Short Story One

Highly Strung (WARNING: disturbing content)

The bicycle ride to school was only two miles but Sam was ten years old so every day the journey felt like a heroic expedition. He liked getting up early to make sure his rucksack was packed properly, with a light rainproof jacket, some dried fruit for energy, a bottle of water in case he got thirsty, and the Swiss army knife he got for his birthday, which included a saw, scissors, tweezers and a toothpick, as well as the usual knives and screwdrivers. The plastic bottle he used for water had once contained orange squash but when the squash was finished he rescued the empty bottle from the dustbin and soaked off the label then rubbed away the stubborn grey glue with a damp cloth and fairy liquid. It was a tricky business but when the clear plastic was clean it felt like the bottle had been made specially for Sam’s travels.

Sam’s mother granted his wish to go to school on his bike because after his father died the boy wanted to show he could look after her if she was ever in trouble, and he wanted to save her money on petrol because the journey to school and back six times a week added up to ninety-six miles a month, and the cost of the fuel was enough to buy them both a modest dinner, and there was the wear and tear on the car to think about as well, let alone the pollution.

The other boys said riding a bike to and from school wouldn’t help the environment much because if he was going to be cycling four miles a day Sam would have to eat more food and the food he ate also used up food as well as water and heating. But Sam knew there was a big difference between the water vapour he breathed out of his mouth and the carbon monoxide the car belched out of its exhaust pipe. The science teacher once explained that carbon monoxide was a nasty gas that deprived the air of oxygen and this was the reason very unhappy people sometimes shut themselves in their garages with the car still running, but Sam’s friend, Michael, who knew about these things, said the teacher was wrong because you couldn’t get a big-enough concentration of gas just by hiding in the garage with the door shut and the engine going. The only way to get a space confined enough to do the job efficiently was to lock yourself in the car with a hose over the exhaust pipe poking through one of the windows, but then you had to use some duct tape or a big towel to seal off the gap the hose would leave at the top. Killing yourself wasn’t as easy as the science teacher made out, Michael said. No one disagreed with Michael because he spoke French and Latin, held the school record for both the 100 and the 1500 metres, and had won the Design Prize three years in a row. Last year he’d written an essay that proved putting solar panels in the Sahara Desert was a stupid idea. Also, Michael was a year older than Sam and his dad was a lawyer.

Anyway, Mrs. Phillips decided to let Sam cycle two miles a day to school and back six times a week during term time, come rain or shine. Sam insisted on this last detail, the rain or shine bit, to stop his mum giving him a lift on wet days, even though it would mean keeping his top half dry and changing his shoes and bottoms when he got to school. He didn’t want to spoil his expensive school uniform and might have to invest in a proper cycling outfit one day (another expense to be avoided if possible) but he was still in two minds about the matter and said these were minor details he would sort out when he had more experience. His mother agreed but said they should use the Summer Term as a trial period and Sam thought this idea was very reasonable.

Because their house was part of a 1930s ribbon development, the first bit of Sam’s journey followed the main road between two local towns, Brinton and Hestburgh, and this meant pedalling past Hazelnut Farm, which was not really a farm but had two large dogs that hurled themselves at the gates when Sam went past and made him veer into the middle of the road. There was also Jason’s Autos, which smelt of petrol and burnt rubber, and had a workshop with open folding doors that produced copious sparks and metallic banging. The mechanics in the workshop wore greasy blue overalls and heavy boots and always interrupted their crashing about and swearing to stare in Sam’s direction. The third nasty place on Sam’s route was Bingham Court, a remand school that used to be a posh country house. If something bad happened in the local area that was left unexplained, like a burglary or vandalism, people always said it was one of the Bingham boys, but none of the sad kids who lived there had ever been charged with a crime.

After a few hundred yards Sam could leave behind the madness of the main road by turning left down Church Lane and taking the longer and more picturesque route through the local countryside and past the little church where his father was buried, which meant he could take a break on his journey, if he had time, and pay his respects. There were more potholes on this route and oncoming cars were often in the middle of the road, but it was much quieter. After another few hundred yards, at the end of Church Lane he had to join the main road again and double back on himself to reach the school gates, but only for a short stretch. He could have reached the gates directly by following the main road all the way, but Sam’s mother didn’t want him battling with buses and lorries and saloon cars whose impatient drivers were late for work. One of those storm drains could send a boy flying.

