Neil felt goose-pimples breaking out all over him. A cold sweat beaded his brow. What the h.e.l.l would a psychopath like that have done to them if he"d caught them? They"d only realised how much of a game it wasn"t when it had been too late to stop it.
Then Daz bundled into the back of him.
"Will you watch where you"re b.l.o.o.d.y going!" Neil spat. "Just because you"re s.h.i.t-scared!"
"I am not s.h.i.t-scared!" Daz replied fiercely.
"You two stop arsing around!" Shane suddenly ordered from several yards in front. "We"re almost there. See."
There was faint light ahead, and they groped stealthily towards it, finding themselves in a wide central corridor, with multiple open doorways on either side. The light was at the far end and came from moonbeams pouring in through a circular skylight high up on a sloping portion of the ceiling. The trio stopped when they reached it. Directly before them, a flight of stairs led down into blackness. To their left, another flight rose up to the higher levels.
"It"s up there somewhere," Shane finally said in a hoa.r.s.e whisper. "Eugene had a den at the back of the thickies" cla.s.s, they reckon."
A dull thump suddenly resounded from somewhere below. They froze. Then Daz clutched Neil by the arm. "What was that?" he hissed. "Christ... it"s Eugene!"
For a moment all three were fixated by the image of that fearsome, faceless giant, charging through the corridors below them, reaching the foot of the stairs, tearing up them like a mad thing, his hair a frenzy of rat-tails, his ma.s.sive arms outspread from wall to wall.
It was too much for Daz.
"Oh Christ..." His voice steadily rose in a wail of terror, and he made to dash away, back towards the toilets, but Shane grabbed him by the collar and slammed him up against the wall. "Just shut up and listen!" he spat.
They held their breaths, straining their ears. Neil felt faint, the blood literally pounding in his temples. His heart sounded as loud as a drum. No other sound came back to them however. Slowly they relaxed again.
"Couldn"t have heard us even if it is Eugene," said Neil after a second, his voice tight. "We haven"t made any noise."
"It isn"t Eugene!" snapped Shane, pushing them both to the foot of the upward staircase. "There"s n.o.body here but us. Now come on... we"re almost there."
There was no actual need for him to push... certainly not as far as Neil was concerned. He had no intention whatever of traipsing back to the toilets by himself, pa.s.sing all those gaping doorways. He complied meekly, and they clumped tightly together as they ascended, the pale smudge of moonlight falling quickly behind them. The steps rose up to a narrow landing, its tall window boarded over, then turned a sharp corner and rose up yet again. The handrail had long perished and was marked only by the odd p.r.o.ng of iron sticking out from the cracked and rotting plaster. Driblets of cold water were now coming down from above.
"We must be near the top," Neil whispered.
"We are," Shane confirmed. "Right at the top. There"s an old music room and the thickies" cla.s.s. That"s what Badger reckoned, anyway."
"He"d better be b.l.o.o.d.y right," said Neil. He"d always had time for Badger - the grinning, mischievous imp who"d first alerted Shane to this reputed treasure-chest - but he wouldn"t be responsible for his actions if this turned out to be a wind-up, and Badger was entirely capable of that.
The stairs finally gave up to a windowless corridor. As they felt their way blindly along, tripping over loose planks, constantly b.u.mping against each other, they pa.s.sed another doorway. Again only dank, black emptiness lay inside it.
"This it?" Neil wondered.
"Naw!" Shane blundered past. "The music room, that. Badger reckoned the room at the end"s the one we"re after."
The corridor was narrower than most they had come through - wide enough only for two people to walk along it side-by-side, and its walls seemed to close quickly in. "Any other way out along here?" Neil asked.
"No," said Shane.
Neil looked over his shoulder nervously, but saw nothing - only the vague outline of the door to the music room. He wondered what they"d do if they suddenly heard the sound of someone playing a piano in there. It was a chilling thought.
When they reached the door at the end of the pa.s.sage, it creaked open at Shane"s touch. Infinite darkness filled the chamber beyond, without so much as a crack of starlight from the outer world. A cold draught crept out to embrace them.
"Perhaps we should"ve brought a torch?" said Neil.
A tiny jet of blue fire spurted up beside him. Shane"s weaselly face and short, spiky hair swam into view. "It"s why I brought these," he said. He held up a matchbox and rattled it.
"Why didn"t you strike one before?" Daz demanded, now too frightened to show the correct level of respect.
Shane pushed him roughly into the room. "Cos I"ve only got a few, now get in!"
