t want to think about it.

  The other way, downstream towards the road, looked easier. The water flowed even faster, but there was a dry bit of bank in between the stream and the wall of the gorge, and rocks you could scramble over. If that carried on for a while, there was a chance Kenny might make it to a place where he could climb up.

  The shock of the fall had made me forget how freezing cold I was, but now the chattering of my teeth reminded me. It was like when we were kids and I used to make the sound of a machine gun. It was hard to speak. But I got the words out.

  “That way, Kenny,” I said. “Follow the stream that way, until you can climb up. The road can’t be far. You can almost hear it.”

  And I did think that if I tried really hard I could pick out the sound of cars roaring somewhere in the distance. It was probably just the water thundering down the gorge, and the pain and the cold playing tricks with my head.

  Kenny hesitated.

  “I’m scared,” he said.

  “Don’t be daft. I was just joking about the gytrash. It doesn’t exist.”

  “Not of the monster.”

  “What then?” I asked Kenny. “That you’ll get lost?”

  “No.”

  “What?” That word came out more like w‑w‑w‑t‑t‑t because of the chattering.

  “I’m scared you might … you might …” Kenny started saying but couldn’t finish. Then he hugged me again, and I felt his hot tears wet on my cold face.

  “I’ll be fine, our Kenny,” I told him. “But you’ve got to move yourself.”

  “I don’t want to be on my own.”

  “You’ll never be on your own, Kenny. We’ll always be together. But to be together, you’ve got to leave me now. Please. Please.”

  And then Kenny got up and walked away. Tina stood, too. She looked at Kenny and then looked at me. It really seemed like she was trying to work out who needed her more, but it was probably just her trying to decide what her best chance of surviving was. Anyway, Tina made her mind up and trotted off after Kenny. In a few seconds they had gone round a bend and I couldn’t see them any more.

  I was about to let out a huge scream of agony and fear, the scream I’d been holding in ever since I fell. Then Kenny came running back.

  “Here,” he said. “You need these.” He took the scarf and the gloves off.

  “No, Kenny, you have them. I bloody hate Leeds United.”

  “Put ’em on anyway,” Kenny said. “I won’t tell anyone.”

  I think he’d forgotten he was wearing the hat, or he’d have given me that, too. I didn’t remind him. He wrapped the scarf around me and even stretched the gloves out while I slid my hands inside. The gloves were wet from his attempt to climb out, but they still felt good.

  “I’ll be back in two shakes of a lamb’
s tail,” Kenny said, which was something my dad used to say when he was off out to the pub.

  And then he was gone, and Tina with him.

  Thirteen

  I lay back down on the cold wet rock. I was shivering and sick and frightened. If I stayed completely still, the pain from my leg was only a dull throb. But the tiniest movement was agony. And now I was so alone.

  How long would it be? If Kenny could find a way back up onto the rough path by the stream and then get to the road … Well, twenty minutes? Half an hour? But then he had to stop a car. What if there weren’t any? Who would be driving on the moors at night? No, someone would. This wasn’t Outer Mongolia, it was bloody Yorkshire. People everywhere. There hadn’t been a single day of my life that I hadn’t seen people. That was the world. It was full of people. You couldn’t hide from them if you wanted. You’d go into Leeds and there’d be thousands, millions, billions of them, more than you could count. All swarming around, all different but all the same, and none of them knowing who you are. Even the village was getting like that. New houses, new people – people whose stories you’d never find out.

  Cold.

  And it was snowing again. The wind didn’t reach down in the gorge, and the overhanging trees kept some of the snow off. But now it was snowing so hard that big wet flakes still reached me. One landed on my lips and I licked it off. It was nice. I hadn’t realised how thirsty I was. I opened my mouth and hoped more flakes would drop in. But it’s one of those things you learn as a kid: you can’t drink rain or snow, no matter how hard it falls – even when it seems that the sky has more water in it than air.

  I took a glove off and ran my hand over my wet hair, trying to scoop the snow off it. Then I licked my fingers. It was useless.