After a few weeks of watching the weather forecast and bagsying a space in the corner of the changing rooms normally used for PE and Games only, Sam settled into a workable cycling routine. Once or twice he misjudged things, took a chance on the weather and got his uniform wet, which made morning lessons rather uncomfortable, and a few times he left home far too early and arrived at school before everyone else, which made him look like a bit of a saddo, but soon he was organized enough to relax on his bike trips and think about constructive things like homework or a cricket match. Sam opened the batting for the first team and was known for stubbornness that bordered on masochism. He would rather be covered in bruises than give up his wicket so he was hard to dislodge from the crease and scored slowly but he was top of the batting averages every year.

Once Sam’s bike travel had become familiar to the whole school, in a morning assembly the headmaster expressed admiration for the boy’s initiative, determination, courage and public-spiritedness, and in a brief handwritten letter to Sam’s mother he said that if there were more boys like Sam in the world the world would be a better place. Sam dug the letter out of his rucksack for his mother to peruse that evening but they both had a good laugh because the ink on the envelope had run and the letter was crumpled.

After a few weeks Sam’s legs grew stronger and he became more confident and boys at school he didn’t know began to say hello. Also, some mornings his mother found it hard to wake him up, even with tea and toast in bed, because he now slept so deeply. This was a good thing, of course, but Sam felt guilty because after his dad was not around any more he kept having bad dreams or lying awake for hours and he saw these nightly troubles as a sacrifice that he was making for his dead father, a tribute to the man he was finding it impossible to replace. So his recent deep sleep meant his grief was waning and he felt ashamed. By way of atonement for this filial betrayal, and even though it meant arriving home a little later, he stopped at his father’s grave more often than his mother thought healthy, but she said nothing because the little church Sam passed by every day was the most beautiful thing for miles around, and her husband had spent many hours within its 14th Century flint walls and tiled roof and snug oak porch and neatly maintained graveyard teaching his son the ways of the world.

At weekends the two of them, father and son, often took simple picnics and sat with their backs against the graveyard wall and looked out over the fields of thick wheat in summer and ploughed furrows in winter, and it astonished Sam’s mother how her husband used the ancient building as a nursery for the boy’s mind. Sam would come home from their church chats over her gifts of flask tea and sweaty sandwiches to test her knowledge of geometry, slavery, atheism, black holes, peacocks, gunpowder, bees, robots and the art of war. And after Sam began cycling to school, proud to be getting there under his own steam and passing the church twice a day, Mrs. Phillips found her son garrulous once more about learning, the very way he’d been when his father was alive. His eyes were brighter, attention fiercer, diction more precise and grades higher. Who’d have thought that such a simple change of routine could yield such happy results? Maybe Sam would recover from his father’s death after all.

One Saturday Sam scored fifty in thirty balls and the match was over before tea. He was pedalling down the country lane in the Spring sunshine when he saw the car park near the church was empty and he thought he’d stop off at the graveyard. He leant his bike against the yew tree, unhitched his backpack, took off his blazer and sat on the grass. Someone had mown the grass that morning and the path was sprinkled with clippings and the air smelt green. Sam took off his tie, dropped his bag beside the headstone and found his cool bottle of water. He took a long drink and lay down to look at the sky but the sun was too bright so he closed his eyes. He could feel the short grass prickling the back of his white shirt. He was just drifting off when he felt a presence by his side. A figure was blocking the light.

Sam thought there must be a funeral and he was going to be asked to leave.

‘Having a little snooze, are we?’

Sam sat up.

Above him stood a boy with his knuckles on his hips and his legs apart like a military officer. The boy was wearing tight green army trousers with side pockets, a ripped black T-shirt and dirty white trainers. There was a black plastic digital watch on his right wrist. His hair was spiked and flat on top, shaved at the sides and bleached white, and there was a gold stud in his left ear. His body was powerful and his nose was broad like a boxer’s but he had the skin of a child. His voice was loud and stony but had the willowy twang of youth. The boy’s accent reminded Sam of a comic-strip villain, a mob novitiate, but he was no more than thirteen.

‘Not really. I like the sun on my face. I was on my way home from school and had a bit of time to spare.’

‘First, who the fuck goes to school on Saturday? Second, who spends their spare time in a fucking graveyard?’