Neil followed. Another match flared up and in the wavering light they saw a damp, surprisingly small chamber, strewn with smashed crockery and broken cla.s.sroom furniture. More corrugated metal covered the windows - nailed up from the outside, while water was dripping from the exposed lathes above. The walls were of soaked, crumbling plaster but some places still bore school-drawings. Neil looked closely at one or two of them, and drew back, repulsed. It was the usual thing - stick people and animals, standing in two-dimensional gardens, with the sun a glowing ball above them, the gra.s.s green, knee-deep and uniformally straight around their clodhopper feet. But it was their faces - their crude, unfinished faces - great splodges for eyes, long b.l.o.o.d.y slashes for mouths. The faces of maniac clowns, grinning for murder!
"Do you think the remedials drew these... or Eugene?" Neil wondered aloud.
The light slowly faded. Shane quickly struck another match. "Who gives a s.h.i.t?" he said, walking over the wreckage towards an old locker in the corner.
Neil stood watching. Absurdly, he felt safest close to the door, though that was undoubtedly where danger would come from if it occurred.
"No sign that anyone ever dossed here, is there?" said Daz. "No bed... or plates or anything."
Shane began to drag items out from the locker and cast them angrily aside. One - an empty biscuit tin - crashed loudly against the wall. Both Neil and Daz jumped. They jumped again when something like an old canteen went clattering after it.
Neil imagined that he heard yet another thump from the farthest regions of the school.
"I"m going to bury that f.u.c.kin" Badger!" Shane was ranting. "I"m going to bury him!"
He struck another match, this one with savage force. It was quite clear however that there was nothing of any value in the old locker - pieces of junk, old rags, screwed-up newspaper. No cigs. No skinny-mags. Nothing.
"Right... fine, we"ll bury him," said Neil, relieved. "Let"s just go."
Shane gave him a vicious look. "We"re not going yet! We"re having a good search round first."
Daz began to whimper, but Shane ignored him, kicking the broken furniture around, hurling rubbish from wall to wall. Neil closed his eyes as the commotion echoed down through the school. This was sheer folly - violent noise-making for it"s own sake. Shane was tearing the room apart because he"d been fooled, not because he expected to uncover Eugene"s mythical trove.
"Shane... there"s nothing here!" Neil blurted out. "There probably never has been. Badger"s a lying little toe-rag. He"s set us up."
Shane made no reply but continued to throw stuff around.
"Suit yourself, but we"re going!" Neil made for the door. "Daz, come on..."
But the words died in his throat and he looked out into the corridor. At the same instant Shane ceased trashing and froze. They all listened intently. From somewhere far below came the distinct thunder of running feet - huge feet galloping through the school.
Shane suddenly yelped as the flame touched his finger-tips. The others didn"t wait for him to strike another.
They ran like men possessed. Logic shrieked at Neil to hide, to find some recess in the terrifying place, to bury himself there until the danger had pa.s.sed. But it was all instinct now - blind animal instinct, and that told him to get out of there, to put the nightmarish ruin as far behind him as he could and never go back.
Always a.s.suming that was possible!
Because they had to cross the junction on the stairs first, and it seemed highly likely that whatever demented thing was racing up to meet them, would get to that vital crossroads before they did.
Neil ran all the harder, a scream filling his chest. He literally bounded down the steps in the dark, two or three at a time, regardless of the danger. He could sense Daz at his shoulder, could hear the boy"s rasping breath. Somewhere close behind them, he heard a third pair of feet, indicating that Shane"s much vaunted courage had also given out at the first sign of the enemy.
A second later, the skylight swam into Neil"s view, seen only through a stinging haze of sweat. His heart hammered as he scrambled recklessly down. He could still hear the trundling feet below, now on the ascent, hurtling upwards, flight after flight. In his terror, he imagined that yodelling scream.
The downward stairs, now approaching on the left, were a black mouth - at any second to emit a colossal shape with hands the size of shovels. All three cried out involuntarily as they raced past... for deep in that stair-well a shadow was indeed barrelling up towards them.
By the time they reached the toilets, they were shrieking wildly, and hurled themselves down the steps, stumbling and falling. Neil tripped over Daz"s flailing body and went face-first into the sc.u.mmy water; but he didn"t even wince, leaping back to his feet, and skidding across to the hard square of midnight sky that was the window. Shane was now in front however, and with a quite remarkable feat of gymnastics, vaulted over the sill, vanishing from sight.
Neil followed, throwing himself out head-first... and only at the last second realising his terrible mistake.