Sam had heard the f-word dozens of times before, but no one had ever used it to his face. The boy spoke the phrase ‘fucking graveyard’ like he was jabbing his index finger into Sam’s under-developed chest. Sam didn’t want to sound weak because bullies got angry if they thought you were weak, but he didn’t want to sound cocky either. He knew whatever he said would be wrong.

‘I don’t normally relax in graveyards, but my dad’s buried here.’

‘You come ‘ere to visit your dead dad?’

‘Of course.’

The boy strolled over to the gravestone and peered at the inscription.

‘Only 37?’

‘Yes.’

‘Fuck me. Bet your mum was upset.’

Sam didn’t reply. He started to gather his stuff.

‘Oi! Where dya think you’re going? Haven’t finished our little chat yet.’

The boy snatched the rucksack from Sam and rummaged about inside.

Sam had no idea what to do. He’d never been in a fight before and this malicious creature would beat him to a pulp then probably steal his bag. And if Sam didn’t play his cards right, he could lose his knife, bike and uniform as well.

‘I’ve got to get home for dinner. My mother will be worried.’

‘Oh, dinner and mother, is it? Fuck me, you’re a posh little cunt, aren’t you?’

Sam was startled. This was a whole new world. But the boy was looking at the headstone again.

‘How come your dad died when he was 37? Didn’t top himself, did he?’

Sam now felt anger as well as fear.

‘Of course he didn’t. It was an accident.’

The boy tittered with scorn.

Sam thought the interrogation was about to get nasty, but the boy looked at his watch and said, ‘Must be off. Nice chatting.’ He dropped the rucksack, gave an ironic half-salute, sauntered across the graveyard, hopped over the flint wall and disappeared into the field of wheat.

Back home Sam didn’t say anything. He didn’t want his mother to worry, of course, but he was also fascinated by the boy as much as horrified. Why was his hair bleached? That was no good for school, and it was a bit much to bleach it on Friday and dye it back for Monday. And why was he wearing jewellery? Only older boys who’d left school wore jewellery. And why was the boy so rude to someone he’d never met before? You must be very angry with the world to be so rude to a stranger. Also, Sam felt embarrassed. He was brought up to sort out problems by himself and only ask for help if need be, but he’d no idea how he felt right now or how to ask for help when it was so hard to say exactly what was wrong. The boy hadn’t taken anything, and Sam had not been physically hurt.

At school on Monday the boy was already fading from Sam’s mind. He had more important things to worry about, like the summer exams and the annual holiday with his mother to Cornwall when his grandmother would no doubt go on about how lovely her own son had been and how much she missed his cheer and wisdom. In break that morning Sam nearly told Michael about the boy in the graveyard because Michael would know exactly what to do, but Sam didn’t want to bother him. On Wednesday he wished he had bothered him.

Sam was riding home down Church Lane when the boy jumped out from behind the big oak tree that stood opposite the church. Sam had to brake hard and crushed his balls on the saddle. The boy grabbed the handlebars.

‘Nice bike.’

‘You nearly caused an accident.’

‘No, I didn’t. You should look where you’re going, mate.’

The acid dread Sam had felt on Saturday came flooding back. Sam’s ears were throbbing, and his heart was pounding, and he felt like crying or screaming. The boy’s two-hand grip was like a vice and the bike didn’t move an inch.

‘You gonna get off or what?’

Wanting to avoid the ‘what’ at all costs, Sam swung a leg over the bike saddle and stood still in the road, staring not at the tarmac but defiantly into the boy’s face. The tummy ache from his crushed balls had started. The boy was smirking, but his eyes were utterly dead as if this behaviour was routine.

‘My turn,’ the boy said.

He jumped on the bike and pedalled back up the lane, with bowlegs like a clown. Sam thought he’d lost the bike for good, and was now thinking about walking home, when he saw the boy pass the church, turn round and come back, wobbling and swerving on purpose. When he reached Sam again, he gave a loud ironic sigh of relief, stopped the bike, and jumped off.

‘This is a nice bike. A really nice bike. Must of cost your dad a fortune.’

He held the machine at arm’s length with one hand, like a buyer assessing goods, then let the bike fall into the road with a crash. He looked at the heap he’d just made and put his hands on his hips while tilting his head quizzically.

‘A bit small though.’

That evening Sam’s mother noticed her son’s discomfort but when she asked he blamed a pothole.