The tar-paper roof had gone clean through, smashed by the force of Shane"s descent, sucking the first boy down into the coal-shed. Neil, helplessly, arms grabbing at nothing, plummeted after him. He fell straight through the outhouse, twisting in mid-air, the open doorway to the playground spinning upwards past him... then down and down, into an even more complete darkness. The subterranean chill a.s.sailed him even before he hit the ground, and when he did, the breath went out of his body in a single whoosh!
For a moment he lay stunned, vaguely aware of what felt like sacks of broken pottery beneath him. He reached out with his hand. Touched skin. Human skin. But cold. Shane... he was lying on top of Shane!
But what about Daz?
Jesus!
Vainly, he tried to scramble away, but the heavy body crashed onto him with sickening force. There was a hollow explosion in Neil"s head...
When he came round again, his breath burned in his chest - he knew his ribs were broken. An ear-numbing silence surrounded him; dust trickled onto his head. He looked weakly up. It hurt to twist his neck, but far above, framed in two concentric holes, he saw the night sky. It looked beautiful, but a long way away.
Not down there, he thought weakly. Please... not down there!
Underneath him, Shane began to stir. Neil tried to heave his battered body off his friend. He was conscious of Daz sitting up beside him, feeling tenderly along his left arm, weeping silently at his own misfortune.
Then, all three of them heard the sound... the sound of feet shuffling somewhere out there in the darkness. Shuffling steadily nearer. A noisome reek washed over them. Daz began to cry all the louder, openly blubbering, pleading for help in a little girl voice. Neil felt Shane go limp beside him. He had fainted.
Up in the school, Council watchman Stan Eastland had turned on his powerful torch and walked through all the cla.s.srooms on the first floor, even looking down in the boys" toilets. He went upstairs and glanced in every room there, then down to the ground floor and across the old a.s.sembly hall to examine the offices at the front.
There was no sign of the little b.a.s.t.a.r.ds now.
Kids today, he thought with disgust, as he stumped back out to his van, making sure to lock the building up behind him. He was d.a.m.ned if he knew what was eating them.
[Originally published in Kimota 6, Summer 1997].
EATING OUT WITH MR. BENN.
by Caroline Dunford.
Everyone in the restaurant was hand-jiving. Strange, but it was after two in the morning, I was hungry and they looked harmless enough. Actually, they looked as if they were having rather a good time. I had already trudged past the deserted grimy eyes of half a dozen eateries; menus with today"s special hanging at half mast in memory of yesterday"s goat curry, carrot pie and duck in piquant melon sauce. Of those few that still haunted my memory I was frankly suspicious and I doubt I would have gone in even if the doors had been unlocked. I wondered if goat was either a spelling mistake or my own bad eyesight, but h.e.l.l you only have one life, why risk it? The second had been one of those health food places, which invariably give me dire indigestion for three days afterwards and the last far too pretentious (and probably too expensive) for my tastes. So all in all the hand-jiving joint seemed like a good and seemingly safe bet.
I sat down at a nice round polished brown wood table, fairly near the kitchen and prominent enough to attract the waitress" eye, but not central to the room, so it was still easy to serve. I don"t know about you, but if I was waiting tables late at night, the guy in the centre of the crazy maze of chairs, tables and sleepy, grouchy customers would be the last one to be served. I try to be thoughtful like that.
Not surprisingly the music was jazz. A woman at the next table expertly twisted her wrist in time to the music and flashed me an improbably wide and obscene smile. I guessed she was one of the ones going in for the big mouth trend, a pointless, extremely painful, but basically cosmetic operation. A gold bracelet, strung with charms, danced on her arm. Her blonde hair was perfectly in place, a high conical tower studded with small to medium sized gems. She had a large sapphire nose pin and a couple of pebble sized diamonds hanging from each ear. I considered, seriously, for a few moments, making a pa.s.s at her, taking her home and running off with her jewelry in the middle of the night. I certainly wouldn"t have got anything for her clothes. Yet, another city had invoked the anti-prudity clause. I sighed and began to worry about the prices in here.
The menu was carved into the middle of the table, which is quite a good idea as it saves faffing around with soup-stained bits of paper. The down side is when you change the list and have to buy all new furniture. This certainly wasn"t the kind of place where you had specials of the day. I was relieved to see the prices were well within my financial capabilities, which meant they were pretty low. Big Mouth seemed to be trying to signal me with her eyebrows, I bent my head further and studied the menu as if my life depended on it.
I had decided courageously on the chilli dog, on the grounds it might have good meat in it and if it didn"t I wouldn"t be able to taste it anyway, when just like good old Mr Benn"s shop keeper, the waitress appeared.
Do you remember Mr. Benn? He was the star of a lunchtime children"s cartoon. He used to visit this magic shop to try on different costumes and whatever he tried on be it s.p.a.ceman suit or cowboy outfit, he would open a door and wander into the appropriate environment for an adventure. Virtual reality for children, when most of us couldn"t even spell computer. Oh yes, whenever he walked into the shop, the shopkeeper would appear "as if by magic" and this was the cue for the real adventure to start.
I admired Mr Benn for three reasons. He had found a magic shop, which no-one else seemed to know about. he never paid for any of the costumes he tried on. He could undress by merely removing his hat. (His other clothes would then go through a bad animation metamorphosis; it was too unsightly for children to see Mr. Benn in his knickers.) The waitress who had appeared like Mr. Benn"s shopkeeper did not look anything like the original. She wasn"t comfortably fat and she wasn"t wearing a fez.
"Chilli dog and Purplerona Cream Soda."
I get the weirdest food fetish late at night, which is probably the reason my last girlfriend left me.
Instead of nodding eagerly or even nodding in the sort of neck folding way late night staff do, the girl agitated on the spot. I mean she fiddled with her l.u.s.tring ap.r.o.n, checked the corners of her vari-mode mouth to see it wasn"t going to split round to the back of her head and shifted from one stiletto-crippled foot to the other. Her arms wriggled, her waist crinkled and her chest undulated. I watched her with a bleary 3am wariness that comes from that in-built human caution, that we all know monsters appear at night. Away from the sun is the realm of the impossible. Wrapped behind the black night windows, immersed in this alternative world created jointly by the minds of the customers and staff, anything is possible. So being a typical human I did the only thing possible.
"A chilli dog and a Purplerola cream soda, ppleease."
Her voice was less than a whisper, a sc.r.a.ping of knife on bone, "I can"t."
I looked down at the menu briefly.
"Ok," I said, willing to make concessions, "a multiburger with fries and a diet Milky."
The problems of having a menu set in wood.
The girl turned and bolted to the kitchen, while I sat there getting hungrier and hungrier. Time slipped by, but not having a watch I couldn"t verify it was the ten years it felt like. My eyelids turned to stone and my body acquired the la.s.situde of the freshly dead. I considered putting my head on the table and having a quick snooze, but the thought of waking up with Death by Chocolate embossed on my face put me off. I"d only had my pretty visage ironed three months ago and it was going to be at least five years before I could afford to have it done again.
My automatic reflexes gave my tumbling mind a belt and I noticed that the hand jiving in the room had become even more intense. Wrists gyrated with such a frenzy you"d think they were trying to whip up a hurricane - a left handed one by the look of it. People moved to tables closer to me. Now that was really odd if I was, by their terms, a freak for not hand jiving surely they would want to move away from me, not towards me. If the whole b.l.o.o.d.y thing hadn"t been so funny it would have been sinister. The dream-like atmosphere was sucking my soul. Perhaps, I thought searching for a meeting of hand jivers anonymous and were trying to catch abstention, like flu, from me. I smiled with what I hoped was a suitable mixture of patronage and genuine friendliness. My instinct for self preservation was just beginning to suggest that the best thing to do was just get the h.e.l.l out of here when the waitress did her Mr. Benn trick again and appeared as if by magic; it was almost a pity she wasn"t wearing a hat.
"If you could come with me, sir."
Her voice was deep and strawberry coloured. Normally I would have followed her anywhere without question.
"Why...," I started only to realise the rest of the restaurant were on their feet.
"Sure, " I said, "fine." They had steak on the menu here and the cutlery to go with it.
Headed by the waitress, with me closely behind, the whole posse proceeded crocodile fashion towards the mirrored doors of the kitchen.
"Ossh, whisy, washy, ossh," intoned the crowd. The best I could hope for was a costume shop and a fez headed shop keeper behind the door. Otherwise it seemed as if there might be a new pie carved into the menu shortly. I hung onto the thought that the kitchen had to have a back door. The crowd remained beyond the mirrors; the waitress and I pa.s.sed through into another world without even waiting to change our costumes.
The kitchen was large, white, steamy, filled full of glistening metal pans and shouting. A large man in a chef"s ap.r.o.n and cap lumbered towards me.
"You," he cried, thrusting an elephant gutting knife in my face, "didn"t hand jive! Is this true? Why not? Why are you here, did Huilo send you?"
"Now look friend, I don"t know any Huilo. I"m sorry if hand jiving is part of your scene. I"m just really tired and I was really hungry. I pa.s.sed your door, smelled the food, saw the prices and wandered in like any ordinary punter."
The chef went purple in the face.
"We do not have ordinary punters here," he bl.u.s.tered making spaghetti in the air.