For the rest of the week Sam could not concentrate on his academic work, played badly in the nets and was distant with his mother, and all because he could not get the boy out of his head, and even though he knew that getting into Sam’s head was exactly what the boy was trying to do, Sam could not make his mind behave.

It was not fear of physical pain, nor the inconvenience and expense and sentimental harm of losing precious property that made Sam feel sick and unable to function, but the boy’s malice. You could deal with people’s anger and frustration and neglect and disappointment and envy and laziness and greed because all these things usually vanished when people confronted each other and the air was cleared, but malice hung in the air like a poison fog and infected everything.

Sam did his best to hide his anxiety at school and when Michael asked what on Earth was wrong Sam told him he was just missing his dad. He was determined to remove somehow the sickening threat that now infected every day of his life but Sam reassured himself: there’d only been two encounters so far and there was no point getting upset about a third when he might never see the boy again.

But on Friday he did see the boy again. This time the boy was standing in the middle of the road with his arms folded. He was wearing faded grey shorts, a white vest and a pair of red flip-flops. His arms and legs were muscular for someone his age and Sam wondered if the boy did heavy physical work outside of school or was going to the gym (prematurely) or was just like that genetically. Whatever the truth, the boy was an intimidating figure to someone of Sam’s age, size and build, and the boy knew as much. He placed his fists under his arms to exaggerate his biceps.

‘Was beginning to think you wouldn’t show,’ he said, when Sam pulled up. ‘But now you’re here, can you do us a favour? Follow me.’

The boy set off for the churchyard, flip-flops slapping, and Sam followed, wheeling his bike. The boy trotted up the lane, paused inside the lychgate and opened the wicket to let Sam through, then strode backwards like a jaunty holidaymaker to make sure Sam was following him over the mossy brick path all the way to the porch. There, he gestured to Sam to leave his rucksack and bike behind, snapped the heavy latch, swung open the dense black door and ushered the scared schoolboy into the cool gloomy space, where Sam did what he was told.

If anyone – verger, cleaner, priest or passer-by – had arrived half an hour later, they would have been baffled when they saw the shorts and blazer of a school uniform with purple piping neatly folded on the table of leaflets in the porch, and been shocked, once inside, to see a little boy sitting cross-legged in the aisle of the church wearing nothing but his underpants. And no doubt they would have assumed something terrible had happened.  

What had happened was this: the boy led Sam into the cluttered space of the nave, made him stand in the exact centre of the building, undress, hand over the clothes to his captor and sing a hymn from memory while the boy sat down on the altar steps to enjoy the concert he’d arranged. The first two lines of the hymn Sam had chosen did not go well but he knew his stuff from years of practice and soon found his voice: ‘Angels in bright raiment rolled the stone away…’

‘Lovely! Lovely!’ cried the boy when Sam had finished. ‘I hope the old geezer can ’ear you.’

The boy got up and, in the fresh silence, tiptoed like a tightrope walker to the exit.

‘Now sing it again.’

Sam started the hymn again, much more confident this time, and increased the volume and clarity of his singing when he saw, with relief, that the boy was leaving, and when the door clunked shut and Sam’s perfect treble fell silent and the space was cool and still once more, Sam sat down on the cool tiles and let the tears flow.

‘He what?’ said Michael, staring at his own fists. ‘Bloody psycho.’

They were wandering round the fields at break, eating sweets and wrestling like detectives with the boy’s possible motives, but their amateur psychology failed to frame a plausible narrative. They resorted to making up silly titles for Sam’s merciless antagonist, like ‘Church Lane Churl’, ‘Holy Hooligan’ or ‘The Satan of All Saints’, but their laughter at such puerile invention was forced. Both Sam and Michael were now feeling the full force of the boy’s menace. He was no laughing matter. In the end they agreed to tell no one, and Michael promised to make up a plan of action in case the boy turned up again. Sam said he felt a lot better now he’d told Michael and could cope as long as things didn’t get any worse, but Michael said the boy had already done quite enough to deserve a good hiding.

‘I’ll get rid of him for you,’ said Michael, ‘but it’s going to get nasty.’

Sam thought this sinister pronouncement was mere bravado.

Since the boy had appeared in just one spot on Sam’s journey to and from school, Michael suggested he inspect the area. One afternoon Michael followed Sam down the lane on foot, and they stopped off in the graveyard. Sam left his bike out of sight while Michael began his survey.

First, he walked round the wall of the graveyard, poking the chunks of flint with his fingernails and looking up at the canopy of ash and birch and yew. Then he took a good look at the grave of Sam’s father and read the inscription with respectful attention. Inside the church he looked around the altar and the organ and the loft and flicked through the huge Bible on the lectern. Outside again, with Sam following, Michael walked up the lane and stopped under the oak tree where the boy had jumped out a few weeks before. Michael looked up at the dense foliage and apple-green acorns. He turned to Sam.

‘How tall is he?’

‘About six inches taller than me. Why?’

‘Interesting.’

Sam watched Michael take off his jacket, hang it on a bush and climb the tree. Then Sam could see Michael’s legs dangling from the huge branch that overhung the road, and he heard Michael’s voice.

‘Can you see me?’

‘No, I can’t. Just your legs. What the hell are you doing?’

‘Surprise, Sam. We need the element of surprise.’

After school next day Michael met Sam under the oak. They waited to see if the boy arrived, then Michael took out a hessian sack, a coil of blue rope, a green plastic scoop, a food tub, a ball of nylon cord and three feet of hose pipe sliced lengthwise into two pieces. Sam watched in silence. Michael looked up at the tree, took out a knife, cut some cord and tied one end to the handle of the food tub. When Michael spoke now, his tone was business-like. ‘Right. I’m going up the tree. You go home and look after your mother. See you tomorrow.’

Sam did not argue, assuming Michael was going to give the boy a fright but not without showing a bit of Holmesian bravado in the process. Scaring the shit out of a bully is just what Sam’s father would have done. Even so, Sam felt the urge to ask what Michael had planned.

‘What exactly are you doing?’

‘Pest control,’ said Michael.

Then he explained to Sam what he had in mind but left out the climax. Michael reckoned if Sam knew the finale he wouldn’t back the plan.

Michael joined Sam on the way home for the next three days, but the boy didn’t show. On the fourth day there was still no sign, and the two friends took a stroll round the graveyard, both declaring falsely that they hoped the boy had got bored and gone away. Wondering what life would be like if it really returned to normal, with this sorry episode just a bad memory, they found themselves at the father’s grave once more and tried to clear their minds, but when they looked down at the now-familiar, well-tended space, they were horrified by what they saw.

The plot’s stone border and the urn were still intact, but someone had chipped out with great skill every letter and number of the headstone’s inscription, so that the name, the epitaph and the dates of birth and death had all been obliterated and the occupant of the grave was now anonymous. The chisel work was so precise the carved characters had been excised by perfect rectangular blanks.

Sam and Michael now changed their routine. Michael left school first and waited up the tree to look out for the boy before Sam pedalled past. On the third day his patience was rewarded. He was ready up the tree as usual, like a sniper, when he saw a figure coming across the wheat field, chopping the heads off young wheat plants with great sweeps of a long stick.

When the muscular figure with bleached spiky hair reached the lane, it looked both ways then crossed the road and disappeared behind the oak. Michael sat perfectly still with his eyes closed, waiting for his moment. When the boy heard the rushing sound of tyres on the warm tarmac, he leapt into the road right under the branch where Michael was sitting. Sam stopped his bike very close to the boy and put his feet down either side of the machine so he was completely steady.

‘Did ya like my handiwork?’ said the boy. ‘Thought you’d appreciate the gesture.’

While the boy waited for Sam’s reply, a blue rope dropped from the branch above his head and the boy looked scared when the noose went round his neck and bit into his young skin. There was a loud rustling from the high thick foliage and Sam watched in horror as a bulging sack fell through the air on one side of the big branch, while on the other side the now-helpless boy was hoisted smoothly into the air. When the sack hit the ground, the boy stopped rising.

Sam’s father once read him a famous piece of prose about a Hindu being hanged by the British, and at the time Sam was sure he’d never see such a terrible thing himself. But he was seeing such a terrible thing now.

The red flip-flops lay upside-down in the road and the boy was still kicking and twitching and gurgling when Michael slipped down the trunk and came to stand beside his friend.

They both looked up at the hanging body and saw a wet patch in the groin of the boy’s shorts where a tent of damp fabric gripped a stiff shape that looked a bit like a pointing finger.

‘Rigor erectus,’ said Michael. ‘I didn’t expect that.’